by sekaterina | Jul 18, 2023 | Blog, Growth Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency |
In the fast-paced world of marketing, success depends on more than just innovative ideas and creative campaigns. Businesses need a well-defined and efficient marketing funnel to achieve lasting growth and maximize results. Introducing the AAARRR funnel, a robust framework designed to guide marketers to attract, engage, convert, and retain customers. This article will dive deep into the AAARRR funnel, exploring its stages and revealing how it can supercharge your marketing efforts.
What is the AAARRR Funnel?
The AAARRR funnel, or the Pirate Funnel, is a framework that breaks down the customer journey into five key stages: Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral. Each stage represents a specific goal within the marketing process, allowing businesses to understand their customers better and tailor strategies to meet their needs at different touchpoints.
Let’s take a closer look at each stage:
Capturing Attention: The Awareness Stage
A potential customer’s journey begins with awareness – the crucial stage of capturing attention. At this phase, businesses aim to introduce their brand, products, or services to a broad audience, sparking curiosity and generating interest. This is the foundation upon which fruitful customer relationships are built. A good example of activities during the Awareness Stage would be LinkedIn Prospecting, Pay Per Click Advertising, Trade Shows, Print and Digital Baseboard Ads.
Engaging Potential Customers: The Acquisition Stage
Once potential customers know a brand’s existence, it’s time to engage with them effectively. In the Acquisition stage, businesses aim to nurture initial interest and build a relationship with the target audience.
For example: Brands engage potential customers with personalized messages, showing a deep understanding of their needs and interests. Email marketing, tailored offers, and targeted ads contribute to the acquisition effort.
Proposing Solutions: The Activation Stage
In the Activation stage, businesses aim to convert interested prospects into active customers. It’s about presenting a compelling solution that fulfills the potential customers’ needs and encourages them to take the next step.
Retention: Nurturing Customer Loyalty
The third stage, Retention, is all about keeping your customers engaged and satisfied to ensure they stay with your brand over the long term. Satisfied customers are more likely to become loyal advocates and make repeat purchases. To foster retention, implement customer support strategies, loyalty programs, regular communication, and personalized offers. Monitoring customer feedback and analyzing user behaviour can also help identify areas for improvement and increase customer retention.
Revenue: Driving Sales and Conversions
At the Revenue stage, your primary focus is to create a positive new customer experience to ensure customer Retention and further Referrals. This stage is critical as it sets the tone for customer relationships. By providing a seamless and delightful onboarding process, you leave a lasting impression on new customers, increasing the likelihood of their continued engagement with your brand. A positive experience during the Revenue stage enhances customer satisfaction and plays a significant role in customer retention.
Satisfied customers are more likely to become loyal advocates who keep coming back and enthusiastically refer your products or services to their network. In this way, the Revenue stage is pivotal in establishing strong customer relationships that drive long-term growth and foster a loyal customer base.
Referral: Turning Customers into Advocates
The final stage of the AAARRR funnel is Referral. Happy customers are your best brand ambassadors, and by encouraging referrals, you can tap into the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Referral programs, social sharing incentives, and outstanding customer experiences can all contribute to transforming customers into active advocates who help you acquire new customers organically.
Conclusion
The AAARRR funnel provides a roadmap for marketers to navigate the complexities of the customer journey. By understanding each stage – Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral – businesses can identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities within their marketing strategies. Moreover, this framework enables marketers to allocate resources effectively, ensuring the right initiatives are implemented at each stage to drive growth and foster long-term customer relationships. Incorporate the AAARRR funnel into your marketing efforts and set sail for marketing success. Remember, it’s not just about acquiring customers; it’s about nurturing and retaining them to build a thriving and sustainable business. So, hoist the sails, navigate the funnel, and chart a course toward marketing greatness!
by sekaterina | Feb 27, 2023 | Blog, Growth Marketing, Marketing Agency |
Companies spend a lot of money on marketing to achieve sustainable and timely growth, but often they can’t get the results they expect. Understanding the difference between Lead Generation, Demand Generation, and Growth Marketing will open a unique perspective on modern marketing and the KPIs of different marketing campaigns.
If you have been around the marketing profession for a decade and more, you probably are very familiar with the term Lead Generation. Lead Generation has been the most popular marketing term for defining and measuring appointment setting and sales generation results. Traditionally, the most popular channels for Lead Generation have been Telemarketing and, later, LinkedIn Outreach Prospecting. However, taken from the context of a well-designed long-term Marketing Strategy, the results of short-term Lead Generation campaigns may be disappointing for business owners and salespeople.
2. Demand Generation:
Unlike Lead Generation Strategies, Demand Generation strategies are designed to create demand for the product or service. Demand Generation Campaigns aim to communicate the benefits and create awareness about the brand. An example of a Demand Generation strategy would be writing an article highlighting decision-makers pains and problems and how a particular product or service would resolve them.
Another example of a Demand generation strategy would be a PPC advertising campaign promoting a webinar, event, or a poll tool to educate and research the target market.
3. Growth Marketing
As we can see from the above, Lead Generation and Demand Generation relate more to campaign execution than a long-term Growth strategy. Growth Marketing takes a broad perspective of understanding the AAARRR funnel.
AAARRR stands for:
- Awareness
- Acquisition
- Activation
- Revenue
- Retention
- Referrals
When we speak about Growth Marketing, we mean long-term, idea-generating, and data-based marketing based on a step-by-step Growth Approach.
Growth Marketing aligns all business functions and departments into one Growth team. First, we take time and extended effort to understand the Buyers’ Persona. Then, we start collecting and evaluating quality data for future Growth Marketing campaigns by connecting with the right people on LinkedIn in B2B, running database acquisition PPC ads in B2C, or buying a database of prospects from a reliable source, such as Dan and Bradstreet, or InfoCanada.
Growth Marketers and Growth Hackers rely heavily on modern marketing technology like CRM and CMS. Securing and constantly growing quality databases of prospects is a stepping stone to Growth Marketing because we need data to achieve results and measure them.
Growth Marketing strategy unites Demand Generation and Lead Generation into one highly functional marketing system. For example, from a Growth Marketing standpoint, Telemarketing or LinkedIn outreach is not measured by a dollar-to-dollar return on sales but by the amount of data obtained, the quality of connections and the rate of engagement we achieved. Yes, we want to secure prospects’ engagement, such as appointments and sales meetings, but we are realistic about our expectations. The main goal is to create a marketing culture and a system that will help our sales team repeatedly.
by sekaterina | Mar 26, 2021 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Small Business Marketing Blog |
Marketing and sales investment loopholes that companies must be aware of.
With work from home being our new reality, many businesses are struggling to get return on their marketing and sales investment. Our employees are working from home, trade shows and networking functions are either canceled or went virtual…So how do we make sure that our money is well spent?
Here are a few suggestions to consider:
1.Rethink marketing and sales investment in technology
We are all using CRMs, right? Do you want to know the dirtiest secret about CRMs? They take your staff valuable time in managing and reporting marketing data, which has no value to your business!
Sales and marketing people often drag along leads that are not active or will never produce anything. Why do we do it? We need to show our management that the RESULTS ARE COMING.
To avoid this endless cycle, do invest in CRM that is simple enough for you to read the results in real time. Many of the most marketed CRMs on the market are simply not user friendly, but sold for $$$ to you because of many functions and features that you do not need.
Do a simple test: go to your CRM and see how many calls, conversations, or updates was done by your team TODAY. Cannot see it? Ditch that CRM investment-you are wasting your money!
2. Compare: where the money goes, and where do your leads come from? Or is it all same old forever?
This is an especially important question. Make a list of all the leads you generated during the last 6 months and see where they are coming from:
You have the idea: the money shall be directed to the most ROI effective channels. Have not tried some of the channels yet-get a trial run. You may be surprised how effective they are for you.
3.Sales Performance Tricks: your sales closing numbers are another eye opener on how your hard-earned money was wasted.
| Leads |
Date Generated |
$$ closed |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
Sales Professionals are “tough monkeys” (joke). We are always in demand and first to go if ANYTHING goes wrong. If we cannot sell-we show ACTIVITY. If your sales team is doing this – find the real reason why they are not closing. Most probably it is not their fault – there is something wrong with your company’s business, market and offering.
4.Keep my investments inhouse or outsource dilemma: Consider both.
Outsourced agencies are offering cutting edge strategies, ideas, and technologies. Your salespeople know your business and your customers on a personal level. BUT…(read below carefully)
There are many ways to optimize on how you can direct your sales and marketing money, staff, and resources. I believe that the mixed solution is the best, but there must be great rapport and cooperation between parties. Often salespeople see outsourced consultants and marketers as a threat. If it is so in your company – raise the red flag! This may be a sign of complacency, laziness, or withdrawal. The healthy sales team will receive this help with open arms. The unhealthy one will reject and sabotage it.
In conclusion:
Analyzing your ROIs and KPIs may be hard during our “unusual times”. You can use and hear many excuses such as “decisions are not made fast” and ” because of COVID”, etc. But can you keep going like this and stay in business?
Is this the time to change strategy or downsize? How long has it been since you revisited and re-evaluated your sales methods, proposals, offers, target markets, etc.? I personally believe in “Profit First” concept. Sometimes downsizing, rethinking and renewing is better that running loops and wasting resources.
by sekaterina | Apr 14, 2020 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Small Business Marketing Blog |
When it comes to sales, marketing and telemarketing during Covid-19, the question is: shall we stop it, or shall we adopt and possibly succeed? In my opinion this is the time to go digital, to work from home and to promote your brand among your prospects and customers.
It looks like we are all in this together, and it will be a while till we get back to normal, whatever “normal” it is going to be. According to officials, COVID-19 quarantine may last weeks, or even months, and it will probably be back in the fall, if the vaccine is not developed. So, this is a new reality and we need to adopt to it. On a good side, the times of change also presents opportunities to renew, rebuild, re-learn and reconsider what we do in our business and every day lives.
Many of us, small business owners, started our businesses in 1980s to early 2000s. We built them based on hard-core traditional marketing methods such as telemarketing, business networking, door knocking – you get the idea. All of us worked hard, and got customers the old way and we succeeded. Why do we need to change what worked for us for so many years? Many of us are still skeptical of the new modern marketing methods. Some tried it and failed, others found it challenging and time consuming to learn, and it can be hard to trust another marketing agency, which promises to make it all work.
As a result of these postponements and hesitations, hundreds of thousands marketing dollars are wasted without positive ROI’s.
In this article, I invite you to reconsider your telemarketing during Covid-19 strategies in favor of digital prospecting via LinkedIn, Google and other social media channels.
Why to reconsider doing Telemarketing During Covid-19 Pandemics? See if I can persuade you here:
“We do Telemarketing because our Customers are Not Present on Social Media Networks…because they are too small, too busy, not very educated, not technology oriented, etc.”
Surprisingly, this is a very common belief among late baby boomer’s generation and even early millennials. My counterparts were amazed when I shared my screen viz Zoom with them and presented the possibility of the Sales Navigator searches. One of my prospects was shocked when I presented them with a search showing over 18000 business owners in Ontario alone with 1-50 employees.
Marketing during Covid-19 presents an opportunity to tap into this huge pool of LinkedIn users, who now have more time on their hand, working from home and as a result are more active on their Social Media networks.
“Telemarketing is the only way to reach people – Our customers are not active on LinkedIn”
- According to statistics 40% of LinkedIn users use it regularly: https://kinsta.com/blog/linkedin-statistics/
- People who are not active will not accept your invite. And it is OK! It does not take long to invite other prospects, who are just like them and are active on the platform.
- You may choose to connect only with Premium profiles users. These type of users usually pay LinkedIn, so they are active on the platform for sure!
Money talks: LinkedIn Prospecting vs Telemarketing cost benefit scenario.
In addition to the benefits above, it has been calculated to be at least 10 times cheaper to deliver your message via LinkedIn rather than via Telemarketing. Here is the example based on the real numbers:
|
|
LinkedIn |
Telemarketing |
| Target Market |
18000 (Business Owners Ontario) |
|
| Cost to Reach |
|
$1000 per month |
$50 per hour |
| Timing |
12 months |
12 months |
720 hours (25 calls/conversations per hour) |
| Budget |
Yearly/monthly |
$12000/ year or $1000 per month/profile |
$36000 ($3000 per month=60 hours) |
| Connections/Calls per month average |
ROI/month |
1500 invites=500 connections |
60*25=1500 calls/ 150 conversations (10% call/convers rate) |
| Engagement |
Reply/further interest/appointment |
30% Avg Reply rate
10% further interest = 15 monthly /future appointments |
150 conversation-2% appts = 3-5 appointments (optimistically) |
| Cost per Appointment |
|
$1000/15=$65 |
$600-$1000 |
“I get a lot of spam from my LinkedIn connections, nothing good can come out of this”
Yes, you may have spam if you are not connecting with the right people. Here are the reasons why you may have spam and how to fix it when marketing during COVID-19:
- You are accepting connections without looking at the Invitees profiles – they will spam you with the message not relevant to your business.
- Your Team uses LinkedIn Bots – Bots will connect you with wrong people.
- You do not regularly clean up and audit your connections.
“I tried it, but I did not get any results.”
According to statistics 43% of marketers say that they acquired at least one customer out of LinkedIn.
To achieve results, you need to have the following:
- Know your customers: Buyers Persona
- Sales Navigator Search – Pay for it and use the filters to narrow down your search.
- Do NOT Sell like a company. Be personal – connect first!
- Pay attention to your communications be friendly and professional.
- Keep conversation going and follow up, follow up, follow up!
Conclusion
In conclusion, I strongly believe that money spent on telemarketing during Covid-19 crisis shall be redirected towards digital prospecting, marketing and advertising. Digital prospecting on LinkedIn is unmatched when in comes to startinga connection and communications with our prospects and customers.
So, stay connected and stay healthy!
Ekaterina Spooner
by sekaterina | Feb 19, 2020 | Blog, Lead Generation, Small Business Marketing Blog |
What is in Store for Small Business Lead Generation in 2020?
Happy New Year! After a Holiday hangover we are all back to business: paying credit cards, completing year ends and filing taxes. So, what Lead Generation in 2020 has in store for all of us?
I don’t know about you, my fellow business owner, but I feel like we are going into another recession. The main indication of this to me is not what I hear on TV and radio, but the fact that my prospects and customers are cutting their spending on marketing and sales by almost 50%.
So, what do we do to thrive and survive in the challenging 2020 business landscape in Canada? Here are the marketing trends to watch, observe and follow.
1.B2B Lead Generation 2020 Goes Digital:
If you have not heard about LinkedIn Prospecting yet, I strongly suggest you get on it! Traditional lead generation such as email and telemarketing alone does not produce the enough engagement anymore. LinkedIn is number one communication tool in B2B today because it allows large coverage, high deliverability and great engagement, which surpasses any other marketing channels. To compare: telemarketing engagement is less than 5%, email less than 1%, while LinkedIn messaging engagement is over 40%.
2.Many Touches to Gain Trust:
Is still good old: “One touch is not enough”. One call is not enough, one email campaign is not enough, one LinkedIn text message is not enough. It takes on average 7 messages to get a reply from a qualified prospect. So carefully construct, fill and monitor your sales funnel with scheduled follow ups.
3.Take it Offline and Make it Personal:
If LinkedIn is the best channel to start a conversation, it is important to take it offline at the earliest opportunity. Follow up with telemarketing calls, send them a personalized e-mail, book coffee meetings, invite your prospects to your lunch and learns. Add your voice, face and personality to your connections. Chat, laugh, joke, communicate and relate. If you market is outside of your geographic area, use video conferencing and webinar technology to meet your prospects.
4. Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up!
With digital tools under our fingertips it is way easier to get interest and attention, but with slow economy and cash flow challenges many sales professionals and business owners experience delays in closing on their proposals and contracts. It may be tiring and frustrating, but don’t give up! Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up!
5. Do Not Abandon Branding:
Even you are a tiny, small consulting business you still can afford branding! It is not only for big guys anymore. With digital tools under your fingertips you can look big, even while being very small. It starts with your website – make it user friendly! Make it easy for your visitors to navigate and read, whichever gadget they prefer to use. Put great information with easy to follow format, make sure there is call for action and other engagements tools such as forms and chats. Make it interesting! Brag, educate, interact and lead visitors to your contact us forms.
Make sure that your site has a blog and connects to social media channels.
Conclusion:
I hope this is helpful for you my fellow business owner. If you need a word of advice, or marketing help book your Free Consultation with one of our consultants. We would love to hear from you.
Happy 2020 again!
Ekaterina Spooner
President
Prospect Solutions Inc.
by sekaterina | Oct 23, 2019 | Blog, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog |
Being an agency owner, I often come across the issue of my clients’ Social Networks’ health. Many of our clients had previously accepted connections requests on LinkedIn, friendships requests on Facebook and followers on Instagram who are neither qualified or relevant to their business.
Why is this an issue?
I strongly believe that the purpose of Social Networks management is to communicate with your prospects and customers effectively. Your networks are your most valuable business asset because it allows your messages to be delivered to the right audience, reduces your e-mail inbox spam and drives most valuable and qualified web traffic to your website.
Social Networks Management: Delivering your messages to your prospects and customers:
Social networks audiences are presenting unique opportunities for delivering your messages, information and offers to your prospects and customers. Comparing to any other marketing communication channels, correct Social Networks management presents the highest opportunity for engagement: up to 60% engagement, compared to e-mail (less than 1 %) and telemarketing (less than 5%).
And the best of all, these messages are delivered to your qualified recipients for free! Compare this to the cost of web marketing, Search Engine Optimization or advertising.
In addition, your social networks contacts are highly monetizable business assets. Yes! If you decide to sell your business, these contacts and the quality of your engagement with them will be measured in a high dollar value.
Social Networks Management reduces spam across all channels:
We are all irritated from the amount of spam coming off internet in a form of e-mail, voicemail and unwanted telemarketing. It makes our mailboxes clattered, make us miss valuable information, waking us up in a middle of the night and infuriate us by interrupting our meetings.
Why do we get so much spam? Look at the qualities of your networks! Did you know that your first LinkedIn connections have access to your contact information, which can be easily downloaded to Excel and imported to any CRM, dialer or other communication software?
So, if you would like to reduce spam-clean up your networks first.
Social Networks promote your website with Search Engines:
In is no secret that Search Engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo are monitoring and constantly accessing your website traffic and its behaviour patterns on your website. If majority of your visitors are relevant to your business keywords and their time on your site is higher than your competition, Search Engines will promote you to the top of their pages. This mean a lot of new business for you! Do you know that #1 position in Google sites draw almost 85% of all traffic, #2 gets about 10%, and #3 all the rest? If you are lower than this – you pretty much get nothing at all. This is why companies invest thousands of dollars to their websites and SEO.
Your social networks’ referrals are the most valuable traffic, which also has the highest conversion rates. In addition, the ability of your website to generate sales leads is one of the most valuable business assets. If your site is on top of the search engines for your business keywords, you can sell it alone for tens of thousands of dollars.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, do not overlook your regular social networks management: clean up, engage, re-engage, segment and qualify your contacts, friends and followers. Remember, behind each of social media profile is a human being, a business professional, a potential customer, a source of referrals and new friendships for you. Clean up and segment your networks, introduce and re-introduce yourself multiple times, communicate informally, tell them about your business and ask questions. Please do not forget to measure and evaluate your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), to ensure that you are on the right track.
At Prospect Solutions, we help our customers with social networks management and lead generation. We manage our clients’ networks, run lead generation campaigns and report KPI’s. Can’t afford agency rates? No problem-we have comprehensive training and marketing temps’ programs.
by sekaterina | Jul 31, 2019 | Blog, Lead Generation |
How To Generate Leads in 2019?
Many of my fellow business owners are still confused how to prospect and generate leads in 2019. Some rely on good old telemarketing, some invest their money in SEO, go to business networking events, or do door to door prospecting. Unfortunately, the silver bullet “one makes it all” in lead generation has not been invented yet. Otherwise everyone would be rich and the time of leisure and prosperity would come on all of the entrepreneurial crowd. It is not here yet.
In this article I would like to share a secret with you. You will not learn magic, but sure enough understand how to achieve the best ROI, as well as how to build your business by leveraging and combining digital and traditional lead generation techniques.
Digital and Traditional Lead Generation Techniques
Before we begin, I would like to give you a bit of history. I own Prospect Solutions for 16 years. We started as a boutique telemarketing firm in 2003, and ever since our livelihoods depended on how effective we are at providing ROI for our clients’ marketing dollars. This is a steep and challenging battle that it is hard to win… But the good news is that we learned a lot, and unlike our competitors we are still in business, which means that we learned to do something right.
In 2003 marketers’ life was different. It was enough to send 100 faxes to gather 20 people for a breakfast seminar or make a quick call to get a sales appointment. Business owners were getting information from salespeople and picked up their phones all the time. The seller had way more power over the sales process and the buyer was left “to beware”. For better or worse, those days are long gone. Fax campaign in business are long gone. Telemarketers are speaking mostly through answering machines and tecom systems, because now most of the decision makers do not pick up their phones unless they recognize the number.
As a result of technology innovation telemarketing campaigns have become ineffective and often counterproductive to their goals. Buyers have more power over the sales process and use internet for research and information. Business networking events are full of non-qualified people, whose main goal is to sell their products and services to fellow attendees. They are time consuming, ineffective and costly, and therefore not sustainable to achieve your business development goals. Door to door marketing falls into “survival of the fittest” marketing category. It requires a lot of time, patience and stamina, which makes it almost impossible to find a quailed marketing representative to do it.
So how do we generate leads in 2019?
The answer is by eliminating a marketer from the process whatsoever. Business people want to speak with fellow professionals, but not with marketers. Period. They do not want to be prospected, phoned and subjected to pressure appointment booking conversation with someone who does not even know what they are talking about and whose sole goal is to create an appointment. This often comes out as meaningless for both parties.
Good marketers learned how to use digital technology and traditional communication channels together to achieve results for their employers and clients. This is called Integrated Marketing and Lead Generation, or Multi-Channeled marketing.
At Prospect Solutions we are combining telemarketing, business networking on LinkedIn and door-to-door representation into one customized marketing campaign, designed to generate the best results for each individual client.
Would you like to know how this may work for your company?
Book a free consultation with one of our senior consultants today!
by sekaterina | Apr 16, 2019 | Blog, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog |
SEO in 2019:
The importance of keywords, meta-data, and long-form content
Your website is one of your most important marketing pieces. It’s often the first place customers look to understand what you do, why you do it, and how you stand out from the competition. It’s important to create website content with your customers’ needs and questions at the forefront. You also want to write SEO content that will make it easy for your ideal customers to find your business. The rules of SEO are continually changing according to how we use and access information online. If you’re wondering what to do for SEO in 2019, well, keywords are still the best starting point. We break down what they are, and how to design your site to use them well. Remember, the ultimate goal of Search Engines is to provide searchers with the most relevant results. These tips are designed to help search engines do just that!
What do you want to be found for?
Whether you’re just creating your first business site or updating an existing one, a very important step is to sit down and think about SEO keywords before you begin. Taking time to understand exactly what you want to be found for can help you understand how to design and organize your website. If you’re not sure what your keywords are, a good place to start is taking a look at your competition – especially the competition that comes up in the top spots when you search. If your business is focused in a certain location, it’s often helpful to include the location in the keywords. Other keywords can center around specific services you offer that people might be searching for. Often, the more specific you can be, the less competition you’ll have on searches.
If you need help researching keywords, a good resource is typing something into google and scrolling down to the bottom of the page to see similar searches.
What is Meta-data and why is it important?
Every page on your site should have something called “metadata” included. Clear, well-written metadata that includes your keywords is extremely important for SEO. The metadata basically summarizes what your page is about for search engines, telling them which topics are the most important on the page. Metadata doesn’t appear on the page itself, but search engines read your meta-data in order to help provide the best results to searchers. The metadata on your site is split up into three key elements:
Meta-title
The meta title is the bolded first line that shows on google when someone finds your site. It also shows up on the top of your browser when you’re on the page and provides the default name for your page link when someone bookmarks it. Why is this important?
Because if you have a clear, well-written Meta-title that puts the most important keyword as early as possible in the sentence, it will help guide people to click on your site. Make sure your Meta-title is clear for the reader to get the most clicks.
Meta description
If you don’t add a meta-description to your site, search engines will typically show a short snippet from your page content – whatever is the most relevant to a user’s search. But that snippet, grabbed mid-paragraph, or cut-off, might not be very helpful to people. When you write a clear, easy to understand meta-description, you’re helping potential customers decide whether your content is relevant to their needs, so you want to make this one count! You also want to consider, what kind of content will help your customer, but also lead them to click for more information, so give a hint on the kind of helpful information they’ll find when they click through to your site.
Meta keywords
Adding meta keywords and/or key phrases tells google the key ideas that searchers will find on your web page. You want to identify keywords for every page of your site and list them in your meta keywords, separated with commas. Whatever keywords you specify, you’ll want to try to use them a minimum of 3 times on the page to make them count.
Using keywords on your web page.
Once you’ve identified your main keyword, and incorporated it into your meta-title and meta-data, you’ll want to make sure that you use it again, at least 3 times in your page content. It’s also a good idea to use it in Header tags, in bold, or in bulleted or numbered lists. All of these styles on your page have more importance than big blocks of text, so putting keywords in these sections will reinforce their importance to search engines.
You should also identify some secondary keywords or key-phrases. While you may not use all of your secondary keywords in your meta-data title and description, simply add them 3 times throughout a page.
The Value of Long-form content
While your general website might not always use long-form content, adding content that is around 2000 words long provides a lot of value for SEO in 2019. The reason for this is that search engines see long-form content as in-depth information that can answer searchers’ questions in one easy place. You can create long-form content on your blog, in help guides, and pdf downloadable resources. Creating long-form content is a great idea for your business, because it helps your clients, proves your expertise in your industry, and on top of that, gives your SEO a boost!
While there’s a lot more to the SEO in 2019, carefully considering and using keywords on your website, crafting good meta-data, and creating long-form content on your website will all help your SEO, and get more customers to your door.
If you need help with your SEO, we’re the experts! Learn more about Prospect Solutions’ SEO services.
by Ekaterina | Apr 2, 2019 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog, Social Media Marketing |
What is Corporate Brand Marketing?
Unlike Personal Brand Marketing, Corporate Brand Marketing is a way to market your company and establish brand reach, recognition, and loyalty. While your company may be your baby, it is a separate entity from yourself, and has its own family, history, voice, and traditions. Your brand’s personality goes far beyond the established corporate name under which you do business, and what your brand means, and stands for, affects your customers, your industry and your employees.
Corporate Brand Marketing communicates your brand to the world via your company website, social media pages, email, telephone, video, photography, colors, copywriting, etc. All of these elements come together to create a consistent feeling and message about your business, what you offer, how you work with partners and clients, and why people should choose you over the competition.
Corporate Brand Marketing also uses social media channels to help connect with clients and deliver great brand experiences, but it takes a different approach to using those tools, and integrates them with other channels to establish your brand and reach customers:
Corporate Brand Marketing on LinkedIn:
Your business page on LinkedIn can be used for a few different things. It helps establish the HR side of your brand, connecting to employees and sharing more about your corporate and work culture to attract excellent potential new hires. It’s also a great advertising platform, especially if your business is B2B-focused, and your target markets are using these channels. You can help reach and connect to customers through posts, but if you want to extend your reach, you can also use LinkedIn’s paid advertising and job-posting options.
Corporate Brand Marketing on Facebook:
Your Business Page on Facebook is also a great place to advertise to potential clients through Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, and to share content from other platforms, like your blog, or website. You can use it to highlight current promotions, engage followers to sign up for newsletters, and much more. One of Facebook’s best features, however, is Messenger, which offers a direct chat option with clients. This means you can offer live conversation and customer support, and be available to customers on one of their most used platforms. You can also set up a chatbot in Messenger to help automate responses to specific keywords, making this communication process more seamless. It’s important to remember that your responsiveness as a brand is an important part of your brand personality, and building client trust and word-of-mouth. Facebook business pages also include options for online selling directly through Facebook. As social media platforms go, Facebook continues to be one of the most multi-featured, offering a variety of tools to support your business.
Corporate Brand Marketing on Twitter and Instagram:
Twitter and Instagram can also both be used for direct communication with clients, but they’re also great platforms to share branded content that establishes your company’s brand personality. Since Instagram does this through images, it should connect with your overall brand feel and colour scheme, and emphasize the visual aspects of your brand. In contrast, Twitter, is more about sharing ideas, and having online conversations, making it a great place to develop and share the voice of your brand personality. It’s also a visible platform for talking to clients, publicly showing how you respond to the customer.
Corporate Brand Marketing on You-Tube:
You-Tube is one of the most creative tools you can use for Corporate Brand Marketing, and often requires the most skill to get it right. You-Tube can be used for sharing your own corporate videos, or you can access You-Tube advertising options and put your ads in front of a wider audience. Corporate videos can showcase products, share corporate events, highlight company values, or demonstrate company culture to help hiring. Whatever they do, they need to do it well in order to engage your audience, so it’s worth investing, time, thought, and money in order to get the most out of branded company videos.
Email Marketing:
Setting up an ongoing e-newsletter is a great way to increase your brand reach, and connect with some of the most qualified contacts. Sending regular emails puts your brand directly in customers’ inboxes, and since customers actively sign up, you know they really want to receive it. E-mail marketing is a great tool to provide value to your customers though tips, expertise, promotions, brand stories, and more.
Blogging:
Your company blog is the place to establish the expertise of your brand, and provide added value to help your potential customers. Establishing a blog helps drive SEO to your website, but more importantly, it helps customers to move down the sales funnel, and/or become repeat customers, by providing information they need to make decisions about your brand, or to get the most out of your products or services. Creating ongoing blog content also supports all of your other social media platforms, as you can re-share this valuable information on a variety of channels. And if you have a sales team, blog content is a great resource for them to share when clients have questions.
The important thing with Corporate Brand Marketing is to create consistency throughout your social media posts, web content, visual and written messaging, and in the the way you do business. With so many online tools and platforms available, companies have a lot of power to establish the strength of their brand and reach clients. But at the same time, clients have a choice, and these very public and conversational channels allow customers to dialog with your company when they’re happy, and when they’re not. This means how you do business, how you communicate with customers, and how responsive your company is, all play important roles in your Corporate Brand Marketing, and brand image.
If you need help with your personal brand marketing or corporate brand marketing, get in touch!
by Ekaterina | Mar 15, 2019 | Blog, Lead Generation, Marketing Agency, Multichannel marketing, Small Business Marketing Blog, Social Media Marketing |
Happy Personal Brand Marketing Year!
2019 is well on it’s way! Welcome to the year of opportunities! At the start of a new year, we know most small business owners are looking for ways to build customers and contacts, and planning how to grow their business in the coming year. Being a business owner myself and managing a lead generation and digital marketing agency for over 15 years, I have the privilege to provide advice to my fellow business owners and entrepreneurs on which small business marketing tactics will help you achieve the business growth you’re looking for!
What is Personal Brand Marketing?
As the name suggests, personal brand marketing is all about the person (or people) who own and run a business, and how they network and build relationships with other business owners, clients and industry leaders. Personal Brand Marketing is about building direct, peer-to-peer personal connections with other business professionals. Through these real connections, business owners can introduce their companies to other business owners, and build trust with their prospects and customers. These days, business owners can build and nurture those direct personal relationships through a variety of social media platforms, maximizing their personal accounts to build and nurture ongoing relationships, and modern “word of mouth.” Here’s how you can use some of the most common online platforms to develop your personal brand marketing:
Build your personal network of peer relationships through LinkedIn, and get in the habit of sharing expertise through this platform. LinkedIn is a great place to maintain connections that you make in person at events, or you can seek and reach out to potential contacts who may be a good fit with your business. When adding new contacts, go directly to the person’s page, and write a personal message when you connect reminding them where you met, or telling them why a connection might be valuable for you both. LinkedIn also has groups for shared business interests, and for many industry organizations, so this is really your go-to-hub for b2b connections, business advice, hiring and more. And don’t forget to add your LinkedIn address to your business card!
Facebook Networking For Business:
Personal Networking on Facebook provides a variety of different opportunities for Personal Brand Marketing. You can invite fellow business owners to become your personal friends, and then request their help growing your business page following, and do the same for them. You can also look at joining existing groups that may be relevant to your business, or creating your own groups. Group participation is especially powerful, as any group messages you post notify group members directly, whereas the reach of your Business page posts depends on your advertising and/or post boosting investments. Making use of your existing personal networks, and working to expand them is a great way to get your personal relationships helping with your business growth.
Twitter For Business:
Twitter isn’t just for big corporations and famous Hollywood stars, it’s also for you, the small business owner! We recommend creating and managing a personal Twitter account to provide your followers with the real personality and passion behind your business. This is a great place to share your ideas and expertise, and have conversations with other business owners online. Twitter is also a top platform for journalists to hang out on, so if you’re looking to get a bit of publicity, it pays to explore which journalists write about topics related to your business, start following them and build a relationship. You can do this by commenting on relevant stories they post, and showcasing your knowledge. Building the right relationships with journalists will help you be top of mind the next time they’re looking for a topic expert on an article that relates to your business.
Instagram For Business:
As one of the most high-engagement online platforms currently in use, Instagram is an excellent place to build your personal brand, and share the real you that stands behind your business. And since Instagram is image-focused, many business partners find it easier to tell their story through great photos. A picture is worth 1000 words, and it’s a lot faster to create and share! To maximize Instagram for Personal Brand Marketing, make sure to direct message your followers thanking them for liking your images, and engage with their content regularly. These are just some of the tools you can use for Personal Brand Marketing. Overall what you need to remember about Personal Brand Marketing is that it’s direct, relationship-focused, and, well, personal! As long as you let your personal business passion shine, your friends, business connections, and potential customers are sure to notice, and feel excited to do business with you!
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