Categories
marketing marketing tips

Golden Rules to Increase Your Demo Requests

While some might consider it a necessary evil, many consider demo requests an essential part of their marketing strategy. After all, your success can largely be determined by how many people you get to request a demo which, in turn, leads to how many people you do demos for. So keep reading if you’re wondering how to increase demo requests or just want to ensure every lead counts.

Make Sure Your Website is Optimized

There are some excellent reasons why you should optimize your website. However, with over three billion websites on the internet, it’s almost impossible for your website to stand out amongst the crowd and get found. Luckily, you can do some simple things to make it more search engine friendly, making it easier for people to see you.

You’ve built your site. You’ve added the content. Everything’s good to go. You’ve added the content. They’re waiting for the demo requests to roll in. What’s going on?

There are many factors that lead to an increase in demo requests on your site. Most of the time, it’s because you have a simple call-to-action (CTA) setup that drives right to the point of your website: requesting a demo. It could be something as easy as “Request a Demo” or “Let’s Talk”.

  • Make sure you have enough CTAs in strategic places
  • Enable live chat and support
  • Have a functional Demo Request form
  • Keep your headlines clear and concise
  • Keep all copy clear and concise
  • Utilize video (on demand) demos on your website
  • Show social proof and testimonials
Golden Rules to Increase Your Demo Requests

Create an Efficient Demo Request Form

A demo request form should be easy to fill out and understand. However, customers don’t want to spend too long on one page, so make sure you have a clear call-to-action (CTA) at the top of your form that explains what they’ll see after they submit their email address.

Make sure it’s easy for customers to find your CTA. You can do this by using clear and concise language in your form. For example: “Get Started” instead of “Start Your Demo.”

Make sure you’re asking for only what you need from them. This will help reduce friction when they fill out the form and increase their likelihood of completing it—which means more demo requests coming in!

Some more tips:

  • Make sure your form is easy to find on your website
  • Use a clear, concise title for your form
  • Include fields for name and email address
  • Include a field for the URL of the product or service that you’re offering
  • Provide an incentive for filling out the form: “We’ll send you our newsletter with helpful tips,” or “You’ll be entered into a drawing to win free tickets to our next event.”
Categories
Content Marketing Demand Generation digital marketing marketing Marketing Management social content marketing social media selling

Why Content Marketing Is Still a Crucial Growth Method in Sales

Content marketing has become a staple for most companies – whether Fortune 500s or new startups.  Much like the gargantuan oak tree began from a tiny acorn, content marketing is the same – so important and valuable that even the latest businesses can use it to their advantage.

Everyone is familiar with content marketing. Why? Why is content marketing powerful? What benefits can you expect? How do you do it?

How Content Impacts Your Marketing and Sales Strategies

How Content Impacts Your Marketing and Sales Strategies

All content is not created equal. Some of it is just plain bad.

We know this because we’ve seen it firsthand: in our content and the content we see from other businesses. And when there’s terrible content on the internet, people stop trusting your brand. They don’t want to give you their money or their time anymore.

Think about the last few articles you read. Were they short? Were they long? How did you feel about them?

Like most people, you felt the longer articles were more thorough. However, you also felt shorter articles were more concise and direct. Do you think about how much better it feels to know the author has been consistent over time? Or taking time to make sure every word was important and well-crafted?

No doubt writing quality content takes time—but it’s worth it. Because when your audience can see how much effort goes into each piece of content, they will feel much more invested in what you have to say. When they see your consistency, they’ll know they can trust this information and expect more from you in future pieces of content!

Capturing Attention

Great content can be used in many ways to grow your business. It can help build customer relationships, generate leads, and increase sales. But how do you know if your content is effective?

To keep your audience engaged, you need to understand their needs, wants, and desires. This means you need to know what they’re looking for in a product or service like yours. When you understand this, developing content that will resonate with them and help them feel connected with your brand is easy.

When creating great content, you must ensure that everything is focused on one goal: attracting new customers while retaining existing ones. The best way to do this is by creating quality content that educates them about your brand or product line without being too salesy or promotional-sounding; this will help build trust between you and your readers, so they’ll want to continue reading more from you in the future!

Quality content is the key to success on social media

Social Media Traction

As a business owner, you know how difficult it can be to get noticed on Facebook and Twitter. You’ve probably tried posting funny photos, links to articles that will interest your followers and clients, or even updates about what’s going on in your personal life. But did any of those things work?

It’s time to change your approach. Instead of posting random updates that no one cares about, focus on creating quality content that will attract the people who matter most to your business: your customers!

Quality content is the key to success on social media because it allows you to connect with potential customers in a way that feels genuine and authentic—and they’ll trust you because of it. Even better? 

Quality content stands out from the noise online, which means more people are likely to see it than if you were just trying to get clicks by posting clickbait titles or sharing outdated memes. 

Online presence is essential because it allows people to learn more about what makes your company different from others in its industry—and why they should do business with YOU instead of someone else.

Lead Generation

When you write blog posts, infographics, and other content that is helpful to your audience and solves their problems, they will want to read it. This helps them feel they know what they’re doing regarding your products or services. They’ll be more likely to make purchases from you because they trust you and what you have to offer.

In addition to generating leads, content marketing is also an excellent way to get more views on your website. For example, when people see what kind of information you share on social media or through email newsletters, they might click over and check out more details about what you have available for sale. 

This can help increase traffic on your site, which may lead them down a path towards becoming paying customers for whatever it is that you sell!

SEO

If you want people to find your site when they search for specific information or products, then it makes sense that you would like to create content that is as relevant as possible.

This doesn’t mean that every page on your website needs to provide information about every product or service you offer—but it does mean that if someone searches for something specific on Google and finds your site near the top of the results page, they’re likely going to stick around long enough to see what else you have available.

The first step in SEO is to write great content, not just old content. Next, you must focus on creating helpful stuff that interests readers and makes them want to share it with their friends.

The second step is ensuring that when people search for things related to what you write about, they find your site first. That’s where keyword research comes in: you need to learn what words or phrases people use when they search for things related to your business to optimize your site for those terms (and avoid using them yourself).

Categories
Content Marketing marketing marketing tips

Using Conversational Video Storyboards to Boost Your Marketing Strategy

According to Hubspot, 85% of enterprises utilize video as a marketing strategy, which is unsurprising given that mobile video consumption grows by 100% every year. While blogging and long-form content are important components of any marketing plan, they aren’t enough if you want to grab your target market’s attention. But how can you make good use of B2B video marketing? Here are a few tips. 

Create a strategy.

Create a strategy.

The adage “failing to prepare is preparing to fail” couldn’t be more accurate in B2B marketing. The most important aspect of your success with it is your plan. In this sense, ensuring that your marketing plan interacts seamlessly with all of your other marketing platforms, such as blogs or social media, is critical. 

Simply said, video isn’t a stand-alone marketing strategy; it needs to work in tandem with the rest of your efforts.

Begin with the funnel. 

A great place to begin is to search for ways to include it in your current marketing funnel. And, because the video is better at establishing a personal connection with clients over other types of content, it will be more successful to make them for clients early in the buyer’s journey. This is a fantastic way to assist or educate your prospects on significant industry and business challenges while also establishing your firm as a thought leader. 

Whatever stage of video marketing you’re in, it is essential to a good video strategy to make sure that the visual content you develop corresponds to precise moments in the client experience. Your material must fulfill their needs and include a call to action that encourages them to take action.

Create personalities for your target audience.

Create personalities for your target audience.

Understanding who you’re talking to is the foundation of every successful marketing approach. And video is no exception. Before you can develop video content that your target consumers will engage with, you need a clear image of them and their position.

Begin any video marketing campaign by building customer personas. This will assist you to tailor the content you generate for certain groups of your target audience (which will make it more effective), as well as confirming what kind of material you’ll need to develop in the first place.

Think about the sorts of videos you want to make.

There are various types of video content you may develop to fulfill the demands of your clients at each level of your funnel, just as there are several customers for whom you should consider generating video content. It’s worth remembering that the more diverse your material is, the more your market will see you as a thought leader in your field. So shake it up a little. Just make sure it is still in line with the rest of your approach.

Make a storyboard for your video

It’s crucial to plan out your video material ahead of time if you want the completed result to strike home, just like it’s important to have a sound approach when it comes to video marketing.

A decent narrative and storyboard are essential for success. The screenplay is what the presenter (or the narrator in the video) will say, whereas the storyboard is a visual blueprint of your video from beginning to conclusion. What you need to film should be based on your narrative and storyboard.

Make use of video to supplement your textual material

When making a video, we generally suggest starting with the script – after all, it’s the foundation for whatever may happen in it.

The good news is that if you currently have a written content marketing plan in place, you’ve already completed the majority of the effort required to write a screenplay that will provide genuine results. A majority of executives prefer to watch a video rather than read text, so making videos to accompany the information you’ve previously produced will allow leads to consuming it in their desired format.

This method also greatly reduces the amount of labor necessary to generate a video. For example, the script may be based on the textual material from a top blog post (which should already be written communicatively), and the storyboard can be based on the visuals from the article. 

Make sure you're using the correct platforms to distribute your work.

Make sure you’re using the correct platforms to distribute your work.

Promotion, like every other type of B2B marketing content, takes effort. So, once you’ve finished making your video, the next step is to show it to your audience.

For B2B, social networking, particularly LinkedIn, is always a good place to start. On LinkedIn, a majority of executives say they exchange videos with coworkers on a weekly basis. As a result, placing it there enhances the likelihood that your target audience—and the genuine decision-makers within it—will notice it.

Subtitles are also important in this situation… Because most people scan through their social media feeds without turning on their speakers, adding subtitles enhances the likelihood that they’ll stop and view it. 

Adding your films to your Youtube account (or another video hosting platform) also makes it simple to embed them in other places, such as your website and blog. This makes integrating their dissemination into your entire content strategy much easier.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing you should remember from this post, it’s to make sure that each video you make has a defined function inside your funnel.

It’s not enough to make marketing videos just to “do video” – they have to serve your clients and complement what you’ve been doing on other marketing channels if they’re going to help you generate leads.

Categories
Blog Content Marketing marketing Sales

Two Innovative Ways to Improve Sales and Marketing Alignment

I recently read an excellent book called The Excellence Dividend by Tom Peters—an ex-McKinsey consultant whose consulting practice now focuses on customer experience and customer excellence. In his book, Peters talks about the importance of cross-functional alignment. And I whole-heartedly agree!

Categories
Blog marketing Sales Sales and Marketing sales for life Sales Inspiration Sales Leadership Sales Management Sales Process

Account Planning: Competitive Intelligence & “Seeking out Poison Pills” in key accounts

knowledge is power

Categories
b2b marketing Blog increase sales marketing marketing tips Sales Sales and Marketing sales for life Sales Management sales strategy Social Selling Social Selling Tools Social Selling Training video selling

Why you Need Account Based Marketing for Your Organization?

Are you implementing Account Based Marketing? If not! It’s time you started applying it in your organization! Studies have shown that the most effective marketing approach in recent times is proving to be Account-Based Marketing. This marketing strategy is more focused and results in better ROI compared to any other marketing method. Account Based Marketing entails identifying prospects that are key stakeholders and strategizing marketing to resonate with the specific personas.

Categories
Blog marketing Sales Social Selling

Social Selling: How Your Sales to Marketing Ratio Impacts Results

Categories
Blog marketers marketing

What Kind of Marketer Are You? Find Out With This Marketing Assessment