Author: Sujan Patel

How Email Marketing Can Improve Content Promotion

Every marketing professional is aware of the importance of inbound marketing. Content shared through inbound marketing campaigns allows you to create an ongoing dialogue with the audience and build better relationships with them. When we think of inbound marketing campaigns, the first thing that comes to mind is content marketing. Content marketing helps in driving organic traffic to your website, and it also plays a crucial role in building trust with your audience. But your inbound marketing efforts also need outbound promotions.

There are multiple opportunities today when it comes to promoting the content you create. There are social media platforms, communities, and other distribution channels. But nothing beats good old email marketing when it comes to ROI. According to stats, every $1 invested in email marketing brings you a return of $36. This is the highest among all other marketing channels and has been so for the past decade. In fact, email is so effective, a new survey reports that 44% of small businesses email their subscriber list at least weekly.

Even with the booming popularity of social media marketing these days, email marketing continues to be a very effective channel for content promotion. The benefits of email marketing are many –

  • Shows greater ROI (evidently!)
  • Helps in reeling in new customers.
  • More cost-effective.
  • Allows you to create targeted messages.
  • Can be easily integrated with other marketing channels.
  • Makes it easier for the higher-intent customers to engage with your business.

Given its ability to reach a larger proportion of users, email marketing can be an indispensable tool to build a community around your business. When you weave your email marketing and content marketing strategies together, you can show your audience what sets you apart from the competition.

How to create an effective email marketing campaign to promote content?

1. Build your mailing list

To maximize the impact of your email marketing campaign, it is important to ensure that you are sending the emails to the right people. For this, you need to build your email list.

For growing your mailing list, several methods can be employed –

  • Website Sign-Up: Your website visitors usually create an account to use your services or products. You can ask the visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter for tips, white paper, and other valuable resources when they sign up.
  • In-Store Sign-up Sheet: If you own a brick-and-mortar business, you can provide your customers with an in-store sign-up sheet where they can jot down their email addresses.
  • Social Media Sign-Up: You can also drive sign-ups through your social media pages. For this, all you have to do is share links with a sign-up button for your email newsletter.
  • Gated content: Another good way to collect your target audience’s emails is by publishing high-quality, valuable gated content on your blog or website. This could be e-books, research reports, whitepapers or anything that a visitor would want to download, and would happily share their email addresses for it.
  • Interactive content: Interactive content like quizzes, surveys, etc. are a good way to gather email addresses too. You can let your visitors take the quiz/survey and share the results only through email. This generates curiosity in them, and they would willingly give you their contact info in exchange for insights.

2. Segment your mailing lists

Segmenting your email lists is important to ensure that you send relevant content to the right people. You can do this by creating smart segments of your subscriber base, based on their location, gender, age, and so on. You can break up your audience base even further, by separating them on the basis of their online behavior and interests.

Segmenting your mailing lists will allow you to create personalized content that will resonate with your audience.

3. Decide on an appealing and engaging design for your email newsletters

Even if your newsletters are filled with insightful and valuable content, they need to look good if you want them to have an impact on the readers. You can find some beautifully-designed email templates on HubSpot and MailChimp.

If you plan on building one from scratch, here are some tips on incorporating an engaging and appealing design for your email newsletter –

  • Use branding: You need the newsletter to be aligned with your company’s visual identity. Make sure to use your brand colors and fonts, besides adding the brand logo.
  • White space: Make adequate use of blank areas or white space around the visual objects and text. This improves the readability of the newsletter and makes it look more professional and clean.
  • Images: Make your newsletter more eye-catching by adding colored header images and GIFs.
  • Mobile-friendly: Ensure that your newsletter is both desktop and mobile-friendly.

4. Plan what content goes into your newsletters

This step is possibly the most important part of your email marketing strategy. Your email newsletter subscribers signed up to get targeted information about your brand. Most people lead busy lives, so it is important that your content is relevant to them. In email marketing campaigns, you will have a small window of opportunity to prove that your content is worthwhile to the readers. Make sure that you choose the right content for the right audience, with a message that grabs their attention straight away. Choose content like seasonal articles, tips and tricks, blog promotions, and theme-based pieces, which will encourage the readers to connect with your brand.

5. Build a content workflow, track and manage the effort

The next step is to build a sustainable and repeatable content creation and publishing workflow. Having a single place where you can collaborate with your team, and keep a repository of all past work and newsletters makes the whole process a lot more streamlined. It is best to create a template for your email newsletters so you have a consistent format that resonates with your audience. Templates also help ensure that the content fits in perfectly with your newsletter design.

I use Narrato as my content planning tool , for creating newsletter content and managing the effort effectively with my team. Narrato comes with a custom template feature that I have used to structure our newsletter for consistency. I also use other Narrato features like calendars, AI writing and readability assistant, topic generator and collaboration through comments and messaging. This helps us keep our newsletter effort organized and I am able to access all past newsletter content in one place.

For images and graphics, I use Narrato’s Free Image Search Tool and Canva.

6. Experiment with your email’s subject lines and headlines

The biggest hurdle faced in email marketing campaigns is getting your readers to open the email. Usually, you will only have a few seconds to grab the attention of the reader. A good subject line or headline is key to increasing the open rate of your email marketing campaign.

7. Add clickable links and CTAs to direct readers to your blog or website

Once you have planned the content for your email marketing campaign, the next task is to create compelling newsletters that can drive leads. If you do not have an in-house content writing team, you can use a content marketplace to avail the services of hundreds of expert freelance content writers.

If you are managing it in-house though, make sure you include clickable links that direct your subscribers to your website/blog. If you are planning to promote any product/service in your newsletter, you should also add a call to action (CTA). Be strategic with the placement of links and CTA, and make sure that they are easily identifiable.

8. Add social sharing buttons to encourage readers to share your newsletter stories

To derive greater value from your email campaign, it needs to be shareable so that it can reach more people. You can ask your subscribers to share the newsletter content on their social media pages. To make this easier include social sharing buttons in the email.

9. Have a fixed schedule for sending out your newsletters

To drive a successful email marketing campaign, it is important to stick to a schedule. You need to plan how often you want to send out your newsletters. Once planned, you can use email marketing software to schedule and send out your newsletters. It would be a good idea to inform your audience in advance so that they know when they can expect to read your newsletters. Once you have a fixed schedule, try to be consistent with your efforts as it helps in building trust with the audience. Before hitting the “Send” button, however, you should also ensure email security and authentication. Do a quick DKIM check to make sure the messages you send will go from your domain’s name.

Leverage Email Marketing to Maximize Content Promotion

Putting all your eggs in one basket can prove to be a costly mistake when it comes to marketing your content. As the marketing landscape continues to change, you need to make sure that you are diversifying your investments in terms of money, effort, and time. Integrating email marketing into your content promotion strategies will allow you to leverage the power of both channels. It will also open a world of opportunities to scale your business to new heights.

Building Talent in a SaaS Company: Top 8 Tips to Follow

Author Sujan Patel | Zero Comments | SaaS

SaaS companies have grown at an incredible rate over the last few years. However, with the increased adoption of SaaS products, many have questioned if SaaS companies are sustainable.

With no immediate business model and revenue models to support, the answers to this question vary, but all SaaS companies could learn from one another while they grow.

Based on their experiences, here are the top 8 tips to follow so that a SaaS company can continue to grow in market share and revenue.

1. Build a Community

Building community-building talent in a SaaS company can be highly beneficial. A community-building talent can create and manage relationships with customers and other stakeholders.

This type of talent can help the company build stronger relationships with its customers, identify and resolve customer issues, and build trust.

In addition, this type of talent can also help the company generate leads and referrals from its customers.

To develop a community in a SaaS company, you need to:

  • Identify the types of relationships that are important to your business.
  • Identify the channels you want to communicate with your customers.
  • Develop a strategy for engaging with your customers on these channels.
  • Train your team members to engage with customers on these channels effectively.

2. Offer a Free Trial Period

Offering a free trial period is an excellent way to build talent in a SaaS company. This allows potential employees to try out your workspace and see if it fits them before committing.

By offering a free trial, you can also determine whether or not the employee is meeting your expectations and whether or not they can handle the workload. If an employee is not meeting your expectations, you can terminate their contract without penalty.

3. Offer a Flexible Work Schedule

Offering a flexible work schedule is an excellent way to build talent in a SaaS company. In addition, by allowing employees to work from home, you can increase productivity and reduce office costs.

You can also create a flexible work schedule by setting up remote working hours. This will allow employees to work during their preferred time slot, which will help them balance their personal and professional lives.

You can also offer employee benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans through your SaaS company. This will attract talented individuals who want to be part of a company that values employee well-being.

4. Team Management

Team building and management is an essential aspect of building talent in a SaaS company. It is essential to have a clear vision for the company, identify the team’s strengths and weaknesses, and create a reward system for their contributions.

To build a strong team, it is essential to understand what makes a great employee. A good employee should be:

  • Dedicated to the company’s mission and goals.
  • Passionate about their work.
  • Engaged in learning new skills.
  • Committed to making their work fun and productive.

5. Recruitment Video Marketing & Employee Handbook

Video marketing and creating an employee handbook is a great way to attract and engage potential employees. It can help you build a better brand, connect with potential candidates more effectively, and increase employee engagement rates.

There are many benefits of video marketing for your company, including:

  • Increased Engagement: Video content is engaging and keeps people on your site longer than text-based content. This means that you’ll reach a wider audience and generate more leads and sales opportunities.
  • Better Branding: A well-made video can help you build a better reputation and attract top talent. It can also show customers that your company values creativity and innovation.
  • Improved Recruitment Processes: Using video recruitment tools, you can quickly screen candidates and determine which ones would be the best fit for your company. You can also create custom videos for each position to highlight each candidate’s unique skills.
  • Increased Employee Retention Rates: By creating a positive environment where employees feel appreciated, you’ll be able to keep them around long term. This will save you time and money in the long run by reducing the need to replace staff frequently.

6. Employee Referral Programs (ERPs)

Employee referral programs (ERPs) are a great way to build talent in a SaaS company. They can help you attract and retain top-tier employees and increase the number of referrals that you receive.

There are many benefits to using an ERP:

  • It can help you attract and retain top-tier employees.
  • It can increase the number of referrals that you receive.
  • It can help you identify and refer talented candidates who would be a good fit for your company.

7. Internships and Mentoring

There is no doubt that internships and mentoring are valuable resources for building talent in a SaaS company. Internships provide young professionals with the opportunity to learn from experienced professionals in the industry, while mentorship provides guidance and support throughout the career development process.

Internships can help employees gain experience in various departments within a company, leading to a better understanding of the business and an increased chance of landing a job after graduation.

Mentors can provide guidance and support during the internship process, prepare the Notion study template to create a comprehensive learning plan, offer advice on resume writing and interviewing techniques, and connect interns with potential employers

Both internships and mentorship programs can be beneficial for both the intern and the company, as they provide employees with essential skills for success in today’s market.

8. Use a CRM and an ATS

Recruitment CRM and an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) are essential tools for managing customer relationships and recruiting new employees. They help you keep track of all your customers’ interactions with your company, including their contact information, preferences, and behaviour.

A CRM system also helps you manage employee records, including hiring processes, training schedules, and performance reviews. ATS systems can also help you identify potential candidates and connect them with your company.

There are many benefits of using a CRM and ATS system in a SaaS company:

  • It helps you improve customer retention by better understanding customer needs and interests.
  • It allows you to identify and address customer complaints more efficiently.
  • It makes it easier for you to schedule appointments with customers and recruit new employees.
  • It can help you reduce the time it takes to respond to customer inquiries.

It’s no secret that the success of a SaaS company depends on having a good team. If you want to build an exceptional team, you need to identify and hire the right people. Our blog post is packed with valuable tips that will help you recruit, retain, and train your employees so they can become part of your high-performing team.

10 Reasons Your Landing Page Isn’t Converting

Making a great landing page is both an art and a science.

It’s a well-known fact that an excellent average landing page conversion rate across industries hovers around 10%. If yours doesn’t quite match with your competitors’, you could be losing valuable opportunities every single day. 

Conversion rate optimization is an important part of any digital growth strategy. As your business grows, the profitability of your landing pages grows as well. Optimizing those pages can dramatically increase the profitability of your website.

Here’s a simple example: 

Imagine you have 100,000 page visits per month and make an average of $50 in profit from every conversion event. Every 1% increase in your conversion rate correlates to a $50,000 increase in profits.

Research shows businesses that invest in landing page optimization can boost their conversions by up to 30%. Landing pages that address buyer fears directly can increase conversion rates by up to 80%. 

Despite these facts, many web creators struggle to profitably optimize their landing pages. From simple mistakes to major structural issues, there are tons of examples of landing page mistakes out there.

I’ve identified some of the most common landing page problems that web creators face and listed them here. If any of these situations apply to you, it may be time to revisit your landing page strategy and develop a new approach.

10 Common Landing Page Mistakes and How to Fix Them

1. You’re not using the right website builder for your use case

There are many different web platforms and site builders out there. Each one has a set of strengths and weaknesses that position it for a particular use case. Not all vendors are explicit about this, so it’s easy to get stuck using web software that isn’t appropriate for your scenario.

A one-person e-commerce startup doesn’t have the same needs a large-scale digital enterprise might. It will be difficult to profitably optimize your landing pages without the right tech stack for your business.

When looking for a website builder, try to identify the specific advantages each one offers. If those benefits complement your use case, you may be on the right track. 

Consider some of these popular options:

  • Squarespace serves small businesses and entrepreneurs without development skills. It supports e-commerce and marketing through its own hosted editor, but offers limited functionality for growing businesses.
  • Wix is an intuitive website builder that also targets small businesses and solo users. Like Squarespace, it compromises long-term scalability for immediate ease of use. Wix users don’t get hands-on control over every aspect of their website, which can get in the way of landing page optimization.
  • WeWeb provides you with the ultimate freedom to visually design your frontend with its no-code editor or by coding your own React or Vue.js components. WeWeb developers have the ability to create and customize various elements of a web application, such as buttons, forms, and navigation bars. Once designed, they can be saved and reused as part of a UI kit.
  • Landingi specializes in landing pages, which gives users a bit more customizability than generic website builders. It’s good at what it does, but can’t produce results unless it’s paired with other services. For example, its built-in analytics are not nearly as comprehensive as they should be.
  • Unbounce is another landing page-specific website builder that does a good job achieving its goals. Its templates are of high quality, although there is a limited supply of them. It’s ideal for agencies and mid-market businesses that need specific solutions to their landing page problems.
  • WordPress is actually a content management system (CMS) that hosts a variety of systems and plugins. These plugins include website builders like Elementor alongside thousands of complementary apps and solutions. It boasts a versatile landing page builder and is an ideal solution for growth-oriented small businesses that demand scalability.
  • Whatever platform you choose, you can use Common Ninja’s free widgets to further enhance your website.

2. Your landing page isn’t fast enough 

Page load speed is one of the biggest obstacles to landing page success. Not only is it a major search engine ranking factor, but it also has a significant impact on conversion rates. Slowing down page load time by one second drops conversions by an average of 4.42%.

Multiple factors influence your page load speed. These include basic things like the size of uploaded images to behind-the-scenes elements like the way code is structured. Google has listed some of the most important page load speed metrics as Core Web Vitals.

All else considered equal, your hosting provider is the one most important factor contributing to your website’s page load speed. The more powerful your hosting service is, the faster your page will load. Better hosting improves your ability to respond to peak traffic without slowing down website performance.

Generic hosted website builders don’t usually allow users to optimize web page loading speed. This is one of the reasons why they are so difficult to scale upwards with growth. If your website doubles its traffic in one month, the host may not dedicate enough resources to ensure a good experience for every visitor.

Dedicated hosting services give web creators the ability to overcome these challenges, but are not friendly to non-technical users. A scalable cloud hosting solution offers an elegant, powerful solution for website owners that prize consistent performance.

3. Your website isn’t optimized for mobile 

Mobile devices have long surpassed desktops to become the number-one way people access the Internet. Regardless of what industry your website operates in, there’s a good chance the majority of your users are logging on on smartphones, tablets, and other touchscreen devices.

When that happens, does your website respond by giving them a mobile-optimized user experience? Or does it show them an exact copy of your desktop site, reducing visibility and ruining site navigation in the process?

A mobile user accessing a non-optimized website will rarely demonstrate the patience necessary to convert. In most cases, they’ll simply click away and find another way to get what they’re looking for – most likely from one of your competitors.

Everyone knows that mobile optimization is incredibly important for landing page success. Despite that fact, there are landing page builders out there that do not adequately optimize pages for mobile users.

If you’re using a website builder that isn’t fully responsive by default, you may be losing valuable time and money. Opt for a solution that automatically optimizes your web pages for mobile and can show you exactly how your landing pages look on various Android and iOS devices.

4. Your calls-to-action are not convincing enough

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are one of the most important elements of landing page design. These are the links, buttons, and images that tell users exactly what you want them to do. CTAs tell users to buy your product, to sign up for your newsletter, or to register for your next event.

Marketing experts have spent a lot of time and energy identifying exactly what makes a CTA work. Modifying the way your CTAs look and how they’re placed can make a significant difference in your overall conversion rate.

For example, placing CTAs in uncluttered areas so they attract attention can increase conversions by 232%. Making CTAs look like buttons can boost the number of clicks by up to 45%.

Sometimes, adding graphical elements like arrow icons or check marks can improve CTA performance as well. In general, the bigger and more obvious the CTA is, the more likely visitors will respond favorably to it.

5. You haven’t perfected the art of non-intrusive, converting popups

When it comes to popups, you’ll find two main modes of thought among digital marketers:

  • Some are unapologetic popup evangelists. They put popups everywhere, often set to trigger the second a visitor opens the web page. They might tell you that if conversion rates improve, disrupting the user experience for other web page visitors doesn’t matter.
  • Others are firmly against popups. They’ll tell you that nothing is worth disrupting the user experience. If visitors want to convert, they’ll do it on their own – you don’t have to push them to it.

There is room for a middle ground between these two extremes. Popups don’t have to disrupt the user experience. You can configure them to trigger only when users perform specific actions – most popup apps have this feature. This can make your landing page much more successful without distancing users who are not yet ready to convert.

For example, you might want to program CTA popups to trigger after a visitor interacts with three different landing pages on your website. You could set a highly targeted popup to trigger after visitors interact with a video on your landing page.

By narrowly defining which web page visitors see popups, you gain the ability to use popup content to qualify leads. Since you have a well-defined audience in mind, you can actually use popups to enhance the user experience instead of disrupting it. That’s when you’ll start seeing significant improvements to your conversion rate.

6. Your design is too elaborate or too cluttered to immediately make sense

It can be tempting to make your landing page as impressive as possible. After all, website visitors may be entirely unfamiliar with your brand – why not introduce them to it in the biggest possible way?

Well, it might confuse them, for one. Remember that many of your landing page visitors are on mobile devices. Even the most immersive design scheme will fall short of your expectations when displayed on a handheld device. If it gets in the way of navigation or accessibility, you can expect a large number of users to simply quit and look elsewhere.

Additionally, elaborate design schemes often require extensive custom JavaScript to function. All that extra code weighs down your website and forces your hosting service to work harder – and you pay the price for it. If website performance suffers as a result of your design scheme, so will your conversion rate.

When designing a landing page, simplicity is almost always the right way to go. A lean, informative landing page will outperform even the most spectacular automated design in most cases. Introduce your products and services plainly, and make their value obvious to visitors. If you do this right, the most impressive part of your website will be its profitability. On your way, some personalization software can help you create personalized experiences to your unique visitors’ needs and interests by using Smart Banners, Dynamic Category Optimizer, Survey Templates, and more.

7. Your headers, sub-headers and overall copy sucks

Take a close look at your copy. Examine the words you’re using to describe your product or service. Does your brand come off as a confident, successful business led by people who know what they’re doing? Or does it come off as disoriented, insecure, or simply irrelevant?

Writing great copy looks easy, but it isn’t. Your landing page has to identify a problem, introduce its solution, and make a convincing argument without losing visitors’ attention along the way. It can be hard to tell where your copy is going wrong without a second opinion from an expert.

However, there are a few quick things you can do to improve your landing page copy right now:

  • Keep it simple. Avoid complex words and sentences. Explain the value of your product or service, but don’t let the details bog you down. 
  • Focus on specific benefits. Landing page visitors already know you’re here to solve their problems. There’s no need to spend time introducing your product or service as a solution. Simply dive straight into the value that makes your solution stand out for their particular use case.
  • Write authoritative headlines. Most visitors will skim through your titles and headers before reading anything else. Strong, confident headers can go a long way towards establishing your brand as a trustworthy source of information – even if your paragraph sections aren’t as well-written.
  • Read your copy aloud. Go ahead and read your landing page as if you were delivering a sales pitch to a potential customer right in front of you. If it doesn’t sound convincing, revise it until it does.

8. You aren’t harnessing the power of video correctly

Videos are an excellent addition to any landing page because they can do things that text and imagery doesn’t. Video content is uniquely engaging and incredibly effective, partially because video transmits emotion far better than any other medium.

But that’s not all video is good for. Video is the ideal content format for explaining complex subjects in an entertaining way. This makes video a great way to introduce complicated problems or solutions. 

Instead of forcing visitors to read multiple paragraphs of text, try embedding a short, easy-to-understand video that covers everything they need to know. That gives you room to use your text content more effectively.

However, the best digital marketers take video one step further than that. Specialized video hosting platforms let you actually gather analytics data on video engagement. This enables you to continuously improve video content and optimize it along with the rest of your landing page content.

9. You aren’t A/B testing

With so many different elements working together, it might be hard to imagine exactly what your fully optimized landing page should look like. In fact, it’s virtually guaranteed.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make changes, though. It simply means you have to qualify the changes you make by testing them. One of the best ways you can do that is through A/B testing.

A/B testing is the process of creating, publishing, and analyzing two different versions of the same web page. Typically, the only difference between those two pages is a single element. It could be a certain CTA phrase, the color of a particular button, or anything else. If one page outperforms the other, that means it is the better-optimized variant.

A/B testing gives you a scientific way to test your intuitions about landing page design. You might be surprised by what you learn about your audience’s preferences and behaviors. Changing one word in a landing page header can reveal things about your audience you may never have guessed otherwise – and provide you with new opportunities to increase conversions.

10. You haven’t created high-quality links for it to rank

For your website to turn a profit, its landing pages must successfully attract visitors. The more visitors you get on your optimized landing page, the more conversions you’ll earn as a result.

Many marketing experts rely on search engine optimization to deliver a steady stream of qualified website visitors to their landing pages. By getting those pages to rank for specific search terms, they ensure a significant number of visitors will be people actively searching for the solution that landing page offers.

Search engines like Google use incredibly complex algorithms to determine which web pages rank and which ones do not. High-quality backlinks are among the most valuable factors in these calculations, since they offer a clear recommendation from a highly trusted, authoritative source.

Getting high-quality backlinks is easier said than done. High domain authority website owners know how valuable those links are. Instead of trying to jump straight to the top, consider developing relationships with industry partners and using guest posts for mutual ranking benefits.

Start fixing your landing page issues today

If your landing page conveys a clear message, delivers a stellar user experience, and has a strong call-to-action, you’ve already won half the battle. However, winning the next half can be a much more delicate process because of the many variables involved.

You absolutely can improve landing page performance on your own, even if you don’t know how to code. High quality code-free website builders and other tools for non-technical web creators can help you transform your landing pages into highly optimized profit generators. Use this opportunity to delight new customers and grow your business starting today.

Growing a Company in a Competitive or Saturated Market [2022 Update]

These days, launching a company is easy.

Getting your first 10 customers – even your first 100 customers – is easy. In fact, it’s widely accepted that all you need is 1000 true ‘fans’ to have a successful business.

But what do you do once you’ve cleared these entry-level hurdles, once you start struggling to scale up and gain a foothold in an industry that’s saturated or competitive? 100 customers is good. 1000 is better. But 1000+ is best.

Continue reading → Growing a Company in a Competitive or Saturated Market [2022 Update]

Pros and Cons of Running Multiple Businesses [2022 Update]

Author Sujan Patel | 3 Comments | SaaS

A lot of people dream of owning their own business and being their own boss.

Well, at one point I was directly involved in running nine businesses – eight SaaS companies and a marketing agency – with monthly recurring revenues ranging from $10,000 to $800,000.

These are all six to seven-figure businesses. And honestly, doing nine of them simultaneously is a lot.

Plenty of thought leaders talk about the importance of deep focus, concentrating on one thing at a time. If I was a smarter human being, and if I was only looking at things from the perspective of building massive amounts of wealth, I’d say I should only have done one company.

But I definitely don’t regret running multiple businesses. In fact, if I had to do this over again, I’d probably do the same thing.

Why?

Because growing a business without VC funding or outside capital is slow. Building a product is slow. Collecting data to make informed decisions is slow.

During those waiting periods, I’d go work at something different, because that ability to switch gears between roles and priorities is part of my skill set. It’s just what I do.

I’m definitely not saying having multiple businesses is the best way to maximize revenue growth, but it’s what makes me happy.

So my approach might not be right for you. It might be completely wrong for you. But here’s what I’ve learned along the way – what’s good about it, and what’s not so good:

What’s Good? The Pros of Running Multiple Businesses

1. Shared Learning

Because all my businesses are in a similar space, we tend to come across the same types of problems pretty consistently.

So the great thing is that when we figure out how to do something once, we can generally apply that learning across the board, which saves us a bunch of time and headaches

2. Informed Decision-Making

When you have multiple businesses, you have an opportunity to test a lot of stuff at the same time, such as, which marketing strategies you should use, or when to push sales and when not to, etc. which is a massive boost to decision-making. This is also necessary when you sell products on multiple platforms like Shopify and eBay, by doing this way, you will know which platform is better to run ads campaigns, and which is better to drive more sales

But there’s another benefit here, too.

As long as you’re able to hire a strong leadership team or individual contributors, you’ll find that running multiple companies doesn’t necessarily take that long. 

Your role pivots from making all the decisions yourself, to removing roadblocks and helping smart people reach their own decisions.

3. Diversified Income

This one’s pretty obvious – and it’s never been more relevant than during a pandemic that’s had a massive impact on the global economy.

If you’ve got multiple businesses, then even if one goes down, you’re still in a position to make good money.

4. Harnessing My Skill Set

This is a personal point – it might not apply to you. But like I said earlier, running multiple businesses is just the best use of my own strengths.

To me, it’s easier to build ten $10 million businesses than it is to build one $100 million business.

My skill set lies in building businesses from zero to $10 million. Personally, I’ve not founded a company greater than that. So all I’m doing is focusing on replicating that multiple times.

5. Buy Companies for Growth

It’s not like I literally built all nine of those businesses from the ground up. Some of them I did, but others I acquired along the way.

Actually, I was pretty early to doing this – it’s much more of a trend now. I was able to buy companies for great deals and do things that would be much, much harder and more costly today.

6. Big Problems Don’t Seem So Big Anymore

The fact is, if you run multiple businesses, you’re going to deal with a lot of shit coming your way.

That might sound like a negative – I guess in some ways it is! But it’s also a positive, because it helps you develop a thick skin.

Let me give you an example. One day in 2019, Google accidentally shut down Mailshake. They literally told us we couldn’t use their API anymore. Turned out to be an error on their part but that was one of roughest 72 hours in my life. It didn’t help that it landed on my wife and I wedding anniversary and I just purchased a 911 GT3RS ($200k race car) the week before.

Any other problem besides Google accidentally killing your company just seems like peanuts. And the cool thing is, literally within 48 hours we solved the problem and were up and running with a backup solution.

So if anything ever happens to my businesses today, it just doesn’t seem like a big deal, which means I can get straight to work on figuring out how to fix it.

7. You’re Less Emotionally Involved

When you’ve got one business, it’s inevitable that you’re going to be deeply personally invested.

But I’ve found that’s just not the case with multiple businesses. Obviously I care about their success and making sure we do the right thing for our customers, but I’m not emotionally tied to any of them. They’re not my babies.

I am passionate, but I’m not emotional about it. There’s a difference.

When it’s not personal, I find that people in general make better decisions.

8. Cross Promotion

When you have multiple businesses, you can get them to work synergistically. 

For instance, Right Inbox and MailShake are two different products. However, I can cross promote MailShake in a blog post on RightInbox.com and vice versa.

And the beautiful thing about this promotion is that I don’t have to pay another company for advertising or guest posts.

Having digital real estate is important. The more you have, the more attention your companies receive. A spike in traffic for one of my businesses could actually equate to growth for my other companies, since I own them.

But it goes beyond simply mentioning one of my business ideas on another of my businesesse’s websites. Cross selling is a great opportunity as well.

A company that uses email heavily for their sales outreach may find that mailshake is a great fit for that. After using the software and seeing how powerful it is, I’ve built trust.

Using some simple customer surveys, phone calls, or follow up techniques, I can uncover additional needs that their business has. Maybe they need a tool to help with managing their emails with scheduling, notes, remindres, and other features.

In that case, recommending Right Inbox would be a natural fit.

9. Trend Spotting

I already mentioned how having multiple businesses helps with diversification. And that’s true, having multiple income sources is a huge benefit.

But there is also more to it than that. A more general type of diversification occurs when you run multiple businesses. You have your hands in multiple markets.

Every market or segment of that market has unique needs, problems, and preferences. Therefore, the more companies you have, the more of these insights you uncover.

I can determine some pretty accurate trends by looking at behavior from customers across my portfolio of companies.

What are people wanting in terms of B2B tools right now? What are my market’s primary concerns? Where is the industry headed? Where is business headed in general?

Even just pattern recognition of certain buzz words can clue me in to what’s coming around the corner. You typically hear chatter about a topic, trend, or tool before it gets really wide spread.

Being able to spot a trend and be a first mover is a huge advantage. You can already plan your marketing and product strategy before your competitors know they want to be in that space at all.

10. Economy of Scale

Most businesses have minimum costs to enter. In other words, you need to spend a certain amount of money to form the company, drive brand awareness, and ultimately get your business off the ground.

Beyond that, there are several business expenses — warehousing, web hosting, business software, accounting, legal counsel, customer service, and more.

Because of this phenomenon, it is actually more expensive, relatively, to own and operate just one business instead of several. You can add more revenue streams by having multiple companies, while sharing a lot of the expenses among the companies.

$1 million in expenses for one company with $10 million in revenue is 10% of total revenue. But if expenses increase only slightly with multiple businesses to $2 million, but I now have $60 million in revenue per year, that’s only 3.3% of total revenue.

Economy of scale is a powerful business force. When you play big and focus on top line revenue, you can afford more expenses because they’re actually a lower portion of your income.

It’s why Coca Cola doesn’t just bottle a few dozen drinks at a time, they produce millions. They’re already paying a minimum expense to bottle one Coke. Might as well scale operations up, especially when the ratio of expenses to revenue goes down.

What’s Not So Good? The Cons of Running Multiple Businesses

1. You’ll Waste a Lot of Time on Some Companies

You might assume that when you’re running nine businesses, you’ll naturally end up splitting your time pretty evenly between all of them.

But that’s just not the case. Some of these businesses maybe take up one hour a month; some take up literally zero time. Others require my attention 30 hours a week.

A couple years into doing this, winners and losers emerged. 

Some of those businesses – like Mailshake, Right Inbox, and Zoomshift – were clear winners thanks to their growth rate and market size.

Others just weren’t going to be major drivers of growth, so we either put them on autopilot, found people to operate them for us, sold them, or killed them off.

That second group weren’t exactly “losers.” For the most part, they were kind of middling. There was an opportunity for most of them to succeed, but there came a point where we looked at them and said, “If we were to triple the growth, would we go to dinner and celebrate?”

For some of them, it just wouldn’t have made a difference to our lives, so we decided to sell.

Like I’ve already said, I have no regrets about running multiple businesses. But if I were to do it all again, I probably wouldn’t do nine!

2. When Things Get Bad, They Get Really Bad

Look at LinkedIn and you’ll see a ton of founders and owners who are worried because their businesses imploded during Covid.

Well, I had that same thing five times. The pandemic had a massive impact on the revenues of all my businesses.

That is what hurts on an emotional level – I don’t mind admitting that Covid killed my dreams for a week or two. It left me pretty crushed.

But fortunately, because I’ve developed this thick skin, I came back with new dreams. I figured out ways to keep the businesses afloat.

So there’s a positive here, too. Everyone knows you learn most from your failures, right? Well, when you fail five times, you’re kind of learning at five times the rate of other people. You end up just getting smarter and evolving faster.

3. You Get Siloed as a Founder/Entrepreneur

When you’re running multiple businesses, you’re busy all the time.

That means you never get a moment to sit back and just think about the big picture, or to learn and develop.

Look at most successful businesses and you’ll see that they worked because someone came up with a fantastic plan, built it up, then hired a bunch of great people until they had a team capable of scaling things.

When you have nine businesses, it’s really, really hard to remove yourself from day-to-day involvement.

In fact, literally while I was working on this blog post, I was also answering an email to close a $2,000 deal. We don’t have a sales team for this particular business, so all of that stuff comes to me. I just wanted to work on my blog, but something always sucks me back in!

4. Higher Expenses

I mentioned that a few of the upsides of running multiple businesses were diversification and economy of scale. Those two things help you weather the storm when an economic downturn hits, such as the pandemic.

However, there’s no avoiding the fact that running several companies requires a lot of capital. If you have expenses on the book for a business that starts losing revenue, a lot of your cash is all of the sudden tied up.

You need to have the cash flow, plus reserves to keep paying expenses that you owe, such as payroll, machines, software plans, security services to protect your digital identity or other commitments that don’t magically go away just because revenue is in free fall.

It takes a lot of discipline to take money off the table and essentially put it on a shelf — neither making your bank account bigger nor being reinvested in the business.

And of course, you need to come up with that capital in the first place. That means selling a previous business, saving up for years, getting investors (thereby diluting your equity), or having the fortune of being born with money and connections.

5. SEO

A business that wants to grow online has to invest in SEO. And either way you cut it, that’s going to require a lotof time or money.

It’s also a waiting game. You might not see real results with SEO for 6 months, a year, or longer.

Luckily, there are some SEO skills that transfer from business to business. Knowing how to create a technically sound website with the right sitemap, crawling, tag structure, and other aspects is very repeatable.

But, each market requires its own marketing analytics keyword research and content planning. Then, you’ve got to have someone write or record all of that content. Then, you need to constantly track your results and update existing content to keep ranking higher.

It’s no coincidence that my most successful companies are fairly related in terms of the market they serve. Cross pollination helps you get backlinks and other organic growth.

Just keep in mind that if you want multiple businesses with totally different markets — tech, health, and food for instance — you’ll have to create an SEO strategy from scratch each time.

What do you think? Has this put you off running multiple businesses, or has it spurred you on? Let me know in the comments below!

How to Interview a Digital Marketer in 2022

Author Sujan Patel | 4 Comments | Marketing

I recently spent 4-5 months interviewing applicants for marketing manager and digital marketing specialist positions. I interviewed more than 100 applicants, reviewed hundreds of resumes, and even went outbound looking for qualified candidates using tools like Dux-Soup to search LinkedIn for growth marketers using keywords like “Facebook Ads,” “CAC,” or “churn.”

If you’re in the same boat, I thought it’d be helpful to outline how we approach the hiring process at Ramp Ventures and Web Profits, and even give you the specific interview questions we like to ask.

Hope you find it helpful in your own hiring processes.

Continue reading → How to Interview a Digital Marketer in 2022

What Is Content Intelligence? Definition, Benefits & Software


Author Sujan Patel | Zero Comments | Content Marketing

Content marketing is only growing in popularity and importance. In fact, almost half (47%) of buyers look at three pieces of content or more before talking with a sales rep.

That means content plays a vital role in not just marketing, but overall sales and revenue. Content intelligence is a way to ensure that you can create the right influence with the right audience, ultimately creating more value with content marketing.

So, in this post, we’ll explore what content intelligence means, its benefits, best practices, and good tools to use for it.

Without further ado, let’s jump in.

What is Content Intelligence?

Content intelligence involves the use of software, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to perform research on your market about the impact of certain types of content.

Marketers can use content intelligence to create high performing content, with the confidence that their predictions are backed by powerful and objective data.

In short, it’s a shortcut to generating a content marketing strategy. You can generate more awareness, leads, and ultimately conversions that lead to revenue.

What are the Benefits of Content intelligence?

So we know that content intelligence is essentially using technology to automate content marketing research and creation.

But why is it so important to do this in 2021 and beyond? Here are some of the main benefits of content intelligence for brands and marketers:

  • Reporting – Content intelligence tools provide excellent reporting and metrics. Their analysis of big data provides you with fast insights based on real time metrics like reach, engagement, and even revenue estimation. That way, you can make better decisions on which content to create in the first place.
  • Content Level Analysis – Aside from knowing what trends are popular in general, you can drill down into specific content tactics. Content intelligence helps you create content using the right brand voice, keywords, and length thanks to natural language analysis. In other words, keyword research and other on-page factors become a science instead of a guessing game.
  • Automate – Save huge amounts of time in crafting the right brand content. These tools help you automate the process of creation and promotion, so that you get the highest ROI possible from your content.
  • Managing Content – You can integrate content intelligence software with your CRM. This means that you are leveraging external data and internal data to maximize the effectiveness of every post, infographic, or other asset.

In essence, using content intelligence allows brands to create content that makes their target audience happy, engaged, and more likely to convert into paying customers. And you can achieve this without the wasted time or guesswork.

Content Intelligence Best Practices

Understanding the value of content intelligence for your marketing campaigns is one thing. But it’s a whole different story when it comes to implementing it.

It’s worth pointing out that you don’t need to completely transform your current content strategy. However, it is important to retool your approach and embrace a data-driven philosophy at every stage.

With that said, here are the three most important best practices when it comes to using content intelligence in your business:

1. Domain Data

Leverage content intelligence tools to uncover the best SEO opportunities according to domain-level info.

This helps you adhere to the following best practices:

  • Ensure all of your domain’s content has relevance for your niche
  • Optimize primary topic clusters (related keywords and pages)
  • Update or change current pages
  • Check health of overall domain
  • Ensure your content is in good condition for audiences and search engines

2. Cluster Data

When you understand what content is the most relevant for your audience, you still need to know which pages are important for each content cluster.

A best practice to follow is ensuring that you focus on each cluster individually, one at a time. Once you get significant growth in one topic, you can begin driving more traffic organically.

Google puts a lot of focus on topical relevance when giving a website authority and rankings, so stay narrow first before expanding.

So, as a best practice, make sure you or your team answers the following questions:

  • Which topics do we need to add to dominate this niche?
  • What are the top priority topic clusters?
  • What keyword clusters should we be using?
  • How many pieces of content do we need to create to have authority in this niche?

3. Single Page Data

The final step when you’ve determined which content is underperforming or missing topical relevance is using page level data. In other words, create great content that is optimized for your ranking goals from the beginning.

Content intelligence tools can help you understand what kind of keywords or content types to use. However, writing unique quality content is still not something that can be automated.

Luckily, content intelligence software can help you identify page length, relevant keywords, and other data points to structure your article so you can focus on creative planning and not mundane technical SEO.

By letting content intelligence work on the hard data, you can use your team’s unique perspectives to create SEO friendly content that your audience will love, share, and convert from.

Some questions to ask yourself during this final part of the process are:

  • Does this page structure make sense?
  • How can I include relevant phrases that my audience is looking for?
  • What type of content should I create? (Video, text, audio, etc.)

Luckily, content editors like SurferSEO help you with this final step, marrying technical SEO and creative SEO to make content built for Google and human searchers alike.

Let’s look at some other content intelligence tools and their benefits for your content marketing strategy.

5 Content Intelligence Softwares

Yes, it’s possible to conduct research and content intelligence manually. However, using software can save hundreds if not thousands of hours for this process.

If you’re committed to content marketing, you’re virtually guaranteed to get more value out of using tools than you pay for them. With that said, let’s take a look at some of the best content intelligence software available right now:

1. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo helps you understand what kind of content is popular with your audience, leading to better performance and ROI. It leverages discovery and research from your market and competitors.

The tool can analyze social media feeds, blog posts, and other online content to present you with hot trends related to your niche. From here, you can create targeted content as well as keywords to use, resulting in better traffic from relevant users.

2. Contently

Contently is another great content intelligence tool. It has a unique technology called StoryBook which predicts which content will have the most positive impact for your brand.

It analyzes the web and uses this data to give you a content marketing strategy that matches your audience’s needs. Contently provides you with specific recommendations regarding brand voice, SEO, and other guidelines.

After creating your content, the tool gives you insights into what content performs best and provides the best ROI. That way, you can double down or rethink your approach.

3. Curata

Curata is a content intelligence platform that uses AI to identify the best content according to your audience. It determines why people like certain content, so you can use these strategies for your own brand.

The software also provides SEO assistance so you can share your content on the channels most likely to generate engagement.

4. Crayon

Crayon’s competitive intelligence informs your content marketing strategy with specific recommendations. You can snoop on competitors and see what works for them, implementing your own version of high performing keywords and social strategies.

It analyzes review sites, blogs, and other content to understand the messaging that your audience is responding to right now. It’s great for generating new ideas and saving time on market research.

5. Knotch

Knotch helps CMOs and other marketing professionals gauge the ROI of their marketing efforts. The software allows you to map your content according to your customer’s buying journey.

It classifies content according to keywords, URLs, and more, pulling from top publishers and competitors that have high engagement and ROI for your niche.

You can find insights for everything from publishing schedules, to keywords, to content length that ultimately makes a strong content campaign for your brand.

Conclusion

Your content strategy is more important than ever. More brands are competing for the same markets, meaning you need the right length, type, and angle for your content.

This is true whether you use video, blog posts, or other types of content to grow your business. Using content intelligence, you leverage incredibly detailed data to automate most of your analysis.

By the way, as important content marketing is, so is proper monitoring. Check out this content marketing monitoring tutorial to boost your skills and enhance your marketing strategy.

That way, your marketing efforts can focus on creativity and unique value that serves unmet market needs, catapulting your brand in front of the competition.

How to Create an SEO Strategy for 2022

Author Sujan Patel | Zero Comments | SEO

What is an SEO strategy? How do you create one? And why is it so important for modern businesses?

If you’ve got those questions, don’t worry. In this post, we’ll talk about how to create an effective SEO strategy for 2022. Because if you want better organic Google rankings for your website, then your SEO marketing strategy is crucial.

However, like with most digital marketing tactics, search engine optimization is always changing. What worked just a few short years (or even months) ago won’t necessarily work anymore.

So if you want free, relevant traffic that turns into more revenue for your business, keep reading.

In this post you’re going to learn:

  • What is an SEO strategy?
  • What are the Benefits of an SEO Strategy?
  • 3 Areas to Focus On for SEO
  • 5 Steps to Create a Solid SEO Strategy
  • 4 SEO Tools to Implement

Without further ado, let’s get started.

What is an SEO strategy?

An SEO strategy is the roadmap and specific steps to take when improving your organic ranking in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

To put it another way, it’s the process you implement to get more organic traffic, as opposed to paying for traffic via ads or social media shoutouts.

What are the benefits of an SEO strategy?

An SEO strategy provides incredible value to your business, such as:

  • Generates High Quality Traffic – The biggest benefit of SEO is attracting highly relevant traffic to your brand. 60% of marketers say that inbound organic content provides the best quality leads. With hyper-specific targeting, you can ensure that only people who really need your help are finding your content.
  • Builds Trust – Ranking on the top page of Google is a big trust indicator. It communicates that your brand is professional, savvy, and helpful to people searching those keywords. You can’t pay for the top organic spots on Google, so SEO lends way more credibility than a Google Ad.
  • Provides Impress ROI – It almost seems counterintuitive that SEO would have a higher ROI than paid ads. However, 94% of clicks are on organic rankings, with only 6% going to ads. That means organic ranking efforts generate the most traffic (and therefore potential conversions) for outstanding ROI.
  • Offers 24/7 Visibility – A solid SEO marketing strategy will ensure that your website, blog, and other content work for you every second of the day. SEO content doesn’t have to take time off — it markets your business forever, after a little bit of upfront work.
  • Contributes to Other Marketing Strategies – Even if you invest in PPC, your competitors will too. So when it comes down to making their decision, your target market is more likely to go with the brand with organic and paid results, since it implies more relevance to their needs.

3 Areas to Focus on for SEO

SEO is a vast collection of tactics and strategies. In fact, almost no one is an expert in every area of SEO. And you shouldn’t try to be. But, there are 3 main areas that make up the bulk of any great SEO marketing strategy:

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing your website’s content to improve rankings and traffic. Three important aspects of on-page SEO are:

  • Keywords – Doing keyword research and choosing the right keywords and phrases in your content that your target market is using, such as “restaurants near me” or “SEO marketing services’
  • Tags – Title tags, and headings (H1, H2, etc.) should include your main keyword and variations of it.
  • Linking – Linking to both internal pages (on your website’s domain) and external pages help to boost rankings and searchability.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO involves activities outside of your actual site that contribute to organic rankings. This includes:

  • Promotion – Social media marketing, podcasts, and other strategies to boost general brand awareness.
  • Backlinks – Getting links back to your website from other sites / domains, which act as a “vote of confidence” in Google’s SEO ranking algorithm.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of making your website’s infrastructure more friendly for SEO, such as:

  • Sitemaps – Submitting a sitemap to Google, which tells the search engine what your site is about and how it is structured.
  • Navigation – Ensuring that every page on your website is linked from another page on your site, to provide for navigation by people and search bots.
  • Page Speed – The faster your website loads and operates, the better your rankings will be.

If you focus on these 3 areas above, you’ll be able to get faster and more effective SEO results. However, you still need a gameplan to apply these concepts. Let’s talk about creating your actually SEO strategy:

5 Steps To Create a Solid SEO Strategy

Follow these steps to create a powerful 2022 SEO strategy from scratch:

1. Source Your Keywords

One of the best ways to start your keyword research is by heading right to Google and typing in your keyword. Notice the dropdown menu of related keywords that appear as you type.

This is Google Suggest, and it’s an excellent way to find keywords with proven demand that Google knows people are looking for.

These suggested keywords also tend to be long-tail (“espresso machine repairs”) vs. short-tail (“espresso”), making them easier to rank for.

2. Snoop the First Page

Do some manual competitive analysis on your keyword. What kind of sites, and just as importantly, what kind of content are ranking for your keyword? Are the top 3 results listicles, image galleries, blog posts, or something else?

It’s best to mimic the type of content you see in the top ranking positions, while improving on it. Speaking of which:

3. Write Your Content

Now you know what keyword(s) you’re aiming for and what type of content you want to rank for. For instance, let’s say you want to rank for “how to make an espresso” and the top results all include a step by step list.

In order to compete, you should also write a list using the “how to make an espresso” keyword and related keywords like “espresso frothing” and “types of espresso beans” — in other words, add more content on your page that adds value to the searcher. It will not be superfluous to consult with specialists in writing content such as Ivory Research.

More related keywords means more opportunities to be found, even if they weren’t using your primary keyword.

4. Optimize On-page SEO and Keyword Usage

It’s good practice to include your primary keyword once every 100 words or so. Therefore, in a 1,000 word blog post you want to use it about 10 times.

In addition to that, place your primary keyword in important positions like the Title Tag, H1 tag, and other headings, as well as the first 100 and last 100 words of your article.

And be sure to add images with keyword-based titles (“espresso.jpg”) and Alt descriptions (“Barista making an espresso.”).

5. Build Links

Having the best on-site SEO won’t do much good without backlinks.

If the top 100 websites in the world all link to a page about “espresso”, but that page only has average on-site SEO optimization, it will still outrank your 100% perfect on-site SEO page with only 2 backlinks from low quality sites. There are different ways you can use to acquire backlinks, but the most proven way to get them is through outreach link building. Send custom emails to every relevant website, influencer, or blog you can think of and ask for a backlink. Backlinks can come in the form of guest posting, creating a more valuable resource (so they’ll link to your page instead of another one), or even finding mentions of your brand that don’t have a backlink yet.

And the most proven way to get great backlinks is old fashioned: cold outreach. Send custom emails to every relevant website, influencer, or blog you can think of and ask for a backlink.

Backlinks can come in the form of guest posting, creating a more valuable resource (so they’ll link to your page instead of another one), or even finding mentions of your brand that don’t have a backlink yet.

And there you have it. The 5 steps above will put you on the fast track to improving your overall presence and organic traffic. But no professional goes to work without the right tools:

4 SEO Tools to Implement

There’s a notion in the SEO marketing world: “SEO is not hard, but it is time-consuming.”

Even with a solid understanding of SEO strategy and tactics, the sheer amount of time required to perform the menial tasks for search engine optimization is overwhelming.

That’s where the importance of using SEO tools for yourself or your team come into play, saving you hours of time every week.

Here are four tools every business owner and marketer should implement for SEO:

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is arguably the most popular SEO tool available right now. Its expansive website crawlers are second only to Google, and that’s saying a lot. With Ahrefs, you can perform site audits, competitor analysis, keyword research, and backlink analysis to streamline your SEO strategy.

2. Mailshake

Backlinks are absolutely essential for SEO in 2022. And like we mentioned in the step-by-step strategy section above, the most tried and true method of getting quality backlinks fast is to perform cold email outreach.

Mailshake is a great outreach tool that enables you to send cold, but personalized emails at scale. You can reuse templates and responses, while inserting custom information for each prospect.

3. SEMRush

SEMRush is another all-in-one SEO tool similar to Ahrefs. It also provides in-depth keyword research, backlink profiles, site audits, and ratings to determine the difficulty of ranking for particular keywords. Here is a SEMrush review for you to check out.

By using these tools above, you can achieve higher organic rankings in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it manually. And that means you can focus on the higher level SEO marketing strategy, which is more important.

It’s worth noting that none of these three tools can track rankings on Bing. Ahrefs only tracks Google positions, and Semrush only tracks Google or Baidu. If Bing performance represents an important part of your strategy for 2022, consider picking up a separate Bing rank tracker like Nightwatch in addition.

4. Keyword.com

Keyword.com is a search engine rank tracker that will help you monitor your website’s organic rankings in Google. Monitoring is important since it will help you measure your ROI based on your SEO efforts. This way, you will improve your strategy based on your performance. This tool not only gives you live rankings data but also gives you access to historic ranking data so you can check rankings over time.

Conclusion

Now you know how to build an SEO strategy for 2022. But knowing the steps is just the beginning. Executing an SEO marketing strategy takes a lot of work, patience, and evaluation of your results.

The sooner you start setting the stage for better organic rankings, the better. That way, your business can enjoy interested, loyal visitors and customers — without relying on paid ads or word of mouth.

Want to grow your SaaS company even faster with proven, powerful SEO strategies? Get in touch today.

Why Digital Transformation Is Here To Stay

Author Sujan Patel | Zero Comments | Business

By 2024, businesses are estimated to spend $2.4 trillion on digital transformation. This shift toward using digital tools and software to improve business processes is necessary in the face of greater competition and connectivity.

But digital transformation is easier said than done. Every company has unique needs and goals. Therefore, it’s important to understand how digital adoption fits into your business and its growth going forward.

So in this post, we’ll talk about what digital transformation is, why it matters, and examples of applying it for better profitability. Let’s get started:

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is the process of integrating digital technology into every facet of your business. It completely changes how you provide value for your target market.

It also means a culture change, where your company embraces change, experimentation, and optimization.

It can sometimes mean abandoning previous business processes to replace them with new best practices.

Most digital transformation should occur with an express aim in mind. For instance, to improve your customer service or enhance profit margins.

How Important is Digital Transformation?

There are a ton of reasons to implement digital transformation in your business. The most important ones are:

  • Survival – Over the last several months, supply chain and economic pressures have made it crucial to react quickly in protecting revenue and profit. Digital transformation is no longer a luxury, it’s a way of life.
  • Productivity – Digital tools are perfect for collecting and analyzing data at scale. They can also create efficiencies in communication and service, as well as automate a range of otherwise mundane and repetitive tasks. There are certain digital tools that are specific to industries. For example, in the digital art industry, digital tools such as free procreate brushes can come in very handy, but they have no value in traditional art or even less in the finance industry.
  • Collaboration – Keeping your team on the same page for projects and business outcomes becomes difficult when everyone is distributed (remote). Digital transformation lets you enjoy the benefits of remote collaboration without sacrificing speed or clarity.
  • Market Expansion – The normalization of digital delivery for most products and services equates to a larger market for your business. For instance, while most people preferred in-person fitness training before, more consumers are open to online classes — which can be delivered to and from anywhere in the world.

Companies who embrace digital transformation will be poised to lead their industries in the coming years. The ability to get more done with less time creates a significant advantage and improvement in the value you bring to your customers.

What are the Cons of Digital Transformation?

With all of the benefits that digital transformation provides to organizations, it’s not without a few potential downsides. Some cons of digital transformation are:

  • Information Overload – Teams can become overwhelmed with the research involved in selecting the right platforms, tools, or strategies. Leaders must place deadlines or parameters on decision making to avoid time-wasting activities that don’t truly contribute to growth.
  • Complexity – In certain cases, a digital tool is not the right answer if it complicates an otherwise elegant process. For instance, providing only digital options can eliminate a large portion of your target market.
  • Third Party Dependency – Basing key business outcomes on digital technology can lead to a dependence on that particular technology, reducing flexibility. Companies should have second and third options in mind to avoid dependence.
  • Security – Sensitive business and customer information requires a solid approach to security. Digital security best practices must be learned and adhered to, even by non-tech savvy team members.

These drawbacks don’t mean you should avoid transforming your business with digital technology. The downsides of digital transformation are manageable and preventable, meaning that you should take them into account when strategizing your digitally-enabled processes.

What’s the Future of Digital Transformation?

Let’s look at some trends coming around the corner for digital transformation:

More Spending on Digital Transformation

As we mentioned, trillions will be spent on digital transformation. Instead of looking for offline solutions, businesses will continue to invest in technology for greater scalability.

People Focused

More focus will be on customers and their problems, instead of technology. Consumers and businesses are less impressed with shiny new technology. If it doesn’t meet a specific need, then your market won’t pay attention.

In other words, a more pragmatic approach in terms of “what problem does this solve” will become the priority.

Financing

Companies no longer have to resort to banks or institutions to raise capital. They can take advantage of digital platforms that crowdsource funds from interested prospects. Even if more capital is needed, connecting with these sources is done online.

This greatly reduces risk, as you are able to pre-sell ideas, products, and services to begin producing cash flow from day one.

Product Creation

Manufacturing is going to be transformed. The ability to feed AI and algorithms with data about products is unprecedented. Soon, ecommerce will become much more competitive as the barrier to entry is lowered.

AI Will Meet Skill Gaps

Your IT doesn’t need to know it all, nor should they. AI can provide companies with secure, scalable solutions. Instead of knowing specific protocols or languages, developers will be able to focus on concepts and use custom tools to manage technology.

Examples of Digital Transformation

Now, let’s explore some examples of digital transformation and how it will change the way companies act internally and with their customers:

Customer Experience

Customers today expect great customer service. Digital transformation can fundamentally evolve the way you help your customers.

For instance, chat bots can provide instant responses to customer questions via a form on your website, or even social media. And self-service customer portals allow a way for customers to solve their own problems without stressing your customer service resources.

Compare this to the traditional method of sending an email or calling a phone number, just to answer a lot of basic questions and finally be routed to the right person, video, or article to answer your question.

Operational Agility

Fast is the new big. In other words, the ability to react to market changes, supply chain shortages, and adapt new technology is key. You don’t need to have millions of dollars in your war chest to compete.

Companies that can find a market demand, meet it, and optimize it with digital automation will be able to spend less money to acquire high value customers.

Scalability

Revenue is generated with products and services. However, true business equity is achieved with scalability. How easy can you replicate your results for one customer across the market?

Using software and technology, you can market, promote, sell, provide customer service, and deliver your product in the cloud. Never before has scalability been as possible or as valuable.

Leadership

Leadership is a key aspect of digital transformation. In the past, companies often utilized a hierarchy with one person at the top. Now, companies are more flat.

This means that responsibilities, ideas, and strategies are shared among the organization as a whole. The best ideas and processes win. And you can determine the best approach with objective data thanks to analysis tools.

Workflow

The new way of working is much different than the past. Just a few years ago, it was rare to find a fully distributed team of remote employees. Today, it is becoming increasingly common and much easier to accomplish.

Team collaboration tools like Google Drive, Google CRM that easily integrate with their preferred G suite applications, Slack, Dropbox, and more help teams organize and execute on projects while meeting key deadlines.

It’s no longer necessary to have everyone in the same physical location. Companies can hire their team members from anywhere, enjoying significant cost savings thanks to differences in currency rates.

Sales Processes

Sales is what ultimately grows any business. With new sales-enablement tools, teams can improve their sales processes.

Using digital CRMs will help businesses track customer progress through their buying journey. This creates a better communication cadence where sales reps “touch” customers, provide data for decision making, or schedule calls at just the right time in the cycle.

And using digital video call, email marketing automation, and other tools allow sales teams to sell their product or service from anywhere in the world. This reduces costs such as office overhead, transportation, and time.

Conclusion

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, businesses saw the value in leveraging digital transformation to become more efficient and profitable. But now, with more people working and conducting business remotely than ever before, it is a necessity.

So be sure that your company culture embraces critical thinking, planning, and usage of digital solutions. It can help you improve customer happiness, productivity, and ultimately profitability.

The Ultimate Guide to Conversational Marketing (+Examples)


Author Sujan Patel | Zero Comments | Marketing

Conversational marketing has become a relatively new buzzword. And it can be a really powerful strategy when used correctly.

But what does it mean and why does it matter so much? Don’t worry, I’m going to answer all of that in this blog post. And I’ll cover some great examples of how conversational marketing is being used to grow companies.

Let’s get started with the definition of conversational marketing:

What is Conversational Marketing?

Conversational marketing is a customized approach to serving your customers online. It uses a series of questions to move visitors through your sales or marketing funnel — emulating a real conversation.

A conversational marketing process typically uses an automated tool like chatbots, live chat, or SMS texting. Let’s explore each of these approaches:

Chatbots

Chatbots are simply software programs that use AI and natural language processing to provide relevant questions and responses during an automated conversation. These chatbots use conditional logic, which luckily you can create internally.

Live Chat

Live Chat is software that you can integrate with your company’s website. It lets sales or service reps chat with visitors in real time.

SMS Texting

Conversational marketing via text messages is the same as other platforms. The only difference is the medium through which it’s delivered. With that said, conversational marketing can take place via other methods as well such as:

  • Email
  • Landing Pages
  • Social Media
  • Forms

And more…

The Benefits of Conversational Marketing

Let’s take a look at some of the main benefits of conversational marketing:

Resource Friendly

Conversational marketing helps you deliver your products and services without talking directly with customers. This means you don’t have to pay as many customer support reps, or any at all, to grow revenue.

Provide a Better Experience

Ultimately, we live in a day and age where the customer experience is vital. People are willing to do business with companies that provide easier, faster service.

Conversational marketing helps create personalized experiences that guide the customer to the exact solution or information they were looking for, with less hassle.

That way, you get the exact information you need from your website visitors. And it happens at the same time that they engage with your business.

Better Relationship Building

You can craft meaningful relationships with your target market via conversational marketing strategies. You can ask great questions to understand their deepest wants, needs, and problems. This also leads to better lead qualification.

Higher Conversions

Engage visitors right away, ensuring they take the next step in your sales funnel. The ability to ask direct questions means you can present visitors with the right landing page, article, email list, or product to further their buying journey.

As you can see, there are some great advantages to using conversational marketing in your business. But, there are some things to keep in mind:

Best Practices for Conversational Marketing

So you know you want to explore conversational marketing for your brand thanks to its automation, time savings, and budget-friendly nature, among others. First, keep these best practices in mind:

Implement in the Right Spots

It’s better to introduce conversational marketing where it will have the most effect on your business. For instance, putting a chatbot at the top of your funnel will touch many more visitors than at the bottom of the funnel.

Don’t Abandon Other Marketing Efforts

You shouldn’t just replace your other inbound marketing channels or agents yet. In fact, you can keep operating business as usual until you see significant differences in ROI with conversational marketing versus your traditional approach.

Keep Your Buyer Journey in Mind

Map out the process you want customers to take, step by step. Then, you can essentially translate these steps into scripts and questions that guide them along that path most efficiently.

Keep it Simple

There are a ton of ways you can program your conversational marketing tools to help customers. But ultimately, start with the basics. Avoid confusion for yourself and for your prospects.

Test, Test, Test

Understand that no marketing strategy has a 100% success rate on the first try. Setting up conversational marketing in your business is a process, not a one-time lottery event.

Follow Up

Just because you can now use robots to field basic inquiries and replace some human input, doesn’t mean you don’t need real reps. At some point, whether the customer bought or didn’t buy your product, you need real people reaching out to them.

Examples of Conversational Marketing

1. Barista Warrior

This ecommerce brand sells coffee products. The brand was built with conversational marketing in mind from the start.

Their secret weapon? — Segmentation. They only use conversational marketing for people who are likely to convert.

Using an app called Dovetale, they identify highly engaged customers and offer them special discounts. With Automation doing the heavy lifting upfront, they can employ resources for real-time conversations on the backend.

2. Nola Mattress

This mattress company had a problem with visitors leaving and not purchasing. After researching the problem, they realized that prospects were presented with too many options, resulting in confusion.

They launched a live chat marketing option, which allowed sales reps to help prospects make better decisions. The result? A boost of 27% in their sales.

3. EatFirst

The event staffing and corporate food service brand had too many inquiries to handle with their human staff.

They implemented a chatbot for conversational marketing, connecting it to their CRM. By pulling data from Salesforce, they were able to engage customers at scale while personalizing the experience, all in an automated fashion.

4. Nectar

The HR software company utilized a blend of live chat and AI to achieve conversational marketing. They wanted a personal, human touch, but needed to automate most of the conversation to filter questions to the right person.

This hybrid approach allowed the company to reach its customers instantly for a better experience speed-wise, while still customizing their recommendations from live reps.

5. HANG TN

This sports apparel retailer decided to avoid chatbots. Instead, they use Google Voice and its texting feature to communicate with customers in their brand voice.

The company was able to increase conversion rates from text conversations by 26%, without any fancy tools. This goes to show that conversational marketing is a strategy that doesn’t depend on any particular software.

6. Pumpkin.care

Pumpkin.care specializes in helping pet owners find suitable insurance plans for their furry companions, including coverage for accidents and illnesses. Using conversational marketing, they engage visitors in personalized discussions about their pets’ needs, preferences, and health conditions. Whether customers have one pet or multiple furry friends, Pumpkin.care provides tailored recommendations for comprehensive pet insurance plans covering accidents and illnesses for all their pets. Through chatbots, they offer real-time assistance, ensuring pet owners receive customized options suitable for their individual circumstances, making the process of selecting insurance for multiple pets seamless and convenient.

How to Implement an Conversational Marketing Strategy

Now that you’ve seen real examples of conversational marketing, it’s time to create your own strategy. Follow these steps to start personalizing your customer buying journey with conversational tools:

1. Map Out the Conversation Stages

The first step in implementing your conversational marketing is to understand the different stages of the process. In order of priority, they are:

Engage

You need to make the customer aware of the ability to have the conversation in the first place. And you need to start the conversation in a way that encourages engagement.

For instance, having a popup that says “Welcome to ABC, how can we help?” Is a great start since it creates visual engagement and draws them into the conversation.

Understand

Ask questions based on the answers that you receive at first. You’re relying on automation and speed, so you need to identify what the customer wants right away.

For instance, if someone types “what kind of service packages do you have” then your chatbot needs to recognize the “service packages” part of their query, and direct them to the appropriate page or person.

Recommend

The entire idea of conversational marketing is to give your customers what they want. So provide them with targeted options, but give them more than one. For example, someone looking for “pricing” should be able to see your most popular packages and exact costs.

Using this simple model will help you create the right scripts, whether automated or live, to guide customers from the moment they hit your website until they purchase from you.

2. Tie Your Conversational Marketing Stages to the Buyer Journey

Now that you know your script for various stages of the engagement process, it’s time to look at your buyer’s journey.

At which stage should you introduce conversational marketing? Do you want every visitor to be engaged? Or, do you want to save your real-time, human rep resources for highly qualified people?

3. Select Your Tools

With the knowledge of what stage of the sales funnel you will start conversing with customers, select your tools.

For instance, email or text might be best if you want to reach current customers. However, social media or live chat could be ideal for creating more detailed engagement with people who aren’t as familiar with our brand.

4. Follow Up and Tweak

One of the great aspects of conversational marketing is that it can be achieved with purely digital tools. No matter what platform you use, you can analyze your conversations and identify opportunities to improve.

For instance, do you get more conversions by providing customers with transparent pricing on your website via a link in the chatbot? Or, is it better to filter pricing questions to live sales reps? Only time, plus data, will tell you the answer.

Wrapping Up

There’s been a whole lot of talk about conversational marketing in the past few years. That’s because more than ever, there are tools available to make it a reality.

Companies that introduce conversational marketing tools into their overall strategy can gain a huge advantage in their industry. These tools might change over time, but the concept of providing real time questions and answers to customers will never go out of style.