Daniel Laws

How to Set Your 2019 Digital Marketing Budget with Metrics & Data?

December 5, 2018 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

It’s the end of 2018 and we are having a number of discussions with potential prospects and customers to plan for the New Year. What we are noticing is many of our customers & prospects don’t have high levels strategies, goals, objectives, and metrics for 2019. A few prospects don’t have projected budgets for 2019 but have big goals for the New Year. Of course, that’s why they came to us for help. Below are a few ideas to help move you towards the desired marketing budget with metrics to back them up.

Set Achievable Goals with a Budget to Fit

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends that small businesses with revenues of less than $5 million should allocate 7-8 percent of their revenues to marketing. This percentage is based on a margin range of 10-12 percent. For small businesses, I would use 7-8 percent to start with this recommendation for your 2019 marketing budget. I use the marketing budget by industry from The CMO Survey and Deloitte Digital as a reference for businesses with revenues greater than $5 million.

I would also recommend that you look at your historical performance such as cost per acquisition, total conversions and conversion rate. With 7% of your revenues allocated to marketing, let’s say that your cost per acquisition is $100, with 100 total conversions, and a conversion rate of 3% has been the historical performance for the past 3 years. Unless revenues have increased significantly, you can set the expectation that 8% of revenues allocated to marketing is not going to generate 300 conversions next year!

Create a Realistic Digital Marketing Strategy

A digital marketing strategy is the series of actions that help to achieve a company’s goals through online marketing channels. These channels include paid search, organic search, media buying, email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, etc. to support a common campaign. According to Smart Insights report, half of the businesses surveyed (49%) are doing digital marketing and don’t have a strategy. Begin the New Year with a digital marketing strategy to set the direction for the business.

Align the Marketing Tactics to Achieve Goals & Objectives

The tactics are the specific actions taken to accomplish the digital marketing strategy. The tactics must align with the strategy, target audience, research, and the user experience. The objectives must be specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and within a time period. For example, banner advertising and podcast ads could be used to accomplish the strategy of brand awareness among millennials within the next 12 months. The research will help to identify where to place the banner and podcast ads. Focusing on the user experience can concentrate the efforts on devices, apps, and podcast stations that are most likely to resonate with millennials.

Select Your Metrics Gauge Tactical Success Wisely

You have successfully gotten potential customers to subscribe to blogs, receive discounts and promotions of your products or services. It’s time to activate your customer database with drip email campaigns or marketing automation. Segment your audience to improve the effectiveness of the email marketing campaign. For example, you can target local customers with in-store sales to increase your total revenues.

Report on the Performance, Obtain Feedback, and Recommendations

You’ve heard the saying, “what gets measured gets done!” I would recommend regular reporting (bi-weekly) to keep everyone focused and to use that information to make decisions to improve your results. Get the reporting into the inboxes of the individuals that can drive results. Schedule a standing meeting (15 minutes) to review the results, obtain feedback, and make recommendations to improve the results.

Want more?

Download our one-page business plan that helps you to prioritize your strategies, how you will accomplish those strategies, what specific tactics, metrics, goals and the anticipated results to be able to measure performance.

2019 Actions to Increase Online Sales

November 28, 2018 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

The end of 2018 is quickly approaching and most of us are planning for 2019. One of the most common goals for the New Year that we are hearing from our clients is the need to increase online sales with digital marketing. The competition will only increase in 2019 – but so will the opportunities for sales growth. Here are my recommendations to increase online sales and to make 2019 your best fiscal year yet!

Prepare for the Voice Search Explosion

Voice Search is rising with the additions and enhancement of products like Google Home mini and voice-enabled digital assistant users. Voice search will become a more important part of the online sales process. Get the facts on voice search statistics, create an action plan, and prioritize your action to improve the user’s experience on mobile devices and to increase online sales.

Get on the Inbound Marketing Bandwagon to Attract Potential Customers

Inbound marketing is a strategy that utilizes content marketing, blogs, events, SEO, social media and more to create brand awareness and attract potential customers. A good inbound marketing strategy requires keyword research and personas to create relevant content to attract new customers. The blogs and social post should focus on ways to attract new customers. For example, researching frequently asked questions and creating your own unique content so that your brand is there to answer the questions.

Stay in Front of Potential Visitors with Valuable Content

Once you have attracted potential customers with inbound marketing, stay in front of them with video and display ads to get them to take action. According to ComScore, 64% of web visitors are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video. We have added software and staff to support the growing requests for a video. An example would be an online form to receive a discount coupon. You can use the contact information on the form to send email campaigns in the future. The contact information should go into a customer database.

Invest in Amazon Advertising in 2019 for More Online Sales

If you are selling products online than you need to be investing in Amazon. Amazon is the largest search engine for finding products and that trend will continue in 2019. I would recommend that you start by building your Amazon store and optimizing your Amazon Product Listings to improve your conversion rates. Check out Amazon Advertising offers several solutions to find, attract, and engage customers ranging from Sponsored Ads to Video Ads.

Activate Your Database with Email Marketing Campaigns

Cross-Sell & Upselling to Increase Your Bottom Line

Cross-selling is a sales technique used to get a customer to spend more by purchasing a related product for something that a customer already bought. I get this all the time when I purchase a pair of shoes and the online retailer shows me the matching belt and socks.

Upselling is a sales technique of inducing the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. For example, you intended to purchase the basic model and the sales rep sold you on the deluxe model with the 3-year warranty.

Both of these sales techniques can be implemented in-store or ecommerce website. Some of the ecommerce websites offer apps to help with the cross-sell and upselling features. I have seen the use of live chats to upsell. For in-store purchases, giving away a reward or an incentive to increase cross-selling and upselling.

Look Before You Leap in the Actions to Increase Online Sales

Before you just go implement all of these actions at once, I would recommend that you determine which action align with your 2019 goals and objectives. Let’s be realistic, some of these action items require time, money, and people to execute which are limited. I would encourage you to pick 1 or 2 of the 2019 actions to increase online sales per quarter.

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General Data Protection Regulation: What You Should Know

May 24, 2018 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

If you’re in the digital marketing or analytics industry, you have probably been inundated by communication from vendors and partners regarding the General Data Protection Regulation, often referred to as (GDPR). Below, we’ve highlighted what GDPR is, why you should care, what impact it will have on your business, and what actions you need to take.

What is GDPR?

GDPR standardizes data protection law across all European Union (EU) countries and imposes strict rules on how personally identifiable information can be collected, stored, and used. The law goes into effect on May 25th, 2018, and all organizations working with the data of EU citizens must comply or face heavy fines. GDPR applies to every business that collects data from customers in the EU, regardless of the company size, location, or intentions.

Why should you care?

GDPR applies to all organizations that handle the personal data of EU residence. Many companies located outside the EU are unaware that the new EU data regulation applies to them. If an organization offers any products, services, or information to EU residents, it must meet all GDPR compliance requirements. Gartner predicted that up to 50% of American firms will not be compliant. Those organizations that do comply with the required transparency should help to build brand trust and equity among consumers.

How GDPR impacts your business?

Fines for noncompliance can be significant. A maximum fine of 4% of global revenues can be applied to companies that fail to gain user consent or violate core data security expectations. Lesser fines of 1-2% of revenues can be applied in situations where a company keeps incomplete records or implements insufficient data controls. GDPR requires organizations to appoint a Data Processing Officer (DPO) for EU government entities or public bodies or a company that either processes or monitors data subjects or sensitive information for citizens of the EU on a large scale.

What actions should your business take?

Below are a few steps that can help guide you for GDPR compliance:

Create Procedures for Breach Notifications
Determine if you’re a controller or a processor. The regulation breaks out responsibility for protecting data into two roles: controllers and processors.
Audit your data and know which technologies are being used on your website
Take the time to understand what data your business is collecting and why.
Review what consent and disclosure look like for your customers. Get the consumer’s blessing on data collection.
Evaluate exactly what third-party processors are collecting, where that data is going and how it’s being used.
Keep a document on data processing and create a process to refresh the documentation periodically
If a breach occurs, take action to inform regulators within 72 hours and be
ready to inform consumers as quickly as possible.

GDPR Impact on the United States

In our opinion, it’s a matter of time before the US government takes action on data collection. With Facebook data privacy being a “hot button” issue currently, antitrust questioning, data collection, and consumer privacy are on the radar of the US government and citizens who watched the Congressional hearings. You would think that the US government is closely watching and measuring the impact of the GDPR to see if it’s worth considering within the US.

Resources:

https://www.pandadoc.com/gdpr

https://www.observepoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GDPR-ASAP-a-7-step-guide-to-prepare-for-the-general-data-protection-regulation.pdf

https://blog.pipedrive.com/2018/03/gdpr-compliance/

https://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/security-and-risk-strategy/7-steps-to-gdpr-for-us-companies/a/d-id/1329235?

5 Tips to Measuring B2B Marketing Initiatives

March 19, 2018 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

The business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing roles are continuously evolving because of social selling, marketing automation, mobile devices, and more. According to Biznology, today’s sales process takes about 22% longer than 5 years ago. So, how does your business measure the effectiveness of sales and marketing campaigns? Below is a brief list of tips to successfully measure your B2B marketing initiatives:

Know Your Sales Pipeline Calculations

We get calls all the time from businesses that want to increase their sales and revenue. Unfortunately, not all businesses take the time to access their sales pipeline and calculate what it will take to achieve their goals and objectives.

How many prospects do you need to call to book a meeting?
How many meetings turn into a quote?
What’s your quote-to-close ratio?

Knowing this information will give you a sense of your potential budget needed to create the incremental volume necessary while also determining whether or not your goals are realistic. You will also have visibility into phases in the sales pipeline that are under performing.

Capture Progress of the Sales Pipeline

It’s no secret that sales reps hate manually entering data. In fact, 23% of salespeople cite manual data entry as the biggest challenge using their existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system (HubSpot, 2017). Capturing the progress of the sales pipeline in your CRM allows you to measure the impact of each sale or prospective customer’s actions. This will improve the sales forecast or closing ratio. The incentive for your business and the sales reps is to help focus on which actions will generate high revenue and sales. Use marketing automation to work on your sales reps behalf.

Access the Impact Marketing is Having on the Sales Funnel

So, you just want more sales but do you respect the sales funnel? The sales funnel is the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products or services. The goal of your marketing is to have prospects enter the sales process to solve your customer’s problem. Access the impact your marketing is having on moving prospects through the funnel. Your business won’t increase its sales until more prospects move through your sales process.

Create a Measurement Plan for B2B Sales & Marketing Campaigns

A measurement plan is a document that translates your business objectives into metrics that can measure your website’s offline sales. It provides a framework to customize the configuration of your digital analytics and sales funnel. It is a vital part of your digital marketing strategy and will guide you to set realistic expectations. If you can’t get to raw numbers to calculate the metrics, can you really measure it?

Report Only on B2B KPIs That Matter

There are so many reports, dashboards, and analyses , but whichget to the point of your marketing and sales campaigns? Narrow down the metrics to your key performance indicators (KPIs) so that you’re not looking at every metric associated with your business to business (B2B) marketing and sales initiatives – only the ones that matter.

Check out Pipedrive (CRM) to improve your sales & marketing campaign tracking. Already measuring sales and marketing? Let us know your thoughts and add to the list of tips.

What is Marketing Automation?

September 25, 2017 by Daniel Laws 1 Comment

Marketing automation is software that helps businesses automate marketing and sales initiatives to generate more leads, close more deals, and measure marketing success better. It gives businesses the power to take action based on the behaviors of prospective customers. On average, 51% of companies are currently using this tactic. With more than half of B2B companies (58%) planning to adopt this technology shortly.

How can marketing automation help your business?

Using a marketing automation software can help your business to improve efficiencies, personalize your marketing messages, connect marketing to closed sales deals, and measure your strategy effectively. To some degree, you can set-up marketing campaigns and leave it on “autopilot” while focusing on other business objectives. When used effectively, it will align your sales and marketing teams towards a common goal.

What are some features of marketing automation tool?

Below are few common features:

Lead Scoring – score prospects based on behavior so you can followup with proactive prospects.

Lead Nurturing – automatically stay in communication with prospective customers through the sales process

Prospect Tracking – identifies activities that prospects have interacted with on your website or marketing

Email Marketing – email design templates to send, test, and measure the effectiveness.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tool Integrations – connecting your leads with marketing activities that closed deals.

Integrated Reporting – see where leads come from, which campaigns are working, and the number of deals closed

This is just a brief list of the options it provides. With technology always improving, there are bound to be many more to come.

Should your company be using it?

If you have a contact database and are proactively marketing your company’s products or services, YES. The saying goes, “80% of sales come from 20% of advertising.” Marketing automation will provide some clarity into specifically which advertising efforts are working. By measuring your funnel, you can identify issues to the process and create strategies to improve conversion rates.

What do you need to know about marketing automation software?

It all starts with a strategy. Without a strategy, you have no chance of success! Marketing automation software can be complex, so start with the fundamentals and grow from there. It’s important to have standards for your contact data and keep it organized. Otherwise, you’ll end up with garbage in your CRM which will cause your marketing automation to be ineffective..

Lastly, you must have or create relevant content in different formats (text, images, gif, video, data sheets, case studies, etc.). Relevant content is king, and without it, you are just a peasant in your industry!

If you want more on marketing automation, drop us a line or comment with your feedback or suggestion.

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

July 24, 2017 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Omnichannel marketing is about ensuring that ecommerce & retail marketing strategies are geared toward enabling customers to purchase on any channel. Often there is some confusion about omnichannel versus multichannel marketing. It is my opinion that multichannel marketing is more specific to the tactical efforts of a campaign while omnichannel marketing is based on an organization’s strategic approach.

Why is Omnichannel Marketing Important for Retail & Ecommerce?

The US Census Bureau reported an increase of 14.7% in e-commerce sales with the latest year-over-year increase compared to the first quarter of 2016. The level of competition will continue to grow while US retail sales drop 0.3% versus 0.1% increase that was expected in May. I don’t think that shoppers are so interested in shopping locally and a look for value with a seamless experience. It is important for retailers to understand the latest omnichannel trends and how integrated marketing can turn shoppers into loyal customers.

5 Ways to Turn Shoppers into Customers

Omnichannel marketing is a strategic approach that will require a clear strategy, integrations, execution, and measurement. Below are 5 ways to start turning your shoppers into profitable customers:

1. Have a digital marketing strategy that addresses abandoned shopping carts. Consider including a progress indicator on the checkout pages and offer multiple payment options.
2. Improve the mobile & mobile apps users experience to help shoppers compare, interact, and offer customers enhanced features to increase your mobile sales.
3. Shopping search engines allow you to search specifically for products for sale from online merchants. Enhance your product feed by automating and optimizing your product listing for shopping engines, mobile shopping apps, and social networks to increase product visibility and sales.
4. Use remarketing to engage with previous customers and retargeting to stay top of mind throughout the shoppers’ journey to purchase. Retargeting is often referred to online placement or display ads that target users who have visited your website in a specific way. Remarketing is often used as an email campaign to reconnect with customers.
5. Ask for online reviews from your customers to build trust and customer recommendations to shop at your location.

Measure Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

By no means is the list of ways to turn shoppers into customers limited to 5! I would recommend that your company solidifies a realistic strategy and set goals with targets to measure the effective and overall impact your strategy has on increased revenue. What works for your competition may not be realistic for your brand or customers so maintain your uniqueness and measure strategies and tactics that work for your company!

For more information on E-Commerce and retail, download our free 5-Step Guide to Ecommerce and start to increase your sales.

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