How Marketers Ruin Infographics (and How to Save Yours)
For a long time, creating infographics has been all the rage. Launching a new product? Create an infographic about it. Want to get press coverage? Create an infographic. Trying to get inbound links? Create an infographic. It’s like that analogy: When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Marketers […]
For a long time, creating infographics has been all the rage. Launching a new product? Create an infographic about it. Want to get press coverage? Create an infographic. Trying to get inbound links? Create an infographic. It’s like that analogy: When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
Marketers are churning out infographics left and right to capture people’s attention in our increasingly visual and busy world. And there are lots of free resources out there to help you create infographics, such as Venngage or Canva— all you need to do is plug in some data and voila, an infographic … right?
Not quite. With this hammer/nail mentality, it’s easy to spend time creating something that’s not quite up to snuff. If you’re mainly concerned with just having an infographic, you could end up with something that gets lost in the sauce — not something people will be excited to read and share.
To make sure you’re putting your best infographic foot forward, read on. We’ll highlight the top mistakes people tend to make with their infographics and give you tips for steering clear of them yourself — because if you’re going to go for the nail, you might as well know how to use the hammer properly.
So without further ado, let’s take a look at the worst types of mistakes we’ve seen (and even committed ourselves) in infographics.
1) The Title’s Wordy
This is probably my biggest pet peeve of them all (which is why it’s first on the list). Unlike design, crafting great titles should be in any content creator’s wheelhouse. It’s something all content creators do, whether they create infographics or not. In a world where everyone has very limited attention for content, a great title could be the difference between your infographic being successful … or not.
Infographics shouldn’t just be a jumble of stats and facts with icons and graphs next to them. Like any other piece of content you create, it should tell some sort of story. Even if all you have are 10 stats for your infographic meat, there should be some flow between them that speaks to a larger trend.
Having a compelling narrative means that your infographic should have a beginning, middle, and end — just like a blog post. The beginning is usually a sentence or two of introduction. The middle is the meat of the story — it has a few themes with supporting details for each. The end wraps it all up for the reader and usually includes the sources for the infographic. People should be able to skim the infographic and walk away with a clear message.
Want an example of a great infographic with a narrative? Check this one out.
If you’re struggling to develop a narrative in your infographic, put together an outline first. Remove and reorganize the bullet points until it makes sense, then translate your outline to the infographic format. If you’re using an infographic template, the translation should be fairly easy — you can just plug the bullet points for each section into the template and then customize the graphics to support the bullet points.
3) The Data’s Outdated
Each industry is different — some move much faster than others. So if you’re building an infographic with data from several years ago, chances are it’s outdated or maybe even wrong. If you want your infographic to get shared and bring long-term, evergreen traffic to your website, you want to keep the data as current as possible.
Each industry moves at its own pace, so what “dated” means changes depending on the industry you’re in. That being said, if you’re creating content for that industry, you should have an idea of what’s in vogue now and what isn’t. If you’re unsure, do some Googling to see if there are more current data on it.
4) The Text Is Tiny
One of the hardest things about designing infographics is you have to make them easy-to-read at any size. Even if they’re only a few hundred pixels wide, people should be able to read and scan the infographic without enlarging it.
So treat your infographic like you would a PowerPoint presentation — keep your font sizes large enough that anyone can read the text on your infographic on any device they choose. People will be accessing your infographic on many different screen sizes, and your infographic should be readable on all of them.
5) No One Knows It’s Yours
After you spend all that time outlining, writing, editing, designing, and optimizing your infographic, you want to get the credit your company deserves. When people share your infographic on a social network of choice, you want people to know your company created it, even if the sharer didn’t mention you.
The easiest way to prevent that is to include your company logo or URL in the infographic. It doesn’t prevent people from incorrectly sharing/attributing the infographic, but it will help ensure people know your company created it — which could bring them one tiny bit closer to visiting your website, converting on a form, and becoming a customer. (Every little bit counts!)
6) It Only Lives on Your Website
Though you want people to recognize you created the infographic, you don’t want to discourage people from sharing it with their network. Chances are, your infographic is meant to get you exposure … so you’ve got to get people to share your content if you want to accomplish that goal.
So make sure you have the infographic primed to be shared. Add an easy embed code and add tweet/pin buttons next to the infographic. If you’re promoting the infographic in a blog post, add some “tweetable takeaways” in the comments, complete with “Click to Tweet” links. Basically, any way you can remind people in a non-spammy way to share the infographic — do it.
Also, make sure you’re distributing the infographic to the right networks. If you have a SlideShare account, for example, upload your infographic there. Since not a lot of people use SlideShare for infographics, you’ll have a better chance of getting noticed — and you’ll improve your chances even more if you avoid the rest of these mistakes, too.
Want to make a kick-ass infographic? Make sure you’re starting off on the right foot by downloading these five PowerPoint infographic templates.
Account-Based (Strategy) Marketing: How to Master the Post-Sales Cycle
Any B2B marketer worth their salt understands the power of account-based marketing (ABM). It’s been widely adopted due to its proven success rate throughout the B2B industry. But there’s a movement taking place, as marketers jump on the ABM train due to the expected ROI and pace of excitement. But, any good ABM program has […]
Any B2B marketer worth their salt understands the power of account-based marketing (ABM). It’s been widely adopted due to its proven success rate throughout the B2B industry. But there’s a movement taking place, as marketers jump on the ABM train due to the expected ROI and pace of excitement. But, any good ABM program has to start with a strategic lens – and end with one. Lately, this seems to be lacking as sales and marketing silo their goals rather than unify them.
A full 87 percent of B2B marketers now agree that ABM delivers higher ROI compared to other marketing efforts. And 92 percent consider ABM “extremely” or “very” important to their marketing efforts.
What is Account-Based (Strategy) Marketing
Account-based marketing is a strategic B2B approach that is concentrated on a set of clearly defined target accounts. These accounts are identified as the most important prospects for a business. Sales leads the conversation – but marketing puts the magic in the program.
So, how does your brand get from strategy to implementation, action and results? Follow the step-by step-guide below so that your marketing team can achieve results with a post-sale, FULL-cycle ABM strategy. You’ll learn what to do even after you’ve closed the deal on your target ABM accounts. As a result, your brand will acquire and retain your ideal customer base, while achieving optimum revenue goals.
Not sure if ABM is right for your B2B company? Before continuing with this step-by-step program, we recommend completing the below checklist:
Step 1: Focusing on the Right Targets
The Rs to Success: Research, ROI and Return on Relationship.
Dare to be specific. Don’t think of hypothetical personas. Do your due diligence. Drill down to get to know the target companies, even the exact individuals who make the purchasing decisions. You can identify target accounts with fit, using predictive marketing (look-a-like and propensity models to identify accounts); intent, looking at in-market activity across the web by topic; and behaviors, by tracking activity such as understanding who is coming to your site or engaging with your brand.
As you develop your ABM strategy, assess what your ideal customer profile looks like and don’t waste effort on prospective accounts that will not give you the biggest bang for your buck.
Additionally, focus on the longevity of your relationship of that targeted account and those that will eventually become advocates for your brand. Building long-term relationships can result in a strong ‘Voice of the Customer’ program, an increase in brand advocates, strong referrals and an overall high RoR (Return on Relationship).
Step 2: Integrating Your Teams
Align. Communicate. Collaborate.
Building that relationship for the long run “takes a village.” Align each of your departments – sales, marketing, customer relations and/or support.
Set your teams up for success by identifying the right roles and resources to get you started.
From a tactical, day-to-day standpoint, your team should have someone that’s going to review and segment historical data; identify customer profiles; review and update account data on a regular basis; and implement CRM tools, updates and processes.
From a more high-level standpoint your team needs someone to strategize, run point between sales and marketing; educate teams on customer awareness, engagement and acceleration; CX; best practices and lessons learned.
However, the most meaningful role – and often the most forgotten – is the one that maintains, monitors and reports on the ABM accounts post-sale. How satisfied is that account? Are they continuing to be nurtured? Given the right content at the right time? Have they been adopting new services or products? This role and resource for your ABM team will be critical to the overall success rate and longevity of this program.
Carrying over the enthusiasm and commitment of the sales cycle into the hard work of managing the client account and providing an exceptional customer experience ignites the power of account-based marketing well beyond the sale.
Find common goals, strategy and metrics across your organization. Making sure everyone is on the same page (and has the same expectations) is critical when taking next steps towards a named account strategy. Step 6 will dig in even further on how to align and define these key metrics and goals between each department. For now, your integrated teams should be focusing on roles and resources needed within your organization, the strategy, how to communicate with each other and at what customer “trigger points” are you passing off in terms of CX, relationship-building and nurturing. Sales pass to marketing, marketing to customer success, back to sales for the upsell (think: land and expand). Any lack of communication in this daisy-chain will throw ABM efforts out the window.
Not sure if your team has the right skill sets available for ABM success? Consider tapping an integrated agency to backfill your in-house efforts. Public relations, content marketing, social media and influencer marketing all play a role in ABM content strategy. If you don’t have all the pieces in place, don’t delay bringing the right talent to the table through outsourcing.
Step 3: Implement an ABM Content Strategy
Personalize. Map Content Pre, During and Post Sales.
The power of ABM is not only targeting those relevant accounts, but also building highly personalized messaging. Your content and engagement strategies are critical. By appealing to the emotional needs of your audience, you can develop highly tailored, actionable and authentic content. Then map that content to account-based stages.
A successful strategy requires an integrated approach. Owned, earned, shared and paid media all work together and support each other – driving one consistent message while effectively aligning resources that drive action and outcomes for your ABM efforts. It’s important to understand the power of integration. People will drive that connection and personalization will fuel the engagements.
Consider the customer journey through the ABM process. A pre-sales social media post targeted a particular organization. A guest blog from a prospect during the pre-sales cycle. A request for a case study from a client after a successful campaign. Use these touchpoints to build relationships.
Pre-Sales ABM Content
47 percent of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep (Demand Gen Report).
This is your brand’s time to shine. You’re looking to turn the data and information that you’ve previously gathered into helpful and (internally) shareworthy content for that prospect. Your targeted accounts won’t be able to find this type of information elsewhere – setting your brand apart from its competitors. This kind of thoughtful personalization might take time, but the results will take you into the sales cycle of this journey.
During-Sales ABM Content
Now that you’ve made the sale, there’s no time to waste when it comes to building that customer relationship. First impressions will make or break your brand’s reputation and customer experience. On the flipside, don’t overload your new accounts with content. Assess, prioritize and acknowledge their pain points as a first step. This should be information that’s fresh and documented from the sales team. Marketing can leverage that to build out helpful content that guides them towards an easy transition into using your product or service. If you’re not sure what kind of content would be most valuable for your new customers – go back and do your research. Investigate what they’ve been sharing and discussing on their channels, ask questions or simply send a quick survey.
Post-Sales ABM Content
Solid content marketing is imperative here – how do you create a detailed content program that keeps customers engaged, highlights loyalty and brings out customer voices? Foster a long-term customer relationship with a full content experience. Use case studies, customer spotlights, Q&As, and customer reviews. Continuously appeal to customer emotions and roadblocks. It’s a two-way feedback loop – ask your customers how you can improve.
Make your content easily accessible and digestible so that they’ll come back for more. Strive to be that go-to resource and thought leader for your post-sale ABM accounts.
Whether the account is a warm lead or an about-to-be-signed new account, mapping out content journeys for each will continue to move them through the sales funnel towards success.
Use the below checklist so that you can tackle each customer stage of your content mapping journey:
Step 4: Apply Complimentary Content Distribution Techniques
Touchpoints Beyond ABM.
Did you know that earning a new customer is between 5 to 25x more expensive than retaining current ones? And the average customer spends 67 percent more between months 31 and 36 with a business than they do from months 0-6? This makes any extra effort to retain your ABM acquired customers all the more important.
Build longevity by continuing to reach out using personalized, targeted touchpoints.
Include different channels of communication – social media, emails, surveys, invitations to private events, etc. Do whatever it takes to improve the customer experience, differentiate your company from the rest and keep clients from straying.
Monitor, listen and engage with your post-sale ABM customers. Celebrate their successes, engage with them on industry trends, collaborate on campaigns, speaking opportunities and the like – all while keeping their primary objectives and goals at the center of any outreach.
Focusing on the accounts you have in the pipeline is useless if you can’t keep the ones in hand happy.
Only 31 percent of marketers are personalizing campaigns and only 21 percent are focused on customer experience (PAN Communications & Holmes Report).
Step 5: Defining Success Beyond the Sale
Revenue. Retention. Reputation. Referrals.
How do you define success beyond the sale? Ask yourself the following three questions:
Are you retaining those customers?
Are you building brand advocates with a Voice of the Customer program?
Have you mastered the upselling process?
Voice of the Customer
Loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering.
Retaining and building brand advocates is the goal. Developing a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program to create great customer experiences will move you towards that goal. A VoC program should be embedded within your post-sales cycle ABM strategy and a way for you to determine the success rate of these programs as outlined below.
Your brand’s VoC program should include customers that encapsulate and align with your brand’s core values. These customers are going to be the drivers when it comes to reaching prospects under similar personas, so you’ll want them to be the best brand advocates that you have. Leverage this relationship even further by capturing the tone and preferences of your ABM accounts. It should show them that their feedback and opinions truly matter.
As you continue to build out your VoC program tied alongside your ABM strategy, don’t forget to document everything that you’ve learned. Update your personas and targets to include new communication channels, unresolved customer pain points, disrupting industry stats, lessons learned, customer quotes and testimonials. Your team should have a knowledge bank that will guide and lead your ABM efforts into future success stories.
Remember the 4 R’s for defining the success of a VoC program:
Revenue: Land and expand.
Retention: Making customers feel important and becoming an extension of their team.
Reputation: Word of mouth is key here even if it doesn’t lead to a referral right away. Ask for testimonials and quotes in the interim.
Referrals: Business connections can go a long way, especially if a previous customer has just jumped ship to another company, they’re likely to recommend your agency to that new company.
The 4 Rs should translate into a platform sales, marketing and other key stakeholders can point to for validation. This will help drive new business and revenue for your organization.
Step 6: Measuring ABM Throughout the Customer Journey
What is the coin of the realm in your business?
New business revenue generated
Increasing revenue per account
Upselling existing accounts to a premium product or service
Finding efficiencies to increase net revenue
Superior customer experiences
Before getting started on KPIs, ensure sales and marketing teams agree on specific lead scoring and hand-off rules. ABM KPIs are different than your standard marketing metrics. Track impact and influence, time spent, and quality over quantity. Before someone spends money with you, they’ll spend time with you.
It’s about accounts, not leads. Ensure that you and your teams have the tools they need to manage and track the customer experience. Assess your martech stack and identify what you may be missing when it comes to KPIs and metrics.
Your ABM metrics should ladder up to the rest of your marketing KPIs. Track not just generic measurements but also get to true ROI (Return on Investment — or Return on Impact). Take a dual approach to your analytics. This means aligning those marketing KPIs with topline business goals. Think of measurement as a continuum, starting with your organization’s big picture revenue goals and drilling down to the granular, tactical results.
Conclusion
Success beyond the ABM sale requires bringing VoC, content and integrated teams together so that you end up with loyal, long-term happy customers. Happy customers lead to higher retention rates, a better brand image, and references; all of which fuel the bottom line, growth.
Facebook Messenger Marketing and Chatbots
Facebook Messenger Marketing and Chatbots What It Is, Why You Need It, And How to Win Most marketers know that chatbots are a trendy, much-talked-about marketing tactic. And it’s also fairly obvious that Facebook Messenger marketing has massive potential. But few marketers know the explosive potential of combining the two. And even if they do […]
Facebook Messenger Marketing and Chatbots
What It Is, Why You Need It, And How to Win
Most marketers know that chatbots are a trendy, much-talked-about marketing tactic. And it’s also fairly obvious that Facebook Messenger marketing has massive potential.
But few marketers know the explosive potential of combining the two. And even if they do know about it, they don’t realize just how easy it is.
In this article, I’ll explain what they are, why they’re awesome, what they look like, and how to start using them. (With MobileMonkey, it’s so easy.)
Let’s do this.
Facebook Messenger Marketing and Chatbots Explained
Let’s cover the basics.
Facebook Messenger marketing — what is it?
Chatbots — what are they?
And what happens when they get together and have babies?
Facebook Messenger marketing is simple. It’s using Messenger to connect with your potential customers.
Just like you use Messenger to schedule hamburgers with Krišs, you can use Facebook Messenger to reel in customers.
It’s marketing. On Messenger.
That’s it.
And that’s where chatbots come in.
You see, messaging people onesie-twosie is like having forty-three full-time jobs. There are so many people to message, so many questions to respond to, and so many different tasks that a new marketing channel like Messenger requires.
You can hire the entire population of North Dakota to do all that for you, or you can….
Make a Facebook Messenger chatbot.
And that brings me to the second question — what the heck is a chatbot?
This is breaking news to probably no one, but chatbots have been the trendy darling of marketers for the last, oh, three years or so.
Chatbots are programs that can facilitate conversations with humans, as well as perform tasks like scheduling, downloading files, segmenting users, and a whole bunch of other stuff. (More on that later.)
And what about Facebook Messenger marketing plus chatbots?
That’s where things get really good.
Facebook Messenger chatbots have been gaining ground as the most powerful tools in the chatbot world, because, well, Facebook.
And, because, well, really insanely powerful.
Let’s talk about that enormous marketing power.
Facebook Messenger Marketing with Chatbots Has Enormous Marketing Power
Okay, let’s get something out of the way.
Maybe you don’t code.
You majored in Ancient Near Eastern Religions, and somehow landed a job in marketing, and are kicking yourself because you can’t tell a Java from a Python.
And that’s totally okay.
You do not need to code in order to make a Facebook Messenger chatbot.
Look at this. Do you see any code on this page?
Not even data = raw_input is there!
That screenshot is the dialogue builder of MobileMonkey. If you can read and click, you can make a Facebook Messenger chatbot dialogue.
So, now that you’ve breathed a sigh of relief, let me tell you a few things about Facebook Messenger chatbots.
First off, chatbots as a whole are on the rise.
The data backs up my prediction that chatbots are the number one growth marketing channel for the next five years, and probably even the next decade.
Look at these gigantic circles.
Look at the light blue circle — Facebook Messenger. It has 1.3 billion monthly active users.
And, lest you think you’re missing out the WhatsApp and Instagram users of the world, don’t despair. All those messaging platforms, owned by Facebook, will be merged by the end of 2019 or early 2020.
In other words, by tapping into Messenger marketing, you have the potential to reach vast numbers of people.
And those numbers are just growing, growing, growing.
But let’s set aside the issue of massive audiences. You’re not trying to reach the world. You’re just trying to reach a reasonable number of interested people.
So, let’s talk about the numbers that really matter shall we?
What kind of numbers? Open rates, clickthroughs, conversions, that kind of stuff.
Compared to boring old Facebook display ads, Facebook Messenger messages convert at least five times better.
Mobile ad conversion rates hover around 1-2%
That kind of sucks.
What about Messenger conversion rates? Let’s just say it demolishes this pitiful level of conversion rates. Most Messenger campaigns have 80%+ open rates and 40%+ response rates in the first sixty minutes.
What about when compared to email marketing? How does Messenger marketing stack up?
It’s no contest.
Please look away if you’re easily embarrassed.
In one study, a simple Messenger broadcast netted an 80% open rate and 13% click rate, absolutely gutting the email control.
If you’re the kind of person who’s always asking how much does it cost? let me show you this:
This screenshot shows you that I spent $4.51 for each lead during one of my recent Facebook ad campaigns.
But this was no ordinary ad campaign. This was a Click to Messenger campaign, using Facebook Messenger as the conversion channel.
With my traditional Facebook ads, I had been throwing away $150 to $250 per lead! When I switched to a Click to Messenger ad, I slashed those numbers to a fraction of the original cost.
All of these chatbots are available as templates in MobileMonkey. You can, of course, easily customized them in MobileMonkey’s chatbot builder. It’s so easy.
Now, Here’s How to Start Using Facebook Messenger Marketing.
(Yes, I even have 3 easy steps!)
Launching a new marketing channel feels intimidating.
What? We’re going to start using chatbots? Hire someone, quick!
Before you go rushing off to HR to hire a chatbot-building specialist, take some time, carve out thirty minutes, and do the following.
1. Make sure you have a Facebook business page.
Surely you have one, right?
This is what MobileMonkey’s Facebook page looks like.
If not, make one. You’re going to need a Facebook business page to do Facebook Messenger marketing.
So far, pretty easy.
2. Next, pick a chatbot builder.
I’ll completely level with you.
Choose MobileMonkey.
Yes, I founded the business, so I have a vested interest in steering you that way.
But listen.
I’ve also spent way too much time studying and outdoing the competition. The product that my rockstar team of developers and engineers have created is peerless in the chatbot platform community.
Here’s why:
It’s free. If you want to upgrade to get advanced features, it’s only $19/month.
It’s really easy to use.
Suitable for one-person businesses to enterprise corporations.
Cloud-based app with a simple drag-and-drop interface.
But nothing substitutes for in-the-trenches chatbot building. Besides, it’s fun.
6 SEO Growth Levers for Higher SERP Rankings; Growth Marketing Conference Summary
Tom Casano is the founder of Sure Oak, one of the fastest-growing SEO agencies in NYC. They’ve grown clients’ organic traffic by up to 500%. Google conducts 3.5B searches every day — SEO is still one of the strongest long-term growth strategies. Anyone can start here and become an SEO expert. HOW TO: Bring cutting-edge SEO tactics […]
Tom Casano is the founder of Sure Oak, one of the fastest-growing SEO agencies in NYC. They’ve grown clients’ organic traffic by up to 500%.
Google conducts 3.5B searches every day — SEO is still one of the strongest long-term growth strategies. Anyone can start here and become an SEO expert.
HOW TO: Bring cutting-edge SEO tactics to your website to spur more conversions
1. Keyword research: find 2-10K keywords related to your company and divide them into topic “clusters”
Clusters are groups of similar content surrounding the pillars of your business, connected by internal links. Group hundreds of keywords in different clusters to establish authority on each topic.
Find keywords related to your main cluster content →
2. On-page optimizations: rewrite URL slugs, header tags, and title tags; internally link related articles and check keyword density
Tags carry a lot of weight with Google; ensure they match the content of the page so searchers aren’t misled. Internal linking also helps guide web crawlers, strengthening authority on groups of related keywords.
Check your keyword/phrase frequency to ensure you’re continuously mentioning keywords →
3. Content: create long-form content on evergreen topics — at least one per cluster
Long-form consistently ranks higher than short. Hack: If you have several short articles on the same topic, combine them into one long-form version. Compile the articles on the highest ranking URL and open with a short summary for visitors looking for quick answers.
Find the highest ranking URL to reorganize the article on →
4. Link building: secure links by creating exciting content and fostering relationships with thought leaders
Links are the most heavily-weighted ranking criteria. Create content that others in your industry care about to land on podcasts or feature in their articles.
Once you have the content, search for link opportunities here →
5. Satisfy user intent: provide answers to questions with specific keywords so you don’t lose ranking
Google’s goal is to help users answer questions. If they bounce quickly back to the search results page Google knows you didn’t provide the answer, and your future ranking will reflect that.
Learn where you’re losing visitors with click heatmaps and screen recordings →
Tools with an asterisk are recommended, not sponsored or affiliated, by the EventNotes author. Tools without an asterisk were suggested by the speaker.
8 Steps To Master Pre-Launch User Acquisition; Growth Marketing Conference Summary
Roy Morejon is the president and co-founder of Enventys. Enventys has launched over 800 products, raised $165 million in capital for clients, and even gotten 16 clients onto Shark Tank. Over 30,000 consumer products are launched each year, but 95% of them fail. Pre-launch user acquisition can be the distinguishing factor between a wild success […]
Roy Morejon is the president and co-founder of Enventys. Enventys has launched over 800 products, raised $165 million in capital for clients, and even gotten 16 clients onto Shark Tank.
HOW TO: Prepare a successful product launch through user research & acquisition
1. Brainstorm all audiences that could potentially fit your product, then start honing in on targets
You don’t want to waste money on an audience that ultimately won’t convert. In groups of 20-50 audiences, zero in on your ideal demographics (age, gender, location) and personas (lifestyle, likes, and needs).
Set up Facebook Lead Ads to start collecting leads →
2. Test 2-3 FB ads per target audience — a generic baseline ad, plus 1-2 ads built for their unique interests
Remember it’s just research, don’t spend more than $5-10 per day per audience. Test discount ads vs. contest ads, as well as different copy, images, and videos. After 72 hours, take the best ad of the 3, create 2 spin-off variations and retest to see if you can drive CPL even lower.
Here’s the step-by-step to making a spin-off creative →
If you run out of ideas, go to competitors’ business pages and look at the ads they’re using →
3. Funnel FB leads into an email drip campaign to keep them engaged until the launch
Create a welcome email to follow up with new leads immediately, then send them 1 email per week until launch. The whole point is engagement — center your copy entirely around your CTA.
Automate your drip campaign with an email service — automated emails get 119% higher click rates than regular emails →
4. Link your email CTA to a product landing page to increase the likelihood of lead conversions
Your landing page should have: 1) a compelling headline, 2) a clear, bright, above-the-fold CTA, 3) a mechanism to gather customer data for future remarketing, and 4) copy, photos, or a short video that showcases your product and compels leads to click the CTA.
5. Embed a contest app in your landing page CTA to maximize customer engagement and go viral
Enventys collects between 1000-1500 additional emails per product with contest apps, and found contest leads to be 1.6X more valuable than Facebook leads post-launch.
Contest apps incentivize users to share your product and have built-in notifications to keep them engaged →
7. Use FB Messenger chatbots as an additional touchpoint to drive further engagement
Facebook found that 64% of people choose direct messaging over picking up the phone or sending an email, and 53% of people are more likely to shop with a business they can message.
The average chatbot open rate is 94%; use this opportunity to improve the leads’ experience and boost conversions at launch →
8. On the launch date, blast your email & Messenger lists with a buy or pre-order offer and publish your winning ads
Segment out key audiences to target, including interest-based audiences that performed well in pre-launch, customers that bought similar products in the past, and lookalike FB audiences.
Enventys found that segmented customer lists convert 6X better than purely interest-based lists; compile all your customer data in a single place to build out your segments →
Tools with an asterisk are recommended, not sponsored or affiliated, by the EventNotes author. Tools without an asterisk were suggested by the speaker.
Learn more at Global Growth Marketing Conference 2019
Growth Marketing Conference 2019
5 Steps to Achieve Google-Like Growth; Growth Marketing Conference Summary
Ken Rudin is the head of user growth at Google and runs their central growth team. Enough said. Simply building a great product isn’t enough to guarantee success — 80% of new products fail. Google uses the scientific method to ensure that their new products succeed, do you? HOW TO: Use Google’s secret scientific […]
Ken Rudin is the head of user growth at Google and runs their central growth team. Enough said.
Simply building a great product isn’t enough to guarantee success — 80% of new products fail. Google uses the scientific method to ensure that their new products succeed, do you?
HOW TO: Use Google’s secret scientific formula to spur product & user growth
1. Observe: Identify the single “north star” metric that best measures user growth
To know if your efforts are actually working, you need to have ONE metric that tracks how well you’re growing. For example, YouTube’s north star metric is Total Watch Time (the total time spent watching videos).
Your north star needs to deliver value to your users, not just to you. Analyze user behavior to understand what core value you provide. EventNotes recommends →
2. Hypothesize: Pinpoint the key growth levers that drive users to your product
Growth levers are the components driving user growth — when you pull them, they move your north star metric. Identify the acquisition, onboarding, engagement and retention levers that have the highest impact on your north star metric.
Adapt Google’s growth model to your company. For example, if your north star metric is Daily Active Users, then you might break it down into growth levers like this →
Compile all your user data in one place to find your key growth levers. EventNotes recommends →
3. Experiment: Choose a growth lever you want to move, then run multiple split test experiments to determine the best ways to move that lever and drive growth.
The two primary ways to move your growth levers are sales & marketing tactics, as well as by optimizing the product itself. Say you have a landing page that drives users to your platform — first split test 3 different CTAs, then test 3 headlines, then 3 graphics…test, test, and keep testing until you find the combination that yields the most growth.
Optimize your winning growth strategies through rigorous A/B testing and AI assistance. EventNotes recommends →
4. Encourage users to act on a growth lever by displaying it as a multi-step process and giving them an end goal to hit
Whether it’s buying, onboarding, or mastering the product, make it a step-by-step process and show users where they are in the journey. The closer people get to a goal, the more motivated they are to reach it.
Google increased the number of advertisers running 3+ ads by more than 20% with this simple visual display →
Monitor visitors in real time to track their progress and see where you need to boost motivation. EventNotes recommends →
5. Drive user action by appealing to their emotions, not their logic
Users make decisions based on emotion, then justify them with logic afterwards. To boost growth and retention, find ways to appeal to users’ hearts, not just their heads..
Google split tested an offer to recapture lost Ads users. An appeal to the positive emotion associated with business growth generated 80% more spending than offering them a $100 ad credit →
Find more examples of how to appeal to emotion and win back users in emails. EventNotes recommends →
Tools with an asterisk are recommended, not sponsored or affiliated, by the EventNotes author. Tools without an asterisk were suggested by the speaker.
Ashley Murphy, formerly the director of growth at OpenView Venture Partners, a VC firm that invests solely in B2B expansion-stage software companies. The firm was an early investor in Calendly, Datadog, and Expensify and they believe product-led growth companies are leading the way. B2B companies that focus on user delight are valued at a 2X […]
Ashley Murphy, formerly the director of growth at OpenView Venture Partners, a VC firm that invests solely in B2B expansion-stage software companies. The firm was an early investor in Calendly, Datadog, and Expensify and they believe product-led growth companies are leading the way.
B2B companies that focus on user delight are valued at a 2X premium compared to other SaaS businesses. Why? Because products that users love attract more attention and sell themselves.
HOW TO: Make product usage the primary driver of user acquisition, retention, and expansion
1. Start by making a product that only does 1 thing, but does it extremely well
Deliver immediate value by solving a common pain point, make it incredibly easy to use, and remove any non-critical bells and whistles that distract users from the key function.
Develop your top buyer personas to identify their pain points →
2. Offer multiple pricing levels, including a free trial, to collect more user data
Some users may never turn into paying customers but you can still use their data to improve your product and land bigger buyers. A free trial is practically industry standard now anyway.
Take advantage of the data you’re accruing by compiling it into a single location →
3. If a free trial isn’t an option, consider a pay-as-you-go version so users can still try your product without a huge commitment
At larger enterprises, executives may not budge on free trials, so you’ll have to get creative. This tactic can generate some revenue while still allowing users to test your product before jumping in.
Test how far behind your company is in product-led growth and learn how to catch up →
4. Your product is a marketing channel — engage with a handful of excited users and they’ll share it with others
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raised $100M in 30 days with this viral tactic. Even if many of your users stick to the free version, they will tell others about it — free WOM advertising!
Calendly gets free users to market to their own networks with this simple CTA →
5. Monitor site visitor behavior, then redesign your site to favor B2B customers
If lots of B2B visitors are leaving your site without a download/purchase, you’re probably not positioning your product correctly — redesign and retest.
Quickly find B2B visitors through their IP address →
6. Empower self-service, but layer in human sales efforts to accelerate growth
If you notice a drop-off at any stage of the buyer journey, connect them with an expert on the sales team. Not only can sales answer any questions, but they can also begin to upsell.
Chat is a great way to be instantly available. Lucky Orange has a chat feature if you decide to try that tool, or you can use this standalone chat →
Tools with an asterisk are recommended, not sponsored or affiliated, by the EventNotes author. Tools without an asterisk were suggested by the speaker.
Learn more at Global Growth Marketing Conference 2019
Growth Marketing Conference 2019
6 Tips to Grow by Improving Customer Experience; Growth Marketing Conference Summary
Alexandra Shapiro has worked as a senior director at both JP Morgan and Paypal. She is the current CMO at Intercom, a client messaging platform built to maximize user acquisition and retention. While at JP Morgan, Alexandra hired 56 analysts to look over data manually. Today, digital companies are sitting on a goldmine of data […]
Alexandra Shapiro has worked as a senior director at both JP Morgan and Paypal. She is the current CMO at Intercom, a client messaging platform built to maximize user acquisition and retention.
While at JP Morgan, Alexandra hired 56 analysts to look over data manually. Today, digital companies are sitting on a goldmine of data they can put to work in real-time, without the hiring.
HOW TO: Use data to align sales & marketing behind a seamless customer experience
1. Create a centralized calendar that coordinates sales and marketing efforts across the funnel
Alignment is just as important as having a good product. A disjointed team will send mixed signals to some customers and neglect others.
Create a calendar and assign tasks, all within Slack →
2. Use real-time data to score leads on potential value, segment them, and assign resources accordingly
Assign workflows to different lead scores so your teams can coordinate on and prioritize top-opportunity leads. (I.e., if a lead reaches X score, retarget with an FB ad then follow up with a sales call.)
Automate the ranking process to maximize team efficiency →
3. Reduce the number of tools you’re using and dive deep into your chosen few
There are probably a lot of features you aren’t using in several of your tools; if you master 1-2 tools, you gain an edge over the competition. (We see the irony of giving you 6 new tools in this summary alone — choose wisely.)
Compile data from all of your tools to see which you use most and should dive deeper into →
4. Build a collaborative sales process from the start or reorganize your existing system to enhance customer experience
It is easy for early-stage businesses to try many different tactics to see what works, but this may confuse customers in the long run. Use data to create consistent strategies that align your sales and marketing ASAP.
Optimize each customer touchpoint through rigorous testing →
5. Use bots to handle inbound questions and free up your team to solve the real problems
Looking at data to find common questions, you can automate responses for 80% of your sales questions. Let your team spend their time handling the tricky cases and boosting client retention.
Customize these chatbot templates to match your unique sales process →
Tools with an asterisk are recommended, not sponsored or affiliated, by the EventNotes author. Tools without an asterisk were suggested by the speaker.
Learn more at Global Growth Marketing Conference 2019
Register for Growth Marketing Conference 2019
Protected: Why AI Is Your New Growth Secret Weapon (Part 2)
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Why AI Is Your New Growth Secret Weapon (Part 1)
Since 2016, the interest for Artificial Intelligence has increased more than twofold worldwide. We can see that in Google trends. There definitely is amplifying buzz around AI although it’s not a new topic. AI has been around for decades but as Ray Kurzwell says “The singularity is near”. How much longer will it take […]
Since 2016, the interest for Artificial Intelligence has increased more than twofold worldwide.
We can see that in Google trends.
There definitely is amplifying buzz around AI although it’s not a new topic. AI has been around for decades but as Ray Kurzwell says “The singularity is near”.
How much longer will it take to reach this singular point where human and artificial intelligence merge?
With a MarTech stack which now includes thousands of growth analytics SaaS solutions, AI for growth is becoming increasingly complex. Yet, growth marketers need to learn how to make new artificial entities part of their growth arsenal and an integral part of their growth team.
Today, as we iterate on growth, a lot of the growth process is still manual. Let’s take one foundational aspect of growth, for example, high-tempo ICE as described in this short video by Dan Martell, most growth marketers use a spreadsheet to align their teams around growth experiments.
Sean Ellis, one of the fathers of growth hacking, and his team at growthhackers.com, recently launched a software called NorthStar to help accelerate and streamline this cross-functional growth process.
What happens in the near future when AI is more deeply integrated into our growth teams to act on all levers of the AARRR framework?
What is AI?
Before sharing real-life AI growth actions I led in my life as a mobile SaaS startup entrepreneur and as a growth marketer, let’s start with getting a clear definition of what AI stands for as of today.
Dr. Raj Ramesh shared a very easy to understand YouTube video that does a great job at explaining what AI is about for now – and the context around many of the currently trending buzz words such as Machine learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Convolutional Neural Networks and more.
To keep it simple, there are two main sections of AI.
One that is based on symbols, symbolic learning and one that is based on data, machine learning.
The former has emerged as early as in the 19th century, as explained in this paper by Inman Harvey. A computer at the time was like a clerk employed in an accountancy or insurance office to perform immense and tedious calculations by hand and by following detailed set procedures.
Fast forward to 1997, and Deep Blue is the first form of symbolic AI to defeat chess champion Kasparov.
We can give a lot of credit to symbolic inroads to help raise the overall AI awareness. Yet, such artificial entities focus on crunching systematically through all the possibilities. Think the finite universe.
Today, data sets are becoming larger and more dynamic. Marketers can collect real-time data at each touch point of their customer journeys. Discover patterns that correlate to their north star metrics to ideate and act on an increasingly larger and more and more data-informed set of growth experiments.
The art of growth marketing is now turbocharged with actionable data learning.
Below are some real-life examples you can act on:
Cross-platform web + mobile AI for automated customer segmentation and messaging
In a previous article on mobile app growth, I had touched on how you can leverage mobile engagement analytics to spur growth.
What I find quite fascinating with an AI driven cross-platform analytics solution such as Pyze, is the simplicity of leveraging behavioral analytics to deliver personalized messaging in no time to each behavioral segment.
The first layer of AI in the Pyze experience is auto-segmentation AI.
Just by dragging and dropping segmentation dimensions, in a matter of seconds, you can make deep segmentation actionable for immediate marketing right away.
Pyze Auto-Segmentation via their Intelligence Explorer
The segments in blue, represent the Silver subscribers from the U.K. organized by increasing levels of attrition.
We can act right away on each auto-segment by clicking on it. We are now crafting an in-app message directly in Pyze.
On the left, we have the various elements of the in-app message. We can edit the picture directly in Pyze, enter the title, core message and add deep-linking CTA buttons or even CTA linking to external webpages which can be useful for survey collections as an example.
On the right, in real-time, you see exactly how your in-app message is going to render.
You can do the same if you elect to send a rich push notification. In these advanced push notifications, you can include a full picture and even a video if you want!
The other interesting layer of AI in the Pyze experience happens at scheduling.
Pyze leverages its big data mobile graph to offer the “Best time to reach per user” scheduling functionality. They use machine learning to custom send each in-app message on a per user basis to maximize tap-through rates for both in-app and push messages.
Last but not least, Pyze boasts a solid visual interface for reporting engagement data in a variety of ways in just a few drag-an-drop moves.
App Installs by Day and by Manufacturer via Pyze Data Query Builder.
Social AI for automated B2B and B2C lead qualification, activation and growth
Lead qualification, activation and growth on Instagram
Followadder is an interesting social AI web app for Instagram. It can help you achieve several aspects of social engagement and growth on top of the things that only humans will be able to do. Even in the future, it may help with Instagram Live engagement including split-screen dual broadcasts.
I found it helpful in discovering product-market fit in the early stages of mobile app experiences where the must-have persona has a strong millennial component.
For example, if you go after a niche market, you can target the followers of the instagram influencers in that niche.
Target followers of top Instagram influencers in a niche persona
You can DM a picture automatically to your followers.
The image below demonstrates how I set it up for our app.
Engage Instagram followers with automated Thank You DM including a picture
You can also test hundreds of messages to quickly iterate and focus on those that trigger the most responsiveness from your core market.
The image below is an example of a portion of a test messaging matrix’s that I used some time back to help simplify engagement comments and surface qualified leads faster.
Messaging test matrix via Instagram AI
Instagram engagement growth through human/AI collaboration – Followers graph in red above
As you combine human social interaction with relevant AI automation, you get to spur social engagement to levels that are stronger than without AI collaboration.
This form of Social AI is symbolic. You input your segmentation, targeting and positioning data for your brand. AI then goes about finding the corresponding “symbols” within the Instagram social graph and automates some of the work that many still do manually.
Yet, there is a lot of room for improvement.
With a tool like that, you can target relevant keywords included in the Instagram usernames, or relevant hashtags, or followers of influencers in your niche and more.
However, you cannot target hashtags. At least I haven’t found a tool that does that yet. Being a developer and having worked on the Instagram API years ago, it wouldn’t be that complicated to create one.
You could really zero in very precisely on must-have personas to validate product-market fit on your first-time user experience.
Here is a quick example with simple figures.
Imagine you only want to target florists who sell orchids.
#florist has 6.5 Million posts on insta.
#orchid has 2.7 Million posts.
If you can only target #florist and #orchid, the odds are that you target people posting about orchids without having nothing to do with being a florist are high. And so are the odds of targeting florists who do not sell orchids.
Now if you target “orchidflorist” as part of the insta username, you get super targeted leads, but you only skim the surface of a much larger addressable pool of orchid florist leads on insta.
See, you only get a few dozens of orchid florists when you search for “orchidflorist” as People.
Even if there are limitations with this type of symbolic social AI, it can clearly move your growth needle by far. We can also understand the power of targeting social graphs and anticipate what will happen as those graphs keep growing.
This will lead to unprecedented levels of targeting possibilities paired with very sharp personalization that will make everybody blink to determine if a human or an artificial entity is actually communicating.
This leads us to personalization API where you can dynamically change your content based on detailed target customer information.
Personalization API to generate B2B leads
Many social APIs are not exposed. Meaning, the social network who hosts the data doesn’t make it available to the developer community to build apps on top of their social graph. Or if they do, they only do it partially.
Nonetheless, there already exists some interesting AI that can help you leverage the “personalization API” angle without actually having to know any coding skills, nor having to use an existing social API.
A very human artificial B2B growth agent
LinkedHelper is a social AI solution for B2B growth.
I find it interesting as it actually mimics human behaviors and automates them. You can pretty much automate anything you would do using a B2B social network such as LinkedIn. This includes writing and sending extremely personalized messages to anyone in your 1st, 2nd or 3rd-degree network.
Here is a tangible example of how you can leverage this AI agent to generate highly targeted B2B leads at a fraction of traditional MQL and SQL costs in B2B settings.
We are going to target the “Real Estate broker” persona in our 2nd-degree network, in a very personal way. We leverage the name(s) of our common connection(s) automatically and put forward our core value proposition to make them a 1st-degree connection first. Then, we can start an automated nurturing strategy to run a demo of our app in their office.
Step 1 – Search for “Real Estate Broker” and activate deep filters
I am using the “All Filters” functionality of LinkedIn Search to make sure to target 2nd-degree connections from my “Real Estate broker” search. I also want to make sure that their current title includes “Real Estate Broker”. That way, you refine the precision of your core persona targeting.
And here we go, we just surfaced 17,926 prospective leads in the exact target persona we are looking to market.
Now we need to assign them to a collection list that we could re-use in the future.
Step 2 – Collect “Real Estate Broker” leads
We simply hit collect:
As the AI starts collecting prospective leads among our 17,926 hyper-targeted prospects, we can start setting up a personalized invite message.
Step 3 – Write personalization invitations
Now it’s time to craft a personalized invite with relevant data from your LinkedIn social graph to boost engagement rate and get a maximum number of qualified leads to connect with you. Time to reel them into your growth funnel!
Click in the body of the message for the pop-up message editor.
Now we start typing a simple invite and include a few personalized data points such as the target connections first name.
To make the invite more personal, relevant and likely to spur a higher response rate, we are going to add the name of a mutual connection. We do this by leveraging the conditional test with a very simple “IF-THEN-ELSE” statement made available by the software.
Just click the conditional statement itself, it will create a new conditional sequence inside the body of your message in the editor. Here, I am displaying the text “including {full name of common connection}”. This should work all the time since I am targeting 2nd-degree connections which by definition have at least one 1st-degree connection in common with me. Yet, just in case a common connections full name is not returned, I populate the ELSE part of the conditional statement with a dot “.” to properly punctuate the sentence and end it in this case.
The image below is what the conditional statement in the message editor looks like.
As you save your invite, you get to preview it if you want with staged data.
It’s almost funny actually!
It’s now time to send our personalized invites to our LinkedIn prospects.
Step 4 – Send your personalized invitations
As we were setting up the personalized invitation in the message editor, the collection AI worked magic. We have already collected 840 highly targeted prospective “Real Estate Broker” leads.
This is more than enough to get started and to get a feel for the response rate on that target persona. It’s best not to send more than 150 invites per day anyway, so we have a few days of prospective leads to contact ahead of us.
It’s time to stop collecting and simply press on the invite button to start sending out our personalized LinkedIn invitations.
The AI starts typing the first invitation at natural human typewriting speed and we can verify that the elements of message personalization are properly populated.
We are now making sure the conditional statements we created, works properly.
And it does!
And the invitation goes out on its own.
Done!
Machine learning in conversational intelligence to increase sales
When I started my marketing career, I marketed the French and Italian subscription of HDTV channels for a leading satellite HDTV network in the U.S.
To read part 2, fill in your info below:
Arsene Lavaux
Founder & CEO at REveo
Arsene Lavaux is the Founder & CEO at REveo.co. REveo is the easiest app to connect Real Estate buyers to showings. Buyers connect in a single click from any device. RE professionals share showings via text, email, any social network. Arsene is an Electrical Engineer from CentraleSupelec in France with a focus on mobile and martech AI. He builds growth engines at early stage startups and Fortune 500 companies. He speaks four languages and leads global growth teams. You can connect with him on LinkedIn for more information.
