Marketing automation is the process of using software to complete repetitive marketing tasks designed to nurture sales leads, personalize marketing messages and content and in the process. By automating many of these tasks, users can more effectively send the right message to the right user at the right time. This saves marketers’ time, money and effort.

How agencies and marketers benefits from marketing automation software?

To help you understand the importance of marketing automation, here’s a collection of lead generation statistics that testify to the value of implementation:

• 28% of marketers saw an increase in revenue per sale attributable to marketing automation – Chief Marketer
• 75% of companies using marketing automation and marketing automation software to see ROI within 12 months, 44% within 6 months – Focus Research
• Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead – Nucleus Research
• 70% companies declare that marketing automation met or exceeded ROI expectations – Focus Research
• Companies using marketing automation for nurturing experience a 451% increase in qualified leads – The Annuitas Group
• 350% return on investment and 100% annual revenue growth while saving $400K and generating $2MM in incremental gross revenue – Acteva
• Marketing automation provides 225% increase in prospect volume that convert to sales opportunities – ShipServ
• Marketing automation reduces ignored leads from 80% to 25% – Bulldog Solutions
• Companies that automate lead management see over 10% increase in revenue in 6-9 months – Gartner Research
• 47% of marketing automation-nurtured leads make larger purchases than non-nurtured leads – The Annuitas Group
• Companies achieve a 15% savings on creative productions with marketing automation – Gartner Research
• Marketing automation-generated personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates over 10% – The Aberdeen Group

Truth is in the numbers

Independent organizations are reporting some very impressive results from companies that are implementing marketing automation and utilizing marketing automation software.

According to Ascend2’s 2016 Marketing Automation Trends survey, 71% of companies use marketing automation. Most of the companies that aren’t using it plan to do so in the foreseeable future.

On average, 49% of companies are currently using Marketing Automation. With more than half of B2B companies (55%) adopting the technology. Emailmonday

Marketing Automation – Your Sales Specialist

Marketing Automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity. Proving the effectiveness of marketing automation, Nucleus Research conducted a study that revealed sales productivity grew by 14.5% when automation software was used. And this isn’t at the cost of increased resources, but in fact the opposite – the same report also found that companies using marketing automation and its software enjoyed an average 12.2% reduction in marketing overheads.

63% of companies outgrowing their competitors are using automation. Online competition will always be tough, but with automation, Lenskold’s Lead Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study has shown that companies can have the edge. Of the companies that are growing larger than their competitors, 63% utilize automation in their marketing strategies.

Nearly two thirds of companies surveyed (63%) expect to realize the benefits of their marketing automation system within six months of implementation. Ascend2 Marketing Automations Trends Survey

Let’s have a look at a quick case study to see how some of these marketing automation, software and numbers translate into business for Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters increased revenue from marketing leads by 175%

Thomson Reuters is a good example of a business that used marketing automation to improve its targeted messaging. Email marketing was producing a high number of leads but not all were of the highest quality, so sales had begun running their own lead generation activities.

Marketing automation technology enabled Thomson Reuters to realign the sales and marketing teams, improve segmentation and targeting through a system of lead scoring, and create ideal customer profiles.

As a result of using the new software:

• The number of leads sent to sales increased by 23%.
• With marketing automation software, lead conversion time dropped by 72%.
• The amount of revenue attributed to marketing leads increased by 175%.

Conclusion

Good marketing has the ability to set you apart from your competition. But it can be hard to keep up with what tactics work and which ones don’t. And even when you do, it’s hard to focus on all of them at once. You don’t always have the time or energy to do it.

Thankfully, marketing automation tools exist to make marketing easier for you and your team. By automating, you can spend your time and attention focusing on other efforts that will increase your company’s success.

If you are not using a marketing automation software or any platform then please consider SmartDesk. Our team can help guide you through the setup and ongoing support you will need to succeed.

If you are using another platform contact us today to do a cost and features comparison. We would love to have an opportunity to show you what we can do for you.

In the context of ROI (return on investment), does email marketing stand a chance against some of the big boys: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram? Google Ads? In this blog we will take a close look and see if good ole fashion still has a place in this ever expanding digital world.

First let’s set the tone for what all the other social media and digital marketing channels have to compete against. Email was the first means of communication in the new digital world that we entered into in the mid 1990’s. Email actually has a longer history going back to the 1960’s with ARPANET, but only became commercially viable in the 90’s with the growth of the home computer. Ok no more nerd talk, back to marketing.

As per online marketing companies in Toronto, today 3.8 Billion people are using email. That is a big number, but is it an effective means of getting your marketing message out?

According to McKinsey , email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. When you want to grow your company, grow your customer base, get your message out to new prospects, you turn to email. Why? Because email delivers better results than any other channe

An email communication to your prospects is 5x more likely to be seen than viewed on Facebook. Social Media has given the digital marketing experts in Toronto and all over the world a new way to connect with customers and prospects but email still remains as a trusted source to get your message out.

Understanding email can also be a lot simpler than becoming an effective social media marketer. Essentially there are three metrics to wrap your head around to know if your email strategy is working. They are: Open rate, CTR (Click-Through Rate), and ROI.

For every $1 spent on email marketing $44 is made in return, according to a study by CampaignMonitor.

In my years of working with clients and online marketing companies in Toronto, email marketing is last on the list of channels that are effectively being used. Most of my clients are in the SMB market, and until now marketing automation and similar tools have been a little too complicated for the average business owner. More on that later…

Open Rate

Your email open rate is calculated by dividing the number of unique opens by the amount of emails sent, minus the number of email that bounce (aka: bad or non-existent email addresses):

Open Rate = Unique Opens / (Number of Emails Sent – Bounces)

According to mailchimp statistics, most industries have an open rate of 21% and a click-through rate of about 2%. Several digital marketing experts in Toronto are using Mailchimp. Mailchimp on average produces much lower numbers than a company using a email marketing platform integrated into a marketing automation strategy. MailChimp is largely used as a email “blast” tool. Although that can be effective it is not the ideal way to communicate with your prospects.

What Digital marketing services in Canada has to say for Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

Click through rate is the measure of how many people clicked on a hyperlink within the body of your email. It’s important to note that CTR is a somewhat variable number, which can fluctuate depending on the content of your email as well as many other different factors, but generally, a healthy rate falls in the 5 to 8% range.

Here is an amazing example from online marketing companies in Toronto.

If you had an 8% click-through rate, it would mean that for every 100 people who opened your email, 8 people went on to click a link within that campaign.

Email Engagement vs Social Media Engagement – Digital Marketing service in Canada’s perspective.

Email today is largely an opt-in methodology so users likely are getting messages that they are interested in. The industry average for opt-outs of email communication is well under 1%. Spam is always a problem, but is much more under control than a decade or more ago. Digital marketing experts in Toronto knows better laws against spam, software is much better at filtering it out, and spam just doesn’t work, so companies are not pursuing it as a viable means of marketing.

Statista shows that more than 2.5 billion people use social media every month. So it makes perfect sense for companies to spend their marketing dollars in this area. However, it’s a mistake to think that social media is the only way to reach consumers.

According to Statista, there are 5.6 billion active email users around the globe in 2019. In fact, research compiled by Campaign Monitor indicates that 72 percent of people would rather receive brand content through email, while just 17 percent prefer to receive their brand messages from social media platforms.

What social media marketing service companies in Canada claim?

Online and social media marketing companies in Toronto claims that 72% people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media.

Why does social media have such a lower number? It is simple, it comes down to solicited vs unsolicited. People opted-in to email communication and even though Facebook does a “good job” of profiling me to understand my interested, the ad is still unsolicited… and for some people they find that a little creepy. With Email you get the be the bouncer, and your inbox is the nightclub.

Market Adoption

If you haven’t started an effective email marketing campaign yet you have a flip of the coin chance of being behind your competition. Only 50% of SMB are using marketing automation.

Looking for a reliable and result-driven online marketing companies in Toronto? Get in touch with us today!

 

50%of small and medium-sized business use their marketing automation software to send email drip campaigns. – Statista

If you are not convinced that email marketing is something that your organization should be doing then I think I need to repeat myself.

Email marketing is the king of the castle with a 4400% ROI!

This blog isn’t about choosing email over social media marketing, it is about understand where you will be the most effective.

Social media marketing is an excellent tool when your goal is to expand your reach and engagement.To connect with new prospects and introduce your brand to the world.

Email marketing is just better at driving sales. Let’s connect with Zand Marketing. We are your digital marketing expert in Toronto.

The Internet is awash with landing pages, some are very good that do the job, and some are not so good that completely miss the mark. This blog will help you understand best practices and creative ideas on how to achieve the highest conversions with your landing pages.

First and foremost, I want to state that your homepage is NOT a landing page! If you are directing your social media posts and paid ad campaigns to your main website, I have good news for you. After reading this blog I guarantee your leads, conversions and sales are about to go up and you will be eager to hire digital marketing service company for your business.

Using correct targeting and testing methods can increase conversion rates up to 300 percent

A typical website conversion rate is about 2.35% on average. But the top 10% of companies are seeing 3-5x higher conversion rates than average. Math was never my strongest subject but let’s take a look at my numbers.

Let’s say you are spending $2,500 with a CPC of $0.75 a month on Google Ads, so 3,333 clicks with a 2.35% conversion rate you are getting 78 leads with that spend. Now if you implement a fantastic landing page (and you will after this blog), and you get your 5x with the same spend. Now you are getting approximately 392 leads… WITH THE SAME BUDGET.

Here is an example from digital marketing service in Canada.

Let’s jump into some more math. If your average sale is $100 and your profit on that sale is _____ (fill in your number) but for illustration purposes I will use $25. So, your campaign spend was $2,500 which brought you $7,833.33 in sales! Great you think you are a marketing Rockstar. Well… not so much. Your campaign should look more like this. You spend $2,500, direct your ads to a highly optimized landing page, convert your leads at 11.75%, generate 392 leads for sales of $39,162.75 and profit of $9,790.69 minus your ad spend you profited $6,457.69. NOW you are a digital marketing Rockstar!

 

Want to take your brand to the next level? Connect with Zand marketing, a top-class digital marketing service provider.

What online marketing agencies in Canada says about Long page and short page?

Technically, a landing page is any webpage that someone lands on after clicking an online marketing call-to-action.

The longer page usually out ranks the short page, but testing what works for you might be in order. Long landing pages can generate up to  220% more leads  than landing pages with CTA (call to action) and above-the-fold. The short page can work if people are very familiar with your product or service offering, but that isn’t the case for most companies. You want to tell the story of your offering, features, benefits, video highlights, bullet points, testimonials, CTA, special offers on digital marketing or another service or etc… Depending on your product or service that can be a long page.

Regarding the statistic above, you want to take full advantage of the long form page. Google tends to rank favorably blogs and pages that are over 1,800 words. There are other factors like time on page and  bounce rate, but if your 1,800 words are engaging and informative, visitors will spend the time scrolling and reading your content.

Here is a good example of what to consider for your landing page.

 

The Best Call to Actions that online marketing agencies in Canada suggest

If your visitors don’t clearly know where to go, then you failed as a digital marketing service company. Make your CTA(s) clear and unambiguous. If you are offering a free ebook then make the button say, “Get your free ebook”, and not “go”, “submit” or “subscribe”.

Be exciting! Enthusiasm is contagious.

For someone looking to book a trip with their family, a CTA such as “Book your 7-day ultimate dream vacation today!” will excite them with the notion of an exciting get-away trip, and make them eager to click on your ad. If your call to action has a beautiful photo of a beach and your CTA is “Book Now”. Book what exactly?  I get that I can book that beach but where is the excitement? The sense or urgency?

Digital marketing service in Canada prefer to use the FOMO. This is a phrase that seems to be very popular in the cryptocurrency community, but it also applies to human nature. It means Fear Of Missing Out. Nobody likes to miss out on a deal, but try to make your FOMO offer genuine, at the end of the day you don’t want to make your prospect feel stupid. For example, click in the next 5 minutes you can take advantage of this spectacular offer!Nobody will buy that… well at least I don’t anymore 

Stop trying to over-qualify the lead

I hear a lot of complaints about the lack of quality leads in my digital marketing service company, and I understand that time is valuable, and it would be great if every lead was ready to buy right away. But it doesn’t work that way…unfortunately. Visits-to-leads-to-sales is a numbers game and you can always do things to optimize your numbers, but at the end of the day it is a numbers game.

Don’t make the mistake of asking too many qualifying questions, you might scare away a sale you could have made with your nurturing campaign or your sales agent over the phone. My four favorite form fields are [name] [email] [phone] and [comments] . In some cases, you can leave out the phone field, but make the name and email mandatory fields and comments optional. I find in most cases visitors fill out the comments area and tell you exactly what they want. 

Reducing the number of form fields from 11 to 4 can result in a 120% increase in conversions.

Optimizing your landing page’s design

In digital marketing world your landing pages’ design determines how visually attractive your site or services is. This may seem obvious, but many landing pages neglect some crucial aspects when designing their landing page.

Your landing page is a great opportunity to try to be a little more creative than you can be with your main site. Here are some points to consider when designing or having your landing pages designed by someone else.

1. Use “white space” – the above the fold area should probably only have your logo, value proposition, imagery, and of course your CTA!
2. Hero shot – you should have a killer custom image or a great stock image that tells the tail of our offer. (try not to use a stock image that everyone knows) you know the famous stock image girl I am talking about. Just google famous stock image girl … you knew it was her before you checked 
3. Some digital marketing service companies recommend Contrasting Colours  to  make your important copy and CTA stand out from the rest of your content and images.
4. Video – Visitors spend more time on pages with video and convert at a much higher rate.
5. Get the lead! – Don’t include your navigation at the top or the bottom of your landing page. Don’t give your visitor an opportunity to wander.
6. Pop-up – I recommend the famous exit pop-up or even the slide up offer. If your visitor is on the way out, why not try to at least get their email or have them follow you.

Digital marketing service companies use videos on landing pages to increase conversions by 86%

How many landing pages should you have?

As many as it takes to be successful! Ok sorry about that obvious set-up, but it is true. Don’t stop at one landing page. You should have at least 3 landing pages that you are testing for each offer/campaign.

I came across this statistic doing my research for this blog “ 48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign .” What are the other 52% doing? Businesses with over  40 landing pages  generated a whopping 12 times more leads than those with 1-5 landing pages.

Not only does Google reward you for ad content that matches your landing pages, people appreciate it as well, probably why Google places high value on this. If your ad headline leads a visitor to your landing page and the offer that enticed them is no where to be seen, then 3-2-1 bye bye, visitor is gone… and Google noticed that… and your ad is dropping in ranking. Houston, we have a problem.

By  removing the navigation menu  you can increase conversions by 100%!

To subdomain or to not subdomain?

Here is the quick answer from digital marketing service companies: no subdomain for your landing page! Google considers a subdomain a completely different URL than your main domain. You’ll miss out on any valuable search engine authority your website is generating. By publishing your landing page to your own domain, you get the added advantage of a small rankings boost when people search for your page’s keywords.

How to optimize your keywords strategically on your landing page

Your keywords are going to naturally reflect the content on your landing page. So once you’ve determined your target keywords, you’re going to want to place them strategically on your landing page. According to digital marketing service companies in Canada here’s where to put them if you want to rank high on the search engines.

Title tag: This is the title of your page. It’s what shows up in the browser’s tabs and the blue link on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Focus on making your title compelling to encourage click-throughs.

Meta description: This is the short description of the page you see underneath the blue title in SERP’s. Use it to give the potential visitors an idea of what they’re going to find on the page if they click-through.

Header tags: In HTML, title tags are arranged in a hierarchy from H1 to H6. Your page should have only one H1 tag and it should be your main headline. If you’re going to have subheadings under that H1, use H2s. If you plan on having subheadings under your H2s, use H3s, and so on and so forth. This prioritizes your content. Putting words into an H1 says to Google “These are the most important words on my page.”

Image file names: Always try to give your images descriptive file names. Since Google can’t physically see your images, it has to go off the written description that you give those images in the file name. So if your image is of someone holding your product, call the image (person-holding-widget), separate words by dashes and replace widget with your product of course  Also don’t forget the ALT tag in your HTML. This should also be a description of the image, but you don’t have to use the dash in between the words.

Your copy: Your keywords should be naturally placed throughout your copy, but sparingly. By using them too much, a tactic known as “keyword stuffing,” you risk being penalized by Google.

Don’t forget the backlinks!

Is you digital marketing and SEO service companies know about back linking? I will end on this point because it is often over looked. If you are taking this exercise seriously then you are likely going to spend the time and or money on creating effective landing pages going forward. Often landing pages are created to accompany a social media campaign or a Google Ads campaign. But your landing pages are also great pages for people searching the inter-webs for your amazing products or services.

As per top 10 digital marketing services in Canada, Backlinks significantly increase organic listings on Google if done right. There are many ways to create quality backlinks to specific pages you want to target. I will do a detailed blog on that as soon as I can, so follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as I always post my latest blog there.

Don’t forget the Marketing Automation!

Ok I will actually end on this point, as it is of course self-serving. Gartner states that companies that implement marketing automation experience 34% higher revenue as a result. Make sure all your landing pages are capturing your leads into a system that will guarantee a higher conversion.

80% of marketing automation users saw their number of leads increase, and 77% saw the number of conversions increase. – VB Insight “Marketing Automation, how to make the right buying decision” (2015)

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Your company could be losing leads without even knowing it. Here is how it could be happening and how you can fix it.

Leads are the lifeblood of a company looking to grow and maintain market share. Every lead is an opportunity to gain a new customer and increase revenues. So, the idea of losing a potential customer because of inefficiencies, lack of process or employee neglect is troubling to the CEO or sales manager.

In this blog, we will look at some of the top reasons why leads are lost, and how to make the appropriate improvements using marketing automation tools.

Companies don’t respond fast enough to leads.

Response time is the number one reason why companies are losing leads and not connecting with new prospects.

 The odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes are 100 times higher versus 30 minutes.   

The odds of qualifying that lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. Responding to a lead in 5 minutes, rather than 30 minutes, will increase the likelihood of that lead entering your company’s sales process by a factor of 21.

SmartDesk allows for 2 key factors to help companies succeed in this area. It is just like your marketing automation consultant. One, leads are instantly sent to the designated sales rep, and two, a second person can be notified if the leads are not responded to within a set time.

The average time it takes a company to follow up on a lead is 46 hours and 53 minutes. That is how long it takes to pick up the phone and respond to a lead. And the sales rep who does call only makes 1.3 call attempts before giving up and moving on. Considering 78% of people buy from the first company they speak to, responding quickly to leads should be a top priority.

I will end this point with a scenario to consider. Imagine walking into a car dealer on Monday and asking to speak to a sales rep and they say they will get back to you on Wednesday sometime!

 

Looking for best marketing automation consultants? We can help!

Companies don’t follow up enough times

Persistence is key. Most company sales reps make 1.3 call attempts before giving up and move on to the next lead. By instituting a policy of 8 to 12 attempts, a company can clearly turn around a sluggish sales performance into a top-performing one.

Studies show that 80% of sales are made after the 5th contact with a prospect. However, 25% of sales reps follow up once and never call that prospect again.

Success is a game of numbers. SmartDesk uses marketing automation to nurture prospects to sales.

Understand your web traffic

As per marketing automation consultants, your website traffic has a lot of hidden gems if you know where to look. Google analytics is a great application, but it can be overwhelming for the non-techy. SmartDesk has integrated analytics giving you page by page details on where your traffic is coming from. It is important to see your paid traffic vs organic, your top performing social channels and how effective was your last email campaign?

SmartDesk does a great job of showing you the most important information in context of where you are within the system. At a glance from a single dashboard you can scroll through marketing automation tools and software and can easily see your visitor to leads ratio (marketing efficiency) , leads to sales ratio (sales efficiency) , leads by campaign or leads by pipeline. Having key metrics on the health of your company is very important and can give you the heads up you need to address an issue before if becomes an issue.

Are you segmenting your leads?

Whether you’re marketing an e-commerce site, a B2B company, or a Fortune500 company, traffic segmentation has the potential to transform your lead generation results by a significant amount. Segmentation allows you to deliver the right experience to the right person at the right time so is marketing automation consultants.

The mistake a lot of companies make is directing all their prospects to a contact page to fill out a generic contact form. There are so many missed opportunities by doing it that way. Ideally, you want to segment your leads by opportunity and then direct them to the proper salesperson or team. By creating a lead form on each of your webpages will allow you to better engage, qualify and respond to the lead. Let me use an example to illustrate this point.

A music shop offers piano and guitar lessons on their website. If all the pages direct the visitor to the contact page and the visitor fills out the form, then the message they get will be something like “Thank you for your interest in our music lessons, we will follow up with you shortly”.

The better way would be to have a form on the page that talks about piano lessons. This gives you an opportunity to engage the visitor with a strong call to action regarding piano lessons. The lead comes in as a piano lead and can be directed to the piano teacher directly. By segmenting the leads in this way, the visitor can be put in a nurturing campaign and be delivered piano related content and calls to action within the email.

Get more leads with Marketing Automation Tools

Have got marketing automation tools? You will need sales and marketing technology to put your process in place and get it running. As part of your alignment process, your teams need to agree on tools they will commit to using every day to capture and manage leads and customers. The best solutions are easy to use and incorporate every aspect of inbound marketing, including:

Website content management system

Content creation and promotion (blogs, social media)

Lead conversion (landing pages, forms and calls-to-action)

Lead nurturing (drip campaigns, personalized content)

CRM integration (seamless, bi-directional transfer of lead data, KPIs and communications)

Marketing automation tools help you with email marketing, list segmentation, lead scoring, lead management workflows.

 

Hire an Online marketing agency in Canada and Nurture your leads

Did you know that 79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales and that a lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance?

This is where marketing automation tools really makes a difference to the process of generating high quality, interested and qualified leads.

When you first get a lead from your marketing activities, you want to either manually move them to an appropriate stage and let the automation work its magic. Another option would be to have the marketing automation automatically move to different stages based on the user’s engagement.

These days buyers are self-educating, they will research the information they need to make a purchase. The more highly involved you are with their research the better chance you stand of closing the sale. Ready to go? Want to generate leads?

Marketing automation consultants and campaigns help you to educate leads over a period of time with clearly defined content. Making those leads sales-ready.

Next Steps

If you haven’t automated your lead nurturing process there’s every chance your sales team is interacting with leads that aren’t sales ready, while irritating potential customers with irrelevant content and untimely calls.

Automated nurturing gently leads your targets through the sales funnel, breaking down barriers to sales with timely, appropriate content. The result? Your sales team spends far more time on sales-ready leads, supercharging your sales cycle.

Request a demo of SmartDeskCRM to see how it can help increase your leads, sales and conversions!

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Unless you are reviving a thriving business from the 1980’s you probably have been doing some digital marketing over the years. Now more than ever having an online presence that drives results is imperative. I am going to cover some key strategies that will help your business succeed whether you have been working your digital marketing skills or not, so let’s get started!

Great solutions start with great questions, and the question I hear most often is “how do I market my business online, advertise on social media, and get ahead of my competitors on Google so that I can start attracting leads and generating more sales .” Of course, I am grouping multiple questions into one sentence, but you get where I am going with the top pain-points most small business owners feel.

Here is a way to get on the right track before I share some strategies for 2020. First, we need to make a plan.

Sounds easy doesn’t it, but guess what, most businesses don’t do this. They know that they need to be marketing online so they get a Google Ads account, write a blog or two, post a message on Facebook, and maybe update some meta tags and keywords because that is important right? Well yes and no. If all these points are part of a strategic marketing plan with defined goals, schedule of activities and budgets then you are on the right path.  

Here are 7 steps to start your plan.

Step 1: Define Your Business

Step 2: Determine Target Audience.

Step 3: Analyze Competitors.

Step 4: Set Goals.

Step 5: Outline Strategies.

Step 6: Set a Budget.

Step 7: Get to Work!

So here are the 5 Internet Marketing Strategies that you should be doing to start.

Focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines. 

All major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users.

I’m not going to go through all the facets of proper white hat SEO techniques because that is a course on to its self. But I will tell you that it needs to be the foundation of your digital marketing for 2020, and here is why. FREE TRAFFIC!

Investing in a good SEO strategy will pay the best dividends but it won’t be overnight. But, when it starts working you won’t believe the benefits. The current market conditions call for a strong SEO strategy. For more on SEO see our beginner’s checklist.

So, what should I expect, the answer is 6, 12, 18 and 24. Confused? Here is the general rule I go by. After 6 months you should start to see an uptick in traffic and quantity of leads, after 12 months you should know for sure that the plan is working, after 18 months you start modifying and improving your strategy, and finally, at 24 months you are on cruise control making changes and growing your business.

Paid Advertising

I’m talking about Google Ads and Bing Ads. I believe that Google Ads – Google’s enormously successful pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system – can work for almost any type of business. Bing works just as well but you won’t have the same reach that Google will give you.

But if you’ve never used Google Ads before, and you’re wondering whether it’s worthwhile, this post is for you. Here are the 3 reasons to use Google Ads.

Paid Advertising is measurable

Compared to TV, radio, magazines and even SEO, paid advertising is one of the most measurable channels for calculating ROI. You get a ton of metrics on literally every click and even non-clicks (impressions) for your campaigns. You can pretty quickly determine if your campaigns are sucking or driving your business forward.

Paid Ads are scalable

If you create a Paid Ad campaign that is converting at a profitable rate, you can increase your spending as the clients and profits roll in. This makes paid ads highly effective for businesses that need a lot of leads but are short on time to wait for the SEO campaign to kick in.

Paid ads are faster and easier

Instant results of a paid campaign is instantly rewarding. You can put resources into a Google Ads campaign and start getting impressions and clicks immediately. Because it’s so speedy, it’s also a good way to test whether a given keyword or audience is worth pursing via organic search – if it converts well in Google Ads, you can deduce that it’s worth trying to rank for in SEO and build out your content in that area. 

YouTube and Vlogs

YouTube is often overlooked as a search engine, but it is the second-largest search engine on the planet currently. It is not hard to see why, people can search a topic in YouTube and get thousands of topics that can be watched or listened to while driving (not recommended), taking transit to work (help save the planet) or for tuning out your family like every teenage kid does to their parents. (I know this all too well).

There are lots of ways to create content for this medium and it is getting easier, faster and a lot cheaper to accomplish this.

Social Media and Influencer Marketing

We all know by now the importance of social media, so I won’t spend too much time on why LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and let’s throw Pinterest in to the mix, are great platforms. Sorry Google+, nobody really uses you ☹.

The rest is up to you based on your ability to create quality content for all the channels you are populating. If you are posting for the sake of posting, then the old adage applies  Garbage in Garbage out. Remember content is king.

Now the most important event that can help you grow your audience and client base. You need to connect with a good Influencer who has a large following and a good reputation.

What works in Influencer Marketing

Carefully consider your approach in influencer marketing

Be organized, put together a strategy, plan, and budget, spend time on research

Be patient and be human – people talking to people, not companies talking to companies

When picking an influencer, first make sure their followers were obtained organically.

Testimonials and Customer Experiences

If you are an existing business, there is a good chance you have happy customers. If so great, have you captured any of those stories, on “paper”, social media, video? Are you letting potential customers know how happy and satisfied they could be if they became a customer as well?

I know… your customers are busy, and you don’t want to bother them, but chances are if you make it easy for them to share a testimonial there is a good chance they will.

Thank you for reading our blog, please reach out if you have any questions or would like to discuss any topics further.

The most frequent failure I see in people conducting sales functions (after forgetting to ask for the business) is that they seem to think as a salesman rather than a customer.

Why do they need to transform their thinking? Because today (as always) salespeople are in the business of providing solutions to problems, answers to challenges and help with opportunities. How can they do that if they are consumed with questions like “do they have money to spend” and “am I talking to the right level” and even “do they have a need for my product”? This is all great sales management questions and we expect our salespeople to get the answers for us to help us ensure our teams are focused on where the business is most likely to come from. But don’t for a minute believe that this activity is actually selling. As a professional salesperson, we need to ask these questions in support of a professional sales organization managing its resources and spending them wisely, but this is not selling.

What else is not true selling? Another common error I see over and over is the belief of some salespeople that they think that if they have just the right phrase or pitch, this will convince the customer to buy. Coincidentally, this is what makes selling to salespeople so easy – they have already bought into the thought of the perfect pitch so when they hear a good one, they are ready to buy. Preparing for a sales call with phrases, benefits, features and references is all part of normal readiness, so it seems to many that reciting these back to a client is actually convincing them to buy. It’s not.

Customers buy when they are convinced that your product will directly affect their lives in a positive manner. When they can see how their lives will be better, and by how much, then they are preparing to buy. But how did they get to this point? By the salesperson helping them imagine a life that has been made better by the product they are selling.

So how does a salesperson get a customer to imagine a better life with their product? A good start is to think like the customer – imagine yourself into their shoes for a day. What are my (their) everyday, biggest challenges? What’s the magnitude of the impact of the challenge? Is it lost revenues, delayed sales, high costs, employee skills, missed opportunities? Is there a potential match in the features and benefits of my product that might address the challenges? How much can I (they) afford to invest in a possible solution? What risk am I (they) prepared to take in buying a new product or solution? How will my (their) people adopt the new way of doing business? How will my (their) customers accept the new way of doing business? Sometimes it’s as simple as asking the customer direct questions about their business.

If you can think like your customer these questions (and answers) will come to you and allow you to answer any objections that may arise that might prevent a sale. And after that it becomes the salesperson’s task to use their character and personality to win customer trust – people still want to buy from people they like and trust.

Are the key features you need included? 

Don’t pay more for features you aren’t going to use. Know what you really need, and make sure the platform you select delivers on those. 

  How long is the contract? 

Flexibility comes at a cost. Most providers know that it takes months to see results, so they tend towards a longer commitment than oine month to give them time to show results, knowing that they can and will deliver if given the time to do so. Others prefer offering flexibility for those that are not sure.

  What are the payment terms? 

You shouldn’t have to take out a mortgage to get started. Some vendors require full payment upfront – tying up valuable marketing dollars that could otherwise be spent on execution. Look for a provider that offers month-to-month billing and no long-term contract.

  Are you looking at both the price and the total cost of ownership? 

Don’t be enticed by lower tiers that limit functionality. You’ll want the full power of marketing automation once you get started, and third-party add-ons for specific features add to the total cost. Also, pay attention to the limits. If a lower tier has limits on contacts and sending, think of how often you’ll have overages, especially if your business is in a growth phase. 

  What’s the word on the street? 

There are several great sites where you can go to hear what actual users are saying about the various platforms on the market. These independent review sites, like TrustRadius, MarTech, Capterra and others, allow you to get insights that professional reviewers just don’t have.

  Is it a “specialty” or “all-in-one” platform? 

An all-in-one system provides all the functions you need to market in the digital world, including: CRM, content management system, blogging tool, landing page builder, forms builder, etc. Be wary of a specialty systems that only cover a part of the tasks involved in being a successful digital marketer.

  Are there integrations available to work with the tools you already use? 

Look for a platform with its own ‘ecosystem’ of providers that it integrates with – either natively, through plug-and-play, or using a provider like Zapier or PieSync. This will allow you to seamlessly extend the power of your investment and lower the total cost of ownership. 

  Do the built-in analytics meet your business needs? 

Choose a solution that provides clear, concise reports that show the end-to-end ROI you’re looking for on your marketing and sales efforts. Ask to see a sample and shop it around internally to make sure it’s going to be impactful.

  Can you get up and running quickly? 

Look at the interface. Is it user-friendly? Is there contextual help (e.g. videos, virtual tours, articles) available in case you get stuck? An intuitive platform will save you countless hours both upfront and long-term.

  Is there quality support, both initially and ongoing? 

Some providers hide fees here, so beware. Does the vendor provide comprehensive onboarding to give your team confidence in using the platform? If so, what’s the cost? Is ongoing support unlimited and free, or are there caps and additional costs? And ask if you get a dedicated person you can call when support can’t help. 

  Should you work with an agency or manage this in-house? 

While many platforms are user-friendly, there’s legwork involved in setting up a marketing automation program that produces results. And ongoing efforts are needed to maintain and update your campaigns, add new ones, and produce regular reports. If you can’t allocate someone in-house to lead the charge, consider using a marketing agency that specializes in these services. Ask the marketing automation vendor if they have a network of agency professionals that can help you achieve your goals.

  What’s the long-term outlook for the platform? 

There have been some notable acquisitions in the marketing automation space recently. Be sure you are signing up with a vendor that is committed to your long-term success and is investing in platform innovation, support, and other services.

Click here to schedule a demo of our Smartdesk CRM Solution. If you are looking for a dynamic platform that will grow alongside your business than Smartdesk CRM is the choice for you.