B2B Marketing Blog

How to Write Compelling Meta Descriptions

By |2023-04-24T12:31:32+00:00November 2nd, 2020|

topicIcon SEM

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

 

Building a strong online presence is a complex process. There are so many different elements that need to fit in together to help you build the right picture and attract the right audience. That includes mastering both on-page and off-page SEO. And one of the most important on-page SEO elements is your meta description.

A great meta description can help you stand out from your competitors and have more people visit your website. Let’s break it down further to see why you need a killer meta description and how to write it.

What is a Meta Description

Before we dig any deeper into the writing tips, let’s clarify the notion of meta descriptions. What is it, and why do you need it?

  • A meta description is a short text that appears on the Google search results page, right under the page title.

The meta description describes what the page is about and helps your target audience decide whether or not to visit it. It answers these questions:

  • What is the page about?
  • Why should you visit it?
  • What information will it provide?

And, unless you write compelling, quality meta descriptions, your audience will pick a different result and skip your page entirely.

Now, let’s take a look at the writing tips that will help you nail each meta description and always stand out from the rest of the search results.

1. Strong Opening

When you’re writing your meta description, you have to understand that your target audience isn’t going to read the whole thing.

Instead, they’re just going to take a quick look. If they like what they see, they might continue reading. If you fail to intrigue, they’ll move one.

This is why you need to open your meta descriptions with the most important information. Let’s compare:

  • Your business’ growth is our concern- we will help you generate leads that will convert to customers
  • Our company will make sure that your business has a strong and scalable growth strategy

The most important information is placed at the beginning, in the first example, making this meta description far more effective and influential.

2. Conciseness

You only have a limited number of characters to convey a strong message and impress potential page visitors.

We suggest you keep your meta descriptions up to 160 characters long.

That means you need to stick to conciseness:

  • short sentences
  • to the point
  • remove redundancy

Think of a clear message and find the simplest way to say it. Make sure every word adds value and is necessary. This is the best way to write a strong, powerful meta description.

3. Keywords

If your page is ranking for a certain keyword, you need to make sure it’s in your meta description as well. To your target audience, it will be a signal that they are in the right place.

Make sure to include keywords following these principles:

  • include the main keyword
  • include the secondary keywords if possible
  • implement them naturally
  • don’t overstuff with keywords

Make sure the keywords are a part of a coherent sentence structure, and not just a bunch of words listed one after the other.

4. Strong CTA

Picture your target audience member. They’re reading your meta description. It’s informative, it’s concise, but they don’t feel the urge to click your page.

This is because you didn’t give them a reason.

A strong CTA is:

  • catchy
  • motivating
  • inspiring

You need to include a message such as “Hire a digital marketing specialist today!” to ensure you provide that extra push to your potential customers and stop them from second-guessing.

5. Friendly Tone

Your meta descriptions need to sound like one friend talking to another. They’re chatting and having a laid-back conversation.

You don’t want to make it into a promotional, marketing message.

This is why you should:

  • use everyday vocabulary
  • use a friendly tone
  • avoid technical terminology

Let’s compare:

  • Our highly-professional and exquisite digital marketing specialists will ensure your company’s online presence is transformed into customers…
  • Our digital marketing team will ensure your company’s online presence is converting into revenue.

Make it natural, simple, and conversational, just like in the second example.

6. No Tricks

Another super-important element of your meta description is honesty. If you think for a second that you can trick your audience into becoming your customer, you’re wrong.

Some marketers feel like they should write ambiguous or untrue meta descriptions to trick people into clicking their page.

But, once they realize the meta description doesn’t honestly describe the page content, they’ll be:

  • frustrated
  • confused
  • angry

And, you’ll lose them forever.

Keep it honest and don’t play any games.

7. Uniqueness

There is no such thing as a one, ultimate, meta description template you can create and apply to all your pages.

On the contrary, each meta description needs to be unique. Make sure that you always:

  • start from scratch
  • think of something new
  • convey a new dominating message

Final Thoughts

Writing compelling meta descriptions is a seriously responsible task that requires your full attention and dedication. Make sure you develop a clear strategy for always nailing each new meta description and showing your professionalism in every aspect of it.

Hopefully, the tips above will help you improve your writing skills and create meta descriptions that work with you on achieving your goals.

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Search on 2020 – what google want us to know

By |2023-04-24T12:32:18+00:00October 19th, 2020|

topicIcon Content Marketing Inbound Marketing SEO

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

 

Google released their yearly “search on” video. And it’s awesome.

TLDW: AI advancements are happening around the clock.

⁃ videos are being scanned and tags are rolled out as chapters, enabling people to land directly on the part relevant to their search intent

How Google understands specific terms and key words in YouTube videos

⁃ Searches with spelling mistakes will be adjusted at a much more accurate scale

⁃ Specific searches will be answered more accurately due to the ability to understand the semantics a page is about and provide better long-tail results

⁃ Broad searches – same as above

⁃ Google lens will enable adding an image of a text and then listening to it

⁃ AR advancements are taking a leap, empowering education as well as maps

⁃ Journalists studio is getting a boost via a new tool called pinpoint enabling searching resources efficiently with some strong tier-1 publishers taking part

⁃ Searching for images of things you want to buy will soon become second nature as the visual search engine continues to improve

⁃ Bonus awesome feature “hum to search” – find that song stuck in your head

What does this mean for businesses? Keep investing in quality content.

Google are constantly evolving their ability to identify what your content is truly about and just how helpful and relevant it is to what people are searching for.

The better your content, the higher you’ll rank in results. It’s becoming as simple as that.

 

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Creating a startup mission statement – the two core steps

By |2023-04-24T12:33:08+00:00September 1st, 2020|

topicIcon Inbound Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

Creating a startup mission statement - the two core steps header

 

You may think that coming up with a mission statement is a waste of time, that it’s BS, or fluff. I think it isn’t. In fact, it is critical for your startup as it helps you deeply figure out what you’re truly about, and fine tune your company’s compass. It’ll help you define and understand your holistic goals, sets your company apart from the competition, and assists in focusing your activities toward fulfilling your vision.

As Robert Greene, the author of Mastery says “having a sense of purpose and direction gives energy to every single thing that you do. Go back and realize who you are that makes you unique.”

Two weeks ago, I talked to Yoel Israel from WadiDigital for the company’s LinkedIn page, and this interview made me reflect on the subject, hence this blog post.

 

 

Noa Eshed's Guide for Creating a Mission statement discussion with Yoel Israel

Here are the two key steps:

1. Start the discussion internally.

Sit down with the team (or “Zoom down”) and talk about it

Your mission statement doesn’t necessarily have to start with your product. It can start with you and your team because a startup is very much about the people that make it, in the same amount as, if not even more than, your product. Pivoting is not a rare thing in the world of startups, and even when pivoting, a mission statement can still hold true. Therefore, you should sit down together and make an actual list of everything you care about and what you want to do, and through this, hone a mission statement that you feel positive about.

Discuss the following:

  • What’s our purpose? Purpose has to be
    • personally meaningful to you
    • Bigger than you
    • Future oriented – you have to work towards it
  • What do we care about?
  • What are our shared values?
  • What is it that we deliver and how does it reflect the above?
  • What is it that we do differently?

Your mission statement doesn’t necessarily have to start with your product. It can start with you and your team because a startup is very much about the people that make it, in the same amount as, if not even more than, your product. Pivoting is not a rare thing in the world of startups, and even when pivoting, a mission statement can still hold true. Therefore, you should sit down together and make an actual list of everything you care about and what you want to do, and through this, hone a mission statement that you feel positive about.

This statement doesn’t necessarily need to be set in stone. I believe that it doesn’t have to stay the same and entirely unchanged with a startup for life. It can be flexible and changeable. After all, many large companies have changed their mission statements and it didn’t have a negative effect on them.

Apple’s old mission statement was “a computer in the hands of everyday people” (Entrepreneur) and it was changed to “bringing the best user experience to its customers through innovative hardware, software, and services” (Apple). Microsoft’s original mission statement was “a computer on every desk and in every home” (Business Insider) but it was replaced by “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more” (Microsoft). Google has so far gone with its mission statement “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (Google) but its co-founder Larry Page said in 2014 that the company had outgrown this mission statement and that they were trying to work that out (Financial Times).

It’s okay to change your mission to move with the times and the changing business environment.

Once you have a statement,

2. tie it down to the outside world – gather feedback from customers, friends, and family.

It’s important to see that your statement resonates and that the outer world responds well to it. Start gathering feedback from your current customers, assuming there are such. If there aren’t any, go social, talk to your friends and family, try to get as much feedback as possible, and observe how they react.

If the statement doesn’t sound like who you are as a startup, then something was left unclear and it’s just a matter of communicating it clearly. If the feedback you get is that you’re being a hypocrite and your words are hollow – don’t correlate with how your company operates – that’s priceless feedback. Where is the gap between what you believe you’re conveying and waking up in the morning for – and reality. Can you change it?

Once you have a mission statement that meets reality, you’ll be able to align your actions messaging and goals around it. That’s pretty meaningful, if you ask me. And the reason I’m confident that a strong mission statement is a foundation and guiding principle of any successful startup

Wrapping up with a dosage of inspiration from the legendary Steve Jobs and his famous here’s to the crazy one’s speech:

 

Hopefully, this quick post has given you some useful insights to assist you in getting clarity and honing the most accurate mission statement for you. Good luck!

 

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How b2b marketers can find journalists and bloggers in their niche?

By |2023-04-24T12:34:15+00:00August 1st, 2020|

topicIcon B2B Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

 

How b2b marketers can find journalists and bloggers in their niche

Your business may have the best product or service in the world however, if nobody knows about it, nobody will use it. Strategy that companies normally take when approaching this problem is called pr outreach. As part of it, they find journalists and bloggers that are willing to write about services like theirs, reach out to them to let them know about theit service and hope that certain percentage of these people are going to either mention them or link back to their content. Normally, this only works if the content you’re promoting is not salesy, but adds value instead. However, producing quality content is outside of the scope of this article so we’ll start from the assumption you already have content that people would link to based on merit. In this column, we’re going to look into how to actually find these people and reach out to them.

The anatomy of successful reachout.

Having stellar content is not enough on its own to run a successful email outreach campaign. As I like to say it, I’ve seen som many things succeed that should never succeed, and so many thing fail that should never fail. But if it’s not just the content, then what is it? It all boils down to being in the right place, having the right thing, being surrounded by right people, and saying the right thing. At the right time. Simple, right?

While a combination of all these things may sound intimidating at first, don’t be afraid. You already have the hardest things to get out of all these – great content! Now we just need to relevant opportunities to promote that content. And that’s exactly what subsequent sections of this article going to cover.

The outreach opportunity

Whatever it is your content is about, chances are that lots of bloggers and journalists are already writing about similar things. If not from the solution perspective, then from a problem perspective which is just as good. If not even better because if your content solves a specific problem, then your content would be a perfect fit for an article where people speak about that particular problem. You just need to know what to look for. However, things are not always black and white. For example, if you’re offering legal services, it may make sense to promote your content on blogs writing about legal services. However, if you’re in the coupon & deals industry, you don’t want to promote your content on blogs offering coupons as these will be your competitors who are running them. In such case, you want to look for content that is helpful to your target customer, which in this case are consumers. Think about “consumer information” and “how to save money with your monthly shopping” kind of content. Whatever it is, your content is helping someone. You just need to find where that someone goes, what are their target interests and outreach to people running such outlets. Now, what would that be for your particular case? Stop for a second and think about it.

Finding responsible editors

When you find a webpage on the internet that looks like a perfect fit for your proucts, services or content, you still need to try to get your product featured there. How successful you are in that, largely depends on whether you are communicating to the content owner of that page. Someone who has decision making powers and can actually edit that page and put your thing there. If you communicate to the person who has no editing powers, it doesn’t matter if they think your content is best in the world. Because they will still not be able to feature your offerings there.

Now, how do you find that person varies greatly. Sometimes, it’s a clear cut. Editor publishes their name directly on the article and you have it right there. Sometimes, they post a username handle not looking like a real name. However, googling for that handle may reveal their name on some other websites. And sometimes, it can be a lot more complex that that. The key here is, no matter how hard it is to find the content owner of the outreach opportunity, you have to do so if you want to have even remote chances of a successful outreach campaign.

Contact information

When you have the name, you still need to contact that person somehow. Most common way of outreaching, and most cost-efficient at the same time, is emailing. But how do you find a persons email? It can be easy and it can be hard, just like finding the person name. Sometimes it’s on the page, sometimes somewhere deep on the same website, sometimes on some other website, and sometimes it can even be a contact form being the only thing you can find. Whatever way, it’s crucial to have direct person’s email before you send anything. You have a person targeted, and you want to reach out directly to them.

Outreach email

When you come to this point, it means you have the outreach opportunity, responsible person and their email found already. But how do you frame your email to maximize your outreach success? What do you need to put in it to catch their attention to look at your product. While there is no magic wand here, there are some best practices you can follow.

First thing, make sure you send your emails 1 by 1. Nobody likes mass email campaigns and if you email looks like another generic one, nobody will pay any attention. You want to make your email very personal. Make sure it’s obvious to the person reading it you’ve spent some time researching them, have read some of their online work and know who they are and what they do. The best way to do that is to make a genuine comment on something they wrote and to make sure you address them directly by name. This way, they know they’re dealing with someone who actually dedicated some time to this email.

Another important thing is to never ask anything in return on your first communication with a person. Acknowledge their work, introduce yourself, and subtly make them aware of your product. And how it would benefit them. Them and their readers. If your product is really relevant, solves a real pain point for them, and it is something they really need or would provide value to their readers, they will check it out themselves. Without you asking.

And don’t forget to follow up. If you get no response, it’s OK to remind them of your email. However, same rules apply. Don’t be too pushy and don’t make your reminder look like a sales pitch. Be subtle, ask politely did they get a chance to read your email and see what they think.

Summary

As we’ve seen in this article, there are a lot of ingredients going into the successful outreach recipe. And no single best way to do it. Outreach also takes a lot of time. Searching for pages, scoring them for relevance, finding editors, their contact information, doing your emails and much more. One of the most draining and time consuming part is building the actual outreach list of opportunities, responsible owners and their contact information. It takes a lot of effort, searching and browsing to do that manually. If you want to save time on that, and avoid using multiple tools and doing lots of things manually, you may look into managed services that do this. One such service is Postbag (https://postbag.co/) for example. It builds the outreach list with opportunities and finds responsible people and their email addresses from all across the web. This way, you can spend all of your time thinking about content, email approach strategies and the big picture of your outreach campaign. Or, if you have abundance of time, you can still do everything manually by searching through the internet yourself. Whatever way you choose, we wish you best of luck with your outreach efforts!

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Smartphone Statistics To Drive Your Mobile Advertising Strategy In 2020

By |2023-04-24T12:35:00+00:00July 1st, 2020|

topicIcon PPC SEM

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

Smartphone Statistics To Drive Your Mobile Advertising Strategy In 2020 (1)

 

The internet is increasingly mobile! In 2020, more people own a smartphone than a toothbrush and we’re spending almost three hours a day glued to their tiny screens.

What does this mean for business?

Users want mobile responsive content they can interact with on-the-go and they want it to be as good as other online content.

While you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a B2C problem, research suggests B2B buyers increasingly want their B2B buying experience to be comparable to the one they get as a consumer.

Plus, it’s a trend that’s set to gain traction as younger buyers enter the B2B market.

But it’s not just user’s preferences you need to think about. Search engines also put increasing emphasis on mobile content. In September 2020, Google will go mobile-first and place mobile-optimised content ahead of other content in the SERPs.

Which means that, If you’re building a presence for a B2B business online, you need to:

  1. Understand how people use the internet on their phones
  2. Build your marketing strategy around their wants and needs

To help you do that, we’ve put together the infographic below. It’s stuffed with all the smartphone statistics you need to hear this year.

Embedded from UKWebHostReview

3 key takeaways for B2B business

1.There’s no social media without smartphones


In 2019, more than half of social media engagement came from mobile users. And if the ongoing rise of mobile-only social platforms like WhatsApp, TikTok and Snapchat is anything to go by, mobile is taking centre stage.

A recent report by Boston Consulting Group suggests this isn’t just a B2C trend. 80 per cent of B2B buyers use their mobile at work and 60% say it plays an important role in their buying process.

Which means you need to think bigger than making existing content more mobile-friendly. Instead, think about developing some mobile-only campaigns. What do we mean by ‘mobile-only’?

Mobile-only marketing campaigns are created to meet the specific needs of mobile users. So they make use of the technology we have on our smartphones. For example, your mobile-only marketing strategy could involve:

  • Creating an augmented reality app that allows potential purchasers to see how your products work without taking them out of the warehouse
  • Tag your field-based service products (e.g. vehicle hires) with a QR code connected to a landing page
  • Use messaging apps to run groups or forums for your niche or industry

… and much more besides.

2. Mobile is just as important to brick-and-mortar businesses


If you thought mobile marketing was just for online businesses, you’d be wrong my friend.

40 per cent of mobile searches reference local goods and services. Which means that owners of brick-and-mortar businesses need to be just as smartphone-savvy.

If you run a local B2B store (e.g. builder’s merchants, service providers), your most important task is to mobile-optimise your entry in Google My Business and other directory listings. If your business appears in Google’s Local Pack, you’ll experience a significant increase in footfall.

Plus, don’t forget that your buyers enjoy the consumer experience. So, don’t discount mobile marketing schemes as a B2C tactic. No matter what hat your buyer is wearing, they’ll still enjoy rewards customer loyalty discounts offered through a mobile app.

3. Smartphones make advertising more global


Run a B2B business with global reach? You need know just how important mobile is outside of Europe, North America and Australia.

While smartphone penetration in the US (77%) and the UK (82.2%) has remained unchanged, it’s risen dramatically across South Asia and Africa. Smartphone are no longer a luxury item for the few, but an essential tool for taking part in modern life.

In fact, by 2021, it’s estimated that 3.8 billion people (almost half the global population) will own a smartphone and it’s often the only internet-enabled device individuals have outside of the office. So, invest in mobile marketing for your global audience and you’ll start reaping the rewards now.

 

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Excel vs CRM – what you need to know

By |2023-04-24T12:35:57+00:00June 9th, 2020|

topicIcon Content Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

excel vs crm - what you need to know

 

I am sure as an excel user you probably use the same basic calculation functions. Are you doing the same with your Marketing Automation platform?

Hands down Microsoft Excel is probably the most important invention of the 21st Century. It is one of the very few products that every single person on earth is required to have some familiarity with regardless of their status or station in life. And without a doubt it is considered to be the Godfather of all CRMs and Marketing Automation platforms. So regardless of any new tool or sexy platform that arises excel will always be the familiar comfort place we will all resort to when we don’t get how these new platforms work.

It’s therefore not surprising that there’re so many businesses using excel to run their sales, marketing and customer service efforts today– not just the small or start-up enterprises, but also some well-established businesses that have been in existence for many years. Is yours one of them?

I know excel could seem easier to use, and even capable of managing your customer relationships. However, it’s not the most efficient way to collect, analyze and manage business data, especially if you are looking to grow in the near future.

Let’s do a quick comparison of Excel vs CRM. The winner is clear, and hopefully by the end of this article, you will be convinced and appreciate the need to adopt a CRM for your business – especially if your business is growing.

But just before that, let’s make sure we are on the same page.

What is a CRM?

CRM is an acronym for Customer Relationship Management, and as the name infers, it’s a system for managing relationships with your customers. It’s designed with the aim to help foster stronger customer relationships and improve sales and retention by having quality conversations with prospects and customers.

Like a CRM, excel can be used to collect, store, analyse and manage business data. So what’s the difference or the big deal with opting to use excel over the CRM?

Here are 8 basic comparison points to help you decide:

Excel CRM
Collaboration Multiple users can’t access one excel sheet at the same time unless it’s uploaded on google drive, making it hard to collaborate. Multiple users can access and work from the same database at the same time. This improves collaboration between departments.
Integration Can’t be integrated with other business tools to enhance efficiency for example emails, and automation tools. Can be integrated with many other business tools that make every day working of the business more efficient, for example emails, automation tools and project management and communication tools like Slack and WhatsApp.
Analytics and Reporting Performing analytics and creating reports takes a lot of time because you’ll need to create and generate each report manually. CRM’s have automated analytics and reporting capabilities which allows you to generate up to date reports by the click of a button.
Business management and leadership With excel the sales or marketing person has to manually send updates to the management or leadership teams. They have no way of getting real time updates of what’s going on with every sales, marketing or service activity. With a CRM, Management/leadership teams get real-time updates of what is happening with the sales, marketing and service teams. They need not wait, follow up or micromanage employees to be in the know.
Time Value A lot of time is wasted because each entry has to be done manually, and in carrying out many other repetitive tasks. Manual data entry opens a door for human error. Since manual data entry is replaced by automated systems, time is saved for sales or marketing people to do what they are actually hired to do – sell or market the business to generate revenue. Human error is also minimised.
Automation Every task e.g. sending out emails, following up with customers and prospects has to be done manually. CRM’s allow for creation of workflows. These take automatic actions, e.g. send out certain communication when a prospect/customer takes a particular action. This makes you more efficient
Customer Experience Data is usually segmented and takes time to dig up the history and previous communication with a prospect/client, which usually leads to broken flow of communication with them. As a result, customer experience and satisfaction is reduced. CRM’s provide a holistic view of the customer engagement and relationship. With the ability to view all and up to date communication with a prospect/client, you are able to continue the flow of conversation in the right direction. This provides a more fulfilling customer experience and better relationship.
Return on investment They say time is money. Time wasted in doing manual repetitive tasks, instead of more productive activities, costs your organization money. Research has showed that average return on investment for CRM is $8.71 dollars for every dollar spent.
Scalability As your company grows and customer relationships evolve, and excel sheet soon becomes insufficient. E.g. excel won’t tell you when to give a certain customer a follow up call or when to upsell them. As a result you miss out on great opportunities. CRM are more scalable tools. You will get notifications when to follow up on a certain client, or better yet, can use automated workflows to send follow up messages for you. You are also able to take advantage of opportunities to upsell at the right time.

 

More Benefits of the CRM

 

  • Higher revenue – improved efficiency and a holistic view of your customers allows you to take advantage of the right moments to cross sell and upsell with higher success rates. This also reduces the chances if attrition.
  • Healthier pipeline – Having a holistic view of your pipeline enables you to prioritize deals more diligently. Therefore your pipeline isn’t clogged up and you remain committed to the bottom line.

When should you adopt a CRM?

Many businesses start small and it works well to manage their data in emails and spreadsheets like excel. As a result, data usually ends up segmented in different places i.e. in people’s laptops and emails.

However, as the business grows, it becomes difficult to use. Data and flow of communication with clients is easily lost along the way or takes too long to retrieve. Then the business starts to feel the pain of disorganization and poor data management, which is usually accompanied by data, customer and financial loss.

Don’t wait for that time. The earlier you adopt a CRM, the better for you.

How do you decide which CRM to use?

There are a lot of CRM options of available.

First you need to decide what your need needs are. Understand what you are looking for.

Then consider the CRM’s:

  • Simplicity – it should be easy for your team to use.
  • Relevance – it should be able to meet your specific needs
  • Integration – does it integrate well with your business tools?
  • Analytics and reporting – does it offer custom reporting and performance tracking.
  • Communication tracking – it should be able to track interactions from your customers from emails, phone conversations and online chats.
  • Affordability – look out for hidden charges which could be in form of maintenance fees, need to pay extra for additional contacts or reporting ability, overage charges for data storage etc.

For more insights on why businesses should invest in a CRM and not rely on excel, listen here as sales experts Resa Gooding and John Golden discuss.

Ready for your first CRM? Let us know in the comments below.

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HubSpot launched an ABM solution – let’s talk ABM

By |2023-04-24T12:36:50+00:00May 28th, 2020|

topicIcon Inbound Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

blog/hubspot-launched-an-abm-solution-lets-talk-abm

 

Last week HubSpot launched a new Account Based Marketing (ABM) solution, it’s a natural step that ties down all aspects of inbound sales. This should be used in addition to the sales pipeline to help organize and better manage communication with key accounts.

This release is a good reason to stop and evaluate ABM, as well as get the basics on how to get started on HubSpot.

First things first, who is ABM relevant to?

You should consider an ABM approach if:

  • Your product/service is expensive
  • Purchasing from you requires multiple decision-makers
  • You have a finite number of prospects – if your target audience is either a very specific niche or only tier-1 companies

Where should you start?

Identify target accounts: What companies out there would you like to be doing business with?

  • Map out specific companies you’d like to attract and engage.
  • Within those companies map out specific people –  these should be the position holders who are part of the “buying committee” deciding whether or not to proceed and make a deal with you. Detail their role within the “committee”:
    • Decision maker
    • Champion
    • Budget holder
    • Influencer
    • Blocker
    • Legal and compliance
    • Executive sponsor
    • End user
  • Make a list of how you’re going to get under their radar both via outbound and inbound methods
    • what content will you need? This could be:
      • Repurposed content from your inbound efforts
      • Personalized web pages
      • An industry event
      • Swag
    • Where do they hang out online
    • What platforms should you directly connect with them on

Make sure your company has a solid representation where your target accounts are present. This could be:

  • Conferences
  • Industry newsletters
  • Review sites and indexes such as product hunt, clutch, capterra, appsumo
  • Industry influencers
  • Sponsored Ads
  • And of course – social media (LI, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, Slack and more)

Once you have an understanding of who you want to target, and how, use HubSpot to execute your ABM strategy. Basically the new dashboard will enable an easier way to manage those relationships and efforts. It’s important to note – this doesn’t replace the regular sales pipeline – it goes hand in hand with it. I know many companies who use the sales pipeline for managing communications with companies who are not yet deals because it answers a need of having all the info in one place.

So deal stages such as “first outreach” “second outreach” etc start emerging on the pipeline and it’s just wrong. While the AMB dashboard isn’t aimed at covering all outreach efforts, it’s a good middle ground. Instead of adding companies who aren’t yet deals to the pipeline – use the ABM dashboard and maybe even manage an excel file for the rest of your cold outreach efforts who arent target accounts. Or – add all cold outreach efforts to your ABM dashboard but mark as low priorty companies who aren’t target accounts (why are you reaching out to none target accounts in the first place?)

How to get started on HubSpot?

First, add contacts and companies that you’ve mapped out when strategizing as new contacts and companies on HubSpot

Activate the ABM features in your HubSpot account by navigating to:

  • Contacts > Target Accounts.
  • Click Get started.

Next, select companies you’d like to focus on as target accounts.

The dashboard will then be uncovered – it’s your central command. It will provide you with an overview of each of your accounts, you’ll be able to see the contacts within those accounts, your engagement with them, how they’re engaging with your content and the overall status. In addition, you’ll be able to create ABM lists and reports that will help you slice, dice and make data-based decisions. .

Update the contact property: buying role

Edit this property to identify the role of the contacts associated with the target account. A contact can have more than one role (for example a decision maker and an influencer). By the way. the target accounts dashboard will detail accounts that don’t have buying roles associated with them.

Viewing account overviews can be done in your target accounts home in the right panel of a company record;

The overview displays:

Lists

After activating ABM, HubSpot automatically creates contact lists based on ABM contact and company properties. This is helpful for segmenting contacts for smart content, newsletters, marketing emails, and ad audiences.

Workflows

You can create workflows to automatically assign a tier to target accounts (referring you back to the point I made earlier about managing priorities outside the sales pipeline). HubSpot provide a default template but I strongly advise customizing it based on your own criteria. Here’s how to find it:

  • navigate to Automation > Workflows.
  • Create workflow.
  • click the Templates tab.
  • In the Type dropdown menu select Companies.
  • Select “Sort companies by ideal customer profile fit template”

Reports

HubSpot added a new set of helpful ABM reports. Here’s how to set them up:

  • navigate to Reports > Dashboards.
  • click Create dashboard.
  • Choose Target accounts
  • Select a dashboard and set it up

That just about wraps up the basics, if you’d like to learn more I recommend HubSpot’s guide to ABM, If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out to me! Happy selling!

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The #1 lesson from being quarantined at home

By |2023-04-24T12:37:27+00:00April 27th, 2020|

topicIcon Blog

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

The no 1 lesson from being quarantined at home

 

No, it’s not stocking up on toilet paper, masks, or alcogel. It’s not even to get ready for the worst situation possible. It’s not buying zoom stocks or BioMed stocks. It’s not about our relationship with China and not about public safety. It’s about us and how we communicate. Applying this one lesson will make everything we do easier. We can improve the way we communicate, we can influence better and easier,  we can create new relationships faster and in a more meaningful way.

As a leadership coach at Intel, I work with many managers. In conversations with managers some have told me how much they miss people around them and it is weird to communicate through the skype all day long. There is an unseen magic the two people communicate face to face. We haven’t noticed the need for connection until it was taken from us.

Usually marketers are experienced communicators. Covid-19 created an opportunity to communicate in a better way, not just because we have changed but because our audiences have changed. Let’s examine how.

When we first were forced to stay at home, our regular life routines were interrupted, the fear of the unknown took over many. How else can you explain people howling toilet paper? For a week we were ok, maybe two. Then, when the understanding that the quarantine can take months took place, we started to feel uncomfortable. It’s not just the fear for our job, the fear of the unknown. It was also the need to communicate and be around people.

Two months ago, If I asked all of the leaders I ever coached how they feel in front of a camera, I’m pretty sure 90% of them would feel highly uncomfortable.  Yesterday, I spoke with my partner on skype using only audio. After ten minutes into the call, we reflected on how weird it is to have only a “phone call” and not using video after we have used video in so many meetings and zoom events in the past month. Just a “phone call” felt weird and disconnected. We have all changed!

The required quarantine helped us discover our need for human connection, out need to be heard to feel that we belong. Feeling alone, people re-created their businesses using online tools, attended late night parties, exercised and attended lectures, birthdays and weddings, all virtual. Human interaction and our need to share experiences together is stronger than anything else in our life. This is in line with the Adlerian theory that all of our actions are driven from the need to feel that we belong. It is the same need that makes us run home and tell our loved ones when something good has happened or call our best friend when bad things happen. We need to share our world, be heard and accepted.

When the need to connect is amplified, we have an opportunity as communicators to tune into this need in a deeper and more meaningful way. Here are some practical ways to practice our relationship building and improving our communications:

Listen to reflect

When we listen to reflect, as opposed to listen to respond, or listen to solve, we give the other person a feeling that they are heard and that we understand what they say. To practice that, begin your sentence with “It sounds like” or “It looks like”.   For example, if your client tells you “I’m so busy, I don’t have a lot of time” reflect and say “It sounds like you’re under a lot of pressure. I’ll make it short so you can go and take care of the most important things to you. Maybe I can even help you with it if they are relevant to our conversation”

Listening with the purpose of reflecting trains us to listen in a much deeper way. With time, you will hear what is said between the lines. It quiets our inner conversation and bias and opens us to a new level of listening.

People judge based on actions not intent.

There are many stories of deals that were signed with a handshake. Those are based on mutual trust.

The fastest way to build trust is to declare your intent. If you don’t declare it up front, the person in front of you will fill that space with their own interpretation of your intent. For example: “I wanted to speak with you because I left our last call with a strange feeling that something was not right. I care about our relationship and I wanted to learn if I have done something wrong”

Communicate with a person, not with a role

Remember that people are more than their role. They have experiences, opinions, stories of hardships, joy and pain. They can tell you stories about the challenges they experienced. Just like you can. When communicating with others, share as much as you can about yourself and let them an opportunity to get to know you beyond your role, they will in return share with you about themselves if they feel safe. In one of my management roles, our main customer was a tough person to work with. He run his group and technical domain without anyone to challenge him. When I came on board, I scheduled some time with him and was curious about his role and about who he was. I soon discovered he served in the Israeli army reserve duties in roles I was familiar with. We very fast turned to share our stories from our army service and found many shared experiences. Very fast we became good friends and our business relationships was very efficient. It doesn’t mean he didn’t give me and my team a hard time. He did, but it was always in a friendly way and focused on the technical details and requirements. Finding what we share together created a bond that supported the business.

Final thoughts,

We all want to belong, to communicate with others and share our experiences. Understanding that we all share the same basic needs and that especially today, more than ever, we’re looking for human connection, creates an opportunity to strengthen our relationships, to communicate in a deeper way. Improving our communication skills can create better opportunities for everyone, both in business and in life.

What have you learned about human connection in the last month?

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How to approach linkbuilding in light of Google’s latest announcement

By |2023-04-24T12:38:00+00:00March 12th, 2020|

topicIcon SEO

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

How to approach linkbuilding in light of Googles latest announcement

 

Recently Google announced that it was penalizing guest blog post articles.

This is a huge deal for many marketers basing their SEO strategy on link building.

At Bold we’ve ceased utilizing this best practice for a while now. Backlinks built via link building outreach tactics are in many cases completely unnatural.

From our experience, even before this announcement, google don’t buy this anymore. Submitting guest posts doesn’t actually lead to any improvement in rankings. Having a guest post or not having it ddoesn’t matter from an SEO perspective. So we’ve stopped focusing on link building but we didn’t have anything against guest posting once in a while.

Now, Google officially want backlinks from guest posting to be nofollow. A no follow link doesn’t deliver SEO juice so it doesn’t impact the rankings. On the other hand, dofollow links are mostly discredited by Google, so in the best case scenario they will have no impact, in the worst case scenario they will lead to penalties.

Basically, from now on Google will not completely ignore nofollow links, the algorithm will take them into consideration giving them very little importance, but still, it won’t ignore them completely.

We don’t recommend not guest posting at all as there are other added values to guest posting such as building authority and generating relevant traffic to your website from publications your target audience reads.

So what should you do?

  1. Don’t abuse guest posting, be moderate
  2. In order to be on the safe side, when you guest post, ask the website that hosts your post to use a nofollow attribute. You can check that was done by viewing the page source, look for your link and see if the nofollow tag appears there.
  3. When you publish guest posts on your own website – use a nofollow attribute as well.
  4. Don’t guest post aiming for ranking improvement. When you choose a website to host your guest post consider other parameters that might benefit you such as the traffic it can potentially bring you, the relevancy and the authority of this domain.

Guest posting purely for SEO ranks is almost dead. Content on the other hand, is still king, and it’s there to stay.

Good luck!

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Top five tools for remote team collaboration

By |2023-04-05T10:45:56+00:00February 25th, 2020|

topicIcon Digital Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

Top five tools for remote team collaboration header

 

If there’s one thing we at Bold Digital Architects understand very well, it’s that talent isn’t hindered by borders. In this day and age, where the entire world is at your fingertips and most of what we do happens online anyway, it would be a shameful waste of opportunity to look for skilled team members in a radius smaller than 6,371 km.

By tapping into the global pool of talent, we were able to assemble an amazing team of creative marketers all over the world, from Israel to Croatia, from Romania to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Idyllic as it may sound, managing a fully remote team comes with a few challenges, as well. The secret ingredient to virtually any team’s success is communication and collaboration to get those synergy juices flowing. However, when the team is spread across different time zones and different work cultures, that can be a difficult task.

Luckily for us, there are tools out there that help us communicate better, collaborate easier and get the job done with stellar results. I’d like to take this opportunity to share my experiences with you; possibly help you overcome any potential fear and inspire you to bring in your next team member from across the planet!

Here are my picks for the top five tools for remote team collaboration:

1. WhatsApp (Groups)

I want to start with WhatsApp groups because in our line of work, it all begins with a solid plan – and you need the combined brainpower of your team members in order to have a solid plan come together.

Whether we’re discussing the next blog post with our clients, that new keyword we want to push for or how to handle content distribution across the social media plane, the job gets done quickly and efficiently through the groups on WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is a great app for multiple reasons:

  • Everyone is already using it. That means no onboarding, no tutorials and training, no getting used to, no “I didn’t know we could do that with this tool”.
  • It’s available on both mobile and PC. The PC version works great and it’s easy to continue the conversation on the go, or wrap it up at the desk. Transferring photos and videos, for example, is a breeze with WhatsApp, which has proven super useful when preparing social media content (however not that WhatsApp does take the quality down so apply with caution).
  • Groups are easy to set up and moderate, and the discussions are easy to follow and follow up on.

2. Asana

After agreeing on a plan and making sure everyone’s tasks are properly communicated, it’s important to use a collaboration platform to track the progress. We love us some Asana here, as this tool makes it easy to ensure that everyone knows what the next steps are. Obviously, you can use the free version of the tool, but we’ve opted for the Premium version as the additional features really bring a lot of value to the table.

In our case, we’ve set up an entire content calendar project with custom fields that different members of the team can edit. Everyone from the AMAZING content writers, editors, SEO manager, account managers, to the designer and finally – client, can track the progress of the project and give their thoughts and opinions.

helping you navigate your startup to marketing stardom

So, for example, the SEO manager will update fields like Meta Text, LSI Keyword or Main Keyword, while the content author will fill up the fields like Author, Type of Content or Description. If we’ve already agreed on a title for our next blog post, we can notify our designer to prepare the visuals, and he can simply update the task to let everyone know that part of the work is done.

It truly is a group effort which results in properly streamlined work, where everyone can understand where we stand with a task at no more than a glance.

3. Zoom

It’s one thing to plan, map out and prepare a project, but executing it is a whole different beast. The content that we are creating for our clients needs to be relevant, easily digestible and speaking clearly to the target audience. But most importantly – it needs to be fresh and original.

In order to avoid the echo chamber that is the Internet – we do our best to invite relevant speakers, opinion-makers, and trendsetters (which are often our clients to begin with) for a short chat, to use their knowledge and firsthand experience to create compelling content that really brings that extra “oomph” to the reader.

Among the best tools for audio/video chats (and our favorite) is Zoom, mostly due to how widespread and simple to use it is. Installation is virtually non-existent, the interface super intuitive and the quality of the audio is (and I say this without fear of overstating) unmatched. It’s a welcome addition to every content creator’s arsenal.

4. Google Docs

Now it’s time to get to the actual writing and for that, we really enjoy the advantages and little perks of Google Docs. Even though it may seem identical to Microsoft’s Word on the surface, there are many little advantages that, when added up, make a mountain of a difference.

First and foremost – it’s a lot simpler to use. All you need is a browser and you can use it anywhere, on any device and on any network. Docs is essentially free to use, but I do recommend going for one of the paid G Suite versions if you’re really serious about improving your remote team’s collaboration perspective.

Perhaps the key advantage is in how Docs handles collaboration. Docs allows you to create a document and invite other team members to work on it, suggest changes and edits, or to add their own copy. You can forget about countless versions of the same file getting lost going back and forth through an email chain. There is just one file and a URL that allows you to access it from any device and from any network.

Speaking of access, it’s also important to stress that Google Docs handles permission management and sharing with ease. With just a few clicks you can organize who has access to what and to what extent. It’s all very seamless and user-friendly.

Last, but definitely not least, is its integration with Grammarly and its own, AI-powered spelling and grammar checker. Regardless of how pro you are and how many thousands of words you may have under your belt, you’re bound to mess up here and there. Sometimes you’ll be pressed on time, sometimes you’ll be exhausted from other tasks, sometimes you’ll just unexplainably fail (we still love you, though, Damir!), and in those situations, having a little AI-powered help goes a long way.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t have another pair of eyes proofreading your content, which you definitely should (we organize proofreading through Asana, by the way), but getting rid of the obvious mistakes helps cut down on time and makes the entire content creation process faster.

5. Google Drive

At the end of the day, all that content needs to sit somewhere where it’s easily accessible to every team member. Given that we enjoy Google Docs, it’s only natural to have Google Drive as our default storage option. Together with Docs, it’s part of the G Suite, so you know what you can expect from it – a seamless experience, access from any device, plenty of storage and a place to securely store all your content. It’s basically a must.

With the right tools, everything is possible

Making it work with a fully remote, global team might sound as an intimidating task at first, but with the right people, the right mindset and the right tools – it’s a lot better than anything you’d be able to accomplish locally. For me, these five tools are irreplaceable and make collaboration for a remote team a joyful event. Hopefully, they will be an essential part of your arsenal tomorrow, as well.

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