Marketing is an essential component of every business and it often turns out to be a huge expense with seemingly insignificant results. Â Staffing companies spend exorbitant amounts for marketing activities. Over the past few years, there has been a trend named no-cost marketing. Â This new way of raising awareness for a product or brand is designed to enable businesses to earn better returns from their marketing efforts without significant investment.
As a business manager/owner you should select marketing methods that make the best use of any limited budget available to you. Let us discuss about no-cost marketing ideas. It is the activities that are designed to promote a product, business, or service. Â Likewise, the ROI (Return on Investment) of these marketing activities is high compared to others. It provides an opportunity for businesses to promote their business without the risk that a cost will not be regained.
No-cost marketing has many benefits. We can make it very effective and successful with the right skills and techniques. But, it is important to develop an attitude that your activities do have an associated cost and to justify the time you spent on these activities. These activities are free from external costs, which mean it will be easier to recover expenditure and grow the business.
No-cost marketing ideas
Some no-cost marketing ideas to promote your business are given below. These ideas allow you to use your budget and time wisely and to maximize the results of marketing.
1. Use social media
Each social media platform helps to reach your brand name, news, services, and advice to a wider audience. Â Social media is not considered as a great selling tool, but it is very useful for product research. Research shows that only 1-2% of online purchases are done directly through social media. But 71% are considering the suggestions on social media in their purchasing decisions.
Social media platform helps to reach your brand name, news, and services to a wider audience
Some social media sites allow users to leave reviews on business pages. Let your customers leave reviews on your profiles. Then, when other peoples come across your profile, they can see those praises from customers. Also, you can post content that encourages people to buy your products. You can post coupon codes, photos of new products, Â and online contests.
2. Guest blogging
Guest blogging is another popular way to bring attention to your brand. You will get new audiences by promoting your knowledge to the audience of the host blog. Also, you are able to make relationships with strategic partners. They will refer their customers to your brand. The cost of guest blogging is free and the time you spend is minimal. Â Create a good article that attracts the audience of the blog. Guest blogging is not easy to discover and pitch. This is very rewarding because both you and the host are promoting the content. You need to begin with sites like Tweak Your Biz as a guest blog host.
Marketing to existing customers is the best way for improving your business base. If anyone bought your product, you should try to turn them into repeat customers. When people purchase products from you, try to add them to your email list, then send inventory updates, coupons, and news about your business to those peoples.
You need to send regular emails to maintain your business in the minds of customers and give them plenty of opportunities to buy from you. Also, you can begin a customer referral program. You need to provide incentives to customers for introducing new customers to your business. For example, you can offer free services or products or a discount on the next purchase.
Try to partner with other local businesses. You can promote businesses to each other. Making partnerships with other businesses will provide you access to their customer base. You need to make partnerships with businesses that might complement yours. Don’t make partnerships with competitors in the market. For example, a coffee shop can make partnership with a bakery. Â Or a local gym can make partnership with a supplement store.
5. Networking
If you run a B2B business, networking groups are a good way to get the news of your products and brand to the mass audience. Most of the networking groups are free, but others have costs. You can utilize apps like Meetup to discover upcoming networking events in your place. Also, you must try to be a member of a business organization such as the Young Entrepreneur’s Council, Business Networking International, the Entrepreneur’s Organization, or SCORE. Look for industry specific organizations that you are able to join.
Email marketing is one of the effective techniques to reach and engage new leads. This is a cost-effective and far-reaching method.  Compared to other strategies, the time taken to create the message and design the email content is very less. Most of the email marketing platforms such as  Constant Contact and MailChimp provides a free account. When using MailChimp, you don’t need to pay for the first 2,000 contacts and 10,000 emails per month. Email is very useful because more than 3-quarters of customers prefer to receive promotional content through their email box.
Email marketing is one of the effective techniques to reach and engage new leads
7. Press releases
There are many websites that allow you to submit press releases at no cost. So you need to consider using these resources when sharing some news about your business. Your company’s popularity will increase by submitting a press release. Â Also, peoples can know about the new offers from your company. The source named PRLog.org is free of charge.
8. Blog comments
Sharing insightful and helpful comments is a good way to be a part of a blog conversation. Â It shows that you are an expert in your industry in front of others. Also, it is an effective way to express our knowledge. Try to avoid leaving a quick comment or link to your site. Â It is just spam and bad form. You need to ensure that you are providing some value to the community and the conversation when leaving a comment. Â People will be interested in knowing about you and they will check out your website.
These strategies are not expensive but it will take a considerable amount of time and effort to implement. Also, you need to provide each technique enough attention and time to work well. However, the ideas that are considered as no-cost are still effective and can generate significant returns for your business. You need to make sure that you are using the right techniques to earn the most from your effort and time.
Benjamin Franklin said “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” In other words, you can rely solely on first-hand experiences to gain sales knowledge but it might be painful. There are plenty of blogs and websites dedicated to SaaS out there, but sometimes nothing beats a good book.
An expertly written book offers a great way to learn in-depth strategies and tactics that you can explore in your day-to-day tasks and along your long-term career path. Itâs always a good idea to explore new resources to continually grow your knowledge, so I present you some of the best sales and marketing books. Some are sales related, some offer a fresh perspective on content marketing and others cover great growth hacking techniques.
Most Recommended Sales and Marketing Books
Get one or more of the books listed below, read them cover to cover and enthusiastically apply the techniques these experts reveal to help your SaaS business enter new realms of growth.
Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
– by Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares.
Traction
In Traction, serial entrepreneurs Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares give startups the tools for generating explosive customer growth. Most startups don’t fail because they can’t build a product. Most startups fail because they can’t get traction. Building a successful company is hard. Smart entrepreneurs know that the key to success isn’t the originality of your offering, the brilliance of your team, or how much money you raise. It’s how consistently you can grow and acquire new customers.
Traction will teach you the nineteen channels you can use to build a customer base, and offers a three-step framework to figure out which ones will work best for your business. No matter how you apply them, the lessons and examples in Traction will help you create and sustain the growth your business desperately needs.
This advanced handbook explains how to acquire customers for your site/app, and how to entice them to purchase. It is widely recommended within Silicon Valley because it actually teaches growth marketing to a professional level. It doesn’t waste time on self-evident, nonsense advice.
Julian says âIf you’re skeptical of marketing advice, know that I am too. This handbook is unique in that I have years of diverse data: I’ve run thousands of experiments for clients like Microsoft, Imperfect Produce, Perfect Keto, Webflow, Tovala, Clearbit, and others.â This material applies to companies of every size and vertical. It covers both introductory and advanced B2B and B2C tactics. Marketers of every skill level will encounter new material.
SaaS Marketing Essentials
– by Ryan Battles
SaaS Marketing Essentials
SaaS Marketing Essentials by Ryan Battles is a great primer covering essential marketing strategies and tactics with concrete, actionable examples. Whether you’re kicking a SaaS idea around in your head or are looking to level-up your current recurring revenue, this book shows you how to attract & convert new users. This book gives so many great ways to find and convert customers, it’s a no-brainer for anyone that wants to grow a successful SaaS product.
Smarter, Faster, Cheaper
– by David Siteman Garland
Smarter, Faster, Cheaper
With huge recent shifts in the way enterprises are built, marketed, and monetized, these are “wild west” times for business. Smarter, Faster, Cheaper gives you an innovative, approachable new guide on how to market, promote and improve your business drawing on real world examples and offering practical advice as opposed to fluffy theory.
It presents a complete roadmap for marketing and promoting your business with the latest techniques. Strategies and ideas are easy to understand, digest, and immediately put to use. From learning when to skimp and when to splurge to mastering the art of online schmoozing, Smarter, Faster, Cheaper will save you time, money, and aggravation whether you’re building your tenth business or your first.
Launch
– by Jeff Walker
Launch
Launch will build your businessâfast. Whether youâve already got a business or youâre itching to start one, this is a recipe for getting more traction. Launch is the treasure map into that worldâan almost secret world of digital entrepreneurs who create cash-on-demand paydays with their product launches and business launches. Once Jeff started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs, the results were simply breathtaking.
Tiny, home-based businesses started doing launches that sold tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars in sales with their launches. Whether you have an existing business, or you have a service-based business and want to develop your own products so you can leverage your time and your impact, or youâre still in the planning phaseâthis is how you start fast. This formula is how you engineer massive success.
With the help of this book, discover the outbound sales process that, in just a few years, helped add $100 million in recurring revenue to Salesforce.com, almost doubling their enterprise growth, without cold calling or a boiler room approach. This is NOT another book about how to cold call or close deals. This is an entirely new kind of sales bible for CEOs, entrepreneurs and sales VPs to help you build a sales machine, and a sales culture that people love.
This book answers the questions like what does it take for your sales team to generate as many highly-qualified new leads as you want, create predictable revenue, and meet your financial goals without your constant focus and attention? What does it take to attract top sales talent, people who exceed and want to stay and grow with your company?
From Impossible To Inevitable
– by Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin
From Impossible to Inevitable
From Impossible to Inevitable details the hypergrowth playbook of record-breaking companies like Zenefits, Salesforce and EchoSign. Whether youâre a small business owner or have a $1 billion firm, you can use the insights from these notable companies to learn what it really takes to break your own revenue records. The authors show how you can grow your company by developing repeatable processes that will consistently drive revenue and increase your growth. This book is a seminal work in the field of SaaS sales and focuses in on a number of critical cogs in the growth process of a business.
They Ask, You Answer
– by Marcus Sheridan
They Ask, You Answer
They Ask You Answer is a straightforward guide to fixing your current marketing strategy. Regardless of your budget, you are almost certainly overspending on television, radio, and print ads, yet neglecting the number-one resource you have at your disposal: the Internet. Content marketing is no longer about keyword-stuffing and link-building; in fact, using those tactics today gets your page shuffled to the bottom of the heap.
Quality content is the key to success, and you already have the ingredients in-house. This book shows you how to structure an effective content strategy using the same proven principles that have revolutionized marketing for all types of businesses, across industries.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on âvalidated learning,â rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneursâin companies of all sizesâa way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before itâs too late. The book provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
Start Small, Stay Small
– by Rob Walling
Start Small, Stay Small
Start Small, Stay Small is a step-by-step guide to launching a self-funded startup. This book intentionally avoids topics restricted to venture-backed startups such as: honing your investment pitch, securing funding, and figuring out how to use the piles of cash investors keep placing in your lap.
This book assumes:
You don’t have $6M of investor funds sitting in your bank account.
You’re not going to relocate to the handful of startup hubs in the world.
You’re not going to work 70 hour weeks for low pay with the hope of someday making millions from stock options.
There’s nothing wrong with pursuing venture funding and attempting to grow fast like Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook. It just so happened that most people are not in a place to do this.
Start Small, Stay Small also focuses on the single most important element of a startup that most developers avoid: marketing. There are many great resources for learning how to write code, organize source control, or connect to a database. This book does not cover the technical aspects developers already know or can learn elsewhere. It focuses on finding your idea, testing it before you build, and getting it into the hands of your customers.
Conclusion
I hope that this list provides enough books to keep you busy for a while â and to help transform your business. Give them a try and understand how it changes your startup. Also, give us suggestions of books that you read and can benefit others in the comments section.
You must have seen many companies which give you an option to buy their âpremium membershipsâ. However, every company calls it with another name for their VIP plans like âAmazon Primeâ, âZomato Goldâ, etc. These are customer loyalty programs that reward customers and encourage them to bear additional purchases. There is a series of reasons to do that. Such customer loyalty cards increase sales without compromising marketing budget. Here is why you should provide membership perks.
According to some report success rate of selling existing customer is 60-70% but at the same time, the success rate of selling new customer is 5-20%. Hence, you should focus more on your existing customers to generate higher profit with low cost marketing. In this post, we are going to reveal them all and help you decide whether you should also have VIP memberships or not and how to create A VIP Program for your small business.
When people buy VIP membership in your service, they feel special. It is because, of course, you will provide some special service to your VIP members. If you have a restaurant, you can provide free home delivery, special booking, special treatment, etc. to your VIP customers. It will make them feel different and special.
Permanent Customer
When people will feel special, they will end up becoming your permanent customers. Also, if they have a VIP membership, they will come to you, at least till they have their VIP membership is valid. Moreover, if you can initiate the automatic renewal of their membership, it will be great for your business. I hate Amazon Prime but I still donât quit itâs membership because I think Rs. 120/month is not a big deal and I donât have to pay manually its fully automated system.
Reward System
Reward System
You can provide a reward system in your VIP membership. You can give them points on buying something particular or discount on bringing another VIP member. Furthermore, you can test your new service or product by providing points to the VIP members on using it. You can ask for their reviews and make changes accordingly. Moreover, provide points on a particular number of purchases, it will increase your sales.
Increase User Base
As people will share their code and bring you more people to get rewards, you will acquire more customers. It will eventually increase your sales. However, please donât overdo it if you donât have enough funds. Customer loyalty program ideas help a lot in building your customer base.
VIP Cards
VIP CARD
If you provide customer loyalty cards to your VIP members, it will be great for marketing. Most of the humans are social animals, and they like to show off. Most of your VIP members will show their VIP cards off to others. It will be great for your marketing. Also, when your VIP member will see their VIP card, it will remind them about your service. They are more likely to come to you if they see something related to you again and again.
Customer Loyalty
Iâm not buying Netflixâs subscription only because I already have Primeâs. Even though I know Netflix is much better and I hate Prime, I use Prime. It is because, somewhere in my subconscious mind, I have become loyal to it. I donât want to hassle again to register and buying some other service.
In one or the other way, Prime has made me a loyal customer. Just like me, other people will become your loyal customer and will think a lot before going to another service. And after thinking a lot, if they are lazy like me, they will end up compromising. Unless you give a terrible service, they will be your loyal customers.
Exclusive Sales
You can provide exclusive access to your new product to your VIP members. It will make them feel more special as only they will have that product. Also, you donât have to worry about the stock. It will be out if your customers are loyal enough. However, analyze your customers first and provide a good exclusive product or service.
If you have a restaurant and exclusively selling a new phone, it will be disastrous, because people come to you for food. Or if your exclusive product is out of fashion as if you are exclusively selling a feature phone or even an old-style smartphone (with bezels), no oneâs gonna buy it.
Customers always trust more on their peers and they love to engage with them. Thus VIP Membership program will give you an opportunity to build a community forum where people can share their positive or negative feedback on the same platform. It will help you to make your product or services better.
Should You Provide VIP Membership?
Membership Tier
Although VIP membership is great to have in your business, it depends on the nature of your business. If you have a car showroom, there is no point in giving VIP memberships because people donât buy cars every day or every month. Whereas, if you have a grocery store, you can provide VIP membership with services like free home delivery and that the customer can give you their grocery list so that they donât have to waste their time in choosing their stuff, etc. This was just an example. Create your ideas and use them in your VIP memberships.
However, I donât have to repeat the points of importance but VIP membership work. Your customers cannot go to your competitors until their VIP membership get invalid. Please check your serviceâs nature if it is compatible with VIP membership or not. Also, you can even lose your other ânon-VIPâ members if you give stupid service in your VIP membership. Think a lot and then decide on every aspect of your business. Consider it your baby, because it is. Your business is not just your effort, many people, directly or indirectly helped you a lot. So take every step carefully. Do you have a VIP membership to any service? Please comment down below. Also, share this post with all your friends.
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 Pinterestâ 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.
In the initial days of startup, you wonât have any customers if they arenât aware of your startup. Even more challenging is figuring out how to attract your first customers when you have a limited budget and resources. Thus, one of the toughest things for any startup is to gain initial traction. This is where most new entrepreneurs fail. The major culprit is inefficient marketing. Yes! No matter how innovative your product is, if people donât know about it, it’s bound to fail.
This applies to both nascent startups and well-established brands. The world awaits a new iPhone model every year, but what if Apple secretly starts flash sale in the market without advertising, without the highly revered Apple event (yeah, it’s the release conference we’re talking about). To save our readers from committing such blunders, we have listed some of the best techniques to gain initial traction for your startup.
Methods to Get Traction for Your Startup
Source: GrowthRocks
1) Come up with an Innovative Product
It starts with the idea. There’s no shortage of problems or issuesâit’s the absence of the right solution which in turn depends on the initial idea. Product innovation encompasses various factors: the market demand, competition, cost, and many more. The crux of building an ingenious product idea is identifying what the market is looking for and if it’s willing to pay for it.
Once done with this, proceed on to analyzing the competitors, what they are doing, and what are they missing out on with their offering. Observe their product from a consumer’s perspective and try to identify the possible enhancements or modifications. Then, improve the product as desired. An existing concept gets the flavor of creativity this way!
2) Social Media Marketing
The probability of an individual having a Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat account is much higher than him or her having a bank account! The demand for social media expertise and awareness has been recognized and many online education platforms and institutions do carry a holistic course on social media marketing in their catalog.
This is the holy grail for gaining traction for your startup. There are two ways to market on social media.
First, let’s talk about the organic way of social media marketingâcreate an attractive business profile for people to understand your brandâyour mission and vision. Post valuable, trending content regularly and interact with people as much as possible. Don’t let your audience feel that you’re paying attention to them. Use Facebook groups to build a community where like-minded individuals can converse with each other. Go through StartupTalky’s Facebook community to get an idea of how effective this is!
The paid way of social media marketing is a bit advanced but once you gain a hang of the tools and techniques, it’s a cakewalk. The cost associated with paid ads such as Facebook Ads is going down day by day. These facilities are becoming cheaper. So, don’t forego this economical opportunities while they are available.
What makes your business different from your competitors in the market? Your popularity and influence on the web. Every company has a website and an app nowadays and this has created a rat race where everyone’s eager to scoop a significant piece of the web traffic. Posting contents on trending topics that enriched with videos and graphics is imperative. And this boils down to the use of search engine optimization, or SEO.
Ensure your website is fully optimized and the you don’t serve pirated content. If your site is indexed and you are posting quality content regularly then it will be easy for you to rank on search engine results pages. This is an organic way of marketing so be ready for some grinding in terms of time and efforts!
4) Affiliate Marketing
If you believe your product or service can make a difference and can benefit the consumers, then the affiliate marketing path would do wonders. Affiliate marketing, benefits your influencers and users. When an influencer sells your product through a unique link, he or she gets a commission from the selling price.
There are tools that help in setting up and automating the affiliate marketing process. Popular tools include Flippa, CJ Affiliate, and and SEMRush.
The whole point is here you don’t market your product; the influencers do it for you. Your job is to deliver a quality product and the service you provide is more beneficial when compared to exisitng solutions.
Crowdfunding has brought in a new way to conceive products and services. Platforms like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter offer the ground for people seek others’ help in raising money for their ventures.
This is the perfect opportunity to attain early traction, as the individuals that choose to invest in your product entrench the base of your target audience.
There are a few things you should keep in mind about crowdfunding your business:
Most crowdfunding campaigns fail.
A high percentage of donations come during the initial days of the campaign.
You should set a realistic goal for your campaign.
Choosing the right crowdfunding platform is vital.
Customer appreciation is a smaller, scalable action (like holding contests or sending handwritten notes to customers) for maintain a good rapport with your audience as well as press-coverage and publicity.
To build your brand authority and gain traction for the long term, you need to build a solid relationship with your customers.There are many methods to do this but unconventional PR is the most sustainable and effective way. Surprise your audience with goodies and perks that seem out of the world!
7) Offline Events
Conduct seminars and press conferences to make your product a burning issue among people for the right reasons. Meet people and advertise yourself. Trade shows will help build relations with industry insiders.
You can also connect with influencers capable of representing your brand. Influencers have the target audience you are seeking. There are many benefits of marketing through influencers, but the highlight is the time saved in building your community from scratch.
Invite them and other competitors in your events. The socializing and partnership building will help you and your brand in the long run.
8) Email Marketing
We’ve discussed so many ways of marketing a startup but if you just have started ,then email marketing is a safe, less risky path. Every startup should build an email list as soon as possible because that’s how one gets subscribers.
Despite the presence of social media platforms, email marketing continues to be effective, but why? 58% people check their email before anything else in their phone. Don’t send spam emails to your users because that’s the last thing anyone wants.
Value people through your emails . Soon, you will have a loyal audience that will be yours for a lifetime.
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 letâs 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 | âš600/month |
| Professional | âš1,500/month |
| Agency | âš12,000/month |
| Agency Plus | âš18,000/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 âHelp A Reporter Outâ. Although it is a service for reporters to get the best content from people themselves, itâs 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.
Marketing is not something that a person can learn overnight. It takes hard work and determination to be a good marketer. Around 30% of the marketers to enhance and improve their skills take advantage of books on the topic. In this article, we have shortlisted 20 books that a marketer should read in 2020.
Books are a good way to learn the basics of marketing because marketers need to understand the origin and underlying theory of it as well as know about the new trends and channels. Books on the topic offer the opportunity to the marketer to learn about both. We have shortlisted some must-read marketing books, recommended for marketers young and old, experienced as well as a beginner.
20 Books That Every Marketer Should Read
1. Killing Marketing
Two of the worldâs top marketing experts- Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose reveal the next level of breakthrough success which is transforming the marketing strategy into a standalone profit center. Playing off the perception that marketing is cost centered, the authors through this book suggests sending this discipline out to pasture and restructuring it.
2. Integrated Marketing Communications
This landmark book by Don E. Schultz, Stanley I. Tannenbaum,â and Robert F. Lauterborn reveals that strategies long used to deliver selling messages to the mass culture through a single medium are now obsolete – and shows marketers how to get back on track. It stresses the fact that how a company communicates is the key to its success.
3. The Practice of Management
A classic since its publication in 1954, The Practice of Management, by Peter.F. Drucker was the first book to look at management as a whole and being a manager as a separate responsibility. This book is readable, fundamental, and basic, and remains a must-read for students, aspiring managers, and seasoned professionals.
4. The End of Competitive Advantage
Chances are the strategies that worked well for you a few years ago, now no longer delivers the results you need. This book by Rita Gunther McGrath serves as a new guide for a new strategy, based on updated assumptions about how the world works with examples of how some of the worldâs most successful companies use this method to compete and win today.
In The Social Organism, Oliver Luckett and Michael J.Casey offer a revolutionary theory: social networks-to an astonishing degree-mimic the rules and functions of biological life  “A must-read for business leaders and anyone who wants to understand all the implications of a social world.”-Bob Iger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney
Some famous books for marketing
6. Permission Marketing
Seth Godin is an author, entrepreneur, marketer, and public speaker. This book explains how businesses can market to a subscriber who gives their permission to market to or âopt-inâ to receive offers and announcements from a brand. enables companies to build long term relationships with customers, create trust, and build brand awareness.
7. Breakthrough Advertising
Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz is not a book just for marketing professionals and business owners, itâs a book for everyone in the business world. Breakthrough Advertising addresses universal business problems that people are still trying to solve today. It deals with questions like How to write a great headline, how to cut through the noise, and how to open up a whole new market.
Chris Ducker through his Virtual Freedom helps you to explore the options when it comes to hiring digital staff and outsourcing work.
9. Epic Content Marketing
Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi helps businesses and marketers develop strategies and use stories to leverage the widespread distribution of social networks, Google, and the mainstream press.
10. Content Inc
Content Inc by Joe Pulizzi explores a 6 step process that many business and entrepreneurs use to dominate the market without selling anything in the first instance
11. Rich Dad, Poor Dad
Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter’s book is for all marketers to learn how to handle their money to keep them coming. This book talks in detail about financial literacy, management, and investment.
Graph showing the popularity of books in learning marketing.
12. The One Minute Manager
This book is co-written by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson that speaks on the importance of goals, praises, and reprimands. It gives a glimpse of the office environment and imparts some valuable tips to improve productivity and ensure personal growth, etc.
13. Made To Stick
This book by Chip Heath and Dan Heath dissects some of the ideas which have rocked the world and attempt to decipher the reason for success.
Steve Jobs has been an inspiration and a role model for many marketers. This book talks about his journey, the struggles, and his quest for triumph. It begins with his childhood to the days of Mac.
15. Brand Identity Breakthrough
With a decade of experience studying businesses across the world, Gregory.V. Diehl has talked about the key to creating innovative brand identities and distinct business stories. In Brand Identity Breakthrough, one will learn how to develop a strong brand identity by combining your personality and values with the functionality of your products, becoming an irreplaceable brand and company.
16. The 22 immutable laws of marketing
This book by Al Ries and Jack Trout breaks down the rules of marketing down into digestible chunks of wisdom.
This book by Daniel Kahneman talks about our minds-tripped up by error and prejudice (even when we are being logical) and gives you practical techniques for slower, smarter thinking.
18. The Artistâs Way
This book by Julia Cameron links creativity to spirituality by showing how to connect with the creative energies of the universe. The Artist’s Way guides you through the process of recovering your creative self.
19. The Art of Client Service
This book by Robert Solomon is a powerful source of counsel for those new to the business, for industry veterans who want to refresh or confirm what they already know, and for anyone in the middle of the journey to improve at what they do
20. The 1-Page Marketing Plan
This book by Allan Dib is the easiest and fastest way to create a marketing plan that will propel your business growth. With it, you will be able to map out your own sophisticated marketing plan and go from zero to marketing hero whether you’re starting new or are an experienced entrepreneur.
Conclusion
âIf you donât build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirsâ- Dhirubhai Ambani.
Marketing is an industry that is constantly growing and evolving. It has a broad spectrum of discipline and to be a good marketer one needs to be constantly educated about the new trends prevailing in the society. To gain knowledge on a regular basis, books are the best way. I hope you find this article with 20 must-read books for a marketer useful and informative.
Since the dawn of humankind stories have existed as a way to bring people together, provide entertainment, spread the news and remember historical events, and although we may have moved along from cave paintings to more sophisticated mediums â the yearning and enjoyment of good stories haven’t changed. What has changed is the accessibility we have to them and therefore the need for a story to be compelling enough to keep our attention amongst unlimited alternatives.
The importance of this is no different whether it’s a piece of art, movies, novels or business and the new breed of successful business minds understand the power of an engaging story, using a seven-step method called StoryBrand, to engage with the right audience, deliver a clear message and win business.
StoryBrand certified guide is a select group of specialists who are using the StoryBrand method, with giants such as Procter & Gamble, Berkshire Hathaway and even the White House under the Obama administration. StoryBrand certified guide guides for a business to help that business clarify their marketing using the StoryBrand framework. A StoryBrand guide can help your business in the following ways:
BrandScripts: seven-part framework from StoryBrand which clarify your brand message
It will help you guide potential customers to success
It will help you leverage story to drive customer engagement
StoryBrand CEO, Donald Miller, says, “The SB Seven framework amounts to the seven things that happen in almost every single story.” “Almost every good story has a character with a problem that meets a guide who gives them a plan and calls them to action that either ends in success or failure.”
In a business context, StoryBrand certified guide expand on that with their clients along the following lines:
Character
The character is the customer, and a company needs to have a strict focus on exactly who they wish to help. The customer must become the hero.
Problem
It’s challenging to think of a good story where a character doesn’t encounter a difficulty or problem which they need to solve. The key to overcoming the problem that the customer is facing is, first, to be fully aware and honest about the specifics of it.
Guide
The old saying that “there’s no substitute for experience” rings more accurate than ever when a customer experiences a problem for the first time. Being walked safely through the same obstacle by a wise and trusted mentor is invaluable.
Plan
As with any critical or momentous decision, having all parties committed and trusting of the plan is vital. The problem has to be crystal clear to develop a strategy that everybody agrees on.
Action
There’s no use having the most spectacular plan in the world if it’s not going to be executed. Customers need to be free from confusion and uncertainty and comfortable to take action.
Avoid Failure
Many stories have a sad ending, but in some instances, particularly in business, only a happy ending will do. Customers should know that taking no action is a decision that may ruin the end of their story.
Success
The happy ending inspires confidence in others to follow a similar path, and for those that are successful – to continue using what is working.
For a business to reach its full potential, it should make the customer the hero and remove any confusion from the heroâs decision-making process. Creating a strong narrative that resonates with customers in todayâs competitive market separates the elite from the obsolete. Â
Thereâs never been a better time for a startup. While many people out there are saying that the market is saturated, there are too many âfakers,â and that you canât make money online, several individuals are out here killing it every day. So, why is it that some people have no trouble making a ton of money online while many never make it out of the startup phase?
It has to do with your marketing strategy. The problem with online business is that itâs so easy and accessible. Back when you wanted to start a brick and mortar business, there was a lengthy process to go through. The steps of applying for loans, permits, licenses, getting a building, and all that weeded out the fakers. In the digital world, anyone can call themselves an expert in something and start a business today. What will give you a leg up over your competition is having the best startup marketing strategy for your startup. In this guide, Iâm going to help you map out your strategy so you can achieve greatness.
What is a Web Marketing Strategy?
marketing strategy
Your web marketing strategy is the series of actions that youâll take to help grow your company. You need to have everything figured out ahead of time, so you know what to do as each problem or issue arises.
You should have a firm understanding of all the following points before you ever spend a dime on marketing or start offering services of any kind. Letâs take a look.
First, what are you doing with your business? Are you trying to generate leads? Do you want to bring attention to something? Do you already have clients, but are trying to bring better results for them?
Whatever it is that youâre trying to do, you need to give it a name and stick with it. Your ultimate goal should be to achieve a business that satisfies you spiritually, emotionally, and financially.
Think about it this way. If youâre dating and youâre trying to find the perfect partner, you likely have a few traits in mind of your ideal person. Maybe youâre looking for someone with brown hair, blue eyes, with a career-focused mindset, who likes to spend time outdoors.
You need to do this with your business, Take note of all the things you want your business to do for your life and how you envision getting up and going to work every day. Once youâve done that, under each point you made, figure out how youâll get to the desired goal.
Understand Your Audience
startup marketing strategy
One of the most powerful things you can do is create a buyer persona. This person is your ideal customer or client, and they need to have an exhaustive description. Youâll have a solid understanding of who your audience is, what they like, and what motivates them to buy something.
When you create a buyer persona, you want to keep some of the following things in mind:
What motivates them?
What discourages them?
Pain points they might have.
Why are they here?
What excites them?
What exhausts them?
You can go on and on with this, but you want to be as comprehensive as possible. When you understand your buyer, youâll have an easier time writing copy, crafting emails, and building funnels that appeal to that specific person.
Hereâs an example of a buyer person named Supermom, âMy buyer persona is a stay-at-home mom between the age of 25-35. She has two kids under the age of 10, and she values her health and the health of her family. She tries to eat healthily and cook quality meals every night, but between wrestling her kids, yoga classes, her kid’s soccer practices, and volunteering at the church; sheâs left with little time at the end of the day.â
That buyer persona might work for a company that sells pre-packaged healthy meal plans that you can purchase a week ahead of time and plan into the week. It allows the mom to feed her family a healthy dinner, and she can always have one available when the day drags on longer than planned.
In this section, letâs break down the four steps of every sales funnel. Youâll find a lot of variations, but these are the four primary steps you should always refer back to.
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action
With Systeme.io, we focus on making it easy to create funnels using these four steps. Our funnel builder allows you to appeal to the psychological side of these steps.
Letâs work our way down from the top.
Awareness
Here is where you are teaching people about your brand. Youâre introducing them to your company but not trying to sell them something. A lot of businesses skip this step, and they wonder why they arenât having success. Think of this as going up and introducing yourself to someone youâve never met before.
Interest
At this step of the funnel, the customer has seen your brand, and they are opening their ears to listen a little. They may even show that theyâre interested in the company and they want to learn more about what you can do for them. Here is where you want to start preaching the benefits of your product or service.
At the desired stage, the customer is now interested in doing business with you. Theyâve decided that your product or service is useful and they want to purchase it. Now you donât have to sell anymore, you need to provide them with the information they need to buy. Here is where upsells will occur as well.
Action
Finally, the customer is taking action, and you might even be up selling them on something else. At this stage is where retargeting occurs as well. Many people, even though they seemed interested at first, will back out.
Where are your buyers?
marketing strategy
Okay, so now you know who your buyer is, and you have an awesome funnel that is bound to convert traffic. Now you need to get people into that funnel.
To do this, you need to find your buyers. Letâs go back to our buyer persona to do this. So, we have a stay-at-home mom who values her health, loves her family, does yoga, and is young enough to be on the cutting edge of technology.
Where do you think she might hang out online?
She might be on Pinterest, checking out design ideas for her home.
Maybe she’s on Facebook during her short period of free time when the kids are running around
Or she could be googling information about cheap and healthy weeknight recipes for children
If youâre trying to build a web marketing strategy around this buyer persona, you need to know where she is and what she is doing there. Understanding this will not only help you create the right ads and copy, but it will help with your funnel as well.
Remember that personalization is key with your sales funnel, so the individual needs to think that this funnel was explicitly made for them.
You hear it all the time on platforms like Click funnels; they talk about funnel hacking. With Systeme.io, we like to call it âcustomer research.â
Itâs important to know where you find your audience because each platform has a different intent.
People on Google are usually there to find information or buy something
People on Facebook are there for entertainment
People on Youtube are often there for information or entertainment
People on Pinterest are there for ideas and inspiration.
Your startup will perish if you donât have the right web marketing strategy. But, in addition to strategy, you need the right platform to run your business. In 2020 and beyond, itâs essential that you have a highly functioning and well-converting sales funnel as well as the best landing pages.
You also need email marketing tools, customization options, a blog, a place to sell your stuff, and automation that take some of the grunt work out of your hands.
For that, you have two options. You can scour the internet to find five or six different marketing platforms and see if they work well together. Or, you could get a 14-day free trial of Systeme.io and get everything you need in one place.
Systeme.io provides easy to use funnel building tools, email marketing, automation, and more. Best of all, you can get started for free and take your business from a startup to wild success in no time.
Be sure to keep all the points outlined in this article in your mind while youâre building your funnel. Remember,
Know what you want to accomplish
Understand your audience and create a buyer persona
Weâd all love to drive Bentleyâs 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 youâre too cautious about your CAC, you will likely be missing out on customers and future revenue. Yet, if you spend too freely, you wonât 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 â you guessed it â 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 doesnât 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:
Letâs 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, itâs 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 youâre 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 youâll 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 youâd like (or can afford), somethingâs 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 doesnât start and end with Instagram models, especially not in the SaaS space. An âinfluencerâ is simply someone who can lend their credibility, and in doing so boost an organizationâs 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 wonât 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 â not just because they enjoy your product or service, but also because youâre 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 âExpense reports that donât suck.â 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
âA rough rule of thumb is successful SaaS companies are spending about 20%-30% of the fully calculated CLTV on customer acquisition.â 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, â to â 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.
Avantika Bhardwaj
