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9 AI Tools for Successful Marketing Funnels – Tools That Solve Real Problems (Not Just Hype)

You’ve read the headlines: “AI is revolutionizing marketing!”

Yet here’s what nobody admits… most teams drown in flashy marketing funnels that promise the moon but deliver chaos.

The real problem?

Traditional funnels treat leads like numbers, not people.

But what if AI could humanize your marketing more than your current efforts?

Let me show you how, without losing your brand’s soul.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

The AI Marketing Crossroads: Why “Business as Usual” Fails

We’ve all been there—staring at a spreadsheet of “qualified” leads that ghost, or pouring budget into campaigns that fizzle. Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

• 61% of marketers say lead generation is their #1 headache (HubSpot)
• 50% of prospects are mismatched from the start (Sales Insights Lab)
• Manual lead nurturing burns 22% of sales teams’ time (Forrester)

But here’s the contrarian take: AI isn’t here to replace your creativity—it’s here to amplify it. The winners won’t be those with the most data, but those who use AI to forge real human connections at scale.

Your AI Marketing Toolbox: 9 Precision Instruments

Let’s cut through the noise. Below, I’ll break down exactly what each tool does, when to use it, and how it aligns with your goals.

No fluff. No hype. Just tools that solve specific problems.

1. Systeme.io: The Swiss Army Knife for Bootstrappers

What It Does: Systeme.io consolidates your entire marketing stack—funnels, email, courses, affiliates—into a single platform.
Why It Matters: If you’re tired of paying for 5+ tools just to launch a campaign, this eliminates app fatigue.

→ Key Features:

• Drag-and-drop funnel builder (landing pages, sales pipelines)
• Built-in email marketing with segmentation
• Host online courses and manage affiliates in one dashboard

Use When: You need simplicity without sacrificing functionality.

From creating a landing page to teaching an online course to manage your affiliates, the Systeme.io platform provides an array of tools.

The free plan only allows up to 1,000 contacts, so you’ll need to upgrade if you need more.

Systeme also offers three paid plans, including:

• Startup $27/month: Up to 5,000 contacts
• Webinar $47/month: Up to 10,000 contacts
• Enterprise $97/month: Up to 15,000 contacts

If you need more than 15,000 contacts, custom plans start at $147 per month.

→ Pricing Reality Check: Start free (up to 1K contacts), then scale to 27+/mo.

If you are just starting out, you will be happy to know that all plans include:

• unlimited emails
• unlimited file storage space
• unlimited membership site members
• no transaction fees (Stripe and PayPal platform fees may apply)
• affiliate programs
• online support

For a truly all-in-one platform, Systeme stands out as both robust and affordable.

Who Should Use Systeme?

Marketers looking to consolidate their suite of marketing tools and processes and rely on one tool.

Use When: You need simplicity without sacrificing functionality.

 

2. Exceed.ai: Your Lead Qualification Robot (That Feels Human)

According to data from Sales Insights Lab, 50 percent of prospects aren’t a good fit for what you sell.

Instead of using your salespeople to weed out the duds, Exceed’s personalization and lead qualification automation can do it for you in less time.

What It Does: Exceed.ai automates lead nurturing using AI chatbots that mimic real sales reps.

Why It Matters: Stop wasting hours on unqualified leads. Exceed filters out tire-kickers while booking meetings for hot prospects.

→ Key Features:

• Two-way email/SMS conversations with leads
• CRM integration (HubSpot, Salesforce)
• Meeting scheduling without human intervention

→ Data Don’t Lie: Clients report 40% faster lead-to-meeting velocity.

→ Pro Tip: Use its “lead scoring” to prioritize follow-ups—saved my agency 15 hrs/week.

With Exceed’s top-notch AI technology, engage your leads in human-like conversation.

The platform can even schedule meetings for your reps and bring you that much closer to the sale.

You’ll need to request a quote from Exceed.ai to learn more about the package that fits your budget.

Who Should Use Exceed.ai?

Businesses and organizations that need the greatest help in their sales funnel’s lead nurturing and conversion stages.

Use When: Your sales team is drowning in unresponsive leads.

3. Saleswhale: The Cold Lead Resurrection Machine

Saleswhale is a SaaS product that uses AI to identify, engage, and convert neglected leads.

Using automated follow-ups, referral handling, and interest qualification, Saleswhale’s AI assistants offer a best-in-class experience for you and your leads.

With the free plan, you can begin to nurture and convert up to 200 leads per month.

What It Does: Saleswhale re-engages stale leads with hyper-personalized email sequences.

Why It Matters: 80% of leads go cold—this tool revives them without manual outreach.

For additional leads and active email campaigns, paid plans include:

• Starter $495/month: Up to 500 leads/month, one active campaign
• Plus $1,495/month: Up to 2,500 leads/month, three active campaigns
• Professional $2,495/month: Up to 5,000 leads/month, 10 active campaigns

→ Key Features:

• AI-generated follow-ups based on lead behavior
• Multi-channel nurturing (email, LinkedIn, SMS)
• Free plan for up to 200 leads/mo
  → Case Study: A B2B client recovered $120k in lost revenue from “dead” leads in 90 days.
  → Script Hack: Upload your best sales emails—it’ll replicate your tone.

Who Should Use Saleswhale?

Companies strong in lead generation, but who need assistance in lead nurturing and conversion.

Use When: Your pipeline has more ghosts than a haunted house.

4. Appier: The Cross-Channel Einstein

Similar to Systeme, Appier is an all-in-one sales tool with a full suite of AI services.

This SaaS can help with prospecting to transactions with its robust data science platform.

Using AI, Appier can effectively segment your audience to drive maximum lead conversions.

You no longer need to create campaign after campaign hoping to hit the mark, as Appier will do the dirty work for you.

What It Does: Appier uses AI to unify ad campaigns across Google, Meta, TikTok, and more.

Why It Matters: If your ads feel scattered, Appier finds patterns in chaos.

→ Key Features:

• Predictive audience segmentation
• Real-time bid optimization
• Creative A/B testing at scale
  → Niche Edge: Dominates e-commerce—clients see 30%+ ROAS lifts.
  → Contrarian Take: Skip this if you’re a solopreneur. It’s for teams spending $10k+/mo on ads.

Appier’s pricing is not available on their website, so you’ll need to reach out to learn more about their tools and their potential fit with your business.

Who Should Use Appier?

Companies looking for a comprehensive suite of AI-powered marketing tools.

Use When: Your ad strategy needs a central brain.

 

5. ClickFunnels

If you are looking for an end-to-end sales funnel solution, then consider ClickFunnels.

Utilizing AI sales models and neural sales data, ClickFunnels aims to improve the marketing experience for businesses of all sizes.

ClickFunnels enables you to easily create funnels, build websites, and manage affiliates.

This means you can collect, nurture, and convert leads using just one platform.

With more than 100,000 entrepreneurs using or having used the platform, it has undoubtedly made a name for itself in the industry.

What It Does: ClickFunnels builds high-converting sales pipelines with pre-built templates.

Why It Matters: Even non-techies can launch a funnel in 2 hours.

→ Love/Hate Stats:

• Pro: 22% higher AOV with one-click upsells
• Con: $297/mo hurts if you’re not monetizing aggressively
  → My Verdict: Perfect for info products, overkill for local businesses.
  → Template Steal: Their “Perfect Webinar” funnel converts at 18% (industry avg: 5%).

These include:

• Basic $97/month: 20 funnels, 100 pages, three payment gateways, and three domains
• Platinum $297/month: Unlimited funnels, unlimited pages, nine payment gateways, and nine domains
• Two Comma Club $2,497/month: Unlimited funnels, unlimited pages, 27 payment gateways, and 27 domains

All plans come with chat support and video training.

Who Should Use ClickFunnels?

Companies who want an all-in-one solution that offers hand-holding and easy-to-use templates.

Use When: You need speed over customization.

6. Data Studio

Previously known as BrightFunnel, Data Studio by Terminus is a funnel reporting tool that connects marketing platforms to deliver beautiful, insightful analytics.

With Data Studio, you can create custom reports for marketers, executives, and stakeholders.

What It Does: Terminus aggregates data from every funnel stage into actionable dashboards.

Why It Matters: Fix leaks in your pipeline by seeing exactly where prospects bail.

→ Key Features:

• Multi-touch attribution modeling
• Custom reports for execs vs. marketers
• Slack/Teams alerts for KPIs
  → Aha Moment: A client discovered their “hero” landing page had a 92% drop-off—fixed it in a week.

Pricing is not readily available on the website, but you can schedule a demo to learn more about the platform.

Who Should Use Data Studio?

Marketing teams need a cohesive analytics and insights platform to bring their sales to funnel data to life.

Use When: Your analytics feel like a puzzle missing half its pieces.

7. Akkio: The Lead Whisperer

According to HubSpot, the top priority for marketers is generating leads.

However, as any marketer can tell you, not all leads are created equal.

You can spend your time manually poring over the data to determine your best path forward, or you can let Akkio take the reins.

Akkio is an AI marketing platform with tools to support every stage of the funnel.

Where it excels, however, is in its lead scoring capabilities and churn reduction technology.

Using data-driven insights, Akkio aims to narrow in on the leads with the greatest chance of a conversion.

What It Does: Akkio predicts which leads will convert (and which will churn) using AI.

Why It Matters: Stop guessing. Let data decide where to focus your energy.

→ Key Features:

• Automated lead scoring
• Churn risk alerts
• $50/mo entry point (cheaper than a bad hire)
  → Case Study: A fintech startup boosted conversions by 37% by focusing on Akkio’s “high intent” leads.
  → Pro Move: Feed it your CRM data—it learns your unique patterns in 48 hours.

For as low as $50 per month, billed annually, you can give Akkio a try with very little risk.

The features included in all plans are:

• unlimited users
• unlimited data
• unlimited flows and deployments
• integrations and API
• model reports

Who Should Use Akkio?

Companies looking for a scalable, data-driven solution.

Use When: Your sales team argues over lead priority.

 

8. Bant.io: The Modular Lead Gen Army

If you are hurting for qualified leads, you should know you’re not alone.

According to HubSpot, 61 percent of marketers consider a lead generation to be their top challenge.

The good news is there are marketing AI tools, like Bant.io, that can help.

What It Does: Bant.io offers à la carte lead gen services (email, ads, chatbots).

These run the gamut, including:

• email
• social outreach
• pay per click ads
• retargeting ads
• sales chatbot

Unlike many one-size-fits-all options, Bant.io plans are customizable to meet your business’s needs. Just add the modules you need and leave the rest.

The modules include:

• Email Outreach: $795/month
• Social Outreach: $495/month
• Retargeting Ads: $395/month
• PPC Ads: $395/month
• Sales Chatbot: $95/month

Why It Matters: Only pay for what you need—no bloated suites.

→ Modules That Work:

• Email Outreach ($795/mo): Gets 15-20% reply rates (my agency’s track record)
• Retargeting Ads ($395/mo): 7x ROAS on abandoned carts
• Chatbots ($95/mo): Cuts support tickets by 50%
  → Client Truth: A consulting firm landed 8 clients in 30 days using their LinkedIn outreach module.

Who Should Use Bant.io?

Marketers who favor a piecemeal approach to lead generation.

Use When: You need flexibility, not a one-size-fits-all solution.

 

9. Funnel.io: The Data Unifier

It’s not enough to have a marketing funnel in place.

You must evaluate every step of your funnel on a regular basis.

While most funnel tools will have their own reporting, they may not always present you with the big picture.

That’s where a reporting tool like Funnel.io comes in.

With 500+ data connections available, Funnel.io makes it easy to build reports that touch on all areas of your business.

Can’t find the data source you need?

The team at Funnel.io will work with you to get it added to their platform.

There are a variety of plans available, including:

• Essentials $399/month: Connects to 260 platforms, five seats, email support
• Plus $999/month: Connects to 500+ platforms, unlimited seats, email and chat support
• Enterprise $1,999/month: Connects to 500+ platforms, unlimited seats, priority email and chat support and a Customer Success Partner

All plans are billed annually.

What It Does: Funnel.io connects 500+ data sources into a single reporting hub.

Why It Matters: End spreadsheet hell. See your entire funnel in one dashboard.

→ Key Features:

• Automated data cleaning
• Custom metrics (e.g., “Cost per Warm Lead”)
• Team collaboration tools
  → Brutal Honesty: At $399+/mo, it’s pricey—but worth it if you’re drowning in GA4, Meta, and HubSpot data.
  → Pro Hack: Use their “Funnel Health Score” to diagnose weaknesses in 10 minutes.

Who Should Use Funnel.io?

Marketers or agencies looking for a comprehensive and collaborative reporting platform.

Use When: Your reports are a Frankenstein of mismatched numbers.

Your Next Step (No Fluff):

1. Audit Your Funnel’s Pain Point
   • Lead gen? → Bant.io or Exceed.ai
   • Nurturing? → Saleswhale or Akkio
   • Analytics? → Terminus or Funnel.io
2. Run a 14-Day Sprint
   • Test one tool with a clear metric (e.g., “Reduce lead response time to 2 hrs”)
3. Debrief With Your Team
   • Ask: “Did this make us more human or just busier?”

Final Truth: AI tools aren’t magic. But when wielded with strategy, they turn “overwhelmed” into “unstoppable.” Now go fix that funnel.

Struggling With Customer Acquisition?: Fix This One Alignment Issue

You are struggling to hit your acquisition targets—the marketing team is bringing in lots of hot leads but the sales team is struggling to convert them. Yet your marketing team is an award-winning one and your sales team is world cup worthy.

Where is the problem with your customer acquisition strategy? And what can be done about it?

Let’s dig a little deeper to understand what is making your team of A-players struggle to hit your acquisition goals?

 

Why Does Your Customer Acquisition Strategy Seem Broken?

There are many reasons why your customer acquisition strategy may not be working. But deep down, it’s due to one thing: the misalignment between your sales and marketing team.

Here’s how it translates into the organization.

 

Gap 1: Your sales and marketing teams are working on different funnels

In most companies, the marketing and sales teams work separately. Too often, marketers know too little about the customers and their dealings with the sales team.

SDRs work on cold emails and cold call random people, and marketers run campaigns to their target persona. As a result, each of these departments ends up creating an acquisition funnel based on the persona they have identified as their ideal customer profile.

This strategy is still used by many companies, even by some industry leaders, and it enables them to fuel their year-over-year growth.

Now, I bet you’re wondering what the problem is since this strategy seems to work.

Well, a study by the International Data Corporation revealed that B2B companies’ inability to align marketing and sales teams around the right workflows and technologies costs them about 10% or more of revenue per year.

In fact, when your sales and marketing departments function as standalone departments, efforts are put into tasks that are not very productive. For example, one study found that 50% of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting—either chasing unqualified leads or trying to convert leads that aren’t yet warmed up.

Another consequence of sales and marketing teams working with different funnels is a lack of understanding of the Ideal Customer Profile to target. For example, a lead that the marketing team deems qualified may be seen as unqualified by the sales team. A study by ReachForce showed that sales reps ignore 50% of marketing leads.

Other studies have shown that 60-70% of B2B content created is never used. In most instances, this is because the topic is irrelevant to the buyer’s audience.

As you take it a step ahead, you realize that if the marketing team and the sales team worked together, it would have been easier for them to determine what content the marketing team should produce for lead nurturing and how to use it to warm leads.

 

Gap 2: Your sales and marketing teams are chasing different results

How can you achieve a shared goal if each team measures its success in different ways?

For clarity purposes, let’s assume you have a SaaS, and your annual goal is to grow sign-ups by 45+ percent.

Now imagine that the sales teams measured their success based on new free trial accounts, closed deals, and upsells. Meanwhile, marketing teams measured their success on lead quantity, quality, and brand awareness.

In this particular case, saying that you will fall short of your annual goal is just an understatement.

If there was alignment between the two teams, they would have agreed on what a quality lead means for the company and what is the average number of leads marketing needs to bring in before sales convert X amount of users.

If, for example, the metric shows that the sales team needs 15 leads to close 5 deals and that each of these leads should be SaaS companies with teams of 50 to 300, the marketing team will know where to focus their efforts and what to do in order to reach the common goal.

Similarly, the sales team will know better how not to fall short of the 5 out of 15 deals closed.

 

Why Aligning Sales and Marketing Is The Only Way to Fix Your Customer Acquisition Strategy

So with the gaps identified, it has become increasingly clear that the solution to bridging the gap is to align your sales and marketing teams.

Here are some reasons why.

 

It helps keep business to customer communications consistent

It happens more often than you think—the sales team calls the product one thing, but the marketing team uses another term to describe the same product.

For example, the sales team calls it a “Chatbot,” while the marketing team calls it a “Conversational Marketing Platform.”

Here is another example. The marketing team talks about “Collaborative Growth Platform”, while the sales team talks about “CRM”.

Admittedly, this can be confusing for potential and even existing customers, and it’s a living example of mismatched messaging.

Not surprisingly, it can cost you your first good impression and, as a result, a prospect may be less likely to trust you.

In fact, 21% of B2B marketers cite “giving the prospect a bad first impression of our company” as one of the most damaging factors resulting from misaligned marketing and sales.

That’s why one of the biggest benefits of aligning sales and marketing teams is consistent messaging.

The messaging used by your marketing team can now warm up prospects and set them up for the sales team to further reinforce those same messages. If the marketing message strikes a chord, the sales team can use it to close more business.

Failing this, you may end up with a siloed message, which can lead to a very confusing and inconsistent journey for your prospect.

21% of B2B marketers cite “giving the prospect a bad first impression of our company” as one of the most damaging factors resulting from misaligned marketing and sales.Click To Tweet

If your prospects think they’re getting one thing based on what marketing is saying when the sales team is selling them something completely different, it will definitely hurt your bottom line.

So it’s important to make sure your message is consistent and relevant to your entire customer journey.

 

It creates a single customer journey

We discussed earlier that the foundation of the sales-marketing relationship is the conversion funnel.

So when it comes to getting everyone on the same page, the best place to start is to get them to agree on the structure of the entire customer journey.

By doing so, you save your prospects from having a single branded customer experience instead of separate siloed experiences.

As a result, everything is tied together as an experience—from the awareness stage at the top of the customer journey funnel to the brand loyalty stage.

 

It fosters a “marketing first” approach

Each department plays its own tune when your sales and marketing teams are misaligned. In such scenarios, prospects are less likely to respond positively to a cold outreach if they’ve never heard of you, and that can harm your reputation and your chances of closing the deal later on.

If both teams are aligned, it encourages a “marketing first” approach—meaning that marketers find prospects who have a specific problem and create content to help them solve that problem.

It all starts with the marketing team warming up and nurturing new leads by creating informational content about the product and selling the features and benefits by creating transactional content to fuel conversion.

Then, when the potential customer prepares to make a decision, the sales team can take it from where the marketing left and close the deal.

 

It leads to a better way of assessing results

By aligning your sales and marketing teams with a common goal and the same KPIs, you have a great chance to see the synergy behind their work and analyze how your organization is stacking up in both sales and marketing.

In addition, you will be able to detect the shortcomings of your customer acquisition funnel and adjust not only certain parts but the whole funnel.

The post Struggling With Customer Acquisition?: Fix This One Alignment Issue appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

How to Align Your SEO and Sales Teams

Have you figured out your marketing strategy for 2022 yet?

Here’s a great idea for you: Embrace collaborative marketing. Aligning your different teams is likely to open up many new opportunities for your business.

According to the recent research by Convince and Convert and Ascend2, 50% of marketers claim that integrating marketing and sales teams has proved to be very successful at achieving strategic goals.

This is huge.

Here’s how to align two of your most isolated teams: Sales and SEO.

 

Foster Content Marketing Collaboration

All marketing is driven by content and that includes SEO and sales. For both teams, content is fundamental. Without content, there are no rankings or sales:

• Google relies on content to identify if a page is relevant to a search query and if it satisfies a searcher’s intent. Relevancy and search intent are two key ranking signals.
• In sales, content is the most important driving force behind buyers’ journey. Content can directly impact purchasing decisions, as many studies confirm.

According to Forbes, more than 60% of B2B buyers say they are able to make their purchase decision exclusively based on digital content, without talking to sales reps or going through demos.

So why is there such a huge disconnect between SEO and sales content? Why do these two content strategies often exist separately without informing or helping each other?

“Content is King” has long been a marketing buzz phrase, especially in the B2B industry. However content is only King if it enables sales.

Too often there’s a discrepancy between those producing content and organizational teams who are trying to leverage it.

The resulting problem is two-fold:

• Sales reps lack the right content they can use to effectively engage with prospects
• SEO content creators lack sales reps’ insight which would enable them to create content that addresses the real struggles of their target audience.

 

Ways to Integrate SEO and Sales

Content can be the driving source for removing your organizational silos and encouraging cross-team collaboration.

How can SEO and content marketing teams collaborate on creating an integrated content strategy?

• Encourage the two teams to brainstorm on content ideas together
• Let the customer support and sales teams keep a shareable record of questions your actual customers are asking them. Any of those can and should be content ideas for the SEO team to research in terms of demand (search volume) and difficulty.
• Foster creativity from both of the teams: What are their thoughts on content promotion opportunities.
• Do they have any viral content ideas?
• Let both the teams explore further opportunities. For example, let your SEO team figure out ways to reuse sales enablement content for ESP purposes. Many of those sales demos can be used as public content that can target all kinds of long-tail ranking opportunities.

 

Help Them Understand Your Customers Better

When you work on traffic numbers all day, it is too easy to forget that there are real people behind those numbers.

Both SEO and sales team have unique access to valuable insights on who is your business’s target customer and how to serve them better:

• Sales teams talk to your current and future customers on a daily basis. They know their struggles and what they are looking to solve. Sharing this information with the SEO team will empower your SEO strategy with more data your competitors have no access to.
• Your SEO team knows exactly what your customers are searching for and which questions they are asking. They know the demand behind each search term and they can report on how your competitors are targeting each search query.

Text Optimizer allows you to better understand concepts behind any search query and help you find the ways to meet your customers’ needs easier:

 

Share Your Web Analytics Insights

Let the SEO team share their web analytics insights: What are the effective paths that bring those leads through the site down the conversion funnel? What works best in terms of engaging your site visitors and turning them into leads?

All of that information will help your sales team focus on what works best and nail their lead generation and onboarding strategy.

Encourage your SEO team to create custom analytics dashboards and hold regular meetings to give. This will give your sales team access to web analytics data they can understand.

Google Analytics is the first option that comes to mind. But there are also web traffic statistics solutions offered by your hosting provider, as well as many Google Analytics alternatives.

Whatagraph is an easy way to create custom reports that are delivered weekly and are very easy to understand even for a non-technical person:

You can also integrate your web analytics into your website dashboard using these templates to let your whole company access it at any time.

 

Open up More Business Opportunities

The cross-team collaboration will likely discover more unexpected opportunities for you and your business. For example, letting your sales team access your SEO data may help them identify industry gaps and define your product’s unique value proposition.

You can also discover new product or service opportunities. For example, this SEO lead generation tool can help you expand your services pretty easily.

Widgets like this help integrate SEO into the sales process in the most efficient way.

 

Conclusion

The power of cross-team collaboration is almost limitless. SEO and Sales collaboration can give you that competitive advantage your business needs. By combining numbers with actual sales experience, you can empower both teams.

The concept of unified communications has become even more important for business survival after COVID hit and many teams moved to work from home.

Finding more ways to let your (remote) teams keep in touch and collaborate is more important than ever.

Hopefully, the above ideas would come useful!

The post How to Align Your SEO and Sales Teams appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

What’s On The Line When Sales and Marketing Are Misaligned? [Research]

Let’s review some mindsets and see if they sound familiar to you.

[Marketing Team POV]

Your team creates some stellar content and executes corresponding campaigns… leads come in.

The leads are handed off into the abyss that is the Sales Team where you assume they take excellent care to turn them into customers (How could they not?!

You practically handed them over on a silver platter!) only to find out nothing became of them.

[Sales Team POV]

Marketing generates leads from some arbitrary content and hands them off to you expecting you to magically turn them into revenue.

Meanwhile, these leads are totally underqualified and a whole lot of time is wasted trying to nurture people who just aren’t a right fit for your services.

If these point-of-views do sound familiar, you aren’t alone. These issues are incredibly common among B2Bs operating with sales and marketing teams on different pages (which, according to our research, is over two-thirds of those surveyed).

But what is really at stake for these businesses that lack sales and marketing alignment?

(I’ll give you a hint, it’s more than just a little drama between teams).

 

The 3 Biggest Wins and Losses in Sales & Marketing Alignment

Convince & Convert came to us here at Ascend2 hoping to uncover what exactly is on the line when businesses don’t align sales and marketing.

By surveying 346 sales and marketing professionals, we were able to gain insight into what’s working, what isn’t, and what makes each team tick.

Below are the research highlights but to get the full picture, download the entire Sales and Marketing Alignment Playbook here.

 

Highlight #1 (and this is a big one!):

Organizations operating with totally integrated marketing and sales teams report experiencing significantly more success from their efforts.

Half (50%) of all respondents who report having totally integrated marketing and sales teams say they are very successful at achieving strategic goals. Compare this to only one-third (33%) of all other respondents – those reporting they are not at all integrated or just partially integrated.

So whatever those strategic goals may be, we can safely say that they impact the bottom line. And when those goals are harder to achieve as a result of misaligned sales and marketing efforts, I’d call that a loss.

 

Highlight #2: Collaboration becomes easier when goals are aligned.

When examining this same segment of respondents who report operating with totally integrated marketing and sales teams, we find that 97% report some extent of ease in working with the other team.

In fact, more than three-quarters (77%) of this group said collaboration is extremely easy, compared to a mere 28% of those who aren’t fully aligned.

Effective collaboration is a natural bi-product of teams that work toward the same goals. When departments are working against each other, consider it a loss for all.

 

Highlight #3: Organizations need to get organized when it comes to measuring performance.

When asked how their organizations manage success metrics, about half (48%) of all respondents said that sales and marketing share responsibility for the management of success metrics. Interestingly, though, marketers reported having more control over success metrics, including that of the sales team.

Sales reported having more control over success metrics, including that of the marketing team.

When sales and marketing teams aren’t on the same page about who manages these metrics, everybody loses. Both teams are in the dark about the other team’s performance, which makes optimizing the customer journey more difficult. And when these areas suffer, ultimately so does the organization’s bottom line.

 

So How Do We Promote Alignment for the Win?

Well, let’s start with what is preventing sales and marketing from aligning.

Both teams agree that a lack of time, resources, and an overall strategy are the most significant barriers preventing alignment.

The good news is that all of these challenges can be addressed through better collaboration and communication between teams. When sales and marketing are working toward the same strategic goals, less time is wasted and efficiencies emerge.

Start by strategizing together. Share common goals. Ensure both teams are represented as customer journeys and buyer personas are created. Track shared KPIs. Collaborate on customer communication and content.

Strengthen ongoing communication and understanding. Encourage relationship building between teams by mixing up the office, hosting cross-department training sessions, and establishing ways for each team to gain insight into the other team’s day-to-day.

By smashing silos, sales, and marketing teams both come out on top.

Download Full Report

 

Methodology

Ascend2 benchmarks the performance of marketing strategies, tactics, and the technology that drives them using an online questionnaire and a proprietary 3-Minute Survey format.

Survey responses were gathered from 87 B2B marketing and sales professionals during the month of September 2021. 184 respondents identified as being a part of the sales team within their organization and 162 respondents identified as being a part of the marketing team within their organization.

Respondents were recruited from Convince & Convert and Ascend2 email subscribers, LinkedIn, and a research panel of business professionals.

 

Participants

Number of Employees

• More than 500 16%
• 50 to 500 32%
• Fewer than 50 52%

 

Primary Role

• Owner / Partner / C-Level 48%
• Vice President / Director / Manager 31%
• Non-Management Professional 21%

 

Associated Team

• Sales 53%
• Marketing 47%

The post What’s On The Line When Sales and Marketing Are Misaligned? [Research] appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

9 Digital Marketing Tips for the Holidays

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Super Saturday—the holiday season doesn’t lack shopping days. Add those to the traditional boost in consumer spending that occurs in the run-up to the holidays, and you have a recipe for a record sales quarter.

However, a bumper festive season doesn’t happen by accident. A comprehensive and thoughtfully crafted digital marketing strategy is necessary to make those sales rack up.

That’s why today, I will run through my top digital marketing tips for the holidays. By the end of this article, you’ll have an arsenal of strategies you can execute to make your physical or metaphorical cash register sing.

 

Why the Holidays Are the Best Time for Digital Marketing Success

Online shopping will be just as pivotal for consumers this festive season as last year. In 2020, online retail sales during the holiday period totaled $186 billion, and Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history. This year, the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday are projected to increase by 14 percent compared to 2020.

The sheer demand for online shopping makes the holiday period one of the best times to launch a new digital marketing strategy, but competition between brands also makes an effective strategy necessary.

It’s important to present a strong digital campaign given the potential propensity for consumers to seek out the kind of in-store events they missed out on in 2020. Research shows that while 70 percent of consumers report their shopping journey involves online touchpoints, only 14 percent of U.S. shoppers say they won’t shop in-store at all this season.

 

 

9 Digital Marketing Holiday Tips

OK, enough background information. Use these nine digital marketing holiday tips to guarantee a holly-jolly holiday season.

 

1. Start Early and Have a Plan

The best holiday digital marketing plans start months before the festive season. To put it another way: If you haven’t already started planning your strategy, start now.

By the time you’re reading this, most consumers will already have started shopping. It’s estimated that 31 percent of U.S. consumers will start their shopping in October or earlier, and 55 percent will start before Thanksgiving.

Whenever you start, making a plan is crucial. Try to wing it during the holiday season, and you’ll be outperformed by competitors who have had their campaigns set up and scheduled months in advance.

Planning your strategy doesn’t have to be complicated.

Start by outlining the goals you want to achieve and the tactics you plan on using. Next, list all the assets you need to design and the marketing funnels you need to build. Finally, create a realistic timeline backward from the day you want to launch.

Breaking your holiday digital marketing campaign up in this way will help show you exactly how much work needs to be done and how to make the best use of your time.

Most important of all, don’t freak out if you haven’t started planning yet. There’s still plenty of time to create a killer digital marketing plan. Focus on the shopping days that are still ahead of you and identify one or two effective strategies to put all of your efforts into.

 

2. Host a Contest

The holidays are a time for gift-giving, so what better way to get into the spirit of the season than by hosting a giveaway contest.

Not only is a contest a great way to give back to your consumers, but it’s also a fantastic way to drum up brand awareness, grow your social following, and build your email list. You can even use your contest to tease the holiday shopping deals and events you have coming up.

The great thing about hosting a contest online is that it’s quick, easy, and cheap to set up. You don’t even need to give away something extravagant to get people excited. A free product is all it takes to get your campaign going.

 

3. Use Paid Campaigns to Increase Awareness

While I’ll always believe SEO should have a prominent place in any marketing campaign, the time-sensitive nature of the holiday season makes PPC ads essential.

Run awareness-based campaigns on every major paid ad channel. I’d recommend Google, Facebook, and Instagram at a minimum, but feel free to advertise on any channel you think is appropriate for your audience.

Be thoughtful with your budget. Specifically, you’ll want to make sure you spread your budget across the entire holiday season. While it’s tempting to front-load your budget and catch shoppers as early as possible, consumers may not be ready to purchase at the start of November.

There are a couple of strategies you’ll need to implement to be sure of this.

First, account for higher costs the closer you get to Christmas. Since retailers know that consumers are much more likely to make purchases the later it gets in the season, CPCs become more expensive, too.

Second, get rid of any campaigns that aren’t performing by the end of November. That way, you can save your budget for campaigns that convert.

 

4. Use Promotions but Use Them Carefully

Promotions and discounts are something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are a great way to drive traffic and increase conversion rates. At the same time, they have the potential to devalue your brand—especially at a time when rampant consumerism is so closely linked to environmental damage.

In response, many brands have been distancing themselves from heavy discounts and Black Friday deals. Outdoor retail brand REI is closing its doors for the sixth year in a row and paying staff to take the day off and spend time with their family. Clothing brand Allbirds is raising prices on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, then donating the additional money to Mother Nature and matching it with their contribution.

You don’t have to go that far, but you should use offers and discounts with caution.

Rather than trying to compete on price when consumers are looking for as much value as possible, why not deliver value in another way? Free shipping, gifts, and other rewards are a great way to retain brand value while offering the discounts holiday shoppers are eager for.

Another way to make discounts more meaningful is to limit them to existing customers. With this strategy, there’s no risk of devaluing your brand in the eyes of new customers, while rewarding existing customers for being loyal. What’s more, it’s much cheaper to retain a customer than acquire a new one, and a generous promotion may be enough to stop them from shopping with competitors over the holiday.

 

5. Create Holiday Gift Sets

If you’re looking for a way to increase conversions and boost your average order value (AOV), try bundling your products into holiday gift sets and selling them at a discount. Product bundles are particularly popular in the run-up to Christmas when shoppers are searching for the perfect gift.

Bundling is particularly common with health and beauty products, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work in other sectors, too. For example, a yoga e-commerce store could bundle a yoga mat, block, carrier bag, and pair of leggings. A pet store could bundle dog food, a bed, and a collar. Whatever you sell, there’s almost certainly potential to bundle several products together.

Don’t just guess which products will work well together. Harness the power of data and dive into your inventory analytics to see which products have been most popular and which are most frequently purchased together.

Of course, you don’t have to only include your best sellers. Bundling is a great way to sell less popular products that may not do so well on their own.

 

6. Create Laser-Targeted Email Campaigns

Email marketing generates on average $36 for every $1 spent, making it the highest returning marketing channel. It’s a no-brainer to include email in your digital marketing strategy.

​​Unfortunately, nearly every other brand includes it in their strategy, too.

That’s right; it’s not just you who gets bombarded with offers during the holidays. From November onwards, everyone’s inboxes start overflowing with Black Friday deals, special offers, and holiday greetings.

Not sending emails isn’t an option. If you don’t catch your audience’s attention, your competitors will. Your job is to make your emails stand out in a sea of sales messages.

Your secret weapons? Segmentation and personalization.

That’s not to say your subject line and email copy aren’t. You’ll have to nail those, too. You’ll also want to make sure emails are optimized for mobile.

There’s only so much you can optimize, however. When you send your email shouldn’t be one of them. There’s no shortage of statistics telling you the best time to send an email. The trouble is your competitors are reading the same articles, too, so forget best practices for a moment and stagger emails as much as possible throughout the day.

 

7. Be Socially Responsible

Customers are prioritizing corporate social responsibility more than ever. More than three-quarters of them are motivated to purchase from companies that work to make the world better, according to research by AFLAC.

That means practicing social responsibility—whether that’s donating a portion of your profits to charity, creating environmentally-friendly products, or something else entirely—isn’t just the ethical thing to do. It makes business sense, too.

If you’re new to corporate social responsibility, start by supporting causes that align with your brand. For instance, it makes sense for a pet store to support a dog shelter, or a gardening brand to support an environmental nonprofit.

In both cases, customers will want to support the charity and may go out of their way to shop with your brand over a competitor. It’s also just nice to give back to something you care about. Tis the season for giving, after all.

Whatever causes you to support, remember to be genuine. Your customers aren’t fools, and they’ll quickly be able to tell the difference between a company that is committed to being responsible and one that is greenwashing.

 

8. Try New Platforms

Ever been tempted to run a campaign on TikTok or Instagram Live? Don’t wait for the New Year to make a change; try a new marketing channel this holiday season.

While it can be reassuring to stick to the channels you know, there’s no guarantee they’ll be as effective as they always have been. The move away from Facebook’s suite of apps towards newer platforms, in particular, is well documented.

Launching a campaign on a new platform may seem daunting, but if you treat it like an experiment, then it doesn’t matter if you fail. Better still, there’s every possibility you’ll hit it out of the park and uncover a profitable platform you can advertise on for years to come.

 

9. Make a Plan for Long-Term Success

My last holiday marketing tip doesn’t technically involve the holidays at all. It’s about how to squeeze as much return as possible from all the money you invest into holiday marketing throughout the rest of the year.

If your brand awareness ads are successful, you’re going to have a lot of people visiting your site. Hopefully, most of them will make a purchase. If they don’t, you’ll want to find ways of targeting them throughout the rest of the year to make sure that initial ad spend wasn’t wasted.

One of the best ways to do this without getting visitors to sign up for a mailing list is through retargeting ads.

With retargeting ads on Google and Facebook’s ad network, you only serve ads to people who have previously visited your site. This is an incredibly cost-effective ad strategy and one of the best ways to keep your brand top of mind well into the New Year.

 

Digital Marketing Holiday Tips: Frequently Asked Questions

 

Digital Marketing Holiday Tips Conclusion

The holiday season is rife with opportunity, and there’s no shortage of digital marketing strategies you can use to make 2021 your best season ever. It’s all about putting together a campaign that works for your brand.

Start by implementing one or two of the strategies I’ve listed above, then make sure you’re doing everything you can to improve your conversions. Finally, learn how you can keep your sales high after the holiday spike.

Which digital marketing tip are you going to use first?

Source: neilpatel.com

How to Use Sales Demos to Strengthen Your Online Reputation

Digitalization has had a huge impact on everyone’s life. In most aspects it has influenced businesses in a good way: They can now go global, discover new marketing channels and broaden their customer base.

But there’s one negative to being online as well: A fragile reputation.

In a world where anyone can complain about any business failure in a public manner, any business is vulnerable. A reputation crisis is always around the corner.

And it is even more challenging in a B2B industry where buying journeys are longer and past failures are harder to erase. B2B customers are good at researching their options, comparing businesses, and making informed decisions. Any past reputation crisis may be standing in your way to success for years to come.

Were you looking for ways to solidify your B2B business online reputation? The solution may be in adjusting your sales demonstrations.

 

Why Are Sales Demos So Important for Online Reputation?

Let’s face it: When it comes to B2B, sales demos are often the only way to close a sale. It is the only way to demonstrate how your product is solving your prospects’ pain points and prove that your platform is worth investing in.

Product demos are central to any software sales process.

But what does it have to do with reputation?

• Product demos can turn a prospect into a customer, a customer into a believer and brand advocate, and who can better protect your reputation than your brand advocate?
• Professional product demos can rank for your brand name and set positive expectations about your brand. Using your product demo on your landing pages makes you look like a serious and reputable company.
• Making your demo easy to access (without the need to register an account, schedule a call, etc.) will shorten your customers’ buying journeys which means fewer people will compare you to competitors and research your reputation.
• Public demos will add some positive context to your brand and help you control its online sentiment. If done correctly, your sales demo lets you highlight your software’s most important features showing it in a most favorable way. The more demos you market, the more of the context contributes to the whole picture.

 

So How to Use Demos to Strengthen Your Online Reputation?

Publish Your Product Demos

This is easy: You may have a ton of recorded demos by now. It will likely be easy for you to find some you can publicize for others to see.

If you use Walnut, this process will even be easier.

The tool allows you to use their code-free platform to create various demos, instantly targeting different personas and use cases. This is a great way to create a ton of original content to make public and use on top of your sales funnel.

You can even embed your demos on various landing pages allowing your site visitors and prospects to use interactive features to try some features and get to know your product better.

Demonstrating your product demo on your website/landing pages makes you look like a serious and reputable company. This is especially helpful to smaller businesses, as you enable product-lead-Growth (PLG) with your prospects which in turn, makes you appear to be a bigger brand.

You can then use Walnut’s built-in analytics to understand which parts of your demo seemed to appeal better to your prospects. This gives you lots of insights to create better demos in the future.

 

Treat Your Demos as Content Assets

Using your demos for reputation management means turning them into top-of-the-funnel content assets. So instead of treating your demos as private assets, start looking at them as your branded digital media.

In other words, you want your demos to rank on Google and get shared around by your prospective customers.

• Research your (or your competitors’) branded keywords
• Break them into groups by search intent, personas, and decision-makers that may be using each keyword (CEO, marketing manager, IT manager, etc.)
• Create landing pages targeting those keyword groups and add your custom demos to each one. The idea is that anyone researching your brand and your products should be able to find answers on your site by watching your demo instead of having to go elsewhere

Obviously, it is a good idea to get your sales team involved in the process as they will likely offer a great deal of insight into your probable decision-makers and buyer personas behind each search query. Collaboration is key to success here.

Note: There’s a cool quiz by Nextiva allowing you to determine whether your company is prepared for collaborations and unified communication. Take it!

 

Monitor Each of Your Sales Funnels

Obviously, each of those landing pages will become your strong sales funnels, so you want to keep a close eye on those.  Again, Walnut will give you lots of insights into how your site visitors are engaging with your demos.

Additionally, you may also keep an eye on traffic channels and buying journeys that started on those landing pages. Finteza will help you build, monitor, and compare those individual conversion channels:

Obviously, Google Analytics can be used for that as well (especially in combination with Search Console that provides keyword data), but it will be somewhat harder to set up and figure out.

 

Conclusion

Innovating your sales demos comes with lots of benefits including a happier sales team and more sales. It may come as a surprise but sales demos can also boost your brand and solidify your reputation as a reliable niche solution. Good luck!

The post How to Use Sales Demos to Strengthen Your Online Reputation appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

10 Sales Tools for Boosting Results, Efficiency, and More

Without customers, you wouldn’t have much of a company. For this reason, spending time and money on sales and marketing-related tasks is never time wasted.

In this post, I’m going to examine some of the top sales tools for boosting results, improving efficiency and organization and helping you generate more revenue.

Let’s get started!

 

10 Sales Tools for Boosting Results, Efficiency, and More

1. HubSpot

Are you seeking a sales platform to handle all the needs of your sales process?

If so, HubSpot fits the bill. When it comes to sales and marketing tools, HubSpot is considered the cream of the crop.

From a sales perspective, there are three distinct solutions:

• HubSpot Sales Free
• HubSpot CRM
• HubSpot Sales Professional
• HubSpot Sales Hub Enterprise

With the free solution, which is a great place for everyone to start, you gain access to tools that boost every aspect of your inbound sales strategy.

For example, there are a variety of email tools, such as access to email templates and sales content.

For those who want to learn more about their prospects, locate the decision-maker, HubSpot once again has you covered.

You can collect data related to visitors, broken down by company, as well as the pages that they are viewing. This gives you a better idea of who’s interested in your product or service, thus allowing you to target the right type of prospects who are the decision-maker in the sales process.

HubSpot has a tool for every type of sales team, sales manager and sales professionals. With the ability to poke around for free, there’s no reason to put off dabbling with this tool.

 

2. LinkedIn Sales Solutions

Did you know that LinkedIn has more than 450 million registered users, scattered all over the world?

As the largest professional network, by far, it only makes sense that it’d be full of sales opportunities in digital marketing.

While you can mine for prospects on your own, you’re better off considering the many sales professional tools provided by LinkedIn Sales Solutions.

Comparing available products will open your eyes to which approach is best for you in social media and digital marketing.

For example, Sales Navigator is a popular choice. With this tool, LinkedIn hopes to make sales prospecting easier than ever before and that’s exactly what you’re looking for.

This tool helps in many ways, including:

• Receive custom lead recommendations.
• Access to an advanced search to find the right leads for your business.
• The use of InMail to contact any LinkedIn member.
• A dashboard for measuring and tracking your social selling results.
• Real-time sales updates for customers and prospects.

With a free trial, you should give the Professional Edition of Sales Navigator a try. Even if you’ve never used LinkedIn for a sales process in the past, this could be the push that you need to take full advantage in the future.

3. InsideSales.com

When it comes to sales lead management, there aren’t many companies that do it better than InsideSales.

There’s more to this company than meets the eye, thanks to its large list of features within its Playbooks offering.

The product manages leads, automates admin tasks, and uses data from 27 billion sales interactions to predict who, when, and how to engage with prospective customers to get the best outcome.

If you’re anything like me, you dig through mounds of data, in an attempt to learn more about your prospects. With this tool, you can better understand how leads are interacting with your business and empower your sales team to say the right thing at the right time.

4. Marketo Sales Connect

Are you interested in turning more sales prospects into customers?

Of course, you are. With the help of Marketo Sales Connect, you can equip yourself with the sales tools that you need to reach all of your sales team goals.

One of my favorite features is the ability to create a “pipeline playbook,” complete with all of the data that you and your team need to stay in touch with a contact throughout the sales process.

This feature provides several ways to improve your pipeline, such as:

1. Integrated email and phone activities. With email and phone system integrations, it’s easier than ever for sales professionals to schedule meetings and communicate with other team members.
2. Sales campaigns. Do you have trouble remaining consistent with your approach to prospecting? Marketo allows you to stay in touch with sales campaigns that include email, social media and phone, ensuring that everything and everybody is on the same page.

Also, Marketo offers email, website and document tracking tools. This allows you to track engagement, based on every type of communication including social media platforms.

Not only is this done in real-time, but it provides you with actionable data that will help you make more informed sales decisions.

Last, but certainly not least, this is one of the top tools for sales team collaboration. If you have more than one person working on sales and marketing, you need a tool that keeps everyone on the same page. Marketo makes it simple to share updates with others in real-time.

At first, you may not use all of the tools provided by Marketo. However, as it becomes a bigger part of your sales strategy, you and your sales reps will turn to it more often.

 

5. Yesware

Have you set the goal of selling smarter? Do you even know what this means?

There are tools that are meant to save you time and money. Yesware is one of them.

There are several reasons why I recommend Yesware to entrepreneurs who want to sell smarter, but it all begins with its analytics tools.

You probably have what it takes to collect data, in regards to your prospects, the decision-maker, and the sales cycle, but, do you know what to do next?

This is where Yesware steps in, to make your life easier.

With access to high-level, actionable insights, you’ll never again wonder what you’re supposed to do with the data that you’ve collected. Instead, you can share it with the appropriate team members, to ensure that everyone’s making the right moves.

The only downside of Yesware is that it can be difficult to fully understand its power and functionality until you have first-hand experience. Fortunately, once you get started, there’s no looking back with this sales process tool.

6. Calendly

What process are you using to schedule meetings with prospects?

In the past, the preferred option was email or a phone call. While there are still times when this works, you don’t want to overlook the power of an appointment scheduling tool, such as Calendly.

The nice thing about this tool is that it can be used to schedule anything and everything. From sales calls to sales meetings, from interviews to demos, it has all of the features that you require.

Calendly has several high-level competitors, but this solution remains my favorite, because of its ease of use for a variety of sales reps.

It all starts with setting your availability preferences. This shows others when you’re available to meet.

From there, all that you have to do is to share your personal link with your contacts or the prospective decision-maker.

For example, if you want to give somebody a sales demo, you can send them your link and ask that they select a time that works for them. This goes a long way in avoiding the traditional “back and forth,” often associated with scheduling a meeting.

One last thing worth noting is the team scheduling feature. With this, your team’s availability can be viewed from one page.

In addition to a free 14-day trial, there is a no-cost package that provides basic features.

With no money out of your pocket and a variety of high-level features, you should look into using Calendly. It will save you and your sales reps time in the sales process.

 

7. Zoom

Do you remember the days of meeting with prospects in person to conduct demos?

If you want to leave this experience in the past, at least to a certain degree, you should become familiar with Zoom.

There are many video and web conferencing services to compare, but through my experience Zoom is one of the best digital marketing sales tools.

With more than 461,000+ customers, you know you’ll be in good hands if you rely on Zoom for your remote conferencing needs.

If that’s not enough to convince you, let’s examine some of its many features:

• Ability to host a meeting with or without video, or with screen share only.
• Mobile screen sharing for iPhone and iPad, making it easy to conduct meetings on the go.
• Webinar capabilities.
• Easy to share a meeting with one or more contact.
• Group collaboration.

On this page, Zoom lays out its many cloud video conferencing features, all of which you’ll enjoy. Some of my favorites include:

• HD video and voice
• dynamic voice detection
• full screen and gallery view

Another key feature is the ease with which the other party can join a meeting. Once you create a meeting, it’s as simple as inviting the other person. He or she can then access the event by entering the Meeting ID or Personal Link Name.

The process is simple and the technology is advanced. That’s what makes Zoom a top dog in the video and web conferencing space.

 

8. ClinchPad

Do you find yourself struggling to use your CRM software? Have you turned to a more simplified solution, such as a spreadsheet?

When the sales process is on your mind, the last thing that you need is trouble with your CRM solution.

ClinchPad is an online CRM, built for small teams that crave big results.

Not only is it easier to use than a traditional CRM, but it’s more advanced than a spreadsheet. Lying somewhere in between, many sales professionals find that it has all of the features they need, without overdoing it.

It’s hard to pinpoint one feature as being my favorite, but the Sales Dashboard is on par with the best that the CRM industry has to offer for sales professionals.

With all of the necessary data in one place, you’ll find that the Sales Dashboard feature saves you tons of time, while also helping you to stay up to speed with the sales cycle.

From prospects at the beginning of the cycle to deals that are about to close, everything that you need is right in front of you. And, best yet, you don’t have to jump from screen to screen to stay informed.

You can create a free account to get started. From there, if you like what you see, paid accounts start at $9/month.

 

9. Proposify

What is your current process for creating sales proposals?

Believe it or not, many companies are still using Microsoft Word, or a similar solution, to create proposals.

Even if this has worked for you in the past, you should consider a change. A switch to Proposify, or a similar solution, could do wonders for your close rate.

With this software, you can share beautifully created proposals with prospects in the cloud. In turn, you hope to close more deals in a more time-efficient manner.

Here are some of the many features that I like:

• Access to a variety of professionally designed templates.
• Drag and drop library for ease of management.
• Access to an online preview tool.
• Use of electronic signatures.
• The ability to track everything, knowing exactly where things stand in the sales pipeline.

The last feature is one of my favorites, as I always like to know what’s going on with a proposal.

You’ll gain access to metrics, such as how many proposals you’ve created, how many you’ve closed, and your overall close rate.

If the lack of proposal software is holding your business back, let Proposify step in and be your guide. With a free trial and pricing starting at $25/month, it’s an affordable solution that can help boost your bottom line.

 

10. SalesLoft

Much the same as HubSpot, SalesLoft offers many tools to sales professionals and business owners.

In an overall sense, this tool is built to help you “increase qualified demos & appointments.”

While this sounds good, you need to learn more about its many options, to see what best fits your business.

Some of the features include:

• sales conversations
• deal forecasting
• analytics and reporting
• dialer and messenger
• cadence and automation

Thanks to a large selection of features, SalesLoft is one of the more advanced tools for a sales team on this list. However, even if you’re only going to use one of its products, there’s a good chance that it can do wonders for your sales strategy.

 

Sales Tools FAQ

 

Conclusion

Just as there are many marketing tools that can help you reach your goals, the 10 sales solutions in this blog post will have you on a better path in the months to come.

As you know, the sales process is full of challenges. If you want to achieve more success than your competitors, take advantage of every tool and solution that is available to you.

Do you have experience with any of these sales tools? Would you add any others to the list?

Source: neilpatel.com

How to Start a Business

Anyone can start up a business. No college degree, huge bank balance, or corporate experience is necessary. All you need is a great idea, the right systems, and the drive to see it through.

Since you’re already searching for ways to learn about how to start a business, odds are you already have an idea and the drive. What you need to know is how to start building your future empire.

In this article, I’m going to discuss the exact steps to start a business so that you can put the right systems in place.

 

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

 

Your 2-Minute Cheat Sheet

I’ll walk through each step in much greater detail below. Here, I want to give you the bare-bones cheat sheet for how to start a business now.

First, refine your idea based on the needs and demands of your target customers, along with your preferences.

Next, you’ll create a business plan. This is a crucial part of the whole process, so you have to get this right.

After sketching out your business’s entire framework, do market research, and collect feedback from friends, mentors, and family.

Then you need to tackle the legal side of things. Get started early in case there are any snags. This includes deciding your business structure, registering your business, getting the necessary license and permits, and setting up bank accounts.

At this point, you have your idea and a plan to make it come to life. You can then use it to arrange for the required capital to launch your product or service. Follow this up by building your team and finding a location if you’re opening a physical store.

Finally, focus your efforts on generating more sales and growing your business, which is also what you’ll find yourself doing for most of your career.

That’s a few years of business distilled into a couple of paragraphs. Let’s take a closer look at each step. Of course, you should feel free to skip steps if you have already locked down the basics.

Step 1: Come Up With a Business Idea

Every business begins with an idea. If you already have one, congratulations! You can proceed to the next step. If not, you need to start brainstorming.

Here are a few tips to come up with a great business idea (I made a list of over 25 home-based businesses as well):

Think of ways to get ahead of the curve. Think of how your product or service can change the business landscape, especially with the constant technological advancements.

• Solve a problem you identify. After all, your customers would prefer more of a good thing and less of a bad thing.
• Try to bring a fresh perspective that helps you gain a competitive edge over your competitors.
• Think of ways to make your approach better, cheaper, and faster if your business idea isn’t new.

At this stage, you can also conduct surveys and collect perspectives by meeting people and asking for advice. Researching ideas online is another excellent way to come up with business ideas.

 

Step 2: Conduct Market Research

The whole point of conducting market research is to understand typical consumer behavior, pain points, and relevant market trends in your chosen niche. This is a sure way to determine how your potential startup might fit into the existing industry landscape.

Try to find the answers to the following questions while doing market research:

• What product or service is currently in demand in your given market?
• What is the market size, or how many clients make up your target audience?
• How many competitors share a similar concept to your business idea?
• What is the price that customers are willing to pay for products and services in your market?
• What’s the typical consumer engagement in your market? Did your competitors move online during the pandemic? Can you replicate their sales process or do it better?

One of the best ways to gain genuine insights is to speak with consumers directly. Take surveys, make questionnaires, and do one-on-one interviews.

Another free resource you should absolutely use is Google. Say you are starting a business that sells shampoo to men. I’d search “shampoo for men”, “men’s hair care”, along with other terms and phrases in the space.

Then I’d take a hard look at the first page of results for each keyword.

What are the top websites (not paid ads) doing? Who are they speaking to? How do they position their products and services?

Asking simple questions like these can give you a ton of insight into the market. You can also plug keywords into tools like Ubersuggest to find out how many people are searching for these terms each month.

Researching your market is an ongoing process. What you find out today may change tomorrow.

I put this as ‘Step 2’ because you want to get started early, but you should be constantly trying to understand the trends in your space.

 

Step 3: Lock Down the Legal Stuff

I always make sure to get the legal stuff out of the way early. This way, I don’t have to worry about anybody else taking my big idea, ending up in a bad partnership, or getting sued because of misinformation.

Determine your business structure first, as it’ll dictate the legal and tax requirements you will have to meet. Your options include sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company (LLC), and corporation.

Enlist a tax professional’s services, as every structure has its own set of tax requirements, or use an online business formation service.

At this stage, you’ll also have to choose a business name and register your business. Find out whether your chosen name is available for registration in your state and within the digital space. You want availability as a:

• Business name in your state
• Domain name
• Social media platform usernames

If a specific name isn’t available, you can always consider permutations of the name. Make sure your domain name and business name aren’t impinging on any registered trademarks.

There is a quick checklist of other things that you’ll need:

• Federal tax ID
• State tax ID
• Permits and licenses (as needed)
• Business bank accounts
• Trademarks, patents, and copyrights (as needed)

It’s best to consult a lawyer to cover everything you need. You can always work out things on your own, but sometimes it’s best to ask an expert.

 

Step 4: Write Your Business Plan

Many people question the purpose of creating a business plan. After all, if you already have a vision for your business, why write it down?

When you create a business plan, you describe every aspect of your business in a formal document. You put everything into words.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “There never was a good knife made of bad steel.”

It’s precisely why a business plan is such a crucial part of any business. It defines your thoughts and research and exactly what you need to do to make a business a success.

This helps put things into perspective and allows you to identify areas to streamline future processes.

Let me clarify: Your business plan doesn’t need to be 100 pages long. It only needs to be readable and include the main components. Such as:

• Pain points your business solves
• An elevator pitch about what your business does
• A list of your target audiences
• An idea list of how you’ll promote your business (your marketing strategy)
• The financial plan of how you’ll raise money to pay and how your business will make money
• Financial documents

Do a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) of your business, too, to gain insights and identify ways to achieve your goals.

As the industry and market are always changing, you’ll find yourself revising your plan frequently. Periodic revisions and refinement of your business plan ensure that your business remains competitive in the long run.

 

Step 5: Raise Capital for Your Business

There are many ways you can get the resources to start your business. Below, I’ve discussed some of the best ways I found raising capital is easy and effective. You can choose one or more that work best for you.

Start at Home

Bootstrapping your business is a long process, but it gives you full control over your business. You can also leverage personal relationships by asking friends and family for a loan or to invest in your business.

Online Crowdfunding

There’s no disputing the power in numbers, especially when it comes to raising capital. Crowdfunding gives you direct access to small investments that can add up to something massive.

Check out Kickstarter or Indiegogo, or Google a list of the most popular crowdfunding websites. Crowdfunding is more for a physical product than a service.

Reach Out to Venture Capital Investors or Local Angel Investors

Venture capitalist investors look for proven teams that require a capital investment of $1 million or more, which is why you need some traction before approaching them.

If you feel you don’t have such traction right now, you can instead apply to online platforms like AngelList and Gust to find potential investors who would be interested in your project.

Apply for a Small Business Grant

Grants.gov is an online directory of more than 1000 federal grant programs that can supply you with the capital to kickstart your project. Although the process is long, you don’t have to give away any equity.

Get a Bank Loan or a Line of Credit

Applying for a bank loan is easy, but you should do so only if you really need a bank loan and if you’re eligible. You can head over to the Small Business Administration to look for loan opportunities.

 

Step 6: Develop Your Product or Service

Nothing feels better than seeing your idea come to life. The only problem is creating a product takes a village–if not a city.

You’ll have a different set of requirements based on your product or service. For instance, if you want to develop an app, you want someone with the technical know-how, whereas if you’re going to mass-produce an item, you’ll need a manufacturer.

Product simplicity and quality should be your top priority. Rather than creating the cheapest product, focus on developing something that catches someone’s attention. You can further streamline the process by keeping in mind the following tips:

1. Avoid handing over product development to someone else or another firm, and if you do, make sure you supervise constantly.
2. Implement regular checks and balances to reduce the level of risk involved. For example, if you decide to hire freelancers, hire multiple people so that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
3. Enlist specialists instead of generalists. A jack-of-all-trades isn’t what you need right now.
4. Always operate within your budget.

For service-focused entrepreneurs, the game is slightly different.

Your primary focus should be to have the necessary certificates and educational requirements. Search online job portals and freelance working platforms to find opportunities. Upwork and ProBlogger could be great places to start.

 

Step 7: Build a Reliable and Responsible Team

What’s the best way to scale your business and achieve all your organizational goals?

Have a good team.

One of the critical aspects of a growing business is delegating responsibilities to other people, whether a partner, employee or freelancer. Here are a few tips to help you find the right team members:

State Your Goals Clearly

When your team members understand your vision and their role in helping you achieve it, they’ll make fewer errors.

If you are just starting out, you’ll probably be interested in some of the really great free project management software out there. These aren’t free trials, and you’ll be able to make sure everyone is on the same page–no extra cost to you.

Establish and Follow Hiring Protocols

Welcoming people to your team involves several processes, ranging from screening people, carrying out interviews, and having proper forms. This will help you create a more competent team.

Create a Strong Company Culture

Great company culture is all about respecting and empowering employees through training and mentorship.

You don’t need futuristic decor or ping-pong tables (if you can afford that, that’s great!) but you do need a positive atmosphere where everybody feels welcomed and appreciated.

 

Step 8: Find a Business Location

One in four businesses that starts within the next 12 months will have a 100% remote workforce. But if you decide to open a brick-and-mortar retail business, you need to focus on getting the right location.

Here are a few things you should keep in mind:

• Demographics: Think about your customers and how they interact with your location. Does your target clientele frequent the potential location? Does your location reflect the image you’re trying to project?
• Foot Traffic: Monitor the foot traffic outside a potential location throughout the day. Do you see a couple of passers-by throughout the day? Or is it away from the public eye? Is there parking available?
• Business Community: The business community refers to the other businesses nearby that can bring you foot traffic. Is there a mall nearby? Are there restaurants where customers can go after shopping at your store?
• Competition: Contrary to popular belief, having competitors nearby isn’t always bad. Whatever your stand, you should be aware of whether or not you have competitors nearby before deciding on a location.

Research the history of the location as well. If other businesses have tried and failed in space, find out why.

And of course, always keep the cost in mind. Expenses like rent, cleaning services, insurance, and parking fees need to be considered.

 

Step 9: Work On Generating Sales

Start by listening to your potential customers to know their wants, needs, likes, and dislikes. Next, learn the art of asking for a commitment without being too pushy.

In other words, don’t force your customers into buying goods from you, or they won’t return.

Moreover, you have to prepare yourself for hearing “NO“ too. Sad, I know.

People listen to your elevator pitch despite having no intention to buy simply because they’re polite. If they don’t end up buying from you, don’t get disheartened.

Grow your customer base and put out advertisements to find an audience to fit your business.

At this point, you’ll also have to figure out the right sales funnel and strategy to generate leads and convert them into paying customers.

Sales and marketing are critical to building a successful business. Check out some of these free customer relationship management tools that help you stay organized as you grow your contact list.

 

Step 10: Expand Your Business

You must have a growth plan if you want to earn and scale your business. Luckily, there are about a million ways to grow your company.

I’d highly recommend utilizing the power of social media through an organic, influencer, and paid campaigns. Email marketing works equally well to create and nurture a dedicated customer base.

One of the key aspects of long-term growth is to have a dedicated customer base and reduce customer churn.

All the efforts you put into nurturing your existing customers can be useful in the long run when they act as your repeat customers, ensuring revenue in the long run.

 

Conclusion

We’ve covered everything you need to know to start a business. Now you can prepare for the exciting adventure in front of you.

Taking the first step can feel a bit scary, but don’t fear. Take the plunge and launch your business–it’s a lot of fun!

Of course, you’ll find challenges and roadblocks along the way, but as long as you remain dedicated and driven, you can learn from your mistakes and climb higher up the ladder.

Don’t wait any longer!

Source: neilpatel.com

How to Avoid Failure in Account-Based Marketing

 

Did you know B2B marketers who report the most success from their digital activities in 2021 are more likely to be engaged in account-based marketing (ABM)? Only 16% of B2B marketers who describe their digital marketing efforts as “somewhat successful” have a measurable ABM program in place.

That number is reduced to 6% for those who say their digital strategy is unsuccessful at achieving goals set for the program. Check out this and other trends in our State of B2B Digital Marketing report.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

What Sets Successful ABM Strategies Apart From Those That Fail?

To start, ABM requires a different planning approach than more traditional B2B marketing methods.

The focus shifts away from driving lead volume and relies on a multi-channel content strategy for key accounts’ aimed at influencers and decision-makers for more personalized experiences.

ABM is based on different performance indicators that favor looking at high quality engagement indicators.

These engagement indicators aim at accelerating your pipeline velocity and increasing the overall account value versus quantity and cost per lead metrics.

To avoid account-based marketing failure, start your ABM plans  by first defining your target account list and audience segmentation:

Targeting:

To develop a shortlist of high-value accounts, take a look at your customer data and develop your version of a 360-degree view of attributes that include things like: industry, size of the organization, growth stage, revenue, etc.

Determine which characteristics drive the most value for your company.

Analyze that list against other information that gauges interest and engagement with your product, including things like website visits, account tenure, intent data from search engines as well as any other relevant relationship health metrics.

Don’t try to boil the ocean — there is no reason to convert your entire organization to an ABM model.

Once you have your best-fit customers identified, you’ll be in a position to put together a list of prospect organizations with similar attributes.

Don’t try to boil the ocean — there is no reason to convert your entire organization to an ABM model.

Most successful teams are able to identify a few key prospects for an ABM strategy with some focusing on larger deals with more complexity and influential internal stakeholders.

Audience Segmentation:

ABM targets are generally composed of a few audience segments that consider both the industry and the individual’s role within the target organization, as well as the purchase process.

The aim is to deliver personalized content that speaks to the pain points of that particular individual in order to drive meaningful engagement that can lead to a sale.

For example, if your company provides IT infrastructure support to small and mid-size companies, someone in a day-to-day operations role would be interested in a downloadable eBook with how-tos for server protection against new security threats, versus the CFO.

However, a whitepaper on managing costs of ongoing threats to information security may prove more effective for the C-Suite or individuals with a senior-level finance role.

Once you have a shortlist of target accounts with audience segmentation, you can then build your content strategy with multi-channel campaigns.

Consider incorporating tactics for:

• website personalization,
• email, direct mail,
• direct sales outreach,
• digital ads,
• sponsored content, etc.,

with engagement triggers that indicate when and how to advance the customer in the sales process.

Sales and Marketing Alignment:

Successful ABM marketers are aligned in lockstep with their sales organizations.

Ever since the invention of email marketing in the early 2000s, driving lead volume has been easy, but the lead quality has suffered.

ABM forces strategic alignment between marketing and sales in order to shorten the sales cycle and drive quality growth not just lead volume.

 

How to Avoid Failure In ABM

• Pay close attention to triggers that move a customer forward in the sales cycle, and how well marketing engagement metrics are aligning with both sales activities and business outcomes.
  Provide ongoing training for sales teams on available content, how it’s performing, and to solicit feedback.
• Understand which accounts sales teams care most about on an ongoing basis.
  Apply a test and learn approach that includes dedicating some of your marketing budgets to your ABM target account list.
• Activate sales teams by indicating which account to take action on next, what engagement signals the account is showing, and the action to take on those signals.
• Abandon the traditional marketing funnel for measurement purposes. Using the same lead analytics associated with lead volume and lead quality can make ABM efforts seem ineffective when performing well.
• Focus on conversion metrics for your ABM pipeline compared with other sales pipelines for your organization, including sales cycle duration.  For most teams, this will include ensuring you have executive buy-in as well as dedicated resources for creating new reports for ABM performance.

 

Stay Focused On Your High-Quality Target Accounts

Earlier this year, 43% of B2B marketers said they had a measurable ABM strategy in place — how many will be successful?

ABM strategies typically require investments in content creation and new reporting dashboards in order to create multi-channel campaigns for each audience segment within your target accounts.

To justify the resource investment and set your team up for success, be sure to focus your team’s efforts on a shortlist of high-value accounts.

 

The post How to Avoid Failure in Account-Based Marketing appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

Who Really Owns Social Selling?

“A-B-C. A: always, B: be, C: closing,” is the immortal advice Alec Baldwin’s character Blake imparts to a group of hapless salesmen in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. This basic sales tenet has not changed much since, but the role of sales and marketing has definitely moved on (for the better).

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Although many companies are taking social selling seriously these days and developing a solid social selling strategy, who within your organization actually owns it?

The obvious answer would be the sales team.

They’re the ones selling.

But the reality is that in many organizations, marketing is driving the initiative in terms of social techniques, where to prospect, and creating content that drives the conversation and engagement with potential buyers.

In some cases, the marketing department is even funding the cost of the technology used by sales to do social selling.

There is definitely a lot of “selling” involved in social selling, and the sales team needs training on creating personal brands, using social listening technology, engagement, and measuring their success.

But the marketing department has an important role to play in most organizations.

 

Here are some areas where marketing can help:

Identifying Watering Holes

By using the same buyer personas created and used by the marketing department to develop the overall marketing strategy, marketing can identify the right micro markets for sales to focus their social selling efforts on social channels, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

Compile a list of online groups, forums, and key influencers your salespeople should follow and get to know.

 

Sharing Social Media Techniques

Marketing departments have been engaging with their audiences via social media for years and will have an established social selling strategy, which sales teams need to take advantage of and integrate with.

Sales should start by social listening and plugging into online conversations to understand the important issues and topics of potential prospects.

This will fuel authentic conversations.

 

Empower Sales to Have Intelligent Conversations

Social selling is much more about sharing quality content than driving a sales angle.

Marketing should have a library of developed and curated content to share with sales for target personas, hopefully for each stage of the sales cycle.

Build social selling campaigns “in a box” that share the right messages, the right calls to action, and in the right format for social channels for sales to easily deploy.

Adding some creative elements or image files can help improve engagement for the team’s developed posts and messages.

 

Sales Training and Enablement

The “last mile” in any good campaign is sales enablement.

Marketing needs to ensure that the sales team understands the campaign messaging and what materials are available, as well as where to find them easily.

Make sure there is sales leadership support.

The campaign launch should be part of standard sales training or enablement, so that the sales team sees it as something they need to do, rather than just information from marketing.

 

Working Together for Your Social Selling Strategy

The best part of social selling is that it gives sales and marketing another opportunity to work together in the ever-blending roles of the two teams.

With the customer experience at the center of both marketing and sales department strategies these days, only by working together will social selling success.

It’s called social selling, but there’s a lot of marketing involved.

This blog was updated by Michelle Saunders, Director of Content.

The post Who Really Owns Social Selling? appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com