Marketing Automation Archives - PROSAR Inbound Inc.

22 December 2019

3 Ways to Improve Your Website

Keyboard with "time t Update" key for PROSAR website improvement blog

In addition to regular content additions to keep your website fresh and a maintenance program to ensure that your website is technically up-to-date and secure. Here are three things you can do to leverage your website more effectively:

Marketers learn that Features explain what something does, while Benefits describe why it matters to the user. Then they can internalize and personalize material, making them more likely to act on your information.

Regardless of what your organization does, you’re selling something: products, services, memberships, ideas, etc. — there is a persuasive purpose for your website. Making your content meaningful to the user and helping them visualize how it makes their life better or easier, will have greater impact. Take advantage of your website to effectively position your organization and its message with persuasive and contextualized content. [Read more: 5 Reasons to Use Content Marketing]

Content Audit

Do you know what content you have and how it fits into your overall marketing and sales goals? Don’t worry, most companies don’t. (This blog will help you get started: Own Your Content)

Having content is good, but in order for it to be strategic it needs to fit into a plan. The plan determines what you need, the audit reveals what you have, you determine how it fits into the overall strategy and what other pieces you need to fill the holes. To make this manageable, we use a spreadsheet with columns for:

Source (web page, blog, whitepaper, infographic, etc.)
Topic
Name/Title
Funnel (does it fit top, middle or low in the info/sales cycle)
Workflow (what workflow or campaign is it part of)
Usability (our own scale on how useful/effective it is for our audience)
CTA (is there a relevant/custom call-to-action/ad in the content

Improving SEO and AODA

Keywords are still important, but keyword stuffing will cost you. Google’s keen sense of good online content can sniff out the junk to determine what is truly a good resource with many layers and forms of relevant content. Meta data is still important as it is used in your search displays, so word your page titles and descriptions carefully, to engage potential readers as they search the web. Check out our 5-Minute SEO Check You Can Do Yourself.

For several years, Ontario has been rolling out the web applications of AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act), a set of guidelines to make Ontario more accessible for people with disabilities. Websites are now judged on whether they adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, AA compliance (except for live audio and video). The timeline for when compliance is required can be found on Ontario’s AODA page. In addition to being complaint, making your website accessible according to WCAG opens your website to a wider variety of potential prospects, improves SEO results and earns goodwill among clients. Check out our article on freindly user-content as a starting point.

Marketing Automation

Often referred to as Inbound Marketing, automated marketing enables a series of tasks to be automatically completed when triggered. For example, a client clicks on an e-newsletter link to your “Our Widgits” web page, and visits a specific new widget page three more times in a week. That shows some obvious interest, so your website may automatically send an email to the client with more information on that specific widgit, additional shipping information and a link to your delivery schedule. If your client clicks on the delivery link, another more informative email could be sent, and the appropriate sales rep sent a prompt to call said client immediately. II the client doesn’t click on the delivery link, then a different email with other information and an incentive might be appropriate, or links to relevant blog articles, or references from other clients who have ordered that widgit…

Point being, strategic tasks can be set up to happen automatically, accommodating for the receiver’s actions and sending the right information at the right time. It allows you to look after prospects’ and clients’ needs efficiently and effectively.

Use of dynamic content, presenting different content on a page for different buyer personas, further nurtures leads, and extensive tracking and reporting provides insight and intelligence to make the user-experience as rewarding as possible.

There is much that your website could be doing to better communicate and engage with your audience. Start taking some steps to leverage its potential.

19 July 2019

SharpSpring Makes it Easier to Close Sales with its New Meetings App

Header image for SharpSpring information on PROSAR website.

Booking meetings is the name of the game in sales. To help you excel at booking appointments and converting prospects to clients, SharpSpring has gone a few steps further than apps that automate the appointment booking process. It has created a fully automated process of triggered emails, tasks, notifications, follow-up and integrated it with their comprehensive marketing automation solution.

Creating and Sharing Meetings with SharpSpring Meetings

Invite clients and prospects to book a meeting with you in a professional, seamless and automated fashion. Use a text link (perhaps in your email signature with “Book a consultation now!”) or a button — either are easily created within the app. You can place the text link/button in an email, on your website or a landing page, wherever you want people to connect online and automatically book a meeting with you.

In addition, you can share meetings that you have created. Each share meeting link is unique to a specific meeting. Just like the initial meeting booking links, meetings can be shared via emails, websites and landing pages.

There is no limit to the number of users. A sales team of 2, 4 or 42 can have profiles for all staff, each with their own settings and personalized links to book meetings.

Customize Meeting App Settings

Set in advance the dates and times you are available, when and how you are notified of booked meetings, and which calendars are synced with your booked meetings. These settings can be modified at any time.

Sales managers can be notified and view all activity, monitoring follow-up, results and prospect nurturing.

You can even customize which domains the meetings are set to, as well as the color for meeting calendars.

And, big bonus, the SharpSpring Meetings app is completely free with the SharpSpring Marketing Automation subscription. To learn more about SharpSpring and their Meetings app, contact PROSAR today.

Learn more about marketing automation and its effect on email best practices in our article The New Email Paradigm: Do More with Less

PROSAR Inbound Inc. is a SharpSpring Partner.

14 July 2019

SharpSpring’s New Sales Optimizer

Sales managers are responsible for creating and implementing a sales process that consistently delivers results. But how do you outline what actions your team should take to close the deal, and when? More importantly, how do you streamline and control the process? SharpSpring has the answer!

SharpSpring Sales Optimizer ensures every salesperson follows best practices for conversion by automatically creating tasks and actions that move opportunities through the pipeline. This suite of tools is designed to give you control over both the cadence and quality of sales communication in ways never before possible.

Comprehensive Workflow Tool that Triggers Notifications, Tasks and Actions

Getting rid of those headaches starts with designing your ideal sales process in the visual workflow builder, a tool that empowers you to easily outline every step your team needs to take, from opportunity creation to a closed-won sale.

Your sales team now has access to the same powerful automation tools the marketing team uses, so they can convert those hard-earned leads to sales.

Workflows not only allow you to delegate how and when tasks are executed, but you can also automate actions like creating an opportunity and moving a deal to a new pipeline stage. Automatically generate new opportunities based on a hot lead’s engagement with your content, or move an opportunity to a new pipeline stage after they submit a signed contract. Allow automation to fill in the gaps and keep leads engaged without a second thought.

This enables your team to spend less time on the admin work involved in pipeline management so they can focus on what really matters – winning deals.

Manage Your Message with SharpSpring Sales Optimizer

Now that you’ve painted your horizon in an opportunity workflow, it’s time to add the little details that really seal the deal. When assigning actions in your workflow, you can easily control what emails and media center assets your salesperson sends out. With every auto-assigned sales task, you can link the specific email template they should send and any content assets relevant to that stage in the buyer’s journey. This makes it easy to align sales communication with the marketing team’s content strategy, so you have ultimate control over the message you want to convey.

Don’t worry, there’s still room for your salesperson to add their own flair – after all, you can’t automate a personal connection. From the Task Manager, the salesperson will have the option to send a Smart Mail template as-is or go into the email editor and customize it for a particular lead.

Streamline Task Management Through Entire Marketing – Sales Process

Having a more personal touch in your messaging is important for one-to-one engagement, but manually creating these repetitive phone and email tasks leaves too much room for human error. One missed follow-up email or phone call, and a sales-ready opportunity could fall through the cracks. With Sales Optimizer, rest assured that all your leads and opportunities are properly managed with the exact cadence you’ve laid out.

Follow-up tasks are auto-generated and flow seamlessly into every salesperson’s Task Manager. Even better, when leads engage with your website, their tasks float to the top of the list so your team can reach out just in time while your brand is top of mind. Sales Optimizer turns your website into a two-way communicator that’s patched in directly with your sales team, making prioritization easy and effective.

Capitalize on Hot Lead Engagement

Prioritizing who to reach out to is now easier than ever from the Activity Feed with instant visibility into which leads have automated tasks associated with them. Lead owners are able to see which leads are currently engaging and what they are engaging with, so they can respond accordingly.

If a lead opens an email or engages with your social media, this not only shows up in real-time on the Activity Feed, but it’s also highlighted when the lead owner has a follow-up task. This way it’s easy to time your sales follow-up at pivotal moments in the buyer’s journey.

Keep Your Team Accountable

Powerful new automation features sound great, but how do you make sure everything is going according to plan? Keep your team on track with detailed task reports that provide insight into which automated tasks are being completed or rescheduled during a given time.

Instantly see if your sales rep sent an email when you assigned a phone call, for example, so you can make sure everyone follows the correct process. You can also identify any holes in your sales plan based on the outcome of automated tasks. Are deals closing on target?

Close More Deals With SharpSpring’s Sales Optimizer

Designing, implementing and fine-tuning your sales process can be a difficult feat. Make it easier – and more effective – with Sales Optimizer. To see exactly how the power of automation can benefit your bottom line, contact PROSAR today.

There is an endless supply of shiny new apps to help you manage your business and grow sales. Some are awesome, many are horrible, many are good, but not optimal for your business. Read our blog on Choosing New Tech Solutions for Business Growth — 5 Things Not To Do.

Article written by Nicholas Mangold, Product Marketing Specialist at SharpSpring.

PROSAR Inbound Inc. is a SharpSpring Partner.

6 September 2018

3 Steps to Implementing Personas

PROSAR persona audits - illustration of many different faces

Personas are more than a buzzword, they help you to define and cater to a company’s multiple audiences. While audience segmentation is nothing new, marketing automation tools and content-based marketing (with heavy analytics integration) has made personas a powerful tool for maintaining customers and getting new sales. The more you integrate personas into your marketing automation processes, the more likely you are to speak directly to your audience segments and connect with them, directing your messaging specifically for them.

If you haven’t started using personas, what are you waiting for? Using them is as easy as 1, 2, 3!

1- Determining Your Personas

Determining your personas involves a mix of looking at your ideal audience and your actual, established audience. Even if you have a large client base already, have you really taken the time to figure out who, exactly, it is your serving.

This is a good opportunity to see how well you’re serving your market. If your ideal audience and your actual audience are too far separated, you might want to re evaluate your marketing plan.

You’ll want to gather data in generally-homogeneous groups, but what those groups are is up to you. Depending on your market, you might divide it by job title, age, relationship status, company size, or industries that use your product.

It’s important to not limit the number of personas you use, but don’t over segment your audience either. You want to look for groups that have similar buying patterns and product/service needs.

2- Persona Templates

There are as many persona templates as there are CRMs. If you have a platform like SharpSpring, you’ll want to follow their template.

Be mindful to make the persona template as usable as possible — you will, after all, be using these to guide your marketing strategy and content. This means that beyond demographics, you’ll want to focus on USPs, Motives, and Pain Points.

USPs, or Unique Selling Propositions, is the objective the persona is looking to fulfill. Their motive is why they want it, and what will drive them to eventually buy it. And pain points consider possible problems/barriers they have that you can help them solve.

Other pieces of information — like their overreaching price-sensitivity, the length of their sales cycle, and what they value in a product/service (including the level of customer service they want, how much they want something to solve their problems) — are also important to keep track of. That data is going to influence how you speak to your personas, and can help you figure out how many audience segments you have.

By honing these elements down to something that is unified across market segments, you get an idea of who your clients are. You can then adjust your content accordingly, and take one more step to increasing conversions.

3- Using Personas

Once you’ve determined your personas and completed your templates, you need to start applying the insights you’ve gained.

If you have a CRM or automated marketing platform with dynamic content, personas are the way to segment them and help reach your audiences more effectively. This allows you to have a single piece of content that speaks to each persona, helping to create relationships, increase conversions and lower the amount of campaigns you need to run.

Dynamic content also applies to digital campaigns, as most online platforms allow you to segment by demographic information, interests, how much they’ve interacted with your company before, and a lot of other metrics that allow you to have a dynamic content experience.

Beyond dynamic content, personas can help focus your content strategy for your campaigns, website text, social media posts, and more. Once you’ve created your audience segments, you can start speaking directly to them with your content and structure what pre-existing content you have into categories that allow each persona to find the content they need without fuss. Personas should influence your website content, blog writing, whitepapers, landing pages, and any other marketing efforts you create. Some of your content likely already fits your personas (it’s how you got your current clients, after all), but refining it is a prime way to help draw more people to your website and conversion process.

12 July 2017

4 Ways to Improve Your Current Website

I had been referred to a consulting company by a mutual print representative who said they wanted some help with their online presence. I reviewed their website, social media accounts and any relevant posts and pages that came up in Google searches. When I met with the President of the firm I explained where I felt their deficiencies were, and what I recommended as a solution; which included a revamp of their current website.

While she concurred with most of what I had to say, she replied that their website did not need to be replaced. However, she went on to say “but, it isn’t really working for us. What can be done to improve our website, short of an actual overhaul or revamp?”

Her response is both understandable and fairly common, which made me think about it further. If you had a website that was developed only two or three years ago, you may feel reticent to invest in a new one. But like this client (yes, she’s a client now), you may not be satisfied with your website’s performance.

If you are happy with the website design and branding, if it is an easy, intuitive site to navigate, if it is responsive (automatically conforms and optimizes for different sized screens) and if it is accessible (people with disabilities can navigate your website) — then you may not need a new website. But, if it isn’t actively promoting your organization or contributing to the sales process then you’re letting it off easy.

In our digital age, a website should do more than say who you are and what you do. It is an opportunity to engage with your audience and impress upon them your ability to satisfy their needs.

Here are four things you can do to help turn your current website from an online brochure, to an online marketing machine.

1. Content Audit

Do you know what content you have and how it fits into your overall marketing and sales goals? Don’t worry, most companies don’t. (This blog will help you get started: Own Your Content) We recently completed a comprehensive content audit ourselves and were surprised to see how many holes we had in our own content and strategy! (A reminder that it needs to be looked at regularly to properly guide your content strategy.)

Source (web page, blog, whitepaper, infographic, etc.)
Topic
Name/Title
Funnel (does it fit top, middle or low in the info/sales cycle)
Workflow (what workflow or campaign is it part of)
Usability (our own scale on how useful/effective it is for our audience)
CTA (is there a relevant/custom call-to-action/ad in the content)

2. Improving SEO

The times of keyword stuffing are long gone, but the importance of keywords is still prevalent. Google’s keen sense of good online content can sniff out the junk to determine what is truly a good resource with many layers and forms of relevant content. And you know what? Your audience is pretty good at it too, so try not to fool either. Provide substantial content that is of interest to your readers, and in different formats, such as video, images, infographics, as well as text.

Meta data is still important as it is used in your search displays, so word your page titles and descriptions carefully, to engage potential readers as they search the web. Check out our 5-Minute SEO Check You Can Do Yourself.

3. Leveraging Social Media

Your website may not offer much engagement or opportunity for dialogue, but your social media accounts do. If social media accounts are relevant to your business, look for ways to integrate them beyond a linked icon on your home page.

Streaming social content on your website is easy and can spur involvement. Inviting dialogue or feedback on topical issues within your industry, requesting and displaying testimonials can be effective, and adding polls or contests can be fun and engaging. Be sure that whatever you do fits with your brand, audience, and is part of an overall engagement strategy. Simply getting clicks, likes, retweets, etc. really doesn’t matter if it isn’t moving your audience along an information or sales cycle.

4. Marketing Automation

These four items — a content audit, improving SEO, leveraging social media and marketing automation — can each contribute to making your website far more effective and engaging to your audience. Used in combination, your website will become a veritable marketing machine.

Photo credt: GettyImages