The word “automation” conjures up the image of robots on an assembly line – an impersonal process with little human input. With marketing automation, this image couldn’t be further from the truth. Used correctly, marketing automation software can create a far more personal experience for your customers and leads.
However, just as marketing automation can add a valuable human feel to your marketing communications, so it can also suffer from human error. Inappropriately managed or applied, this software will not provide the ROI you expect from it.
So how can we make sure our investment in marketing automation is fruitful? Below, I’ll share six examples of fatal errors regarding marketing automation that I’ve seen businesses make, along with recommendations about how to avoid these pitfalls.
1. Too much, too soon
Marketing automation is a brilliant tool for nurturing your existing customer base; what it can’t do is to produce customers out of thin air. Businesses that are just starting up can be tempted by the potential of a sophisticated marketing automation solution, but in reality such a solution needs a big enough customer audience in order to be effective.
Similarly, start-ups can go overboard by choosing marketing automation software with more functionality than they require at this early stage – wasting investment on features that will go unused. Or the software might even be too comprehensive for the size of target market.
Honda’s Andrew Pattison has some straightforward advice for startups looking to invest in marketing automation: “Start small, really nail something, and then scale it.”
Action:
Ensure your business has enough prospect data to make the solution worthwhile. If traffic is low, the investment would be better spent driving more users. Some say that only 20-25% of your total marketing budget should go on marketing automation.
Start with a smaller, scalable solution, based on a solid understanding of the features you really need. Ideally, it should be able to grow with your number of contacts.
2. Ignoring the customer journey
In the build-up to conversion, there is a series of unique interactions between a customer and your business. It is a mistake to assume that a conversion funnel from another business will work the same way for your customers.
Failing to engage in customer journey mapping could lead to investment in the wrong marketing automation solution. If you don’t understand the crucial touchpoints for your customers, you can’t ensure that this particular solution will offer the right tools for you to reach them.
In contrast, once you have gained an understanding of the customer journey, marketing automation “allows you to nurture your leads through the entire buying process, delivering highly-targeted, personalized messages that address their specific barriers to purchase.” (Hubspot)
Action:
Monitor customer interactions with your business, identifying the pain points that could be addressed by your marketing automation strategy.
Iteratively test different funnels and work out which marketing automation solution can be adapted for you. Perhaps you could implement a more targeted email strategy, or reach out to customers via social media.
3. Poor utilisation of customer data
Far too often, an effective marketing automation solution is rendered useless by the customer data it relies on. Mismanagement of your CRM system and a lack of customer segmentation result in the wrong messages getting through to the wrong people, threatening your overall inbound marketing strategy.
Businesses frequently overlook the need to clean up customer data held in their CRM. With around 15% of email addresses on marketing lists invalid, that’s a lot of inefficient noise. The impact of your marketing automation is dependent on the quality of data being fed into it.
Once you’re confident that your CRM data is up to date, the next crucial step is to segment it effectively. Marketing automation can achieve an impressively individualised method of nurturing your customers, but it can only do this if your audience segmentation is well defined.
Action:
Ensure your CRM data is relevant and up to date. This Uberflip guide has some excellent tips for refreshing your database.
Consider complementing your CRM with a data management platform (DMP) that can help you achieve even more accurate audience segmentation.
4. Alienating the customer
At its best, marketing automation should create an interesting, informative, personal experience for your customers. However, if mismanaged, there is still a risk of alienating people with irrelevant campaigns, excessive numbers of emails, or even the wrong mode of address.
Communication via marketing automation should make customers feel that you are giving them more choice and agency – not that you see them as one more faceless consumer. For example, florist Bloom & Wild has received praise for emailing customers the opportunity to opt out of Mother’s Day communications. Demonstrating this sensitivity could have a powerful positive impact on the value of their brand.
Nonetheless, using marketing automation to personalise the content your customer sees goes far beyond email communication. It can include the ads you show them or even a modified version of your website. You have the tools to shape a customer’s experience around who they are as an individual.
Action:
Make sure your marketing automation complements your inbound marketing strategy; use the software to nurture existing customers based on the knowledge you have.
Utilise other external data sources to enhance the data you already possess about your customers.
5. Insufficient integration
If your marketing automation solution is not sufficiently integrated with your other digital tools and systems, then it will not react at the right moments – and the chance of a valuable interaction with the customer will be lost.
Certain user activity – for example, making an in-app purchase or downloading an eBook – should trigger a sequence of messages. These will ensure the user knows you value their interaction with your business and are there to support them to get the most out of it.
Action:
Try using data management software to help you integrate your marketing automation with your other systems.
6. Focusing on the wrong metrics
When you’re evaluating the success of your marketing automation, it’s easy to get distracted by one high-performing metric – forgetting that this is just one part of a bigger story.
Perhaps your open rate for one email campaign is 40% versus 10% for another. Based on that metric alone, it looks like the first campaign was more successful. But what about click-through rates? If that 40% opened the email but didn’t follow the link inside, whereas half of the 10% did, suddenly the second campaign looks more productive.
Considering how multiple metrics work together will give you a much more accurate picture of the impact of your marketing automation. Take a holistic approach. This will help prevent a waste of budget on ineffective strategies.
Action:
Make the most of web analytics tools to test your KPIs and ensure your marketing automation solution is keeping pace.
Conclusion
In the right hands, marketing automation will allow your business to grow while still providing a personal experience for customers. Choosing software with the appropriate level of functionality for your business – and then using these tools to their full potential – is crucial.
Keep your customers in mind at all times. Who are they, what are they buying, what content do they demand? This data needs to be measured, managed, and used to shape your automation strategy. Furthermore, checking that your systems are integrated and communicating with each other will ensure that the high-quality content you’ve produced is actually reaching the right people at the right time.
Providing you invest in the right software for your business needs, marketing automation will be a great asset to your company – allowing you to connect with more customers in more profound ways. But you must take time to understand the software’s functionality, integrate it with your existing systems, and ensure that it is delivering a message that will drive engagement and action.
Oren Greenberg is a growth marketer and the founder of the Kurve consultancy in London, UK. He helps startups and corporate innovations projects scale using digital channels. He has written for leading marketing blogs and has been featured in the international press.
In the summer of 1956, 10 scientists and mathematicians gathered at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College to brainstorm a new concept Assistant Professor John McCarthy called “artificial intelligence.” According to the original proposal for the research project, McCarthy—along with fellow organizers from Harvard, Bell Labs and IBM—wanted to explore the idea of programming machines to use language and solve problems for humans while improving over time.
It would be years before these lofty objectives were met, but the summer workshop is credited with launching the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Sixty years later, cognitive scientists, data analysts, UX designers and countless others are doing everything those pioneering scientists hoped for—and more. With deep learning, companies can make extraordinary progress in industries ranging from cybersecurity to marketing. It’s just a matter of knowing where to start.
Think of AI as a machine-powered version of mankind’s cognitive skills. These machines have the ability to interact with humans in a way that feels natural, and just like humans they can grasp complex concepts and extract insights from the information they’re given. Artificial intelligence can understand, learn, interpret, and reason. The difference is that AI can do all of these things faster and on a much bigger scale.
“In the era of big data, we have the need to mine all of that information, and humans can no longer do it alone,” says Mark Simpson, VP of offering management at IBM Watson Marketing. “AI has the capacity to create richer, more personalized digital experiences for consumers, and meet customers’ increasingly high brand expectations.”
The knowledge companies stand to gain by using AI seems to have no bounds. In healthcare, medical professionals are applying it to analyze patient data, explain lab results and support busy physicians. In the security industry, AI helps firms detect potential threats like malicious software in real time. Marketers, meanwhile, can use AI to synthesize data and identify key audience and performance insights, thus freeing them up to be more strategic and creative with their campaigns.
There’s something else AI is very good at, and that’s improving the relationship between companies and consumers. “Even in its earliest iteration, AI helped companies better understand how to be human,” says Brian Solis, author and principal analyst at Altimeter, the digital analyst group at brand and marketing consultancy Prophet. “The irony is that it took this very advanced technology to make them think differently about how they should communicate with their customers.”
Over the past 50 years, Solis says, advances like speech technology, automated attendants, virtual assistants and websites have opened a chasm between companies and customer engagement while also multiplying consumer touchpoints. But AI has the potential to close that gap.
By helping marketers collect data, identify new customer segments and create a more unified marketing and analytics system, AI can scale customer personalization and precision in ways that didn’t exist before. Connecting customer data from sources like websites and social media enables companies to craft marketing messages that are more relevant to consumers’ current needs. AI can deliver an ad experience that is more personalized for each user, shapes the customer journey, influences purchasing decisions and builds brand loyalty.
IBM’s Watson Marketing is leading the charge with a platform that capitalizes on all that AI has to offer. Products like Customer Experience Analytics lets marketers visualize the customer journey and identify areas where consumers might be experiencing friction. Companies get a more complete view of the customer journey, which they can then optimize to improve customer engagement and conversion rates. Since it’s delivered through a single, unified interface, IBM Watson Customer Experience Analytics makes gaining actionable intelligence a seamless process for brands.
According to market research firm TechNavio, the AI market in the U.S. is expected to grow at a compound actual growth rate of about 50 percent through 2021. In its 2017 report “Artificial Intelligence: The Next Digital Frontier?” the McKinsey Global Institute urges companies not to delay “advancing their digital journeys”—especially when it comes to leveraging AI. “It’s those who understand how to use AI in new ways, to create new mindsets and paradigms, that will instill a competitive advantage that wasn’t there before,” Solis says.
We’ve entered the age of deep learning, and with human guidance AI is finally reaching its true potential. Today, the technology McCarthy and his colleagues dreamed about in 1956 takes the form of AI platforms like Watson Marketing. And now is the right time to truly harness the power of AI and put it to work for business success.
Find out more about how Watson Marketing can uncover insights to help you better understand your customers. Read the Guide.
Content Provided by IBM with Insider Studios. Insider Studios is the branded content studio for Insider Inc., the parent company of INSIDER and Business Insider.
Marketing consultant must be in a position to take care of any issues or problems that may come up during your advertising campaign quickly and efficiently.
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So you’re in the early stages of launching a small business. You’ve got a great product or service and obtained funding to get the company off the ground, but what about marketing? Do people know your business will be opening soon?
Getting noticed is one of the biggest challenges facing new small business owners. There are many different ways to market your business, such as using internet ads, social media pages, content marketing, in-person networking and more.
Some methods may be more effective than others, depending on your industry. But two areas all businesses need to excel in are internet-based marketing and in-person networking.
We’ve compiled a list of small business marketing tips, strategies and ideas that will help get your business noticed before, during and after opening.
13 Small Business Marketing Tips, Ideas and Strategies
Below is a breakdown of different tips, strategies and approaches on small business marketing. These tips and ideas are ranked based on when you should consider implementing them during pre-launch or in the early days of your business.
1. Create a Marketing Budget
For small businesses operating on a shoestring budget, it can be tempting to save money by not setting aside funds for marketing. But if your marketing strategy is to rely on word of mouth to promote your business, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Josh Rubin, CEO of Post Modern Marketing, tells small business owners they have to create a marketing budget, and the value of that budget can’t be an amount that will break the company if it doesn’t produce immediate results.
In the early days, you’re going to be spending time determining your company’s identity and figuring out what messaging connects with new customers. Be prepared for a lot of trial and error. “So set a budget that you’re willing to lose,” Rubin says.
2. Secure Your Company Name
You have an idea of what to name your small business and think it will connect with your target audience, but is that name available online?
“I see a lot of business owners that think of the name of their company but then don’t think about reserving a URL with [that name],” says Sherry Bonelli, owner of Early Bird Digital Marketing. She is also a small business mentor with Score, a volunteer group supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration that connects business owners with mentors from similar fields.
Having a website address that matches your company name is important, as people are doing more business online. It might be difficult for potential customers to find your website if they don’t match.
Once you have a business name in mind, go to a domain registrar, such as GoDaddy or Google Domains, to see if the web address is available. Prices start at $12 per year to reserve a domain name using Google Domains.
3. Create a Logo and Brand
If you want to be taken seriously as a business, you’re going to need to look the part. It might be tempting to create a generic logo and use a website template or stock photos when launching, but that isn’t necessarily good in the long run.
“I think many small business owners skimp on this step, and that’s a big mistake because if you don’t look like a real company, customers and clients are not going to trust you,” Bonelli says. Freelance websites such as Fiverr, Upwork and 99designs connect business owners with graphic designers who can create a custom logo, color palette, business cards and overall design for your business. This can cost anywhere between $300 and $500.
4. Build a User-Friendly Website
Once you have your logo ready, it’s time to build your website.
The way people search online has created many changes to website design. Having a site that looks good on smartphones and tablets is more vital than ever.
Website builders like WordPress.com, Squarespace and Wix, come with mobile-friendly features. They offer multiple templates, customization options and support for a monthly fee. Think like a potential consumer when building your site and make sure it has all the features and information you’d want to see.
5. Make Your Website SEO Friendly
Now that you’ve built your website, you should make it as easy as possible for people to find it when searching the web. Search engine optimization, more commonly known as SEO, is the process of getting web traffic from search engine results. SEO plays a crucial role in helping local and small businesses get discovered online.
Several factors determine a website’s search engine ranking. These include posting well-written blog pages that establish your topic credibility on a regular basis and using correct keywords associated with your business. To learn more about best SEO practices, check out free resources on sites such as Moz, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal.
If you’re planning on opening a physical location such as a restaurant, store or office, don’t forget to create a business profile on Google My Business, a free business listing service, that provides your essential info,such as a street address, phone number, hours of operation and business description.
One of the primary benefits of Google My Business is that it drives the “Map Pack” on Google search results, which may increase your visibility, in-store visits or calls This service is only available for local businesses with a physical address, not internet-only companies.
When owning a company, you should watch what your competitors are doing with their social media platforms. “If a competitor is using Pinterest and it seems like they’re gaining a lot of engagement, then Pinterest might be a place you want to go,” says Kim Randall, owner of KiMedia Strategies. Tina Russell/The Penny Hoarder
Now it’s time to create social media pages on platforms your audience uses. You can count on using the major platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn — to promote business news and engage with your customer base.
At all stages of your company’s life, you should also keep an eye on what your competitors are doing with their social media platforms. “If a competitor is using Pinterest and it seems like they’re gaining a lot of engagement, then Pinterest might be a place you want to go,” says Kim Randall, owner of KiMedia Strategies, a small business marketing firm.
7. Find Free or Low-Cost Business Services
Money is going to be tight in the early days of starting your small business, so it helps to use free or low-cost services to help your marketing. Below is a list of programs that can help you save money running your business.
Buffer is a social media tool that allows users to schedule posts in advance or post the same content to different platforms at once. It has free and paid versions, starting at $15 per month.
Google Alerts are free and will help you keep up with what people are saying online about your business or keep up with specific keywords.
KeywordTool.io is a free service that allows business owners to do keyword research for their website and ads.
Apps such as Grammarly and the Hemingway Editor can be useful when writing blogs or content on your website. These will help you write more succinctly and catch grammatical errors. Grammarly has a free version and a premium version that includes features such as a plagiarism detector, vocabulary enhancement and genre-specific writing-style suggestions. The premium versions costs $29.95 per month (or a discounted rate of $139.95 when paid annually).
8. Buy Online Ads
Once your business has opened, it’s time to start advertising. Google Ads, which appear when you search on Google, is an obvious place to start because of the search engine’s popularity. According to Google, businesses generally make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on Google Ads.
Bonelli says the problem with Google Ads for new small-business owners is that it can be expensive. To make it effective, she says to include your ad the information that users seek when they search on Google.
For example, if someone is searching for “wedding gown alterations,” the web page your ad sends users to must emphasize that your business specializes in wedding gown alterations.
9. Set Up Email Marketing
People who sign up to your email marketing program tend to be the most engaged members of your audience. These members generally read more articles after opening the email and are more likely to buy your products or services. That’s why it’s important to provide content and information your audience cares about in every email blast you send.
“If you’re mailing out to a random [email subscription] list you didn’t build, that’s where you’re not going to be effective. But if you mail out information that people are interested in, that’s where it’s really effective,” Bonelli says.
Include a button on your website that allows people to sign up for your email campaigns. A free version of MailChimp can help build your email list — it allows you to send up to 12,000 emails a month to up to 2,000 subscribers. The paid version allows you to send an unlimited number of emails to an unlimited number of subscribers. The cost of the membership increases based on the number of subscribers.
10. Craft an Elevator Pitch
Before you start meeting potential customers and attending networking events, do you have your elevator pitch ready? An elevator pitch is a speech lasing 30 to 45 seconds that tells the listener who you are, what you do and how your business will be better than the competition. With some practice, it may lead to a potential customer. Learn more on how to develop a great elevator pitch.
Randall listens as Jason Hendricks asks a question during an Operation Startup workshop where Randall led a workshop on how to grow one’s company social media presence at the Entrepreneur Collaborative Center on in Ybor City, Florida on March 15, 2019. Tina Russell/The Penny Hoarder
When your business is off the ground, think about establishing yourself as a thought leader. A “thought leader” is a marketing term for a recognized authority in a field who is sought after as an expert.
Every business owner is a thought leader without knowing it yet; there is a reason you started your business, so let people know what you know. For example, if you’re a photographer, write blogs offering tips and tricks on how to take better iPhone photos or suggest “three things to look for in a wedding photographer.”
Randall used this strategy in the early days of social media marketing. “When I gave my thoughts, tips and everything else away and became a thought leader within the social media space, I gained a lot more clients,” she says.
Early on when people are not yet visiting your site, consider becoming a guest contributor on another established website in your field so you can promote your knowledge on the subject and point people in the direction of your website to learn more.
Another way to become a recognized expert is by meeting your target audience. Meetup.com is a great way to find local groups who are interested in topics related to your business. For example, if you run a knitting or sewing store, you might look to see whether any knitting or sewing events are happening in your area and offer to give a free demonstration.
12. Get Involved With Your Chamber of Commerce
Not all marketing is done online. Getting involved with your local Chamber of Commerce will enable you to meet fellow business owners during in-person networking events and other chamber functions. Over time, you’ll expand your professional network and be able to utilize their resources.
Rubin says his Chamber helped his company get featured on a local news segment. Once you start to support other businesses, they’ll do the same when you have a big event or project.
“All it takes is your time and your energy,” he says.
13. Find a Business Mentor and Continue Learning
As a new small business owner or entrepreneur, it’s never a bad thing to seek guidance from people who have been in your shoes. There are both local and national nonprofits devoted to helping business owners.
Score offers their mentoring service free of charge. Rubin, a Score volunteer, says if you want to know more about marketing, Score can connect you with retired marketing executives or other knowledgeable people who can help you grow your business.
“I’ll scream their praises from every rooftop because everyone always thinks that you have to pay for this kind of business support, and it’s out there for free,” he says.
As you progress and figure out what marketing material connects with your audience, don’t stop learning new things. Small business marketing is a topic that is difficult to master because strategies that work now will change and marketing fads come and go.
Luckily, there are a lot of free blog posts, courses and resources out there to teach business owners about SEO, social media marketing, internet advertising and more.
You can sign up for a massive open online course (MOOCs), keep up with the SEO sites listed above or follow marketing professionals you admire on LinkedIn or other social media.
“There’s so much information out there now that if business owners spend an hour a night just searching the web and teaching themselves how to do small business marketing, they’ll be successful at it,” Bonelli says.
Feature Image Credit: Kim Randall, owner of KiMedia Strategies, helps other businesses grow their social media presence. Tina Russell/The Penny Hoarder
Your international marketing campaigns hinge on one crucial element: how well you have understood your audience.
As with all marketing, insight into the user behaviour, preferences and needs of your market is a must. However, if you do not have feet on the ground in these markets, you may be struggling to understand why your campaigns are not hitting the mark.
Thankfully you have a goldmine of data about your customers’ interests, behaviour, and demographics already at your fingertips. Wherever your international markets are, Google Analytics should be your first destination for drawing out actionable insights.
Setting up Google Analytics for international insight
Google Analytics is a powerful tool but the sheer volume of data available through it can make finding usable insights tough. The first step for getting the most out of Google Analytics is ensuring it has been set up in the most effective way. This needs to encompass the following:
Depending on your current Google Analytics set-up you may already have more than one profile and view for your website data. What insight you want to get from your data will influence how you set up this first stage of filtering. If you want to understand how the French pages are being accessed and interacted with then you may wish to create a filter based on the folder structure of your site, such as the “/fr-fr/” sub-folder of your site.
However, this will show you information on visitors who arrive on these pages from any geographic location. If your hreflang tags aren’t correct and Google is serving your French pages to a Canadian audience, then you will be seeing Canadian visitors’ data under this filter too.
If you are interested in only seeing how French visitors interact with the website, no matter where on the site they end up, then a geographic filter is better. Here’s an example.
2. Setting up segments per target area
Another way of being able to identify how users from different locations are responding to your website and digital marketing is by setting up segments within Google Analytics based on user demographics. Segments enable you to see a subset of your data that, unlike filters, don’t permanently alter the data you are viewing. Segments will allow you to narrow down your user data based on a variety of demographics, such as which campaign led them to the website, the language in which they are viewing the content, and their age. To set up a segment in Google Analytics click on “All Users” at the top of the screen. This will bring up all of the segments currently available in your account.
To create a new segment click “New Segment” and configure the fields to include or exclude the relevant visitors from your data. For instance, to get a better idea of how French-Canadian visitors interact with your website you might create a segment that only includes French-speaking Canadians. To do this you can set your demographics to include “fr-fr” in the “Language” field and “Canada” in the “Location” field.
Use the demographic fields to tailor your segment to include visitors from certain locations speaking specific languages.
The segment “Summary” will give you an indication of what proportion of your visitors would be included in this segment which will help you sense-check if you have set it up correctly. Once you have saved your new segment it will be available for you to overlay onto your data from any time period, even from before you set up the segment. This is unlike filters, which will only apply to data recorded after the filter was created.
A common missing step to setting your international targeting up on Google Analytics is ensuring the entry points for visitors onto your site are tracking correctly.
For instance, there are a variety of international search engines that Google Analytics counts as “referral” sources rather than organic traffic sources unless a filter is added to change this.
The best way to identify this is to review the websites listed as having driven traffic to your website, follow the path – Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals. If you identify search engines among this list then there are a couple of solutions available to make sure credit for your marketing success is being assigned correctly.
First, visit the “Organic Search Sources” section in Google Analytics which can be found under Admin > Property > Organic Search Sources.
From here, you can simply add the referring domain of the search engine that is being recorded as a “referral” to the form. Google Analytics should start tracking traffic from that source as organic. Simple. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work for every search engine.
If you find the “Organic Search Sources” solution isn’t working, filters are a fool-proof solution but be warned, this will alter all your data in Google Analytics from the point the filter is put in place. Unless you have a separate unfiltered view available (which is highly recommended) then the data will not be recoverable and you may struggle to get an accurate comparison with data prior to the filter implementation. To set up a view without a filter you simply need to navigate to “Admin” and under “View” click “Create View”.
Name your unfiltered view “Raw data” or similar that will remind you that this view needs to remain free of filters.
To add a filter to the Google Analytics view that you want to have more accurate data in, go to “Filters” under the “View” that you want the data to be corrected for.
Click “Add Filter” and select the “Custom” option. To change traffic from referral to organic, copy the below settings:
Filter Type: Advanced
Field A – Extract A: Referral (enter the domain of the website you want to reclassify traffic from)
Field B – Extract B: Campaign Medium – referral
Output To – Constructor: Campaign Medium – organic
Then ensure the “Field A Required”, “Field B Required”, and “Override Output Field” options are selected.
You may also notice the social media websites are listed among the referral sources. The same filter process applies to them. Just enter “social” rather than “organic” under the “Output To” field.
4. Setting goals per user group
Once you have a better idea of how users from different locations use your website you may want to set up some independent goals specific to those users in Google Analytics. This could be, for example, a measure of how many visitors download a PDF in Chinese. This goal might not be pertinent to your French visitors’ view, but it is a very important measure of how well your website content is performing for your Chinese audience.
The goals are simple to create in Google Analytics, just navigate to “Admin”, and under the view that you want to add the goal to click “Goals”. This will bring up a screen that displays any current goals set up in your view and, if you have edit level permissions in Google Analytics, you can create a new one by clicking “New Goal”.
Once you have selected “New Goal” you will be given the option of setting up a goal from a template or creating a custom one. It is likely that you will need to configure a custom goal in order to track specific actions based off of events or page destinations. For example, if you are measuring how many people download a PDF you may track the “Download” button click events, or you may create a goal based on visitors going to the “Thank you” page that is displayed once a PDF is downloaded.
Most goals will need to be custom ones that allow you to track visitors completing specific events or navigating to destination pages.
With the number of goals you can set up under each view (which is limited to 20), it is likely that your goals will be different under each in order to drive the most relevant insight.
5. Filtering tables by location
An easy way to determine location-specific user behaviour is using the geographic dimensions to further drill-down into the data that you are viewing.
For instance, if you run an experiential marketing campaign in Paris to promote awareness of your products, then viewing the traffic that went to the French product pages of your website that day compared to a previous day could give you an indicator of success. However, what would be even more useful would be to see if interest in the website spiked for visitors from Paris.
By applying “City” as a secondary dimension on the table of data you are looking at how you can get a more specific overview of how well the campaign performed in that region.
Dimensions available include “Continent”, “Sub-continent” “Country”, “Region”, and “City”, as well as being able to split the data by “Language”.
Drawing intelligence from your data
Once you have your goals set up correctly you will be able to drill much further down into the data Google Analytics is presenting you with. An overview of how international users are navigating your site, interacting with content and their pain points is valuable in determining how to better optimize your website and marketing campaigns for conversion.
1. Creating personas
Many organizations will have created user personas at one stage or another, but it is valuable to review them periodically to ensure they are still relevant in the light of changes to your organization or the digital landscape. It is imperative that your geographic targeting has been set up correctly in Google Analytics to ensure your personas drive insight into your international marketing campaigns.
Creating personas using Google Analytics ensures they are based on real visitors who land on your website. This article from my agency, Avenue Digital, gives you step by step guidance on how to use your Google Analytics data to create personas, and how to use them for SEO.
2. Successful advertising mediums
One tip for maximizing the data in Google Analytics is discerning what the most profitable advertising medium is for that demographic.
If you notice that a lot of your French visitors are coming to the website as a result of a PPC campaign advertising your products, but the traffic that converts the most is actually from Twitter, then you can focus on expanding your social media reach in that region.
This may not be the same for your UK visitors who might arrive on the site and convert most from organic search results. With the geographic targeting set up correctly in Google Analytics, you will be able to focus your time and budgets more effectively for each of your target regions, rather than employing a blanket approach based on unfiltered data.
3. Language
Determining the best language to provide your marketing campaigns and website may not be as simple as identifying the primary language for each country you are targeting. For example, Belgium has three official languages – Dutch, German, and French. Google Analytics can help you narrow down which of these languages is primarily used by the demographic that interacts with you the most online.
If you notice that there are a lot of visitors from French-speaking countries landing on your website, but it is only serving content in English, then this forms a good base for diversifying the content on your site.
4. Checking the correctness of your online international targeting
An intricate and easy to get wrong aspect of international marketing is signalling to the search engines what content you want available to searchers in different regions.
Google Analytics allows you to audit how well international targeting has been understood and respected by the search engines. If you have filtered your data by a geographic section of your website, like, /en-gb/ but a high proportion of your organic traffic landing on this section of the site is from countries that have their own specified pages on the site, then this would suggest that your hreflang tags may need checking.
5. Identifying emerging markets
Google Analytics could help identify other markets that are not being served by your current products, website or marketing campaigns that could prove very fruitful if tapped into.
If through your analysis you notice that there is a large volume of visitors from a country you don’t currently serve then you can begin investigations into the viability of expanding into those markets.
Conclusion
As complex as Google Analytics may seem, once you have set it up right expect to get clarity over your data, as it makes drilling down into detail for each of your markets an easy job. The awareness into your markets you gain can be the difference between your digital marketing efforts soaring or falling flat.
Having successfully in-housed its own media buying and planning, Lastminute.com has launched a consultancy arm – Playbook – to help other brands do the same.
In an industry where businesses are increasingly bulking up their internal arsenal, Playbook will guide brands through the complex process of internalising core marketing capabilities, including media planning, tech, data and content creation.
Although it’s being pitched as a consultancy, it’s not run by consultants, instead, it will be led by the same team behind Travel People; Lastminute.com’s own in-house media and trading arm.
Playbook and Travel People will both be led out of a new media business within Lastminute.com called Forward. Alessandra Di Lorenzo, Lastminute’s chief commercial officer, will head up this new company as chief executive.
Playbook is already working with several unnamed travel and FMCG clients.
Lastminute.com has been bulking up the services it offers to brands since it launched Travel People 2016, scaling up its programmatic capabilities and finding new sources of revenue by letting other advertisers plug into its adtech stack.
Steered by Di Lorenzo, as a way to protect the travel platform’s revenues against the threat of the digital giants like Google and Facebook, Travel People has helped Lastminute.com up its annual media revenues by 40% in three years.
As a brand, Lastminute.com started in-housing its own media in 2016, after pausing its relationship with former planning and buying agency Manning Gottlieb OMD. Although Publicis still handles its above-the-line work, it runs its own media desk.
Di Lorenzo explained how having gone through this process itself, Lastminute.com has “experienced the challenges, solved the problems, spotted the opportunities and honed the process,” of setting up shop in-house.
“We realised that we are perfectly placed to de-risk the process for other businesses, and to help move other brands forward by making their marketing activity more efficient, intelligent and relevant,” she added.
“2019 and beyond looks set to be a tough year for marketers. In-housing proven and repeatable marketing activities is a no-brainer for companies wanting to empower their teams to drive powerful and tangible achievements, faster. But – understandably – many don’t know where to start. That’s where Playbook comes in.”
Playbook will work closely with businesses to help them identify opportunities and successfully build the necessary confidence to in-house core marketing capabilities.
This includes deciding what technology providers to work with and how, building an in-house content function, monetising and making better use of data or upskilling internal teams.
The launch from Lastminute.com follows on from a recent ID Comms report that revealed finding talent to bolster in-house media capabilities was cited as one of the top concerns among marketers in 2018.
A report from Kantar has shown that consumers are suffering from ad fatigue, with bombardment and oversaturation putting the UK ad industry at risk.
The research firm’s Dimensions report, found that almost three quarters (73%) of UK consumers had seen the same ads ‘over and over again’. As a result, just 11% said they ‘enjoyed’ advertising.
Kantar commissioned the report to examine the risks facing the advertising industry as a result of over-targeting. It is based on the findings of 5,000 consumers in five markets with a combined total ad spend of $352bn.
The study found that Brits’ perception of advertising has been tainted by repetitive and obtrusive ads, with more than half (55%) saying they felt ‘apathetic’ towards advertising, an increase of 2% on 2018’s figure. On the flip side, 61% of people conceded they were open to receiving ads relevant to them.
The report also looked into ad-blocking technology, and found use remains steady. Despite this, the study detailed how better content was continuing to pull consumers towards subscription offers with paid-for TV and video services on the rise.
As one of the 58 brands who contributed to the report, Eve Mattresses’ chief marketing officer Cheryl Calverley said: “What you can’t see from data is the damage you might be doing by re-targeting people endlessly with your products.”
On the matter of rebuilding consumer trust, Kantar’s UK chief executive, Mark Inskip said there needed to be: “More responsible use of data across the industry.”
He added: “By adopting an integrated approach, balancing niche targeting capabilities with mass marketing tactics, brands can provide consumers with a helpful, additive experience.”
The findings of the report echo concerns raised by top brand marketers about oversaturation. Back in 2017, P&G’s Marc Prichard warned of the content “crap trap,” and advised brands and agencies to dig themselves out of exposure overload by creating fewer, but better, ads.
For Credos, bombardment of advertising messages was found to be the biggest issue of all the public concerns about advertising and accounts for half of the ‘negatives’ in the search.
In the first chapter of our “Complete Guide to SaaS Marketing”, we discussed how to validate a SaaS idea as a marketer and why marketing is so vital in the validation stage of every startup.
I shared my 7-step validation framework with you – a framework that could help even the most desperate of wantrepreneurs.
If you’ve applied this framework, you should’ve validated your idea and even have some pre-orders in your bank account.
You’re probably not rich enough to run off to the Bahamas, yet, but you have enough fuel to push yourself to the next milestone of your startup journey: building and launching the real product.
But before that, there’s one more step: the pre-launch.
In this article I’m going to show you:
How to create a Go To Marketing Roadmap.
How to build a successful pre-launch landing page.
How to start a conversation with your pre-launch audience.
How to get traffic to your pre-launch landing page.
And how to grow your pre-launch email list.
On top of that, I asked 8 startups that have built a pre-launch subscriber base to share their best pre-launch marketing tip with us.
I’ve accompanied each pre-launch marketing tactic in this guide with a real-life mini-case study.
But it doesn’t all end there.
I’ve also packed this guide with a few goodies for you. Download them all below:
Unlock The Pre-launch Pack
Pre-launch landing page template – Photoshop and HTML files included. Kickstart your pre-launch marketing with a conversion rate optimized landing page.
Go To Marketing Roadmap – Google spreadsheet swap file. Prepare and execute a solid pre-launch plan with this roadmap.
List of all ProductHunt upcoming products with 500+ subscribers – Examine the best performing upcoming products and learn from them.
+ All other marketing resources from Encharge
So let’s get rocking!
Contents
Why Pre-launching and Pre-launch Marketing
Today I was catching up with an old friend of mine.
He’s a developer.
I was talking about my pre-launch marketing efforts at Encharge when he interrupted me:
“Isn’t it a bit too early to market? I mean, you don’t have a product, yet.”
I don’t blame him.
He’s a developer.
I blame the hundreds of startup teams that slave away for months developing a product before they push the Go button on their marketing.
The highest achievers spent more time crafting what they did and said before making a request. They set about their mission as skilled gardeners who know that even the finest seeds will not take root in stony soil or bear fullest fruit in poorly prepared ground.
– Cialdini, Robert B.. Pre-Suasion
You might’ve seen this video of the co-founder of Dropbox showing a “fake” prototype of Dropbox.
This video skyrocketed Dropbox’s beta list from 5,000 subscribers to 75,000 literary overnight.
Or you might have heard about the Robinhood story.
A plain pre-launch landing page with a concise value proposition helped the 2 founders get over 1 million pre-launch subscribers.
Now:
I don’t care if you want to be a big unicorn success like Robinhood or a tiny bootstrapped operation.
Your SaaS must be pretreated and readied for growth.
You must have a pre-launch marketing plan. And you must engineer that plan the moment you decide to pursue your SaaS idea.
Before we get into some actionable tactics:
Why the hell you need to bother with pre-launch marketing? Why not slouch around for a few months until your tech co-founder or developers build the product?
5 Reasons to Do Pre-launch Marketing for Your SaaS
1. You will have an audience to launch to.
Say no more, Sherlock.
This one is obvious, but a lot of startups still get it wrong.
They’re way too confident. They believe because it was hard and took a lot of time, it must be important.
The truth is simple – if you don’t have an audience, you can’t sell shit.
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
If you have the best software in the world, but no people to try it, do you have a product?
For Simvoly (one of the SaaS companies that I’ve consulted) it took 3+ years to get to a few hundred in MRR.
When they were doing that much in monthly recurring revenue they had a product that was up to par with behemoths like Wix (yes, a solid product!) Yet, they struggled with customer acquisition. Now, a few years after the first line of code, they’re doing pretty well for a bootstrapped SaaS.
Question is:
Do you have that much time on your hands?
I guess not.
Which leads us to the next reason to pre-launch…
2. You will enter your market faster.
You can’t allow lazy marketing to slow you.
It’s our job as marketers to help the market find our product sooner than later.
Pre-launch marketing can be the difference between $0 and $10,000 MRR in your first 2 weeks.
Sathish from LimeVPN – another great SaaS marketer and founder that I’ve worked with – did a great job with his pre-launch marketing strategy. They had a bunch of customers lined up long before they launched the actual product:
Pre-launch marketing works!
3. You will build relationships with your (future) customers.
Let’s face a universal truth:
Except for Al Pacino’s speech in The Devil’s Advocate – conversations are more interesting than monologues.
Pre-launching gives you the time to be human and start a conversation.
Ask questions, answer questions, talk to people.
Do the opposite of screaming “Buy my STUFF!!1”
Opening a dialogue with your potential clients is an example of what I call “the shot across the bow,” and it’s a great way to start your prelaunch campaign.
– Walker, Jeff. Launch (p. 24). Simon & Schuster UK. Kindle Edition.
4. Your customers will become more receptive of your product message.
The best persuaders become the best through pre-suasion—the process of arranging for recipients to be receptive to a message before they encounter it.
– Cialdini, Robert B.. Pre-Suasion (p. 3). Random House. Kindle Edition.
After the pre-order campaign for Encharge, I did a little exercise. I opened our Autopilot and sifted through the activity log of all people that have made an order.
I noticed a simple pattern:
All the pre-order buyers have opened at least 3 of my emails.
If a person opens my email broadcasts 3 or more times there’s a high chance he will become a customer.
By providing value in your email sequences, you’re building anticipation and increasing the receptiveness of your audience.
It’s simple: the healthier your email list metrics are, the better your SaaS launch will be.
5. You will get feedback on a larger scale
While you exposed your MVP to a handful of people (from a couple dozens to a few hundred), the pre-launch idea is to go all out and create buzz for your product on a much larger scale.
The goal of your pre-launch should be to reach thousands of people.
This is an excellent opportunity to confirm your hypothesis from the MVP and collect some quantitative product feedback.
MVP vs Pre-launch marketing
The Go To Marketing Roadmap
Below is the Go To Marketing Roadmap (GTMR) we use to launch SaaS products.
The Go To Marketing Roadmap which includes the Pre-launch marketing stage
The GTMR could be used for launching brand new SaaS products but also for launching new features and releases.
The purpose of the GTMR is to:
Provide an actionable plan that shows how your product and marketing are likely to evolve.
Align your product people and marketing people.
Help with prioritizing your marketing activities and provides a general continuity of purpose.
At Intercom teams now hold themselves to a new rule: If we’re launching a product and want to spend more than a week on it, the product manager and product marketing manager must align on the story we want to tell come launch.”
– Matt Hodges, Senior Director of Marketing at Intercom
Unlock The Pre-launch Pack
Pre-launch landing page template – Photoshop and HTML files included. Kickstart your pre-launch marketing with a conversion rate optimized landing page.
Go To Marketing Roadmap – Google spreadsheet swap file. Prepare and execute a solid pre-launch plan with this roadmap.
List of all ProductHunt upcoming products with 500+ subscribers – Examine the best performing upcoming products and learn from them.
+ All other marketing resources from Encharge
This is the exact Go To Marketing Roadmap we’re currently following at Encharge:
The Go To Marketing Roadmap of Encharge
Stage
I’ve divided the roadmap into 3 main stages:
Validation – the stage in which you validate your product or feature. We already covered what you should as a marketer in that stage.
Pre-launch – the stage in which you’re building your new product or feature. Later in this article, we’ll explore different tactics for pre-launch marketing.
Launch – The most exciting and scary stage of your product or feature’s life. The day you’ve been building up to. The moment you click Launch.
Post-launch – not included in my template but it’s a good idea to add a post-launch stage. That stage is dedicated to evaluation and following-up with the leads that didn’t convert in your Launch stage.
Release
These are your product releases – as in the releases you’ve set for the development in Jira or wherever.
It’s entirely up to you decide on the number of releases and their names.
At Encharge we’ve broken down our pre-launch into 4 releases:
Alpha – this is for internal use. We’re already using the barebones of Encharge to send one-off broadcasts
Beta – a release for close friends and people that will not get angry by a buggy product.
Gamma – this is the first time we’re going expose our pre-order customers to the product. Fingers crossed and prayers to the gods of startup.
Gamma – a larger release. We’re going to send an email to a small segment of our email list
Public release – the big bang. We’re going to launch Encharge.
Pre-launch – for our pre-launch we decided to focus on evergreen, long-term marketing tactics: email list building and link building to ramp up our organic traffic. As well as regular email broadcasts to drum up some interest in our audience.
Launch – our marketing activities in the Launch phase will be related to warming up our audience with “Open cart” email sequences and webinars.
Output Goals
This is a quantifiable goal that you’re in control of. What are you going to produce as a marketer in each stage? While it’s difficult to be in control of the outcome, outputs give you the opportunity to be disciplined and achieve your goals.
Validation – for Encharge we set to have 50 customer development conversations. Design a landing page. Plus write regular broadcasts to warm up our email list audience for the pre-order.
Pre-launch – for our pre-launch (the stage that we’re currently at) I’ve set myself some stretch targets for the marketing deliverables. I’m tracking these on a weekly or monthly basis:
My marketing tasks in Todoist
Here you can also include your pre-launch landing page
Launch – for the Launch stage we aim to launch using the Product Launch Formula (more on this in our next article). Create 1-2 product launch webinars and provide some extra service packages to sell with the software.
Outcome Goals
These are your marketing goals. What do you actually aim to achieve at each stage?
Validation – for Encharge we aimed to have 50 conversations with potential customers, collect 1,000 emails and have 100 credit cards (i.e., trials).
Pre-launch – now, for the Pre-launch our target is to collect 3,000 emails and grow to a stable 150 daily visits.
Launch – for the Launch we aim to get 300 people to trial Encharge – 10% conversion rate on our email list. Convert 30 of those to paying customers. Add $1,000 in initial MRR and also make another $6,000 in collateral revenue from personalized service packages.
Outcome Achieved
The last column in this table is what you’ve actually achieved. A.k.a delusion check.
Do not mourn if there’s a big discrepancy between your goals and your results. As you become a seasoned launch expert, your results will match and outperform the goals you set.
Your Landing Page
Ok, let’s clear something out of the way.
I don’t care how good of a marketer you’re and what smart marketing tactics you have in your bag, you must have a pre-launch landing page with a clear call to action.
Even if you don’t have a full-fledged idea, create a landing page.
It becomes real when you create a landing page.
That’s when you can start getting feedback.
You can put a big, bad mission statement. But what I really want you to do is collect email addresses.
This is important because as you grow your email list, they (your subscribers) can help you launch and do other things.And frankly, if you can’t collect email addresses and people don’t resonate with your idea it’s a time to change either your messaging or maybe your idea doesn’t have legs.
The purpose of your pre-launch landing page is to:
Build an audience or pre-sell your product
Test your product messaging with a broader audience
Start a conversation with potential customers
Should I collect emails or try to pre-sell my product on my pre-launch landing page?
It depends.
It depends on how far are you with your product development, on whether you have any screens to show, and whether you’ve validated your idea or not.
Ideally, by the time you launch your SaaS, you’d have both a raving email list and people that have passed the walled test.
Yet, you should only have a single call-to-action (CTA) on your landing page. Do not try to collect emails and make pre-orders at the same time. That’s a terrible idea.
Whichever goal you set for your landing page, it’s important to have it written in your Go To Marketing Roadmap.
Next thing – putting the landing page together.
Before you get muddled into what software to use for your brand new landing page, let me show you a different approach.
Copy First, Design later
Every letter matters.
– “Getting Real” by 37 Signals
As a designer, I could tell you that letters matter more than pixels.
How you communicate the story and the Why behind your product is going to have a way bigger impact on your pre-launch success than the look of your page.
Think of how Amazon does launches. You might’ve heard about their “internal PR release method.”
Instead of building the product first, product managers at Amazon start by writing an internal press release announcing the finished product.
You can treat your landing page as an internal PR release and apply the same practices Amazon’s PMs use.
Start from the epicenter of the page and write outwards.
Focus on the essence of the page and ignore the peripheries: logo, navigation bar, footer, and so on.
I use visual elements to separate sections and outline buttons/CTAs, but my goal is to keep my writing distraction-free as possible and focus on the messaging, not the style.
I always start writing the copy of a landing page first
Designing and Building the Landing Page
I don’t want you to spend weeks designing and coding your landing page, so I’m going to do you a favor here.
I had a bold idea to share the design and code of the Encharge landing page for free. It will save you some time and headaches. That’s how nice I am!
Feel free to use it for your SaaS product or any other commercial projects.
Leave your email below, and you’re going to get our landing page design – Photoshop and HTML files included + the rest of the bonuses.
Unlock The Pre-launch Pack
Pre-launch landing page template – Photoshop and HTML files included. Kickstart your pre-launch marketing with a conversion rate optimized landing page.
Go To Marketing Roadmap – Google spreadsheet swap file. Prepare and execute a solid pre-launch plan with this roadmap.
List of all ProductHunt upcoming products with 500+ subscribers – Examine the best performing upcoming products and learn from them.
+ All other marketing resources from Encharge
Encharge landing page
Between 14 November 2018 and 17 January 2019 (around 60 days)
1,698 people visited this landing page.
42 people made 50 orders on this landing page.
That’s 2.94% conversion rate on a visitor to buyer. I’d say it’s a satisfactory result for a non-existing product.
Note: We’re currently not accepting pre-orders. If you land on the recent homepage of Encharge, you’re going to see an email collection form instead.
Let’s break down and analyze the elements of this landing page and why it works.
Headline and Sub-headline
A clear and concise headline and sub-headline that describe what’s the product (“marketing automation software”) and “what is in it for me” (“make your marketing apps speak to each other).
The target customer can easily understand what the product is all about.
Personalization and Identification
The landing page speaks to a single customer persona – SaaS companies.
Narrowing the message by using contextual keywords like “marketing” and “SaaS”, the target buyers can identify and relate with this offer.
Clear CTA
Clear call-to-action immediately visible above the fold.
No “blocking” words such as “Signup” used in CTA.
Product Visualization
Customers can see what they’re going to get.
The deliverable is illustrated with a solid product image that depicts the most exciting part of the product – our visual workflow builder.
Video Sales Letter
Hello there, it’s your boy Kalo!
A brief (2-3 minutes) video that summarizes the landing page messaging.
These are the stats from our Wistia video.
28% of the landing page visitors watched the video
On average people watch 43% of the video
Most surprising for me was that 21.8% of the viewers click on the call to action at the end of the video.
Yes, with Wistia you can have CTAs in your videos.
My tip is:
If you’re going to have a CTA in your video, make sure to apply the same best-practices you use for the rest of your page CTAs.
CTA at the end of the video
Personal Letter from the Founder
Personal elements on the landing page
A sincere personal letter from the founder (me) that speaks to the customer.
The message depicts the customer current’s situation and problems:
It demonstrates my understanding of the problem and entices trust in the reader:
It describes a better future for the customer:
Lastly, we made it look like a real human message by having my snapshot at the end. It’s almost as I’m chatting with the reader through the landing page:
Value-oriented Headlines
Here, we could’ve done better by quantifying the value (i.e., highlighting numbers.)
Skimable Sections
Sections are separated visually with clear headlines, section backgrounds, and other visual clues such as icons and screens.
List of Benefits
Instead of using bullet points, our Use Cases section explains our software. We focused on the benefits, rather than features.
Use cases with benefits
Live Chat
Let’s not forget this. People are going to ask you questions about your upcoming product. Be accessible – include your email, a live chat button, and any other contact information.
Start a Conversation With Your Pre-launch Audience
Opening a dialogue with your potential clients is an example of what I call “the shot across the bow,” and it’s a great way to start your prelaunch campaign.
We started writing on Medium a mix of “how to” guides that were specific to pain points and learnings I had and thought leadership articles.
Elevar’s Medium blog
Now, we’re targeting Shopify eCommerce business owners but when we started eCommerce managers were our primary target.
For the topics, we did a little bit of keyword research on competition of target queries. Otherwise, I tended to write about what I was actively doing and learning about at the time.
We also amplified our articles through Facebook ads:
I created audiences on Facebook that matched interests (e.g., Shopify, Google Analytics and eCommerce) and posted/boosted articles from our Facebook page to these audiences.
We tried collecting emails, but it was dismal to succeed with this on Medium.
It was nice to have a built-in audience looking for analytics content to help get started, but the lack of retargeting, pixeling and prompting for emails was the big turning point for us to switch to a native blog.
Later we changed over to WordPress on our main site and canonicalized the Medium pages.
It also turned out to be very good for organic search as well.
Before and after the transition to our primary domain (note organic channel only):
My pre-launch marketing strategy was pretty simple since cold emailing or calling was not working for me.
Ecomply.io is a GDPR software, and I wanted to earn a reputation in the market as a specialist even though I was not a lawyer.
I wanted quick traction, but I didn’t have customers – Ecomply was still in Beta.
I put together 3 webinars on different topics. I promoted the webinars on relevant Facebook groups and invited people to join.
Webinars work for pre-launching
As a result, people started trusting me.
In total, it was 40 hours of work, including promotion and organization.
I got 5 sure customers who paid me €100/month each.
If you ever want to pre-launch your app, either do a webinar or create a user base through blogging.
Don’t Forget the Basics: Sort Your On-page Optimization and Track Conversions
Waleeg C, Bodo Results: 2,300 subscribers in 12 months
To get to over 2,300 subscribers in a year, I had to focus on the low hanging fruits.
SEO
Probably the most obvious advice, yet, often ignored or the hardest to see any result from in the short term.
You should cover the basics:
A good page structure and keywords optimization.
Register your website on the Google Webmasters Tool (now Google Console) and observe for keyword opportunities.
Google search is my number one traffic source, and I am far from ranking first on my keywords. Patience is key.
Track Conversions
About 25% of all Bodo visitors sign up to receive product launch announcements.
The option to sign up for the email list has been there since the very first version of the site.
I later improved that conversion rate to 50% by tweaking the design and copy of the page and focusing on user’s pains rather than features.
To increase your conversion rates, you must have a design that inspires trust – forget the quick, unpolished landing pages.
Conversion optimization is just like SEO, it might only increase your sign-ups by a few people a day; but over a long period, this could translate to hundreds if not thousands of new subscribers.
Kalo’s note:
If you’re looking for a lead generation/form builder with advanced conversion tracking look no further than ThriveLeads.
In my personal experience trying more than 5 different pop-up/form builder tools, I’ve found that ThriveLeads has the most robust conversion rate reports:
Turn Your Subscribers Into Ambassadors
I always try to please my users above and beyond.
I involve them when building new features, and make sure to understand their pain points.
I, also, don’t shy away from big discounts for the most engaged users. I found out that they would usually recruit more people around them.
Don’t waste time/$$ on ads, or commenting to the void on social media, trying to find an initial customer or build a community from scratch.
Try attending an event, or hosting one, and find those initial customers in real life.
Start by browsing Facebook events near you, searching Eventbrite.com and meetup.com, and check out the calendar at your local co-working space(s).
Use Facebook to find relevant meet-ups and events
Look for groups where you can find some people who have the same problems, then share your solution and see what resonates, and what doesn’t.
Can’t find a group? No worries, make an event on Eventbrite or Meetup about your thing, and meet a few people one afternoon at a cafe to talk about it.
Build up your mailing list and start your community from here.
Digital is awesome! It would be ideal for most of us to make an ad, which gets customers signed up online, and they start paying us… but your job (especially in the beginning) is to talk to people and understand them… know their needs and wants and to build a product you (and they) will love.
Once you know who your people are, then you can target some ads for more people like them and use online to drive sales and engagement for you.
Doing this might get you both a customer and help you start a community too.
Signing up to the Product Hunt Ship feature had a significant impact – once I enabled promotion and people could discover the page, I found many subscribers naturally through Product Hunt.
However, I think the biggest impact came from carefully choosing my upcoming page’s title to match the keywords prospective users would search.
In my case, this was:
SEO Split Testing Tool: Optimize your Organic CTR with A/B Rankings
Product Hunt is a highly trusted site, so without really needing to do any further promotion, my upcoming page would rank in Google for some queries related to the product.
Keyword optimizing my title helped me reach far more people before the launch than I would have through PH’s listings alone.
At first, it was just me having ten to fifteen-minute conversations with people. We made it a little bit more efficient by having a survey on our website where I could send people to. We did that to get 700 people. After that, we just wanted to automate it because our end goal was to get 10,000 subscribers.
That’s when Drew turned up to UpViral to run a viral giveaway.
GrooveVest’s UpViral campaign
Groove are using a custom-designed landing page and share page:
They promoted their giveaway across their website in areas such as the header, slider, across product features.
They also used catchy videos to share the giveaway on Instagram.
This campaign resulted in over 2,800 email subscribers and 1,856 social interactions.
Although, not a software product, the same giveaway tactic could be applied to your SaaS to gain some early traction and build a pre-launch audience.
My marketing superpower is long-form content (as you might have noticed from this post).
My strategy with pre-launching is:
Write a long (5,000-15,000 words) eBook that is relevant to my target audience.
Promote the hell out of it.
“From an Idea to Exit” helped us collect over 600 emails of marketers and entrepreneurs. We did that by distributing and syndicating content to other social networks – Facebook, Reddit, and IndieHackers. You can read the whole case study here.
We decided to promote our Upcoming listing in a more integrated manner versus using the widget provided by Ship which is more invasive and feels like live chat.
Layr’s website
I attribute a lot of our subscriber growth to people who landed on our website through some other means and were enticed by the idea of getting a behind the scenes look into something new we were building.
We used our marketing automation software to send targeted emails announcing the same opportunity to gain a behind the scenes look into something new we were building to 3 different segments:
Current Customers
Because this is our most loyal segment, we also asked them to amplify our Ship campaign by re-sharing our social media posts announcing the effort.
Prospective Customers
We used the Ship campaign as a way to re-engage with our prospects.
Because they aren’t customers, perhaps there was something about our current product they didn’t like?
What better way than to try and win them over than by offering a behind the scenes look into the new product we’re building?
Prospective Investors
Like most startups, we have a segment of investors who have asked to be kept up-to-date with our progress.
Again, we used the Ship campaign as an “excuse” to engage with them.
Further, investors often have unusually high follower counts on PH so as they followed our Upcoming listing; their networks were organically exposed as well.
An engaging first communication with new subscribers that set expectations is vital. You want your subscribers to amplify our Upcoming listing across their network so getting them excited about what you’re building is key.
We made sure that our first message isn’t just a short “Thanks for subscribing, we’ll keep you updated.” Instead, we provide concise bulleted examples of what we’re building along with tentative dates of when we’ll be engaging with the Ship subscribers. In a way, we almost want subscribers to look forward to receiving their next Ship update from us.
Bonus Case Study: How Crowded Got 1,407 Subscribers for a Side-Project
Several channels are driving pre-launch signups for Consently right now:
1. Product Hunt Upcoming
We signed up for Product Hunt Ship, through which we can list Consently on their upcoming page.
It’s great because it has a viral component built-in. If someone subscribes, followers on the platform will be informed.
We capitalized on this effect by using Ship’s sign up form option as an email capture on our website.
Consently’s website
When someone learns about Consently through another channel and signs up via the website, they are signing up through Product Hunt.
The cool thing is, if someone is a PH user, it will also show up on their Product Hunt profile/feed. This works really well!
2. A Viral Effect in the Product
While we are still building Consently (it’s a side-project at our startup Crowded) we do already help people with our product.
There are no interfaces yet, so we help people set up Consently manually.
When people subscribe, they get an invite for our private beta. People then can get our consent pop-up on their website.
Our product is used on other websites, and this is a marketing channel for us:
In the popup itself, we show a little link saying “We’re powered by Consently.” This referral link amounts for 15% of our visitors now.
Consently’s viral widget
The conversion rate of people that end up subscribing to Consently is 4.4%. We’re pretty excited by this specific metric once we start rolling out Consently and have our pop-up on more website
3. SEO Optimized Blog
One of the biggest names in our industry is Cookiebot.
Inherent to having a huge customer base, there’s also a group of people looking to move away from Cookiebot.
To rank high in search for people searching for “Cookiebot Alternative”, we wrote a post “Cookiebot alternative for tracking consent tool.”
“Cookiebot alternative” has 590 monthly views
We didn’t actively push signups in this post using pop-ups and lead capture; we just link to our main website from the post.
The conversion rate from this post is an astounding 27%. The post got 700 page views from Google. Of those, around 200 went to our website, and 50+ people signed up.
4. Friendly Features in Newsletters
Now and then a bunch of new visitors come to our website because we got picked up in a newsletter.
For example, Kai Brach featured us in “DenseDiscovery”. That feature brought 750 visitors and 90 signups!
We’re keeping an eye on our analytics to see who is writing about us.
Hope you enjoyed reading this and already have some tactical tips for your pre-launch marketing campaign!
In the next chapter of the Complete Guide to SaaS Marketing we’re going to discuss launching a SaaS product, so make sure to follow.
Don’t forget to grab the pre-launch goodies below:
Unlock The Pre-launch Pack
Pre-launch landing page template – Photoshop and HTML files included. Kickstart your pre-launch marketing with a conversion rate optimized landing page.
Go To Marketing Roadmap – Google spreadsheet swap file. Prepare and execute a solid pre-launch plan with this roadmap.
List of all ProductHunt upcoming products with 500+ subscribers – Examine the best performing upcoming products and learn from them.
Co-founder and marketer at Encharge. Former co-founder of HeadReach, a SaaS that I bootstrapped and scaled to 7000+ users. Now, I’m working on my next big thing — Encharge, marketing automation platform for SaaS companies.
Building a social media following is difficult – it requires patience, consistency and a commitment to learning what your audience wants and needs from your brand on social platforms.
But all of that can be undone in an instant if you share the wrong things. Send out a misguided update and you can quickly turn people off, reversing your work to establish a connection. Yet, it still happens, brands still tweet out updates that are tone-deaf, or they simply fail to adhere to basic social media best practices.
Want to know the mistakes that could be ruining your social media marketing strategy?
The team from Inklyo share their social media fails to avoid in this infographic.
Influencer marketing is a relationship built between a brand and an influencer, where the influencer promotes that brand throughout social media outlets. Influencer marketing allows businesses to advertise directly to their target audience through an influencer that consumers follow and already trust. Influencer marketing has become a very popular social media strategy in the past
Influencer marketing is a relationship built between a brand and an influencer, where the influencer promotes that brand throughout social media outlets.
Influencer marketing allows businesses to advertise directly to their target audience through an influencer that consumers follow and already trust.
Influencer marketing has become a very popular social media strategy in the past few years. With the rise and advancement of technology, it’s important for businesses to learn and master this tactic to drive traffic and increase sales.
Here are the four steps an entrepreneur can take to successfully execute the influencer marketing strategy.
Define main goals and target audience
The first step to achieve success with any tactic in marketing is to define and set goals throughout the campaign. This preliminary step makes it easier to measure success and generate returns on any investments made.
Identify and make your product appeal to your target audience. Take time to research your target audience and identify what your ideal influencer would look like. Then, you will be able to target your product towards that specific audience.
“For a small business there’s one simple goal for influencer marketing: sales,” said Dhar Mann, an experienced entrepreneur and founder and CEO of LiveGlam, a cosmetics company that he took from $600 in starting capital to 8-figures in annual revenue in less than two years.
According to Mann, it is important to consider your company’s current stage when choosing where to focus your time and effort. In the beginning stage of your business, always place the focus on sales. After some cash is put away, you can focus on building up the brand.
Develop performance-based affiliate program that pays commission for sales
A business starting with a small budget can get the most return on their investments working with influencers by creating a performance-based affiliate program. Using this approach can help a business generate sales without spending any money.
“My company, LiveGlam, a beauty subscription box, will generate $20 million in sales in our third year of business and we will spend a whopping $0 on advertising. All of our sales come through commission-based influencers that love our products and make a great living selling them,” Mann added.
However, you must create personal relationships with key influencers in order for the performance-based affiliate program to be put into effect.
Create personal relationships with key influencers
Building trust and a personal relationship with an influencer is key to holding a mutually-beneficial relationship. People feel more of a connection with a person than they do to a brand.
“My advice is to take time to build personal relationships and don’t blow your whole marketing budget on a few pay-to-post activations.
“First, make sure the influencer loves your product and consistently uses it so their audiences know the love is real. Once that history is developed and the influencer’s audience is warmed up to your brand, then paid activations can start to work,” Mann said.
It’s also important to focus on developing a really good relationship with a smaller number of influencers then it is to depend on thousands of micro-influencers to drive sales.
“We constantly send them thoughtful gifts, fly them to our studio in Los Angeles, interact with them on all their social channels, take them on trips and do whatever it takes to build personal relationships.
“We pay attention to the small details and it’s paid off in a big way,” Dhar Mann added.
Also, creating a strong relationship can lead to many different, exciting opportunities to promote your product including giveaways, exclusive product bundles, and collaborations. These opportunities will also help expand your company’s social media followings.
Use the right platform
Using the right platform for influencer marketing makes a huge impact, depending on your brand. It’s also more efficient to become an expert one platform at a time.
“I suggest start with one platform, master that, and naturally it will start spilling over onto others especially since most Influencers are multi-platform. If they love your product and your brand, they’ll start talking about you everywhere,” Mann advises.
Facebook Live is a great platform to use for the start of your influencer marketing strategy.
According to a study held by Statista, Facebook is the most widely used social network.
“Not only do influencers on Facebook Live have the deepest engagement with their audiences, they’re also not being flooded with offers by big brands because live content is so new. So, you can get a lot of bang for your buck.
“Established YouTubers and Instagrammers have so many deals coming at them that you’ll have a tough time getting on their radar and will have to pay an expensive price to get in the door,” added Mann.
Review and Repeat
Keep your social media influencer relationships strong and continually monitor the success of your business. Reviewing your influencer strategy helps you to adjust any problems and replicate success. It also helps you find out what works best for your business.
“When LiveGlam first started we looked at everything like this: if we spend $X then we expect a $Y return. And we defined a successful activation as one that generated a positive return on our investment.
“As our business grew we started to look at the brand lift potential from an influencer activation. How many followers did we gain? How many impressions did we generate? How many people now know about our brand that had never heard of us, including other influencers?” said Mann.
Monitor your sales, leads, traffic, followers and engagement consistently. Make changes according to your business growth and keep your influencers happy for future demands. Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to improve your brand’s awareness. Using these strategies can help take your business to the next level.
Christina Nicholson, (Media Maven) is a former TV reporter and anchor who has worked in markets from New York City to Miami. She is still telling stories, but instead of doing it for a newscast, she’s doing it to help businesses grow. With her business, Media Maven, her podcast, Become a Media Maven, and in her TEDx talk, she helps entrepreneurs reach thousands, even millions, of their ideal customers or clients in minutes instead of months through the power of media without spending big bucks on advertising.
You can still see her in front of the camera as a host on Lifetime TV, in national commercials, and read her work online in Huff Post, Inc. Magazine, and Fast Company. Christina also has a local lifestyle and family blog, Christina All Day. She lives in South Florida with her husband and two young children.
