How to Use a CRM to Better Run Your Business Posted on October 21, 2020October 6, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick It isn’t every day that you come across a tool that plays a part in every single aspect of your company. For small business owners, tools like that are highly coveted, as they allow us to keep budgets nimble and our companies running smoothly. Which is why having a small business CRM is crucial. A CRM does a lot to help you track, manage, and engage with your prospects and customers. But it also does so much more. When you know where to look and how to use data correctly, a CRM can inform not just your customer service, sales, and inbound marketing efforts, but all different facets and various departments within your business. So, if you’re interested in keeping your business running smoothly and providing your consumer base with the right products and solutions, look no further than a CRM. Let’s dive into exactly how a CRM touches and assists every department within your business. Marketing The more information you have in marketing, the better you can target the right people with the right content. And your CRM is crucial for making it happen. A CRM keeps track of your prospects and customers by monitoring their behaviors and experiences. From there, you can evaluate this information and look for key patterns, such as which pieces of content your audience is most drawn to and what types of outreach materials garner the most engagement. Think of a CRM as one more tool at your disposal for tracking your marketing performance. By pinpointing exactly what’s motivating action, you can double down on the efforts that yield the most impressive results and create content that can be more useful to your prospects. Sales Any tool that enables your sales team is a good tool to have, and your CRM is one of the best. A CRM creates efficiencies that your sales team can use to direct their focus and ensure they’re putting their attention where it matters: selling. Use a CRM to create tasks and automate follow-ups and email campaigns so your sales team doesn’t have to perform them by hand. In addition to opening up time in their schedules for everything else on their to-do list (in turn allowing them to manage their time better and sell more products to more leads), it also offloads rote processes and keeps errors out of the equation. The result isn’t just more sales but more effective sales. Customer Service A bad customer service experience can end a client relationship before it’s even begun. And with so much riding on getting it right, it’s a good idea to use all of the information you have at your disposal to meet your customers’ needs. A CRM allows you to easily track past behaviors and actions, providing you with background information that can be essential as you seek to provide a customer service resolution. It also shows your customers just how much you value their partnership, and that you’re willing to go the extra mile to get to know them better and ensure their experience is an optimal one. Product Development Your product development team needs to know the specific features and resources that your audience finds valuable. With a CRM, you can easily pull up your top customers’ track records to evaluate what they’ve found to be the most useful, as well as follow up with them as needed to find out what else they might be looking for. This kind of insight is invaluable as you look to expand your product line and improve your rollout processes. Your CRM offers information that you won’t be able to gather from anywhere else — or at least not quite so easily. Software Development Your dedicated software development team is there to help ensure that your website and software are always running smoothly for your customers. If a user is having issues, they’re also the ones who are on hand to rectify it. A CRM provides an important advantage here since it provides your software development team with the ability to keep track of any and all software service issues that your users experience. And, your CRM can illuminate patterns that suggest a bigger problem, which can save your company big-time. Your software development team can pull records related to each customer who reaches out, which may cue them into a wider system issue, or at least a more productive solution that takes less time to solve. Leadership It takes a village to run a successful business, but that doesn’t mean that your leadership team is always completely up to date on new developments. A CRM gives leadership a window into your audience, including what they think of your product or service and what their experience has been like so far. Look at your CRM dashboard like a distillation of the insights and analytics that you already discuss with your leadership team, laid out in a simple format that offers essential information without requiring your brand’s leaders to spend hours interpreting the data. As you can tell, there’s pretty much no area where your CRM can’t provide at least some benefit. If you haven’t invested in CRM software yet, look for a platform that includes just the right features for what you’re trying to achieve, with intuitive, built-in navigation that every department can use for their own purposes. And if you want to learn more about BenchmarkONE’s all-in-one CRM, schedule a walk-through of our platform today.
How Meta Tags Can Dramatically Boost Your Site’s SEO Posted on October 20, 2020December 1, 2022 by Guest Author Nowadays, SEO is a complicated business (that people often outsource). Each year brings new guidelines as to what does and doesn’t boost your website’s performance in search rankings. This means that simpler, more fundamental elements of SEO can be forgotten. One of these elements is meta tags. While meta tags have been around for a while, that doesn’t mean they aren’t effective when it comes to improving your search ranking. Did you know that 93 Ninety-three percent of online experiences begin with a search engine? When it comes to improving your SEO strategy, it’s essential to focus on the basics and ensure your site is being indexed correctly by Google. That’s ultimately what determines if you’re part of the majority of those online experiences or not. In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into meta tags – why you should use them, where you should use them, and best practices for using them. Why You Should Use Meta Tags One of the reasons that meta tags have been somewhat forgotten about in recent years is that they no longer directly impact Google SEO rankings. The Page Rank algorithm no longer pays any attention to meta tags when assessing your page’s authority. However, this does not mean that meta tags aren’t useful pieces of content. Far from it, in fact. First of all, it’s important to understand what meta tags were designed to do. Back before the advent of AI-driven search engines that intelligently read your pages’ content, indexing web pages was performed by looking at two things: the cookies a site placed on users’ browsers, and meta tags. They Play a Role In Indexing Your Site Meta tags still affect the indexing of your site in several key ways. They allow Google to understand your pages’ content so that they will appear more frequently in searches for particular keywords. In addition, effective use of meta tags can boost your keywords ranking. This means that even if they don’t directly increase your performance on search engines, they can have a dramatic effect on how well you rank for certain keywords. This makes it crucial for you to implement effective keyword research so you can determine what keywords you want to be using in your content and meta tags. They Help Users Find Your Content Meta tags aren’t all technical. There are more user-related reasons to use them, allowing people to find what they are looking for more easily. How? Well, the information included in meta tags is commonly read by a variety of other user-facing systems. In fact, many email marketing systems will display page previews based on meta-tag data, as will content syndication engines. They Sharpen Your Skills Finally, learning how to use meta tags will simply give you more control over your site and arm you with a new skill. Digital skills training is recognized as highly important among marketing professionals, with 89 percent stating digital skills training would make them more successful in their role. Being able to deploy meta tags effectively is one element of this. Where to Use Meta Tags Most website owners will be aware of at least one type of meta tag – the one that goes at the top of each page and appears on SERPs. However, this is just one type of meta tag, and most eCommerce platforms will allow you to place meta tags in at least five different places on your site: The most familiar type of meta tag is the title tag. This sits at the top of the HTML code for each of your pages and appears on the SERPs as a preview description of that page. Each of your pages should have a unique, descriptive, useful title meta tag. The meta description tag is an extension of the title tag. It acts as a more detailed description of the content on a particular page and is crucial in drawing visitors to your pages. Both of these tags are commonly used, and it’s likely that you’ve already deployed them on your website. The canonical tag is a way of indicating that a particular page is unique. This is particularly useful if you have dozens of nearly identical product pages because if Google doesn’t have a canonical tag to read, it will assume they are all copies of each other and mark you down in the SERPs for duplicate content. The alt tag is an image optimization tag that makes your images more easily accessible for search engines and human users alike. This tag is very under-utilized, but if your site has a lot of images, using it can have a dramatic impact on your SEO. This tag is particularly useful for photographers. Finally, the header tag is similar to the title tag but appears in-line on your pages rather than at the top of the page. This tag is designed to allow you to break up long pages into sections and to have a unique meta tag for each section. This helps Google to understand what a particular page contains, and therefore helps your search ranking. Ideally, you should be using all of these types of tags. However, merely writing a description of each page, image, and section is not enough. In order for your meta tags to perform well, you’ll also need to write them up in a particular way. How To Use Meta Tags There are a number of key principles when it comes to writing and using meta tags on your site. You are probably familiar with some of these – such as the character limit – from writing title tags. However, writing effective meta tags can be a complex art form. Here are some tips: Most importantly, keep it short. Google’s limit on meta description length is approximately 158 characters for desktop users, and 120 for mobile users. However, far less than this amount is actually displayed in page previews. Google typically displays only 55 to 61 characters. So make sure that all of the important information is in the first 60 characters. Choose one or (maximum) two target keywords, and use them naturally in your meta tags. Don’t crowd them in, or simply list them, because this will give a bad impression of your site to human users. Nowadays, you can include your logo, company name, and website URL in meta tags, and you definitely should. This helps users associate content with your brand, and in the long-term, helps with brand recognition more generally. This is particularly important if you are syndicating your content or writing guest posts, where you request that your branding goes into meta tags on the third-party site. Wherever possible, use efficient modifiers like “Best”, “Top”, “Buy”, “Easy”, “How To”, “Current”, “Review”, or “Find”. People use these terms very frequently in search requests (even if Google Page Rank doesn’t pay much attention to them anymore) and so they boost your pages’ performance dramatically. Google recommends that all title tags be 100 percent unique, and the company has hinted that replicated title tags result in a penalty on your pages’ rank. Therefore, you should try and make every tag across all the types we’ve mentioned above, totally unique. This might be difficult if you have hundreds (or thousands) of pages or images, but it is worth slowly working through all of them over the course of a few months. Don’t vary the keyword. Though getting the same keyword into each meta tag can be a trying process, this is absolutely necessary for your pages to perform well. For all its cleverness, the Google algorithm still doesn’t completely understand the relationship between similar phrases. If you are looking to use meta tags to boost your keyword performance, make sure that your keyword is the same in each page and tag. Though SEO can sometimes feel like a huge, complex, daunting subject, there are some basics that it pays to get right. Meta tags are one of those. Not only can meta tags increase your SEO, but they also have another huge advantage over more complex techniques: adding them is totally free. They’re an effective way to maximize your results without adding costs to your marketing budget. Follow some of the techniques above, and see how far they get you. Sometimes, the simple approach is the best one, so make sure you’ve got your meta tags in place before you blow your marketing budget on expensive consultants! Author Bio Nahla Davies is a software developer and tech writer. Before devoting her work full time to technical writing, she managed—among other intriguing things—to serve as a lead programmer at an Inc. 5,000 experiential branding organization whose clients include Samsung, Time Warner, Netflix, and Sony.
What Should You Be Tracking for Content Marketing ROI? Posted on October 15, 2020October 8, 2020 by Natalie Slyman As content has evolved, so has the way we measure the return on investment that we get from it. Back in the early days of content marketing, it wasn’t uncommon for companies to have a set-it-and-forget-it attitude about the pieces that they published. After all, so long as their content was serving in some vague way to increase brand awareness and credibility that was enough — right? Today, we have loftier goals — and higher expectations — for our content, and a lot more ways to track performance, too. There are so many areas that contribute to how successful your content marketing is, and knowing what they are is crucial to ensure you’re getting the most out of your efforts. To help you put everything into perspective, here are some of the most important indicators of just how much of a return you’re getting on your content. Brand Awareness Brand awareness remains a central concern of content marketing, and for good reason. Eighty-nine percent of B2B marketers cite brand awareness as a top content goal, and that’s remained consistent for years. Fortunately, if you’re producing quality content, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting it to boost awareness and steer more eyes in your direction. But measuring brand awareness isn’t as straightforward as one might think. In order to ensure you’re creating brand awareness from your content marketing efforts, make sure you’re asking your marketing team the right questions: Are more people becoming familiar with what it is that you do? Are you seeing growth in social media followers and engagement? Are other people sharing your content? Is your content being syndicated to other sites? How to track brand awareness: Ask your sales team if leads and prospects express their familiarity with your brand in initial sales conversations. Track increased site traffic from any content you’re placing on outside publications. Track your social media following each month to determine if your numbers are increasing. Also, track likes, comments, reshares, etc. and see if those are on the rise as well. When you log on to your social media accounts, check your notifications for reshared content and engagement. Set up a Google alert that lets you know every time your company is mentioned online. Pay attention to industry events and speaking engagements. Often when brand awareness is increasing, companies get asked to participate in these networking events ahead of time. Credibility Effective content marketing can help you increase your brand’s authority within your industry, in turn opening up new doors for strong and reliable partnerships. This is a big win since long-term success relies heavily on how you’re esteemed within your industry and how well you’ve established yourself as an authentic leader. Content gives you a foundation to start with, and when it’s done right, can offer more opportunities to further increase your credibility. When checking-in on your brand’s credibility, ask the following questions: Are you getting awards for your content? Are you getting invited to speaking engagements? Are you solidifying columns and growing your guest-contributor portfolio? Are you getting more press? Are you getting more backlinks from reputable sources? How to track credibility: An increase in company awards. Make sure you’re submitting your company and your work for prestigious awards within your industry. Track the amount of speaking engagements your CEO and other members of your leadership team get asked to participate in. But make sure you’re on the lookout for these engagements and submitting your team for speaking spots. If industry publications ask you to write for them more regularly, that’s a good indication that your credibility is increasing. Make sure your marketing team is getting your articles published in noted publications your audience reads, and again, track website traffic from these sources to see if it’s increasing. Track your webinar performance and partnerships to see if registrants are on the rise and if more partners want to team up. Website Activity Is a great website really so great if nobody is visiting it? One of the primary ROIs you should be getting out of the content you create is an increase in site activity, which should be consistently measured through various on- and off-site metrics. While content might be only one piece of the puzzle driving your site’s success, if your activity is on the up-and-up, then it’s safe to say your content marketing strategy is probably doing its job. Make sure to ask these questions when checking your website activity: Do you see an increase in organic search traffic? Are you getting more backlinks to your content? Is your referral traffic on the rise? Is there are decrease in your bounce rate? How to track website activity: Some marketing automation platforms can show you exactly where your traffic is coming from and how much of that traffic is from what source. Check-in on your Google Analytics to get a better idea of your site’s performance. Run monthly reports and compare them against the previous month, quarter, and/or year to determine how well you’re doing. SEO SEO is a major ingredient in the recipe for successful content. From your alt tags to your keywords and everything in between, every detail of your content should be optimized to ensure that it ranks higher on the search page — especially when you consider that 67.6 percent of all clicks go to the first five organic results. Ask yourself these questions to see how well your SEO is doing: Is your content ranking high in the search results? Is your content ranking higher than the content of your competitors? Are you ranking for competitive keywords? Are you reaching the right audience with your content? How to track SEO: Again, check-in on your organic site traffic through your marketing automation tool or your Google Analytics. Perform routine searches using your keywords to see if your content is ranking or climbing up the search results page. Measure your website’s domain authority on sites like SEMRush. Track your keyword rank using special tools, like iSponiage. Sales At the end of the day, your content marketing ROI usually comes down to sales. Increasing your profits is largely an important part of calculating whether your efforts have paid off, and it makes the investments in time and money that you put into your content marketing strategy all worth it. You’re likely tracking your sales metrics closely already, but these questions will help you pinpoint how and where your content played a role in getting you to where you are. What source are your leads coming from? Did they find you from content you created online? Did they do a search and your content popped up at the top of the results? How qualified are your leads? Is your content helping you connect with the right audience? What are your content conversion rates? How quickly are your leads converting to customers? Is your sales team using your content as an enablement tool? How to track sales: Get very familiar with your inbound marketing funnel to determine how many leads are coming from off-site content, like guest-contributed articles, press mentions, awards, etc. Track the performance of your drip campaigns to see which emails and which content are converting the most. Look at your gated content to see which pieces are converting the most site visitors to leads, and then determine how many of those leads ended up becoming clients. Check-in with your sales team each month to see if any content they’ve used resulted in a sale. Understanding your content marketing ROI will help you understand your broader marketing outcomes. And on the flip side, you may be able to make up for a lack of ROI in one area by putting more focus — and more resources — into your content strategy. A high content marketing ROI doesn’t happen by accident. Put in the effort first, and you should see it pay off later.
Five Easy-To-Use Chatbot Tools of 2020 Posted on October 13, 2020October 12, 2020 by Allie Wolff When people are able to easily message a business, they’re more likely to trust that business, and this is true around the world. Having the ability to quickly and easily ask questions or request key information means less wait time and quicker transparency. But chatbots offer more than just trust and less wait time for customers and businesses. When done right, website chatbots can help your business meet certain goals and offer specific options for your customers. Plus, they give you the chance to meet online customers in a communication space they already feel comfortable in, improving the customer experience without requiring them to endure long hold times on the phone or wait days for an email response. Chatbots also take massive pressure off sales and customer service teams, freeing them up for work that actually requires human attention. Chatbots aren’t exactly a newfangled idea, so chances are, you’re already familiar with these various benefits chatbots offer. If you aren’t currently using a chatbot tool, it’s likely because there are a ton of options out there and you aren’t sure which one is right for your needs. If this is your struggle, we’re here to help you! Don’t take on the tedious task of sorting the good from the bad alone. Instead, check out our five recommendations. It’s important to note that there is a massive array of chatbot builders for different use cases – from those primed for Twitter DMs to those like Chatfuel that create chatbots just for Facebook messenger. While these are great (and often free), we’re only including chatbot tools that cater to a wide variety of platforms. Let’s dive in! 1. imperson How it works: Imperson is a full-service chatbot, supporting text, audio, video, AR, and VR on all major messaging platforms. It enables you to create chatbots that cater to your business’s unique voice and brand so you can continue to build strong relationships with your customers. How much it costs: It depends on your needs, and you have to contact sales for pricing information. What we like: The user-friendly interface and laid back approach that make this a versatile tool for businesses truly looking to foster lasting relationships. 2. ChatBot How it works: ChatBot is a simple but powerful tool for creating chatbots that integrate with a variety of platforms — from Messenger and Zapier to Slack, Skype, and Twitter. How much it costs: Free for 14 days, then $50/month for 1,000 chats (and more chats for an additional fee). What we like: From the get-go, ChatBot guides you to create your first chatbot, with straightforward commands to create your first story and interaction. They also have a ton of templates, so if you are completely terrified at the prospect of setting up a chatbot, this one will hold your hand from start to finish. 3. Dialogflow How it works: DialogFlow is an omnichannel conversational AI that has a bot-building platform. You can create an “agent” (a conversation interface) for your chatbot, then an “intent,” or a series of terms that a user might ask surrounding one topic. Next, you create various responses for that query and test it out to ensure it works well. How much it costs: Varies based on the edition and monthly requests. What we like: We like the broad range of possibilities when it comes to setting up conversations and the step-by-step tutorial for setting up your first chatbot. 4. Pandorabots How it works: With a multitude of chatbot templates and add-ons like custom chatbot development and other professional services, Pandorabots can build anything from simple chatbots to very complex ones. How much it costs: There are four versions: free, premium ($19/month), pro ($199/month), and enterprise (contact sales for pricing). What we like: It’s easy to navigate, sleek and professional, and integrates with messenger, SMS, Slack, Twitter — you name it. What’s not to love? 5. FlowXO How it works: Begin with FlowXO by setting up your first “flow,” or conversation, and seeing it play out in real-time in a test box at the right. Flows contain triggers and actions (user input and chatbot responses). After you’ve built and deployed your chatbot, track interactions within the FlowXO dashboard. How much it costs: There are two versions: free and standard ($19/month). They also offer bot and interaction add-ons. What we like: The tutorial gives you a big-picture view of FlowXO’s capabilities from the start. While it doesn’t have as much hand-holding as some of the other interfaces, a huge benefit to FlowXO is its inexpensive standard edition. If you’re looking for a functional but cost-effective solution for your small business, this may be the one. You don’t have to be a developer or expert coder to implement a chatbot tool that’s right for your business. The options above have great interfaces and are easy-to-use so you can install, set-up based on your needs, and then get back to your daily demands. Good luck finding the chatbot that’s the perfect solution for your business needs.
14 Articles To Help You DIY Your SEO Posted on October 8, 2020October 2, 2020 by Natalie Slyman There’s a sense of empowerment that comes from DIY’ing. Building that shelf yourself instead of buying one online makes you feel like you can do pretty much anything. But when it comes to things that appear to be a bit harder to wrap our heads around, like SEO, it’s a different story. It can be easy to convince ourselves that we don’t have the skills needed to implement better SEO practices or that we just don’t fully understand all the technicalities around it. But what if I told you that you could do away with that inferiority complex and DIY your brand’s SEO? Yes, you can actually implement strategies that will, over time, increase your search engine optimization and make your website rank higher in Google search results. To help you get started, I pulled 14 of our blog articles that share SEO tips and tricks and put them right here for you to dig into. So, take a look and get started on the path towards SEO success. 1. All of the Google Tools Your SEO Strategy Needs If you’re going to tackle your SEO yourself, you need to get your tools in order. This blog post lists the various Google tools that will help you get the job done, along with why you should use them to assist your SEO strategy. 2. Subdomains vs. Subdirectories: Which is Better for SEO? Keywords and backlinks sort of get all the SEO glory, but how your website is organized has a lot to do with SEO too. Subdomains and subdirectories are used to organize your site, which is beneficial for tons of reasons. This blog post dives into what subdomains and subdirectories are, their difference, and which are more optimal for your SEO practices. 3. Everything You Need to Know about SEO for Voice Search Voice search is the future. In fact, by this year, it’s expected that at least half of online searches will be done by voice. This blog post breaks down what that means for your SEO and specific ways you can optimize your SEO for voice search. 4. How SEO Drives B2B Marketing This blog post is a must-read for a more basic understanding of SEO and its role in your B2B marketing efforts. It discusses keywords and content and how to use and organize your on-site content in the best way. Also, it dives into expectations regarding outsourcing these efforts, as well as results. 5. 5 Marketing Channels That Need To Be Included In Your SEO Strategy SEO is more than just managing the content on your website. If you really want to be effective, then you have to consider how SEO affects the other marketing channels you’re using. This blog post discusses SEO in regards to your paid advertisement efforts, infographics, social, and more. 6. 5 SEO Tips for Marketing Agencies Marketing agencies are very unique when it comes to their goals and tactics. In order to stay competitive and actively grow their client base, they need to be trying new and creative methods. This blog post, authored by John Jantsch, a marketing consultant, speaker, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, dives into SEO tips that can specifically help marketing agencies. 7. 3 SEO Strategies for Driving Traffic to Your Website We all want more traffic to our website. It helps us increase the chances of converting that traffic to leads, and then converting those leads to paying customers. SEO plays a big part in driving traffic to your site, but you have to use the right strategies. This blog post offers three that are sure to work, as well as tons of necessary information around SEO. 8. Before You Hire an SEO Company, Try These 16 DIY Tips This blog post has everything you need for DIY’ing your SEO. Our CEO, Jonathan Herrick, offers 16 tips that you can implement on your own, without the help of an outside agency. Instead of spending tons of money outsourcing, check out some simple things you can do to improve your SEO. 9. SEO Tips to Start Using Right Now When it comes to SEO, you don’t have time to waste. But not knowing where to start can lead to an epic amount of procrastination. Break the cycle by reading this blog post for some SEO practices you can try right now. 10. 7 Ways Small Businesses Can Compete with SEO Giants The small business struggle is real. Big companies have more money and more people, which can leave small businesses in the dust. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Check out this blog post for some ways small businesses can compete against larger SEO giants in the industry. 11. Everything You Need to Know About Internal Link Building Internal link building is a lot like spider webs. It’s an intricate operation that requires careful strategy and consistency. This blog post breaks down internal link building by discussing what it is, how it’s different from external link building, why internal links are so valuable, and tips for effectively using an internal link building strategy. 12. How to Write a Marketing Blog that Ranks on Google There are many moving parts that make up your SEO strategy. So, let’s break down one of the most important components: your blog content. This article dives into a step-by-step process for putting together a singular blog post with the intention of it ranking well on Google. 13. 4 Tips For Improving Your Blog With Expert Keyword Research Finally, keyword research explained! You know keyword research is a crucial part of any SEO strategy, so you don’t want to skip reading this blog post. Check it out for an easy-to-follow guide on implementing keyword research. 14. The Real Cost of Skipping SEO Think you can continue to put SEO on the backburner? Think again. Skipping SEO has major repercussions, not only for your online visibility but for your company’s bottom line, too. It’s time to flex your DIY skills and take a stab at your company’s SEO. You can no longer afford to be putting it off simply because you’re worried about being unskilled, or you’re unsure of where to get started. We hope you find all the help you need in the articles above and get started on your DIY SEO strategy ASAP.
How to Use CRM Software to Perfect Your Sales Pitch Posted on October 7, 2020October 2, 2020 by Jonathan Herrick A great pitch can be the difference between losing a sale forever and gaining a long-term client. So when it comes to pitching your small business product or services, it’s important to put on the best razzle-dazzle performance you can for your prospects. There are a number of essentials to a successful pitch, but right at the top is confidence in what you’re trying to sell and your ability to do it. Sales pros who approach the pitching process with optimism outperform their pessimistic peers by 57 percent, even when the latter group has an overall better set of selling skills. And to go into your pitch with confidence, you need to make sure you have access to all relevant information. Having a small business CRM is crucial for arming yourself with as much info — and as much sales confidence — as possible in the lead-up to your pitch. And to illustrate why we’ve outlined a few of the areas where a CRM can really come in handy when acing your pitch. Prove You Know What You’re Talking About An excellent sales pitch strikes just the right balance between being engaging and providing prospects with the information they need to know to make their decision. In addition to making sure that you follow the basics, such as not making your sales pitch too long (try to keep it at 45 minutes or under) and setting a clear and organized agenda that covers 3-5 primary points, you also need to go into your pitch having done all of your due diligence. Among business buyers, 78 percent say that they’re seeking trusted advisors that add value to their business — and not just salespeople. If you’re not well-versed on your prospect’s needs, preferences, and past behaviors, you’re not going to inspire confidence that you can be the partner they’re looking for. Where Your CRM Fits In Think of your CRM as a crystal ball into the background information that can help you turn a “meh” pitch into a true stunner. The data is all there — it’s just up to you to put it to use. You can do that in a couple of crucial ways, including: 1. Knowing Your Audience As in all marketing and sales endeavors, the better you know your audience, the more successful you’re going to be. Your CRM helps you here in two ways: It allows you to zero in on your best potential buyers so that you can aim your sales pitch at the right people. It gives you a ton of insight that you can use to really understand your prospects’ needs. Everything from the size of their business to their biggest hurdles and objectives is useful in forming the hole-in-one pitch that you need. Go back to your content marketing strategy where you outlined your buyer personas. Examine them again and make sure they’re still the group of people you’re looking to sell to. Compare them against your current clients, and use their CRM data to make any refinements to ensure who you’re pitching to align. 2. Creating Case Studies Case studies lend additional authority and help you show and not just tell prospective buyers what you can offer them. Use your CRM data as part of your case study building strategy, identifying your most successful clients, and then engaging with them to create forward-driven marketing materials. You can also use your CRM to pinpoint clients that are in the same industry as high-value prospects and either design a targeted case study just for them or double down on your relevant experience. Remember: your goal with your sales pitch, aside from laying out the basics of your product or service, is to position yourself as a potential partner. And just as you wouldn’t hire an advisor who has no experience in your field, your prospects don’t want a partner who won’t come in with at least a cursory understanding of what they’re up against. 3. Including Testimonials Much like with creating case studies, your CRM can help you identify your happiest clients. You can look through your customer data to see which of your clients is loving your services or software, and reach out to them and see if they’d offer a testimonial. Testimonials are great to add to pitches because they provide third-party credibility, straight from someone who has actually worked with your company. Just make sure you encourage your clients to be as specific as possible when offering up a quote, so have them comment on your service’s specific feature or element. The Formula of a Perfect Sales Pitch Like a great email or blog post, a great sales pitch is clear, to the point, and expertly targeted to its audience. In addition, it includes each of the major components below: Identifies your prospect’s problem Gives a concise outline of the value your business can provide Explains how your solution works Provides proof that your solution works Offers examples of how your solution has benefited clients Presents your prospect with a chance to ask questions and get thorough answers Each part of the formula requires a bit of a different approach as you plan your pitch, but in all areas, your CRM can provide you with more of the info that you need to seal the deal. With such a great resource standing by, there’s no reason not to use it to sharpen your sales pitch. The perfect sales pitch is attainable, especially with a CRM. And when you crack the code of how to build one, you can expect more revenue, more growth, and more trust between your team and the clients that you serve (and hope to serve).
5 Proven Strategies To Create More Opportunities For Small Businesses Posted on October 6, 2020September 8, 2022 by Guest Author As small business owners, it’s always a good idea to look for more opportunities. Sometimes even the most loyal customers leave, or they encounter financial struggles, leading to less discretionary spending. So, despite creating a solid customer base for your business, new customers are integral for growth in the long run. And that is why you need to ensure that your enterprise is always inviting and relevant to new clients and customers. The stream of new clients will help keep your customer service robust and your products innovative. Attracting new customers can also help in keeping you focused and generate more revenue for the organization. If revenue is getting stagnant or slowing down, you’ll have to look for new and innovative ways to promote your business and attract new customers. But before getting too tactical on how you can do that, it’s important that you implement these steps first: Identify the type of clients you wish to attract Learn about your ideal client’s buying process Set both annual and quarterly objectives based on how many new clients you need Evaluate how much resourcing can be allocated for attracting new clients Actively communicate with your target customers on their preferred communication/social channels (email, social media, text message, search, etc.) There are certain lead generation mistakes entrepreneurs need to avoid as well. While the above practices are essential for the success of a customer acquisition strategy, they can’t help you capture new customer attention. But, the following tactics will. 1. Refine Your Inbound Marketing Tactic Aside from digital marketing, there is another incredibly effective way to attract new business opportunities, and it’s called inbound marketing. If your business isn’t generating the desired quantity and quality of leads to help meet your business objectives, inbound marketing can help. It’s different from other marketing techniques because instead of reaching out to people, it makes your prospects come to you for more information about the services and products you offer. This marketing tactic is of utmost importance today than ever before, considering the improved innovations in ad blockers. This brings us to search engine optimization. SEO is integral to the success of any inbound marketing plan. With the aid of SEO, you can create a solid, fast, and user-friendly site that ranks higher in google searches. This, in turn, will attract more qualified leads to your website and eventually boost conversion rates. In the past, SEO focuses primarily on phrases and keywords, and while those elements still hold a key role, it’s time to improvise your strategy. Nowadays, you’ll have to include social influence, authority, and content quality. 2. Use Promotional Items and Offer Discounts For any small business to excel in the long run, it’s very important to create brand interest. If your company doesn’t get enough exposure, your bigger competitors will likely beat you in the game. In fact, over 50 percent of small enterprises fail within four years. Fortunately, there are many ways for small businesses to promote their brand and reach more prospects. One such method includes using promotional products. Incredibly effective and also easy to implement, promotional merchandise advertising is an excellent option for small establishments. Sure, promotional merchandising and giveaways don’t seem like the flashiest of strategies. However, studies have shown that it’s incredibly effective in terms of boosting brand awareness, and ultimately, improving sales. You can also offer discounts or a free giveaway. Not many businesses provide limited-time offers or discounts – they’re an immensely powerful way to garner new opportunities. And though offering freebies may not seem viable for a small business, it can actually pay dividends in the future. Offering free services for a client’s testimonial is another effective approach to gain more prospects. Just remember not to spend too much time or money than what you can actually afford parting with. 3. Attend and Host Networking Events While the internet plays an important role in how you promote your brand, the way you interact with prospects and customers in person does too. Therefore, attending events where you can network with people will do wonders for your business. Event Marketing can make more people aware of the services and products you offer. However, the managers and owners shouldn’t be the only ones doing all the talk and promoting the business. The other staff should also be doing it. You need to make your employees network as well. Send them to showcases or conferences to promote and look for new opportunities. Supply them with freebies and coupons to offer to the people while talking about the brand. 4. Address Complaints and Issues Even if you put much effort into your business, you’ll likely be met with a few critics. Rather than just ignoring that feedback, you need to address it. Customers today are interested to know how companies handle concerns and complaints, and they do that by checking review sites or social media platforms. While they aren’t expecting businesses to be flawless, they do expect the companies to be willing to address the issues when they arise and resolve them. 5. Team Up With Other Enterprises By partnering with another business and sharing resources, you can accomplish things you never thought possible on your own. Find other businesses within your local area that serve a similar client base. Create a list of lifestyle brands, retail establishments, and business or charitable organizations your target customer might support and approach that company about building a partnership. Your main goal here is to come up with a complementary arrangement where both businesses can benefit from. For instance, if you manage a coffee shop, you can partner with a plumbing company and offer free coffee coupons to its customers. Or if you manage a marketing company, you can team up with an accounting business to promote each other’s services. While running a small business is no easy feat, there are numerous business opportunities that can help expand your organization. Even if the current state of your business is satisfactory to you, you should look for ways to improve. If you’re focused on improving your business and employ the things discussed today, you’d be surprised to find that you have ample business opportunities. Author Bio Emily Johnson is a marketing consultant with ten years of experience in the execution of marketing strategies. Currently, she heads the marketing department at Blue Mail Media, a renowned B2B data solution company based out of Austin, Texas, offering a host of services like email appending, data hygiene, and CPA emails. Connect with her on Twitter.
5 Benefits of Influencer Marketing For Your Small Business Posted on October 1, 2020November 11, 2020 by Allie Wolff Raise your hand if your spending has gotten a little out of hand during the quarantine. It seems like every time I’m on Instagram, there’s a new product being targeted to me, one that I simply cannot pass up. The truth is, there are a lot of us engaging in a little retail therapy right now. It feels good to anticipate the delivery of a new item, and the brands advertising to us know that. They’re doubling down on various digital marketing tactics because they know we’re searching for a little more at-home entertainment via Netflix (exhibit A: Netflix’s newest documentary, The Social Dilemma), or, more popularly, social media. Which is why influencer marketing is perhaps more effective now than ever. It’s great for using social media to engage with your audience and tap into valued third-party credibility. And even though you may not have a ton of marketing budget right now, it’s more cost-effective and reliable than other similar tactics. Let’s dive into some more benefits to using influencer marketing so you can determine if you should make this marketing strategy a priority for your small business. 1. Reach Highly Specific Audience Directly Forty-nine percent of customers rely on the recommendations of influencers to make a purchase decision. Tapping into that presents a huge opportunity for your brand to increase sales and reach the right people. There are influencers for every industry and niche out there — fashion, fitness, DIY, makeup, home decor, and yes, even marketing. As a result, they amass followers interested in these same things, followers who are looking for someone to advise them, make suggestions for them, and tell them what products work. When you partner with a particular influencer in your industry or niche, not only do you have a direct line to the people they influence, but you also have a direct line to people highly interested in your product or service. You can cut out all the noise and directly reach your specific audience looking to make purchases. 2. Cut Through the Noise Typical digital marketing ads can seem abrasive and annoying, which is why most internet users can block ads or request that they not be shown certain ads. While this is great for online users, it’s detrimental to the advertisers. It means that even if a customer would be interested in your product, they might never see it because they’re overloaded with content, or their blocker of choice kicked it out of sight. But, if an influencer they follow discusses your product, they’ll be curious. Seventy-four percent of customers on social media trust the opinion of their networks, which includes influencers, to guide their purchase decisions. So, if they are already choosing to follow this influencer, and if this influencer loves a particular product, consumers know it’s worth checking out. It may go without saying, but you can’t just partner with any influencer. It’s important to forge partnerships strategically and make sure your product aligns well with your chosen influencer’s audience, style, and brand. 3. Boost Engagement Getting people on social media to stop, look at your post, like it, leave a comment, and – miracle of all miracles – share it is hard. It pays to tie your product to a life your customers aspire to. Traditionally, companies did this through advertisements. Just watch any car commercial, and you’ll see a handsome adventurer roaming the countryside or perfume ads that almost always include a glamorous woman traipsing around town. Today, you don’t have to come up with stories to capture your audience. There are people on social media already living this story, and if you play it right, your product can seamlessly tie into that. Take GoPro. Instead of filming short commercials about adventurers, the company found real adventurers, gave them a GoPro, and told them to upload their good times. Naturally, these influencers shared this with their networks, who envisioned themselves recording their own adventures with the same device. Now, you may not be able to afford to hire a bunch of uber-popular influencers, but that doesn’t mean you have to rule out influencer marketing, period. Think about how you can get people to talk about your product for free (i.e., contests or calls for user-generated content) or consider hiring micro-influencers who may not have a million followers, but who have cultivated a network of people who trust them and would use your product. 4. Build Brand Authenticity Trust takes time to build, and for small businesses, time runs out much faster than it does for other companies. However, ensuring your consumers see your small business as authentic is the best way to fast-track building trust. Remember when I mentioned the importance of partnering with the right influencer? Well, when you try to force your product or service endorsement by partnering with an influencer who doesn’t align with your industry, your audience base will see right through it. They’ll notice how inauthentic the influencer’s endorsement is, and it will make them no longer trust the influencer, as well as your brand or product. By thoughtfully working with influencers who align with your brand, you can absorb some of the trust they’ve built with their followers. Doing so will help build third-party credibility and long-lasting trust with a consumer base looking for resources like you. 5. Reap a Return on Marketing Investment Plugging money into marketing and not seeing an increase in sales simply sucks. Fortunately, influencer marketing is a very effective strategy. For every dollar brands spend on influencer marketing, they see a return of $5.78. Small businesses simply do not have the budget to try strategy after strategy, hoping one reaps the benefits they’re looking for. Instead of shooting in the dark, try a strategy that’s proven to give you substantial return, even if it requires a little bit more on the front-end. And if you’re still concerned about what it may cost upfront, try spreading out your influencer marketing strategy so that you’re doing one partnership a quarter, or one or two a year. With promised ROI, it’s totally worth seeing what this strategy can do for your small business. Influencer marketing is effective, affordable, and ultimately worth the investment. By turning some of your casual online surfing into purposeful influencer research, you’ll find effective brand ambassadors and spokespeople in no time. Are you ready to give it a try?
Tips For Surveying Parents and Getting Quality Feedback Posted on September 30, 2020October 1, 2020 by Allie Wolff As a K12 communicator, you’re doing everything you can to break down the barriers between parents and the institution you represent. It’s no easy endeavor, but the results can be an improved learning experience for the students and parents feeling confident in their child’s education. With such a promising outcome, how do you achieve parent engagement that is reliable and consistent? The truth is you have to find a way to make parents feel valued and involved. Instead of just talking at them by sharing events and important information regarding school activities and procedures (which is still part of your job), you have to also employ tactics that garner their feedback in a way that makes them feel heard. Two-way communication is key, especially in today’s climate. Enter one of the oldest marketing tactics in the book: customer surveys. In this particular instance, customers are the parents, and surveying them is a great way to get a feel for what they’re happy with and what they think could use a little work. The unique perspective that parents bring to the table can lead to a lot of valuable insights, and in some cases, may even shine a light on new angles and best practices for facilitating an optimal learning environment. You don’t need to pursue every recommendation a parent gives you, but it’s always a good idea to make parents part of the conversation. Here’s how to survey parents so that you get the best quality (and most helpful) feedback possible. Be Specific With Your Questions Before you add surveys to the emails you’re sending parents, make sure you have a firm grasp on how to formulate the questions you’ll be asking. After all, broad questions yield broad answers, which will be of no service to you. If you want to gather some truly useful insight, you’re going to have to get specific. For example, instead of asking parents what their favorite thing about the previous school year was (a question that you want answered, but in broad terms won’t give you a very good understanding of your overall successes), break it down into components. Instead of this: “What was your favorite thing we did this school year?” Try this: “Which did you like best about this school year: the way classes were structured, the overall curriculum, or the after-school programs that we offered?” Gear your questions toward the initiatives that are most important for your budget and objectives. While parents may have liked pizza Fridays or the new interactive garden planted at the front entrance, the goal is to focus on big-picture plans that affect how you teach and operate. Ask How They’d Like To Be Informed It seems like every year we see the introduction of new technology that changes how schools and parents communicate. As a k12 communicator, though, you need to know how you can communicate most effectively (after all, “communication” is in your job title). And to know that, you’re going to have to ask. Include a question in your survey that lists various communication methods (email, snail mail, phone, communication app, etc.) Ask parents to check off which are best for them, or to indicate what about the current communication isn’t working. Then use this data to improve how you communicate, including adapting communication methods as needed for families that don’t have easy access to certain modes of outreach. Keep It Simple Parents are being pulled in a million directions, and now that most of them are working from home with children, their capacity for concentration is drastically reduced. To make sure that you actually get responses to your surveys, keep it simple enough that it requires very little effort on the parents’ end. This applies to both the format and length of your survey, as well as the method for submitting it. Instead of asking for typed answers, provide multiple choice. Or, if you’re asking parents how satisfied they are, have them rate their satisfaction on a sliding scale. The less typing they have to do, the better. Ask One Question at a Time It’s only natural that certain questions will play off of each other, but avoid looping multiple questions into one. If you ask too much at once, you increase the likelihood of not getting answers to all of your questions, so break it down into parts and allow parents to tackle each question in turn. Check for (and Remove) Any Bias You may have high hopes for the sorts of answers you’ll receive, but impartiality is key here. It’s essential that you frame your survey in such a way to eliminate any bias. Instead of this: “We’re anxious to hear what you loved about our extracurricular programming this year.” Try this: “We’re anxious to hear your honest and candid feedback regarding our extracurricular programming this year.” While the second phrasing does open the door to negative responses, it also helps ensure that you’re not leading parents toward providing only positive reviews. You want the full spectrum of insight here, and to do so, you can’t narrow the field of possible responses. Doing so could also rub parents the wrong way and leave them feeling like they couldn’t voice what they needed to. Put Your Feedback to Use Just as important as surveying parents in the first place is taking what you learn and turning it into action. You’ll never be able to keep everyone fully happy all of the time, but if you see patterns in responses, take what you learn and put it to use as you see fit. A great way to hold your institution accountable is to tally up all the survey responses and share averages with all the parents. This shows them that you want to keep them as informed as possible and that you are aware of their stances on everything. But don’t stop there. When you share the overall responses, consider sharing some of the ideas their responses have inspired so they know you plan to act on them, and make any necessary changes. Show your institution’s parents that you care about their satisfaction and what they have to say. Follow the steps above to gather more impactful feedback from them and to inform positive changes to the way your educational institution runs. Your parents will thank you for it.