Sunday, August 26, 2012

Lead Nurturing and the Sales Funnel

When it comes to running a successful business, it is all about making sure you have a solid sales funnel that brings in consistent customers who are loyal to your brand and spread the word of their experience to their own networks. However, before you can capture a bunch of strong leads to turn into customers, you need to first understand the metrics of lead nurturing.

Knowing how a person thinks before they become a fully fledged customer of your business might sound difficult, but it really doesn't have to be--especially with how many metrics and analytics are now available to diagnose why prospects are finding you. This data will enable you to create calls-to-action and marketing campaigns targeted at those visitors and create warm leads. All it takes is a little reporting savvy, the ability to act fast, and most importantly: quality aligned content that really shines.

Think Like Your Leads

A great way to see what type of content is working for you is by reverse engineering your own sales funnel and web traffic. Work through it so that you understand where the majority of your leads are currently coming in from--are they being predominately directed from your Facebook Fan Page? Your blog? Email campaigns? Do you have specific search terms that are generated a lot of high converting niche traffic? Whatever it may be, keeping reverse engineering your customers and traffic until you get to step one and know what is helping you generate leads. Analytics will especially help with this part.

Obviously, there are going to be a few different paths a majority of your customers will take. From here, you should have a couple that stand out from the rest which give you a good snapshot of what to do next.

Focus On The Majority
You've established major pathways that most of your leads take to become buying customers, now you have to focus your energy on making sure the process of going from interested visitor to lead to buyer is dialed in. Using your newly found data from reverse engineering your sales funnel, you can now provide even better content that your leads want and need.

Some of this high quality content might include white papers, free downloadable guides, monthly trials, free consultations, archives of how-to videos, infographics, and much more. But, what kind of content should go where? Here's a shortlist to consider:

    Top of the Funnel: Content like downloadable ebooks, white papers, videos, infographics and other easily "consumable" content are perfect for that initial awareness of your business to the lead. They can be informed of what exactly you are providing without being given a sales pitch. You are just providing useful information for their buying decision.

    Middle of the Funnel: The second stage of lead nurturing happens when the lead is interested but needs that extra push to become a buyer. Content like case studies, comparison sheets with competitors, demos, and open contact between you and the lead all fall into this category. At this point, you can start exposing them to your business's purpose.

    Bottom of the Funnel: Finally, the buying stage! It's time to bring out the big guns at this stage with promotional deals, sales, coupons, free consultations, estimates, and other incentives to make them become a customer.

All of your content should be aligned with your sales funnel, easily and seamlessly directing leads to the final sales pitch. This should be done in a way that is highly customized based on lead behavior. Drastically segmenting the leads by group at the top of the funnel will only increase the potential of isolating them before uncovering their true buying intent, so having a comprehensive content and lead nurturing strategy is a must.

Filling in the gaps within your own sales funnel can now be much easier, allowing you to ramp up sales and see a significant increase in conversions simply by rearranging content to fit the needs of prospects during that particular stage while remaining cohesive throughout the entire funnel.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

How Text Reminders Can Help Your Business

These days almost everyone owns a mobile/cell phone. We carry them with us at all times, which is why SMS text reminders are such a useful tool for businesses of all kinds.

SMS reminders have proven to be the most effective way to reduce the likelihood of a forgotten appointment. Emails are useful, however it's not uncommon for email appointment reminders to be ignored, lost in a flood of emails within our inbox, or sent to the junk mail folder. Text reminders are always read and never ignored, which results in a much smaller risk of clients forgetting their appointments.

Using text reminders in your business is very easy and affordable thanks to online text reminder services. These online services work by using your web browser to schedule SMS appointment reminders from your laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Internet technology has come a long way in recent years, which makes it possible to schedule SMS reminders for your customers in seconds.

Using SMS reminders is surprisingly a very low cost way of communicating with your customers. Most online SMS reminder services don't charge any monthly or setup fee's. You simply purchase text credits in pre-paid blocks and use them as required. Each text message costs just a few cents, but could potentially save you thousands of dollars each year in prevented no-shows.

Appointment reminders are not the only way SMS technology can be used in business. Many online text reminder services include features such as the ability to send out bulk text messages. This is a great way to notify your existing clients of deals and specials. Some reminder services will even let you receive SMS replies from your customers free of charge.

Another useful feature you will find in some of the leading SMS reminder services is the ability to schedule recurring reminders. Recurring reminders let you set up "happy birthday" text messages to go out once per year, monthly bill reminders, or daily/weekly reminders for patients to take their medicine.

Text reminders are an innovative tool you can start using today to help your business and customers. Thanks to today's advanced online text reminder services your business and customers can now benefit from SMS technology with minimal expense and effort on your part. Your customers will thank you for it, and your businesses bottom line is guaranteed to improve as a result of reduced no-shows and missed appointments.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

How to Successfully Advertise Your Company in This Tough Economy

There is a saying that without advertising, nothing happens. If you own and operate a business, I'm sure that you can appreciate the truth of that statement. Of course, the type of advertising and promotion that you do for your business is going to differ, depending upon the particulars of your business and your budget. Fortunately, there are some things that can be done to help promote your business successfully, even when an economic downturn is looming. Here are a few suggestions which can help you to successfully get the word out about your business during the tough times.

One thing that you should consider is the possibility of using business promotional items and marketing giveaways. It is important for you to test this thoroughly, as you would not want to spend a lot of money and get nothing in return. When done properly, it can really help to promote your business and to brand your company. The type of promotional items that you use for your business will differ, but some of the better suggestions include pens and pencils, notepads, small alarm clocks and stress balls. These are things that tend to be used regularly or that will lay around, helping to remind them about your business, each and every time they see it.

Social media also offers you a way to promote your business and to really increase your success. Facebook is the king as far as social media is concerned but that does not mean that you have no other options that are open to you. If your business thrives when you are connected with similar businesses, you may also want to include the LinkedIn service as a way to extend your reach. It is important for you to understand, Facebook and other social media networks are not all about advertising and promoting your brand. You need to make sure that you are interacting with those who like your page and have friended you. You will then see better results when you actually send an advertising message about what you have to offer. Don't neglect using the other social media networks, such as twitter. They can really help to extend your reach and can get the message out about your business to those that may have an interest in what you have to offer. Just make sure that you balance the social media efforts with any other online efforts that you may currently use.

Finally, don't be afraid to get out and make yourself visible in your local area. Your local Chamber of Commerce and other business groups may be quite beneficial, particularly if you live in the metropolitan area. It is also important for you to do a little bit of local advertising, particularly if you have a service or product which is sold to people at a physical location. It will still be to your benefit to use the Internet and promotional products but you can do so in a much more effective manner when you actually show yourself at the events that are being held in your area.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Top of the Funnel Offers for Lead Generation

Top of the Funnel Offers

As content marketing and other forms of inbound marketing continue to grow at a rapid pace, marketers need to understand that all facets of a sales funnel still count in their strategies, not just the bottom of the funnel when the user is finally ready to become a loyal customer. However, more and more businesses are focusing their content, services, and marketing in an effort to drive the "buy" action and not as much making sure to maximize incoming lead volume at the top of the funnel.

One way of making sure people who are interested in your services or product, but are not yet ready to buy have the best chance to eventually become customers, is utilizing top of the funnel offers which initiate the interaction with your brand. These can come in many forms: eBooks, top ten lists, free offers, special promotions, demo, etc. But, which ones are the best top of the funnel ideas?

The Buyer Persona

First and foremost, any marketer knows that the key to capturing more leads is creating different buyer personas which define likely potential customers. Through market research and current customer analysis, you can uncover characteristics of who is interested in your business, what exactly they want, and why they enter your funnel.

Once you have a good understanding of buyer personas, then the top of the funnel offers are much easier to create and control.

Top of the Funnel Ideas

Now that you have your personas identified, it is time to dive into the ideas and inspiration for the best converting top of the funnel offers you can provide to these potential customers. Content is going to vary from business to business, but these best practices should get you started in the right direction:

    It's all about the content! Make sure you have a fleshed out content marketing strategy that includes at least blogging, online articles, and images (two of the most popular forms of content marketing). Engage your audience and make sure to keep it specific to their persona. Create content that addresses a need that they have during an early stage in the buying process and ask them for their details in exchange for that content.

    Keep data gathering simple. You don't need a customer's address, phone number, and other personal information right at the get-go. In fact, your main focus should be their email address. Once you have that, you have a method to entice them further with targeted and automated lead nurturing programs through email.

    Inform your readers, there's no need to try to pitch them your product or service at this point. They are interested, but need to know more without a loosely masked sales pitch.

Once you have mastered top of the funnel offers, bottom of the funnel offers become a breeze. All it takes is a little content know how and a strategy for integrating it for your business.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Pinterest for Business

Social media has changed the way businesses approach marketing. Facebook, Google+ and Twitter brand pages have allowed your company to have almost real time interactions with your customers and clients. The newest addition to the commercial social media sphere is the website Pinterest for business.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social networking site that is very different than it's peers. While Facebook and Google+ allow companies to post photos, videos and text to create brand awareness pages, which their visitors can comment on and interact with, Pinterest has a rather unique approach. The site allows individuals to visually share, curate, and discover new interests and products by posting (also known as "pinning") images or videos to their own or other users pinboards. A pinboard is a collection of "pins" usually with a common theme such as Men's Fashion, or Antique Furniture. Individuals can upload unique images from their computers or can "pin" items they find on the web using the Pinterest pin it button or just adding a URL.

Pinterest for Business

With many brands and retailers already active on its platform, the transition to accounts designated for marketers, was inevitable. Pinterest's new business accounts are free of charge and are not brand pages in the tradition of what Facebook and Google+ have rolled out. They will not look any different than what is currently on the site. What is different is that Pinterest will allow you to simply enter the name of your business when registering, streamlining the sign up process. As part of the migration to more commercial usage, Pinterest has created new tools specifically for business users to help enhance interactivity. New widgets enable you to embed pins and boards on your company's website.

What Are the Advantages For Your Business?

Pinterest is taking an active roll in working more closely with businesses. The new widgets are designed to help you drive traffic by attracting more followers to your pinboards and profiles. More traffic means more brand awareness. By opening the Terms of Service to business users, you can now actively promote your presence on Pinterest in all of your marketing materials and across the web. Embedding the Pinterest widgets on your company's website allows visitors to your site to go directly to Pinterest where they can interact with your boards and share links to your products or services with their friends across all other social media platforms.

By opening up Pinterest for business use, your company has another outlet to engage prospects. Creative promotions like contests, development of apps, websites, and other services designed for use with Pinterest, offer new ways to reach potential customers, and to continue to engage your existing ones.