b2b marketing trends 2020

Difference Between B2B and B2C Marketing Automation

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Marketing automation offers a company the chance to centralize most of its marketing activities into a single software platform and to automate it to an extent. This centralization appeals to both B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) companies. However, the way B2B and B2C marketing automation works is different due to fundamental differences between the two groups.

Why Is Marketing Automation Between B2B and B2C Different?

Effective marketing addresses each customer’s individual goals and needs. This remains true whether the customer is B2B or B2C. Because these groups have differing goals and needs, the way you market to them has to be different. As a result, the following differences remain when you use marketing automation:

  • The marketing focus differs:
    • With B2B, the focus is on generating leads and keeping their subscribers engaged throughout the longer sales cycle.
    • With B2C the focus is on building the brand.
  • The tactics used are different:
    • B2B marketing delivers content that positions the company as an industry leader, while nurturing the lead in the sales process.
    • B2C marketing is about the customer journey and making data-driven recommendations for products or services.
  • The tone of the messages is different:
    • B2B messages are to targeted groups at different stages of the sales cycle.
    • B2C messages are more personal and highly relevant to the individual.

Top 5 Benefits Of Marketing Automation

How B2C Marketing Automation Differs From That of B2B

With all the differences between marketing to the B2B and B2C groups, it’s easy to see why their marketing automation needs differ as well.

  • Communication channels. While both B2B and B2C businesses rely on email for marketing, the B2C use other channels as well. Text messaging, push notifications and retargeting are just a few examples. The B2C marketing automation solution needs to handle these additional channels.
  • Data used. B2B consumers are businesses that have specific needs. Marketing data for this group would include approximate company size, industry, point of contact and specific needs. B2C consumers are individuals with specific tastes. Marketing data for this group includes age, gender, purchase history and frequently visited product categories.
  • Features needed. B2B companies need help with nurturing their leads through the sales cycle. They want features like lead scoring and integration with their CRM system. B2C companies want to retain the customers they get, so they want features like reputation management, retargeting and retention marketing.
  • Marketing focus. B2B marketing focuses building the one-on-one relationship. B2C is more about building the brand and building mass appeal.
  • Pricing. B2B automation is priced based on the number of contacts managed within the system. B2C automation is priced based on the volume of data. It is not uncommon for B2B automation to have only 100 contacts in the system while B2C has thousands.

Differences Between B2C and B2B Email Marketing

The differing approaches of B2B and B2C marketing lead to their different marketing automation solutions. Trying to substitute one strategy for the other is difficult, due to different features and pricing structures. If you need help finding the right solution for your business, contact us at Stevens-Tate.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

social media personas

Establishing Your Brand Personality Through Social Media Personas

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When setting up accounts and profiles on various social media platforms to promote your brand, remember that your competitors are also on social media. Simply posting content on multiple platforms isn’t enough to get your brand at the forefront, especially without a clearly defined social media persona.

Customers are nowadays looking for content that resonates with their needs. Research shows that 90% of consumers buy products from businesses that advocate for a cause they can identify with.

People love associating with brands that provide a personal, human touch. They would prefer to associate with a business that delivers on its brand’s qualities and values. If your business demonstrates reliability, commitment, loyalty, honesty, and longevity, it can better succeed in the competitive business landscape.

However, if your posts still miss the mark and don’t help your brand effectively reach its target audience, it may be because you haven’t clearly defined your social media persona. The persona sets you apart from the competition and gives your brand a voice.

It guides your social media marketing strategy, engagement with your target audience, and the content you post. This post will explain how to create a buyer persona to boost your social marketing strategy.

What Is Social Media Persona?

Social media personas are fictional profiles you can develop to represent your brand and target your customers. They combine qualities and characteristics that give your brand a distinct personality, including character, tone, voice, and approach. These factors are critical because they influence how customers interact with your brand.

Remember that your customers don’t read statistics about your brand’s performance and probably don’t care how many awards you’ve won. They care more about who you are and what your brand stands for, not your logo.

How to Create Your Social Media Personas?

Creating social media personas can help establish a consistent and familiar presence on your social media platforms. These personas must be authentic and align with the values of your organization. The process doesn’t have to be complicated, and you can find and build the perfect persona for your brand in a few steps.

The best practices to consider while creating these personas are:

 Identify Your Target Audience

The first step to creating a successful social media persona is to make the “ideal customer.” Who is it that your brand targets, and what are their demographics? It would help if you established the following factors:

  • Their gender
  • Age
  • Employment status
  • Income levels
  • Location
  • Home types
  • Relationship status

You may also want to research more information like their hobbies, goals and motivation, purchasing triggers, pain points and fears, and personality traits. For a more comprehensive persona, it would also help to find out the social media channels they actively use, the influencers they like to follow, and the hashtags they respond to regularly.

You can research this information through the following:

  • Your existing customer data available on your CRM, email lists, point of sale systems, and customer support systems
  • Your social media analytics, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and your website analytics
  • Collecting customer feedback through social media polls, emails, or surveys.

The goal is to create a brand persona that appeals to every segment of your target audience while aligning with your business niche.

Stay True to the Values Which Your Brand Wants to Convey

Once you have all the information you need to develop your brand’s perfect social media persona, determine the values you want to convey to your customers. Your content creation strategy should revolve around the following:

  • The unique selling proposition that sets you apart from other brands
  • How you want to portray your brand
  • What you want to offer your audience on social media
  • The kind of tone that typically resonates with your audience

Once you have answers to these questions, brainstorm a list of adjectives to describe your brand’s voice. Think of terms like professional, candid, passionate, authentic, relatable, bold, honest, and trustworthy. These will guide your brand’s personality when approaching the above factors. Staying true to these values is the easiest way to maintain consistency across all your social media platforms.

Choose Visual Elements Which Align with Your Brand Identity

In maintaining consistency across your brand, you also must include visual elements that resonate with your brand. Studies prove visuals are more effective in passing your brand message than words. Photos, videos, illustrations, and infographics can strengthen your brand and boost engagement with your audience.

Choose visual elements that embody your brand’s personality and create a strong brand image. Some tips for creating compelling visual elements that your audience easily recognizes are:

  • Creating a visual guide to ensure consistency, including colors, sizes, fonts, and file formats
  • Using unique visuals such as custom illustrations as opposed to stock images
  • Repurposing content such as customer feedback, product images, and blog posts

Stay Consistent Across All Platforms

Inconsistency is one thing that can kill your branding efforts on social media. Strive to stick to the persona you created across all your social media platforms. If your business description, tone, values, messaging, or brand image differs across the platforms, your customers will likely perceive your business as multiple entities. The result is lower engagement and fewer sales.

An effortless way to maintain consistency in your message is to develop a comprehensive voice and tone guide for your brand. It should appear on your blog, company website, social media platforms, email newsletters, and other touchpoints relevant to your business.

Your Social Media Personas Can Boost Your Marketing Impact

Creating a social media persona for your brand can take time. It also requires that you have the right tools and leverage teamwork for the best results. Once you do the groundwork, you will have a valuable tool to create compelling content.

That way, you can meet your customers right where they are and communicate effectively. Besides, you will improve your social media strategy for more personalization to increase overall conversion rates. A digital marketing agency like Steven & Tate can help you get your social media marketing strategy right. Talk to us for a consultation.

 

targeted advertising

How Does Targeted Advertising Work?

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Back before the Internet, it was difficult to escape ads. If you were watching TV, then you had no choice but to watch the commercials. However, because users have more control over what they view online, advertisements are easy to ignore. As a result, marketers are using targeted advertising to expose their ads to users who are more likely to show interest in their products or services. This reduces the chances that someone will ignore the ads. Let’s know more how this targeted advertising actually works.

How Does Targeted Advertising Work?

In order to target an audience that might be interested in a product or service being advertised, advertisers will use data collected on the user. This data can include demographic information as well as behavioral data. For example, if a person views a certain product on a website, their browser will submit this piece of data to third-party advertising networks. That information will be stored in a browser cookie, which is a snippet of code that shows sites that the person has viewed. When the person visits a different website that has the same advertising network, ads for the product the person viewed on the first site may show up. For example, if a person was checking out a new sofa on a furniture website and then visits a social media platform, like Facebook, they might find an ad for the sofa they were just looking at show up on their feed. This is a result of targeted advertising.

How To Create Measurable Social Media Goals?

Types of Targeted Advertising

There are several types of targeted advertising. The following are a few common examples:

  • Social media advertising – Many social media platforms will place advertisements in your feed or on the side of your pages. They have access to a lot of demographic information about its users that can help target different people.
  • Behavioral advertising – Many sites will use past purchasing decisions to advertise to their visitors. For example, Amazon often recommends different products based on the purchasing behaviors of its customers.
  • Search engine advertising – Search engine ads, such as Google AdWords, target users based on their search engine queries to match the keywords they use with those used by their ads.

5 Ways To Optimize Your Social Media

How To Use Targeted Advertising Effectively

While targeted advertising can be incredibly effective in helping you find an audience that has a need for the products or services you’re advertising, it does have one drawback: some people may be put off by the ad if it looks like you’re using personal information about them in order to target your ad. This can come off as an invasion of privacy, after all. Keeping that in mind, the following are a few tips on how to use targeted advertising:

  • Be transparent – Make sure that you let visitors know that you’re collecting data and how you are using that data. The more transparent you are, the less your audience will feel like you’re spying on them.
  • Create control – Although you’ll want to use the visitor data on your site to target your ads, you should provide users with a sense of control by implementing security features, such as SSL certificates, firewalls, DoS, and more. This lowers the chances of someone stealing user information and it helps protect visitors.
  • Don’t use sensitive information – You don’t need to use every bit of information you collect to target your ads. For example, you should avoid using information such as health conditions, race, relationship statuses, and sexual orientation to target ads.
  • Targeted advertising can be an incredibly effective way to market your products and services. This is because it helps you identify audiences that will find your ads relevant. This makes your marketing campaign much more cost-effective as a result.

Learn The StoryBranding Process

data driven marketing

Should You Consider A Growth Driven Design Strategy?

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In this day and age, every business understands the importance of having a company website. Even local mom and pop shops have a web presence, whether it’s a basic website or a social media page. However, not everyone realizes that there are different ways to build your website. If your website is the foundation for all of your online marketing efforts, then consider implementing a growth driven design. It is true that when properly implemented, traditional website designs can still be very effective. However, growth driven designs have their own set of unique advantages worth taking a look at.

What Is A Growth Driven Design?

Traditional websites tend to be designed all at once. Meaning, once the website goes live, it’s finished–everything is complete. Growth driven design involves a more incremental process. It’s not completely finished once it launches.

Instead, you continuously work on the website, implementing design elements based on data collected from visitors interacting with your site. This allows you to design your website from top to bottom based on buyer observations which, thereby, improve your web design over time. Additionally, it prevents design elements from growing stale and eliminates the risk of being stuck with poor design choices.

Similar Article: Growth-Driven Web Design – Is It Right For Your Company?

Growth driven design

The Benefits 

The following are a few of the advantages to choosing a growth driven design:

Eliminate the need for massive overhauls – Traditional website designs often require complete redesigns after only a few years. Because a growth driven design requires that your website be regularly updated, major overhauls won’t be needed.

Meet the needs of your users – While traditional website design certainly makes use of some data, a lot of the design elements will no doubt be based on the personal preferences of those in charge of designing the site. Likewise, they may use elements that a competitor has used to great effect. However, your site design will be more effective if it’s tailored to what your users want, not what you want (or what your competitors use). A growth driven design is a user-driven one.

Launch your website quickly – It can take some time to launch a traditional website design. This is because once it’s launched, it’s done. Since a growth driven design requires consistent work on the website, it’s not expected to be finished once launched. This means that you can get it up and running much quicker.

 Support a goal-oriented strategy – Long-term marketing goals require constant work. Being able to consistently improve your website will make it easier to support the goals that you’ve established.

Make better use of your resources – There are certain choices that you may have made with a traditional website design that you’ll just be stuck with until you do a redesign. This ends up being a waste of resources, whereas with a growth driven design, you can change what’s not working.

Shift, pivot, or adjust on the fly – Not only does a growth driven design make it easy to make needed changes on the fly, it also makes it easy to change course should you shift in regards to your business goals or model.

Similar Article: 6 Web Design Principles to Increase Conversions

Implementation

There are three main stages when it comes to implementing a growth driven design. These stages are as follows:

Growth driven designStrategy – Creating a strategy for a growth driven design is not that dissimilar than creating a traditional web design strategy. You’ll need to identify your goals and what you want your website to achieve. You should also perform extensive research so that you can make as many data-backed decisions as possible in the initial stages of your site design.

Launch Pad – During this stage, you’ll launch a site that looks and performs better than what you have but that isn’t finalized. The launch pad is a foundation on which you’ll build your website. Start with creating a wish list that will help achieve your objectives. Narrow that list down to a list of priorities that need to be implemented from the start.

Improvement – The third stage is never-ending–it’s the stage in which your launch pad site goes live, data collection on visitors begins, features are added, and improvements are made based on that data.

One of the big advantages is the ability to continually adjust your website design based on how users are interacting with your site. This prevents your site from growing stale and makes it easier to meet the needs of your audience. While traditional web designs can still be effective, be sure to consider your website design options by looking into growth driven design as well.

Website Redesign Checklist
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how to tell your brand story

What Is The Brand Development Process?

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Branding is more than just creating a logo and slapping it on a website or the side of a van. Brand is about a consumer’s perception of your company. A positive perception means that a customer has a sense of quality, value and trust in your company. A negative perception means the opposite. Connecting emotional with a brand takes dedication, a brand leader and relentless following the style guides rules and guidelines. That is why you need to understand the brand development process and how to do it successfully.

Brand development is a multi-stage process with the ultimate goal of building brand equity in a consumer’s mind. Brand equity is an intangible set of assets that cannot be tracked on a balance sheet. But, the value of that equity is the most valuable asset a company can own. Think about Kraft, Amazon, Apple, Will Ferrell or Servpro. What emotional ties do you have with these brands?

The Brand Development Process

Developing a brand must be part of the larger marketing plan for the company. It is often the biggest challenge but the most critical. You don’t have to invest millions to develop your brand, but making the effort will pay off.

The Brand Development Process Demystified 

Determine what you are branding

You can brand almost anything. The most common things are a person, a company, a product or a service. A critical part of the branding process is determining exactly what you are branding, positioning the brand, what you are promising with your brand, your brand story, and your elements and style. This process can be overwhelming, but with the help of a marketing team, you can make it happen.

Research your target market

Marketing research into your target market is critical for effective brand development. It is a step that many startups overlook because they think they know their audience. The reality is that, professional market research will give you critical insights into who the target is, what they like/dislike, what their challenges are, and how you can help them. As I have been doing this for 30 years, not ONE company has ever properly realized their target audience upon the first meeting.

Compile your brand definition

The next step is developing a clear brand definition. This definition can be in the form of a story or statement that clearly reflects what your brand is all about. Your marketing team will help you define what you are offering, how your target audience will benefit from it, what guarantees you offer, and what your unique selling proposition (USP) is. Remember to ask the question, what can this brand do or stand for that no other brand can say?

 

Learn The StoryBranding Process

 

Create your name, tagline and logo

Giving your company a name, a tagline and a logo is the fun part of brand development. But, it is not something you should do without careful thought. Your marketing team can help you determine what name, tagline and logo will resonate with your audience. Nike’s Just Do It! has become a staple of a strong statement just as “It’s Finger Lickin Good” or “Just like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is there”.

Launch the brand

With all the elements in place, it is time to launch the brand. That means creating your first products, offering your services, or making a name for yourself. It could mean many things to many brands like digital campaigns, radio spots, drip campaigns, demographic targeting, print or even showing up at tradeshows. On the surface that sounds easy, but there are many moving gears that need to align to keep the marketing moving forward. The good news is that with all the prep work you did before, your launch will have a great foundation.

Manage the brand

With good up-front work, your brand launch will be successful, gaining momentum as you provide consistent service and quality. Even with a successful launch, you will still need to manage your brand going forward. That is why you need a dedicated team, always monitoring your company’s reputation, doing continuing research, and updating the brand as the market evolves. This step is one that is most ignored when things are running well, but is most important.

These steps will help you and your marketing experts develop a strong brand. The full brand development process takes time. But, look at it as an investment in the company’s future, one that will pay off with dividends for years to come.

I always tell individuals that if your air conditioner breaks, you hire a professional that does it everyday to find the problem and find a cost efficient way of solving the issue. The same theory can be applied to marketing and developing a brand. Marketing companies do it everyday, know the shortfalls and successes, and will have it launched months or years before you could on your own.

 

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How to Improve Your Social Signals for SEO

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Social media has become a critical part of our lives, and businesses are taking notice. Today, the platform isn’t just a place to share memes and cat videos – it’s also a powerful tool for digital marketing. One key social media aspect often overlooked is its impact on SEO. Over the years, social signals have significantly impacted search engine (SE) rankings, and ignoring them could hurt your site’s visibility.

In the sections below, we’ll take a closer look at social signals, including how you can use them to boost your SEO efforts.

What are Social Signals?

These are people’s reactions to online content they interact with on social media channels. They include views, likes, dislikes, comments, shares, tweets, etc. The more responses a post receives, the more mainstream and popular it becomes.

social signals

Remaining visible on the internet is key to gaining more reactions. From an SEO standpoint, social signals can improve SE rankings and help individuals or businesses establish their identity, popularity, and reliability.

It’s worth noting that different platforms use different metrics to measure or categorize social signals. Before seeking user engagement and reactions, you need to understand how a given social media platform works.

Social Signals and SEO

Social signals tell more about a brand’s popularity and relevance on social media platforms. They play an important role in SEO optimization as they indicate the quality of content and generate traffic, which ultimately helps in ranking higher on search engines.

And while social signals are not an official ranking factor for Google, they do indirectly impact SEO performance. Social engagement, such as comments, likes, and shares, can increase the visibility of social posts, resulting in higher traffic and better SE rankings.

To improve social signals for SEO, you need to focus on visibility and brand awareness while posting on social media. You should also engage with your audience, share valuable content, and optimize your posts with relevant hashtags and keywords. We have covered these and more below.

Ways You Can Utilize Social Signals to Boost SEO

While social signals are just one factor in SEO, they are still an important aspect of any digital marketing strategy. Investing time and effort into social media engagement and optimization can improve your online visibility and ultimately drive more traffic to your website. Here are some crucial steps you can take today to improve social signals for SEO.

One obvious and most common way to improve your social signals is to link your site to all the social media pages. Linking your website to your social media pages will improve your online visibility and user experience.

By making it easy for users to find important URLs related to your brand, you’ll increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.

To ensure a smooth connection, place links to your social media pages in the footer of your website. This way, users won’t be distracted from your call-to-action buttons or lead-generation forms.

Publish Consistent Content Across Social Channels

Another less common yet effective way to boost your social signals is to stay consistent across social. Consistency in your brand voice and communication style allows you to build brand recognition and a loyal following.

updating social media

Understanding your audience’s demographics and interests will help you choose the right tone of voice and content that resonates with them. When creating and sharing content, aim to be relevant and authentic and ensure you verify the accuracy and ethics of the information you share.

Consistency in your posting schedule and visual aesthetics can also maximize your organic reach, helping you reinforce your brand identity and leave lasting impressions on customers.

Ensure Your Content is Shareable to Social

Adding social plugins is one way to ensure that your content is easily shareable. These plugins allow site visitors to share your content with friends and family on their social media accounts.

For instance, you can add social icons that stick as the user scrolls through blog posts. That way, you encourage users to share your content, increasing your site’s visibility and reach.

Remember that consumers are more than five times more likely to make a purchase recommended by a trusted friend or family than as a result of seeing an ad or influencer endorsing the product. So optimizing your content for social and making it more shareable can increase reach, brand awareness, and trust.

Stay Active on All Social Media Channels

To make the most out of social media marketing, you should stay active on all social media channels. Responding to comments and shares is a great way to show your followers that a real person runs your profile. This also makes them feel more connected to your brand.

By actively engaging with users, you create more opportunities to share relevant links to your website and increase traffic. If you’re too busy to manage your social media accounts, consider hiring a marketing manager or outsourcing your social media tasks to an agency.

Don’t forget to listen and digest what people say about your brand. You should also respond constructively to any criticism you receive.

Foster partnerships By Sharing Other People’s Content

In today’s digital age, building strong partnerships is one of the organic growth strategies you should adopt. One way to achieve this is by sharing other people’s content. Here, you not only show support for your peers, but you also establish yourself as an active member of your community.

If you do this properly, i.e., retweeting, thanking, and reposting content on social you can form partnerships and increase engagement with peers. In turn, this could lead to more shares and likes from the same accounts in the future, ultimately growing your reach and strengthening your business relationships.

Get Started Today

Taking your SEO game and the overall digital marketing strategy to the next level takes time and effort. The strategies we have highlighted above aren’t exhaustive but will give you an idea of what to tweak to boost your social media marketing.

Before taking any action, ensure you set realistic goals and have some means to monitor your efforts and track the results. As long as you are doing the right thing, it’s never too late to act.

direct vs indirect marketing 1

Direct vs Indirect Marketing

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You may not realize it, but all marketing efforts can be categorized in one of two ways — direct marketing or indirect marketing. On the surface, direct vs. indirect marketing is relatively easy to understand.

Difference Between Direct and Indirect Marketing

Direct marketing involves engaging with leads or customers directly. For example, sending a customer an email that contains a promotional offer. Indirect marketing is a strategy in which you put yourself in a position to be found by leads. Consequently, allowing them to engage with you instead of just directly engaging them. For example, writing a post on your website’s blog. Which leads can find through external links or through a search engine, is a form of indirect marketing.

Both direct marketing and indirect marketing can be effective strategies. However, to make sure that you implement them effectively, it’s important that you not only understand what the advantages of using each are, but also what the potential disadvantages are of direct vs indirect marketing.

Direct Marketingdirect vs indirect marketing 2

Direct marketing includes a number of traditional marketing strategies that everyone is familiar with. For example TV commercials are a form of direct marketing. So are billboards, magazine ads, radio ads, and telemarketing. That’s not to say that digital marketing can’t be direct. For example, email marketing and PPC advertising are also forms of direct marketing. You’re essentially trying to find and address a specific audience — and you’re trying to get them to take action right away. The following are some of the advantages to such a strategy:

Advantages

  • You can identify specific audience segments, thereby allowing you to connect with people who are likely interested in your product or service already. For example, if you run a TV commercial, you can choose a time slot on a channel that you know your audience is watching.
  • If you know the audience you’re addressing, then you can personalize your messages, thereby allowing you to nurture leads and build stronger relationships. For example, using the data you have to segment your email list allows you to send more relevant content to your recipients.
  • The data you collect from your direct marketing efforts is more measurable. For example, you can track your email response rate to determine how effective your direct marketing strategy is and to make adjustments accordingly.

While there are plenty of advantages to implementing certain direct marketing techniques, there are some potential drawbacks as well. These can include the following:

Disadvantages

  • If you’re too overzealous, your direct marketing efforts may cross privacy boundaries and may even come off as spam, which will hurt your brand reputation.
  • You have to have an understanding of who your audience is and where you can find them. Otherwise, you may be advertising to people who aren’t interested in your brand, which is a waste of time and money.
  • Your overall reach won’t be as widespread since direct marketing requires you to focus in on a specific audience to be effective.

Learn more about indirect marketing strategies

 

Indirect Marketing

Indirect marketing is essentially marketing in which you’re not trying to sell a specific product or service. For example, content creation in the form of a blog of email newsletter are forms of indirect marketing. A lot of social media marketing is indirect as well. For example, if you’re simply engaging in discussions or posting links to informative articles. The idea behind indirect marketing is that you’re nurturing relationships, building brand authority, and generating brand awareness. The following are some of the advantages of indirect marketing:

Advantages

  • You provide value to your customers without coming off as self-serving, which helps to build your brand reputation and increase brand trust.
  • Indirect marketing is typically much less expensive than direct marketing.
  • Indirect marketing is a long-term strategy, which means that your efforts will continue to have an impact throughout the future. For example, you might write a blog post that someone reads years later.

As beneficial as indirect marketing is, there are a couple of disadvantages when compared to direct marketing. These disadvantages include the following:

Disadvantages

  • Tracking performance is more difficult. This is because you’re not honing in on specific customers — you’re casting a wider net.
  • Indirect marketing efforts may not have an instant impact — it may take some time before they begin drawing in new customers. As such, it can be frustrating not to see an immediate impact on sales.
  • Because it’s a long-term strategy, indirect marketing requires constant attention. Whereas direct marketing tactics can work on their own, indirect marketing functions as a whole. This means that you need to be constantly working at it. There’s basically no end in sight.

You are now well aware of the differences between direct and indirect marketing.

As you can see, when it comes to direct vs indirect marketing, both direct marketing and indirect marketing have their share of advantages and disadvantages. Instead of choosing one over the other, the best course of action is to use a combination of both direct and indirect marketing. This will allow you to see both short-term and long-term results, especially if you’re careful when it comes to avoiding the potential drawbacks that both strategies can present when used improperly.

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smart goal examples

5 SMART Goal Example For Business Development

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A smart goal is basically what the acronyms from the name suggest. It is specific, measurable, attainable, and relevant and time bound. The Smart Goal process provides a frame where you can create a long term goal. It also provides a time limit for you to work on the same goal. By doing this business’ are 70% more successful in achieving their goals thanks to regular check-ins, updates and group accountability. Below are a few smart goal examples for business development that will help you understand the system better and enhance your business.

Smart Goal Examples for Business

  • “I Want To Increase My Profits”
  • “I Want To Improve My Response Time to Customer Complaints”
  • “I Want To Improve My Employee Retention”
  • “I Want To Be More Efficient In My Business Operations”
  • “I Want To Grow My Business Operation”

“I Want To Increase My Profits”

smart goal examples
Specific: I will increase revenue while cutting down on expenditure. Moving to a more affordable premise that will cut my rent by 7% will reduce the operational costs.

Measurable: I will increase sales over the next 3 months by signing in 5 more potential clients.

Attainable: I will improve my current customer relationships and promote the business through referrals, networking and through social networks. This will help me find more leads and therefore see to an increase in revenue for the business.

Relevant: moving to a cheaper establishment will reduce the operational cost of my business and therefore give room to the growth of profits.

Time-bound: I will have increased my profit by the end of the coming three months.

“I Want To Improve My Response Time to Customer Complaints”

smart goal examples
Specific: I will improve the response time to customer complaints by increasing my customer service staff from 3 to 8 in the next one year.

Measurable: the increase in customer service staff is scheduled to take place within one year. It should bring the number to a total of 8.

Attainable: as I plan on moving to a new establishment I will ensure the place has enough room to accommodate the additional staff members I intend to have in the next one year.

Relevant: I will find ways to manage the complaints meanwhile in order to maintain the customer base I have and strive to grow the client base even further to match the additional customer service staff.

Time-bound: I will have hired the customer service staff by the end of one year

Learn how to maximize your marketing budget

 

“I Want To Improve My Employee Retention”

smart goal examples
Specific: I will improve the employee turnover by 15% in 90 days by putting up training for the new employees to let them know what is expected of them and have a program for them to get used to the operation systems. I will also have one-on-one meetings with employees so that I get to know what challenges they could be facing.

Measurable: the improvement in employee turnover is scheduled to be by about 15% and should take place within 90 days.

Attainable: trainings and one-on-one meetings will ensure the employees are prepared for what is expected of them when they get into production. It also give me a hint of what’s on their mind concerning general operations of the business.

Relevant: outstanding employees will be put up for a reward system. For the ones that might be having a difficult time, there will be motivation trainings for encouragement.

Time-bound: employee turnover will have improved within 90 days

“I Want To Be More Efficient In My Business Operations”

smart goal examples
Specific: I will improve my efficiency in business operations by challenging my sales department to increase their closing ratio from its current 45% to at least 60%. They could also work on improving the delivery time from 72hours to at least 12hours maximum.

Measurable: the sales people are supposed to increase their closing ratio from 45% to 60% and the delivery time improved to 12 hours from the initial 72hours

Attainable: I will conduct a survey to find out what both the clients and the sales team think about the idea. I will implement it as soon as the idea passes as valid.

Relevant: increasing the number of motorbikes and pickups that will do courier services for us will help make the plan a success

Time-bound: this should happen in one year.

“I Want To Grow My Business Operation”


Specific: open three more branches countrywide within five years

Measurable: the objective is to increase operations and revenue for the business. This will, in turn, facilitate the growth to three more branches.

Attainable: increasing my current selling space by 25% will mean more production. This can help me save for the planned growth to 4 branches countrywide.

Relevant: increasing production, operations and revenue will mean a larger client base thus the need for more branches will not be a wasteful idea after all.

Time-bound: establishing the branches should be within the next five years.

How Smart Goals Should Align With Your Business Goals

As much as an organization will work to ensure that its business goals are smart, they will never be flawless. It is, however, essential to ensure they give their teams tasks within their capability and make decisions using accurate data from their past operations while setting new smart business goals. The rest will work out just fine.

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Choosing HubSpot CRM As Your CRM Solution

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If any business wishes to collect customer data, monitor customer interactions, and ensure that their marketing and sales teams are properly aligned, it is necessary to have a CRM (customer relation management) platform. However, there are a lot of different CRM software solutions to choose from. For good reason, HubSpot CRM tends to be one of the more popular options. The following six reasons are why you should consider implementing HubSpot CRM into your marketing strategy:

Why To Choose HubSpot CRM As Your CRM Solution?

1. HubSpot is Available For Free

When comparing CRM solutions, you’ll find that most of them cost money. Although many of these solutions have free trials or even free versions, they are often limited in their number of usable or accessible features. HubSpot provides its CRM solution for free. While they do have paid versions available with added features, the free version is absolutely packed with features and almost no limitations. For example, your HubSpot CRM platform will be accessible to unlimited users, and stores upwards of one million contacts.

Similar Article: Using HubSpot Lead Flows to Improve Conversion Rates

2. HubSpot is Packed With Features

For a free CRM, you’ll be surprised at the number of beneficial features you can use. These include a standard dashboard, ticketing, tasks, deals, email scheduling, upwards of five email templates, team email, live chat, conversational bots, external form tracking, pop-up forms, company records, contact management, contact and company insights, and more. 

3. HubSpot is Scalable

As expected,  your business will grow over time. Therefore, whatever CRM solution you implement, you should make sure that it can handle significant increases in customer data. Even HubSpot’s free version is capable of doing this. It is, after all, able to handle upwards of one million contacts. This is enough for even the world’s biggest corporations. Should your business expand to the point where you need added functionality, you’ll probably be at the point where your budget has no problem accommodating one of HubSpot’s paid versions.

4. HubSpot Can Be Easily Integrated

Due to HubSpot CRM being designed to integrate with a wide range of applications,  you should have no issue integrating it with your existing marketing technology stack. Some of the other applications that HubSpot CRM can be integrated with include Dropbox, Gmail, Outlook, MailChimp, WordPress, Salesforce, Facebook, and more.

Similar Article: What Are The Benefits of Using HubSpot Marketing Automation Tools?

5. HubSpot is Extremely Intuitive

Next, HubSpot CRM was designed to be user-friendly. Your team members can easily obtain the data and functionality they need, as a result of the intuitive menus containing only the most useful elements. Additionally, the dashboards make it easy to align your marketing and sales goals, along with establishing who is responsible for what, and identifying the current state of your marketing and sales efforts in real time.

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6. HubSpot Will Improve Conversions

Finally, HubSpot provides tools that allow for tracking leads as they navigate your website. You can monitor what actions they take to determine how ready they are to be engaged. In fact, this makes HubSpot particularly effective for both marketing and sales teams. Your sales personnel will be able to identify the highest quality leads, and use information gathered by your marketing team. Subsequently, this will help them nurture the lead and close the sale (such as what products the lead has viewed the most, for example).

Even if you’re running a smaller to mid-sized company, you will not want to go without a CRM platform for long. Implementing a CRM solution is going to make your marketing and sales efforts much more efficient and, therefore, effective. As far as CRM solutions go, you can’t go wrong with HubSpot CRM. This highly advantageous CRM tool understandably continues to be one of the most popular options on the market.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

A Guide to the Consideration Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

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Once you’ve managed to draw new leads to your brand by presenting content that helps consumers navigate their problems through the awareness stage, you’ll want to make sure that you have content living on your site (and on other channels, such as social media and email as well) that addresses the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey.

What Is The Consideration Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey?

The consideration stage of the buyer’s journey follows directly after the awareness stage. Once a consumer has a better understanding of what their pain point is as well as of what the potential causes of their problem are, they will begin searching for solutions. It’s during the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey that they will begin to explore their purchasing options.

At this point, you will want to explain what types of solutions will help with their specific problems as well as what their options are and present your products and services as a potential solution.

Let’s say the consumer has decided that they need to replace their current computer, which keeps freezing. They already know that they need to replace their computer and why they need to replace it. If you’re selling brand new computers, then you’ll want to present content that helps provide information that will help guide them to making the right purchase. They may have questions that include:

  • How much do new computers cost?
  • What kind of computer do I need?Image result for buyer's journey
  • Should I buy a new or used computer?
  • What brand is the best brand?

Content that addresses these questions is going to help consumers make a more informed decision about their purchase, thereby helping to get them closer to making a purchase.

How do you create great content with the help of the buyer’s journey?

Creating Content For The Consideration Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

You will want content on your site that specifically addresses the consideration stage for consumers who have been doing research on your site from the beginning of their buyer’s journey. However, this content will also help attract consumers out there who already know what their problem is and are performing research for potential solutions from the get-go.

While you’ll want to present your products and services as a solution, you’ll want to make sure that your content is still on the informative side and not the promotional side. The more helpful your content is in explaining what the consumer’s options are, the more they will trust your brand’s authority, which will help make them more likely to choose your solution.

You’ll want to create a variety of content, including short-form and long-form articles, videos, case studies, demo videos and more. Topics you may explore that help inform consumers looking for a new computer could include:

  • The Pros and Cons of Used vs. New Computers
  • Mac vs. PC vs. Chromebook
  • Buying a New Computer on a Budget
  • What to Look For in a New Computer

Other forms of content to consider creating include product webinars and FAQs that consumers can explore to see what your company has to offer in terms of solutions to their problems.

During the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, you’ll want to provide content that provides consumers with information about potential solutions to their problems while also introducing them to your specific products and services. The idea is to give them enough information so that they will feel comfortable making an informed purchase.

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