Author Archive

Liz Farquhar

As former Content Strategist, Liz helped agencies create a repeatable new business process to support their agency growth goals.

How to Define the Ideal Vertical for Your Agency to Serve

One of the biggest mistakes that a marketing agency can make is trying to be all things to all people. At first glance, casting a wide net seems logical. After all, isn’t it the best way to ensure that your message is seen by as many people as possible? It is, and that’s the problem. Here’s why: Most of those people would never have been interested in your offerings anyway, so your message is lost on them–and so are your efforts, time and money.

Instead, define a very specific target audience on which to focus your efforts. In doing so, you’ll get way more bang for your marketing buck and will set the stage for long-term growth, profitability and success.

Five Tips for Identifying the Ideal Vertical for Your Agency

With a clearly defined target audience, it will be much easier to know where, when and how to market your products and services. Keep these tips in mind to more easily define a target vertical on which to focus your marketing and branding efforts:

  1. Get to Know Your Current Customers – Much of what you need to know can be found in your sales records. Who currently buys your products and services? What needs are they trying to fill by using them? What kinds of things do your current customers have in common? Consider things like age, interests, education level and the like. While you’re at it, closely examine your biggest customers. What traits do they share? This research should give you a great head-start in defining your ideal audience.
  2. Scout Out the Competition – Take a look at your closest competitors. What do their customers look like? Who do they appear to be targeting with their marketing efforts? Don’t attempt to go after the same exact audience. Instead, look for niche markets that your competitors may be overlooking, as they could be your best opportunity.
  3. Consider the Benefits of Your Products and Services – Painstakingly list each of the products and services that your agency provides and the benefits that they provide. Next, consider the problems that these products and services solve. Who typically experiences these problems? These are the folks who could benefit the most from your offerings.
  4. Define Your Target Audience – Consider the kind of person who is most likely to buy your products and services. They should not only need to buy them but should be able to also. Jot down a list of the demographics that they share, including age, gender, income, education, marital status and occupation. Dig deeper by considering their shared interests, attitudes, values and other personality traits.
  5. Assess & Grow Your Newly Defined Target Audience – Finally, make sure that marketing to the target audience that you’ve selected will help you achieve your objectives. Will these folks truly benefit from what your agency has to offer? Can they afford your offerings? Are they easily accessible? If so, which media or channels  do they typically prefer? Do you understand the motivations behind the decisions that they make?

Finding the right vertical for your agency to primarily serve is a small but crucial part of achieving long-term new business growth. With a specifically defined audience, your sales and marketing efforts will go a lot farther.

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Top 5 Prospecting Tips for Growing Agencies & Startups

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Prospecting is time-consuming and often messy – but also vital for young companies ready to develop strong customer bases. If you aren’t finding enough leads, it’s time to invest more heavily in high-quality prospecting. Here’s what you need to know.

1. Be Organic, But Also Focus on Data

Let’s unpack this tip a bit: Prospecting is about acquiring contact information and profile data for potential leads. Because it can be time-consuming and doesn’t actually lead to revenue until leads have been turned into customers, many new companies are tempted to cheat – to buy lists of customer contact information or use contact lists from other portions of the business. Avoid this temptation – prospect data needs to be organic, gathered in the wild from real sources. This is the only way to guarantee high-quality leads with the right contact information. At the same time, these organic prospects need to be as data rich as possible so that you can start forming accurate customer personas, predict the needs of your leads, and start putting together powerful sales strategies.

2. Establish Useful Conversions

Prospecting is not too early for conversion efforts: We’re talking about basic, early conversions designed to test the efficacy of your process and gather important data. Conversions like responses to emails, fill-out forms on your website, successful referrals, and similar actions should all be fueling your prospect list. Ideally, they should also give you enough information so that you can rank your prospects based on their profitability and chances of success. Conversions this early in the process also allow you to note which channels are the most effective in picking up prospects.

3. Use All Available Channels

Speaking of channels, how many are you using? You should tap into all channels possible for your industry and target audience: Social media, blogs, forums, email, trade shows, calls to past clients, buddies at the local pub, old friends now working for another business…cast a wide net when first building your customer base. Not only will this help you find more prospects, but it will also help you sharpen up your sales pitches and marketing content before you start dealing more directly with your leads.

4. Specialize in the Right People and Tools

When we say “specialize” we are talking about two important steps in the prospecting process. First, specialize in demographics that are indeed interested in what you are selling. Don’t waste your energy gathering prospect information for people that have no interest in your products (people who live in apartments don’t buy lawnmowers, etc.). Second, specialize on prospecting within your company. There are several reasons to avoid having your salespeople find prospects. A better solution is to assign someone temporarily or permanently to dig up prospects and do nothing else: Follow up by giving these people the right sales tools to maximize productivity and narrow down/rank prospects efficiently.

5. Stay in Communication and Predict Needs

If you have followed our other tips and have a roster of high-quality leads to pursue, don’t give up on them. Keep trying different approaches, offer different solutions, seek out new decision-makers, try for different meeting times, send more emails, and so on. Prospects that may seem dead on arrival today could be a new client tomorrow. One of the most important steps in turning prospects into successful leads is to correctly forecast their needs before anyone else (including the prospects themselves). Keep a finger on the pulse of your industry, watch trends, and start making predictions about what your target audience is going to need before anyone else is thinking about it.

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Top 3 Things Limiting the Growth of Your Agency

One of the greatest challenges in the agency world is entering a growth phase…when you aren’t seeing much growth. In a perfect world, business growth would happen naturally in easy-to-predict stages, but that isn’t this world – chances are good that instead you need to grow, but aren’t seeing it happen. Here are the three top reasons it happens to agencies like yours, and what you need to make real growth happen.

1. Financial Management Issues

This sounds like a broad topic, because it really is – financial management stretches from day-to-day profits all the way to major capital and investment decisions. However, financial planning and consistent new business growth play integral roles when it comes to company growth.

This can take many forms. Perhaps poor cash flow management is holding your company back – you may struggle with accounting for where your cash comes from and where it goes at the proper time, a problem many new businesses encounter. As a result, agencies like yours quickly find themselves without cash on hand to cover supplies and overhead, and emergencies quickly dig into valuable reserves so there really isn’t much time to think about expansion at all.

Another common financial management deals with revenue and credit. If your credit policies and accounts receivable turnover are poor, you will probably never have enough capital to expand. Creating purchase strategies that get revenue into your hands in a timely manner can be a challenge for many companies. You want customers to have the ability to purchase your goods, but you can’t give them too much credit leeway or too many discounts, which will dig into your profits.

What do these problems add up to? A business without cash reserves that simply does not look very impressive on paper. And this is where we reach the investor problem: Business growth requires money, typically via business loans or perhaps a capital group. Banks and investors alike pay a lot of attention to financial statements, which means poor financial management – even in the small things – can keep you from getting the capital that you need.

2. Adaptation to Market Changes

This point is a bit more intangible, but still just as important when looking for reasons why your business isn’t seeing the growth you want: You aren’t watching the market closely enough, and you aren’t responding to it properly.

Part of this is an entrepreneurial issue: New business leaders tend to have a lot of energy and willpower focused in one direction, which means it can be difficult for these leaders to see related issues – and to change. Stubbornness has kept many a business from expanding properly.

Part of this problem is also simple business evolution: If your target demographic, preferred purchasing method, or the communication tools in your industry have changed, you absolutely have to change with them to find new growth.

3. Client Creep and Time Management

This is a subtler problem related to agencies that interact a lot with their customers and typically take on large client projects. Clients are your lifeblood…but they can also choke your own vision for your business. If you and your employees are spending too much time attending to client needs and tackling their complex projects, you may not have any time left to think about your own business and growth strategies. Pay attention to time management, and be sure to make time for nurturing and developing new business opportunities outside of your referral network.

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The Role of Email Marketing in New Business Acquisition

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Email marketing certainly still has a place in the world, especially for growing agencies looking to acquire new clients and increase client retention. Take a look at several ways email should be used in any marketing strategy.

Creating Customer Databases that Work

One of the most important steps for driving new business is to create and maintain a healthy database of prospects. Yes, there are quick and dirty ways to create prospect databases using lead lists and other things of that nature, but the reality is that those tactics don’t work. However, what does work is building your database off of real email addresses that real prospects provide.

It’s very cost-effective, easy to utilize, and provides some welcome hard data for businesses that may not know much about their customers yet.

Platform for Campaigns and Brand-Building

When it comes to campaigns and brand awareness, many businesses immediately start thinking about social media and blogging. But email is a speedy way to help increase customer participation and purchases in both areas. Always include email notifications or newsletters when launching a new campaign or announcing a new deal – many customers won’t notice otherwise, but a bold email subject line announcing the deal will draw attention. Likewise, more complex email content can also be used increase awareness and brand loyalty (try using or summarizing your more popular blog posts for this).

Building Buyer Personas

To take audience targeting to the next level, you need to know who needs your product or service and the best ways to reach those people. Using emails as login information is a great way to track potential clients, as well as consistently generate valuable data for marketing initiatives. Specifically, use customer habits gleaned from your email databases to create buyer personas, based on the ideal client you want to attract. Of course, this also requires that you tie email addresses to a CRM and marketing automation system.

Rewarding Loyalty

You can absolutely email coupons and discount codes to your customers to increase business and responses…but this should be done carefully. Email can be a useful platform for customer loyalty rewards, where such coupons and other benefits are sent to long-term or high-purchase customers as a thank you for their business…and an incentive to return.

Future Target Marketing

Finally, your agency should begin customized, personal email marketing as soon as possible. This is a great way to retain customers and use email in a way that few other channels can be used – to craft in-depth and personalized responses. After creating customer databases and building personas, this is absolutely the direction that companies should move to utilize email and win more conversions.

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Top 5 Free Marketing Tools for Growing Agency New Business

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Hunting for scalable email marketing solutions for your agency can be a daunting task, especially when you have limited time and resources to work with. Fortunately, there are a number of budget-friendly and free tools that can effectively solve your agency’s business development problems right now. 

If you have been struggling to find the right tool for your team, here are our recommendations on the best free and low cost email marketing tools for growing agencies.

Cyfe

In the interest of efficiency, check out Cyfe to track data and analytics from various sources. The Forever Free Plan can solve many of your issues. 

Cyte is a convenient all-in-one business dashboard solution that gives you the ability to bring your website and/or blog analytics, SEO metrics, and social media analytics, into one shared and easy-to-read dashboard. It can help you analyze data covering year-to-date revenue from Salesforce, Google Analytics website visitor locations, keyword rankings and funnel paths, Twitter tweets, and email marketing analytics from MailChimp. We know you are interested in email marketing, but you get all the other information as well. Pretty cool!

MailChimp

If you have less than 2,000 email contacts, you should explore MailChimp’s Forever Free Plan. The plan doesn’t expire, and you can send up to 12,000 emails a month using the majority of their tools.

VerticalResponse 

VerticalResponse is a great tool because it enables you to send up to 4,000 emails a month, create unlimited sign up forms, a connection to one Facebook and one Twitter account, and test out their auto-responder tool for free.  

Thunderbird From Mozilla

Thunderbird is a dynamic free application developed by Mozilla, and it may be just what you need. This email application is easy to set up, easy to customize, and it’s loaded with fantastic features.  

It combines privacy, speed, and the very latest technology. Thunderbird also includes many innovative extra features including mail redirect.

99design

There is a new email design category from 99design. It’s a perfect source whether you’re running a SMB or a larger firm. Remember several years ago when the buzz was that email was going to disappear? Well, not happening. 

With 99design, the demand for services and free templates is growing. They also offer free design consultation.  

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5 Common Misconceptions about Email Marketing Automation

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When you hear “automation,” chances are you’re thinking fast, robotic, and assembly line. While there is truth to these perceptions, email marketing automation requires a knowledgeable marketer to create a strategy, manage the process, and then analyze the results to inform on next steps.

If you’re unsure about using email marketing for your agency, let’s put to rest some common misconceptions.

1. Email Marketing is a Passing Fad

Talk about a huge misconception. According to a 2015 Salesforce analytics study reported on Forbes, email marketing is the top source for data used by high performance enterprises. Then consider the number of active email accounts is growing: there are over 4.35 billion in use now, which is predicted to reach 5.59 billion active accounts by 2019. 

2. Automation Means Set It and Forget It

Without human intelligence, all of that data your email automation software collected is as useful as 10,000 lbs. of cotton puffs at a building construction site. Software cannot create marketing plans or content. It compiles lists of your leads, tracks email delivery and engagement rates, and collects email performance data. You need to put in the intellectual and creative work; interpret the data to find insights that inform future campaigns and other marketing tactics.

3. Automation Ensures Email Deliverability

Between sophisticated spam filters and prioritized inbox features, it’s easy for your marketing email to go unread, possibly undelivered. Best practices play a role here in determining which segment of your audience will receive an email and the clarity of the message to inspire action.

4. Email Marketing Automation Is Effortless

Content is significant in email marketing, and you need to create a lot of it following a strategy and established goals. Each email campaign must be unique and should be personalized. Target your buyer personas using list segmentation, and speak their languages while addressing their needs. Then there is the follow through when you ask the recipient to click on the CTA (call to action). The work extends far beyond the email to fulfill the offer.

5. Automated Emails Are Cold and Impersonal

Email automation software is designed to integrate with your CRM enabling you to categorize your audience or leads based on interest levels and other segments. From there, the message and CTA are geared toward the targeted audience with personalized touches, including addressing the recipient by first name.

Now that these common misconceptions have been cleared, it’s time for you to put email marketing automation to work and win more business for your agency.

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The Future of Agency Relationships

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For years, most agency/client relationships developed into close, long-term partnerships. However, increasingly more these days, that’s just not the case.

According to Forbes, CMOs now view agency relationships differently. The Client/Agency Relationship Survey showed that 62 percent said that they now view their agencies as suppliers or vendors, not partners.

Also, due to the fact that many companies are now building in-house marketing teams, agencies are being asked to do short-term, one-off projects instead of acting as a long-term agency of record (AOR). Of course, this also plays into the vendor vs. partner relationship shift.

Marketers have also expressed consistent frustration with various aspects of traditional agency relationships. Although there are a number of things contributing to their dissatisfaction, two of the most common reasons are:

1. Lack of transparency about how their money is being used in relation to campaign spend and MoM results.

2. They were sold on a “full-service” marketing strategy with all the bells and whistles only to find out after the fact that the agency didn’t have the expertise or bandwidth to execute against it.

When agency relationships begin with unrealistic expectations, it only breeds distrust over time — and that distrust is compounded by the fact that clients already don’t feel involved with (or in control of) the process and execution of .

Key Takeaways

Although client-agency relationships are changing, the good news is that agencies can still increase revenue and close new business as long as they take a strategic approach to business development.

Here are four tips to get you started on the right path:

1. During contract negotiations, never promise deliverables your agency can’t do just to get the deal signed. Also, don’t just assume that your team will simply “handle it” or figure it out on their own.

2. As tempting as it may be, avoid pitching your agency as a “full-service” provider. The most successful agencies are those that differentiate themselves by specializing in one area of marketing or advertising.

3. Although “growing pains” are normal to a certain extent, make sure that you aren’t doing a disservice to your current clients or operational staff by prioritizing new business revenue growth above revenue growth from retention and referrals.

4. Remember: Just because a company has money to spend with you, doesn’t mean they are a good client fit for your agency. Clients that don’t fit with your agency’s culture will create more work for you and your agency than they’re worth. More often than not, they will end up costing you money, time, employees, and worst of all, the clients that you actually like.

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11 Best Marketing & Advertising Conferences for Agency Executives in 2016

It goes without saying, but conferences and tradeshows are a big deal in the marketing and advertising world. These events present a unique opportunity for senior-level marketers to learn from industry leaders, and at the same time, network with a large pool of top prospects to generate new business leads.

However, every year there are more and more conferences to choose from and it can be a daunting task to try and figure out which ones present the best opportunity for business growth and leadership training.

To save you some time and help you win more new business in 2016, here is our list of the 11 best marketing and advertising conferences to attend this year.

1. 2016 ANA Brand Masters Conference 
When: Feb. 3-5
Where: Hollywood, FL

A more intimate companion to the Masters of Marketing, ANA Brand Masters is an event that brings together CMOs and marketing thought leaders. These top marketers come together and share actionable tips on how to navigate customer insights, data analytics and technology to engage clients and prospects, and grow their businesses.

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2. Digital Marketing Innovation Summit
When: March 10-11
Where: New York, NY

This summit brings together innovative senior executives from around the world who work in digital marketing.

Digital Marketing San Francisco 2014 from Innovation Enterprise.

3. Intelligent Content Conference
When: March 7-9
Where: Las Vegas, NV

If your agency specializes in content marketing then this is a must attend conference in 2016. Speakers include Joe Pulizzi, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, as well as Jeffrey Tambor, Scott Brinker, Robert Rose and more!

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4. Social Media Marketing World
When: April 17-19
Where: San Diego, CA

With an estimated 3,000 marketers attending yearly, Social Media Marketing World is the world’s largest social media marketing conference. By attending you get the chance to network with industry leaders and top prospects on the brand and agency side. Definitely one you don’t want to miss!

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5. Mirren Live New York
When: May 2016
Where: New York City

Every year, top agency marketers and CEOs from 400 different agencies gather in New York City to discuss innovative new business strategies and techniques. This conferences showcases over 50 speakers and includes more than 35 sessions.

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6. DIGIMARCON WEST 2016
When: June 15-16
Where: Santa Monica, CA

Held at the luxurious Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, DIGIMARCON WEST is known for showcasing the most thought-provoking and innovative digital marketers in the industry. The speakers provide attendees with insight on cutting-edge strategies, the latest technology and best practices for content, UX, mobile marketing, social media, search marketing, marketing automation, analytics and more.

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7. Content Marketing World
When: Sept. 6-9
Where: Cleveland, Ohio

Every year the best and brightest flock to Cleveland to attend the now infamous Content Marketing World conference. The event showcases more than 80 sessions with top content marketers. In 2015, the line up of speakers included big names like Nick Offerman, Jay Baer and David Beebe, the VP of Global Creative & Content Marketing for Marriott International. This is an unbeatable networking opportunity and a rare chance to get actionable tips from the very best on how to maximize results for clients’ content marketing strategies.

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8. Digital Strategy Innovation Summit
When: Sept. 14-15
Where: Sydney, Australia

If you have the budget and are looking for a conference with a little adventure, the Digital Strategy Innovation Summit in Sydney is a fantastic choice. This internationally renowned conference brings together the most innovative thought leaders in the industry for two days of inspirational discussions. This summit also presents a rare opportunity to network with top prospects from around the world for agencies targeting international audiences.

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9. INBOUND 2016
When: Nov. 8-11
Where: Boston, MA

No surprise here, but HubSpot’s INBOUND conference has quickly become the number one event of the year for most senior-level marketers. And with a line up of speakers that includes the likes of Seth Godin, Aziz Ansari, Chelsea Clinton, Marc Maron and Jonah Peretti, how could it not? Every year, thousands of top advertisers and marketers come together and have a great time. If you only attend one event next year, this is the best choice you could make.

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10. Internet Summit
When: Nov. 16-17
Where: Raleigh, NC

The Internet Summit presents a rare opportunity to rub shoulders with industry leaders from every area of digital advertising and marketing. For 2015, the star-studded line up of speakers included Russell Simmons, Rand Fishkin, Chris Brogan, Melanie Deziel and Tina Moffett — and that’s just a few of the unbelievable sessions attendees can look forward to. As one of the few conferences priced below $500 right now, this is one of the top three events to mark on your calendar next year.

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11. Digital Summit 
When: Varies by City
Where: Phoenix, AZ | Charlotte, NC | Atlanta, GA | Denver, CO

Digital Summit is a two-day conference held throughout the year in different cities. Thousands of top digital marketers come together and present innovative strategies, new technology and discuss trends emerging in the marketplace. According to Steve Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple, “this is where people get inspiration. Everything going on here is so important.”

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Attending a conference not included on this list? Tweet us @CatapultNewBiz and tell us about it!

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21 Statistics that Make the Case for Marketing Automation

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Marketing automation has rapidly become a best practice for acquiring agency new business.

However, you may be surprised by just how many agencies don’t have any automation set up for email and marketing campaigns, not to mention, how many don’t even have a dedicated marketing department. 

If you are in charge of business development for an agency that isn’t yet convinced of the profitability of marketing automation, here are 25 stats to help you make the case.

25 Statistics on Marketing Automation Usage & Value

1. 79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for two or more years. (Source: Pardot)

2. Marketers using automation solutions have experienced a 34% increase in sales revenue on average. (Source: Pardot)

3. On average, nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (Source: DemandGen Report)

4. Companies that use marketing automation generate twice as many leads as those just using email software. (Source: Autopilot)

5. Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. (Source: Nucleus Research)

6. Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects see a 451% increase in qualified leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group)

7. 63% of the companies outgrowing their competitors use some kind of marketing automation. (Source: The Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups)

8. B2B marketers who implement marketing automation solutions increase their sales pipeline contribution by 10% on average. (Source: Forrester Research)

9. 75% of companies that implement automated marketing campaigns see ROI in just 12 months. (Source: Focus Research)

10. The most important features of marketing automation for users are lead nurturing (57%), analytics & reporting (52%), and list segmentation (39%). (Source: Marketo)

11. Relevant emails delivered through automated campaigns drive 18x more revenue than generic email blasts. (Source: Jupiter Research)

12. Marketers who have adopted marketing automation suggest that the biggest benefits are:

  • Taking repetitive tasks out of marketers hands, so they can work on other projects (36%)
  • Better targeting their prospects and existing customers (30%)
  • Improving customer experience (10%)
  • Better email marketing (9%)
  • Reduction of human error (8%)
  • Lead management (4%)
  • Multichannel marketing (3%)
    (Source: Redeye and TFM&A Insights)

13. Sales and marketing teams that use marketing automation software have more than 650,000 contacts in their database, which is 30% more than non-automation users. (Source: Autopilot)

14. Triggered emails – those sent in response to a specific user action on a website – have a 70.5% higher open rate. (Source: Gleanster)

 15. The average length of the sales cycle has increased 22% in the past 5 years as more decision makers are involved in the buying process. (Source: SiriusDecisions)

16. By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their buying journey without talking to a human. (Source: Gartner Research)

17. Businesses that use marketing automation average 4,200 leads per month. (Source: Autopilot)

18.  Marketers who send out communications to prospects every two to four weeks generate 2x the leads. (Source: Autopilot)

19. 35% of marketers using marketing automation solutions consistently capture intelligence for the sales team, compared to 19% without marketing automation systems. (Source: The Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups)

20. Only 30% of agencies aren’t using marketing automation to distribute content, prove inbound marketing ROI, and improve inbound effectiveness with personalized targeting. (Source: SharpSpring)

21. Gartner estimates a 15% savings on creative production when businesses use a marketing automation system. (Source: HubSpot)

 

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How to Win New Business with Social Media Advertising

Social media remains one of the more challenging parts of the modern marketing campaign: Sure, you can use social media to help improve brand recognition and etc., but can it be used to create new business and find new leads?

The answer is yes…that is, if you invest enough time in social activities. Here are a few tips on basic social media management and how it can help bring in new customers.

Always Audit

Start by doing a basic audit of your social networks.

1. What social profiles do you have?
2. Are they all using the same marketing materials?
3. What links do you want people to visit?
4. How do people get there?
5. What is your end goal for lead generation?
6. Who is in charge of scheduling posts and ads?

You have to ask and answer these questions before you are ready to start creating new business on your accounts. Organization is a vital step: Don’t fall into chaos before you begin.

Get Involved in B2B Discussions

If you are a B2B seller, pay special attention to blogs, LinkedIn discussions and other places online where conversations are taking place.

You want to prove that you are an authority in the community and an expert in your field. Sites like LinkedIn even monitor your discussion presence as a way of charting your sales acumen. This commenting and industry leadership model works best for B2B selling, but can also be effective when selling to consumers.

Social Media Targeted Advertising

Social media is not just about posts – there are plenty of opportunities for creating social ads. Facebook has one of the most complete targeted online ad creators out there, allowing you to create and target ads to specific groups of users, then track their progress.

There are also options for mobile app advertisement for sites like Facebook. Use a combination of online social ads to bring in new business, but don’t stretch your net too wide!

Twitter Ads

Twitter also has several options for advertisement, but one of the most effective is the Promoted Tweet, which allows you to skyrocket tweets to the front pages of followers and searchers where it can be seen.

You can also promote your account or your campaign if you prefer. Link to a product page, a customer info form, or something else that will generate a real lead.

Hashtag Interest

Now that hashtags are supported across a number of social sites, you can use them very effectively to chart how well a campaign is going.

Who is sharing or mentioning your keyword hashtags? How many people have picked up on it? Smart hashtag use can attract the attention of people searching hashtags for particular suppliers, products or services, and it can generate more business than you might think. Just avoid going too general and getting lost in the chatter.

Always Manage Your Links

As you have probably noted, most of these social tips depend on really excellent link work. You need to have the right links in the right places at the right times to generate qualified leads.

Always double-check your link management, and keep a watch for potential problems, such as poor conversions or redirect issues.

Proper analytics and tracking is key here, but you can save a lot of trouble by checking and updating your links before you launch new material.

Social media is just one of the many ways your agency can generate new business. Click here, to learn more about how Catapult New Business can help you grow a pipeline of prospects and grow your agency.

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