Welcome to my March Traffic Report. To see February’s report, click here.
Traffic generation is a challenge faced by every entrepreneur, at Bright Ideas we’ve made a habit of publishing our traffic reports as a means of giving insight into how we are doing, what is working, and what isn’t. Additionally, writing the report forces me to look! If you think this is helpful, please be sure and share this post.
The data we look at for our traffic report helps us to answer what we want to know most each month.
When you are doing your own analysis, be sure you start with your own top questions. Ours include:
Is overall traffic up or down? Why?
Are overall subscribers up or down? Why?
Which traffic/referral sources are contributing the most to traffic and subscribers?
How can we adjust our strategy to increase traffic and subscribers?
Here’s what I found for March…
Traffic
Mar 2014 Traffic
As you can see, our traffic was significantly higher in March than in February (13,429 vs 7,351). However, pages viewed and visit duration were down, and bounce rate was up.
This makes sense, given that we received almost 2,000 visits as a result of one of our posts (The Dumbest LinkedIn Mistake I See Over and Over Again) going viral on StumbleUpon, which is one of the sites we use to promote our content. The StumbleUpon traffic had a very high bounce rate, and most visitors spent very little time on the site, likely because most of the visitors from StumbleUpon weren’t a good fit with our audience.
We also received some additional traffic due to an Infusionsoft webinar we hosted on March 11, since Infusionsoft sent some of their leads to our site during the week leading up to and including the 11th.
However, most of the additional traffic was almost certainly due to an increased podcast production schedule that we implemented in March. In March, we went from approximately 1 podcast post and 2 text-based posts per week to approximately 5 podcast posts and 2 text posts. The additional content led to more reasons to visit the site, as well as more content promotion and social sharing.
For the month of April, we have shifted down to 3 podcasts per week, so that we have an opportunity to focus on our Groove Digital Marketing agency activities.
Conclusion #1: Overall traffic was up significantly from February, due to significantly increased podcast production and also to one post ‘going viral’.
Subscribers
Mar 2014 Opt Ins
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I believe the conversions in Google Analytics are a rough estimate of actual conversions (opt-ins), and should be only loosely considered. According to GA, conversions in March were at 302 compared to 107 in February. These don’t agree precisely with my more reliable subscriber numbers from Infusionsoft, but are within 10-20% and are good enough to indicate trends.
Clearly, our additional traffic led to additional opt ins. We had also run a split test in February on an alternate main landing page header, and it didn’t convert as well as our original header. So in March, we returned to using the original header.
We created a new Infusionsoft-specific landing page prior to our March 11th Infusionsoft webinar. We received a significant number of opt ins from people who visited this page (according to GA, 94). This makes sense since people who are interested in Infusionsoft are more likely to be a good fit with our target audience. A number of these were associated with the webinar promotion, and others were as a result of an Infusionsoft Google PPC advertising campaign that we ran.
We received significantly more opt ins as a result of emails that we sent announcing posts (82 vs 3). This is one area where again I’m not sure I trust GA, since most of these folks should have been subscribers already, but it’s also very likely that there were more emails forwarded to people who then subscribed. We actually sent the same number of these types of emails in February and March, so I’ll attribute this more to the nature of the popularity of our March posts (the LinkedIn and marketing agency posts I mentioned above, as well as a post updating you on our agency activities).
Here are some other highlights with respect to opt ins:
Our opt ins as a result of Google organic traffic increased almost 3x (20 vs 7). We actually had slightly fewer, shorter organic visits on average, although this was not statistically significant. Unfortunately with keyword “not provided”, it’s difficult to analyze and the reason for the increased opt ins is unclear. It’s possible that it’s as simple as the return to our original landing page header.
Our opt ins that could be tracked directly from social networks and syndication increased 5x (26 vs 5).
Conclusion #2: Overall subscribers were up significantly in March, due to increased traffic, and targeted traffic as well.
Referral Sources
Here’s where Google Analytics showed my traffic coming from:
Mar 2014 Traffic Sources
Once again, the largest portion of my traffic is from people typing in the URL directly. This is followed by our emails to our list, and in this case StumbleUpon was a larger referrer than Twitter.
As far as other social referrals, as it has been in the past, Twitter is our major source of referral traffic, followed by LinkedIn and Facebook.
Conclusion #3: In March, we received a significant amount of traffic from StumleUpon. Other than that, our major sources of traffic (and conversions) continue to be the major social sites (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook).
Other Metrics
In addition to looking at traffic and subscribers on a monthly basis, you want to be sure you’re periodically looking at your pages viewed, landing page conversions, and SEO acquisition reports.
In March, the first two of these were unremarkable, but there was something interesting (if not especially remarkable) in the SEO reports.
SEO & Acquisition Reports
Google has definitely made it more difficult to see which keywords you are ranking for (instead giving the unhelpful “not provided” result). However, you can still look at acquisition reports both in terms of queries and landing pages, and for your top queries, make some educated guesses about which landing pages your keywords are taking people to.
In March, Google did show that we ranked for “how to start a business for under 100,000 dollars”.. again, Google makes it a little difficult to know for sure, but it appears that this search led folks to the somewhat unrelated podcast on how to launch a podcast and get 100,000 downloads a month.
That’s a little unfortunate, since I do believe that a marketing agency is a great business to start, for those with under $100,000 to invest (and with some marketing knowledge, of course).
Since writing a post about how I’m planning to grow my agency, Groove Digital Marketing, into my next 7 figure success story, the feedback I’ve received from readers has been very positive.
Thank you to those of you who shared the post, commented on it, or emailed me directly. Your feedback was very encouraging.
In today’s post, as promised, I’m going to give you a look over my shoulder for the past week and share with you what I did, as well as the results that I achieved. If you missed last week’s post, you can find it here.
As always, my hope is that my transparency with you can be the fuel you need to achieve similar results in your own business.
Sound good? Here we go!
Key Activities in the Week of March 24, 2014
During the week of March 24th, I worked on the following things:
I asked our writing team to write 5 blog posts
Did a Content Marketing Blueprint discovery call with our new client
Did a scoping call with three prospective clients (suspects)
Wrote a proposal for a qualified prospect
Wrote a white paper for the middle of our funnel (MOFU)
Asked my designer to create a cover page for the white paper
Asked my designer to create a Call-to-Action image for the white paper
Asked my designer to create some podcast cover art
Had one of our virtual assistants create a list of of suspect companies for outreach
Tested our top of funnel (TOFU) automated workflows
Created MOFU automated workflows
Connected Hubspot to Infusionsoft using Zapier
Created several automated campaigns for managing new prospects
Published several more middle of funnel posts to the blog
Now that you’ve seen, at a high level, what the key activities were, let’s dive into some details.
As I mentioned in last week’s post, I will not be the one writing the posts for Groove.
Instead, I am treating Groove’s blog exactly like I’ll be treating all of Groove’s client’s blogs. This means that the writers that will be writing our own content will be the exact same team of writers that are producing content for our clients.
There are two reasons I’m doing this:
I believe in drinking my own kool-aid (what’s good for me is good for my clients)
Working “in” the business is not how a CEO should spend their time
I’m not saying that I will ‘never’ write a post for Groove, but I am saying that 90% or more of them will be written by people other than me.
One of the most common objections I hear from people when it comes to not writing their own content is that they fear that no one else can write as good as they can.
Really?
Do you think Hubspot’s blog publishes articles from the company’s founders? Hardly.
Instead, Hubspot publishes content from a team of staff writers and other Hubspot partners. Given that Hubspot’s blog is one of the most popular blogs on the web (and the company has gone from $20M to $100M in the last 2.5 years), I think that their success is ample evidence that working with writers works just fine…SO LONG as you give them enough guidance.
What is enough guidance, you ask? Well, for us, it looks like this:
We provide them with a detailed post outline that includes the main key points that we want them to write about
We provide them with instructions detailed enough to ensure that the first draft is 90% of what we’ll need to publish to our client’s site
Did a Content Marketing Blueprint Discovery Call with Our New Client
I mentioned last week that we signed our first client. This week, I spent an hour on the phone with them to help them get started with the detailed questionnaire that we use to create their Content Marketing Blueprint.
The Blueprint plays an absolutely critical role in the content marketing process, and the feedback from our client was terrific.
Prior to the call, I warned them that the questions that I was going to ask them were not going to be easy to answer, and that they should expect to involve several members of their team.
At the 40 minute mark of the call, they told me that, while difficult, they were absolutely loving how our questionnaire was really forcing them to think about who their customer really is and what problems they needed to address.
Scoping Calls With Prospective Clients
At the end of the day, everything that I’m doing from a marketing perspective has a single goal: give me the opportunity to do discovery calls with qualified leads.
When you end up talking to someone who already knows they need what you do, and they have already been exposed to your (high quality) content, the chances of your converting these prospects into clients is actually quite high – assuming they can afford what you do, and have the authority to say yes.
Of the 19 leads we generated from Groove’s site, 3 turned out to be qualified enough for a scoping call.
What is a scoping call? We talk to them to find out if there is a need for what we do, and to see if they would be qualified (budget, authority, need, timeline) to work with us.
Wrote a White Paper for the Middle of Funnel (MOFU)
When we created our own Content Marketing Blueprint, one of the things that was designed was our MOFU offer. Generally, a MOFU offer is a white paper or webinar that provides more detailed information about your specific service, what its like to work with you, etc…
The middle of the funnel (MOFU) is shown as the Consideration Stage. This is where prospects begin to become interested in learning about the specifics of how your company could help them.
Think of this white paper as a very detailed brochure that is only sent to prospects who’ve requested it. This is one of the ways we filter our qualified leads from those who are just looking for free information.
Generally speaking, this white paper is about 2,000 words long and rich with images. The goal of the white paper is to convert a marketing qualified prospect (that’s a term we use to describe a MOFU lead) into a sales qualified prospect. Once they become sales qualified, it’s time to talk to them one to one; which for us, is the scoping call.
Created MOFU Automated Workflows
The workflows for the middle of the funnel are much the same as the ones for the top of the funnel that I created last week. Each workflow is triggered when someone downloads a report, and then a sequence of actions and emails are triggered. The goal is to get the marketing qualified lead to continue on down the funnel to become sales qualified.
Created a Target 100 List of Suspects
While I absolutely love content marketing, I’m the first to admit that achieving success from content marketing alone takes time. To help speed things up, I recommend you combine your content marketing with very targeted outreach.
The importance of targeting a profitable market cannot be understated
To make this happen, I instructed one of our virtual assistant’s (VAs) to build us a spreadsheet containing 100 companies that met the criteria for revenue and industry. This first list contains one industry and companies doing $10M to $25M a year in sales.
With this list in place, the same VA will now be doing cold emails to this list in a very specific way (I describe this in detail in my course, The Best Buyer Formula). We’ll also be making extensive use of our TOFU content to support these emails.
Next week, I’ll be having her build several more industry specific lists and repeating the process so we can begin to collect data on the responsiveness of various niches that we believe are a fit for our services.
Connecting Hubspot to Infusionsoft
When I announced that I’ve chosen Hubspot as the software for Groove, several long-time readers wrote to me to ask why I was “switching from Infusionsoft to Hubspot”?
Given that I never said anything about my switching from Infusionsoft to Hubspot, I was rather surprised at the number of questions I got.
So, with that in mind, let me be clear: I have added Hubspot and still use Infusionsoft.
The reason for using both is simple; aside from email marketing, there is almost no overlap between the two apps. Hubspot is awesome for content marketing and I’m using it to help attract prospects. Infusionsoft, while extremely good at the email marketing part, sucks at content marketing because it wasn’t built for it. In fact, there are zero features for content marketing.
Where Infusionsoft shines is that, in addition to killer email marketing, it also gives me a CRM and eCommerce engine, and I need both of them.
Think of it this way: I use Hubspot to help me to create epic inbound marketing campaigns to attract traffic and leads. I also use it to help me nurture those leads from being just ‘information qualified’ to ‘sales qualified’. Once they are sales qualified, they are copied over to Infusionsoft and then we manage the relationship in Infusionsoft from that point forward.
Of the 4 discovery calls that I did two weeks ago, thus far, one has become a client and gone ahead and purchased a Content Marketing Blueprint for $2,000. The remaining 3 have the payment link in their inbox and I am waiting for them to proceed.
Last week, I left a voice mail for each of the three. One never called back, so they are no longer a prospect and are now ‘demoted’ to ‘suspect’ again and will continue to receive an email per week that is educational in nature.
Another called back and said that budget was going to be an issue and so they needed to delay. They will also be getting an educational ‘drip’ email per week.
The third called back and said that they had every intent to proceed; however, as he (the CEO who called me) had not yet received anything in writing from me (like a proposal), he didn’t have anything to share with his management team to build consensus to proceed.
I sent him the proposal on Thursday and hope to get a commitment to proceed this week.
I should point out that I’m not a really big fan of proposals; however, in some situations, they are a required part of the deal.
If you liked this post, and want future updates on our progress with how to launch a marketing agency, just click the image below. If you’d like to get even more help and surround yourself with other agency owners, be sure and check out the Bright Ideas Mastermind Elite, which is my mastermind group for entrepreneurs running marketing agencies.
[xyz-ihs snippet=”BuildGroove”]
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/groove-weekly-update-post-header.jpg281686Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-04-01 13:09:082015-12-07 20:08:40Groove Digital Marketing Agency: Key Activities and Results for Week of March 24th
Since writing a post about how I’m planning to grow my agency, Groove Digital Marketing, into my next 7 figure success story, the feedback I’ve received from readers has been very positive.
Thank you to those of you who shared the post, commented on it, or emailed me directly. Your feedback was very encouraging.
In today’s post, as promised, I’m going to give you a look over my shoulder for the past week and share with you what I did, as well as the results that I achieved.
As always, my hope is that my transparency with you can be the fuel you need to achieve similar results in your own business.
Sound good? Here we go!
Key Activities in the Week of March 17, 2014
During the week of March 17th, I worked on the following things:
Had my designer rebrand our new Top of Funnel (TOFU) lead magnet. This is a report called “25 Website ‘Must Haves’ for Driving Traffic, Leads, and Sales”
Had my designer create a call to action for the bottom of each blog post that is a part of the first inbound campaign
Created the back end automation in Hubspot (emails and the blog posts they link to) so that when a new lead downloads this report, they receive a series of 3 emails to help them move towards the Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)
Published 3 blog posts that these 3 emails will link to
Did 4 discovery calls with prospective clients
Signed one new client
Now that you’ve seen, at a high level, what the key activities were, let’s dive into some details.
If you are going to succeed with content marketing, you’d better have a pretty solid game plan. Just banging out blog posts without a strategy in mind isn’t going to get you the results you’re after. Trust me on this one.
The goal of the blueprint is to force you to really think about who your ideal buyer persona is, what their problems are, and how your solutions can help them to solve their problems.
Once you have gone through this process, the next step is to come up with 3 campaigns that can be executed over 90 days. Each campaign covers one topic, has 8 blogs posts, and is published over 30 days.
All 8 blog posts have a call to action that sends visitors to a landing page where the campaigns lead magnet (ebook) can be downloaded.
When the download happens, a lead is captured and then the automated follow up emails start to go out. The goal is to have your new lead move down through your funnel and transition from being an ‘information qualified lead’ to a ‘marketing qualified lead’, and then, ultimately to a ‘sales qualified lead’.
The Lead Magnet for Inbound Campaign #1
The first lead magnet is a free report will serve our first inbound marketing campaign, which will consists of 8 blog posts published at a rate of two per week over a 30 day period.
I will not be writing these posts. Instead, I have created a detailed set of instructions and will be outsourcing this task to contract writers.
Why use contract writers? Simple. As the CEO, my job is to work ‘on’ the business, not ‘in’ it. If I’m to build a company that can one day be sold for over $1,000,000 (like my last one), I cannot be the one to handle ANY of the day to day operations.
The Call to Action for Lead Magnet #1
Within Hubspot, there is something called a Call-To-Action.
Essentially, it’s a way to create a button that will be clicked to take someone to a webpage where a lead can be captured.
Rather than use just a button at the bottom of the post, I’m going to be using Hubspot’s Call-to-Action feature so that I can get analytics on how many times the button is shown and how many times its clicked. As you might guess, I want detailed analytics on what is (and isn’t) working so that I can continually improve conversion rates.
To ensure that the Call-to-Action stands out, I had my designer create a professional looking image for me that I just uploaded into the Hubspot software.
Create The Back End Automation in Hubspot
On of the things I really like about Hubspot is their Inbound Campaign planning tool.
By using this tool, it’s pretty hard to forget anything. Plus, as my campaign is running, I can collect all sorts of data on how my content and offers are converting. Plus, at the end of the campaign, I will be able to see how my campaign did against the goals I set for it, as well as if the campaign achieved a positive ROI or not.
Below is a screenshot of our first campaign. The campaign is not yet live, but notice how detailed this screen is. It’s literally a checklist for everything you need to do to run a successful campaign.
In future posts, I will be sharing the results of this campaign, so be sure and become a subscriber if you want updates sent to you.
Published 3 Blog Posts to Nurture My Leads
The goal of capturing a lead is to convert them to a customer. To help my leads to move along through my funnel, I need to answer questions and concerns long before a sales conversation every takes place.
When we did our blueprint and defined our persona, we also determined what some of these concerns might be. In our case, they were:
How do I know that content marketing will work?
How do I get started?
What results can I expect?
The three follow up emails that a new lead receives address these issues and then point readers to the appropriate ‘middle of funnel’ blog post.
The posts we published to address these concerns are:
At the end of the day, everything that I’m doing from a marketing perspective has a single goal: give me the opportunity to do discovery calls with qualified leads.
When you end up talking to someone who already knows they need what you do, and they have already been exposed to your (high quality) content, the chances of your converting these prospects into clients is actually quite high – assuming they can afford what you do, and have the authority to say yes.
My Results for the Week
Of the 4 discovery calls that I did last week, thus far, one has become a client and gone ahead and purchased a Content Marketing Blueprint for $2,000. The remaining 3 have the payment link in their inbox and I am waiting for them to proceed.
Two of these calls were done on Friday, so it’s quite possible that payments will be received at some point today or tomorrow (if they do, I will update this post).
The Content Marketing Blueprint is the first step of a new client engagement. Once this step has been done, my client has a solid game plan for their first 90 days of content marketing.
If we both liked working together on the Blueprint, the next step is for my team to set up their Hubspot account (we call this ‘building the engine’) so that all the inbound campaign items I showed you in the screenshot above (except the blog posts) is done. If they want us to, we will also create the three premium reports for them for an additional charge.
At the conclusion of step two, the next (final) step is for my clients to put Groove on retainer to create the blog posts for them. We’ll also advise them on how to promote their content on their social media accounts.
If you liked this post, and want future updates on our progress with how to launch a marketing agency, just click the image below. If you’d like to get even more help and surround yourself with other agency owners, be sure and check out the Bright Ideas Mastermind Elite, which is my mastermind group for entrepreneurs running marketing agencies.
[xyz-ihs snippet=”BuildGroove”]
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/groove-weekly-update-post-header.jpg281686Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-24 10:55:142015-12-07 20:08:40Groove Digital Marketing Agency: Key Activities and Results for Week of March 17th
Note: This post has been updated since it was originally published on March 17, 2014. You can also listen to me explain my 2 year plan here.
If there is one word that is most often used to describe ultra-successful entrepreneurs, it’s focus.
When you have it, you get results.
When you don’t, you’re just busy.
Ever since last month’s dismal earnings report, I have been deep in thought about the business that I’m trying to build and the results needed to get me there.
As I’ve thought more and more about my businesses, my products, and how I’ve been spending my time, I’ve come to the realization that how I’ve been allocating my time (and the actions that I’m taking) are not exactly what I need to be doing to achieve the results that I’m after.
In other words, I’ve not been focused on the right things.
Begin With The End in Mind
To help me work my way through my challenge, my wife and I decided to begin by creating a vision board for what we want our life to look like. At the time of this writing, the board is not yet complete; however, I can tell you about a few of our ‘must haves’ and ‘nice to haves’.
Before I do, I want to emphasize that the reason that I’m going to share this is not to boast about what we want to accomplish. Instead, my motivation for sharing some of our goals is purely to (hopefully) inspire you to take this same step in your own business/life planning process. So, with that said…
Must Haves
Come Up With Plan and Work Towards It
With respect to the business, which will obviously have a large impact on our lifestyle, our list of must have’s includes the following:
We must add massive value to our clients and customers, so that they remain highly engaged and reliant on us for a long period of time
A recurring billing revenue model, so that we can build a business that can one day be sold for a large sum, and gives us highly predictable revenue for as long as we own it
The business is location independent so that we can live anywhere we like without restricting our level of income
Products and services that we are passionate about with a very long shelf life so that we can build a business that will last for the long term
The potential to achieve a 7 figure revenue stream with gross margins of at least 60% so that our net profit margin will exceed 20% of total revenue
A suite of products and services that are very scalable so that we can build systems and train employees to use those systems to run day to day operations
Products and services that are paid for in advance so that we never have to deal with unpaid receivables and a negative cash flow cycle
The opportunity to work with interesting people so that the business always remains fun to be a part of
Nice To Haves
While not critical to my happiness, below are a few of the things that would be very nice to have in my business:
Invitations to speak and consult that are close enough for me to fly my own plane to (I have a pilot’s license) rather than hop on an airline
A mastermind group comprised of people running $10M (or larger) companies so that I can organize retreats to some really amazing places, and be paid to travel there
A few clients that are paying me enough each year that I can afford to take them to Miller Motorsports Park for a fun-filled day of racing around the track in some really fast cars
One of the biggest reasons that I chose to become an entrepreneur is so that I can design a lifestyle of my choosing. What motivates you? Please tell me in the comments below.
Make a List of Short Term Challenges
In 2013, Bright Ideas earned a six figure income from information products and consulting work. The revenue from information products came primarily from two major product launches and the consulting revenue came from consulting engagements with Bright Ideas readers who wanted to use Infusionsoft in their business.
Given that we hit $127,000 in our first year of monetization, our results were OK (but not incredible). To repeat this level of income in 2014, we either need more consulting clients, or I need to write more books and launch more products.
The problem with product launches is that, in my opinion, they are not a sustainable business model. Worse that than, however, is that a product launch is a massive amount of work and pretty stressful (what if it flops?).
Because of this, I’m not terribly interested in building a business dependent on product launches, and as such, I’m going to need to do more consulting work with clients.
The problem that I’m faced with is that, up to now, attracting consulting clients hasn’t really been my focus. Sure, I’ve mentioned Infusionsoft (see…I did it again!) on my blog many times; however, thus far, consulting engagements for this type of client have been limited to $5,000 or less, and worse, the revenue has all been one-time revenue, as opposed to recurring revenue.
Boo.
If I’m to hit my goal of at least $250,000 in revenue in 2014, I’m going to need to offer something much different that I’m offering today, as well as to offer it to a type of business that doesn’t (yet) even know that I exists.
The Bright Ideas business (everything I sell, except consulting) will probably generate between $30,000 to $40,000 worth of sales in 2014 without my doing much other than blogging and running my mastermind group. The rest of the income is going to have to be generated by my agency, Groove Digital Marketing. I suspect the numbers will be about the same split in 2015.
As I plan to look back on this post in two years to see how I’ve done, here’s a quick summary of the goals for each of my businesses:
Groove Digital Marketing
Within two years from today, Groove will have become a $500K company with a 20% net margin. This business will have embraced the “built to sell” methodology and every part of this business will have been systematized and delegated to a member of the team.
Virtually all revenue will be from retainer income. The value of this asset will be equal to 5X earnings IF I am not needed to run the day to day operations of the company.
This is pretty much what I did while running my last company, Dyrand Systems. In year two, I think we did just shy of $500K; about half of which was recurring revenue. By 2008, we were doing just under $2M and I sold it for $1.2M :)
I Plan to See This Company Become the Beacon for Groove
Bright Ideas
Bright Ideas will be the platform where I talk about what we are doing to build Groove. The content produced will be of interest to other agencies and entrepreneurs in general. Revenue will be $500K.
I came up with these numbers after a talk with a guy I really respect. His business has the exact same model as Bright Ideas (we create high value free content to generate traffic, and then monetize that traffic with info products, affiliate income, and our mastermind groups.
Like me, he also has a services division that does work for his clients – though his service business caters more to other information marketers, as opposed to the type of clients that I will pursue with Groove.
When I found out that his business did $2.5 million (with a net profit margin of 50%!) in the last year, I was pretty stoked, to say the least. As I couldn’t wrap my mind around hitting that figure within 2 years, I thought $500K would be something that was more believable; especially if my success with Groove gives me the street cred to attract more mastermind members at a higher price point than I charge now (his pay $18,000/year and he’s got 40 of them).
Make a Plan to Get From Here to There
If I Don’t Set My Goals How Will I Know Where to Go?
Below is a short summary of my plans for Groove and Bright Ideas.
Groove Digital Marketing
Effective immediately, my primary focus will shift to growing Groove into a 7-figure business, and to do that, my plan is to offer content marketing services to businesses that can get an ROI on a monthly retainer of $3,000/month or more.
In hindsight, this is a decision that I should have made a year ago; however, there are two reasons why this didn’t happen.
Reason #1: My last business was really hard to grow. We were an outsourced IT department for small businesses and our clients paid us a monthly retainer for this.
The reasons it was so hard to grow were twofold: first, no one really wants to pay for IT support, and second, due to the nature of our business, attracting larger clients was incredibly difficult because selling to companies with one full-time IT manager involved a massive amount of politics (they feared for their jobs).
As a results of this experience, up to just recently, I swore I would never get into another services business as my primary means of income.
Reason #2: Thanks to my podcast, I have had the opportunity to interview quite a number of inbound marketing agency owners, and they have all been having quite a bit of success.
Unlike IT services, marketing services is something that CEOs want to buy because they know that effective marketing will help them to increase profits. And, thanks to my understanding of how to create documented processes and outsourcing, I am extremely confident that providing content marketing services can be treated as a scalable ‘product’ business in ways that offering IT support could never do.
With a scalable product offering, we should be able to grow faster! (assuming my sales engines is optimized, of course)
Sidebar: If you haven’t yet checked out my podcast, you should. The amount of free training in provided by my podcast exponentially exceeds what I have created in my paid products.
Know Who to Target and How
The Niches We’ll Target
Initially, we are going to focus on two niches: financial services and industrial manufacturers. By specializing, the goal is to:
Decrease direct competition from generalists
Increase our ability to charge premium pricing
Increase the likelihood of referrals
Have fewer places we need to advertise
Create more compelling offers and lead magnets
Develop high levels of industry specific expertise
The reason for the financial services niche is that I spent my first career in that niche so I have a better than average understanding of it. In addition, profits margins in financial services tend to be quite good and there are plenty of companies in the $10-50M range to target.
The reason for the industrial manufacturing niche is that they sell very high ticket items and aren’t generally known to be very good marketers. For this reason, I believe that we will be able to charge premium prices for premium quality content marketing. I have also interviewed several CEOs in this space and they have confirmed my assumptions.
Contact existing Hubspot users who might not be getting the ROI there were hoping for
Perform Seek and Assist on LinkedIn
Buy Facebook Ads to promote webinars and other lead magnets
Speak at Vistage (I’ve just become an “approved” speaker, thanks to an introduction made by a past guest on my show)
Use dimensional direct mail + content to pursue my “Target 100” list of ideal prospects.
*as a result of a recent interview, I discovered the content marketers blueprint and how it ties into Hubspot. Suffice to say, I was blown away by what I saw. Infusionsoft is awesome for information marketers, people who want/need ecommerce, and people who want just one system to use ; however, as I’ve just recently discovered, Hubspot is ‘the shiz’ for content marketers looking for detailed analytics on what is working. Look for future posts on this.
Required Resources
In order to achieve the maximum benefit from the CMB, we have purchased Hubspot at a cost of $800/month. This is a significant investment; however, I cannot credibly sell content marketing in the way that I plan to without using the same tools myself.
The Groove Website needs a facelift which will cost $500 and a day or two of my time (this is actually done already).
Initially, my role will see me working “in” the business, and as cash flow allows, I will hire more employees to take over my day to day roles, thereby allowing me to transition to working “on” the business almost exclusively. With the time I free up by working “on” and not “in” the business, I will be able to invest time into building Bright Ideas into a much more successful business than it is today.
Bright Ideas
James Schramko has proven that a personal blog can be built into a 7 figure business and the key driver to achieving this result is the production of very high quality, helpful content.
Many others (including me) have proven that providing incredibly helpful content for free creates a highly engaged audience and a very large mailing list.
Given that our near term monetization plan is focused on Groove, aside from creating content, Bright Ideas needn’t consume as much time as it has in the past.
More advanced funnels, product launches, etc, are all items that, given the current size of my list and volume of traffic, don’t offer a high enough ROI to warrant the time investment required.
Given that Bright Ideas content will be centered around sharing the story of how I’m building Groove (the stories of other enterpreneurs’ successes will continue to be shared via the podcast) into a 7 figure business, I suspect that the audience demographic will shift more towards agency owners and consultants as time goes by.
To ensure that new visitors are clear about who Bright Ideas is for and what they will learn, I am going to make some changes to the lead magnet on my home page.
Currently, the home page looks like this:
Yesterday, I sent my designer the following mockup and asked her to create something attractive.
With this type of lead magnet, I don’t need to create a new course (this would take time). Instead, all I need to produce is one blog post per week to detail my progress. The post could be as simple as what I did that week and the results I achieved.
More importantly, by offering this type of “look over my shoulder” content, I expect that I will also attract the type of reader I most want to have and this will likely generate more leads for the mastermind group.
In the near term, the only monetization system that needs to be built is a new version of my resources page that I’ve started referring to in recent podcast recordings (these recordings will start to air in a few weeks).
Assess the Time Required to Execute The Plan
No plan is worth the paper it’s written on if it isn’t feasible from a resource standpoint. Given that time is my most precious resource, I thought I would produce an estimate of how I plan to allocate my time to execute my plan.
As you can see, I only account for 34 hours per week of productivity, where as I will work a total of about 45 hours. This is because it would be impossible for me to produce 40 hours of productive work in a 40 hour week. Email, which is a necessary evil, is a somewhat unproductive time pig. Oink!
Adjust and Fine Tune
In 3 to 6 months, when I read this post again, I’m sure that, with hindsight to my benefit, I will see all sorts of flaws in my plan that are invisible to me today. Such is the nature of the beast.
If you’d like to join me for this journey, please be sure and become a subscriber today by clicking the button down below. It’s going to be another incredible ride and I’d be stoked to have you join me!
[xyz-ihs snippet=”BuildGroove”]
https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/focus-header-image-web.jpg279690Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-03-17 09:02:112015-12-07 20:08:41My 2 Year Plan to Build a 7 Figure Lifestyle Business
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
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
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
Welcome to my February Traffic Report. To see January’s report, click here.
Traffic generation is a challenge faced by every entrepreneur, at Bright Ideas we’ve made a habit of publishing our traffic reports as a means of giving insight into how we are doing, what is working, and what isn’t. Plus, writing the report forces me to look! If you think this is helpful, please be sure and share this post.
We look at our traffic report in such a way that it helps to answer what we want to know most each month.
When you are doing your own analysis, be sure you start with your own list. Ours includes:
Is overall traffic up or down? Why?
Are overall subscribers up or down? Why?
Which traffic/referral sources are contributing the most to traffic and subscribers?
How can we adjust our strategy to increase traffic and subscribers?
Here’s what I found…
Traffic
Overview of traffic for Feb 2014
As you can see, our traffic was very similar month over month. However, our bounce rate was way down, which turns out to be due to an analytics script error. I would not have discovered this nearly so soon if I hadn’t done this traffic report – another reason to regularly check your metrics!
As far as new traffic goes, we are just starting to experiment with paid traffic sources. If you’d like to see the results we’re getting, keep an eye out for a post on that soon. If you’re not already a subscriber, make sure you don’t miss out – become one now.
Conclusion #1: Overall traffic was similar to January.
Subscribers
Feb 2014 Conversions (opt-ins)
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I believe the conversions in Google Analytics are a rough estimate of actual conversions (opt-ins), and should be only loosely considered. According to GA, conversions in February were down to 107 from 122 in January. My subscriber numbers were down in Infusionsoft as well.
However conversions were not down in a statistically significant way when you consider that February is a shorter month (February has 90% as many days as January, and February had 87% as many conversions as January).
We did experiment with different headers on our landing pages in February, and those split tests converted at slightly lower rates than our original headers, so that contributed to the lower conversion rate. Obviously, we have reverted to the original headers.
Conclusion #2: Overall subscribers were down slightly.
Referral Sources
Here’s where Google Analytics showed my traffic coming from:
Feb 2014 Referral Sources
Once again, the largest portion of my traffic is from people typing in the URL directly, followed by Twitter, and then by our emails to our list. Again, for people who are typing in the url directly, I can only guess that those people are doing so in roughly the same proportion as the referral traffic whose sources we can see. For instance, many of them may already be subscribers, and others will be from Twitter.
Once again, Twitter is our major source of referral traffic, followed by LinkedIn and Facebook.
In an effort to significantly increase traffic from our podcasts (right now, most of this traffic is showing up as ‘direct’, since people type in the URL after listening to an episode), we have just shifted to 5 episodes per week and are expanding our podcast selections with shorter episodes of “Ask Trent” and other Bright Ideas branded podcasts. This could have a significant effect on our traffic.
Conclusion #3: Our major sources of traffic (and conversions) continue to be the major social sites (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook).
Other Metrics
In addition to looking at traffic and subscribers on a monthly basis, you want to be sure you’re periodically looking at your pages viewed, landing page conversions, and SEO acquisition reports.
Pages Viewed
Most of our high traffic “landing pages” (or at least what Google Analytics thinks are landing pages) are actually blog posts. These tend to get the most traffic soon after they’re posted, so the month-over-month data is not very useful. However, a look at our most popular pages provides some insight.
As you can see, other than the homepage, our posts that are open, transparent, and honest (e.g., where I reveal my failures or my income) tend to be the most popular. I’ll continue to share these types of posts with you.
Page Conversions
Once again, these numbers don’t match with what I see in Infusionsoft, but they do provide a good breakdown of the relative number of subscribers coming from different traffic sources.
Most of our conversions are from “direct” traffic – folks who type in the URL directly. Many of these are traffic from our own list, when we haven’t put tracking links into our emails. Of those who came to us in other ways, organic search and our top social media sites are all providing roughly equal numbers of conversions.
SEO & Acquisition Reports
The idea behind SEO analysis is to look at acquisition reports both in terms of queries and landing pages, and for your top queries, make some educated guesses about which landing pages your keywords are taking people to. Our top keywords all include the phrase “bright ideas”, and likely take people to our homepage. However, we do have other keywords that show up in search, and we’ll be focusing more on optimizing for search in the near future, so stay tuned for more information on that.
Our traffic was pretty consistent with January; however, our bounce rate was way down (great) and conversions were also down (not so great).
Look for pages on your site that people tend to visit, and optimize those pages.
Older posts with a high percentage of traffic from new visitors may be doing well in Google search.
Analyze your most popular pages and look for opportunities to improve page conversions.
Analyze your SEO acquisition reports to see if you can determine which keywords are doing well and which landing pages people are visiting based on these keywords. You also have an opportunity to improve page conversions on these landing pages.
If you run your own business, yours is a family business – and to think otherwise will lead to disaster.
It doesn’t matter if your family members actually work in your business or not. Whatever their relationship to the business, each member of an entrepreneur’s family will be profoundly impacted by the decisions the entrepreneur makes about his business.
Sadly, many entrepreneurs tend to compartmentalize their lives unless a family member is directly involved in the business. For most entrepreneurs, they believe that their business life is separate from their family life.
As you are about to see, this is far from the truth.
What Happens in Business, Happens at Home
In reality, your business and your family are inextricably connected to one another. Whatever is happening in your business, is also happening at home.
Consider the following, and ask if each one is true:
If you are stressed at work, you are stressed at home
If you are having money problems at work, you are having money problems at home
If you feel out of control at work, you feel equally out of control at home
If you are having communication problems at work, you are also having them at home
If you are having trust issues at work, you are having trust issues at home
If you feel alone and isolated at work, you feel alone and isolated at home
The truth is that your business and your family are one – and you’re the link that connects them. If you are trying to keep them apart, your business and your family will be like strangers and you will have created two separate worlds for yourself – two worlds that split each other apart.
The Story of Tony and Tina
Let me tell you the story of Tony and Tina.
Tony and Tina met in college and have been married for over 15 years. They have two kids and live a modest lifestyle.
For 8 of the last 10 years, Tony worked for a mid-sized corporation and earned more than enough to pay the family’s bills as well as to save for retirement. For 8 of the last 10 years, Tina was a stay at home mom and made sure that the needs of the family were well looked after.
Excited For The Future
Two years ago, Tony decided to quit his corporate job to pursue his dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Prior to quitting, Tony and Tina talked about the change at great length. They talked about what type of business Tony would start, the type of clients he’d go after, how long it would take to replace the family income, and many other details involved in the transition.
They determined that they had sufficient savings to make the transition and agreed that the risk was worth taking. After all, as a successful entrepreneur, Tony would have more income and more freedom than he ever had during his corporate career.
With this extra income and freedom, Tony and Tina planned to take more vacations and to get more involved with their kid’s lives. The possibilities were downright exciting!
Tony’s New Business
During Tony’s last few years of corporate employment, he’d worked in the marketing department and had become quite passionate about his profession. He saw how his work had directly benefited the company and how growth had increased as a result.
The only problem was that Tony’s income didn’t go up in line with the success of the company and this was something that he desperately wanted to change.
Given his past experience and passion for marketing, Tony decided to start his own marketing agency – and unlike many traditional agencies, Tony’s agency would specialize in digital (online) marketing.
Online marketing is still quite “new” relative to traditional marketing, so change is a constant. As a result, Tony saw a huge opportunity to serve a customer segment he knew well.
The services that Tony planned to offer his clients included:
Website design
Content marketing (blogging)
Social media management
Unlike many traditional agencies, Tony want to focus only on digital marketing services as a way to differentiate his firm from the masses.
The First Six Months
All Signs Were Looking Up
Tony’s first six months in business were nothing short of amazing. Using his personal and professional network had yielded terrific results. He had attracted several clients and the cash was rolling in.
In fact, things got so busy that Tony was having a hard time keeping up with all the client demands, and to solve this problem, he decided to hire two other people to help him.
Finding just the right people to join his firm was incredibly challenging. Trusting them to do the work the way that he wanted it done was even more difficult. But what choice did he have? He just couldn’t keep up without them.
Managing his new employees was more complicated and took more time than working for someone else. Tony not only supervised everyone, he was always looking for ways to keep them busy.
More Staff. More Demands. More Stress.
With more clients and more staff to manage, the demands on Tony’s time were greater than at any other point in his life. To cope, Tony began leaving home earlier in the morning and coming home later at night. He rarely saw his kids now. For the most part, Tony was resigned to the problem. He just saw the long hours as essential to build his company.
Every New Opportunity Comes With Some Drawbacks
Money was also becoming a problem. Much to Tony’s surprise, clients didn’t always pay on time and when they didn’t, it had a huge impact on his cash flow. He still had to pay his bills on time. Why didn’t his clients do the same?!
Back when Tony was an employee, he got paid every two weeks, but now that he was the boss, there were times when he didn’t get paid for a month or more.
The financial stress was taking its toll.
Making matters worse was the fact that Tony didn’t feel like Tina was sensitive to his troubles. Though, given that his mantra was “business is business”, Tony didn’t talk to Tina much about it. Instead, he believed it was her job to look after him and the family.
As time went on, Tony became even more consumed with running his business. Not surprisingly, Tina became increasingly frustrated with Tony’s lack of communication and increasingly long hours. She’d put many things in her life on hold to focus on the family, and now her husband was barely ever at home.
Tina was not impressed.
Client demands never let up and Tony was now regularly working 10+ hours a day and it still wasn’t enough. To keep up, he was now also getting up at 5am on Saturdays so that he could catch up on emails before the rest of his family started their day – a day that they expected Tony to be a part of!
Tony hated working so much, but he just couldn’t see any other way to keep up with all the work he needed to get done.
Not only that, Tony had exhausted his list of personal contacts to drum up new business, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to find the time to do the activities that he knew would attract new clients.
Problems With Clients and Staff
On top of all this, some of his existing clients were complaining. They were upset that Tony’s staff wasn’t delivering the quality of work that they had come to expect when Tony was personally handling their accounts.
One client was so unhappy, they told Tony they’d planned to leave if he didn’t fix the problem within a month.
As a result of working so hard, Tony was starting to feel burned out. He was also feeling overwhelmed and really stressed out.
After a few months of this, Tony’s stress levels started to impact his business – and his family.
As the owner of the company, Tony felt very alone. There were so many things he needed to talk to someone about – and talking to his staff about these things was totally out of the question.
Instead of talking to his staff, Tony micro-managed them even more. He just couldn’t afford to lose any clients, so everything had to be done exactly the way he wanted it done.
With the micro-management increasing, Tony’s staff started to become disillusioned – and, unknown to Tony, they started to look for employment elsewhere.
More Stress and Isolation
Around this same time, Tony began to isolate himself from his staff. This was a marked change from how things were at the start and his staff began to behave in ways that surprised Tony. They didn’t seem to care as much. They missed deadlines. They didn’t tell Tony about problems that they should have.
The Stress Was Taking Its Toll
As you might guess, this drove Tony’s stress levels even higher and his relationship with Tina and his kids was now suffering. When they did spend time together, Tony was always preoccupied with thoughts of the problems of the business.
Tony didn’t feel like he could tell Tina that his business was suffering. He wasn’t getting as many new client leads. He wasn’t getting as much work from existing clients. His staff wasn’t very happy.
If he told Tina about any of this, she’d be stressed out, too!
As time went by, things just weren’t getting any better.
One of Tony’s employees told him that she just wasn’t enjoying working for him any more. The environment had become one of stress, frustration, and negativity, and she wanted no part of that, so she handed in her resignation.
The thought of having to replace this person was more than Tony could take, and he became angry.
Now, instead of feeling full of optimism, Tony’s daily routine had become one of anger, frustration, loneliness, and despair. What this really what he signed up for?
Family Life Starts to Suffer
Tina was running out of patience with Tony, too. When they started this business, their goal was to get more balance in life.
That had not happened. In fact, Tony was working almost 50% more hours now than he ever did at his corporate job. Tina and the kids were feeling neglected, to say the least.
One night when he got home from yet another long day at work, Tony noticed an unfinished email on the screen. It was an email from Tina to her sister complaining of how distant Tony had become and how she was thinking about leaving him as a result.
That night Tony slept on the couch. He left the house early in the morning before anyone was awake. For perhaps the first time in his life as an entrepreneur, he was in no mood for questions.
When Tony got to the office, he headed straight for the liquor cabinet beside his desk…and you can image how the situation goes from here.
What is the Lesson Here?
What lessons can we draw from Tony and Tina’s story? As I’ve already emphatically said, every business is a family business. Every business profoundly impacts every family member – whether they work there or not. Every business either gives to the family or takes from the family, just as individual family members do.
If the business takes more than it gives, like Tony’s did, the family is always the first to pay the price.
Sound Familiar?
Tony’s biggest mistake was trying to do everything himself. True, he hired staff, however, he didn’t really trust them to assume responsibility for important projects and he micro-managed their work.
Had he succeeded, life would have been grand and he would have felt fantastic. Instead, Tony unwittingly isolated himself thereby achieving the exact opposite of what he sought.
He destroyed his life – and his family’s life along with it.
Repeat after me: Every business is a family business.
Are You Like Tony?
I believe that many entrepreneurs have many things in common with Tony. You must learn that a business is only a business. It’s not your life – it’s just a part of your life, albeit an important one.
Your business can have a profoundly negative impact on your life unless you learn how to run it in a way that is different that what 99% of other entrepreneurs do. You must not run your business like Tony did.
Tony’s business could have served his family in the way that he’d originally envisioned. For that to happen, however, Tony would have had to learn how to master his business in a way that was completely foreign to him.
Instead, Tony’s business consumed him. Lacking in a true understanding of the critical strategic thinking that would have allowed his business to flourish, Tony and his family were doomed from the start.
There is a Solution
The story that I have just told you was inspired by the story of Edward and Abigail in the book eMyth Attorney, by Michael Gerber.
I Made My Business Work For Me
When I read the book, I was reminded of my first business, Dyrand Systems, which I started in 2001. Within 6 months of starting that business, I’d discovered and read Michael’s first book, The eMyth, and it was my decision to embrace the principles in The eMyth that allowed me to grow the business from nothing to several million in revenue, while working 40 hours a week or less.
In the year that I sold Dyrand for $1.2 million, I barely needed to show up for work. The fact that the company continues to do well today is ample proof of how redundant I’d made myself using the principles I discovered in The eMyth.
For some people, just reading the book will be enough to help you alter the course you are on.
For others, I suspect more support would be highly beneficial.
How to Avoid Tony’s Mistakes and Get the Support You Need
After reading the book the other day, I posted a message in the Facebook group for my Mastermind Elite members to see. Being exposed to the eMyth again after all these years had reminded me of some things I’d forgotten, and I wanted to see if the members of my mastermind group would be interested in what was now on my mind.
When you read the thread below, pay particular attention to Drew’s comment. Drew grew an online retailer to $6M in sales and then sold it for a tidy sum. He and I are the only two guys in the mastermind that have (thus far) grown a company to millions in sales and then sold it for 7 figures.
Both of us LIVED the message in The eMyth. Perhaps you would benefit from doing the same?
If so, keep reading and I will tell you how I’d like to support you in that regard.
How to Embrace the Principles of the eMyth
The eMyth is now going to become a guiding pillar for the members of the Bright Ideas Mastermind Elite.
We are all going to read the book and we are all going to embrace its principles in our respective businesses – but we aren’t going to do it in isolation. Instead, ours will be a coordinated approach.
Taking a coordinated approach to problem solving is a fundamental part of any mastermind group. Why figure everything out on your own when you can instead share your ideas with, and learn from, others who are pursuing goals that are similar to yours?
If you’d like to be a part of a group of like-minded entrepreneurs and build a business that allows you to live the life of your dreams, instead of becoming a business that sucks the life out of you, then please accept my invitation to apply for membership in our exclusive group.
At the time of this writing, we are a group of 8 entrepreneurs who all share the goal of building a highly profitably business that is built to run on systems. Systems that will empower our staff to deliver excellence, while giving us the freedom to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Like Drew, I have already experienced the thrill of selling a company for over a million dollars, and I can assure you that I plan to do it again – and experience tells me that the way to do that is to build a business that is built on systems.
I’m sure some of you can do this on your own and if you do, please write to tell me about it.
For those of you who don’t want to do it all alone, I recommend you apply for membership today. Trust me when I say it will be the best decision you make this year. But don’t take my word for it. See what one of our members has to say…
What is Holding You Back?
What do you think? Can you relate to Tony’s struggles? Please share your thoughts down in the comments, and if you are feeling bold, go ahead and share with me what one of your biggest struggles is. If I have advice for you, I’ll be sure and reply to your comment. Thanks!
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https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/overworked-e1393450319173.jpg358600Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-02-27 09:25:142015-12-07 17:38:42The Story of Tony and Tina: A Tale of an Agency Gone Very Wrong and How You Can Avoid the Same
Creating high quality content and then distributing it to your client’s websites and social media platforms is a time consuming process that involves a lot of moving parts.
It can also be a very profitable source of recurring revenue, if done efficiently.
KontentFlow is a brand new application that we’ve been developing for the last 6 months that makes it faster and easier for marketing agencies to create and distribute content to their clients’ blogs and social media accounts.
In this post, I’m going to give you a sneak peak at the software, as well as give you the opportunity to apply to be a part of our beta program.
See KontentFlow in Action
To help you understand the problems that KontentFlow has been designed to help you solve, we’ve created the three explanation videos below.
Overview of KontentFlow
In this first video, my partner Paul is going to give us an overview of the software.
Creating Content
In this video, Paul shares how KontentFlow helps you to significantly speed up the process of content creation.
Marketing Agency Owner’s View
Here Paul shows us KontentFlow from the perspective of the agency owner.
What Problem is This App Solving?
Approximately a year ago, I met an agency principal at an industry event and during our conversation, I asked him if he was creating blog content for his clients on an ongoing basis, for a retainer fee.
He smiled and said that his firm had 120 clients on retainer for exactly this.
Then I asked him how he managed it all.
His smile disappeared when he told me that it was all done with spreadsheets and email and it was a complete nightmare.
Content Marketing for Clients Has a Lot of Moving Parts
As I explained in a prior post, delivering ‘content marketing as a service’ to your clients is a wonderful way to increase your retainer income and position your firm as an indispensable partner to your clients.
It is also a way to dramatically increase the value of your agency. I know this because my last firm had $80,000 in monthly recurring revenue, and without this predictable stream of revenue, there is no way that the buyers of that firm would have paid me anywhere near the $1.2 million they did.
Obvious financial benefits aside, there is a snag you must consider- the logistics of managing it all.
If you have even 6 clients on retainer, you have the following ‘moving parts’ to efficiently manage:
six editorial calendars
at least 2 writers (depending on volume of content to be delivered)
at least one account manager working for the agency
at least one person per client who needs to approve content before it’s published
at least six client websites
15 to 18 social media accounts
If you think about the workflow for a single piece of content, it goes something like this:
Determine topic
Assign to writer
Perform keyword research
Perform general research on topic
Write article
Send to account manager for review
Send to client for review
Publish to client’s site
Promote on social channels
Measure content’s impact on traffic and sharing
That’s ten steps for just one blog post for just one client.
Remember the guy with 120 clients? Each of them want at least one post per week. Can you see why managing this with spreadsheets and email just doesn’t cut it?
Due to the logistical issues involved, if you don’t have a well-defined process in place, supported by software, the management burden of this service offering can get pretty intense as the number of clients you serve increases – possibly resulting in a very negative impact on profitability.
Fortunately, we have a solution for you.
KontentFlow: Content Marketing Software for Marketing Agencies
Before we get into what the software does and how it works, I want to briefly address what it doesn’t do.
KontentFlow does not write content for you. It doesn’t scrape content, or do any other kind of spammy content creation you can think of.
Instead, what it does do is dramatically speed up the process of content creation, distribution, and promotion – while giving you an organized system to ensure that you can deliver your service efficiently and profitably.
If you run an agency and are creating blog and social content for multiple clients on an ongoing basis, KontentFlow is for you.
What Do You Think?
If you have questions about KontentFlow, please ask them in the comments below. I will personally read and reply to every comment.
If you’d like to use our software in your business, please apply to our beta program.
Apply to the Beta Program
We are now ready to launch our beta program and are accepting applications.
Initially, enrollment will be extremely limited to allow us to work very closely with our beta users. For this first round of beta, we are looking to work with agencies that already have at least 3 content marketing clients.
To apply, simply click the image below to be taken to the enrollment page.
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https://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/kontentflow-header-image.jpg113690Trent Dyrsmidhttps://brightideas.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bright-Ideas-logo-1030x255.pngTrent Dyrsmid2014-02-21 06:00:252015-12-07 17:32:21Introducing KontentFlow: A Content Marketing Software for Marketing Agencies
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rospect
Last week, I left a voice mail for each of the three. One never called back, so they are no longer a prospect and are now ‘demoted’ to ‘suspect’ again and will continue to receive an email per week that is educational in nature.
The first lead magnet is a free report will serve our first inbound marketing campaign, which will consists of 8 blog posts published at a rate of two per week over a 30 day period.
So, when should Bob start talking about how his products might help me?
As I 