The 5-Message Sequence: A LinkedIn Marketing Strategy that Generated $101k+ in 9 Months

You don’t need thousands of leads.

You just need the right ones. The question is… how do you find them?

A lot of people focus too much of their time being everywhere and everything to everyone in the hopes that something will work, and they’ll finally get traction—we call this the “Spray and Pray” approach.

But as a DigitalMarketer reader, you already know that it takes a well-planned strategy and action plan to have success.

What may surprise you, however, is that being on all the social media outlets, pumping out content, and putting ads everywhere…

Is not always necessary, especially when you’re looking to sell a high-ticket service offering.

Being on all the social media outlets, pumping out content, and putting ads everywhere is not always necessary, especially when you’re looking to sell a high-ticket service offering.

This may seem blasphemous to many a marketer, but in these cases, a more simple, straightforward approach based on building strategic business relationships can many times trump big ad spends or complicated funnels.

And one of the BEST places to do this is actually on LinkedIn, where there are TONS of businesses to compete against, true, but where you also have all the big-name prospects you’d ever need at your fingertips.

You just need a way to stand out and rise above all the noise. And building relationships is the key to that.

Following this simple, straightforward approach, we’ve been able to help our clients build relationships with their ideal prospects. This system has generated appointments with decision makers at big-name companies like…

via GIPHY

This works for nearly any industry, as long as you have a specific prospect and a high-ticket offering.

Today, you’ll learn about Matt Jones, a corporate health and safety consultant, who finally saw major traction in his business when he streamlined his marketing efforts to focus on relationships and, using a simple 5-message sequence on LinkedIn, generated over $101,000 in fewer than 9 months.

You’ll also learn:

• How the common approach most people take on LinkedIn backfires and how you can stand out from your competitors in a crowded market
• Why LinkedIn is a gold mine for building strategic relationships and starting business conversations
• What successful salespeople do to stay top-of-mind with their best prospects without being pushy or salesy
• The exact messaging scripts we taught Matt Jones and hundreds of other business owners like him to generate appointments and sales with his high-ticket prospects
• How the scripts work within a larger relationship marketing strategy and how you can implement this for your own business to build major trust with your prospects, create undeniable industry authority and influence, and even close high-ticket leads

But first, let’s talk about what doesn’t work on LinkedIn…

The Hard-and-Fast Sell

Coaches and consultants are everywhere. Take a look at how many are on LinkedIn…

And if you want to blend in with the rest of them, try this:

This is extremely commonplace, even though it doesn’t work…

Sure, you might get 1 or 2 people to bite eventually because, like they say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

But when you are targeting your MOST valuable leads, many of us can’t afford to burn through prospects left and right.

Let’s explore why the hard-and-fast sell doesn’t work.

No one explains it better than Chet Holmes, author of The Ultimate Sales Machine, with his Demand Generation Pyramid. It looks like this:

Chet’s research revealed that only 3% of your target market are actually ready to buy at any time. Which means that if you send a message on LinkedIn encouraging someone to buy right away, there’s a 97% chance that they’re not ready to hear your offer and will immediately shut you down—not the result we’re after!

This requires a complete switch in how we sell…

When you focus on building a relationship instead of going directly for the hard sell, you’ll not only build trust with your prospect, you’ll also position yourself as an expert authority in your industry.

THIS is how you stand out from all the other vendors fighting for your prospect’s attention so that when they do move into that 3% that’s ready to buy, they know exactly who they’ll turn to.

(NOTE: Before you can start targeting your audience, you need to know who your ideal customer is, where they are, and what they will buy. Download our proven Customer Avatar Worksheet now and get clear on who you’re selling to.)

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Do What the Most Successful Salespeople Do

The question is, how do we actually build that trust and nurture a sincere relationship? To answer that, let’s take a look at what the most successful salespeople are already doing…

They already know that a hard sell like the one above isn’t going to cut it. They also know that it actually takes 7 to 13+ touches before most prospects will even consider doing business with you.

Microsoft shared their research on this…

What buyers and decision-makers respond to is a positive experience and a valuable relationship, especially if they’re one of the 97% that’s not ready to buy yet.

(*As a side note—this is one reason why LinkedIn is so perfect for this strategy… it allows you to easily message your best prospects in a FAR less crowded inbox than email.)

The problem is, most businesses don’t even make it to 5 touchpoints. As you can see from the graphic above, Microsoft’s study shows that by the fourth contact, a full 89% of salespeople have moved on.

What buyers and decision-makers respond to is a positive experience and a valuable relationship, especially if they’re one of the 97% that’s not ready to buy yet.

In fact, Salesforce explains it perfectly, “To win at selling now means helping your customers win too, fostering a discussion that uncovers their needs and proposing solutions that best fit them.”

See the chart below for their findings:

All this tells us that business buyers respond most to those they trust and have a relationship with.

Now let’s take a look at how business owners like Matt Jones are able to build relationships with their best prospects using our process…

The Exact Process Matt Jones Followed to Generate over $100K in 9 Months

Matt Jones is the Owner and Operator of Advanced Safety, a health and safety consultancy in New Zealand, and before he started using the exact process I’m about to show you, he was in a very sticky place. He knew he had something to offer, he knew that he could make his business work, but he just hadn’t figured out how to do it.

He needed a consistent stream of good-quality leads, giving him opportunities to close new clients every single month. With only a few hundred in the bank and pressure from all sides to return to the corporate world, he needed to do something different…

“I was a start-up business. I literally had a few hundred dollars in the bank. It was a crossroads moment in my life where I had the choice of turning back to the corporate world or going out myself. I had a lot of people in the background advising me to get back to the corporate world where I had a guaranteed income and could pay the mortgage and the bills.”

So, using the system we taught him, he gave it one last effort and started to create simple relationships with his primary targets.

Once they trusted him as an expert in his field and as someone who could deliver results for them, these relationships naturally turned into the conversations that fueled his business growth and allowed him to produce more than $100,000 within 9 months.

Here’s the exact process we helped Matt, along with hundreds of others, implement on LinkedIn to build more trust with their best, high-value prospects:

Niche Down

First, he niched down and got very clear on exactly who he wanted to target. This is key to the whole system!

(RELATED: [DOWNLOAD] The Customer Avatar Worksheet: Finally, Get Clear on WHO You Are Selling To!)

If you target the wrong people…

1. The sale will be harder
2. They’ll likely be more difficult clients to work with
3. They won’t help your business move forward. You want to target people who will become excellent clients, people you know you can get results for, and people who will pay you appropriately for those results

You might have heard the phrase, “the riches are in the niches,” or like Seth Godin said, “Everyone is not your customer.” And it’s ABSOLUTELY true. Because you cannot be everything to everyone.

Matt decided to target small, medium, and large businesses specifically in New Zealand. He created a LinkedIn group to attract these very people…

Is he missing out on business?

No. It’s the opposite.

He’s able to speak to a specific group of people who have very specific, shared experiences and interests. In his communication, he is now able to speak directly to those specific needs and interests, positioning himself as THE go-to guy for anyone in that situation who needs help with their taxes.

Here are some other examples of what that looks like…

And don’t worry, as you grow, you can expand outside your chosen niche. In fact, look at what our client, Aaron Agius did…

He initially started out targeting “Marketing executives and directors in Australia.”

Now, he didn’t ONLY work with Australians. But he tailored his LinkedIn work more specifically to that audience to help him stand above the noise. Once he began to get a following in that niche, he expanded to include international audiences.

But it doesn’t just have to be finding your niche based on geography.

Just look at Tom Swip, CEO of Swip System, a software development company specifically for manufacturers.

We have clients who tailor their LinkedIn campaigns to all sorts of different niches—from job position or title to industry, gender, age, and more.

Starting with a well-defined niche and following the rest of the process in this article is what has led Tom to generate over $600,000 in new client revenue.

Build and Nurture the Relationship

Once Matt knew exactly who his BEST prospects would be, he began messaging them in a very strategic way designed to build trust and nurture the relationship.

To do so, he used a multi-point messaging process that looks like this…

Message 1: Thanks for Connecting

Message 2: Link to quality resource

Message 3: Link to high-level discussion in group

Message 4: Request for call

Message 5: Follow up to Message 4

Let’s dive into each of these messages now…

Your Multi-Touch Messaging Campaign

Below is an example messaging template we recommend to Matt and other consultants and coaches to help open the door to sincere business conversations. You will want to update these scripts to include specifics about you, your business, your prospect, and your industry.

Consider this a starting point to boost your own messaging campaigns and spread them out over a few weeks.

Message 1: Thanks for connecting

This message sets the tone for the relationship.

Instead of being another sales rep with commission-breath on the tongue. We are simply thanking the prospect for connecting and looking to build on that connection on LinkedIn.

Message 2: Link to quality resource (3^rd party content)

This message is about value and positioning.

You are providing your prospect a resource they’ll find useful without an immediate benefit to your bottom-line.

That positions you differently in the mind of your prospect.

You led with value that wasn’t directly tied to a sales funnel.

You are now a resource.

Message 3: Link to group discussion

For our clients with a LinkedIn group, this is where we love to promote the group through the lens of it being another resource the prospect can use.

If you have created a group that is specifically for your prospects and about what they care about (not just your solution), then this will cement you as an industry resource in the mind of your prospect.

You aren’t another vendor. You are different. You can be a trusted advisor.

Message 4: Request for phone call

A key addition to Message 4 is providing a quasi-specific timeframe for this conversation.

The easier you can make your call to action on a prospect, the more prospects you’ll have follow through.

This approach is looking to further build the relationship with your prospect.

We find in our campaigns that giving general timeframes (i.e. day of the week + morning/afternoon) is the best practice.

This approach is looking to further build the relationship with your prospect.

By getting them into a conversation or appointment, you are effectively taking the relationship to the next level. Think of this as moving in with your boyfriend or girlfriend. You haven’t yet made the pitch (proposal) or sale (marriage), but you’re moving toward that point.

Message 5: Follow-up for phone call

Always, always, always follow-up.

Don’t leave your call to action by itself. Add a follow-up, and you may try a different angle with this one. For example, you see above the place in the template to add some information about your business and who you help.

This is a more direct approach, but it can be effective as a follow-up.

How You Can Get More Appointments with Your High-Value Prospects

This messaging strategy has seen success in numerous industries and with various company sizes, from small to big businesses. It has also helped our clients get their foot in the door at otherwise nearly-impossible-to-reach big-name companies—and it can do the same for you.

The best part is, targeting your best prospects and sending out a multi-touch messaging campaign doesn’t take nearly as much time as you think, especially once you break it down into a manageable system. Then, once you’ve developed the relationship, the sales conversation happens much more naturally, so that when your client eventually moves into the 3% of prospects that are ready to buy, you already have the relationship and you’ve already proved your value.

However… remember that this messaging campaign should be part of a larger LinkedIn strategy; success on LinkedIn isn’t just about logging on and blasting out messages to everyone.

While the messages we just reviewed are a key factor in a successful LinkedIn campaign, they work best in synergy with other components of a strategic plan. So, in order to maximize the effectiveness of your messaging campaign, here are a few other things to keep in mind.

You need to:

• Properly optimize your profile to attract your best prospects in the first place
• Have an efficient system to continually bring new prospects into your network
• Use the right language in YOUR specific message that will compel them to take action
• Know how to convert them from an appointment into a paying client

When you use a marketing method that focuses on creating and nurturing strategic relationships with the RIGHT prospects, you can stop the “Spray and Pray” approach that is too common on social media these days and start booking high-ticket sales appointments on LinkedIn.

(NOTE: Before you can start targeting your audience, you need to know who your ideal customer is, where they are, and what they will buy. Download our proven Customer Avatar Worksheet now and get clear on who you’re selling to.)

The post The 5-Message Sequence: A LinkedIn Marketing Strategy that Generated $101k+ in 9 Months appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

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Facebook Group Hacks with Pat Flynn

The post Facebook Group Hacks with Pat Flynn appeared first on ProBlogger.

Our team has just finished watching this video of Pat Flynn’s from earlier this year. It’s all about using Facebook groups, and he shares 27 different tips and hacks for Facebook marketing within your groups.

We think it will give you a lot of great ideas for your own Facebook group. It even prompted us to reflect on how we use Facebook groups at ProBlogger.

Pat’s Facebook business group tips are for how to:

• Grow your group
• Increase engagement
• Make money from it

Check out all of his 27 tips and hacks here:

For the first six tips (‘Growing your group’), I’ve outlined what it looks like for us at ProBlogger.

Growing your group:

1. Make joining part of a step-by-step process (0:51)

Unlike Pat, we don’t send first-time visitors to the Facebook Group from our Start Here page. Instead we use it to help new users navigate our site, and prompt them to sign up to ProBlogger PLUS.

2. Put a call to action to join in your email signature (1:23)

This is such a simple thing to do. But only a few of our team members use signatures, and none of us have a link to the group in it. Laney is one team member who doesn’t use them, and this has prompted her to set hers up.

3. Create a handy short link for your Facebook group (1:44)

On ProBlogger our short link for the ProBlogger Community Facebook group is problogger.com/group instead of https://ift.tt/2rgkoz3.

4. Mention that short link organically in your content (2:05)

Having a short link makes it easy for Darren to mention the group in the podcast, and for people to remember it.

5. Link multiple Facebook groups together (2:23)

We hadn’t done this before now, and it took all of 30 seconds to link our new 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Course group to our main group with a note of how to sign up for the course. We may get an influx of people requesting to join, but you need a password to be accepted into the group (which you get when you sign up for the course).

6. Feature community members outside the group (2:51)

We’ve previously featured community members on the podcast (check out our Start a Blog series) and the blog (Caz McCulloch, Amelia Lee, Laura Trotta, and Sharon Gourlay).

And right now we’re in the process of inviting our community to be on the ProBlogger podcast in a series about “blogging breakthroughs”. (You can submit your breakthrough story here.)

I encourage you to go through the rest of Pat’s 27 tips and hacks to improve your own group.

Here are some more tips from the way we use groups, as well as reiteration of points Pat made.

How ProBlogger Uses Facebook Groups

Rules and Engagement

In our ProBlogger Community Closed Facebook Group (which has more than 10,000 members):

• We ask a few questions of aspiring group members applying to join:
  • What is your blog’s URL? How long have you been blogging?
  • Why do you want to join the Problogger Community group?
  • Do you agree to abide by our group rules outlined in our description?

• We use hashtags to direct discussion so it’s constructive and positive as possible for members, and to make threads easier to find
• We post our group guidelines on our About Page, and expect members to read and abide by them so everyone can come away feeling a step closer to building a successful blog
• ProBlogger Darren Rowse usually does a Facebook Live video tutorial in the group once a week (Tuesday 10:30am AEST, Wednesday 5:30pm PT, Wednesday 6:30pm MT)

Groups for Support and Feedback

We used a Facebook group to launch our Ultimate Guide to Start a Blog course in January this year for more than 1,000 enrolled students to provide us with feedback on the course.

We also have a Facebook group for a Mastermind group for people to connect before and after a live event to share ideas and expertise.

Social Learning Groups

Right now we’re most excited by our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course Facebook group, which uses new ‘Social Learning Group’ functionality.

Facebook’s Social Learning Group type has only been released in the past couple of months. We decided to try it after one of our ProBlogger Community members Melanie Surplice of Surplice of Spirit originally mentioned it in a group discussion. (How handy are groups?!)

Apparently Facebook first trialed a feature called ‘units” last year without announcing or publicizing it. Units are incorporated into this social learning group, which is just like a regular group except:

• Admins can organize posts into units, and change the order they appear in
• Group members can click ‘I’m done’ to let the admin know they’ve interacted with the unit
• Admins can view group insights and see details on unit and post completion.

We’ve set up units to match each day of our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course. For each unit we have:

• an image that relates to the day/topic of the course
• a call to action for students to share their results or comment on the learning outcome of that day

That way, students can easily find the discussion for the particular day or topic of the course they’re up to and interact with their fellow students and the ProBlogger team.

Although our courseware has forum functionality, we’ve switched it off in favor of using Facebook. Our students prefer the more open, social nature of interaction on Facebook. They also get Facebook notifications, which provide another touchpoint to check back into the course and keep progressing.

Do you have a Facebook group for your blog? Which tips do you think you can use straight away?

The post Facebook Group Hacks with Pat Flynn appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

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The Top 20+ DigitalMarketer Posts of All Time

To date, we’ve published over 1,000 blog post on the DigitalMarketer Blog.

To put this into perspective, that’s equal to about a 4,000-page college essay or 5.67 copies of A Game Of Thrones.

I don’t know a single person who would enjoy sifting through ALL of those pages to find the information most relevant to them…

So we dove into the data and picked out the top 20+ DigitalMarketer blog posts of all time (and some honorable mentions ) so you can find the best digital marketing strategies you can start applying in your business today!

(Hot Tip: bookmark this page and come back to it so you can get quick answers to the hard marketing questions, whenever you need them!)

1. DigitalMarketer’s 101 Best Email Subject Lines of 2017 (…And a 5-Year Email Subject Line Reflection)

Contained within this post are more than 500 highly swipeable headlines you can snag for your business’ email marketing. Every year we try to give you a little bit extra with this post, and since this is the 5^thanniversary, I decided to review our archives to see how DigitalMarketer’s subject lines have changed over the past five years—use this as inspiration in your email marketing in the coming year… [Continue Reading]

2. Customer Value Optimization: How to Build an Unstoppable Business

It’s the same system Starbucks and McDonald’s have used to corner the coffee and hamburger markets.  It’s the same system Amazon uses to dominate ecommerce. It’s how Best Buy, Beach Body (selling workouts like P90X), and Sports Illustrated have become household names. This system works because it exploits each and every aspect of the irrefutable law of business growth put forth by legendary marketer Jay Abraham… [Continue Reading]

3. 9 Lead Magnet Ideas with Examples (And ONE That Generated 35,859 Leads In 60 Days for DigitalMarketer…)

We’re going to look at nine different types of Lead Magnets in this article and the absolutely WRONG question most businesses are asking about generating leads. But first, you must understand the single most important element of a successful Lead Magnet… [Continue Reading]

4. 6 Trending Digital Marketing Skills to Put on a Resume

We’ll tell you the secret when it comes to future-proofing your career: It’s about your skill set, not your job title. If you have skills, or the “give a damn” to learn them (which happens to be one of DigitalMarketer’s core beliefs), you’ll never run short of assets to put on a resume. To get you started, we’ve narrowed down six indispensable digital marketing skills—and the latest trending jobs that go with them… [Continue Reading]

5. The Customer Avatar Worksheet: Finally, Get Clear on WHO You Are Selling To!

“To market a product or service properly, the first thing you must do is get clear on WHO your ideal customer is, where they are hanging out, what their challenges are…” You know building a customer avatar (some call it a buyer persona) would have a huge impact on your marketing. But how? We’ll get into the how-to in just a second, first understand that a customer avatar is… [Continue Reading]

(NOTE: Want to determine who your ideal customer is, where they are, and what they will buy? Download our proven Customer Avatar Worksheet now.)

6. 4 Lessons Learned from Running 1,573 Facebook Ad Campaigns in 4 Years

An ad is usually the first touch point for the customer, but it’s the last step when creating a marketing campaign. You could create the most magnificent Facebook campaign of all time, but if no one wants what you’re selling… it will fail. Paid traffic is the last step and if the rest of the Customer Journey is failing, your ads will fail too… [Continue Reading]

7. How To Build A Marketing Dream Team For Your Brand (Even If You Aren’t A Marketer)

Make no mistake, DigitalMarketer is not only the name of our business—it’s a career. According to Yahoo! Finance, digital marketers have an earning potential of $209,755 with 12% of these pros earning more than 150,000 annually. Even the entry-level salary is more than 73K. Not pocket change. But don’t worry, when you finish this article you’ll know what roles you need to hire to build your own internal marketing team and (as a BONUS) they won’t cost you nearly as much… [Continue Reading]

8. How To Architect The Perfect Conversion Funnel For Your Business

Allow me to introduce you to the most misused and misunderstood word in all of sales and marketing… FUNNEL. It’s not just for digital marketers… online or offline, ecommerce store or dry-cleaner, if you have a business and you have customers then you have some type of funnel (even if you call it something else)… [Continue Reading]

9. The Most Persuasive Word in the English Language (Plus 3 Sales Letter Formulas That Put It to Work)

Imagine making one small change to your sales pages to get more people scrolling down the page and reading? But not just reading. Rushing to the buy button and purchasing your product or service. This change hooks your ideal prospects and turns them into customers with less work. You could save time and energy, sell more than you ever imagined, and impress the socks off your family and friends… [Continue Reading]

10. The Ad Grid: How to Build Traffic Campaigns that Convert Higher and Scale Faster

Systemizing a strategic process is tough. Systemizing the creation of an entire traffic campaign is nearly impossible. But, after 3 years, we’ve developed a 7-step system we’ll share with you today. At DigitalMarketer, we follow this 7-Step Plan no matter the product or the traffic platform because it works… [Continue Reading]

(NOTE: Want The Ultimate Facebook Ad Template Library? Copy & paste these 7 proven Facebook ad campaigns to create low-cost, high-converting ads on demand. Get them here.)

11. The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce Email Marketing

This five-part guide has everything you need to set up a full-scale ecommerce email marketing program without outside help. So, let’s get into it, but first, let’s dive into what ecommerce email marketing is… [Continue Reading]

12. The Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas [2nd Edition]

Looking for blog post ideas? You’ve come to the right place. You’ve found the Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas, 2nd Edition. This article is divided into eight sections, each representing a goal you might be trying to reach with your blog… [Continue Reading]

13. The Only 4 Email Marketing Metrics That Matter

If I gave you $1 to spend in your business, where would it go? Your first instinct might be to invest in Facebook ads, or maybe to sock it away and save for the latest marketing software. But the highest return on investment (ROI) might come from a surprising source: your email marketing. If you want to achieve results (and who wouldn’t?), you need to figure out if your emails and campaigns are ACTUALLY driving business-building results… [Continue Reading]

14. 5 Copywriting Elements to Test on Your Landing Page

Even though copy is important, not all copy should be treated equally. Use this checklist to dive into some of the most effective copy types on your pages that are worth testing… [Continue Reading]

15. The 15-Point Landing Page Audit

With all of the Landing Page editors or themes you can use out there, it is REALLY easy to create Frankenstein’s monster without even knowing it—this will give you the process you need to avoid doing that entirely… [Continue Reading]

(NOTE: Want DigitalMarketer’s proven 8-Step Optimization Process for turning existing traffic into more leads and more sales? Get our Optimization & Testing Specialist training and certification. Learn more now.)

16.The Complete Guide to Google Analytics Campaign Tracking

When you have the ability to track your ROI on every launch, every funnel, every email, and ad campaign—you can cut the fat and double down on what’s working. This transforms your business from one that spends time, money, and resources on strategies that just seem like they’ll work well, to a business that makes smart, data-driven decisions and knows what strategies will work well… [Continue Reading]

17. Traffic Temperature: How To Build Real Relationships With Automated Campaigns

If you think about marketing as a relationship, a true relationship, not some imaginary person on the other side of a computer screen, not only will this article make WAY more sense, it will CHANGE the way you market, BUILD relationships with your customers and GROW your business… [Continue Reading]

18. How to Find Writers to Consistently Produce Click-Worthy Content for Your Blog [2nd Edition]

This is the four-step process DigitalMarketer uses to run our content creation like a machine without going crazy, without sacrificing quality, and without wasting time with poorly written, irrelevant, unusable content. If you’re looking to create high-quality content on a regular basis, start here. [Continue Reading]

19. The Remarketing Grid: The Science of Ad Retargeting Audience Segmentation

The “Remarketing Grid,” which was first shared at the Traffic and Conversion Summit in Sydney in July 2015, is a tool to help you visualize how your remarketing works. It applies to Facebook, AdWords, or any other platform and will help you picture the different audiences that you need to target. To really get a firm grasp on the Remarketing Grid, this post will be broken into three parts… [Continue Reading]

20. 3 Advanced AdWords Tactics That Increase ROI

This is not a “come one, come all” post. This article is for those looking to expand their knowledge of AdWords and take their remarketing campaigns (aka retargeting) and targeting methods to that “wicked smaht” level. These advanced tools can help you get there… [Continue Reading]

Honorable Mentions:

1. Facebook Messenger Ads: How to Use Them in Your Business
2. How to Launch a Podcast
3. 6-Point Facebook Ad Design Checklist
4. Community Manager vs. Social Media Manager: Which Hire is Right for Your Business?
5. 8 Essential Strategies to Build a Thriving Customer Community
6. 4 Persuasive Sales Copywriting Techniques to be a More Effective Copywriter—Starting Today!
7. Ecommerce + Paid Traffic: How Ezra Firestone Turned $434,256.72 into $1,422,500.15 in 30 Days Using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google and Shopify
8. How To Design Facebook Ad Images Like a Pro (…When You’re Really an Amateur)
9. The 5-Step Customer Acquisition Cost Formula
10. Not Making Sales? Don’t Kill that Product or Service Until You Read This…

(NOTE: Want to learn effective strategies to grow your business online? Join the premier online community for digital marketers for just $1 and capitalize on tested and proven marketing strategies and campaigns with our weekly webinars and 30+ Execution Plans! Start your trial today.)

The post The Top 20+ DigitalMarketer Posts of All Time appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

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Cross-Team Collaboration: How to Include All Your Employees into Different Aspects of Digital Marketing

Your brand is delicate. It can be compared to rare lily, having to be coaxed carefully and softly into full bloom. What does that mean for your brand?

You have to very deliberately curate and grow it, avoiding the many pitfalls that even big brand often fall into. One single brand image problem and you could lose a chunk of your user base.

A good strategy for cultivating a strong brand from that tender little bloom is by getting the entire team on the same page.

Why Collaborate?

Stop, collaborate and listen… Vanilla Ice knew what he was talking about… sort of. The best brands collaborate as one entity, working as a team to make sure they have the best final product possible. Those brands aren’t insisting that marketing remains in Marketing or sales remain in Sales. The whole team is responsible for each part because in the end it all fits together.

Think of your brand as a chain. Do you want a weak link breaking off the rest just because that link wasn’t aware of what is being done day to day to market it? Alright, so the analogy falls apart in the middle, but you see my point. Everyone should be collaborating and participating in the marketing of your brand.

What you will get as a final product is an innovative brand that is plugged into the community in the now, ready to move into the future.

So, where do you start?

Engage Your Team in Your Social Marketing

Social media is where your team can really thrive and get the most direct results. Authenticity is important in driving brand popularity. Consumers want to know they can trust you and so they need to relate to you. Being a faceless entity just doesn’t cut it anymore. The modern day customer expects more.

Put together a digital packet that tells your team members about the tone and voice of your company. Discuss with them what is and isn’t appropriate to post. Then ask for their ideas. You will get a ton of fresh perspectives with unique ideas for how to market the company on social media.

Another reason this is a great idea is that it will look from the consumer side like these team members are being spontaneous, while you know that while the ideas came from them, it was tailored to fit into your social campaigns.

Featured tools and resources:

Make sure you have clear guidelines in place. You don’t want your team members to go too relaxed in their public style when talking on your behalf, plus you don’t want them to feel to limited either. There’s a fine balance there and this guide from Sprout Social will help you maintain one. It also contains some actual examples of social media posting guidelines from several brands to help you out:

Slack: Set up individual channels for different teams and purposes and that my team members can interact with one another. There’s a huge potential for automating here: For example, you can import your brand mentions into Slack to engage your team in talking to your brand promoters and let them support the positive sentiment or revert the negative one:

Brand Identity and Design Decisions

A big mistake many startup founders make is to hire people from outside to design their brand identity for them. Your brand is your unique, most important asset and your team is one of those integral parts of it that makes it so unique.

Your sales team, customer support team, and of course you as a founder – you all are going to be in the front line working with your customers and getting them to like and recognize your brand going forward.

Engage your team in forming your brand identity and you’ll turn them into believers right away.

Together you can come up with a new design and identity: The more people are involved, the better! All from different backgrounds, so bringing together multiple ideas and experiences in working with your future customer.

Featured tools and resources:

Canva has a powerful collaboration element as part of their PRO package allowing teams to work together to design consistent social media graphics, working on templates and brand kits together.

Create folders for different projects, let team members create mockups and more. It is all just as intuitive as using Canva as a single person and it is so user friendly that anyone can use it without much help.

Duda is a web design platform with a very powerful collaboration component, empowering agency teams and client-side teams to contribute to website builds based on each stakeholder’s individual skill specialties:

• Add team members and assign different permission levels for bloggers, designers, developers, marketers and more.
• Automate workflow communications with clients using smart email templates that prompt them to populate content sections or to view weekly analytics reports.
• Use the “Sections: module to assign and build custom blocks of page elements that can be saved to shared libraries for flowing in to multiple client projects, making it easier to customize designs at scale.
• Make the workload you impose on your clients as light as possible by sending them forms for bulk uploads of assets that you can then easily flow into page designs.
• Create your own widgets with third-party integrations and full CSS code control and use these across pages and websites.

If you want to have more control over the tools your team is using, for a lighter, more scalable project pipeline, Duda may be worth checking out.

Invision App allows you to work with your team by designing logos, websites and more on this collaboration app. Create multiple prototypes and view them on any device. It is simple, clean, easy to use and provides free feedback.

Content

Content is probably the most integrated marketing area out there. It touches every aspect of marketing, from customer satisfaction to advertising. Hence, everyone, from marketing to sales to tech, should be involved in content marketing. That doesn’t mean everyone should be writing blog posts or creating drip campaigns.

Some people can contribute to blogs, some make videos, some can simply contribute ideas and share sources.

Getting your team involved in content is one of the easiest way to engage them in digital marketing and adapt your content to cross-channel marketing. How they choose to do so makes the end result all the more unique and impactful. What matters is to set up the culture to encourage collaboration and idea sharing.

Featured tools and resources:

Trello is a great tool for sharing and organizing ideas. You can set actionable columns (with due dates and responsible people) as well as generic dashboard where everyone can just drop ideas as they come:

Coschedule is a content editorial platform that has a very powerful collaboration component. You can manage all kinds of tasks lists for every content asset in your calendar including research, brainstorming, design, and then (social media) promotion. Use color-coding, to-do lists and comments to get as many engagement as you can:

Scribblar is a fun educational tool that is usually used by teachers and students. But it is also for teams who want a more visual way of brainstorming ideas. Many find it easier to scribble a concept down then use words to describe it.

Further reading: How to Collaborate: Examples, Tips & Tools for the Ultimate Influencer-Sourced Content Asset

Do you have an idea on how to get a team collaborating on digital marketing campaigns? Let us know in the comments.

The post Cross-Team Collaboration: How to Include All Your Employees into Different Aspects of Digital Marketing appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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Sounding the Alarm: Now Is The Time to Be a Cockroach

I build businesses that high-flying tech startup investors generally don’t like.

The businesses I build are profitable, focus on cash flow, and sell commoditized services. They’re considered unexciting to tech startup investors, who want to invest in the new hotness.

I’ve tried to contort myself into building that type of business, but it’s just not for me. That’s because, in my view, those businesses are unnatural. A business must (eventually) make a profit to survive. And many of these fancy tech startups die once they’re forced–by the economy, their investors, or the public markets–to make a profit. They can’t turn the corner.

Are We at The Top?

We are, right now, in a state of economic expansion that has lasted for 10 years. Having lived through two major downturns (2001 and 2008) as an adult, I’ve trained myself to recognize the top of the market. And though I may be wrong, I feel confident in saying we are at the top right now.

That does not mean the economy will not continue to expand. “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent,” John Maynard Keynes wisely said. Timing the market is extraordinarily difficult.

I closely watched the financial news during the last two economic expansions and contractions, and for the last 3 months I’ve seen the same indicators I saw at the top of those two expansions.

So, if we’re not at the top, the markets will certainly only get more irrational and frothy from here.

Why do I mention all of these economic indicators? Because now is the time for you to start being a cockroach.

You should irrationally focus on profitability and putting as much money into the bank (liquid cash) as possible right now. And from a personal level, you should be focused on paying down debt, not taking on new debt, and stacking as much cash as you possibly can. Get money now while the economy is at the top.

As much as you can given your time and health, take on paying gigs now. Then put that cash in the bank and keep it there. You will need it when the economy tanks, whether that’s later this year, next year, or 2-3 years from now.

Why Save?

I say “irrationally” above even though what I just wrote seems rational to me, because in our consumer-driven economy, saving money and making a profit are not considered rational. Why save money when you can always just go drive for Uber to make more? (Because that option won’t always exist.) Why be a profitable business when you can just go get more funding to pursue the next hot thing? (Because investors will shut their doors on you once the economy tanks–ask anyone who tried to raise money in late 2000 or early 2001, or in 2008.)

I am warning you now: Do not take on new debt at this time, whether business or personal. It would be rational now to pull a line of credit as backup for your business–and then refuse to touch it except for emergency. (We are in the process of doing this for our business right now. Get credit while the economy is good.)

Pay off your cars. Pay off your phones. Stop buying new cars and phones. Pay off your student loans. And stack 3-6 months of money in your emergency fund.

Why Am I Saying All This?

I am blaring this horn of urgency while the rest of the economy is still having a party, and I am doing so for this reason:

In 2001, I was a web developer, working at Sun Microsystems on Sun.com (a job I hated, and was underpaid for.) There were no other companies hiring web developers, especially ones like me who were self-taught with no degree.

I eventually quit and subsisted on contract work, a lot of crappy food, and at least one eviction notice. My boyfriend at the time ended up moving in with me to my small 1BR apartment in the East Bay and paying the electric bill to avoid my utilities being shut off.

My landlord reduced my rent (when was the last time you heard of that happening in the Bay Area?) because so many people were leaving that they wanted someone to sign a 6-month lease. Please sign it, they begged. I negotiated. I got even lower rent.

After my 2001 horror story, I resolved I would never be caught unaware by a downturn again.

Throughout 2005-2007, I became obsessed with financial news as the market became irrational. By 2008, I was prepared. I correctly predicted the real estate downturn on this blog. I sold my hosting company on September 7, 2007, within a couple weeks of the peak of the market.

And then I took 4 years off without having to worry about money, while the rest of the economy tanked and everyone struggled. I built this blog, eventually reaching over a million unique visitors a year. I learned marketing inside and out.

This is not a “brag.” This is me telling you why I’m sounding the horn now. I understand it seems ludicrous to worry about this, especially if you’re young and didn’t have to live through 2001 and 2008. Those were incredibly rough years.

Now I am battening down the hatches again.

If I’m wrong, I come out of this with no debt, some savings, and a decent business (no plans to sell our business this time.) If I’m right, I can subsist on contract work again for a few years, this time eating slightly better food.

From Cockroach to Billionaire

I urge you to do the same. Cut unnecessary expenses, pay off the cars you have, make sure your business is profitable, trim unnecessary expenses there, and do not take on new debt at this time!

Take on additional paying work if it pays decently and won’t kill you health-wise. Use that extra money and put it away as cash. Do not invest it unless that investment pays cash-on-cash returns (aka dividends) and you have read the financial statements and believe the business will be OK in a downturn.

Be a cockroach, right now, while everyone else is still getting wasted at the party. Warren Buffet famously said, “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” Now is most certainly the time to rein in.

As an added bonus, stacking cash now will enable you to take advantage of market opportunities when others go bankrupt later. I am already making some plans in this area (involving commercial real estate, if you’re curious.) But now is not the time to invest. Now is the time to stack cash so you can invest later.

Billionaires often get created during downturns. In a few years, it may be your time to shine.

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The post Sounding the Alarm: Now Is The Time to Be a Cockroach appeared first on Starting Your Own Business with Erica Douglass.

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SPI 326: From $50k in Debt to Business Success in Less than a Year—How to Be Mindful and Ruthless

Today’s special guest is Sagi Shrieber, coming at us from Tel Aviv, Israel, who bailed himself out of $50k worth of debt by taking massive action. Today he’s sharing his journey, why he hired a coach (even though he was deep in debt), and how he’s building an amazing community in the design and entrepreneurial spaces now. Sagi’s also breaking down some of his favorite design tools, as well as quick and easy tips so you can boost your design game and maximize conversions for your business.

Sagi is what’s known as a Full Stack Designer, a designer who also knows how to get great results for sales and conversions (he uses the metaphor of an MMA fighter). It’s that kind of mindset—Sagi calls it the Full Stack life—that got him through some of the tougher times. In the end, he managed to push through the discomfort and learn to trust his gut instinct, which is where the name for his Facebook community comes from—Mindful and Ruthless. There’s a lot that we can learn from Sagi’s story, and if you want to learn how to take your design strategy to the next level, you’re going to want to stick around. Put that device in your pocket and let’s get started!

If you want to check out Sagi’s design course for 50 percent off, go to DesignPrinciples.co/pat. Sagi will also be offering a three-hour webinar soon—you can get more info on the site. If you want to learn how to communicate better with designers and developers, and create designs that stand out and create emotional connections, you won’t want to miss out!

Thank you so much to everyone who’s left a review for the show, it goes a long way toward helping convince someone who hasn’t heard the show whether it’s worth their time or not. If this podcast is something you’ve enjoyed, please leave a review on iTunes and subscribe if you haven’t done so already.

A lot of people have been asking me how I do my online courses. I don’t have a course on how to create an online course (yet), but I can tell you that it makes it really simple when you have an all-in-one platform. I host all of my online courses on Teachable. If you want to learn more about the platform, try it out, and get some free goodies to along with it, check out Teachable.com/pat. [Full Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor and an affiliate for Teachable.]

Thanks for Listening!

To share your thoughts:

• Leave a note in the comment section below.
• Ask a question over on AskPat.com.
• Share this show on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.

To help out the show:

• Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.
• Subscribe on iTunes or download our mobile app.

Special thanks to Sagi Shrieber for joining me this week. Until next time!

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You'll Learn

• How Sagi got started in design and entrepreneurship, and why he quit his day job.
• Why Sagi doesn't regret not having a salary for six months.
• Why Sagi decided to hire a coach even though he was $50k in debt.
• How Sagi launched a design course in Tel Aviv in four months and nailed it.
• What a vision map is, and why it can be a total game-changer.
• What a Full Stack Designer is and how to take advantage of design principles in your business.
• Tools, plugins, and templates for creating amazing landing pages and websites.
• The one simple rule for creating fantastic design compositions.
• Quick and easy tips for designing your web pages to maximize conversions, and more!

Resources

• Sagi Shrieber
• Pixel Perfect Magazine
• Fiverr
• Upwest Labs
• Hacking UI
• Entrepreneur On Fire Podcast
• Calvin Wayman
• Sell or Be Sold by Grant Cardone
• Social Media Marketing World
• Mindful and Ruthless Facebook Group
• Elementor WordPress Page Builder
• Leadpages
• Teachable

from SPI 326: From $50k in Debt to Business Success in Less than a Year—How to Be Mindful and Ruthless

#1622 Can the headache of outsourcing be solved?

Today’s guest runs a company called The Virtual Hub, outsourcing simplified. Here’s why outsourcing needs to be simplified. Like many of the people who I’ve interviewed, I read “The 4-hour Workweek” where Tim Ferriss talks about how to hire outsourcers. And he makes it sound like such a revolutionary concept that I had to go and use one of the companies he mentioned. And, man, it was frustrating. It was so frustrating. They didn’t get anything done. Well, today’s guest had the same problem and said, “I’m going to make it really easy for the person who’s hiring an outsourcer to get a virtual assistant who knows their work.” I invited her here to talk about how she did it. If you’re in the people business, you’re going to want to learn how she did it. If you’re selling entrepreneurs and you’re going to want to know how she did it.

Barbara Turley is the founder of The Virtual Hub, a virtual assistant company based in the Philippines

Sponsored by

StartEngine – With 150,000 registered investors, StartEngine is the largest equity crowdfunding site in the United States. StartEngine has helped 170+ companies raise more than $60 million in capital for their businesses on their own terms, directly from customers and fans. To find out more check out StartEngine

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ActiveCampaign – Improve your marketing & sales processes by upgrading to an automated platform. Start sending follow-up that adapts to your customers’ behavior so you are sending the perfect message at the perfect time. You’ll have happier customers and higher conversions. See why over 150,000 marketers use ActiveCampaign to create intelligent marketing that gets better results.

If you’re with one of their confusing competitors and you want something new, you owe it to your business to check out ActiveCampaign.

More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint
Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

from #1622 Can the headache of outsourcing be solved?

Episode 1 57: 1 BIG Facebook Ad Update You Need to Know About

Join the experts as they discuss a major update Facebook made to increase transparency, why this might be a bad thing for “Bush’s Baked Beans,” but why it is definitely a GOOD thing for your business.

If you’ve ever had trouble researching your target market and coming up with ideas for ad creatives, this update is exactly what you’re looking for. Tune in to find out why.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

• A “sneaky” new way to spy on your competitors’ ads to learn what’s working for them
• What to test in your Facebook ad campaigns so you can reach more of your audience
• New restrictions being placed on 1 Facebook ad type and how this will impact your Facebook ad strategy

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Episode 08: Ad Targeting: Put Your Offer In Front of the Right People
Episode 87: 3 Steps to Finding the Perfect Audience for Your Ads
Episode 143: Cambridge Analytica: What You Need to Know
Episode 144: Why This is Still the Best Time to Be a Facebook Marketer (Plus… Insights from Facebook’s NYC Office)
Facebook Newsroom: A New Level of Transparency for Ads and Pages
Facebook Newsroom: Shining a Light on Ads With Political Content
Facebook Newsroom: Making Ads and Pages More Transparent
Facebook Advertising Policies: Political Advertising
Active Ads from SkinnyFit
Tier11 is Hiring
Messenger Marketing & Chatbot Conference

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

iTunes not your thing? Find us on Stitcher.

The post Episode 1 57: 1 BIG Facebook Ad Update You Need to Know About appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

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Motherbirth with Mellisa Reeves

Have you been waiting to hear more about Chase’s better half’s business? What exactly is Motherbirth and how did Mellisa Reeves go about starting her company?

This episode is all about Mellisa and the business she started centering around helping and fostering meaningful maternal dialogues. Mellisa is here today, talking to Chase and unpacking her journey before and after launching her own company.

We discuss the inspiration behind her work, her job in real estate before branching out and the ideas and values that are the foundation of what she does. A big takeaway from the episode is the idea of the slow-burn approach and Chase and Mellisa really flesh out this great concept.

We also talk about charging for a service aimed at people in pain, self-awareness, content creation and getting away from the information overload.

So for all this and more, join Mellisa and Chase for an extra special episode!

Key Points From This Episode:

• Some information on what Motherbirth is about. [0:05:40.2]
• The reasons that underpin Mellisa’s work with her company and podcast. [0:07:52.6]
• Turning a passion into a profit and balancing the pressure. [0:10:56.2]
• Gauging your own inner compass of connection to what is most important. [0:14:02.1]
• The concept of slow-burn progress and the sustainability it provides. [0:17:44.6]
• A lesson we can all learn from bacteria! [0:22:20.3]
• The catalyzing factors in developing the Motherbirth course. [0:31:20.6]
• What sparked the idea of Mellisa’s motherhood coaching. [0:32:21.4]
• Making peace with charging people who are in pain. [0:38:29.3]
• The first steps in developing the group coaching and course. [0:40:01.2]
• The way Mellisa managed creating the content for each week of her course. [0:46:30.8]
• The technical skills that Mellisa picked up along the way. [0:49:25.9]
• Avoiding the entrepreneurial inclination to fiddle endlessly. [0:52:39.6]
• Why this process of fiddling is so enticing. [0:55:39.6]
• Mellisa’s policy on lessening the amount of unhealthy kinds of information. [0:57:59.6]
• And much more!

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

• Gusto — https://gusto.com/fizzle
• HoneyBook — https://www.honeybook.com/fizzle
• Sezzle — https://sezzle.com/fizzle
• Fizzle — https://fizzle.co/
• Fizzle Toolkit — https://fizzle.co/toolkit
• Fizzle Goals Course — https://fizzle.co/courses/goals
• Fizzle 80/20 Copywriting Guide — https://fizzle.co/sparkline/writing-copy-for-web
• Fizzle Journaling Course — https://fizzle.co/courses/journal
• Fizzle Roadmap — https://fizzle.co/sparkline/small-business-roadmap-1-clarity
• Fizzle Craft + Commerce — https://fizzle.co/sparkline/craft-commerce
• ConvertKit — https://fizzle.co/convertkit
• Motherbirth — https://motherbirth.co/
• Motherbirth Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/motherbirth.co/
• Motherbirth Course — https://motherbirth.co/trust-your-body-again
• Alan Watts — http://www.alanwatts.org/
• Joe Rogan — https://www.joerogan.com/
• Final Cut Pro — https://www.apple.com/lae/final-cut-pro/
• Tim Ferriss — https://tim.blog/

from Motherbirth with Mellisa Reeves

#1621 The business behind online reputations

Today’s guest is someone who had an experience with a client and it changed his life. I’ll let him tell you what happened in this interview that led him to create a company. Jason Dolle is the founder of Testimonial Tree, which helps businesses get positive online reviews and collect customer satisfaction surveys. I invited him here to talk about how he did it and how he got clients. I know working with businesses can be challenging so I want to understand how he did it.

Jason Dolle is the founder of Testimonial Tree, which helps businesses get positive online reviews and collect customer satisfaction surveys.

Sponsored by

Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.

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HostGator – Ready to take your website to the next level? Whether you’re a first-time blogger or an experienced web pro, HostGator has all the tools you need to create a great-looking website or online store. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. Founded in 2002, HostGator is the perfect web partner for business owners and individuals seeking hands-on support. Visit https://ift.tt/2HikPBw to see what HostGator can do for your website.

More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint
Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

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#1620 How a bootstrapper pivots against obsolescence

I’ve got Macs all over my office and they all come with Keynote for creating presentations FOR FREE! And still, today’s guest decided he wanted to get into the space even though he’s be competing with one of the best software creators in the world. Payman Taei is the founder of Visme, a visual design tool that allows users to create presentations, infographics and other visual content. His business is going strong so I invited him here to find out how he’s competing so well with the big guys.

Payman Taei is the founder of Visme, a visual design tool that allows users to create presentations, infographics and other visual content.

Sponsored by

Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.

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HostGator – Ready to take your website to the next level? Whether you’re a first-time blogger or an experienced web pro, HostGator has all the tools you need to create a great-looking website or online store. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. Founded in 2002, HostGator is the perfect web partner for business owners and individuals seeking hands-on support. Visit https://ift.tt/2HikPBw to see what HostGator can do for your website.

More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint
Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

from #1620 How a bootstrapper pivots against obsolescence