Top Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategy Tips for Business Growth

Effective customer acquisition and retention strategy is key to driving business growth and maintaining profitability. This article provides practical tips on how to attract new customers and keep your existing ones loyal. Expect to learn about the stages of customer acquisition, key retention strategies, and how to measure success. By the end, you’ll have a roadmap for balancing these efforts to ensure long-term success.

Key Takeaways

• Customer acquisition and retention are vital for sustainable growth, with a focus on balancing resources for both to maximize profitability.
• Implementing strategic approaches throughout the acquisition funnel—awareness, consideration, and decision stages—enhances customer engagement and conversion rates.
• Prioritizing customer retention through strong relationships, loyalty programs, and feedback integration is crucial for increasing customer loyalty and lifetime value.

Understanding Customer Acquisition and Retention

Customer acquisition and retention are the twin pillars of sustainable business growth. While customer acquisition focuses on bringing new customers into the fold, customer retention aims to keep existing customers engaged and satisfied. Both are crucial for maintaining a loyal customer base and ensuring long-term profitability. However, businesses often face the dilemma of whether to allocate more resources to attracting new customers or to delighting existing ones. Striking the right balance between these efforts is essential for scaling effectively.

The main challenge lies in balancing these efforts. On one hand, customer acquisition is driven by the need for growth, competitive landscape pressures, and the desire to gain more market share. On the other hand, customer retention is about turning customers into repeat buyers and preventing them from switching to competitors.

It is often more cost-effective to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. Therefore, solving customer needs and consistently delivering value should be the primary focus to attract and retain customers.

The Customer Acquisition Process

Customer acquisition involves attracting and engaging potential buyers and converting them into paying customers to acquire customers through our customer acquisition strategy and acquisition efforts. This systematic approach can be visualized as a customer acquisition funnel, consisting of various stages that guide prospective customers towards making a purchase, highlighting the customer journey and the similarities customer acquisition, ultimately leading to customers acquired.

These stages are: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. Each stage requires targeted strategies and marketing efforts to effectively move prospects through the funnel.

Awareness Stage

The awareness stage is where potential customers first learn about your product or service. Creating brand awareness is critical for customer acquisition and ensures long-term business growth. Content types that effectively generate awareness include educational articles, social media posts, and SEO-focused materials. For instance, targeted online ads tailored to specific customer identities can significantly boost sales performance.

One successful example is an e-commerce brand that significantly boosted customer engagement and conversion rates through tailored email marketing campaigns. Search engine optimization-focused materials enhance visibility and ensure that potential customers can find brand content effectively. Addressing pain points and sharing valuable information helps businesses attract and engage potential customers during the awareness stage of content marketing.

Consideration Stage

During the consideration stage, prospects are evaluating their options and considering whether your product or service meets their needs. Providing informative content increases the likelihood of prospects engaging with your brand. Techniques such as webinars and detailed product guides serve as effective tools to educate prospects and build trust.

Engaging prospects during this stage is crucial to influence their decision-making process. Utilizing these engagement techniques can significantly enhance the prospects’ understanding and trust in the brand, leading to higher conversion rates. Addressing customer needs and sharing valuable information effectively moves prospects through the acquisition process.

Decision Stage

The decision stage is where prospects are ready to make a purchase decision. To facilitate conversions, brands often provide special incentives like limited-time discounts or exclusive offers targeted at specific demographics and their target audience. For example, Michaels runs targeted campaigns during peak shopping times like back-to-school and holidays to engage specific customer segments.

To move prospects from intent to evaluation, provide convincing information on why your brand stands out. Purple enhanced its conversion rate by 6x through innovative marketing strategies, illustrating the effectiveness of such efforts. Similarly, Comcast experienced a significant lift in conversions due to effective promotional offers.

These proven strategies not only drive conversions but also lead to increased website traffic and overall engagement.

Essential Customer Retention Strategies

Customer retention is crucial for businesses as it is easier to maintain high profits and indicates product and service quality. Prioritizing retaining customers can often be more cost-effective than acquiring new customers to improve customer retention.

Key components of a good customer retention strategy include quality interactions, loyalty programs, and gathering and acting on customer feedback. Improving customer retention, even by a small percentage, can substantially increase profitability as retained customers tend to spend more over time, enhancing customer retention efforts.

Building Strong Customer Relationships

Building strong customer relationships is fundamental to long-term loyalty. Consistent and meaningful engagement, such as personalized follow-ups, increases customer trust. Retaining existing customers is generally more cost-effective than acquiring new ones, as it can be five to seven times more expensive to bring in a new customer. Moreover, building emotional connections with customers can significantly contribute to long-term loyalty.

Long-term customers often become brand advocates, effectively promoting the business through word-of-mouth referrals. SaaS companies that implement educational content as part of their user experience can enhance customer loyalty and reduce churn, resulting in satisfied customers.

Happy employees provide better support and build long-lasting relationships that contribute to customer retention. Businesses can address concerns early by interacting with customers in online spaces. This engagement also helps in keeping buyers involved for the long term.

Implementing Loyalty Programs

Implementing loyalty programs is a proven strategy to retain customers and enhance engagement. Types of loyalty programs include points-based systems and tiered rewards, which help in collecting detailed customer data for personalized experiences. Identifying customer groups with the highest lifetime value is crucial for maximizing profits. Tailored loyalty programs can enhance customer engagement by aligning rewards with customer preferences.

Gamification in loyalty programs can boost participation and excitement among customers. Loyalty programs that focus on specific customer segments can dramatically enhance engagement and reduce customer churn. By implementing these programs, businesses can increase customer lifetime value and foster a loyal customer base.

Gathering and Acting on Customer Feedback

Gathering and acting on customer feedback is essential for improving customer retention. Analyzing customer feedback helps identify specific areas needing improvement to enhance retention. Prioritizing feedback resolution can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Gathering customer feedback is essential for understanding customer experiences and identifying pain points.

Businesses should actively integrate customer feedback into their strategies to continually improve customer experience and meet customer expectations. By addressing customer needs and consistently delivering value, businesses can retain customers and build long-term loyalty.

Measuring Success: Key Metrics for Acquisition and Retention

Measuring success is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of customer acquisition and retention strategies. Key metrics include Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and Customer Retention Rate. Evaluating these metrics helps businesses understand the efficiency of their strategies and make informed decisions to optimize their efforts.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) helps businesses determine the total cost of acquiring a new customer, which is crucial for assessing marketing efficiency. Higher customer acquisition costs can decrease the overall customer value, making it essential to monitor and manage CAC effectively. Brands can reduce customer acquisition costs and achieve lower acquisition costs by increasing current customer value and finding cheaper promotion channels.

Monitoring CAC is vital for businesses to ensure marketing strategies are effective and financially sustainable. Understanding and optimizing CAC allows businesses to allocate resources more effectively and maximize ROI.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) helps businesses assess long-term profitability by estimating the total revenue a customer generates throughout their relationship with a company. CLV is calculated by multiplying the average purchase value by the purchase frequency and customer’s lifetime. Understanding and calculating CLV allows businesses to focus on building long-term relationships with customers, ultimately leading to sustained growth and profitability.

Prioritizing high-CLV customers enhances marketing efforts and boosts overall satisfaction. This focus on long-term value helps in creating a loyal customer base and driving financial growth.

Customer Retention Rate

The customer retention rate is the percentage of customers who remain loyal over a specific period. A high customer retention rate is often associated with strong customer satisfaction and loyalty, indicating that customers are happy with the product or service. Good customer retention rates vary by industry, such as 83% for automotive, 84% for media, 77% for software, 78% for finance, and 84% for professional services.

Collecting customer feedback through surveys and service insights can enhance retention and is crucial in identifying pain points. Businesses should prioritize customer retention when they have a solid customer base to maximize ROI. By focusing on retention, businesses can reduce churn and increase customer lifetime value.

Balancing Acquisition and Retention Efforts

Balancing customer acquisition and retention strategies is crucial for sustained business success. Successful acquisition strategies often focus on building long-term relationships rather than short-term sales. Businesses need to adapt their focus on acquisition or retention based on current market conditions and growth objectives.

Integrating AI systems can provide a comprehensive approach to enhance both customer acquisition and retention.

When to Prioritize Customer Acquisition

Customer acquisition is crucial for business growth during critical phases such as entering new markets or launching new products. Companies should prioritize acquiring new customers when they are entering new markets or launching new products to build a customer base and gain a competitive advantage. A low market share requires businesses to prioritize acquisition to counteract competitive pressures and strengthen their position in the market.

Focusing on customer acquisition not only addresses immediate market challenges but also lays the groundwork for sustained business growth. By attracting new customers, businesses can expand their reach and enhance their market presence.

When to Focus on Customer Retention

High customer churn rates signal the need to focus on retention to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. In subscription-based businesses, maintaining high retention rates is crucial for ongoing revenue generation. Focusing on customer retention is essential for maximizing the value of existing customers.

Prioritizing retention strategies can not only reduce churn but also lead to increased customer loyalty and lifetime value. Focusing on existing customers ensures a good retention strategy and sustainable growth and long-term success.

Real-World Examples of Successful Strategies

Real-world examples provide practical insights into successful acquisition and retention strategies. Brands like Globus and Comcast use identity marketing to connect deeply with their customers, effectively acquiring new clients. Identity marketing is known to enhance engagement and foster customer retention, making it integral to successful strategies.

Bombas implements a social responsibility strategy by donating a clothing item for every purchase, enhancing customer loyalty.

Example 1: E-commerce Brand’s Acquisition Campaign

Purple, an e-commerce brand, successfully raised awareness among potential customers through a lucrative market segment aligned with its brand. By implementing identity-driven offers, Targus saw a 413% revenue increase and a 389% increase in orders. The brand utilized online advertising to connect with new customers, which proved to be a highly effective strategy. The combination of awareness raising and strategic advertising led to substantial growth in the brand’s customer base.

Online advertising and identity-driven offers were pivotal in attracting and engaging potential customers. This approach not only lowered customer acquisition costs but also ensured a steady influx of new customers. Leveraging targeted marketing channels allowed the e-commerce brand to guide prospects through the acquisition funnel, increasing conversion rates and growth.

Example 2: SaaS Company’s Retention Program

A SaaS company launched a retention program targeting military customers, achieving an engagement rate 2-3 times higher than typical campaigns. This tailored approach in loyalty programs demonstrated the effectiveness of focusing on specific customer segments. By understanding and addressing the unique needs of military customers, the company could enhance customer loyalty and retention.

The success of this program highlights the importance of personalized customer experiences in customer success retention strategies. Prioritizing retention efforts helped the SaaS company reduce churn rates and increase customer lifetime value.

This example underscores how a well-executed customer retention program can lead to sustained business growth and loyal customers relationships.

Leveraging Technology for Better Customer Acquisition and Retention

Technology plays a crucial role in enhancing customer acquisition and retention strategies. Dollar Shave Club, for instance, uses a chatbot to answer common questions, showcasing proactive customer service facilitated by technology. CRM systems facilitate better customer relationship management by organizing customer data and interactions, enabling businesses to deliver personalized experiences. Adopting AI tools can streamline customer interactions, build loyalty, and reduce churn rates.

The integration of technology allows businesses to optimize their marketing efforts and improve customer satisfaction. Leveraging AI and CRM systems provides valuable insights into customer behavior, enabling tailored marketing strategies and exceptional experiences.

This technological edge can significantly enhance both customer acquisition and retention, leading to a loyal customer base and sustainable business growth.

Summary

Balancing customer acquisition and retention efforts is crucial for sustainable business growth. While customer acquisition brings in new customers and expands market reach, customer retention ensures long-term loyalty and profitability. By understanding the customer acquisition process and implementing effective retention strategies, businesses can optimize their marketing efforts and build a solid customer base.

Key metrics such as Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and Customer Retention Rate help assess the effectiveness of acquisition and retention strategies. Real-world examples illustrate the success of tailored approaches and the importance of leveraging technology. By focusing on both customer acquisition and retention, businesses can achieve sustained growth and a loyal customer base. Remember, the key to long-term success lies in consistently delivering value and exceeding customer expectations.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the importance of balancing customer acquisition and retention?

Balancing customer acquisition and retention is essential for sustainable business growth, as acquiring new customers drives immediate sales, while retaining existing customers fosters long-term loyalty and profitability. Prioritizing both aspects leads to a more stable and thriving business.

How can businesses reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)?

To effectively reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), businesses should focus on increasing the lifetime value of existing customers, exploring cost-effective promotional channels, and optimizing their marketing strategies for better efficiency. Implementing these tactics can lead to significant savings and improved profitability.

What is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and why is it important?

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) measures the total revenue a business can expect from a customer throughout their relationship, highlighting the importance of nurturing long-term relationships to maximize profitability. Understanding CLV enables businesses to make informed decisions on marketing strategies, customer retention efforts, and resource allocation.

What are some effective customer retention strategies?

To effectively retain customers, focus on building strong relationships, implementing loyalty programs, and actively gathering and responding to customer feedback. These strategies will enhance satisfaction and foster long-term loyalty.

How can technology enhance customer acquisition and retention efforts?

Technology can significantly enhance customer acquisition and retention by streamlining interactions and providing crucial insights into customer behavior. Implementing AI tools and CRM systems fosters loyalty and reduces churn rates, making your efforts more effective.

The post Top Customer Acquisition and Retention Strategy for Sustainable Growth appeared first on Done For You.

These business growth strategies help you increase profits, expand your customer base, and create sustainable growth. The best part? You don’t need a massive budget or a complete business overhaul—just small, strategic adjustments that create compounding results over time.

Understanding the Revenue Dials Framework for Business Growth

Scaling your business doesn’t always mean chasing new customers. Instead, optimizing what’s already working can lead to exponential growth. The six revenue dials represent adjustments you can make within your current business model to maximize profitability and achieve sustainable business growth.

Think of them like volume knobs on a soundboard—tweaking each one individually allows you to fine-tune your revenue model. Some businesses benefit most from increasing order value, while others see better results by adjusting pricing or targeting more profitable customers. By understanding these six revenue dials, you can scale smarter, not harder.

1. Increase Average Order Value for Faster Business Growth

If you want to grow revenue quickly, increasing how much each customer spends per transaction is one of the most effective ways to do it. Instead of solely relying on acquiring new customers (which can be costly), focusing on maximizing the value of each sale helps boost profits without significantly increasing marketing expenses.

Increasing average order value (AOV) is a simple yet powerful business growth strategy that boosts profitability without requiring additional marketing spend. By strategically adjusting product pricing, offering bundles, and using premium pricing tiers, businesses can significantly enhance their bottom line.

Strategies to Boost Order Value:

Upsells & Cross-Sells

Offer complementary products at checkout to encourage additional purchases. (e.g., “Would you like fries with that?”) This works well in both physical and digital businesses—software companies offer premium features at checkout, while retail stores suggest related items like chargers for electronics.

Bundling Products

Package related items together at a slight discount to incentivize customers to buy more. A great example is McDonald’s value meals, where the bundled price is lower than purchasing each item separately. Ecommerce businesses can bundle skincare products, fitness gear, or home office essentials to increase order value effortlessly.

Premium Pricing Tiers

Introduce a higher-end version of your product or service with added value. This works well in service-based businesses, online courses, and software subscriptions. Offering VIP or exclusive packages with extra perks encourages customers to spend more while feeling like they’re getting a better deal.

Minimum Spend Incentives

Encourage customers to spend more by offering rewards for reaching a certain threshold, such as free shipping on orders over $50 or a discount for spending $100 or more. This tactic encourages buyers to add extra items to their carts to unlock a better deal.

Example: Apple excels at increasing AOV by offering accessories, storage upgrades, and AppleCare+ protection plans during checkout. Customers frequently opt for these add-ons because they enhance the functionality and longevity of their devices.

By implementing these strategies, you can increase revenue without adding extra marketing costs, making each transaction more valuable while improving the overall shopping experience.

2. Boost Purchase Frequency to Drive Business Growth

Rather than constantly acquiring new customers, one of the smartest ways to grow your revenue is by getting existing customers to buy more often. A business that successfully increases customer retention gains a business growth advantage over competitors. Loyal customers are 50% more likely to make another purchase, making retention-driven revenue a key driver of long-term profitability.

The key to increasing purchase frequency is staying top of mind with your audience while providing ongoing value. Whether through personalized marketing, incentives, or convenience-driven models, repeat sales create a more sustainable business model that isn’t entirely dependent on constantly finding new buyers.

How to Increase Repeat Purchases:

Loyalty Programs

Reward customers for continued purchases by offering points, discounts, or exclusive perks. (e.g., Starbucks Rewards gives customers free drinks and bonus points for frequent visits, encouraging them to return regularly.) Loyalty programs create a sense of exclusivity while making customers feel appreciated.

Subscription Models

Offer convenience through recurring purchases, eliminating the need for customers to actively reorder products. (e.g., Dollar Shave Club delivers razors and grooming essentials every month, ensuring customers never run out of supplies.) This model works particularly well for consumable products like skincare, coffee, pet supplies, and household essentials.

Re-engagement Campaigns

Send personalized email or SMS reminders based on past purchase history. These could include reminders to restock a product, recommend upgrades, or provide exclusive returning customer discounts. (e.g., Ecommerce brands often send “It’s time to reorder!” emails for vitamins, supplements, or beauty products.)

Limited-Time Offers for Past Customers

Encourage repeat purchases with exclusive discounts for returning buyers. A “Welcome Back” offer or a VIP-only deal can be a strong incentive for past customers to purchase again.

Membership Perks

Offer benefits like faster shipping, exclusive access, or personalized deals to make returning more appealing. (e.g., Amazon Prime has mastered this by offering fast, free shipping, which not only increases customer satisfaction but also creates a habit of buying through Amazon rather than competitors.)

Example: Amazon Prime is one of the best examples of boosting purchase frequency. By offering perks like free two-day shipping, exclusive deals, and Prime Video access, Amazon ensures that members continue shopping on their platform rather than looking elsewhere. This membership model has driven higher order frequency, increased spending, and stronger brand loyalty.

By focusing on repeat customers, you can drive revenue growth without constantly needing to acquire new buyers—reducing marketing costs and increasing profitability over time.

3. Optimize Your Price Point for Sustainable Business Growth

Pricing is more than just covering costs—it’s a powerful psychological trigger that influences customer perception, sales volume, and overall profitability. Many businesses unknowingly underprice their products, leaving significant revenue on the table. Others price too high without offering enough perceived value, causing potential buyers to hesitate or look elsewhere.

Finding the right price is about balancing profit margins, customer demand, and competitive positioning. A well-optimized pricing strategy can boost conversion rates, increase customer lifetime value (LTV), and maximize revenue without requiring additional sales volume.

Pricing optimization is one of the most effective business growth levers. A well-structured pricing model ensures sustainable profitability while making your products or services more attractive to the right customers.

Ways to Optimize Pricing:

Test Different Price Points

Experiment with pricing models using A/B testing to find the most profitable and customer-friendly price. This could involve slightly increasing or decreasing prices across different customer segments and tracking which version converts best. Online businesses, especially those with digital products, can quickly adjust prices to test customer sensitivity and perceived value.

Introduce Tiered Pricing

Offer basic, premium, and elite versions of your product or service to appeal to different customer needs and budgets. (e.g., Software companies use “freemium” models where a free plan attracts users, and paid tiers unlock advanced features.) By adding higher-priced options, you allow customers to self-select based on their needs and willingness to pay, effectively increasing revenue without extra effort.

Use Psychological Pricing Techniques

Small adjustments in how you present your price can dramatically impact sales.

• Charm Pricing: Ending prices in .99 or .95 (e.g., $9.99 instead of $10) makes a product seem cheaper, even if the difference is minimal.
• Prestige Pricing: Higher-end brands round up prices (e.g., $500 instead of $499) to reinforce a luxury perception.
• Bundle Discounts: Packaging multiple products at a slightly lower combined price increases the perceived deal value while boosting the average order value.

Leverage Value-Based Pricing

Instead of pricing based on costs, determine what your customers are willing to pay based on perceived value. (e.g., A high-end coaching program can charge significantly more than a standard online course if it promises one-on-one guidance and exclusive resources.)

Use Discounts Strategically

While excessive discounts can damage your brand’s perceived value, limited-time offers or seasonal discounts can create urgency and drive more conversions. Consider running promotions only for new customers or as part of a loyalty program to increase customer retention without devaluing your brand.

Example: Apple rarely discounts its products, maintaining a premium brand image. Their pricing strategy is based on value perception, product quality, and brand loyalty, allowing them to keep higher profit margins. On the other hand, McDonald’s and fast-food chains use value-based pricing, offering affordable meal bundles to drive high transaction volume and repeat purchases.

A well-thought-out pricing strategy ensures you’re maximizing revenue without sacrificing customer trust or brand positioning. Whether you’re testing different models, leveraging tiered pricing, or using psychological pricing tactics, small adjustments in pricing can lead to significant revenue growth.

4. Target a More Profitable Customer Segment for Long-Term Business Growth

Not all customers contribute equally to your revenue. Some are price-sensitive, while others are willing to pay a premium for quality, exclusivity, or convenience. If you want to scale your business effectively, you need to focus on attracting and retaining high-value customers—those who spend more, buy more frequently, and require less hand-holding.

Shifting your marketing and sales focus to a high-value audience is a business growth strategy that increases revenue while improving customer lifetime value. Businesses that successfully attract premium buyers often experience higher profit margins, stronger customer loyalty, and a more sustainable long-term growth strategy.

How to Attract Premium Customers:

Reposition Your Brand

Adjust your messaging, website design, and overall customer experience to signal exclusivity and higher quality. Premium brands don’t just sell products—they sell a lifestyle. Think about how Tesla positions itself as an innovative status symbol rather than just another car brand.

Offer Exclusive Products or Services

Introduce VIP memberships, limited-edition releases, or high-end versions of your products to appeal to those willing to pay more for exclusivity. Luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton thrive on scarcity and premium craftsmanship.

Refine Ad Targeting and Customer Acquisition Strategies

Focus on audiences with higher purchasing power by leveraging data-driven insights. Adjust your ad targeting to reach demographics that historically spend more, and personalize marketing messages to highlight quality and exclusivity rather than price.

Enhance Customer Experience

High-value customers expect premium service. Offering white-glove customer support, personalized recommendations, and fast shipping can justify a higher price point and foster brand loyalty.

Example: Rolex markets exclusively to high-net-worth individuals, reinforcing its luxury appeal. Instead of targeting the mass market, they focus on prestige, craftsmanship, and legacy, making their watches more desirable and justifying premium pricing.

By shifting your focus to the right customer base, you can increase profitability without having to scale operations significantly. Instead of chasing low-margin sales, invest in attracting customers who see the value in your offering and are willing to pay for it.

5. Expand Your Product Line to Unlock New Business Growth Opportunities

Expanding your product line is one of the most effective ways to increase revenue without constantly chasing new customers. By offering complementary products or services, you not only enhance customer lifetime value but also create new opportunities for repeat purchases. A well-thought-out product expansion strategy strengthens brand loyalty and makes it easier for customers to find everything they need within your ecosystem.

Diversifying your offerings ensures consistent business growth by increasing customer lifetime value. Whether through digital add-ons, complementary products, or premium-tiered services, expansion helps maximize every customer interaction.

Ways to Expand Your Product Line:

Offer Digital Products

If you sell physical products, consider digital add-ons like ebooks, templates, or exclusive online content. These products have low production costs and can be delivered instantly, making them an easy upsell. For example, a fitness equipment brand could sell digital workout guides or meal-planning templates.

Create Complementary Products

Adding accessories, bundles, or related items enhances the customer experience and increases average order value. A brand that sells cameras, for instance, could introduce tripods, memory cards, and editing software.

Develop Premium or Subscription-Based Offerings

Introducing a premium version of an existing product or launching a subscription model can create recurring revenue. This approach works well in industries ranging from beauty (subscription boxes) to SaaS (tiered pricing plans).

License or Partner with Other Brands

Instead of developing a new product from scratch, collaborate with other companies to introduce co-branded products. Strategic partnerships allow you to tap into new markets while leveraging existing brand credibility.

Example: Tesla expanded beyond electric cars into solar panels, battery storage, and energy solutions, creating an interconnected ecosystem that keeps customers engaged across multiple product lines.

By strategically expanding your product offerings, you create more opportunities for customers to buy from you, increasing their lifetime value while solidifying your brand’s authority in your industry. The key is to ensure that every new product aligns with your brand identity and genuinely adds value to your audience.

6. Introduce Add-On Services to Strengthen Business Growth

Service-based add-ons are an excellent business growth strategy that not only increases revenue but also strengthens customer relationships and brand loyalty. Customers often seek additional support, customization, or expertise when purchasing a product, and providing these services creates an opportunity for recurring income. Whether through one-time service fees or ongoing subscriptions, add-on services can significantly increase customer lifetime value while setting you apart from competitors.

When introducing add-on services, think about the full customer journey. What challenges or needs arise after they purchase your product? How can you enhance their experience while generating additional revenue? The best add-on services solve a problem, provide convenience, or elevate the perceived value of your product.

Add-On Service Ideas:

Installation & Setup Services

Many customers are willing to pay extra for professional setup, especially with tech products, appliances, or furniture.

Example: Best Buy’s Geek Squad offers installation and tech support for a variety of electronics, making setup hassle-free for customers.

Extended Warranties & Support Plans

Offering protection plans or priority support can provide peace of mind while generating additional revenue. This works well for high-ticket items like electronics, fitness equipment, or even software subscriptions.

Example: AppleCare+ extends coverage and adds premium support for Apple device users.

VIP Access or Consulting Packages

If your business offers specialized products, consider selling premium support, coaching, or exclusive access to expert guidance.

Example: Online course creators can sell one-on-one coaching calls alongside digital courses, giving customers a personalized learning experience.

Subscription-Based Content or Services

If your product aligns with an ongoing need, offering a subscription service can lock in repeat revenue.

Example: Peloton sells premium exercise equipment but drives long-term profitability through its monthly subscription for live and on-demand workout content.

Customization & Personalization

Customers love products tailored to their preferences. If you sell clothing, offer monogramming; if you sell planners, allow users to choose custom covers or layouts.

Example: Nike’s “By You” program lets customers personalize their sneakers, creating a premium experience that adds to the brand’s appeal.

By introducing strategic add-on services, you provide more value to your customers while boosting your bottom line. The key is to ensure these services complement your core offering and enhance the overall experience, making your product indispensable to your audience.

Leveraging Automation for Business Growth

Scaling a business doesn’t have to mean working longer hours or hiring a massive team. Automation allows businesses to streamline operations, enhance customer engagement, and drive business growth without increasing overhead costs. Tools like AI chatbots, CRM automation, and predictive analytics optimize workflow and sales processes.

Automation isn’t just about convenience; it’s a strategic advantage. Businesses that embrace automation can personalize customer interactions at scale, reduce operational costs, and ensure that no opportunity slips through the cracks. The key is identifying repetitive tasks that take up time and replacing them with systems that run on autopilot, allowing you to focus on high-impact growth strategies.

Ways to Use Automation for Growth:

AI Chatbots for 24/7 Customer Support

Instead of requiring human support agents to answer every customer inquiry, AI-powered chatbots can handle common questions, assist with troubleshooting, and even guide users through the purchasing process.

Example: Many ecommerce brands use chatbots like Drift or ManyChat to qualify leads, answer FAQs, and drive sales conversations in real-time.

Automated Email Sequences

Follow-up emails are crucial for nurturing leads, onboarding new customers, and encouraging repeat purchases. Setting up automated sequences ensures that no lead gets ignored and customers receive timely, relevant messages.

Example: SaaS companies use drip campaigns to educate users about product features, leading to higher retention and upsell opportunities.

Personalized Marketing with AI

Customers expect personalized experiences, and AI makes it possible to tailor product recommendations, promotions, and messaging based on browsing behavior, past purchases, or engagement history.

Example: Amazon’s recommendation engine generates 35% of its total revenue by suggesting products based on user activity.

Social Media Scheduling and Engagement

Staying active on social media is essential, but manually posting and responding to messages is time-consuming. Automated scheduling tools like Hootsuite or Buffer allow businesses to plan content in advance, while AI-powered tools can respond to comments and inquiries instantly.

CRM and Sales Funnel Automation

Managing customer relationships and tracking leads can be overwhelming as a business grows. CRM software like HubSpot or Salesforce automates lead tracking, follow-ups, and even deal-closing sequences, making the sales process more efficient.

Order Fulfillment and Inventory Management

For ecommerce businesses, automation can optimize order processing, manage inventory, and send shipping notifications without manual input.

Example: Shopify users integrate with fulfillment centers like ShipBob or Amazon FBA to automate logistics and focus on scaling sales.

Example: Ecommerce brands using AI-powered chatbots see a 30% increase in conversions because customers get instant answers and support, eliminating friction in the buying process. By automating customer interactions, businesses reduce cart abandonment and improve overall user experience.

Making Automation Work for You

The secret to successful automation is knowing what to automate and what still requires a human touch. While AI and technology can handle repetitive tasks, personalized customer interactions and creative strategy should remain hands-on. The goal is to build systems that work in the background, allowing you to focus on innovation and scaling your business.

By integrating automation into your business model, you create a streamlined, efficient operation that drives consistent revenue growth—without burning out yourself or your team.

The Power of Branding in Revenue Growth

A strong brand contributes directly to business growth by increasing perceived value, improving customer retention, and allowing companies to charge premium pricing. Customers don’t just buy products; they buy into brands that align with their values, aspirations, and emotions. A well-defined brand allows you to command higher prices, differentiate yourself in the market, and turn one-time buyers into lifelong customers.

Branding isn’t just about your logo or color scheme—it’s the entire experience customers have with your business. Every interaction, from social media content to customer service, shapes the perception of your brand. If done right, branding makes your business memorable, influences purchasing decisions, and encourages word-of-mouth marketing.

Branding Strategies That Drive Revenue:

Consistent Messaging Across Platforms

Your brand voice should be uniform whether on social media, your website, or in customer emails. A cohesive brand message reinforces trust and reliability, making customers feel secure in their purchasing decisions.

Example: Apple’s minimalist, premium messaging is reflected in everything from its packaging to its website copy, reinforcing its high-end image.

Emotional Storytelling for Deeper Connections

Customers make purchasing decisions based on emotions, not just logic. Brands that connect with their audience on a deeper level foster loyalty and engagement.

Example: TOMS Shoes built a brand around giving back—customers know that every purchase helps provide shoes to someone in need, making them feel good about their purchase.

A Strong Visual Identity That Sticks

The colors, fonts, and design elements you choose create an instant association with your brand. A distinctive visual identity helps your brand stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Example: Coca-Cola’s iconic red and white branding has remained consistent for decades, making it one of the most recognizable brands in the world.

Positioning Your Brand as a Premium Option

If you want to attract high-value customers, your branding should reflect exclusivity and quality. From website design to packaging, every element should signal value.

Example: Luxury brands like Rolex and Louis Vuitton maintain exclusivity through high-end branding, allowing them to charge premium prices.

Leveraging Brand Advocates and Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Your most loyal customers can be your best marketers. Encouraging user-generated content, referrals, and brand ambassadors helps expand your reach organically.

Example: Tesla’s early adopters became vocal advocates, spreading brand awareness through social media and personal recommendations—without Tesla having to spend heavily on advertising.

Turning Branding into a Revenue-Generating Asset

Your brand is one of your most valuable business assets. A strong, well-positioned brand not only attracts new customers but also increases customer lifetime value by encouraging repeat purchases. Investing in branding isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about creating an experience that resonates with your audience and keeps them coming back.

By refining your brand strategy, you set the foundation for long-term revenue growth, customer loyalty, and market differentiation.

Your Key to Business Growth

Scaling a business isn’t about guessing—it’s about strategically adjusting these six revenue dials to optimize business growth and profitability. By refining your strategies in pricing, retention, branding, and automation, you can build a scalable and sustainable business model.

Start by tweaking just one or two dials—maybe experiment with pricing, optimize your product lineup, or introduce upsells. Small, smart changes lead to exponential growth over time.

Success in business comes from iteration, data-driven decisions, and continuously refining your strategy. Focus on optimizing what’s already working, and you’ll build a business that scales effortlessly.

FAQ: Business Growth and Revenue Optimization

1. Which revenue dial should I focus on first?

• Start with the one that offers the quickest impact—for most businesses, it’s increasing order value or purchase frequency.

2. How do I test price adjustments without losing customers?

• Use A/B testing, introductory offers, and tiered pricing to gradually increase prices and measure customer response.

3. What’s the best way to identify high-value customers?

• Analyze purchase history, engagement levels, and demographics to find those who spend the most and return often.

4. How can I add services if I only sell physical products?

• Consider subscription add-ons, extended warranties, exclusive access, or personalized product recommendations.

5. Do all businesses need to expand their product line?

No—but offering complementary products boosts revenue and retention by giving customers more reasons to stay with your brand.

The post 6 Revenue Dials to Accelerate Business Growth appeared first on Done For You.

In the world of digital marketing, filtering your prospects isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the key to sustainable growth and higher conversions. The reality is that not all leads are created equal. Without a system in place to filter and qualify prospects, your business could be wasting time, energy, and money chasing leads that will never convert.

After analyzing over 400 sales funnels and generating thousands of leads, we’ve identified the most effective strategies for filtering prospects and transforming them into high-quality leads. Here’s how to implement a filtering system that works for your business.

The Impact of Proper Filtering on How to Get More Qualified Leads

The difference between unfiltered and filtered leads is staggering. Let’s take a look at real-world numbers:

• Unfiltered traffic: 1-2% conversion rates
• Basic filtered leads: 4% conversion at a $497 price point
• Well-qualified leads: 30% conversion at a $97 price point
• Strategy session leads: 51% conversion for high-ticket offers

Why does this matter? Because a clear filtering process ensures you’re focusing your efforts on leads who are ready and able to buy. When you filter for intent and readiness, you’re not just increasing conversions; you’re building a more efficient, scalable business.

Proven Filtering Methods for Generating More Qualified Leads

1. Role and Seniority Within the Organization

Understanding a prospect’s decision-making authority is crucial, especially for B2B offers. For example, in our Done For You sales funnels, we ask prospects:

• What is your role in the company?
• Do you have decision-making authority?
• What is your current marketing budget?
• How large is your team?

These questions allow us to filter out leads who aren’t in a position to make purchasing decisions.

2. Level of Social Status

Social status provides another layer of qualification. Here’s how we apply it in practice:

• Requesting LinkedIn profiles for B2B leads to verify their professional background
• Checking business email addresses instead of generic ones like Gmail or Yahoo
• Assessing company domain authority to gauge credibility

This approach helps us focus on leads who are serious and credible.

3. Current Workflows and Systems

Every lead’s current setup tells a story about their needs and challenges. Here are some metrics we evaluate:

• Existing marketing systems and tools
• Current sales processes
• Key pain points in their funnel
• ROI expectations for new strategies

Understanding these elements allows us to tailor our approach and ensure we’re addressing real needs.

4. Product Interest Level

Tracking engagement metrics provides valuable insight into a lead’s level of interest. Key indicators include:

• Email open rates: Should be 40-55% within the first week
• Landing page engagement: Target a 30-40% conversion rate
• Webinar attendance: Aim for a 50% show-up rate

These benchmarks help us identify which leads are ready for immediate action versus those who need nurturing.

Implementing Strategy Sessions To Get More Qualified Leads

For high-ticket products or services ($2,000+), strategy sessions are one of the most effective ways to qualify leads. Here’s a real-world case study that highlights the power of proper filtering:

Case Study: From 15% to 52% Close Rates

A client selling a $997 product struggled with low conversions on their webinar funnel. Here’s how we transformed their results:

Before Filtering:

• 1,000 webinar registrants
• 300 attendees
• 12 sales ($997 product)
• 4% conversion rate

After Implementing Filtering:

• 500 qualified registrants
• 250 attendees
• 38 sales ($997 product)
• 15.2% conversion rate

What Changed? We added a detailed application form to the funnel. Prospects were asked about:

• Monthly revenue and ad spend
• Team size and decision-making authority
• Specific business goals and timelines

This allowed us to pre-qualify leads and ensure strategy sessions were only held with those most likely to convert. By the end of the campaign, close rates soared to 52% for strategy sessions, resulting in a significant boost in ROI.

Automated Filtering Systems

Automation makes it easier to filter prospects without adding extra work. Here’s the process we recommend:

Lead Magnet Delivery:

• Day 0: Welcome email with lead magnet
• Day 1: Consumption check
• Day 2-4: Engagement content
• Day 5-7: Qualification survey

Survey Segmentation: Based on survey responses, prospects are sorted into three categories:

• Ready to buy: Directly sent to the sales page
• Needs nurturing: Entered into an educational sequence
• Not qualified: Added to the general newsletter

This system ensures each lead is handled appropriately based on their level of intent.

Beyond Filtering: Building a Holistic System for Qualified Leads

While filtering is essential, it’s only one part of the equation. A holistic lead generation system also includes:

• Storytelling: Create narratives that resonate with your audience’s pain points and desires.
• Clear Branding: Ensure your branding reflects your values and aligns with the leads you’re targeting.
• Consistent Follow-Up: Nurture leads with email sequences, retargeting ads, and personalized outreach.

Final Thoughts: Take Action Today

Effective filtering is about more than just improving your numbers—it’s about building meaningful connections with the right audience. By implementing these strategies, you can focus your time and energy on prospects who are ready to take action, ultimately driving more sales and sustainable growth.

If you’re ready to get more qualified leads and take your business to the next level, start by refining your filtering process today. The results will speak for themselves.

The post How to Get More Qualified Leads: Why Filtering Your Incoming Prospects Is a MUST appeared first on Done For You.

Black Friday presents a unique opportunity for sellers to capitalize on customers’ heightened purchasing intent by selecting the best pricing models for Black Friday. By carefully crafting your Black Friday pricing strategy, you can attract buyers and protect your brand value, ensuring long-term success.

This guide offers actionable insights on structuring prices for maximum conversion while preserving your brand’s integrity. With tailored pricing strategies for digital products, services, and software, you can drive sales without compromising your reputation. Implementing an effective Black Friday pricing strategy is crucial for maximizing sales during the holiday season.

Digital Product Pricing Sweet Spots: Crafting Your Black Friday Pricing Strategy

Digital products offer excellent profit margins even with deep discounts, making them perfect for Black Friday promotions. Understanding the best pricing models for Black Friday can help you structure offers that drive sales without compromising profitability. Here’s a breakdown of the best pricing tiers for digital products and effective ways to position them for Black Friday. A well-planned Black Friday pricing strategy can set your brand apart from competitors, especially when pricing digital products for maximum impact.

1. Entry-Level Products: A Black Friday Pricing Strategy for $7-$37

   Entry-level offers act as effective customer acquisition tools by providing value at a low price point. Pricing these offers for Black Friday at the lower end of the spectrum creates “no-brainer” deals that appeal to impulse buyers.

   • Dropping $37 Products to $7-17: Lowering the price to this range makes the purchase feel irresistibly affordable, often leading to impulse buys. Even with such discounts, digital products maintain profitability because of low delivery costs.

   • Bundling Multiple Lower-Priced Items Together: By combining several related products, you can increase the overall value of the offer. This justifies the original pricing while making the Black Friday discount appear even more substantial.

   • Adding High-Value Bonuses to Justify the Regular Price: Including extras, such as guides, templates, or resources, enhances the perceived value of your product even at a discounted rate. This reinforces the original price and maintains its worth even after Black Friday ends.

2. Mid-Tier Products: Key Black Friday Pricing Strategies for $97-$297

   This pricing range often hits the “sweet spot” for Black Friday buyers who want significant value without a large financial commitment. By selecting the best pricing models for Black Friday, mid-tier products can appeal to value-conscious customers while maintaining strong margins.

   • Reduce $297 Products to $97-147: Dropping prices in this range creates an attractive offer that feels like a significant deal, enhancing the appeal of mid-tier products without devaluing them.

   • Include Premium Add-Ons to Increase Perceived Value: Adding high-value bonuses like additional training modules or exclusive resources makes the discount feel even greater, adding an extra layer of perceived value to the product.

   • Offer Payment Plans for Higher Price Points: Breaking payments into 2-3 installments allows customers to access premium products at manageable costs. This approach increases affordability while maintaining profit margins.

3. Premium Products: Effective Black Friday Pricing Strategies for $497-$997

   Higher-priced offers require a carefully crafted strategy to maintain their premium positioning while still providing Black Friday value. These products typically attract more sophisticated buyers who need additional proof of value before purchasing.

   • Consider 50-60% Discounts to Create Compelling Offers: Offering discounts in this range provides a strong incentive to buy, while still retaining the premium positioning of the product.

   • Bundle in Consultation Calls or Implementation Support: Adding personal interaction, such as a strategy session or live Q&A, enhances both the perceived and actual value. This differentiates the product from lower-priced options.

   • Add Scarcity through Limited Quantities or Timing: Creating genuine scarcity by limiting quantities or sale duration drives urgency. This technique is particularly effective for high-ticket items and helps maintain exclusivity.

Software and SaaS Pricing Strategies for Black Friday Success

Software products require a unique approach to Black Friday pricing because they typically involve ongoing costs and support. The goal is to drive immediate sales while building sustainable long-term revenue through customer retention. SaaS companies can effectively use Black Friday to lock in annual or long-term subscribers by offering exclusive discounts or bonuses.

1. Annual Plans

   Annual subscriptions provide immediate revenue and encourage long-term commitment. Structuring these offers to reward commitment while still offering a substantial discount can increase conversions.

   • Offer 40-50% Off Annual Subscriptions: This discount range makes a compelling case for subscribing, appealing to users looking for savings on long-term commitments.

   • Include Additional Months Free: By adding extra months (e.g., 14 months for the price of 12), you increase the perceived discount without altering the regular pricing structure.

   • Add Exclusive Black Friday Features or Upgrades: Offering exclusive features or capabilities for Black Friday customers adds perceived value and makes the deal feel unique, further justifying the full price after the promotion.

   • Understanding consumer behavior is vital for developing a successful Black Friday pricing strategy tailored to SaaS products.
     

2. Lifetime Deals

   Lifetime deals are among the best pricing models for Black Friday, providing customers with exceptional value and generating immediate revenue. These deals should be structured to cover several years of subscription revenue, providing value for both the customer and your business.

   • Price at 2.5-3x Annual Subscription Cost: This pricing ensures profitability by covering multiple years of regular subscriptions. It appeals to customers who prefer to make a one-time investment rather than recurring payments.

   • Include Future Updates and New Features: Guaranteeing access to future updates makes the offer feel comprehensive, assuring customers that they’ll receive ongoing value without additional charges.

   • Limit Availability to Create Urgency: Set a clear quantity limit or sale end date to drive immediate action, which also protects regular pricing after Black Friday.

Service Package Pricing: Developing a Black Friday Pricing Strategy

Service-based businesses require unique pricing strategies for Black Friday that maintain the premium nature of their offerings while providing compelling value. For service-based businesses, choosing the best pricing models for Black Friday is key to maintaining a premium perception while attracting high-quality clients.

1. Strategy Sessions

   Initial consultation calls provide a low-cost entry point for high-ticket services, allowing clients to experience your expertise before making a larger investment. Offering these sessions at a discounted rate for Black Friday can attract serious prospects.

   • Price Point Should Be Low Enough to Encourage Trials ($47-297): This range makes the initial session affordable while still qualifying leads who see value in professional guidance.

   • Include Pre-Session Materials and Assessments: Preparation materials provide added value, helping clients come to the session informed and ready to get the most out of it.

   • Add Bonus Recordings or Resources: Offering additional resources, such as recorded sessions or PDF guides, increases perceived value and can guide prospects toward a higher-tier service.

2. Group Programs

   Group coaching or training programs are a great way to scale services while maintaining high profit margins. Black Friday promotions for group programs can help fill upcoming cohorts and attract committed clients.

   • Offer Early-Bird Pricing for Upcoming Cohorts: Offering a discount for advanced registration helps manage cash flow and program planning while creating urgency.

   • Consider 30-40% Discounts on Regular Rates: This discount level is substantial enough to attract buyers while preserving the perceived value of the program.

   • Add Exclusive Black Friday Bonuses: Including special bonuses only available during Black Friday increases perceived value without adding ongoing delivery costs.

3. High-Ticket Services

   Premium services require careful positioning on Black Friday to maintain their high-value perception. Rather than relying on deep discounts, focus on adding unique value to attract clients.

   • Maintain Premium Positioning Even with Discounts: Keeping discounts moderate (20-30%) helps retain the high-value perception of your service, attracting clients who are willing to invest.

   • Focus on Value-Adds Rather than Deep Discounts: Include additional services, such as extra sessions or personalized support, rather than reducing prices dramatically.

   • Consider Offering Upgraded Service Levels: Create Black Friday-exclusive service tiers with enhanced features or support that add value without diminishing the regular offer.

   • Tailoring your Black Friday pricing strategy to your target audience can lead to higher conversion rates for premium services.

The Multi-Tier Pricing Approach: A Comprehensive Black Friday Pricing Strategy

Implementing a multi-tier pricing approach ensures you cater to diverse customer segments with the best pricing models for Black Friday. Each pricing tier should offer distinct value to encourage upgrades. Here’s how to structure a tiered approach effectively for Black Friday. Analyzing past performance helps refine your Black Friday pricing strategy for future success.

1. Basic Tier

   The entry-level tier serves as an accessible point for price-sensitive customers. It provides essential value while encouraging eventual upgrades.

   • Highest Percentage Discount (50-70%): Offering the deepest discount here attracts entry-level buyers and encourages list-building for future offers.

   • Core Offering Only: Keep this level simple and straightforward, focusing on the main product without extras to maintain profitability.

   • Limited Support or Access: Offering basic support creates a clear path for upgrades to higher tiers for enhanced support and features.

2. Premium Tier

   The middle tier typically generates the most revenue by balancing price and value. This option should offer clear advantages over the basic tier, making it appealing to more serious buyers.

   • Moderate Discount (40-50%): A substantial discount keeps this option attractive while maintaining stronger margins.

   • Additional Features or Services: Include exclusive bonuses that add value, making the premium tier feel like a worthwhile investment.

   • Enhanced Support Options: Providing better support at this tier helps differentiate it from the basic offer and makes it more appealing to customers seeking more guidance.

3. VIP Tier

   The highest tier targets your most committed customers and maintains premium positioning. This tier should offer exclusivity and maximum value to justify the price.

   • Smaller Discount Percentage (30-40%): Keeping the discount moderate helps preserve the premium status and justifies a higher investment.

   • All Available Features Plus Exclusives: Provide full access to all content along with unique extras, making it the most comprehensive option.

   • Maximum Support and Access: Offer the highest level of service and support, ensuring VIP customers receive exceptional value for their purchase.

Creating Profitable Discount Structures: Key Elements of a Black Friday Pricing Strategy

Your discount strategy must balance attractive offers with sustainable profits. The key is understanding your margins and lifetime customer value while creating compelling reasons to buy now.

1. Maintain Margins

   Understanding your true costs and profitability enables strategic discounting that drives sales while protecting business sustainability.

   • Calculate minimum profitable price points, including delivery, support, and overhead costs to ensure profitability.

   • Factor in long-term customer value, considering future purchases and upgrades when setting initial discounts.

2. Use Strategic Discounting

   Different discount levels trigger different psychological responses. Understanding these thresholds helps optimize your offers for maximum conversion.

   • 50% off typically creates the strongest urgency, prompting quick action from buyers.

   • 67% off should be the maximum for digital products to avoid devaluing the product and affecting future sales.

3. Add Value Instead of Cutting Price

   Adding bonuses often proves more effective than deeper discounts while protecting your regular pricing power.

   • Bundle complementary products to increase perceived value without additional cost.

   • Include implementation support to add extra value, particularly for high-ticket offers.

   • Crafting a thoughtful Black Friday pricing strategy ensures both attractive offers and sustainable profitability.

4. Payment Plans and Financing

   Making purchases more accessible through payment options can significantly increase conversion rates while maintaining profitable pricing.

   • Use split payments for higher-ticket purchases, spacing payments 30 days apart to align with customer budgeting cycles.

   • Buy Now, Pay Later options can remove purchase barriers while ensuring full payment upfront.

Protecting Regular Pricing: Maintaining Integrity in Your Black Friday Pricing Strategy

While Black Friday demands significant discounts, implementing proper constraints helps maintain long-term pricing power.

1. Time Limitations

   Clear deadlines create urgency while protecting regular pricing structure.

   • Enforce strict deadlines to avoid customer expectations of extended sales.
   • Communicate exact expiration dates, down to the hour, to encourage action.

2. Quantity Limits

   Scarcity drives action while naturally limiting discount exposure.

   • Set reasonable limits that align with business capacity.
   • Publicly display availability to increase urgency and maintain trust.

3. Value Communication

   Emphasize the value you’re providing rather than focusing solely on discounts.

   • Showcase results and testimonials to support your regular pricing.
   • Maintain premium positioning by focusing messaging on value rather than price cuts.

Implementation Checklist: Executing Your Black Friday Pricing Strategy

A systematic approach to implementing your pricing strategy ensures smooth execution and maximum results. By preparing each element of your Black Friday campaign in advance, you can handle the increased traffic and demand effectively. Here are the essential steps to follow before launching your Black Friday sale:

1. Calculate Profit Margins at Different Price Points

   Determine your minimum viable price for each offer, considering production, delivery, and support costs. Knowing your profit margins allows you to set discounts that remain profitable.

   • Calculate your “floor price” that includes all associated costs to avoid underpricing your products or services.
   • Factor in customer lifetime value, considering potential upsells or repeat purchases that justify your discount levels.

2. Test Payment Processing Systems

   Ensure that your payment gateway can handle the increased volume and that there are no hiccups during checkout. A seamless payment experience is crucial for high conversion rates, especially on busy shopping days.

   • Conduct test purchases to ensure smooth transactions from start to finish, with no issues in processing or payment errors.
   • Prepare backup options if necessary, in case of issues with your primary payment gateway.

3. Prepare Clear Terms and Conditions

   Document the specific details of your Black Friday offers, including refund policies, delivery timelines, and any limitations. Clear terms help prevent misunderstandings and build trust with customers.

   • Outline refund and exchange policies to manage customer expectations, especially for discounted items.
   • Ensure all terms, such as limits on quantity and time-sensitive bonuses, are displayed on sales pages and checkout screens.

4. Create Urgency Triggers

   Design and implement scarcity elements like countdown timers and stock levels. These triggers encourage customers to take action before the deal expires.

   • Use countdown timers on your website and in email marketing to reinforce the limited availability of your offers.
   • Publicly display remaining quantities for limited-stock items to emphasize scarcity, which can boost conversions.

5. Set Up Tracking and Analytics

   Use analytics tools to monitor key metrics in real-time, including page views, cart abandonment rates, and sales conversions. This data helps you optimize your campaign while it’s live.

   • Set up tracking in tools like Google Analytics and your eCommerce platform to monitor sales, traffic, and conversions accurately.
   • Analyze data daily to identify any issues or opportunities to improve the campaign’s effectiveness during the Black Friday period.

6. Plan Post-Purchase Sequences

   Prepare follow-up emails and workflows for customer engagement after purchase. Keeping buyers engaged can drive future purchases and reinforce brand loyalty.

   • Use thank-you emails to acknowledge purchases and provide details on what to expect next, especially for services and digital products.
   • Schedule post-purchase emails to introduce upsells, cross-sells, or loyalty offers to retain customer interest beyond the initial Black Friday sale.

7. Prepare Fulfillment and Customer Support Resources

   Black Friday can significantly increase demand, so ensuring you have adequate support is essential for customer satisfaction. Prepare your fulfillment and customer support teams to handle the extra load smoothly.

   • Stock up on inventory for physical products, and test automation for digital products to ensure immediate delivery.
   • Schedule additional support staff or extended hours for customer service to address any queries quickly and efficiently during the sale.

A successful Black Friday pricing strategy requires a combination of compelling offers, robust preparation, and effective execution. By calculating your margins, testing systems, establishing clear terms, and setting up tracking, you ensure a smooth and profitable Black Friday sale.

Thoughtful post-purchase follow-ups further enhance your brand’s value, helping turn one-time buyers into loyal customers. Implementing these steps well in advance will help you make the most of Black Friday, maximizing both immediate revenue and long-term customer relationships. By adopting the best pricing models for Black Friday, you can maximize sales while maintaining brand integrity and customer trust.

The post Black Friday Pricing Strategy: How to Price Your Offers for Maximum Conversion appeared first on Done For You.

Similarly, selling marketing services is as much an art or a marriage as it is a certain automation or business development person. While the selling of your services needs to solve prospect’s problems, you also need to be “appropriately aggressive” in pursuing prospects – much like the tenacious, deal-making strategies outlined in Donald Trump’s famous book, *The Art of the Deal*. While his approach to business inspired a relentless focus on closing, the same spirit can be applied to converting warm leads into loyal clients. This guide will take you through the essential steps to mastering the art of the sale, ensuring you turn interest into commitment.

1. Understand Your Warm Leads Thoroughly

The first step to successfully selling your services is to know who you’re talking to – you need to understand your warm leads inside and out. These leads have already shown interest, so it’s crucial to understand their specific needs, challenges, and motivations. And more importantly, you need to know how your services speak to or solve their needs and challenges. 

Tip: Use your CRM and analytics tools to track lead behavior and interactions. Knowing what content they’ve engaged with and what questions they’ve asked will help you craft a more targeted pitch.

2. Tailor Your Pitch for Maximum Impact

Your pitch should be more than just a presentation of your services—it should be a solution to the specific problems your warm leads are facing. Focus on the outcomes they can expect from partnering with your agency. You can even retarget these leads with that same messaging – helping coax them down the funnel to conversion or prepping them to book a sales call by answering their questions in retargeting ads. 

Tip: Highlight case studies and success stories that align with the lead’s industry or challenges. Make your pitch about them, not just about what you offer.

3. Create a Compelling Call to Action

Prospects need a reason to act now. Creating a sense of urgency can help push them from consideration to decision. Whether it’s a limited-time offer, a free trial, or the promise of immediate results, your CTA should motivate action. One ecommerce brand I worked with simply added a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” badge at the bottom of every page. This action alone (not even parameters or disclaimers unpacking details of the guarantee itself) drove a 15% increase in conversion. Now, we were ready to stand by our guarantee if we ever had a disgruntled customer via refund or replacement, but it rarely came to that. The reassurance was enough to instill trust and confidence in our brand.

Tip: Use phrases like “limited availability” or “start seeing results within weeks” or “satisfaction guaranteed” to create urgency. Make it clear that delaying could mean missing out on significant benefits.

4. Address Objections Proactively

Prospects will certainly have objections—whether it’s the cost, timing, or doubts about the ROI. Address these concerns directly and with confidence, providing data or testimonials to ease their worries. Try to mitigate as much risk for the prospect before ever hopping on a sales call with them. Reassure them of the value of working with your agency compared to the risk of not doing so and the impact that will have to their business. 

Tip: Be prepared with a list of common objections and responses. For example, if cost is an issue, demonstrate the long-term value and ROI your services provide OR (if margin allows) show a discount for services in the proposal itself as an added value for this prospect. It shows you’re willing to have some “skin in the game” with the client because you believe so strongly that you will be able to help them. 

5. Close with Confidence

When you’ve addressed a majority (if not all) of the prospect’s concerns and they are ready to take the next step (onboarding to become a client), it’s time to close the deal. Confidence and reassurance are key elements here—guide your prospect smoothly through the final steps, making it easy for them to say yes – even reminding them of questions you’ve answered along the way.

Tip: Use closing techniques like the assumptive close (“When would you like to start?”) to encourage a decision. Ensure all final details are clear and straightforward. Then book the now-client’s onboarding session(s)!

6. Follow Up and Support a Long-Term Relationship

The sale doesn’t end with a signature. In fact, now the real work begins! Set up the client for a solid onboarding (defining the scope of work, developing their messaging and offers, and defining what success looks like in your partnership is essential for client retention)! On top of that, proactively following up with quick wins or reporting to ensure client satisfaction and continuing to nurture the relationship is crucial for long-term success. This approach not only secures future business but also opens the door for referrals.

Tip: Implement a healthy client mtg cadence and proactive follow-up schedule that includes checking in regularly, reporting on performance (if relevant), updates on the project, even providing additional value, and identifying new opportunities to assist your client.

Conclusion: Seal the Deal with Confidence

Selling marketing services to warm leads, converting them to prospects, and eventually onboarding them to become new clients requires a thoughtful, strategic, and confident approach. By understanding your leads (first), tailoring your pitch, addressing (prospect) objections, closing with authority and onboarding strategically, you can master the art of turning interest into long-term business relationships.

Are you ready to streamline your lead generation and sales process? Partner with Done For You and gain access to a steady flow of high-quality leads without the hassle. Become a partner today at DoneForYou.com/Partners!

The post The Art of Selling Marketing Services to Warm Leads: A Step-by-Step Guide appeared first on Done For You.

A well-optimized sales funnel is the cornerstone of success. Whether you’re selling products, services, or subscriptions, a strategically designed funnel can guide potential customers through the buying journey, nurture leads, and ultimately drive conversions. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through the process of optimizing your sales funnel to maximize conversions and boost your bottom line.

Understanding the Sales Funnel

Before we dive into optimization strategies, let’s start by understanding the basic structure of a sales funnel. At its core, a sales funnel is a visual representation of the customer journey, from initial awareness to final purchase. It typically consists of several stages:

1. Awareness: This is the top of the funnel, where potential customers first become aware of your brand, product, or service.
2. Interest: In this stage, prospects express interest in your offering and seek more information.
3. Decision: Here, prospects evaluate their options and decide whether to make a purchase.
4. Action: The final stage is where prospects take action and make a purchase.

By understanding each stage of the funnel and the corresponding customer mindset, you can tailor your marketing efforts to effectively engage and convert prospects at each step.

Step 1: Define Your Target Audience

The first step in optimizing your sales funnel is to clearly define your target audience. Who are your ideal customers? What are their needs, pain points, and preferences? By creating detailed buyer personas, you can better understand your audience and tailor your messaging and offers to resonate with their needs and interests.

Step 2: Create Compelling Content

Content is king when it comes to attracting and engaging potential customers. From blog posts and social media updates to videos and podcasts, create content that educates, entertains, and adds value to your audience. Use storytelling techniques to make your brand relatable and memorable, and incorporate relevant keywords to improve visibility and attract organic traffic.

Step 3: Capture Leads with Lead Magnets

Once you’ve attracted potential customers to your website or landing page, it’s essential to capture their contact information so you can continue to nurture the relationship. Offer lead magnets such as e-books, whitepapers, or free trials in exchange for email addresses. Use enticing calls-to-action and opt-in forms to encourage visitors to subscribe to your email list.

Step 4: Nurture Leads with Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful tool for nurturing leads and guiding them through the sales funnel. Segment your email list based on demographics, interests, or behavior, and tailor your messaging accordingly. Send targeted, personalized emails that provide valuable content, address customer pain points, and showcase the benefits of your offering.

Step 5: Drive Conversions with Compelling Offers

At the decision stage of the funnel, prospects are evaluating their options and considering whether to make a purchase. This is where compelling offers and incentives can make all the difference. Offer discounts, promotions, or bonuses to incentivize action and create a sense of urgency. Use persuasive copywriting and compelling visuals to highlight the value of your offering and convince prospects to take the next step.

Step 6: Optimize the Checkout Process

The final step in the sales funnel is the action stage, where prospects make a purchase. To maximize conversions at this critical juncture, it’s essential to optimize the checkout process for simplicity and convenience. Streamline the checkout flow, minimize form fields, and offer multiple payment options to reduce friction and increase completion rates. Provide clear, transparent pricing and shipping information to eliminate uncertainty and build trust with customers.

Step 7: Track and Analyze Results

Once your funnel is up and running, it’s crucial to track and analyze key metrics to measure its effectiveness. Monitor metrics such as traffic, conversion rates, and customer lifetime value to identify areas for improvement and optimization. Use A/B testing to experiment with different strategies and tactics and optimize your funnel for maximum results.

Conclusion: Unlock Your Sales Potential

By following these steps and implementing best practices for sales funnel optimization, you can unlock your sales potential and drive more conversions for your business. From defining your target audience and creating compelling content to nurturing leads and optimizing the checkout process, each step plays a critical role in guiding prospects through the buying journey and turning them into satisfied customers. With a well-optimized sales funnel in place, you can attract, engage, and convert prospects more effectively, ultimately driving growth and success for your business.

The post Optimize Your Funnel for Conversions: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making More Sales appeared first on Done For You.

In the world of digital marketing, conversations often revolve around flashy ad campaigns, eye-catching visuals, and persuasive copywriting—all aimed at driving conversions. However, amidst the noise of tactics and strategies, there exists a secret weapon that many overlook: psychology. Yes, the unsexy secret to skyrocketing conversions lies not in fancy graphics or clever slogans, but in understanding the underlying psychology of your audience and leveraging it to your advantage. In this in-depth exploration, we’ll uncover the hidden power of psychology in driving conversions and reveal how you can harness it to achieve remarkable results.

The Psychology Behind Conversions

At its core, conversion is all about persuading someone to take a desired action—whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a form. Persuasion, as it turns out, is deeply rooted in psychology. By understanding the cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and decision-making processes that influence human behavior, marketers can craft more effective strategies for driving conversions. From the fear of missing out (FOMO) to the allure of social proof, psychology plays a pivotal role in shaping consumer decisions and driving action.

Leveraging Cognitive Biases

Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts that influence our perceptions, judgments, and decisions. While they can sometimes lead to irrational or illogical behavior, cognitive biases can also be leveraged to nudge people toward desired outcomes. For example, the scarcity effect—our tendency to assign greater value to things that are scarce or in limited supply—can be used to create a sense of urgency and drive conversions. By highlighting limited-time offers or low stock levels, marketers can tap into this bias and motivate people to take action before it’s too late.

Appealing to Emotions

Emotions play a powerful role in decision-making, often trumping logic and reason. By appealing to emotions such as fear, joy, or nostalgia, marketers can create more compelling and persuasive messaging that resonates with their audience on a deeper level. For example, a skincare brand might use fear of aging to motivate customers to purchase anti-aging products, while a charity organization might evoke feelings of empathy and compassion to encourage donations. By tapping into the emotional core of their audience, marketers can elicit stronger responses and drive higher conversions.

Harnessing Social Proof

Social proof is the idea that people are influenced by the actions and opinions of others. From customer reviews and testimonials to social media likes and shares, social proof signals to potential customers that a product or service is trustworthy and popular. By showcasing positive social proof, marketers can alleviate doubts and build credibility, making it more likely that people will convert. Whether it’s featuring glowing testimonials on a website or highlighting user-generated content on social media, harnessing social proof is a powerful way to boost conversions.

Creating a Sense of Familiarity

Familiarity breeds trust, and trust is essential for driving conversions. By creating a sense of familiarity through consistent branding, messaging, and imagery, marketers can make their audience feel more comfortable and confident in their decision to convert. Whether it’s using familiar colors and fonts in your marketing materials or telling a consistent brand story across different channels, reinforcing familiarity helps to build rapport and strengthen relationships with your audience, ultimately driving conversions.

Simplifying the Decision-Making Process

The paradox of choice is a well-documented phenomenon in psychology, which suggests that too many options can lead to decision paralysis and decreased satisfaction. To overcome this barrier and drive conversions, marketers can simplify the decision-making process by presenting information clearly and concisely, offering guidance and recommendations, and reducing friction at every step of the customer journey. By streamlining the path to conversion and removing unnecessary barriers, marketers can make it easier for people to say yes.

Conclusion: The Power of Psychology in Driving Conversions

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, understanding the psychology of your audience is the key to unlocking higher conversions and driving sustainable growth. By leveraging cognitive biases, appealing to emotions, harnessing social proof, and simplifying the decision-making process, marketers can create more persuasive and compelling experiences that resonate with their audience on a deeper level. While flashy graphics and catchy slogans may grab attention, it’s the underlying psychological triggers that ultimately drive action and lead to conversions. So, the next time you’re crafting a marketing campaign or optimizing your website, remember the unsexy secret to skyrocketing conversions—it’s all in the mind.

The post The Unsexy Secret to Skyrocketing Conversions (Hint: It’s Not What You Think) appeared first on Done For You.

The basic concept of sales funnels

Traffic, i.e. website visitors, coming in from social media? From organic search? From paid ads? From direct traffic or referral traffic?

Sales funnels help channel all the relevant, incoming traffic to pre-designed and strategic funnels to help guide them through your buying process.

Your digital sales funnel could start with a free giveaway or a free trial. Either is intended to entice a first-time visitor to give up their email so you can contact them again in the future. With lead nurturing autoresponders smartly laid out, your funnel gets to work automatically with every lead who signs up. Eventually, sales happen.

If you’ve setup your funnel right, this should work like a charm. Sales come in and pipeline fills up automatically.

But wait. Why funnels?

You need a digital sales funnel because 73% of leads don’t even want to be sold to. What they want is to buy what they need to buy when they need to. Until then, your job as a business is to nurture those leads.

Do it right and your sales figures will fly like a bat out of hell. But then, why doesn’t it always work? Why do businesses still struggle to construct sales funnels that work like a charm? If it were that easy, anyone would do it.

How to build sales funnels that convert

It isn’t easy to build sales funnels that work. There’s a lot that goes under the hood. There are best practices you should be aware of when it comes to sales funnels. Here are some of them:

Funnels aren’t silos

Digital sales funnels are much like Lego blocks – you’d have to bring various elements together to make it work.

Usually, funnels start with landing pages where people opt-in for your mailing list. In some cases, you might have multi-step landing pages.

Then, you’d have a thank you page (or a confirmation page). Some marketers and businesses also use intermittent pages for upselling or to make a one-time or special offer.

Once people sign up at the top of the funnel (at the landing page level), you’d have an automatic sequence of emails that go out to every new subscriber. A different email sequence can be sent to subscribers segments, like qualified leads or users. Each of these email sequences is laid out with a dual purpose – to nurture, and to sell.

Your subscribers are led to sales pages or product pages from within your emails to bring about sales. Of course, you could extend that to all sorts of use cases such as using affiliate links to make sales or to have subscribers sign up for something else altogether.

While that’s the basic structure of sales funnels, each of those moving parts has to work together. Connect and integrate to win.

Be wise to use the right mix of tools, applications, products, and services to ensure smooth working for your sales funnels.

One offer per page

One funnel can’t service multiple offers. If you are making multiple offers like “Sign up for the newsletter”, “Download this ebook”, “join our facebook community”, and “Buy Now” – all on the same page, it’s not going to work.

Too many funnels don’t work as well as they should due to these multiple offers for a single funnel. When you add so many offers, visitors normally freeze due to indecisiveness.

Ads, for instance, are made for a specific audience with a single offer per ad. The same ad can’t have two offers, can it?

Similarly, your funnels have to be singularly focused on exactly what you want your potential audience to do.

For every offer, you are making and for every marketing objective, launch a dedicated funnel with the proper series of autoresponders and workflows for that funnel.

Copy, message and design do more than you think

The integrations and the initial setup is relatively easy. The design and copy used on your landing pages, your email subject lines, the email copy, and even the call to action button copy – that’s even more important.

Business owners don’t have the time or patience to think through the minutest of details when it comes to sales funnels. Meanwhile, marketers and entrepreneurs are in too much of a rush to launch campaigns.

As a result, sales funnel design and the copy used across the elements of the funnel aren’t given the importance they deserve. While it’s the combination of design and copy that actually brings in the money, most funnels today suffer from design and copy afterthought.

Copy literally sells. Like trillions and more in sales each year, for the last several decades. Writing sales letters should be one of your favorite tasks!

Fortunes have been made just thanks to copy. Align powerful and yet simple copy with design and that’s when you have a winning funnel.

If you depend on an average developer to help build landing pages, you’ll probably get an average result in terms of design and copy. Developers are not necessarily the best people to create beautiful designs or write high-converting sales letters. On the flip side, if you try to create the landing page yourself using popular tools, you’ll like face problems with design customizations, like aligning elements, and your landing page won’t look professional.

If you’d like an audit or to discuss your marketing strategy or how you can use landing pages and funnels to grow your business, book a call with us.

Data wins. Theories die.

Funnels… All fine and dandy but the fact that you could gather, make decisions, and glean insights from several data points on your funnel is what gives you real power.

When you use data, the decisions you make are not just based on conjecture, whims, fancies, or opinions.

Combined data sets result from regular funnel use, testing, hypotheses, and more. Top marketers and businesses have already caught on with the power of using data to run smart campaigns and smarter businesses. About 90% of top companies are already using and sharing data between departments.

In the case of funnels, most of the data you’ll work with lies in metrics that accumulate at the landing page level and then for your email marketing sequences.

Beyond that, most of the data from the hypothesis you’ll work with comes from the various (and continuous) A/B testing that you’ll do to test out various elements of your funnels such as ads, landing pages, email subject lines, call-to-action buttons, and others.

If you want to find out more about the ingredients in funnels that just work extremely well, download our Funnel Factor Report.

If you’d like to skip the download (or have already downloaded the report!) and want more help, click here to book an Action Plan call!  Or, click the button below…

The post Do You Know These Fundamental Rules Of Digital Sales Funnels? appeared first on Done For You.

Maximize Your Small Business Potential with Proven Digital Marketing

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, marketing efforts can either propel a business forward or leave it lagging behind. With the vast array of tools and platforms available, digital marketing has become essential to any successful business strategy. However, despite its potential success, many businesses still need to catch up on common pitfalls hindering their digital marketing efforts. In this blog post, we’ll explore the five most prominent and common digital marketing mistakes and provide actionable tips on avoiding them.

Neglecting to Define Clear Goals and Metrics

One of the most significant mistakes businesses make in digital marketing is embarking on campaigns without clear goals and metrics. Without a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, measuring success accurately is impossible. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving sales, defining specific, measurable goals is crucial.

Solution: Take the time to establish SMART goals – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your goals and regularly track and analyze them. This will provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts and allow you to make data-driven decisions to optimize performance.

Failing to Understand the Target Audience

Another common mistake in digital marketing is failing to understand the target audience thoroughly. Without a deep understanding of your audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points, your marketing efforts will likely miss the mark. Generic, one-size-fits-all messaging is unlikely to resonate with your audience and may result in wasted resources and missed opportunities.

Solution: Invest time in market research to comprehensively understand your target audience. Utilize tools such as Google Analytics, social media insights, and customer surveys to gather data about your audience’s demographics, preferences, and behavior. Use this information to create detailed buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. Tailor your marketing strategies and messaging to address each audience segment’s specific needs and interests for maximum impact.

Overlooking the Importance of SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a fundamental aspect of digital marketing that businesses often overlook or misunderstand. With millions of websites competing for attention online, ensuring your content ranks highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) is essential for driving organic traffic to your site. Neglecting SEO can result in your content being buried beneath competitors, making it difficult for potential customers to find you.

Solution: Prioritize SEO as an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. Conduct keyword research to identify relevant search terms and phrases your target audience uses. Optimize your website and content to incorporate these keywords naturally, including titles, headings, meta descriptions, and body copy. Focus on creating high-quality, valuable content that solves your audience’s problems and encourages engagement and sharing. Regularly monitor and analyze your website’s performance using tools like Google Search Console and adjust your SEO strategy to improve rankings and visibility.

Ignoring the Power of Content Marketing

Content is king in digital marketing, yet many businesses underestimate its importance or fail to invest in it adequately. Content marketing encompasses various formats, including blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts, which can be powerful tools for attracting, engaging, and converting customers. Neglecting content marketing deprives businesses of the opportunity to showcase their expertise, build trust with their audience, and establish themselves as industry leaders.

Solution: Develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy aligning with your business objectives and target audience preferences. Create a content calendar to plan and organize content creation efforts, ensuring a consistent publishing schedule across various channels. Focus on producing high-quality, relevant content that provides value to your audience and addresses their needs and interests. Experiment with different formats and distribution channels to maximize reach and engagement. Monitor performance metrics such as website traffic, engagement rates, and conversion rates to evaluate the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts and refine your strategy accordingly.

Neglecting Mobile Optimization

With the increasing prevalence of smartphones and tablets, mobile optimization has become non-negotiable in the digital marketing landscape. Yet, many businesses still neglect to optimize their websites and marketing campaigns for mobile users, resulting in a poor user experience and lost opportunities for engagement and conversion. In today’s mobile-first world, failing to prioritize mobile optimization can harm your brand’s reputation and bottom line.

Solution: Ensure your website is fully optimized for mobile devices, with responsive design, fast loading times, and easy navigation. Test your website across various devices and screen sizes to ensure a seamless user experience for mobile users. Pay attention to mobile-specific SEO factors such as local and voice search optimization to improve visibility and accessibility for mobile users. Additionally, consider leveraging mobile-specific advertising formats and targeting options to effectively reach and engage mobile audiences.

Avoiding these five common digital marketing mistakes can significantly improve the effectiveness and ROI of your marketing efforts. By defining clear goals and metrics, understanding your target audience, prioritizing SEO and content marketing, and optimizing for mobile, you can position your business for success in the ever-evolving digital landscape. Remember, digital marketing is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Be prepared to continually test, iterate, and refine your strategies to stay ahead of the competition and achieve your business objectives.

The post 5 Biggest Digital Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them appeared first on Done For You.

Online advertising has become crucial to any successful marketing strategy as the world becomes increasingly digital. But with so many options available, it can be challenging to determine which method is the best for your business. In this article, we’ll look at the top online advertising methods and compare their effectiveness to decide which one reigns supreme.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

PPC advertising is a popular method of online advertising where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their ads. This method is particularly effective for businesses looking to drive traffic to their website or generate leads. Google AdWords is the most popular PPC advertising platform, but other options are available, such as Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.

Advantages:

• High level of control over ad targeting and spending
• Ability to track and measure results
• Immediate results

Disadvantages:

• Can be expensive if not managed properly
• Requires ongoing monitoring and optimization
• Limited reach compared to other methods

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO involves optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords. The higher your website ranks, the more likely users will click through to your site. SEO is a long-term strategy that requires ongoing efforts to maintain and improve your rankings.

Advantages:

• Cost-effective in the long run
• High click-through rates for top-ranked websites
• Builds credibility and trust with users

Disadvantages:

• Can take a long time to see the results
• Requires ongoing efforts to maintain rankings
• Limited control over search engine algorithms

Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising involves running ads on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This method is particularly effective for businesses targeting specific demographics or promoting their brand awareness.

Advantages:

• High level of targeting options
• Ability to track and measure results
• Large user base on social media platforms

Disadvantages:

• Can be expensive depending on targeting options
• Ad blindness due to the high frequency of ads on social media
• Limited reach compared to other methods

Display Advertising

Display advertising involves placing ads on websites, typically in the form of banner ads, to reach a broader audience. This method is particularly effective for businesses looking to increase brand awareness and reach a larger audience.

Advantages:

• Broad reach across a variety of websites
• Ability to target specific audiences
• High level of control over ad placement and targeting

Disadvantages:

• Low click-through rates compared to other methods
• Can be expensive if not managed properly
• Ad blindness due to the high frequency of ads on websites

Email Marketing

Email marketing involves sending marketing messages to a list of subscribers via email. This method is particularly effective for businesses directly promoting their products or services to their target audience.

Advantages:

• Highly targeted audience
• Ability to personalize messages
• High ROI compared to other methods

Disadvantages:

• Requires a list of subscribers to be effective
• Can be seen as spam by users
• Limited reach compared to other methods

Conclusion

So, which online advertising method is the best? The answer is it depends. Each method has advantages and disadvantages, and the best method for your business will depend on your specific goals and target audience. However, if we had to pick one method that reigns supreme, it would be PPC advertising. With its high level of control, ability to track and measure results, and immediate results, it’s a solid choice for businesses looking to drive traffic and generate leads. Ultimately, combining these methods may be the best approach for your business to achieve maximum results.

The post Is “Pay-Per-Click” the Click That Kills Your Budget? The Shocking Truth! appeared first on Done For You.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to any digital marketing strategy. It involves optimizing your website to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords and phrases. However, SEO is constantly evolving, and what worked yesterday may not work today. In this blog post, we’ll discuss 10 SEO best practices that you need to know to rank higher in search engine results pages and drive more traffic to your website.

1. Conduct Keyword Research

Keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO campaign. It involves identifying the keywords and phrases your target audience is searching for and optimizing your website accordingly. Use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to conduct keyword research. These tools can help you identify relevant keywords and analyze their search volume, competition, and difficulty level.

2. Optimize Your Website Architecture

Your website’s architecture is crucial in determining how search engines crawl and index your content. To optimize your website architecture, make sure your site is easy to navigate, has a clear hierarchy, and uses descriptive URLs. Additionally, ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and has a fast loading speed.

3. Use Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Title tags and meta descriptions are HTML elements that provide information about your website to search engines and users. Title tags appear as the clickable headline on search engine results pages, while meta descriptions summarize your page’s content. To optimize your title tags and meta descriptions, include relevant keywords and make them compelling, concise, and unique.

4. Create High-Quality Content

Content is king in the world of SEO. To rank higher in search engine results pages, create high-quality, informative, and engaging content that provides value to your target audience. Use relevant keywords and make sure your content is well-structured, easy to read, and visually appealing.

5. Optimize Your Images and Videos

Images and videos can help enhance your website’s user experience and engagement. However, they can also slow down your website’s loading speed if not optimized correctly. To optimize your images and videos, use descriptive file names, compress them to reduce their file size, and add alt text to provide context for search engines and users.

6. Build High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to your site. They’re an important ranking factor for search engines, indicating that other websites consider your content valuable and authoritative. To build high-quality backlinks, create valuable content that other websites would want to link to, reach out to relevant websites and ask for backlinks, and use social media to promote your content.

7. Utilize Social Media

Social media can help you drive more traffic to your website and increase your online visibility. To utilize social media for SEO, create and share valuable content on your channels, engage with your followers and industry influencers, and use social media to build relationships and promote your content.

8. Monitor Your Analytics

Analytics can provide valuable insights into your website’s performance and help you identify areas for improvement. To monitor your analytics, use tools such as Google Analytics or SEMrush and track your website’s traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, and other key metrics. Use this data to optimize your website and improve your SEO strategy.

9. Stay Up-to-Date with SEO Trends

SEO is a constantly evolving field, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices is essential. To stay informed, read industry blogs and publications, attend webinars and conferences, and network with other SEO professionals.

10. Be Patient and Persistent

SEO is a long-term strategy, and it takes time to see results. Be patient and persistent in your efforts, and don’t expect overnight success. Focus on creating valuable content, building high-quality backlinks, and optimizing your website for search engines and users.

In conclusion, SEO is a critical aspect of any digital marketing strategy, and these ten best practices can help you rank higher in search engine results pages and drive more traffic to your website. Remember to conduct keyword research, optimize your website architecture, use title tags and meta descriptions, create high-quality content, optimize your images and videos, build high-quality backlinks, utilize social media, monitor your analytics, stay up-to-date with SEO trends, and be patient and persistent in your efforts.

The post SEO Best Practices You Need to Know for Higher Rankings: Expert Tips and Tricks appeared first on Done For You.

In today’s digital age, online advertising has become a crucial component of any successful marketing strategy. With so many different methods available, it can be challenging to determine which one is best suited for your business. In this article, we’ll compare some of the most popular online advertising methods to help you make an informed decision.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is a popular model where advertisers pay publishers each time their ad is clicked. The most well-known PPC platform is Google Ads, which allows advertisers to bid on specific keywords relevant to their business. When a user searches for one of these keywords, the ad appears at the top of the search results, increasing the likelihood of clicks and conversions.

PPC advertising is an effective method for businesses with a clear understanding of their target audience and the specific keywords they want to target. It can also be a cost-effective method, as advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad.

Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising involves placing ads on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. With the vast number of users on these platforms, social media advertising can be an effective way to reach a large audience quickly.

One of the benefits of social media advertising is the ability to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. For example, a clothing retailer could target women aged 18-34 interested in fashion. This level of targeting ensures that the ad is seen by people most likely to be interested in the product.

Display Advertising

Display advertising involves placing banner ads on websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms. These ads can be static or animated and include images, videos, and interactive elements.

One of the benefits of display advertising is the ability to reach a large number of people quickly. However, click-through rates for display ads tend to be lower than other methods, and there is a risk of ad fatigue if the same ad is displayed repeatedly.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO involves optimizing a website’s content and structure to improve its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher a website ranks, the more likely it is to be seen by users searching for relevant keywords.

SEO is a long-term strategy that requires time and effort to see results. However, once a website ranks for relevant keywords, it can provide a steady stream of organic traffic and conversions.

Which Method is Best for Your Business?

The best online advertising method for your business depends on several factors, including your budget, target audience, and marketing goals. For example, if you have a limited budget and a clear understanding of your target audience, PPC advertising may be the best option. If you’re looking to reach a large audience quickly and have a more visual product, display advertising may be the better choice.

Ultimately, it’s essential to experiment with different methods and track your results to determine which one is most effective for your business. By focusing on your target audience and marketing goals, you can develop a successful online advertising strategy that drives traffic, conversions, and revenue.

The post Choosing the Right Online Advertising: Your Ultimate Decision-Making Guide appeared first on Done For You.

Do you need help to convert leads into paying customers? Have you heard of a sales funnel strategy but need help figuring out where to start? This blog post will provide tips and tricks to master your sales funnel strategy and increase conversion rates.

Understanding the Sales Funnel

Before we dive into the tips and tricks, let’s first understand what a sales funnel is. A sales funnel visually represents turning a lead into a customer. It consists of four stages: awareness, interest, decision, and action.

During the awareness stage, potential customers become aware of your product or service. In the interest stage, they show interest and engage with your brand. In the decision stage, they consider purchasing from you. Finally, in the action stage, they take the desired action, usually purchasing.

Tips and Tricks for Each Stage of the Sales Funnel

Awareness Stage

1. Define Your Target Audience: Understanding your target audience is crucial to creating content that resonates with them. Conduct market research to identify their pain points, needs, and preferences.
2. Use Social Media Advertising: Social media platforms allow you to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. Use social media advertising to reach your target audience and increase brand awareness.

Interest Stage

1. Create Valuable Content: Your content should provide value and educate your audience. Use blog posts, videos, webinars, and other content formats to showcase your expertise and build trust with your audience.
2. Use Lead Magnets: Offer lead magnets, such as e-books, cheat sheets, and templates, to capture the contact information of your potential customers. This will allow you to nurture them with targeted emails and move them down the sales funnel.

Decision Stage

1. Provide Social Proof: Social proof, such as customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies, can help potential customers decide. Use social proof to showcase the benefits of your product or service and address any objections they may have.
2. Offer Incentives: Offer incentives, such as discounts, free trials, and demos, to encourage potential customers to take the next step. This can help them overcome any doubts and make a purchase.

Action Stage

1. Simplify the Checkout Process: The checkout process should be simple, user-friendly, and secure. Use a clear and concise checkout page, and offer multiple payment options to accommodate different preferences.
2. Follow Up with Customers: Follow up with customers to thank them and gather feedback after a purchase. This can help you improve your sales funnel strategy and increase customer retention.

Conclusion

Mastering your sales funnel strategy takes time and effort but can yield significant results. By understanding each stage of the sales funnel and implementing the tips and tricks we’ve provided, you can increase your conversion rates and grow your business.

The post Sales Funnel Mastery: Elevate Your Conversion Rates with Proven Techniques appeared first on Done For You.

Marketing management plays a crucial role in the success of any business. It involves planning, implementing, and monitoring marketing strategies to ensure that they effectively generate leads, increase sales, and ultimately maximize your return on investment (ROI). This blog post will discuss the importance of effective marketing management and provide tips on maximizing your ROI.

What is Marketing Management?

Marketing management is overseeing and executing marketing strategies to achieve specific business goals. It involves analyzing the market, identifying target audiences, and developing and implementing marketing campaigns. Marketing managers are responsible for creating marketing plans, managing budgets, and measuring the success of marketing initiatives.

The Importance of Effective Marketing Management

Effective marketing management is crucial for the success of any business. Here are some reasons why:

1. Increased Revenue

Effective marketing management can help increase revenue by generating leads, converting leads into customers, and increasing customer loyalty. Businesses can attract more customers and increase sales by identifying target audiences and creating marketing campaigns that resonate with them.

2. Improved Brand Awareness

Marketing management can help improve brand awareness by creating consistent messaging across all marketing channels. Businesses can build brand recognition and establish a strong brand identity by using the same tone, voice, and messaging.

3. Competitive Advantage

Effective marketing management can give a business a competitive advantage by differentiating it from its competitors. By identifying unique selling propositions and creating marketing campaigns highlighting them, businesses can stand out in a crowded market and attract more customers.

4. Better Customer Relationships

Marketing management can help businesses build better customer relationships by creating personalized marketing campaigns addressing their needs and pain points. By understanding customers’ motivations and preferences, businesses can create marketing campaigns that resonate with them and build loyalty.

Tips for Maximizing Your ROI

Here are some tips for maximizing your ROI through effective marketing management:

1. Set Clear Goals

Before embarking on any marketing campaign, it’s important to set clear goals. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to increase sales, generate leads, or improve brand awareness? Setting clear goals will help you measure the success of your marketing initiatives and ensure that they are aligned with your overall business objectives.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Identifying your target audience is crucial for creating effective marketing campaigns. Who are your ideal customers? What are their pain points and motivations? By understanding your target audience, you can create marketing campaigns that resonate with them and drive results.

3. Develop a Strong Value Proposition

A strong value proposition is key to standing out in a crowded market. What makes your business unique? What value do you offer that competitors don’t? By developing and highlighting a solid value proposition in your marketing campaigns, you can differentiate yourself from competitors and attract more customers.

4. Use Multiple Marketing Channels

Using multiple marketing channels can help reach a wider audience and increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Use social media, email marketing, SEO, PPC advertising, and content marketing to reach your target audience and drive results.

5. Monitor and Measure Results

Monitoring and measuring the results of your marketing campaigns is crucial for optimizing your ROI. Use analytics tools to track key metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, and customer engagement. Use this data to optimize your marketing campaigns and improve your results.

Conclusion

Effective marketing management is crucial for maximizing your ROI. By setting clear goals, identifying your target audience, developing a strong value proposition, using multiple marketing channels, and monitoring and measuring results, businesses can create marketing campaigns that drive results and achieve their business objectives.

The post Unlocking Your Business Potential: The Crucial Role of Marketing Management in ROI appeared first on Done For You.

If you’re looking for a way to get your brand in front of a large audience without breaking the bank, cost-per-thousand (CPM) advertising might be the answer. This kind of advertising is a digital marketing strategy that allows you to pay for ad views instead of clicks, making it a cost-effective way to reach a broad audience.

This blog post will explore tips and strategies for maximizing ROI with CPM advertising.

What is CPM Advertising?

This is a popular model where you pay for every thousand impressions your ad receives. Images refer to the number of times your ad is displayed on a website. CPM advertising is commonly used for display ads, the banner ads you see on websites.

Why Use CPM Advertising?

CPM advertising is a cost-effective way to get your brand in front of a large audience. Unlike pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, where you pay for every click on your ad, CPM advertising allows you to pay for ad views. This means you can reach a wider audience without breaking the bank.

Tips for Maximizing Your ROI with CPM Advertising

1. Target Your Audience

One of the most important things you can do to maximize your ROI with advertising is to target your audience. The more targeted your audience, the more likely they are to engage with your ad.

2. Use Eye-Catching Creatives

Another critical factor in maximizing your ROI with CPM advertising is to use eye-catching creatives. You’ll need to stand out and grab your target audience’s attention.

3. Optimize Your Landing Page

Once you’ve captured the attention of your target audience, it’s essential to keep them engaged. One way to do this is to optimize your landing page. Your landing page should be relevant to your ad and give you a clear call to action.

4. Monitor Your Campaigns

Finally, monitoring your campaigns frequently to ensure you’re getting the most out of your CPM advertising is crucial. You should monitor your ad performance and make adjustments as needed to maximize your ROI

CPM advertising is a cost-effective way to get your brand in front of a large audience. So, try it and see how it can benefit your business, or let us know if you need help!

The post Elevate Your Marketing Game: Maximizing ROI with CPM Advertising appeared first on Done For You.

Welcome to GSDdaily. This is episode 155. Today is a five-minute guide, and we are going to talk quickly about how to, in five minutes or less, find the keywords your website is ranking for organically.

This is a little exercise that we put a client through a little earlier in the week and I figured it’d be cool to show you. So basically your website is ranking for something. We might not know what it ranks for yet, but it’s ranking for some keyword phrase because of a blog post or a page, or shit, your privacy policy might be ranking for something.

One of the quickest ways to figure out what that is and are free tools, both are going to let you find out what you’re searching for, what … How much traffic your website is getting, what pages are getting traffic, and what the keyword phrases for those pages are. Install the following applications,

1. Google Search Console
2. Google Analytics

What we’re going to do is we are going to go through and I’m going to show you how to use Google Analytics a little bit, specifically the search console functionality, so that you can see what pages are ranking.

Google Analytics

So we’re going to flip over into Google Analytics here and we’re going to look at some of the done for you data. I’m going to make this a little bit bigger so you can take a look at it. And if we go to the home here, we’re going to see, we’re going to go back to the done for you home. Overall, we’re going to switch to 28-day visitors, and then we’re going to … So just a real quick overview. These are all of your time stats. So anything real-time is in this top browser here.

Right now, there are two people on our website. We can look at the locations. We can look at traffic sources, the content they’re on. So specifically these two people, one person is on a homepage, one person’s on a software page. So you can watch that fluctuate back and forth.

Demographics

Your audience is all of your audience, your people. So if we look at the demographics of people who come to do for you, then we see that by and large, 25 to 34, 35 to 44, 45 to 54, 55 to 64 and 65 plus and it is mostly male. We can go, we can break it down by age and gender. We can break it down by interests. So there’s a lot of things you can do here to actually understand your users a little bit better.

Acquisition Report

The acquisition is going to show you all of the ways that people come to your site, and what we’re going to dig into is this search console tab. The search console is going to show you the landing pages, the countries, the devices, or the queries or search results.

We’re going to start by going to landing pages and just take a look through. Here we see that there have been 3,000 impressions for this particular blog post, with zero clicks through. The average position is 52, meaning the average position is on page six of Google. Obviously, there’s a lot of room to improve that. And if we look at, and then … it’ll go through and show you where your search traffic is clicking to, what pages are ranking, and then ultimately when somebody clicks in the search result, where they are going.

Our absolute number one search result is, in this sampling, is the homepage. But then after that is email marketing campaigns, is a blog post, then another blog post, then a sales page. And if we look at queries, this is where you start to see and find the keywords you’re ranking for.

Rank Your Keywords

Done for you is ranked for 4,000, and what we see is all of the things that we could be ranking for. I’m going to add rows, and so we’re going to do show rows to find the keywords. Here you can see that in the last seven days, we’ve received 900 impressions for the keyword phrase business consultant, 800 impressions for the keyword phrase sales funnel. Then we can scroll all the way down here and say, “Okay, what is customer analytics,” we received 75 impressions, business consultant skills, 72 impressions. Done for your sales funnels, 72 impressions, and four clicks.

These are all the keyword phrases that basically are done for you. What do I do when I look at this and say, “Okay, what are the keyword phrases that I would like to rank better for?” I can get more traffic from, and then also, what do I need to do to influence those rankings?

Optimize Organic Content

We’ve done quite a few dailies on basically optimizing organic content, and that is the answer to those questions. So it’s basically going through, editing the blog post, adding sub-headlines, making sure your keyword density is good, making sure you have YouTube videos and multimedia content inside that blog post, as well as images. And then editing it, bringing it back up to the top of the queue.

Google and search engines love it when you edit all content as opposed to writing new content. So whenever possible, we always try to go in and edit the old stuff, and then we’ll say updated in the blog post title. But usually just updating it is enough to bounce it up a couple of pages in Google. And then we’ll do some internal linking. We’ll do some outbound. So we do very, very little bits of linking. Most of it is just on-site SEO and stuff.

So that is today’s five-minute guide. Came in just on, I think, five minutes is right now. But that is how you find the keywords that you’re ranking for and also the pages you’re ranking for organically. And then you take it a step further and optimize the blog posts and the content for those fewer phrases. So have a fantastic weekend and I will see you on Monday.

The post Ways In Finding The Keywords Your Website Is Naturally Ranking For appeared first on Done For You.

In today’s GSddaily, we’re going to talk about maximizing conversions through a landing page or a sales page, or a page. If there is a page on your website that you don’t think is getting the results and getting the conversions that it should, this is how you fix it.

Now, landing pages are most often the choke point in a sales funnel. Basically, a lead comes through, a click comes through, they hit a page, they either move on or they don’t. From there, they end up walking through the rest of the sales funnel. But if they don’t hit that first page and they don’t convert on that first page, then they’re gone. You can get back in front of them, retargeting. There are lots of ways to get back in front of them, but you miss the opportunity if they didn’t convert their first time through.

2 Different Landing Page Styles

What we’re going to do is I’m going to show you two different landing page styles, and then I’m going to show you how I’m testing them.

1. Multivariate test or  Split test – it is where we’re testing different headlines against each other
2. On different pages – we’re testing page one, page two, and page three against each other. Then we’re able to look at the stats, look at the numbers, and say, “This is which one is winning. And this is which one is not.”

Testing Pages

1. Automated Webinar Playbook
2. Supercharge Your Marketing With The Unabridged Automated Webinar Playbook

The two pages that we’re testing, we have this Automated Webinar Playbook, and this one. We talked a little bit about this one yesterday. We talked about the ads for this one. For the Ads, we went through and disabled the ads that weren’t working so that we dropped the lead cost on that. That was kind of the first step, is how do we optimize the traffic that is coming through. Now, today we’re optimizing the landing page. This test was already ongoing when we disabled yesterday’s ads. So here we go.

Now we have Supercharge Your Marketing With The Unabridged Automated Webinar Playbook. Now, if we look at… We’re using a piece of software called Visual Website Optimizer for this. So there are a couple of different pieces of software that we can use. vwo.com is one. So it’s AB testing. It’s always been my favorite. There’s a lot of different kinds. VWO just has been the one that I’ve been using forever. In fact, for a while, we didn’t use it. I was trying out some different split testing software. And then I resigned up for VWO and it felt like coming home after being gone for a decade.

It just felt like this is where I needed to be because we were testing different stuff, but we were using like Google’s version, we were using a different one, which is Inspectlet, is another one. So it had some nice, simple split testing functionality. It also records screens. So there are some different versions. Inspectlet is nice if you just want to play around with split testing, but you’re getting good and used to it. Inspectlet is nice, but VWO is my favorite. So VWO is what we’re playing with right now.

So if we look at our playbook here, you see that we have, let’s throw up the report here. And basically, we have four different versions of testing. So here, we have our variations and then we have control variation one, variation two, variation three. You can see that we deactivated version variation two and variation three in this test already. And we were testing with our control and our variation one. So here’s what that means.

If we pull up a preview of this, so we’re going to pull up a preview of the page. So this is the control. The control is Supercharge Your Marketing With The Unabridged Automated Webinar Playbook. That is the control. And right now, if we look at the report, you’ll see that it is converting at 34.93% to a lead. From an add to cart standpoint, it is converting it to 2.2%. And then it’s got, from an engagement standpoint, is at 51% engagement. So your engagement means that the people who hit a page, then they interacted with that page in some way, they scrolled down and they clicked it, they moved…

Do you know what I mean? They somehow triggered an engagement, didn’t just show up, and then bounce away. Prospect clients showed up and did something. And that doing something could have been the button click that loaded the opt-in form. So, that’s the engagement.

I always use engagement as a backup metric so that I know which pages are getting the best engagement and then we can design to that. So this one, this variation, from a leadership standpoint, has a 34% conversion. Then we have variation one, which is 29.96 variations. So just under 30%. And let’s see what that one looks like. So we just hit this little button on the lower right-hand corner, this little selector. Variation one, it reloads, and then that variation is Print Money On Autopilot With The Complete Automated Webinar Playbook. Interestingly, this version is 5% less in terms of landing page conversion. You would think that it would be higher, but it is not. So, that’s how we end up split testing.

Now, we always start with the headline. So the headline, the easiest way to squeak out extra conversions on a landing page is the headline. It’s a barn most easily. It’s the thing that we focus on. As soon as we load a page, we read that headline and in our head, we figure out whether it is worthwhile and useful for us or not. So we read the headline. If we agree, we read down the next line, and then we read the rest of the page. The headline is always the first thing we test, always the first thing we test.

Next, we test the image. You’re going to see that in this next example, that I’m going to show you. After that, we test the button color. And then, button colors, usually oranges or greens work pretty well. And then we test sub-headlines and then we test the rest of this stuff, the features and benefits. But generally headline, then image, then button color, then sub-headline, then the rest, the exclusive free, the features and benefits of the page. So this is the first test with this page, so it’s the first time we’re optimizing this page.

If we aren’t getting a conversion that we like, then we start testing different page styles. So sometimes that happens. Sometimes for whatever reason, a page style doesn’t work, despite the copy being dialed in and that’s why we test engagement. Then you test different page styles, you nail one that works, and then you restart your test. You start headlines, then images, then button color, then sub-headlines, and then features and benefits. That’s the split testing matrix that we end up employing.

The next example is this page. It is the Automated Profits Webinar Registration. It’s an automated webinar that we have. This general layout is working well right now. Very, very simple. Part of the reason it’s working well is that it’s great on mobile. Facebook’s going to send mobile traffic if they can. It works great from a mobile standpoint.

Learn My Simple 2×2 Sales Funnel Framework That Helps You Cash In On Products & Services. Let’s look at the split test data. So this is the Automated Webinar landing page. And if we go to the report, you’ll see that we have… So our control didn’t work all that well. So we had our expected landing page conversion rate was 36%. We just had two out of six who converted on that thing. So it was deactivated pretty soon. Then we have a 21% conversion here and a 17% conversion here. Now, if we go to engagement, we’ll notice that the engagement is 50% on that variation one, variation two is 37%.

Now, to give it a little bit of meaning, let me go here. So we’re going to go through and preview the variation and you’ll see that this, I think this variation… Okay, so that variation has a video. Now let’s go back to the report and we’re going to show you a variation that has just an image. This is the one that is winning at the moment. No video, and it’s just an image of the 2×2 grid that we use. This is the one that is winning currently. So we tested a different page with a different image. Let me go grab that one real quick here. So this is the control that did not win. I think I might not be able to load this because it’s the basis of the split test.

So this is the control. The control didn’t work all that good. We ended up simplifying the message and just basically having the block on top. This also didn’t work all that good. It didn’t work nearly as well as this version, which is the simplified layout in the image. And this is the one that is getting better landing page conversion than anything else that we tested so far. And that was after we tested the headline. So you’ll notice that all the headlines are the same because we already went through the headline test and now we’re testing the images and the creativity in them.

So does anybody have any questions? This could get deep really quickly. I just really want to make sure that we handle the process more than anything. The process is really, it’s the most important part of this. It doesn’t matter what software you’re using, whether you are using VWO, whether you’re using Optimizely, whether you are using Google Optimize or Inspectlet.

Optimizing Landing Page Conversion

The process for optimizing a landing page is headline first, then creative, so it’s either a video or an image. Then it is button color, so try to do greens and oranges. Then it is the sub-headline and then it is features and benefits. Those are like the five testing criteria and you will incrementally improve your landing page conversion as you test each of those things. If your landing page conversion sucks, swap out to a new page, a new style, something that is kind of formulaically different, so it’s not just the page with a different background. Something that looks different, is perceived as different, loads differently. And then try it all over again. So that’s the process for split testing landing pages.

For Question and Guide

If you have any questions at all, go to doneforyou.com/start. Book a call on our calendar. We’d be happy to jump in and put together an action plan for you and talk about your traffic and landing page conversion and all that other stuff. And if you have any questions, just let us know. You can either drop a comment here on the live stream or post to the page or whatever. And I’ll talk to you soon. All right? Thanks. Bye.

The post Maximizing Conversion On Your Website’s Landing Page appeared first on Done For You.

This week is going to be about conversions and conversion rate optimization, basically taking pages, systems, email, traffic, all of that stuff, taking it, pulling those subsystems out, optimizing them, and then putting them back in. And here’s why it’s important.

Sales funnels rarely, work the first time out of the gate. That’s why there’s always a two-week testing and optimization process for all of our clients even if they come to us with a funnel-like. If we’re putting new systems in place, if we’re putting new traffic, new landing pages, new sales, material, sales copy, all of those things need to be tested so that we know they’re going to work and then that establishes the KPIs or key performance indicators that we’re able to move on moving forward.

It’s interesting because I’ve been reading a lot about systems in general, more suitably, like standard operating procedures and that kind of thing. So I thought this would be a really interesting week chunk to talk about the systems that make up a sales funnel.

How Optimization Affects Our Landing Pages

Whenever I talk about sales funnels, it’s always this big gigantic thing. It is marketing pages, it is sales copy, it’s automated webinars, it’s email, whatever. It’s all kinds of big things.

But the process of optimization is distilling down into the few things that aren’t working, pulling those out, and then optimizing them and then putting them back in. There’s a lot of different kinds of tools. There’s a lot of software, there’s a lot of know-how that it takes to do this stuff. And like I said, rarely, I mean, 80% of even our stuff … Right now, we launched the Automated Webinar Playbook. That landing page sucked the first couple of weeks that it was out. We were getting, it was I think 12% conversion rate optimization or something from paid traffic. The paid lead was 14 or $15 for the first week.

It’s not about scrapping the whole thing. It’s not about throwing the whole thing out and saying, “Oh, it all sucks. Let’s redo it.” It’s about doing the small things that then bring that lead cost under control. We went from spending 14, 15 bucks per lead a couple of weeks ago to making a couple of ad tweaks, a couple of landing page tweaks and now we’re down at a $4 per lead cost, which is precisely where we want it to be. It wasn’t about throwing everything out or rebuilding the entire thing. It’s just about doing the small things that matter a whole lot.

Facebook Dynamic Creative Ads

Today what I want to do is I want to walk you through Facebook ads. We set up a type of ad called dynamic creative. Now, these ads, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time doing them. I went into Canva, I grabbed a screenshot of a video, dropped it into a Canva listing, made this ugly as a shit ad, and then just started running it just to see what we could do, some different ad copy, whatever.

Let me flip over to Facebook here.

Work The System Book by Sam Carpenter

I wanted to talk about this. This is the book I so highly recommend. It’s called Work the System. It’s by a guy named Sam Carpenter. And he walks through this idea of systematizing your business, but it’s also systematizing your life too because every result that you get in your life is the result of a system. And by understanding that it’s the result of a system, you can always try the conversion rate optimization to that system, whether it’s professional or personal or whatever. You can always optimize that system to give you better results.

The book is incredible. I originally read the book in 2011, so it was nine years ago back when I was doing SEO stuff. And I remember reading the book and then writing all of these procedures for SEO content, like how blog posts are to be written and all that other stuff. Well, since my life has changed a couple of times, that documentation is no more, SEO is different. I mean, you can imagine those procedures. Those procedures were literally like, “Write a 500-word blog post. Build a shitload of backlinks,” you know what I mean? Back when that stuff worked. That stuff doesn’t work now.

Work the System, highly recommended. That was kind of the inspiration behind this idea, that and a couple of conversion rate optimization I’ve had over the last couple of weeks, so excellent book. Read it on Kindle. I tried to find it an Audible. It wasn’t on Audible so that we’ve listened to it driving, but whatever.

Facebook Ad Sets For Automated Webinar Playbook

These are the ad sets that I created that started. You can see here, if you look at this column right here, so right there, then you can see that this first ad, $22 per lead. That’s a lot. That’s a lot. Let me go to the last 14 days. All right, so $16 per lead over the last 14 days. That’s enough.

Anyway, let’s go look at this ad first, just so you know what we’re dealing with. We’re going to go in here and look at the ad. We should be able to see this on your screen. Let me make it a little bit bigger. Does that look okay? I think that looks. Yeah, that’s good. Okay, cool. Let’s go and look at this ad. This is for the Automated Webinar Playbook. Here, we’ve got the preview on, and this is the ad that is working right now, so a little bit of background image, a little bit of background music. It’s got a scrolling video and then the primary text is this. We had four or five different kinds of primary texts and they were. Here, let’s see if you can see it.

Initiating our Facebook Ads Campaign

Okay, there we go. All right, so this is the ad. I had four or five different headlines that we’re cycling through or text, I should say. And then there were two different images and then there were these. I had, it was an arrow, and then I have plus, and then I just had free download, download digital playbook today. The Arrow arrow worked better than the other two, which surprised me. Then we had this. We had our headline, so this is the winner. All it is animation. It’s got the scrolling PDF on the one side and then the text on the left side. Really, simple to create. I just took a screen recording of the playbook and that was it.

Results

Now, let’s go look at these results. If we drop into here, we can see that … Let me just scroll down. Okay, cool. Here we go. A lead … We got a total of 39 leads in the last 14 days, so nothing to write home about yet. Like I said, early testing. We spent a total of $314 to get those 39 needs. That’s expensive. We have a cost per result is 1620. And this was this video that you didn’t see. Then, there were the other two videos here. One of them was $5 and 18 cents and the other one was 9.91.

Here, I was just kind of trying to be funny. The text was, “I wonder if obnoxiously retro and certifiably ugly video ads work. Let’s find out.” They did not because the cost per result was 22.98. Then I have, “We’ve tried a lot of stuff to sell high ticket products and services for our clients. And this is the only way we found to get consistent repeatable results day in and day out.” No leads for that one, despite having 370 impressions. Then we have, “14 years ago, I was a truck driver who fell in love with the digital real estate domain names.” That one was the best one at $6 and 95 cents per lead and it got 33 leads. Then the last one was talking about the playbook itself, so, “One-third sales and marketing strategy, one-third checklist, one-third journal, a hundred percent awesome.” And then that one got nine dollars and 67 cents cost per result.

Conclusion

My point is, having four different texts. You can see that if we were just to do one and we were just to do one and it was this one, then no go. It’s a failed campaign because we got zero leads. If we were just to do this one, then we would have won or it would have been marginal. Out of four tries, one of them was a winner. Basically what we did was we took the winning combination, the winning text, the winning … check this out … the winning headline. If you look here, arrow, download the digital playbook today, plus, download the digital playbook today, plus, and then free download big-ticket digital playbook PDF.

Look at these results. $7 and 39 cents for arrow, 17.63 for plus, and 13.63 for free download. We got 36. Basically what I did was I took all of these … I took the headline and the video and the text, combined them into one video, and now our lead cost between that control video has dropped substantially. Now, if I would’ve just went out the gate with my first inclination on the headline, on the text, and on creative, then this campaign would have fucking bombed. Even now it’s like $6 per lead. I know I can drop it to four and we can continue testing. I can throw some new creative in there and we can keep going to the point where we’re able to get $2, $3, $4 per email lead. And then we can drastically scale up the ad spend of this guy and put a bunch of people in the funnel.

Testing Small Systems

That is the idea of this testing small systems. If I would have looked at the overall whole, the whole campaign about conversion rate optimization, and said, “That campaign blows. We need to start from scratch,” then I’m wasting my team’s time. I’m wasting my time. I’m wasting a shitload of money for all of the things that people have done to put this campaign in life, would have wasted my time, but that’s not the answer. The answer is you test the small things, small high leverage activities. One of them is your traffic. And with these kinds of dynamic creative ads, then you can test very quickly and you can test a lot of stuff. You can test a lot of different creativity, a lot of different thoughts. We go through and test new strategies weekly for our clients. You can do this and then you can maximize your conversion rate optimization on those points.

The other place to test is your landing pages, making sure that your landing pages are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. Landing pages, the mission of a landing page is not to sell. The mission of a landing page is to get them to take action, to get them to click a button and opt-in, click a button, go to an order form, click a button and do something. The mission of the landing page is to get them to take action. Tomorrow we are going to talk about that. And that is, your landing page, is another small little subsystem that you’re going to pluck out of your funnel and say, “I’m going to work on this thing and try conversion rate optimization on this thing and then I’m going to put it back and I’m going to have a better system as a result.”

For Questions and Guide

Anyway, if you have any questions at all, could have DoneForYou.com/start. Fill in the application. We’ll be able to schedule a call with you. If you’d like us to look at your optimization process or look at your funnel or do an audit or whatever, just let us know. We’re happy to take a look. On the lower right-hand corner of the DFY website, there’s the chatbox. Just go ahead, type it in there and we’ll go from there.

The post Conversion Rate Optimization And Its Uses appeared first on Done For You.

In today’s GSDdaily, we’re going to talk about picking the right call to action for your webinar. We’re also going to talk about the tools and tech and gear and stuff that you need to pull off a webinar that you can sell high-ticket products and services on. This entire week we’ve been going through this, which is a PDF that we put together on, the Automated Webinar Playbook. You can get this thing for free at… I’m going to change this little ticker here, so download PDF at, there we go. All right. You can go ahead and download this PDF for free at doneforyou.com/legendary.

Now, the reason it’s legendary is this is our L1 funnel, which is basically, it’s a high-ticket automated webinar funnel and it walks through the exact process of creating something automated that sells for you. It sells your coaching program, your consulting program, your high-ticket digital product, your lead magnet, or not lead magnet. Sometimes you need a lead magnet, but it sells all that stuff for you. In the last couple of days, we’ve been walking through this guide. Yesterday we talked about this, where is it? Right there, we went through this sales funnel process. And then we went through this piece, which was the checklist on all of the material that you need to pull off one of these funnels. So that was yesterday’s thing.

Maximizing the Conversion of High Ticket Offers

Today what we’re doing is we’re talking about maximizing the conversion of our high ticket offers. We’re going to walk through the next probably 10 or so pages of this guide, but when it gets to maximizing the conversion of high ticket offers, your webinar does a lot of work. I call it the triple trigger.

Webinar

Your webinar helps you generate leads and you’re generating leads to cold traffic or warm traffic or your email list. You’re getting people to raise their hand and say, “Yes, I’m interested in the thing that you were offering,” or “I’m interested in the challenge that you’re presenting and the challenge you’re going to be solving on the webinar.” “Yes, I am interested in transforming my business or myself into that thing that you’re going to be educating on.” That’s what registering for a webinar means. Now that makes the webinar an awesome lead-generation tool, if nothing else, but webinars do so much more than that which will be your high ticket offers.

You usually have webinars anymore a little bit shorter. They’re don’t go for 90 minutes like they did five or six years ago. Most webinars are 30, 45, or 50 minutes kind of it tops out at. Your webinar really generates a lead. It engaged in bonds with a prospect. What you’re doing is kind of compressing that whole awareness, interest, desire, action, you’re compressing it into a 60-minute chunk of time. You’re getting awareness from the prospect. They are becoming interested in the thing that of your high ticket offers. They find themselves desiring the thing, hopefully, if they’re the right customer avatar and all that stuff. Then they take action on it. It’s this compressed block of time that you’re going to get somebody engaged, interested in taking action. The last piece is the call to action.

Now in maximizing the conversion of high ticket offers, there’s a couple of things you have to take into consideration.

The first is who is your target avatar? Are they a busy executive who was in no way going to ever schedule something on their calendar, like an hour block of time for a web-based presentation? They’re going to have one of their underlings do it. If that’s the case, then you need to engage with them immediately. On-demand. And sometimes you need to engage with them with a PDF first, showcasing your ability and then inviting them to the webinar. Others, very aspirational markets like business development, business opportunity, a lot of times you can schedule that webinar out in advance and people are going to sign up for it. But the key to maximizing your conversion of high ticket offers on the webinars is presenting the right call to action that matches up with the prospect.

The Framework of Successful Webinar

Here’s kind of the framework of the successful webinar. In most markets, in most niches, the call to action should drop around 45 minutes. So part of then is because when somebody blocks out time for a webinar, they usually block 60 minutes. What you want to do is you want the call to action to land about 40, 45 minutes in, and then have some time to decompress from there. Answer some questions, maybe drop a couple of testimonials, whatever. You want to have a very brief intro section. I tell a lot of our clients the biography and the introductory part of the webinar needs to be this big in comparison to the whole webinar. People don’t care about you. They don’t care about who you are and what you can do for them. All they care about the problem that you’re going to solve for them.

They don’t necessarily care about who you are until after they learned about the solution. So it’s important to introduce yourself because that’s just good manners. But, at the same time, don’t spend a whole lot of time talking about your accolades and your education and your experience and your history, because most likely it doesn’t matter yet. It will matter afterward. It matters after you showcase your ability, but not right now. So the bio can be real short, then you talk about the solution, and then you can even get into your story or how it ties in with your story or whatever, but you need to deliver value.

We always use questions in our webinar and that is to engage the audience thinking, to engage the thinking of the audience. And here’s why. Whenever you’re asked a question, your brain answers that question, regardless of if you kind of consciously come up with the answer yourself. Whenever you posed with a question, your brain answers it, which is it engages it. Sometimes that comes up to the conscious level, where you can verbalize your answer, but if you’re asked a question, your brain’s going to answer it. So that’s why we use questions. It engages folks. It aligns with their thinking. And a lot of the times what we do, we do three successful questions and they start very broad, you can think of it as a funnel that will be your high ticket offers.

Start very broad and then the next question is a little bit more narrow. And the next question is even more narrow. And that last question is what sets up the rest of the presentation. Then what you do is you move to content for like 20 or 30 minutes. You talk about your four-step system or five hacks or six questions or six secrets or whatever. And then you transition them into the pitch. And that’s where the call to action comes in. So the call to action itself is… There’s an art in moving from good content to a good call to action. And we always try to make it as seamless as possible.

We try not to make it real abrupt. Now we’ve covered and there’s so much more to cover other than this, but all we have is 45 minutes in this presentation. So what I did was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I put together a coaching program where it’ll reveal the secrets of the universe and you can have access to blah, blah, blah money.

It needs to be more elegant than that, so we try to have a nice transition between the content and how that content that they just learned can be further reinforced or further accelerated by the high ticket offers. So that tends to work pretty well. And then right here in the PDF is some notes that you can take as you kind of go through it. And choosing a call to action that matters. This is kind of what the whole high-ticket webinar thing is all about. The call to action you need when you are selling high ticket offers is a strategy session. So the call to action is going to be signing up, booking a call on your calendar or your team’s calendar, your sales rep’s calendar, whatever. So the webinar sets up the sale, but it doesn’t sell the thing.

The webinar sets up the sales call and the sales call sells the thing. And the sales call is only effective if the high ticket offers are great for both sides, meaning the prospect gets something solved that they need to have solved, the solution for their problems, and then, of course, you or your company are providing the solution and you’re happy about the client, or you’re happy about the project too. So that’s one of the best ways to maximize conversion to high ticket offers.

What I usually tell my clients is when you have a webinar that is set up like this, where it’s a webinar that goes into a strategy session call, typically you’re going to close like one in four when you’re first starting. Because the webinar, if it’s doing its job is kind of talking about the high ticket offers, talking about the problem, talking about the solution. Just the fact that somebody went through that webinar and then ultimately booked the call and then answer some questions on an application.

Then we know that they’re going to be a good fit or not a good fit. And if they’re not a good fit, don’t even waste your time on the call. So you don’t have to, if you don’t want to, you know what I mean? So give him a call. Have a great call. Sometimes it’ll be a one-call close or two call closes or three call close or whatever. But as long as you’re serving your prospect, then you’re going to close some sales. As far as the tools.

The benefits beyond sales, first of all, you build your email list because your webinars are great lead-generation tools, you’re selling more of your product or service, and you’re also connecting with your audience in a way that is different than just a kind of a cold website. So those are three of the biggest benefits that you get out of this webinar. Now, the tools that you’re going to need.

Tools to Conduct Webinars

So the tools in tech have changed a little bit. A little bit, but not much. There are so many things now, especially now, like mid-pandemic, that we’ve been shoved into needing to use. We’ve had to figure them out. Not us, we’ve been using it forever but now the population is just a whole lot more comfortable with Zoom. Everybody has webcams. Everybody knows how to do video through their computer, for the most part, and if they don’t know how to do it, video through the computer, they know how to do it through their phone.

As a global population, we’ve all figured out the video to a much better degree. That makes your job infinitely easier now. Here are some of the mics that we use. It’s totally up to you if you want to use this stuff. I used to always say that like Apple’s tools, Apple laptops, and stuff, the camera and stuff were great. They’re not so much anymore. I guess this new line of MacBook Pros and stuff that are coming out, they’re going to have like full 4K cameras or at least 1080 cameras.

Microphone

The two pieces of equipment you’re going to need is a microphone. There are some examples here.

1. Blue Snowball
2. Blue Yeti
3. Audio-Technica AT2020

You can find blue snowball and blue yeti at Best Buy. You can also order them online. I use these. This is an Audio-Technica AT2020. They have a USB variant and then also a music recording variant. I don’t know if I can share this. Of course, it’s kind of short, but that cord right there. I don’t know anything about recording music, but I do know that this is a I think it’s an XLR cord and then it pipes into a mixer. So that’s what I use. I have an AT2020 on my desk over there too. A USB variation.

Camera

1. Logitech HD Pro

That way we have a uniform recording on videos and stuff. The Logitech HD Pro, this camera, has been nice. I have been using something different though. This is an actual 1080 camera that pipes into a USB connection on the computer, which is sometimes why I have issues with their video. It works, but the setup was kind of created for gaming. Then I have the same thing over on that computer there. There are some lights now. These lights, super-nice, but now they have LED variations. There’s a light there, which is the same as this light here. I have one that kind of sits. You can see it on my glasses.

Now you’re not going to be able to unsee it. But so we have one of these lights and then I have like a ring light over on that computer, which helps out quite a bit too. And let’s see, that’s it for tools. And then software. Here, let me show you these though. Let me pull up a web browser page because I want to show you kind of what I have been using from a camera set up.

This is a camera set up that I have been using. You can see that I last purchased this thing on April 28th. So I have two of these cameras. Well, so what happened was is I would have just bought two webcams, but with the pandemic, everybody started buying webcams. So I was looking around and as a good solid brand-name webcam was $189. And I was like, “Well, shit, why don’t I just buy a camcorder, and then I can use it for other stuff if I want to?” So I ended up grabbing two of this camcorder. One for this, and this is what I’m looking at now, and then another one over there, which is what, when I’m like at my sitting desk, is what I use. And then I got an HDMI-to-USB adapter.

It’s, basically, one of these things. Now there are lots of different variations of this. And a lot of them are from China. It just depends on the kind of what you want to go with. I ended up going with, let’s see the brand of the one that I have, a HornetTek video capture. HornetTek, H-O-R-N-E-T… there it is.

This is the one that I grabbed. I have two of these and what it is is it’s an HDMI cable on one side and USB out of the other side. So it’s a passive device. A lot of gamers use it. What they do is they use an HDMI splitter and then one side goes to their TV and the other side goes to their computer so that they can stream shit on Twitch or whatever. I think that’s how it works. I’m not 100% positive. But just in reading the reviews, I saw that a lot of people were doing just that. There are all kinds of others… I think there’s one called an Elgato, which is one that I read about quite a bit. But there are lots of different kinds of video capture tools.

This is just what I’ve been using. Do you have a camcorder that outputs HDMI, then you can use one of these things and get a great camera resolution on it. And then we talked about mics. So those are probably the two most pivotal things. I also have one of these. Sling Studio. I think it’s at myslingstudio.com. Yeah. So I have a Sling Studio too that I record. And it’s a video-camera switching unit. So you can record anything on iOS. You can have an iPhone, iPad always recording inputs as well as these, which is pretty cool for camera switching. I don’t do it on the live streams, but I do on some of the other videos. So just a couple of things from a webcam standpoint.

Now, when we get to webinar software, there are so many different types of webinar software out there that will help you do these webinars. From a tried-and-true standpoint, GoToWebinar is nice. I have been a GoToWebinar user forever, but I do have to say that I switched to Zoom for so many more things, just because it’s easier. GoToWebinar, you don’t need to download software or Zoom you don’t need to download the software. You send a link and everybody just has it. GoToWebinar, I found that so many people were using Zoom that now GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting, having to download stuff for the conferencing, which was just a pain in the ass. And so we stopped using it. We moved over to Zoom.

In terms of automated webinar stuff, there’s EverWebinar is still the best. EverWebinar. Great tool from a marketing standpoint. Let’s see. And those are kind of pretty much the only tools that we use from a webinars standpoint. Any more though, literally, on Monday, we talked about the on-demand webinars, which is pretty much all we do anymore. So it’s, basically, a landing page that kicks over into a webinar room page. The webinar room page is set to have a video that automatically starts. So it’ll, the webinar room page, the video just automatically goes live. And then there’s a webinar replay page that has a call to action button underneath it. So we don’t even use special software for it anymore. We just use a Vimeo web player that shows up.

Let’s see. And I think, for the most part, that’s about as far as we were going to get in this guide today. Email marketing software. For the most part, we use like ActiveCampaign or we use our CRM, which is access or we’ll use like InfusionSoft or Keeper and Ontraport. Those are pretty much the email. So if somebody opts in for the webinar, they get the email through those email marketing platforms and we tie all that stuff in, and then the webinar gets delivered from there. I’ve got some stuff on webinar tools. All right.

I think probably the last thing we need to talk about, and we kind of touched on it yesterday, which is just all the different emails that you need to pull this thing off. So you need the webinar promo emails, the emails that go out promoting the webinar. You need the webinar replay emails. So that is the emails that go out after somebody attends the webinar and those emails promote the webinar. They promote high ticket offers. If this is an evergreen webinar, you can do evergreen webinar promo and evergreen replay emails.

That’s really about it from an asset standpoint. You need a sales presentation too. You have to do the webinar slides to have the webinar. Then we have a little checklist here – microphone, your camera, your lighting, the webinar software. What are you going to use for that? What are you going to use for email marketing? Then what sequences are you going to run? If you have any notes, go ahead and write to them there.

For Questions and Guide

If you have questions on putting the whole thing together, go to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little application and jump on a call with us. We’ll go through an action plan for you, with you.

I want to talk about your funnel, your traffic, the webinar set up, and all that stuff. And I will see you tomorrow. Tomorrow we’re going to get into the replay, which is the replay and the replay email sequence. Probably 85% of your sales are going to come from the replay. It’s a bigger part of the high-ticket sales system than the webinar itself, is the replay. We’ll cover that tomorrow and I will talk to you soon.

The post Choosing A CTA That Converts High Ticket Offers appeared first on Done For You.

You create content and publish it on your blog continuously. Amplify your content distribution using social media and you also strive to grow your email list, and maybe you run paid advertising campaigns with targeted and complete sales funnels.

Over 80% of everyone who arrives at your website or your landing pages will leave without taking action. This, in turn, means that you are losing over 80% of your potential prospects.

That hurts; you don’t want to lose your potential customers, do you?

On average, less than 2% of your web visitors will ever buy. You want to do much better than that. Retargeting is a great way to refuel your funnel, boost conversions, and bring back all those potential customers you could have otherwise lost.

What is retargeting

Retargeting helps you reach out to those exact people who visited your landing pages or website by targeting those audiences exclusively in your paid campaigns. It works on advertising platforms such as Facebook and Google. Furthermore, retargeting will show ads to web visitors regardless of their initial source.

For instance, you could launch retargeting campaigns to traffic from any of the paid traffic sources. Or you could retarget to all the visitors of your website or landing pages (including organic traffic).

Retargeting is often overlooked and not many businesses actually make the best use of it. The fact is that your inbound marketing funnel is never optimized without retargeting.

You have regular funnels that you use for advertising campaigns with the goal to reach out to new audiences and expose them to your brand and offers. You then have retargeting funnels which are slightly tweaked versions of your main funnels with the goal to bring back visitors who left your site and convert them into leads.

How to make retargeting work

To make retargeting work you should follow these tips today:

Start with well-defined audiences

To begin with, build only one general audience on your advertising platform. This should consist of everyone who visits any of your web properties.

A general audience could be all visitors to your website and/or all visitors to your landing pages or both combined — regardless of the platform on which you are building an audience (Facebook or Google).

Every other audience you’ll build is going to as specific as it can get.

Here’s an example of a high-intent audience for a service business.

1. People who read your blog.
2. Then, those who checked out your products or services.
3. Those who visited your pricing page.

Or an audience of an e-commerce store, which has the following behavioral attributes:

1. Visited store.
2. Browsed products.
3. Added items to cart & did not make a purchase.

You can get as specific as you can. The more specific you get with an audience, the better results you’ll be able to get with laser-focused retargeting campaigns.

Don’t wait too long or launch too early

Whether you are building audiences on Facebook (using the Pixel) or on Google (using Google’s Audiences feature set), don’t make the mistake and launch too late or too early.

If you launch too early, your audiences won’t be populated yet. In plain English, this means that your potential audience doesn’t know you well enough to make a purchase yet.

If you are too late, your retargeting campaigns might not be able to catch your potential customers hot on the button and ready to buy.

The appropriate time to launch your retargeting campaigns is to launch when you hit the sweet spot with your audience size. An exception to this is the default generic audience, as this is an audience you can target anytime you want.

For all other audiences, aim to gain at least a couple of hundreds of unique visitors before launching a retargeting campaign.

Don’t ask for the sale

With Amazon, people don’t have a problem clicking on the “buy button”; they trust Amazon and believe that their purchase is secure (among other things).

For other businesses, an instant purchase is a little too much to ask from a new web visitor. No matter what kind of a campaign you run — regular paid ads or retargeting ads — newly acquired traffic won’t convert that fast.

Taking that credit card out and purchasing from you is not going to come naturally to most people who aren’t familiar with your brand yet. You’ll probably make a few sales but it’s not something that’s sustainable or would work in the long-term.

Instead, try launching retargeting campaigns with much less friction and a high-conversion offer, like a free trial, a free download, a free sample, or a sneak peak.

Follow up with automated email campaigns to make those sales happen, over a period of time.

Don’t push too hard

Retargeting is meant to be an assertive way to follow up, follow through, and to just keep showing up around people almost furtively, as they browse online. It is not meant to be aggressive, “I’ll follow you no matter where you go, till the end of the world” kind of a campaign.

For that reason, keep an eye on “frequency caps” that every retargeting platform or channel allows you to control. Don’t set it frequency cap as “infinite” and then throw your lifetime earnings on campaigns.

The best way to let ads show to a particular visitor is much like how you’d follow up with a potential client on a phone call or an in-person meet — soon after the first contact? Once a week? Once a month? Not all of the time though because pushing too hard will irritate the prospect.

Retargeting demystified

By now, we hope you can see that following these advanced retargeting tips you’ll be able to optimize your campaign and see better results.

Remember, maximizing the potential of your advertising efforts is an ongoing process. Test. Review. Optimize. Repeat.

How are your retargeting campaigns managed? If you’d like to discuss your existing campaigns, sales funnels, or your marketing strategy, get on a scheduled call with us.  If you’d like to build out a paid traffic strategy, including retargeting, from scratch…  We’ve got a number of ad management packages that you can pick from!

GSDdaily Episode 90

Today, we’re going to summarize, put a capstone on the retargeting week. Basically, we covered everything retargeted related. I mean we talked about how it’s usually the quickest way to generate sales from the traffic that has already been to your list. We talked about how to set up banner ads and creating audiences. Also, we talked about pixels and all that other stuff. So today we’re just going to recap it and talk about what your next steps are if you want to implement retargeting or you would like somebody to do it for you.

First of all, for those of you who don’t know who I am, we’re always getting new people, there are always new folks who are watching these videos and stuff and learning about internet marketing and whether it makes sense for their business and everything, which of course it does because we are living through a pandemic at the moment. My name is Jason Drohn, creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in creating offers, building sales funnels, and also doing the marketing automation and the traffic to drive sales for your business. Today we’re finishing up the retargeted piece.

Here’s a post that is going to walk you through the basics of retargeting campaigns, stuff that we’ve covered in the last couple of weeks. This top video here is us right now, so this is the Livestream.

First of all, what is retargeting?

We covered this on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, but retargeting is when somebody comes to your website or they watch some of your video or they are on a customer list or a prospect list and you upload them into a system. Retargeting is where you show that person a banner ad or an ad of some kind to bring them back into your website, to bring them back into a sales process, to bring them back to an order form. That’s what retargeting is.

Retargeting goes by the phrase remarketing too in Google language. Remarketing, retargeting, same thing. If you have ever gone and looked at a hotel in Las Vegas and then you’ve found that they’re following you around. You go to the hotel and then you start seeing their ads everywhere, which is retargeting at its finest. I know that the explanation might be belaboring the point because retargeting is something that’s four or five years old, but at the same time, it’s the most powerful form of advertising, especially if you’re not doing paid traffic.

It is the way to do paid traffic, it is the way to get started with paid traffic. Even us, we drive a lot of traffic. The sole purpose of the code traffic we drive is to grow the retargeted audiences. The retargeted audiences are actually the things that generate a tremendous amount of return on ad spend.

How retargeting works?

We set up a pixel, the pixel gets added to a website and basically every time somebody comes to that website then a cookie gets added to the web browser. Basically, that cookie travels around with them everywhere else they go. So if that cookie is present in the web browser then your ads show up to them, so it’s a way for a company like AdRoll, which is an ad platform. It’s a way for AdRoll to basically match your visitors with your banner ads and then it serves up those banner ads.

It’s very, very nice, very easy, and the audiences can be as generally wide as you want them to be. An audience could be all visitors who have come to your website in the last 180 days. They can be an audience who could be everybody who reads your blog. The audience could be only the people who visit your products or only the people who visit your services. They can be only the people who add that item to a shopping cart are actually going to see my ads.

There is a lot of different customization when it comes to audiences, and then you also want to exclude all of your buyers, all of the people who took action with your business, all of the customers. You don’t want them seeing ads for things that they just bought. That’s where the audiences come into play. You have a big audience of people who’ve been to your website and a small audience of people who have bought, so you want to make sure that they don’t see your ads.

Now, when it comes to retargeting you don’t want to wait too long to actually show them ads. If somebody hits your website and then they don’t see ads for 30 days that’s too long. If they hit your website and they’re seeing your ads 60 or 90 days later but they haven’t been back to your website then you’re wasting money. The sweet spot is understanding that there’s a warm area. If they’ve been to your website or they’ve watched a video in the last seven days, they are hot. They know that there’s a problem that they need to solve and they know you are a potential solution for it. Showing them ads is a great idea.

Now if they’ve been to your website for seven to 30 days, so in that other… little bit farther out but they haven’t engaged with your website your brand in any other way between seven and 30 days they’re warm. Those people you should still retarget, but maybe you retarget with a lower ad budget, so those people aren’t nearly as hot as the newer folks.

Then you have your 30 plus day crew. Your 30 plus day crew is they haven’t been to your website, they haven’t watched a video in 30 or more days so those folks can actually come back and buy, so you can have the least retargeting budget for those people or you can just cut them out entirely, it’s up to you how much you want to stretch your budget. The other nice thing about retargeting campaigns is they let you do a lot of cool things on the code traffic side.

You can give a lot of value, you can drive clicks to blog posts, you can have a video that people are watching 10 seconds, 15 seconds, whatever. So you throw this video up and then you can retarget only the people who watch that video. It lets you be really cool upfront and give a lot of content.  It will give a lot of value and engage with people and grow your audience where they are. Then if they are interested in taking that next step with you, then you can retarget them into a product offer or a service.

One of the nice things about retargeting is because you’re building your warm audience by bonding and engaging with them.

Retargeting Frequency

Now you also do not want to push too hard on the retargeting campaigns. When retargeting first started, AdRoll had a really bad problem. All of the platforms, but AdRoll who is the retargeting platform that we like, had difficult frequency issues. Basically, inside AdRoll there are six recommended banner ad sizes that they have. What AdRoll would just literally just litter the whole page with your banner ads. You had a header bar and a sidebar and a footer bar. Some would have banners all over the whole page, so it looked absolutely terrible. Well I mean if you’re a prospect it looks really, really, really spammy.

They have since dropped the frequency, so it’s kind of like who is it? CW, have you ever watched the CW app? It’s funny, my wife and I joke about it but I forget what we were watching, The Flash or something. You see the same commercial five times in a row. That is a remnant ad buy that somebody basically just said, “We’ll take all your remnant space”. They just had to fill holes in the commercial slots. Was it State Farm? I don’t know, one of the insurance agencies or the insurance companies it was four and five in a row. Domino’s pizza four and five in a row. So, bad retargeting is when you have four or five banners all on the same page.

The platform needs to allow for the room so it doesn’t feel spammy even though you’re still following them around. When I say don’t push too hard, be mindful of that. There are some platforms you can even cut down the retargeting frequency. Also, there are some platforms that control the retargeting frequency, so just know that.

When your frequency goes up in retargeting campaigns then it’s not always a good thing. Other than that, from a retargeting standpoint, we talked a lot about AdRoll. We logged in to AdRoll and we created a campaign and our audiences. Talked about Canva for creating banner ads. Canva can create rapidly prototyping different size banner ads and designing them. Another tool that in your retargeting tool belt you’re not going to want to miss.

The other option is Photoshop. You can do Photoshop and create a royalty-free image creative company like Envato Elements has a nice subscription. It’s a subscription service that you get access to a bunch of royalty-free downloads, video stock images, all that kind of stuff, icons, some 3D stuff. You can download this, use it in Canva, use it in Photoshop, but it’s going to give you some nice images that you can use that aren’t necessarily something that you have to create. I mean with retargeting sometimes we’ll end up uploading a lot of different variations of the same creative to see what tests better and then we’ll go through, look at the CPMs, look at the click-throughs, look at the conversions, all that stuff of the creative and disable the stuff that doesn’t work. The same optimization rules hold true for retargeting as any other app platform.

Facebook ads, Google Ads, retargeted ads, whatever, you still want to optimize it, you can’t forget about it, you want to make sure that you’re always optimizing and bettering the creative and always driving people to the next thing that they need to see and making sure that you’re excluding the audiences of the people who already took action. You don’t want them seeing the same ad for the thing that you already did. That’s definitely bad.

Applications For Creating Banners

All right, so now if you would like to… This whole time I’m sitting here talking I’m not sharing my screen.

1. Envato Elements – where we end up grabbing some stock photography.
2. Canva– where we design a bunch of banner ads
3. Photoshop
4. Adobe Creative Suite – which is just a monthly subscription
5. Illustrator

If you’re not a hugely adept graphic designer, Canva’s going to get 98% of the way there. Very, very nice piece of software. AdRoll is the retargeting platform that we use for banner creative. You can also use Facebook retargeting in there, and then you can use Google, of course, Google remarketing. They have their own campaigns that you can use for remarketing. AdRoll is going to give you retargeting on both platforms.

It also gives you a way to back up all your retargeted data. If your Google Ad account gets banned, Facebook ad account gets banned all of your stuff is still safe because it’s inside AdRoll. And this is the article that we were using.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions or would like to set up retargeting campaigns or would like to at least chat about it, go to doneforyou.com/start. Fill out the little form and we will get on like an action plan call and walk you through what a retargeting campaign is going to look like, what it’s going to do for your business. Obviously the important parts there are how big is your audience? Do we need to build the audience? Do we need to add some video ads and stuff so that we can build that audience for you and then move people into retargeted traffic? But the quickest path to cash for retargeting is if you have a website that is getting some traffic and then you install the pixel and then you set up the retargeting.

Back on Monday I said, I told you, “Set up the AdRoll account, install the pixel. We’ll be creating audiences in the next couple days,” and that’s exactly what we did. If you want to get into retargeting, you have a website, or you’re getting some traffic and you want to start capturing that traffic into retargeting banner ads, set up an AdRoll account, install the pixel. Give us a call and we will work through the banner ad stuff for you. Have a fantastic weekend. It’s Friday, so it’s the last episode of the week. Monday we will be back with something new. Monday, 10:00 am Eastern and I’ll talk to you soon, all right? Thanks. Bye.

The post Best Retargeting Campaigns For Your Website appeared first on Done For You.

The Need for a Marketing Automation Agency

A marketing automation agency can be your secret weapon when seeking to enhance your business’s marketing efforts. Contrary to popular belief, marketing automation isn't only for giant corporations but can be a game-changer for businesses of all sizes. In this guide, we'll focus on how to pick the right marketing automation agency to meet your specific needs and objectives.

Debunking Myths: Marketing Automation is For Everyone

Is Marketing Automation Overwhelming?

The term "marketing automation" might seem daunting, particularly if you're a small business or a creative agency. Rest assured, the right marketing automation agency will make the process seamless, efficient, and highly effective.

Marketing Automation Across the Board

Marketing automation agencies cater to businesses, big and small, spanning various industries. Whether you're a tech startup or a local retail shop, marketing automation is applicable and beneficial.

Critical Advantages of Partnering with a Marketing Automation Agency

Achieve Scalability and Efficiency

Its scalability is one of the most compelling reasons to work with a marketing automation agency. Automation handles repetitive tasks around the clock, freeing up your valuable resources.

A Hands-Off Approach to Lead Generation

Imagine generating qualified leads without lifting a finger. With the right marketing automation agency, you can set up systems that acquire, nurture, and convert leads automatically.

Not Just Set It and Forget It: Ongoing Benefits

Investment and Returns

While implementing automation requires an initial investment in time and capital, the long-term benefits far outweigh the costs. Your selected marketing automation agency will ensure that your systems work tirelessly, growing your business even when you're not actively involved.

Beyond Email: Multi-Channel Capabilities

The Misconception: Email is Everything

A common misconception is that marketing automation only involves email campaigns. In reality, a competent marketing automation agency can do much more.

What Multi-Channel Means for You

From SMS marketing to social media discovery and CRM synchronization, the right agency will allow you to reach your customers at every touchpoint. This ensures a customized and highly effective marketing strategy beyond simple email campaigns.

The Ultimate Advantage: Deep Customer Connections

What Meaningful Connections Can Do

A significant advantage of working with a marketing automation agency is forming more meaningful connections with your customers. Whether through personalized messaging or timing your customer interactions perfectly, automation enables a whole new level of engagement.

Final Thoughts: Simplifying Marketing Automation

Marketing automation may seem complex, but it's straightforward and highly effective with the right agency. If you're interested in diving deeper into this topic, we have a free webinar to watch to learn how easy it is to implement automation for your business.

By choosing a competent marketing automation agency, you’re not just buying a service; you're investing in your business's scalable growth and long-term success.

[Video Transcript]

Today, we will discuss what working with a marketing automation agency should look like. Now, there's a lot of different automation play. There are so many other things about marketing automation, so many different ways to cut it up and so many different ways to generate revenue from it, profit from it, and use it. But at the end of the day, some straightforward tools tend to be plug-and-play. From a marketing automation standpoint, how you combine those tools is just up to your imagination.

For those who don't know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in creating offers, building sales funnels, and doing marketing automation and traffic for clients. Marketing automation tends to be a place we thrive in because it's the glue between many different things. It's the glue that brings a lot of other elements together. It brings the pages together, and it brings the email marketing together, and it brings outbound kind of SMS stuff, and sales, and sales staff, and sales teams and, pipelines, and workflows. It all comes together in this idea of marketing automation.

What should be the goal in setting up a Marketing Automation?

When setting up marketing automation, the big thing you're looking for is making sure that the different pieces talk together. They go through, and you have your marketing. You have your CRM that speaks to your sales pages and your sales page; they talk to your CRM, and then all of that.

What we're going to talk about today is what a marketing automation agency is going to do or should do to help you grow your business online.

First, as marketing artists, we do a lot of marketing automation. We're a marketing automation agency. Although, I don't classify that as what we are. We're more like a growth team that does marketing automation.

Marketing automation is a key fundamental kind of building block of what sales funnels are and what sales funnels do.

Everybody does a small amount of marketing automation. Some agencies specialize in marketing automation, though. I would say that we specialize in marketing automation. We can make the website do things you haven't seen before, even in some of the stuff we do.

DFY website Marketing Automation

It's funny because we have our page visits tracked to Slack every once in a while. If we have somebody's email address or phone number, and they come to our website and hit a specific page, then it will send up kind of a warning flare and say, "This person is on your page." Ding and the whole deal.

When that happens, it also outputs their phone number and email address. If you have been to our website and any of our sales pages, and you get an email from me or one of my staff, it's a personalized email. That is why. It's because we have Slack configured through Zapier. We have our CRM send an alert over to Zapier. Zapier makes connections between software. It's the API hub between a bunch of different, 1000s of other, applications. A CRM sends a Zap to Slack and says, "Show, basically ping, these people on Slack every time this person, or we know who a person is, who hit a sales page.

Every once in a while, if you get a call from somebody on my team or an email from somebody on my team or even me, it's because we're watching that channel. You showed up on that page and ping; we see your email; we see your phone number because you've given it to us in the past. Not because it's weird, and we're spying on the world. But it's because it's all used from our collected data.

There have been times where we've noticed, I've seen, somebody be on page two or three or four days in a row. I don't even wait for them. I'll call them and say, "Hey, what's up, blah, blah, blah. This is Jason. You know, I saw you were on the page." And they're like, "What? You know, like, that's creepy." I'm like, "Yeah, it's creepy, but this is what we do. This is marketing automation. It's what we do. We wrote a book on it. You know what I mean?"

A good marketing agency must be able to implement workflows that will reap benefits and rewards from marketing automation.

That is one of the blessings of marketing automation. When you can run it correctly, a good marketing automation agency can do that for you. That's the idea. They're going to be able to implement those same workflows so that you reap the benefit and reward from it. There are marketing automation agencies, and then there's marketing automation for agencies. Both of those things they're the same. Marketing automation is marketing automation, whether you are an agency that is using it for your clients or you're an agency that's using it to acquire clients. It's all the same thing.

It's connecting different pieces of software so that things talk and trigger.

Zapier

There are lots of ways to do marketing automation. Zapier tends to be the place that everything comes to. It's kind of the head between all of the different sides. If you're running a Facebook lead ad, you will use Zapier to put that email address inside your CRM. Let's go over here to apps. There's all kinds of stuff, Google Sheets.

Most of the Google Suite has some pretty exciting stuff:

• Google Drive
• Facebook Lead Ads
• ActiveCampaign
• Facebook Pages

All of the things that it can do. We can get or send Gmail emails to new leads from Facebook Lead Ads, which I don't recommend.

You can also get emails with new Facebook Lead Ads leads. You can send lead ads to different rows in Google Sheets. We do that all the time, especially for our real estate clients.

1. We'll set the trigger.
2. Facebook sends the lead-in.
3. Then, it adds them to the CRM.
4. Then, finally, it puts them in a spreadsheet.

The CRM triggers, then the email marketing workflows, and then the spreadsheet is what somebody would call a sales guy would start screaming and working those leads.

If somebody comes in from a Facebook lead ad, we can add or update active campaign contacts—lots of different things you can do there. Your imagination is the limit when it comes to marketing automation. It is that simple. There are so many ways to trigger all kinds of cool stuff.

Slack

Slack is huge. There are so many integrations you can run with Slack. Microsoft Teams is fantastic, too, but Slack will integrate with everything. I'm not in a Microsoft environment at all. I don't think I have any Microsoft products installed on my computers, maybe Skype. We set it up with our CRM. We'll have Facebook Lead Ads ping Slack whenever there's a new sale.

A new conversation goes off into Google Sheets. We can set up some stuff in Airtable in Slack for project management. We're used to having it, so we get a Slack notification every time a base camp task is updated. We've set it up so that there are KPIs inside ad managers that will ping a Slack notification.

There are lots of different ways to work. There are lots of different ways to work on that moving forward. Now, let's see if we go to some of the other methods.

Anyway, your marketing automation agency will know all of this stuff. They will learn to trigger things that will move somebody through your prospect's scenario and pipeline. That's just what marketing automation does.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

1. The first is you're going to sell more.

You're going to sell more because people are in front of you or your brand is in front of them, I should say. You're going to generate more revenue in the long-term from that.

2. Your brand will be remembered better.

You will also, and perhaps more importantly, you will be remembered better. If somebody is seeing your ads, emails, text messages, or whatever for months and years to come, they're much more likely to buy. I can't tell you how many times we ended up getting somebody. They come in, and the first time they ever bought anything, a book or maybe a video course or whatever. Then, all of a sudden, they're our best customers. They've been on the list for six years.

They're our best customers because it just took a long time to warm up to us enough or to be ready to buy something. But once they do, they're committed because they're getting results. They know our process, and they know us without working directly with us. It ends up working out that much better for them. Marketing automation makes that possible.

Our marketing and marketing automation agencies work to set it and forget it.

It's a big question. We get asked all the time, and the answer is not. Marketing automation will make you money long-term, but there are always rules and things that break.

I mean, marketing automation is very much you're looking at Zapier. I just got one yesterday. My Instagram Zap broke between Instagram and Google Drive. I have no idea why. I haven't investigated. But it shows that even though something has been working for years, sometimes it breaks. Sometimes, there's a coding issue. Sometimes, a lot of these integrations have three parties.

They have your ad account. You have two sides. Let's say Instagram and Google Drive, and then you have Zapier in the middle. You have three coding teams who are all trying to work together technically. They're building the frameworks for everything to coincide. Sometimes, it doesn't work out all that well. Sometimes, something will break for a few days, and then it will magically get re-enabled. There are just some things to look at there. Here are some things to take note of.

You are always going to think of ways to do things better. You're going to say, "Oh man, I should've sent lead ads to Slack rather than to a spreadsheet." As I'm talking about it, I think that because we go into a spreadsheet for our clients. Like, "Well, why don't we set them up with a Slack account?" There are always ways to do things better. You have to keep your mind open to it.

As I said earlier in the week, if you're researching and thinking, some of my best, most transparent marketing automation "gotchas" happen when I'm mowing the lawn. I don't know why. I'm just driving around, riding on a lawnmower, but then I'm like, "Oh, damn, I shouldn't do this. Or I should do that."

Some of my most significant kind of aha moments come from when I'm driving, which my wife pointed out. In the middle of this pandemic, she's like, "Yeah, we don't drive anywhere." She's like, "So you don't have any processing time." And it's right. She's absolutely 100% right, as always. And I don't. That's always what I did when I drove. I'd process things that happened during the week because we don't go anywhere, as you can tell by being in this office. However, we will start shooting some on-location live streams, which I'm excited about, at a co-working place in town.

Marketing Automation Tips

You want to email, SMS, significant, big marketing automation components—any alert, triggers, or anything important to your business is also essential. Suppose you need your sales rep to know immediately when something comes in the door. In that case, you can set up a marketing automation trigger, put it in Slack, send it to a text message, put it in a spreadsheet, whatever the motivation, or some other bell or whistle. There are all kinds of exciting things to do. You can download an app called If This, Then That: I-F-T-T-T, IFTTT.com. If This, Then That, it's on iPad, probably Android too. But it's kind of like Zapier, only it's mobile, and you can trigger all sorts of cool things. When a sale comes in, it can ding. You can change the lights in your room, and all kinds of fun stuff there.

Advantages of Marketing Automation

Now, one of the most significant advantages of marketing automation is it creates a customized personal; it just customizes your marketing message for your end-user. You can do so much to customize the way they're marketed. If you have a survey and there are four answers on a survey, and depending on how they pick one of those answers, you enter them into an email sequence. That's one way to do it. You can send them down different paths based on a link they click in an email or a page they visit.

They go to a particular page, like a Facebook traffic page or how to make a garden table out of two by fours pages, then you can send them three or four two-by-four emails. You can think about all kinds of really cool stuff if you just sit back and think, "What do they want from me? What can I give them to help them grow or help them transform their lives or help them do something better?" That's all marketing automation is.

For Questions and Guide

With that, if there's anything we can do to help, we're happy to. Go to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little form, and book a time on our calendar. We will dig in and figure out where in your business, what in your business can be automated, where we can find traffic, and what kind of automated processes and sales systems we can set up so that everything scales well and fast and as mechanical as possible inside the framework that you're already working in. That ends marketing automation week.

The post How to Choose the Right Marketing Automation Agency for Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

Video Transcript:

Jason Drohn:
Hey, what's up? This is Jason Drohn. Welcome to Sales System Experts, Episode 11, with Aaron Parkinson, the man, the myth, the legend. How are you doing, Aaron?

Aaron Parkinson:
I'm doing good. I want to point something out this morning for those people who think that consistency is easy. So my wife wants me to take a weekend off, which is a very rare thing. And she's like, "You're going to take Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off." And I'm like, "I will after I do my Sales Systems Expert podcast." Because I don't want to break the trend. I don't want to be not having the consistency of the 11th week. So, this is my last work thing for today before I take a weekend off. But the point is I did it because I'm committed to it, and that's the end of it, right? So it's not...

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
...to be consistent, but it's a thing that separates good from great, right?

Jason Drohn:
It is.

Aaron Parkinson:
If you're going to do the thing, you do the thing, right?

Jason Drohn:
Yep.

Aaron Parkinson:
That's it. And then you figure out how to make everything else work around it.

Jason Drohn:
Right. You show up and you-

Aaron Parkinson:
90% of it is just showing up.

Jason Drohn:
90% of it is just showing up.

Aaron Parkinson:
I used to have a gym, a CrossFit gym, which I don't know if you've ever done CrossFit before, but it's very hard.

Jason Drohn:
My wife is very, very into Crossfit. I didn't know you had a gym.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I've been doing CrossFit for six years.

Jason Drohn:
Really?

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I had a gym for two.

Jason Drohn:
In Cayman?

Aaron Parkinson:
No, in Canada.

Jason Drohn:
Oh, okay.

Aaron Parkinson:
And our CFO of Seven Mile owns the CrossFit gym in Cayman that I go to. And his wife has been to the games five times. She's like a leader of the elite.

Jason Drohn:
Really?

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, so that's who we're going to the... On vacation with this weekend is Carl and Wanda. If you look up Wanda Brenton.

Aaron Parkinson:
She's been in the Top 10 for Over 40. I think it's, she did it in her 30s and her 40s. She's in her 40s now. And she's qualified for the world championships five times.

Jason Drohn:
Holy shit, yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, and they as a team have been to the games. As a team, they've won the Latin America qualifier about six or seven years ago. And they went as a team. And some of the biggest celebrities come here before the games to prepare, so.

Jason Drohn:
Wow.

Aaron Parkinson:
We work out a lot of times with people like Sam Briggs and high-level CF athletes, which means I'm the weakest person.

Jason Drohn:
They're fucking ridiculous.

Aaron Parkinson:
I'm just trying to keep up. Wanda and I, they call us the A-team. Because we like to go out and have fun and cause a ruckus.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
And when I try to work out beside her, it's like working out with my eight-year-old. It's very emasculating, I just try to hold on and stay alive.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah, the whole mass exodus of CrossFit affiliates has been interesting. And now the takeover by a 10 year CrossFit veteran, it'll be interesting to see what happens with the brand.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. It was interesting with their brand here is they decided to separate and all because of Glassman's statements. If anything, Carl came out and said, "Look, I judge a person by their actions, not by the media." And he broke down all of his actions, supporting minorities, and stuff over the last 10 years. Things that you and I will never do-

Jason Drohn:
Right, yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
... that he has done, but he understood it was stupid to make the comments, bad timing, bad judgment, et cetera, et cetera. So they kind of, they were staying the course, but then another rash of stuff just came out about Glassman, essentially, like a sexual predator. And he was like, "Okay, that's it. I'm done." And it's disappointing because the culture of CrossFit is amazing. The impact and the results on people are amazing. And Glassman is a genius, but Glassman is an asshole. He's said stupid things for a decade, where he's just been so full of himself that he has no filters-

Jason Drohn:
Right, yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
... and eventually, it was going to catch up to him. And now it has and now they're going to have to rebuild that brand. Because your CEO of a billion-dollar brand, can't be an unhinged lunatic.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
They're going to have to rebuild off of his indiscretions.

Jason Drohn:
Well, and even that it went from CrossFit Games to CrossFit Health. And then, he was championing a different thing. And now then this happened. So it was like the death of a thousand cuts, kind of.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I feel like they've got away from their core values and their core business model. And the core values and business model was very much based off of law enforcement, military, pushing the limits, challenging science, redefining what fitness was. Opening people's eyes to what they could accomplish. And then it kind of became more business-related than core culture related, more about the money and the exposure, then the actual core values. And I think what you'll see is they'll strip back down to the core values and refocus on what made them, what they were. And either they'll survive or they won't. I mean, that the reality is the programming is amazing. It's the stuff above that, that's been the problem.

Jason Drohn:
Right, right, right.

Aaron Parkinson:
Which is always directly correlated to the CEO. That's the person that's supposed to be guiding the ship. And he has not done a good job.

Jason Drohn:
Right. Well, that went off on a tangent. But fun, though

Aaron Parkinson:
But, that's what we're here for, this is our show. We can talk about whatever we want.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
I mean, you can take that and implement that into your business. I mean, the reality is, is that as our staff grows, the team grows. And we were talking about this right before the call. You have to become a different person as your business grows and people who are watching this have businesses. And when you're starting your business out, you have to be very much like fire and brimstone and almost borderline psychotic to get traction and get momentum. Anybody who thinks you could just sit down and you fire up a business and it's good to go is delusional. Or just one of the one in a million lucky people. It just doesn't... You and I sit in this chair, 12 hours a day and grind and brick by brick, by brick, that's how businesses are built.

But as the business grows and you increase your team, and you increase your revenue, and you increase your reach, right? Your role, if you decide to be the CEO, evolves with the role. And your role evolves from being the warrior to being the general. And it's not the same person. You have to evolve as a personality because as you grow, it becomes a lot more about who you attract into your team? What are the core values of the company? How do you support them in their ambitions and their career goals? How do you paint that picture to join your movement? How do you keep them motivated and make them feel good about the community that they're a part of? And if you're still the warrior that does not facilitate the feeling of...

Jason Drohn:
Inclusiveness.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, inclusiveness, right? And there are anomalies, there are examples, like Steve Jobs was very much like, "It's my way or the highway." So there are examples of people being like that and still being successful. But for the most part, it doesn't work that way. The CEO is almost like the chief bum patter.

Jason Drohn:
Right, right.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right? I'm reading this book right now. I don't know if you've read it. It's Robert Iger.

Jason Drohn:
Oh, it's great.

Aaron Parkinson:
...time. He was the CEO of Disney, right?

Jason Drohn:
Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
The CEO's job is not to be moving, and shaking, and creating, and causing a ruckus, and doing all of these things. It's about smoothly guiding the business in a very conservative growth trajectory, and keeping it in the guardrails, right? And Glassman is the perfect example of somebody who is not good at keeping things in the guardrails.

Jason Drohn:
Right. Right, right. Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
And he probably should have been removed. When I had my gym, and this is just my opinion. Everybody has different opinions. I mean, Carl has different opinions than I do. And that's okay. We're all allowed to have different opinions. My gym, five years ago, I saw him more caring about more affiliates, more money, more revenue than caring about the independent affiliates and their businesses. It was almost getting like a funnel, where you had affiliates getting started next to each other and five in one town. And it got away from protecting the results of the affiliate and more how much money can we make, right?

And so I thought five years ago, he was no longer the right fit. He had grown up to the point where he had reached the level of his evolution and he was not evolving anymore. And it was the time to bring somebody in that was more polished, and experienced, and capable of that level of business. And had they done that, I think you would have seen the same trajectory. I think if they just stuck with affiliates, exclusiveness, the games, not changing everything, you would just see this... They had Reebok on board. They needed to just in that simply controlled growth trajectory. And then it just kept getting like crazier and crazier, going all over the place.

Jason Drohn:
Right. Well, that's, in that book that you're reading, Bob Iger there, he was the perfect and probably the only person who would have been able to pull off the mergers that he did inside Disney. Because he did just, he just guided people. I mean, including Steve Jobs, including... And at the end of that book, he says, "If Steve Jobs was still around, I think that Apple and Disney would already be merged. They would already be the same company."

Aaron Parkinson:
Interesting.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. You haven't gotten that far, probably.

Aaron Parkinson:
No.

Jason Drohn:
But it was a big takeaway for me. There's, the antithesis of that is somebody like an Elon Musk or a Steve Jobs, who is a very dictatorship. You will do this, you will do it my way or the highway. And I think in the presence of that kind of a CEO, the "Why" of the organization is bigger than the leader. So you have people marching to the same drummer and then you have just an aggressive leader who is challenging them at all times to fulfill on the "Why". Does that make sense?

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, it does. And I think that Elon Musk is one of the first people that comes up for me when I think of somebody like Steve Jobs, right?

Jason Drohn:
Yep.

Aaron Parkinson:
I think that it's tough to say, you look at somebody like Elon Musk and he's so brilliant, and he's so interesting to listen to, and he's so... I mean, he's essentially the real Tony Stark.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
He is that guy, right? And he's very charismatic and weird, and interesting, and kind of crazy, and all these things. And it's awesome but when you're dealing with managing a company like Tesla, for example, it just needs to be organized, streamlined growth with him giving input. Him being the CEO may not be the wisest decision to guide that business. But we've also seen the reverse when Steve Jobs got pulled out of Apple, the thing tanked.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah, totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
It's hard to know if they're the driving force if they're the thing or they're the thing that's holding it down. But if you wanted to look at it statistically across 1,000 businesses, it's usually not those types of personalities are creating the longterm success, right?

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. It's somebody like a Bob Iger.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I know. It's more a Bob Iger, right? And I love Elon Musk and I love Steve Jobs, but I feel like there are anomalies in the CEO role. It's kind of like the referee, in a mixed martial arts fight. You know the referees are a good referee when you're never sick of their name.

Jason Drohn:
Right. Yes.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right? When you're talking about the CEO all the time, that might not be the best person to have running the company.

Jason Drohn:
Well, and it's funny because there are times where all you see is Elon Musk in the headlines. I'll be reading the news in the morning and it's like, Elon Musk, Elon Musk. It's like the whole page, nothing. He even comes up with his little category inside of Apple News, and it's like, "Oh."

Aaron Parkinson:
Absolutely. And he goes on Joe Rogan and smokes a joint as any other normal person could, and the stock drops 7%. These are the kinds of things. Bob Iger would not be going on Joe Rogan and smoking a joint.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right? And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, I think it's awesome. It's authentic. It's real. It's cool. It's why I like him as a human being. I just don't know if it's the right fit for-

Jason Drohn:
Tesla.

Aaron Parkinson:
... that.

Jason Drohn:
And SpaceX. Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
And this isn't new information. People are constantly calling for his head and trying-

Aaron Parkinson:
... to remove him-

Jason Drohn:
Yeah, totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
... from the... And again, I don't know if it would be beneficial or if it would be a drawback. But it's just, it's abnormal. Let's put it that way. And so this has no bearing on what we were supposed to be talking about today, but-

Jason Drohn:
No, we used supposed to talk about landing pages and sales copy. And, but I like this, this is good. We'll just go on and we can save that one for next week.

Aaron Parkinson:
I mean, I think at this point, we've already gone halfway down the tunnel. I think that we just keep going. And you and I talked about this before the call when you're starting your business, you have to wear all the hats, right? Traditional businesses have executives, and then they've got middle management, and then they've got the executor's, right? And when you start, you have all of them, right? And you're just all over the map. And it's probably the most profitable the company's ever going to be because you don't hire anybody. But it gets you to the point where, like I know this is the metric that I've figured out in my head. And maybe, I don't know, I'm going to ask you the same thing. As an agency, I know we can do $80,000 a month with just me.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
That's the number.

Jason Drohn:
Actually. So the number that I've always run up against is 70, with just me. And then at that point, you're like, "Fuck," but, it's that you're right there.

Aaron Parkinson:
You're 15 hours a day, your adrenaline's dumping the moment you wake up right until the end of the day, you're just like... The to-do list, it's this long. And you're just like..., and there are no days off. You make good money, but it's at the expense of everything else, right? And then from there, you've got to hire... My first hire was... It was Hailey, our operations manager.

Jason Drohn:
She was your first hire, I didn't know that.

Aaron Parkinson:
She was our first hire, yeah. Hailey was our nanny for seven years.

Jason Drohn:
Oh, okay. Okay. All right. So yeah, that's interesting.

Aaron Parkinson:
And then she went on to go to school and... companies, and then she came back around.

Jason Drohn:
And she's a Ninja. She's ridiculous.

Aaron Parkinson:
She's super good. And that was like, "Okay, I need to get all of the admin off my plate." Any schedule, any invoicing, any following-up. You need to start helping me build some structure, I don't have signatures in my emails. I don't have anything. And then from there, it started stacking up with media buyers, and strategists, and copywriters, and all these other layers of stuff. And I didn't start making any more money until the agency got to about a quarter-million a month. It was just reinvesting into the business until it got to the place where it kind of caught up with itself. So there's almost this space that needs to be... where you don't make anything more.

Jason Drohn:
Right. Well, because especially in what we do. I mean, it so resources intensive. I mean, it's human capital. It's, everything is human.

Aaron Parkinson:
That's right.

Jason Drohn:
I mean, you can automate some stuff, but, and not only that it's, everything is a specialist, so. And they don't teach it in school. It's not like you can go hire a car salesman. Or it's not like you can just put in a help-wanted ad somewhere and just say, "Hey, I'm looking for a dishwasher." Do you know what I mean?

Aaron Parkinson:
And I had two family members this year say, "Hey, I see you're hiring. Do you think I could come and work for you?" I'm like, "Sure. You need four years' experience".

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
You can't just rock in here and know how to do digital marketing. This is a ton of trial and error and experience.

Jason Drohn:
Even then, it's not even like you can go to school and pop out with this kind of experience because they're five years behind.

Aaron Parkinson:
Minimum. And they're usually teaching high level, more business brand, business structure, branding theory. All of the-

Jason Drohn:
Theory.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah.

Jason Drohn:
Stupid...

Aaron Parkinson:
I had this conversation with somebody yesterday where they're like, "Well, my partner worked for one of the big five agencies and they put up a Facebook page and them kind of did a couple of things and it didn't work." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's because they don't know how to do direct response marketing." They're taught the case studies of the big branding, Fortune 500 stuff, which is super important. But it's what you do after you have proof of concept that something jumps out, right? Get proof of the concept that something can sell first, then start to build the brand and the assets around it so that you have something to exit in five to 10 years.

Jason Drohn:
Right. That's, like this book, Billion Dollar Brand Club is entirely about Warby Parker and all the e-com disrupt, Purple mattresses. The e-com companies that started as direct response. And then, I mean, 40% of the revenue is ads. 40, I mean they're just, every dollar they're making in revenue, they're dumping back into... From a front-end direct response sales model. And then they're growing their brand because of it. And then they're achieving billion-dollar exits.

Aaron Parkinson:
They're growing their brand. They're making so many sales because their ads are in so many places versus building the brand and then hoping people resonate with the brand and then buy some stuff, right?

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
And if you talk to anybody in the venture capitalist game right now, if they give you money, they want 60% minimum earmark for Facebook and Instagram ads.

Jason Drohn:
Right. Yep. Yep.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right? That's insane where we're at right now, right?

Jason Drohn:
Totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
So, who understand direct response marketing have potentially the most valuable skill on-

Aaron Parkinson:
... presently.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Because no matter what happens, it doesn't matter. Even, I mean, the close second would-be programmers, I would say. I mean like a programmer, somebody who can build apps, but even then you still have to sell it. It's still a direct response, no matter how you cut it up.

Aaron Parkinson:
At the end of the day, something's always got to sell.

Jason Drohn:
Yep.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right? And, maybe that's what we'll go into next week is how do we figure out if it's going to sell? How do you craft something so that it sells? What are the fundamentals in a direct response world to make it sell? But, I mean, even developers now are becoming commoditized, right? I mean-

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
... they're being outsourced to better talent and cheaper places. Your India's, your Thailand's, all these other places where they'll do it for 12 bucks an hour, probably better than the guy charging you a hundred.

Jason Drohn:
Right, totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
But,

Jason Drohn:
I-

Aaron Parkinson:
To ahead.

Jason Drohn:
One of my clients told me yesterday that she has a one-year-old and they are teaching one-year-olds how to... Like beginner coding now. It's in California, I think. No, in Canada, up in Canada.

Aaron Parkinson:
That's amazing.

Jason Drohn:
That's a part of the curriculum. Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
That's amazing. And one of our clients right now teaches blockchain and cybersecurity. They're an accredited university. And cybersecurity right now is... There's estimated to be a hundred million job openings by 2024.

Jason Drohn:
Wow.

Aaron Parkinson:
And that's like, "What?"

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
And blockchain right now has something like 20 million unfilled jobs. And the average salary is like $160,000 to start.

Jason Drohn:
Wow.

Aaron Parkinson:
And it just shows that developers and programmers are becoming commoditized, but these niche parts of development are vastly underserved. And there's so much demand that the salaries are through the roof. Right? And so there's so much opportunity. I was saying to Liz yesterday, in then sort of the next three to four years when I retire, I'd like to start a digital marketing school in Cayman for locals to be able to learn the skill. I don't... Not for money, just for... And give back because what's one of those things you can do on a small island that doesn't have a lot of resources or industry? Well, go cloud-based, go digital.

Jason Drohn:
Oh, yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right? Because that's where everything's still has been going for 15 years and it's only speeding up.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
So I think that would be awesome to just teach.

Jason Drohn:
That would be fun.

Aaron Parkinson:
It would be super fun.

Jason Drohn:
We'll come to visit.

Aaron Parkinson:
Perfect.

Jason Drohn:
Maybe even buy a house there.

Aaron Parkinson:
You'll be the professor. You'll be the other professor.

Jason Drohn:
I like it. That works for me.

Aaron Parkinson:
Media Professor.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah, that'll work.

Aaron Parkinson:
We'll create our titles. It will be amazing.

Jason Drohn:
Oh, that's funny.

Aaron Parkinson:
All right. And that, four minutes over, so next week offers and what makes people pull out their credit card.

Jason Drohn:
Sounds good. I'll talk to you soon. Have a fun rest of the day and weekend off.

Aaron Parkinson:
My vacation weekend.

Jason Drohn:
See you.

Aaron Parkinson:
Later.

Jason Drohn:
Bye.

The post How Scaling A Business Leads To Better Marketing appeared first on Done For You.

This is the GSDdaily episode that is about the fuck up series or the things that I’ve done wrong. I hope that you don’t make a similar mistake because, at the end of the day, there’s a lot of things that you do wrong. There’s a lot of decisions that go bad. There’s a lot of things that you do when you’re in business, that doesn’t always work out quite the way that you want them to.

As a marketer, as somebody who does marketing for a living, there are at least 20 or 30 failures that we come up against every day. Failures are kind of loaded terminology. It’s not necessarily a failure. It is a split test that goes wrong. Also, it is spending time doing something when your document doesn’t save, and you wasted 45 minutes. It is all of these little things throughout the day that adds up to a shit show. That adds up to something that doesn’t work quite the way that you wanted to. And the reality is that every day there are tons and tons of failures.

Motto: Failing Fast

When you are failing fast, you’re able to find out what works more quickly, and you’re able to do more of that thing, that thing that is generating revenue, that thing that is generating leads, that thing that is getting clicks for super cheap. You’re able to do more of that quickly when you fail fast. Every campaign that we release there is… I mean, there’s an optimization stage, and that optimization stage is failing fast.

Why a marketer always test everything?

If you throw up five versions of an ad, how many of them are going to failing fast for you to find the one that works? That is why we test ads. That is why we test videos. We test headlines. I mean, so much of the previous GSD series and the funnels and the split testing, and I’ve shown you guys so many different ways of testing different things. But it’s understanding that you will fail in something. Not everything throughout the day is going to go right. There’s always going to be failures.

The problem or the trick is realizing that there are going to be failures. Then also protecting the downside. Understanding that every test when approached scientifically has control and it has variables. You have control in your control is the best that you know of right now. It’s the best thing, the best way forward that you know of. It’s the strategy that is working or you’ve seen working, or you’ve heard of working, that’s your control.

Now, that is your control until you test a new variation that works better. In so much of what we do, we’re talking about products and offers and all this stuff, and we have sales funnel flows and everything else that we do, and those are always our controls. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a variation, a thing that will improve effectiveness if you test it out.

The trick is to just test it with a very minute, a certain percentage of traffic or something like that. But you will always fail. There will always be things in a campaign, in a sales funnel that are broken and you can’t. When you see a failure, you don’t throw out the whole campaign. This kind of gets into what we were talking about yesterday.

What success means in promoting your offers and products?

Yesterday we were talking about offers and not giving offers and products. Enough room to grow, where you’re throwing it out there, maybe sending an email to your list and saying, “And there it is. It’s the best thing in the world.” And then tomorrow you’re moving on to something different. That isn’t what success is.

Success is promoting something and again, and again. We talked about Brendon Burchard and how he gives himself a year runway to actually… Or he used to, at least, a year runway to build and promote a product. Now on that runway, there are lots and lots and lots of failed tests.

Brendon Burchard failed a million times in generating his first million dollars. Do you know what I mean? Their first million dollars with a product. Everybody feels a lot, that is a part of marketing. But you got to fail fast and you have to fail to know that there is a downside and knowing that you have control that you’re trying to improve. That’s how you protect against that downside because you have the control and you’re always testing against it.

Now, there’s this interesting concept that was introduced to me in this book, You Are a Badass. And you’re a badass, but I fucking love this book. Chapter 25 is Remembering to Surrender. In this self-help personal development space where you’re seeking improvement, where you are trying to better yourself, you’re trying to better your surroundings, or you’re trying to better what’s going on in your head so that you can seek a more abundant lifestyle or you can live more abundantly, or you can not have a fixed limited mindset.

There’s thinking to grow rich. “You think it is going to come into existence because you thought it and you made the decisions and took action based on that thought.” True. However, one of the problems and the traps that I fall into, my misguiding or my failures, one of the things that I do is I assume that I have to work harder. I have to put in more hours, I have to do more things to accomplish that idea, that vision, that thing, which is wrong.

Make a Vision for your Business

It’s not always about working harder. You can do more with less, work smarter, not harder, all of that fucking bullshit. I get it all. But the one thing was this chapter where you sit back and you surrender and you say, “You know what? I’m working on it. This is where I want to go, the vision I have and the business I want to build. This is the thing that I want to do for the rest of my life, or at least until we sell the company or whatever.”

Then just surrender and let your vision play out and let the lifestyle play out. There’s always, in the midst of this failing fast, there’s always this idea of surrendering and knowing that it is going to take time for people to click through and test out your ad variations.

You cannot log in a day or two days later and then expect that you’re going to be any closer to the goal if you’re only spending $5 a day in traffic, or you’re only getting a click or two a day. Basically, you need to let these things play out. You need to surrender to the process so that you are failing fast and then you can find the winners.

Focus on being Inflow

So, that is one of the things that I’ve struggled with throughout this entire journey. And I tend to take action probably more quickly than not because even now I still think of this chapter whenever I’m going too hard, or whenever I’m trying to force something, or to the point that now I shared some of my kind of last summer’s journey and a reawakening. Now, I am much more focused on being inflow.

The flow is knowing where I’m going, but also being open to anything that comes into my life, based on kind of the thoughts and the intentions and stuff that I have. And a part of the flow is also surrendering. It’s knowing flow is not about pushing so hard that you are… just needlessly moving forward. You’re being intentional about your actions. You’re being intentional about what’s happening.

Surrender to Reality

Ultimately, you’re surrendering to reality. You’re surrendering to the things that are happening in your life and realizing that it might take a little bit of time to get there. But yet you’re going to focus and you’re going to move toward that direction as quickly as possible by failing fast.

I hope that helps. I see some folks are giving some likes and loves, which is great and appreciated. That was kind of my fuck up, day two. Failing fast and not being aggressive or… You can still be aggressive, but surrendering to the process and realizing that there is a process to everything.

That’s all I got for you today. This isn’t necessarily marketing-related, but like I said yesterday, I want to share some of the stuff that I screwed up and what I’m doing differently. That’s it. I will talk to you tomorrow with some other massive fuck up. It might be a little bit more procedural tomorrow, but we’ll see.

The post Failing Fast, Realize Your Mistakes And Learn From It appeared first on Done For You.

Good copy starts by writing (and or finding) the best sales headlines and building on top of them.  It's the difference between selling a lot of stuff and not.

Most people think of a sales funnel as a collection of pages. In actuality, a sales funnel ALWAYS starts with a headline.   Sales funnels are a whole lot more than just a collection of pages. The copy is on those pages: the headlines, subheadlines, the video, features, benefits, bullets, and everything else. All of it is what drives sales. It isn't just the pages, layout, or how pages are set up or structured. That stuff matters a whole lot less than what you would think.

What matters is how people engage with the page.

How they engage with the page is through the copy that is on the page. Now, we will talk about how to write the best sales headlines. I will walk through the different ways that headlines can be used. Headlines can be used for email subject lines, blog post titles, and sales letter headlines.

Good copy is a good copy and can be used in many different areas.

It's all just a form or a function of this idea of how to write the best sales headlines. That's what we're going to talk about.

For Starters: The Top 25 Best Sales Headlines in the History of Marketing

Sales headlines are the first impression your potential customers have of your offer. They are crucial in grabbing attention and persuading people to read more. A well-crafted headline can distinguish between someone clicking through to your website or ignoring it altogether.

Over the years, there have been countless sales headlines that have stood the time test. These headlines are memorable, persuasive, and effective in driving conversions.

Here are 25 of the best sales headlines in the history of marketing:

1. "The $64,000 Question" (1950s game show)

   
   Opens in a new windowwww.pbs.org

   $64,000 Question game show

2. "Think Small" (Volkswagen Beetle)

   
   Opens in a new windowwww.aaaa.org

   Think Small Volkswagen Beetle

3. "Where's the beef?" (Wendy's)

   
   Opens in a new windowjasonblog.tw

   Where's the beef? Wendy's

4. "They're Gr-r-great!" (Kellogg's Frosted Flakes)

   
   Opens in a new windowwww.amazon.com

   They're Grrreat! Kellogg's Frosted Flakes

5. "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand" (M&M's)

   
   Opens in a new windowwww.reddit.com

   Melts in your mouth, not in your hand M&M's

6. "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is!" (Alka-Seltzer)

   
   Opens in a new windowwww.amazon.com

   Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is! AlkaSeltzer

7. "Diamonds are a girl's best friend" (De Beers)

   
   Opens in a new windowwww.luxuryacademy.co.uk

   Diamonds are a girl's best friend De Beers

8. "Breakfast of champions" (Wheaties)

   
   Opens in a new windowwww.aaaa.org

   Breakfast of champions Wheaties

9. "Just do it" (Nike)

   
   Opens in a new windowwhcconsulting.blogspot.com

   Just do it Nike

10. "Got milk?" (California Milk Processor Board)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.jabamay.com

    Got milk? California Milk Processor Board

11. "Can you hear me now?" (Verizon)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.usatoday.com

    Can you hear me now? Verizon

12. "Where do you want to go today?" (Microsoft)

    
    Opens in a new windowvimeo.com

    Where do you want to go today? Microsoft

13. "Because you're worth it" (L'Oréal)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.lorealparisusa.com

    Because you're worth it L'Oréal

14. "The ultimate driving machine" (BMW)

    
    Opens in a new windowhowbritseesit.wordpress.com

    ultimate driving machine BMW

15. "Think different" (Apple)

    
    Opens in a new windowen.wikipedia.org

    Think different Apple

16. "Have it your way" (Burger King)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.pinterest.com

    Have it your way Burger King

17. "Snap, crackle, and pop" (Rice Krispies)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.amazon.com

    Snap, crackle, and pop Rice Krispies

18. "A diamond is forever" (De Beers)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.forevermark.com

    diamond is forever De Beers

19. "The cola with a bite" (Pepsi)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.wideopencountry.com

    cola with a bite Pepsi

20. "The real thing" (Coca-Cola)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.creativereview.co.uk

    real thing CocaCola

21. "Reach out and touch someone" (AT&T)

    
    Opens in a new windowclickamericana.com

    Reach out and touch someone AT&T

22. "I'm lovin' it" (McDonald's)

    
    Opens in a new windowzh.wikipedia.org

    I'm lovin' it McDonald's

23. "Obey your thirst" (Sprite)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.amazon.com

    Obey your thirst Sprite

24. "Because you can be anything" (L'Oréal)

    
    Opens in a new windowwww.amazon.com

    Because you can be anything L'Oréal

25. "The world is your oyster" (American Express)

    
    Opens in a new windowmedium.com

    world is your oyster American Express

These headlines are all effective because they are:

• Clear and concise: They get to the point quickly and easily understand.
• Benefit-oriented: They focus on the product or service's benefits to the customer.
• Intriguing: They pique the reader's curiosity and make them want to learn more.
• Unique: They stand out from the competition and make a lasting impression.

How To Write Headlines

Now, today, I want to talk a little about how to write the best sales headlines and show some split-tested examples. There are some straightforward ways to get good at copy or writing copy. You have to put the effort and work into it, which sucks, but it is what it is.

If you want to be a master of your craft, you want to sell a lot of shit online; you must do the work.

• figure out some of the buyer's psychology of what people want to buy,
• what makes them buy,
• what are their triggers

How to write headlines is the easiest way to start to pinpoint that. For instance, the best sales headlines are very to the point. They have a compelling message and a compelling offer. Usually, they have a little bit of urgency, and they convey a benefit in them. One headline encapsulates the entire message of a blog post, a sales letter, and the whole thing. But besides, it also serves as the jumping-off point when somebody reads it.

They read the headline, which helps them understand the offer, page, and email. In addition, it also gets them to read the following line. That following line is usually a subheadline or the opening paragraph or whatever. That paragraph gets them to read the following line or section, which brings them to read the next one down the page.

When you're looking at sales letter-like stuff, we use some screen capture tools and stuff. It records a video of somebody watching a sales video, managing a sales page, or scrolling through a sales page. Most people read the headlines, then return and read the subheadlines. Then, they find the sections that they get into. They read those sections down to the buy button.

They're kind of like, they scroll the page, and then they go back up to the top, and they scroll the page, and then ... They're back and forth, back and forth before they decide to buy it. Oddly enough, it's even more prevalent right now in the pandemic; people are sporadically going through sales pages; they're not looking at sales pages formulaically like they have in the past; they were kind of like, up and down, up and down, up and down, "Oh, I'm going to buy." Then they buy, and then the same thing for the upsell, the up and down, up and down.

1. Hint it to some curiosity

It's interesting how our psyche has changed because of the pandemic and the crisis. At the end of the day, you want to hint at some curiosity about how to write the best sales headlines. Your interest wants to propel, to give some urgency. You want to make sure your headline is as believable as possible. If you can use numbers, numbers are great. But they also engage the logical side of the brain away from the emotional side of the brain.

2. Avoid hype

You want to avoid advertising, which is everywhere right now.

3. Use humor

If you can use humor, make sure to use humor. I am not a very humorous copywriter; some people are in. As I'm saying this, I'm thinking of the Harmon brother's video ads. They're very clever, they're funny as shit. That's what makes them so unbelievably viral.

People want to share them despite them being advertisements. If you can tie humor into it, then that always helps.

4. Add Pre headline, subheadline

Like a qualifying statement, a pre-headline can sometimes precede your main headline. Some of the stuff we use is like a headline, turn clicks into customers, then there might be a pre-headline for coaches or consultants or a sub-headline underneath that qualifies them slightly more.

We use pre-, headlines, and subheadlines to nail our target prospect or demographic. That way, they know that they should continue reading, or if we're offering something for sale, like a lead magnet, we usually try to put the price of the thing and how to write headlines so that they can immediately tune out or tune in, depending on what they're interested in.

5. Make it personal

You want to ensure they know they're being communicated to. In your sales copy, use words like you, make it personal to them, and make it actionable, so everything about the headline.

Copywriting

First, I wanted to share some of my copywriting where I learned copywriting. I didn't necessarily go through any extensive course, but the copy is one thing you must know by doing. There's no other way; you can go through periods, listen to audio programs, buy, go through Udemy courses, and learn what good copywriting is, and it might take years or decades to figure it out.

It's quicker to write the copy and test it live with real people, real websites, real traffic, and see what converts and what doesn't.

Way back in the day, I had a website called Marketing Hacks. One of the top blog posts on this website was a post on slogans; it was like the 30 best slogans.

We have thousands of visitors a day looking up slogans, best slogans, unique slogans, and company slogans; like all of these keyword phrases, we're driving traffic directly to this blog post. And I was like, "Oh my God." This was ten years ago. Oh my God, this is such a great opportunity to create a course on slogans." I created a slogans course, like a six- or seven-module system. I think I priced it for $67 or $27 or something like that.

When I started writing copying, I wrote some long-form copy; this was before sales videos were invented. I wrote some long-form sales copy, then began tracking conversions; it wasn't even conversions; it clicked. Four hundred people came to the sales page, and I'm like, well, shit, I didn't sell anything.

Then you tweak the copy again, wait for another two or 300 visitors, and don't sell anything. And then you squeeze the manuscript again, and then you get one sale after three or 400 visitors. Then, you tweak the document again, and you get three deals. Mind you, we are 1200 visitors into this tweaking process, but we're starting to get some sales. So now, with paid traffic, you can do that much quicker.

Testing To Find The Best Sales Headlines

You can get the traffic, the views, the lead, whatever, to test your conversion process quickly. But you have to learn by doing and writing, so you'll learn how to write headlines by trying other headline variations and figuring out what works and what doesn't.

There's one way that I am absolutely in love with for testing headlines quickly. Last week, we talked about visual website optimizer. This way is a whole lot simpler, so there's a plugin that I like called Thrive Headline Optimizer. Let me start here now; this is a blog post, so you can use headlines differently.

If you know how to write headlines, you can test how to write headlines obviously in your sales copy. You can also test your headlines as:

1. blog posts subjects
2. email subject lines

You can see where I am getting most of my opens. If I get a lot of opens with this particular email subject line, it must be a great subject line. If I get a lot of blog post interactions from this separate subject line, then it must be a great subject line.

Most like Buzzfeed and all these like super, super crazy trafficked websites, they'll have as many as 25 or 30 subject tests that they run, and then whichever one wins, wins, and then they just let it go, and then that thing is just feeding traffic crazy forever.

Thrive Headline Optimizer

They test everything, and it's an essential part of their work. This is a piece of software called the Thrive Headline Optimizer. It is part of the Thrive Plugin Pack and is my favorite tool for finding the best sales headlines.  This is a paid tool; you get a leads tool, and it's lovely, but this particular one is not this page.

Thrive Headline Optimizer is the tool we will be playing with. I found this thing a few months ago, and we've been getting some crazy organic traffic. I credit a lot of it to this plugin, not all of it because we're doing live streams; we're doing a lot of new cool stuff. I credit quite a bit of it to this, but not all.

This headline optimizer works in every blog post you write; you can split-test the subject line. Currently, well, today, I mean, you can see that we had 16 views of the split test subject lines. Now, I have already done this test with 25 blog posts; if we go and we're going to look at the rows per page, these are all of our completed tests.

Content with completed tests: I will look at some of these. Here's one example: how to use data analytics to unlock sales online. That was the winning variation; we can start another test from here, but let's look at the results of the last test. Here you see what we got in total ... It doesn't show how many difficulties we have, but we ran six different subject lines for this blog post. And you can see how they ended up charting out.

We had one that sucked, it was terrible. How to use data analytics to unlock sales? It got no engagements, no content views, nothing. Then, the next one was this dark green one, so this was how you use data to improve sales and conversions. That was a total engagement rate of 42%, which was our control.

Well, now, if you look at some of the winners, the winner was how to use data analytics to unlock sales online. And then the one book below used data analytics to improve online sales. This tells you that it's letting you split-test many different subject lines, and then it goes through and tests them all head to head.

It's testing all of them to tell you which one works. And you can see, we can beat the original 99.5 and 99.97, 99.99. We chose This green one as the winner: how to use data analytics to unlock sales online? That one is boring, but it still shows that more people will respond to certain headlines.

I could use that headline in an ad or an email subject line because I already know it will resonate better than many other combinations for that particular keyword phrase. Let's look at a different one, so there was one here. We've got all kinds of traffic. What's that one, three features from Instagram, Instagram live video, we're going to look at this one, this one got a lot of traffic, it always gets a lot of traffic.

Our winning variation right now is three features: get your free traffic from Instagram, which is odd because there's a misspelling. I mean, it should be you, your free traffic. Here, we've tested a lot of different variations; we tested three features: get your free traffic from Instagram so that one has a 100% chance to beat the original.

Then, we have three free features that get you unlimited traffic from Instagram. And that one had 99.37%. You can see that both of these ended up neck and neck. The red one, which is the one with the misspelling, actually won. That is the one that is currently live on the website, but with this tool, all you have to do is look at an older blog post, and I'm going to show you how to set this up.

We will go to all posts, and then I will find one that my team hasn't set up a headline test for. This one is being tested; these are all being tested; here's one: tricks to effective sales pipeline management. This was the last one I did, so we will go through how to write headlines test using this Thrive Headline Optimizer.

Tricks to effective sales pipeline management, there's an important thing here. The keyword phrase we're trying to rank for is sales pipeline management. We want to ensure that that thing is in every keyword phrase we're working with. Here, under our Yoast SEO plugin, sales pipeline management is the keyword phrase we're looking to optimize for.

Setting up the Split Test

We will add a new headline to set up that split test. We're just going to add three variations of this. Sales pipeline management, how to effectively crack sales. Now we're going to set up another variation, top tips to effectively tracking sales pipeline management, and ... Usually, I throw like a winger in; my last interpretation usually is just kind of like a Hail Mary; maybe it'll work, perhaps it won't.

As sales pipeline management work, find out here. Now, we have three different variations of this test. As soon as we hit update, it will throw that in that Thrive Headline Optimizer plugin. Then it's going to start to round robining those subject lines. We're going to check back in a week or two.

Usually, about a hundred views, we're going to check back and see which subject lines won. We will also check which one's suck. If there is a clear winner already, then we will activate that clear winner. We'll lock that in, and then we usually retest.

Usually, we'll do another test and see if we can beat that winner again. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't, but we're always trying to find a new control with our headlines. How to write headlines, whether it's a sales page headline, whether it is a blog post headline or an email subject line, we always try to find that new control, and then we go from there.

For Questions and Guide

Suppose you have any questions at all. If you want to schedule an action plan, call my team. We will walk through sales copy, sales funnels, and email traffic. Just go to doneforyou.com/start. Book a call with us; we'll happily create an action plan for you. If you have any questions for future episodes, go to doneforyou.com/blog.

The post What Are The Best Sales Headlines To Boost Website Conversion appeared first on Done For You.

Welcome to the Ultimate Sales Funnel Guide... We're going to break down the parts of a sales funnel for you so that you can build one for your following product or service...

Did you know we actively engage in parts of a sales funnel every time we buy a product? Even before we believe?

It doesn't matter whether we are in a brick-and-mortar business or browsing an online store; we, as consumers, have already entered their funnel.

These days, every online marketer and business owner talks about online sales funnels. Search Google News or read any sales or marketing blog, and you'll see that sales funnels and sales psychology are making the news.

Why is that?

Because competition has grown to be so intense and digital business best practices are so commonplace, companies NEED to have an automated sales process to acquire new customers. The fact that we're exposed to thousands of advertising messages daily reinforces that.

So, from a business perspective, how do you stand out?

The answer: Developing an effective, automated sales funnel.

Parts Of A Sales Funnel

This sales funnel guide will explain parts of a sales funnel in plain English. Our goal is to help you not only understand their value -- you probably know already that your business can't survive without a funnel -- but the integral components of a sales funnel.

Let's say you were about to hire a Sales Funnel Expert to build your online sales process. (Notice, I didn't say designer!)

A designer or developer is going to start and stop at your website. The truth is a website is required. It's mandatory. But it's the least important part of the entire sales funnel conversation.

The parts of a sales funnel, or purchase funnel as put in Wikipedia, as you'll see, are a complete system that starts with web pages, including email marketing, multi-media content, order forms, call scheduling, and more... All built custom for you and your business!

The parts of a sales funnel should automate your sales and reinforce your existing processes, not make you reinvent how you and your team work.

A Basic Funnel Breakdown

A primary funnel (and this is our approach to building successful sales funnel development) is comprised of three stages:

• Your Offer – What you're selling.
• Your Follow-up – Your communication with your lead once they're in your sales process.
• Your Traffic – The people coming to your website or landing page.

You get sales when you combine all three – traffic, your offer, and a follow-up process!

These three parts of a sales funnel are the minimum you'd expect to see in an effective funnel. Let's break them down so you know exactly what comes with each.

1. Your Offer

You cannot expect to have sales if you have nothing to sell. It should go without saying, but some small business owners don't realize they get no deals because they have no offers. In these cases, their bottom line won't reflect increased web visitors.

For your sales funnel to work, you need to have a clear, well-defined, branded product (or productized service) to sell.

Video Sales Page

At a minimum, you need one of the most elementary parts of a sales funnel: a page where the potential customer can click the "Add To Cart" button. This would be your "sales page". Also, thanks to our short attention spans, this page should have at least one Sales Video. Many more people would rather watch than read.

Typically, for offers under $100, a sales video is about all you need to sell.

Downsell / Upsell Pages

To maximize your average customer value, you'll also want to create downsells and upsells, another way to say complimentary products. These are products of a lower or higher price than the initial offer. They will be shown to customers of the initial offer accordingly.

So, if a sales page visitor doesn't buy, they might be presented with the down-sell through an exit pop. On the other hand, if they believe, they will see an upsell on the next page before they get access to the product.

Live or Automated Webinars

If your offer is more than a few hundred bucks or is complex, you'll want to sell it through a webinar. The webinar must be scripted, recorded, edited, and set up to play throughout the day.

We've had the best luck with starting webinars every 15 minutes in most markets. Sometimes, though, they test better when they're set to start every night at, say, 9:00 PM or deliver immediately after registration. Each niche is a little different.

Product

Now, what could your offer be? It could be anything from a physical product to a digital service. A pair of shoes, coaching, consulting, an eBook, a DVD, a downloadable training course, a monthly service, or yearly access to a cloud app.

If you create it and there are buyers for it - it's your offer!

Lead magnet

Before the offer, it's best practice to show people a free offer (called a "lead magnet"). Most website visitors won't be familiar with your brand. This is why they won't buy right away. But still, you don't want them to leave empty-handed.

So, instead of driving traffic to a sales page, you'd want an opt-in page where people give up their email to download a freebie. You can add them to your mailing list and contact them again.

(We always split-test a few things when running traffic for our funnel clients. Usually, we promote a lead magnet and a webinar side-by-side to see where our leads are the cheapest!)

2. Follow-up

The reason why sales funnels have gained in popularity is that they can work for you on autopilot.

Parts of a sales funnel are the exact replacement for a sales process in a brick-and-mortar business, plus they can be fully or semi-automated. Funnels are a nearly set-and-forget solution to attract, nurture and convert customers.

Automated Email Sequences

Let's assume someone enters your funnel by filling out a form. Right after that, you need to have an automated lead nurturing process in place.

So, when people subscribe to your email list, an automated email sequence is triggered. Whether Monday morning or Sunday at midnight, computerized workflows will take over and do the heavy lifting for your marketing on autopilot.

Follow-Up Sales Funnel Guide Checklist

To create Email Automation, you will need:

1. Email marketing service with automation (and optional website tracking features)
2. Emails (copy, images)
3. Automated email sequences are set up to serve different goals or segments

In the sales funnels we deploy for clients, we usually write and schedule between 20 and 25 emails before we go live!

This way, every marketing automation contingency is accounted for. If someone registers for the webinar OR doesn't register for the webinar OR buys OR doesn't buy... We have already automated a response specifically for actions that could be taken.

Endless Automation

You might be wondering where the follow-up stage ends. Well, you can stop following up when a prospect becomes a customer. But then why not have them become a repeat buyer? Email automation can be an infinite process you can set up once and have it work for your business 24/7.

Most parts of a sales funnel have a pre-defined marketing term already done... 30 or 45 days is standard for our clients. So, when someone gets into their funnel, all of the marketing is handled for at least 30 days.

Then, after 30 days, they either get added to the next funnel (Funnel Stacking) or weekly broadcast emails and newsletters take over.

That way, there's always continuity in your marketing messages. And if your prospects and customers jump down another rabbit hole for your next offer - that's awesome!

Setting up the CRM and marketing automation can be tricky. Still, it is doable and 100% worth the effort, as it will put you closer to finally achieving your goals of generating a monthly passive income.

3. Traffic

Sometimes, when you approach a web developer or choose to work with a "Funnel Page Building Software," you won't have a plan for getting traffic. Sometimes, this is on purpose. Web developers are paid media experts. And 'funnel software' does integrate with Facebook or Google Ads.

As far as we're concerned - this is a little bit like selling someone an electric car but not including an extension cord to plug it into the outlet in your garage. You can't hope to have an automated sales process without people there to buy your stuff.

In reality, you wouldn't expect to sell without having a way of getting the right people to see your offer.

Organic vs. Paid Media/Ads

Unless your website already has enough organic traffic (from Google search results), you need a traffic method to attract people interested in your offer.

That is why we are advocates of traffic as a significant part of a sales funnel, AND it's also why we start every sales funnel conversation with traffic! Then, once the funnel is built, you've already got ads ready to go live to promote your landing pages. And, if you have assets like an email list or a social media following, we account for those in the rollout phase!

Traffic  Checklist

Parts of a Sales Funnel: Putting It All Together

In short, all of the above elements are essential for a sales funnel. They won't all be needed for every horn, but they should get you a good overview of the things you'll need to have in place before launching.

In the past five years, we've built and launched over 400 sales funnels in almost every niche. The absolute most popular types of sales funnels we've deployed are:

• Automated Webinar Sales Funnels: The Call To Action is a sales call or a purchase through an order form for higher ticket offers.
• Video Sales Funnels: Featuring a one-click upsell and downsell sales process to maximize customer value.
• eCommerce Sales Funnels: Also with upsell and downsell functionality, but for physical products :0)
• Survey Sales Funnels: These work well in highly volatile advertising markets and where you need to segment buyers into buckets before marketing automation.

We'd love to learn more about your business and determine which sales funnel will work best for you!

Plus, our team will manage the whole process (even the product or lead magnet creation) and deliver a complete done-for-you sales funnel customized to your needs -- but still proven to convert because of the tested funnel parts (e.g., opt-in page) that we plugin and optimize.

Our experts can work from square one to create an offer, design and build all pages, write high-converting copy, and set up automated email sequences. We create, test, and deliver sales funnels that operate like clockwork 24/7 without you having to do the work.

If you'd like to learn how to create and launch a digital product for your business, complete with an upsell funnel that helps you sell it, check out the Launchpad Accelerator at DWY!  Click here to learn more...

The post Unlock Explosive Growth: A Sales Funnel Guide Revealing Essential Parts of a Sales Funnel! appeared first on Done For You.

Though this is how marketing leads convert into sales, very few managers and business owners get it right. That’s when conversion rate optimization is needed.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a process that enables people to take action upon visiting a website. Businesses can augment their chances of converting visitors into leads and customers by modifying and designing certain elements.

Websites are designed with the purpose of converting visitors into customers. Conversions can happen all over the site – the landing page, homepage, price page, blog, etc. You can optimize all these pages to increase your chances of conversion. Conversion rate optimization is all about optimizing the process and conversions.

The conversion rate is also a metric, a percentage, displaying the number of website and/or app visitors completing an action out of the total number of guests visiting your website.

Hence, improving your conversion rate demands selective and specific ROI-focused strategies targeting different stages of marketing as well as the sales funnel.

The average ROI of CRO tools is 223%.

There is no one optimal conversion rate for business. It varies across channels and industries.

Important marketing channels for effective conversion

In marketing, you have to master the art of moving potential users through the funnel and converting them into customers. To do that, you need to select the appropriate marketing channels and target specific stages of the sales funnel. However, the conversion rate of the channel may differ across the many stages.

Source: blog.hubspot.com

Here’s an example: Say you want more visitors to your website and your conversion goal is to increase views. In this case, you can leverage guest blog posts and add backlinks to your site. Tools like Curately can help with blogging. Likewise, you can also consider pages on social media and paid Google AdWords ads.

However, if you want to convert your visitors into qualified leads, which mean lead generation is your conversion goal, you can use chatbots, demo forms on websites, CTAs in blog posts, etc.

Newbies – How to achieve a good conversion rate

All web elements and stages of the funnel are useful when it comes to CRO. Here’s how different pages play a different role in the process.

Homepage

CRO benefits homepages. Besides creating the first impression on guests, the homepage should be used as an opportunity to retain visitors and further guide them into the website. To do this, you can emphasize links to your offerings, product information, a free signup button, a chatbot, or some feature that can help visitors with the browsing experience.

Landing page

A landing page is crucial because it conveys your business values, gains trust, and converts website visitors into leads. In fact, these are inherently created for visitors to take action. However, most marketers are still struggling to understand the performance and benefits of a landing page.

Source: blog.hubspot.com

According to Unbounce research, the best landing page conversion rate varies across industries. Similarly, the median conversion rate was in the range of 3% to 5.5%.

To improve, convey the value proposition of your business. Reduce page loading time. Leverage scarcity and urgency in the copy of the landing page. Reduce the risks of distraction and friction.  Test all the elements of the landing page.

Wordstream research shows that adding videos on the landing page can increase conversions by up to 86%.

Blog

Blogs are saviors with mammoth conversion opportunities for business websites. Besides publishing thought-provoking blogs and informative content on your niche, you can also use blogging as CRO and convert your readers into leads.

Adding call-to-actions (CTAs) to your blogs is important. It invites readers to click and learn more about your products by giving their email address in exchange for an industry report or offer.

Pricing page

Being transparent about the pricing of your products is the key to win your leads. It is a make-or-break point for visitors. Conversion rate optimization helps pricing pages convert visitors and leads into customers.

If you simply modify the pricing page, add pricing intervals month and year wise, it can make a difference. However, you must also explain the product features responsible for the pricing difference.

How to calculate CRO

To calculate CRO, divide the total number of conversions generated by a website by the number of people visiting the page. With this, marketers can easily find out the conversion rates of blog posts, ad clicks, landing pages, and websites.

Once you’ve gauged your customer demands, you can figure out how to get maximum returns from the existing website traffic.

Here’s a little help with calculation:

#1: Revenue goal / average sales price = total number of new customers

#2: Total number of new customers / lead-to-customer close rate percentage = lead goal

#3: Leads generated / website traffic X 100 =- Percentage conversion rate

Takeaway: It is not necessary to generate more traffic, though you may want to. Changing your approach towards the goal can make a difference. CRO is all about getting more from what you have and making it your route to improvement.

Tips for beginners: How to get started with CRO

1. Set your goal

• Traffic
• Analytics
• Strategy

Assuming you have good traffic move ahead to data collection. However, on this path, there are a few obstacles:

• Bounce rate
• Exit rate
• Time on page
• Time on site
• Pages visited
• Loading speed

These metrics are crucial to diagnosing problems on a website. For instance, if a page has a low conversion rate with a high bounce rate and slow loading time, you know what to do.

2. CRO tests

Running tests is crucial to see the performance of pages. Some pages would be unique to visitors, whereas others may not. Filtering out the non-performing pages would allow you to work on them, optimize them, and deliver the brilliant result.

Choose pages generating huge traffic, as there is always a scope of improvement. All conversions are valuable to the brand. Hence, traffic should not be the only consideration. You have to identify your conversion goals and choose pages to test.

3. Check incoming traffic

If the important pages of a website are not generating traffic as expected, your CRO strategies are not going to have a great impact. You should aim to get enough visitors to the major parts of your website.

Traffic to landing pages come from search results, both organic as well as paid traffic. Thus, you have to put in more efforts into your SEO endeavor and refine paid advertising strategies to get more traffic.

However, not all conversions may take place on the landing page or the first page users’ visit. In fact, visitors may not be reaching the most important pages after landing on the site. In such cases, you have to optimize those pages to increase clicks through rate.

Use advanced analytics software such as Axis to measure ROI

4. Call to action

CTAs are basic to any page that goes online. With CTAs, you are telling your users to buy products, sign up for newsletters, request a quote, and take action to achieve your conversion goal.

A compelling call to action is an art. You have to test it and optimize on all the pages. Instead of being carried away with minute details like font style or color, focus on testing the changes of the CTA. It should have a genuine impact.

The most important part of CTA is words. How compelling you can make them for users to act!

Placing CTAs at the right place on a page can also have a dramatic impact on your conversions.

CTA included in the content, or surrounded by content, is crucial to prim users to take action.

Most importantly, if users cannot see them, it is useless. So, make your CTAs visible.

5. Forms

Almost every conversion involves filling up web forms. Do not hesitate to use forms for CRO. You can choose Statly to create web forms and get brilliant results.

Research clearly shows that multi-step forms can increase the rate of conversions by up to 300%. It can also improve the quality of leads to pages.

This is a crucial fact because it is not just the number of conversions adding value but also the quality that matters. A lower percentage or rate of conversions from potential customers likely to turn into paid customers is more profitable.

6. Page loading time

Countless studies have proven the negative impact of slow pages. Consider this as the topmost priority.

Though some research shows that page speed is the last on the priority list of marketers, it should be either way. You have to put in all your efforts to boost page speed and stand out in the competitive market. The best place to start is on mobile. Boost your conversion rates with high-speed pages.

7. Offer signs of trust

Make your business trustworthy. There are ways to show that users can invest in your business safely. Before adding detailed trust signals, ensure your site design is topnotch.

Compare the site to the competitor brands in the industry. You would know what your visitors are expecting from the site. You may want a sleeker, modern and professional website that gives you the look of a leader.

Along with that, including customer reviews, expert reviews, influencer reviews, testimonials, awards, and statistics on the website. It essentially builds trust as people’s opinions matter.

Conclusion

Take your optimization strategy to the next level. When you think beyond the pages and optimize the sales funnel, it creates a win-win scenario. Highly optimized web pages improve the buying process.

Get real-time, easy-to-understand, and meaningful marketing analytics that help reduce bottlenecks, increase sales, capitalize on potential opportunities. Book a demo for the new Axis today.

The post CRO: The Complete Newbie’s Guide To Conversion Rate Optimization appeared first on Done For You.

If a million people swear by a brand, you’ll swing towards that brand sometimes even without thinking much.

The more popular a company stock is, which means more people have positive expectations, the more likely the price is to increase — and you’ll invest in it anyway.

See what’s happening there?

It’s called social proof — it is powerful but overlooked despite the fact that we all know intuitively how effective it is.

According to studies, nearly 70% of consumers look for online reviews or some sort of validation before they make purchases. Product reviews left by other customers are at least 12 times more trustworthy than product copy or advertisements.

Are you ignoring the power of social proof?

Your ads are probably not suffering from low-quality design, less powerful copy, or bad execution. It just so happens that you are completely ignoring the power of social proof and you are just as likely not using it for your ad campaigns.

If you are trying to make your gorgeous-looking Facebook ad or purposefully-written Google ad stand out all by itself in isolation and you’ll realize that it’s incredibly hard to do.

Now, social proof applies everywhere — from websites to landing pages; from funnels to ads; from general copywriting to ad copy.

Specifically for your paid ads, social proof goes a long way to help you squeeze more from your ad campaigns.

Sprinkle some social proof on the ad though and you’ll be able to make your ads work that much harder and your ad campaigns will turn fruitful.

Types of social proof for advertising

There are various types of social proof you can use for your ads, landing pages, and funnels — depending on your business. Here are some of them:

• Customer testimonials — applies to almost every business out there.
• Certifications
• Logos of previous & existing clients
• Associations with other organizations, such as governing bodies, communities, etc.
• Expert or celebrity endorsements
• Proof that a few others recently purchased items
• Real-time statistics that show how many people are viewing or buying something. These are popular with travel websites, hotel booking, airline websites, etc.

Now that you know what kind of social proof you could use, here’s how to make your ads work harder, social proof in tow:

Adapt and use social proof, depending on ad formats

How you use social proof will depend on the ad type and the platform you are creating. Google ads restrict the number of characters you can use within your ad. Using customer testimonials might not work for the actual Google ads.

You could have used Google’s review extensions (but Google is sunsetting the feature soon) and that would make for a great addition as social proof.

Let’s assume that you are going to use Google ads. You can still add social proof to your Google Ad in the following ways:

• Use sitelink extensions pointing to a dedicated page on your website full of customer testimonials
• Use the callout extensions to add a small phrase from an actual customer testimonial.

Just be sure not to overdo the promises or the claims you make. You know? Things like “The Absolute Best CRM in the world” or “Lose 140 kilos in 10 Days” — Google won’t allow that.

As for using banner ads, Facebook ads, etc., using social proof is a lot easier with these platforms.

Use customer testimonials as ad copy

Use customer testimonials in your ads. Then, test this ad performance against your regular ads.

For instance, if you were creating a Facebook ad, you could create an ad with just the face of the customer and what they think about your business.

Image Credits: Adespresso

By doing this, you are using social proof in your ad and you’ll also end up using a picture of a real person (which helps boost click-through rate).

You can use customer testimonials as ad copy in a few ads and then test these ads against the regular ads that you run. You can also experiment with short video testimonials against simple image ads.

Promote customer stories

Image credits: Adroll

Insight #1: We humans love stories. If you can weave in your products or services within the story, you have a double-barrel shotgun.

Insight #2: Promoting your stories will ensure that the retention, engagement, and click-through rates are higher, especially for ads.

Insight #3: Using visual medium to narrate stories takes your game up several notches higher.

With the three insights above, you can clearly see why using customer stories as “ads” (as against regular ads that make an offer) can be a lot more engaging. You are not only getting eyeballs, engagement, and clicks on your ads but you’ll also be able to make your ads “sticky”.

Using stories to get results for your business is now all the more easy with Youtube’s Trueview ads, Instagram stories, and Facebook stories already available for you to tap into.

Need help with your ad campaigns, sales funnels, and landing pages? Do you want to ensure a better ROI for your ad campaigns? Fill out this form now and we’ll get back to you.

The post How And Why Adding Social Proof To Ad Campaigns Boosts Your ROI appeared first on Done For You.

Prospects, leads and clients are the driving force of a sales organization. They are the soul of a typical sales team. Getting a lead is the first essential step of a long journey to convert a prospect into a client. For most businesses, it is a daunting task to add more and more clients to the database. Hence, it is important for organizations to have an excellent sales team to follow up on leads.

Image Credit: Grapevinegroup.co.za

Sales representatives take the lead and work on conversions. However, it all depends on their approach and having enough control over the methods. As a team, to determine prospects, it is crucial to work synergistically and be aware of the facts and quick points of contact. However, nearly 57% of B2B prospects and customers feel that their sales teams are not prepared for the very first meeting, according to IDG source.

Therefore, if you are waiting for a perfect sales plan, there is not any one single plan to follow. As Roman Lozinski said, “There is no perfect sales pan. There are only actions that bring you results.”

The B2B sales segment has an added layer of complexity in the form of the lead follow-up process. Here, you are not selling to a person; it is an organization or business with whom you are dealing. The same organization has its own processes, hierarchies and approval techniques.

Following such a complicated process is time-consuming and prone to errors. Those errors can further lead to additional complexities, such as missed opportunities, failing to meet sales quotas and anxious prospects.

How can DoneForYou help?

DoneForYou delivers incredible software and tools to make your life easier. To avoid making B2B blunders, use an autoresponder like Scriptly, where it is possible to create proven email autoresponder sequences within a few seconds. Simply create an account, choose the type of autoresponder sequence you want to create, fill in a questionnaire about the promotion and…start.

It is the most effective way to communicate with your customers and prospects, though it may take some time to compose emails commanding attention.

Scriptly can solve this problem easily by combining a compelling subject line, an engaging email body, and a persuasive call-to-action to get you a click. It generates a sequence of emails to copy and paste in the autoresponder for your promotion.

Now, getting back to the major mistakes that could ruin your B2B lead follow-up, let us get started:

Mistake 1: Not following up quickly and timely

We are living in an age of instant coffee, cabs, and services. The thumb rule is “instant follow-up.” That means within 5 minutes of receiving an email, you must respond.

These quick follow-up skills are rewarding, for sure.

People who get in touch with the lead first make more than half of all sales.

However, this 5 minutes timeframe may or may not be realistic in all cases. For instance, if you are dealing with offshore clients in different time zones, how are you supposed to respond in the middle of the night? On the other hand, if you are in the middle of a meeting or a call, how can you maintain the 5 minutes rule?

Though numbers do not lie, you have to find a backup.

Scriptly is the backup we want to introduce. Scriptly or similar marketing automation software sends personalized and automated emails to your leads as soon as they reach  your inbox. The emails should include information on the next course of action (CTA). The CTA could be for them to either contact with you or purchase the product.

Mistake 2: Communication lacking personalization

The more personalized your communication, the more likely it is to get a response.

Studies from 2013 show that personalized emails have more chances of getting clicks. Ask yourself how to send follow-up emails and personalize them. Customizing emails make people feel that you value them and their opinions instead of just sending another automated email checking off your today to-do list.

Emails are the best and most convincing way to follow-up. Having said that, you can personalize emails by merging tags within the mail merges or follow-up emails. You can also use merge tag variables to change a small part of the email for respective prospects, leads and customers.

A simple tactic is to use the prospect’s first name to create a friendly follow-up email and optimize the email subject. People generally respond to their name actively as it stimulates a certain part of the brain uniquely.

Mistake 3: Purposeless calls

Before calling a prospect or drafting an email, you should be very clear about why you are doing so.

A salesperson cannot just call a prospect or a lead to check in. So, what exactly is the purpose of the call? When you are following up with a lead, you have to cite a reason for the call which, after all, is taking up some time from his/her busy schedule.

So, how would you fix this?

It is simple! You can convey the reason for your call and open your pitch saying, “The reason I called you today is…”

To be more specific and deliver substance, you must take detailed notes. You can also use a CRM to store your notes so that your sales and marketing team can refer back when necessary.

Make sure you cite references of previous conversions and mention pertinent details to help the prospect remember the last call.

Mistake 4: Failing to focus on the business

If you are handling a smaller business, you can achieve your goal by locating one person who supports the deal. However, if you are dealing with a large organization, you have to build a good rapport with multiple people at different levels of thehierarchy. You must also understand how decisions are made at different levels. However, trying to create a cordial personal business relationship with every individual involved in a large team within a short span of time is next to impossible.

Here, you must shift your focus on the overall requirement of the company. You have to convince that one person how the deal is going to be profitable not just for the work environment, but also for the team players.

When you are pitching to bigger businesses, you must focus on the after-sale services of your company. There are hundreds of companies selling similar products in the market, but if your team can help a customer navigate through tricky marketing tactics, it would take you a long way in selling products and delivering services.

Mistake 5: Not following up enough

Statistics reveal that if you call one prospect three times, there is an 81% chance of contacting them. Calling the same prospect six times increases chances up to 93%. Therefore, you have to aim to call your prospects and leads enough times to get in touch with them without annoying them.

To do this, you need a scheduling tool such as Timeslots. It helps you create a schedule and follow it.

Now, schedules differ based on the location of ads, types of products you are selling and many more factors. To create a proper schedule that works, revise your sales data and find out what is already working for your business and team members. Data shows how many touches can get you a response from your prospect, what works best for communication and much more.

Based on your data, create a schedule to follow up on your leads and be realistic in your approach. Invest in marketing automation software, which you can use to ensure that you are mailing your prospects regularly.

Mistake 6: You are not using a preferred channel of communication

Your prospects and leads may have a preferred channel of communication, which you have not identified. Mere emails and phone calls are the safest sales efforts. However, time is changing and more practical and accessible ways of communication are here. For instance, discussion boards, social media, blogs and forums are some of the most promising channels.

Of course, you cannot be on every channel, so you have to learn to pick the ones most suited to your needs. You have to take optimum advantage of those leads that your prospects recommend. It could be a social site or even a method of text messaging.

Mistake 7: Not saying goodbye to your not-so-beneficial prospects

Some prospects and leads may not work at a certain point in time. If you have followed up a number of times but the result was not promising, it is time to say goodbye and move on.

You may feel that giving up is a bad idea, but it is not. Only when you give up wrong choices can you make space for the right ones. Therefore, if you have not heard from a prospect for a long time, despite several attempts, you should say goodbye. You can type a formal email citing the closure of your request and dropping a hint that they can contact you whenever needed.

Final word

Improving the lead follow-up process is complicated. However, if you are equipped with the right B2B tools and software, you can make it big. Start investing in one tool at a time, evaluating your performance, and creating your own schedule. In the long run, the chances of success with your leads shall increase exponentially.

The post 7 Mistakes That Can Ruin Your B2B Lead Follow-Up appeared first on Done For You.

Even some of the most reasoned experts miss out on specific aspects of conversion optimization; it almost feels like it’s an overkill to worry about nitty-gritty of every single element of your campaigns. These elements include ads, funnels, landing pages, headlines, copy, images, videos, email subject lines, and CTA buttons.

Often, conversion optimization is misunderstood.

Businesses and marketers who are on the good side of marketing best practices often think that conversion optimization is just A/B testing (or split testing) or it’s about changing button colors on a website.

Conversion optimization is more than that, of course. It goes a lot deeper and demands a lot more attention, blood, sweat and tears.

While you shouldn’t be allocating your precious business resources big time into conversion optimization without getting other basics sorted out such as landing pages and funnels, you should at least know that there’s a thing called CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) and that you’d have to get there sooner or later.

You need what you need

Practically speaking, to even get anywhere near conversion rate optimization, you’d have to have the basics in place:

• A systematic way to test your headlines, copy, and content.
• Landing pages (always in pairs such as version A & Version B)
• Sales Funnels (usually multiple landing pages, each linked to another). For instance, Funnel A grabs an email address leading to an upsell page (Funnel B), which then leads to a humble “thank you” page thanking your lead for their interest (Funnel C).
• Email autoresponders and other marketing automation sequences and/or tools.
• Proper setup with Google Analytics, advanced analytics tools, and other integrations with your marketing stack (such as proper connections between landing pages and autoresponders, sales pages and lead magnet delivery, etc.,).

These are basics. If you don’t have this, get it all set up.

No traffic, no CRO

When will I make sales?

When do you think I can break even with my ad spend?

Those are just a few of the many questions we get every time we onboard clients for our paid traffic management services. Having worked with several hundreds of clients now, it’s one of the most common things they ask.

But almost everyone forgets this: you need traffic to your landing pages and funnels for them to work.

You don’t make sales without anyone visiting your pages in the first place (also applies to your other objectives — depending on your business — such as scheduling appointments, filling up your contact forms, etc.)

You need relevant, interested, engaged, and a hungry audience to sign up for what you offer on your landing pages.

Not everyone should do conversion optimization

If you are starting out, you should ideally be trying something else like getting high-quality traffic by using:

• Blogging high-quality content, with a scheduled publishing effort regularly.
• Spreading your wings on social media, with an emphasis on not just driving traffic but also to boost your brand image while maintaining micro-conversations.
• Grow your email list using lead magnets and an array of elements such as pop-ups, slide-ins, welcome gates, and landing pages
• Run Google ads or Facebook ads with the objective of “driving traffic” to your websites.

You need traffic first.

Without that, in most cases, you won’t even be able to achieve what you finally need (Read: results)

Did you know that you try to launch Facebook ads, you will not able to choose “conversions” as an objective unless you have several pixel events — between 500 to 10,000 and above pixel events for 30 days?

So, if you are just starting out with Facebook ads, you’ll have to go for “reach and traffic” centric campaigns such as optimizing for “link clicks” or “landing page views”.

What does that tell you?

You won’t even qualify for running result-oriented campaigns like “conversions” and “website purchases” unless you get enough traffic first.

No amount of work involving conversion optimization for your website, landing pages, pop-ups, and funnels is worth it if you don’t do what you need to do before you get to CRO.

Conversion rate optimization is not just about best practices

For one, “best practices” are not going to be a constant set of pointers for us to follow. Just as with everything else, they are bound to change as time changes and new ideologies replace the old ones.

Your business is unique. How your potential audience reacts to your marketing efforts is also contextual — often depending on culture, consumer behavior, and specific spending habits in the particular geographic location you normally target in.

The conversion rate optimization process is mostly science with a wee bit of creative freedom thrown in. It’s an exact, repeatable, and scientific process built to remove human complexity but rely more on data and processes.

Without enough traffic, there’s just no point getting into meaningless exercises such as split testing, for instance.

Conversion rate optimization is hard

If you are a marketer trying to get your management’s nod to proceed with full-fledged conversion optimization, it’s going to be hard.

Are you an entrepreneur trying to do conversion rate optimization for your own business? It’s even harder.

According to Lindy Tolbert of ConversionXL, you’d have to be:

• An expert at many things, including marketing, analytics, statistics, UX/UI, IT, design, and photography (and this isn’t the complete list)
• The scene is constantly changing. Desktop gives way to mobile, which gives way to what now?
• You have to unlearn what you know or believe. On top of that, you’d have to constantly challenge your own assumptions, hypothesis, and beliefs.
• You can’t let your ego get in the way while keeping your goals customer-centric.

In a nutshell, don’t just get carried away by post titles and triggers like “Start Conversion Optimization Now”.

Do what you can to bring in enough traffic to your websites or landing pages. Only when you have enough, you can then move on to conversion rate optimization which helps squeeze more out of what you have and get more for less.

If you’d like to use the right marketing strategy to generate traffic, leads, conversions and sales, fill out this form and our team will get in touch with you.

The post A Beginner’s Guide To CRO: What Is Conversion Optimization? appeared first on Done For You.

An impeccable landing page with a promising CTA (Call to Action), compelling email marketing efforts and power-packed Facebook advertisements might fail to show results. It is vital to focus on a complete lead generation process, not just a single landing page or campaign.  Today, 66% of business goals emphasize mainly lead generation.

Lead generation is the heart of your business, and it means growth and sustainability. Most companies fail to make it work, and they will continue to fail in lead generation in 2019. This is merely because they look at the tree, not the forest.

What is a lead?

A lead, in digital marketing, is an individual who is interested in a product or requesting a service. A lead becomes a qualified prospect if they explicitly express their interest in your product. In other words, a prospect is a potential customer.

While you nurture a lead, you can understand what your target audience wants. That’s essential to success and successful lead generation in 2019. Growing your pool of leads becomes easier if you focus on what your audience wants and adapt your landing page and all your marketing collateral to address those needs.

Remember, there are no fixed lead generation strategies that are suitable for every online business. It is very important to implement some basic strategies correctly and then update and optimize your lead generation process in 2019.

Lead generation basics for 2019

Simply put, there are five basic strategies, to begin with. At this stage, it is crucial to set up web analytics to determine the source of organic leads. After that, you can start with the following:

1. Email marketing

Email marketing tops the list of the most promising digital marketing technique ROI as much as $44 per $1 spent. With email marketing, you can build trust and credibility with leads by sending relevant emails consistently and maintain rock-solid communication.

Communication is the key to lead generation. You cannot allow your audience to forget you.

The other way is to collect email addresses by offering something – a coupon for instance. It works! You can build a robust customer base with these email addresses and convince them to visit your website repeatedly. Here, you can use our software for a short survey that drives traffic to your website.

2. Cold calling

Running a campaign with mobile numbers for communication is also an in-thing today. If you are doing it, make sure you pick up calls from interested customers; they could be your potential sales. Add multiple phone numbers and be responsive.

3. Responsive landing pages

68% of B2B businesses use strategic landing pages to acquire credible leads.

A landing page is crucial. It is the first impression of your business. In addition, space converts visitors into sales. Create a compelling landing page that would encourage visitors to share information, such as email address and contact number. You can then use these details for sales and marketing purposes.

4. Calls to action

A call-to-action is essential to driving sales. Choose words carefully to make sure visitors know where the link would lead them. A simple line that says – “click here to get your coupon code” is a more personalized pitch than merely writing, “click here.”

You can be creative with CTA. If you are into real estate, CTA could be “Let’s Explore.”

5. Blog consistently

Blogs add value to your business. They provide an insight into your business, which is essential to draw the customer’s attention. Create a responsive blog with a subscriber list so that your potential clients and leads are always informed about new resources, products, and services. Update your blog regularly to share new information and content.

Try our software, Curately to write blog posts. It curates relevant content from all over the web to keep your blog fresh.

What’s new in 2019?

Are you looking at some new lead magnet funnels to capture prudent leads? Are you thinking of getting a fresh and innovative landing page design? What are your plans for lead generation optimization?

Possibilities to play around opportunities that the digital market has to offer while staying rooted in the basics – that’s the mantra.

Here below, we are unveiling the real secrets of lead generation in 2019.

Homepage review – Focus, focus

The homepage of any website is the face of the brand. It receives the first visits. It should be credible, informative, gripping, and definitely surprising. Not to forget, it should have an influential headline with subtitles, images, and a convincing CTA.

Businesses that promote their websites proactively should receive more visitors from relevant sources such as social networking channels, referring sites, search engine results etc.

The key is to have a power-packed headline with a consistent message on the homepage. And make sure that your done for you lead magnet is featured pretty prominently. It’s all about branding, rather ‘branding well’.

Allow users to log in with Google

Most of us use Google. Allowing users to log in with their Google username is a convenient way to rope them in. It also ensures personalized efforts. Moreover, you have to learn to view your customers as individuals, and not a group.

While this one strategy has helped many businesses, it is still the most under-used technique. Google is not just a popular email account resource but also the hub of content marketers, online entrepreneurs, and bloggers. It is one of the largest databanks to explore.

Moreover, social media platforms make it more convenient to connect with people. As a result, you can find a sizeable chunk of people storing their names, addresses, contact numbers, and other details on their trusted sites like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. As a result, marketers can create a simple and flexible flow of signing up new users.

Have a dynamic team for lead generation only

If you are serious about converting visitors into leads, take lead generation to a level higher than usual. Yes, you need a brilliant landing page, but it should include everything that attracts users – a headline, subtitles, headers, bullet points, and CTA. In other words, you have to play with the dynamics of the upcoming strategies and keep updating your landing page regularly. Regular testing shall get you right.

But, an important aspect of this strategy is to divide your teams – a team for marketing and a separate team for lead generation. That’s specialization!

Only a specialized team focused on lead generation can bring home potential leads, nurture them, and run successful strategies.

Invest in webinars

Webinars are the latest inexpensive lead generation tools. Using webinars, you can not only have better reach of your audience but also deliver an entire database of leads. The fastest growing digital marketing technique today, webinars are effective for lead generation and nurturing. With these 100% online (digital) events, you offer an interactive medium to your audience, engage them, and make them feel involved, ask questions, give necessary feedback, and get their undivided attention.

Research shows that you have 75% better chances of your audience watching a video instead of reading a boring text. Likewise, 97% of viewers are happy to give their contact details.

https://youtu.be/9r6TkAfKUZg

Write commanding headlines

The headline of your landing page is the place of all the action. A headline, if written with attention-words can instantly draw user attention.

How to do it?

Focus on the structure, length, keywords, topic, and the action appearing in the headline. Each of these can evoke curiosity, which, in turn, persuades visitors to click.

There is another reward of creating a credible and powerful headline – it improves search engine ranking tremendously by lowering the bounce rate. In fact, a Tech Nicholas research shows that people make 73% of all buying decisions depending on the headline.

Regardless of the platform, you have to create a headline that drives leads. The only way to do it is by adding strong action words in the headline. When you use a strong verb, it replaces useless adverbs, passive voice, and wordiness.

Some verbs that work are – increase, improve, boost, expand, nurture, attack, engage, drive and similar.

Make your business irresistible with offers for no reason

How do you convince people to visit your website, stay, and look, stay further and purchase? Only by giving them irresistible offers.

Marketers just want a “yes” from their audience. The route to that is through offers having high value and spiced with persuasion. All you want is a “yes” in action and that’s how you can attract potential clients as well as retain them.

Now, an offer does not have to be a 50% discount all the time, though percentage discounts attract better attention. In some cases, you can just have a clause like, for example, Domino’s Pizza – delivery in 30 minutes or free. That attracted more and more customers. It wasn’t a discount or a coupon code, but the idea that worked. And, it saved a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Similarly, some SEO services provide lower rates compared to the rest, which definitely grabs attention. While the difference is often unclear to novices, this idea works and eventually, you can save big bucks.

An offer with a call-to-action is definitely the road to success.

Final thoughts on lead generation in 2019

With a plethora of lead generation tools and techniques available, you might tend to feel overwhelmed. But you don’t need to because not every tool will for your business. To build a successful online empire, it takes time, proper lead nurturing, and a compelling presence on social media, effective email marketing, content, and much more. Start by developing a data-driven lead generation campaign. With consistency, hard work, and focus, you can certainly achieve your lead generation goals.

The post The Secrets Of Lead Generation In 2019 appeared first on Done For You.

Jacob Baadsgaard of Search Engine Journal analyzed over 2000+ Google ad accounts — millions of dollars in total ad spend, 100 billion ad impressions, and at least over 500 million ad clicks — and concluded that at least 76% of ad accounts have wasted ad spend.

That number could be higher, since not every ad account has been audited. Chances are that you don’t even know if you are doing the right thing with your paid ads.

Here are a few instances where you can bet that your paid ads won’t work no matter how much money you throw at them.

1. Spending too much, too early

The trouble with all of us? Give us hope, and we are willing to jump right off the cliff. So, much that we’d jump even without a parachute.

Too many businesses spend too much money, too fast.

When you first get started with Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or with any other paid advertising channel, it is critical to keep your budgets low.

Starting with low budgets gives you breathing room, more mileage (as far as time that the campaigns are live is concerned), and allow you to split-test ads and funnels (see below).

2. Ads pointing to your homepage

If you are already running paid campaigns on Google Ads or Facebook Ads, check to see if your destination URL is that of your homepage or a random page on your website.

If so, you’d be lucky to get any results at all. Even if you do manage to convince your visitors to take action, it will basically be out of sheer luck. However, luck is not strategy.

As you get more web visitors, you will need a more compelling, focused, and absolutely relevant landing page to nudge your visitors to sign up for your offer.

Pages with distracting elements, like other links to click on, social buttons, irrelevant images and anything else that takes the focus away from what you want web visitors to do on your page, are a major mistake.

To make the most out of your paid traffic you need landing pages. Any campaigns without relevant landing pages, that match your advertising message to a targeted audience, are likely to fail.

3. Campaigns with no offers

Customers have choices today. More choices than anyone could have ever imagined. Within your own industry, your competitors are already wooing your potential customers with all sorts of offers, discounts, or some sort of value addition upfront even before asking them to part with their money.

Campaigns that focus on direct sales by pointing to pages with a “buy now” button on them, campaigns that try to get to a sale before trust is established are bound to fail. You’d be lucky if you get sales this way, but not before hundreds or thousands of dollars are spent on your campaigns.

There’s only one sustainable and dependable way to run campaigns: generate leads first.

Then, use email marketing campaigns, upsells, or cross-selling to achieve your goals.

4. No funnels. No campaigns.

If there is a paid ad out there, that ad should have a singular goal: capture details of the person interested in your ad. This is lead generation at its most basic, and there’s no escaping that path.

Transactions happen when your customers are convinced that your products, services, or your brand is the solution to their problem. Customers need to be convinced that you are better than your competition and that you have enough chops that your customer can trust you with their hard-earned money.

For a business to develop trust, the window of opportunity from an ad to a landing page is too short. You need to do more with nurturing and to establish trust.

Sales funnels exist for that reason. Sales funnels could be built in any way that makes sense for your business.

Here are a few examples:

• Ad > Landing Page > Email Autoresponder sequence
• Facebook Ad > Facebook Messenger > Chatbot message sequence
• Google Ad > Landing Page > Intercom chat
• Ad > Landing Page > SMS messages

No matter how you build your sales funnels, the premise of your sales funnels is to push visitors down the path to a purchase.

5. No tracking & analytics

Someone wise said, “You can’t improve what you can’t measure”. Most businesses don’t bother with the unending list of things to do to measure, track, and analyze campaigns.

Both Google and Facebook have robust tracking and analytics tools built-in. You have Google Analytics, our own Advanced Analytics Engine, and plenty of other third-party tools such as Mixpanel, Visual Website Optimizer, Mouseflow, and Hotjar.

Starting with Google Analytics and then using other analytics and tracking tools will help you stay on top of your campaigns, analyze what works and what doesn’t, and make decisions based on data (and not opinions, whims, or preconceived notions).

Good tracking and analytics practices allow you to practice data-driven marketing.

6. Not split testing (a.k.a. A/B testing)

There’s no way in the world to know if your existing ads, landing pages, funnels, audience selection, or any other elements of your campaigns or sales funnels are the best they could be. The only way to know is to use data to make high-impact decisions to make your advertising work for you.

By split testing your ads, creatives, assets, landing pages, and funnels, you embrace data-driven marketing without letting emotions get in the way.

If you don’t test ads, for instance, you’d never know if one ad performs better against another. Not doing A/B testing is one of the reasons why most paid ads never see the light of the day.

Don’t let your marketing dollars go waste. Get professional help to help manage your campaigns. If you’d like our help, click here to learn more about how our experts can help optimize your campaigns.

The post 6 Reasons Why Your Paid Ads Don’t Work appeared first on Done For You.

Why?

That’s probably because people are searching much more on their smartphones than on desktops. According to a recent survey, 3 out of every 5 web searches are performed using mobile phones.

From logging on to social networking accounts to shopping online, smartphones have taken an indispensable place in our lives. Maybe, that’s what led Google to make drastic changes and give top priority to mobile optimized websites for search engine rankings.

Before we discuss the effect of mobile-first indexing on your business and the best strategies to make the most of it, let’s see what mobile-first indexing actually means.

What is “mobile-first indexing”?

Let’s take a look at what the official post from Google Webmasters says about this term. It goes something like this,

“To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index mobile-first. Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results.”

Put simply, this post means that from now on Google is going to consider the mobile version of your website as a starting point to determine your rankings.

Remember it’s mobile-first, not mobile-only!

It’s important to understand that mobile-first means that the mobile version of your website (or a mobile-optimized website) will be given priority when determining its ranking on Google. However, if you don’t have a mobile version then the desktop version would be given preference. Thus, the desktop-focused pages will still be crawled and indexed.

Most modern websites are built to be mobile responsive. So, no separate mobile version is needed. Google knows whether your website is optimized for mobile devices, and will give you credit for that.

However, not having mobile-responsive pages that load fast would still cause a dip in your rankings or present varying results between mobile and desktop search results. Hence, it’s still important to note that the new mobile-first index isn’t a mobile-only index.

Now, how can make the most of mobile-first index?

Mobile first best practices

Let’s take a look at the following best practices:

1. Switch to a responsive design

Getting a responsive website design should be your first step to rank well on Google. When your website automatically adapts or changes according to the screen or type of device being used, then the website is called a responsive one. As more and more people are accessing the web and other services on phones, it’s essential for a website to have a responsive design and be mobile-friendly at the same time. That’s why Google recommends implementing responsive designs.

2. Optimize content for mobile

The number of mobile users is increasing every minute. The first thing that catches their attention is the content on your website. It goes without saying that you should start producing content (and optimizing older content) keeping the mobile users in mind. Make sure your content is short, crisp and engaging. If you publish long-form content, keep your paragraphs short. Offer others forms of content as well as infographics, images, audios, videos, and more.

3. Set up structured data

To get better rankings on Google, make sure you include the same structured data markup on the desktop version as well as the mobile version. It’s also important that URLs within the structured data on mobile versions are of the mobile version of the URL.

4. Provide meta data on both versions

As meta data plays a crucial part in determining search rankings, be mindful of the fact that titles and meta descriptions are equivalent on both versions of pages. Optimize titles for shorter character counts but don’t forget to include relevant keywords and other important information.

5. Get serious about mobile-first strategy

The only way to find success is to keep evolving as time goes by and adopting the changing trends and technologies. It’s high time that you started thinking about your mobile-first strategy. Do whatever it takes to make your website responsive, mobile-friendly, and optimized to climb up the search engine rankings.

Conclusion

We hope that you find the above information helpful and you that you are prepared for mobile-first indexing. Υou can no longer ignore or escape from mobile optimization.

At DoneForYou.com, we create complete mobile responsive sales funnels that work for your business 24/7. Sales funnels consist of high-conversion web pages and automation systems that turn your static website into a living asset. If you’re looking to create marketing-oriented web pages, see how we can help.

The post Everything You Need to Know About Mobile-First Indexing appeared first on Done For You.

In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into conversion rate optimization, and explain why CRO is so valuable. Primarily, in this guide, we are dealing with the basic mistakes you are already making and how you can fix them.

Whether you are a small business owner and want to increase your revenue, or if you are a marketing professional helping clients to develop a marketing strategy, Conversion Rate Optimisation should be in your daily routine.

By helping you stay away from these CRO pitfalls, you will soon be able to boost your conversion rates, i.e. turn more visitors into qualified leads and, in turn, more leads into customers. Put simply, when you optimize your conversion rates, you are able to reap more benefits (i.e. revenue) with the same resources.

What are some advantages of CRO?

Conversion rate optimization is the art and science of streamlining your buyer’s journey to help more paid or organic traffic take the next step. In practice, this could relate to how many web visitors will make an inquiry or subscribe to your newsletter or buy a product.

In any case, improving your rate of conversion will be extremely beneficial.

Picture this: if you double or triple your conversions, then you are essentially doubling and tripling your incoming leads or sales. Same effort – double the result. In a digital world where every business is fiercely competing for a portion of traffic, it’s crucial that you make the most of every click/visitor you get.

What’s more, conversion rate optimization helps you understand your target audience. With CRO, you learn what makes customers tick, and which elements or features are most likely to trigger their enthusiasm to the point that they perform a particular action, like placing an order.

Ultimately, CRO helps companies target audience. It prevents you from using the same old tactics that just don’t work. Instead, with CRO, you get a higher ROI from your campaigns by focusing on parts of your sales funnels that bring in more leads, customers, and money.

Having explained how CRO benefits your business, let us now look at the mistakes you might be making with your CRO, and how you can avoid or fix them.

Common CRO mistakes

Mistake #1: Website is slow

Studies indicate that 47% of users expect a site to fully load within two seconds or less. We know, this seems like too fast, but in today’s internet era with a lot of information and distraction, users expect sites to load instantly. Slower sites equal higher bounce rates and a drop in conversion rates.

Don’t keep your users waiting. This CRO mistake is easy to fix. We highly suggest you try to reduce the content on each page of your website. Particularly, you can optimize the size of images and video, if you are using them.

Use tools to minimize javascript and CSS – there are a lot of WordPress plugins that will do that with the click of a button. Switch over to a faster server to host your pages. Or maybe you can use a CDN for faster page serving across the globe.

It shouldn’t be too hard to optimize your pages for speed, and the results can be dazzling. To see how fast your website is currently loading, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

So, the goal with this CRO factor is to get your website under the two-second threshold.

What’s more, you need to understand that high-conversion pages don’t need to be packed with information; simplicity wins.

See, for example, how we use clean landing page designs with short and to-the-point web copy to achieve dazzling conversion rates for our own business and for our clients. Download our ultimate lead generation template or sign up for this free video course that will teach you how to skyrocket your conversion rates.

Mistake #2: Outdated or ugly web design

Research indicates that around 75% of buyers will judge a company based on the style of their website. If your own isn’t beautiful and functional, then you are already losing out on a significant amount of leads. Traffic may come in but people will leave your pages as soon as they see them.

Now, the obvious question is what makes a beautiful website? 

Of course, you need to follow the design trends so your pages don’t look outdated. Besides having a modern site, you need to consider how the structure and various elements function and help create a buyer’s journey for your visitors. In other words, does your site design and layout serve your conversion rate goals?

A big part of your CRO strategy should focus on product/service pages. Product pages are where users go to learn more about your offer and eventually hit the button to place an order or inquire further. A product page is an essential part of your web design project as you need to keep it simple for visitors; they need to be able to easily find product information, images, navigation elements and exactly how to take action.

Here’s a checklist to help you review potential CRO mistakes you might be making with your web design:

• Is your website mobile responsive?
• Are all the elements displayed well on mobile?
• Is there a core focal point to captivate the user’s attention the minute the page loads?
• Do you have clear navigation menus to help visitors browse and find the information they need?
• Can web visitors figure out what to do to order or inquire?
• Is the content easy to read?
• Is your color combination attractive?

Improving your website design and layout can have a great impact on your CRO. To start with, you will see more and more people staying on your web pages for longer, and the bounce rate should drop.

Mistake #3: Struggling to track web visitors properly

A large component of CRO is understanding user behavior patterns and testing out new paths or elements in those paths. We will say more about testing later on in this article, but this particular mistake, the inability to track users, is a CRO roadblock. Click here to learn more about how web tracking and analytics work, and how they can benefit your business.

Our proprietary analytics tool, Statly, works by simply installing a code snippet to your website. It allows you to track every visitor from the minute they arrive at your landing page all the way through to every stage of your sales funnel. It is a real-time and advanced analytics solution and one of the most essential tools for effective conversion rate optimization.

Apart from sales funnel analysis, you can even set up a heat map tool that shows where the users’ cursors go and what they’re doing on your web pages. Then, you can replay the whole session and see exactly what the user did. The benefit of heat maps is that you can follow a user all the way from landing on your site, through to taking an action step and finally exiting the site.

With user behavior analysis, you should be able to discover common patterns that will help you reduce friction. For example, you can compare how different landing pages perform using the same paid ads and the same target audience. Then, you can both improve your low-performance landing page and ramp up the investment in the best-performing page. By all means, you can examine the landing page that’s delivering the highest conversion rate, and try to design other pages like it to generate the same results.

By failing to keep track of users, you miss out on every piece of important CRO information. Essentially, you’re participating in a guessing game with every person that visits your website. But business is not about guessing; it’s about making decisions based on data.

If you don’t have much of an idea how folks found your website, how they acted when they were on your pages, and the buyer’s journey they followed or they didn’t follow, then there’s not much you can improve.

Mistake #4: Landing pages aren’t optimized for conversions

Another common conversion rate optimization mistake is when landing pages are not specifically put together to convert traffic into leads or buyers. In other words, the misstep is that you are not placing enough significance on the role landing pages in CRO. You may have too few, or you don’t have any set up at all.

The advantage of a landing page is that you can customize it to tempt users into performing a specific action. A landing page provides you with the opportunity to practically map out the user experience, and guide them to your ideal conclusion of the buyer’s journey.

This happens because a landing page is part of a sales funnel, which consists of different pages and automated email messages, as well as other assets, like lead magnets or webinars. Each of these elements has a specific role and objective, and they all work together to guide the visitor through the process of transformation you have mapped out for them.

Mistake #5: Your tests don’t yield accurate results

Split testing or A/B testing is the backbone of virtually every conversion rate optimization method. It begins with running the original page (the base scenario) and evaluating the conversion rate. Then, you change an element of the page (e.g. where you place a video, or how many fields a form has) and see if this change yields a better conversion rate, and so on.

Changes should be made ceteris paribus – don’t change multiple variables at once or you won’t know which alteration yielded in an increase in conversion rate.

Among the most typical CRO mistakes is that your tests are delivering inaccurate results. How does this occur? It usually boils down to three things:

• You are running a multivariate testing without even realizing it.
• Your sample size is far too small. Go back to your statistics textbook to see how you can define a proper sample.
• You’re not taking the seasonality factor into consideration. For example, websites may see a better conversion rate during a holiday period like Christmas.
• The tests aren’t being run for long enough.
• You fall into the trap of seeing what you want to see – just seeing the piece of data that confirms your initial hypothesis.
• You run the test only once. To see true validity, you have to run multiple test cycles and analyze the data you receive.

Misinterpreting the data at hand can get your into real trouble with decision making. You need to cross-check and verify that what you are seeing paints an accurate picture of what’s going on in your business. Keep an open mind and think outside the box to allow you and your team discover what’s really hiding behind those numbers.

Get help with CRO

Of course, A/B testing, sales funnels analysis, and conversion rate optimization can be complicated and take up a lot of your precious time. You would probably need to assemble a team to tackle all of these tasks effectively – but this is where we come in.

Our team at Done For You is ready to lend a helping hand. For several years now, we’ve been building high-conversion sales funnels, setting up tracking and A/B testing, and tackling all the issues that are needed to improve CRO.

Our goal is to get you more traffic, better leads and more sales. We are experts at driving your ideal customer to your landing page, and helping you to turn them into leads who are ready to take an action like fill out an inquiry form, call you to book an appointment, or simply give up their email to download your material.

There’s no need to wait any longer to make your website finally work; Hit us up using this form and we will get back to you with all the insight you need.

The post Are You Making These CRO Mistakes? Stop Losing Money! appeared first on Done For You.

Creating a Facebook ad campaign is easy; making it work to get you a positive ROI is harder than it seems.

Since Facebook tries to make it really easy to set up ads, more businesses and marketers than ever are using the platform.

Facebook ads can be a monstrosity as far as platform complexity is concerned.

Yet, the closer you get to what you want your Facebook Ads to do, the easier it gets to make your campaigns perform better for your business.

Since Facebook Ads has plenty of features, various objective types, and several options within campaign setup and management, here are a few Facebook Ads tips to put you on the right path with your campaigns:

1. Say “No” to stock photos (Facebook or other sources)

As you begin to set up your ad campaign, Facebook will ask you to upload images to complete your ads (along with adding copy and links).

Do yourself a favor and don’t choose any of the images available inside Facebook’s inventory of stock photos. If you are looking for images on other sites like Pexels, DepositPhotos, for instance, be choosy about what you pick.

From experience, we know that images of a particular kind always work better than others as far as Facebook ads are concerned:

• Photos of actual people in them, front and center (with some contrast to make those pictures stand out).
• Images of the actual products you sell
• Illustrations or custom graphics

You can take parts of stock photos or just use better photo depositories such as Unsplash for your Facebook ads.

In fact, anything will do better than a cheesy stock photo with three suits and a hand-held banner.

2. Exclude irrelevant audiences

Just by excluding audiences that don’t make sense to your Facebook Ad campaigns, you’ll save several hundred or even thousands of dollars. A few excluded audiences from your campaigns could be:

• Audiences that signed up for your offers from previous campaigns
• Your existing customers
• Your existing free trial users
• Groups of audiences with low potential to convert
• Your email subscribers

It’s worth spending more time on defining your audiences than anything else you do for your Facebook campaigns. Think through your audience sets carefully to decide what to include and exclude.

3. Use instant experiences

If you are skipping the “Use Instant Experience” option while creating your ad with your Facebook Ad Manager, you are missing the boat.

Instant experiences within Facebook are all about using visuals to persuade, invoke an action, and to give your ads some life.

When you create an Instant experience, you are essentially creating a full-page, mobile experience for those that click on your ad.

This allows you to add more information, visuals, context, and push your audiences to click through.

Use Instant Experiences to acquire new customers, establish your brand (and warm up your audiences), or directly sell your products by showcasing them. Facebook provides templates for you to start with. Alternatively, you could create a custom Instant Eperience.

While it’s perfectly fine to use a single image ad and nothing else to make your campaigns work, it’ll help when you test a single image (or video) advertisement with instant experiences.

Video can help, but if you don’t have one, it’s alright. Instant experiences will work even if you had a couple of images.

Note: Facebook now allows you to not only use Instant Experiences but also their Lead Generation forms (see below).

4. Lead generation campaigns & forms

If you are generating leads, use Lead Generation Ads with Facebook ’s native “forms”.

Creating landing pages, trying to push Facebook’s audience to click through and get to another page, and having them fill up their information to sign up as a lead — these are all extra steps for a potential customer to go through.

Instead, you could use lead generation campaigns with a form that opens instantly and the forms are instantly pre-filled with information that people have shared with Facebook.

5. Always edit Facebook ad placements

Facebook, by default, will automatically place your ad across their network (including audience network, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram, and on Facebook itself).

For most advertisers, you don’t need that kind of exposure.

Audience network could be hard to manage or to extract a positive ROI from, and the effectiveness of placing ads on the Facebook Marketplace is still unknown.

Instagram is a totally different platform with a different set of users compared to Facebook (while there could be an overlap). Also, Instagram is on mobile devices.

It’s much simpler and easier to “edit” placements instead of opting for “automatic” placements and tighten up your Facebook ad spend by gaining control.

6. Use custom scheduling to save money

Image Credits: Adespresso

While your website — and your existing strategy to generate leads off your website — can work round the clock, as far as ads are concerned not all businesses need to be open 24×7. Local businesses, for instance, don’t need to have Facebook ad campaigns running all the time.

If you are on a tight budget and if you’d like to save some of your cash, use custom scheduling and set your ads to run during your business hours. You could skip the weekends and all the extra hours each day when you think it doesn’t suit your business.

Need help with your Facebook Ad Campaigns? Want to see your campaigns fly off and get you the results you seek for your business? Get on a call with us now.

The post 6 Quick Tips To Make Your Facebook Ads Perform Better appeared first on Done For You.

Here, we will see how real-time marketing analytics can boost your campaign performance and help perk up your ROI.

What is Marketing Analytics?

Understanding consumer behavior is vital for business success. At the same time, if you know which marketing channels work best with varied segments and which ones are more profitable, you will achieve better results. In-depth analytics let you predict your consumers’ requirements and measure marketing performance. Not only do they ensure increased customer satisfaction, but they also help boost business growth and profits.

Marketing analytics uses critical data to help advertisers target their prospects better, measure the ROI and forecast demand. Marketers use a range of predictive modeling and data mining techniques to target their prospects with effective communications and make marketing more profitable. There are three primary use cases for marketing analytics:

• Identifying potential customers and improving the quality of prospects
• Track and analyze campaign performance
• Demand forecasting and discover new opportunities

Thus, real-time analytics is a beacon that directs your marketing strategy. It is an agile approach that is not just about adapting the latest trends, but rather, identifying opportunities and consumer behavior that are relevant to your brand.

What are the key metrics of Marketing Analysis?

Image Source: business2community.com

To achieve higher ROI, it is first important to identify the key metrics of marketing analytics.

• Deriving valuable insights

Analytics is not just about data handling. It is about deriving valuable meanings from such data. Every year, we generate tons of data, most of which is unstructured. Turning bulk amounts of data, Big Data, into meaningful insights requires a rigorous process of organizing, reporting, and analysis. So, the key to real-time marketing analytics is to transform data into business-critical information.

• Consolidating data with concepts

Data holds no meaning when analyzed in a vacuum. It is vital to combine important data with your existing knowledge structures to identify which metrics are crucial and how to formulate actions from such data. It is only when you transform data into concepts that you can translate analyses into actions to optimize performance. Data visualization provides an in-depth view of what is going on with your marketing campaign – something you cannot do with just a column of numbers.

• Using marketing insights to guide data gathering

To improve your data gathering efforts you need a good understanding of critical marketing concepts. For instance, your user experience data. Without knowing how your consumers move through the sales funnel or what affects their decision-making process, it is difficult to know what data to evaluate further or to integrate into your A/B testing.

• Continuous monitoring

It is not enough to have a superb analytics program in place. You have to ensure constant monitoring, i.e. collecting, structuring and analyzing data in real-time. With performance monitoring in real-time, you can tweak your marketing campaigns or create powerful social media posts to achieve improved results.

Statly is a powerful tool that gives real-time marketing analytics a new dimension. It provides real-time tracking of how your customers behave through the sales funnel, and radically improves your chances of transforming quality leads into customers. This comprehensive analytics tool helps gather meaningful data and integrate it into your existing business concept to make the right decisions.

Tips to improve ROI with effective Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics practices put data into relevant contexts, allowing you to spot indicators and trends that can be used to boost performance and increase ROI. The insights may help you win new prospects, allocate funds to the high-performing marketing channels and forecast opportunities.

Here are some tips to rev up your sales and increase ROI with the right marketing analytics strategies in place.

#1 Set objectives for improved ROI

To improve ROI, it is important to have a plan. To achieve your objectives, first establish an outline of what to measure, how to measure and when to measure. View historical data; identify modern trends. Know how you can incorporate analytics into your existing process. Discover how you are going to reach the desired ROI.

Image Source: Neilpatel.com

Based on your outline, find out ways to measure performance by:

• Using predictive modeling techniques in marketing data analysis.
• Bringing real-time marketing analytics in line with your financial goals.
• Gathering customer behavior and engagement data.

#2 Lead prospecting

Successful customer acquisition and retention are crucial to drive sales and increase ROI. Give it a boost with real-time marketing analytics.

Many marketers merely collect information on users who visit the company website or view the ads; the data is often compiled through various advertising networks. But they only get the basic demographic details with no valuable insights on how to convert the leads to sales.

Use one-of-a-kind platforms such as Statly to gain real-time “opportunity based” marketing analytics that helps track every prospect moving through your sales funnel or website. Having a robust and in-depth view of your prospects, you can identify qualified leads and configure your marketing campaigns to target only these users. Leveraging the data insights, you can optimize their sales experience, minimize bottlenecks, improve conversions and leverage hidden opportunities.

#3 Focus on engagement metrics

Often, marketers make the mistake of remaining content with typical metrics, like press release shares, retweets or Facebook fans. However, these parameters are considered “vanity metrics” and do not contribute to revenues as such. Rather, prioritize “engagement metrics” that can help improve your ROI.

In this regard, the Director of Products at Filament, Jason Amunwa, states, “Vanity metrics do nothing for your actual website objectives but make your marketing efforts look good. This is problematic because often they siphon effort and focus away from the things that could really move the needle for you. Engagement metrics tell you what content is truly performing for you, what’s just “meh” and what’s ripe for enrichment and optimization; in short, engagement metrics tell you where the real opportunities are for growth.”

Instead of running behind what does not correlate with your ROI, save time and make better decisions by tracking the right data.

You can leverage effective tools like Statly to:

• Monitor consumer behavior in a consistent manner.
• Get customized reports with the most relevant data.
• Analyze critical data through all stages of your marketing initiative

#4 Leverage real-time Website Analytics

Website analytics plays an integral role in identifying quality leads and improving their value for a lifetime while reducing the cost of customer acquisition & retention.

With effective web analytics, you can uncover various key performance indicators that help drive website traffic and conversions. Identifying stellar performers, and tweaking the weaker ones, can help improve the overall user experience, converting leads into quality customers. Use key metrics of web analytics to:

• Understand your customer demographics.
• Track essential parameters like click-through rate, bounce rate, number of conversions or types of referrals.
• Perform behavioral analysis of website visitors to increase ROI over time.

#5 Demand forecasting

Having the right data at the right time empowers marketers. At the same time, tracking historical data is vital to helping identify trends and forecast demand. Critical factors such as seasonality can affect campaign performance.

In-depth analysis can help highlight these variables, and likewise, re-allocate or tweak your marketing investments. Data analytics helps to understand the product or campaign performance, providing insights into which products will face a high demand in the next quarter.

#6 Use Marketing Analytics to increase sales

Today, consumers are more informed than ever. Most purchase decisions are now based on information gathered from reviews, social networks, blogs, etc. The good news: marketing analytics gives you access to such significant information. The bad news: you have no idea how to convert this data into profits.

To gain a holistic view of ROI, focus on how your marketing efforts impact sales. Identify when the right time to call a prospect is, which product would make a killer impact and who is best suited to close the deal. Discover what marketing strategies are contributing to maximum sales. Big data analysis can help increase your sales by:

• Understanding a customer’s decision-making journey.
• Tracking user behavior and sales patterns on the website.
• Discussing your ROI plan with the entire organization and not just the sales or marketing teams.

#7 Conversion tracking through your sales funnel

For effective business growth, increased sales and better ROI, you must have the right sales funnel in place.

Do not have a sales funnel? Have an expert build a sales funnel for you that seamlessly guides a prospect through all stages of Attracting, Converting, Closing and Delighting.

Statly is a tool you can use to track conversions through your sales funnel, analyze data and build strategies to improve user experience across all stages. Not only will this help increase conversions, but it can also go a long way in boosting profits by improving overall value.

Conclusion

Real-time marketing analytics practices are sure to play a vital role in effectively tracking performance and measuring ROI. A profound understanding of its capabilities is the key to leveraging these powerful tools to your advantage. Use Statly to assess how you can profit from real-time marketing analytics. From planning to decision-making, use analytics to spread brand awareness, increase sales and lower costs.

The post How Real-time Marketing Analytics Help To Improve ROI appeared first on Done For You.

That search could be the beginning of a profitable relationship, if only you manage to show up at the right time.

You already know that the Google Ads platform is a fairly complex one (it reminds us of Adobe Photoshop). That also explains why many businesses miss out on some fantastic features that aren’t so obvious when you log into the platform.

Here are a few Google Ads features that you can use to get better results with minimal work:

Explore & use Gmail Ads

Gmail Ads is now an evolved product and it can help you get the results you seek.

However, it’s critical to note that Gmail Ads don’t exactly work like your typical Google Search Ads. For that reason, you need to set the right expectations when working with this ad unit.

Gmail Ads work a little higher up in your funnel — best used for branding, product launches, or for introducing your brand to your potential audiences.

Here are a few quick tips to make your Gmail Ads work for you:

• Use competitor domains for targeting users who get emails from your competition (also known as competitor conquesting).
• Use Similar Audiences, RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads), or In-market audiences to fine tune your targeting for Gmail Ads.
• Take advantage of your own Gmail Inbox to find subject lines that you could use for ads.
  Adding topically relevant emojis (not just smileys) can help boost your Gmail Ad CTR (Clickthrough Rate)

With the possibility of adding your own email subscriber lists to run Gmail Ads, you do have interesting ways to target audiences and get more potential customers for your business.

Need an example? See what LifeSports achieved with Gmail Ads for their Black Friday campaigns. According to Think with Google, LifeSports managed to achieve about 75% less in terms of Cost-per-sale than their usual targets.

Over 40% of those sales came directly from Gmail Ads’ “Customer Match” — a way to target completely new customers based on datasets of existing customers.

RLSA (Remarketing lists for search ads)

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) has been around for a while. It’s a great strategy to:

• Target users who’ve already visited your website pages
• Be able to bid on broader keywords while choosing to target only qualified or high-intent user
• Bid on your brand name but limit exposure only to qualified users instead of letting the whole world see it (regardless of qualification).
• Tailor your ad copy to make it more relevant to users who just visited your website. This makes your ads more contextual and focused.

Using RLSA allows you to deliver more personalized, effective, and targeted ads to get you the results you seek. How do you get started? Here’s a handy guide on RLSA by WordStream.

Note: You’ll need at least 1000 unique visitors for the time-frame you choose to collect the audience for RLSA to work.

Similar Audiences for search

You are already of aware of retargeting (or remarketing as Google likes to call it). Retargeting helps bring back potential visitors who’d have been your customers and allows them to convert.

But what if you want to target separate audiences very similar to your existing remarketing audiences (people who showed interest in your web pages, services, products, or your brand)?

Similar audiences for search within Google Ads allow you to expand your target base of customers by letting Google find people with similar search behavior as those of your existing remarketing audiences.

John E. Lincoln of Search Engine Land explains Similar audiences in a lot more detail and writes that while features such as Similar audiences have been around for a while, many businesses don’t take advantage of it.

Chrysler, as John points out, achieved 22 percent more conversions, 14 percent lower cost per acquisition (CPA), and 11 percent increase in click-through rate (CTR), all thanks to using similar audiences for search.

Audience targeting

You could just skip audience targeting completely while building your Google Ads campaigns, and that’d be leaving money on the table. Audience targeting works just like Facebook’s audience targeting and you can specifically target people who are “in the market” for specific products or services.

For instance, you could choose to target “gamers”, “travelers”, “pet lovers”, “technology nerds”, “gadget lovers”, and more.

Depending on your business, you could zoom in to an audience that’s most likely to be interested in what you sell.

Audience targeting is available for GDN (Google Display Network), search, and Video (YouTube) and it also gives you various options such as affinity, custom affinity, customer match, and similar audiences (as explained above), depending on the network type you’d select.

Here’s how it’d look like, according to Google.

Best Google Ads features?

Which of these Google Ads features are you using (and not)?

If you need help with your Google Ad campaigns, Facebook Ad campaigns, landing pages, and sales funnels?

Hop on a call with us now.

The post Google Ads Features That Get You More Results (for Less) appeared first on Done For You.

For decades, you have been made to believe that ineffective lead generation strategy is why you are not getting enough sales. But is poor lead generation the only issue? Or is it your incapacity to convert your website traffic into sales?

Let’s delve a little deeper. How would it feel when someday you at look at your website analytics, and find that you have a nice traffic flow to be happy with? When you compare month-to-month reports, and see there has been a steady increase in website traffic and you have more people viewing your website? You would think, “Awesome; my prospects are growing and potential customers are considering us.”

So, let’s be honest. Having website traffic makes no sense unless you can retrieve the data and nurture the leads into paying customers.

Thus, the real problem is not having a dedicated lead conversion strategy in place.

Turn Cold Traffic Into Leads And Buyers Fast! is an e-book that provides in-depth insight into converting your prospects into sales by following an automated, proven sales funnel strategy that is geared for conversion.    

Lead conversion strategy: How to “convert” website traffic into sales.

By doing in-depth research, we have outlined the best tips & tricks to convert your website traffic into qualified leads.

1. Generate the right leads for better conversion ratios

Let’s face it. Website views aren’t everything. Just because people visit your website does not mean they will ever buy from you.

The key to lead generation, and eventually, lead conversion, is having the people who have the potential of becoming customers, i.e., generating the right kind of website visitors to have better conversions.

The first step is to eliminate all website visits from robots to have only the original ones. Next, you should filter out all visitors who are irrelevant to your business. For instance, if you serve a particular geographical area, you can remove all website visits originating far outside the area. You can also filter web traffic based on language.

What will remain is a well-sorted list of visitors who have the potential to get converted into sales.

For this, you need a powerful data analytics tool such as Statly. This software aids in real-time marketing analytics, offering an in-depth view of customer behavior & patterns across the sales funnel. You can also segment your targeted website traffic based on demographics, language, interests, etc.         

2. Is your website optimized for lead conversion?

Your website is the foundation of your business. In today’s digital-driven world, a significant section of your targeted audience knows you by your website. It is where they learn about you and communicate with you. It is where most of your conversions take place.

What do you have in your website that would attract your visitors to take a positive action or make a purchase?

 Optimizing all aspects of your website is the key to lead conversion strategy.

• Does your website load faster? On average, if your website loads in less than 3 seconds, you are good to go. More than that and you have some serious issues converting your traffic to leads. Just imagine how you would feel if a website took several minutes to load before you could scroll easily. Your website visitors feel the same way.

The below image indicates the direct relationship between page loading time and bounce rate:

 So, ensure a faster page-loading experience to your consumers, and you will see a dramatic increase in interested prospects making inquiries, subscriptions or buying your product or service.   

• Do you have a killer landing page? Your landing page is the first thing that your visitors see when they click on your website link on search engine result pages. No wonder, it has to be the best; something impressive, powerful and engaging to convert your visitors to sales. Focus on long-form landing pages that have the ability to generate up to 220% more leads. It should have a strong Call to Action. However, it should be relevant to what the person is looking for.

For instance, someone who wants to know about influencer marketing tactics, clicks on Google search results to visit your page and finds it deals with influencer marketing only as a small part of digital marketing strategy. It will be a complete turn off for the person. Next time if he thinks of hiring a digital marketing agency, he may not even consider your services, thinking you are unprofessional and irrelevant.   

Optimize your landing pages with effective SEO tools and most importantly, perform A/B testing to see what is working and what is not.

Want to create stunning website content and marketing pages to boost your lead conversion strategy? Use powerful copywriting tools like Scriptly that help you write marvelous content in a quick & convenient manner. The one-of-a-kind copywriting engine has important tools like a marketing page builder, video sales letter software, email auto-responder engine, webinar creator and much more.   

Here is an example of a great landing page:

• Content is King: “Consumers are fed w/ in-your-face advertising & sales tactics that feel slimy” tweeted Julia E McCoy. They want valuable information – something fresh, unique and relevant – to boost their decision-making process. Effective content marketing can generate over three times as many leads as outbound marketing, while costing 62% less. So, there is no reason why you should undermine the importance of quality content in lead conversion.

Craft a stunner in minutes with Curately, an effective tool that helps create exceptional pages and blog posts by taking clues from some of the best content from from around the globe. The key features of the software include unlimited posts & sites, unlimited sources & projects, lead magnet creator, Point & Click WordPress integration etc., so every time your readers will have something new, fresh and enticing.   

3. Use various lead magnets

With information & attractive offers everywhere, it has now become harder to convert cold or warm prospects. The only way to stand out in this competition is by using different lead magnets to sell to your prospects. This may include webinars, podcast series, engaging videos, consultation calls, or virtual & automated events.

While videos convert 3 times better than any other tool, you can also provide your prospects with real-time experiences using virtual reality apps or automated events. “How to” videos or webinars are a great way to push your prospects down the sales funnel.

Want to know how you can use lead magnets to push sales effectively? “Ultimate lead generation template” provides ideas on how to sell to your prospects using powerful lead magnets, that are right for your business etc. 

Discover exactly how to turn cold traffic into warm opt-in leads with this proven lead generation template and download ad combo! 

4. Offer something for free

“If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.”

So, when you give away valuable stuff to your website visitors, it’s not a crime; neither will Google penalize you for this. In fact, they will appreciate your honest initiative to convert website traffic to sales.

When you reward your prospects for a positive action, it will help bring your business to notice. People will feel more inclined to share their email address, subscribe for the newsletter, or opt-in for a free trial when they get something relevant and useful in return.

You can give away essential stuff such as eBooks, videos, audio files, worksheets, interviews, etc. for effective lead conversion.

Giving away something for free will increase your chances of generating more leads which will eventually transform your website traffic to sales.

5. Have the right email marketing strategy in place while still having automation

When done right, email marketing can generate one of the highest ROI as compared to other digital marketing channels. Consumers still love emails and “all the standard process metrics, open rates, click rates and most importantly conversion rates are up,” says Skip Fidura, the Strategy and Insight Director at Dotmailer. This is driving up the revenues for marketers globally. Email campaigns are best used for following up with your website visitors after they leave your site.

For this, it is vital to have a strong email marketing campaign that works. To boost performance, you can use effective tools like Convertly that helps you build a solid email list and convert more customers. Automate the process of new subscriber onboarding; send email blasts; build triggered email sequences to automate communication; stay in touch with your old customers; re-engage your email list to convert more subscribers to paying customers – Convertly has you covered for all. 

 6. Opt-in forms

One of the most important aspects of lead conversion is having accurate visitor information so that you can follow-up with them and close the sale. Opt-in forms are a great way to invoke website visitors who will share their content information quickly. This will help you build a huge database, which you can later use to analyze, follow up and convert into sales.

Ensure you have a simple and attractive opt-in form with your value proposition. Make it visible on your homepage or anywhere that has more clicks or views.  

Conclusion

Do you have a well-planned strategy to generate and convert your leads into sales – right now? No?

The above tips will help you create a plan that will help you garner more quality leads and better conversions in real time. Using the right software tools will further boost your lead conversion strategy results in the long run.

If you’d rather hand the job over to a team dedicated to conversion and getting you leads, make sure to check out the Done For You Lead Generation page.  We’d be happy to walk you through putting a system together that does all of the above and more!

The post Lead Conversion Strategy: Tips To Convert Traffic Into Sales appeared first on Done For You.

Most Software As A Service (SaaS) providers are unable to convert more than 20% of their free users to paying customers. On average, most companies only convert 20 to 30 percent of the free users to paying ones. However, with the right strategies, you can get a SaaS conversion rate of up to 80% of all the free users. See this list of typical SaaS conversion benchmarks and compare your SaaS conversion rate against industry standards.

When thinking of how to convert SaaS free trials into customers, you should have the main problems at the back of your mind. For most customers, the problem is usually starting to pay for something they are used to having free of charge. It is, therefore, important to think of ways of making it seem less of a burden.

Here are the top 5 ways used to convert free trial users into paying customers.

1. Offer premium promotions

While you may not be able to provide a free trial for a long period, you can give your customers promotional offers that will attract them to paying for the product.

For example, Spotify offers its customers up to 90% off on the first three months subscription. For most customers, paying $0.99 per month is not a big deal as compared to paying $9.99. Such offers work in two ways; first, they help you know the customers who are truly interested in your product.

After the promotional months, you can follow up on such customers with retargeting email campaigns to get them to keep on using the product. Secondly, it is a strategy that is used to get your customers used to your product. Once the customer is used to your product, they will be unable to continue doing their work without your software. In the end, they are forced to subscribe to premium options at the set price.

Download our done-for-you flash sale email sequence which you can plug into your autoresponder to boost your next sales campaign fast.

2. Use impact messaging

There is a difference between optimizing your message and creating an impact message. It is important for your customers to know exactly what they are getting into before they start their journey.

The mistake most marketers do is to market the software as “free”. In this case, you will get enough traffic but no conversion. Your message should be displayed clearly on your landing page. Let the potential customer know how long the free trial period is and how much the cost will be after the trial.

There are many companies that have been forced to remove the words “free” from their website. For example, SumoMe changed its marketing message from “Free tools to grow your business” to “Tools to grow your business-Try for free”. This clearly indicates that the free option is a trial version and not the full product.

3. Collect payment information upfront

This may seem unorthodox to some people but is the best way of separating the chaff from the grains. There is no need to get very many people to sign up yet they are not interested in buying the product.

Collecting payment information upfront lets those who wish to continue paying for the product to sign up. This does not mean that they do not get to enjoy the free trial period. The customers simply set the payment information and billing dates in place when they start the free trial. Once the free trial period is done, they can either cancel their subscription or move on to the premium version.

4. Make the transition process easy

It is a fact that getting people to pay for a service they are used to for free is a big task. Therefore, you need to make the process easier by removing any obstacles in the way. You need to ask yourself what would be the biggest problem that anyone would face when they want to upgrade to premium. Get rid of such obstacles that the process can be seamless.

One of the ways of ensuring the process is simple is providing multiple checkout options. Ensure that those who wish to pay can pay in as many ways as possible. Other options include providing offers that make the package too attractive. Provide effective support systems and different payment packages so that the customer can choose the best-suited option.

5. Implement email drip campaigns

Most people forget that they will need to start paying for the service at the end of the trial period. As we all know, ambushing anyone to give you money for any reason does not work.

To ensure that your customers keep the need to pay for the service at the back of their mind, you need to find ways of reminding them. One of the best ways is to use drip email campaigns. Such emails are constant reminders to the customer that the trial period is running out.

You need to start with a welcome or a thank you message as soon as the customer signs up for the trial period. Throughout the course of time, keep them engaged with follow up emails. You can use this opportunity to showcase your brand as a leader in service delivery.

You can also use the follow-up emails to give the users some tips. Send them the deadline reminder just a few days to the end of the free trial period.

Grab this free re-engagement email sequence and start re-activating your idle subscribers fast.

Keep converting more

It is always an uphill task to convert SaaS trial users into customers. However, with a few tricks here and there, you can convert up to 80 percent of all trial customers.

The key factors to consider in SaaS onboarding include…

• the messaging,
• follow up,
• payment methods and
• purchase obstacles among others.

You need to entice your potential customers to want to purchase your services.

Whichever way you chose to go, make sure you make your product very attractive. Trial periods are meant to showcase the benefits of your product.

Make sure the customer is at the point when he/she needs your product the most before you start asking for money. You should also divide payment into options that are easily payable. Create offers for first-time subscribers to motivate them.

The post 5 Ways To Convert SaaS Free Trial Users Into Paying Customers appeared first on Done For You.

Relevance score defined

Relevance score is a metric measure of engagement level and quality of ads on Facebook. It is vital in that it determines how frequently Facebook users will view your ad and also determines the cost per click (CPC) of the ad. It is how Facebook decides whether an ad is great or junk.

Relevance score is one of the most critical yet often overlooked metrics for Facebook ads. It is calculated based on implicit and actual engagement that Facebook expects the ad to receive. The score is refreshed as people engage with the ad (comments and likes) and click the link (or not).

When Facebook users do not mind the relevance of an ad to them, then the marketer does not get anything for having an ad viewed by someone out of the target audience.

The metric itself is simple: a score of 1-10—10 indicating that your target Facebook users find your advertisement super relevant to their needs and interests.

Ads are usually taken to be highly relevant or useful to the audience if they hit a score of 7 out of 10.

What Facebook Ads relevance score is NOT

Note the wording. Relevance score, not quality score.

The scope of this metric is not to evaluate how good your image or ad copy is. Facebook’s main goal here is to give you a good idea if your ad’s demographic target is holding your message directly related to them and thus engaging with your ad.

How to locate the relevance score of your Facebook Ads

First go to your Ads Manager or Business Manager. Click on a campaign and then an ad set. Now you will be able to see the different ads.

Here’s an example of what you might expect to see:

If you don’t see the relevance score column, then click the “+” symbol on the last column and then “Customize Columns.”

The next screen you will be taken to will look like this:

Here you have the ability to choose the columns you want to appear and also add relevance score to your Facebook Ads dashboard. Don’t forget to hit the Apply button for the changes to take effect.

Benefits of a high relevance score

Over the recent years, advertising through social media has grown to be a big deal. This also led to a number of companies taking the same trend to market themselves and catch new potential clients.

However, some consumers became unhappy about being bombarded by certain Facebook ads. Facebook decided to create a standard score known as the relevance score. They introduced it back in 2015. The purpose of this metric is to make both users and advertisers happy.

With a high relevance score, the cost per click for an ad is reduced. By having high relevance scores, you know that you are hitting the target audience making your online marketing better and efficient.

Low relevance scores will damage your returns on investment which is very bad especially for a small business.

How to increase Facebook Ads relevance score

To get more views on an ad, here are some tips that will help you to improve Facebook Ads relevance score.

1. Understand your audience properly

To deliver your message properly, you will need them well. It is vital to understand an audience as well as knowing your product.

You could make use of the Facebook’s saved audience, custom audience or lookalike audience. By so doing you will reach your message to both the existing audience and to the new audience base. To do so, you deserve information on some things about your potential client or customer including:

• Their preferences.
• Social class and status.
• Phrases and keywords that could arouse their reaction.

With you have figured out the ideal audience, it will be easier to reach the message to your targeted group and in turn raise your relevance scores.

The takeaway here is to design campaigns based on buyer personas. Here’s how to do it.

Having a hard time to define your ideal audience? Click the image below to be taken to a free Scriptly trial. With Scriptly’s Customer Avatars feature you’ll be able to define the exact personas you want to target.

2. Be specific with your audience

Upon knowing the audience you are aiming for should now even be more specific with whom you want to get the ad.

Companies collect user data for them to use it for more personalized advert targeting. Try to use the available information to find out and determine who views or interacts with your posts most. Such people are key to help you get a good relevance score.

An example is that in case someone likes your sports T-shirt, there is a good chance that he or she will react excitedly to an ad on sports shoes.

By making your target more specific, you get better relevance scores.

Use Facebook’s Audience Insights to get a good grasp of what your ideal persona’s interests look like on the world’s largest social media platform.

This built-in tool will help you learn your customers better and also create new Facebook audiences that are more relevant to you.

You can also utilize Facebook pixel to create custom audiences from people who have already visited your site. Then, you can use these custom audiences to create lookalike audiences—a way for Facebook to name augmented audiences that are similar to your web visitors. Here’s more information on custom and lookalike audiences.

3. Make use of split testing (also known as the A/B test)

Most of the Facebook users are known to scroll down the news feed on their phones til they see something that will capture their eyes. Mostly it is an image that users check after scrolling the rest of the feeds.

Therefore by making use of attractive images to lure your targeted audience, your chances of having a higher relevance score will improve. However, you should consider taking the A/B test before making the ads.

The test is crucial since you do not want the target audience hitting the “Hide Ad” button which will ruin your return on investment.

A/B testing involves taking two audiences and showing the same ad to them or taking two different ads and showing them to the same audience. From there you can take into note the comments and reactions of the audience towards a certain ad. You will also find out which ad will perform better when posted on Facebook.

By deciding which image to go with, you minimize the rate of the targeted audience disliking your ad or post.

4. Make use of Call To Action (CTA) buttons

Call to Action buttons are used by online marketers to lure the user(s) to take an action. To ensure your CTAs are the clearest possible is by being relevant to the target audience.

For instance, in an eCommerce ad there can be a CTA reading,” Shop now” or for a job providing company, it could read, ”Apply Now”.To make a good relevance score, you will need to analyze your CTAs.

If the CTA is creating ease of the users understanding your Ads’ objectives, then know you have a good relevance score.

Here are the options you have when creating a Facebook ad.

5. Make use of video ads

For ages, images have been appealing but right now videos are gaining popularity in advertisements mostly online.

Some marketers using video content are making better conversions. By using the newly introduced video view feature on Facebook, you can manage to have your ad viewed by users who are likely to react excitedly to it.

You also will get to know at what point in the ad do the people begin too loose interest, hence you can rectify before it is late. Using video ads will raise relevance score but however, you need to do it right.

6. You need to add a sense of urgency in your ad

Most Facebook users will either convert between the first twenty minutes of viewing the ad or will not convert at all. Hardly will someone see an ad, leave it without taking action, and then come back later in the day and try to follow up on the peoples’ previous thoughts. As long as people keep posting stuff then, any user, upon logging into his or her Facebook will check on the current posts.

The main aid of adding a sense of urgency is to have as many people convert on viewing the ad post. There are several ways of having people take action on an ad but the usual one is offering a discount or a limited time coupon.

Offering a discount and adding a statement reading “Discount Ends Midnight” or, “Discount For The First Twenty”, will get the users who can afford to rush to convert. Make it short and simple and having hit the right audience will yield great results.

7. Optimize your landing page

You need to keep congruence along the path as the user enters your sales funnel and follows through.

When users see your ad and click, they establish some expectations of what they are about to see on the landing page that follows the click. If your landing page headline is NOT a continuation of the advertising message, the user experience is disrupted and the visitor is more likely to abandon the page.

The more consistent an ad image and copy are with your landing page headline, images and copy the more likely you are to increase your Facebook Ads relevance score.

See more landing page tips that will help you build high-conversion pages and add to your relevance score.

You may also want to try Scriptly’s Page Builder module which allows you to create optimized landing pages that are already proven to convert. What’s more, with Scriptly you get pages that practically write themselves.

Get better ads for less

As we explained, achieving a high relevance score will help you pay a lower CPC, thus get your message in front of the right buyers at a lower total cost.

Because Facebook ads are becoming more competitive, you need to make your marketing as cost effective as possible. When multiple ads (that you and your competitors are running) are targeted to the same Facebook audience, a high relevance score will help your ads stand out from the competition.

Also, when you are testing different ad variations and want to choose a winning ad to scale, you should be looking for ads with a 9/10 or 10/10 relevance score. They will be more cost effective and easier to scale.

The post How To Improve Facebook Ads Relevance Score appeared first on Done For You.

Now, have you noticed that when you Google for something, in the search results you can see Google review stars adjacent to some search results. Right?

Today, we will discuss whether these review stars help in boosting the click-through rate for a business or not. We are going to incorporate the basic facts and results obtained as a result of the CXL Institute Study.

Google stars lead to a 35% boost in click-through rate!

Getting straight to the point, we would like to put forward the results from this study. Yes, you are reading it correctly – Google review stars made a huge impact on the click-through rate raising it by 35% for businesses.

But how does it work? This is indeed a million dollar question.

A brief about the study

As part of the study to know how Google star ratings impact the buyer’s clicking decision, a group of users was encouraged to view search engine results in Google and click on any link keeping the following things in mind:

• Why did you click on that particular link?
• Which brands have you previously used for the service?
• What’s the most important factor you consider when making that particular choice?

Based on all this information, results were evaluated and it was found that Google stars lead to a 35% boost in click-through rate!

Now that we know about Google stars playing an important role in increasing user-engagement, let us have a look at how Google stars work. But before that here’s a peep at the basics about Google stars, when it came into the picture and how does it work?

Background

In order to understand this, let’s get back to 2010 when Google first started the concept of Star Ratings. It all began with Google asking companies to pay for ad space on top of the search results as part of their Google Shopping project.

Soon after, Google took this concept to the organic results as well. Today, these reviews are not just something for which businesses pay Google to get their name on top, but an average of the trusted reviews that Google collects from various third-party reviews sites trusted by the search engine giant.

How does it work?

Now that you know the basics about Google review stars, the next step is to figure out how these stars work and how they can make such a huge impact on your online business performance.

It makes a great first impression!

That’s just about the perfect answer to the question – how Google review stars work. As the saying goes, the first impression is the last impression, and this is the theory that works here.

Google ratings let the person, searching for something, know that your site has good feedback from people, and hence it must be worth a try. This first impression leads to an increased click-through rate. Good Google rating stars have been shown to create a snowball effect for businesses many a time, leading to great results for your business!

The ultimate question that arises after getting to know all this is: how can a business get great Google reviews? In order to get an answer to this question, here are a few things you need to know.

Encourage the customer

As per the latest guidelines, Google requires you to showcase your positive reviews on your web-page, and not only on the third-party website.

In order to achieve this, you must find a way to encourage the users to post reviews on your website.

The easiest way to do this is to take screenshots from third-party websites and post them on your web-page.

Another smart way to achieve this is to encourage users to post reviews of your work. You can invest in plugins or maybe run some script on your website that makes it easy for the users to post reviews and stars.

You can even run email campaigns to ask people to share their feedback and display the answers on your website.

Let Google find you!

Creating structured data on your website is the best way to encourage Google to not just find the positive words your consumers said about your business, but also to understand what they are saying.

Based on how you have built your website, you can choose different ways.

For instance, there is this Free Structured Data Schema Plugin that helps you achieve this without breaking a sweat.

If you are using the WordPress platform then I would recommend WP SEO Structured Data Schema plugin; easy and free to use.

WordPress SEO Structured Data Schema plugin enables web designers and business owners a super-easy way to add a schema for:

• Organizations
• Local businesses
• News articles
• Blog postings
• Events
• Products
• Videos
• Services
• Reviews
• Aggregate ratings
• Restaurants

Now, the next thing you need to know is Rich Snippets.

What are rich snippets?

A rich snippet shows extra information between the URL and the description. A rich snippet looks like this:

Difference between Snippet and Rich Snippet:

A snippet is a result Google shows to the user in the search results. A normal snippet usually looks like this:

Rich snippets are the extra information that you often see right in the search results, such as:

• Star ratings
• Events and event times
• Embedded site search box
• Videos
• Breadcrumbs

How to set up Google reviews

In order to get started with Google reviews set-up, you need to have a Google Merchant Account that you can easily set up using your Google account. Once you have established the Merchant Account, you need to:

• Select Merchant Center Programs by clicking the three dots you see on the right-hand corner of your screen.

• Go to the Google Customer Reviews Card

• Click Enable
• Add survey opt-in code to the website

Images: Ignitevisibility.com

And, that’s about it!

An optional way to add the badge code to your site

Before adding the code, you’ll be prompted to read and sign the Google Customer Reviews agreement.

Customer Reviews should appear as a program in your Merchant Center, once you successfully agreed and signed up.

What Google policy says: As of now, Google Customer Reviews is available in 23 countries, including the United States, Germany, The United Kingdom, Canada, and China.

Google Customer Reviews Dashboard:

With the help of Google Customer Reviews Dashboard system we can gauge insight into seller analytics as well as contains information collected by Google.

Metrics you’ll be able to monitor are:

• Opt-ins received: the number of customers in a given week that opted-in to the survey
• Surveys sent: the number of surveys emailed to customers in a given week
• Responses received: the number of survey responses customers have submitted in a given week
• Seller rating: shows your seller rating during the time period shown

By tracking these valuable metrics, you can better understand customers’ interaction with your products and process.

Make the first move

So, you can see it quite lucidly that getting good reviews on Google is the first step to improving your click-through rates, engagement and profits. After all, more visitors would automatically boost the chances of higher conversions.

This is the reason that without wasting any time further, you must begin with the application of all the points mentioned here. Now that you know about the various things you need to do in order to get stars for your business, go ahead with the practical implementation, and see how things turn out.

After all, it’s all in the stars – statistics show this as well.

Want to master the art of creating great content for your business? Check out this freebie!

The post Do Review Stars On Google Help Boost Your Click-Through Rate? appeared first on Done For You.

After looking at the definition it becomes quite evident why marketers want to boost their conversion rate. So, how can you achieve this?

This post is going to be the gateway that will give you a clear picture of 5 Google Analytics key metrics that will help you skyrocket your website’s conversion rates.

So, without further delay let us take a look at what those terms are.

1. Bounce rate

What’s the worst thing that can happen to a marketer? Visitors leaving a website as soon as they land on it.

This is exactly what bounce rate is all about. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.

In other words, when someone visits your website and leaves after visiting the page they landed on it counts for a bounce.

How does bounce rate play a role in conversion? When someone visits your website and leaves straight away without taking any action, how can you expect them to convert?

Consequently, high bounce rate means the content on the website is not engaging or encouraging enough for the visitors to take action.

Differences between bounce rate and exit rate

Bounce and exit rates might sound similar but they measure different visitor behaviors on a website. Bounce rate deals with a visitor’s first impression of a website. It measures the effectiveness of a landing page design and copy to persuade visitors to remain on the website and take a particular action on the landing page. Exit rate, on the other hand, is used to detect breakdowns in the process flow in the website.

2. Pages per visit

Now that you have sorted the problem of high bounce rate, how can you still be certain that the visitors are performing the action you want them to perform?

This is where pages per visit come into the picture. As the name suggests, pages per visit show you the number of pages viewed by the visitor while browsing your website.

There is no ideal number as to how many pages must a user visit while landing on a website. However, the higher the number of pages people visit the higher the engagement. And, higher engagement means better chances that the visitors will convert into leads and paying customers.

In short, engaging content and optimized pages per visit could eventually lead to a boost in your conversion rate.

3. New vs. returning users

A plethora of new users visiting the website is like a dream come true for an online marketer. However, what’s even better is to see an increase in the number of returning users.

A higher number of returning users means that people love your content and are willing to come back for more. An analysis of new versus returning users can eventually paint a clear picture of how successful your marketing endeavors are.

A key metric to remember is that a higher number of returning users is a reflection of how engaging your content is. At the same you must always keep an eye on the conversion rates coming from returning users. A low conversion rate means that your content is enticing but does not convince users to make a purchase. If that is the case, you need to work on your copy, CTA and product offering.

4. Page speed

Is your website fast enough to keep the visitor engaged? Or is it so slow that it makes the user want to leave?

Having a fast website matters to your business more than you probably realize.

You might be shocked to know that users abandon a website to never return if it takes more than just 3 seconds to load.

The first impression is the last impression. You cannot expect a web page to make an impression if it takes too long to load even the basic home page. Forget about utilizing the content on the website to boost your conversions!

How fast does your website need to be?

How long are you willing to wait for a web page to load? Five seconds? Two seconds?

Here’s the truth in numbers:

• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
• 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.
• 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with website performance are less likely to buy from the same site again (and 44% also tell their friends about bad online experiences)
• A one-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

How to improve website loading speed

First of all check your web page speed insights:

After a few seconds, Google will provide a detailed report of Page Stats & Optimization Suggestions. Just apply those changes accordingly!  That’s it!

5. Average session time

Last but not least, average session time is one of the most important factors in conversion rate optimization. A session last for as long as a visitor is active on your site during one visit.

A higher session duration means that the content is highly engaging and compelling. An average session time of 2-3 minutes is considered to be good for most industries.

Now, once you start using Google Analytics you will eventually notice how average session time fluctuates. Based on how your average session time is performing over the course of time you can eventually measure whether you are moving in the right direction with your content and web marketing tactics or not.

If you are looking for an advanced web analytics tool to help you create comprehensive reports and make sense of your data, try Statly.

Which metric matters the most?

This last point sums up the list of top 5 metrics that you need to take into account in order to analyze and improve your website’s conversion rate.

This is virtually a million dollar question. However, if you are looking for a one-word answer to this question, you are going to get disappointed. All metrics are important and should be used as part of a combined analysis to reach important conclusions.

The orchestrated interplay of all these factors is going to prove pivotal in your conversion rate optimization processes. You must have a thorough understanding of these terms and then create a plan to optimize your website content in such a way that can boost your engagement.

The post Top 5 Key Metrics To Skyrocket Your Conversion Rates appeared first on Done For You.

Profitable sales funnels are a real asset to your business. Once you have one (or more!) going, your sales funnels can continuously bring in sales, revenue, and profits without you having to lift a finger.

That’s the pipe dream at least. To get there, you’d need funnels that work really smart. There’s ongoing work just to keep those sales funnels working the way they should.

You need the right team, the right tools, and speed of execution.

Businesses — small and large — lose out on a lot just by doing various things that they shouldn’t be doing. In fact, chances are that you are killing the potential of your landing pages without even knowing it.

Here’s how:

Dependence on developers for landing pages

Your designers and developers are not marketers.

Good sales funnels demand skills from varied functions. You need decent design (see below), great copy, minimalistic approach, and the right technology (including tracking, analytics, and A/B testing) to power your sales funnels.

Plus, with all those campaigns waiting to be launched, you can’t afford to wait for months for your designers and developers to send in the completed funnels and landing pages.

None of that has anything to do with your IT department. They won’t be able to do it, they are expensive, and even if they did (while you don’t mind the cost), they won’t do justice to your sales funnels.

Fussing over design

Joshua Brewer once quoted:

“Socrates said, “Know thyself.” I say, “Know thy users.”

And guess what? They don’t think like you do.”

You can fuss all you want over the design aspect of your landing pages and funnels. You could spend millions (and we pray that you don’t, at least not yet) on design. Maybe you’d wait for a full year’s worth of back and forth with your designers, marketing team, and stakeholders.

All this fussing over designing, moving buttons and graphics a few millimeters here and there, worrying about background images, won’t bring you any results.

Good design can make serious money, there’s no denying that. However, given the task at hand and the inane urgency of a need for sales funnels that work, you should aim for decent design but maximum results (like leads and sales).

Making your opinions count too much

The big trouble with digital marketing? Everyone has an opinion about it (or aspects of it). Some believe that it’s SEO that we all should be focusing on.

Others swear by content marketing, content curation, and the good old inbound marketing. There are still others who spend years doing link building, guest posting, and what have you.

Having strong opinions on sales funnels can hurt your funnels so much that they are as good as dead.

Don’t waste time with opinions on your sales funnels when data tells you something else entirely. Let your campaigns run for a while, gather relevant data (with continuous testing), and then make decisions. It’s called data-driven decision making.

It’s brutal, but it’s the truth.

Focus on KPIs that really matter

Too many people focus (if at all) on metrics that don’t even matter.

How much traffic do I get to my sales funnels?
What are the number of impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and the Cost per Click (CPC) of your ads?

While each metric has a story to tell, they aren’t the ultimate metrics you should be concerned about. Focusing on metrics that don’t matter puts you on a path that only leads to a dead-end (or is it several dead ends?). These are metrics that don’t do you any good.

The kind of metrics you should really be concerned about — as far as sales funnels are concerned — are

• The CPA (Cost of Acquiring a lead).
• Number of leads at the landing page level
• The conversion rate of your landing pages
• The lead-to-sale ratio (how many of your leads convert into customers?).
• The average sale value, Lifetime Value (LTV) of each customer.

Those are the kind of metrics that give you the brutal truth about how well your sales funnels are performing. Everything else is fancy.

No business runs on fancy, ego-inflating metrics.

Sometimes we don’t realize that we are the main culprits for your dysfunctional or underperforming sales funnels or landing pages. Need a reality check? Get on a scheduled call with us, show us your sales funnels, and we’ll talk about how you can make your sales funnels work the way they should.

The post Sales Funnels: Avoid These Needless Bottlenecks (And Maximize Output) appeared first on Done For You.

Customers are constantly bombarded with an onslaught of advertising all day long. The average online visitor has an endless stream of marketing messages and ads to contend with for as long as they are on the internet (both on desktop and on mobile).

Banner ads, contextual links, pop-ups, pop-unders, dynamic opt-in forms, exit intent pop-ups, slide-ins — all these are things that the average visitor to your website puts up with. The whole aspect of whether or not you should take marketing to extremes is something that’s debatable.

We are marketers. We get it. But we don’t want every website to blast sound horns or pop-ups either.

But then, there are certainly more unintrusive ways to acquire leads on your website without being pushy, greedy, or plaster pop-ups all over your website.

Let’s explore a few low-key lead generation tactics.

Know what you are up against & scale Back

The global average of conversions on your mobile pages is around 1.43% while it’s 3.89% for the desktop, according to Madeline Blasberg of Leadpages.

As you can see, conversion rates are not that high. It’s an uphill task for every business to generate leads assuming they are hitting all the best practices and doing great with their website and overall web presence.

If you have to do better, you’d need to beat those global averages. You’d either have to up your game with lead generation or get more traffic to your sites, or both. One of the ways you can really stand out is when you keep it all minimalistic and simple.

Instead of opting for more lead generation elements such as opt-ins and forms, reduce them and use a strategic approach to have them show up.

For instance:

• Everyone uses a blog sidebar. Remove it and provide for a full screen experience.
• Instead of using a generic pop-up site wide, use specially-crafted, content-specific opt-in forms within each blog post (for blog content upgrades).
• Don’t use any pop-up. Use only exit-intent pop-ups.

Everything points to a single landing page

If you follow any of the content marketing best practices such as content upgrades, for instance, you’ll find that your website becomes a complete mess with all sorts of opt-in forms and pop-ups plastered all over your website and your blog posts.

Instead of using pop-ups, slide-ins, and opt-in forms for lead generation all over your website, create a single landing page and use links to point to that landing page.

Be sure to make this single landing page a complete entity by itself focused on lead generation by using a compelling offer — a free course, a free membership, an information-packed report, or a free video (or a set of videos).

Use only links

Links are clean, and a web page with content is a natural habitat for a link. If your website or blog had nothing on it except text, videos, and links, it’d be the cleanest user experience you’d ever manage to get for your visitors.

A website without any of those annoying pop-ups but only strategically placed links is a breather — an oasis, really.

Also, because of lack of anything else to click on, there are now more possibilities for your links to be clicked on while your visitors read and consume your content. Plus, by using just links instead of opt-in forms or pop-ups, only the most interested visitors will end up clicking on those links to sign up.

Clicking on links leading to a sign up shows high-intent on the part of your visitors. This leads to a much higher quality of leads than you’d otherwise.

It’s all about timing

The above two approaches for only for those who dare (or those who can get away with experimenting a little). Most businesses don’t have the time to experiment and they can’t afford to let go of potential leads, just like that.

In other words, for some businesses, there’s just no way you can afford not to have pop-ups and other lead generational elements.

In such cases, the next best thing to do with lead generational elements is to use “timing”. Use only highly-relevant offers on appropriate pages.

Use exit-intent with relevant and timely offers. Or make those slide-ins come out only after your visitors pass certain rules such as “spent X minutes on site” or “visited X pages”.

If you have to use your lead generation elements, make sure to time them properly. Get deep with page level elements or timed events so as to make them more relevant to your visitors.

Are you going full on with your lead generation elements or are you scaling up? In either of the cases, how have your results been like?

If you’d like to learn more about lead generation, running full-fledged organic or paid campaigns, building sales funnels or landing pages, get on a scheduled call with us now.

We can also build Done For You Lead Generation Campaigns for you and manage the traffic!  Click here to read more about it.

The post Lead Generation: Low-key Ways To Acquire Leads On Your Website appeared first on Done For You.

Automation is known to evoke several emotions such as curiosity, confusion, and fear – everything at once. There are people who might think that marketing automation is time-consuming, a waste of time and won’t do any good to your business and then, there are people, in awe of marketing automation, will bombard you with numerous examples to prove why it is something that your business needs desperately.

With all these opinions, there are some myths associated with marketing automation as well. Before we go ahead and bust them out, let’s take a moment to learn a little bit about the marketing automation first.

What is marketing automation?

The definition of automation in layman’s terms goes something like this – “the use or introduction of automatic equipment in a manufacturing or other processor facility.”

Now, if we look at automation in marketing then it is basically to automate your marketing and sales engagement for purposes such as:

• Generating more leads
• Increase efficiency
• Grow revenue faster

In fact, it won’t be wrong to state that it is a segment of marketing that focuses on customer management system and works in the best manner to organize, categorize, and gain quality customer interaction.

Applications of marketing automation

Marketing automation is an awesome way to target people based on their behavior, preferences, and previous sales and generate new leads while converting the existing ones. Its applicable uses include social media marketing, email marketing, lead generation, metrics and analytics among others.

As we might have got a better understanding of marketing automation, it’s time to discuss the myths associated with it. Learning about these myths will help you learn better about marketing automation.

Below are the common myths associated with marketing automation. Let’s take a look at them:

Myth #1: Automation is only for email marketing

It is surprising to see that a lot of people, including many digital marketers and business owners, are of the opinion that marketing automation is relevant for just email marketing.

However, one can’t deny that email marketing is definitely a strong medium or channel for automation but you can take it to another level with the appropriate use of social media, landing pages, and lead generation.

Automation is about the engagement of prospect customers from the moment they open their email. You can gauge their behavior and personalize email communication accordingly, make changes in the content, or the way they are being directed after a submission.

 The best example of this comes in the form of the recent rise of chatbot. Chatbots have been used by marketers to:

• Sell products and services
• Make payments simpler and easier
• Gain customer insights
• Personalize marketing strategies
• Increase engagement
• Qualify Leads

So, you can see that there is a lot of automation in marketing than just plain emails. And, this is just one facet of it.

Myth #2: Marketing automation is a ‘set and forget’ approach

It is a popular myth that once you automate certain things on your marketing campaign, you can leave them just the way they are. It is obviously false because every campaign needs to be reviewed and updated from time to time.

You have to make sure that it has not deflected from your business strategy, ultimate goal and vision. One has to take care and intervene to check even the evergreen campaigns and optimize them to increase their effectiveness.

Opting for this ‘set and forget’ approach might just make your campaigns outdated. Today, we live in a world where people want unique and meaningful content. Make sure you don’t miss out on such details and think that automation will do all the work for you. That’s just not how marketing automation works!

There is no denying that just like any other field, marketing automation is also going through an evolution. And, hence it becomes imperative for marketers to forget about the once set and done approach. Rather they must focus on evolving with the ever-evolving marketing automation strategies.

For example, the recent rise of AI and predictive analysis has made it simpler for marketers to gain valuable insights about customers. However, in order to achieve the desired results, the marketers must also evolve and understand the terminology.

Myth #3: Automation is mechanical and impersonal

It is often talked about how marketing automation is kind of robotic and is not at all personal as opposed to what it should be. Now, what we often forget is that it’s not the thing that makes a difference rather it’s being used that changes the game. Likewise, the fault here is not in the process, rather how it is being carried out.

Customers are quite well-aware of their importance and value. That’s why companies don’t mind going an extra mile to allure them. Hence, they are constantly coming up with personalized messages, emails, calls, offers, ads, and various other attempts to allure them. Thus, it is an important way to supplement your content marketing strategy.

Here’s a great example of how big names like Disney are using it to great effect. Just a while back, Disney released the movie Zootopia. They took automation marketing to the next level by creating a character named Judy Hopps bot (which was also the central character in the movie) on Facebook messenger, giving the users a more personal and fun experience.

And, this is just one odd example!

Myth #4: Marketing automation is time-consuming and too expensive

Well, automation marketing does require a monetary contribution from organizations and businesses. To all those, who are debating over this topic must see this as an investment than an additional cost. This being said, the question of money and time largely depends on the size and ultimate goals of a company.

There is a myriad of reasons that speak volumes about the value and ROI marketing automation brings along with it. Just think about the number of new customers and new lead conversions from existing ones are needed for the cost to be returned, and you’ll get your answer.

Myth #5: It is only suitable for big companies

It is probably one of the weirdest misconceptions that marketing automation is only for big industries and large businesses. On the contrary, many small and medium businesses and companies are quite successfully and efficiently using marketing automation to their advantage.

Whether you have a large enterprise or a small startup, you can easily integrate marketing automation into your business and leverage its power to meet your needs. It won’t just magically fix everything but could definitely help you automate tasks and get a better hold of your work.

As a matter of fact, there is a list of amazing tools that can help you in marketing automation, even if you are a budding startup with not a lot of cash to burn.

Over to you!

These myths and misconceptions are just the tips of an iceberg as there are so many others floating out there yet to be debunked. However, with more awareness and knowledge on the internet, people are constantly updating themselves with the right information and are choosing platforms that best meet the requirements of their business.

Do your research and target the audience with the right tactics and make the most of this amazing thing called marketing automation.

By the way f you are looking for an awesome tool that can help you automate your marketing campaigns, you need to check this out!

The post 5 Common Marketing Automation Myths Debunked appeared first on Done For You.

Once you are all set with the basic task of setting up landing and other funnel pages, you’ll then move on to creating advertising campaigns and email marketing autoresponder sequences. Then, you’ll have the ongoing task of landing page optimization, A/B testing, and making tweaks to ensure that all parts of the funnel are contributing towards higher conversions.

By the way, a prerequisite for sales funnel optimization is having sufficient and meaningful data. If you don’t track your sales funnels the right way, you won’t be able to extract all the important information you need. Statly is an advances analytics app that helps you track every visitor moving through your sales funnel and website while it delivers customized alerts to increase conversions, reduce bottlenecks and capitalize on hidden opportunities! Would you like to try Statly for free?

Part of that ongoing optimization work you have to do revolves around trying to achieve the maximum conversion rate of your landing pages.

But how do you do that? What can you possibly increase your landing page conversions even more?

Here’s what you can do:

Remove distractions

We are so used to designing landing pages the way we design websites that we think landing pages work exactly like websites do. Partly yes, but mostly no.

Elements that might look and feel naturally at home on a website are an absolute no-no on landing pages.

For instance, you’d use live chat or a Facebook Messenger prompt on your website – and that’s fine.

The same prompts on your landing page would probably distract your visitors from taking that all-too-important action that your CTA is working hard to accomplish.

Navigation menus, links, social media buttons, or any other element that is clickable (everything except the call to action) shouldn’t be used on landing pages – period.

Often, you’d design your landing page and sales funnels without these distractions in the first place, right from the go, even before you launch your campaigns.

But if you did, it’s time to start removing these distractions one by one.

Keep testing

Split testing is not a one-time thing; it’s an ongoing process to pit one variant against another to reach a point when you arrive at a collection of ads, landing pages, and email marketing sequences that get you the best possible results.

To get to that point, however, you’d have to continuously and diligently work with your split testing process.

You can’t stop. You can’t sit back and relax if you want the best results.

Split test your ads, your landing pages, the subject line of your email autoresponders, and all applicable parts of your sales funnels to get the best possible results. You’d need sufficient data, enough time, and an ongoing effort to make your split tests work.

Add geo-targeting

About 74% of online customers get fed up and frustrated when they land on web pages that are irrelevant to them or when the information they see doesn’t pertain to their interests. More than 84% of online shoppers claim that personalization impacts their purchase decisions.

Geo-targeting helps resolve these issues by making it possible to show more relevant content to your visitors while helping you personalize their user experience and content.

You can also use Geo-targeting to hyper-personalize your pop-ups or slide ins, launch hyper-local promotions to boost in-store revenue, launch local events, and more.

Utilize dynamic text replacement

One of the most important aspects of matching your ad with a message-matching landing page is relevance and continuity. It so happens that most ads don’t “connect”. If an ad says something or promises something, that story doesn’t extend to the landing page where your potential visitors are bound to arrive.

That’s the basics, anyway.

You could take this to another level with dynamic text replacement where a certain keyword automatically shows up on the landing page making it more relevant. You could use dynamic text replacement to dynamically show location names, specific keywords, or any other items you’d specify such as Pin codes, for instance.

In essence, DTR (Dynamic Text Replacement) swaps out a piece of text on your landing page with whatever keyword (or another valid element) your prospect might have searched for before arriving on your page.

Does DTR really work? You bet.

In a simple A/B test, Campaign Monitor found that using DTR helped with 31.4% lift in conversions.

How do you plan to optimize your landing pages?

What kind of ongoing work do you foresee with your landing pages and funnels? What are you trying to do continuously to inch towards better conversions?

If you need help designing high-converting landing pages and funnels or if you’d like to discuss your marketing strategy, please don’t hesitate to get on a scheduled call with us.

The post CRO: How To Make The Most Of Your Landing Pages (When You Thought You Couldn’t) appeared first on Done For You.

That applies to the audiences exposed to your campaigns, sales, and landing pages too.

Just like banner blindness is a reality, your landing pages could begin to look old, outdated, and maybe just lose a little shine.

As a part of ongoing work you’d have to do to keep your sales funnels going, landing page makeover is one of those things you just have to do.

Periodically, your landing pages and sales funnels will call for a makeover, a redesign, or an overhaul.

Note: None of these are mandatory if your landing pages and sales funnels are already pushing you into the profit zone. These landing page makeover tips are for those pages and funnels that really need a makeover.

Also, it isn’t proven if landing pages or sales funnels with good looks actually convert any better than ugly ones.

With that out of the way, here are a few tips to add some spice to your landing pages when the time comes for a makeover:

Don’t mess with what works

When you are this stage of a makeover for your landing pages, chances are that your landing page has already been used for your existing campaigns.

Maybe your landing pages worked, and there could also be other variants of the same page competing in your regular A/B tests.

Don’t mess too much with your landing page makeover if they are already working great. The point of the makeover isn’t to throw a monkey wrench into the lead generation machine that you’ve worked so hard to build.

If everything is working great and your continuous A/B testing is helping you improve your overall conversions sure and gradually, you should actually stop reading at this point.

Experiment with backgrounds

The simplest and the most effective background in the world is: solid color backgrounds. You just can’t go wrong with a background using simple and solid colors such as white or blue.

But if you were feeling adventurous, your landing page has some sort of a background which isn’t just white or blue.

Try to tweak the page so that it has a solid color. You can also experiment with a pattern, or a beautiful gradient.

Play with colors

Colors go a long way to not only enhance user experience on your landing pages but also help in the ultimate act of persuasion (which is exactly what your landing pages are built out to do).

Your choice of colors will directly affect your ability to trigger actions on the part of your visitors. Colors are so powerful that they can also induce physiological reactions such as increase blood pressure, metabolism, or “good” (or negative) feelings.

Guido Jansen writes that your potential customers — knowingly or unknowingly — interact with colors. Red is festive and bold. Blue is cool, trustworthy, and friendly. Yellow is all about positivity. Grey is understated elegance. Green is a symbol of wealth.

See how colors affect our moods? Build out your color palette and use them on your landing page.

No animations? Add them

Animations on your landing page add a special layer of interactivity (and maybe even fun) taking the user experience to another level altogether.

All this without actually changing, editing, removing, or adding any element that’s already working on your landing page.

For instance, your background, headlines, sub headings, copy, images — they all remain in place. Except that you could animate and change the way your elements display depending on user interactions (such as hover, scroll, or click).

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

Your landing page makeover exercise gives you a chance to simplify your pages.

Look out the usual mistakes most businesses do when they build landing pages such as adding extra clickable links on the page, adding too much information that’s not required, adding social media buttons (with links), adding a navigation bar, or using extra images or graphics that don’t need to be there on the page.

Remove clutter. Seek opportunities to simplify. Keep your landing pages minimalistic and still effective.

Are you working on a landing page makeover or are you planning to? If you need help with landing pages and sales funnels, get on a scheduled call with us. We’ll help you up your game and help you generate more leads (and hence more revenue).

The post Same Page, Different Game: Top Landing Page Makeover Tips appeared first on Done For You.

Tracking visitors and page views are important metrics, of course.  What’s much more important to see what they’re doing though!

Tracking website visitors involves understanding where they came from, what they’re on your site for, what their demographic is, and which actions they take on your website.

What’s the visitor value? How many of them see the content you want them to see? How many take the desired action you need that moves your business forward, like signing up for your newsletter? And, how long do they stay on your pages? All these are questions that you should be able to answer with website visitor tracking and analytics software.

Website visitor tracking defined

Website visitor tracking is part of web analytics. It’s about measuring and analyzing user behavior on your web pages and sales funnel pages. It’s about tracking the user source (how they found your website) and behavior (journey on your website) during the present and future visits.

Your goal with web visitor tracking should be to optimize the user experience by customizing the kind of content that visitors see on your website according to their profiles (source, country, keywords used to find your site, ad they clicked on, presumed interests).

It’s also to measure the effectiveness of your sales funnel elements; like sales copy, landing pages, blog posts and supporting pages.

Basic visitor tracking metrics

Page Views/Page Impressions: The total number of times a website (or a particular page) is visited. Knowing your top visited pages helps you understand where most of your incoming traffic lands, and track people’s actions following their entry point.

Unique Views: The number of time a website (or a particular page) is visited by unique browsers. This is different from total views because it excludes recent visitors, so they’re not counted twice.

Referrer: A third-party web property where your visitor clicked a link to your site. Looking into your referrers will help you understand which backlinks or sources bring in the most traffic.

Bounce Rate: A “bounce” is when someone visits one of your pages and immediately clicks away (clicks the back button or closes their browser tab). A bounce usually means that they didn’t find what they were looking for in your content. Bounce rate is the percentage of people who exited from the same page they landed.

Goals/Events: Pre-defined actions that visitors can take on your website, like checkout, view a product, watch a sales video, fill out a survey, submit a form, or click of a button.

Conversion Rate: Of all the web analytics and visitor behavioral metrics you might track, the conversion rate is probably the single most important one. Your conversion rate is the percentage of web visitors who completed a goal on your site. Goals are things like submitting a contact form, completing a purchase or viewing a certain page on your site.

The right tool to analyze web traffic

All of these metrics should be looked into separately and combined to derive meaningful results. Statly, our comprehensive web visitor tracking and sales funnel analysis software, produces combined reports that showcase where your visitors come from, which pages they visit and at what point they convert. So, what Statly does is derive data from all important web metrics and combine them into marketing reports of value to decision makers.

Take conversion rate, for example, which is arguably the most important metric you should track with your web visitor tracking software. Conversion rate as a whole doesn’t say much. Instead, look at the conversion rate per traffic channel.

You want to know what’s the conversion rate of a specific audience coming from a particular Facebook campaign that drives traffic to one of your landing pages. This metric, when compared to industry standards or other campaigns that you run, is the ultimate measure of how successful your site and sales funnels are.

With Statly, you can visualize your sales funnels, see what converts, and find bottlenecks that you need to fix. Maybe you’re not attracting the right kind of web visitors. Or, maybe a page has a lot of bounces, so you need to optimize it. A sudden drop in conversions might mean that there’s an error in your shopping cart.

That’s the magic of website visitor tracking and advance funnel analytics. You can easily see what works and what needs to be fixed…  More than that, Statly even sends out triggered notifications when the AI-engine sees that there’s an opportunity (like a sudden burst of traffic) or a bottleneck (like a sales page that isn’t converting that well).

The wrong way to track website visitors

Now that we have explained what website visitor tracking is and how you can implement it using Statly, we also need to stress that there’s a wrong way to do it.

The wrong way is either using your hosting provider’s stats counter or installing a visitor counter on your website. Both these solutions will only give you fragments of information. With these web visitor tracking solutions you will only get the number of visits, but nothing more. No behavioral information, no funnel tracking, no conversion stats…

Track what matters

So, your only option is to use a dedicated advanced analytics solution from either the day that your site goes live or right now :0)  Once you get the tracking script installed, Statly saves all the conversion data for you to dip into later.

You probably know what Google Analytics can do, and you also know that it’s the industry standard.

However, there are other web visitor tracking tools, like Statly, that are tailor-made for real businesses that want meaningful data presented in a useful way. Of course, both Statly and Google Analytics can run simultaneously on your website, if you choose to do that.

Statly is a sophisticated (yet simple and comprehensive) web analytics solution for website traffic analysis and visitor tracking. Statly enables advertising and marketing teams as well as business owners to have access to meaningful marketing data.

With Statly in your MarTech (or AdTech) stack, big data finally makes sense.

Click here to sign up for a completely free Statly account – no credit card required. Install it in less than two minutes using our WordPress plugin (or just copy and paste the code), and start tracking website visitors instantly!

The post How You Can Track Website Visitors And Turn Them Into Prospects appeared first on Done For You.

It’s not to say that social media isn’t worth your time or that you shouldn’t bother with email broadcast campaigns; it’s just that you can’t overlook a particular digital marketing channel over another — because of inertia, lack of resources or knowledge, or just because you never thought about it.

What is a transactional email?

Transactional emails consist of:

• order notifications,
• reminders,
• service emails,
• shipping notifications,
• and several others.

According to MailJet, open rates for transactional emails range from 30% to 40% (as compared to only 15 to 25% open rates for regular marketing emails).

How you can profit from transactional emails

Transactional emails are almost always overlooked as a particular email marketing campaign type that can bring in extra sales.

For most businesses, transactional emails are an afterthought.  The get opened and read though…  And that keeps email deliverability up.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are a few ways to make transactional emails work to bring in sales and profit, without you really doing much (except making a few changes to your strategy):

Make reminders ring the cash register

Take a look at what Evernote does when they send you a reminder that your annual subscription has ended, when they notice that you are getting close to your subscription date, or when you remove some of the devices you use from auto syncing.

Transactional email example #1: Evernote

This could have been just a reminder or a notification that you’ve successfully removed two of your devices from syncing.

But with simple messaging, on brand, and a simple offer to help you save on your next subscription (for a full year), Evernote is throwing its gates open for existing subscribers to continue with their subscriptions.

Could you do something like this for your business?

Order notifications for upsells

Every email that goes out to welcome your customers thanking them for their order is an opportunity for you to upsell.

You don’t have to overdo it but you can use notifications during a specific month or based on the number of times a single customer placed an order (regular customers?) and send out ultra-specific offers to those customers or during specific months.

Transactional email example #2: Moo

Moo has always been awesome when it comes to using emails to their benefit. Here’s a simple (but really long and loaded) order notification email that they use (upselling included):

Shopping cart abandonment emails can increase your profit

The average rate at which shopping carts are abandoned is anywhere from 60 to 75%, according to Baynard Research.

Shopping cart abandonment is killing e-commerce. If you are selling products or services online, chances are that you are already suffering from it. Shopping cart abandonment drains money right off your shop pages and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Or can you?

You can, if you are aware of the problem and that you are willing to do something about it. Sending out timely shopping cart emails is a powerful strategy if you do it right.

Transactional email example #3: ASICS

See how ASICS does it:

Image Source: Reallygoodemails.com

Winback emails

Remember the marketing mantra which goes something like, “It’s easier to sell to existing customers than try to target new ones”?

Winback emails or re-engagement emails help you do just that.

For every business, there are customers who bought once but never again. SaaS businesses, membership sites, subscription-based businesses have inactive customers (those who were customers once but aren’t active now), and several other use cases. Winback emails make for terrific ways to get your inactive customers back.

Transactional email example #4: Skillshare

Image Source: Reallygoodemails.com

Out of stock emails

As if Shopping cart abandonment wasn’t a major issue, you run the risk of suddenly running out of stock with a few popular items on your eCommerce store.

Customer comes to your store, selects a product (s), and sees the “Out of stock message”. Worse still, she goes all the way to checkout page places an order and then receives a notification that the product is out of stock.

What happens then? Most eCommerce stores don’t have anything more than “We are sorry, but the product you ordered is out of stock” message.

Transactional email example #5: Dr. Axe

You could do better than that, like Dr. Axe does:

Image Source: Reallygoodemails.com

Transactional emails don’t just have to do the heavy-lifting like to send out a message, a notification, or a reminder. They can actually do just as well in helping you increase revenue and profit compared to your regular email campaigns.

The question is: Are YOU using transactional emails to increase your profit?

Check out our Attract. Engage. Profit Webinar, get access to our email marketing handbook or get on a scheduled call with us to discuss your marketing strategy.

The post Simple Ways To Profit From Transactional Emails (With Examples) appeared first on Done For You.

But wait, is traffic the only thing that a business expects to get from a mobile app? Certainly not!

After all traffic – or just a huge number of installs – does not pay the bills, does it? So, how do you measure the success of an app for a business? Or, if we put it in better words – what is the one figure that actually matters in a mobile app for a business?

Mobile app conversion events that matter

Is it just the install, or is it something more important than that?

Before answering that question, let us take a look at some interesting numbers.

According to eMarketer, after installing an app, the number of app usage events was 35% for iOS users and 30% for Android users. However, this number falls back to a mere 3.2% and 3.3% within 30 days.

The biggest reason behind this is the ever-increasing competition creeping up in the app market. So, how do you maintain the interest of users after they have installed the app?

Here are some tricks to increase usage and conversion events that actually matter to the success of your business. These strategies for mobile app conversions have worked for the most successful apps out there. Give them a try and see how they work for your mobile app.

1. In-app events

Categorizing users into different segments based on their actions once they download the app can be the smartest move.

Here is a small example.

Suppose you have a gaming app that gives users the option to go for a full tutorial. Now, it is obvious that only those who are interested in the app will go for a complete tutorial, and are bound to retain for a longer time, whereas the ones who leave it in-between are going to be somewhat disinterested in the app.

You need to find the correlation points and then take steps to improve customer retention using that data.

2. Acquisition campaigns

Finding correlation, as mentioned above, is the first step of getting the best ROI from your app. The next step in the mobile app conversion chain of events is to draw the acquisition path.

For instance, a campaign that has underperformed – even after all the tricks mentioned in the first step – can be discarded. Rather than that, you can focus on investing resources in a strategy that has resulted in a lot of active and engaged users.

Ratios like ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) and loyal users, versus number of installs, are some of the most important mobile app metrics you need to consider when measuring the success of your user acquisition strategy.

Are you tired of trying to figure out what’s the best way to generate profits for your business? Maybe you can’t find a profitable strategy because you don’t know what really works. Measuring the right data and focusing on important business information can help you get out of this vicious circle of low income.

Don’t base your decisions on intuition only, try Statly, one of the best sales funnel tracking tools. With Statly’s advanced analytics capabilities, you’ll know what brings money and what doesn’t. Knowing your business numbers is the way to make informed decisions.

We have also prepared a three-part video course for you, which you can watch on demand, and learn how you can optimize your funnels to increase profits.

3. Cohort analysis

In layman terms, cohort analysis is the method that will enable you to group together mobile app users showing similar behavior, and analyze their KPIs over the course of time.

In simpler words, “cohort” is just a fancy word for group. Cohort analysis allows you to categorize and measure the quality of your average app user. Read this article to learn more about how to do it.

Based on whether the quality of the user is increasing or decreasing over time, a business can further plan its next step. After all, being prepared for one step in advance is the first sign of a smart business.

Isn’t it so?

4. Deep-linking

The best way to boost your conversion rate is to make sure you carry out proper deep-linking in the app.

What this means is that you add deep links in the app that allow you to get the user to land on any specific web page that you want.

This is where it gets tricky. You need to insert the deep-links without compromising the user experience. Here’s a small example of how you can handle it.

Suppose you are offering a 30% discount on the first order to all your new mobile app users and have sent an email regarding this. Now when the user clicks on the link, it takes him to the app download page. Once installed, the first message that the user gets to see is again the promotion offer that drove him here.

Doesn’t this make an impact?

So, you can learn from this trick and develop your own strategies to make sure you drive users to the page you want, without compromising even one bit on their app experience!

These mobile app ratios matter…

It has been observed that during the earlier phase, when mobile app marketing was in its early days, people used to think of click-to-install rate as the factor that determined the success of an app for a business.

However, thanks to the rise of metrics, meticulous evaluation and a better understanding of the date, the focus has now shifted to metrics, such as:

• Retention rate or churn rate
• ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) or ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User)
• Daily active users or monthly active users
• Cost per active user acquisition
• Average lifetime value of users

Read this article if you want to learn how to calculate important mobile app usage ratios.

Keeping track of such conversion events and ratios, is the ultimate factor that can help you get the best ROI. After all, as mentioned in the earlier part of this blog, only app installs won’t pay the bill for your business. It’s the monetary returns that you get that will prove to be vital to the success of your business.

Do you want to meet your mobile app marketing goals?

This is the one question that causes sleepless nights for many business owners because they fail to understand the conversion metrics that actually matter in mobile apps.

If you were also part of this creed, then now you have a clear picture of what you should measure and what should not! Based on the information provided above, you can eventually plan your mobile app marketing strategies and get better results.

The post Mobile App Conversion Events That Actually Matter appeared first on Done For You.

A/B testing is the method of comparing two versions of the same web page (mostly landing pages, in our case), to figure out which version performs better, given that everything is the same, except for one single element that’s being tested.

According to Optimizely,

A/B testing allows individuals, teams, and companies to make careful changes to their user experiences while collecting data on the results. This allows them to construct hypotheses, and to learn better why certain elements of their experiences impact user behavior.

In another way, they can be proven wrong — their opinion about the best experience for a given goal can be proven wrong through an A/B test.

Split testing is at the very core of data-driven marketing, and it essentially makes sure that you inch towards a more positive ROI, while making precise decisions leading to lesser spending for more results.

A/B testing is awesome, but there’s an issue: How do you determine what to test?

Before we get there, here are a few things you shouldn’t even waste your budget testing:

• Background color: If you are not using white as your background color, and if you got around to testing the background colors of your pages, there’s something wrong. Get on a strategy call with us if this is the case (we need to talk).
• Hero section: Image or no image, visuals are important for us humans to process information. You can either use a background image on your landing page, keep the hero section plain, use gradients, or colors. There’s no need to test this.
• Video vs. No Video: Video just works. If you have a sales letter or a landing page with a video on it, that page is bound to work better than a page without a video.

Now with that out of the way, here’s what you should split test on — from traffic sources to your sales funnels.

Start with testing headlines

At least 8 out of 10 people who arrive on your landing page will read the headline. The headlines you use are the heavyweights of your funnel, they have the capacity to either make that conversion happen or not.

In fact, if there’s only one thing you’d bother A/B testing start and end with headlines and leave everything else alone. Pick the first variant of your landing page and use one type of a headline while you can use another variant of the same headline on your other variant.

Test your offer type

You might think that the offer you are making is out of this world, but you never know if it’s the best offer. The only way to find out what kinds of offers work and what doesn’t is to test them out.

If you are giving away coupon codes for your eCommerce store as one kind of offer, try to see if a non-discount offer, such as a tip sheet or a cheat sheet, works better.

Customers in different niches respond to offers differently. While some prefer discounts, others prefer videos. A few others might demand a lot more than just a little “free something.” Offers for other verticals such as SaaS products are almost always like a “free trial.”

Test call to action buttons

First, never ever use “submit” on your call to action buttons. You are better off without any call to action than to use “submit.”

Don’t write off the power of a button. According to Wingify, more than 30% of all A/B tests done are for CTA buttons. About 1 in 7 A/B test campaigns produce results that are statistically significant. When that happens, the conversion rates go up by 49%.

Flow with the context of your copy and use a call to action text on your button that’s more contextual and colloquial.

Now, how exactly do you determine what copy is appropriate for your CTA button? Michael Aaagard has been doing CTA button tests for years, and Peep Laja of Conversion XL points out that Michael only has two questions to help you arrive at the right copy for your CTA buttons:

1. What is my prospect’s motivation for clicking this button?
2. What is my prospect going to get when (s)he clicks this button?

Answers to these two questions are going to be the basis for the button copy and for the copy surrounding it.

A/B testing tips wrap up

That’s it. You only have three different elements on which to do your A/B testing. If your budget permits and if you have the time and resources, you can fine-tune your testing and go deeper if you like. Or you could choose to do A/B testing for several other elements.

If you’re looking to dig in even further, check out this A/B Testing Guide by our friends over at CXL.

But if you are like most businesses strapped for time and resources, we only recommend that you start with the big three elements (headlines, CTA buttons, and offers) and take it from there.

If you need help building custom funnels and layout specific A/B testing strategies relevant to your business, get on a call with us now.

The post A/B Testing: Must-know Tips And Recommendations For Insightful A/B Testing appeared first on Done For You.

Sadly, most businesses aren’t anywhere close to creating landing pages and using them for their campaigns. Those businesses that actually use landing pages don’t seem to get it right by leaving out crucial work that goes into making high-performing landing pages.

Here are a few mistakes businesses and marketers do when it comes to landing pages, and we are hoping that you’ll avoid these.

Mistake #1: Hiring developers

Way too many businesses still do landing pages the old fashioned way by using HTML/CSS or by employing PHP developers to help create landing pages. There are plenty of problems with this approach:

• Developers don’t know about conversion-centric design, copywriting and calls to action.
• It takes a ridiculous amount of time to get a single PHP-based or HTML-based landing page designed. When you are launching campaigns and when you need multiple landing pages for testing, waiting on the developer (even for making changes slight changes) just won’t work.
• It’s difficult to do split testing for your landing pages to know which one performs better. Your best options if you use HTML pages is to use Optimizely or Visual Website Optimizer — both of which are expensive to begin with.

Given that this is the age of software and the availability of DIY landing page building tools, you don’t need to depend on your IT staff to get your landing pages ready.

Just in case you need help to plan your landing page strategy, get on a scheduled call with us to see how we can be of help to you.

Mistake #2: One page won’t do

You can’t just send traffic to a single landing page and hope to get conversions. Even if you got conversions

(or leads), you’d never know if that’s the absolute best your landing page can perform.

Almost any business might have multiple offers to make or multiple products or services to promote. Creating a single landing page can rarely do any good for a business, regardless of the size.

Prepare to create multiple landing pages for each service, product, or other offers that you have. In fact, the more landing pages you have, the higher the volume of leads you’ll generate, according to Pamela Vaughan of Hubspot.

Mistake #3: No tests, no progress

If you had 1,000 visitors to a specific landing page and if your conversion rate was 20% (which means you’d get 200 leads), is that the best you could do given the exact same budget spend?

The answer: You wouldn’t know until you split test your landing pages.

Landing pages, especially when you use DIY landing page builders or when you hire us, lend themselves well for A/B testing and optimization on a continuous basis. When one variant performs better than the other (and you’d know that after you have enough data), you can pit the champion against a new variant and run a new test altogether.

Eventually, you’ll arrive at the best possible combinations of ads, landing pages, and email autoresponder sequences, i.e. the best possible funnel.

Mistake #4: No nurturing sequences

It’s not all well with the average Joe who did put up funnels and funnel pages but nothing ever happens for a person who signed up as a lead. It so happens that generating leads is only half the story. The real magic happens when email marketing autoresponders are triggered or workflows through your chatbots are triggered.

It’s the nurturing that leads to sales, and most businesses miss out on the nurturing aspect of a sales funnel. Learn more about funnels from our Funnel Blueprint Video Series.

Lead nurturing helps your potential customers trust you more and makes your products or services available to them when they are ready to buy.

Connect your landing pages to an email autoresponder of your choice or your Facebook Messenger chatbot, be sure to create your nurturing sequences in a way that your business can attract, engage, and profit from these interactions, and that’s when you can call your funnels complete.

What kind of mistakes are you doing with your funnels, opt-in and sales pages? If you need help figuring out how to create a high-conversion sales funnel, feel free to schedule a call with us.

The post Landing Pages: If You’re Doing This, It’s A Mistake appeared first on Done For You.

The importance of a well-rounded Martech stack

Today, technology is the pillar of most businesses who operate online. And marketing technology, as part of the whole infrastructure, can make or break your business. Needless to say that software tools and cloud apps that support your marketing processes can cost a lot. So, you need to find the right balance between cost and benefits if you want your online marketing to thrive without breaking the bank.

In today’s post, we will we will pick out 6 out of the hundreds of Martech tools that we at DoneForYou have created with the goal to address real business needs and provide the functionality you need to achieve your marketing goals. All of these tools came as a result of years in business, and are a product of interaction with companies who want to get the most out of each cent they spend on marketing.

What’s best about these tools is that they can get you results even if you hate the word “marketing.” Let’s face it: Not every business owner likes marketing or has time to do so. In most cases, you want to do what you do best; you want to work on your business, not in it. Therefore, with the right marketing stack, you’ll be able to free up resources and, most importantly, save your time so you can focus on business development and serving customers.

Here’s your marketing stack…

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top six software tools you can start using right now to revitalize your online marketing, regain control of your customer-related processes and give an instant cash injection to your business.

1. Statly: Understand marketing data – Improve sales performance

If you want to succeed in your marketing, you must be able to track and analyze data. See, you may be successful at attracting tons of traffic to your website. But, what if only 2% of those visitors convert, while the rest remain anonymous? Don’t you want a way to identify who they are, track their behavior and keep them coming back? Of course you do.

How are users acting when they visit your website? In today’s competitive times, obtaining meaningful data is an important part of a successful marketing plan.

This is where Statly comes into the picture. As the complete tool that helps you in real-time tracking of users leveraging the sales funnel strategy, it can immensely help your chances of converting traffic into sales. Statly helps you obtain meaningful data so you can make the right business decisions.

But how does Statly work? Statly gives you a comprehensive idea of how your sales funnels are actually converting. It helps you spot opportunities and the parts of your funnels that need to be improved. Watch this video to learn more about what our patent-pending tool can do for your business.

Here are some of the salient features of the tool:

• Real-time website analytics
• Conversion tracking through sales funnels
• Tracking conversion opportunities
• Tracking sales and user behavior on the website

If your site is powered by WordPress, then all you need to do is install the latest version of our plugin to get started with Statly’s advanced analytics and sales funnel tracking.

With Statly in your arsenal, you will be able to better optimize your online sales process and the buyer’s journey, so you entice more web visitors to convert into paying customers. Sitting in front of a load of data wouldn’t do any good, would it? But with Statly by your side, all these previously intimidating numbers will finally make sense.

Click here to sign up for a free Statly trial!

2. Askly: Your customer has a voice; now you can hear it

It might sound like a cliché but it’s 100% true and often overlooked: You need to understand your customer before you actually sell to them.

As Peter Drucker put it, the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

So, why is it that business owners tend to overlook the need for deep understanding of customers’ needs and behavior? It’s because they fall into a common trap; If they’ve been in business longer than a couple of years, they tend to be victims of the illusion that they know their customers.

In reality, most of the time our perceptions go through our subjective cognitive prism that stops us from really understanding the customer persona. This is why you need actual data to form better views and make the right decisions.

How do you acquire real in-depth data about customer needs? By asking customers the right questions at the right time and place.

To help you in this process, Askly provides all the insights and information you need about the customer to target them in the most efficient possible manner.

Watch the video below to see how Askly has helped dozens of businesses get valuable insight on their customers’ needs.

Customer engagement is the name of the game today. In order to engage customers effectively, you need to:

• Figure out their biggest challenges
• Send them the right information
• Get the conversion rate sky high

All of this you can easily get with the help of Askly. By providing valuable insights about the customer, Askly can eventually help you skyrocket sales with no hassles.

Click here to get started with Askly today!

3. Scriptly: Done-for-you content, email swipes and sales scripts

Scriptly is a must-have Martech tool for any online business. Let us back up this bold statement.

If we talk in terms of numbers, content marketing brings three times more leads to outbound marketing, while consuming 62% less money.

These numbers make it quite clear why investing in content marketing is the key. However, this is where a majority of businesses fall flat. They don’t have any idea how to write an engaging copy that will entice the user to enter the sales funnel.

To help you with this, Scriptly provides professionally written scripts that you can start using as they are or customize to better suit your business. These scripts or swipes will help you write high-converting sales copy right away, even if you’ve never written a line of sales copy before.

In fact, you can have complete sales pages created for you with the click of a button. Sound interesting? Watch the video below to see Scriptly in action.

And, it’s not only sales copy you get. As a Scriptly user, you’ll get instant access to:

• Autoresponder engine – This is set of dozens of email sequences that are completely done for you. Anything from affiliate autoresponder sequences to webinar sequences is there.
• Page builder – Create any kind of customizable landing page. All templates are tested and proven to convert to paid traffic.
• Customer avatars – No need for a separate tool to define different customer avatars, to customize your marketing material to address different target groups. We have it all covered in Scriptly.
• VSL creator – Video sales letter can be easily created using Scriptly’s well-structured templates. For every part of the sales letter script you can choose the sales copy that resonates with your audience.
• Webinar creator – Create your next webinar is minutes, not hours, with this unique fill-in-the-blank formula. The webinar creator is a handy tool that will help you get past the writer’s block in an instant.

Sign up here to try Scriptly at zero cost!

All these can play a vital role in creating a win-win content marketing strategy that can fetch you great results. See, with Scriptly you’ve got nearly all of your content needs covered, without having to learn copywriting or spend hundreds of dollars per hour of expert work. Which brings us to our next Martech tool for content, Curately…

4. Curately: Content curation at its best

We explained how Scriptly is a unique tool for your content needs. Although Scriptly covers nearly every aspects of content marketing, it leaves out blog post creation. And that makes sense because you want a dedicated tool to help you create fresh, targeted and optimized content for your blog. That tool is Curately.

Curately makes it easy for you to find and curate content from all over the web. With this awesome tool you’ll never run out of ideas for successful content that keeps your readers hooked.

Here’s how Curately works:

• Find the biggest content publishers on the web from your niche
• Get to know what they are writing and how they are using content
• Build your marketing strategy around those ideas
• Add a personal touch to the content you are going to publish.

And, that’s about it! Did you ever think content marketing could be this easy? Well, Curately makes it easy! Check out the tool now for free or watch the video below for a quick demo.

5. TimeSlots: Simple, centralized scheduling for your e-meetings

So, you devote resources to acquire quality traffic to your website. You have all your funnels in place, you’re tracking them, and you’re investing in paid ads or content creation. You want your qualified web visitors to be able to easily schedule a strategy call with you or book a demo of your product, don’t you?

The best way to actually qualify prospects and turn them into active customers is by providing them an easy way to get on a scheduled a meeting with you. However, for this to be effective it has to be done in a centralized and automated way.

This is where a marketing technology tool, like TimeSlots, becomes a lifesaver. Combining forms and appointments online, TimeSlots lets you qualify the prospects so that you can close them.

Here’s how the scheduling process works:

• Send a link to the prospect
• The prospect books a time
• You choose your availability
• The prospect schedules a meeting with you

Everything gets done with just a single click! What else can you ask for? Click here to see how TimeSlots works and how it can save you the time and frustration that come with other scheduling tools. It also comes with a free trial; sign up here to get it!

6. Axis: Convert customers with email marketing and automation

What is the flagship of outbound online marketing? Email marketing. No business can survive unless it is able to communicate directly with their audience in a way that will constantly bring in new prospects and, ultimately, sales.

You’ve heard it before: Email marketing has one of the highest ROI compared to other online marketing channels, and here are the numbers to prove it.

So, how can a marketing stack be complete without an email marketing tool? Axis helps you contact and convert more customers by building email marketing campaigns that actually work. From sending broadcast messages to deploying triggered autoresponder sequences, all is done for you in Axis.

With this tool you can achieve the ultimate goal of every business: get as many conversions as possible from the prospects that visit your website.

Watch the video below to find out how simple it is to use Axis, and how it stacks up against competitive email marketing tools.

Axis comes with a competitive pricing and a free trial which gives you access to all the tool’s email marketing and automation features.

Some of the benefits you can reap from Convertly include:

• Grow your email marketing list the simple way
• Send one-off broadcasts, i.e. email blasts
• Automate new subscriber onboarding with autoresponder sequences
• Create triggered email sequences that will automate your communications
• Effortlessly stay in touch with your past customers
• Re-engage your list and convert more subscribers into customers.

All these reasons make it a worthy investment for your business. After all, you need to do email marketing if you want to grow your business. There is nothing quite like reaching your customers’ inbox, when we talk about conversions!

How will these marketing tools change YOUR business?

This last tool, Axis, sums up our list of Martech tools that can help you transform your marketing strategies to change the way you run your business.

To recap, we discussed how 6 top-quality tools can help you tackle major aspects of your online marketing. These aspects are:

1. Data and analytics with Statly
2. Customer surveys with Askly
3. Sales copy and sales material creation with Scriptly
4. Content creation with Curately
5. Online scheduling with TimeSlots
6. Email marketing with Axis.

Now, picture this: You have access to all these tools, they are integrated with your site, and are configured and set up live. How would it feel having this online marketing machine streamlined and working for you on autopilot? You can feel safe that you’re doing the best you can to attend to your brand online and grow your business without the hassle of elaborate tools that take up too much energy and time to set up.

Although they are simple to use and fast to set up, you might feel like you don’t want to go through the onboarding process but want a done-for-you solution instead.

If this is the case, our experts at Done For You Marketing can do the heavy lifting and set you up with your new marketing stack in zero time. Our team will make sure that your accounts are configured properly and that all the individual tools are integrated with your site and working as they ought to.

From sales page creation to complete email marketing automation, we are here to help you get started fast. Click here to schedule a strategy call with us, so you can start growing your business right away.

The post 6 Marketing Tools That Will Change Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

If you run an e-commerce business, you cannot ignore the importance of Facebook. It’s as simple as that!

When we talk about leveraging the power of Facebook to drive e-commerce sales, it’s not just about creating a Facebook page and waiting for the magic to happen. It won’t happen ever.

You need to put forth efforts to bring good results and get more sales out of your Facebook marketing endeavors. One of the most trusted ways to generate e-commerce sales that have emerged in recent times has been the use of Facebook ads.

However, many businesses are struggling to find the right way to use Facebook ads. And, this is what we are going to discuss as part of our blog here.

So, without wasting any time let us get to the topic – how to generate e-commerce sales for your business using Facebook ads.

1. Bring buyer personas into action

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make while creating Facebook ads is that they focus on creating generic content for the advertisement. This is major mistake because they are lost in the fallacy of attracting as many people as possible from the crowd.

As a result of this generic content, more often than not, the ads fail to make an impact.

This is the reason that bringing buyer persona into action can be a great idea!

By creating a representation of your actual customer, based on your existing ones, you can develop the persona of your ideal customer.

This can help you create content that better resonates with your ideal customer and develop content which would create an impact on your target audience.

2. Eliminate curiosity clicks

People who are not looking for a solution, or people who are simply curious, are going to eat up your Facebook advertising budget.

Therefore, you need to do whatever is needed to eliminate these so-called curiosity clicks.

How to do it?

Simply create more relevant ad content. For instance, if you are selling a leather jacket which is targeted at the high-paying market segment, list the price of your jacket in the advertisement. This would prevent people who cannot spend this much money to click on the advertisement.

Similarly, listing out shipping details if you are confined to selling only in a particular area could be another great idea.

3. Use the power of words and images

With the literally countless number of businesses trying to make an impact on Facebook using its ads platform, it could be impossible to stand out from the crowd.

This is where you need to smartly inculcate the power of words and images in your ad copy.

For instance, creating an urgency to buy the product using words such as “Limited Stock,” “Only 100 left” and more could be the easiest way.

In fact, you might be amazed to know that “You” acts as a trigger word and has been shown to boost the performance of ads manifolds.

If we look at the most powerful and impactful words in ad-campaigns based on a study from SEM Rush, the term “Free” comes out on top.

In a similar way, when it comes to using images in your web copy you need to focus on a few details such as:

• Using a clear image that brings the focus to your product
• Use close-up images of people
• Alternate between people images and close-ups for multi-product ads
• Don’t obstruct the user’s line of sight

4. Create different types of ads based on your need

When it comes to advertising on Facebook, there are two types of ads that you can create for your business.

The first are the ones that could be used to capture the information of users and are referred to as Facebook Lead Ads. The second are the ones that could be used to get direct conversions, which we will be referring to as Dynamic Ads.

Let’s talk about the two in detail.

Lead Ads

The best thing about lead ads is that they capture the user’s attention. As it is quite difficult to grab the user’s attention in today’s competitive economy, Facebook lead ads can do what you would not have even imagined.

There are quite a number of businesses that have leveraged the power of Facebook lead ads to good effect and reaped great results.

Dynamic Ads

These ads work best for e-commerce businesses when you are looking to achieve the following results from your ad-marketing efforts:

• Improve your ad reach
• Retarget visitors from the past
• Reconnect visitors across multiple devices such as a computer, mobile and tablets

In fact, Facebook has a dedicated help page for businesses looking to get the best out of their dynamic ads.

Based on what you are targeting as part of your Facebook advertising services you can choose to implement either dynamic or lead ads strategy and see how it turns out.

Attention. Interest. Persuasion.

In order to make the most out of your Facebook advertising efforts and generate e-commerce sales, you need to focus on these three things:

• ATTENTION seeking headlines: As already stated the attention span of users on the web is decreasing day by day. Therefore, you need to come up with something that captures the user’s attention instantly. Using the magic of powerful and persuasive words is, therefore, something you need to practice.
• Build INTEREST: Once you have captured their attention, you need to keep users hooked up by creating the perfect description that mentions how your product or service is going to solve the user’s problem is the key to a successful ad-copy.
• PERSUASIVE closing: The key to success of your ad campaign lies in the closing call to action. You can try out different calls to action to see which one works the best for you. Remember, the most successful CTA is the one that persuades the user to take an action.

Facebook ads won’t work unless you do

In the end, you need to remember that creating a successful Facebook ad campaign is all about finding the right combination of what works the best for you. You might have to do a little bit of trial and error first.

However, when trying out different strategies you must incorporate the elements of creating a powerful advertisement that we have mentioned above.

So, what are you waiting for?

The post How To Generate E-commerce Sales Using Facebook Ads appeared first on Done For You.

Digital marketing is just the kind of thing that’s the wrong topic to be spending hours talking about in a team meeting.

Over thinking your marketing

Anything digital moves fast.

By the time you are done discussing content marketing strategy with your team, your competition would have completed 18 blog posts, 4 videos, and even built a complete funnel with a powerful lead magnet.

Most businesses tend to over think marketing strategy (like everything else corporate) — it’s just a habit that comes from the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when every decision had to come from the top down, all the way to the workers in steel plants.

Digital marketing action (including Facebook advertising, Google Adwords, funnels, landing pages, copywriting, email marketing, blogging, content strategy, and social media) happens right where your customers are.

At that level, a lot happens very fast. If you stop to think, analyze, do a couple of meetings with your team, and take your own time to execute, you’ll lose money on the table.

Here’s what really happens if you don’t act and, instead, over think your marketing:

You fail to do what’s crucial

When it comes to digital marketing, a few things don’t need you to “think.” But they are crucial, and each of the following steps must be done.

• Setup a fast-loading and simple website – How much do you need think and ponder on that?
• Start blogging regularly, at a frequency – In 2018, you really don’t need anymore convincing, do you?
• Setup aocial media accounts and stay active – Enough said. No comments.
• Start doing email marketing – If nothing fancy, you could at least do email marketing basics, like create a lead magnet to build your email list and do basic email marketing campaigns. Want to check out our lead magnet creator video series, instead?
• Setup sales funnels — Learn how to setup sales funnels. You can also get expert help from us to help you build your sales funnels without you having to bat an eyelid.

Really, what are you thinking about each of the steps listed above?

You lose money, every single minute

While it’s not exactly the New York minute, every minute of a digital marketing day counts.

More than 40,000 people are search for something on Google and about half of 2.1 billion people are on Facebook everyday.

With an audience like that who might potentially want to hear from you, and at a time when you can put up complete websites in days and create sales funnel in hours, not taking action would mean:

• Potential visitors don’t have a website to visit.
• If and when they visit, there’s no way they can signup to become your email subscribers.
• You have no way to nurture your email subscribers (leads) and prime them up for when they are ready to buy.
• Assuming they want their problem solved, and that they are willing to invest, you have no sales funnels and there’s no way for them to make a transaction.

Just how much money are you losing on the table if you don’t take action? If you do have your funnels setup, do you have a way to:

• Make sure all elements of your funnel are working correctly?
• Analyze and track events happening across your funnels?
• Do you have a way to do Conversion Rate Optimization and boost your sales funnel performance?
• Are you able to attribute sales (or results) to respective digital marketing channels?

Miss a single point above and money drains away, never to come back again.

Your competition can kick you out of the race

Let’s assume a scenario where you and another business (who happens to be your competition) decide to start marketing at the same time. Assuming everything else is equal and considered the same, the business that goes to market first gets the first-mover advantage. That, by itself, can hurt your business.

On the Internet, word spreads fast. Once a business has a significant market share, it’s extremely hard for others to progress (see how Salesforce and SugarCRM dominate the CRM landscape while so many other CRM tools are still trying to grow positively).

Getting started — at least on the digital marketing front — isn’t even half as hard as building a product and launching a business.

Over thinking (and hence freezing) on how to start with digital marketing or how to build a sales funnel can literally put you out of the race.

Period.

Not all businesses have the resources to get that digital marketing action going. We understand. For that reason, we help small businesses setup effective sales funnels that work.

If you’d like to talk about your business and if you need a custom sales funnel for your business, get on a scheduled call with us.

The post Act, Don’t Think: How Over Thinking Your Marketing Hurts You appeared first on Done For You.

First, people are drowning in a tidal wave of emails. Radicati Group’s study published in February 2017 revealed that a staggering 269 billion emails are sent each day globally. The same study estimated that there are over 3.7 billion email users around the globe.

These findings mean that the average user receives more than 72 emails a day. Also, a previous study reported that an average office employee receives 121 emails a day.

Second, a lot of times marketers send emails to lists that they scrape from the web or otherwise acquire without the consent of the users. This practice will most probably make the majority of the messages land in the spam folder.

Third, open rates are low not only because of spam filters but also for the reason that numerous email marketers compete for attention. And if you add so many other online distractions, like social media, the chance of a person actually noticing your email is pretty low.

According to recent email performance benchmarks published by Mailerlite, open rates could range anywhere from 11.23% to 33.71% depending on the industry.

So, it’s definitely hard work to get your reader’s attention, but when you do get it, you don’t want them to skim through your content without caring; you want to get them do something about it, follow your call to action (CTA) and, eventually, become customers.

How to convert email subscribers into customers

With half the population of earth reading email every day it only makes sense to consider email marketing an opportunity for making money.

Email is the one most important element of a person’s online id. Each email address is unique. You use your email for all things online and particularly to sign up for services and applications.

Email is the connective tissue between the user and any type of online business. Cracking the code of engagement and conversion via email is the way to go if you want to make money online.

Is lead conversion puzzling you? Join the free workshop that will demystify the process of attracting, engaging and profiting from new email subscribers by systematically giving them what they want!

In a previous article, we talked about how to write emails that get clicks. We gave you 6 tips for high-converting email content. We’ve also explained why good email copy is important and how to score well, even if you’re not a copywriter. We also talked about the best alternative to a copywriter, i.e. a tool to write the emails for you – that tool is Scriptly.

Now, in this guide, we’ll look at the best ways you can convert email subscribers into paying customers. Let’s get started!

Tip #1 – Focus on a single niche

You need to be very specific with your target market. You can’t kill two birds with one stone; Heck, you can’t be successful at approaching many target markets with different products at the same time, at least not if you are a small business.

The mix of niche and product you choose can either make you or break you. Health, wealth and relationships are the broader areas that you should consider. Start from any of these and narrow down to define your ideal sub-niche.

Tip #2 – Create an offer

It might sound crazy but a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners don’t know exactly what they’re offering. What we mean by that is they haven’t defined their products and they haven’t created specific types of offers. Let’s assume you are a career coach. It’s not enough to market your career coaching services.

You need to create an irresistible offer by productizing and positioning your offer in the marketplace. Know exactly what your product is, how much it costs and how you will deliver it to the client. Use email to communicate the value of your offer and watch subscribers convert into paying clients.

Tip #3 – Offer subscribers real value

Chances are new people coming onto your list don’t know you. You need to give them time to get to know you, trust you and realize that you can provide real value.

To accomplish that, you need to consider marketing tactics that can convert free email subscribers into paying customers.

• Educate your audience and provide tips and tricks via email.
• Offer subscribers a free trial or a free product, to get to see the real work that you do. Periodically, stress the premium features or benefits they’ll get if they decide to become paying customers.
• Provide free trials, training sessions or customer onboarding sessions which will give you the opportunity to pitch your premium plans and services.
• All in all, a proven route to converting email subscribers into customers is to invite subscribers to a free discovery call, otherwise known as consultation call or strategy session.

The strategy session method

The strategy session method will have you bringing in more high-ticket clients, as well as clients who are more aligned with your style and what you have to offer.

During a strategy session, you can screen out people who aren’t suitable for your program and at the same time pitch your offer. We, at DFY, are using Timeslots to schedule strategy sessions online.

Many entrepreneurs have found the strategy session model to be the best way to sell their high-ticket offers and, at the end of the day, convert email subscribers into customers. That is because it’s easier to sell premium services when you speak directly to a person compared to throwing a sales letter at them.

Tip #4 – Tell a good story

If you want people to listen to you and build a deep connection you need to speak to their hearts not their minds. Purchase decisions rely heavily on emotions, and you need to address that in your email marketing conversion strategy.

Purchase decisions are not only the result of thoughtful evaluation of alternatives through some type of cost-benefit analysis. Purchase decisions can appear as an impulse purchase or be instinctively made satisfy basic human needs, like the sense of security.

The tool you need to utilize as an email marketer is storytelling. People connect emotionally with stories. Stories can contribute to converting free email subscribers to paying customers.

The modern consumer wants to buy without being pushed or sold on directly.

Being able to tell a good story in your email is very important if you want to convert email subscribers into customers.

See this infographic that explains how storytelling affects our brain. At the end of the day, good stories can help you create a thriving email list.

Persuasive storytelling

The keyword for successful stories, ones that convert email subscribers into customers, is “persuasive.” The story should compel subscribers to want to read more, ideally through the end of your message. So what are the basic components of a compelling story? Incorporate some or all of the following elements.

• A relatable character – You should be composing your story as if writing to one recipient – to your ideal customer avatar.
• A problem – Use a story, your own if possible, to paint the picture of a problem that you (your character) went through.
• Empathy – This is the “I’ve been there too“ part of the story. The aim is to make them feel emotional and realize that their situation is one that others could be facing.
• Connect the dots – Relate the story to the problem, so your reader can understand there is a solution to their problem.
• The vision – Create a vision of how the character in your short story finally managed to overcome the predicament and how it transformed their life.
• The solution – It is the part of your email where you introduce your subscriber to your unique product. This is the solution to the character’s problem, the route to transformation.
• Re-iterate – Bring your email subscriber back from “Once upon a time…“ into reality and challenge them to change their situation.
• Call to action – Place a button or link with a strong CTA. This is the action they need to take to solve their problems. That action is to buy your product.

Tip #5 – Convert more with lower price tags

For some companies, the aim might be to first convert a big percentage of free subscribers into low-end customers and then into repeat customers. For example, there might be a front-end offer for $7 that will essentially prove that the subscriber is ready to trust your brand and use their credit card.

Even with $7 only the mission is accomplished; You now you have a confirmed buyer! You may see this type of affordable products referred to as tripwire offers. The tripwire offer is a low-cost, risk-free offer that is easy for your business lead to buy into.

However, other types of businesses might intend to build more sophisticated funnels, like the one we described above that starts with a strategy session. This sort of funnel may convert fewer subscribers into customers but still, generate a higher revenue.

So, that’s it! With the above tips, along with consistency and quality, you should be able to convert more email subscribers into customers.

The post Email Subscribers Not Converting Into Customers? Here’s What You Need To Do… appeared first on Done For You.

As you read this, it’s only getting harder to be found online, to gain traction, and to generate leads. It’s getting harder to get the average web-dwelling, Instagram-happy, and Facebook-addicted customers to pay any attention to what you produce on a daily basis.

While it’s getting harder, it’s certainly not impossible to create buzz, get noticed, build your own tribe, and to generate qualified leads.

You know that your sales funnels can be set up in a way that nurtures leads automatically. This will ultimately lead to sales. If you need help building custom sales funnels for your business, get our Funnel Blueprint video series.

Chances are that most of the content you create for your funnels will not make the kind of impact it should; that is usually because of a few things forgotten. Here’s what you need to do to make your content sweat:

1. You have a voice. Use it.

If you thought that it’s only Anthony Robbins and Gary Vaynerchuk who have a voice while others are constantly being drowned out, you are completely wrong. Let’s go back a few steps for once:

• We are all unique.
• Our way of saying (and writing) things is different from one another.
• People want to hear from other people, not machines (at least, we aren’t there yet).
• You know what you know. Others want to know what you know.
• Everyone wants to get from point A to point B. If you can show people how it’s done, you win.

Your content strategy doesn’t have to bore when it comes from your heart. You might be saying the same thing that your competition is but what’ll stand out is your voice. Your voice will come through your blog content, podcasts, videos, and social media updates.

You have a voice and you should use it for communication. If you think you don’t have a voice, you haven’t heard yourself properly yet.

2. Find creative angles

Creativity isn’t just about wall paintings, art, and illustrations. It’s also about how you happen to wing two different things together and still make sense. It’s about picking up an idea from one popular content piece online and twisting that idea to create a different content piece that’s relevant to your niche.

Next time you try to cook up a blog post title, try to think of how you could pull out information from a completely irrelevant and different source to use it in your content strategy. Or get others’ opinions on what works (in your niche) and give it your own twist.

Your voice, combined with your insights, and the creative angle you pick is the formula you need to produce content that always works.

3. Hook, Line, and Sinker

Let’s just assume that you are going to follow point one and two above. Even then, it’s hard to keep your visitors engaged with your content.

You have another card in your content strategy deck that you can use to strengthen the stickiness factor of your content.

It’s called Hook, Line, and Sinker.

First, you hook your readers and this is where powerful headlines work their best. You’d then, make your visitors follow a structured path to ensure that they keep reading.

At some point, you’ll give (whatever your headline promised) it away.

The Hook, Line, Sinker method works across industries, for all niches. You just have to be prepared enough to use it and then benefit from it.

4. Curate to convert

Quick question: Assuming you want to get serious about content marketing, what’s fast, easy, bring you links, boost your SEO, and allows you to produce content like a machine?

The answer: Content Curation!

You don’t have to create content all the time (it’s just an inefficient way of doing content marketing). You could also do content curation which is much easier to accomplish than creating content. Curating content is also a great way to link out to various sources and in turn getting linked to.

With tools like Curately and others, content curation can be fast and efficient. Content curation is a must-have for your content strategy while allowing yourself to also create listicles, repurpose old content, and so much more.

How does your content marketing playbook look like, right now?

The post How To Amplify Your Content Strategy (And Make It Interesting) appeared first on Done For You.

Though this one line sums up the entire email marketing game, it requires a lot of effort to become a pro at writing an authentic and honest message.

If you are looking to stretch your email marketing game beyond the ordinary, to become a pro at it… then we are here with some proven email marketing tactics that will help you boost audience engagement and achieve desirable results.

So, without wasting any time let us get it right away!

It all begins with a good subject

What was the subject of the last email that you sent to your audience? Was it enticing enough that could compel them to open the email without hesitation?

If you can’t remember it, then don’t expect it to work.

Writing a compelling subject line is one of the most important aspects of email marketing. After all, just like with every form of content you only get a limited window to make an impact on the reader.

You must know how to make the most out of this limited time window. This is exactly what a compelling subject-line can do for you.

Here’s a report we prepared for you; it includes the 100 “Most-Opened” Email Subject Lines.

It should tell a story

Storytelling is the heart and soul of writing. No matter what form of content you are writing, it is important for the audience to know why you are writing it.

Your content should tell a story even if it is in the form of an email. How can you do that?

Well, it’s simple – build a structure for the email, and fit the pieces of your story’s puzzle in that structure. By the time you finish fitting all the pieces in you will have a clearly defined, and well-written, story that could rope the reader’s attention with ease.

Compel them to take action

The most powerful element of an email is ‘Call to Action’.

Whether you use buttons or plain text to highlight call to action in the email, it must be placed in such a way that people cannot resist taking the action.

The best way to achieve success with your call to actions is to A-B test as much as possible. You never know which version users might click. So, eliminate the risk and A/B test different content, color, as well as style for your call to action buttons and see which one achieves the best results.

Personalize it

Personalized content creates a better impact than the generic.

The entire world knows about it, but still, businesses don’t pay heed to creating personalized content. The ones that do end up achieving their goals!

Remember, email is an opportunity where you are in a person’s most personal space – their inbox with their consent.

You cannot afford to miss out on this by sending a sleazy email that looks like it’s written by a robot.

So, invest time in understanding what you can do to personalize the email and see how it works.

A great way to do is to segment the lists and then create separate email marketing campaigns for separate lists.

Leverage the power of technology

Technology has supplemented marketers with superpowers that they didn’t even know existed a few years before the tech came around.

One such power is automation. Thanks to the latest technology it has now become possible to send an automated email in response to a user’s action. This is known as a trigger email!

Based on users’ interaction with your business, you can set a trigger email campaign that will keep sending the user a constant reminder about your product/service.

This will serve as familiarizing them to your business and at the same time keep the users hooked up with the new changes that you are bringing to the market.

Mobile-friendly

With the number of smartphone users climbing sky-high, it has become necessary to test your email campaigns for mobile devices as well.

No matter if it is a product update, an email newsletter, or any other form of email content that you intend to send to your users, you cannot afford to miss out on testing for mobile.

In fact, it is not just about mobile. It is always a smart idea to test the email campaigns across various platforms i.e. Windows, iOS, Outlook and more.

After all, you would not want to put your reputation at stake by sending a non-optimized email to your users… Would you?

Polish it thoroughly

Most important of all, don’t forget to review the email more than once for errors.

This will help not just reduce the volume of content that you have poured in the email, but will also make the email more impactful.

As they say, the more you read the better you write. Take ample amount of time to review and refine the content so that only the final polished product reaches your customers.

Don’t forget to include social media

There’s nothing quite like social media to connect with your audience and build a community to boost user engagement.

If you want to boost audience engagement for your business using email marketing, then how can you forget about incorporating social media into the campaign?

Give people a direct channel to connect with you over social media.

Add social media handles and buttons in the email so that the interested email readers can directly approach you and connect with your channels. By including them in the email, you are saving subscribers the trouble of searching you out.

Conclusion

There you have it – some of the simple, tried and tested tactics to make email marketing work for you. if you are looking to make it big in terms of audience engagement using email marketing, then it is time give them a try and see how effective they turn out to be!

So, what are you waiting for?

The post Email Marketing Tactics To Boost Audience Engagement appeared first on Done For You.