Archives for June 2017
Developing a Multichannel Marketing Plan for Your Business
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What is a multichannel marketing plan?
A multichannel marketing plan is one that focuses on using a variety of inbound marketing channels, techniques, and types of content to bring in new customers and keep existing customers coming back over and over again. Multichannel marketing is important for the simple fact that your offer, your solution, your resource must be where your customers are.
This type of plan encompasses both online and offline activities. Marketers who develop multichannel plans focus on specific aspects of the entire customer journey, from the initial contact with the customer to encouraging an action, converting a sale, and continuing engagement.
Certain aspects of a multichannel marketing plan are very similar to digital-specific marketing plans. However, the disadvantage of digital-specific plans is that they can have some limitations in terms of marketing integration, which is already a major challenge for marketers. Once a business has already implemented its digital marketing plan, that plan should be integrated into the company’s overall marketing efforts rather than being seen as an entirely separate entity.
Successful multichannel marketing plans…
What value is an optimized digital customer experience if your customer has a negative experience when they pick up the phone?
A successful multichannel marketing strategy focuses on customer value, engagement, and retention instead of vanity metrics.
It is a huge mistake to view or evaluate your digital marketing efforts without equally evaluating your entire reach. For example, let us presume you are a traveling consultant that speaks at live events and seminars. Your website is your reference deck, your slide deck is your educational vehicle and your social media is where your audience can engage with you after your presentation. Multichannel marketing is about being everywhere and encompasses both offline and online activities.
Thorough multichannel marketing plans can be helpful in many ways, including:
- Creating annual communications plans for small businesses
- Creating annual communications plans for a specific market or target audience for larger businesses
- Developing long-term customer engagement plans focusing on a specific market or audience
Creating your own clear multichannel plan
Any successful multichannel marketing plan should contain the following elements:
- Clear goals you can realistically achieve with your plan. A single view of the customer journey across all channels.
- A well thought-out strategy that will allow you to achieve those goals, while also factoring in the competition you face
- Plenty of details about the actions you must take to be able to take this strategy and put it into action
- Ways to measure the success of your plan to ensure you remain on track for achieving the goals you have set for it
Your multichannel marketing plan will take into account many of the same elements a marketing plan on a single channel does but in more of a “big picture” sense. For example, which industry influencers are you able to leverage to get more visibility and improve your ROI? Which types of tracking tools are available in each specific channel to help you ensure sustained success? What are the best methods of increasing engagement in each individual channel you are using? How do you assess the value of customers across each channel?
Your multichannel marketing platform must include processes and technology that support campaign segmentation, workflow, campaign optimization based upon analytics, content creation that is multipurpose across various channels, attribution tracking, inbound and outbound call tracking by resource, response attribution, and more.
For more information about developing a multichannel marketing plan, contact us today at Viral Solutions and we will be happy to help you begin your next marketing journey.
What Infusionsoft Can’t Do
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We volunteer our time up to ten hours per month to help start-ups and entrepreneurs learn how to use our favorite tool, Infusionsoft. These are small group meetings ranging from one to twenty-five. Whoever comes, gets help. It is that simple.
Over the years, we have noticed something in common with the struggling subscribers of SalesForce, Ace of Sales, Eloqua, and even Infusionsoft. First, we admit the learning curve of mastering these tools is very steep. However, there are some expectations that are not being met and I would like to mention what those are and why they may never be met by spending money on such a system.
How do I know these things? I have either done them, expected them to happen, or moreover, been a part of a discussion involving such beliefs. Let's talk about these issues and concerns in the context of the tool I know the best.
Infusionsoft Will Not Maintain Itself
Infusionsoft is a great tool, but it is only a tool. In the end, you are responsible for how you choose to use it. It is not a mind reader, and it cannot derive or extrapolate implied information. As they say, “garbage in, garbage out.”
When you use Infusionsoft, it’s up to you to educate your prospects, clients, and staff on how you can maintain a pristine, clean database.
- Educate your clients on the use of unique identifiers
For example, Infusionsoft uses the primary email address listed as a unique identifier, much like the government uses your SSN or SIN. When people enter the same email for multiple records or registrations and you have your “duplicate record check” set, you need to understand that new data will overwrite the old data.
Without this understanding, you could be throwing away the information for potential new business opportunities and not even realize it!
- Check for dublicate records
Keep your data clean at all times. Check for duplicate records every time that you import data, and every month after that. Have your settings on your WebForms and Landing Pages auto-check whenever any data is filled out.
A failure to remove duplicate records could mean that you’re sending repeat messages to targets, annoying and harassing them, and ultimately turning them away from your business.
- Typos, capitalization, and spelling errors.
How does your prospect know that you bought your list? Probably because you imported it in ALL CAPS, and when you merged the fields it stays in ALL CAPS.
Come on — is that really the kind of message you want to send your prospect? Is that the kind of message you want to receive? Present yourself in a professional manner by eliminating typos and all caps and by using clean, correct grammar in all of your content. Low-quality content simply shows prospects that you don’t take pride in the quality of your work.
- Erroneous data or field entries
Teach and train yourself and other users to enter the correct data into the correct fields. If you fail to do so, you’re not going to reach out to the correct contacts or will be operating on false information.
Remember: Infusionsoft is not an interpreter — it’s just a parrot, only repeating what you have put into it.
Gather Information Your Prospect is Not Willing to Give
In this day of suspect internet security, many prospects are understandably unwilling to share private information. However, you need this information to fill out your Infusionsoft forms and keep in contact with them.
Therefore, you need to offer them something compelling in return. The more compelling your offer, the more information they’ll be willing to part with, such as:
- Their role in life or career
- Date of birth
- Annviersary
- Spouse or child’s name
- Where they were born or raised
- Employment history
- Personal interests
- Social media links
- Their beliefs that impact your offer
All of this information would allow you to target your prospect better. But how compelling is your offer? Infusionsoft can’t help you there — only you can make sure that you’re offering your prospects a good enough product or experience in return for their information.
Fix a Bad Business
There are certain aspects of your business that simply can’t be fixed with Infusionsoft, meaning you need to take the responsibility for these things yourself before you get started. If a business model does not appeal to the audience in your system, the system will not make millions.
Infusionsoft WILL NOT:
- Tell you how to price an item.
- Close deals by itself. You need to be able to use your own personal touch.
- Single-handedly convey your message in the way you want to get it across.
- Establish morals and ethics that are not present in your business or your prospects’ businesses. This is hugely important!
- Change your personality or the personality of your prospect.
- Change your image.
- Establish sound policy, procedures or processes.
- Plug a cable into your head and download.
It’s easy to look for a scapegoat when your business or software is not functioning the way you want it to. Heck, blaming Infusionsoft is a whole lot easier than looking in the mirror and figuring out the real reasons for your issues.
But if you want to have any hope of finding success with Infusionsoft, you need to take a long, hard look at the problems facing your company before you get started with Infusionsoft and determine which ones you need to solve on your own first.
Measure Inactivity
Guess what: Infusionsoft doesn’t magically fix all of your problems as soon as you purchase it, and it won’t make all of your prospects magically engage with your content.
When your customers don’t get engaged, realize this about Infusionsoft:
- It will not tell you WHY your customers aren’t getting engaged.
- If you hit the wrong button, you will send the wrong message.
- The AUTO RE BUY option might not be the best course of action, especially if you’re doing it just because you need the sales.
Yes, lack of engagement is a problem. Cookies, tracking, and unopened emails are on the rise all over the place, partially because of the sheer volume of emails people receive on a daily basis and partially because of increasing security. Emails used to automatically open images, for example, and now users have to allow images to be displayed, which could lead to the email not being registered as “opened” if they decline the option.
Remember: the best way to make sure that you’re getting loyalty and repeat business out of your customer is by showing the customer that you are dedicated to meeting their needs and that you are committed to putting forward a high-quality product. Those are issues that you have to address outside of Infusionsoft.
Grow a Wallflower
If you’re not being socially active, and if you are not doing everything you can to actively engage with your customers, then there’s not really a point in using Infusionsoft.
Consider the following points:
- If you have a single approach and don’t integrate your message in a 360 degree format, then that’s what it will remain. Social media is SOCIAL first and foremost.
- If you don’t engage with your audience, Infusionsoft won’t do it for you. When the time is right, you need to get personal.
- If you don’t LOGIN, it won’t REPORT to you.
- It won’t demand that you show up for work.
- It won’t turn a passive voice into a confident voice.
Most of all, Infusionsoft cannot execute a marketing plan that you’ve never written!
Get active on social media. Participate in discussions on Twitter and Facebook. Expand your presence on LinkedIn and position yourself as an expert in your field. Be proactive about starting conversations, not just joining them.
If you are a wallflower, Infusionsoft can’t help you. But if you are a social butterfly, then it can be a powerful tool.
Today's sales and marketing automation software are amazing. Buying it is not the part that makes you and me amazing. Breaking bad business habits and treating the tool like the chief in your business is how you really make them hum.
Seeking to attain digital marketing success? Contact us immediately or visit our website to learn more about assisting your company.
Marketing Trends Series: Importance of Big Data
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In this final installment of our marketing trends series, we will take a look at the importance of “big data” and how it is shaping digital marketing as a whole, both as a trend this year and as a major influence for the future.
Many companies today are collecting data from a wider variety of sources than ever before to enhance their digital marketing capabilities. In many cases, today’s digital campaigns are more effective than old forms of advertising, meaning the companies that were capable of adjusting to the digital world have had a leg up over those still using old-fashioned advertising techniques.
The amount of data and analytics available can be overwhelming.
But here are some of the biggest reasons why so many companies are emphasizing the importance of big data analysis:
Big data makes visualization easier:
Marketers are always looking for better ways to quickly understand and interpret their data. There are plenty of data visualization tools available to decipher big data and what the information you have collected actually means. As a result, businesses are able to gather their marketing teams together to discuss data in more detail without confusion and while having factual, easily visible evidence to support ideas being shared in these discussions. In this way, all decisions will be made based on a clear understanding of the data points being discussed, rather than on guesses of what the data collected could mean.
Big data allows you to more quickly collect customer insights:
Today there are plenty of data analytics tools available to allow you to analyze all of the incoming customer insights and data in real-time. This means you are able to more quickly adapt and respond to the changing habits, preferences, or demands of your customers to constantly provide them with the best possible experience. These shorter “pivot times” will help you stay ahead of any competitors who are not as equipped to analyze their big data in real-time.
Big data analytics does not have to be expensive:
Even smaller businesses can make use of big data analytics. When companies are unable to manage their own databases, there are other third-party services that now offer data analytics as an outsourced service, which can be ideal for small companies with large amounts of data but not enough cash flow to purchase their own analytics tools and/or licenses.
The information gained from big data will help you form predictive models:
The data you collect about past events will help you pinpoint trends and identify the best routes forward, allowing you to plan campaigns far into the future. A restaurant, for example, could take the information gained from customer orders to determine which items perform the best in certain circumstances, then offer specials for less popular meals to get them to sell more or find ways to improve those lower-performing menu items to make them more popular.
You can collect your data from many different sources:
Search engine data, social networks, crowdsourcing, transaction tracking, and web mining are all outstanding sources of data that you can use to inform your marketing processes.
These are just a few of the biggest reasons why big data is the “big” thing this year. Contact us today at Viral Solutions for more information about how to collect and analyze big data for your company.
Infusionsoft Basic Settings: CRM Settings for Beginners – Part 1
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If you are new or a novice with Infusionsoft then this series is for you. In this blog article series, we hope to help you with the basic settings in Infusionsoft, the ones that matter and the ones that may not. After all, to start with a campaign build is not wise, might be what is wanted, but again a bad move.
When building a home, a solid plumb level and square foundation are important to a wallpaper hanger, that is the part of the house that helps the wallpaper align square with the window and door trim.
Infusionsoft basic settings are not sexy but you will be glad you spent some extra time on them so this piece of SaaS can do its magic when you need it most.
Infusionsoft Basic Settings under the CRM tab is where you will find all contact and company settings. This set of settings is used for Tasks, Notes, Tags, Contact Types, Titles, and Suffixes for addressing professionals and a whole host of items that may be important to your organization. In this article, we will discuss the General CRM settings options.
CRM > Settings > General
Company: Minimum Account # Length
This is where you enter a whole number before you ever add a company record it this establishes the numeric length of the company's account number, which is rarely used in Infusionsoft. Unless you are B2B, this can be skipped, and even then it is doubtful it will be needed since most searches are performed on the contact record even if searching for a company association.
Contact: Contact Types
These are used in the dropdown field “Person Type” of a contact detail record. This list comes with default information set as Prospect, Customer, Partner, Personal Contact, and Vendor. Take some time to think this through as this will be used in your reports, dashboard, and sorting process. Many users with a defined sales funnel use it, as do those who utilize Infusionsoft for internal communication and contact third-party vendors and suppliers. We commonly add the types “Suspect” and “Internal”.
Contact: Titles
This is used to address people in any merge field where formality is important. The defaults are Mr, Mrs, Dr, and Ms. We commonly add “Miss”, “Rev.”, “Sir”, and others. Punctuation is important as any future integrations with third-party forms can break these settings. Also, train your users to know if punctuation is included or not so that they do not duplicate that in prepared documents with merge fields. This feature shows up on the Contact Detail screen under the “Additional Info” tab.
Contact: Suffixes
is used to address people in any merge field where formality is important. The defaults are I, II, III, IV, Ph.D., Jr. We commonly add “Sr.”, “MBA.”, “Esq.”, “MD”, and others. We usually remove III and IV. We also sort them based on common use. Punctuation is important as any future integrations with third-party forms can break these settings. Also, train your users to know if punctuation is included or not so that they do not duplicate that in prepared documents with merge fields. This feature shows up on the Contact Detail screen under the “Additional Info” tab.
Contact: Phone Types and Fax Types
These are used as a visual aid when viewing the contact detail record and do not have any other use, such as reporting. Sorting by phone numbers in reports or filtering for those who have certain phone number fields with data is how you find those contacts. So these are again for the end-user to help identify what is contained in the field. It is critical that your CRM maintain discipline for which phone field contains what information. Only phone field one can be used for finding duplicate entries. Therefore here you have the defaults of Work, Home, Mobile, and Other. We use those and add Direct for B2B clients. We also reorder them based upon client need and common use as the top one is the default. These can also be changed with form submissions if so desired. Change these settings later and you might break the ones in use. In the contact detail record, these show up with every phone field, default or custom.
Contact: Address 1 Label (2 and 3 also)
This is a setting for reports and other lookups. Changing this setting does not change the bold heading on the contact detail record; that happens in another place we will show you later. It is more important at this stage to understand that Infusionsoft e-commerce uses the first field in the contact record for verifying the credit card billing address and likewise in B2B invoices. Again, database integrity is about discipline from day one and it is important for the vibrant organization to understand these factors.
Client Login
This, for the most part, is a legacy feature. Most Infusionsoft users utilize membership sites, internal forms, and email update/opt-out links to enable the contact to change or modify their record. This is not an important setting and we would leave it as the default software has it set.
Adding Contacts: Default Add-New Contact Form
is a very handy feature for those Infusionsoft users that have a back-office need for internal forms and other circumstances. Here you choose the default form desired when someone adds a contact manually. when you build internal forms in campaign builder they will show up here also and that is a great way to really help your back office people enter data as the leadership desires it to be. We almost always build custom internal forms that are set up and branded for back-office sales teams, traveling coaches/consultants, or call centers. The “Short Add Fields” section then helps limit the information being manually entered into the CRM to those fields highlighted but does not limit the fields after the record is manually created. The “Quick-Add Forms” and “Default Quick-Add Form” settings go along with have also been discussed here.
The information provided here is not intended to apply to every case. Infusionsoft is incredibly agile and therefore it can be complicated. Your basic settings in Infusionsoft need to take into account your type of business, your target market, your users, how you gather leads and sell your wares – just to name a few factors. Just like when you buy a new car and you need to learn where all the buttons and settings are, that is also true with Infusionsoft. We highly recommend you learn the subtle differences of each setting before you use the software to help your small business succeed. All information provided is based upon version 1.65 as of the date of this publication.
In our next article on Infusionsoft Basic Settings, we will go over the settings under CRM > Settings > Tasks Appt Note.
Marketing Trends Series: The Rise of Interactive Content
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Modern marketing is about more than just informing — it’s about engaging. Marketers are expected to create campaigns that engage their audiences, encouraging them to take action and become customers who keep coming back again and again.
Content marketing has become one of the most effective ways to engage an audience. About 70 percent of marketers are creating more content today than they were even just a year ago. But the field of content marketing has become more than just blogs, articles, and videos.
Over the last few years, we have seen the rise of interactive forms of content, which are expected to be one of the dominating marketing trends of this year.
“Internet. Interactive. The two were destined to collide. The term ‘internet' came to be because it connected networks. The prefix ‘Inter' means ‘between.' It follows that ‘interactive' means ‘action between.' Or something like that. The point is we were destined to interact online. We live for interaction and the Internet lives to give it to us.”
Here are the five main types of interactive forms of content:
- Assessments: Users answer a series of questions and are then placed into several categories. You’ve likely seen plenty of Buzzfeed quizzes like “Which Disney character are you?” plastered all over your Facebook feed — this is a quintessential example.
- Calculators: Answers provided by users get plugged into a set of calculations on the back end that then provide a unique, numeric result for the person entering the numbers.
- Trivia: Again, these are popular all over social media, from Sporcle quizzes to “How many U.S. Presidents can you name?” quizzes from sites like Buzzfeed.
- Polls/Surveys: Used to get feedback, opinions and insight from users who fill out a questionnaire you provide for them.
- Brackets: Tournament-style content set up to determine a winner. March Madness is the first and most obvious example that comes to mind.
Interactive forms of content can be used by just about anyone, from media stalwarts like Buzzfeed and The New York Times to small businesses. It has even begun to pick up in the B2B marketing world as a means of building up larger databases, developing more thorough prospect profiles, and improving lead scoring.
What makes interactive forms of content so effective?
Interactive forms of content essentially allow you to have a more dynamic conversation with your audience. While blogs and articles have plenty of informative benefits, they are more about you sharing information than actually having a conversation. Interactive content promotes more engagement and enthusiasm among your audience.
One of the main reasons why it works is that the allure of testing themselves, competing with others, sharing their opinions, and comparing their results with friends is just too much for many people to resist. This type of content is extremely shareable on social media, as well. You’ve likely noticed how when one person on your newsfeed takes and shares a quiz, it begins to make the rounds among your mutual friends.
Ultimately, this kind of content provides a different kind of value to your customers than your blogs, articles, or videos. They get immediate and personalized results that they care about looking at.
This interactivity provides a number of benefits to marketers as well. You are able to learn a lot more about your audience when they are more eager about providing you with feedback or information. It gives you a better idea of the kinds of thoughts and emotions your customers experience so you are better able to connect with them and market to them.
Start planning your content
Of course, it’s not enough to just throw together a quiz and hope your audience takes it. Like any type of marketing, interactive content takes a great deal of planning and strategy to ensure it is actually as effective as you want it to be.
For more information about interactive forms of content and how to develop a strategy of your own, contact us at Viral Solutions today.