About Blogging for Digital Marketing Agencies
I was asked, “Why do you think it is really worth it the write a blog in a digital marketing agency” Others have addressed some of the reasons blogging for business is good, overall. Specific to a digital marketing agency, I think it serves a few purposes: Practice what you preach It is highly effective Gives you a playground I find it incredibly disheartening when an “expert” proclaims one thing and seems to do the opposite, or at least something very different. As a digital marketing agency, you should be utilizing the best practices of the industry, and experimenting to find your own (Point #3, above). If an agency can…
As a small business with little content, can I benefit from marketing automation?
This question is a part of my Free Q&A Series where I answer questions posed by entrepreneurs around the world on sites like Quora, Clarity, and various freelancing forums. ABOSLUTELY! In fact, utilizing marketing automation is likely to result in some great benefits for your company that will allow you to create more content and further improve the business. The thing about marketing automation most business leaders fail to recognize, is that it is not “set it and forget.” It is a constant evolution and improvement to your systems. Additionally, it does not need to overtake your entire sales and marketing process at once. You can automate a piece at…
How to Find Clients as a Freelancer
There is a certain romance associated with being a freelancer. Often we conjure images of working from remote, exotic locations; the freedom from a 9-to-5 job; the ability to create our own destiny; and doing work that is engaging or meaningful. According to a 2016 survey of the freelance economy, the number of freelance workers is growing quickly. Currently, there are approximately 55 million freelancers in the United States, up from 53 million in 2014. This represents about 34 percent of the total workforce and is expected to balloon to 50 percent by 2020. But, as many of those entrepreneurs can attest, running a freelance business is hard work. From day to day operations, managing clients, and…
How to Tell Where Your Website Traffic is Coming From
After months of trial and error, your website is finally getting a couple extra thousand visitors every month. You think, I’m doing something right! Break out the champagne! Not so fast. While an increase in website traffic is definitely something to celebrate, you need to first understand where these visitors are coming from. Someone coming to your site from organic search will behave differently than someone coming from Twitter. Here are three ways to tell where your website traffic is coming from: 1. Create a Basic Site Survey The easiest way to find out where people are coming from is simply to ask them in the form of a survey.…
The Best and Worst Ways to Generate Leads
There are the best and worst ways to do everything. There’s the best way to write subject lines, there are the worst ways to use Facebook, and there’s the best way to design a homepage. But what are the best and worst ways to generate leads? It’s easy to invest money in social media, email marketing, and content marketing, but do they really work and are they worth the money? [Tweet “Lead generation is a pot of gold for every digital marketer; but we must avoid fools gold.”] Here are three of the best ways and three of the worst ways to generate leads: 3 of the Best Ways to…
23 MORE Industries That Can Benefit From Content Marketing
A few weeks ago, I wrote a list of 23 industries that can benefit from having a strong inbound or content marketing strategy. Since then, I’ve thought of 23 more that should have been included in the first list. If you think you cannot benefit from a plan that attracts the right people, at the right time, with the right information, you’re sorely mistaken. Without further ado, here are 23 more industries that can grow and attract new customers through content marketing: Tradeshow Hosts / Promoters Freelancers Educational Institutions Accommodation & Hospitality SaaS Long-term Health Care / Retirement Home Debt & Credit Repair Personal Assistant Organization DIY Services Warehouse, Storage, and Distribution Employee…
How To Develop a Social Media Strategy
Whether you care to accept it or not, social media is here to stay. It is becoming a powerful marketing tool for businesses all over the world to connect with their customers. The questions is no longer, “should we be doing social media?” It is now, “are we doing social media right?” One way to do it right is to have a strong social media strategy. Many brands are simply using social media as a way to promote themselves. They’re not using it as it was designed: as a communication platform. Social media is a two-way street of dialog between a brand and the consumers. Unlike traditional marketing platforms – like…
Setting the Course: Creating a Strategic Plan for Your Agency
To say agency life is busy may be an understatement. Work isn’t confined to the normal 9-5 schedule, and it can feel like there are never enough hours in the day to find new business, make sure existing clients are happy, contribute to projects, and lead a team of employees. Oh, and you still need to make time to think about the future of your agency and where you want to be in the next five years. Creating a strategic plan for your agency can easily fall on the backburner. It can seem like there are more pressing issues in the present, like an unhappy client or an impending deadline.…
Why Blogging Generates Quality Sales Leads
A buyer has made almost 70% of their buying decision before they talk to you. Seventy percent! Todays buyers are self-educating; they are coming to the table armed with more product knowledge than ever before. For sales teams, this means that the prospect is almost ready to buy, you just have to answer any last minute questions and close the deal. But what about the process that leads to that 70%? A large part of that comes from the consumer self-educating and researching the product or service they intend to buy. Brands who embrace sharing content can control the narrative. Blogs work to generate sales leads because buyers are already…
The Single Biggest Mistake Brands Make On Their Blogs
“I wanna talk about me.” More than just a song by Toby Keith, “I wanna talk about me”-mentality is the number one mistake brands make on their blog. Take a step back, read your last 5 blog entires. Are they brand-focused or buyer-focused? When you write for your audience, you transform the relationship from buyer-seller to buyer-advisor. — About the Daily Marketing Minute The Daily Marketing Minute is my project for the last quarter of 2014. Each day, I will deliver bite-sized, fat-free nuggets of sales and marketing insights. In an increasingly noisy sales and marketing world, it is easy to lose track of why you do what you do. Ultimately,…
The Invisible Link Between Social Media and Sales Conversions
For modern marketers, simply being on social media is not enough. There are too many gimmicks; too much noise; too much drama. Instead, ask yourself, “What are we going to do with social?” The answer is to introduce call to action to drive intentional outcomes. Using social media with measurable purpose is the invisible link between social and sales. Without a purpose, and a way to analyze your efforts, you are adding to the noise and drama. — About the Daily Marketing Minute The Daily Marketing Minute is my project for the last quarter of 2014. Each day, I will deliver bite-sized, fat-free nuggets of sales and marketing insights. In an increasingly noisy…
How To Solve The Biggest Problems For Your Ideal Customer
“How Have We Helped You, Today?” That is the question I ask each time I see these faces. They represent our customers. The people we exist to connect and help. It’s a big mental shift to adjust marketing from “about us” to “about them.” The customer. More specifically, your ideal customer. Consider challenging yourself for 6 weeks to look your ideal customer in the face each day and become obsessed with making their biggest problems disappear. The transformation will be evident in both your organization and theirs. How have you helped your ideal customer today? Have you defined your ideal customer persona? If not, join my free email course to do just…
What Is Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing is a process for generating leads and nurturing them to a point of sale through content and automation. It’s not magic, it’s just a very efficient and human way of connecting with customers at the right moment. — About the Daily Marketing Minute The Daily Marketing Minute is my project for the last quarter of 2014. Each day, I will deliver bite-sized, fat-free nuggets of sales and marketing insights. In an increasingly noisy sales and marketing world, it is easy to lose track of why you do what you do. Ultimately, I believe that relationships will transcend the daily grind we face in sales and marketing. Every day,…
We Hate Interruptive Marketing
It is hard not to hate someone who constantly interrupts you with irrelevant messages; one who assumes they deserve your undivided attention at all times. It is easy, however, to love someone who always says the right thing, the right way, at the right time, in the right place. Which are you? — About the Daily Marketing Minute The Daily Marketing Minute is my project for the last quarter of 2014. Each day, I will deliver bite-sized, fat-free nuggets of sales and marketing insights. In an increasingly noisy sales and marketing world, it is easy to lose track of why you do what you do. Ultimately, I believe that relationships…
Are You The Right Fit For Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing has radically changed the traditional sales process. The basic premise of inbound is reaching the right people, at the right time, with the right content. The idea of a sales funnel has been around since the late 1800s, we have adapted several iterations of this model; which maps the process a theoretical customer journeys through before making a purchase. The process, however, assumes that all prospective customers loosely take the same route. We know that not to be true. With the introduction of social media and the huge influx of technology, we now know that consumers and prospects are entering the buying process from many different channels and…
How Buyer Personas Help You Connect with More Customers and Close More Sales
Wouldn’t it be better if you knew what your buyer wanted even before they did? To be successful with inbound or content marketing, your brand – whether it is the sales team, marketing team, or social media team – your brand needs to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. This requires an understanding of the specific process they will go through to make a purchasing decision. Such understanding will help you attract leads that are already in a purchasing process, increasing the number of leads that convert to paying customers. What is a Buyer Persona A buyer persona is a fictional representation of the real…
Why I am an Unapologetic, Raving Evangelist for Inbound Marketing
I don’t just like inbound marketing. I believe in it. I’m a raving fan of it. An ambassador. When I started Never Mind Marketing, the now-pillars of inbound were only loosely connected. We knew web design and layout were important, we knew search engine optimization was important, and we knew that social media was important. Beyond that, there was no formal name for what we were doing, it was just called “internet marketing”, which many people thought was scammy affiliate marketing garbage. I’m pretty sure my mom thought I worked for Google. In The Beginning I started in the wild wild west in internet marketing at the age of 13.…
How B2B Trade Shows can Benefit from Social Media
Some of my favorite speaking gigs are B2B trade shows. Most often, the attendees of my sessions are business owners themselves, or a representative tasked with learning “how to do social media”. It is exciting to me to see the “Aha!” moments on the faces of those who realize social media isn’t just for sharing stupid cat pictures, memes, or drunken photos of the weekend’s transgressions. The point that usually causes the most enlightenment is that there really is no “B2B” marketing. In reality, business decisions are made by humans. A business does not determine sources, vendors, or emotional connection – humans do. Social media, at its core, is a…
How To Use a Buyer’s Journey to Increase Sales
It pains me to see sales professionals doing the right thing, yet missing the mark when it comes to their monthly or quarterly sales goals. I’ve watched as brands dump money into their sales and marketing budgets to expand their brand awareness, increase sales, and decrease the workload of these departments only to be met with disappointing results. The problem is not the level of their effort, it is the efficiency of their effort. This is often evident by the sales team wasting their time (and your business dollars) continually following up with leads that are unqualified or otherwise not ready to make a purchase. How do you know? Answer…
