I’ve talked about the benefits of focusing on a niche, and this podcast really hits home just how important that is.
Chris started Landscape Leadership, a marketing agency specifically for clients that work in “green” industries. This is a prime example of someone who looked for a need in the market and designed his company around it. If you are considering starting a business and haven’t chosen your niche yet, or you’re in business and aren’t focused on a specific niche, I highly recommend listening in on this episode.
In addition to his niche, Chris and I cover how he got started, how he’s blogging, and what he sells first so that his clients keep working with him.
Listen now and you’ll hear Chris and I talk about:
(02:45) Introductions
(04:45) How did you start your marketing agency?
(07:45) How did working with your first client position you to get more?
(09:30) What do you think focusing on just one niche is so important?
(12:30) What are some of the benefits of focusing on a single niche?
(14:30) What does your blogging routine look like?
(18:25) What do you see as the biggest opportunity for your agency?
(19:30) What does your initial sales conversation look like?
(24:15) What service(s) do you try to sell first?
(25:30) How do you on-board a new client?
(28:25) What advice would you give to people just getting started?
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
Listen Now
Leave some feedback:
What should I talk about next? Please let me know on Facebook or in the comments below.
Chris Heiler is the founder and president of Landscape Leadership, an inbound marketing agency that combines website design/development, social media, content marketing, and search marketing into integrated and measurable campaigns for green industry clients ranging from landscape construction and maintenance companies to lawn care operators and garden centers.
Landscape Leadership has clients across the country with all team members working remotely. Heiler lives in Austin, TX.
How Content Marketing Has Changed and How You Can Take Advantage of This Shift
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chris.jpg7202200Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-17 06:00:142020-09-14 04:32:10How Chris Heiler is Growing Landscape Leadership into a Successful Inbound Marketing Agency
Building a software service isn’t all about the bells and whistles.
Imagine coming up with a killer small business software application. You spend countless hours testing and writing to get all the aspects of the software working flawlessly. After you nail down what you know to be a functional application, you pitch it to people hoping to rake in the clients. The problem is, nobody needs this software.
Part of the software development process should be finding a market to support it. Camilo discovered a need and went about trying to find ways to satisfy it. This is a great episode for any entrepreneurs looking to get into the software business; in fact, it’s a great episode for any new business hoping to better understand and cater to their audience.
Listen now and you’ll hear Camilo and I talk about:
(2:30) Introductions
(4:30) How did you come up with the idea for your startup?
(7:30) How did you develop the first prototypes?
(10:30) How did you know your prototype was getting traction?
(12:30) What step did you take after you got early validation?
(17:40) What happened after you moved to Mountain View?
(19:40) What turned out radically different from the original vision?
(21:30) What are you doing now to cause growth?
(24:50) What was the first step you took to land homeaway.com?
(28:30) How much revenue were you doing at this point?
(30:30) How much have you needed to raise so far?
(31:30) What are some of the big lessons you’ve learned from fund raising?
(33:10) How did you begin the fund raising process?
(34:50) How did you cover the legal bills for fund raising?
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
Before starting PayByGroup, Camilo worked with Frank on Root Orange, a VC-backed domain name startup that split domains by city. Previously, he worked for his family’s government communications firm, and in best practices consulting at the Corporate Executive Board, both in his home town of Washington, D.C.
Camilo is actively involved in organizing alumni gatherings for his school (Sidwell Friends School) and his college alma mater. He also hosts fundraisers for education reform organizations such as KIPP, and political candidates that support the cause. He enjoys driving on sunny days with the windows down and music up, and doting on his chocolate lab, Kipper.
Camilo holds a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University.
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Camilo.jpg7202200Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-14 06:00:182020-09-11 07:21:13How a Small Business Software PayByGroup.com is Planning to Become the Paypal of Vacation Rentals
Not every new venture is successful – in fact, even the ones that seem to be can come crashing down at any minute.
Jayson Gaignard provides an example of just that. His company hat reached millions of dollars in sales, when suddenly… it tanked. The loss of his prior company and how he came back with a new outlook on business gives a great story for all entrepreneurs to hear.
It’s not all big sales and mojitos on the beach. Sometimes things fail, but if they do, it helps to see how others have taken adversity and ramped up another successful business.
For the good, bad and the ugly of entrepreneurship ideas, check out this episode.
Listen now and you’ll hear Jayson and I talk about:
(03:05) Introductions
(03:50) How did you get started in business?
(06:40) What did you do to ruin your company?
(16:50) What is MastermindTalks?
(21:50) How did you get started with your first event?
(29:50) How did you attract other speakers?
(33:50) How did you drive traffic to the application page?
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
Jayson Gaignard is the founder of Mastermind Talks, an annual invite-only event designed for elite entrepreneurs. He started Mastermind Talks after a failed business left him a quarter million in debt and with a ton of questions about what to do next.
Jayson went on to become the Founder of MastermindTalks, Mastermind Retreats, and The Early to Rise Podcast. Jason has revitalized his vision and is realizing a different kind of success.
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Jayson.jpg7202200Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-13 06:00:122020-09-11 07:12:23Entrepreneurship Ideas From Jayson Gaignard on Going From Massive Debt to Massive Success
Welcome back to another video in my series on content marketing. In this video, as the headlines might clue you in, we’ll be talking about Buyer Personas.
Creating a Buyer Persona is something that you don’t want to skip. This is really important because if you don’t take the time to define exactly who you’re writing for, and who you want to attract to your blog, ultimately you’re going to fail in three really important areas.
Number one is relevancy. Without paying attention to your buyer persona, your content is not going to be as relevant as it otherwise could, and that can have a cascade effect on two other really important things:
If your content is not super relevant, your audience is not going to be very engaged
If they’re not very engaged, they’re not going to do a lot sharing on social networks
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Social Networks
When you produce copies of content (be that a video like the one above, or a podcast, or a written piece of content), if you really nail relevancy a lot of sharing can take place and it can actually have a very viral effect.
So how do you go ahead and get started with creating a buyer personas?
Research
Start with research. You need to have a good idea of who you’re talking to and what their interests are. There’s a couple of ways you can do that:
4. Talk To Your Existing Customers
If you have customers right now, make sure that you pick up the phone and talk to them.
If they are your ideal customer you want more of those people, and this group is the easiest to contact. In order to track potential clients you need to understand precisely who they are (at the end of this post I’ll give you some materials to work with).
5. Audience Jacking
Now if you don’t have a lot of customers you can use a little term that I invented that’s called audience jacking.
Basically, you’re going to go to your competitors blogs and look at who’s commenting on those blogs. Typically when people comment, their name is a hyperlink to their website and learn a lot more about those people.
6-8. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
One other thing you are going to be able to do is find your audience’s social profiles.
When you figure out who they are, go to their Facebook page, check out their likes, and give yourself an idea of some of the interests of that individual.
The other thing you should do is go to their Twitter profile and look at their Twitter Stream, what site’s content they are retweeting, who they are following, etc. This is going to tell you a lot about the type of things that are of interest to this person, who is of course an interest to you.
It is the same with LinkedIn. Look at their LinkedIn profiles because there is a ton of data there for you to mine.
9. Quantcast
How do you find your competitors or learn about what their traffic is like?
There’s a free resource called Quantcast. If you type in any site URL into Quantcast you will get a lot of demographic information about that site. This is a great way to check basic demographic data and see what kind of traffic is coming in.
10. Quicksprout
Use this tool for any given website to find what the audience is most interested in.
Go to Quicksprout – Neil Patel has a tool there which does website analysis. You punch in the URL, let it crunch its numbers, then scroll down and you’ll see a list of all of the most shared pieces of content on that site – which, by the way, will give you ideas of the things that you should be writing about.
I want to continue to make these short videos for you and put out useful content regularly. So please, tell me what you think – I’d love to hear your feedback!
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/buyer-persona.png429491Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-12 09:00:152014-03-13 09:24:4810 Things You Need to Know About Creating a Buyer Persona Template
If you want to develop a Content Strategy – or improve your current one – this is one interview you’ll definitely want to listen to.
As the president and owner of Aha Media, Ahava works with clients and travels the country to deliver winning strategies to marketers. An established author, Ahava has captivated thousands with her insights. In this interview, I got a wonderful opportunity to get an inside look at the techniques she uses with her clients.
If you’d like to advance your content marketing techniques, this is a can’t miss episode.
Listen now and you’ll hear Ahava and I talk about:
(02:20) Introductions
(04:00) How is digital copy different than offline copy?
(09:20) What type of clients do you work with?
(11:20) How does a company realize that they need to work with you?
(14:00) What is the #1 Lesson in your book?
(14:50) What are your seven steps to success?
(20:20) What does your client-retainer relationship look like?
(26:20) How do you position yourself as a Strategic Adviser?
(30:50) Why are analytics so important?
(34:20) Describe the framework of an initial sales conversation with a client
(38:20) Do you sell an assessment to get your foot in the door?
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
Ahava is passionate about content and prides herself on tackling the toughest content projects—from healthcare to higher education to hip-hop (seriously). She has more than 15 years of experience in writing, messaging, and marketing, and is a well-recognized content expert. Her first book, The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web was published by Morgan Kaufmann in November 2013.
Ahava is the president and owner of Aha Media Group, LLC, a content strategy and content marketing consultancy founded in October 2005. Prior to beginning Aha Media, she was a communications strategist for a government agency. Ahava has also worked for two major advertising agencies and a commercial production company, and she served as the metro beat reporter for The Jerusalem Post.
Ahava received her M.A. from Georgetown University and her B.A. from Stern College. She lives in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region.
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Ahava.jpg7202200Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-12 06:00:232020-09-11 07:06:23How to Win With Content on the Web with Ahava Leibtag
This is what I heard from one of my subscribers a few weeks ago – three weeks in and he was so frustrated with the functionality constraints, he decided the lower startup costs weren’t worth the hassle, even after he had migrated most of his business into Ontraport (formally Office AutoPilot). The same day I heard from him, another one of our subscribers brought a very similar complaint to us via Facebook. The complaints were pouring in!
So, I decided to write this comparison.
With the great CRM system, the loads of 3rd party support, and the amazing Campaign Builder, Infusionsoft was an easy choice for us, but not everyone has the same needs. Here we’ll take a look at the different features each software provides. Specifically, we’ll analyze the following components:
Each program has its own unique approach to software set-up. Infusionsoft is consultant-based and detailed, while Ontraport is more self-servicing and intuitive. Here are the prices and expectations for each:
While the initial startup costs can seem daunting to small business owners, Infusionsoft feels that due to the customizable nature of the software, the startup Kickstart training is necessary. The packages follow a structure which includes:
One-on-one consulting and implementation help in the first 30 days
A custom implementation guide to follow for the next 60 days
Analysis of your business’ needs and challenges
Help implementing the features that will make the biggest impact
Data import and dashboard configuration assistance
There are two packages you can choose from once you begin your Kickstart program:
Marketing Blueprint- Ideal for newer businesses looking to create and implement a marketing strategy for their lead generation and nurturing. This program will help create a framework to utilize in the future.
Automate and Scale- Focused more on businesses looking to scale their efforts and make the business processes self-sustaining and automated. This program is designed to help businesses create internal processes to help sustain growth and scale their operations with the business.
The benefits of the Kickstart program go beyond the training and support for the actual software. With the right strategy and self-reflection, business owners can use this support to write personalized goals and campaign strategies, which is a powerful step in lead generation.
As opposed to Infusionsoft, you can order Ontraport online and move through the setup process fairly quickly. There is a much shorter lead-to-customer cycle, which is a nice touch and can be less intimidating.
As you can see, the monthly fees are higher but there is no startup fee. There is a free 2 hour implementation session which connects you with a dedicated “Hero” who is in charge of your account. The session includes:
Immediate Ontraport training with a dedicated Implementation Specialist
Get started building automated processes tailored to your business
Gain a deep understanding of Ontraport’s features and functionality
Get your sales and marketing automated right away
A unique head start in mastering Ontraport that’s tailored to your business
While the stated deliverables are a little overlapping repetitive, the main point is a service professional will contact you and help set up the program while tailoring the session to your business model.
The difference between Ontraport’s Pro and Team options is pretty negligible as far as I can tell, the main difference being the number of program users and email contacts. The number of emails does not change, which is odd considering the extra $300 a month fees.
The length of set-up time is partly due to the Kickstart training regimen provided by the company (which takes place over 30 days), and partly because the software is so dynamic. While it the time period may seem long, remember that you will be building and implementing your software throughout the actual process. You will be in contact with a dedicated consultant and can utilize the program while it is being created.
After the Kickstart, you should be well prepared to operate the software, as well as automate many of the processes to run your business. That being said, this is not a quick fix solution. This is a long term strategy which takes time to develop and understand. For this to work you need to allocate some time for reorganizing your business.
Community
The other training advantage I believe Infusionsoft has is their large user community. There are large forums with people actively searching and posting ideas on how to use the software effectively and other strategies they have seen succeed and fail. This is something Ontraport, being a relatively newer and self-learning software, does not yet possess.
Along with an active community, Infusionsoft also hosts events and seminars for their users to learn more about the program and upcoming changes. These include:
Infusionsoft University– Based at locations across the country, these classes offer hands-on training, Q&A sessions, mastermind groups, and other events.
Mastermind Webinars– Weekly webinars focused on marketing strategies and automation
ICON– Annual seminar for users to learn from business experts and thought leaders
Along with live phone support, Infusionsoft also features 24/7 chat support, which is vital because if you’re a small business owner like myself, you know your business is always a 24/7 effort.
Ontraport
Approx. Set-up Time: 1-4 weeks
This is one of the nice features about Ontraport. There set-up is much simpler. Most of the functions are relatively easy to understand after an initial training. As with Infusionsoft, you have one point of contact during the transition to help you customize your set-up.
The actual time frame depends on your level of experience with marketing software and willingness to learn, but is undoubtedly shorter than the time Infusionsoft takes to master because it is a less involved system.
This process can take longer if you are migrating from other platforms to a centralized system, but if you are unsure or time-restrained, you can hire a concierge to migrate the systems and help with other learning hurdles.
A Small Staff and Window of Support Makes Me a Little Nervous
Ontraport offers live chat and service calls for customers, but support hours are limited to 6AM-9PM PST on weekdays and 9AM-9PM PST weekends.
The personalization the “Heroes” offer is nice, but it is also a weakness, as only 12 support staff members are available. This is restraining for businesses located outside of the West Coast or in other parts of the world.
Non-Threatening Feel
I like the friendly feel of the entire interface. If you watch the videos and visit the page it is clean and non-intimidating. If you’re a small business owner looking to make a big money decision, you’ll value that level of approachability.
Features
Let’s break down the different perks and features included in each software.
I normally suggest ignoring the Essentials package and moving straight to the Deluxe(s) and Complete packages. The usefulness of the sales component is reason enough to pick up the larger packages. If you don’t have an inventory or product, you will have less need for Infusionsoft in the first place.
As you can see, data can be sorted by tagged details applied to each contact. This is information you can gather based on opt-in forms, random surveys, user actions, or during the check out portion of your sales process. This allows you to search for relevant information depending on the needs of your campaign.
Notice the tag section below. We utilize hundredsof tags. No joke. We tag everything from clicking a certain link, to attending a webinar, to watching a certain percentage of a video, and so much more.
These tags allow you to monitor your customer’s behavior throughout their experience with your site and give you the opportunity to make informed decisions on how to respond to their actions.
Identifying Hot Leads Automatically
Infusionsoft also offers a quality lead scoring system which you can automate to update when a contact has completed certain actions or purchased certain items. This can be incredibly useful for sales teams looking to optimize their time as it helps to quickly identify quality leads without doing manual searching and decision-making.
This is the key to automation – a powerful CRM system which integrates with a reliable automation system. The tagging and organizational aspects allows you to make more precise and meaningful automation decisions.
Clean Data and Company Identification
While this may seem trite, the value of these features on Infusionsoft should not be understated. With the amount of data coming in, it is important to capture unique contacts.
Infusionsoft allows you to delete repeat information and keep a concise and accurate customer base. With Ontraport, this can be time-consuming.
Adding One Tab Can Be So Important
Infusionsoft also allows you to categorize companies independently from customer contacts. If you are running a B2B service or even just have elements of B2B work, this feature is critical. This is also missing in Ontraport’s CRM system.
Sales Pipeline
Informative Video On The Various Actions In The Sales Pipeline Feature
The Deluxe Sales and Complete versions of Infusionsoft allow you to make complex and powerful sales pipeline adjustments. Use this tool to structure task assignment for sales teams, assign leads to users, update product lists for possible customers, and more. This is a feature especially important for companies with devoted sales teams and a list of products the sales team is working with.
This feature is just plain not available in Ontraport.
Ontraport
CRM
Ontraport offers a decent quality CRM system that is useful and intuitive. There is the normal functionality and sorting, but it is much more limited in scope than Infusionsoft.
But this does not mean Ontraport is a bad system.
A Peek Into Ontraport’s CRM
It contains all the necessary components, is clean and efficient, and can handle most CRM needs. There is also a tagging and lead scoring system which can be automated and utilized to act on high involvement actions. The tagging and lead scoring isn’t as advanced as Infusionsoft’s, and doesn’t easily tie into the automation feature (read on for more details about the Marketing Automation differences between the two systems).
These are great features, but they fail to keep up with the sales heavy focus of Infusionsoft. This includes the 150 Custom Fields that Ontraport provides compared to the 100 custom fields per record type that Infusionsoft has. That being said, there are aspects of Ontraport that go above and beyond what Infusionsoft does.
Facebook Integration
If you have a Facebook site or advertising and move a prospect through this channel, Ontraport has a great integration system to capture those leads. This comes standard and creates the lead profile upon user entry. Infusionsoft has a great plug-in called GroSocial which is very similar, but there is an additional fee per month.
Membership Sites
Ontraport offers a free and easy membership site plugin for WordPress users. This is especially useful for information marketing because it allows paying subscribers access to certain content depending on membership level. Infusionsoft offers CustomerHub, but it is also an additional plug-in with an additional fee.
Ontraport offers pretty seamless plugins for WordPress users including order forms, landing page creation, and membership sites. Infusionsoft offers the same.
The difference here is the ability to add-on as your business grows.
Ontraport is limited in its capabilities and does not have a strong plug-in marketplace. Infusionsoft allows you to add nearly any business function you need as you grow your business. This allows for a vastly more personal software system throughout the life of your business.
In the Campaign Builder function of Infusionsoft there is a drag-and-drop feature for creating things such as landing pages. There are templates available that can cater to most customers. With a little bit of training, the process is relatively simple and intuitive.
The function does lack in terms of creativity and manipulation. You can completely customize your pages, but it does take a little more time and understanding of the software.
Email Templates
Infusionsoft’s Email Templates
Email templates are one of the nicer aspects of Infusionsoft’s marketing system. The formatting is very simple and extremely clean, but there are additional functions and personalization available.
For instance, you can insert personalized information in an email, include a download link to an online product, or tag a contact based on a specific link they click in your email.
You can easily direct your emails to specific users, and the integrated anti-spam system helps your emails avoid your contact’s spam folder.
Despite this, there is no real split-testing function in Infusionsoft. You can manipulate the emails to send to specific users (as in cloning the email and selecting A-M and N-Z for example) but it is cumbersome.
THE Campaign Builder
Ok, here it is. The best feature of any small company marketing software – the marketing automation component.
In Infusionsoft, it’s called the Campaign Builder.
Best Campaign Planning Software I’ve Seen
It’s just so damn beautiful.
This feature allows you to conceptually create a system of actions to take place throughout different campaigns. It can trigger automated responses depending on where your contact came from and what they are searching for.
Brilliant.
It’s also very simple to use and makes the process of visualizing the customer buying process on your site much easier.
I really can’t get enough of this piece of software. This is the kind of thing that would normally be reserved for large company software programs worth thousands. This is far and away the best automation tool I’ve seen – not just in comparison to Ontraport, but to any small-to-mid-sized software on the market.
Here are some videos on how the system works and how easy it is to create campaigns.
Ontraport
Webpage Builder and PURLs
Ontraport’s webpage builder is more customizable and looks cleaner. This also applies to Ontraport’s web order forms, post cards, and landing pages. They emphasize the personal touch in their product. These Ontraport-created pages can also be hosted on your own site, which makes it easier to have full control over the sales process.
Ontraport also has a great PURL system. If you are unfamiliar, PURLs are sites that customers land on which has personalized features that can say things like “Hey Brian” or “It’s been 3 days since your last visit, here’s what you missed”. You see this on larger sites like Amazon and it really adds a great marketing angle. These are only available through a 3rd party with Infusionsoft.
Ontraport offers a campaign system which is intuitive and in a language that most users can understand. Select a user action, then a condition (like if the customer is a subscriber), and then a follow up action to be taken.
You can really get down to the specifics with this system and it is a breeze to set-up and utilize. This is a very useful tool in the steps towards profitable automation.
While the system works well and is in the same vein as the Campaign Builder, it can’t even hold a torch to the amount of customization you can achieve with Infusionsoft’s system.
This is possibly the most useful integration feature of the marketing automation tool-set. The Split-Testing option allows you to create up to 4 different emails (A/B/C/D) and send them out based on certain parameters or on random assortment.
This can be integral to your marketing efforts as you measure and report the different response rates you are getting from your campaigns, and is a powerful testing function which isn’t as easy in Infusionsoft.
These emails are also sent from your own IP address and have a time zone identifier for your international customers (Infusionsoft was adjusting that last time I checked).
To be fair, Infusionsoft is really the only one of the two with any real E-Commerce functionality. There is seamless and powerful integration between E-Commerce, CRM, and the Campaign Builder.
If you have a sales team or a product listing, Infusionsoft has a clear advantage because Ontraport just doesn’t have a E-Commerce system in place other than 3rd party plugins.
Shopping Cart
A Multi-Item Shopping Cart Comes Standard
As you can see, Infusionsoft has a multiple-item shopping cart, and action buttons for the different stages of the buying process. You can tag people who have purchased items and redirect sales efforts based on those new conditions. This can also be used in collaboration with your Campaign Builder, making a seamless buyer process to monitor.
Affiliate Center
Infusionsoft offers a hosted affiliate center which is much easier to initiate than Ontraport’s self-hosted option. The system is set up and ready for you, so all you have to do is configure it. Ontraport has this feature but you must create your own site through the WordPress plugin, much more time consuming.
3rd Party Plug-Ins
This is one of the defining features of Infusionsoft. There are a fantastic list of developers catering to niches in your business efforts. If you need a new function in your system, you can often simply find someone who provides it.
Despite the additional costs, I’m going to say this is a big plus for Infusionsoft. Ontraport just does not possess the sheer number and functionality of 3rd party developers as Infusionsoft does. You can add so much personalization and utility to your process, whereas Ontraport users are essentially stuck with the options provided.
Ontraport
Postcards and Email
Ontraport allows you to create and send personalized post-cards to customers with at no extra cost (there is a limit on amount sent). This may not be overly important to your business but it is a nice touch which can really add to your customer’s trust in you.
Ontraport also allows a much larger email lists and amounts of emails to send. You can add additional email contacts to your contract with Infusionsoft, but it is an additional fee.
Tracking is made pretty simple with Ontraport’s system. It allows you to see with data and charts what things your customers are doing on your site – which pages they visit, which links they click, and more.
This is especially useful with Ontraport’s email split testing and PURL functions, which can give you fast and easy reporting on your campaign reactions.
While Infusionsoft does offer data analysis tools, you will likely want to create your own analytic reports. They do offer some standard functions but for more detailed reporting you have to create your own formulas. This allows for more customization, but to be honest, it can be difficult to know what you want the data to do and, probably more so, what data is worth looking into.
The analytics reporting feature included in Ontraport is a little more easy to read and conceptualize, especially with the graphs and other tools.
I use a 3rd party data analysis tool on Infusionsoft, and regardless, I do recommend you have multiple measuring systems in place, but it is nice to have one already established.
Ontraport vs. Infusionsoft. I know it seems lopsided, but the fact is Infusionsoft is a larger company with more capabilities. Ontraport has some great features as well but for many users the functionality may not be enough.
Ontraport is newer and is continually learning from their progress. It’s great. I love what they’re doing and they have a good program, but they are competing with a better, more established, even cheaper alternative. It just doesn’t stack up right now.
Infusionsoft has more features that focus on more solidified business practices, which is why they’ve been growing so rapidly for years. In fact, they received $54 million in venture capital funding in 2013, and they’re only expected to continue to flourish.
Their focus on CRM, Sales, and Campaign Planning are the reasons Infusionsoft holds such a solid presence in the marketing software marketplace.
I would continue to recommend Infusionsoft for most business structures, especially ones that possess a strong sales angle and a physical product. For information marketing, solo-ventures, and consulting, I can see where Ontraport can provide some great tools. The problem is scalability, where Ontraport is limited to its basic functions, while Infusionsoft grows with the user as their business grows and changes.
But my opinion isn’t the only one worth listening to – what are some of your experiences with these two pieces of software? What are some key selling points? What do you like or dislike? We love to hear your ideas on the analyses we do here.
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Ontraport-vs.-Infusionsoft_0.jpg600600Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-11 09:30:212015-12-15 11:10:48Ontraport vs. Infusionsoft: Which Marketing Software is Right For Your Business
The first thing you’ll notice about Adam is his charming accent.
The second is how well-versed he is in digital marketing strategy. Adam generously shares his strategies, and how they have helped him turn his company into a multi-million dollar marketing agency. Learn how he and Toby Jenkins got their company started, and they strategies they use now to attract clients to come to them – clients who are willing to pay big money to hear their advice.
Listen now and you’ll hear Adam and I talk about:
(03:10) Introductions
(09:00) The first phone call Adam has with a prospective client
(16:00) How often are prospects asking for a discount?
(18:00) Adam’s content strategy
(24:30) Which content has converted the best?
(33:00) What kind/size of companies is Bluewire Media targeting now?
(36:00) What is Adam doing to attract clients that are willing to pay $7,000/day?
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
Adam Franklin is a social media speaker and marketing manager of Bluewire Media – the web strategy consulting firm he co-founded in 2005 with school mate Toby Jenkins. Adam is a social media commentator on 2UE and writes for two of the Top 25 Business Blogs in Australia (Startup Smart and Bluewire Media).
He lives and breathes Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and email marketing. Adam co-created the Web Strategy Planning Template and co-wrote the e-book Web Strategy Secrets which have been downloaded by thousands of people worldwide. Adam has been featured on Smart Company’s Hot 30 Under 30 and the Dynamic Business 2010 Young Guns lists of young entrepreneurs, as well as in the latest edition of David Meerman Scott’s book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR.”
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Adam.jpg7202200Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-11 06:00:432020-09-11 06:56:57Adam Franklin on How BlueWire Media Attracts Clients that Pay $4,000 Per Day for Advice
Weddings are expensive. Most couples accept that and budget for it, or try to keep the cost down by limiting the guest list etc.
Not Dave Kerpen. He wanted a big wedding, and at 500 guests he definitely got that. But, he didn’t pay through the nose.
Instead, Dave and his wife used their marketing smarts to raise $100,000 in corporate sponsorship. Now that’s impressive!
But it doesn’t stop there – the wedding was held in a baseball stadium, and ended up getting a ton of media coverage. The couple estimated they received the equivalent of $20 million in earned media coverage, and they used the momentum from this success to launch their successful marketing agency!
Dave’s also had an Inc 500 fastest growing company for 2 years, and when we spoke he held the title as the #1 LinkedIn Influencer in pageviews. You can imagine that he has some great ideas to share.
Listen now and you’ll hear Dave and I talk about:
(03:05) Introductions
(05:20) What problem does your software solve?
(10:45) How did you go about attracting customers?
(15:45) How did you get started in business?
(18:45) How did you get corporate sponsorship for your wedding?
(21:45) How did sponsorship translate into customer attraction?
(26:15) How did you launch your agency?
(28:45) What would do differently today if you were starting over?
(31:45) What advice would you give the solo-preneur on growing beyond just one?
(32:45) What is your pricing strategy?
(36:15) How did you target your customers?
(39:45) How did you continually increase the size of your customers?
(42:45) What advice would you give to entrepreneurs to succeed with content marketing?
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
Dave Kerpen is the Founder and CEO of Likeable Local, and the Co-Founder and Chairman of Likeable Media. Dave is the NY Times Bestselling author of 3 books and the #1 LinkedIn Influencer of all time in page views, ahead of Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Mark Cuban and President Obama.
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/dave.jpg7202200Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-10 06:00:122020-09-11 06:45:51Dave Kerpen on Reality TV, Building a Successful Marketing Agency, and Launching a SaaS Company
If you are one of the kind of people who think Twitter is just for kids to tell each other they had macaroni for dinner (that used to be me), I think you should really take the time to listen to how effective Twitter can be as a marketing tool. Sarah’s team at Hubspot is focused on Lead Generation, and with her different tools and social media platforms, Hubspot finds about 50,000 new leads a month. Wow.
In this podcast we go over the ways Twitter can be effectively utilized, how important content is for a Twitter campaign, and other winning lead generation strategies. I learned a lot in this interview and I think you will too.
Listen now and you’ll hear Sarah and I talk about:
(02:00) Introduction
(05:00) Why use Twitter for lead generation?
(07:20) How to determine a Twitter-Friendly content strategy
(10:20) Has removing the opt-in form ever proved beneficial?
(13:20) How do you get started with paid ads?
(20:20) How to optimize your campaigns
(22:20) What other tips do you have for Twitter campaigns?
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
Trent: Hey there, Bright Idea hunters. Welcome to the “Bright Ideas”
podcast. I am your host,
Trent Dyrsmid. This is the podcast where we feature interviews with
the entrepreneurs behind some of today’s fastest growing companies.If you’re looking for proven tactics and strategies to help you start
a new business or grow an existing one, you are in the right place.The way that we do this is we interview proven experts on the show and
today is no different. My guest today is Sarah Goliger, she is the
head of paid marketing at HubSpot, one of the fastest-growing
marketing software companies on the planet.In this interview, we are going to dive deep into how to use Twitter
and paid traffic on Twitter. Not just paid, but paid and organic, to
generate more leads for your brand.And this was a really enjoyable interview, I learned a whole bunch.
So, in the roughly half hour it takes to listen to it, I guarantee
you, you are going to learn some actionable ideas that you are going
to be able to use in your business.Before we get to that, a quick announcement. If you are looking for
ways to take advantage of digital marketing to attract more interest
to your business, then you’re going to want to check out my recently
published digital marketing handbook. And you get to it and
brightideas.co/book.In the book, I explain everything that I have done to build my
business up in the very first year to a tribe of 10,000-plus
followers. We’ve had a whole lot of success. Also, I have invited a
number of my past guests to contribute to the book. You’ll get their
ideas in there as well.Again, get that at brightideas.co/book. And you can get even get a
free chapter. So, with that said, please join me in welcoming Sarah to
show. Hey, Sarah, welcome to the show.Sarah: Hi, Trent. Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be
here.Trent: I am equally excited to have you here. So, thanks for making
the time. There’s obviously
lots of folks in my audience who don’t yet know who you are.Before we get into the meat of our interview on how to leverage
Twitter as a lead generation machine, let’s have you just take a
moment and please introduce yourself on who you are and what you do.Sarah: Sure. I work at HubSpot and we sell marketing software. I
manage our paid
marketing channel, which basically means that I’m responsible for all
of our PPC efforts and also working with some of our partners in the
marketing industry to coordinate opportunities to work together and to
promote our content to their audiences.The focus of all these efforts is lead generation. So, I work closely
with the other folks on our lead gen team who run our organic
channels; social media, e-mail marketing, landing page optimization.
And together, we generate over 50,000 new leads for our sales team
every month.It’s a pretty incredible place to be. We move really fast here and
we’re always trying to stay a step ahead in our marketing, so that we
can not only do marketing well ourselves and keep innovating, but
also, so that we can teach marketing to our readers and ultimately be
able to sell our software.I’ve been with HubSpot for two and a half years now. And I’ve actually
worked on a lot of different parts of our marketing team. So, right
now, I’m focused on PPC and paid marketing. But I’ve also done some
SEO, some blogging. For a while, I was focused on e-mail marketing and
lead nurturing. I did a bit of sales training.It’s been really helpful for sort of getting that full experience
across the board with marketing. But I would say that PPC has
definitely been one of the most interesting channels.It’s so different from the others and I love that there’s so much
flexibility with it. Really, just a ton of opportunity to do it well
and make it work for your marketing, to sort of play around and
experiment and figure out what works.It’s kind of like a big puzzle in a way. So, I’m definitely excited to
get into some detail here and chat about this stuff with you.Trent: I’m equally excited to get into detail. So, before we jump into
this, I’ve always wanted to
ask this one question to a HubSpotter. What do you guys call
yourselves, anyway? A HubSpotter or…Sarah: Yes. A “HubSpotter.” That’s the correct terminology.Trent: Your company is a content-producing machine. How many staff
writers do you guys have?Sarah: We only have a handful on the content team. I have to say,
they’re all incredibly talented
writers. We have probably four or five on our blogging team and then
another three or four who produce our eBooks. It’s a fairly small
team, but they crank out a ton of content every single month.Trent: Do they ever, all right. That was a total side-distraction from
the interview, but I
wanted to find out anyways. Now, we’re going to talk about Twitter
marketing. First off, the first question is why? Why use Twitter to
generate leads?
Sarah: I think that a lot of people still think about Twitter in the
way that individuals use it for
social purposes. They think “No one needs to know what I’m doing right
now. And I don’t really care about what other people are doing. I
didn’t really need to know that you ate macaroni for dinner. Thanks a
lot.”
These are kind of the status update kinds of posts that many people
think of when they think of Twitter. But these people are actually
missing out, because Twitter is hugely valuable for businesses.
And much like the other popular social networks–Facebook, LinkedIn–
you can use Twitter to gain a following, to share messages, to connect
and communicate with your fans and your customers.
The beauty of Twitter compared to the other social networks is that
Tweets are, of course, limited to 140 characters each, meaning that
you have to keep your message concise. But you can also share more
updates, more often because this is the nature of the platform.
So, in a given day, you could easily tweet 20 or 30 times without your
followers so much as batting an eyelash. But if you try that on
Facebook, you’re pretty much bound to watch your fan count tick
downward, right?
Trent: Yeah. That would be an understatement.
Sarah: Yeah. The other thing is that Twitter is such a vibrant space.
It’s a real community.
People go to Twitter to learn more about their fields of interest.
They go to Twitter to learn about brands and find out what their
friends think about those brands and have to say about them.
Really, as a marketer, who wouldn’t want to be on Twitter? Who
wouldn’t want to be active in that space? So, I think it’s really an
absolute must for businesses these days to be there, to be on Twitter.
Trent: I want to echo that statement. I used to really think Twitter
was the dumbest invention
ever before I got it, before the light bulb went on. Because, again, I
didn’t want to know when you were eating your macaroni or what movie
you were watching.
I’m happy to say now that Twitter is my number one social referral
source. So, folks, if you’re listening to this and you haven’t yet
embraced Twitter and you think like I used to think, I encourage you
to keep on listening.
I think, by the end of this, my hope is that the light bulb will come
on for you and you’re going to start to use it.
If you’re going to make Twitter work, you also need to have a strong
content strategy. Because you can’t just be Tweeting nothing, you’ve
got to have something that you’re sharing. Can you talk about how
Twitter and the content strategy go together?
Sarah: Absolutely. Yeah, before you really dive into Twitter
advertising or, for that matter,
any sort of promotional campaign, you really need to figure out what
it is you’re going to promote. You have to have some sort of content
to feed your campaign. Like you said, you can’t just tweet nothing.
And so, as obvious as that may sound, a lot of marketers will really
skip right over this step and just sort of say “Oh, I need to be on
Facebook and I want to set up Twitter campaigns. And I should really
start writing those marketing e-mails.”
But they won’t sit down beforehand and map out the content that
they’re going to use in those campaigns. And that’s when things get
really difficult. Because when you get ahead of yourself like that,
your content really is the backbone of nearly every kind of marketing
campaign that you could possibly run.
And so, it’s so important that you sit down and really make that
effort in advance to figure out what it is you’re going to promote.
And also, the content that you choose to promote on a given platform
is likely going to determine your positioning, your copy, your
targeting, your audience. So, you need to have this part figured out
before you can even begin setting up your campaigns.
I won’t get into too much detail about what types of content you
should be using. Because that’s a whole other topic for another time.
But, basically, you want to figure out what the goal of your campaign
is and then choose content that supports that goal.
If your goal is to generate leads for your business like my goal is,
you’ll want to promote lead generation content. That is, content
that’s behind lead capture form. Whether that’s “Hey, we’ve got this
free eBook for you to download. In order to read it, we just ask that
you give us these few pieces of information about yourself.”
Or it may be “Fill out this form to sign up to join us on this webinar
that we’re hosting. Whatever it may be, you want to be capturing
information. You want to be capturing those leads through that
content.
But, conversely, if your objective is more branding and awareness-
focused, you’ll want to promote content about your business. Content
that conveys your brand message.
Or maybe your goal is actually to turn more of your followers into
customers. In which case, you’ll want to promote more content about
your product or your service. Maybe offer a free trial or demo.
Once you’ve identified your goal, you really want to focus in on
creating high-quality content pieces that you can use to help you
achieve that goal, help you get there.
Trent: Have you guys ever tested, done a split test with a piece of
lead gen content that is
behind an opt-in form? Versus just being freely available? I’ve read
some stuff and I’ve never tested this myself. And so, I’m very curious
if you have.
Some people, they land, they click the tweet, they get through to the
landing page and they’re like “Eh. I don’t want to fill in
information.” So, they don’t interact with that piece of content, they
never see it, they never see how good it is.
Whereas if the content was simply available, granted, you don’t get
their information, per se. But so, potentially, so many more people
could see the content because a person who sees that first tweet gets
the content. They interact with it, they think it’s great, they share
it and so on. Have you guys ever done any testing on that?
Sarah: Yeah, I mean, we definitely find that the longer your forms
are, the more friction there
is, right? People don’t want to spend the time to sit there and fill
out all of their information to give to you and people are also
skeptical of giving companies their information.
As little privacy as we all have these days, it’s still something that
makes people inherently uncomfortable.
We have found that the fewer form fields you use or even just taking
out the form entirely will tend to result in more submissions or more
downloads. But the trade-off is that, what you could do, conversely,
is create content that’s really, truly valuable to your readers.
That’s what we focus on here. Every single piece of content that we
put out, every blog post we write, we audit it for quality before it
goes out.
We make sure that this is something that people would be willing to
sit down and fill out a form in order to read. Our blog posts aren’t
gated but our eBooks, we really make sure that they’re enticing enough
and the content is legitimate and it’s valid, and it’s substantial
enough that people would take that time to go through the form process
in order to get it.
Then, of course, that helps our business because we need to be able to
feed our sales team at the same time.
Trent: You guys don’t happen to have an eBook that explains the
process that you go through
to reveal your eBooks before they get published, do you?
Sarah: You know, we actually have an eBook on how to create eBooks,
believe it or not.
Trent: Could you make sure you send me a link to that so I can include
it in the show notes of
this episode?
Sarah: Sure thing.
Trent: Thank you. All right, so, should you be running paid ads on top
of your organic efforts
on Twitter and if you are going to do that, how do you which one to
focus on?
Sarah: You always want to focus on organic promotion first. For no
other reason than the
obvious that that’s the free one. So, you want to make sure, first,
that you have a solid, organic Twitter strategy in place. That you
have a strong number of followers and that you’re regularly tweeting
valuable content to them.
You should already be working toward your goal, whether it’s lead gen
branding, what have you. You should already be working toward it from
an organic perspective before you consider starting with paid ads.
Then, once you have things running smoothly with your organic
strategy, if you have some budget to work with, paid advertising is
actually a really excellent way to supplement your efforts.
And note, that I chose my words very carefully there. You always want
to use paid advertising to supplement your organic efforts, not
replace them. And this is, of course, true across the board. Not just
with Twitter.
Trent: Okay. How do you go about getting started with paid ads? How do
you set up a
campaign?
Sarah: There are a couple things you need to figure out before you
dive in. So, like I
mentioned earlier, you want to start by deciding what your goal is.
Whether it’s lead gen, brand awareness, lead to customer conversion.
And then, once you have your goal nailed down, the second step is to
decide what type of campaign you want to run. If you’re looking to
increase brand awareness and gain more followers, you can run what’s
called a “promoted account” campaign. Which displays your account in
the “Who to follow” sidebar.
It also allows you to craft messaging about why people should follow
your brand, which is then displayed next to a “follow” button. You
might say something like “Looking to stay updated on the latest
marketing tips and trends? Follow HubSpot to stay in the loop.”
And then, that will appear right next to a “Follow” button so you can
follow the HubSpot account right from there.
Trent: And what did you call that again?
Sarah: That’s promoted accounts. So, that’s better for branding. But
if your goal is lead
generation or really, anything other than brand awareness, you’ll want
to run promoted tweet campaigns.
These put your tweets right in the feeds of the users that you’re
targeting. And if this is the option that you choose, then the next
thing you’re going to want to do is select the content that you’re
going to promote in those tweets. Make sure that the content aligns
with your goals, like we discussed before.
And then, the next step is to choose your targeting. So, this is where
things start to get a little bit complicated, but bear with me. So,
Twitter is actually really good as far as targeting goes. You have a
few different options.
One, is you can target based on keywords, which lets you target users
who search for or tweet about those keywords or engage with them in
some way.
This type of targeting is really great if you’re running an event, if
you’re doing event promotion or if you are running product-specific
campaigns because then you can really zone in on those keywords that
are relevant to that product that you’re promoting.
It’s also really good for going after folks with purchase intent. So,
if you’re looking to sort of narrow in and focus on those people who
are most likely to purchase from you, this is a great option for that
as well.
This option, going based on keywords, will usually give you a
narrower, but more focused and higher-quality audience.
Then, you can also choose to target by interests and followers. And
this option lets you search for interest categories to target. For
example, I can target anyone who’s interested in marketing or home
repair or French cuisine or whatever it is that is most relevant to
you. That’s the interest side of the equation.
And then, it also lets you input any Twitter usernames. And it’ll then
target users who look like those people’s followers. So, for example,
when I run campaigns with this type of targeting, I’ll put in a bunch
of usernames of people who are really well-known in the marketing
industry and have a lot of followers. It’ll find other Twitter users
like those people’s followers.
This option is much better for a less qualified, but much broader
audience. And then, on top of this, you can also target by location,
you can target by gender, you can target by device.
If you only want to reach people who are on desktop or only on mobile,
you can do that, too. To really have a ton of flexibility here to
build an audience based on the criteria that you care the most about.
Then, they also, just last month, actually, released a brand-new
targeting option called “Tailored Audiences,” which lets you directly
target your site visitors. And this option is really great for re-
targeting.
We did the beta testing when they first rolled this out to the beta
users. So, we’ve been in this for a few months now and we’ve been
collecting some data.
We found in our own efforts that our re-targeting campaigns have had
45 percent higher engagement than our regular promoted tweet
campaigns. So, if you’re looking to convert more of your existing
database into customers and sort of focus more on them, then Tailored
Audiences is a really great option to use here.
Trent: Let’s dive into that one a little deeper for a minute. So, I’ll
just use myself as the guinea
pig. I’ve got my 4,000 or so Twitter followers. When you talk about
the Tailored Audiences, am I tweeting more to the people that already
follow me? I’m not sure that I fully get it yet.
Sarah: You’re basically tweeting to the people who are in your
database or who have visited
your site. You could set it up to say “Anyone who has come to my
website, I want to capture them in this audience.” And then I want
them to be in this group of people to whom we’re displaying these
tweets.
Trent: When they come to my site, they’re going to get cookied. And
that cookie is then going
to trigger a re-targeting within their Twitter stream.
Sarah: Yes. So, it’ll build the audience for you. It’ll grab everybody
who has visited your site
and then, that will be the audience that you select for the targeting
purposes.
Trent: Okay, cool. I like that. All right.
Sarah: Just to wrap up here, to finish the building out your campaign,
really, the last thing
that you need to decide on is your budget. And I think this is where a
lot of marketers get stumped or concerned or nervous.
Everyone sort of asks “What’s the right amount to spend on paid
advertising” and “What’s the right amount to start off my campaign”?
The unfortunate fact of the matter is there really is no right amount.
It’s different for everyone, it’s different for every marketer, for
every budget, for every campaign. And if you’re really planning to
spend a lot, I don’t know exactly what the minimum is, but they’ll set
you up with a dedicated account rep who is going to help you on the
best ways to spend that money.
But otherwise, you’ll pretty much have to figure it out on your own.
But I promise, it’s really not as hard as it sounds. So, you want to
just decide how much you’re willing to spend on Twitter ads in a
month. And then break that down, you can divide it out by business
days if you want.
Try spending that much in a day and if it’s too little, if it’s not
working, you’re not seeing any results, you can condense that spend
into maybe a week or two. It’s much better to spend more at once and
see actual results than to drag out your spend in tiny increments.
So as you go, you’ll sort of start to get a feel for how much you need
to spend in order to make your campaigns effective. And that’ll help
you plan your spending going forward. Then, once you have all of this
mapped out, you just set your bids for the campaign. When you choose
your targeting criteria, it’ll give you a recommended bidding range.
I would say go for at least the average of that, if not higher. If you
have more to spend and you can be a little bit more free with your
money, then go ahead and set it maybe even a little bit above the
bidding range.
Once you choose your bid, I think you’ve pretty much filled out the
whole setup process. You just write those tweets and you can go ahead
and launch your campaigns.
Trent: If you had one landing page that was your number one lead
generator that you were
promoting, you could have any number of different tweets that would
all be linking back to that one landing page?
Sarah: Oh, absolutely, yeah. And I would actually recommend that. When
you’re building a
campaign, you want to have more than one tweet running in that
campaign. Because the interface that you’re looking at within the
Twitter ads platform will show you the number of impressions and the
click-through rates by each tweet individually.
You want to be testing more than one so you can figure out what kind
of language resonates the best with your followers and keep optimizing
from there.
Trent: Okay. All right, so far, it’s making sense. So, now, we’ve got
our ads. They’re up and
running. Obviously, they’re not as good yet as they could be. Do we
have to go through some kind of optimization? So, I’m sure you’ve got
some ideas you can share with us on that.
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of like what I was just saying. You
want to be trying different
things, have those different tweets, be looking at the metrics and see
what’s working. But sort of from a more macro perspective, you want to
keep an eye on these campaigns.
You don’t want to just set them up and let them run and leave them
unattended. You should really be constantly optimizing for your
overall metrics.
So, when you’re choosing what metrics to sell for, you want to align
those with your goals. So, if your goal is lead generation, you want
to be maximizing the number of leads that you generate and also,
minimizing your CPL or cost per lead. And so, these are the two main
metrics that I look at for our campaigns.
It’s also important to look at these metrics across all of your
campaigns, but also, on the individual campaign level. So that that
way, you can see which campaigns are performing well and which ones
are bringing down your averages.
What I do is I use a different tracking token in the links for each of
the campaigns I run, so I can see on a campaign level, which content
pieces are generating how many leads.
Since I’m also able to see how much I’m spending on each campaign
through Twitter, I’m able to very easily calculate the cost per lead
of each individual campaign. And then, if it’s too high and the
campaign is either not generating enough leads or costing too much,
then I’ll pause it and shift its budget over to a higher-performing
campaign.
You want to always be doing this and always be sort of optimizing for
the top performers of the bunch.
Trent: You mentioned the term “tracking token.” Is that using the
Google URL builder, or is
that something that is within the Twitter interface that allows you to
create that?
Sarah: It’s not within the Twitter interface. You can build your own
URL tracking token. I type
ours in myself. It’s fairly simple. You can usually just do little
question mark source equals and type it in. It depends on what sort of
analytics software you’re using to track it.
We use HubSpot. So, I know that I’m able to go into our reporting
tools and very easily see how everything breaks down. And we also run
Salesforce reports, so I’m able to sort of do the campaign by campaign
breakdown there, too.
Trent: Okay. Now, do you guys have any blog posts that you could link
me to that would
provide more information on the tracking tokens and campaign
optimization?
Sarah: Absolutely, sure.
Trent: Make sure that you get me those links, too, please.
Sarah: Okay, will do.
Trent: All right, what’s next on my list? What other tips do you have
for running an effective
Twitter campaign?
Sarah: In terms of the copy, I would say the biggest tip that I have
is don’t be too sales-y.
Your copy should always focused on providing value to your readers. As
is true, of course, in all marketing contacts, not just on Twitter.
But if your tweets come off as pushy and super product-focused, then
chances are, they’re really not going to get much engagement. You want
to really let your brand personality show through. And talk to your
followers as if they’re real human beings and not just leads in your
database.
Trent: So, have you got some phraseology examples that you could give
us? Is it a lot of how-
to-type [inaudible at 00:23:42]?
Sarah: Yeah. People like “How to,” people like “101 examples of
companies that are rocking
social media.” Any way that you can phrase it that very clearly
conveys the value to the readers. Whether it’s because it’s
interesting or because it is a how to or because it’s just very
relevant to them and their industry. You want to make sure that it’s
enticing content.
Trent: Okay. All right, where do I want to go here?
Sarah: So, other tips.
Trent: Yeah, let’s keep going with tips.
Sarah: Another tip would be to spice it up a bit. I think that text
can be great. But it can also get
kind of boring and can blend in with all the other tweets in your
users’ feeds. And we found that images work really well.
We’ve actually found that using images in tweets increases lead gen by
57 percent, which is huge. So, try some images, try some Vine videos.
It never hurts to give your brand some personality. People love that
stuff.
So, go for it. Try crazy things. Be enticing, be engaging. Be fun.
Trent: A Vine video. Can’t say I’m familiar with a Vine video. I’m
probably embarrassed to
say that, but what’s a Vine video?
Sarah: It’s quite all right. Vine is a six-second video platform. It’s
tied into Twitter, so you
can record a six-second video. And it also lets you break it up. I
think you can only do it on your iPhone. I’m also not 100 percent on
top of Vine, so we’re in the same boat there.
You can sort of hold your finger down and then let it go, so you can
break up the six seconds. It doesn’t have to be continuous. But
anyway, you can do very fun things and short videos and include those
in your tweets very easily. It’s sort of a quick way to entice people
to watch something.
Trent: Is Vine a platform that’s owned by Twitter?
Sarah: Yes, yes.
Trent: It is? Okay. All right, so when you’re up and running,
obviously you don’t want to just
keep doing the same thing over and over, because that always gets old.
What are some things that you guys have done which you didn’t
necessarily think you were surprised by the results? Surprised to the
upside. I’m looking for the examples of the best and most successful.
Sarah: Sure. So, like I said, the images were probably our most
surprising test. I had no idea
that they would increase lead gen by 57 percent. I mean, when that
stat came out, we had team meetings about it because it was just so
incredible. So, that was really exciting.
We also started doing promoted accounts recently. So, my main focus
has always been lead generation. So, we’ve pretty much strayed away
from the promoted accounts because that’s obviously focused on growing
your follower base.
I decided to give it a test recently and it’s actually been working
very well. We’ve been able to cut the amount that we have to spend to
gain a follower basically in half from what it used to be.
That’s been really effective as well and I would say that if you have
the budget for it, it’s definitely worth a test.
Trent: Hang on, I want to make sure I understood what you just said.
You decreased your cost
of adding followers by using promoted tweets instead of promoted
accounts?
Sarah: The other way around. So, promoted tweets are what we typically
use for our normal
campaigns. Those are sort of our lead gen tweets, if you will. It’s
where we share our content and we say “Oh, if you want to learn more
about how to use Facebook for marketing, you should download this
eBook.” With better copy, of course, but that’s the general idea.
Whereas promoted accounts, the idea there is that you are just trying
to get more people to follow your account. That’s what I was saying
before about “If you want to stay updated with the latest tips in the
industry, follow Hubspot and we’ll keep you posted on that stuff.”
More of that kind of thing.
So, what you’re paying for is essentially more follower acquisition.
Trent: What did you do that drastically cut the cost of follower
acquisition?
Sarah: Just starting to do that. I’m not actually sure what types of
efforts we were running
before. We may have done promoted accounts in the past before I was
managing this channel. But when I came back to my manager and I said
“Hey, this is the amount we’re paying to acquire a new follower,” he
said “Oh, wow. That’s half of what we used to do.”
So, I’m not sure exactly what we’re comparing apples to apples here.
But it’s been very effective. Not even comparing it, but even just
looking at the numbers as they stand by themselves. It’s been very
good.
Trent: Now, earlier in the interview, you talked about targeting with
keywords. Is there a
keyword research tool within the Twitter campaign builder at all so
that you can figure out search volumes for keywords?
Sarah: Yeah. So, if you enter in a keyword or a few keywords, there’s
a button that allows you
to find similar and related keywords. So, that’s really great for just
sort of thinking of those things that you haven’t thought of.
The other thing is, if you used AdWords, they have a really great
keyword recommendation tool. So, you can always look there. I’m sure
there are other sites that also will find similar keywords. But, yes.
They do have it built in right into Twitter.
Trent: Okay. All right, so let’s wrap up with my lightning round.
These are just a couple of
really quick questions. What’s the most recent business book that
you’ve read?
Sarah: Most recent business book that I read? Well, just this morning,
actually, I was
discussing “Blue Ocean Strategy”. And that is definitely a classic, I
would say, business book. I would definitely recommend that one.
Trent: What’s your favorite blog and you can’t say HubSpot.
Sarah: I can’t say HubSpot. What’s my favorite blog? You know, I
really like Seth Godin. He’s
one of our unsung heroes around here. Or maybe for you, I guess he’s a
sung hero. We definitely love Seth Godin around here and he writes
very short snippets, but they’re great. Very entertaining.
Trent: All right. And if people want to interact with you at all, how
do they do that?
Sarah: I’m on Twitter. @SarahBethGo and you can find me there. Or you
can find me on
my website, sarahgoliger.com.
Trent: All right. Sarah, thank you so much for making some time to
come on to the “Bright
Ideas” podcast and share some insight and tips on how we can all use
Twitter to generate more leads for our businesses. Much appreciated.
Sarah: Absolutely. It was my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
Trent: To get to the show notes for this episode, go to
brightideas.co/98. If you enjoyed the
episode, please also take a moment and go to brightideas.com/love
where you’ll find a link and a video to show you how to leave feedback
for this show in the iTunes store.
And if you take a moment to do that, you have my eternal thanks
because every time someone does, we get a little bit more exposure in
the iTunes store. That draws more listeners and then more listeners
get to benefit from hearing all of the bright ideas that are shared by
my guests here on the show.
That’s it for this episode. I am your host Trent Dyrsmid. Thank you so
much for tuning in. And I look forward to producing another episode
for you in the very near future. Take care.
About Sarah Goliger
Sarah Goliger is the Head of Paid Marketing at HubSpot. She is responsible for coordinating marketing campaigns with external vendors and running display and retargeting campaigns through both search and social networks with an ultimate goal of lead generation.
Previously, Sarah managed email marketing and lead nurturing for HubSpot’s mid-sized business segment. Sarah also offers individual email marketing consulting. You can learn more about Sarah on her website and connect with her on Twitter at @sarahbethgo.
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sarah-Goliger.jpg7202200Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-07 06:00:332020-09-18 05:59:31How to Leverage Twitter for Lead Generation with Sarah Goliger
When used properly, LinkedIn can be a very powerful tool for generating leads for your company.
Sadly, most people totally F**K this up.
What I’m about to show you has happened to me at least 100 times, and I have ignored the person who reached out to me every single time.
If you are doing what I’m about to show you, PLEASE STOP! People who use LinkedIn this way are ANNOYING the hell out of people and I don’t want you to be one of them.
Here’s the first offender:
Where in this email does it show that this person knows anything about me? Nowhere that I can see.
I do however, see the words “I” and “We” used too many times. And, to make matters even more offensive, this nitwit has attempted to use a scarcity tactic by saying that he can only take 5 calls a week. Seriously?
Here’s the second offender:
This one is slightly less awful than the prior one. I actually read the entire email, mostly because of the subject line; which made me think (until I read the email) that they were looking for my help.
At no point in this person’s email have they asked me anything about myself or what I might be most interested in. Instead, all she has done is include a link to a video that I am supposed to watch. Really? I don’t know who you are and you expect me to take time out of my day to watch your stupid video without knowing why or what’s in it for me.
Yeah…gonna get right on that just as soon as I finished cutting my grass with a pair of scissors.
Here’s the final offender (I’ve saved the best for last):
Clearly this person doesn’t know a bloody thing about me or my business.
Do I need help with cold calling? Holy crap! I’ve written about how cold calling is dead; I’m a content marketer and I don’t make cold calls.
If she’d taken a few minutes to read even the about page of my blog, that would have been painfully obvious.
After her pathetic attempt at an opening paragraph, the usual thing happens. It’s all about them. “We do this…” and “We can help you with that…” etc…
I don’t care what the hell you do! Why should I? Clearly, you don’t care enough about me to take 60 seconds to learn more about me before you pooped in my inbox.
Buzz off!!
Ok, rant over.
The Right Way to Connect with Others (Who Don’t Yet Know You)
Am I trying to say that you should never use LinkedIn to reach out to a stranger?
No. Definitely not.
What I am trying to say is that whenever you reach out to someone who doesn’t yet know you, if you make the first contact all about YOU, that will be the end of any chance you have of developing a relationship with that person.
The right way to connect with a stranger is to make it about THEM.
Wait. Go read that last sentence again.
It’s all about them….UNTIL, they become interested in YOU.
Only then can the conversation be about you and how you can help them.
Now that you get the concept, I want to show you an example of how to make it happen.
Cold Email Example
In this example, I’m going to assume that a stranger is reaching out to me because (ultimately) they want to sell me their stuff; which in this case, is software that will help me automate my content marketing efforts (pretty sneaky that I’m using content marketing software for my example, eh?).
——– start of email from Bob ——–
Subject: I loved your post about how content marketing changes everything!
Hey Trent,
I just finished reading your post title, “How Content Marketing Has Forever Changed How to Attract Clients and How You Can Take Advantage of This Shift” and I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed it! In fact, I thought it was so good that I’ve shared it on every social network that I use.
Got any other posts like this one?
Cheers, Bob
——– end of email from Bob ——–
What do you think is going to happen when I see Bob’s email?
Am I likely to ignore it? Uh…hell no.
Bob has stroked my ego…so naturally, I immediately like Bob!
Not only do I like Bob, but I’m going to reply to him…plus, the next time Bob emails me, I’m going to read it.
When I reply to Bob, I’m likely going to tell him thanks for sharing my stuff, supply him with links to a few other articles, and tell him to keep in touch.
The next move is Bob’s to make.
What Should Bob Do Next?
With just a single email, Bob has proven that he’s not a jerk, and he’s got in my good books.
What Bob hasn’t done is try to sell me anything.
So, if I was Bob, here’ s what I’d do next. When I get Trent’s reply, I’m going to reply to that reply like this….
——– start of email from Bob ——–
Subject: Re: I loved your post about how content marketing changes everything!
Hey Trent,
Thanks for the links you sent me. I really enjoyed both posts….especially the part about…x, y, and z. Awesome stuff.
Now that I’ve spent some time on your blog, I can see that you are super passionate about marketing automation. I can also see that you pump out a LOT of content.
How the heck do you produce so much? Do you have a bunch of people helping you? Do you have some systems or automation that helps you to get so much done?
Cheers, Bob
——– end of email from Bob ——–
See what Bob is doing? He’s not yet tried to sell me his software. Instead, he (smartly) is asking me questions about my business processes.
Why is he doing that? Well, the first reason is to build rapport with me. The second reason is because he’s probing for pain.
If Bob shows interest in me, I’m going to like him…and how do you treat people you like? Nicely!
Not only that, but when you like someone, you are going to be more honest with them.
Now that I like Bob and he’s showing interest in my business, he’s earning the right to direct the conversation where he wants/needs it to go if he’s to make a sale at some point.
When to Talk About Your Stuff
So, when should Bob start talking about how his products might help me?
Not before he’s figured out if I have a problem that his products can solve, that’s when!
Remember Bob’s last email to me? He asked me how I pump out so much content. He might also have asked me if I have clients that I product content for (sidebar: if you need that service, let me know), because if I did, I’d likely need his software even more. (second sidebar: if you produce content for your clients, check out my software).
In my next reply to Bob, I would have told him what he wanted to know. I would have told him that it does indeed take a lot of work to produce this volume of content. I would have told him that I also do it for clients.
Knowing this about me, Bob now has a qualified lead for his software, and in his next reply, he could very easily ask me if I’d like to learn more about how his software might be able to help me out.
Or…even better, if Bob had a case study or article about his software, he’d send me that content first with a little note like:
“Hey Trent, given what we’ve been talking about, I have an article or two that I think you’d like to read. Mind if I send them to you?”
Damn, Bob is smart!
Rather than just send me his links, he’s asked for my permission first! (this is why we call it “permission marketing”)
Obviously, when I reply to Bob, I’m going to say yes…and in doing so, I kind of owe it to Bob to actually ready what he sends me.
Let’s Recap What We’ve Learned
Never send someone a cold email that, more or less, says “Buy my stuff!” Doing so is a dick move. Don’t be a dick.
Always make your first contact all about the other person because doing so will be well received and they will like you for it.
Be sure and share their work and tell them you did so. They will like you even more.
Engage in an actual conversation that is about them first until it’s time for it to be about you.
ONLY make the conversation about you if they need what you sell (and you’ve done enough digging to have a very good idea this is likely the case).
Ask their permission to send them information about your stuff before you send it. That way they are much more likely to pay attention to what you’ve sent them.
After you send them information about your stuff, it is totally acceptable to follow up with them to ask their opinion of what they saw. If they had a good opinion, ask them to take another step.
Voila…B2B selling that feels good.
Why everyone doesn’t do this is beyond me.
What To Do Next
If you sell B2B and are having trouble getting your foot in the door, check out my Best Buyer Formula. It is stuffed full of ideas that I have used for my entire career and I have sold tens of millions of dollars worth of products and services to small businesses – using the exact techniques in course.
If you want to really set yourself apart from your competition, you need to integrate content with your sales efforts. If you need help with content marketing, I’ve written a book about it.
If you’d like to grab both products (bless your heart), I’m going to give you a big “I love you” discount!
To get both products, and the 50% discount, you will need to use this order form. (Note: if you want to read the sales pages first, use the links above, but place your order via this link.)
PLEASE NOTE: You must use the following promo code: DMH3BBF.
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https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/dumbanddumber.jpg388690Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-06 16:14:392015-12-07 20:08:29The Dumbest LinkedIn Mistake I See Over and Over Again
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