Digital marketing may have its own niche sector where the required credentials go beyond basic marketing techniques and innovative skills. If you are considering joining the digital marketing business, learning the skills needed and what digital marketers are doing is a good way to start.
High-level digital marketing applies to ads distributed through digital platforms such as search engines, blogs, social media, email, and smartphone applications. Using these online media platforms, digital marketing is the process by which businesses promote products, services, and brands.
What does Digital Channel Include
How does it feel like to be a digital marketer?
With the easy use of social media, digital marketing needs to consider user preferences and motivations, synthesize the analytics, and interact successfully with consumers. See what digital marketing is exactly, why a digital marketer is relevant, how he enters the industry and how he enters.
Digital marketers are responsible for the marketing by one or more digital media outlets of products or brands, such as search engines, social media, e-mails, Blogs, and applications that connect with existing and future consumers.
Content is central to digital marketing. The drafting and editing of blog posts and landing pages are more than just the creation of documents. This includes linking you to the goal population with the accompanying communications and persuading them to act.
2. Social media skills
You may also know social media ever since it first appeared you have been using it. However, a successful digital marketer recognizes that social media is more relevant than frequent and continuous blogging.
Because marketers now use social media to reach their target audiences, the networks have grown greatly to address the demands of digital marketing. Social networking ads, newspapers, hashtags, corporate accounts, communities and more are available. Currently, a lot needs to be learned.
Prepare yourself
3. Understand Design-Based Thinking & Planning
Design Thinking is a concept that essentially refers to a process in which user-centered challenges can be addressed. It literally allows one to learn about large-scale, complicated topics in a human-centered way. Designers and developers probably have such a strategy, but it is useful to learn and apply it if possible even if you are not one.
When you don’t meet the right people, a well-published blog post or newsletter is worthless. Note that the techniques responsible for driving traffic to your site include search engine optimization (SEO), and search engine marketing (SEM). Greater knowledge of this ensures that the marketing plans are properly applied.
The algorithm of Google continues to be updated, and the value that keywords can be used has hit a new high. As the global web is rapidly crowded every day, it is important to be informed and completely aware of the new changes and search ranking algorithms.
Challenges
What are their task and duties?
Digital marketers may use the tools of their company to generate a return on investment with organic (Free) or paying platforms.
Digital marketers work to obtain main KPIs for each channel to assess their output accurately through each channel. For example, a search marketer that analyzes traffic on their website and adapts campaigns and tactics accordingly.
Task and responsibilities of Digital Marketers:
Plans and runs both web, SEO/SEM, marketing software, emails, social media, and promotional campaigns.
The social media presence is planned, built, and preserved.
Quality evaluations and reports on all digital marketing strategies and aim assessments (ROI and KPIs).
Identifies and optimizes expenditure and efficiency based on insights trends and insights.
Brainstorms digital marketing to build and establish innovative development tactics.
Plans conduct and measures conversion trials and evaluations.
Collaborates in the development and optimization of the customer interface for internal staff.
Now mainly let us focus on the qualification of a digital marketer:
No formal credentials to become a digital marketer are required, but a certification or short course may be helpful.
Consider graduation in marketing or business from a Certificate or Baccalaureate.
Taking a brief online or on-campus digital marketing course to learn social ads and users’ skills
Key to Success
Conclusion
In summary, while no mandatory work certification is needed for digital marketing, you improve the odds of reaching the digital marketing challenge of your dreams exponentially by enrolling in and pursuing a renowned and well-rounded digital marketing course. Furthermore, you can achieve a real strategic lead on the market by earning qualifications in more advanced fields or competences.
With the growing market, you can also start thinking about starting your own. If you are an active social media user, you can utilize this opportunity. You can turn your usage into a business. You can seek for the best social media business ideas. These ideas can turn you into an entrepreneur if you are willing to.’
Social media is very common among netizens. Almost all people with smartphones are part of social media. Also, people are utilizing the lock-down period up to the brim. They have started doing business through social media. Social media ensure a vast reach and helps you to filter your target audience easily. If you think you have the potential to convince people to buy your product or service, go through the best social media business ideas.
The wellness industry and educational organizations that operate all around the world, provides online assistance too. This includes online counselling on many fields that includes academics, business guidance, fitness, beauty, mental health and so on.
You can provide sessions online through Whatsapp and Facebook and even YouTube. You can also arrange live streams where you can interact with a mass at a time. However, if you charge for every session you take, from every individual as their registration fees, then it might be one of the best social media business ideas that you can opt for.
Affiliate Marketing
An affiliate business permits you to exchange items purchased from makers to clients. The affiliate outsource plan of action is reasonable, making it an incredible choice as one of the best social media business ideas. As an affiliate, what you do is basically act as a broker between the producer and clients.
Best social media business ideas – Affiliate marketing
People take their social media handles, mostly Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram mainly. There they advertise and display the products that are available. They also put influencing captions and discounts to attract people that they are mainly familiar with.
Social Media Management
Social media management is a digital way of advertising any product or service. A decent online media administrator can support the perception of an organization. It is done by making powerful social media campaign and publicizing strategies. A social media marketer produces limited time content. It can be any deals done with an organization’s online media presence, by doing survey and research.
You should have to stay aware of the the recent trends. It is because you may be dealing with more than one social media stages. You also need to recognize which trend may influence your customer. It also depicts the negative effects and positive effects too. This is one of the best social media business ideas that can earn you a lot, considering you work with a good strategy.
Social Media Business Tips
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing business is a type of online media advertising. It includes endorsements and product placements from the influencers, individuals and associations. The involvement needs to be done with implied expertise in the field of information or social impact in their field.
An influencer is an individual possessing the ability to influence the buying choices of others. They have a certain power to convey the information to their crowd. There is a particular niche that they talk about.
Social media marketing – Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing centers around utilizing key pioneers to drive your brand’s image to the bigger market. Instead of advertising legitimately to the mass, you rather hire influencers to speak the words for you.
The influencers charge money on the basis of promotion they make. They can also get free samples of the product if they don’t want direct money.
Webinar Business
A webinar is essentially an online workshop. Rather it can be called a seminar being taken online. A workshop is a simultaneous occasion that includes both preparation and discussion. Also, it need to be equipped with some kind of association and commitment. It’s a route for you to enamor and connect with a large mass.
The most immediate approach to make money from online classes is to charge an admission cost for people who are interested to join the webinar you organize. Individuals will pay a to find out about explicit subjects from professionals and experts.
Social Media Event Promoter
All around the world, various events are happening online. It is not possible to reach everywhere on earth whenever we will feel like. Especially during the pandemic, we can’t even reach our neighbors.
Social media marketing- Social media event organizer
Through social media, it has become possible to meet various people. To make things more formal and accessible to the mass. So you can be the organizer. You need to keep a track of all the events happening online. Approach to the authorities of the event and show your work interest. With a proper strategy, you can get the responsibility and the money. This is why social media event promotion is one of the best social media business ideas.
Open A Podcast
A podcast or conventionally netcast is one of the best social media business ideas. It is more like listening to experts about their life choices. This can be considered as one of the best social media business ideas since it involves generic earning from your production.
A podcast can be on anything and everything. There are many motivational speakers who generally share their experience of struggle and build up. You can get yourself registered with various social media platforms. In this way, you can get a portion as your income.
Meme Marketer
Meme-making is one of the very common names you will get to hear if you are an active social media user. Memes are generally a joke or sarcasm thrown at someone or something randomly. It is humorous and is made for fun. Memes can also be very relatable to life.
Social media marketing ideas – Meme marketing
If you can successfully make memes out of anything, and make it suitable enough for a large mass, then you can opt meme marketing put of all the best social media business ideas. It is very engaging and profitable if you reach out to your target audience properly.
The best social media business needs you to have good public relations. Most importantly, you need to have contacts from various field. You have to be very vocal and keep in mind what people want. If you can generate something that engages most of the people, then it is absolutely a thing for you.
A city that never sleeps experienced a widespread power outage. While the whole city was experiencing an outage brands didn’t miss out to capture this moment marketing opportunity. Many of the digital marketing teams had their content marketing teams out to communicate in their own flavor.
Twitter and Instagram continues to gain moments during these times. Many people took to twitter to use humor to deal with the situation. Some of the brands found this opportunity as an excellent marketing strategy and handled the situation with a bit of humor.
Netflix is a player which has always been taking advantage of moment marketing. The OTT platform has been regularly using Twitter as a medium for reaching out to its audiences. In the most recent instance, the OTT platform tweeted about the power outage in Mumbai.
Moment marketing uses offline experience, particularly in TV shows and sporting events, to drive or trigger online interaction. It is also seen as the next big thing in the content marketing strategy.
Interestingly, if we analyze this space, Amul, a dairy brand, has always been the leader when it comes to ‘moment marketing’. The Amul girl has always been topical and spoken to the country on various political and non-political developments in real time. Till date, Amul Girl amuses the Indian audiences with its phenomenal one liners nearly every day.
Running out of ideas for the website? It’s a common problem every content writer faces once a while but that doesn’t mean that the website will not come with new articles because no matter what happens there should be a continuous spread of articles to keep the consumers on board. So, what’s the solution?
The solution is to repurpose the available content. Repurposing content is finding new ways to recycle your existing content. Repurposing content has a number of benefits such as it can save you time in the content creation process. So, the question is how to repurpose the content? Here are the best tips for Repurposing Content.
Content repurposing is a technique to reuse or recycle your old content to create a new post or content. Of course, you cannot go, copy your old content, paste it in CMS and post it. You have to do it in a way that people don’t notice it and enjoy at the same time. Although people want to know something new always, so you have to do it in a way that the old content looks new. Content repurposing is not only for blogging, but it is also for other businesses and even YouTubing.
Best and Creative Ways to Repurpose Your Old Content
Ways to Repurpose Your Content
Find The Topic
You can open your old post and look for something which can be explained in more detail. As you will already have some knowledge about that topic, you can easily write content on it.
Let’s take an example to make it more clear
You uploaded an article named as “Best Ways To Promote A Business” and among the points, one point is “Social Media Marketing “, so for the next post, you can write “Social Media Marketing” as a topic for a separate article.
Recreation
If it has been a while since you created some blog posts, you can recreate your old content with new updates. You can tell about the new technology and how we can use that to make our life more productive.
For example, tech bloggers keep posting new posts on “best phone” or “WhatsApp tricks”, etc. This way the readers will be getting trendy items in mind and the content will be used once again but in a different approach.
Create Case Studies
It is one of the best ways to repurpose your content because people love case studies. You can use your old content and its data to create case studies. However, you will have to spend time and put your effort to research the case studies. Power of repurposing content helps you gain extra authority.
You can also write about other start-ups and their success stories. This will help you to build a relationship with other big brands and also gain traffic to your blog from different sources.
Email Marketing is now in the boom, so you have the opportunity to use this platform and grow faster. There are so many tools available such as MailChimp by which you can send your every new post to your email subscribers. You can also automate the process using the tools and send your old best posts to your subscribers.
There are many creative ways of doing this like you can send weekly posts to your subscribers telling them that this post has the highest views and comments. This will help to build trust and also reuse your old content.
Infographics
An infographic is a collection of images, charts, text and animated graphics that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic.
With the information available in your old articles, you can create some infographics. People like infographics because it saves a lot of time and it is also interesting to read them.
Using Your Old Content from Other Platforms
If you are a creator of a while now, you can dig into your old post on other platforms. You can search for your Quora, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to find something which can be used in your next article or video. Repurposing blogs for different mediums means appealing to more audiences and extending your reach.
For example, you can find an old question that you have answered on Quora and update that content with some new topics or you can create a new post for that specific question.
Turn Posts Into Videos
Turn Posts Into Videos
It is the age of videos. You can use the data of your old posts to create videos and upload them on YouTube. And of course, vice versa, you can convert your old video into a blog post.
Research has shown that nowadays people prefer video content more than text content. So you have to change with the time if you want to go long on this race. There are so many free platforms available where you can post your video content.
Create an Ebook
With some of the best posts of your blog, you can create an eBook. After creating an ebook, you can provide its link in some relevant posts or on the home page of your website.
For e.g:- You wrote an article named “How To Use SEO To Increase Traffic”, so based on the article and other related articles you can create an ebook which shows all about SEO and it’s usage, advantages etc.
The content which is already featured on the website can be converted into a podcast because people while working loves to listen and podcasts are a great way to make the content more interesting.
Also, feature some popular names who expertise in the following fields as guest speakers to engage the audience and keep them interested. The links of the podcasts can be provided to the posts and this can be an alternate way to the readers to read about the content.
Slideshow
The content which is written in a lengthy paragraph can be broken down and use as a slideshow with important information and pictures. This will give a completely different look to the content.
There are many platforms available like Slideshare where you can upload your slideshows and also the link of the original post.
Webinars
Turn valuable content into series webinars
People love online webinars as they can watch it, by staying at home. So, the content which provides information about a certain topic, it can be converted into a series of webinars. For making it more interesting, some eminent guest speakers can also be invited and they host some bonus episodes. This can generate huge traffic to the website and also to your YouTube channel.
Republish the Content in Other Media
Social networking has no limit, to express and share the articles, hence the other various ways to increase the traffic for the articles and use the existing articles, is to republish in various media. It will be beneficial to increase the traffic by reaching more audience as well as the content will be reused also.
You can post your content on the platforms like Reddit, Academia etc. It will help you to gain quality backlinks as these sites have a huge authority.
Creators’ jobs can never be replaced by any robot. It needs mindful people to create any type of content. But, creators are not robots either. You cannot think of new things every second. You need some inspiration. While you are gaining your powers back, you can repurpose your content.
However, it is not good for the SEO to repurpose the old content but if you do it right, it can rank again. You have to provide some value in the article you are posting. Google ranks those sites which they think is useful for the user. You have to respect it and give it something new and useful. We hope you have got a basic idea of how to repurpose content. If not, feel free to comment and ask questions.
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In this modern era, people tend to use social media to market their products to sell quickly. Social media can be accessed by anyone in the world so that they can identify products that are trending. Besides, they can find whatever they need. Pinterest can be used an effective tool for marketing. But it is essential to know how to market on Pinterest. Here are best 10 tips on how to market brand on Pinterest.
Many people know about Facebook and Twitter, but Pinterest is still comparatively unknown. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard where people can upload photos or images that can be inserted into different categories (a kind of album or folder) that can be customized by name. Pinterest can also be used to market your product.
There were more than 291 million people using Pinterest in 2019. Even many businesses using Pinterest to market their product. There are 27% global marketers using Pinterest for business promotion and 75% saved Pins on Pinterest are coming from businesses. Advantages of Pinterest for business are many. The most important advantage is that it saves a lot of time and also money to market your product around the globe within a short period.
Some social media platforms which are commonly used in marketing are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and so on. People choose a social media platform according to their needs and by accessibility where they want. Facebook has become the number one social media platform used by almost everyone. Twitter and Pinterest occupy the second and third positions respectively. Pinterest for business strategies can be really useful tool if used wisely.
Pinterest Stats
How to use Pinterest to Market your Business
Make a Strategy
Everything starts with planning, a good plan can decide how long you will go on your way. At first, you have to make a good plan that is how you are going to use the platform to market your product. Because if you start without any strategy you will not be able to promote your product for the long-term purpose. If you want to get the result of the time and effort you have to work smart.
You should prepare a strategy to use Pinterest. Such as making a pin with the desired objectives before starting the marketing process. To increase website traffic, enhance brand awareness, escalate sales or extend customer engagement choose a picture and make pinboards according to the required purpose.
In our growth hacking article, we have mentioned that social media is one of the best ways to get traffic to your website. But you have to research a lot to understand what type of content is getting better impression than other contents. If you think that your content can attract new users then you should start using social media to promote your brand or product.
Create inviting boards which contain 40% pins about inspiration and motivation, 40% pins for instruction and education, and 20% pins about the brand being marketed. After making this, the daily percentage of traffic and content can be observed.
Be Friendly Pin
To get traffic to your website you can take advantage of your social media platforms. You can share your blog post or any type of content from the website to your Pinterest profile. Make rich content that people will love to share and always try to give value to the people because this is the only way to build trust with your audience.
Add a Pinterest button on the website and give images and blog posts that can be pinned automatically. Additionally, people can add a “Follow on Pinterest” button to allow visitors to pin images and posts directly and increase the traffic on the website.
Promote Another Pin
You can also promote other pins that are related to your niche. Promote other businesses posts that you think is creative. It will help you to market your brand too. People who are already a customer of any other business in your niche maybe not aware of your brand, promoting other business on your profile can give you a lot of engagement and a shoutout to the new audience.
Build a pin with another pin engaged in community services by giving comments, repins or liking these pins. Individuals can also leave tags to other users to allow them to follow every description of the pin. Pinterest marketing services have all you need to market your brand.
Optimize Your Website
Optimize your website by putting keywords in the titles and descriptions to improve the ranking of the website on Google. Use the hashtag to emphasize keywords and phrases that might be sought after by customers. For example #newshoes, #shoes, #cuteshoes, and others.
Your social media profiles can also help you to rank on google. Because now Google also prioritize those sites which gets more traffic from social media.
The purpose of cross-promotion is to promote one social media page on other social media accounts. For example, people can promote their Pinterest on Facebook or Twitter. Apart from this Pinterest tabs can be added in other social media accounts for promotion.
You have to utilize all the platforms to get traffic to your website and social media profile. People who are following you on Facebook may not follow you on Pinterest and it is also possible that they don’t know about your presence on Pinterest. So always keep updating your audience about your activity on social media profiles.
Noting the Pin Placement
Always pay attention to the placement of the pin, put the pin in place of the most important example, in the middle of the top or second row of the board. Some research suggests that the most visited pins are in the front and middle of the page. So the pin position is crucial to the survival of the business.
Provide Interesting Stuff
Providing interesting items will increasingly attract visitors to the web page and increase its traffic. Give something valuable to the audience like e-books or podcasts via the pin description. This will ensure an increment in engagement by 80%. Make sure it’s big enough and effective for attracting customer engagement.
Make a landing page on your website where people can give their information and subscribe to your email newsletter. Many Digital Marketer uses this method that is Email Marketing to build their brand because this is cost-effective. You can give value to your audience via emails and this will also help to get better engagement.
Make the board more interactive by adding various multimedia such as videos, screencasts, and podcasts. The good multimedia pin is one that includes tutorials, product demos, tours behind the scenes, and webinars.
People love to consume information through visuals and nowadays social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc. prioritize visual content more than text content. So we have to change our marketing methods with the fastest-changing time. Observe the new social media trends use that as a reference to your content.
Observe The Pin Analytics
Pin Analytics on Pinterest
To be able to observe the analytics of pins, you can use the Web Analytic Pinterest. You can find out pins which are often seen by people, and can then develop further strategies for business continuity of your respective websites.
Although, Pinterest marketing is a relatively new concept in the Indian market, yet it is gaining popularity as people are becoming aware of its benefits. With the right guidance and strategies of use, Pinterest marketing can become the next big thing in the start-up world.
There are many platforms out there which you can use to market your products or services but if you are looking for more creativity then Pinterest is the best platform for you. You can also rank your website with the help of Pinterest SEO, so try to utilize all these above mentioned ways to market on Pinterest and be as creative as possible.
The restaurant business is a very competitive one. Many restaurants fail during their first year itself. Therefore, good marketing of your restaurant becomes very important if you wish to stay at the top. In today’s world, digital marketing plays a very big role in the success of a business. In fact, companies like Google are helping small businesses in India to digitalize. Therefore, it is very essential for you to market your restaurant business digitally. If you have no experience in digital marketing, it can be tough at first but it will give you unexpected results. Therefore, you should give it a try.
Below are some tips that will help you in the digital marketing of your restaurant.
Tips For Digital Marketing Of Restaurants
1. Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing (SMM) plays an important role in digital marketing. The most popular social media platform in today’s date, Instagram has over 1 billion active users per month which are mainly of the age group of 25-34 years old. Therefore, the proper use of social media for marketing can generate a large number of customers for your restaurant.
There are paid advertisements on social media platforms that you can use to reach more and more people. People are attracted to businesses that are active on social media platforms.
Respond to every query or complaint by your customers through social media. Use these to inform your customers about special offers and deals. Attract people by showing them what you can offer to them using photos and videos.
Use Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make your online presence stronger. Doing this will increase the chance that people see your restaurant’s name on the top when they search for something like ‘Restaurants near me’ on various search engines.
The first step is to list your restaurant on Google under ‘Google my Business’. Make your listing informative by adding opening and closing hours, contact number, and address of your restaurant.
Create blogs about your restaurant. This point is not necessary but it will help your restaurant to grow online. Make your blog SEO-friendly by using various SEO techniques.
Google My Business Listings Will Show Your Restaurant When People Search On Google
3. Make Use Of Influencer Marketing
Influencers are people who are experts in a certain field and have a large follower base on social media. Contact and make deals with such people to post reviews about your restaurant on their social media platforms.
In exchange, you can either pay them or give them free coupons. Influencer marketing is an important part of digital marketing. By partnering with food bloggers, you can reach out to a targeted audience.
4. Partner With Food Delivery Businesses
In current times, when no one is willing to take the risk of going to their favorite restaurant to get their favorite meals, online food delivery platforms, such as Swiggy and Zomato will play a huge role for your restaurants. You should make your restaurant available on such platforms so that your customers can order their favorite dishes online. This will also help to increase your customer base.
Popular Food Delivery Apps In India
5. Email And SMS Marketing
This still remains a very important marketing strategy under digital marketing. Use Emails and SMS’s to increase your growth. There are many tools available online for the creation and sending of good quality commercial emails to your customers. Also, in comparison to social media marketing, email marketing can be more personalized and more economic. Almost all people check their emails regularly and find these types of personalized emails attractive.
You can send emails and text messages to your loyal customers informing them about offers and discounts
You can send them personalized offers (Just For You!). Such types of personalized offers will attract your customers
Send them messages/emails regarding changes in menu and items that are ‘Today’s Special’
6. Use Online Advertising Tools
Almost everyone uses the internet these days. Therefore, it is a good idea to advertise your business on popular websites. You can use online advertising tools such as Google Ads (previously known as Google Adwords) to advertise your restaurant online. Google Ads says, “Get in front of customers when they’re searching for businesses like yours on Google Search and Maps. Only pay for results, like clicks to your website or calls to your business.”
This is undoubtedly the age of digital marketing and social media. If you want your restaurant to grow continuously, you must adopt digital marketing for your restaurant. Once you get familiar with digital marketing, it will generate huge revenues and a larger number of customers for your restaurant.
Marketing is the key to get the popularity a business requires. It is the way of getting the business to where it needs to be taken. Hence, the marketing game needs to be very strong and every major company has its strategy of marketing which they change quite often. According to some reports, 17% of failed startups in the world agree that they had a poor marketing plan and that it was one of the reasons of their failure.
But how to start marketing with limited resources? Now, there are many ways to get marketing done for the business. You can either hire someone especially a content marketer to get the job done or you can do it on yourself. No matter whatever you choose, after some time you will need an online marketing tool.
Are you ready to grow your business through online marketing? Then let’s begin. Below we’ve listed the best online marketing tool/software to choose from.
ContentStudio
ContentStudio Homepage
ContentStudio is a social media and blog management tool which helps you to manage all the social media handles in one place. Additionally, you can manage multiple blog websites with the help of ContentStudio. It gives you an option to either post something on social media right away or schedule it for the future and to repeat the post in the future if you want to.
This is the most important marketing tool if you are serious about the social media of your company. If you don’t want to go for Buzzsumo, Content Studio is the best alternative. It is the best marketing tool for social media.
Pricing plans for ContentStudio are:
| Plan | Price |
|— |— |—
| Pro | $49/month |
| Small | $99/month |
| Medium | $199/month |
| Large | $299/month |
Zoho Social
Zoho Dashboard
Zoho Social is another amazing social media management tool that helps you to manage everything with a clean interface. It has many other features that will help you grow like its analytics feature is one of the best and it even makes Instagram posting easier. It is really worth buying the Zoho service as it is considered best. And its marketing tool for social media is one of the best you can get in this budget.
Pricing plans for Zoho Social are:
| Plan | Price |
|— |— |—
| Standard | ₹600/month |
| Professional | ₹1,500/month |
| Agency | ₹12,000/month |
| Agency Plus | ₹18,000/month |
HubSpot
Hubspot Social Media Software
HubSpot is one of the best platforms for marketing, sales, and CRM software which has always been on the top of the players. HubSpot also provides blueprints, resources, and support to growing businesses.
The sales team of your business can get started quickly with HubSpot CRM without making many changes in the workflow. HubSpot is built for inbound marketing and sales which focuses on developer and marketer of software products. It is also considered as one of the best-integrated CRM platforms as it has many more additional features which can organize the communication with your customers.
By tracking every move and analyzing it, one can increase the return on investment of the company. Kissmetrics can help with that work and one can see what’s working and what’s not, in the campaigns. It is a powerful business intelligence platform.
As it is a web-based tool, it is supported by all the devices and operating systems. Kissmetrics can be used for any type of business such as small businesses, medium business, and even freelancers can use this to grow their clients business.
Mailchimp is one of the best tools for Email Marketing which is used by almost 12 million users. You can design email newsletters and share them on social networks with the help of Mailchimp. It can also be integrated with other services you are already using.
Mailchimp can also help you to track your results. It is a privately owned company and was launched in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong. It started as a paid model lately converted to a freemium model.
Despite being a free tool, Ubsuggest is a very powerful SEO tool that gives you insights on your own website or your competitor’s website. The site is enabled with a lot of tools that let you find keywords, content ideas, backlinks, traffic, etc. Anyone can easily use Ubsuggest by just logging on the site even without signing up.
Originally founded as a tool that scraped Google Suggest terms, Ubersuggest was recently acquired by entrepreneur Neil Patel, who has since expanded the feature set significantly.
Ahref
Ahref is the most popular brand when it comes to a suite of SEO tools. It has all kinds of tools which a marketer needs. Also, the data Ahref provide is the most reliable and you can trust it to plan your campaign.
Pricing Plans of Ahref are:
| Plan | Price |
|— |— |—
| Lite | $99/month |
| Standard | $179/month |
| Advanced | $399/month |
| Agency | $999/month |
Trello was initially released on September 13, 2011, and then again the revised version for iOS was released on October 2, 2019. After that, it was released for Android on October 10, 2019. Trello is a tool that helps to manage projects and see what’s working, who is working on it, and what is in progress.
It takes a few minutes to set the board and all the online marketing strategies can be shared in one place. Also, the entire team can jump in after getting a quick invitation. Trello is one of the hard tools to beat when it comes to collaborating with all tasks and the team.
Pricing Plans of Trello are:
| Plan | Price |
|— |— |—
| Free | $0/month |
| Business Class | $12.50/user/month |
| Enterprise | $17.50/user/month for 250 users |
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo Homepage
BuzzSumo is an online marketing tool that allows users to find popular content. The process of finding content from different social media sites will be tedious especially for the growing businesses. This is where BuzzSumo comes for rescue, it can gather information from various social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, etc about the topics getting the most attention.
BuzzSumo can also filter content type, i.e, an infographic, interview, video, or guest post. BuzzSumo helps the content marketers to find the most popular posts which can be relative to the business. You can also analyze your competitors using BuzzSumo which can help you to know what your competitors are doing. Four subscription plans are starting from $99/month however with each plan you get a free trial. This is one of the most user rated marketing tools which makes it valuable and trustworthy to use.
Pricing plans of BuzzSumo are:
| Plan | Price |
|— |— |—
| Pro | $99/month |
| Plus | $179/month |
| Large | $299/month |
| Enterprise | $499+/month |
Hootsuite is a social media management system that was created by Ryan Home in 2008. It allows the user to schedule social media posts in advance that saves a lot of time. Hootsuite also gives you in-depth analytical data of your social media marketing strategy which helps to lead the sales team. The key feature of Hootsuite is that it listens to the audience, it tracks and identifies key terms or phrases of your expertise in other user’s posts. Also, it helps with the advantage of schedule posts in advance across different social media platforms.
Pricing Plans of Hootsuite are:
| Plan | Price |
|— |— |—
| Professional | Rs. 1260/month |
| Team | Rs. 6600/month |
| Business | Rs. 45000/month |
| Enterprise | Custom |
ClearVoice
ClearVoice Logo
A complete content marketing ecosystem app is ClearVoice. It is a combination of flexible and portable software with a built-in marketplace. It is an app that combines content creation, branding, publisher communities, etc. ClearVoice is a subscription-based content marketing platform and was founded in 2014 by Jay Swansson and Joe Griffen.
Through the collaborative software, ClearVoice will help you to combine all the marketing needs you have. ClearVoice is specially designed for content marketing but it can also be used as a project management software to manage your to-do task list.
Grammarly helps to get the grammar right in the articles which helps the content writers to take less time to check the grammar. Grammarly is a web-based software that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing. It was released in July 2009 by Grammarly, Inc. which has its headquarters in San Francisco and has offices in Kyiv and New York City.
Grammarly also has a free browser extension version which is automatically capable of scanning and checking the content’s grammar, spellings through machine learning and deep learning algorithms. It is considered as one of the best tools to enhance articles. The products Grammarly offers are grammar checking, spell checking, and plagiarism detection services. It is a crucial tool for marketing as we all know that a good written and well-optimized article is the most essential part of a content marketing strategy.
What’s better than infographics to promote the brand? It’s interesting and keeps the attention of the users to the bay. It is also a great way of marketing. For the purpose, Piktochart is the best tool to use for. It is a web-based infographic application and allows users to create infographics without being too professional graphic designer. It has free as well as paid subscription plans. Piktochart has over 600 templates that one can edit and can also use the more advanced version by customizing it, according to their preferences.
Pricing Plans of Piktochart are:
| Plan | Price |
|— |— |—
| Free | $0/month |
| Pro | $24.17/month |
| Pro Team | $82.50/month |
Yoast is a very popular WordPress plug-in that works to help optimize the content for search engines. It helps to choose cornerstone content, focuses on keywords that can help in ranking, individual content URLs, etc.
The Yoast SEO is free for WordPress and the paid version has plans range based on the number of sites one needs to monitor. It is a great way to optimize the content for SEO of a website. Pricing for yoast is $89 for 1 website.
Buffer
Buffer logo
You may have already heard about this one. The Buffer is an application that will help you to manage your social media handles. You can schedule, analyze, reply, and do so many things in just one place. In the free version, you can handle 3 accounts at once. Also, you can schedule 10 posts at once in the free version and the features increase with the paid versions.
But the twist is, those 10 posts are not weekly or monthly. Once you scheduled 10 posts, you cannot add more to the list. But as soon as one of those 10 posts get posted, you can add more in the queue. I would suggest you go for a free version unless you are handling the whole company through social media only.
Pricing plans of Buffer are:
| Plan | Price |
|— |— |—
| Pro | $15/month |
| Premium | $65/month |
| Business | $99/month |
Want to know what people think of your product? Conduct a free survey on Typeform. Typeform is a freemium website. You can conduct surveys for free, but only 10 questions per survey and only 100 responses each. The numbers turn into unlimited in the premium plans. An online survey website conducts surveys on many websites and lets their users earn some points through them. Why they do it for free?
Maybe because they know it will definitely impress you and you will buy the premium version. Try this service out if you are on your initial stage of entrepreneurship. You can also go for other websites like Survey Monkey or ZOHO, etc.
This is the best and free marketing tool in the whole list. HARO stands for “Help A Reporter Out”. Although it is a service for reporters to get the best content from people themselves, it’s a great opportunity for entrepreneurs. The basic subscription is free. Once you subscribed, you will receive 3 emails a day. If you think you can answer any of the asked queries, then reach out to journalists.
Once they liked your answer, they will ask you about your company. It will definitely help you to go to the next level. In the paid versions there are, of course, many advantages like you can filter the topic, get extra time by getting alerts when their editorial team approves a media opportunity, etc. It worth giving a try, but try the free version first.
I think this is the most underrated yet second best and free marketing tool for entrepreneurs. Google Trends is the best tool to check what’s up with the world. You can check which is the most trending topic on the internet. This may help you to create your advertisement keeping in mind the trending topic. Or if you are a blogger, then you know how important this tool is. You just have to learn to use it. It will feel so boring and useless at first, but it is probably the most important marketing tool for every entrepreneur out there.
Canva
Canva logo
It is a simplified graphic-design tool website. Founded by Melanie Perkins in 2012, it uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to photographs, vector images, graphics, and fonts. It can be used for both web and print media design and graphics. It uses a freemium model. For the basic features, you can opt for free versions and upgrade them for the advanced versions. It has three monthly pricing options depending on the use of it. The user can get a 23% discount if the user pays annually.
Hotjar is a marketing tool that reveals the online behavior and voice of the users. It works by combining both analysis and feedback tools and then gives the reason for how to improve the site’s experience and performance. It allows easy access to instant feedback from the users. It comes with a free trial. The basic version is free of cost. The plus version is $29 per month and the business starts at $89 per month.
Pricing Plans of Hotjar are:
| Plan | Price |
|— |— |—
| Personal | $0 to $29/month |
| Business | $89 to $989 /month |
| Agency | Custom |
Simply Measured
Simply Measured logo
Simply Measured is a social media analytics platform. It simplifies end-to-end analysis of all social network activities of its users, whether it’s paid, owned, or earned. It is used in small businesses, large corporations, and every company between them. Examples of companies that used it are Adidas, Microsoft, and Samsung. It provides companies with social media analytics to measure their social media performance, online campaigns, etc. It is supported by Windows, MAC, and Web-based.
Conclusion
We’ve listed the top marketing tools that can help any business to grow and enhance the brand experience. If you are using any other tool then let us know in the comment below.
Managing a small business is tough. You need to make sure your business stays afloat. However, to do this, you have to make a personal investment in marketing your business to reach to the target audience. If you are thinking of one channel of social media marketing, chances are you will not survive in the industry. You need to consult multichannel digital marketing professionals to assist you. Multichannel marketing is the practice of using various online and offline marketing communications channels to reach customers. Examples of communications channels are websites, physical stores, catalogs, e-mail marketing, TV, video marketing, text messaging, blogging, content marketing, direct mail, social media etc.
People can access websites on mobile phone so you need to give positive user experience to users who opens your website on mobile phone. If you are not using mobile ads then you may loose a huge part of market.
Reviews, links and social shares get you in front of more people. Through organic shares of your brand, people see others engaging with your brand. So it always profits you.
Youngsters are using multiple devices so, they are living multichannel lifestyle and if you are not there on multiple devices then you will have less traffic on your website, so less revenue.
You may think it’s too expensive or not necessary, but below we highlight why you should hire a multichannel digital marketer.
Know how to structure and strategies your online presence
Brand imaging is no small thing. Hiring professionals puts you at a better position to strategize your brand or business in different social media platforms with ease. They make sure that your website isn’t poorly positioned, thus being penalized by Google. They personalize your brand according to the image of the company that you have so that it doesn’t appear as a copycat of another company.
Use tools and resources correctly
Hiring a digital marketing professional is useful especially when it comes to using tools such as search console and analytics, among others. They help you know how to use these tools and managing the ROI of digital marketing. It leads to you saving time and money as well as it provides your business with the benefits you long for.
Experience
Having an expert in digital marketing make sure you get the professional expertise and experience in running your day-to-day business activities. Experts such as Gravitec offer innovative web push technology throughout the world. You get high quality messaging services and online presence that will allow you to reach to as many clients as possible.
Customized strategy
As a business owner, you might have a lot on your plate. Running a successful business requires you to take care of the inventory, employees, think of the cost of expanding or renovating a torn-down building. Thinking of this might leave no room to consider the effective means of marketing. Why not hire a professional digital marketer to focus on marketing as you worry about other stuff?
A professional marketer will give you proper social networks, positioning, and creation of a working website. They will do all the maintenance needed to make sure your website is continually working. It’s vital that you get the word out there, that your business exists and what it offers.
Stay up to date
The social media dynamics keep changing. Your marketing and advertising techniques need to stay relevant and fresh to lure the target client base. Hiring a digital marketing expert will make sure you get current marketing services that relate to what people are experiencing. They provide your business with an ideal perspective in marketing currently.
Marketing is a significant segment that’s taken seriously by the world’s top brands and businesses. Multichannel digital marketer understand the level of competition as well as need to remain relevant. As a small upcoming business venture, you need to follow suit. The Marketing campaign is very crucial if you intend to sustain your business. Why not hire an expert and see it work wonders for you!
There is a lack of access to digital marketing for small businesses looking for ways to grow their business. Big agencies don’t really work for the SMEs and people/agencies that work for SMEs are not effective at making them profitable from online ads spend. Biplab Poddar started Oxedent with the mantra to make them profitable, not just maintain the digital presence. The company has created an online advertising strategy exclusively for SMEs that turn their Online Ads into a profit center.
Read this article about Oxedent, how it works, founder, tagline, business model, challenges, growth, and future plans.
Oxedent deals with Pay per click (PPC) management which includes Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads campaigns setup, and management.
The company has been successful in executing 250+ projects since the last year across 54+ countries with the maximum clients from the UK and EU Countries.
“We ensured that our clients get the maximum of the ads spent. Our average client sees a 6.5x ROI, meaning every $1 they spend on ads we gave them a sale of $6.5. We want to expand to a 50 people team and expand our reach to the Australian market.”, says Biplab Poddar, Founder, and CEO of Oxedent.
The company is working on building a SaaS app which won’t just automate the campaign setup and optimization but also make the campaigns profitable for eCommerce businesses. E-commerce business owners will be able to tell the app their advertising goals and the system will choose the audience, ad platform channels, placements to get the most out of their ads spend and increase store revenue.
Oxedent – Target Market Size
There are an estimated 20 million – 24 million e-commerce sites across the entire globe, with more and more being created every single day. Only about 2M of them generate $1000 per month in sales. On the other hand there are 2.05 Billion active people shopping online. So there is clearly a gap or limitation in the way e-commerce businesses advertising online.
Biplab Poddar, the owner of Oxedent, pursued a B.Tech Degree from Kalyani Government College in Electronics. Like all other parents, it was expected from him too, to get a 9-5 job in an MNC and get his life settled. But it was way too different from what he thought.
Biplab started doing paid internships right from 3rd year of his college and helped many startups with their digital marketing who were just starting up and can’t afford full-time employees. Going forward he started learning advanced techniques and tools of Digital marketing.
“I read an interview of a freelancer making $30000 per annum from consulting on digital marketing to foreign clients, then I learned about freelancing platforms like PeoplePerHour and UpWork. I created a profile immediately, got my first job in about a few weeks. It was a London based Law firm, I helped them create Google AdWords campaigns, and they are still my client”, recalls the Oxedent founder.
This was the turning point of his life and since then, he never looked back and was making a handsome sum of money every month in the final year of his engineering days. Poddar never wanted to join a full-time job but was unable to convince his parents and had to join a full-time role as Digital marketing manager in a real estate company.
The founder paralleled freelancing with his job and continued like this for 3 months after college. More companies were inquiring for his services and single-handedly he couldn’t deliver.
“Then finally the fire in me made me quit my job to be on the crest on a wave and hired more digital marketing enthusiasts, trained them, and made them a part of my team. It was September 2017, I registered Oxedent as a Pvt. Ltd company”, says Biplab.
Oxedent – Product/Services
The company is into PPC management services and the biggest USPs are:
They’re ROI & Focused
One of the few Google Partners
They only do PPC unlike other agencies that do everything from social media management to SEO, email marketing etc.
They are a 9 person team at the minute. They maintain a very friendly environment in the office, all of the team members are under 30 so there is a lot of work and a lot of parties.
Hiring: It doesn’t matter if the candidate has a college degree or not as long as he/she knows what he does (PPC) and how to make campaigns generate sales.
Oxedent – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Oxedent has its name derived from the term “Oxygen” for the company acts like oxygen to the brands who are suffering due to online absence and who need a complete transformation in the digital sphere.
Oxedent Logo
The company has a distinct clear vision to break through the clutters of internet marketing agencies, hence the name Oxedent, far unique than the typical “solutions”, “info” in the names of most marketing agencies.
The company has a very simple flat fee business model based on your marketing budget. This is a list of ad spend vs company price:
Ad Spend (INR)
Oxedent’s Fee (INR)
70K-100K
20K
100K-150K
25K
150K-200K
30K
200K-250K
35K
250K-300K
40K
300K-350K
45K
350K-400K
50K
400K-450K
55K
450K-500K
60K
Oxedent – User Acquisition
Biplab already had a client base and a strong portfolio since he was doing freelancing for 2 years before he started the company. The company has got its first 100 clients organically through the website. They also have an amazing blog where they share how-to, strategy and step by step articles on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, conversion rate optimization(CRO).
“As I mentioned earlier most of our clients are SMEs and they try to run ads of their own and look for help online and found through our blog and we help them get maximum ROI from their ads spend”, says Biplab Poddar, owner of Oxedent.
The team hasn’t spent a single Rupee on ads in the first one and half years but focused on creating content that helps business owners utilize the Online Ads to scale their business/sales. They have 100+ amazing articles on their blog that brings them 80% of the website traffic.
They also have tie-ups with UK and USA based digital marketing agencies and offer white label PPC services to their clients.
Hiring the right talent was/is a challenge in Kolkata for a very niche service (PPC management). When Poddar was managing clients’ ad campaigns single-handedly, he ensured all of them are profitable (made sure they get at least $4 in sales for each $1 they spend on ads). While growing the client base it was his main concern that the quality of his works is the same and clients get maximum ROI.
Biplab Poddar initiated a training program called ‘oxedent mini’ where he teaches PPC & CRO to candidates with digital marketing experience and then hire them, to maintain the quality of his service and highest ROI for the clients.
Oxedent – Growth
Operating locations: The majority of the clients are from the UK, EU Countries, Middle East, and the USA.
Revenue: About 1 crore
Profit: 25-30 Lacs
Userbase/Client base: The team has worked with 250+ clients so far. They are currently working with 18 clients.
Notable clients: Tata Housing, UNICEF Ireland, Boy London.
The revenue of Oxedent has grown from 22 Lacs in the first year to 47 Lacs in the second year to 1 Crore in the third year.
There are an estimated 20 million – 24 million e-commerce sites across the entire globe, with more and more being created every single day. Only about 2M of them generate $1000 per month in sales. On the other hand, 2.05 Billion active people are shopping online. So there is clearly a gap or limitation in the way e-commerce businesses advertising online.
Oxedent is building a SaaS platform where the e-commerce business owners can reach engaged shoppers with buying intent and only spend on ads channels and audiences that are likely to generate sales and revenue. The platform will automatically suggest the best advertising channels, keywords, ad copies by scanning their website, and products.
We’d all love to drive Bentley’s and live in mansions overlooking the beach, but not if it means spending the money your family relies on to buy food. Similarly, every business wants to get as many customers as possible, but not if it means going broke in the process. In order to achieve that balance, a crucial metric for businesses (especially startups) to track is customer acquisition cost (CAC).
Achieving sustainable growth for a SaaS company means constantly acquiring new customers and keeping them around for as long as possible. While this may sound simple, it can be incredibly challenging to find new opportunities for growth and customer acquisition in the crowded SaaS industry. If you’re too cautious about your CAC, you will likely be missing out on customers and future revenue. Yet, if you spend too freely, you won’t be profitable and will likely end up in the dead pool.
This article will walk you through the saas customer acquisition strategy.
Put simply, customer acquisition cost (CAC) is – you guessed it – the cost of acquiring a new customer. To compute the cost to acquire a customer, CAC, you would take your entire cost of sales and marketing over a given period, including salaries and other headcount related expenses, and divide it by the number of customers that you acquired in that period.
It doesn’t take a genius to understand that business model failure comes when CAC (the cost to acquire customers) exceeds LTV (the ability to monetize those customers). A well-balanced business model requires that CAC is significantly less than LTV:
Well Balanced Business Model
Here are some typical industry standard cost of customer acquisition values, the amount of money each company spends on average on marketing and advertising to acquire just one new customer:
Let’s say you run a company called ABC, which sells movie inspired accessories. From June to December 2019, you spent $100,000 on sales (mainly sales team salaries) and marketing (Google ad spend, Facebook ads, content creation, marketing team salaries). In that same time frame, you made 10,000 sales.
CAC Calculation
Dividing $100,000 by 10,000 gets you 10. So, for this time period, ABC has a CAC of $100.
Understanding CAC is critical for businesses of all sizes. However, it’s particularly relevant to startups that are in the early stages of scaling up or trying to woo potential investors. Once you know your CAC, you can evaluate the cost of growing the business and the value each new customer brings. To acquire new customers, most SaaS companies devote a substantial amount of time and money before they see a full return on their investment. Examining just how many months of revenue from a customer are actually needed to recover these costs becomes essential as your business grows, as it may take much longer than you think for your company to recover CAC and actually begin to profit.
Tracking Customer Acquisition allows for a better control of your spending and makes sure you’re being profitable on specific channels.
The average length of the sales cycle for a SaaS company is nearly 3 months. That’s quite a long time to be chasing someone down and asking them to buy something from you. If you consider some of the factors that lead to this extended buying process though, you’ll see that it makes quite a bit of sense for customers to take their time:
High Cost
SaaS solutions aren’t usually very cheap. Even with less expensive tools, customers must factor in the recurring charges that go along with the SaaS subscription-based payment model. This can add up to be a significant amount of money for some customers.
Privacy Concerns
Because SaaS solutions are based in the cloud, new customers can sometimes be reticent about allowing an unknown tool process their (or their customers’) personal data on external servers without learning more first.
Complexity
Most SaaS tools are built with deep sets of features and complicated use cases to solve complex problems for which customers may not even know the extent of their needs.
Too Many Options
The SaaS industry has exploded in the past 10 years, meaning customers have usually have several different choices when choosing a SaaS solution.
All of these factors act as barriers to customer acquisition. This is why SaaS customers require an extra level of care and education (or nurturing) to incrementally move them towards a purchase decision
How to Track Leads through the Stages of SaaS Customer Acquisition?
There are 4 unique stages that leads go through before making a purchase and becoming SaaS customer:
Awareness
Prospects first become aware of your business. This is usually the stage in which leads find you through a blog post or other content. Often, they’re not looking for a solution at this stage, and they may not even be aware that they have the problem your product solves.
Engagement
Potential customers start regularly consuming your content, subscribe to your newsletter, and maybe even download an eBook or other resource from you. They are more aware of the problem you solve and begin questioning whether they need a solution.
Exploration: After learning that they have a problem and need a solution, prospects will do research on their options. This usually means visiting your pricing page, reaching out to sales, requesting a quote, or signing up for a free trial or free account to test out the product.
Conversion/Retention: Once prospects have fully explored all of the options you offer, they sign up for the plan that’s right for them and become a paying customer. Now it’s all about making sure they succeed with your tool and continue to be an active user.
While tracking Customer Acquisition may sound simple at first, here are just some of the things you’ll need to consider: 1. Ability to clean the data whenever necessary 2. Ability to cater for your own business needs (targeting Accounts VS Users) 3. Ability to integrate with other software (e.g. CRM, Payment Processors) 4. Ability to manage all the Ad Platforms you use 5. Ability to monitor all costs (CAC calculation) 6. Ability to choose and switch between Attribution Models
If your CAC is higher than you’d like (or can afford), something’s got to change. Here are a few strategies you can use to reduce CAC and improve your bottom line.
1. Conversion Rate Optimization
Optimizing your website can increase your revenue and lower your CAC by making it easier for visitors to convert. This is particularly important for e-commerce sites that might be losing out on sales even if their traffic is high. Check that your site loads quickly, displays properly on mobile devices, and that your checkout process is simple and bug-free. You should also perform A/B testing on your landing page copy to find out what works best for your target market.
2. Using influencer marketing, even for B2B
The phenomenon of influencer marketing doesn’t start and end with Instagram models, especially not in the SaaS space. An “influencer” is simply someone who can lend their credibility, and in doing so boost an organization’s reputation. In the B2C world, celebrities will often sell just about anything. The audience for B2B influencers is different. Influencers have a reputation, so they won’t be promoting junk. They will seek to partner with superior products that align with their brand and are disrupting their space.
3. Reward Referrals
If you can get consistent referrals from existing customers, your average CAC will drop significantly. Say, for instance, a customer who cost you $15 to acquire refers two new customers. This brings your CAC down from $15 to $5 because you landed three new customers for the cost of one. Implement an attractive referral program that gets more customers to spread the word about your business – not just because they enjoy your product or service, but also because you’re offering a referral bonus to sweeten the deal. This could be something as simple as a discount code for their next purchase or a temporary upgrade to your premium service for referring new users.
4. Building product-led growth into the marketing strategy (the flywheel)
Startup unicorns have built insanely good products that catch on faster than any marketer can sell them. What does a product-led growth campaign look like out in the wild? Take Expensify, for example. As part of their marketing efforts, they directly targeted people who submit expense reports. Their slogan was “Expense reports that don’t suck.” Instead of looking mainly at buyers, they tried to hone in on a more specific user pain point. The Slack platform allows users to invite others into their workspace. Dropbox has a functionality where you can add a new user to unlock more space. The Ice Bucket Challenge raised $100 million in 30 days. All of these are examples of product-led growth.
Look at the level of touch required to complete a sale. Some products are easily understood, while others may require a careful walk-through by a sales person. Sometimes, the customer will want a trial with their own data. Consider every possible way to minimize this. For example:
Create demo videos that answer every likely sales question.
List the common sales objections that come up in the sales cycle, and provide answers to these on the web site.
Try using customer references to avoid the need for a trial.
If your customers are going to compare you to the competition as part of their process, consider doing this for them, with a section of your site that has a comparison matrix with appropriate check marks.
Tackling the SaaS customer acquisition cycle is not for the faint of heart. It requires a lot of work, and most importantly, a deep understanding of your customer and their needs to create a SaaS acquisition strategy that works.
JASON LEMKIN, FOUNDER, SAASTR
“A rough rule of thumb is successful SaaS companies are spending about 20%-30% of the fully calculated CLTV on customer acquisition.” JASON LEMKIN, FOUNDER, SAASTR
So, if a SaaS customer LTV is $1,000, then their customer acquisition costs should be in the range of $200 to $300 to stay competitive. Or put another way, ⅓ to ⅕ LTV.
When you’re applying these principles in your own acquisition efforts, be sure to always put your customer’s needs first. By focusing on their benefits and what they’re looking for in a solution, leads will be much more receptive to your messages. Keep this in mind and find ways to guide them through the acquisition process with helpful interventions that come at the right time and add value to their experience. This will lead to much more success in the long run.
Souvik Dey
