teamsstepup, Author at StepUp Marketing

An Inside Look at Successful B2B PPC Campaigns – And What Makes Them Work

Posted on March 13, 2018February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

Setting up a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign can be a huge investment, so it’s important to look at what strategies actually work. One advantage of building marketing systems for numerous B2B businesses is that we work on many different types of campaigns simultaneously and when we find something that is working well for one client, we can apply it to others.

Setting Expectations

First, it’s important to note that the process of generating a lead is more complicated than it seems. Leads rarely do a search, see an ad, click on it, and make a purchasing decision, especially in a B2B marketing setting. It takes more time and generally several interactions with the same lead before they’re even ready to start the quoting process.

B2B PPC campaigns can also be very expensive. In an effort to not only cut costs but to have a more effective marketing program, it’s important to pair your PPC campaign with a remarketing campaign. Once a lead visits your website, you can place a cookie on that lead’s device. This cookie then allows you to target them as they visit other websites that display advertising including social media.

It generally takes a lead several times seeing your ads before your presence really begins to sink in and remarketing is the best way to continue to target the same leads without hoping they stumble onto your more expensive PPC ads regularly. It’s important to set expectations accordingly. While PPC allows you to sit front and center before a desired lead, simply serving up ads for a day is unlikely to result in increased sales.

Educate and Raise Awareness

The process to go from the first click on a PPC ad to buying decision can be a long one, so it’s important during that time to help educate and raise awareness of your brand for the potential lead. This means you may create and promote educational content that is connected to awareness keywords to help your leads better understand what your business does, the value you offer, and most importantly, how you can help them solve problems.

As you remarket to a lead, creating value for them even when they are not ready to buy means they will associate your brand with that information and value. Spend time thinking of the common questions your leads ask and answer those using blogs, infographics, or white papers. A blog post that gives an overview of an answer to the question can then link to a detailed white paper that a lead can download in return for their email address. Once you’ve captured an email address, you now have the ability to reach your lead directly with educational content or be even more personalized and have a member of your sales team reach out and see what their needs and concerns might be.

Setting up a PPC campaign can be an integral part of your overall digital marketing strategy, but it’s important to understand that it’s only one piece. To learn more, reach out to the team at StepUp to learn what components your business needs to build a successful marketing strategy that brings in the right leads.

Why Hiring a B2B Lead Generation Company is Not Enough to Help Your Business Grow

Posted on March 5, 2018February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

If your business is looking to grow its digital marketing footprint and really use the power of the Internet to generate business, it takes a lot more than just finding the leads to turn them into customers, even if you’ve got a great sales team. After all, the first time a lead hears of your business, they may not be at the point where they want to make a purchasing decision or they may want to do more research and get to know your business first. For these reasons, growth is about more than just generating leads through a B2B lead generation company – it’s also about educating, nurturing, and staying in touch during those early stages of your lead’s buying process.

Generating Leads

Finding good leads and qualifying them is the first step. Many marketing services bill themselves as B2B lead generation companies, believing that just getting the leads is the most important step. Finding and qualifying the leads is absolutely a big deal and there are a number of different strategies you can use, from trade shows to quality downloadable guides to pay-per-click advertising to generate those leads. Identifying and qualifying “ideal” leads is a process best done together with sales – they know best when it comes to identifying the leads that are ready to buy. Once the lead is identified as “sales qualified,” it can be turned over to your sales team to work.

Educating Leads

It’s rare that you find a lead that’s ready to buy, especially in a B2B setting where the sales cycle can be technically complex and months long. Instead, it’s time to educate leads and remarket to them in order to position your company as the main industry thought leader. In many industries, suppliers are already considered the experts by their buyers – it’s a natural leap for the suppliers to provide technical and compelling industry news. This can be done a number of different ways, but it requires creating high quality educational content that provides value. Figure out what common questions leads have before they reach you and as they interact with your sales team and then create content that addresses those questions in creative ways. You can then post this content on your website for an SEO boost, send the content out in email blasts, or use it to remarket and raise awareness.

Nurturing Leads

As you collect leads, you’ll notice that even leads who seem like ideal buyers – the right companies, the right markets, the right job titles – are not always reaching you at ready to make a buying decision. Some of these leads can turn into great future customers, but they need to be nurtured for a while. Your sales team can certainly reach out on a periodic basis and touch base, but having an email newsletter with compelling content or another marketing campaign that keeps your brand at the top of mind ensures that when they’re ready to make that decision, your company’s name comes up first.

To accomplish your marketing goals, there are a number of different highly effective online marketing strategies your business can use. It’s important to remember, however, that lead generation offers the best ROI when it’s done in an “inbound” way – understanding what makes a quality lead, and understanding how to educate and nurture those leads with valuable content and consistent outreach. Contact the team at StepUp Marketing for a customized B2B marketing strategy session to see how our system could work with your B2B company.

How We are Preparing Our B2B Marketing Agency for GDPR Compliance

Posted on February 26, 2018February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will go into effect on May 25, 2018 and will require all companies that collect personal data of EU citizens to take many new measures to protect that data. As an inbound marketing agency we believe that increased data protection is a great thing, and can help build the relationship of trust between company and client that we work hard to establish through creation of valuable content and other aspects of our work. We are working hard to achieve GDPR compliance in our marketing agency by May 25.

The GDPR requirements are demanding, so appropriate planning has been important. We’ve listed below the steps we are taking. While we are happy to share our own process, you should not take this information as advice for your company. It is essential that you consult with a knowledgeable legal authority to be certain of the specific steps you must take to be GDPR compliant.

Here are the steps we are taking at StepUp to be GDPR compliant:

1. Getting explicit consent before collecting information, and enabling easy withdrawal of consent

For us at StepUp, the data we collect is straightforward and not sensitive. However, the GDPR requires us to make sure that when we collect leads for mailing lists, consent is simple and clear. We are implementing “opt-in” consent on all our forms so that any person who interacts with us will understand what they are signing up for, and how they can withdraw consent through a simple and easy “unsubscribe” process.

2. Putting a process in place to make sure we can (if requested by a contact):

Confirm if and how any personal data is being used
Provide leads with their personal data
Transfer their personal data to another company
Erase and forget their data

3. Making sure we are ready in the event of a data breach

In our marketing activities, we don’t collect highly sensitive information such as financial or medical data, but we need to be ready to act in the event of a data breach anyway. GDPR requires organizations to notify their supervisory authority of data breaches within 72 hours of discovery of the breach. (For organizations which do collect sensitive data, such as medtech or fintech companies, it is also necessary to notify contacts directly in the event of a data breach.)

4. Putting policies in place to make sure data protection is a core function

We are reviewing internal policies and procedures to protect the data of our leads. For example, we work with HubSpot as a marketing automation platform, because we are aware that Hubspot’s platform is already conducive to the protection of the data of all the leads we collect and store.

5. Collecting only the personal data necessary to carry out the work at hand

Every time we create a new landing page, form or conversion point, we ask ourselves, what information do we really need from these leads? We aim to be thoughtful in the collection of data rather than gathering personal information “just because.”

6. Limiting access to personal data to the people who need it to carry out the work at hand

When we assign users within our marketing automation platform and CRM, we make sure that only the people involved in each project can see the contacts. HubSpot helps us set reasonable access parameters for each member of our team.

7. Appointing a Data Protection Officer [DPO] and a representative in the EU

Under the GDPR it’s not enough to make technical changes. It’s also essential to appoint a qualified professional to handle ongoing protection issues and to systematically carry out record-keeping and monitoring functions.

8. Have an informed IT lawyer on speed dial

We know that our own in-house research is not enough, so we have our lawyer involved as a central part of our GDPR compliance. Because the directives are new, and not clear in many places, and because their implementation depends on the specific position of each organization, we view access to competent legal counsel as the most important part of our GDPR compliance – and you may want to as well.

GDPR Compliance in Your Company

We hope that your company will benefit by knowing how we have approached the changes required by the GDPR. Make sure you outline a thorough plan in advance and run it by your lawyer. Ultimately, your leads and customers will appreciate your efforts to protect their data – both those that are required by GDPR and those imposed by other authorities. Compliance keeps you on the right side of the law, protects you from financial penalties and reinforces your company’s image as thorough and innovative.

At StepUp we work with a number of companies that collect varying levels of personal data, and it’s important to us that the information we collect on behalf of our clients is gathered lawfully and protected carefully. If you’d like to work with a marketing team that puts data protection at the center of your marketing plan, reach out to our team to schedule a free consultation and strategy session to learn how our inbound marketing methodology can help you grow your business.

Our Top 10 Industrial Websites – And What Makes Them Work

Posted on February 12, 2018February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

When you visit a website for the first time, whether for work or for fun, you are probably hit with a feeling of “this works!” or “this doesn’t work!” But it’s harder to understand what exactly causes that feeling in the initial 30 seconds of exposure to a website. You may be particularly interested in understanding this feeling if you are considering a website redesign at your B2B or industrial company. We’ve taken a look at some of our favorite B2B industrial websites and broken down what exactly makes them work.

Clear Explanation of Complex Topics

Industrial products and processes are often complex and use high-tech materials and machines to create unique products. Even if your website is B2B, showing how your products move from business to business to consumer by showing examples of end products in different segments helps increase understanding of what a company does and how that fits into the final product.

Building materials supplier Martin Marietta sums this up nicely in their logo, “It’s not just what we make. It’s what we make possible.®” Dow has a number of products in vastly different business areas, but their websites has them clearly divided by market and even sub-market with pictures to showcase each of their solutions. Bechtel, meanwhile, showcases their products through a clear slogan featured in their URL, brand video, and beautiful explanatory graphics.

Focus on Key Value

Your business has certain differentiators that set it apart from the others. When your website focuses on those key values or a company mission that sets you apart, you’ll be able to convey not only what you do, but one important fact you want potential customers to associate with your brand.

Plastics Unlimited features their focus on quality and service in bold right on the front banner of the website. Dyntex wants you to know that they’re pushing boundaries in a variety of areas that tie into both their products, their technology, and their company culture. National Lien and Bond lets the construction industry know they are there to help them get paid, and builds a relationship of trust right from the first interaction. Acme Hardesty features beautiful graphics and a video to tell their brand story.

Your website is a reflection of your company, so you want the design to be

professional, friendly, and easy to work with. Even for businesses offering complex products to multiple industries, a focus on designing and organizing your website is key.

DRTS features a clean design with bright pops of color designed to draw attention, easy-to-follow navigation, and a scrolling front page that conveys the basic information about the company in clear bites. Koniku, meanwhile, uses interactive graphics to explain a complex topic and its potential applications in easy-to-understand and attractive detail.

Creativity

Who says B2B has to be boring? There are brilliant and creative people behind industrial processes and design, so bring some of that to the forefront of your website. Procurement and purchasing agents are still people who appreciate and respond to clear communication and creative design.

Bechtel’s interactive graphics featuring specific examples of their work showcase both their products, how they’re used, and how they impact the lives of the end consumers. The hands-on video in Cochran’s Lumber takes you inside the workshop and paints a vivid picture of their high quality product.

If you think it’s time to bring your B2B website up to speed and give your potential customers the feeling “this works!” when they first visit your website, reach out to the team at StepUp for a free consultation. We will review your current website and help you explore new possibilities for a user friendly interface that works for your specific business and industry.

5 Things AgTech Investors Are Looking for in AgTech Startups

Posted on February 5, 2018February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

Investing in any business is a risk that investors take when the potential ROI is evident in the new product or idea, and AgTech investors are no different. They want to make sound investments and so there are certain key aspects they’re going to look for in any AgTech startup to ensure the company has a chance of success and their capital is secure. However, in a highly technical field like AgTech, there are some unique aspects of early stage development that are key to building a successful plan and raising capital. If you are part of an AgTech startup or are an investor considering the industry, here are some important things to consider as you build your startup or weigh your potential investment.

Team

No matter the size of the startup, investors want to see that the company has the expertise it needs to accomplish its goals. Having founders or team members who are familiar with the industry and have the skills to develop the proposed solution is key. As the company grows, founders also want to see team members with management experience and sales abilities. A stable team is particularly important in a technical field like Agtech, where you may need to prove that you have an expert in agriculture as your CTO, an engineer as your COO, and a veteran entrepreneur as your CEO.

Rules & Regulations

Depending on the location of the startup and its product, it’s likely subject to a number of different rules and regulations. Agtech investors are looking to see that the startup has a clear understanding of the rules and any processes they need to undergo in order for their products to be approved for use in agriculture.

Early Adaptors

In a highly technical field like Agtech, it is easy to remain exclusively focused on product development and technical details. Even at the early stages, AgTech startups should focus on talking to farmers or other end consumers to get validation of their idea, and on building a community of early adaptors once the regulatory and technical challenges are overcome. Will it really help a large enough number of customers to make it a business? How much are those customers willing to pay? These questions should be answered initially through on-the-ground market research, and revisited periodically to ensure the startup is on the right track.

Think Big

While your company may initially start out focused on smaller co-ops or recreational farms, you need to have a vision for how your business will grow. There are a number of different routes to do this within AgTech. While focusing on a niche is a great way to get initial adoption, having a clear path for the future is a great way to get investors.

Resilience

Just as farmers want plants to stand up to hot sun or disease, investors want to put their capital in startups that will roll with whatever comes their way and keep going. Some investors look at serial successful founders for this trait, others like to see it demonstrated from the beginning through creative problem solving.

AgTech is a growing industry as more and more technology is developed or adapted for this major and important market. Investors are savvy enough to know that it takes more than just a knowledge of farming or technical expertise to succeed in the marketplace. That’s why having the right team and the right plan matters so much. Don’t make the mistake of leaving marketing out of your initial business strategy and waiting until your product is almost at market to figure out how to actually market it. At StepUp our focus is exclusively on helping B2B manufacturing companies, particularly in the fields of AgTech, MedTech and CleanTech, build smart marketing systems that save time and increase leads. If you want to learn more about marketing automation and strategy for AgTech companies, contact us today for a free B2B marketing strategy review.

5 Reasons Why Your Manufacturing Business Needs a Sales and Marketing Alignment Agreement

Posted on January 29, 2018February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

For many businesses, sales and marketing are two separate departments with very different goals and outlook on how to achieve those goals. But businesses where sales and marketing work together to create a shared vision of success have a much higher chance of achieving it. It’s important to focus on sales and marketing alignment whether you have big in house sales and marketing teams or you are using an outside firm to handle your marketing. One way to do this is to sit down and create a sales and marketing alignment agreement where each side details their goals and the metrics they want to work towards. Here are a few reasons why this process can be powerful for any business.

Set Clear Marketing Goals

Marketing is generally charged with creating a brand look and feel, boosting brand awareness, and bringing leads into the sales funnel. It’s important that the sales team understand the full scope of what marketing is responsible for handling and what specific metrics they aim to reach, especially when it comes to the last responsibility of bringing in leads for the sales team. Here you can set goals as to the number of leads, the parameters used to qualify leads, and what happens to nurture leads that aren’t yet ready for the full sales press.

Set Clear Sales Goals

The sales department is responsible for following up on sales leads, preparing RFQs, and closing sales. They often rely on marketing to bring in leads and marketing, in turn, is relying on sales to close those leads. Sales metrics should allow the business to track the source of the different leads that close by value as well as volume. Sales should also communicate with marketing the types of questions customers are asking so that marketing can create relevant content.

Written Commitment to Concrete Goals

An agreement is exactly that, both parties sit down and agree what they will do. This can be a wonderful, collaborative process between the marketing and sales departments and should result in some concrete, measurable goals each side will work to reach. These goals can then be revisited throughout the business cycle to see how each department is faring.

Develop Regular Reporting and Tracking

Managing a growing business means being able to digest large amounts of information quickly. Once your sales and marketing teams have set specific goals, come up with a periodic reporting timeframe and report format so that you can see how they’re progressing towards their stated goals.

Celebrate Achievement

Once you’ve set clear metrics both sides can track and work towards obtaining, you can tell exactly how people in sales and marketing are performing. So when they hit their goal numbers, motivate their continued performance by taking a little time to celebrate their success.

Making the time to prepare sales and marketing alignment will pay off in the long run as both departments will know exactly what is expected from them. If you hire an outside firm like StepUp Marketing to handle your businesses marketing needs, then aligning goals is an important first step in bringing us up to speed on how your business operates. If you’re interested in learning more about how StepUp Marketing can help you build a powerful marketing system, contact us for a free consultation.

What Do All Great LinkedIn Campaigns Share? 5 Secrets to Remember for Your Next Campaign

Posted on January 22, 2018February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

Much has been published about the use of social media for marketing campaigns, but for certain businesses, particularly those who work in the B2B space, LinkedIn might just be the most powerful social network. Running a marketing campaign on LinkedIn is different from running one on Facebook or Instagram because you’re targeting professionals based on their work interests and trying to present yourself as a thought leader rather than an aspirational figure. While there’s a lot to learn about LinkedIn campaigns, here are just a handful of tips to remember as you get set up.

#1 Choose a Clear Goal

Before starting any advertising campaign, it’s important to choose a clear goal for the campaign. If you’re pursuing LinkedIn, are you looking to raise awareness of your company, drive new recruits, or reach out to potential leads? Once you have your goal clearly defined, it’s easier to create an effective campaign as well as use the different metrics LinkedIn provides to track your success.

#2 Choose the Right Types of Ads

There are many different ways to reach people on LinkedIn. If you’ve built a following, you can share content directly to their wall. You can also sponsor content and have it appear on people’s feed based on various demographics you can control. However, if you’re targeting people who aren’t frequently checking LinkedIn, you can also send InMail, which acts as a personal connection between you and the person you’re reaching out to and goes to their email inbox.

#3 Deliver a Strong Message

Copy that is short, direct, and helpful is the best way to get and hold someone’s attention. The right images are important on LinkedIn, like any social network. But unlike other networks, real, meaningful content is what makes professionals stop and look. Think about your audience and what they might need and then write articles or messages that help them answer some of their questions. Even in a business to business marketing scenario, people are searching for answers to help them work smarter, faster, or more efficiently.

#4 Measure and Compare

As you run your LinkedIn campaign, take the time to look at the information you’re getting from your metrics and adjust your material accordingly. See if there are certain demographics that are responding to your content, if people are searching for certain key terms, or run an A/B test to see which version of a headline gets the most clicks.

#5 Maximize Your ROI

Knowing what the goals of your campaign are, you can track your effort and advertising spend against success on those goals to determine which parts of your campaign are working. There are many clever uses of LinkedIn for brand awareness, recruiting, and lead generation, so take the time to find the strategies that work best for your organization.

Implementing a LinkedIn campaign requires planning, quality content, and deliberate execution. StepUp Marketing has experience helping businesses handling their social media and online marketing, not just in LinkedIn, but on a variety of other platforms. We craft each unique marketing campaign to fit the needs of our clients and use metrics to be sure we’re delivering value. Reach out today to set up a free consultation and learn what the StepUp Marketing team can do to help your business.

Planning Your 2018 Trade Show Calendar? 5 Tips to Guarantee Your Trade Show ROI

Posted on January 15, 2018February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

Attending a trade show, especially if you’re putting up a booth, is a huge expense for most businesses. In some cases, it’s the biggest marketing project of the year. Therefore, it’s important to maximize your efforts to get the most ROI possible from each trade show you attend. Here are five tips you can use to help guarantee your trade show ROI.

Looking for ways to make follow up easier? Download our guide to email follow up after a trade show.

Start Marketing Pre-Show

A sample of HubSpot Meeting Scheduler- one of many tools to help automate meeting scheduling before tradeshow- or anytime!

By the time people are walking around the trade show and have a chance to see your booth, you want to make sure this is the third of fourth time they’ve heard of your brand and their mind will connect your booth with a familiar idea. This will drive more traffic to your booth and keep your sales team happy. The best way to approach this may vary depending on your industry and the size of your company, but providing valuable educational content via your website and email marketing campaigns will both position your company as an industry thought leader before the trade show, and build your mailing list so you can let as many people as possible know where you will be pre-show.

Consider adding a call-to-action below your company email signatures, directing contacts to sign up for meetings in advance, and even offering them a discount or special offer in exchange for pre-registration at events your company is running during the trade show.

Get a Good Location

If possible, scout the trade show a year before you plan to attend to figure out the best place to put your booth and sign up as early as possible to reserve the best spot. You don’t want to be off to the side were no one wanders. Another great strategy is to try and get a booth that’s close to one of the biggest sponsors of the event. They’ll likely attract a lot of foot traffic that will pause and look at your booth as they pass.

Prep Your Sales Team

Everyone who will be manning your booth needs to be familiar with your products and understand the main challenges of your target customers. If you have several junior associates supporting a few top salespeople, it’s important to teach the junior people how to qualify leads before passing them on to the senior sales people. Everyone should know what the post-show marketing plan is and encourage people who drop by the booth to swipe their contact badges to collect email addresses – or better yet have ipads set up in your booth to collect more extensive info and enter new leads into your CRM right on the spot.

Follow Up FAST

The leads you’ve collected from a trade show can be sales gold, but only if you capitalize efficiently on the follow up process. If you have a sales team, divide the leads among the sales team and ensure that individualized contact happens quickly.

Looking for ways to make follow up easier? Download our guide to email follow up after a trade show.

Collecting the right information at the trade show will also make this follow up process easier. If certain leads came to the trade show ready to purchase, it’s vital to collect this information (ideally through a form that syncs directly with your CRM) and to mark them as top priority for personal follow up (preferably within 24 hours after meeting them, and then again within 24 hours after the trade show ends). You can be sure you won’t be the only company contacting them, so it’s important to be the first! For less important leads, consider automating or semi-automating the follow up process with email templates.

Continue to Educate

While your sales team is following up with each lead, you also want to take advantage of the wealth of information you gained at the trade show to nurture some longer-term leads. Not everyone who visited your booth is ready to enter directly into your quoting process, so you want to make sure you keep your brand in front of them so that you’re their first thought when they reach that point. Follow up emails after the trade show and a well-planned, educational, value-added lead nurturing campaign are great ways to make this happen.

Marketing professionals like the team at StepUp can help you maximize your trade show follow up to ensure people who are interested stay informed and your brand stays top of mind. Reach out today to find out about the services we offer and learn more about how to maximize your trade show ROI.

Why Finding the Right Keywords will Bring You the Right Leads

Posted on January 8, 2018February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

Businesses looking to do some marketing through search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns know that one of the big secrets of success is finding the right keywords. You want to strike that perfect balance between using the words your ideal target customers are using to search on google and words that are specific enough that they won’t cost you a significant amount. This is particularly significant for B2B companies, where the right keywords might take more time and research to find.

Once you’ve chosen the right keywords, your conversion-per-click rate will increase enough so that, even if the keywords are expensive, when people do click on your website, they’re in the process of making a purchasing decision or are ready to get a quote from your sales team. Tracking your click rate as well as your conversion rate will ensure you’re spending on the right keywords.

Searching for and Finding the Right Keywords

For many businesses with moderate keyword budgets, this means focusing on “long tail keywords” or keywords that get less traffic, but are more specific to what someone is searching. Because these phrases have less people searching for them, it’s easier to rank higher and have you ad displayed more frequently for less.

Another detail to consider when looking to find the right keywords is their relevance to your business. Relevant keywords are likely to attract more clicks and Google tracks how many people click on your link from a search and how long they stay on your site after they click. You can also optimize your searches around location, which is especially useful if your business only serves a certain geographic area.

Understanding your Audience

How well do you really know your target customers? Do you know what and where they tend to look for answers when they encounter a challenge? Even more than being relevant to your

business, your chosen keywords need to be relevant for your target customers. Call some of your best customers and have a chat. Ask them questions like, “When you have a challenge in your business, do you search on Google? Do you turn to Facebook groups, or a professional forum? If you search on Google, do you type in full questions or do you type in the minimal amount of information?”

The methods used to learn more about a professional challenge or find a solution differ between industries and between cultures. If you have customers in multiple countries or in multiple industries, be sure to have conversations with a good sampling to make sure you understand all the parts of your audience. You might be surprised by some of their answers.

Keyword Planning Tools

To help you find the right keywords, and to get a sense of how popular certain keywords are, Google offers their Keyword Planner for free as part of your adwords campaign as well as Google Trends to let you get a better sense of search history over time and compare search volumes for different keywords.

Since so many businesses now base their success on their SEO campaigns, other sophisticated tools have come onto the market such as Keyword Tool.io, which generates a list of suggested keywords based on Google’s autocomplete feature and Wordstream’s Keyword Tool, which suggests keywords similar to the one you’re interested in that may apply to your business.

As you decide which keywords to choose, you’ll want to wade through the ideas suggested by each tool and choose only those most relevant to your business. After you’ve set up your campaign, you want to continue to monitor keyword tools and traffic to your website to tweak your SEO.

There are a number of paid offerings as well, such as Accuranker and Hubspot’s Keyword Tool. These tools give a more sophisticated analysis and feedback on each keyword to help you focus in on those most likely to give you the best return on your advertising dollar.

Planning your company’s SEO strategy and monitoring it can quickly become a complicated process, which is why it may be helpful to pull in the experts at StepUp Marketing. To help you get started, we offer a free consultation where we discuss your specific business and your goals with SEO and how StepUp can not only help with finding the right keywords, but also creating the unique content that draws in potential customers and helps them connect with your brand.

What is Social Selling and How Will it Turn Your Sales Team into Sales Leaders?

Posted on December 31, 2017February 26, 2024 by teamsstepup

An exciting presentation by Jamie Shanks of Sales for Life, recently covered how sales leaders can train their team in the art of social selling. But what is social selling? With so much information and connectivity available, it can be hard to know how best to leverage this valuable tool and how to move your sales process into the electronic world.

The basic sales process remains the same, people want to buy from other individuals, so there still needs to be communication and conversation, even if this occurs in a digital format. You’re moving them along their buying journey and communicating with them just as you did in the past, you’re just doing it using technology and social networks.

Starting a Social Selling Process

Your sales process starts by finding people who may be interested in your product or service. You can leverage your social networks to do this by setting alerts that notify you based on different triggers. This could include when companies merge or a lead switches positions. You can also find leads by reaching into your own social network and mining it for connections. Technology makes it easy to track these relationships and changes, but you have to keep your network up to date and pay attention to it in order to leverage this data. Your goal is to surround the company and send different people within the organization multiple marketing touch points that are educational and useful.

Teaching your sales team this art this begins by working with your sales team to convey your brand digitally. Go through all their social profiles to ensure the brand message is consistent, uses the right keywords, and that their profiles are open and inviting. Have them review their profiles and messaging through a buyer-centric lens.

Refining Social Content

Once your team’s social profiles are in tune, look at the content they’re sending out. Is that messaging adding value and are they leveraging the information from their networks to know who is interested in what material? Is that material conveying a consistent brand message? Sometimes it helps to do a spot audit of one sales person’s biggest account to see how well they’re connecting with the account’s contacts on social media, how frequently they’re engaging, and what material they’re sharing. Then you can offer coaching on how to improve their techniques for the specific client that carries over to other accounts.

You know the sales process should never contain a message or email that doesn’t add value, either through educating or informing your customer. You can help your team accomplish this by giving them digital content to share on best practices, industry updates, and exciting news. Mix content you’ve created in house with content you’ve found to position your team as experts in your industry.

Once they’ve got the process and content figured out, work with your team to teach them how to develop their sales accounts by looking for new leads to add to their social networks. When the leads are in your network, you can track the content they’ve looked at or engaged with to determine where their interests are. Challenge your team to grow their social footprint by one person each day.

As a leader, you must be ahead of the curve in demonstrating these digital sales strategies to your team and showing how they are effective. Start by telling stories of how digital sales is working for specific customers, then begin to gather data to show it’s having a positive impact on the company as a whole.

Once you’ve started training your sales team, and you get some people having success implementing social selling, then bring your team together again and have them to teach each other the successful ways they’re implementing new strategies into their existing techniques. Nothing gets someone to master material faster than having to teach it.

If you’d like some help starting your digital selling strategy, check out our guide to email follow-up. It’s helped businesses in many different industries set up digital marketing and sales automation that increase efficiency and complement what is already working.