Growth Hacking

Why You’re Not Able to Get Leads For Your Business

Published

1 year ago

January 16, 2020

It’s important to keep your pipeline busy to keep leads flowing and sales soaring. As a result, looking for prospects or prospecting is an important activity that sales and marketing personnel should always be doing. In most cases, the marketing department is usually tasked with bringing in leads but this does not mean to say that sales can just drop the ball. Even though inbound marketing and marketing automation has done wonders in bringing in leads for the business, sales personnel still have to rely on the traditional way of bringing in business.

Here are some of the best prospecting tips to help inspire you today.

Prospect Everyday

If you want to be good at prospecting, you have to set aside time everyday to do it. if you’re one of those people who go to the gym regularly, think of prospecting as going to the gym. However, instead of building muscles, you’re building relationships and bringing in leads. Unless it rains prospects, your calendar won’t start filling itself. Set aside at least 1 hour a day to prospect. Pick up your phone and start making those phone calls. Prospecting is not the most fun activities but being consistent will yield good results.

Focus On Your Target Market

As they say, it’s a big ocean out there. It is composed of different people, industries and companies. So where should you start?

Before diving into the ocean, take time to find out who your ideal customer is. Do some research. Who are your 5 best customers? Who are your 5 worst customers? Who are the most profitable? Who are the least profitable? Create profiles for each group of customers. Just because these people are in your data base does not mean to say that they fit your ideal customer profile.

Once you know who your ideal customer is, it will be easier to start prospecting. Once you know who to focus on, it can help you land leads and secure sales more efficiently.

Use Every Method Possible

Prospecting is about building relationships. But that’s not what prospecting is for. Prospecting is about getting results from cultivating those relationships and there are many ways to do this. You can do cold calling, email marketing, networking, tradeshows, direct email, social networking, referral and many more.

Make a list of all the methods that you should and will use. For every method you use, plan which customers you will use the method on and the expected results. For example, you plan to attend 1 trade show per month and promise to get at least 2 prospects per event. Measure the results of each type of method and focus on the method that generates the best rate of return.

Be The Best At Cold Calling

Cold calling is still the best way to schedule appointments and open relationships. There are many ways to become a great cold caller but that’s for another blog. Find ways to do it and make sure that this is in your prospecting arsenal.

Nurture Relationships

Even if you’re the best in cold calling or use the best prospecting methods consistently, you’re still going to a No, and you’re going to hear it a lot. But relationships including those in business are built over time. A consistent and unrelenting pursuit of your clients should be a long term plan for success and not an overnight sales fix.

This means that your clients need to hear from you consistently, like the sun rising every morning. Some of the best business relationships will take a long time to win and consistently nurturing this relationship will open opportunities over time. Being consistent and nurturing means that you are not going to disappear like some of your peers. It means that you really want to work with them. It means that you are determined and you can execute. This is one of the characteristics businessmen look for in salespeople.

Build Your Social Media Presence

In case you were living in a rock these last few years, social media is where everybody is at. 91% of adults are on social media. 80% of internet users visit social networking sites and blogs. 57% of marketers acquire customers through social media. Companies that blog have 44% more customers. 61% of global internet users use the web to research products before purchasing.

This means that social media is where you need to be. Boost your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram presence. Hire bloggers to talk about your products or service and writers for press releases. Remember that social media should be another tool in your arsenal and should not replace any of your other prospecting activities.

These are just some of the best examples on how you can be better at prospecting. It doesn’t have to be difficult or uncomfortable especially if you cultivate relationships and have a routine to help you get on track every day. No matter what tool you use for prospecting, always remember that salespeople open relationships and good prospectors can bring in good leads.

Business

Best Unlimited Graphic Design Companies Of 2021 (+25% Promo)

Published

1 month ago

January 21, 2021

Jeffrey Davidson

Top unlimited graphic design companies featured image

Looking for an alternative to a freelance graphic designer or trying to scale your business using your existing team? A new wave of companies who call themselves “Unlimited Graphic Design Services” are disrupting the creative industry, providing a solution to what is usually an expensive and unpredictable task. Here’s what their offerings have in common:

Monthly subscription model
24-48 hour turnaround time
Work with their vetted team of designers
Unlimited design requests
Cancel anytime

Which Provider Should You Choose?

We’ve done the homework and curated a list of Unlimited Graphic Design providers for you and also negotiated special deals on your behalf. You can see them all below and decide which one fits your needs.

Unlimited Graphic Design Providers

1. Penji

$399$379

2. Kapa99

$399

3. UnicornGo!

$399

4. Graphic Zoo

$299

5. Design Shifu

$99

6. Limitless Design

$179

7. Kimp

$369

8. The Futures

$365

9. Delesign

$350

10. Many Pixels

$399

11. Creato

$3,499

12. MeetAnders

$497

13. Design Buffs

£350

14. Design Joy

$549

15. Designed

$2000

16. Grow Modo

$295

17. Church Media Squad

$597

18. No Limit Creatives

$449

19. Undullify

$149

20. Cueball Creatives

$159

21. Darkroast

$1199

22. Digital Polo

$149

23. Online Design Club

$1500

24. Draftss

$89

25. Graphiker

$99

26. Design Desk

$499

What Does Unlimited Graphic Design Mean?

These unlimited graphic design services have a monthly subscription business model. That means you can sign up and cancel whenever you like. What sets them apart from your typical freelancer, agency, or in-house designer is you gain access to a workflow that is designed to be quick and to the point.

You’ll communicate with their team through Trello, email, or an online platform. The option given is dependent on the company you choose. For example, only a small selection of services provide a custom built online platform for their customers.

Once you’re connected to their workflow, you can begin submitting as many design requests as you want. Although they all claim “unlimited”, it generally means you can “create” unlimited design requests. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll work on them all at once. Usually, they just work on one design at a time. When one completes, they start the next design.

The usual turnaround time is between 1 – 2 days, and that’s just for the first draft. It doesn’t mean your entire request is complete. If you don’t like it, you can request as many revisions as you want, and that will take more time. So it can take up to a week to actually get the design complete if you have a lot of revisions.

Another thing to keep in mind is content. You need to be able to have everything ready and provide all the content needed in order for their designers to get started.

Are they worth it?

If you have a lot of design needs, they’re definitely worth it. Being it’s a monthly recurring investment, you’ll need to make sure that you have the need for an ongoing graphic design service. This graphic design service model is comparable to outsourcing a designer yourself, except much of all the management work is done by the company. The quality of designs and turnaround time also tends to be significantly better when outsourcing a designer yourself.

Business

Top 10 Black Friday Deals for Digital Marketers 2020

Published

4 months ago

November 16, 2020

Kaytie Cayton

Rejoice, agencies and digital marketers! Black Friday deals aren’t just for flatscreen TVs and doorbusters. This year, you can also get ridiculous discounts and offers for software and services to help take your business to the next level. Here are the top 10 hottest Black Friday deals you can take advantage of right now

Penji

We’re marketers, not designers. And hiring freelancers is a time-consuming process I don’t enjoy. Meet Penji. It’s a graphic design service that lets me work with a vetted designer on as many design jobs as I want – for a flat monthly rate of $399/m.

And if that deal isn’t already good enough, here’s their Black Friday promo code to make it even sweeter.

The deal: 50% off any plan 1st month. Use promo code OMBLK50. Code is limited to the first 100 customers. Valid from now until 11/29/20.

GET THIS DEAL

SEMRush

All the SEO tools you’ll ever need under one roof. SEMRush’s comprehensive toolbox lets you manage your SEO performance, track daily rankings, analyze your competitors, research backlinks, and much more. They’re rated one of the most reliable and robust SEO tool on the market right now. Prices are usually more expensive than other software, but they’re well worth the investment.

The deal: Get 30% off on the annual SEMrush Competitive Research bundle. Valid between 11/25/20 – 12/15/20. For new users only.

GET THIS DEAL

Timecamp

Want a time + activity tracking software your team will actually want to use? Then meet Timecamp. Timecamp has just what you’re looking for. The SaaS software allows you to monitor activities and track your team’s attendance. In addition to tracking, there are over 100+ integrations to the software you’re already using.

The deal: Get 4 Months of TimeCamp for Free! Use this code at checkout: BFDEAL2020. Offer starts 11/23/20 and ends on 12/1/20.

GET THIS DEAL

SE Ranking

Marketing agencies and digital marketers are probably already familiar with keyword and competition monitoring software. You’ve probably already heard of SE Ranking for that matter. SE Ranking is a densely packed SEO tool with features such as competitor monitoring, rank/keyword tracking, keyword research tools and backlink analysis.

It even has auditing tools to show you what you need to fix on your website to rank better. We actually use this ourselves and love it.

The deal: Get 30% off ANY plans. There’s also a small chance your membership benefits will double if you’re one of 3 lucky winners after their drawing. Use code BLACKFRIDAY2020 at Checkout.

GET THIS DEAL

Email List Validation

Email marketing is great…when the emails actually deliver. Solve your email deliverability issue with Email List Validation. The software lets you verify and clean your email database to ensure you’re only sending it to working emails.

The deal: Get 25% off all plans. No code needed, just visit link below.

GET THIS DEAL

OptinMonster

Remember when everyone keeps saying email is going to go away? Yea…here we are 20 years later. And OptinMonster is proving that email marketing is here to stay. OptinMonster helps you convert and monetize your website’s traffic. Get your visitor’s attention with event-triggered popups and capture their interests with exit-intent forms.

The deal: Get 60% off all plans.

GET THIS DEAL

SocialPilot

This one is for agencies and marketers managing multiple client’s social media accounts. Put all of your client’s social media accounts on SocialPilot and leave it on Auto-pilot (bad pun I know…) SocialPilot lets you create, manage, schedule, and even finetune all your posts in one place.

The deal: Get 20% off discount on all lifetime plans. No promo codes needed. Just check out link below.

GET THIS DEAL

LongTailPro

LongTailPro is for marketers, bloggers, and digital marketing agencies looking for an effective tool to help research and track long-tail keywords. In addition to its robust search feature, you can also track rankings for all your keywords on major search engines.

The deal: Get 30% off all plans with BONUS access to competitor research and SERP analysis tools.

GET THIS DEAL

Mangools

Mangools is more than just a keyword research tool. It’s actually 5 tools combined into one platform, making it an amazing deal for marketers. You get the Keyword explorer, SERP checker, SiteProfiler, SERP watcher, and Linkminer all for the price of one.

The deal: Get 25% off

GET THIS DEAL

For Black Friday, Mangools gives a 25% discount on its SEO tools, including KWFinder, SERP Analysis, Backlink Analysis, and Rank Tracking. The offer data starts on November 29th.

HelpCrunch

HelpCrunch is a marketer’s wet dream come true. Create chat automations and popups to guide and convert visitors. Have live chat to provide instant assistance to browsing prospects. Create a knowledge base for your customers to find answers themselves. And the list of feature goes on.

The deal: 20% off any plan

GET THIS DEAL

Business

Strategies and Tools for a Growing a Pandemic-Proof Business

Published

4 months ago

October 20, 2020

Jie Kuang

For the past year, businesses have been met with unrelenting challenges. Because of this, founders are more careful about where to put their time and funds. Longevity in business is desired, so thinking critically about the strategic principles of business is a must. Growing a pandemic-proof business is possible. But how are you going to make it happen? We took our questions to Facebook groups Tech Ladies and Societygal to ask women in the industry about their input on how to grow a business successfully and efficiently.

1. How important is getting your business assets right? (logo, website, branding guidelines, etc)

When it comes to the creative aspect of building a business, there was a split in what is necessary. Recently, founders and business owners have been turning to creative services like Penji for increased design output. While there are still repercussions from the pandemic, businesses are learning to adapt by discovering these new innovative solutions.

Some of our friends at Tech Ladies and Societygal believe that it is crucial, especially when it comes to setting yourself apart from competition. Others choose to focus on other aspects of the business. Here’s what they had to say:

“Hi. I think that for number 1-It doesn’t really matter. I think what people want is results. Connect with them, and show them what your products or service can do for them. How does it solve the problem that they have.” – Prerika Agarwal, Tech Ladies

“I think that these branding pieces really matter as a way that establishes how your company will move and grow. I’ve seen a lot of small businesses that kind of wing it and I think that especially in terms of social media and web, a cohesive brand can really make a business stand out.” – Charlotte Clark, Tech Ladies

“I think it’s less about getting it right and more about being consistent and looking professional. A business that visually appears fractured hurts its own credibility.” Natalie Sharma, Tech Ladies

“The first 1-2 years, really not important! I see so many starters get lost in this search for the perfect font-pairing, the perfect logo blah blah – and what they REALLY need to be focusing on is nailing down their product suite and getting good at copy. Most of us leave corporate and can’t write a blog post or sales post for shit because we sound so wooden and stuffy! 😂 You need a website to get your message out – but honestly? Nobody cares about your logo. Would you stop buying Nike/McDonalds/Pepsi tomorrow because they switched up their logo and it sucked? No, you stay because you like the product.” – Alex Sheach, Societygal

What is a common mistake that businesses make when trying to grow?

Growing a business is not easy, especially now. With the increased number of businesses shuttering their doors because of COVID, one can only benefit from avoiding common mistakes.

“I think that one mistake is that businesses don’t take advantage of how research can validate and verify your ideas going forward. There should be a certain level of confidence in what your next steps are and how they’ll fair.” – Charlotte Clark, Tech Ladies

“The main pain point of scaling I’ve seen is failure to document and inform. If one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing then you aren’t on the same page and you can’t help each other when things go wrong.” – Natalie Sharma, Tech Ladies

“Getting sucked into downloading YET ANOTHER (usually very disappointing freebie) which moves them no closer to their goals. Get your UNSUBSCRIBE vibe switched ON, tune out all that low-level noise and commit to your OWN ideas and vision.” – Alex Sheach, Societygal

What can people take advantage of now that is often overlooked?

Innovation and creative thinking is key to a pandemic-proof business. As we adapt to the current lifestyle of consumers, founders are taking advantage of what is in front of them. Here’s what members suggested.

“What’s overlooked is the human aspect of things not being perfect and just going with inspired action once you have some clarity about your business.” – Prerika Agarwal, Tech Ladies

“With staying at home still being a large part of life, I think people should take advantage of having more people online and the ability to do webinars, virtual networking, and doing research directly with your specific users or customers.” – Charlotte Clark, Tech Ladies

“Digital businesses should take this opportunity to rise to the occasion to help their local communities. As a digital business owner I can confirm we spend a lot of time virtually hustling. Show the world around you that you exist and that you care. It pays dividends for both of you.” – Natalie Sharma, Tech Ladies