Digital Marketing

Business Leads & Conversions – What’s The Difference?

October 21, 2020 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

While Conversions and Leads can be the same thing, that is not always the case (nor should it be.) To simplify, let’s define each term in order to make a clear and easy distinction. Sometimes multiple Conversions occur before someone becomes an actual Lead for your business. In the case of E-commerce, an online sale is a Conversion when it turns a User into a customer, skipping the Lead phase altogether. But, before we get too far ahead, let’s clearly define our terms:

Conversion – Action take, often online via a web page, app, or a phone call.

https://seodigitalgroup.com/what-is-a-conversion/

Lead – Person who has self-identified as someone interested in becoming a customer/client.

https://www.leadsquared.com/what-is-a-lead/

For example, a User might Convert once by watching an informational video. While this action would trigger a Conversion, no identifiable information is exchanged, so the User is not yet a Lead. However, when the User later downloads a case study and provides a name and contact information, they become a Lead. Marketing pros would score this as 2 Conversions and 1 Lead.

Generate Leads To Grow Business Revenue

The top priority for marketers is generating leads. (HubSpot, 2020)

Revenue comes from sales, which come from customers, who were once Leads; but how do people become Leads? That depends on what you are offering. A Lead is someone who identifies themself as interested in your products/services. How is this accomplished? Most commonly, it comes in the form of a submission or phone call.

A phone call happens when someone is ready to have a conversation, and ideally, someone on your end is ready to have the same conversation!. A form submission, on the other hand, could happen for any number of reasons, depending on what you offer. The most basic is a simple “Contact Us!” form, but that doesn’t give the new Lead anything except the anticipation of hearing back from you. To get more form submissions, offer something to the User (whitepaper, case study, audit, etc.) to entice them to become a new Lead.

Generating Leads – Now What?

As you collect and keep your new Lead information, your CRM will fill up nicely. Make sure you are continuing to follow-up with your new Leads by showcasing the benefits of becoming your customer.

Let DaBrian Marketing Group Fill Your CRM With Quality Leads! – Contact Us Today!

2021 Top Lead Generation Tools

October 8, 2020 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

What is lead generation?

HubSpot defines lead generation as “the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into someone who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service.” The top priority of marketers is to capture more leads. According to Ascend2, 49% of companies stated that increasing customer acquisition is their primary objective in 2020. I would expect that in 2021 lead generation is going to be a top priority again!

What is a lead?

A lead is any person who indicates interest in your company’s product or service in some way. For example, a person could indicate interest by completing a “Contact Us” form or requesting a quote. Companies spend millions of dollars annually to get leads.

In order to grow your company, you’ll need more leads and lead generation tools to make the process repeatable. Below are the 2021 top lead generation tools recommended by the pros at DaBrian Marketing Group:

HubSpot Sales

HubSpot Sales Hub is a complete sales tool for businesses. It provides a CRM (Customer Relationship Management), live chat, the meeting scheduling, quote creation and generation, email templates, tracking of sales emails and reporting for sales teams. Start with the free version then upgrade as needed. Here at DaBrian Marketing Group, HubSpot is the lynchpin of our inbound marketing and sales efforts. (DaBrian Marketing Group uses and recommends HubSpot Premium).

HubSpot Marketing Hub™

HubSpot Marketing Software is a tool that brings all of your marketing together. It is a marketing automation software to help you attract the right audience, convert more visitors into customers, and run complete inbound marketing campaigns. You can blog, handle SEO, post on social media, and manage your paid ads on one platform. It also works for HubSpot Sales, Services, and Content Management System (CMS).

Zapier

Zapier is a tool that connects your apps and automates your workflows. For example, you can automatically connect Facebook leads with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. You can create 5 automations with 100 tasks per month for FREE! There are 2000 apps and hundreds of templates to help you. DaBrian Marketing Group uses this for our clients as well as our own inbound marketing projects.

Calendly

Calendly is a free online appointment scheduling tool. It’s a great way to improve your company productivity by avoiding the endless “back and forth” of email. Add it to your website and include your email signature so prospects can schedule an appointment at their convenience. It will connect to any CRM, including Salesforce, Zoho CRM, and Pipedrive as well!

Drift

Drift is a cloud-based live chat app that allows visitors to your site to connect with any of your team members with the click of a chat bubble! Drift offers a free account for one user and 100 contacts. Additional features and functionality start at $50/month for one user and 1,000 contacts.

CallRail

CallRail is traditionally a call tracking platform. It measures telephone calls received as a direct result of your company’s marketing activities. For example, you can capture calls from Google Ads or Google My Business. Captured leads may come from calls, forms, or texts. You can even integrate CallRail with the other tools recommended here including Facebook, HubSpot, Zapier, and more.

We use CallRail when building websites for our clients because it has great features that automatically trigger and respond to make your business scalable. Full disclosure, DaBrian Marketing Group is a CallRail Agency Partner.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is most notably known for email marketing. It has recently expanded to become an all-in-one integrated marketing platform for small businesses. Mailchimp can be used to do everything from creating a website to sending postcards. Mailchimp will even connect to favorite apps you may already be using such as Stripe, Eventbrite, and Canva in order to improve your efficiency. MailChimp has a free offering for companies with less than 2000 contacts. Upgrades are available for more contacts, features, and functionality.

Zopto

Zopto is one of the latest LinkedIn Automation Tools. It can attract hundreds of hot leads by finding and targeting your ideal customers from LinkedIn. It will automate your connection request and put into motion an InMail sequence of emails. Zopto does require you to create the messaging, the targeting, and replies to potential leads. You can personalize the message, save time, and track your ability to connect and engage with potential customers.

Unbounce

Unbounce is one of the top Landing Page platforms. Landing Pages are standalone web pages used for a marketing or advertising campaign. Unbounce simplifies your ability to design beautiful landing pages that in turn convert more customers. You can also insert popups and sticky bars to help generate more leads. Like other lead generation tools, Zopto will integrate with Zapier, Drift, and Calendly to increase your effectiveness and efficiency.

Reply.io

Reply.io is a “sales engagement platform which automates email search, LinkedIn outreach, personal emails and calls.” All communications can be personalized. Reply.io shoulders the routine work, allowing you to focus on closing deals. The DaBrian Marketing team used it prior to switching to HubSpot Sales and can tell you it’s a good tool. They have expanded their offerings to email search, LinkedIn outreach, and calls since then.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s tool for finding prospects on this popular professional social network. The tool includes an advanced search filter for finding prospects, displays more detailed information for prospects (including phone numbers and job titles), lead saving, qualified lead recommendations, alerts, and InMail credits. Recently, LinkedIn added “Smart Links” which allows you to share relevant content with your recipients and track viewer engagement.

Don’t see your favorite lead generation tools? Tell us, what lead generation tools are you using? Are you considering testing out any of these suggestions?

3 Ways Businesses Are Changing Their Marketing Due To COVID-19

September 8, 2020 by Michael Sanders Leave a Comment

Everyone has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but we know that many small and medium sized businesses are feeling particularly vulnerable right now. Brick-and-mortar retailers are looking for new ways to sell amidst a number of physical challenges; doctor’s offices are looking to assuage doubts about in-person visits; and online businesses want to attract new customers.

Whatever your situation, a half-year of varied customer responses to COVID-19 have given us some insights into the marketing trends that are working and what to expect in 2020 — and beyond. While we all know consumers have shifted more online, businesses need to structure their marketing teams to best tap into that traffic, communicate more effectively, and ensure that social media gets increased attention.

Marketing Goes Digital

The most obvious marketing response prompted by COVID-19 has been the acceleration of digital. Stay-at-home orders, physical distancing, and remote work & school have changed the way consumers shop and interact. Naturally, businesses are shifting how they attract new clients and retain long-time ones. Deloitte outlines four marketing keys for organizations to make the shift a smooth transition:

Keep Your Team Connected – Ensure your team has the resources needed to effectively communicate and coordinate with each other and customers
Engage Customers with Unified Empathy – Listen to your customer and ensure the interactions they are having with your brand are consistent across channels
Personalize Digital Experiences – Now is the time shift resources into digital techniques such as remarketing ads to deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time
Optimize Marketing Resources – Now more than ever, you need analytics experts in your corner to ensure you’re leveraging the wealth of information at your fingertips

Especially when engaging with potential clients, you need to create personalized journeys across the channels and in the settings that they are now using. For example, in recent months, we have seen a sharp reversal in the trend away from mobile devices as at-home users move back to desktop. Without a careful adjustment to your SEO strategy, your website might have the wrong focus, leading to lost customers. You also need to carefully consider how your customers can and will interact with your business. As customers expect a seamless experience, your service channels must deliver a consistent message to maintain loyalty.

Communicate Availability

According to McKinsey, the availability of products and services is the number one reason customers are switching their brand allegiance. For marketers, this means a number of things. The most obvious (if most difficult) tactic is to increase the days of inventory on-hand of products or the availability of time slots for services. With more people working from home and many kids learning remotely, some physicians and doctors offices with whom we work have reconsidered staffing toward more daytime slots and fewer night and weekend hours.

But what if the overseas lead time for your products precludes increasing stock levels? This is where timely communication is paramount. Depending on industry, we’ve seen returning traffic increases of up to 1200% in the months following the COVID-19 pandemic, as users return again and again to a website. For high-volume items, consider placing a banner on your cite to indicate when the product will be in-stock. If you aren’t collecting customer emails, now is the perfect time to create a subscriber list so that you can be proactive with notifying customers of availability.

Social Holds The Key To 2021

Organizations should be prepared to dedicate more resources to social media marketing in 2020 and beyond. Social media budgets accounted for almost one-quarter of total US marketing budgets this summer, up from 13% this winter. During the pandemic, marketers are increasingly making customer retention a priority. Presented with a list of 5 objectives and asked to choose their primary one, more than twice as many marketing leaders pointed to customer retention (32.6%) as acquisition (14%).

And the primary method businesses are using to engage and retain is social media. Your customers are looking for ways to interact with others in a social-distanced world; to connect with others and even to be distracted from everything that’s going on. Social media is the perfect platform for brands to engage with customers in this way and create opportunities for now and into the future. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn can help you start and maintain meaningful conversations with your most important assets.

Toward Marketing In 2021

Being prepared for the post-COVID world means setting up your marketing and customer service teams for success, communicating more effectively, and ensuring that you’re having good conversations with your clients and leads. Stop wasting valuable resources on pre-pandemic tactics — re-allocate your marketing spend to attract and engage the right customers, in the right place, at the right time. If you still have questions, contact DaBrian Marketing Group today.

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How to Transition Marketing Staff and Hand Over the Reins

August 19, 2020 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

In the COVID-19 world, we’re all just trying to survive. That includes navigating remote work, medical leave, layoffs, and co-workers leaving their existing jobs for opportunities that are better for their families. Keeping all of it organized and everyone on the same page is more important than ever. That’s why we’ve put together a marketing checklist of things that businesses should do while in the transition to better position their employees and marketing departments for success.

Ensure You Know What Marketing Projects are In Progress

There is always work to be done so make sure that you know what projects are in progress so you can plan accordingly and assign responsibilities to existing employees or a new hire. Look to understand the role, deadlines, and the employee’s involvement in all projects. I recommend that you gather a list of projects, the employees, the deadlines, and specific responsibilities all in writing so you have a reference document. Depending on the complexity, consider project management software that includes a marketing project template, such as Asana.

Obtain Marketing Plans, Strategies, Goals & Objectives

Collect all existing versions of marketing plans, strategies, goals, and objectives for your existing employees. These documents should have insights that will help the next employee or marketing agency hit the ground running! Find out how you are tracking progress against annual and quarterly goals and objectives. This should save you time, money, and the effort of creating marketing plans or strategy from start to finish. New to marketing strategy? Start by getting your digital marketing priorities in order.

Get Key Contact Information for Marketing, Sales, and IT

Collect the contact information of key players in marketing, sales, and IT. This list of key contacts should include internal and external stakeholders. These contacts will be able to provide historical information and insight into existing marketing projects and marketing plans. Make sure key information is shared with your team.

Gather all of the information about the marketing department so that the next person has an idea of how things work. For example, you should have organizational charts, product/service information, process guides, manuals, etc. These documents will provide your people with a sense of direction, knowledge of processes, and points of contact that will make it easier to get work done.

Examine Marketing Vendor & Partnership Agreements

In most cases, you will have multiple vendors or partners to help with different aspects of your marketing. For example, who do you use for print materials, hosting, and digital marketing solutions? It’s also important to understand what you own versus what you rent. Some web design agencies will say that you own your website but you cannot move it to another web host or agency. Considering company downsizing and the amount of remote work currently being done, it’s key that you examine your agreements to ensure you’re still getting the services that you were promised. Acquire all agreements and make sure you understand the scope of work.

Do not hesitate to contact these vendors and providers to assure yourself of these services and promises. In the post-COVID world, it is imperative to be sure you are receiving what you are paying for. Six months into this new environment, your business partners, by this time, should have their feet on the ground and operating efficiently and effectively to serve you. If not, perhaps reexamine your partnership.

Inventory Your Marketing Tools

Depending on the complexity of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, it could cost your business anywhere between $12 to $300 per month for each user. Build a list of all of your marketing and sales tools. This list of marketing tools will give you information to show you where you are overspending or have redundant tools. Understanding what tools you have will help you to transition duties to another employee and obtain support to get the most out of your tools. In my experience, it would be wise to start your marketing and sales list with your CRM, email marketing platform, social media publishing tool, etc. because these are commonly used among businesses no matter the industry.

Know What Reports the Employee is Accountable For

The marketing department usually has daily, weekly, and monthly reporting which funnel into executive reporting. Request an example of these reports for your reference. Our clients have had success in having discussions about who is responsible, what and where are the data sources, what is the process, and who needs to receive these reports and by what date.

Schedule an Exit Interview & Revisit the Job Description

If an employee is leaving the marketing department voluntarily, you need to gain insight into why. According to Harvard Business Review, exit interviews are key to long-term business success as they help you to keep a pulse on functional units, improve processes, and increase retention. The employee’s feedback can help you to improve the job description for future candidates or uncover issues that need to be addressed. It will also help you in the decision-making process when determining if you will choose your internal employees or outsource some of your marketing efforts.

Create an Onboarding Plan for Staff

Develop an onboarding plan for new employees, transitions in responsibilities for staff, or your new marketing partners. This plan should include obtaining access to marketing tools and internal resources, documentation, training materials, and meetings to confirm or validate their learning as well as capabilities. You’ll see better results by scheduling recurring meetings to measure progress for the first 90 days and throughout the year.

Moving On From Marketing Staff or Ad Agency

According to Spencer Stuart’s 16th annual CMO Tenure Study, the average tenure for Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) decreased from 43 months to 41 months in 2018. You have to weigh the pros and cons of internal staff versus a strategic marketing partner. Going through these steps that we’ve outlined here, give you the information to change processes and procedures, identify talent, and position your business for success with internal, external, or a combination of all marketing resources.

Like what you’ve read? Have we inspired you and given you a springboard for moving your marketing department and business into the post-COVID business arena? Access more valuable information regularly by subscribing to our blog and following us on social media.

What is Inbound Marketing?

August 7, 2020 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Inbound marketing is the methodology of attracting customers by creating valuable and relevant content experiences tailored to potential customers. The process of inbound marketing requires your content to be tailored toward your target audience and buyer personas and their needs. Inbound marketing forms a connection by solving problems that your potential customers have.

What is the Inbound Method?

The inbound methodology is focused on growing your company by building meaningful, lasting relationships with consumers, prospects, and customers. It’s about helping and empowering people to reach their goals at any stage in their customer journey with you. When they succeed, your company will succeed and increase the likelihood of customer retention as well as referrals.

Inbound Methodology is often used in 3 ways:

Attract: getting the right people with valuable information and actions to establish you as a trusted advisor that they want to engage with. Engage: provide insights and solutions that align with their problems and goals so they are more likely to buy from you. Delight: deliver guidance and support to help your customers succeed with their purchase.
Engage: provide insights and solutions that align with their problems and goals so they are more likely to buy from you.
Delight: deliver guidance and support to help your customers succeed with their purchase.

Types of Inbound Strategies

There are three inbound strategies that will help you market to your target audience through the inbound model. Each of these strategies will help your business grow better. Below are the types of inbound strategies:

Attracting Strategies drive traffic from your buyer personas and target audience by creating and publishing content that provides value and helps potential customers to solve their challenges.
Engaging Strategies will communicate and connect with leads and customers to build long-term relationships with your business. Actively provide them with solutions to their problems while addressing their needs and wants.
Delight Strategies ensure that your customers are happy, and provide them with support after the purchase, which transforms you into their trusted advisor as new challenges are presented.

How to Use the Inbound Method in Your Marketing?

Select the inbound strategy that makes the most sense for your business. For example, if you are just getting started, consider working on the attracting strategy. The tools to attract customers are: ads, video, blogging, social media and a content strategy. Create valuable content for your target audience, distribute the content on these channels. Provide an offer (i.e. downloadable, consultation, value-added, discount code, etc.), then measure your ability to attract potential customers. If you need help, you can hire an inbound marketing agency to help you. There are a few HubSpot solution partners in Reading, PA and surrounding states.

Want to learn more about inbound marketing for your business? Subscribe to the blog and follow us on social media.

Drive Web Traffic With Paid Digital Advertising

February 28, 2020 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

You have a great looking website, but this is not Field Of Dreams. Just because you built it does NOT mean people will come. So, how do you increase traffic to your website? Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Email Marketing, Paid Advertising, etc… Where should you start???

Here are a few questions to consider:

Is your website mobile-friendly?
Is your content clear and concise?
Is it easy to achieve the end goal on your website?
Do you have a budget to acquire more traffic?
Do you need web traffic immediately?

While all of the above listed options are valid methods to increase traffic, some take time (SEO), or require an existing audience (Email and Social Media.) However, if you answered “Yes” to all the above questions, then you are ready to run Paid Digital Advertising. Running Paid Ads isn’t quite that simple. What kind of ads – Search, Display, Video or Shopping? Where will these Ads be shown – Search Engines, across the internet, on Social Media? And very possibly the most important how will you reach your desired audience (targeting settings)?

While this blog will never answer all your possible questions about Paid Digital Advertising, let’s at least tackle some of the big ones.

1. Type of Paid Digital Ads

Search Ads – Context based ads that appear above and below Search Results. These ads consist of Headlines, Body Copy, URL and often various Extensions (ie. location, phone numbers and other additional information.)

Display Ads – Image ads that show on various sites above, below, next to, and among a websites content. Since these ads are not the primary reason a person comes to the given website, they need to grab their attention and give them a reason to click.

Video Ads – Often shown before, after or during a desired video similar to a tv commercial. Again, this ad needs to distract a person from their desired video and give them a reason to click.

Shopping Ads – Product focused with the goal for selling typically via an ecommerce site.

2. Placement of Paid Digital Ads

Search Engines – Seems obvious, but Search Ads are shown on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP.)

Display Network – Display Ads can show almost anywhere on the web. There are several Display Networks with the most popular being the Google Display Network (GDN) which boasts to include over 2 million websites,videos and mobile apps. Since videos are included in the Display Network, your video ads will show on this network along with your display ads

Shopping Ads – These ads mostly shown on Search Engine Shopping sections (Google and Bing). However, depending on targeting setting your shopping ads could also be Display ads and therefore be shown across the Display Network.

Social Media Advertising – Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and several other social media platforms have their own Advertising platform. These ads are often similar to display ads, since they are often shown along the side of the page and are not based upon a search, but rather other targeting settings (geographic, demographic and more.)

3. Target Audience

The success of your Ads ultimate starts with your targeting settings. Even with the greatest Ads (search, display or other) shown to the wrong audience will never succeed, While Search Ads are primarily targeting and shown based on what a user searches, there are several other targeting settings involved. A short list of setting that can (and should) be setup on most, if not all, Paid Digital Advertising campaigns:

Geographic Location
Day Parting/Time of Day
Demographics (Gender, Age, Parental Status, Household Income)
Interest/Topics (for Display Campaigns)
Bidding Strategy
Device Targeting/Bid Adjustments
ReMarketing/Similar Audiences/In-Market Audiences

Following this very oversimplified process to setting up your Paid Digital Advertising will help put you on the path to not only driving web traffic but also growing your business and bottom line. However this is only getting you setup, you will still need to monitor and optimize your Paid Advertising campaigns on a regular basis.

Ready to Start your Paid Digital Advertising? Want Help setting up, monitoring and optimizing your Advertising Campaigns, or just have additional questions – Contact DaBrian Marketing Today.