Marcu Taylor's Blog, page 11

The Ultimate Guide to Systemising Your Business

If you’ve ever read those success stories of modern tech startups and wondered how on Earth they managed to turn a bedroom venture into a multi-billion enterprise, you’re going to want to keep reading.

The answer is systemisation.

A small business doesn’t suddenly generate 100,000 leads by running a single ad campaign on Google. More to the point, how can a small business suddenly handle 100,000 leads without building a huge sales team overnight? And what happens when you have a hundred new customers calling up with technical issues that need resolving?

By systemising your business, you can put processes in place that generate a higher volume of leads and increase your customer base. But, crucially, you can also put processes in place that allow your business to actually handle growth as the customers roll in.

This is how today’s most successful ventures scale up and this business systemisation guide is going to show you how to do the same thing.

What is a systemised business?

A systemised business is one that has defined processes in place to maximise efficiency. When you or your staff need to complete tasks manually, you have the tools in place to get the job done as quickly and effectively as possible. When there are tasks that don’t need manual input, you have automated systems that complete them for you.

It’s all about finding the most efficient balance between human input and automated systems.

Some businesses can be fully systemised so they operate and grow by themselves, with very little outside input. The number of fully systemised businesses is only going to grow as technologies like A/B testing become increasingly automated and machine learning tools become more capable of making decisions in place of humans.

For now, though, most businesses are partially systemised and the big challenge is understanding how much of your business you can/should automate, which tasks should be left to the human and how to maximise the efficiency of both processes during a time when the technology you have available to rapidly advancing.

Above all, you have to keep the main objective in mind at all times: increasing business performance where it matters most – profit, growth and productivity – while reducing the time, expense and manual labour of running and scaling your business.

The role of automation in systemised businesses

Systemisation and automation are close relatives but they’re not the same thing and it’s important to understand the difference because a lot of people use the two terms interchangeably.

Automation is one form of systemisation and it’s often part of a larger systemised process that may or may not involve people, machines, computers or a combination of all three.

Systemisation doesn’t always involve automation, though. There are plenty of systems you might create that don’t involve any automated processes whatsoever.

Landon beat Whitman 34-0; https://t.co/V6zVPi7a9O @LandonSports @koachkuhn

— WashPost HS Sports (@WashPostHS) September 2, 2017

For example, The Washington Post started using AI in 2016 to write simple news stories and post them to social media. Clearly, there’s a lot of automation going on here but there are various steps of this systemised process that may not involve any automation at all.

A summary of this systemisation might look something like:

AI bot covers basic news stories (automated)Editing team proofs the stories ready for publishing (non-automated)Huma reporters focus more time on complex stories that can’t be automated (non-automated)

In this scenario, one automated process is helping human teams get more done in a wider systemisation strategy. This is the role automation will most likely play in systemising your business, helping you get more done with a smaller team of people who can focus their efforts on what makes the most impact upon your business.

A more practical example might be systemising your customer service process – something we’ll look at in more detail later. A lot of companies now automate the first step of customer service interactions using chatbots, which then hand the conversation over to human support staff when the time is right.

Systemising isn’t only for big businesses anymore

Business systemisation and automation aren’t particularly new practices. Businesses have been using automated clocking-in systems, barcode scanners and ERP systems to automate all kinds of business management processes for decades.

The difference is these technologies have become much cheaper in recent years, meaning they’re no longer reserved for big name brands with equally large budgets.

The latest breed of automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence is opening up advanced systemisation tools to businesses of all sizes. Which means efficiency is no longer throttled by the size of your enterprise; in fact, smaller businesses are starting to have an advantage because it’s easier to implement, manage and change systems on a smaller scale. Likewise, a small business built from the ground up using systemisation for scalability is going to have efficiency baked into its DNA from day one – a crucial attribute for today’s growing enterprises.

What kind of processes can you systemise?

One of the biggest challenges in systemising your business is pinpointing which processes to systemise in the first place. The truth is, just about every business process can be systemised to some extent but this doesn’t necessarily mean every process is worth systemising.

To give you an idea of where to start, here are five key business processes every business should systemise:

Lead generationSales & lead nurturingQuotes & proposalsCustomer service & retentionStaff training

Now, let’s look at each of these in more detail so you can see how systemisation works in practice.

Lead generation

One of the first processes you’ll want to look at systemising is lead generation to bring in a higher volume of potential customers. According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 report, generating traffic and leads is the biggest challenge marketers still face.

By systemising your inbound marketing efforts and making the most of today’s marketing automation tools, you can create processes that bring in more traffic, improve the quality of traffic and generate a higher volume of leads that are more likely to convert.

Here are some processes you can systemise.

Automate your webinar strategy

As explained in our ultimate guide to automated evergreen webinars, 73% of marketers say webinars are the most effective way of generating high-quality leads (stat from InsideSales).

The problem with traditional webinar strategies is you have to stage live events, create marketing campaigns to promote them, nurture your webinar leads and then run follow-up campaigns to convert those who don’t buy during or after the webinar itself.

That’s a pretty big workload.

However, we’ve managed to fully automate our webinar strategy so that we can reuse the same webinar over and again to generate leads on an ongoing basis without any human input. Better yet, we’ve also automated the signup process, lead segmentation, lead nurturing and follow-up marketing campaigns.

Essentially, our automated webinar strategy is a self-running lead generation system that constantly brings in fresh leads – all of which are handled with automations. The only time our sales team needs to get involved is right at the end of the conversion process, if the leads can’t be closed by our automated system.

This allows us to handle almost any volume of webinar leads with a small sales team. More importantly, this allows us to market our webinar as aggressively as we like and know we have the system in place to handle a new influx of leads – something a purely human system would be overwhelmed by.

Systemise your blog lead gen strategy

Blogs are a crucial SEO and inbound lead channel for modern brands but how many businesses actually maximise the lead gen potential of their blog content?

Not many as far as I can see.

Above all, most businesses aren’t creating content that’s useful, valuable or interesting enough to turn blog readers into genuine leads – so fix that before you try to systemise anything else.

If you’re already producing the content goods, but you’re not generating the kind of blogging ROI you would like, it’s time to put a system in place that maximises results.

WordPress makes it easy to systemise your blog strategy by using categories

Start by creating in-depth guides, based on the same topics you normally cover on your blog. For example, if your most popular blog categories are productivity, marketing, business software and business management, create plans for eBook downloads that go into real detail.

We’re talking about five or ten thousand word guides that go into highly specific and useful detail for the people you want to turn into customers. Titles like The Psychology of Productivity: 11 Proven Psychology Tricks That Will Make Your Team More Productive – something that promises to offer useful information your audience won’t get elsewhere.

Next, carefully create the table of contents for your guide, breaking down these valuable insights into smaller chunks. You’re going to create blog posts covering these chapters in less detail and use these to bring in traffic from search, social and paid advertising channels and then get them to sign up for the in-depth guides.

One of our CTAs that appears on our blog pages for lead gen topics

To automate the lead gen process, you’re going to add CTAs to the main body of your blog pages. Next, you’re going to assign a variable based on the category of each blog post so the CTA for your productivity guide shows on blog posts for this topic while the CTA for your marketing, business software and business management guides automatically show on every post under the relevant category.

This way, every post you publish becomes a genuine lead generation tool that uses the topical interest each visitor has already shown by clicking through and draws them closer to your business.

Segment email contacts on your website to increase lead quality, conversions

Increasing lead quality doesn’t always result in higher profits, unless you’re actually converting enough of those leads into customers. Sometimes, increasing the quality of your existing leads and your ability to get them across the finishing line is the more profitable strategy.

We use Leadformly to segment our leads as they sign up to our email campaigns by using conditional logic to learn more about what they want from us. This increases the quality of leads as they sign up and gives us more insights into what kind of marketing messages will encourage them to take the next step.

We can also take this further by automating our email response, based on the information they give us while signing up. So we’re no longer sending out generic responses when people sign up. We’re sending engaging emails that guide leads across the buying process from the very first message.

The end result is higher open rates, stronger engagement rates and ultimately more conversions – before we even start spending more to increase traffic/lead volume.

Take it from us, lead segmentation is something you definitely want to systemise to make your marketing spend more effective and maximise ROI.

If you want more info about this, take a look at our guide on how to segment your traffic into buckets to increase leads and conversions.

Sales & lead nurturing

Systemising your sales and lead nurturing processes can be complex but we’ve got of great software available these days that helps us simplify this. The first thing you’re going to need is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to help you manage leads as they navigate across the buying process.

This is where platforms like HubSpot and ActiveCampaign are vital. First of all, they allow your sales team to track leads and customers at every stage of the consumer journey but they also give you the power to automate sales processes.

ActiveCampaign is particularly good at this.

ActiveCampaign helps you automate and personalise all kinds of interactions with leads and customers

With ActiveCampaign, we’re able to create contact lists for each stage of the buying process and automatically send messages to them, encouraging them to take the next step – for example, email reminders to people who have signed up to watch our webinar.

Once users take the next step, ActiveCampaign automatically bumps them onto the next contact list and the next round of automated messages will be sent out at the appropriate moment.

This automated approach helps us nurture leads from the very early stages of the consumer journey, all the way to the point of purchase with minimal human input from our sales team.

With this kind of system in place, we can also test new messages for each stage of the journey to refine our emails and other content for better results. Now, our team can spend more time on crafting the most effective messages and less time on managing contacts manually.

Quotes & proposals

Quotes and proposals probably aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think about processes to systemise. But manually creating these for every potential customer is a major drain on resources, especially when you know a large portion of them aren’t going to result in actual sales.

Thankfully, this is something that can be systemised quite effectively and we use a combination of Leadformly and Quoteroller to handle this for us.

First, we use Leadformly to learn more about what customers need from us, which gives us the information we need to create a basic quote. Then we send this data to Quoteroller using some handy webhooks where we’ve already created our quote templates. Once Quoteroller has this data, it’s automatically inserted into the template and the quote is sent right back to our prospective client.

This whole process is automated, allowing us to send customised quotes instantly without any drain on our resources. Our sales team follow up quotes if we don’t get a response quickly enough or provide potential customers with more details when needed.

This, combined with our automated lead gen and sales processes, means we’re often able to get leads, nurture them and convert them into customers without our sales team getting involved.

Customer service & retention

One of the biggest drags on a growing business is its ability to manage customers after they’ve paid for the initial transaction. From this point, the objective is to keep them happy, get them saying positive things about your brand online and, hopefully, turn them into repeat buyers.

That’s a lot to pull off for any business and you only have to look at the review sites like Trustpilot to see how even the biggest names in any industry struggle to manage customers after the sale.

This is an area where brands are experimenting a lot with systemisation right now and there are multiple approaches you can use – all with their own pros and cons.

Use chatbots to start the customer service process

One of the most common approaches you’ll see is chatbots being used to start the customer/technical service process. Essentially, the bot acts as the first interaction, pointing users towards answers for simple queries, relevant user guides and FAQ pages covering the topics they need help with.

ChatBot promises to help you automate customer service within 10 minutes

Of course, your customer service team is always going to be there to pick up the thread when needed. However, a well-designed bot can reduce their workload by a significant margin and the important thing is, these are the customer service cases that don’t really need manual input to begin with.

Systemise your social media customer service process

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become a crucial line of communication for customers who want to get in contact with brands. Increasingly, this is where the customer service process begins for today’s social savvy buyers – especially when they run into a problem that needs addressing quickly.

According to research from Clutch, almost half of millennials expect brands to respond to them on social media within the hour. We’ve also posted before about how soon leads can turn cold if you fail to respond quickly enough and it’s a similar story when people reach out to you on social.

The difference is, social media interactions between you and your customer are there for all to see, which means how you handle these interactions can have a major effect on your brand reputation. So it’s crucial you’re able to deal with customer service issues quickly enough and fix them in a way that not only satisfies your customer, but also potential future customers who can see everything.

This can be especially tricky when one of your customers is having a bad experience with your product or service – something you simply have to deal with in the correct manner.

The first thing you want to do is get a social media management platform like Hootsuite or Brandwatch Analytics so you can manage all of your accounts from one place. Set up alerts so that your customer service team members are notified when someone contacts you via social media.

Your team members will then have to decide which messages to respond to or mark as urgent. Try to avoid generic responses, too, because chatbots can provide these basic answers much faster than your human team. Address problems specifically and be seen to be taking action – none of that “someone will respond to your query as soon as possible” nonsense.

This is one are where you need a very human system in place.

Maximise repeat purchases with email marketing automation

Lead nurturing doesn’t end once a user buys from you; it continues long into the customer service process and every following purchase each customer (hopefully) makes from you.

According to Invescpro, it costs roughly five times more to attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing customer buying from you again.

Best of all, you already have all the data you need on your existing customer to send them targeted messages, encouraging them to make the next purchase. And, if you’ve already systemised your lead nurturing process with the right CRM and email marketing software, you’ve already got all the tools you need to systemise your customer retention process, too.

All you need to do is create additional email marketing lists for customers who have already bought from you. How you’re going to segment these lists might depend on the type of product or service each customer has bought, how long the life cycle of them is and what related products or services might be useful to them.

In the case of a software company, your primary goal is to make sure your existing customers stay signed up to your platform. So your email marketing objectives might look like this:

A list for new customers who aren’t using the platform a great deal to remind them why they should get more involved.Weekly reports for pay-monthly users to show them what they’re achieving with the platform.Quarterly reports for pay-annually users to show them what they’re achieving.Weekly tips for users to help them get more from the platform.A loyalty bonus or reward for pay-annually users when the end of their contract is up for renewal.Reduced rate for pay-annually users who cancel their contract before the next 12 months begin.

By using a CRM like ActiveCampaign, which has excellent email marketing automation features, you can automatically move customers from one list to another as their contract rolls on so you’re sending different messages to those who are due to renew than you are to new customers.

You can also create lists based on user habits to encourage them to use your platform more or achieve better results with it, increasing the likelihood of them paying up for another annual subscription.

This process can be entirely automated, too, leaving you with a system that automatically responds to user behaviour and the amount of time remaining on their existing contract. To make this work, you’ll need to identify user problems that might prevent customers from renewing their contract and the challenges that may develop over the course of a 12-year period.

Finally, you’ll need to craft the right kind of messages that keep customers engaged with the platform and ready to pay the asking price once again when their contract is up for renewal – something you’ll need to test along the way.

Apptus is one of many AI-powered recommendation tools to emerge in recent years

For retail brands, the focus is going to be more about getting existing customers to buy other, possibly related products. The complexity of this depends largely on how varied your range of products is and the likes of Amazon rely on AI recommendation machines to tempt customers with new offers based on their purchase history.

Basic systemisation: Automating everyday tasks

All of the systemisation techniques we’ve looked at so far simplify relatively complex marketing processes. However, there are a bunch of basic, everyday tasks modern businesses need to systemise and you don’t need complex or expensive tools to get these done more effectively.

There are plenty of inexpensive and free tools available these days to help you systemise simple tasks, which make a real difference when you add them all together. These also act as a great, practical introduction to systemisation if you’re completely new to the concept.

Automating between apps

If you have thousands of attachments to download from Gmail and then upload to Dropbox every month or dozens of Facebook posts every day that also need publishing on Twitter, you lose a lot of time to repetitive tasks.

Zapier

Platforms like Zapier, IFTTT, and Microsoft Flow can save you all kinds of time by creating simple automations between apps without writing a single line of code.

So your Gmail attachment will be automatically stored in Dropbox, your Facebook posts will automatically be published on Twitter and thousands of other simple processes can be automated for you.

Comparison table by John Gruber, Codeless Automation: IFTTT vs Zapier vs Microsoft Flow, published on Medium

These are great tools and you can get started with them for free. Take a look at this handy summary written by John Gruber if you’re unsure of which platform suits your needs most.

Collaboration between team members

The days of teams sending documents back and forth, constantly editing and saving, until nobody knows which version is the latest are thankfully long behind us. With today’s collection of collaboration tools, teams can work on the same documents in real-time, knowing all progress is saved and the latest version of a document is there for all to see and access at any time.

Even basic tools like Google Drive make it incredibly easy for teams to collaborate on simple word documents, spreadsheets and other business essentials.

For more complex collaborative needs we have the likes of Slack, Trello and Monday to make project management and collaboration easy.

Monday

Now teams can work and collaborate from different rooms or sides of the planet without any confusion getting in the way of progress.

Systemising research, notes and ideas

It doesn’t matter what line of business you’re in, the amount of research, note-taking and idea generation modern companies need to undertake is staggering.

Managing a corporate blog like this one alone requires hours of research, planning, creative thinking and idea-batting between multiple team members every week.

We use a number of tools to speed this process up for everyone involved. Google Drive is a constant presence but we also use Pocket to save web pages we come across that could be useful for content ideas, stats, case studies or new pieces of software to try out.

You may also want to use tools like Evernote for more complex note-taking and idea nurturing between team members. I also use Feedly quite a lot, which allows me to browse content from my favourite sources in one place – another great tool for content ideas and keeping up with the latest industry trends.

Systemising business management

A lot of the most time-consuming tasks for businesses are those basic admin tasks – the ones nobody loves but simply need doing. This is another key area where simple software solutions can help you save huge amounts of time and money by systemising these processes.

Xero

You’ve got the likes of Xero for accounting, Dapulse for quarterly task planning, Breezy for recruitment and Teamup for collaborative calendars.

There aren’t many admin tasks you can’t systemise or automate to some extent these days. You can see a much longer list of tools we use to systemise our business, boost productivity and increase revenue here.

25 tasks you can systemise right now

If you’re still a little hazy on the kind of tasks you can systemise and/or automate, here are 25 suggestions from Infusionsoft, a company that should know something about this topic as one of the world’s leading CRM platforms.

You can read the article in full by clicking on the link above but here’s a quick summary of the 25 tasks it thinks every small business should automate:

Respond immediately to an email contact requestAssign inbound leads to a sales representativeSend email notifications to contacts who miss your callsFollow up with new networking connectionsCapture leads by offering free contentSet a framework for your sales pipelineLead scoringLead nurturingWelcome new clientsGenerate repeat business (customer retention)Remind customers about abandoned shopping cartsChase up failed billing paymentsCustomer serviceSend appointment remindersClient satisfaction reportsAsk clients for referralsClean up your email listsRetrieve lost passwordsRemember client birthdaysIncrease social media followersEvent registration (can include webinars)Promote Facebook eventsBusiness adminSend/receive important documentsCollect job applications

I think it’s fair to say I’ve covered all of those 25 points and more in this guide, which should get you off to a good start with systemising your business.

It’s OK to start small with systemisation

Remember, you don’t have to start off big or overwhelm yourself with a complex network of software platforms. You can start by systemising basic human tasks for better efficiency and start using simple tools to automate and systemise basic, everyday tasks – these are some of the most important tasks to systemise.

From there you can be more ambitious with your systemisation goals and start conquering more complex processes like lead generation and customer retention.

Systemisation isn’t about perfection; it’s about constantly improving your business processes to increase efficiency, productivity, growth and – above all – profit. The software we have available today means this is something businesses of all sizes and budget can achieve now but there’s nothing wrong with starting from the bottom up and building your way to bigger things later down the road.

Hopefully, this business systemisation guide has given you everything you need to get started on the right track.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Systemising Your Business appeared first on Venture Harbour.

5 Ways to Use Live Chat Software & Chatbots For Lead Generation

No doubt you’ve noticed the drastic increase in live chat widgets on websites over the past few years. This has coincided with the rise of chatbots – a new spin on the live chat concept that capitalises on the rise of instant messaging apps and social media.

The question is: does this technology really work or is it just another fad?

Well, it turns out 69% of consumers prefer talking to chatbots for quick communication with brands, as opposed to calling them directly or sending an email.

Source: Salesforce

This makes sense when being put on hold or waiting for someone to read and reply to your email seems out of touch with today’s fast-paced world.

It seems businesses understand the demand for bots, too According to research from Oracle, 80% of businesses plan to launch a chatbot of some kind by 2020. While separate research from Juniper predicts that chatbots are going to save businesses $8 billion in costs by 2020.

Automating lead generation with bots

The real beauty of chatbots and live chat widgets is they’re 100% automated. So, once you’ve set them up, the technology will keep bringing in the leads, no matter how much traffic you throw at them – and you don’t anyone at the helm to operate them either.

That all sounds great.

Of course, it takes a little bit more than slapping widgets all over your website to get results. You need to have a strategy in place to pinpoint those moments where bots can be useful to the user and understand the kind of friction you might be adding in certain situations.

To give you a better idea of how bots can generate valuable leads by enhancing the experience on your site, here are five strategies you can try out for yourself.

#1: Offer help to users who appear lost

The most common place you’ll see live chat widgets is on a company’s homepage – or possibly every site on their page by default.

Typically, these trigger as soon as the page loads or after a short delay.

The problem I normally find is they tend to pop up too quickly while I’m still seeing what the page has to offer. Elegant Themes has a longer delay on its chat widget than most and think this improves the overall experience.

Personally, I would have an even longer delay for first-time visitors to give them a chance to take everything in. If they don’t click through to anything after a certain amount of time, this is the perfect moment to trigger the widget.

With some platforms, you can also trigger them to pop up when a user looks like they’re about to leave your site.

#2: Engage users when they want to leave your site

You’ve seen exit-intent popups and you’ve probably seen exit-intent web forms. Well, some bot platforms, such as Tido, allow you to setup exit-intent chat experiences that trigger when a user looks like they’re about to leave.

Now, this could be when a user is about to leave your homepage or it could be when a potential customer is about to abandon a cart full of products.

Tidio helps you reduce cart abandonment.

Capturing a lead at this stage could make the difference between losing the sale forever and getting them back to place an order – now or in the near future.

#3: Collect leads out of hours

The internet never sleeps and people can engage with brands at anytime they want, anywhere in the world. Whether that next potential customer is in another time zone half way around the world or simply discovering your business out of hours, you need a channel that’s capable of capturing these leads.

Chatbots work around the clock so you can engage with users 24/7.

Flow XO is one of many chatbot builders that helps you easily add the technology to your website.

Going back to the Salesforce research we linked to in the intro of this article, users say the most important role of chatbots is providing basic information quickly. Things like opening hours, as illustrated in the screenshot from a Flow XO chatbot above.

Wherever possible, you want to capture these users as leads so you can reach out to them again later. In most cases, this means asking users for their email address but there are other options – eg: embedding a Facebook Messenger bot on your website.

#4: Engage a visitor who quits a form

We’ve spent a lot of time optimising web forms here at Venture Harbour in recent years – and with great success. In fact, one of our most successful ventures is Leadformly, a platform that helps you create and optimise high-converting forms for the best possible performance.

We’ve tested our fair share of chatbots recently too and one strategy recommended by Tidio is using bots to capture leads who quit web forms.

To do this, you’ll need to make sure your chatbot platform has this specific feature or allows you to create custom rules for when your bots trigger – ie: after a user starts filling out your form, then tries to quite the page before completing it.

#5: Capture blog readers when they reach the bottom of the page

According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 report, 55% of marketers say blog content is their top inbound marketing priority. That’s a telling statistic when there are so many channels to manage these days. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, when blog content plays such a crucial role in organic search and social media marketing.

The problem is, creating and publishing all of that content is only the beginning. You also need to make sure that content converts or generates leads but what are your users doing when they reach the end of your blog post (assuming they even make it that far)?

Instead of letting those users leave your site, set your bot to trigger when users reach the end of your blog posts and push them towards converting.

Are you using chatbots in 2019?

If you’re not yet using chatbots to generate leads and reduce negative actions like bounce rates, cart abandonments and form quits, then now is a good time to test them out.

By focusing on these specific user actions, rather than simply triggering the same bot on every page of your site, you can actually enhance the user experience and provide the incentive people need to continue engaging with your brand.

The post 5 Ways to Use Live Chat Software & Chatbots For Lead Generation appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Ways to use LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation

LinkedIn is renowned as the social network for B2B marketing but getting results from the platform isn’t as straightforward as you might hope.

You can’t just fill out your company page with some basic details, send out a few invitations to connect with your old colleagues and expect the magic to happen.

LinkedIn gives you a dedicated platform to connect with the world’s professionals in a single place but you still need to put the work in if you want to generate valuable B2B leads. And, in this article, we’ve got 10 tried and tested ways to use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation.

#1: Genrate B2B leads from your LinkedIn company page

The most common mistake I see brands and marketers make on LinkedIn is using their company page as a digital business card. Let me make this clear: your LinkedIn company page should be a lead generation page that encourages people to engage with your brand.

Nobody cares what year you were founded in; show people what you actually have to offer.

Take a look at Unbounce‘s LinkedIn company page – a brand that knows a thing or two about B2B lead generation. It hits visitors with an offer right away and prompts them to sign up for its latest Page Speed Report for Marketers.

This is the first thing people see when they land on the page and all of the other content you’ll find there is about offering value to its existing audience and users.

This is the kind of approach you should be taking with your LinkedIn company page.

#2: Create showcase pages to segment LinkedIn leads

LinkedIn Showcase Pages are designed for B2B businesses that need to promote different products, multiple brands, events and other aspects of a business that has its own specific audience.

These “affiliated pages” allow you to create and promote content for each target audience and you can assign different categories to each showcase page. These pages give you the chance to segment your LinkedIn B2B leads more effectively and target them with relevant content.

Take Salesforce as an example, which has multiple products to promote and audiences comprising of businesses, agencies and developers.

#3: Build quality connections – lots of them

Yes, it’s important to have plenty of connections on LinkedIn but the biggest mistake marketers make on this platform (and many social networks) is to try and get the highest number of connections as soon as possible.

The problem is low-quality connections aren’t going to generate leads. You’re only going to get genuine business opportunities from relevant, high-quality connections.

The more relevant your connections are, the more likely they are to share your content and engage with it, which means more of their connections get to see it, too. This allows you to grow your presence on LinkedIn organically, rather than the same group of uninterested people ignoring your content.

Quantity is important but quality is your priority.

#4: Create your own LinkedIn groups

Joining LinkedIn groups is an important part of making new connections, engaging with people and building your presence on the network.

However, your long-term goal should be to create LinkedIn groups of your own – ones that have large enough audiences to become a source of B2B leads. This will take some time and you’ll need to build up a solid collection of high-quality connections first. You’ll want to establish yourself as an authority in your niche so people trust your groups as a place for valuable knowledge and discussion.

It takes a certain kind of content to make this happen on LinkedIn.

#5: Share newsworthy content daily

To make things happen on LinkedIn, you’ll have to be active every day. It’s better to spend 30 minutes or an hour on the network each day than six hours once a week.

Take some time to share newsworthy content on a daily basis and add your own thoughts.

The first benefit of this approach is it doesn’t cost you anything to create the content you share. It also helps you be active on the network every day and it gives you a medium to express your brand’s position and engage with other users.

Crucially, it also shows people you’re constantly up to date with the latest developments in your industry, which is really important for our next step.

#6: Create thought leadership content

The phrase “thought leadership” has become an overused buzzword in recent years but the premise behind it is sound. For people take notice of what you have to say, you need to have authority and people want to listen to B2B brands that have innovative ideas.

If you’re creating “how-to” content, make sure you’re offering tips people haven’t already heard 100 times before. In fact, you might even want to rethink the “how-to” format altogether and aim for something a little more original.

Businesses also want to work with brands that have the expert knowledge and foresight to see where their industry is heading. Things change quickly in every industry these days and business minds listen to industry experts who can help them prepare for what’s ahead.

#7: Back it up with data journalism

The reason I don’t like the phrase “thought leadership” is because too many publishers think they’re creating original, thought-provoking content when they’re no less generic than everything else out there.

To be prove your content is the real deal, back up everything you say with solid data.

Data journalism is the art of telling newsworthy stories based on data. This data can come from your own research or third-party sources but the aim is to create 100% original content showcasing new ideas, all reinforced by trustworthy data.

Take a look at The Data Journalism Handbook if you’re not familiar with this essential content strategy.

The great thing about data journalism is you can still create original with fresh ideas from data that’s been used before. All you have to do is put a different spin on it, add your own insights, present new data and make your arguments.

Better yet, you can conduct your own research and deliver 100% original insights to your audience – a fine way of establishing yourself as an industry leader.

Bonus tip: Publish your studies and findings in a visual format on SlideShare.

#8: Above all, add value

It’s easy to talk about creating “quality” content, engaging audiences and all the usual marketing cliches. Actually doing these things is much more difficult but there is one thing every piece of profitable content has in common.

It offers some kind of value to the end reader.

Keep this in mind when you draw up your LinkedIn content strategy and create every piece of individual content. Ask yourself what value is this really giving to your connections, the people in your groups and whichever audiences you’re targeting.

If you can’t answer this question instantly and confidently, your content isn’t strong enough. And it needs to be if you want to build an organic presence on LinkedIn that generates B2B leads.

#9: Turn your best content into sponsored content

Once you you’re producing content that gets results, you’ll want to consider promoting your best content as sponsored content to maximise reach.

Sponsored content is one of the ad formats you can use on LinkedIn to reach a wider and/or targeted audience.

One thing I would say about LinkedIn advertising – compared to using Google Ads or Facebook, for example – is that costs-per-click (CPCs) can be significantly higher. So it’s worth waiting until you’re confident your content will get results before you start paying to promote it.

#10: Target high-value prospects with Programmatic Display Ads

LinkedIn Ads are the best way to make sure your content gets seen by the right people but the network is known for being one of the more expensive PPC platforms (those pesky CPCs again!).

Naturally, this can put a lot of B2B advertisers off LinkedIn but higher CPCs don’t always mean you’re going to be out of pocket. The trick with LinkedIn advertising is to target the highest-value audiences you’re able to identify – in other words, the most profitable prospects.

As a crude example, a software company selling business management tools might want to focus on enterprise brands who are going to spend the most per conversion.

You might be paying more for each lead on LinkedIn than you are on Google Ads, but LinkedIn allows you to guarantee your ads are being seen by enterprise decision-makers.

LinkedIn: The ultimate network for B2B leads?

LinkedIn has a reputation as the ultimate source of B2B leads for a very good reason. It’s the only major network that connects you with the world’s professionals – most of whom are hungry to do business in some form or another.

This doesn’t mean B2B marketing on LinkedIn is a free ride, though. There are millions of business minds using the platform as a marketing channel and you’ve got to get your brand to the top of the queue in your niche.

I’m not saying the strategies we’ve looked at in this article are going to turn you into an overnight LinkedIn success. But, with some good-old-fashioned hard work and patience, you will get results with them.

The post 10 Ways to use LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation appeared first on Venture Harbour.

Marketo Review: Where it shines (and where it’s quite overrated)

Marketo is one of the biggest names in marketing software, offering a wide range of solutions for businesses of all sizes – from marketing automation to lead management, email marketing, analytics and more.

If you’re looking to ramp up your marketing efforts with some solid technology, Marketo will undoubtedly be on your list of options. However, it’s not the cheapest piece of software out there and you really need to know what you’re buying into before you sign up.

In this review, we’re going to look at the pros and cons of Marketo: what it does well, what it doesn’t and how much you can expect to pay for it.

Marketo pros & cons

Before we delve into the details, let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of using Marketo. I’m basing these on our experience with using the platform and comparing it to alternatives such as HubSpot, ActiveCampaign and Infusionsoft.

Marketo pros



Extensive marketing solutions: Marketo is a comprehensive marketing suite covering all the essentials modern brands need.Flexible: Marketo offers separate products for marketing automation, email, analytics, etc. so you can pay for what you need and forget about the rest.Usability: By separating its platform into multiple products, Marketo is easier to use than less flexible, complex marketing suites.Quick and easy setup: For a marketing suite as comprehensive as this, Marketo is impressively fast and easy to set up.



Marketo cons



Pricing: Marketo has never been an affordable option but prices have increased rapidly over the years – and the company isn’t particularly transparent about the full cost of its platform.No CRM: Marketo doesn’t have a built-in CRM although it does integrate with a wide range of customer relationship management platforms.Poor landing page & form builder: This is one area where Marketo still lags behind industry leaders such as Unbounce and Leadformly.Analytics & reporting: A lot of Marketo users complain that its analytics and reporting features are lacking behind the competition.Usability: While the overall experience is generally good, using some of the specific tools in Marketo can be frustrating.Speed: A lot of Marketo customers also complain that the software can be sluggish at times and this is consistent with our experiences.

Make no mistake, Marketo is a true leader in marketing software but there are some issues, as always. For us, the cost of Marketo is out of touch with today’s alternatives and there are too many issues with small (but important) tools to justify such a hefty price tag.

How much does Marketo cost?

Marketo doesn’t any pricing on its website and you’ll need to call up its sales team to get a quote. For some reason, it still decides to separate plans into three categories: Basic, Pro and Elite, even though pricing is meant to be based on the number of leads you have.

Instead, pricing is based on the plan and the number of leads on your account – something that’s easier to understand with a table.

 
< 10K
10K – 30K
30K – 100K
100K – 250K
250K – 500K
500K – 750K
750K – 1M




Basic
$1,195
$1,495
$2,495
–
–
–
–


Pro
$1,995
$2,995
$3,995
$5,395
$7,195
–
–


Elite
$$3,195
$4,395
$5,595
$6,795
$7,995
$9,995
$11,995

Let’s be clear, those prices may have changed since we used Marketo and you should take them as a rough guide. Those are the monthly fees you’ll be paying on an annual contract and this could save anywhere between $250 to $2,500 depending on which plan you’re signed up to.

These fees are comparable with many of the other enterprise marketing software options on the market but there’s no entry-level option for smaller businesses so this isn’t something you can really use to scale your business from the ground up.

Either way, Marketo is one of the more expensive options, even at the enterprise level.

What can you do with Marketo?

Marketo divides its platform into a number of different apps, allowing you to essentially use the features you need without the other getting in your way.

This is important, too, because enterprise platforms like this can drown you in features and dashboards, which makes it difficult to navigate and use. Marketo does a good job of splitting its suite into dedicated apps so you can easily get to what you need, when you need it.

Marketing automation: Create, automate and measure campaigns across channels.Account-based marketing: Focus on the accounts that
matter most using AI.Email marketing: Engage customers with relevant conversations in minutes.Mobile marketing: Communicate with customers wherever they are.Social media: Integrate social to find customers
and make them advocates.Digital ads: Target the right customers with personalized display ads.Web personalisation: Interact dynamically
with customers on your website.Marketing analytics: Measure campaigns, prove their impact and improve results.Content AI: Give customers the content they want automatically.Marketo Sales Engage: Give your sales reps more power to identify the most valuable leads and keep them engaged.

That gives you solid coverage across all of your marketing strategies and plenty of tools to automate processes between them. Something that is missing, though, is a CRM and this means you’ll need to integrate with a third-party platform for this. Marketo does integrate nicely with leading CRM platforms but these don’t come for free.

Other frustrations we found with Marketo were the poor landing page and form builders. Analytics and reporting is another weak point and, despite dividing the platform into individual apps, the UX of specific tools could be improved.

How does Marketo compare to the competition?

Marketo’s feature list is about as good as any other enterprise marketing software provider and I’ve given you our insights on its strengths and weaknesses. But now I want to quickly compare it against two other marketing platforms we tried out – one of which became our software of choice for the past five years.

Marketo vs HubSpot

The most obvious difference is that HubSpot comes with a CRM and it also has entry-level options for smaller businesses. Aside from the CRM, HubSpot covers you for email marketing, social media, content management and automation.

Pricing isn’t all that different once you get to the more advanced HubSpot packages but its entry-level pricing means you can scale your business – just be aware that your costs are going to increase drastically as the number of leads you’re dealing with increases.

Overall, the user experience of HubSpot is fantastic and reporting is more extensive, too. One of the best things about HubSpot is its customer support and the huge range of content and documentation the company has created to help its customers get the best from its software.

Marketo vs ActiveCampaign

After trying Marketo and HubSpot we turned to ActiveCampaign, an option that had escaped our attention. Unlike the other providers we’d looked at, ActiveCampaign doesn’t position itself as an enterprise platform. While it does have an enterprise solution, ActiveCampaign is designed specifically for smaller businesses that want to grow.

This is reflected in the pricing and ActiveCampaign has an affordable entry-point for small businesses. However, unlike HubSpot and many other providers, the price increases as your contact list grows are far more reasonable.

This is a key reason we recommend it to smaller brands looking to automate growth – the platform will still be cost-effective in five years’ time.

ActiveCampaign’s automation features and CRM are up there with the best, too. It’s not as feature-rich as Marketo but with a few integrations you’re able to do just as much at a fraction of the cost – and the overall usability is better.

Marketo verdict

Marketo packs industry-leading features into a platform that almost delivers everything enterprise brands need from marketing software. The lack of a CRM is frustrating but this is still one of the top option for enterprise businesses.

If you’re not yet in that enterprise category, though, Marketo will be out of your budget range. This is where options like HubSpot and ActiveCampaign start to take the lead, thanks to their modest entry-point pricing that allows smaller businesses to get on board and grow.

All that said, we’ve been using ActiveCampaign for five years now and we can tell you the enterprise version offers 95% of everything a brand could need from marketing software – including a CRM. All you need is a few additional integrations and you’ll still probably save money compared to Marketo.

The post Marketo Review: Where it shines (and where it’s quite overrated) appeared first on Venture Harbour.

5 White Label Email Marketing Tools for Agencies

If you’re an agency looking to add email marketing to your services, you’re going to need some white label software that allows you to manage multiple client accounts and apply your own branding.

As a professional agency, you don’t really want software logos all over your reports and dashboards, especially if you provide client access to the platform.

Of course, you could build your own email marketing software but this isn’t always realistic – or even necessary when there are excellent platfoms already offering white label solutions.

Here are the best white label email marketing tools for agencies.

What is white label email marketing software?

White label email marketing software allows you to remove the branding from existing platforms and customise their dashboards to a certain extent. The idea is to allow agencies to provide email marketing services by using these platforms, instead of building their own software solutions.

Why is this important?

Well, you’re going to need to provide your clients with reports to show them how your services are making an impact. In many cases, you’re also going to want to give your clients access to certain parts of the platform so they can access reports for themselves or even create their own email templates, campaigns, etc.

Regardless of how much access clients have to your email marketing platform, you want your agency’s logos, URLs and other branding elements to be there – not the branding of your software provider.

This is the key selling point of white label email marketing solutions and we’ve got five of the best options for your in this article.

#1: SendinBlue







Key features:



Logo & URL personalisationAdvanced contact segmentationAdvanced, real-time reportingMulti-IP ManagerAPI AccessMulti-language Support

SendinBlue is a great email marketing platform and we use it here at Venture Harbour for sending transactional emails. It doesn’t provide the automation features we need and it lacks a little on the integration side of things for us, but SendinBlue is a highly capable piece of software all the same.

With its white label offering you can customise URLs to match your domain, add your agency logo to the interface and create custom reports for different clients. Overall, it’s not the most customisable white label option but you do get multi-language support, which could be crucial if you’re dealing with clients in foreign-speaking markets.

#2: ActiveCampaign







Key features:



Custom domainReplace ActiveCampaign logo with your ownModify HTML and CSS for button colours, borders, fonts and other elements to match your brandAdd/remove buttons and other optionsRemove all references and links to ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is our main piece of email marketing software and it’s the platform’s excellent automation features and integration options that sealed the deal for us.

As a white label option, ActiveCampaign also gives you more freedom than SendinBlue, as well. Aside from custom domains and logos, you can also modify the style of the interface itself to match your brand. As long as you’re happy to tweak some HTML and CSS, you can change the colour of buttons and borders, change font styles and other design elements.

You can also remove buttons entirely or add them to other parts of the interface. Crucially, ActiveCampaign makes sure all references and links to itself are removed from the platform.

#3: Campaign Monitor







Key features:



Custom domainsCustom logo and brandingSuper-fast navigation between client accounts, campaigns and billing detailsCreate customised permissions and workflows for different client accounts

Campaign Monitor is much like a stripped-down version of ActiveCampaign, offering email marketing and automation but with significantly fewer features.

You can view a feature comparison at Marketing Automation Insider to see how much these differences matter to you.

Campaign Monitor’s approach to white labelling its software is a little different and it actually tweaks the navigation structure for agencies, making it faster for you to move between client accounts, campaigns and billing details.

It’s a relatively simple modification but it makes a real difference to using the platform as an agency. Besides that, you can also create customised permissions and workflows for different client accounts for more granular control.

#4: mailingmanager







Key features:



Custom domain and SSLCustom brandingUnlimited clientsFree trial signup pagesAutomation processes for turning free trials into paying accounts

mailingmanager’s white label solution is designed to make it easier for creative brands to add email marketing to their list of services. The emphasis is on getting clients to sign up for free trials, use your rebranded version of the platform and then sign up for a monthly subscription.

To make this work, mailingmanager gives you a 100% white label solution that you can fully customise to match your brand. There’s no limit on the number of clients you can have on board either, so you’re never going to be held back from developing this as an additional stream of revenue.

You also have automation and CRM features rolled into the platform and mailaingmanager has automation workflows specifically for agencies to turn free trials into paying customers.

#5: Instiller







Key features:



Custom brandingCustomise client accountsUnlimited accountsUnlimited team members

Instiller is purely a white label email marketing solution designed for agencies. This means the platform is designed from the bottom up for agencies that want to offer email marketing services.

You get a 100% white label solution, allowing you to customise domains, logos and design styles to match your brand. Instiller also gives you unlimited client accounts and there’s the added bonus of being able to create unlimited team member accounts, too.

As an email marketing platform, Instiller gives an intuitive drag-and-drop builder, strong automation options and detailed reporting. It’s just about everything you could need from a platform like this, except it’s 100%

Which is the best white label email marketing platform?

Choosing the best white label email marketing solution for your agency depends on a few factors:

The quality of the email marketing software itselfThe amount of customisation options you needUsability of the software

First of all, you need to make sure you have all the email marketing features your agency and clients need. Then, you need to be confident you have the freedom to customise the platform sufficiently – otherwise, there’s not much point in going white label in the first place.

Finally, you also need a solution that provides the usability your agency and clients demand. This depends entirely on how your agency works, the tools you need to integrate with and how much access you plan to give your clients to the platform. For example, will you only give them access to reporting or will you allow them to create and manage campaigns for themselves?

If you’re looking for a recommendation, ActiveCampaign gives you all the email marketing, automation and CRM features you could ever need – you don’t need to worry about that. You also get a lot of room to customise the platform – from domains and logos to button colours and font styles.

For the vast majority of agencies, this should be more than enough.

If you need (or want) a little more freedom to customise the finer details, then it’s worth taking a look at mailingmanager and Instiller, two truly 100% white label platforms.

Whether they can provide the features you and your clients need is something only you can decide.

The post 5 White Label Email Marketing Tools for Agencies appeared first on Venture Harbour.

Unbounce Review: Is it the best landing page builder?

Landing pages have always been tricky for us here at Venture Harbour. Our developers are normally busy with building new products and optimising our existing ones but our marketing team needs landing pages built regularly and quickly – they don’t want to be waiting for a few weeks while each one is designed and developed for them.

Sound familiar?

Building landing pages is only half of the battle, though. Running split tests and optimising every page on an ongoing basis is a real challenge and we’ve tried multiple landing page builders to solve this problem for us.

Most recently, we’ve been using Unbounce to aid the release of our latest venture, Serene, and we thought it might help to share our experience as an in-depth review/case study.

What are we looking at in this Unbounce review?

Our main goal with this review is to give you a real impression of what it’s like to use Unbounce as a landing page builder and optimisation tool.

First, I’m going to explain why we started using Unbounce and then I’ll run through the pros and cons we experienced along the way. But the main bulk of this review is going to be more like a case study, showing you what we’ve actually done with the platform, the problems it solved for us and what could be improved.

To do this, I’ll run you through five key tasks we managed with Unbounce:

Creating our first landing pagePublishing a landing page on our WordPress siteIntegrating Unbounce with our CRMRunning our first A/B test in UnbounceUsing popups & sticky bars

This will give you working examples of what Unbounce can do for your business and idea of what kind of issues you come across. No marketing tool is perfect and only you can decide what the dealbreakers are for your own needs.

This review will help you decide whether Unbounce is the landing page builder for you.

Why did we start using Unbounce?

Essentially, landing pages were holding back our efforts to release and promote new products. With our development team pumping all of its resources into getting ready for launch, the task of designing and developing the landing pages for our marketing team upon request isn’t manageable.

We need landing pages, fast

Once our marketing team comes up with campaign ideas, it needs landing pages quickly – it can’t wait weeks for them to be designed and developed, one by one.

We can need multiple landing pages at any one time, too, for different products, new websites, PPC campaigns, email marketing campaigns and all kinds of purposes.

Being able to create these quickly is a major attraction of landing page builders like Unbounce.

We need to test & personalise landing pages

Your first landing page design never gets the best results. To maximise performance, you need to optimise/test on an ongoing basis and this means you’re essentially creating multiple variations for every landing page you build.

This only makes development and time constraints more difficult.

We knew that Unbounce comes with unlimited A/B testing on all of its plans and we wanted to see if this, combined with its landing page builder, would be enough for us to create and optimise our pages using a single platform.

Another feature that caught our attention was Dynamic Text Replacement, which promises to make personalisation fast and easy to implement.

We’d tried other options and came back to Unbounce

Leadpages and Instapage also caught our attention in the quest for a landing page builder but neither option quite worked out for us and the feedback we were getting from Unbounce users was consistently better than the other options.

You can read our Leadpages review here but the quick answer is its landing page builder wasn’t as good as the alternatives and it lacked enough customisation options and testing features for our needs.

Unbounce pros & cons

Overall, Unbounce is a great piece of software and there are plenty of good things to say about. There’s always room for improvement, though, and here are the pros and cons we’ve experienced while using the platform.

Unbounce pros



Quickly build and publish landing pagesQuickly create variants for testingExcellent templates and third-party sources like ThemeForest for more templatesHighly customisableGreat landing page builderSplit testing functionality is good



Unbounce cons



You can’t split test existing landing pages created outside of Unbounce (something you can do with platforms like VWO and Google Optimize)Our Unbounce landing pages were lost as a data source in Google Analytics – we found a workaround but it wasn’t idealYou can’t add custom classes to buttons so we had to rebuild them in HTML, which prevented us from tracking goals in Unbounce

I’m not going to lie – some of those cons added a lot of initial extra work but you’ll end up with the same problems on most landing page builders like Instapage and Leadpages.

If Unbounce opens up the platform to split test landing pages previously built outside of the software, this would be a huge win and the ability to add custom classes to buttons would save a lot of time as well.

Overall, Unbounce is going to save you way more time than it costs and, once you’re up and running with the platform, it’s pretty hard to do without. The landing page builder is great, the templates available are excellent and you get a lot of freedom to customise your pages.

Unbounce’s split testing features are solid, too. Sure, they’re not as extensive as a dedicated piece of A/B testing software but it’s a strong offering for a landing page builder and more than you’ll get from most alternatives.

Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty of what it’s like to actually use Unbounce as a landing page builder and optimisation tool.

Creating our first landing page in Unbounce

Our first task with Unbounce was to create a “coming soon” page for the Serene app. You can either start with a blank page and build your own landing page from scratch, use the Training Template as a general guide or choose a template and customise it to your needs.

We wanted to generate leads for Serene before we launched the product live so we chose a minimal template with an email signup form and adjusted the design to suit the concept of a productivity app.

In colour psychology, orange is associated with energy and this is the feeling we want to leave our users with, so we opted for a gradient from red to yellow – a combination that draws attention (think traffic signs), signifies importance and gets people excited.

Unbounce’s landing page builder makes it incredibly easy to put your own designs on its templates with a lot more freedom than you may be used to with other platforms.

In terms of actually building our first landing page, we were done in a matter of minutes – and there’s no reason it should take you ay longer, as long as you know what you want to create before starting.

Publishing a landing page onto our WordPress site

If you’re running a WordPress website, the first integration you’ll need to think about is publishing your pages through the CMS.

This was actually a lot easier than we anticipated and the only prepwork you need to do is download the Unbounce plugin to verify your site.

Once this is done, head back to the Unbounce dashboard and the landing page you want to publish. Simply define your URL (and make sure it is the correct URL) you want to publish to and that’s it.

Simple.

Integrating Unbounce with our CRM

Unlike WordPress, integrating Unbounce with our CMS ActiveCampaign wasn’t as straightforward as we had hoped. It turned out this was because ActiveCampaign has updated its interface and Unbounce hasn’t updated its documentation to match.

In the end, we ended up using Zapier to integrate the platforms and this actually worked out better for us. Unbounce’s native integration with ActiveCampaign only sends over the name and email of users but we created a Zap to send over additional data.

I have to say, I would recommend this approach if you’re using Unbounce and ActiveCampaign.

Running our first A/B test in Unbounce

Unbounce offers unlimited A/B testing on all versions of its platform and this was a key feature that drew us to its software. Otherwise known as split testing, this allows you to create multiple versions of the same landing page and pit them against each other.

Traffic will be split between each version and you can keep track of progress in the Unbounce dashboard.

All in all, A/B testing on Unbounce works really well and it simplifies the entire process nicely. You don’t need any technical expertise whatsoever and our marketing team is able to create variations and run tests without any input from our development team whatsoever.

The only problem we had with A/B testing on Unbounce is that we couldn’t apply it to existing landing pages we’d already created outside of Unbounce. This is standard procedure with landing page builders like this but more extensive optimisation platforms like VWO and Google Optimize do provide this.

Using Popups & sticky bars with Unbounce

We’ve experimented quite a lot with popups and sticky bars over the years and this is something we wanted to continue with our Serene landing pages.

Once again, Unbounce’s drag and drop editor makes it a breeze to create and customise these. Once you’ve designed your popup or sticky bar, you can choose when to trigger them, add them to any page on your website (not only Unbounce landing pages), set custom frequencies and schedule them to only appear at certain times.

That gives you a lot of deliverability options and you can monitor performance from your Unbounce dashboard to see how they’re impacting conversion rates.

Compared to dedicated popup platforms like OptinMonster, Unbounce doesn’t give you a dozen different types of popups to work with but I’m not convinced this is an issue.

More important for us was Unbounce’s Dynamic Text Replacement feature that allows us to adapt the content of our popups and landing pages to match the search terms users type into Google before landing on our site.

Unbounce verdict

After using Unbounce throughout the launch process of Serene, I have no reservations about recommending it as a landing page builder. It’s certainly the best platforms of its type that I’ve used and I don’t think anyone else on our team is going to disagree with that.

There are some minor niggles that add unnecessary work, particularly when you’re first getting started and it would be nice to have some better integrations with Google Analytics.

However, Unbounce solves far more problems than it creates and I think it’s safe to say this is still the best landing page builder on the market. We were pretty demanding in the way we used this platform and any problems we came across were fixed with integrations or a few tweaks.

To sum up: if you’re on the hunt for a landing page builder, start with Unbounce.

The post Unbounce Review: Is it the best landing page builder? appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Best PPC & Remarketing Agencies in 2019

Choosing a PPC agency can be nervy because you’re putting ad budget on the line from day one. It’s important you choose an agency that’s going to get results – within budget and in a reasonable time-frame – but this is easier said than done.

The good news is we’ve got ten of the best PPC and remarketing agencies for you in this article.

We’ve got full-service agencies that can provide every marketing strategy you need and pure PPC specialists in here – all of which are highly regarded, award-winning agencies in their niche.

#1: Absolute Digital Media

Absolute Digital Media is a full-service digital marketing agency based in Chelmsford, Essex. The company specialises in SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media, web design and development – just about everything a modern brand needs to maximise visibility.

Absolute’s approach is to find the right mix of marketing channels and integrate them into a single strategy, based on the unique needs of each client – a mix of B2B and B2C ventures across the UK and overseas.

The company has plenty of awards to brag about, particularly in the search and social advertising departments – just what you want from any PPC specialist.

#2: Directive

Directive calls itself a “PPC agency for B2B and enterprise companies”. Based in the US, this highly-specialised agency also has offices in London and works with major B2B brands such as Cisco, Allstate, Samsung SDS, Cherwell and WestRock.

Directive says it spends 89% more hours on its clients’ PPC accounts compared to the average PPC agency. It also claims to increase leads by 84% on average by optimising accounts without increasing ad spend.

While the company clearly defines itself as a PPC specialist – rather than a full-service digital agency – conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is deeply embedded in everything it does.

For enterprise B2B brands looking for a specialist PPC agency to handle paid advertising, Directive is the first number to call.

#3: Greenlight Digital

Greenlight Digital is another full-service marketing agency in the UK, this time based in London. Search marketing quite literally tops the list of services on its website, though. SEO and Paid search & shopping are the top two of thirteen different services listed on its site.

Greenlight also offers conversion optimisation, content marketing, social media, analytics and various other services. The company’s list of clients has a strong B2C profile with major brands including GHD, Dixons Carphone, Furniture Village, FootAsylum and Laura Ashley.

Its awards cabinet must be running out of space by now, as well.

Greenlight describes itself as “data-led and 100% audience focused, which allows us to solve problems in the most impactful and measurably effective way for our clients.”

And, judging by its list of international clients across more than 30 countries, it must be doing something right.

#4: Loud Mouth Media

Loud Mouth Media is a highly-rated agency and winner of the “Best Small PPC Agency in the UK” award for 2017 and 2018 at the UK Search Awards. Only time will tell if the Belfast-based agency can make it three years in a row when award season 2019 comes around.

Considering the company was only founded in 2011, its reputation is all the more impressive. The agency says 90% of its business is inbound, thanks to “a reputation built on fantastic results and happy clients”.

Loud Mouth Media is a small business PPC specialist that provides a comprehensive service including social advertising and SEO campaign management.

If you’re an SME in the UK looking for a specialist PPC agency, get in touch with Loud Mouth Media.

#5: Soap Media

Soap Media is a full service digital marketing agency based in Preston with offices also in Manchester. The company aims to be the only agency you’ll ever need by providing comprehensive services within research and planning, design and development, digital marketing and paid advertising.

Soap Media’s clients include Money Supermarket, AA Tyres, American Golf, Booths and many more. The company takes a highly strategic approach to integrating every marketing channel and extensive audience research is a huge part of everything it does.

Don’t be put off by the fact Soap Media is a full service agency; it’s highly regarding in the paid advertising field and rated as one of the top PPC management agencies in the UK for 2019 by Clutch.

#6: Precis Digital

Precis Digital is a data-driven marketing agency with offices in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the UK. Paid advertising and search optimisation are key priorities for the agency and you’ll also notice analytics, measurement and data science are deeply involved, every step of the way.

Precis’ clients include NA-KD, L’Oreal, HBO Europe, Klarna, TUI, Bauhaus and PriceRunner. The company also has 20 awards to its name and it enjoyed a particularly strong couple of years in 2017 and 2018 at the European Search Awards, The Drum Search Awards and The Search Engine Land Awards.

Its data-driven philosophy isn’t for show, either. Precis has developed its own optimisation suite, analysis platform, custom algorithms and a dozen of software solutions to power its PPC efforts and other marketing strategies.

#7: Optimum Click

Optimum Click is a specialist PPC agency based in Manchester that promises to get results in the first three months of working with clients. If you don’t see a 20% increase in revenue during that time, Optimum Click has a 100% money-back guarantee – not that the company expects to reimburse clients.

Based on the reviews we’ve found, Optimum Click delivers on its promise. Clients report impressive results within the first few months and some report almost-instant improvements.

This might explain the agency’s Certificate of Excellence 2019 at Bark.com. But it also speaks of Optimum Click’s transparency, reporting and how closely it works with its clients to make sure they know exactly what’s going on with their PPC accounts and what results they’re getting.

#8: PPC Geeks

It can be hard to find PPC specialists these days because most agencies offer the full service marketing package. That’s why articles like this help so much but PPC Geeks doesn’t leave you guessing with a name like that.

PPC Geeks is a paid advertising specialist and that’s all it sells itself as, promising to “grow your business with better PPC”. It mostly works with SMEs but there’s a good mix of B2B and B2C businesses on its list of clients.

The company is listed as one of the Top Advertising & Marketing Agencies in the UK and the Top PPC Management Agencies in the UK for 2019 by Clutch. Online reviews are very positive and you can get a free PPC audit by visiting the PPC Geeks website.

#9: Yando

Yando is a small, agile team of digital marketing experts based in London. It provides SEO, PPC, retargeting and paid social for a comprehensive search and social strategy.

With its no-nonsense approach, Yando says its mission is to make you more money. You won’t find any talk of designing great experiences, improving engagement or other marketing cliches on its website.

Yando only talks about getting results and that means increasing your online revenue. You can analyse your website for free by visiting Yando’s website and typing in some basic details about your site.

#10: Circus PPC

Circus PPC is an award-winning team of paid search specialists that creates bespoke strategies for each client, based on their individual needs. The company puts a heavy emphasis on mobile, as this is where most consumer journeys start, and it was quick to recognise the importance of Google Shopping campaigns for retailers.

The agency has been a regular feature on the UK Search Awards shortlist in recent years and its a former winner of the Google Ready To Rock award.

Circus works with SMEs and enterprise brands in B2B and B2C sectors across various industries – from finance to automotive and bingo. You can speak to its teams by calling either its London or Leeds office for more info about what Circus can do for you.

Choosing the agency for you

Results are what matter most in PPC but the process is also important – especially when you’re hiring an agency to work on your behalf. Above all, you want to be confident you can trust your agency to get on with things so you can concentrate on your own workload.

All of these agencies have a proven track record for getting results but they’re also recognised for the way they work with clients, as proven by their customer reviews and industry awards.

The post 10 Best PPC & Remarketing Agencies in 2019 appeared first on Venture Harbour.

Leadpages Review: Where it shines (and where it’s quite overrated)

Leadpages is one of the most popular landing page builders for small and medium-size businesses. Calling itself “the most effective, affordable way for small businesses to connect with an audience, collect leads, and close sales,” Leadpages promises to help you build landing pages, pop-ups and alert bars easily.

In fairness, that makes Leadpages sound like pretty much every other landing page builder on the market. So, in this review, we’re going to take a closer look at where the platform shines and where it’s kind of overrated, compared to the other tools you have available.

Leadpages pros & cons

Before we look at how much Leadpages is going to cost you and what you can do with it, let’s dive right into the pros and cons of this platform.

We’re basing these on our experiences with alternative platforms such as Unbounce and Instapage.

Leadpages Pros



AffordableEasy to useCreate landing pages quicklyFilter templates by highest conversion rateSolid integration optionsNo traffic limitations



Leadpages cons



No enterprise optionLack of customisationSluggish drag-and-drop builderLimited A/B testing on Standard planLimited form options

Essentially, you get a huge amount of landing page templates and Leadpages is generally very easy to use. Sadly, the quality of these templates doesn’t really stack up to the likes of Unbounce and Instapage but this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if Leadpages allowed you to customise its standard templates more extensively.

Sadly, this isn’t the case and you need to use Leadpages’ drag-and-drop builder to get highly customisable results. This in itself wouldn’t be a major problem either but the builder is quite sluggish and this detracts from an otherwise easy-to-use platform.

There are some nice features in there, though – like the fact you can filter templates in order of their conversion rate (based on Leadpages’ data) and the optional pop-ups and alert bars.

How much does Leadpages cost?

Leadpages has three packages available: Standard for new businesses, Pro for growing businesses and Advanced for agencies. There’s no option for enterprise brands but this platform really isn’t aimed at larger businesses at all.

There are three different payment models with Leapages, allowing you to pay monthly, annually and on a 2-year basis – each option offering a lower equivalent price point.

 
Standard
Pro
Advanced




Monthly
$37/mo
$79/mo
$321/mo


Annually
$25/mo
$48/mo
$199/mo


2-year
$17/mo
$42/mo
$159/mo

If you compare that to Unbounce (plans start at $79/mo) and Instapage (plans start at $99/mo), Leapages clearly aims to offer smaller businesses a cheaper alternative.

Here’s what you actually get for your money.

Leadpages Standard ($37/mo, paid annually)



Unlimited Pages, Traffic, & LeadsUnlimited Pop-upsUnlimited Alert BarsFree HostingConnect 1 Domain200+ Free Templates(Mobile-Responsive)40+ Standard IntegrationsFacebook & Instagram AdBuilderTech Support (via Email)Weekly Group Coaching



Leadpages Pro ($79/mo, paid annually)



All Standard featuresOnline Sales and PaymentsUnlimited A/B Split TestingEmail Trigger Links10 Opt-in Text CampaignsSpecial Discounts with partner companies



Leadpages Advanced ($321/mo, paid annually)



All Standard and Pro featuresAdvanced Integrations5 Free Sub Accounts50 Extra Opt-in TextCampaigns1-on-1 Quick Start CallLeadpages Virtual Workshops

In terms of features, Leadpages packs a lot into its platform for a reasonable price. The only complaint I have is the fact you don’t get unlimited A/B testing on the Standard version, despite the fact you can create unlimited landing pages.

Yes, the company needs to differentiate its plans but reserving this essential feature for its more expensive plans largely cancels out the price advantage over Unbounce and Instapage.

One huge advantage Leadpages has over the competition is that fact you have no restriction on traffic, regardless of which version you use. With Unbounce, for example, you’re limited to 500,000 unique visitors per month and you’ll have to sign up to the enterprise version for anything more than that.

You don’t have this limitation with Leadpages, which is great if you have a lot of traffic coming to your site. In real world practice, though, very few of the small businesses Leadpages is targeting will generate more than 500,000 unique visitors on a monthly basis.

What can you do with Leadpages?

Leadpages offers three core products, all of which you can use as much as you like on all versions of its platform: Lead Pages (landing pages), Pop-Ups and Alert Bars.

Lead pages

Of course, Leadpages’ primary function is a landing page builder and you’ll be familiar with the overall process if you’ve ever used a tool like this or a theme-based CMS like WordPress.

Essentially, you choose your template, add your content and you’re pretty much good to go. Leadpages has a huge library of templates to choose from as well. Quantity doesn’t always result in quality, though, and Leadpages’ templates always felt like they were behind the likes of Unbounce and Instapage – until the last couple of years, that is.

I still think Leadpages has some catching up to do but its template designs have definitely improved in recent years.

Unfortunately, your customisation options are highly limited when you use a standard template and this is where Leadpages drag-and-drop builder made an exciting addition to the platform. However, I’ve found the web app to be sluggish when I’ve tried it myself and this isn’t something you want from a tool designed to make life easier.

Pop-Ups

Next up, we have Leadpages’ Pop-Ups products, which you can implement on your landing pages and any other page on your website.

These are exit-intent pop-ups that trigger when a user looks like they’re about to leave your website. The idea is to capture leads from traffic that would otherwise slip through your fingers.

Leadpages make these incredibly easy to set up and you won’t need to write any code. Unbounce also has a product to help you create exit-intent pop-ups with no coding but you don’t get this feature with Instapage.

Alert Bars

Leadpages’ Alert Bars allow you to get a message across to users without interrupting the user experience in the same way full-page pop-ups do. They’re a relatively mobile-friendly approach and they provide a simple solution for adding CTAs to pages that might not otherwise generate leads.

Once again, Leadpages makes these incredibly easy to set up and you won’t need to deal with any code or plugins to use Alert Bars. Combined with exit-intent popups, these can make a real difference to your landing page conversion rates.

How does Leadpages compare to the competition?

Leadpages gets off to a strong start with affordable pricing, solid features and a decent selection of landing page templates – a tempting proposition if you’re comparing it to alternatives like Unbounce and Instapage.

Unfortunately, Leadpages quickly loses out if you actually start using other landing page builders.

There are a number of reasons for this.

Leadpages vs Unbounce

Unbounce is more expensive than Leadpages but you get unlimited A/B testing on every version of its platform and you also get an extensive range of optimisation features.

Dynamic text replacement is a particularly great tool.

Unbounce’s page builder is superior as well, truly making it fast and easy to build and customise landing pages. This is one area where Leadpages really frustrates and it’s hard to forgive this in a landing page platform.

Something else that ruled out Leadpages for us was its limited form options. In fairness, Unbounce’s built-in form options were also under-par for us but what you can do is embed forms on Unbounce pages and this allows us to place our highly-optimised Leadformly forms on any landing page we create.

We can’t do this with Leadpages.

Leadpages vs Instapage

Instapage also gives you unlimited A/B testing on its basic “Core” plan and its landing page builder is probably the best I’ve used so far.

One of Instapage’s standout features is its heatmapping tool. This is an invaluable optimisation tool for landing pages and you’ll need to integrate Leadpages or Unbounce with a third-party platform for this, such as Hotjar.

You can read our Hotjar review here.

Leadpages verdict

Leadpages aims to provide a landing page builder for smaller businesses and its pricing policy looks pretty suitable at a glance. There are a few things it needs to fix, though. If it makes A/B testing fully available on every version of its platform, then the affordable prices of its Standard plan become a genuine asset.

At this point, you basically have to pay up for its Pro version and this puts you close to Instapage prices.

The other two issues I have is the lack of customisation options on Leadpages’ templates, which makes it difficult to match the branding and design on existing websites. Then we have that page builder which could have solved those customisation issues, if it wasn’t on the sluggish side.

Final verdict? Leadpages could be a great option for smaller businesses if it fixes a few key issues.

The post Leadpages Review: Where it shines (and where it’s quite overrated) appeared first on Venture Harbour.

The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is a crucial strategy for getting the best performance out of your website and maximising the return on investment (ROI) from your marketing spend.

Traffic isn’t free and the more visitors who leave your website without converting, the bigger the dent in our profit is going to be.

Highly-optimised pages convert a higher percentage of users, generate more leads and turn more visitors into paying customers. The only problem is it can be tricky getting a CRO strategy off the ground but this beginner’s guide to conversion rate optimisation is going to tell you everything you need to get started.

What is conversion rate optimisation?

Before offering up my answer to a question like this, I like to quote an explanation from one of the industry’s most trusted sources. This time, we’ve got a definition of CRO from HubSpot:

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of enabling people to take an action when they visit a website. By designing and modifying certain elements of a webpage, a business can increase the chances that site visitors will “convert” into a lead or customer before they leave.

Ben Cotton, Hubspot

That’s a pretty good explanation but think we can simplify things a little more than that by breaking down CRO into three key elements:

ConversionsConversion rateConversion rate optimisaton

Once you clarify what a conversion is and, then, what conversion rate is, you have everything you need to understand what conversion rate optimisation involves.

What is a conversion?

A conversion is any profitable action users take on your website: buying a product, downloading one of your eBooks, signing up to your email list – anything you identify as being valuable to your brand.

What is conversion rate?

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors on your site who complete an action you’ve identified as a conversion. If 100 people visit your homepage every day and four of them complete a conversion per day, your conversion rate for that page is going to be 4%.

What is conversion rate optimisation?

Conversion rate optimisation is a data-driven approach of testing changes to your website with the goal of increasing the conversion rates of your pages and key elements on these pages – eg: calls to action.

A good CRO strategy is 100% data-driven – you’re not making design changes based on guesswork and hoping for the best; you’re pinpointing conversion killers through analytics, testing design improvements and proving their effectiveness with solid data.

Why is conversion rate optimisation important?

You put a lot of time, effort and money into bringing traffic to your website. Sadly, the vast majority of these visitors are going to leave your site and probably never come back again.

This is very bad for your marketing ROI.

Conversion rate optimisation aims to increase the percentage of visitors who take valuable actions on your website. It aims to make the most of your existing traffic and maximise the impact of all your inbound marketing strategies.

How to get started with conversion rate optimisation

Before you get started with conversion rate optimisation, you’re going to need htree things:

Traffic: You need enough visitors coming in on a regular basis to run tests that provide reliable results.Analytics: The right data to spot opportunities for improvement and test design changes. A strategy: Clear goals and a strategic approach to implementing CRO.

Assuming you’ve got the necessary traffic hitting the right page, your first move should be getting the data you need. The sooner you do this, the better, too, because more data means more accurate results.

At the very least, you want conversion data for every page that has a conversion goal. This allows you to test design improvement and check how conversions are affected – hopefully, proving your design tweaks are having a positive impact.

However, there are plenty of other metrics you want to pay attention to, which help you discover why users may or may not be converting:

Bounce rate: When a user leaves your site without visiting a second page.Exit rate: When a page is the last one visited in a session.Time on page: How long a user spends on your page.Time on site: How long a user spends on your entire site.Pages visited: How many pages users visit before leaving your site.Page speed: How long your web pages take to load.Devices: How many visits you get per device type.

You can use these metrics to help diagnose problems on your website. For example, if one of your important conversion pages has low conversion rates, high bounce rates, low time spent on the page and slow loading times, you know you probably want to make your page load faster.

Likewise, if you see these metrics look much better on desktop than they do on mobile, it tells you improving page speed and mobile optimisation is a good place to start.

Choosing your first CRO tests

To choose your first CRO tests, open up your analytics suite and see which pages are generating the most unique visitors. Now, filter out all of the pages that don’t have a conversion goal and this will leave you with a list of pages to optimise.

It’s important to choose pages that generate plenty of traffic because these have the most room for improvement. Not all conversions are equally valuable to your brand, though, so traffic isn’t the only consideration. You also need to identify which conversion goals are most important and then choose which pages to start with.

For example, if you’re an SaaS company, the conversions that generate most revenue might be ordered like this:

Upgrades to pro versionSoftware purchasesFree trial signupsUsing your online comparison toolDownloading one of your guidesSigning up to your newsletter

In this case, the top three conversions are clearly the most valuable and I would make free trial signups the priority here – because this is probably where the journey towards software purchases and pro version upgrades begins for most users.

Your landing pages with free trial CTAs are probably dealing with the highest volume of traffic. So I would start with the following CRO goals:

Free trials: Increase the percentage of visitors signing up to free trials.Software purchases: Increase the percentage of free trial users signing up to the paid version at the end of their trial.Pro upgrades: Increase the percentage of customers upgrading to the pro version.

In this case, goals two and three are more about the quality of the software platform involved and the quality of customer service around it (eg: optimising your online support centre, troubleshooting, etc.).

For the rest of this article, I’ll be focusing on goal one in that list because it brings our attention to parts of a website most businesses need to address.

Now that you know which pages you need to optimise, start by looking at the following issues:

Incoming traffic

If the most important pages of your website aren’t generating enough traffic to begin with, your CRO efforts are going to have minimal impact – so make sure you’re getting enough visitor to the most important parts of your site.

For landing pages, most of your traffic is probably going to come from search – a combination of organic and paid traffic. So you’ll need to up your SEO efforts and refine your paid advertising strategy if you’re not getting enough visitors to these pages from search.

Not all conversions take place on the first page users visit, though, and you may find visitors aren’t reaching the most important pages after landing on your site – eg: your social traffic is browsing blog posts and then simply leaving without completing any valuable action.

In this case, you’ll want to optimise the pages that to your conversion pages and increase the percentage of visitors clicking through to the next stage.

Hero sections

On any page with a hero section – normally home page and landing pages – this is where you get across your first and most important message. First impressions matter and the impact you make upon users in hero sections defines how they interpret rest of your content as they scroll down the page.

In most cases, you want to set users up with some kind of emotional trigger. Know what impact you want to make and test variations until you get the emotional response that sets people up for conversions.

Calls to action

Calls to action (CTAs) are the most important element on any page with a conversion goal. This is where you literally tell your users to buy your products, request a quote, sign up to your newsletter or whatever else the conversion goal for each page may be.

Creating compelling CTAs is something of an art form and this is one of the first things you’ll want to test and optimise on each page. Don’t get too carried away with small details like font colour and text styles, though. Focus on testing changes that will have a genuine impact on how many users convert:

CTA copy: The most important aspect of any CTA is its wording and how compelling you make it for users to take action. Placement: Where your CTAs are on the page will have a drastic impact on conversions.Surrounding content: The content surrounding your CTAs – particularly above them – is crucial to priming users for taking action.Visibility: Your CTAs aren’t going to make an impact if people can’t see them – either because they don’t stand out or there’s too much else going on.

These key factors are going to have far more impact than switching fonts and background colours. I’m not saying those design elements aren’t important but people don’t open their wallets because of font choices; they buy because you’ve gotten a compelling message across.

Web forms

Just about every conversion on your site is going to involve some kind of web form and you don’t want issues stopping people from converting at this stage.

Leadformly can increase conversions by up to 300%

We’ve spent years optimising our own forms and we discovered multi-step forms can increase conversions by up to 300% and improve the quality of leads your pages generate.

This is important because it’s not always the quantity of conversions that adds most value. A lower percentage of conversions from users more likely to turn into paying customers can be more profitable – so keep this in mind.

Loading times

Seriously, there are no downsides to having faster loading pages and countless studies have shown the negative impact slow pages have on conversions. This should be a top priority for marketers but research from Unbounce earlier this year reveals loading times are bottom of the list of priorities for marketers.

This is insane but you can use it to your advantage by taking the lead and optimising your pages for speed. If you want to stand out from your competitors for all the right reasons and boost conversion rates, this is a great place to start – especially on mobile.

Trust signals

People buy from businesses they can trust and there are various ways you can show users their money is in safe hands. Before you add any of the specific trust signals I’m about to recommend, make sure the design of your site is up to scratch.

Compare your site to the leading brands in your industry because this is what your visitors are going to be comparing you against. You want a modern, sleek and professional website that makes you look like an industry leader in every way.

With that sorted, experiment with the following:

Customer reviews: Show new visitors how happy your existing customers are – just make sure you have a solid collection of positive feedback on platforms like Google Reviews, Trustpilot, etc.Expert reviews: If your brand, products or services have been highly rated by industry experts, your landing pages could be a good place to show it.Testimonials: Hand-pick feedback from your happiest customers/clients and showcase it on your pages. Unlike customer reviews, you can choose which feedback.Awards: Few things instal confidence quite like awards – great for products, services and brands alike.Statistics: If your product saves businesses an average of 136 minutes per week, increases productivity by 83% or reduces expenses, make sure you tell new visitors about it.

Essentially, visitors are going to trust the opinions of people who have dealt with your brand before, industry experts and stats more than anything you can say yourself.

Don’t go overboard with the trust factors, though – a combination of two or three from the list above should do it. Test out different combinations, designs and placements until you find the right mix.

Take your CRO strategy to the next level

Once you’ve got the basics of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) under your belt, you’ll be ready to start thinking beyond individual pages and optimise entire sales funnels. With highly-optimised pages, you can focus on the journey users take as they progress along the buying process – both on your website and other channels.

Your goal with funnel optimisation is to increase the number of users who stick to the right path and make their way to the purchase. For more information on this, take a look at our Funnel Optimisation 101 article to stop users getting lost along the way.

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimisation appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Ways to use Remarketing for B2B Lead Generation

Remarketing is one of the most important tools for maximising the ROI of your paid advertising spend. However, this snazzy little PPC feature can a lot more than bring previous visitors back to your website.

In this article, I’m going to show you ten ways you can use remarketing to generate new B2B leads, nurture them along the sales process, increase your email marketing success and get your existing customers back to make more purchases.

Here are 10 advanced remarketing for B2B lead generation strategies you need to try out.

#1: Create remarketing lists for every stage of your sales funnel

The first thing you need to do for your B2B remarketing strategy is to map out your sales funnels. Hopefully, you’ve already done this and created PPC campaigns for each stage of your sales funnel to address user needs as they change along the consumer journey.

If this isn’t how you’re doing PPC, it should be.

With this kind of strategy in place, you’re now going to create remarketing campaigns for each stage of your sale funnel, too. The only difference is these campaigns are designed to re-engage the users who don’t buy into your initial ad message and drop off the sales funnel.

So you’re going to create remarketing lists for each stage of the sales funnel and target users on each one with campaigns designed to convert them into leads, based on their position along the consumer journey.

This approach will also allow you to nurture leads from one stage of your sales funnel to the next by reassigning them to the next remarketing list and targeting them with the relevant campaign.

#2: Create separate remarketing landing pages

Now that you know what kind of campaigns you’re going to be creating, it’s time to think about landing pages – and you’re not going to send users to the same page they visited first time around.

Your original offer didn’t work first time around, so what makes you think repeating yourself is going to work now?

Landing page tools like Unbounce (above) and Instapage make it easy to create and test a multitude of landing page messages.

The whole point of creating remarketing lists is so you can target users with highly crafted messages and this includes the landing pages you send them to. So you’re going to create separate landing pages for each remarketing campaign with the message you decide is most effective for turning them into worthwhile leads.

#3: Create remarketing lists for your email subscribers, too

You might like to think a user counts as a lead once they sign up to your newsletter or download some of your content – but how many of these “leads” are turning into paying customers?

To maximise your email marketing efforts, you’ll also want to create remarketing lists for your email subscribers. Here are a few examples of the sort of lists you might create:

Users who visited your webinar signup page but didn’t sign upWebinar signups who didn’t attendWebinar signups who attended but didn’t convertWebinar attendees who converted but haven’t made a second purchase

These are just four examples of remarketing campaigns you can create to boost the performance of a webinar strategy, for each stage of the lead generation process. You’re going to want to think like this for all of your lead generation strategies.

This helps you generate more email signups via remarketing and increase the quality of your leads by increasing the number of actions taken at each stage.

And that’s not all

#4: Reach new audiences with Customer Match & Lookalike Audiences

Google and Facebook’s advertising platforms both offer similar features that allow you to take your email marketing lists and use them to target new users who display similar online interests and behaviours.

Take a look at Customer Match on Google Ads and Lookalike Audiences on Facebook Ads – both of which can turn your email lists into entirely new PPC leads.

Note: As these features involve you providing Google/Facebook with user email addresses, you are responsible for GDPR compliance (see point #10 in this article for more details on this).

#5: Maximise email signups with multi-step forms

As you can see by this stage, a strong B2B remarketing strategy is heavily integrated with your email marketing efforts and this means you need to maximise email signups to get the best results.

The biggest discovery we’ve made here at Venture Harbour over the past five years is that multi-step forms increase email sign-ups by up to 300% and slash the cost of your leads in half.

Leadformly‘s conditional logic segments your leads on the page and improves the overall quality of your leads

By using conditional logic in your multi-step forms you can also increase the quality of the leads you’re generating on your web pages and segment them, which allows you to create more relevant follow-up messages (email and remarketing) from the first interaction.

#6: Move B2B leads along your sales funnels (using remarketing lists)

We’ve already looked at using remarketing lists to target users at various stages of the consumer journey but now it’s time to look at the real magic of remarketing lists: guiding users along every stage of your sales funnel and truning them into paying customers.

To do this, you’ll want to create action-based rules that move users from one remarketing list to another. This way, you can automatically add users who view a product page to your remarketing list enticing them back for the purchase and, if they abandon their cart before paying up, they’ll automatically be moved to your cart abandonment list and targeted with ads encouraging them to finalise the purchase.

You can apply this strategy to every stage of your sales funnel and create a fully-integrated remarketing strategy that guides users along every stage of your sales funnel.

(This is why it’s so important to have a sales funnel-orientated PPC and remarketing strategy).

#7: Post-purchase remarketing

Forrester research tells us it costs 5x more to acquire a new customer than it does to turn an existing one into a repeat buyer. You’ve already invested time and money into getting your existing customers on board, too, so it only makes sense to maximise your ROI from your existing customer base.

It doesn’t matter what line of business you’re in, there are plenty of opportunities to turn first-time buyers into loyal customers:

Cross-selling: Related products relevant to a customer’s first purchase.Upselling: Upgrading from the free version to a paid version of your software platform.Renewing: Contractual or subscription-based products/services when the initial contract period is up.Rebuying: Purchasing the same product or service again at the end of its lifecycle – eg: a new phone or website redesign.Reinviting: Reaching out to previous customers who have left or stopped buying from you.Loyalty campaigns: Reaching out to customers with rewards to build stronger relationships.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking your job’s done once a lead pays up for your products/services. Target them with remarketing (and email) campaigns to keep them engaged with your brand and ready to buy again when the time comes.

You’re going to need a solid understanding of your customers’ needs to pull this off (what accessories/add-ons do they need to get the best from your products, how often do they need to renew/upgrade their purchase, etc.) and reinforce this with excellent customer service.

Don’t focus your entire strategy on selling more products either. Create a wider strategy that helps your customers get the best experience with your products or services after the purchase and show them you’ve got their best interests at heart, instead of simply trying to milk every penny you can out of them (email is a very effective and low-cost channel for this).

#8: Content remarketing

This is one of the most overlooked remarketing lead gen strategies around, which is a crime considering how capable it is for B2B brands.

All that time and money you’re investing in creating blog content is falling short of its full potential unless you’re targeting your readers with remarketing campaigns encouraging them to sign up to your lead gen content (webinars, eBooks, digital downloads, etc.)

Once again, the key is segmenting your audiences and creating lists based on the topical interests of each user. This means people who have been reading your content on business tips see ads for more content on the same topic while those looking specifically at recruitment, flexible working and productivity see ads for your lead-gen content on those niche topics.

#9: Limited offer remarketing campaigns

When your PPC traffic doesn’t convert at the first opportunity, it normally means one of two things: you’re simply not offering what they want or there’s something relatively small preventing them from making the comitment.

If it’s the first of these, you need to go back to the basics with your PPC campaigns to make sure you’re generating relevant traffic and communicating your offer effectively.

If you’ve already got this kind of strategy in place, it shouldn’t take much to convince users – they’ve already shown a strong interest in your offer to make it this far. So target them with remarketing campaigns featuring special offers and make it clear these offers aren’t going to last very long.

Offers that are going to run out soon create a strong sense of urgency and triggers a psychological phenomenon known as loss aversion, which makes the fear of losing out on your offer a powerful incentive.

For other powerful psychological techniques to use in your remarketing strategies, take a look at our article on 9 cognitive biases that influence buyer decisions.

#10: Keep your remarketing campaigns GDPR-compliant

It wouldn’t be right to talk about remarketing for B2B lead generation in 2019 without mentioning GDPR. You don’t need to let the European regulations get in the way of your remarketing efforts but it is important to understand your obligations.

Essentially, any time you collect personal data from users in the EU, you need to make sure you’re GDPR-compliant.

You can get the full list of rules for businesses and organisation here but these apply to every instance of data use. When it comes to remarketing specifically, you’re going to need to pay particular attention to how you get consent from users when you collect their email addresses – especially if you’re using Customer Match and Lookalike Audiences (which we mentioned in point #4 of this article).

What about cookies?

Well, these don’t actually come under GDPR at all but you do need to comply with the EU’s ePrivacy directive when it comes to using cookies. You can find a relatively clear explanation of your obligations on the European Commission website.

For remarketing purposes, you are going to need to get consent from users before you can start using cookies and it’s important you design an unobtrusive consent process that keeps you on the right side of ePrivacy regulations.

You don’t need those awful popups with half a dozen tick boxes and getting consent doesn’t need to hamper your remarketing efforts. These ePrivacy regulations have been in place for years and GDPR doesn’t suddenly make them more important than they were before May 2018.

Take your remarketing to the next level

Remarketing is capable of so much more than bringing visitors back to your website. Implement these strategies into your pad advertising campaigns, get them working with your other marketing strategies and you’ll see what remarketing can really do.

The post 10 Ways to use Remarketing for B2B Lead Generation appeared first on Venture Harbour.