Beating Your Competition
Beating Your Competition
2011 RivalEater Inc. Creative Commons Written by Andre LeBlanc Please feel free to post this on your blog or pass it on to whomever you think could benefit from it! Thank you!
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03 - GET STARTED
Get Started
CONSUMER
PROCESS
NO BOND
DECISION MAKING
AWARENESS RESEARCH
LOYALTY
BOND
ENGAGEMENT DECISION
LOOP
DISCUSS
Inspired from the Harvard Business Review
Awareness
Inbound Marketing
If you have more money than brains you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing. -Guy Kawasaki
Search Phrase
Awareness - Revisited
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88,000,000,000
WORLDWIDE WE CONDUCT
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-How is your company currently building awareness? -Is it working? -What are your prospects searching for? -Does your company have a presence in these results? -Do you know what steps to take to position your company better? -Do you know how to optimize your results for higher conversion?
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Research
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Lead Opportunity
Likely Clickthrough
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-How is your company influencing prospects in the research phase? -Is it working? -Where are your prospects going to research your companys product/service? -What are you doing to make the results they find better? -What are your competitors doing?
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Engagement
Our prospect has chosen to engage Jeep through their Build Your Own app. (Who doesnt love Jeeps)
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Decision
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Discuss
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-Is your company satisfied with your visit to lead ratio? (Do you know your visit to lead ratio?) -Are your companys leads converting into customers? -What are people saying about your company? -Is your company getting return customers? -Is your company getting referrals?
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Plan of Attack
In five easy steps!
The game winning plan is pretty straight forward, its not about building the most flashy website, or having the most followers on Twitter (though both may help); its about building a system focused on the bottom line, SALES! Its certainly great to have the most modern website coded with HTML 5 and CSS 3 (which ours are), but is that really going to make the difference in acquiring a new customer...probably not. What is going to make the difference, is a system that captures your prospects, has been built to form a relationship with that prospect, and will nurture them into a conversion. Thats how you beat your competition!
BUILD THE FOUNDATION ATTRACT VISITORS GENERATE LEADS INCREASE SALES IMPROVE OVER TIME
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Attract Visitors
Once you have the foundation built, you need to attract people; preferably qualified, interested people. This can be accomplished through a number of ways including Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Search Engine Marketing, and other future industry buzz words.
Blogging
Blogging is the backbone of generating traffic. Its benefits include: building content (useful for building a bond with your prospect/ customer), establishing you as an industry thought leader, and boosting your search engine ranking. Blogging begins by scheduling and creating blog entries that maximize your traffic generation and engage your audience.
SOURCE:HUBSPOT
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75%
SOURCE: MARKETSHARE.HITSLINK.COM
Social Media
Social Media is becoming an ever more powerful marketing tool for both B2Bs and B2Cs alike. It is a great resource to monitor brand sentiment, listen for brand mentions, scout leads, build relationships, keep prospects engaged, and interact with your community. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are platforms to build a loyal fan base, encourage interaction, and turn your fans into brand evangelists that will share your company. They key to social media is to engage your community wherever it exists. (Even if thats not Facebook or Twitter)
SOURCE:HUBSPOT
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SOURCE: MARKETINGSHERPA
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-Does your company have control over the amount of traffic its website receives. -What are you doing to get more traffic? -Are you active in social media? If so, how are you measuring ROI. -Do you know what words people are using in search engines to find a product or service like yours.
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Once you have traffic, you need to generate leads. Leads can be on a micro-conversion level (like getting someone to like your Facebook fan page) or on a macro-conversion level (like getting someone to ask for a consultation or buy a product). Simply having a contact button is not going to generate the amount of leads that your company is looking for. The best tactics to generate leads is to combine solid offers with custom landing pages and effective calls to action across all of your marketing materials.
Sales Funnel
Developing a Sales Funnel will help you identify your audience and what kind of content and offers appeal to them.
LE S AD
SALES
Creating content for every level of your sales funnel will maximize your marketing efforts and help your company generate leads more effectively.
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92%
ITE S WHPER PA
LES
LOG B
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E O -BO KS
Advanced Content
Advanced Content includes information such as E-books, webinars, podcasts, etc. It is premium content that your prospects find relevant and interesting. The goal of this content is to build a bond with your prospects and establish your company as an industry expert. In exchange for this content, they will excitedly become leads in your sales pipeline.
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S ESSE PR EA
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Offers
Offers are a great way to get your audience to engage your brand and are a key in generating leads. The key is to develop offers that appeal to your prospects. If done effectively, your offers will capture leads and result in further interactions.
Calls to Action
Calls to Action are appropriately placed, well timed calls (graphics, links, instructions, etc) that encourage your prospects to take an action. Giving your prospects an easy and obvious way to complete the desired action is crucial to generating leads.
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Social Proof
Social Proof is formed from the public feedback the comments and reviews of your customers. Your company should encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews of your company on relevant sites and communities. In addition, your company should listen for negative reviews to both directly address dissatisfied customers and learn where your company may have room for improvement.
-Happy Customer
-Brand Evangelist
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-When someone comes to your site, what is your company hoping they do? -How many leads does your company want to receive online? -Are your companys offers bringing you leads? -Does your company know how to improve lead generation?
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Increase Sales
Converting those leads into sales is a process that takes time. Developing automated lead nurturing campaigns and a finely-tuned sales process can make this process more automatic.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is a great way to periodically communicate with your leads or current customers. The more targeted your email campaigns are, the more effective they will be. Your company should plan and create email marketing campaigns that leverage your lead data to maximize sales.
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Lead Segmentation
Lead Segmentation separates your leads into different groups based on their source and what actions they have taken. This enables you to target your leads better during email campaigns, phone calls, etc.
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CRM Integration
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Integration provides your sales team the maximum effectiveness in tracking leads from your inbound and outbound marketing sources. It will help them determine what leads to pursue and even grade them based on interaction. In addition, it will help in measuring the effectiveness of your sales funnel, performance of your sales team, etc. Integrating your sales platform with your marketing strategies simply makes sense. It allows you to target qualified leads, customize your presentation, and nurture them into customers.
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-Does your company have a strategy to convert your leads into customers? -Is your system customized to target leads in their specific stage of the process? -Does your company have a way of tracking your leads?
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Success is great, being more successful is ...more great. In order to improve your results over time you need to monitor your successes and failures. Your company needs to track what campaigns, keywords, offers, etc. are not only bringing traffic, but which ones are converting into leads and sales. Your company should also be performing A/B tests on all of your marketing materials to improve them and see what your prospects respond to better.
A B
or
A/B Tests
A/B Tests use two or more different versions of the a page, form, etc. to determine which is better and what improvements can be made to increase effectiveness. To maximize your internet marketing efforts, your company should constantly be running these A/B tests to determine how it can improve its marketing.
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In-Depth Analytics
In-Depth Analytics are critical to understanding and measuring marketing performance. Start by measuring how many visits, leads, and customers are coming from each source. Then measure which of these sources are converting into sales, which sources are assisting in the process, and which sources are not converting. This will reveal the value of the sources and be useful in deciding how to best apply marketing efforts.
Regular Analysis
Regular Analysis by your team is critical to improving the effectiveness of your strategy. Inbound marketing is not a one-time expenditure, it is a constant activity... if you want it to be the most profitable. This is why good analysis is the foundation to improving results.
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-Is your company tracking the success of individual campaigns? -Is your company testing campaigns, pages, keywords, etc. against each other to see which is more effective? -Is your company planning how to improve your results? -Is your company staying current with changing trends?
03 - GET STARTED
03 - GET STARTED
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Get Started
We can help!
Start getting leads and sales from your online marketing strategy today! To get started, we recommend following the steps outlined in The Winning Solution section. If you need help getting started we would love to be of assistance. RivalEater Inc. is a creative internet marketing agency. We are experts in internet marketing and branding. If you would like a free consultation to evaluate your current marketing strategy and begin discussing how we could improve it, visit our website today.