What Small Businesses Can Learn From Peloton Posted on April 19, 2022April 26, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick After its debut in 2012, Peloton saw steady growth in its business until the pandemic when demands for the products increased exponentially. This pushed the company’s revenue up significantly and even tripled the company’s valuation. Despite this success, the company is presently in troubled waters with a decline in product demand, and navigating safety and security issues. What can you learn from Peloton as a small business owner? Read on to find out: 4 Lessons Small Business Owners can learn from Peloton Know Your Audience Peloton’s target audience is fitness enthusiasts who want to have great workouts from the comfort of their homes. However, with an entry price of $2,495 for the Peloton bike, it is evident Peloton has its eyes on higher-income households. The entry price cut out a large segment of otherwise interested buyers who would have loved to own a Peloton, narrowing down the number of people that could purchase a Peloton bike or treadmill for their homes. Although Peloton has a subscription service that allows fitness enthusiasts to subscribe to instructor-led sessions and virtual classes for sessions like HIIT and Yoga, the bulk of the company’s revenue comes from the sales of bikes and treadmills. Pricing can limit the size of a potential customer base, and small business owners can learn a lesson from this example. It is important to know your audience and understand your target market when considering pricing, products and services that fit within the financial reach of prospective buyers. Know Your Product Like other fitness equipment, Peloton’s products such as bikes and treadmills typically only need to be purchased once by the customer. Then, once the item fulfills the customer’s needs, the chance to secure repeat purchases from that same customer might be limited. Peloton did not foresee some of the faults that became associated with their products. Security researchers identified a vulnerability that, when exploited by hackers, could give them control over a customer’s Peloton bike. The unique design of the treadmill also increased the possibilities of injuries which led to the company recalling thousands of treadmills and reimbursing customers – an enormous strain on the company’s revenue. Business owners need to consider the pros and cons of their inventory carefully. Is your product something that consumers will purchase again and again, or a one-time investment? What are the potential issues that the product might encounter, and what are the stakes? By considering these factors, owners of small businesses can be better prepared for the issues that they may face in the marketplace. Know the Demand The worldwide lockdown in 2020 gave Peloton a much-needed boost. The company’s valuation went from $1.82 billion to $4.82 billion, and the company’s market capitalization soared to $50 billion. What made this possible? People were stuck with working out at home since they could not go to the gym, which led to a spike in demand for Peloton bikes and treadmills. As a result, Peloton couldn’t meet the demand and even had cases of missed deliveries. To help with the increase in demand, Peloton purchased Precor, a company that produces fitness machines, for $420 billion. However, demands began to decline with the ease of the lockdown, which made it possible for people to start going to the gyms again. As a result, Peloton had more products in stock than the market needed. In January 2022, the CEO, John Foley, announced that the company would stop the production of its bikes and treadmills due to the decline in demand for the products. The lesson here is to think carefully before expanding your business. What kind of demand are you responding to, and is it stable? Will you be able to service existing clients comfortably whilst also gaining new revenue? Look at the big picture Just as the pandemic served success to Peloton, it also put the company in a tight spot once lockdowns began to ease. Then, issues emerged. Peloton could perhaps have prevented some of the negative backlash by recalling its treadmills earlier. As a small business owner, you too might encounter a scenario where you’d like more time to reach a decision, but you could find yourself in a position where you’ll need to take swift action. While it is not clear yet if Peloton will rise from the ashes, as a small business owner, you may find that you can learn valuable lessons from looking at how businesses like Peleton make decisions and respond to arising issues. Staying on top of business news is just one part of building a successful small business. With Benchmark One, you can keep things running smoothly day by day, and turn relationships into valued customers faster.
20+ Best Lead Generation Tools To Use In 2022 Posted on April 13, 2022September 11, 2024 by Guest Author Lead generation tools are critical to businesses to capture your audience’s interest and contact data. Finding the set of right ones can significantly help you scale faster, connect with vital contacts, and discern potential opportunities. Additionally, it also helps you streamline your marketing and lead generation approach and focus on delivering what customers need. And the high-end lead generation tools can help you expand your customer base, maximize sales and improve the overall business performance. To help you out, here is a round of some of the best lead generation tools to leverage that can help you take your lead generation game to the next level. Top Lead Generation Tools For Your Business Lead generation tools help you connect to targeted leads and engage them to drive conversions. Finding good leads takes more than just getting prospects to visit your website. It is also about garnering their information so you can communicate with them effectively and convert casual traffic into loyal customers. And that’s where lead generation tools come in handy. Let’s explore some of the top-performing lead generation tools that can enhance your overall sales, prospecting, and marketing efforts. All-in-One CRM Tools Marketing automation solutions offer an automated system to manage and organize your customers’ data in a single location with the use of databases, minimizing the chance of errors. Here is a top-performing marketing automation tool that can simplify processes: BenchmarkONE BenchmarkONE is an all-in-one lead generation, CRM, and marketing software that helps you identify hot prospects, keep in touch with them, and nurture and build strong customer relationships. Bring in new leads and prospects for your small business with BenchmarkONE’s dedicated landing pages for your campaigns and attention-grabbing pop-up forms. Use the tool’s drip campaigns and autoresponders to keep communication open with your prospects and audience. Follow up with interested leads with the software’s easy-to-use marketing automation tools alongside the email marketing tool. BenchmarkONE allows you to create visually appealing and creative emails that will not only lure your prospects in but make your content engaging to keep your prospects glued. With BenchmarkONE, take your lead generation, sales, and marketing with you anywhere, all thanks to the Zapier integration. This means you can use BenchmarkONE with your favorite marketing platforms and other apps. Hubspot Widely known for its inbound marketing practices and teachings, Hubspot is a valuable all-in-one sales, CRM, and marketing tool. With Hubspot, you can create exciting customer experiences for your leads and audience. Hubspot features a Marketing hub that helps you manage your lead generation activities, marketing activities, and marketing automation. It also provides you with analytics for data-driven insights helpful for your marketing activities. The Sales hub gives your business access to advanced CRM and the ability to schedule marketing activities and initiate automatic processes for your activities. Engage with your audience and personalize customer experiences with the CMS hub. The CMS hub provides you with content themes, a simple drag and drop editor, and SEO recommendations to make sure your business is appearing where it should. Email Finder Tools Email finder tools allow you to discover the prospects and lead contact information and helps you get in touch with them. It enables marketers to improve their sales prospecting efforts and make the process easier and dependable by ensuring relevant and accurate information. Here are some of the tools that can effectively help you find the right contacts’ email addresses: UpLead UpLead facilitates B2B marketers and helps them take their B2B lead generation efforts to the next level. This feature-rich platform provides accurate B2B contact information from its comprehensive database. You can access your lead’s phone numbers, email addresses, and much more while ensuring truthful data and insights. Furthermore, UpLead helps you find the targeted leads email addresses and has an email verification tool that validates all the email-related data in real-time, which enables you to connect to quality leads and close more deals. Voila Norbert Voila Nobert is a robust email finder platform that helps you find and connect to your prospects, ensuring that your sales team stays on the same page. Once you discover your targeted leads, you can directly drop them an email via Norbert. Additionally, you can keep track of it and see its progress. This makes it easy for marketers and helps them manage their outreach from a centralized location. Email Outreach and Email Marketing Tools Email outreach and email marketing tools are indispensable for any business that’s looking to increase engagement with its leads. Through these tools, you can manually create and send several emails effortlessly. Additionally, it helps marketing teams develop and customize the emailing process and track the data thoroughly. Try these tools to enhance your outreach efforts significantly: Benchmark Email Benchmark Email is one of the robust email marketing tools out there that are incredibly easy to use. Companies looking for something simple yet powerful email marketing suite, Benchmark lets you send emails seamlessly. It is a full-fledged email platform for your marketing needs that effectively enhances lead generation efforts for companies looking for easy-to-use and well-designed email marketing software. All the things from their platform interface to their templates are designed beautifully and visually appealing and provide an unparalleled user experience. You can easily understand your data, and it lets you make a lasting impression on your contacts. All in all, Benchmark is a comprehensive tool that is a simple, intuitive, and easy-to-use email marketing automation tool. Mailshake Mailshake, a sales engagement, and email outreach platform, helps sales teams create personalized outreach efforts using your email account, phone, and social. With Mailshake, you can easily upload a prospects’ list with customized fields like phone numbers, name, social profiles and even create personalized paragraphs and sentences. Mailchimp Mailchimp is popularly known as an all-in-one marketing tool that takes care of lead generation, marketing, funnel building and conversion, and much more. Mailchimp differs from other platforms by some of the marketing tools they have to offer. Create engaging emails, social ads, postcards, landing pages for campaigns, and much more all in one place. Manage your leads, prospects, and customers with Mailchimp’s easy-to-use audience management tools. Create a variety of content with the Content studio that also features a creative assistant to help you with engaging and better content for your audience. Track your lead generation and marketing activities with the insights and analytics tool and boost your productivity by automating marketing activities inside the software. GetResponse GetResponse prides itself as an all-encompassing inbound marketing solution for business owners. With an array of valuable features, you can grow and nurture your audience, engage your leads and prospects and boost sales all in one place. GetResponse allows you to segment your contacts into different lists for accurate marketing and targeting. You can use this feature to group your prospects according to where they fall in the buyer journey stages. Take care of communication and continuous engagement with your prospects using the email marketing software. Build and personalize dedicated lead generation campaigns with the website builder and create stunning landing pages. Move your prospects through different buyer journey stages using conversion funnels coupled with the ability to automate your marketing activities. Need to use autoresponders? GetResponse has got that covered for you, too. EasySendy EasySendy is an email marketing platform that lets you launch different campaigns to engage and interact with your customers and subscribers via automated drip email campaigns and autoresponders. You can also easily manage your subscribers on Facebook messenger. Build personalized subscriber pages, leverage email templates, build automated flows for drip email, filter subscriber segmentation, and do a lot more. EasySendy helps you achieve all of this with precision. Lead Management Tools A lead management tool helps you manage your prospect relations in your business. It makes the process of lead management less time-consuming and more straightforward. These are suitable lead management tools to streamline your business processes: Salesmate Salesmate is a contact management platform designed to automate your manual processes and streamline your salespeople’s workflow. This smart sales customer relationship system offers various features such as sales automation, contact management, email tracking, sales reports, email templates, team inbox, etc. Furthermore, Salesmate is a practical sales productivity tool for businesses, irrespective of their size. This tool is an excellent option with prompt customer support. Salesflare Salesflare is another lead management system that thinks and smartly works for its users. It eliminates the manual tasks from your sales pipeline, such as filling the address book, keeping track of your interactions with the leads, etc. Furthermore, it provides you frequent reminders about your leads and simplifies all the complex processes. Salesflare also gives you data-driven insights and visual pipelines to effectively control and manage your sales funnel. BigContacts BigContacts is a simple contact management tool designed to help small businesses manage customer and prospect communication in one centralized location. This tool makes it easy for you to organize all your contacts and emails, calls, notes, and tasks, giving you a 360-degree view of every activity – all from a single dashboard. Some of its key features include task notifications, meeting reminders, email tracking, insightful sales reports, team calendar, social media bookmarks, and many more. BigContacts simplifies the work of your customer support and sales/marketing teams, helping them track, nurture, and convert leads quickly and collaboratively. Live Chat Tools Live chat tools enable easy and flexible communication for customers and help marketers better connect, engage and deal with their prospective and current customers. Here are some tools that can help you improve and amplify your customer support and overall business performance: Intercom Intercom is a useful communication software tool that provides a broad spectrum of features. Essentially, it centers on the live chat feature, also known as the ‘business messenger,’ which offers digital functionalities. Furthermore, you can create your help center, custom chatbots, outbound, and inbound email, A/B testing and objectives, etc. With Intercom, you can enhance your customer support efforts and provide exceptional service to your end-users. Messagely A robust all-in-one customer support and live chat tool, Messagely facilitates businesses effectively to communicate with your customers. It provides you with easy-to-use, comprehensive live chat features, streamlines the communication process, and makes it as efficient as possible. Use it to access powerful chatbots that focus on your customers around the clock, irrespective of your work hours. The platform also supports various integrations, which enhances its functionality and performance. Tidio Live Chat A top-rated chat boosted with chatbots, Tidio Live Chat is a solution for small and medium businesses that helps to build customer relationships instantly. Equipped with features such as live visitor lists, viewed pages, or free chatbots, Tidio makes it easy to automate customer support, lead generation, and sales. With a simple setup, highly customizable widget, and affordable pricing, Tidio is one of the most popular solutions for turning website visitors into happy customers. The tool also integrates with a number of CRM, eCommerce, and email marketing platforms. ProProfs Chat ProProfs Chat is yet another SaaS-based customer support tool that can help your business capture leads, manage multiple chats at the same time, and even boost sales. This live chat software offers you the option to track visitors in real-time and engage proactively with features like chat greetings. As a complete sales, support, and marketing solution, ProProfs Chat even enables you to automate each of these processes with the help of its ChatBot feature. You can capture leads, book appointments, know your potential customers in detail and route them to the right department instantly. It’s intuitive yet easy to set up a chat widget that is perfect at keeping your operators informed when a chat is added to the support queue. Besides this, its powerful integration options can help you create a support bundle for free as well. Social Proof Lead Generation Tools Social proof tools essentially help you leverage social influence for your business. These tools allow you to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts on social platforms and provides you with insightful information. Check out these social proof tools to improve your lead generation efforts: Trust This one’s an all-inclusive social proof tool that provides ratings and testimonials. It combines all other means, including video testimonials, text, conversions, visitors, to deliver indisputable social proof. You can get video testimonials that let you manage your customers with precision. All in all, Trust enhances the customer experience and ultimately helps you drive conversions. TrustPulse TrustPulse is a comprehensive social proof tool for marketers who want to build trust within their customer base and improve their conversion rate. With TrustPulse, you can showcase credible social proof notifications. The tool lets you choose where you would want the plugin to show the notification. Furthermore, it allows you to track and monitor downloads, purchases, and registrations on your site. Webinar Software A webinar software platform lets you instruct, educate, and sell to your audience base through a live demonstration/presentation. Generally, it includes video, slides, interaction, polls, offers, and chats. Hosting webinars are an effective way for selling products or services, educating your audience, and providing valuable content to your viewers. Here are some of our top picks: ClickMeeting ClickMeeting is an all-in-one dedicated webinar software that offers various features. With it, you can easily record, download, and share webinars. It’s an ideal tool for communication and collaboration for large enterprises, irrespective of the location. ClickMeeting’s key features consist of webinar stats, one-click recording, meeting room rebranding, and desktop sharing. WebinarJam WebinarJam is another excellent platform that helps users with their webinar requirements. The platform can let you reach around 5,000 individuals at a go. You’ll also find registration and scheduling options as well as the ability to customize them according to your requirements. Social Selling Tools Social selling tools help marketing and sales professionals incorporate social selling into their routine tasks and expand their potential and existing customer reach. There are various social selling tools out there, but some of those stand out amongst their counterparts in terms of effectiveness and usability. Here are the favorites: LinkedIn Sales Navigator LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a social selling platform that offers increased visibility into networks and customized algorithms that help you get in touch with decision-makers. It’s a feature-rich tool for sales professionals, enabling them to engage and connect with others. Dux-Soup Dux-Soup is a well-known LinkedIn automation tool that helps marketers with their sales and prospecting efforts and lets them connect and interact with the right prospects. It’s an easy-to-use tool that enables you to manage prospects, download their profiles, and facilitate automation and outreach efforts. All in all, Dux-Soup can essentially help you generate quality leads while ensuring accuracy. ReferralCandy What better way to bring in new leads for your business than have existing customers do the work for you? That’s what ReferralCandy is all about. ReferralCandy is lead generation software that uses a referral system to generate leads for your business. With Referral candy, you can reward existing business customers for new leads that they refer to you. The software lets you customize the rewards for participating customers and track referrals with the data dashboard. Payouts or specified bonuses can be automated for winning customers once they hit the threshold. Take your lead generation activities with you everywhere as Referral candy integrates with major eCommerce platforms and marketing tools. Lead Analytics Tools These act as a report card for your marketing, sales, and lead generation efforts, tracking lead performance for your business. This, in turn, helps you improve and strategize your plan and maximize the ROI. Here are some simple, actionable, and useful lead analytics tools to help you effortlessly leverage data-driven insights. Supermetrics Supermetrics, a cloud-based lead analytical tool, unifies all metrics and performance indicators in a centralized location. It predominantly helps businesses streamline the data accessibility process via Google Analytics. With Supermetrics, you can enjoy a full-fledged reporting solution that integrates with other analytics engines and tools. On the whole, it helps you create a plan and execute online marketing, online analytics, and social media and get an exhaustive report of your prospective clients. Finteza Finteza is a powerful analytical tool that helps users collect information about their website — traffic quality, weak spots, inefficient advertising channels, and user behavior. This, in turn, helps you manage your online campaigns, create banners, and set targeted ads all in just one platform. Furthermore, you can access audience reports, deep and comprehensible sales funnels, reliable statistics, and more. On-Page Lead Generation Tools On-page lead generation tools help you capture leads right from your website. These tools convert casual visitors into leads by analyzing their intent, tracking their activities, and nudging them at points when they are most likely to convert. These tools closely track your visitors from the time they land on your website till they leave. While visitors navigate through your website, the tools find the best opportunities where the chances of conversions are the highest. Here are the best on-page lead generation tools your business needs: Picreel Picreel is an excellent tool to track the digital footprints and click behavior of your website visitors and present them with interactive popups. You can use it to present prospects with compelling and customized offers that they cannot refuse, collect valuable feedback from leaving visitors, and capture email leads to contact them later. The collected data can be smoothly moved to your CRM, helping your sales and marketing team reach out to prospects and boost your sales. Qualaroo Qualaroo is a powerful customer feedback tool that helps you ask visitors the right questions at the right time in a way that doesn’t feel intrusive. The insights gained from responses to Qualaroo Nudges can be up to 10x more powerful than email surveys. Qualaroo surveys visitors in real-time and targets them based on their actions, behavior, location, and many other factors. For example, a lead generation form can pop up when visitors show exit intent or when they are at the pricing page. Nudging visitors at the right time increases the chances of getting genuine responses. It helps you unlock valuable insights into what your visitors are looking for or what’s stopping them from making a purchase. Even if they don’t complete their purchase, you can try to get their contact details so that they can be added to your outreach list for future products or offers. Wrapping Up Businesses have different goals, skills, budgets, and requirements, but they want their business to thrive in the long term at the end of the day. With the right lead generation tool, you can create a steady stream of leads or prospects that you can tactfully turn into customers. Author Bio Will Cannon, the founder of UpLead and Signaturely, has considerable experience in lead generation, email marketing, customer acquisition, and retention. He provides actionable insights to marketers on customer relationship management and ways to drive higher business ROI.
Four Business Trends That Will Define 2022 Posted on April 7, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick Photo by Kaboompics .com Trends come and go, but it is essential to keep up with changes in your industry if you want others to see you as a leader and expert in your field. And remember, early adopters often remain on the winning side. Here’s a list of four business trends that you should pay attention to in 2022. Four Business Trends You Need to Pay Attention to in 2022 Hiring and Keeping Talent – Shorter Work Week One of the effects of the pandemic is high employee turnover. The emergence and popularity of remote and hybrid work models have pushed employees to crave extra flexibility at their jobs. In many cases, employees are willing to quit their roles in search of new job opportunities that provide the flexibility and work-life balance that they are looking for. This could provide an opportunity for companies that offer flexible working options to scoop up top talent. In some cases, even companies who may not be able to increase compensation might be able to retain talent in their workforce by offering a work-life balance that appeals to their employees. As a business owner, you should consider whether you offer options such as working from home, hybrid working, or other lifestyle benefits that are highly appealing to today’s employees. Vaccine Mandate vs. Testing Whilst some companies have instituted a vaccine mandate, some executives are concerned about consequences, according to a Gartner study. Here are some possible reasons that highly concerned executives might refrain from implementing mandates: Employers fear that employees may quit if the vaccine mandate is implemented, contributing to employee turnover. Employers may not be able to handle the court cases that could arise in the case of a vaccine mandate being implemented. The employers believe that the choice to be vaccinated or not remains a personal choice of the employee. For these reasons, it seems probable that some companies will opt to set up testing systems rather than mandating employees to get the vaccine. In some cases, free and easy-to-access COVID testing could be a selling point to new team members. If it’s something you can offer onsite at your company, you might find it’s a benefit when attracting new talent. Adoption of Cryptocurrency Many businesses that ignored the e-commerce trend lost footing during the pandemic and barely made it through the global lockdown. Keeping up with digital trends can be important, and one that business owners may want to pay attention to in 2022 is cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency business trend just gained more momentum with the announcement of President Joe Biden’s executive order, which will help banks to get more comfortable with crypto. Cryptocurrency could become a more widely accepted means of payment in 2022, and you don’t want your business to get left behind. As a business owner, consider whether it could benefit you to introduce cryptocurrency as an acceptable means of payment, especially if e-commerce is a big part of your business. Health Concerns for Remote and Hybrid Workers The flexibility of remote and hybrid work appeals to employees, but it also comes with potential health downsides for a company’s workforce. While 35% of employees responded to the flexibility of remote work by engaging in physical activities, 40% became more sedentary and consequently gained weight, according to the Harvard Business Review. Working in the office requires employees to commute to and from work daily and be on their feet for discussions, brainstorming sessions, and meetings – all forms of physical activities absent in remote and hybrid work models. So, business owners and employers need to develop creative solutions that will engage their workforce physically, even with the adoption of remote and hybrid work models. The last two years have been tough on many businesses, and 2022 will require business owners to discover new ways to thrive amidst the disruptions that persist in so many industries. Keeping an eye on business trends can help you to prepare for the year ahead, but we understand that it is hard to keep on top of moves and shifts while also keeping all your plates spinning. That’s where BenchmarkONE comes in. Our all-in-one CRM software is designed to save you time, so you can get back to thinking about the future of your business instead of getting bogged down by sales and marketing admin tasks.
Essential Case Study Questions to Ask Your Best Customers Posted on April 6, 2022October 28, 2022 by Natalie Slyman Picture this: a customer is looking to replace their email marketing software. As they evaluate different options, they look for products with features that suit their needs and preferences. Most importantly, they want proof that your product works. You can tell the story yourself, but the problem is that 9 out of 10 customers won’t trust what you say about your brand. Instead, they want to hear from other customers who have used your product and reaped the benefits. This is where case studies come in handy. A case study gives skeptical customers evidence backed by data, numbers, and analysis. It’s an impactful direct endorsement from satisfied customers that tells others, “come buy this product: it enables me to achieve these results and will work for your business, too.” Where to Use Case Studies Case studies are an important part of your content marketing strategy. Here are a few places you can feature your case studies to drive social proof and conversions: Your website: 92% of potential customers look for social proof before making a purchase. Adding excerpts of your case studies on key web pages and on focused landing pages will improve conversions. Nurture emails: If you have a case study about a feature or product a customer is looking to buy, send a targeted, nurture series featuring the case study. Sales and marketing team: When the customer is in the consideration stage, you can send them targeted case studies. Sales and marketing teams should also learn to use case studies at the right moments in the buyer’s journey. Newsletters: Case studies are a great resource for your newsletter series, whether you’re looking to build new relationships or strengthen existing ones. Marketing videos: Making video case studies or testimonials helps potential customers see what your product can achieve from a third-party perspective and may convince them to buy. Actually, 2 out of 3 customers claim they’d make a purchase after watching a testimonial video. Blog posts: You could also use quotes from case studies to add credibility to information in your blog posts and articles. Identifying the Right Customers for Case Studies Not all customer stories lend themselves well to case studies. For a case study to really woo your customers, it has to be authentic, believable, and captivating. When picking candidates for case studies, consider the following: Company size: The size of the company that suits your case study comes down to what you want to achieve. If you want to add more SMBs to your customer base, then write a case study about a small business; and vice versa. The challenge: Evaluate your target audience and pinpoint the problem you want to solve. Then, identify the specific product feature that solves that problem. Lastly, search through your customer base and pick a customer that had a similar problem and used the same feature to solve it. Chances are, if you use that customer as a case study, the story will resonate with the target audience. The results: Remember, for the case study to have a significant impact, it has to showcase cold, hard data. For this reason, pick a customer with solid numbers to back up their anecdotal results. Gather direct quotes, as well, to spice up the case study and improve narrative flow. You’re telling a story, after all, so make it exciting! Other things to consider include: pick a customer you’ve recently worked with, and ideally, one requiring minimal layers of approval. This way, your proposal to feature them in your case studies will get approval in time — and you won’t have to delay for months while you wait for legal to provide their stamp of approval. Fundamental Case Study Questions to Ask in Your Interview Asking your customers the right questions can make or break your case study. The questions you ask will vary depending on your industry and the angle of your case study, but here are some essential ones to start with: How did you find out about us? When did you start working with us? What was the beginning of the engagement with our company like? What problems were you looking to solve? Did you evaluate our competitors or other solutions to your problem? What made you decide to go with us? How did our product/solution solve your problem? Did you need any help using our product/solution, and how did you get help? What are some of the main benefits of using our product/solution? What are the three biggest things you love about our company? What would you say to other people considering us? 1: What’s Your Background? Getting your customer’s backstory is a great way to set the stage and tone for your case study. It might even help steer your case study down a path you hadn’t considered before. Better yet, these personal stories engage potential buyers, helping them to relate to your customer base. 2: How did you find out about us? 3: When did you start working with us? 4: What was the beginning of the engagement with our company like? 5: What Problem Were You Trying to Solve? Every buyer is working to address a problem. Your case study should focus on one problem, so ask what problem the user was trying to solve. This question will give the reader (and you) insight into how people perceive and use your product. 6: How Was The Problem Affecting You? Most buying decisions are based on emotions rather than logic. Expand this question by asking how the problem was affecting impacting the customer’s bottom line, what difficulties it was causing and how it made the person feel. Ask open-ended questions and try to elicit emotional responses as much as possible. 7: What Possible Solutions Did You Consider? There are always multiple ways to solve any problem. Those who read your case study will trust the testimonial more if they can see that the customer considered other solutions. Buyers always start with a list of options and then narrow down the list until they find the perfect fit. 8: Why Did You Choose Our Product or Service? Case study readers will be interested in the decision-making process previous buyers have gone through. If they identify with the process, they are more likely to buy the same product. 9: What Would Have Happened If You Had NOT Made The Purchase? Asking this question reiterates the original problem. Hopefully it’s the same one the reader is trying to solve. It emphasizes the consequences of postponing a purchase and increases the likelihood of the reader making the decision you want him or her to make. 10: What Risks Did You Consider? Every decision has risks. If you ignore them they won’t go away, so you need to address each risk to reassure your prospective customer. This helps the reader to overcome their natural aversion to taking risks. Risk analysis has two main components; how likely it is, and how severe are the possible consequences. You can reduce perceived risk by including a ludicrous over-the-top warranty that offers much more than the standard money-back guarantee everyone offers. 11: What Reservations Did You Have? This is similar to risk analysis and gives you another way to find why people might not be buying from you. If one person has reservations, other buyers might have similar feelings and need to confront them before making a decision to purchase. 12: Did you need any help using our product/solution, and how did you get help? Provide potential customers with a taste of what it’s like working with your company. Do you have 24/7 support? Personalized account management? Give your customer service and support a chance to shine. 13: What are some of the main benefits of using our product/solution? 14: What Measurable Benefits Have You Seen? This question gives your case study respondent an opportunity to address the value in your product and to spell out exactly how it solved their problem. It is more convincing as the final question because readers can see the feedback is credible. Praise is more effective when it’s given after a detailed risk analysis and consideration of alternatives. 15: What are the three biggest things you love about our company? 16: What would you say to other people considering us? Bonus: Can You Provide Creative Assets? Be sure to ask your customer for a headshot, company logo and other brand elements you can add to their case study to make it feel even more personal and authentic to your audience. You know what you need and how your study needs to be structured. If you simply ask someone to give you feedback on a purchase, what you get is unstructured and rambling praise that lacks credibility. Structuring responses will save the respondents time and gives you something much more valuable. Your best customers value your partnership and want to help you succeed. They will more than likely be happy to take part in a case study. All you need to do is to ask.
The Best Email Marketing Tools of 2022 Posted on March 31, 2022April 6, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Email marketing is still one of the most lucrative ways for businesses to connect with prospects and customers. But like all digital marketing channels, email marketing is not immune to change, and the right email marketing tools make all the difference. A great email campaign takes more than creativity, clean design, and snappy copy to land in the inbox. In 2022, careful collection of first-party data, segmentation and personalization are key to generating sales. Email Marketing in a First-Party Data World Third-party cookies have been a mainstay in the digital marketing arena for decades now. Recent statistics show that over 80% of marketers rely on third-party cookies to improve user experience, track web visitors, collect data for ad targeting and create personalized onsite experiences. Third-party cookies’ bells have tolled, and an era of cookieless internet is burgeoning. Web browsers are restricting the use of third-party cookies: Safari did so in 2017, and the biggest player — Google Chrome — has announced it will end third-party cookie tracking by 2023. As this change sweeps across the marketing landscape, marketers have to come up with other ways to drive prospecting, lead generation, and personalization. Leah Lloyd, Senior Director, CRM, and Email at Tinuiti advises marketers to hone in on first-data strategy. Dr. Ada Barlatt, the founder of OperationsAlly, shares a similar sentiment. She posits, “creating a first-party data strategy is a great way to prepare for these new privacy measures.” 61.9% of brands have heeded this advice and are ramping up first-data collection, while 67.3% have built customer data platforms. Email is growing in prominence as it remains one of the best ways to support first-party and zero-party data collection. Some of the popular use of email marketing include: Asking customers to provide feedback after an interaction with them Sending targeted pop-ups to ask customers for contact information Sharing surveys and quizzes through email to know the customer better Top Email Marketing Tools for 2022 For your zero- and first-party data strategy to work well via email you have to use the right email marketing tools. Here are the best tools to use in 2022: BenchmarkONE BenchmarkONE is an all-in-one customer relationship management and marketing software solution. A scalable solution, made for businesses small and growing, BenchmarkONE offers a streamlined CRM and sales automation platform. But what does that have to do with email? Your CRM data directly integrates with BenchmarkONE’s email marketing system, allowing you to manage your email lists, create beautiful templates, and contact your customers right from their interface. We also offer marketing automation features that allow you to set up notifications and actions to contact leads when they click a specific link or visit a certain page. BenchmarkONE is a powerful, affordable option. The free plan includes unlimited users, 250 contacts, and 500 emails per month. Paid plans start at $29/mo. for Hubspot Hubspot offers a free CRM, but that’s not where the email marketing power resides. Check out their Marketing Hub, which allows you to create beautiful, on-brand and personalized emails quickly and easily. What sets Hubspot apart is that their marketing platform integrates not only with email, but all areas of your in-bound marketing. From one software, you can manage your company’s blogging and landing pages, which you can then feature in your marketing emails. Hubspot is a one-stop inbound marketing shop at $800/month. If you only want email design and automation, their pricing starts at $50/month. Benchmark Email Benchmark’s claim to fame is a simple to use platform that allows small business owners to create their marketing emails, manage automation, and place sign-ups on their website with ease. Their A/B testing and in-software analytics also offer easy-to-digest, beautifully designed graphs that help owners easily visualize their email trends. Benchmark is priced based on email subscribers. Their pricing begins at free for unlimited subscribers and 250 emails/mo. Features and pricing scales up from there, starting at $15/mo. Campaign Monitor Campaign Monitor has been a fixture in email marketing for years and they’ve earned that reputation well. Their drag-and-drop email builder is one of the best in the business, with beautiful templates and an intuitive interface. Automation and personalization can sometimes be intimidating to new users, but Campaign Monitor makes it easy to incorporate engaging elements in into your emails and send them at the perfect time or trigger. Campaign Monitor is priced based on volume and starts at $9/month. Email on Acid Email on Acid isn’t an email builder; it’s an email checker. Have you ever wondered what your emails look like rendered on different browsers, operating systems, and cell phones? Email on Acid allows you to see exactly what your customers see by simply forwarding them your email design. You can hit the send button with confidence, after using Email on Acid, that all of your customers are getting the exactly experience you intended. Their premium service also tests email for spam analytics, allowing you to ensure that your visuals and verbiage aren’t triggering major spam filters. This means more of your emails will get to the inbox you intended. Email on Acid starts at $99/month. Drip Drip is an ecommerce email marketing platform that allows you to learn deep customer habits from your clients. You get a first-row seat to every click, purchase, and interaction a customer makes on your site, no matter which ecommerce platform you use. This information allows you to use their integrated email marketing platform to send highly customized, exactly-on-time messages to your customers. Whether they’re timed or triggered, you can ensure that your messages are what they’re looking for, when they’re looking for it. Drip is priced based on the size of your email list and begins at $19/month. BombBomb Interactive emails are the future. It’s crucial that you find ways to stand out in the increasingly crowded inbox. You want your emails to excite your clients and have them enthusiastically open them, right? Send personalized videos to clients during one-on-one email conversations either by taking a video with your phone, recording your screen, or sharing a video on your computer. BombBomb is the ultimate email personalization tool. After all, there’s nothing more personal than your face, right? BombBomb starts at $49/month and scales up from there. MailerLite MailerLite is an easy-to-use email marketing tool for small and medium businesses. Besides the clean and streamlined design, it comes with a drag-and-drop email builder to help you create emails with ease. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned marketer, it’s easy to create stunning signups and landing pages to drive your marketing strategies. With the free forever plan, you can manage up to 1,000 email subscribers and send 12,000 emails per month. The premium plans (which are affordable) allow you to unlock unlimited sends per month and advanced features such as newsletter templates, custom HTML editor, dedicated IP, and deliver by time zone. Moosend Moosend is a cost-effective email marketing platform for brands that manage a small email list. It provides the tools you need to create and manage email campaigns, signup and subscription forms, landing pages, and transactional emails. Besides that, you can use marketing automation and artificial intelligence to power product recommendations. Moosend distinguishes itself by being super affordable. First up, the 30-day free trial is quite generous as it allows you to send unlimited emails, use automation workflows and create one landing page and signup form. The paid plans are also on the lowest end of the pricing spectrum in the market. Edison Mail If you’re dealing with multiple inboxes across different providers and want a one-stop shop to manage them all, Edison Mail might be a good pick. While it’s not a CRM (it’s more of an email organization tool), if you’re a busy professional who feels overwhelmed by your inbox this may be a great time saver. If you do a lot of selling or prospecting through email or LinkedIn, you’ll be pleased to know Edison Mail syncs with LinkedIn so you can find your contacts in a couple of clicks. Edison Mail boasts “faster, simpler, smarter” as its key benefits, and definitely ticks those boxes. Email marketing is always evolving. It’s important to stay abreast on the tools and services out there that could improve your marketing efforts. After all, if there’s an innovative tool out there that you’re not using, it’s likely that your competitors are. So, stay ahead of the curve and experiment with some new email marketing tools. Just be sure to test, test, test any changes you make to your campaigns.
How To Create a Sustainable Instagram Content Strategy Posted on March 30, 2022March 30, 2022 by Guest Author Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile When marketers use social media to reach today’s consumers, there is only one golden rule: content is the absolute king. But do you think the biggest and most successful Instagram brands pump out content off the cuff, with no strategy for what they’re going to post? Of course not—that would be akin to a basketball team going into a game with no playbook, no plan for how to win. A diverse, sustainable, and efficient strategy for creating and posting content is just as important as any other facet of your marketing. A report by the Content Marketing Institute shows that companies with a concrete strategy are more effective in almost all aspects of content marketing compared to those with only a verbal strategy or no strategy. So, in today’s article, we will demonstrate how to put together a killer Instagram content strategy to set you on the path to success. Crafting your Instagram Content Strategy Study your audience A scattershot plan isn’t going to work—nobody puts together a game plan by first trying anything and everything and then figuring it out afterward. On the contrary, good strategies come together by first learning about your audience. The more you know about the customers you’re trying to attract, the more effective your content—you’ll be better able to serve them content that engages them. You do this by knowing their pain points and challenges. If you think of content as a product, then your audience is your consumer. If you want your audience to “consume” your content, you have to make sure that the product solves their problems and makes their lives easier and better. Without this knowledge, you’re taking shots in the dark, hoping that some will land—a waste of effort! Once you can hone in on specific topics or types of content that will resonate with your customers, then you should focus on those things. Have a library of content ideas The most challenging part of Instagram content marketing is creating the content day in and day out. You likely already have some ready content that is easy to put together—things that you can crib from your marketing material. But posting that all the time can mean that your Instagram profile looks like one big ad for your products. That’s no way to create an engaging experience with your intended audience. They need something that connects with them to keep them coming back to your feed. Know your own strengths Every brand has its own unique strengths and attributes—successfully executing your content strategy means utilizing those strengths. Perhaps your brand has a great aesthetic that plays well with photo carousel posts, or maybe you’re a thought leader and have a wealth of knowledge that you can share with your followers in instructional videos. Your brand could have a rich heritage and history that people can identify with if you focus on telling your story. These approaches serve to create a connection with your audience and engage them in what you can offer. In the early days of Instagram, all we had were single-photo posts. The platform has become much more complicated now, with a plethora of content options. Videos, photo carousels, Instagram Stories, Reels, etc. Trying to excel at everything means you could be spreading yourself thin (and wasting time and effort). You don’t have to utilize every type of Instagram content all the time—tailor your strategy to your situation. An effective communication plan can also help serve as a guide for your posting strategy. Give yourself concrete goals Without knowing what you’re aiming for, your strategy will be aimless, disconnected from the rest of your business and marketing funnel. You need to know what kind of effect you’re trying to create on a monthly or even weekly basis. Perhaps you’re trying to increase website hits, or you’re trying to align with new products or service launches. Knowing what’s coming down the line for your brand means that your content can be planned out in advance, saving you time and effort. The type of content you’re going to post will need to change to serve those goals. The only caveat is that your content should be consistent—like we said in the previous point, you need to play to your strengths; straying outside this paradigm could be seen as jarring. Have a schedule Having a schedule—both for posting content and for creating it—means that you have a concrete goal: post at these times or create something at a certain time. However, your schedule isn’t set in stone. You’ll hear of posting schedules being spoken of as though there’s some magical time where every post gets maximum engagement—but that’s not the case. And there’s not one blanket schedule that applies to all companies, all the time. Your posting schedule should be tied in to your knowledge of your audience. What time are they on the platform and ready to engage? How often do they go on Instagram, and what do they do while there? Some brands post several times a day, while others post once or twice a week, but receive similar engagement and reach. The trick is finding the schedule that works for your brand specifically. We can simply figure out the best time to post on Instagram by looking at these analytics. If your brand is just starting out with its content strategy, it can be beneficial to post a little more often than usual so that you can build up a well of great content that engages your audience. Once you’ve gotten that ball rolling and built up a loyal following, you can transition to your preferred schedule. Leverage User-Generated Content Your audience is an incredible resource—if you can get them talking and posting about your brand, then you have a massive library of content for your own feed. Reposting user-generated content saves you time and effort and increases the trust your audience has in your brand. Almost 90% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Once your audience sees that other like-minded consumers are speaking positively about your brand, they’re much more likely to give you their business. And this isn’t limited to consumer reviews—you can hold photo contests or giveaways, creating even more engagement. The real caveat here is that you don’t have much control over what your audience creates, but this can be a great supplement to your existing content library. A starting point for your Instagram content strategy Today’s tips aren’t the end-all-be-all for creating an Instagram content strategy, but they’re an excellent place to start. The next big step is evaluating the success of your strategy and being flexible enough to adapt. That’s the real sustainability that we’re looking for: maintaining audience engagement over months and years, despite any changes in the market. If you master today’s tips, you’ll have a solid foundation for your sustainable and efficient Instagram content strategy.
How to Build a Digital Marketing Team for Your Business Posted on March 25, 2022September 18, 2024 by Guest Author If you want to grow your business, a digital marketing team is essential for generating new leads, increasing brand awareness, boosting sales, and nurturing customer relationships. Building an exceptional marketing team is about more than just hiring people to manage your ad campaigns. Today, consumers have higher expectations from brands, which is why each member of your digital marketing team should bring specialized skills in different types of marketing disciplines to the table to drive your business forward. From content experts and visual design gurus to web development specialists—team members’ skills should come together to build a unified brand marketing strategy and achieve sustainable long-term growth through various marketing initiatives. So, how do you build a multifaceted digital marketing team? Keep reading to find out. Begin with the makeup of your digital marketing team Digital marketing is an essential business process for attracting leads, converting customers, and growing your business. The structure of your digital marketing team will depend on the size and budget of your business. If you’re a startup or small business, you might not have the resources to hire a different person for each job. Consider marketers with a wide-ranging skill set that’s transferable across the board. As your business grows, you’ll be able to take on more employees to fulfill essential roles as they come up. Enterprises will have more scope to hire a larger marketing team with specialists in each area. Whatever the size of your business, it’s essential to structure your digital marketing team to align with your business budget and goals. Marketing is a highly dynamic industry. As technology advances and consumer demands shift, so do the roles of marketing professionals. So expect your marketing team to develop over time. No matter the size of your digital marketing team, make sure communication silos aren’t creating barriers to collaboration. The team should communicate with each other to holistically execute marketing strategies. Collaboration and communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams can be super useful for day-to-day communication. Virtual meeting platforms, like Zoom, can help your team connect while they work remotely. Another option is to bundle communication tools with the best phone systems for small business, including the features you need for your business, like a CRM integration, video conferencing, voiceover IP, or an integration with your workforce management solution. Start hiring for different roles. We’ve chosen these roles based on what kind of digital marketing expertise a small-to-medium-sized business will need to grow. Leadership roles Just like any other area of business, you’ll need people in leadership roles to execute your marketing strategy smoothly. You might hire a chief marketing officer (CMO), Director of Marketing, or a VP of marketing. Whoever you choose needs to be a steadfast leader with organizational and interpersonal skills to manage a team and liaise with other important figures in your organization like your CEO, account executive, and so on. Digital marketing leaders must be able to spearhead campaigns to achieve specific goals, delegate tasks to team members, motivate employees to perform well, and report on the overall success of marketing initiatives. This requires leaders to work closely with their team, using synchronous and asynchronous communication channels to connect and collaborate whether working in-office or remotely. Content marketing team Content marketing is integral to any digital or inbound marketing strategy. The content marketing team, depending on your budget, can consist of: Content marketing managers: They are responsible for overseeing content creation, developing content strategies, implementing editorial content, and ensuring content meets quality standards and adheres with the brand tone of voice. Copywriters/content writers and editors: The wordsmiths of the group. They write copy and content for an organization’s website, landing pages, blog, webinars, resources, email marketing campaigns, and so on. SEO specialists: Using their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) skills, they know how to create and implement an SEO strategy to index your website and content on search engines like Google and Bing more easily. Social media marketers: As of October 2021, there were 4.55 billion active social media users around the world. Social media marketers promote your business over social media. They’re also in charge of managing a social media budget for PPC (pay-per-click) advertising and tracking and analyzing social engagement, conversions, and other key metrics. Your content team will need to collaborate internally between themselves and with other members of your digital marketing team. It’s a good idea to leverage communication and file-sharing apps to keep them connected. Plus, another important thing you can do is leverage Kanban for multiple projects to keep everything organized and on track. Image source Creatives Creativity is what makes your brand unique. It’s essential to hire creatives as part of your digital marketing team. This includes roles like a head creative director, visual and graphic design specialists, video production specialists, and photographers. This team is tasked with creating cohesive brand imagery across marketing channels that represents your organization and appeals to prospects and customers. They know how to create a consistent brand strategy and possess a deep understanding of design principles. If you’re a small business, you might look for someone who possesses diverse creative skills to take on different roles. They should be familiar with web tools and creative programs like Adobe and Photoshop, as well as proficient in brand strategy. Web development specialists Having someone skilled in web design and development is crucial. It takes people about 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website. It’s the face of your business, so website optimization is key. If your site is slow or not optimized for mobile, visitors are likely to leave before they even look around. Your web development team is the point of contact for any website issues, and they’re in charge of ensuring your website offers a seamless user experience. You’ll be able to expand your web development to include senior developers as your business and website grows. Paid media team Your paid media team might consist of a demand generation specialist or manager, or digital marketers with experience running paid advertising campaigns. It’s a good idea to hire a dedicated team or team member to manage PPC (pay-per-click) social and search ads because it can be a time-consuming job that requires you to constantly refine and update your strategy for best results. The paid media team will pay close attention to the media consumption and behavior of your target audience. This way, they can find out what they’re buying, which social media channels they’re using, and what kind of content they like. Armed with this information, they execute paid media campaigns that boost your online visibility, increase brand awareness, and drive sales pipeline growth. Paid media team roles require employees to have extensive knowledge of tools like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. They’ll also need to keep up with algorithms across channels, ensuring they’re always on top of industry trends and consumer behaviors. They’ll collaborate with the rest of the digital marketing team to align paid media with marketing campaigns. Adopt the right tools to bring together your digital marketing team Whether your digital marketing team is located in-house or working remotely from around the world, you’ll need to empower them with the tools they need to succeed in their roles. The software you need will all depend on your company scale and budget, but a few are essential for any digital marketing team. You’ll also need robust CRM software to store customer data and help bridge the gap between your sales and marketing team. You should also consider investing in social media tools, SEO and keyword research tools, email marketing software, lead enrichment tools, and so on. Outline KPIs to track performance What is a business process you can implement to monitor the success of your campaigns? Well, setting and tracking KPIs is an effective answer. After all, building a digital marketing team is not a one-off activity. You need to continually track performance, make tweaks to your team set up to keep improving and carry on tracking. Everyone should know exactly what they’re working towards and what your campaign hopes to achieve. Outline priority goals and generate metrics and Key Performance Indicators to monitor progress and ensure you’re on track to achieving your goals. For instance, if you’re launching a content marketing project that aims to increase traffic to your website, you’ll want to measure KPIs like unique page visits, time on page, and engagement rate. Image source Keep building out your digital marketing team as your business grows Building a comprehensive digital marketing team as a small-medium business can be challenging. There are so many facets of online marketing that need to be covered. It’s a good idea to take a look at your existing team to understand whether they have transferable skills and expertise that can fit in with your new digital marketing team structure. However, always ensure that they’re focused on digital marketing to guarantee a cohesive strategy and achievable goals. As your business grows and your digital marketing team requires more force behind it, you can start making additional hires or adjusting the roles of your existing team members. Ensure your digital marketing goals align with your overall business objectives, and make sure they’re empowered with the tools they need to communicate, collaborate, and execute marketing campaigns successfully. John Allen – Director, SEO, 8×8 John Allen is the Director of SEO for 8×8, a leading communication platform with integrated hosted VoIP phone, contact center, voice, video, and chat functionality. John is a marketing professional with over 14 years experience in the field, and an extensive background in building and optimizing digital marketing programs across SEM, SEO, and a myriad of services. This is his LinkedIn.
8 Marketing Challenges and How to Overcome Them Posted on March 23, 2022October 14, 2022 by Jessica Lunk There are many steps to operating a successful marketing strategy. None of them are easy, and you’ll undoubtedly run into some mistakes along the way. From generating new clients to using effective SEO tactics, the digital marketing challenges that agencies face can — and often do — stand as hurdles to scaling. We’re taking a deep dive into Wordstream’s State of the Internet Marketing Agency 2019 report to pull out the most common challenges today’s marketers are facing and, more importantly, to share some advice on how to overcome them. Challenge #1: Getting New Clients According to the report, 51% of agencies rely on customer referrals as their main source of new clients. That hasn’t changed much over the years, which makes creating a referral program a no-brainer for getting new clients. However, now more than ever, agencies are also relying heavily on content and digital marketing to grow their client base. Generating leads with content marketing is totally doable, but you’ve got to ace your content creation and digital marketing approach. In terms of content, start publishing articles on noted online marketing publications that you know your audience reads. This will help you broaden your reach, further establish your authority and credibility in your space, and tap into a broader audience. Another tactic is to incorporate co-branded marketing webinars into your content strategy. Just make sure you partner with a brand that has a similar audience as yours so you can both benefit from the other’s network. Another suggestion is to use a CRM and marketing automation software. Doing so allows you to more fully understand where your prospects are in their journey so you can send them personalized offers and content that educates them and leads them down the funnel. Challenge #2: Retaining Current Clients The average client lifespan is just 0-12 months for 30% of agencies. And that’s a big issue, considering that existing clients spend more and cost less than new ones. So how do you keep your clients on board for longer? Once again, it starts with content. Send your existing clients resources that can help them get the most use out of your products and services. Send personalized perks, gifts, and/or exclusive promos too, and use milestones like birthdays and customer anniversaries as excuses to send offers and messages. Don’t be afraid to change your approach to individual clients over time. Get creative with your customer retention strategies, and know that as their plans change, so should yours. If you notice that a client is on a package that no longer suits them, adjust it — even if it costs them less. It’s better to keep a client around on a lower-tier plan than to lose them entirely. Challenge #3: Keeping Up With Ad Platform Changes Nearly half of agencies don’t have any full-time staff members dedicated to paid search, which means it’s easy for ad platform changes to fall through the cracks. But your paid search strategy is at the mercy of the ad platforms you’re using, and if you’re not keeping up, you’ll fall behind. Make a plan for staying up to speed with platform changes, whether that means adding this type of research to an existing team member’s role or setting up an RSS feed so you’re notified right away and can do research on your own. Publications, like Search Engine Land, can be a great source for staying up-to-date on new tools and current trends. Better yet, schedule routine check-ins with your team to discuss what’s working and what’s not with your paid search strategies. Not only will this hold more people accountable for tracking any changes, but it also makes it more likely you’ll notice changes earlier rather than later. Challenge #4: Time Management After generating new clients, managing time is the most common challenge agencies face. And it makes sense: there’s a lot to juggle when it comes to digital marketing, and while the workload is getting bigger and more complex, the teams and spending don’t always keep up. Our first piece of advice for making better use of time is to get a project management tool. Platforms like Toggle or Basecamp can help you organize your to-dos and stay on track, no matter how busy you get. Some other tips for managing time: Give yourself a limit on the amount of time you work on something. When you hit it, stop and move to the next thing on your list, then revisit it later on. This way, everything moves along, and you avoid sitting on one task for too long. Divide projects into three categories: this week, next week, and this month. Then prioritize accordingly. Ask for help! After all, teamwork makes the dream work, right? Challenge #5: Hiring and Training New Employees Onboarding is crucial, but it often gets pushed aside for more pressing matters. With all but 11% of agencies anticipating growth this year, hiring and onboarding are still going to become more important than ever. The best way to manage this is to make sure you have a job description already created for the various roles within your department (that you update as-needed), as well as an effective and specific hiring and training process. Having these things created ahead of time helps reduce any scrambling when it comes time to hire someone and speeds up the process of getting everyone on the same page. Challenge #6: Unlocking the Power of Data Your Martech stack spews a lot of data that you can use to drive personalization and business growth. To unlock the power of this data, you have to get five elements right: gathering data, deriving insights, driving action, and measuring outcomes. However, aligning these processes to wring the full potential of data is easier said than done. For example, unifying and cleansing data coming from internal and external sources can be a real challenge. Statistics show 63% of marketers struggle with unconnected data, meaning they fail to get a holistic view of customer behavior. Some tips to unlock the potential of data include: Create a solid data management platform (DMP)) Unify internal data with external sources to get a comprehensive view of each customer. Embed analytics with defined process workflows to ensure actionable insights are available where they are most needed. Hire people with advanced analytics skills to derive and translate insights into action for your team. Challenge #7: Improving Email Engagement Email marketing can deliver a return on investment (ROI) of 3600%. However, you have to improve email open-rate, engagement, and conversion rates to obtain that ROI. Sadly, a whopping 56% of marketers say improving email engagement is their greatest challenge. If you’re struggling to improve email engagement, your approach to this form of communication might be the problem. Today’s subscribers engage with emails that resonate with their needs and preferences — targeted, personalized, and valuable emails. If the engagement rates are dipping, your messaging might be the culprit. 62% of savvy marketers claim that personalization is the key to improving email engagement. Take time to get to know your subscribers and understand their interests, needs, and preferences. Know the devices they use to read emails, their time zones, and the best time to send out emails. Doing so will help you send more engaging, personalized, and timely emails. Challenge #8: Understanding Metrics As a marketer, part of your job is defining goals and ensuring they are met. While that sounds simple, it can be complicated, particularly if the team doesn’t understand the key performance indicators (KPIs) for marketing success. Take this example: email marketers know that their campaigns are bound to fail if subscribers don’t open emails. That said, they don’t toot their horns when email open rates improve. Why? Because an increase in open rates doesn’t necessarily mean revenue growth; it’s the conversion rate that really connects action to income. Remember, anecdotal metrics such as organic traffic growth and click-through rates are important. However, you have to assign a financial goal and measure the ROI to reap optimal benefits from each campaign. Besides that, follow these cardinal rules when identifying the metrics to track: Explain metrics to the team to make them easy to understand and use Make sure the metrics are easy to replicate. Collect internal data and back it up with external sources so that each metric delivers useful, actionable insights that impact the business No challenge is too big if you know what you’re up against. Embrace this year with a new plan for tackling some of the biggest digital marketing challenges.
How to Grow Your School District’s Email List with Online Forms Posted on March 17, 2022March 16, 2022 by Jess Lunk Photo by Caleb Oquendo from Pexels Email is one of the best communication and marketing channels for K12 schools. It’s a great channel to reach parents share updates, important news, back-to-school protocols, and upcoming events. The channel boasts an incredible 36% open rate, which means when you send an email, there’s a high probability your message will reach home. However, before you can send an email to support parents, students, teaching staff, or donors, you need their email addresses. In this article, we’ll show you how to build your K12 email list and why doing so is extremely important. Why You Should Build Your Email Newsletter List A school’s email list degrades naturally. Parents will remain in your school’s email lists for as long as their kids are enrolled in your school. If the kid transfers or completes 12th grade, the parent will likely unsubscribe from your list or just completely lose interest. Not to mention, approximately 0.4% of parents unsubscribe from your list even when their kids are still enrolled. Taking this into consideration, you can see that if you don’t double down on continually building your email list, eventually, you’ll have no one to send emails to. And if you don’t have an email list or it’s constricted, you will be unable to: Drive direct email marketing campaigns and raise funds for various programs Support students, parents, and teaching staff by keeping them as informed as possible Conduct surveys or research targeting non-teaching staff, teaching staff, or students Run contests, organize sports events, games, and shows Why Web Forms are the Best for Growing a High-Quality List One of the easiest ways to capture email addresses for your K12 newsletter is through forms on your existing website. There are various types of web forms you can use, such as: Opt-in forms: Used when you want to request parents register for specific events, competitions, or your school newsletter. Pop-up forms: Place this type of form on pages or blog posts that receive the highest traffic. As the name suggests, the form pops up when the web visitor performs a predefined action such as showing an exit intent (moving their mouse to the upper right-hand corner, for example). Pop-up forms are good because they grab the reader’s attention and prompt them to take a specific action before you lose them altogether. Landing page forms: These can be used in promotions and as lead magnets so you can direct visitors to these pages and grow your list in a more conscious way. With BenchmarkONE K12 Edition, you won’t struggle to create any of these forms. We give you customizable templates which you can use as a springboard for ideas to design forms that grow your list significantly. When contacts start streaming in, we help you manage and segment them to ensure you’re sending the right message to the right group—no more looping grade eight parents into messages specific for grade one parents. Tips for Using Web Forms to Grow District Newsletter Email List Here are some helpful tips for growing your K12 email list: Maintain Consistent Branding Whether you’re creating a pop-up or opt-in form, make sure the design matches your website’s color palette. This way, when you add the forms to the web pages, they won’t look out of place. Most marketing automation tools, like BenchmarkONE, offer you tons of templates to choose from that make assembling your school newsletter super easy. These templates help do most of the work for you, and you can swap in your school logo and colors, so your messaging is consistent with your school branding. Place the Forms Strategically on Your School’s Website If you are using opt-in forms, add them in strategic places, such as landing pages, sidebar widgets, headers and footers, or at the end of a blog post. For pop-up forms, choose when you want them to appear, such as after a user has spent a specific amount of time on your page or when they show exit intent. Make Your Forms Mobile-Friendly The majority of the parents, teachers, and non-teaching staff consume your school and district’s content on mobile phones. For this reason, make sure your forms are mobile-friendly so that it’s easy for them to fill out anywhere and anytime on their mobile device. The last thing you want is to lose potential subscribers because they couldn’t read or notice your sign-up form. Give Web Visitors Value in Exchange for their Email Address If you are asking parents to sign up for the school’s newsletter, your content should be valuable to them. Don’t send too much content at once, and pay attention to which topics are resonating with readers the most. It can be hard to get parents and other constituents to read your newsletters, so you want to make sure you’re doing yourself as many favors as possible. Only share key information and insight and do so in a way that showcases the importance of being subscribed to your newsletter in the first place. Encourage Subscribers to Enroll Friends and Family Create a helpful district newsletter that parents, donors, or parties outside your school community will find interesting. For example, you could choose to deliver a newsletter series to help parents manage kids’ digital security. And then ask parents to recommend the newsletter to friends and family. Since this is a topic of concern for every parent, regardless of their kid’s school, a good number may subscribe to your newsletter, particularly if their school doesn’t cover the same. In general, be selective with how you go about this. Having more people subscribe to your district newsletter is great, but only if they’re going to truly value receiving it. Make sure that when you’re encouraging those on your email list to share the newsletter with others that they understand the value in doing so. For example, if you share upcoming district basketball games and tournaments, there are probably extended family members that would enjoy knowing about them and therefore want to be signed up for your district newsletter. Growing your district newsletter’s email list may sound super confusing and overwhelming, but with the BenchmarkONE K12 edition, it’s a cinch. Use the tips mentioned above and check out what our marketing automation and CRM software can do for you by scheduling a live demo.