Tag Archive for: Marketing Automation

3 Tools You Need to Streamline Your Marketing Strategy

,

As a small business owner, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with managing multiple platforms and marketing tools. That’s why it’s important to have the right tools in place to help your marketing run consistently and effortlessly. In this episode of David’s Dose of Marketing, I share three tools that are absolute must-haves for any small business owner looking to streamline their marketing strategy and free up their time.

1. Social Media Management Tool

Having a social media management tool is crucial to schedule and manage your social media accounts effectively. Although there are numerous scheduling tools available, some of them limit the number of posts you can schedule. However, there are other social media scheduling tools that allow you to recycle posts. This game-changing feature ensures that your posts repeat after a certain amount of time, saving you time and effort. By recycling your posts, you can focus on creating other types of content while still engaging with your audience.

FREE DOWNLOAD: The Ultimate Blueprint To Automating Your Social Media Content

2. Email Automation Tool

Building an email list is essential for any business to stay connected with their customers and nurture leads. Email automation tools can help automate your follow-up process, engagement, and lead nurturing. This tool streamlines communication with your audience, and you can use it to send relevant content that aligns with their interests. By creating an email automation workflow, you can save time and focus on other aspects of your business.

3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

A CRM tool helps you keep track of your customers’ journey and enables you to send them personalised content based on their buying behavior. This tool allows you to segment your audience, allowing you to send personalised messages that resonate with them. The right CRM tool helps you stay on top of your customer’s needs and keeps them engaged throughout their journey.

There are many different types of CRM software available, and some are even combined with email automation tools. These tools, such as MailChimp, Clixio, ActiveCampaign, and Ontraport, offer an all-in-one solution for your marketing needs.

By utilising these three tools, you can streamline your marketing efforts and focus on other aspects of your business. As a digital marketing consultant, I strongly recommend that small business owners consider these tools to increase efficiency, productivity, and results.

To sum things up, if you’re looking to streamline your marketing strategy, invest in a social media management tool, email automation software, and a CRM that integrates well with your business. By using these tools, you can simplify your marketing processes and save time, allowing you to focus on what you do best.

If you’d like help with creating a marketing strategy that will help your business grow by actually doing less, click here to schedule a free strategy call today.

 

 

Evergreen Marketing: 3 Fundamental Strategies to Marketing Success

,

 

Have you ever felt frustrated and overwhelmed when it comes to marketing your business? With so many different platforms and tech tools out there, is it any wonder that most business owners struggle to keep up?

But what if there were ways of growing your business not by doing even more, but by actually doing less? As a marketing consultant, I have helped hundreds of business owners do just that using Evergreen Marketing.

Marketing is such an important part of making any business profitable. However, most of us didn’t go into business to write a marketing plan, but because we wanted to enjoy more freedom and time to do the things we love.

The big problem with marketing is that it means something different to everyone. From website and social media to email marketing, blogging and advertising, as business owners we are forced to wear many hats, especially when it comes to marketing.

So, what does marketing actually mean? Where do you start? What should you focus on and, most
importantly, how do you bring it all together to make it work in alignment and produce results?

There is a common misbelief amongst business owners that they need to do even more to successfully market their business. However, I have found that the best way to grow your business is actually not by doing more but by doing less – using Evergreen Marketing.

What is Evergreen Marketing?

Evergreen Marketing is a set of strategies that we can set and forget. Timeless tactics we can simply implement once, but that will work for us for years to come.

A recent study by HubSpot, one of the leading companies in the marketing space, found that 43% of business owners spend six or more hours every single week managing their social media accounts alone.

What would you do if you had an extra day every single week to do more of the things you love doing?

Today I want to share the 3 fundamental strategies with you that Evergreen Marketing is built on. These are practical tips you can take and implement in your business right away.

1. Make All Your Content Evergreen

It takes the same amount of time to create a piece of content that’s only relevant today as it will take to create a piece of content that’s going to be relevant for years to come. So, be very conscious of the type of content you create.

What are the different pillars in your business you can educate your customers around? What are some timeless tips you can share with your audience that won’t go out of date and that are going to be just as relevant in five years as they are today?

By focusing your time and effort on creating evergreen content, you will build up a large content library over time that you can repurpose and reuse, saving you an endless amount of time and headspace.

Download your FREE Social Media Blueprint to completely automate your social media content

2. Have a Clear Next Step at Every Step of Your Customer Journey

When posting on social media, ask yourself what step you want people to take next. You might want to send them to a specific blog post to learn more. Once on your blog, you might want to get them to enter their email address in return for a free download. Once you’ve got their contact details, you might want to send them an email with an invitation to book a phone call or free trial.

In other words, always have a clear call to action for your audience and eliminate as much friction as possible.

This brings us to the third fundamental strategy of Evergreen Marketing.

3. Automate, automate, automate

Automation really is a game-changer that will allow you to take your marketing to a whole new level. Because once we start using some of the amazing automation tools available these days (many of them are free) we are able to free up valuable time and resources and escape the rat race of constant content creation.

Great content doesn’t always have to be new as long as it’s still relevant to your target audience.

I believe Evergreen Marketing is the future of marketing because it allows us to be more consistent while freeing us up to do more of what we love to do.

 

4 Smart (Not So Obvious) Ways To Grow Your Business

, ,
4 Ways to Grow Your Business - David Lee-Schneider MarketingDavid Lee-Schneider Marketing

In essence, there are only three ways to grow your business. Increase the number of customers, increase the purchase frequency, and increase your average transaction value. However, there are a number of not so obvious ways to increase sales and make your business more profitable. Here are four of them. Ready? Then let’s go!

1. Automate processes to increase efficiency and reduce cost

Today, there are thousands of tools out there to help you automate repetitive business processes. Simply automating a few things can help you significantly reduce wages and free up valuable time. When looking for ways to grow our business, we often overlook areas that don’t directly contribute to your profit. Here are a few things you can automate quickly and easily that could put money back in your pocket.

  • Social Media Posts
  • Invoicing
  • Email Marketing
  • Online Advertising
  • Lead Generation
  • Sales Processes & Follow Up
  • Internal Task Management
  • Review Management

Tools like Zapier and Integromat can help you connect various services and software to make processes even more efficient. 

Some examples:

  • When you have a new lead -> automatically add a contact to a list -> then send a follow-up sequence
  • After a customer makes a purchase for the second time -> send an invitation to review on Facebook
  • When a purchase is made on your website -> automatically create an invoice in Xero

2. Launch a re-targeting ad campaign

Many business owners already use ads to attract new customers and generate new business. However, if you only run direct ads, you are missing out on a huge chunk of potential customers by ignoring this simple strategy. Re-targeting ads are a powerful tool that allows you to show specific ads to people who have already interacted with your content in the past, adding continuity to your customer experience and significantly increasing the chances of turning them into customers.

Se if you can offer them something of value in relation to certain pages or blog posts they have visited on your website. 

Example: A yoga studio might show a re-targeting ad for a free yoga pass to people in their area who have read blog posts on the benefits of yoga on their website. When people see the ad, they can enter their email address to claim the free yoga pass and automatically be subscribed to an evergreen campaign. (See next point)

3. Stop focusing on one-off promotions and develop an “Evergreen” campaign instead

The majority of business owners think of marketing and promotions in terms of one-off activities. It might look something like this:

  • January -> Promotion #1
  • February -> Promotion #2
  • March -> Promotion #3

While this might work well, it also requires you to continuously come up with new promotions, which can be exhausting and feel like you’re always running behind.

Instead, create an “evergreen” funnel that sends new leads or customers a series of pre-designed offers from the moment they join your list. Then keep adding new offers to that sequence. Over time, this strategy allows you to develop a marketing machine that continuously produces sales without ever having to worry about what your next promotion is going to be. You just need to make sure that offers in that sequence are timeless and not seasonal.

All you need is a good email automation tool, like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign, and there are many more options available. 

4. Make Partnerships “evergreen”, too

Partnerships and joint ventures with other businesses that complement yours is a powerful strategy. You might have already partnered with another business in the past to run a one-off campaign promoting your products or services. Maybe you’ve asked the other business to hand out vouchers to all their customers.

See if you can turn this strategy into an evergreen campaign, too, like in the previous example. Look for businesses that already have an evergreen funnel and see if they are happy to plug your offer right into it, while you can do the same for them. 

Example: One of my clients owns a massage clinic, while another owns a yoga studio. I got both of them to add an email to their existing evergreen sequences promoting the other business. Now, everyone who receives a massage at the massage clinic also receives a complimentary yoga gift card, and everyone who joins the yoga studio receives a discount voucher for a massage a month later.

There you have it. Four (not so obvious) ways to grow your business over the next few months. All four are “set and forget” strategies that you only have to set up once and will benefit from forever.

 

3 Things You Can Do Now To Get Your Marketing Right (And Your Time Back)

,
3 Things You Can Do Now To Get Your Marketing Right - David Lee-SchneiderAndrea Piacquadio

Unless you are drowning in new customers, getting your marketing right should always be a priority. As business owners, we face many challenges and have to be able to react and adapt to the constantly changing market, customer behaviour and other aspects of our particular industries.

Certain things, however, remain the same, like the importance of great customer service and building trust with your customers. In fact, they are becoming increasingly important in order to maintain a viable business. What has changed completely though is how we deliver customer experiences. Using clever software, it has become easier than ever before to design and deploy personalised customer experiences that build trust through consistent touchpoints. Moreover, it is now possible to automate your entire marketing strategy, from first contact with your brand to after-sale care. Thus, we have now reached a stage where we are able to develop digital marketing ecosystems that can deliver results 24/7.

A digital marketing ecosystem can help your business move from a reactive way of marketing (only marketing when business is down) to a proactive approach that is more predictable and fully automated. A well-designed marketing strategy produces a steady stream of qualified leads, builds trust through nurturing, helps to make sales and even provides guidance to your customers after they have made a purchase. By automating this entire cycle, we can move our focus towards delivering amazing customer experiences, identify exactly which strategies work and which don’t, and dedicate more of our time to producing amazing products and services.

Here are 3 things you can do now to take your marketing and business to the next level

The result of implementing these strategies is a healthier business, happier customers and more time for business owners to focus on what truly matters to them.

1. Map out your customer experience

What happens after a customer opts in for an offer? Design a series of emails that will guide your customer. Communicate the benefits of what you do in a non-salesy way. Try to connect on a deeper level, tell stories your customers relate to and encourage them to join the conversation. E-mail is a two-way medium. Recognise the fact that it’s not about your brand or product. It’s about your customers. Consider the emotional journey they go through, from not knowing you to increased brand awareness, over considering to buy to actually making the purchase. Help them with their decisions during each of these stages by delivering relevant content.

2. Automate, automate, automate

Use software, such as Ontraport, Infusionsoft or Mailchimp, to automate the delivery of your content. This set-and-forget approach will save you many hours of manual communication each week while creating consistency in the way you communicate with your customers. This, and the fact that you deliver relevant content at each stage of their emotional journey, results in increased trust levels and sales.

3. Consider ditching print advertising

The amount of money I see still being invested in print ads that don’t work is staggering. Moving your advertising budget to online ads (if done right) can result in higher returns and allows you to test and measure results faster and more efficiently. You can launch your ads the day you decide on a campaign and start seeing results in a matter of hours, not weeks. Print advertising certainly still has its place and might work well for certain industries. Just make sure that everything you spend money on can be measured and brings tangible results. If you don’t know your return on investment, it’s probably not a great strategy. Being able to measure the right metrics is key of a good marketing strategy.

Need help with your marketing? Let’s work together!

I help business owners develop and implement the right strategy for their business. In 3 months I will help you automate your marketing activities, including lead generation, social media content, email marketing and so much more – so you can focus on running your business.

Click here to learn more and book a free strategy call today.