The learning center

Setting up your sales funnel for success is massively crucial to your business’s profitability. You might wonder how I get people from just being a website visitor to becoming somebody who's a paying client. This is a process that my team and I have perfected over the years.

Website visitors are leads. But odds are, not all leads are ready to buy. So the key is to create a sales funnel that allows you to focus on leads who are serious about buying, and nurture them until they’re ready to convert into sales.

I’m going to show you how. Keep reading if you want to know what a sales funnel is, why you need it now, and how to set up your sales funnel for success.

To learn how to attract qualified leads, click here.

Do You Know Your Marketing IQ?

Take our QUIZ and we'll send you a report detailing exactly what you need to improve in order to start winning the game of marketing.

Get Started

‍

What is a Sales Funnel?

Let's start by defining a sales funnel. Essentially, a marketing or sales funnel is the journey you take prospects through so they know you, like you, and trust you enough to do business with you.

There are three stages of the customer purchasing journey:

1. Cold prospect: People who have vaguely shown interest in your business.
2. Customer: People who have already decided to buy from you.
3. Raving fan: These are your repeat customers. Also known as brand ambassadors, these people rave about your product to anyone who will listen and post about your services on social media. Apple fans spring to mind; they’ll stand in queues for hours to get the latest Apple product.

Now one thing to keep in mind is that not all leads will eventually turn into customers, which is why you need a sales funnel.

Why Do You Need a Sales Funnel?

This is a question I get asked a lot. So my clients will say, why can't I just invite people to check my website, send a contact form, or whatever, and get leads?

Look, this is not how you successfully approach your target market. Let's put it this way.

• 3% of your target market is ready to make a decision right now. And this is what all marketers are fighting for. You'll see Google Ads, landing pages, and other sales campaigns targeting them.
• 7% are really interested in buying but they might need a bit of a nudge. For example, they have questions that need to be answered before they’re ready to buy.
• 30% are also interested, but they can't buy right now. They either don't have the money now or it’s not the right time.
• 60% of your target market are just not interested at all. They wouldn't even buy your product if it was free.

So this is why you should build a sales funnel. You want to know how many of your leads are ready to buy, who wants to buy in the future, and those who aren’t interested. Once you figure this out, you can redefine your strategy and focus on leads who will convert to sales.

How to Set Up a Sales Funnel

So now that you’ve got a handful of leads, what's next? You have to set up your sales funnel. Ideally you want to do this before you start generating leads, but let’s say you’ve got a few already.

And I understand if you find this confusing. There are a lot of sales funnels that you can see online. But I'm not going to make it complicated for you. You can start with these three steps:

• Qualify
• Follow-up
• Close

Step 1: Qualify

So let's start with qualifying your leads. This is really important since you want to focus on leads that fit your buyer profile. You'll want to know which leads to move through your sales funnel.

Here are five ways to qualify a lead.

• Look at your past data. To qualify leads, you need a basis. And this is why you should start digging into your past data. Which leads have historically been the best fit for making sales? Although your target market can change, or you might add more segments, this is a great start. Instead of relying on guesswork, you can take a look at past records and draw something from them. Best of all, you can use your CRM to get this information easily and effectively.
• Know your buyer profile. You have to know them well. So, start with the basics. You can extract demographic data—age, gender, income levels, and so on. These factors/variables can really help define your buyer profile. Aside from past records, you can do your own market research to make sure that your data is up-to-date and relevant.
• Do your own research. So once you get a lead's contact information, do your own research. Google them. Does this lead match your buyer profile?
• Check for Hopium. Is there real interest or are you chasing hopium? For those of you who have no idea, I talk about this in The 1-Page Marketing Plan. Hopium is that false hope that maybe, this prospect can turn into a buyer soon. And don't get me wrong, some of us might dream about the same thing, but it can be a waste of time.
• Going back to the diagram about the target market, a combined 60% of your leads are either uninterested or wouldn't even accept your product for free. So think twice. Be realistic. Don’t expect all leads to become customers.
• Ask further qualifying questions. Before prompting your sales team, you can ask a few questions to further qualify the lead. You can shoot an email or schedule a quick preliminary call to learn more about the prospect's budget, annual revenue, or even the industry they belong to.

Step 2: Follow-up

This is where many businesses come unstuck. They follow-up once or twice and if they don’t get a favorable response, they give up.

I actually built a 12-step lead nurturing model on my 1PMP and this involves emails, calls, or a combination of both. You want to get your leads to give you their contact information so you can follow-up and build relationships.

This is an effective way to build trust and authority with your target market.

And it all starts with your messaging strategy. It's very important to:

• Educate your prospects as an expert authority in your niche.
• Offer value.
• Understand pain points.
• Deliver the offer.
• Provide a clear call-to-action.

So how often should you follow-up with your prospects?

The best time to start is once they've sent you their contact details. And then, reach out everyday or every other day. Don't overwhelm your prospects with five or six emails a day. Once or twice a week is perfect, and this is something that you can automate using your CRM.

Step 3: Close

We're now at the final step in a sales funnel. So you’ve built trust. You’ve nurtured them through the buyer’s journey and you’re ready to close a sale.

Closing sales differ depending on what you’re offering and the resources you have. But it all boils down to these two things:

• What is your desired outcome? As you nurture your leads, what's next? What's your goal? This has to do with what actions you want your prospects to take. Do you want them to call you? Set up a meeting? Buy your product left in their shopping cart?
• What will inspire them to take action? This specifically indicates your offered product or service that prospects will buy. It can be a special offer, a limited time period, or a product trial.

How is a CRM Used in a Sales Funnel?

Let's say you've followed all of these stages in your sales funnel, and you're getting 500 leads in a week. I think that it's impossible to track them one-by-one, figure out which ones are qualified leads, and do everything manually. So don't put unnecessary pressure on yourself. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can help you with that.

A smart CRM can automatically track your leads and their journey on every step of the buying process. You can also customize it to nurture leads and engage with your prospects until they make a purchase from you.

Think of Tony Stark, Iron Man. Technology doesn’t replace him. It augments his ability. So marketing automation will make things faster and easier. Once you've chosen a really great CRM system, you’ve got your evergreen funnel set up.  It frees you up to focus on other important matters.

The Top CRM Systems to Use

Ontraport

Ontraport is an all-in-one, integrated platform that includes a powerful CRM system, marketing automation, affiliate management, and advanced business automation suite. This is my preferred CRM, especially if your email list exceeds 10,000 subscribers.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a great place to find hundreds of pre-built automations that combine email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, and machine learning. It ensures powerful segmentation personalization across social, email, messaging, chat, and text.

I’ve used ActiveCampaign and it was great for my smaller list. But once you exceed 5,000 subscribers you might want to look at something else.

ConvertKit

If you want to focus more on email marketing, I suggest you use ConvertKit. It's a marketing automation tool that delivers drip email campaigns and builds easy forms to quickly send them to new subscribers.

PipeDrive

PipeDrive is a great CRM tool for businesses wanting to build out different sales processes. It's intuitive and easy to use. You can also integrate it with other software like Google Apps, MailChimp, and more. My team uses PipeDrive for all communications with clients, and I know they love it.

Clickfunnels

Clickfunnels is another awesome CRM tool for building sales pages that can drive conversions. No need to start from scratch since you have hundreds of templates to choose from.

Tips for Setting Up a Sales Funnel

1. Avoid setting things up manually.

Most businesses like to do things on their own manually. I get it. You can save a few dollars. But they make the mistake of saying, “Fill out this form,” or “Call our office and give me your credit card details,” or whatever.

In a sales funnel, you don't want to create confusing situations where people are unsure of what to do next or friction where prospects spend more time than they need to before moving to the next step You can lose sales because of this.

To avoid this, make use of technologies to make everything go as smoothly as possible. For example, you can use Calendly, a personal favorite of mine. It allows you to schedule meetings on-the-go instead of manually confirming a schedule through a call. If you have clients across different time zones this is a lifesaver.

2. Keep the conversion flow simple and seamless.

One of the reasons why I like email replies is it's very easy for my readers to hit the reply button, and I get something back quickly.

While for others, they send them out to third-party landing pages and forms and all of that. I'm not saying these things are wrong. But, in my view, you're adding unnecessary friction.

With email, you can skip all of this, hit reply, and say whatever you want. That's less friction. Your prospects don't have to leave their email. So it’s a very powerful way of staying in touch with your subscribers.

Remember, conversations lead to conversions. Make it simple, easy, and effortless for your prospects to do business with you.

3. Personalize your responses.

Something that I recently started doing that’s having great results is sending personal video responses to my list. So if you simply say, “Hey, I'm interested in your course, and I'd like to ask a question,” someone from my team will send a personalized Loom video that covers everything you want to know.

It’s a much nicer, more effective way to get back to your prospects—far better than putting up a help desk. While standardized responses can answer someone's question or concern, it can't build trust.

So keep it personalized. You can say, alright, let's have a look. Drive them to your sales page, and tell them why the course is awesome and how it will help them. Then, they can decide whether to buy and get started.

4. Don't take a shortcut.

It's important to always think about the next step.

In my book, I didn't force people to buy my course. All I do is say, “Hey, opt in on my email list and you're going to get more resources and access to some of my premium content.”

And once they subscribe to my emails, I reply to them and ask about their business or whatever it is.

So at every stage in the funnel, I'm only selling the next step. I'm not skipping to the last step, which is the purchase. When you skip steps in the buyer’s journey you lose sales. You drive away your prospects. Don't rush. Follow your sales funnel.

Wrapping Up

A sales funnel is a tool. Its ability to track all of your leads will help you refine your strategy. Use a good CRM and you can eventually focus on qualified leads you can convert into sales.

But a key point here: It's good to use your sales funnel for mapping out some processes—particularly with guiding your leads and prospects in a buyer's journey—but you can't replace a marketing plan with it. A solid marketing plan is your blueprint for getting and retaining customers.

Business market segmentation is often a forgotten step when launching a startup or small business.

Most business owners start with a product they created or a service they can deliver—then they try to find customers to buy what they’re selling. This approach is all wrong. If your business hasn’t invested in market research, can you be sure who your customer base is and what services or products would appeal to them?

You need to start with a niche market that’s an inch-wide and a mile-deep; otherwise, your marketing message will never connect. To do that, you have to figure out who is fun to work with, who’s most profitable to your business, and whom you can really help.

Market segmentation is a great way to do this. But what is it? What are the benefits of segmenting your business market, and can it mean the difference between success and failure? Let’s find out.‍‍

Get Our Free 12-Step Niche Domination Framework

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

‍

What is market segmentation?

Market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad target market into subcategories or segments. Each segment consists of a group of customers with shared characteristics. So they have similar interests, needs, and problems that only you can solve.

By homing in on a tightly defined market segment, you’re better able to enter the conversation going on in your prospects’ minds.

As a result, your marketing strategies will target customers more effectively, and your marketing campaigns are more likely to generate a positive return on investment.

You can have a business-to-business market segment and a business-to-consumer market segment.

Get Our Free 12-Step Niche Domination Framework

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

Why is market segmentation important?

Let me ask you this first: Do you know why so many businesses fail? It’s not because they had a bad product or delivered terrible service.

Poor market segmentation is the reason why most startups and small businesses close their doors.

They make assumptions about who their customer is, what media they consume, which social networks they follow, the difficulties they face daily, and the messages that would resonate without ever having researched their target audience. They’ve possibly neglected any market-based research as well. So, essentially, it’s all guesswork.

Unless you are your ideal customer, your marketing efforts will be ineffective.

Any sales you make will be random at best. You’ll repeatedly be dipping into a fountain of cash (you likely don’t have) to pay for advertising costs and generating a host of low-quality leads who’ll never buy what you’re selling.

So correctly segmenting your business market is vital because it gives you a competitive advantage. And here’s how:

1. Find a better quality customer

Not all customers are created equal. What this means is within your niche, you have suboptimal and high-quality customers. By identifying your customer segments, you’re more able to focus your marketing efforts on the segment that will bring in the dollars. For example, writing search engine optimized blog posts.

You can do this with the PVP index:

• P – personal fulfillment – How much do you enjoy working with this type of customer?
• V – value – Do these people value your service/product, and will they deal with you on your terms?
• P – profitable – Are they willing to pay you a lot of money for what you do, and will you make a profit in the end?

It’s not an exact science, but it’ll help to hone in on your business’s ideal market segment—to maximize your profit and have a better chance of success.

2. Personalize your marketing message

You know what your customer segments crave above all else because you’ve talked to them, you’ve asked probing questions, and you can weave this into your messaging.

You'll have different customers within a business market segment, so your message will need to differ. Let’s use my business as an example.

I’m in the coaching business. I help business owners get clarity as it relates to their marketing. So I have three market segments I serve, and they’re largely segmented by need and revenue.

1. My entry-level offer is my book, The 1-Page Marketing Plan, which is for side hustlers, startups, and business owners trying marketing for the first time. They’re clueless about marketing strategy and tactics, and they want to know marketing basics and how to get the best return.
2. Then there’s my Academy, which is my professional offer. Members are looking for guidance. They want me to review their marketing strategy and suggest improvements. So these customers are willing to invest a monthly sum in taking their business to the next level.
3. Now my premium service is one-on-one coaching. It’s pretty much a done-for-you strategy for businesses doing well but wanting to break through the $10 million barrier.

As you can see, they’re different customer segments, so my marketing message needs to address their needs. There will be some crossover, but the primary message will differ.

So personalized messaging leads to a higher conversion rate because your customers feel understood.

3. Waste less money and time on bad marketing decisions

Everyone likes to ask, “What’s your marketing budget?” But, I say, if you’re getting a return on your advertising, spend more.

When you get the segmentation of a market wrong, you make bad decisions. You create a laundry-type list of messaging that targets a broad audience, creating a knock-on effect. You get a lot of low-quality leads clicking on your Facebook Ads and Google Ads.

You’ll spend time and energy nurturing leads that will never convert to customers. And eventually, you’ll go out of business.

But if you’ve engaged with your customer segment, you can use their exact lingo in your campaign. You know where they hang out online, so it’s easier to reach them and entice them to join your mailing list or download your lead magnet.

If your lead-nurturing sequence is optimized, you’ll improve your campaign performance and have a clear direction of how to attract and convert prospects into customers. So aptly determine your business market segment and get better returns from your advertising.

4. Differentiate your business from competitors

When you’ve researched a market segment, you know what your competitors are doing, and you know what they’re not doing. Because of this, you’re able to deliver a world-class experience that surpasses any discount they may offer.

For example, would you rather go to a hairdresser that washes and cuts your hair or one that massages your neck while your hair is being washed, then hands you a cappuccino and biscuit to enjoy while having your hair cut? The latter will cost more, but it’s an experience that builds raving fans who love to be pampered.

And your repeat customers are where the money is made. So delivering a unique experience to a business market segmentation that your competitors have failed can massively influence your success.

5. Build a tribe of raving, loyal fans

A tribe of raving fans is a customer segment that loves and trusts you. They’ll walk past a similar product on sale and purchase your full-priced product. They send referrals to your business or post about it on social media. And they do this because they’re brand loyal.

It takes time and effort to build your tribe of raving fans. You’ve got to nurture this master segment. You have to prove that you can fill their need almost to the exclusion of everything else.

Get this right, and they’ll care about what you do, and they’ll be fanatical in helping you to succeed. Think lifelong customer retention—the ultimate dream. Here’s how to get started on building your referral program.

6. Branch out and develop new products

One of the benefits of having an engaged business market segment is customer feedback. You get insight into your product's highlights and shortcomings, which you can use to inform product development.

You’re also able to identify a sub-niche of your segmented market that you’re not yet serving. This allows you to create a product that addresses their needs.

For example, Uber began as vehicles for hire. But soon, they realized their customers wanted more than just the convenience of a taxi at their fingertips. They wanted to be able to order food and have it delivered. They wanted to be able to courier packages. And they’re still evolving. So this is a prime example of a brand branching into new services.

So those are six benefits of market segmentation, but what are the types of market segmentation?

Get Our Free Worksheet for Defining Your Niche

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

‍

The four types of business market segmentation

Market segmentation helps your business build a complete picture of your target market (potential customers). So you’ll need to conduct market research (I share five ways to do this).

Here are the four main types of business market segmentation:

1. Demographic segmentation
2. Geographic segmentation
3. Behavioral segmentation
4. Psychographic segmentation

You need to create your market segmentation strategy by answering the questions in all four segments before working on a marketing campaign.

1. Demographic segmentation

Demographic segmentation is possibly the most commonly used form of market segmentation. It involves dividing a market by easy to discern characteristics, for example:

• Age, gender (male or female), race (ethnicity), physical location, marital status
• What’s their annual income or earning potential?
• Are they religious?
• Are they well-educated?
• What is their family size?

In a business setting, we might ask:

• What is the size of their company?
• What industry do they serve?
• What job function do they perform?

It costs very little to gather this information. You can ask your consumer base directly or through an online survey. While this method is more time-consuming, using your customer’s lingo in your marketing is very powerful.

Social media is also another great tool to find information about your customers.

And when you combine demographic segmentation with other types of market segmentation, you’re able to narrow down your target audience further.

So let’s look at an example of demographic segmentation. Take the beauty and personal care industry. Think of the leading disposable razor blade brand Gillette. It produces razor blades for men (the Mach series) and women (the Venus series).

Outwardly, there’s very little difference between the two types of blades. The greatest distinction comes in the form of the coloring of the product and packaging and its messaging.

For example, the Mach series focuses on speed, precision, and getting a close shave, whereas Venus talks about smooth and silky legs. Marketing to a female audience focuses on pampering, and to a male audience, time-saving.

2. Geographic segmentation

Another commonly used type of segmentation is geographic segmentation, which targets a group of customers based on their location.

• Where do they live? Be specific. What country? What state or province? What city?
• What are the characteristics of the areas they live in? Are they based in a rural or urban area? Is it sparsely populated or overcrowded? What is their climate like?
• What language do they speak? Do they respond to particular phrases?

It’s an essential part of your segmentation strategy because understanding your customers’ location helps you determine what to market and when.

For instance, someone living in the inner city would have very different buying habits than someone living in the rural countryside. And a small, local business would not need to target a global customer base.

So, understanding where your customer lives can help you address their needs better and reach them through geo-targeted ads.

For example, an eCommerce platform wouldn’t market lawnmowers to densely populated inner-city areas. Those customers are more likely to shop for small, potted plants to place on their balconies.

Whereas a customer living on the outskirts of a city probably has a small garden that requires regular maintenance and would be more interested in purchasing a lawnmower.

Another great example of geographic segmentation would be a global clothing brand. It has to consider more than just the climate; it has to use the language of its consumers in its marketing.

For instance, in South Africa, flip flops are known as slops and slippers are often referred to as stories. But if you were to use these words in the U.S. market, you’d create a lot of confusion and not many sales.

So it’s vital to understand how geographic segmentation (language, climate, and location) affect the advertising and marketing content you create.

3. Behavioral segmentation

Unlike geographic segmentation and demographic segmentation—which focuses on who the customer is—behavioral segmentation looks at how consumer behavior relates to your product or service. So how do they make their purchasing decisions?

• Do they shop online or in-store?
• When online, what actions do they take? Do they read online reviews and compare prices across multiple e-commerce platforms before making a purchase? Or do they research the product online before booking an in-store appointment to talk with a salesperson and physically interact with the product?
• What is their attitude towards your brand? Are they brand loyal? An excellent example of behavioral segmentation is the Apple brand. Apple fans won’t just purchase an iPhone. They’ll buy an iPad, an iTV, an Apple Mac, and an Apple Watch. They’ll stand in long lines from the early hours of the morning, in rain or snow, to get the latest Apple gadget. And they’ll staunchly defend their brand against other technology brands. Brand loyalty is compelling because it’s guaranteed future purchases without needing to convince or win trust.
• How do they use it? Are they knowledgeable about your product or service?
• Is there a built-in bias for the way they make their decisions? Take engineers, for example. They’re very analytical. They want to know the specifications, the granular detail. In comparison, a CEO is more inclined to look at the big picture—how it will make their life better. Therefore, the way you interact with and market to these segments needs to be very different.
• Are they motivated by rewards or discounts? Are they the kind of customers who want to be first to know about a new product or be invited to an exclusive early-bird sale? Being a member of an exclusive club can be a massive motivator for getting consumers to spend a lot of money.

Luckily, it’s not difficult to acquire this information. You could place cookies on your website to track user behavior or analyze the purchasing data from your CRM to see which products are more popular. You could also reach out to third-party datasets such as eCommerce sites.

4. Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation shares similar traits with demographic segmentation, but it deals specifically with your customers’ personality traits and intrinsic characteristics.

As you can imagine, this information is more challenging to identify. The best way to acquire it is to engage customers in conversation. You’ll want to arrange interviews or focus groups with existing customers.

You could also use surveys or monitor your website to see what types of content your users engage with. These, and even networking events, are all great ways to gain valuable insights into who your ideal customer is.

Here’s what you want to look for:

• What do they value?
• What are they interested in?
• What are their priorities?
• What motivates them?
• What lifestyle do they want?

Knowing this information will help you to understand what they care about and would motivate them to buy. So your job is to cater to the unique needs of each segment of your market, and psychographic segmentation helps you to do just that.

For example, vehicle brands do a great job of segmenting their market by psychographic traits. A lot of people own a vehicle, but their tastes differ widely. A businessman in his 60s probably has no children at home. He wants to purchase a car that makes him feel younger, which cements his status as having made it. So he’s more likely to buy a convertible or high-end vehicle.

Now someone in their 30s and 40s with a young family is more likely to purchase an SUV. But perhaps sales conversions for this segment is low. When you apply psychographic traits, you learn that this customer segment also values safety, family adventure, and community. So you might show ads of families camping or taking their kids and their friends to football or baseball practice.

So those are the four types of market segmentation. But how does this vital market research influence your marketing strategies?

How to zero in on the right market segment

When segmenting your market, you want to choose the market in which you’re going to have the greatest success. Remember the PVP index?

1. You need to enjoy working with them.
2. They need to value your expertise.
3. They need to be profitable.

So here’s how I determined my market segment...

I always knew I wanted to be in success education, but that’s a pretty broad market segment. My expertise was in building multimillion-dollar businesses, so it made sense to target a business segment.

But business education could encompass anything from mindset, personal development, sales training, managing finances, or getting funding.

I wanted to zero in on something I felt I could deliver the most value—marketing education. It’s a subcategory of business education.

Marketing education could encompass advertising, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), branding, social media, etc. It’s more targeted, but it’s still a wide sub-niche, and it’s already dominated by well-known influencers such as Neil Patel and Gary Vaynerchuk.

So I thought, where are the gaps? Where could I make a difference and gain traction?

I’d spoken with hundreds of small business owners (my target market), so I knew marketing planning was a largely untouched and unknown market segment. So that’s the segment I targeted. It’s an inch-wide and a mile-deep.

How to use your website to segment your email database.

A question I get asked a lot is: “How do I manage multiple target markets?” A great way to do this is to segment your email database. But how do you do that?

Remember, if you use the same email sequence for vastly different groups of subscribers, you’re going to have many people unsubscribing, which is pretty bad.

And trying to segment your subscribers after they’ve opted into your email list is a nightmare. So you want to streamline the process.

Start by looking at past and existing customers. What are their common characteristics? So what problems routinely keep cropping up?

Let’s use James Schramko of Super Fast Business as an example because he does segmentation well. Instead of funneling his email subscribers into a single funnel, he uses questions on his website to allow his prospect to self-select.

• Do you need help with your business strategy (pricing structure, business model)?
• Do you want help with getting more traffic and sales?
• Do you need help with productivity (knowing where to focus your time and energy)?
• Do you want help with building your team?

As you can see, these are all very different needs. Now someone looking for help with building their business strategy is probably a startup. They’re nowhere near ready to talk about building a team. Sending an email campaign that talks about the best places to hire great talent will probably not resonate.

James has to write lead-nurturing sequences for all four market segments, but by allowing his target consumer to self-select, they’ll be separated into lists in his CRM and receive the right sequence.

How to create a market segmentation strategy for your business?

By now, you know what market segmentation is, how it helps you understand your customer base and purchasing habits, and how to use it to inform product or service development.  

So market segmentation allows you to more easily map your customer journey and improve how you communicate with your target customers.

Now let's look at how you can use segmentation strategies in your company.

1. Analyze your existing customers

Always start the market segmentation process with audience analysis. Here, your goal is to identify the unique characteristics of your current customer base so you can better target potential customers.

Interview your favorite customer.

This is a unique group of people who keep purchasing from your company. They're the ultimate example of customer loyalty, so you want to find out what they love about your products and services.

I want you to find out:

• What they love about you or your business. Did they talk about value or quality of service?
• What blew them away?
• What words do they use to describe themselves?
• What words do they use to describe you?

Use their insight to improve product development.

Use their words and phrases in your marketing campaigns. This is a great way to create messaging that connects with your target audience every time.

Remember, getting inside their minds helps you flesh out the four types of market segmentation: psychographic segmentation, demographic segmentation, geographic segmentation, and behavioral segmentation.

Speak to your company employees.

Talk to your team. They deal with your target customers and current clients every day and provide valuable insight into the common questions that get asked, personality traits, and purchasing habits.

They might also share new markets to tap into, ways to target customers and how to innovate your products and services, so use them as a source of data.

Survey your email database.

Learn more about your target market by surveying your email subscribers. Stick to 10 or 20 questions, and track the responses you get. Are you seeing any patterns?

I recommend ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, and Ontraport when investing in a CRM.

Analyze your website analytics.

Use Google Analytics to track your customer journey and analyze behavioral data. For example, if you have an eCommerce site, the data you collect will tell you which products perform best and what customers to target based on age, gender, physical location, etc.

Use social media to research audience interests.

Again, social media sites have analytics tools that give you insight into the ads your audience interacts with, the post they engage with, the conversations they have.

Use this information to build a world-class customer loyalty program.

Use SparkToro to discover what your target customer searches for.

SparkToro crawls the entire web and all social networks so you can see what your audience frequently talks about, words they include in their profiles, accounts they follow, websites they visit, podcasts they listen to, hashtags they use, and so much more.

Knowing your audience's interests helps you identify psychographic segments, as well as the topics they care about.

It also gives you access to your customers' top sources of influence as well as where they hang out. This insight will help you decide WHO to connect with, so you can collaborate with them on an ad campaign or whatever project you're working on.

Check out customer reviews.

While you might prefer to avoid your 1-star reviews, they can help you identify ways to improve your products or services. So read them all. See what they love. When you target customers based on the words they use, you increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

2. Create a customer avatar or buyer persona

Using the data you’ve gathered so far, create a profile for your ideal customer. This is the person who is most likely to buy from you and respond enthusiastically to your messages.

Choose a photo of your avatar. You have to visualize them in your mind if you're selling to them in the future. Remember the research you conducted: geographic segmentation, demographic segmentation, behavioral segmentation and psychographic segmentation. Use this information to answer.

• What's their name?
• How old are they?
• What gender do they identify as?
• Where do they live? Be specific.
• What's their education level?
• Do they have kids? Pets?
• What's their life circumstance? For example, did they just get married, buy a new car? Are they currently studying? Do they own a business? If so, what number of employees do they have?
• What are their unique characteristics?

Unpack the decision-making process your customers go through. You need to care about their buyer behavior.

3. Identify market segmentation opportunities

Now that you have a comprehensive customer avatar, start looking for new markets to target.

Answer the following questions.

• What problems does your brand solve?
• What do you do better than competitors? Is it the content you create, your product, or the experience you deliver?
• Where can you deliver a ton of value? Based on the data you've compiled, are there gaps you can potentially plug?
• What groups of people do you enjoy serving? This is the audience you want to target.

Continually refer back to your data to discover how to serve this segment best. What can you offer that would lead to greater brand loyalty and the growth of your company?

4. Research your market segment

Before tackling a new segment, it's vital that you gauge the interest of your audience and that you're aware of major competitors in your market space. If there's little interest in your new segment, you're wasting your time and money.

Start with keyword research. Using AHREFS, you can get a sense of which keywords perform well and where you can gain market share. Ideally, you want to target popular phrases that have little to no competition. If you're trying to rank for keywords that HubSpot or Forbes already hold pole position, you're going to struggle.

5. Measure and Manage Your Numbers

Closely monitor and measure your campaign results. In any marketing campaign, you'll create different messages and ads. Keep your messaging clear and concise, and monitor the performance of each ad and the media you choose to advertise in.

Cut the losses and invest big in the winners.

Segment correctly to level up your business

So that’s it, we’ve covered what a market segment, the benefits of market segmentation, the types of market segmentation and segmentation strategies.

And really, market segmentation is a great way to infiltrate an industry and come to grips with who your customer is and what they need.

It touches on everything you do. It’s going to drive the marketing strategies you implement, the message you create, what media you choose to advertise or invest time in, how you deliver your product or service, and whether your customers become raving fans.

Getting your market segment right leads to rapid business growth and interest from investors (potentially your biggest payday).

Do the work upfront (research thoroughly), and you’ll avoid the laborious and costly task of recreating your marketing campaigns. Good luck.

Now that you’ve ventured into entrepreneurship, you’re probably looking to market your business. But what comes first: the marketing strategy or the marketing tactics?

Most business owners get this wrong and, as a result, they waste hundreds and thousands of dollars on generic advertising:

• Facebook ads that bring in low-value leads.
• Email campaigns that deliver dismal click-through rates.
• Blog posts that never get read.

If you want to earn a return on your investment, you have to stop chasing bright, shiny objects—a host of tactics (think TikTok)—and instead focus on creating highly targeted marketing. To do that, you need a strategy.

In this article, I’m going to explain the difference between marketing strategy and marketing tactics and why you need both to attract high-value leads.

But let’s start with: What is a marketing strategy? Is it something you can identify without having any marketing knowledge, or do you outsource your marketing to an agency?

‍If you want to receive regular tips and tricks for marketing your business, sign up for our free inner circle newsletter. Or read out top marketing strategies to focus on now.

What is a marketing strategy?

Think of your marketing strategy as the big-picture. It’s the overall strategy you use to attract your ideal prospect and convert them into a lifelong customer.

So, your marketing strategy identifies the long-term goals or marketing objectives for growing your customer base and scaling your business.

Without a strategy, most small businesses invest in, what I like to call random acts of marketing—essentially tactics. You jump on the latest social media network or you rush into creating a series of videos without understanding why.

What is the point of investing in a video series? If it’s to capture new email subscribers, how many opt-ins do you need a week to break even?

Most small businesses haven’t thought about this. They equate marketing with customer growth and increased revenue. But if you’re not up-to-date on industry trends and how this, along with demographics, affects your customers’ buying habits, the only result you’ll get is a headache and low bank balance.

You need strategic planning. By outlining a strategy, you give your team a clear direction. Everyone knows the answers to these questions:

• Why are you investing in marketing?
• Why would your ideal prospect care about your business?
• How are you going to reach your target market? Which media will you choose?
• What brand messaging would make them notice you?
• How are you the pain relief for your ideal customer?
• What is your competitive advantage?
• How can you get them a result?

As a business owner, you have to own your marketing strategy. I don’t expect you to handle the tactical implementation, but you must be on board with what your company goals are and the strategies you’ll use to get those results.

Marketing Plan vs Marketing Strategy

Interestingly, many entrepreneurs often confuse a marketing strategy with a marketing plan. Unlike a marketing plan, a strategy highlights the goals your company wants to achieve. Your marketing plan explains how you will achieve those goals.

Now let’s discuss tactical marketing.

What is a marketing tactic?

Digital marketing (social media) is a tactic. Investing in a CRM, SEO, pay-per-click advertising and Google Adwords are marketing tactics. Creating a website or brochure, writing blog posts, designing, and developing your marketing collateral, it’s all tactics.

So marketing tactics are the things you create and do to reach your target audience. And the problem with focusing on tactics is that without the strategy you’re throwing your cash away.

Because while you may be reaching an audience, is it the right target market?

You could hire the world’s greatest copywriter but it won’t matter. If you haven’t  and learned what they need, what message would grab their attention, and why they’d purchase from you, well, no marketing tactic is going to get you a sale.

You’ll just attract unqualified leads that take up time, energy, and resources. So you really want to be strategic about which tactics you use to reach your digital audience.

‍Market segmentation is a great way to research your ideal audience, figure out where they live online, how their location affects their buying behavior, and much more. It really gives you a competitive advantage. It also ensures you won’t waste your dollars.

Marketing strategy vs tactics: What is the difference?

The reason why so many small businesses struggle to get traction with their marketing campaigns is because they don’t understand the difference between strategy and tactics.

Most will create a Facebook or LinkedIn page because that is what everyone else is doing. Companies know their prospects are online and if they create an account and start posting customers will appear.

Or they rush to put together a website that’s really an online version of their brochure. It speaks to heritage, what they do, and how to get in touch with them. But it offers no compelling reason to connect.

Yes, you should be marketing but not before you’ve formulated a strategic plan of action. So strategy first then tactical implementation.

So what is the difference between strategic marketing and tactics?

Simply put, a marketing strategy focuses on the long-term goals of your business. So what objectives do you want to achieve and how are you going to get there?

For example, are you scaling to attract investors, or are you looking to expand and serve a global market? Whatever your goal, it’s best to start with market segmentation. First, understand your ideal customer and their buying behavior. Then, conduct surveys, review the data, and strategize:

1. Who is your niche target audience?
2. How do you position your brand?
3. What is your unique selling point or competitive advantage?
4. How will you establish trust or build your authority and credibility?
5. What tools do you need to deliver a world-class experience?

Marketing tactics, on the other hand, are the details, the actions that should be taken to accomplish the objectives outlined in your strategy. So tactics are the doing, the short-term goals that focus on implementation.

For example, let’s say you decide to implement a direct response marketing campaign. Your short-term goal is to attract high-quality prospects that you can get into your email database and nurture. But what are the steps you have to take?

1. Create a how-to lead magnet that targets your ideal prospects' pain points and build a landing page. This is perfect for lead generation.
2. Invest in digital marketing to drive traffic to your website. Having done your strategic planning, you know which social media to advertise in, what blog posts to write, whatever.
3. Hire a copywriter to create a series of lead nurturing emails that you load into a CRM. Or if you're going to be handling the writing yourself, here's what you need to know to craft better writing.
4. Make a compelling offer once you’ve built a relationship. Offer something specific like a discount or a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Something that’s too good to resist.

Do you need strategy and tactics to create successful marketing campaigns?

In 500 BC Sun Tzu said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

While Tzu was speaking about war, the same applies to marketing your business.

Without a strategy, you haven’t identified who are the major players in your industry. So you don’t know if there are gaps your business can fill which means you can’t capitalize on your competitors’ weaknesses. Basically, you’ll never convince prospects to figuratively cross the road to come to your business.

And without tactics, you don’t have a presence in the marketplace. You’re relying on word-of-mouth marketing to bring in new leads and new customers and that’s like living on a prayer, unreliable.

So let’s look at how strategy and tactics work together.

An example of marketing strategies and tactics in action

Say you live in an isolated town and you’re the only vendor selling apples. Not the tech kind. Juicy, crunchy apples. So you’ve got 100 percent market share. Under these circumstances you’d require little marketing, probably just a stand and a sign saying, “Apples for sale.”

Word spreads around the town and you attract people to your store. But soon, another vendor starts selling apples at a similar price, and halves your market share.

If you want to claw back sales you’ll need to differentiate yourself. And that’s where marketing becomes vital.

What is your long-term business goal?

To win back at least 25 percent of the market share you lost.

How will you achieve this business goal?

Through strategic marketing. Having segmented your market you know that offering home deliveries is key to winning back customers. So you plan and execute a strategic marketing campaign.

Your marketing mix defines how you'll use digital marketing (website, blog posts, email, and social media) to achieve your business objectives and increase sales.

You set your tactical campaign in motion. Reminder: make sure you track the performance of your tactics. Sales increase and your business propels to a higher market share.

Strategy vs tactics? Which one can upscale your business?

The first thing I want you to stop doing is thinking in terms of marketing strategy vs tactics. Yes, there is a difference between strategies and tactics but they're not independent of each other. You need both to level up your business.

Unfortunately, most start-ups will focus on tactics like SEO, social media, PPC, email marketing, digital marketing, and so on without understanding why? What long-term and short-term goals are they trying to achieve?

Prioritizing tactics over strategy is like building a house without a blueprint. It's bound to collapse. You might get lucky this time. But what about your next digital campaign? What if it fails? Tactical marketing isn't sustainable without a plan or strategy underpinning it.

To make the most of your marketing dollars, start with a plan (goals), outline the strategy, and implement the tactics.

Marketing strategies drive growth. You need to see the bigger picture to upscale your business.

If you want people to remember your business name, if you want to take your business to the next level, invest in strategic marketing. Here’s how.

1. Start with a plan. Define your business goal. What objectives do you want to achieve?
2. Be specific. What marketing strategies and tactics will you use to attract customers and build your brand? Will you focus on digital marketing, so email reactivation campaigns, crafting strategic blog posts and specific social media campaigns? Which digital media will deliver the highest success?
3. Time to implement. Upgrade your website. Start working on creating compelling marketing creative. And make sure to use your marketing tactics wisely.

Which marketing tactics are most effective?

As long as you've defined your business goals, these are the tactics that deliver the best results for small businesses. And remember, what is the strategy behind each tactic.

Email marketing

One of the reasons I really love email marketing is it just creates so much leverage. It has literally generated millions of dollars for me and my clients across multiple businesses that I've been involved with.

Unlike other tactics, email marketing offers a personal experience. It builds relationships and boosts engagement with leads, prospects, and customers.

If you'd like to know more about using email check out this: 9 ways email marketing can fuel your inbound strategy.

Referral marketing

Referral marketing is one of the most effective marketing tactics you can implement. It promotes a win-win situation.

You get free marketing for your business. A customer gets social validation (or a reward) to spread the good word about your products or services, and their friend gets a recommendation from a trustworthy source.

Digital marketing

Think of your website as your storefront. It needs to entice people to shop. A good way to attract new customers is to make it user-friendly. Make it about your target audience. Speak to their needs. Show that you understand them and make the customer journey easy.

You can use social media, email, PPC, whatever you like to drive traffic to a landing page on your website.

Content marketing

Content marketing is the best strategy for sharing interesting, relevant, and valuable content to your target audience. Content comes in many forms, but the main goal is to establish a reputation as a thought leader in your field. You want people to see you as an authority figure in your industry. And this can happen by continuing to create valuable content.

A plagiarism checker must be used to ensure that the content you’re writing for marketing is original. In this way, your content will be 100% unique and free of any copied content.

To recap

So that's the difference between strategy and tactics.

Don't get me wrong, having a strategy and tactics are both important. They go hand-in-hand, but without a good strategy, a shiny new website won't attract the leads you want. Any email you send will probably result in low conversions. It's a waste of your time and money.

So if you have the goal of building a successful brand, have a plan and make sure to include strategy and tactics in your marketing mix. Or consider investing in a business coach. The benefits are substantial.

Click here to learn more about hiring a business coach.

Since you're reading this, you already know that LinkedIn is an excellent lead generator for your business. More than 50 percent of all social media traffic to business websites comes from LinkedIn, so if it’s not part of your overall marketing strategy, I’d strongly suggest adding it.

I’ve been actively using LinkedIn for a little under two years now. It’s safe to say I’ve tried every strategy there is.

I’ve crafted posts that got over 93,000 views, and some that fell flat. My network scaled from a little over 900 connections to just under 6,000 (a 495 percent increase), and it keeps growing.

Here’s what’s worked to get my connections to engage with my content and build my LinkedIn profile.

Get our top tips on writing a LinkedIn post

This guide will help you connect with the right audience, engage, and grow your following.

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

Is a post the same as an article on LinkedIn?

Unless you're completely new to social media, you'll know that a LinkedIn post and an article are not the same things.

• A LinkedIn post is a short format piece of roughly 3000 characters. It can be a status update, poll, video, announcement, event promotion, or brief statement: really, it's up to you.

• A LinkedIn article, in comparison, is much like a long-form blog. You have a 120,000-characters to educate and entertain your audience. As it appears in search engine results pages (SERP), you can use it to build your brand and drive traffic to your website.

It's a great idea to use a mix of LinkedIn articles and posts. Aim to post regularly, once a day if you can. And try to craft an article once a month.

How to write a LinkedIn post that people will read and share

A lot of people get bummed out by the lack of views, comments, shares, and likes they receive on their LinkedIn posts.

They think "I need to go viral" to get a ton of clients.

Understand that those people who go viral see an uptick in connections, but they don't lead to more sales or inbound messages. In reality, they're bloating your LinkedIn connection list with a bunch of low-value leads. People who will never buy from you.

Don't write a post to go viral. Write content your ideal customer wants to read.

And make it easy for them to read. People skim read on social media no matter what industry they are in. (I cover more great tips on writing here.)

A good LinkedIn post follows this framework.

1. Stick to plain text

Look, I know that video works really well on LinkedIn, but you need to have a strategy, and you’ve got to be consistent. Otherwise, you won’t get the views.

I’ve had great success using plain text posts, so that’s what I advocate. You don’t need all the bells and whistles. You don’t need fancy imagery or slick videos.

You just need a great message. An “aha moment”—if you like.

So before writing anything, be clear in your mind about:

• What’s the point of your post?
• How will it benefit your connections?

2. Use emojis in your LinkedIn posts

Think about when you last sent a text message. Did you use an emoji?

To be honest, adding emojis to my LinkedIn posts isn't something I'd typically do. But the reality is they help to highlight ideas and make your content more digestible, so I've become more conscious about including them.

Even though LinkedIn is a business environment, adding emojis can help make your post stand out.

• They break up walls of text.
• They show your personality.
• They add color to your post.

BUT don’t go crazy when inserting emojis. There is such a thing as too much. But a few strategically placed emojis can help to lift your copy.

3. Nail your LinkedIn headline

Believe it or not, you’ve got roughly two seconds to catch the eye of a user. Remember, most are just scrolling through, looking for something that they can either comment on or something that is going to be of value to them.

So you need a headline (or opening statement) that makes them pause and think, I’ve got to know more.

‍This is where you need to tap into your inner journalist. I’ve found the following to work really well on LinkedIn.

• Statistics
• Inspirational or motivational quotes
• Questions
• How-to offerings
• Humor
• Compelling statements
• Clickbait headlines

Forget about adding hashtags to your headline. Instead, focus on packing a punch.

Here’s an example of an intriguing statement that did well.

4. Start with a story

Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, you’re dealing with humans, and they respond to shared experiences.

‍By opening with a story, you create a sense of kinship and instantly become more relatable.

‍Don’t be scared to get personal or be silly, as these posts do well on LinkedIn. So many of my most effective marketing campaigns come back to human-to-human marketing.

“Infotainment” is about providing information but also entertaining your audience. Your audience will put up with a lot, but they won’t accept being bored.

Adding personal pictures and stories is an excellent way to entertain your audience and give them a sneak peek into your life.

Just remember that a good story always has a:

1. problem,
2. solution, and
3. moral.

Learn more about writing a B2B vs B2C website here.

5. Break up walls of text into single-sentence paragraphs

Writing a LinkedIn post is no different from writing a blog article (see how here). Your intent should be to deliver a great user experience.

Walls of text can be intimidating, whereas single sentences are easy to digest and easy on the eye.

I do this with my emails, as well. I like to write in short sentences that can be understood by a 14-year-old. An AI Summarizer can be a valuable tool to quickly identify key points in longer text, helping you craft concise and impactful single-sentence paragraphs.

You’ll want to include three or four hard paragraph breaks between your headline and opening sentence. This creates intrigue. By not being able to see the next sentence, the user has to click on the see more button.

If your story includes tips, you’ll want to highlight these as bullets or numbered points, or emojis.

I like to use 👉 or 👍 👎 when listing DOs, DON’Ts, and benefits, but you can use whatever strikes your fancy.

6. @Mention connections or influencers

A great way to get new eyes on your post is to @mention someone, particularly someone notable. Ideally, you want to have already formed a relationship with this person.

You can also @mention a connection who’s been influential to your business or your career. Perhaps they shared valuable advice. Maybe they wrote a book or featured you on their podcast, whatever.

The goal is to get them to respond to or comment on your post. If they do this, your LinkedIn post is more likely to appear in their connections feed.

It’s just another trick that you can use to grow your network, and give a shoutout to those who have helped you in one way or another.

7. Give specific instructions such as asking readers to “Like” your post

Now that you’ve downloaded your wisdom or wit into a great LinkedIn post, you need to tell the reader what to do next.

• Do you want them to comment?
• Do you want them to like your post?
• Do you want them to answer a question?
• Do you want them to share it with someone who might benefit from reading it? (This is a great way to build your network.)

Giving specific instructions encourages engagement.

You’re not quietly hoping that someone will take action and share their thoughts, you’re actively asking them to do so. You’re starting a two-way conversation, and beginning to build a relationship.

From my experience, the posts that give specific instructions outperform those that don’t.

8. Ask a question

I mentioned earlier that you need to close your posts with a question. By doing this, you encourage commenting, which is critical for three reasons:

1. LinkedIn rewards posts with comments.
2. Posts with more comments have a higher chance of trending.
3. Trending posts are more likely to appear in the feeds of 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections.

Also, asking your connections for their viewpoint is flattering.

But it’s not just about starting a conversation, building relationships, and growing your network.

Asking questions can lead to a debate and spark new ideas to write about.

Here are a few suggestions to try:

• Is your passion sustainable?
• What’s your favorite productivity tool?
• How do you motivate yourself?
• What’s the best email subject line you’ve ever read?
• What’s your favorite podcast?
• What’s your biggest LinkedIn pet peeve?
• What’s your go-to marketing strategy?
• How do you build relationships?
• What’s one thing you wish you knew when starting your career?
• Which author would you love to meet?
• What’s your top networking tip?
• How do you generate content?
• What’s your quote to live by?

Another great suggestion is to ask people to share examples of their work. It could be the landing page of their website, an article they wrote, their elevator pitch, or a lead magnet.

The benefit of this is that someone in your network might see their work and think, Hey, I need a writer, and this looks promising. Or, I could really use a tax consultant.

‍It’s an opportunity to potentially acquire a new client they won’t want to miss out on.

9. Offer some form of intellectual property (IP) to your LinkedIn community

This is something new that I’ve started doing at the urging of my good friend and LinkedIn expert consultant Paul Higgins, and the results have been great.

‍But what is intellectual property (IP)?

‍IP is a piece of content that you’ve created based on your professional experience. Think of it as the “gold standard” of how to do something. It’s based on facts and results.

I’ve seen people upload:

• A checklist of podcast equipment that every virgin podcaster needs
• A document on how to craft a lead-generating LinkedIn profile
• Scripts for inbound messaging
• How-to guides
• Instructional videos
• A list of killer headlines
• A press release template
• A checklist of software every remote business needs

The options open to you are endless. As long as you have something of value to share, don’t be afraid to put it on LinkedIn. You might be surprised by how many of your connections want to take a closer look.

10. Add three industry relevant hashtags at the end of your LinkedIn post

Hashtags are a great way to reach an audience outside your network.

While you should create a branded hashtag that you use on every post, you’ll also want to choose a mixture of niche and well-known hashtags.

You can find these by typing a word or phrase into the search bar. LinkedIn also suggests hashtags based on the content within your post.

I recommend using no more than five. Any more than that just looks desperate.

Here are a few popular hashtags with massive followings:

• #entrepreneurship
• #startups
• #smallbusiness
• #marketing
• #digitalmarketing
• #money
• #productivity
• #bestadvice
• #branding
• #motivation
• #strategy
• #ecommerce
• #publicrelations
• #networking
• #business

The key is to do your homework. What topics do you write about? Now figure out which hashtags would help you to reach a wider audience.

Make sure the hashtags you choose are relevant to your topic and vary them.

Don’t use the same hashtags for each post. Like Instagram, the LinkedIn algorithm will quickly pick up this sort of repetition, and your posts will suffer.

11. Never include a link to an external site in your Linkedin post

Linking to an external site is an absolute no-no. LinkedIn will punish you, and the results will be low engagement and poor views.

LinkedIn wants to keep you on its platform as long as possible, so if you’re linking to your website, a podcast, article, YouTube clip, whatever, your post will suffer.

Instead, I like to mention in the post that they can find the link to the site in the comments section. I’ll also ask my connections to like that comment, so it stays on the top.

12. Schedule your post to go live at the same time each day

Schedule your post to go live on your LinkedIn feed at the same time every day. That's when your social connections are most likely to see it and comment on it.

This gives your post the best chance of performing well.

7 Examples of LinkedIn post ideas

What to post and when? Sitting down at your computer waiting for inspiration to strike is a bit like staring at your oven, hoping it'll tell you what to make for dinner.

Grab a few ingredients, and several meals come to mind.

You need a content calendar. This is a spreadsheet that irons out what content to post, at what time, and which days.

I've shared a few examples of LinkedIn post ideas that you can use to build out your content calendar.

1. Personal stories of triumph

This is what I like to call the rags to riches story. It's aspirational, and inspirational. For anyone struggling to pay bills, Neely Khan's story serves as a reminder that the hard times will pass.

It also encourages connections that have shared a similar story to comment. These LinkedIn posts tend to do really well, so don't be afraid to get personal.

2. Job postings

Use your LinkedIn network to find your next team member. Or build a database of freelancers you can tap into when you need to outsource work.

But beware. You will get tons of responses, and they'll keep coming in long after the position has been filled.

Top tips:

• Be specific. If you're looking for American writers, state it.
• Include your budget.
• Mention if the job is remote or local, full-time or part-time.
• Tell applicants what to do next, for example, DM me with a link to your portfolio or website.

3. Run a poll on LinkedIn

At one point in 2021, everybody was posting a LinkedIn poll or complaining about them. Love it or hate it, polls are a great way to gain insight into your market and foster discussion.

But remember, you only have 30 characters per multiple choice so think carefully about the answers you want to gain.

Top tips for posting a poll:

• Ask a question
• Add a little personality to poll selections
• Include 'Other' as an option and invite your community to share their thoughts.

4. Post a Video Story on LinkedIn

Video is growing in popularity on LinkedIn. It can get three times more engagement than plain text posts.

The key is to post your video to the platform as opposed to hosting it on a site like YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia.

Top tips:

• Keep it short and sweet, between 30 and 90 seconds.
• Include captions.
• Let your personality come through.

5. The Reality check LinkedIn post

Follow influencers on LinkedIn long enough and you'll start to see that everyone is crushing it. They're making a ton of money, working four hour days and holidaying in Bali.

Don't get me wrong, these posts do well, but so do vulnerable posts. These posts show the bad days, and struggles. People have posted about losing children, dealing with depression, health issues, money problems.

The example below discussed how trying to be the perfect mom, business women and wife led to a heart attack. It served as a warning that chasing the hustle culture can have life-changing consequences.

Top tips:

• Include a photo.
• Be vulnerable.
• Own your scars.

6. Share a job announcement

Don't be scared to share a job posting 49 million people use LinkedIn every day to search for jobs and six are hired every minute.

Job announcement promote the social platform and signal to job hunters that opportunities are out there.

While this will generate a ton of engagement, most of it is superficial. But it can help to garner more LinkedIn followers.

Top tip:

• If you're currently looking for a job, don't be scared to use the Open To Work banner.
• Respond to posts looking for freelancers in your industry.
• Make sure your profile is up to date.

7. The how-to post

Entice your connections with a how-to post. It's a great way to demonstrate your expertise and show your LinkedIn connections how to solve a problem.

• Craft a compelling headline.
• Use listicles or numbers.
• Give step-by-step instructions.

Should I delete posts that don't perform well on LinkedIn?

It can be tempting to delete a LinkedIn post that's received little engagement. But don't.

Most people who become clients don't actively engage with you on LinkedIn. That doesn't mean they haven't seen or read your content.

Unless your LinkedIn post is receiving negative attention or you've said something that could potentially get you in hot water with your clients, I wouldn't delete it.

Instead, repost it at a different time and day. Log if you see more engagement. It might just be that the timing was off.

Are you ready to start marketing your business on LinkedIn?

If you want to grow your LinkedIn following, you need to consistently write attention-grabbing posts that encourage your network to interact with you.

You have 3,000 characters to establish your authority, build rapport, and entice your audience to engage. Make it count. Craft your headline, tell a story, select emojis and hashtags carefully, ask questions, and be specific about what action you want your connections to take.

Most importantly, don’t forget to respond to any comments you get.

If it feels like there are never enough hours in the day to get through your work, you’re probably not managing time effectively.

Perhaps you’ve prioritized work that should be delegated to a team member. Or you consider everything on your to-do-list as equally important. But they’re not. There will always be projects that take precedence, and learning how to identify and manage high-priority tasks is essential to good time management.

So I’m going to show you how to build a productive team that gets results and takes your business to the next level using these 11 time management strategies.

But first, let’s unpack: What is time management?

Get Our Free Time Management Guide

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

What is time management?

Time management is a skill. It’s the ability to strategize and plan your workday in advance so you know which tasks to prioritize and how much time you should spend on each.

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Work smarter, not harder.” Well, good time management ensures you maximize your team’s productivity and efficiency. Do this, and you’re able to get through a greater workload well before deadlines loom.

Why is time management important?

Let me ask you this. When your to-do-list is pages long, are you eager to dive in and start ticking off tasks, or do you fall into a procrastination trap, where you’re so overwhelmed that you spend more time reading what you need to do than actually doing it?

As a leader, you not only have to plan and manage your work, but you need to keep track of what everyone else is working on. You must know when meetings have been scheduled, who’s waiting on feedback, which deadlines should be shifted, what’s outstanding, are you on budget, and much more.

‍Managing time effectively ensures that you and your team get more done in less time. This means you can move onto other important projects quicker.

The caliber of work delivered also improves. Your people are calmer and happier because they have realistic deadlines and clear objectives and are not overloaded. They can see what’s in the pipeline so they have time to raise concerns well in advance.

Essentially, you’re providing all the tools they need to succeed so, yes, time management is important but is it a skill?

Is time management a skill?

Absolutely, good time management is a skill. It  allows you to structure your day in such a way that every minute is optimized. After identifying when you’re most productive, you can assign tasks accordingly.

For example, if your productive hours are in the mornings you could spend that time on content creation. The middle of the day could be spent in meetings with clients, and the end of the day on planning the next day's schedule, as well as responding to queries.

So learning to manage time effectively allows you to feel in control. Your team trusts you to lead, and your boss trusts you to get results. You don’t feel weighed down by the responsibility of being a manager because you’re on top of projects. And this ensures you can anticipate potential roadblocks and deal with them before they become problematic.

In comparison, poor time management often leads to unhappy teams that typically deliver substandard work late and over budget. It’s frustrating and easily rectified because you can learn effective time management skills.If you have the goal of building a productive team, you need the following time management skills.

Get Our Free Time Management Guide

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

11 time management strategies for team leaders

The best leaders recognize that time management is a vital part of your management strategy. You don’t want to spend your time micromanaging your people. So how do you cut out distractions, set goals, and plan your work to deliver consistently good results? Try these top time management tips:

1. Determine what your time is worth to you

Whether you’re a business owner or project manager, it’s vital that you identify what your time is worth. So what is your effective hourly rate (EHR)?

‍Here’s how you can work it out.

‍Take the monthly profit that you make and divide it by the number of hours you work. That gives you an effective hourly rate, and it’s a great filter for figuring out what you should be doing versus what your team is doing, and maybe what they shouldn’t be doing.

‍For example, if you charge your clients a $1,000 an hour consultation rate, it makes no sense to spend time on certain tasks like administration. Following up on invoices or booking meetings would be better handled by a junior staff member.

So look at what you're currently doing and ask yourself,

• What are your strengths?
• Where is your time best spent?

For me, that’s coming up with new content or ideas. For you, it could be innovating a new product, whatever.

Completing this exercise allows you to analyze what you spend your time on throughout the day and shift any low-priority tasks to team members. It’ll free up your time to focus on the tasks that make you tons of cash.

2. Identify what can be delegated

Now delegation really comes back to determining your EHR. If someone else can do a task 80 percent as well as you, delegate it.

For example, are you wasting time figuring out how to set up a sales funnel in your customer relationship management (CRM) system? The amount of time that you spend trying to learn the program could be better spent nurturing client relations.

Instead, hand the task over to one of your people or outsource it to a freelancer. The time you’d save negates the cost incurred. So delegation is one of the essential time management strategies.

3. Invest in project management software

As a manager, you’re juggling many roles. You’re a liaison, task manager, implementer, executer, leader, and much more. Each day you have to know:

• Who is working on what?
• Do you need to follow up on a query raised?
• Which project deadlines are looming?
• Which are delayed and why?
• Is the owner’s or CEO’s input required to complete a project?
• When is your next client meeting? What was discussed at the last meeting that you need to follow up on?

And you have to make split-second decisions:

• Do you need to shift one team member to a higher-priority task?
• Should you pause an existing project and rethink your strategy?

It’s impossible to retain every detail in your brain. And paper to-do lists are archaic; they just pile up and eventually get thrown away.

You could manually set calendar reminders to follow-up on each project, but it’s an unproductive use of your time and project management software does that for you automatically.

Here are a few benefits of project management software:

1. It allows you to see which projects are in the pipeline, what’s been completed, and where resources have been allocated.
2. Documents can be saved into assigned tasks, making it easier to retrieve a file or click through to a link to review the content.
3. There is a trail of updates from those working on the projects. If your input is needed @ mentioning you in an update will send an email to your inbox.
4. Team members can reassign tasks once completed.
5. Daily reminders are sent to team members.
6. It offers time-tracking if you’re so inclined.

But most importantly, it’s all neatly packaged for you so it’s really a smart way to manage your time. We recommend Asana, but you could also use something like Trello, ClickUp, or Monday. com. As a free tool, Trello would be our preferred project management software.

So investing in productivity software makes for effective time management.

4. Set clear goals and prioritize work

Goal-setting is essential to getting results because it gives your people a clear understanding of which projects are revenue-generating and should be prioritized.

‍So goals are the aspirational statements that indicate what your business is trying to achieve.

‍Ideally, you want to set short-term and long-term goals, and these should be clear and compelling.

Remember, your team consists of people with different skills, interests, and capabilities, so you want to align them with a common set of goals to focus their efforts. For example, you could have a goal of improving sales by 10 percent each quarter, but what do you need to do to make this happen?

• Perhaps you raise your prices by one dollar.
• Your marketing department creates a campaign to promote the product.
• Your salespeople actively engage with prospects, whatever.

This is a high-value goal. But the thing about business is there are always urgent tasks cropping up and your people need to know when to shift focus. Having clear priorities helps them identify what work can wait and what needs to be attended to immediately. It also ensures they complete projects in time, with as little stress as possible.

So goal-setting helps with effective time management and is crucial for taking your business to the next level.

5. Create a standard operating procedure (SOP) for reporting on tasks

As a project manager, you’ve likely got a team of up to ten—if not more—reporting to you. Having to touch base with each person separately is time-consuming and unproductive. You could spend all day following up on tasks and planning and you’d never get any work done.

You want to spend your time wisely. And a great way to organize your work is by using standard operating procedures (SOP), also known as business systems. SOPs are a series of checklists that provide clear instructions on how to do something in your business.

By documenting clear procedures and processes you’re able to deliver a particular service in a consistent way.

To give you an example of how an SOP can improve productivity, let’s use responding to tasks as our checklist. It would look something like this:

1. Create a task in your project management software.
2. Include all relevant information—step-by-step instructions (written or video), links to reference documents, goals, whatever.
3. Set a due date and assign the task to a team member.
4. Include all people involved in the project on the task.
5. Acknowledge that you’ve received the job. The team member assigned to work on the project must respond that they’ve read the task. And at the end of each day, they need to provide a brief written update of their progress.
6. Reassign the task once the work is completed. Who needs to review the work next? If it’s the project manager, they would make observations and schedule a due date for it. Or depending on your project flow, maybe you’d pass it to your designer or editor first. Basically, whoever is working on the project is responsible for handing it over and adding comments.
7. Close the task. Please note the task is closed only when it’s signed off on.

Implementing SOPs makes you feel more in control. You’re confident that your people know exactly what’s required of them, and they have a system in place for reporting. You don’t have to chase anyone for updates, because it’s all there for you to track. You’ll see pretty quickly that it’s an effective way of managing your time.

6. Film short Loom videos when briefing teams

I recently discovered the joy of  videos and how they’re a great time management strategy.

Writing out a list of instructions can be tedious, but with Loom, you can film a short instructional video that updates your team on exactly what is required. This is particularly helpful when making changes to creative content.

For example, let’s use a blog article. Your web developer uploads it and sends the link for you to review. But you notice changes you’d like to make. You could take screenshots and highlight these changes in a Google Doc, or you could film a quick video where you explain what you’d like to be changed.

Those involved in the project can refer back to it when necessary. So  are a great way to improve productivity and make sure work gets done.

‍Loom videos and how they’re a great time management strategy.

Writing out a list of instructions can be tedious, but with Loom, you can film a short instructional video that updates your team on exactly what is required. This is particularly helpful when making changes to creative content.

For example, let’s use a blog article. Your web developer uploads it and sends the link for you to review. But you notice changes you’d like to make. You could take screenshots and highlight these changes in a Google Doc, or you could film a quick video where you explain what you’d like to be changed. Those involved in the project can refer back to it when necessary.

So Loom videos are a great way to improve productivity and make sure work gets done.

7. Minimise distractions

Distractions come in many forms and they happen throughout the day—meetings, responding to emails, or questions from colleagues—but your mobile phone is probably number one.

A quick glance at social media networks, like LinkedIn, can easily turn into twenty minutes of browsing, reading, and commenting. You might even click on a news site—and there goes another ten or so minutes.

Unless it’s critical to your business, place your phone out of sight. That doesn’t mean you can’t keep it within hearing distance, but if you can’t see it you’ll be less tempted to check it.

You see, distractions interrupt your workflow and break your productivity. You want to manage your time so you can remain focused for at least 30 minutes. Here’s how:

• Set aside time to deal with emails.
• Isolate time in your day when you can handle and respond to questions.
• Schedule in coffee breaks where you can relax and forget about work. You’ll come back refreshed and ready to tackle the task at hand.

8. Divide your day instead of multi-tasking

While your day is made up of handling an assortment of tasks and urgent matters that require your attention, trying to juggle these all at once can leave you feeling frustrated and ineffective.

In 2010, P Bergman published a paper in the Harvard Business Review titled “How (and why) to stop multitasking.” It revealed shocking statistics, that multitasking leads to as much as a 40 percent decrease in productivity.

So how can you get through your work and still be efficient? Divide your day up.

1. Determine when you are most productive. Would that time be best spent on creative endeavors or managing people? You want to break up the hours in your day to use your time efficiently.
2. Should you spend the first hour of your day reviewing and responding to emails and task updates or is that best left to the end of the day?
3. When is a good time to speak to customers? Always aim to speak to clients when you’re refreshed and in a good frame of mind.
4. Do you need a long lunch in order to come back to the office ready to tackle the second half of the business day or are short fifteen minute breaks every two hours better for your productivity?
5. Plan ahead. The best way to avoid unnecessary stress is to be organized. Know what important deadlines are looming and set aside time to follow up with all the key players in a project.
6. Book time in your calendar to consult with your team members and clients.
7. Focus on one thing at a time. When you complete a task, it feels like you’ve achieved something, you’ve met a goal. But when you multitask, it can take a week to complete one task because you’re constantly shifting priorities.

9. Learn when to say, “No.”

Business owners can have unrealistic expectations when it comes to goals. Most don’t know the logistics involved in delivering a project, which means the system quickly becomes overloaded with tasks and impossible deadlines.

As the project manager, you have to know when is the best time to say, “No, we’re at capacity,” because overworked teams tend to be stressed, unhappy, plagued with health issues, and unproductive.

Regular meetings with upper management are necessary to identify what the high-value jobs are—what will bring in the most money and what can be paused.

But owners want reasons, and a good leader knows how to justify their decisions. Here’s how:

1. Explain why it’s not a good idea to add to the load. List the priority tasks in your pipeline and the estimated time it will take to complete each job.
2. Ask which important tasks can be paused in favor of other urgent incoming jobs and which deadlines can be shifted out.
3. If all jobs are considered equally critical, ask to bring in outside help, such as hiring a freelancer for a few days. And know your numbers.
4. How long do you expect a job will take?
5. Do you have a freelancer in mind?
6. What is their hourly rate?
7. What would the job cost in total versus using someone in-house but delaying it?

Numbers are compelling, so know yours. Because learning when to speak up and argue against adding more work to the system has to be one of your top time management strategies.

10. Pre-organize the next day’s to-do list

Plan ahead, Instead of starting each day planning what you want to achieve, work out what tasks you need to focus on the day before. Make sure this becomes a habit because it'll increase your productivity.

Here’s how.

• Put aside 30 minutes towards the end of each day to list what you’re still working on and need to deliver. I like to use a Google Doc but Word works just as well.
• Now number each item in order of importance. Knowing the business goals and the urgency of tasks will help you to sort your work into high-priority and low-priority tasks. Can you break these projects into smaller milestones?
• Estimate the time it will take you to complete each task. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to get through all your work.
• Which tasks can you delegate to colleagues? Do that before you log off, so it’s something you won’t have to worry about in the morning.

Planning ahead is an effective time management strategy that will help you to stay focused and keep on top of your work.

Get Our Free Time Management Guide

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

‍

11. Factor in time to re-energize

Your brain is a muscle, and like any muscle when it’s overworked, it becomes fatigued and no longer functions optimally.

Sometimes, this is referred to as burnout. One of the symptoms of burnout is a foggy brain. It’s hard to concentrate and you struggle to focus on a particular task for any length of time. You might also be irritable, anxious, and overly critical of the work of others.

This is a productivity killer. But it’s also not good for your company culture. Stressed out teams underperform. They’re not happy, and they’ll eventually look to leave.

So as the manager, it’s your job to ensure that everyone gets downtime. For example, you could schedule one day every other week where your people finish work early or you could plan to do something fun once a month.

It’s time to recoup because healthy companies have healthy teams.

Time management strategies are vital to your productivity; use them

So those are 11 time management strategies you can use to organize your workday more effectively. Many of us think we can do it all on our own, but business is a team sport. And even the best teams are constantly looking for ways to optimize their performance.

Because productivity gets results, and you don't need to implement a host of changes in one go, make small changes. Focus on one thing at a time and track if and how it improves your productivity:

• Are you able to get through more work every day?
• Do you feel more in control and focused?
• Are you less stressed?

These strategies are designed to help enhance your work life, so make sure you practice time management daily.

What is an email reactivation campaign? And can it benefit your business?

Your email list is full of customers who've previously bought from you. For some reason they stopped. I’m going to show you how to entice them back. It all starts with a simple email reactivation campaign.

Get Your Reactivation Campaign Worksheet

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

What is a reactivation campaign?

A marketing reactivation campaign is an email campaign that targets three types of prospects:

1. Dormant or inactive customers (clients who left or haven’t bought in a while)—these we want to REACTIVATE.
2. Prospects who, for some reason, didn’t convert—these we want to RE-ENGAGE and activate.
3. Existing customers—these we want to RETAIN.

The purpose of a reactivation campaign is to stimulate a conversation. It’s to get your prospect to put their hand up and say, “Hey, I’m still interested in what you’re selling.”

For the reactivation emails to work, you need to understand why they stopped buying from you in the first place. And you need a strong offer to win them back. Check out the importance of having a message that connects here.

Get Your Reactivation Campaign Worksheet

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

Why you need an email reactivation campaign

As business owners, it’s tempting to put all our marketing dollars into attracting new customers. But what about those customers who’ve already bought from you?

And here, I’m not talking about those customers who are raving fans—the ones that continue to support your business year after year. I’m talking about the one-time purchases. The customers who, for some reason, haven’t done business with you again.

Do you know why they stopped buying? More importantly, do you know what percentage of these dormant customers make up your email database? The truth is, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to sell to an existing one. This means your database of email subscribers is a gold mine.

Email is incredibly powerful. It generates $38 for every $1 spent, making it more effective than social media or any other advertising medium. So the logical solution is to implement email campaigns. But not just any campaign will do.‍

You need to implement an email reactivation campaign.

‍But first, I’ll explain why customers stopped buying from you and which ones you want to reactivate. Then I’ll tackle how to implement a reactivation campaign that helps you win back inactive subscribers and make money.

Three reasons why customers stop buying

1. You did something wrong

Yes, as much as we all hate to admit it, sometimes we make mistakes, and these mistakes have repercussions. It could be that you delivered poor customer service or your product wasn’t a great fit, whatever. The result was you lost a paying customer.

2. They got a better deal elsewhere

There’s a large base of customers who are price-shoppers. They’re always on the lookout for the best deal. They’re not loyal, and they’ll never be. It’s a race to the bottom. So if you win a customer on price, you’ll lose them on price.

3. Apathy

This is probably the most typical reason for customers leaving. You neglected the relationship. You weren’t nurturing or building it, and sadly, it had turned into a purely transactional relationship.

During this time that they haven’t heard from you, their needs have likely changed. A competitor reaches out, offers a solution that meets their needs today, and there goes your customer.

If you want to retain customers or win back inactive subscribers, you need to make deposits. You can’t just make withdrawals.

I want you to think of your relationships in terms of capital. How can you make more deposits? How can you make the relationship more valuable both ways? When you get this right, you retain customers. And let me tell you, a lifetime customer is invaluable.

So email campaigns are a great way to win back inactive subscribers and get them engaging with your emails. But before I get into the six email reactivation campaign examples, let’s decide which customers you want to come back.

Three things to consider before embarking on an email reactivation campaign

You now know that there are customers within your database who will always buy on price. These are suboptimal customers and aren’t worth investing your time, energy, and money in.

So you need to decide whom you still want and whom you don’t want. There are three criteria I like to use:

1. Are they fun to work with?
2. Are they profitable? Can they afford your services?
3. Do they value what you do?

It's important to keep these questions in mind when you begin the laborious task of pruning your list of email subscribers.

Get Our Signature 1-Page Marketing Plan Template

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

Pre-reactivation campaign work: Getting your database ready

Now that you know which type of customers you want to target, it's time to turn your attention to your database.

Chances are it’s a mess.

If you’re like most small business owners, your customer data is probably housed in various locations: your email, an excel spreadsheet, a drawer full of business cards, and a CRM.

I like to use Ontraport, but I've also used ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign.

The choice of CRM depends on your list size.

Step 1: Pool your data into a single location, preferably a CRM system.

Make sure to remove all duplicates and triplicates (especially if you’re grabbing data from multiple locations).

Step 2: Start tagging and segmenting your data.

Reactivation campaigns fail when the message you’re sending isn’t relevant to the receiver. Effectively tagging your database of email subscribers ensures that you can personalize your reactivation emails.

Also, according to Campaign Monitor, business owners using segmented campaigns report a 760 percent increase in revenue. So segmenting is super powerful.

So you want to tag and segment your data by:

• Geographic location
• Demographics
• Industry
• Customer size

Step 3: Sort your database into three types:

1. Prospects
2. Dormant customers
3. Active or existing clients

Step 4: Run your email database through a validation system.

You’ve got hundreds, if not thousands, of email addresses that don’t exist.

Perhaps the prospect made a mistake when entering their email address. Maybe they moved companies, and their account was deactivated. Or they got married, changed their name, and created a new email address.

Running a validation test like Never Bounce allows you to pull out those email addresses that no longer exist and delete them.

This allows you to start over with a healthy database.

Once you’ve segmented your database and deleted emails that don’t exist, you’re ready to launch a reactivation campaign.

Remember, the goal of a reactivation email campaign is to get a reply. You want to start a conversation with your inactive subscribers because conversations lead to conversions.

So here are six tried-and-true ways that you can use email to rekindle relationships with inactive subscribers and move them one step closer to making a sale.

Try these 6 EMAIL reactivation campaign examples

1. The 10-word reactivation email

Invented by Dean Jackson from I Love Marketing, the 10-word reactivation email is an incredibly successful way to revive dead leads. And it’s so simple.

Here’s an example:

Subject line: John…

Are you still looking for a 50-ft yacht?

Or whatever you’re selling. This format is golden for any business, and it guarantees great open rates.

Just don’t be tempted to include more information in your engagement email. So forget the deals you’re running, upcoming workshops, whatever. I’d also suggest you hold off on adding graphics or images.

‍Why it works

‍It's short and sweet and ends with a question. The brain, for some reason, can't ignore a question. Also, sending a plain text email feels more personal, and people love personalization. So give this reactivation email a chance.

2. Email a personalized video

Shoot a personalized video using Loom or Bon Jovi. Then add a thumbnail of the embedded video in your email. And don’t forget to personalize your email subject line.

According to Yes Lifecycle Marketing, emails with personalized subject lines generated a 50 percent higher open rate than those without.

Here's an example video script:

I was going through my contacts recently, and I noticed your name. And I remember we were having a conversation last year about buying (XYZ).

Is this something you're still open to or something that you're looking at right now?

I'd love to re-engage in a conversation with you over email.

This kind of reactivation email is also great for cold prospecting.

A web designer could share on Loom and create a short video highlighting some of the major concerns on a prospect’s website.

Here’s an example of a script for cold prospecting:

Hey (Name),

I came across your website, and I can see you're doing some really awesome things.

You've got a great call-to-action here, and you've got email opt-ins, but I noticed the design isn't optimal for mobile use.

You know most people now visit websites on their phones, so I'd suggest a few things:

• X
• Y
• Z

By the way, we're running a webinar next week on website usability. I'd love to invite you to join. It's completely free. There's a link in this email to our webinar. Look forward to seeing you.

Why it works

‍Sending a video is personal but it’s also engaging. People are more likely to watch a video than read text.

In fact, MarTech Advisor’s 2017 data noted that embedding a video in your engagement email can result in a 300 percent click rate. So it’s definitely a strategy worth investigating and implementing.

3. Send a Thank You or Sorry or We Miss You email

This is probably the most recognizable reactivation email campaign. We’ve all seen those emails in our inbox with the subject line “We Miss You” or “Thank You.”

Here’s an example of an email script:

Hey (Name),

First I'd like to thank you for being one of our clients. It's people like you who make our business what it is today.

And, second, sorry. You see, I noticed since your last purchase we haven't done enough to get you back here. Perhaps we neglected the relationship or did something wrong, and we'd love to win you back.

So here’s a promo code or offer to put towards your next purchase.

Why it works

‍You can run campaigns like this online or by regular snail mail. And it works because you’re acknowledging that you haven’t done enough to keep your customer happy in the first place.

You might not have done anything wrong. It could just be apathy on the part of the customer. But by appealing to their ego, they’re more willing to give you a second chance.

4. Send a physical gift card via mail

Some people might say, why bother? Why not email them a coupon or gift card instead of mailing it? But it’s not the same.

‍Why it works

‍There’s an element of surprise and delight. It’s unexpected, and it can also be deployed immediately.

More importantly, people are less inclined to throw away a plastic or metal card with a monetary value. It feels like currency, almost like you’re throwing away dollars.

Also, most people tend to spend more than the value of the gift card.

Just remember to include conditions for redeeming it.

Check out this post for more cool ways to wow customers.

Or discover the power of a shock and awe package. It's perfect for high-value customers.

5. Send a free sample in the mail

Another great idea to reengage inactive subscribers is to send them a sample of what you're doing. It needs to be something the prospect can test or consume.

A car salesperson might send an accessory like a branded keychain. A software company could offer a free trial.

You would then follow up on this gift with an engagement email. For example:

Subject line: We hoped you liked our gift.

We noticed you tried (XYZ) software in the past.Would you like to give it a whirl for another 30-day trial?

We've also got someone who can help onboard you and demo how you can use the software. They'll even help you to import all your data.

Why it works

It’s exciting. There’s an element of shock and awe, which creates theater around the product. This can be very impressive. Combined with a follow-up email marketing campaign, it's likely to engage inactive subscribers.

And if the prospect doesn’t want to use it, they can give it away to someone else—so you can’t lose.

6. Invite the prospect to an event

Lastly, you can re-engage inactive subscribers by inviting them to a live event or a virtual summit.

For example, take a client in the e-commerce industry who sells golfing equipment. You could host a live golf event and arrange for a professional instructor or golfer to do a live demonstration.

The golfer could show how to hold a club, correct swing, etc. And those who can’t be there in person can join remotely.‍

Why it works

‍These kinds of events allow you to attract a global audience. It gives your prospects a chance to mix with current clients—usually your biggest advocates.

Not only can your inactive subscribers re-engage with you and get excited about your product, but you can also find out why your former clients left and, hopefully, entice them back.

So those are six email examples that you can use to help you get started.

Hit Play on Your Reactivation Campaign

Reactivation email marketing campaigns are super powerful. They allow you to re-engage inactive subscribers and grow your business. While you won't convert every subscriber to a paying customer, you will win back enough to make a difference.

Not only can you make quick money using reactivation emails, but you'll now have a slimmed-down database of high-quality prospects and customers that you can market to more regularly.

And make no mistake, you should send out a reactivation campaign regularly. I’d recommend every quarter.

With the six examples I’ve shared, you can change up each engagement email campaign. Monitor the results. Determine which delivers the best return.

Which example gets the highest open rate? Is it the personalized video option or the 10-word email?

Once you know what works, it’s just a matter of a few tweaks before launching your next email marketing campaign. So get started.

Here's to growing your business.

Who handles marketing for you?

According to Vendasta, 47% of small business owners run marketing entirely on their own. Most of these small businesses don’t have a marketing plan.

Before you think, I don’t need one, can you honestly say that your current marketing campaigns generate consistent leads that convert into customers?

The problem is without a plan, there’s no strategy behind your marketing. It’s completely random.

You’ll dabble in social media marketing because an expert told you to. You’ll spend a little on Google Adwords or Facebook advertising. Maybe you sink a chunk of change into a print ad in that magazine you read all the time. But you can’t say for sure that it’s resulted in a bunch of new customers.

Get 5 Examples of 1-Page Marketing Plans For Free

Just tell us where to send them...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

‍

Most marketing newbies focus on tactics or what I like to call shiny objects. But without a strategy (your big-picture planning), your marketing won’t work.‍

You’ll see money rapidly flowing out of your business, but not much flowing in. This is where your marketing plan becomes critical. I wrote a book to help you. Check it out now. But I digress. Let's take a look at what is a marketing plan?

What is a marketing plan?

Think of your marketing plan as your business’s blueprint for success. It’s an operational plan for getting and retaining customers. It outlines the overarching marketing strategy and tactics that you’ll use to get your target market to know you, like you, and do business with you regularly.

• It gives you a clear picture of your target market. Who are they? Where do they live? What do they do? What do they struggle with?
• It helps you to create marketing messages that resonate and ultimately get results to help you grow your business. Your customers expect one-on-one attention which requires a personal approach.
• It tells you exactly what you need to do next. So, where to advertise? What to offer? How to capture leads? How to engage with prospects? What systems to put in place, what metrics to manage, and much more.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

Tell Me More

‍

A marketing plan is not a business plan.

Both are independent documents that need to coexist. A business plan focuses on the goals of the company as a whole. It includes the company’s mission statement, vision, financial goals, and sales and marketing strategy. The marketing plan focuses on how it will achieve these goals.

Why do you need a marketing plan?

Because winging it won’t work. I know. I made many costly advertising mistakes during my entrepreneurial infancy. I spent thousands of dollars on ads that resulted in zero customer acquisitions. Nothing! I've also coached hundreds of small business owners.

From experience, I can tell you that if you don't know why you're investing in pay-per-click or opening a Facebook account, or how to monitor and measure its performance, you're not going to get the results you want or need.

A report from Content Marketing Institute revealed that documenting your marketing strategy gives you a 538% greater chance of being successful.

Quite simply, professionals have plans.

Teachers have a curriculum they follow. Doctors follow a treatment plan; pilots follow a flight plan. Why? Because when the stakes are high, you need a plan. You need to know what to do next week, next month, in six months, in a year. And it needs to evolve.

Like technology, your marketing plan should be flexible. It's not something that you create, look at once, and never refer to again. It’s also not something you blindly follow for the next three years.

Your business isn’t static and neither is your plan. It needs to be agile. As you implement your marketing campaigns you should be tracking and measuring its success and optimizing where need be.

More importantly, you need to be able to track how your content performs.

• How many new leads did you generate from your free webinar?
• What was the average engagement rate on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook?
• How much traffic did your website gain during the month? Do you know which pages performed well?
• Which Google Adwords garnered the most click-throughs?

Perhaps you find that Instagram doesn't deliver a return on investment, but LinkedIn is flying—so you shift and focus your efforts there.

‍Maybe you wrote a blog article that doubled traffic to your site. Now you know what topics connect with your prospects, so you decide to create more content around it.

That's why having a marketing plan is so important. Without one, without defined key performance indicators (KPIs), you can’t know what's working and what isn't.

But you need the right plan for your business.

Introducing The 1-Page Marketing Plan.

The problem with many marketing plans is they’re overwhelming. They’re pages and pages long—with graphs, stats, and information that isn’t really going to help you grow your business.

Just look at any of the top-performing articles by searching: What is a marketing plan? You’ll find multiple options to choose from—too much to know which is the right choice.

A marketing plan needs to be simple. It’s something that you take out regularly and review. You need to see it. Unfortunately, if it’s 90-pages long, it’s probably going to get read once and never again.

That’s why I developed The 1-Page Marketing Plan template. Think of it as an entrepreneur’s small business encyclopedia.

What is the purpose of the 1-Page Marketing Plan template?

According to Sophia Xiang of The Daily Nova, The 1-Page Marketing Plan provides the proverbial map to treasure: explicit instructions for making money, simplifying what would have been a tedious, complicated task into a manageable, concise plan."

The 1-Plan Marketing Plan is an implementation breakthrough that's simple and easy to do. It’s a nine-step framework that you can literally put together in 30 minutes.

• It's built for entrepreneurs.
• It's built to be practical.
• It's built to be something you use, not leave hidden in a drawer. You can place it on your wall or your desk and refer to it routinely.

Now I've used this marketing plan example in my businesses, and with many of my coaching clients. I know it works. So let's get cracking on building your marketing playbook so to speak.

A three-phased approach to building a marketing plan.

Marketing is a journey that you need to guide your prospect through to make a sale. There are three major phases in a marketing plan:

‍Phase 1: The Before phase—focuses on prospects

Phase 2: The During phase—focuses on leads

Phase 3: The After phase—focuses on customers

Often, business owners will ask me, What should I start with first? What is the most critical part of my marketing plan? Personally, the entire plan is critical. But you need to nail The Before phase of your marketing plan. If you don’t get this right, your marketing won’t connect.

Marketing Plan: The Before Phase—Focuses on Prospects

Unless you’re Samsung or McDonald’s, your prospect probably doesn’t know who you are.

So in The Before phase, your goal is to be noticed.

I’ll give you an example. You know how, in the movies, the nerd desperately wants to date the cool kid, but because they don’t move in the same circles. Mr. or Miss Popular doesn’t know they exist.

This is pretty much your business. If you want to attract the attention of your ideal customer, you need to become a factor in your prospect’s life. And that’s what The Before phase focuses on. It helps you to identify

Step 1: Who is your niche target market?

Step 2: What message will resonate with your buyer?

Step 3: What media will you use to reach your prospect?

Marketing Plan: The During Phase—Focuses on Leads

So leads are people who’ve indicated some interest in your offer. Now you’ve got to build on this interest and really drive home the benefits of taking your relationship to the next stage. So in The During phase, your goal is relationship-building and establishing trust.

Here’s another example. You hosted a webinar on content planning, in which 30 high-quality leads attended. You held a Q&A and many thoughtful questions were raised. So you take this knowledge and write successful blog articles that directly deal with the problems your leads are grappling with.

You have their email addresses, so you regularly share these tips and tricks. Finally, you offer five lucky subscribers a free content audit and a two-week trial at a massively discounted rate. They see value in this and decide to purchase your services. So let me ask you:

‍Step 4: How will you capture leads?

Step 5: What will you do to nurture these leads?

Step 6: How will you convert them to customers?

Marketing Plan: The After Phase—Focuses on Customers

Now this is where things get exciting. You're at last dealing with customers. You've done the hard work. You've won their trust, built a relationship, and enticed them enough to spend a little cash.

‍The goal of The After phase is to create raving fans. The reason why you want to turn customers into raving fans is that they buy from you more often. They buy in more volume and they refer new business to you more regularly.

For example, think of Apple fans. They don't just buy an Apple laptop or iPhone. They buy the iPad, the Apple watch, the TV, you name it. It doesn't matter that Samsung is the camera king. They live, breathe, and eat Apple, and they're never going to switch.

So this is what you want to achieve with The After phase.

‍Step 7: Outline how you'll deliver a world-class experience.

Step 8: What measures will you put in place to increase the lifetime value of your customer?

Step 9: How will you orchestrate and stimulate referrals?‍

So let's dive into exactly how to write your marketing plan. Answering these questions will help you to hone in on each step in building out your roadmap to success.

How to write your Plan

The 1-Page Marketing Plan is a framework where, in literally nine steps, you can clarify your whole marketing plan. So we’re talking the strategy, the tools you need to use, the tactics, the assets you’ll build, and the processes you’ll implement.

So we’re going to go in-depth into what is included in a marketing plan. The key is to complete each step as you go.

1. Identify your niche target market.
2. What’s your message to your target audience?
3. What media will you use?
4. How will you capture leads?
5. How will you nurture leads?
6. What’s your sales conversion strategy?
7. How will you deliver a world-class experience?
8. How will you increase your customer lifetime value?
9. How will you orchestrate and stimulate referrals?

1. Identify your niche target market.

The first step in writing your marketing plan is to identify your niche audience. Why? Because targeting a broad market is costly.

Your goal is to become a big fish in a small pond. To do that, you need to home in on the people you like working with or where you can really make a tangible difference.

For example, instead of trying to sell your miracle eye cream to every adult female, target sleep-deprived moms of newborns. It's highly specific which means you're not competing against thousands of other companies.

These are some of the questions you need to answer when deciding whom to target:

• Who is your ideal target market?
• Who is your ideal customer?
• Whom do you love to deal with?
• Who is profitable to deal with?

Need help finding your niche? Read this article. It includes 8-steps to finding a niche you can dominate.

‍Top tip: If you’re stuck on who to target, think about segmenting.

‍Market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad target market like entrepreneurship and business into subcategories. These are niches that are an inch-wide and a mile-deep, so important to your success. I'll give you an example.

When I started Lean Marketing, I thought, which market am I likely to have the greatest impact. I wanted to focus on businesses looking to better their lives and the lives of their people. So I started with success education, and then I focused on business education.

But business education is quite broad. It could encompass mindset, personal development, sales training, managing finances, getting funding, whatever.

So I shifted my focus to marketing education, a subcategory, or sub-niche of business education. I could laser in on content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, branding, you name it.

It's more targeted, but it's still a wide sub-niche. And while I have a lot of experience in these marketing areas, my message was still likely to get lost.

So I thought, where are the gaps, where can I gain a lot of traction. For me, the glaring gap was marketing planning. At the time, there was nothing like this available for business owners to use to create a holistic plan around marketing.

And so, that's an inch-wide and a mile-deep.

2. What’s your message to your target audience?

To get your target audience to take notice of you and buy from you, you have to come up with a compelling message.

This isn’t something you do in isolation. It takes field research. You need to be on the ground interacting with your target market. Asking them questions, listening to what they say and how they say it.

Using their language in your marketing collateral is an excellent way to craft copy that connects and gets results.

Here’s what you want to know:

• What are your customers’ wants, needs, desires, problems?
• What message would grab their attention and make them act?

Ask open-ended questions and pay attention to their body language. If they’re nodding their heads and responding, you’re on to something good.

If they’re looking a bit bored or are casually reaching for their phone, you’ve lost them.

Then you need to think: How will I package my offer. It needs to be unique.

I’ll give you an example: the Dollar Shave Club. The idea was ingenious. Men need razor blades. Men hate shopping. So these guys created a subscription service for cheap razors blades that get delivered to your door each month.

It was a winner with the market. They didn't invent razor blades or shaving. They just tapped into most men’s hatred for shopping and provided a workable solution. And what would you know, Unilever just paid them a billion dollars for their company.

So when crafting your unique selling point, you want to think about the following:

It was a winner with the market. They didn't invent razor blades or shaving. They just tapped into most men’s hatred for shopping and provided a workable solution. And what would you know, Unilever just paid them a billion dollars for their company.

So when crafting your unique selling point, you want to think about the following:

• How will your product or service make your prospects’ lives easier, better?
• Why should they buy what you’re selling?
• And why should they buy from you instead of a competitor?

You'll also want to tell them about all the effort you go to. So you want to share your business story. Thing is, storytelling in marketing is so effective. It makes you stand out in an already crowded market.

3. What media will you use?

In advertising, the only measure of success is: Did you get a return on investment? Did you make more money in profits than what you spent on advertising?

‍This, and your budget, will largely dictate what media you advertise in, so whether you use social media marketing, email marketing, digital ads, whatever.

And you might think that you know your target audience. You know where they live online or what publications they read.

A study found that 26% of small businesses don’t have a website because they don’t believe their customers are online. This is proof that you don’t know your buyer as well as you think you do.

So before spending your precious marketing budget, these are some of the questions you need to answer:

• What is a customer worth to you? What are you willing to spend to acquire a customer?
• What media does your target market consume? Ask them directly.
• Do you want to spend a lot or focus on organic reach?
• Do you spread your budget around, so invest a little in social media (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn), digital (Google Adwords, SEO, pay-per-click), public relations (learn how to write a press release now, print advertising, radio, television). Or do you focus on two lead-generating sources?

And KPIs become so important. You want to set key performance indicators (KPI) for all your marketing campaigns for your technology and the people you work with.

More importantly, you need to be able to track how your content performs.

• What are your short-term versus long-term goals?
• How much traffic to your website do you want each month?
• How many unique visitors do you want to convert to leads?
• How many leads convert to customers?
• What’s your average transaction value?
• What’s your break even point?

A dashboard is a great way to do this. You can use Google Analytics to determine the amount of traffic to your site, time on pages, bounce rates, etc. As long as you measure, manage, rinse, repeat. There’s always room for improvement.

4. How will you capture leads?

It baffles me how many business owners rely on social media to connect with their customers and prospects. What happens if Facebook or Instagram shut down tomorrow. How would you reach them?

According to Vendasta, 41% of small local businesses depend on social media to drive revenue.

The first bit of advice I want to give is never to rely on a single source of lead generation. You need multiple sources, for example, a book your website, a podcast, or landing page, PR, etc.

And you need this all to be funneled into a single location—this is where a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system becomes vital. It allows you to automate and organize information in a way that would be difficult to do manually.

I’ve used many in my time as an entrepreneur. My personal preference is Ontraport, but I’d recommend ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit for startups or small businesses with a database under 10,000. So, ask yourself the following:

• What will you use to pique your prospects’ interests?
• How will you capture these leads?
• What do you do with them?

Also, set goals for your technology.

5. How will you nurture leads?

In many ways, lead nurturing is the most important phase of your marketing process. This is where you take someone from being vaguely interested in what you have to offer, to wanting it, and eventually buying it.

Getting this right requires a mindset shift. Don’t focus on the sale. That will come. You need to focus on educating and building a relationship. It’s about becoming a voice of value—someone your target audience looks forward to hearing from.

So these are some of the questions you need to answer:

• How will you build trust?
• What information will you share that resonates, engages, educates, and entertains?
• How often will you contact your prospect?
• When can you be sure that it’s the right time to sell?

Consistency is key. Almost half of small businesses spend two hours a week on marketing. If you want to scale your income, this simply isn’t enough.

6. What’s your sales conversion strategy?

Sales is by no means easy. For many, it feels uncomfortable or disingenuous.

My best advice when it comes to selling is: Don’t be weird. Be authentic. Be yourself.

‍Don’t force a sale.

If you’ve positioned yourself correctly, if you’ve pre-framed your prospect, you’ve delivered value upfront, you’ve educated, you’ve built a relationship, you’ve become a trusted advisor, the sale will come naturally.

Many small businesses make the mistake of positioning themselves on price.

Positioning your service or product as a commodity is disastrous because there will always be another company that offers a lower price.

How you position your business will determine how customers treat you and what they’re willing to pay for you.

For example, as a coach, if you position yourself as an expert authority and you deliver great results, you can charge a premium price for your services, and people will pay what you ask.

So here’s what you need to consider:

• What is your sales process? Map it out. Think about the different stages your prospect goes through to eventually make a decision, and then sell the next step in the strategy, not the end step.
• How will you price your product?
• What sort of package can you offer to make the sale more enticing? Think about a-try-before-you-buy, a risk reversal offer or an outrageous guarantee, whatever.

7. How will you deliver a world-class experience?

There’s nothing quite like a raving fan. Think of them as your personal cheerleader. They can’t wait to talk about your product or service. They’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. Write a review, post on social media. You name it. They’re your champion.

Delivering a world-class experience converts customers into raving fans. But many businesses stop at a sale. They don’t follow up. They don’t stay in touch. And then that customer becomes a one-off transaction.

So part of your marketing plan is to figure out what strategies you’ll use to continually WOW your customers. Ask yourself:

• How can I go above and beyond?
• What business systems can I put in place that will help me deliver a world-class experience?

8. How will you increase your customer lifetime value?

Here you want to think about how you will get the customer to buy in more frequency, volume, and quality, perhaps moving them up to the next level in your program or the next highest version of your product? And doing that in a way that actually benefits the customer.

In this blog post I break down how to upsell to your customers. Check it out.

There are five ways to do this:

• Raise your prices. If they love what you’re selling, they won’t complain about a price increase.
• Upsell. Instead of discounting your product or service, include an add-on.
• Offer an ascension plan, that moves customers up to a higher, better value tier.
• Offer a subscription service, send them reminders, or give them a reason to come back—like a voucher to put towards their next purchase. It works every time.
• Build a reactivation campaign. It costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain an existing one. And increasing customer retention by 5% increases your profits by 25% to 90%. So it’s something to give serious thought to.

You also need to consider which critical marketing metrics to measure. I’d advise:

1. Customer lifetime value - how much does each customer spend over a lifetime?
2. Monthly recurring revenue - this is the total recurring billing, and, ideally, this needs to grow each month.
3. Churn rate - this is the percentage of customers who stop buying from you or cancel subscriptions.
4. Customer satisfaction rate - how many complaints versus compliments do you receive?

These are all numbers that you should measure monthly.

9. How will you orchestrate and stimulate referrals?

Word-of-mouth marketing is powerful but notoriously unreliable. Most business owners quietly hope for a referral. This is a losing strategy. Yes, you want to add word-of-mouth marketing to your plan, but it needs to be an active process. You want to make it part of doing business with you.

So these are some of the questions you need to answer:

• Will you request a referral in the onboarding phase?
• Will you request a referral once the job is completed?
• How will you create a win-win scenario for a joint venture? Click the link to learn more about forming the right partnership.

Implementing an email reactivation campaign that targets dormant customers is another great way to increase revenue quickly. You can find out more about how to do that here. And that’s the nine steps in your marketing plan.

Marketing Plan Examples: 1PMP Template

To help you get started, I’ve included a few examples of completed 1-Page Marketing Plans. Use these as thought-starters and a guide when filling out your marketing plan template. Build out your marketing plan with the Free 1-Page Marketing Plan Examples. ‍

Get 5 Examples of 1-Page Marketing Plans For Free

Just tell us where to send them...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

Plan Your Way To Marketing Success

Marketing without a plan is a lot like fishing in rough seas, the chances of you catching anything are slim to none. That's just a waste of time and money. So start being intentional with your marketing.

Remember, your marketing plan identifies the steps you have to take to attract high-value leads, build relationships and ultimately convert them to customers, again, and again.

To do that, download our marketing plan template and start fleshing out your strategy for scaling your business. And if you need inspiration, check out our marketing plan examples above or leave a comment below.

‍If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article, What is Direct Response Marketing? As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to market your business.

Like many other industries, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) moves extremely fast. But where is the future of SEO going?

What does an effective, organic digital marketing strategy need to look like in the next few years?

While not too long ago, everybody was totally focused on keywords and backlinks (links from other websites). Today, we hear search and SEO more and more in the context of machine learning and artificial intelligence within a collection of hundreds of ranking factors. But there is much more to the future of SEO!

However, before we dive deeper into where the search industry is heading (based on my point of view), I would like to make sure you, as a reader, can see Google through somewhat different eyes.

What does Google want?

For digital marketing specialists, and in particular, in search marketing, Google plays a very special role—not only because of their market share (more than 92% in 2020) but also due to their incredible focus on user experience.

The search engine was the first company to focus on what’s best for their users—after all, a happy user will come back for more. This should be enough to shift our view of Google from the “evil giant” to a giant that aims, above all other things, to do what’s best for its users.

Artificial Intelligence

Digital marketing is getting more and more automated: automatic bidding, programmatic marketing, tracking, email marketing automation, hyper-segmentation, cross-platform promotion.

All these are only possible due to the vast amounts of data points big platforms have gathered about each and every internet user. Those masses of data then need to be analyzed so that algorithms can make sense of it and leverage information for higher returns on investment.

Companies like Google, Facebook, or Amazon have more information stored about us than we can possibly imagine—and one of their main goals is to obtain even more.

The reasoning couldn’t be clearer: the more information they have, the better they can make us happy. While “happy” could mean product suggestions on Amazon, for Google, it refers to ads and organic search results.

Already today, answers to search queries are personalized based on your location, preferred websites, previous searches, and more. What a person sees in Sydney on many searches isn’t going to be the same result someone would see in Melbourne.

A good example would be a Google search for “pizza delivery.” The search engine would understand local search intent and bring up results geographically near the respective user. But personalization goes much deeper than that.

The massive amount of data requires machine learning tools to process and artificial intelligence in order to identify patterns that can then be fed back into the algorithm. Google “learns” with every single search.

On a given day, by the way, thousands of searches are being executed by users all over the world for the very first time. Google has never seen them before but will still try to “understand” the underlying search intent to serve a relevant result.

So, for your site’s SEO, how could you beat Google’s AI engine? The answer: with AI itself. From early on, machine learning tools have received a very special place in our toolbox: link research, content brief creation, content optimization. Wherever machine learning tools can be used in SEO, their results should definitely be considered for the ongoing optimization process.

User Experience

When a platform like Google wants to make its users happy, it needs to factor in a whole lot of elements. The following deserve some further explanation:

Relevance

If a search result isn’t relevant for a user, they will hit their browser’s back button and click on another search engine result. Relevance can refer to design, layout, content structure, content length, and depth, etc., and should always be a top priority in every SEO campaign—stay relevant!

Search snippet

Users are only happy if they find their answers fast. The way search snippets are designed and the content they contain play an important role, which is why Google sometimes decides to overwrite a page’s title and so-called meta description in order to present a nicer result to search users.

Care about your search snippets as if they were your cat!

Mobile

Nobody likes to wait for a page to load, especially on their mobile phones. As a result, site speed and mobile performance, and usability are crucial elements for Google when determining the ranking a site deserves.

With users’ patience levels decreasing and attention spans shortening, there is a demand for increased loading speeds. Consequently, search engines will be forced to insist more on a site’s performance. This will especially be the case on the server-side, as 5G and similar technologies are very likely to reduce the effect of large images or videos that before might have been slowing down a page.

Link Building

Google’s success in providing high-quality search results is largely based on their algorithm and how it interprets links from one website to another one as a signal for authority.

With social media and other sources of data giving search engines more and more information, it is very likely that the effect link building can have on a site’s ranking might diminish over time. Until then, focus on actively pursuing links from other websites to your homepage and your pillar articles!

Personalization

One of the best ways to attract people’s attention in marketing is through personalized communication. Search engines are getting really good at personalizing search results, and with the growing number of data points of more and more people, it is to be expected that they will get even better at bringing us the right results at the right moment.

Already today, Google tries to come up with search results based on what they know about us, our calendar, and our movements between different places—even before we search for them. Ever gotten into your car and Google Maps told you how long it would take you to get home? This is Google’s personalization in action! For search results, personalization will probably, at least in part, mean very personal search preferences.

• Some users might prefer longer and more in-depth articles as search results when they are at home and shorter summaries when browsing through their phone.
• Others will only use their phones to check their email, but whenever they search for products, they will buy at Amazon, so Amazon might need to come up first for them on any of their transactional searches.

SEO is an important part of marketing, and personalization will definitely play a big role in marketing in the near future. Learn how to use market segmentation to better understand your business customer.

OK Google

How many voice assistants do you have available in your day to day? Most of us might be used to calling Siri or Alexa, Google Assistant or Cortana, to help us with daily tasks, reminders, or to do some quick research. The essential idea of a voice assistant is to get a question as an input and respond with an answer. This directly affects SEO because voice assistants will limit themselves to very few, if not only one possible answer.

The more we see personalized search results coming up, the higher the chances are that voice search relies on a search engines to make sure the first result contains the best possible answer. Integrating an AI voice generator could significantly improve communication by creating natural and engaging content directly from internal discussion.

While now we generally have ten search results on page one of Google, in the future, it might just really be the first or maybe the first few results that count. In any case, questions will (and have always been) play an essential part in search.

‍People have questions and want answers—fast. Back in 2010, I had my first client start answering two questions a month on his blog. He did this consistently (with our writers’ help) over many years, and still ranks with very simple answers to very simple questions, getting leads and sales still in 2020, leveraging answers written in 2011.

If you have the best answer to your target audience’s question, you are likely to do very well in SEO. Add consistency over time, and you’re up for a long-term winner!

Search Components

There is just one thing that Google likes more than making users happy to help them find the right website: make them happy finding the answer directly within Google.

More and more, we see search elements popping up in search, like “People also asked” sections, featured snippets, carousels, maps, local search results, and knowledge panels.

All these blocks extract information from websites to answer user queries directly on the search result page, resulting in approximately 50% of searches not leading to a click-through to a website. The search engine has (and provides) all the necessary information.

The trend towards more and more search components has been clear over the last years. And while it's a good SEO strategy for sites to sneak their way into the first page with some specially marked-up answer, site owners will have to accept that Google is actually becoming their website’s homepage, giving direct access to the different parts of information they consider relevant, and sometimes, providing the full answer directly within search results with no click going to the website itself.

Google has a problem.

Not all problems can be solved easily—not even by Google. While still trying to make their users happy, Google aims at finding a way to find out whether a site is trustworthy, has a certain authority in its niche, and whether the presented information comes from a source with expertise in their field. This is especially true when it comes to so-called YMYL sites (Your Money, Your Life).

YMYL refers to sites that directly impact on people’s lives (health) and finances, thus directly impacting happiness. There is just too much content being produced online to keep track, and it’s getting harder and harder to determine which content really should be consumed when seeking advice, and which content has been written by a non-expert on a budget in 15 minutes by rewriting whatever could be found on the subject.

And there’s more: with AI getting more and more ahead, in no time, there will be commercial writing programs available, creating original content automatically with AI engines, based on a few parameters like topic, length, level of expertise, etc.

Those engines will feed themselves with thousands of similar texts to extract common patterns and produce articles on their own, in less time than it takes a copywriter to open their favorite editing app.

‍E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and has become a very important term from 2018-2019 when Google added a section to their quality guidelines, asking quality raters at Google to check for relevant signals that might indicate whether the site and its author can be trusted.

‍Branding might just be one of the most important things you can do in order to make sure future algorithms can recognize the expertise you own in your field.

So do you need SEO?

The future of SEO is definitely going to be based on artificial intelligence, enabling search engines to improve user experience through extremely high levels of personalization.

The exponential growth of partly AI-created content will require extra levels of analysis in order to select not only the best, but also the most trustworthy response to a user’s search intent. Many business owners are being told you need SEO to get more leads.

So it's a tactic you implement. But what is your strategy? If you want to learn the difference between a strategy and a tactic, click the link.

A well-crafted email sequence is a vital part of your marketing arsenal. Master the art of writing a lead nurturing sequence, and you'll regularly convert leads to customers. Get it wrong, and you'll butcher your email list.

Luckily, there is a simple lead nurturing process that you can follow.

I'm going to show you how to write a lead nurturing email that:

• gets high open rates
• moves your prospects further along the buyer's journey
• results in sales

But first, I want to start with a little myth-busting. You don't need to be a copywriter or a bestselling author to write a lead-nurturing email. Anybody can do it. Just follow the process.

Get Our Proven Lead Nurture Sequence Template

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

‍

What is a Lead?

In many ways, a lead is a high-value future customer. This is a person or organization that will, in time, need your product or service. And you attract these high-value prospects with marketing.

Great content is vital for generating high-quality leads. I'm talking about writing blog posts, lead magnets, a landing page, social media, eBooks, etc. But you also want to capture their details—so their name, surname, phone number, and email address in your email list. And you can do this with an opt-in form.

Now the next step is to nurture these leads. But what is lead nurturing, and why is email marketing the perfect medium to use?

What is Lead Nurturing?

Lead nurturing is the process of building and maintaining relationships with a prospect at every stage of the buyer's journey. It engages potential customers in a series of conversations, with the end goal of converting them into buyers.

For them to convert, they need to be nurtured repeatedly in the sales funnel.

Thankfully, automated email sequences make the nurturing process possible.

Lead nurture is the basis of direct response marketing. To learn more, click here.

What is the Purpose of an Email Lead Nurturing Sequence?

Not all visitors to your site are ready to purchase immediately. In fact, only three percent of your target market is ready to buy at any given moment.

So what about the other 97 percent?

You could take a chance and hope they'll see your next marketing campaign and buy your product or service then, but humans are inherently suspicious. They've been burned many times before by brands who've overpromised and underdelivered.

To convince prospects to invest in your product or service, you need to build trust. You do this through education, entertainment, and by taking a personal interest in them.

This requires email marketing. It's a great way to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with minimal time, effort, and spend on your side.

5 Benefits Of A Lead Nurture Sequence

A lead nurturing sequence is an automated series of emails that a prospect receives after subscribing to your email list.

And the purpose of the lead nurturing process is to:

1. Stay top-of-mind for prospects who are interested in what you're selling but aren't quite ready to make a purchasing decision in that moment. We want to be on their mind when they're ready to buy.
2. Give your prospect a result in advance. It's compelling when a prospect takes your free advice, implements it, and gets a positive result. Imagine what a lead could get if they paid for the full service.
3. Inform and entertain. Think of your lead nurturing email sequence as infotainment. You want prospects to enjoy engaging with it. If you can educate in a fun and unique way, that's far more compelling than dry, boring content. Use it to send updates or share an important announcement. It is the best way to stay in touch with your customers.
4. Stimulate a conversation. Conversions come from conversations. By engaging with your prospect, you build a relationship that makes the decision to buy from you easier because you've earned their trust.
5. Move your prospect to action when they're ready. It could be a subtle call-to-action in your email signature. Or it could be a direct call-to-action in the body of your email—for example: “Get 25 percent off when you purchase my course today. Offer expires at midnight.”

Now that you know the benefits of a lead nurturing campaign, let's look at the types of email sequences you can send to your subscription list.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

Tell Me More

8 Types of Email Sequences in Marketing

When devising a lead nurturing campaign, you want to think about the type of nurturing sequence you wish to send your customers.

There are loads of automated email sequences you can use to nurture leads. Remember, the purpose of a lead nurturing email campaign is to build relationships with your prospects, move them closer to a sale, and become lifelong customers.

Not all of the email sequences listed below will be relevant to your business. For example, if you don't sell directly from your website, it's unlikely that you'll need a cart abandonment sequence.

Your goal should be to familiarize yourself and choose the best lead nurturing sequence to suit your needs. Here's our list of eight.

1. Welcome email sequence—helps you build trust and enables you to set the tone and mood for pushing the sale.

2. Confirmation email sequence—used to verify the identity of a subscriber.

3. Onboarding email sequence—provides information about the benefits of your offer, how to use it, and even testimonials from loyal customers.

4. Cart abandonment email sequence—a trigger-based sequence used to recover customers who have left a product on their shopping cart but never made the final stage of the sales funnel.

5. Repeat customer email sequence—used to upsell or offer similar recommendations that can best entice a customer to make another purchase. We break down how to upsell your products or services here.

6. Re-engagement or reactivation email sequence—used to win back prospects who have stopped interacting with you for a certain period for whatever reason.  

7. Event email sequence—used to notify users about an upcoming event to motivate them to purchase tickets or book a trip to a venue.

8.  Follow-up email sequence—used to remind subscribers to make a purchase, read a new blog post, complete a course program, or answer a survey, to name a few.

The beauty of a lead nurturing email is it's simple but effective. A nurture sequence is a compelling way to stay in touch with your customers on a personal level and entice them to buy a new product.

What to Do Before Writing a Lead Nurturing Email

Most of the work that goes into lead nurturing happens before you ever write a single word. It comes from researching and understanding who your audience is and what the different sub-segments are.

Before you write, you'll have answered in your head:

• What's keeping them up at night?
• What do they hope for?
• What are their pain points?
• How can your product or service improve their life?

Answering these questions ensures you know what type of content to include in your lead nurturing emails. Next, you need to organize your email database and CRM.

Not sure which CRM to use?

Personally, I'm a fan of Ontraport. Particularly if you've got a list that's more than 5,000 subscribers.

But if you're just starting I'd look at ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit. Both are great customer relationship management tools.

1. Identify what type of email sequence you need to create.

Generally, an email sequence can be categorized into a time-based or trigger-based sequence.

A time-based email sequence sends messages at predetermined time intervals through an email autoresponder. For example, once a prospect submits her email address to your CRM, a welcome email is forwarded. A series of lead nurturing emails will follow—sent on specific days—no matter if she responds to your welcome message or not.

On the other hand, a trigger-based email sequence, as the name suggests, is sent based on a recipient's actions. A series of lead-nurturing emails will only be delivered as long as the prospect responds, whether through clicking a button or checking out a link.

2. Organize your list of recipients.

Manually organizing your email list is a time-suck. A smart way to avoid this is to give your lead the option to self-select when signing up for your newsletter. This is particularly helpful to brands with multiple target audiences.

For example, an e-commerce platform selling various products will have some customers interested in kitchen equipment, others in the latest technology, and some in children's toys. Now a business owner without kids won't want to receive emails promoting Lego's new technic line. It's irrelevant to their needs, and they may unsubscribe.

So a lead nurturing campaign must be relevant to the customer receiving the email.

Also, don't buy email lists. You'll end up with a host of low-quality leads. Instead, develop a lead magnet such as a case study, eBook, worksheet, checklist, template, whatever. A lead magnet is an excellent marketing tactic and ideal for lead generation. (I've written about how you can create a lead magnet that converts in blog post.)

So to recap: allowing users to self-select on your opt-in form ensures you funnel the lead into the correct sequence.

3. Check your email sequence.

Whether you have one or multiple lead nurturing sequences before launching your email campaign, you’ll want to ask yourself:

• Does it follow a logical marketing automation workflow?
• Does it help achieve your objectives and goals?
• Does each step move the prospect through the buyer's journey?
• Will it result in more sales?

Much of this will boil down to your choice of a subject line, email content, and call-to-action. Let's look at the content you’ll need to include in your lead nurturing campaign to help you start.

But first, how do you generate content ideas? I'm going to share my best practices for developing content ideas. Follow these tips, and you'll boost your email open rate.

The Top Five Email Marketing Content Ideas

1. Write down frequently asked questions.

I generate a lot of my content ideas from frequently asked questions. Whether I'm on a podcast or presenting live, I encourage people to write to me. And they'll often ask questions. I like to note these down. So I'll use Apple Nights, but you can use something like Evernote. I can use these questions to generate content that my prospective customers are interested in.

2. Address the elephant in the room.

Next is objections. For example, why are your prospective customers saying no? Roadblocks could be that you're too expensive or they have a false impression of what your product does in relation to competitors’ products. Addressing these objections in your content is very powerful. By addressing the elephant in the room, you create trust.

3. Use stories and anecdotes.

Human beings are wired to listen to stories. Weaving stories into your lead-nurturing sequences is an excellent way to connect with your audience, grab their attention, maintain it, and lead them to a sale.

4. Show them case studies.

Now I've found this syndrome that many customers suffer from. Very often, prospects will be wondering if what you're selling will work for them.

So they'll say, "This works for B2B but not B2C,” or "This works for the tech industry but not the financial industry."

Case studies are a great way to bridge this gap. So showing people like them can get from point A to B, from a worse condition to a better state, can help the sale.

5. Tell them what's new in your field.

What's new in your prospects' life as it relates to your field, product, or service? There'll be innovations or things that come out very often, and people don't know because they're not in your industry. So being that source of news in your field is very powerful.

How to Write an Automated Email Sequence that Leads love

Now, it's time to get into email sequence writing. Follow these best practices to keep in touch with subscribers and turn them into repeat customers.

Write an awesome subject line.

The subject line is the first thing that your lead will read. It's been known to make or break email campaigns. It must be compelling or intriguing. Any time I come across a clever or quirky subject line, I like to note it down. Sometimes it sparks a new idea. But there's also nothing wrong with shamelessly stealing a powerful subject line now and then.

Ideally, your subject line should not be more than nine words. Anything more, and you could adversely affect your campaign’s open rate.

Introduce a pattern interrupt in your email.

I like to use a pattern interrupt in my email content. Whether it's an anecdote, a statement, or a question, this technique sucks people into the copy. It makes them read every sentence and paragraph because they're intrigued.

A short anecdote, a statement, a question, or something that makes a lead keep reading, is very powerful.

Share a knowledge bomb in your sequence.

I have this rule where my free emails should be more powerful and more valuable than other people's paid content. I don't want my emails to be just about selling or promoting a product or service.

So I make sure to include some kind of knowledge bomb that customers can walk away with. It's a nugget of information they can take and implement into their business and start seeing results.

Delve deeper into a topic.

I like to do this over multiple sequences.

I'll write a soap opera sequence where I'll open up a discussion on a topic and end the email on a cliffhanger. Like any well-written television series, you leave the reader wanting more. And then we move to the next one, and we go deeper.

So rather than just skimming over a topic in one email, I'll do this over multiple emails. It's a great sales tactic because I'm nurturing my prospect, building trust, and moving them along the sales funnel.

Add personalization to your message.

Customers or prospects want to feel like you're talking to them directly, so send a personal one-on-one email. People need to know they're not dealing with a robot. A.I. has its uses but not in email marketing.

Here's a tip: Address your lead using their first name. This creates personalization and encourages dialogue.

We cover how to personalize your marketing here.

Write according to your goal.

What is the purpose of your lead nurturing campaign?

Is your email sequence intended to reactivate a dormant customer, entertain, or make an offer?

Each type of email sequence requires a different approach, so it's vital to stick to your objective with every message you write. If your message deviates from your end goal, your sequence can end up being a total mess.

Address your leads' pain points.

Start with the pain. By recognizing what your leads are feeling and what keeps them up at night, you develop a sense of camaraderie.

Use their words in your marketing content—so your lead magnet, blog articles, or posts on social media. It's the best way to attract high-quality leads.

Deliver what you promised.

Did you promise a free case study or access to exclusive videos on the form your lead filled out? Did your lead magnet promise to show them how to build a lead-nurturing campaign?

The quickest way to lose a potential customer is to overpromise and underdeliver. Make sure your campaigns meet expectations.

Encourage leads to connect with you on social media.

Besides email communication, share links in your message where the reader can connect with you on social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. This is another way to stay in touch and share different content.

Make them entertaining.

I prefer writing my nurturing sequences with a sense of “infotainment.” I want them to be educational and entertaining at the same time. This ensures you solve their issues without boring your reader. Best of all, customers will look forward to hearing from you.

End your message with a call-to-action (CTA).

This is an essential component of your message. What would you like your reader to do next?

Should they click a link to your offer? Or claim their coupon from your website? A strong CTA should convince your prospect to act.

You need to create a sense of urgency or add an element of scarcity in your closing. This makes your sales engagement more powerful.

The Top 11 Tips for Writing a Lead Nurturing Engagement Email

Nurturing leads is all about establishing a relationship with your email subscribers. Your goal with each campaign is to move them further along the buyer's journey. Follow these 11 tips to write nurturing email sequences that convert.

1. Be conversational.

Make sure you use a conversational tone in all of your content. It helps to break down barriers. It makes it easier to read or consume. It's also easier to write. So write your lead nurturing engagement email much like you're speaking to a friend.

2. Keep your sentences short.

Cutting long sentences into readable bite-sized chunks is an art. If you want to create an impact with your words, a sentence should have eight to ten words max. So keep your paragraphs nice and short.

3. Check your spelling.

Sounds simple, and yet, I get countless emails with spelling mistakes. I've sent out a few myself.

The problem with spelling errors is it looks sloppy and it can draw attention away from your message. Basically, customers focus on the grammatical mistakes, and if it annoys them too much, they may unsubscribe. So put your emails through Grammarly. It can help you fix weird sentences and phrases.

4. Highlight important words or phrases.

You want specific phrases or offers to stick out in your text. Highlighting, bolding, or underlining helps to emphasize a call-to-action.

Sometimes it's called junking up or word art. Basically, this helps your customers focus on essential information. For example, it could be the link to a form or a new course you're selling.

5. Include facts, statistics, or quotes.

Use data in your lead nurturing. Here's why. Data is eye-catching. It reads as truth. So when writing your lead nurturing email campaign, consider using data to emphasize something you're saying.

6. Only use one CTA.

It's tempting to link to multiple offers or webpages in an email, but don't do it. You'll only create confusion. Instead, determine your email's purpose and link to one call-to-action. You can include a link multiple times.

For example, if you have a limited offer or something that's time-sensitive—like an opt-in for a webinar—you'll want to pepper the call-to-action throughout your email. See below:

7. Focus on one topic.

Again, like with the call-to-action, you don't want to create confusion, so focus on one topic per email.

8.  Link to podcast clips or pieces of content you've written.

People like to engage with your emails, so make them interactive. It's not just about sharing your thoughts; you want your customers to take action. Including links to podcast clips, blog articles, or contributor pieces is a great way to build trust, educate, and move your prospects from the bottom of the funnel to closing sales.

9. Write a super signature.

So a super signature is a soft sell. It appears after your name and can be included in sales emails and value-building emails. I like to have it as a P.S.

And what a super signature does is give your leads the option to purchase your product when they're ready. So whether you're creating an email marketing campaign or you're just sending helpful content, make sure you've included a super signature.

10. Get someone who's not in your field to read your email.

It's easy to assume that if you write with clarity customers will know what you're talking about. That's not always the case. So get someone who isn't in your industry to read your emails. If they don't understand what you're talking about, it's helpful to know before hitting send on your lead nurturing email.

11. Develop a copywriting style guide.

You might also want to consider putting together a copywriting style guide, especially if you're planning to hand content writing over to your team. Style guides make it easy for content writers to get the voice of your business.

If you don't use swear words or slang, that needs to be in your guide. If you prefer to write in the first person, note that down. Make it easy for a writer to get into your head and craft compelling lead nurturing emails.

Get Our Proven Lead Nurture Sequence Template

Just tell us where to send it...

We respect your email inbox and will never spam.

How Often Should You Send a Lead Nurturing Email?

Now, this is a question my clients ask regularly. You don't want to annoy your audience, so it's vital not to bombard them with emails. For example, I don't want to hear from my plumber three times a day.

Whereas my stockbroker, I want to hear from him regularly. I want to know what happened in the stock market that day. So the frequency depends on the industry.

Also, you don't want to wait too long between emails. The maximum time you should go between a prospect hearing from you is a month. If you're not connecting with your audience at least monthly, you run the risk of them forgetting who you are, and they could unsubscribe the next time you email.

Start Building Your Lead Nurturing Campaign

Now that you know what a lead nurturing campaign is and why it can help move your leads through the buyer's journey, it's time to craft your email sequence. Note down the process you need to follow:

Step 1: Build a lead magnet.

Step 2: Select your email sequence.

Step 3: Start writing each email in your lead nurturing campaign.

Step 4: Set up your CRM to funnel leads into the correct sequence.

Step 5: Hit the autopilot.

Don't be afraid of marketing automation. It will help to move leads through your sales funnel and closer to becoming a customer. As long as you've written conversational emails that entertain, inform, and nurture, your campaigns will result in sales.

Not sure what is a business process? Click the link to learn more about how to craft your processes.

Found this helpful? Check out our blog on the difference between lead generation and lead nurturing.