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So someone saw your email in their inbox, clicked on it, and read it. Great, right?

Now, what? What do you want that subscriber to do next?

I recently talked about how to get your emails opened and read. You can check it out here. The next challenge is tackling your click through rate. Getting your mailing list to take some sort of action. Whether that's opting into a paid membership, requesting a quote, or booking a call—what's the next step?

But before I dive in, let's look at two common mistakes businesses make when sending marketing emails:

1. Sending newsletters: Newsletters are purely informational. There's nothing for a subscriber to do with them. So don't limit yourself to sending newsletters.
2. Using a no-reply email address: This is one of the biggest mistakes in email marketing. Never use a no-reply email address. You're blocking your prospects and customers from replying to you. If someone replies and it goes unanswered, you just missed connecting with a potential customer. And it's your loss, not theirs. So don't do it.

What Is A Click-Through Rate?

Your email click-through rate is the total number of recipients in your email list who clicked on the call-to-action in your email.

For example, if you have an email list of 30,000 subscribers. And you send an email upselling your course (click the link to learn how). If 100 of those subscribers click on the call-to-action link in your email, your CTR is 0.33%.

What Is the Average Email Click-Through Rate?

According to HubSpot's 2023 Research, the average click-through rate from an email is about 2.6-3%. If your email CTR is lower than that, you might want to prune your email list or relook your writing strategy.

Perhaps your subject lines need to be more intriguing. Maybe your copy needs to be livened up.

But often low CTR is a result of a bloated email list, some of which are not your ideal target market.

Why Email Responses Matter

People worry too much about getting a ton of emails and spending hours replying to them.

You're worrying about the wrong things. Email marketing is not a broadcast medium where you just blast newsletters here and there.

It's a two-way street. Think about owning a physical store. When someone comes in, a salesperson (you) will ask them if they need assistance, and then you'll walk them through. Give them a tour, get asked a few questions, and answer them. Now, this is the concept of email responses.

Allow your subscribers to reply to your emails. And don't ignore their messages. Write back within a day or so. Engaging with your readers in this manner is super powerful. It's how you begin to nurture relationships, build trust, and steadily move subscribers towards a sale.

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

How to Get Your Leads to Click Through

Now that you know why responses are an essential component of your email marketing strategy, here are some tips on getting your mailing list to take action and click through to your offer.

Have a super signature.

If you're subscribed to my mailing list, you'll know I have a super signature. This is a low-pressure sales tactic that ends my emails. It's a P.S. that I use to promote my audiobook, course, and a chance to work with me one-on-one.

You can also use a super signature to promote anything.

But here's a friendly reminder: It has to be a soft sell. Just list products and services you offer in your super signature, tell more about them and encourage your readers to reply.

Your Super Signature Must Include

• Link to products
• A free downloadable asset - you should be giving away your best stuff for free, such as a helpful checklist or a template
• Invitation to sign up for an event or a webinar
• Invitation to join your community or group
• Link to social proof, as you want people to trust you. Link to Google reviews or testimonials.
• Link to a video, as you can show people how your services are done. Also, people get to see you and that’s very important for relationship building.
• Invitation to connect

My Formula For A Super Signature

• P. S. - that’s important because in general when you see it, it’s something extra that catches your eye and it’s usually something personal.
• PLUS: Here you want to be talking directly to you reader. It suggests you're adding more value.
• 1-3 relevant actions:
• A compelling headline
• 2-3 sentences summarizing why they should be paying attention
• Call to action

Below is an example of my super signature.

Send a personal reply.

Most people think of call-to-action as a click to a blog or sales page. I don't mind if you do this, especially if you have a particular offer on your site.

But try sending personal replies too. It's quick, simple, and easy.

Instead of sending a subscriber to a web page—which requires more effort on their part—start the conversation through email.

The reply button is there for a reason.

Key point: Use a P.S. that says you personally read and answer emails from your subscribers. This reminds people that a real person is ready to reply on the other end.

Send emails regularly.

Not everyone's ready to buy from you or work with you. Some prospects take weeks, months, and even years to take the next step to become your customer.

Regularly sending emails can be a powerful way to build a relationship with your readers. First, it will help you establish yourself as a thought leader and a trusted confidante. And this also helps to encourage your prospects to reply and connect with you.

If you ask me how often you should send your emails, it depends on many factors. But a good rule of thumb is to send one email every week.

Remember, you don't want to have long breaks between emails. Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder when it comes to email marketing; it results in amnesia. And if your prospects haven't heard from you in, say, three months or so, they'll forget they willingly opted into your emails. Many will unsubscribe.

So make sure you're emailing your list regularly.

Key Takeaway

Getting your subscribers to take action from your marketing emails starts with having a clear call-to-action (CTA).

Do you want your subscribers to:

• Hit reply?
• Call you?
• Visit your website?
• Click a link?

Include your CTA in your super signature, and send at least weekly emails. Personalize your emails so people know they're coming from you. Do all of these regularly, and you'll build and deepen relationships with your target audience.

Do you have other ways to drive your subscribers to take action from emails? I'd love to know!

Have you given up on email marketing? If it feels like email is a strategy that just doesn’t work for your business, you’re not alone. I often get complaints from clients who can’t crack the email marketing code.

But as soon as I start to delve a little deeper into their efforts, I notice common mistakes that are affecting the success of their email campaigns.

Email marketing is an excellent investment if you know what you're doing. It's key to building your inbound strategy and hitting target numbers.

And you can course correct. Don't give up because you haven't had the success you were hoping for.

Email delivers a massive return on investment. In fact, it has the best return out of any marketing tactic. For every $1 you spend on email marketing, expect to get an average return of $42. That's why it needs to be part of your business's marketing plan.

So how can you start to write emails your prospects want to receive and respond to?

To improve your delivery and open rate, get more responses, and grow your sales, try these email marketing DOs and DON’Ts.

The 9 Do's of Email Marketing

1. Start with an intriguing statement.

You want something that will draw your reader in and make them think, I’ve got to see where this is going. Every word counts. I’ll give you a few examples:

• You’ll never believe what happened to me yesterday. It was simply too good not to share.
• Imagine for a moment…you’ve just closed a major deal.
• What if I told you that I'm quitting?
• I just met the richest guy in the world.
• 2020 is the most challenging year of my life. I thought I was right until...

2. Keep it short.

I don’t know about you, but for me, walls of text are a major turn off. It feels like I’m reading a school paper and that’s just not something I want to see in my inbox. Big chunks of text are intimidating, and most people won't read them.

Instead, you want to break your sentences up. Write shorter paragraphs. Make it easy for them to read and follow.

Another top tip is to leave out fluff and unnecessary content. If it doesn’t add to the story, it doesn’t need to be there.

So, once you've written your draft, start cutting and pruning your work.

3. Stick to plain text.

Unless you have an e-commerce or fashion site, forget about creating a fancy designed template. Text-based emails work because they feel more personal. It’s like an email from a friend.

Make sure it’s in a readable format. For example, if you want to emphasize an idea or a thought, bold or italicize it.

If you're listing steps, use numbers. And bullet points are perfect for highlighting benefits or ideas. Best of all, they make it easy for your subscribers to digest your content.

Leave the bells and whistles for programmatic advertising. Overload your emails with ads and you’ll come across as pushy or worse, desperate.

4. Make it personal.

Even if you have a database of 20,000 subscribers, write as if you're talking to one person. So always use 1st and 2nd singular subjects. This means no "y’all" or "you guys." Instead, use words like:

• You - This one is very powerful.
• Hey, Hi, or Yo! [NAME]
• Use their name in the body of the text when possible.

And if you want to boost your open rate, you can add the recipient's name in the subject line. For example, instead of writing "Can you help me decide?" ask "Which would you pick, [NAME]?" It’s a clever marketing hack that makes the reader feel important and valued. It also comes across like you wrote the email specifically for them.

5. Give actionable value.

Email marketing is more than getting your emails opened and read. That's just the tip of the iceberg. People need to know what to do next after reading your emails.

So, what actionable steps can you give to support your content?

• Do you want them to hit reply?
• Do you want them to click a link to your blog article, a product you’re selling, or a webinar you’re hosting?
• Do you want them to call you now?

Whatever it is, always include a call-to-action (CTA). Give them clear and direct instructions. For more info on how to get your emails actioned read this blog.

6. Test before you send.

What does your email look like on your mobile phone? What does it look like on your desktop?

Always test your email before sending it out to your list. This way, you can fix any typos, broken links, strange wording, unnecessary fluff, and poor imagery. Here’s why.

Imagine your email is Brad Pitt—Achilles himself. He’s one of the best looking dudes in the world, but if he’s got a piece of lettuce stuck in his teeth, you’re not going to notice those gorgeous blonde locks or dazzling white teeth. You’re going to be fixated on that annoying bit of green.

So small mistakes leave bad impressions. They draw our attention away from all the good stuff in your email, and you don't want that to happen.

Here’s how you can avoid this from happening:

• Run your email through something like Grammarly or Hemingway.
• Send a test email to your phone.
• Ask a colleague to give it a once-over before sending it to your list.

7. Find a way to tell a personal story.

Readers want to know that they're talking to an actual person, and they can smell a white lie a mile off. So, personalize it. Share a story about yourself or something that recently happened to you. It can be anything funny, embarrassing, or memorable, as long as it's connected to the topic.

Stories draw your readers in. They establish kinship, for lack of a better word. Use them to your advantage.

8. Add an emoji in your subject line.

Emojis are a great way to express what you’re feeling, and you probably use them all the time. So why not add one to your subject line?

They’re attention-grabbing, friendly, and can even boost your open rate.

But here’s a word of caution. Don’t overuse them. Only use an emoji if it adds to your message. Slapping in an exploding fireball or a dancing fairy might not work if you’re sending an email about the Dow Jones.

9. Use a CRM.

Every business needs a CRM. It’s an essential email marketing tool, and it’s going to make nurturing relationships with your customers and leads so much easier.

You can use CRMs to do any of the following:

• Send automated emails
• Handle opt-in and opt-out mechanisms
• Track your spam score
• Find out if you're using a lot of links or phrases that are going to trip up spam filters

Most importantly, it helps you to track what emails are performing well and which failed. This way, you can figure out what works and what to avoid in the future.

So now that we know what you need to be doing in your emails, let’s talk about what you absolutely shouldn’t be doing.

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The 6 Don’ts of Email Marketing

1. Don’t use email as a broadcast medium.

A lot of media is essentially used as a broadcast medium—ads on TV, YouTube, banner advertising, radio—you get the idea. You don’t want your emails to fall into this category.

But email marketing, when done right, is not a broadcast medium. It’s really a two-way street. It’s about talking to your audience and getting to know them. You want to deliver value, educate, and entertain.

Blasting a bunch of promotional messages like, Hey, buy my stuff, gets old quickly. My rule of thumb is two to three value-building emails to one hard sell.

2. Don’t spam.

I’m not talking about the tinned food. Spam is unsolicited, overly promotional email that's unexpected. I’d go so far as to say unwanted.

There are a few things that can make your emails look like spam.

• Spammy keywords: “Make money” and “Get rich quick” are examples of keywords not to use.
• Too many links: Calls to action are essential, but you want to limit the number.
• Over capitalization: Limit the use of all caps in emails, especially in subject lines (using the words “DOs” and “DON’Ts” are an exception).
• Too many images: Make sure you’re using a reasonable amount of tasteful images.
• Your email reputation: If web providers get an indication that when you send emails, people hit the spam button, you’ll get flagged, and your emails will automatically start filtering to promotions tabs or spam folders.

So if you don’t want your emails to be classified as spam, you need to send emails that are actually wanted and needed. Don’t forget to check if your email security protocols are activated.

3. Don't buy mailing lists.

This is an absolute no-no. A lot of businesses think buying mailing lists is a sure-fire solution to getting customers quickly. Frankly, you might as well start flushing your dollars down the drain.

Your customers and prospects aren’t idiots. They know when they’ve opted into a mailing list. So if your business suddenly starts appearing in their inbox, that’s going to make them mad.

This can lead to bad-mouthing online, which can definitely affect your brand reputation.

And let’s not forget, there’s no guarantee that the list you buy will be full of qualified leads. You really MUST have people's permission to email them; it’s the law.

So instead of wasting your time, money and resources on buying mailing lists, put that effort into building a must-have lead magnet. You’ll build your list slower, but you’ll have a greater chance of converting these leads into customers.

4. Don't send too many emails in a week.

Do you want to receive five to six emails a week from the same brand? I know I don’t.

You want to be seen as a welcome guest in your prospects’ lives, not a pest. Emailing too often can quickly turn you into the friend that people avoid by silencing their phones when you call.

So don’t overwhelm your readers. Limit the number of emails you send.

5. Don’t go straight for the hard sell.

No one likes a pushy salesperson.

If you only ever send "buy my stuff" emails, your unsubscribe rate will be pretty high. Remember, email is about building reciprocal relationships. Everyone needs to win.

But if you don’t educate, entertain, or deliver value, you’ll quickly become a parasite that needs to be exterminated. So stick to the 3:1 ratio. Three value-building emails to one promotional email.

6. Don't use spammy trigger words.

These are the words that spam filters send straight to spam folders. Your email could genuinely be a wealth of good advice, but if you’ve used a spammy word in your subject line or the body of your email, your subscriber will probably never see it.

Here are a few words to avoid.

• Make money
• Get rich
• Earn extra money
• Limited time
• Order now
• No fees
• Free
• Bonus
• Urgent
• Unlimited
• Exclusive deals
• Instant
• For instant access
• Once-in-a-lifetime
• Join millions of
• Americans
• What are you waiting for?
• Congratulations!
• Double your income
• Message contains
• This isn’t spam

And that’s the six DON’Ts of email marketing. Make sure you’re not making these mistakes.

Wrapping Up...

Email marketing is a powerful strategy when done the right way. Follow the steps listed above, and your list of subscribers will actually look forward to receiving your emails. Your open rate and click-through rate will improve, and you’ll close sales more often.

What’s your biggest struggle when it comes to email marketing? I’d love to know.

If you enjoyed this article, you might want to check out our post on How to Set Up Your Sales Funnel. Check it out and let me know if you found it helpful.

There are four major challenges of email marketing. I’ve already covered how to guarantee your email gets delivered here. That’s the first challenge. Now we’re going to talk about getting your emails opened and read.

Inboxes are typically cluttered. You know that. Yours is. I know mine is. If you’re writing overly promotional copy, your emails will be buried in your recipient's crowded inbox, unanswered and worse, tossed into the garbage.

A successful email marketing campaign starts with a good email open rate. This will get you more click-throughs, more conversions, and more revenue.

In this post, I’m going to talk about the three key elements of getting your email opened, then I’ll explain what you need to ensure your email gets read.

How to Get Your Email Opened

1. Use Your Name as the Sender.

People are more likely to open an email from a person, instead of a brand. Let me ask you this, what’s the first thing you think of when you see a brand name in your inbox? Probably that it’s going to be some sort of sales pitch. Maybe you open it. Maybe you don’t.

But getting an email from a name is different.

If you're subscribed to my email list, you’ll know my marketing emails show up with my personal name as the sender. So, you can see "Allan Dib" and not "Lean Marketing." It's coming from allan@, not info@ or sales@.

This helps my subscribers to know they’re getting a personal email from me, Allan Dib. So they know I wrote it.

Whereas, using "info" or "sales," or whatever role-based email address is too generic. Aim to stand out. You want people to feel like they’re getting a personal note from you. That’s massively powerful.

2. Use a Domain Name.

Aside from using your name, your email should be signed by a legitimate website. As you can see, the "Show Details" box lets you check that my emails are signed by leanmarketing.com, which is our outgoing mail server.

Why is this important? I've seen a lot of phishing emails over the years and they're becoming more and more identical to the real ones. People need to know that they’re getting a legitimate email from you.

3. Use a Compelling Subject Line.

Like any good book, a title can draw you in or leave you wanting. I want you to think of your subject line like the title of a book. What’s going to pique the interest of your subscribers? What’s going to make them think, I have to know what this is about.

You can take in a subject line at a glance, so you literally have milliseconds to grab their attention.

But here's the tricky part: creating a compelling subject line. Unfortunately, there's no secret formula to crafting a great subject line. Instead, I like to keep it simple and catchy. Let your personality come through. Ask a question or make it the lead for a story you’ll tell in the email.

Here’s a few other handy tips to try:

• Keep it short and sweet.
• Don't use title case.
• Leave the punctuation out.
• Keep it personal and add the recipient's name.
• Add an emoji if it's appropriate.
• Tease the reader by creating some sort of intrigue.

So we’ve covered how to ensure your email gets opened, now let’s look at three key elements to getting your emails read.

How to Get Your Email Read

1. Keep It Plainly Formatted.

Format your email like how you'd write it to a friend. As you can see, I don't use heaps of links, graphics, logos, and things like that. It's done on purpose because I want people (and spam filters) to feel like it's an email coming from a human being.

And think about it—emails from friends tend to be plainly formatted. No fancy, colorful visuals. No logos. Just text.  

Now if you're selling something visual, like food or clothing, it makes sense to add images because your business is imagery-based. But generally speaking, text-based emails are the way to go.

2. Personalize Your Email.

I have 40,000 people on my mailing list and this figure continues to grow. But I write my emails like they’re just going to one person.

This is the best way to build a connection with a reader. Words like "you all" or "you guys" give an impression that you're sending an email to a group. It feels less personal, and you draw people away from you.

So even if your emails are going out to tens of thousands of people, write as if you're chatting to a friend over coffee. Write as if you're carrying on a conversation. Show your personality and attitude in your emails.

3. Tell a Story.

So many people get into professional writing mode when it comes to email marketing. They use overly formal words like:

• I hope you are well.
• Thank you for purchasing...
• Here's more information about...
• I completely understand how you feel.
• Please do not hesitate to contact me.

These are all cliché email phrases that might either confuse or bore your readers. What's worse is after using these, many entrepreneurs dive instantly into a hard sell. This is not how email marketing works.  

What works is writing like how you speak in real life. Make it engaging. Tell a story. It can be anything funny or embarrassing that’s happened to you. If your readers can relate to your story or experience, you're more likely to get a response. And that should be the goal because email marketing is a two-way street.

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

‍

Take the next Step

Right, so you know you need to personalize your emails. You know you need to be sending emails from your personal account as opposed to your business name. What’s next? Start implementing.

Instead of sending a designed email template to your list of subscribers, try plain text. And measure the results. Change your business email address to your name. Play around with clever subject lines. Ditch the professional lingo and keep it casual. Lastly, don’t forget to add a story element to your email.

These are the ingredients to an email that gets opened and read. Next you need to focus on getting your email actioned. You can find out more about that here.

Before you go, what other tips would you suggest for getting more people to read and open your emails?

I regularly get emails from clients and prospects asking me how to generate new leads or convert qualified leads to customers more easily.

You're here because you've probably got a decent customer base, but you want to expand. Unfortunately, word-of-mouth marketing only brings in a few new customers a year. You need a lead generation strategy. At least that's what a few marketing friends have suggested.

Great, but what is lead generation? And then what?

Getting prospects on your mailing list is only the first step. Just because they found your business doesn't mean they're going to buy your product or service. That's where lead nurturing comes in.

Now, if all of this sounds like a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo, don't worry.

Generating leads and building your sales pipeline doesn't need to be difficult. I'm here to explain the difference between lead generation and lead nurturing and why you need both to scale your business, staff, and revenue. Sound good?

So, let's start with the basics.

What is a lead?

A "lead" is a high-value potential customer—someone who has raised their hand and indicated they're interested in learning more about your products and services. You know because they:

• Input their details into an online form on your website.
• Sent a message through live chat.
• Called your business's contact number.
• Interacted with you on social media.

But how do you generate leads? With a few strategic marketing tactics. I like to focus on direct response marketing, particularly for small businesses. Brush up on your knowledge here.

What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is the process of using a piece of content—it could be a lead magnet, free trial, landing page, podcast, Google Adword, whatever—to attract and capture a potential customers' interest to lead them through the sales funnel.

It's a long-term game. Lead generation is not about closing sales, it's about starting a conversation because conversations lead to sales. And it’s typically done in two ways: inbound and outbound.

Inbound Lead Generation

Inbound lead generation is my preferred process when building a sales funnel.

This allows prospects to go over your website, visit your social media page, and decide what to do next. Your goal with inbound lead generation is to help, not sell.

Outbound Lead Generation

Outbound lead generation, instead of relying on your prospects to find you, you find them. Unlike inbound, this is for closing deals rather than helping or educating.

If you're in the startup phase or you're new to marketing your business, it's a good idea to have a mix of inbound and outbound lead generation. But you can steadily move away from cold calling and cold outreach once you've built brand awareness.

Benefits of Lead Generation

Here are four benefits of using an effective lead generation program.

• Brand awareness: Lead generation expands your reach and educates your target market about your products and services.
• Defined target market: Knowing your target market  is just the first step. With lead generation, you can identify which leads fit your buyer persona.
• Trust and authority: As you generate leads, you build trust among your prospects. You can also be seen as an expert or authority figure in your niche or industry.
• Growing customer base: The reason lead generation effectively increases your customer base is that it naturally fits within the buyer's journey. The more leads you generate, the more prospects you can turn into customers.

Five Examples of Lead Generation

I like to have multiple forms of lead generation. At Lean Marketing, we generate leads through my eBook, social media, blog articles, lead magnet (1PMP framework), SEO, speaker events, podcast appearances, PR, and PPC.

1. Lead Magnet

A lead magnet will help you attract high-converting website visitors and get new, paying customers. When using one, you have to offer it for free.  

For example, I've been known for The 1-Page Marketing Plan. Anyone who visits my website can download the 1PMP canvas for free. It's a great headstart for someone who wants to improve their marketing.

Although you might give something valuable for free, this will help you grow your email list and ultimately drive conversions.

2. Blogging

Content is king. I've found that the best way to attract qualified leads is to answer their questions or solve their problems. And writing SEO blog articles is a great way to do just this. With content marketing, you can provide value and build your database of potential customers.

For example, let's say you're in the HVAC industry. Instead of posting promotional blogs, talk about their common problems and build content that will help them.

Then, add a call-to-action (CTA) at the end. Do you want them to call you? Send an email? Set an appointment? Make sure you capture their contact information.

3. Social Media

Everyone's now on social media. Besides building a website, create a social media page where prospects can find you through an instant mobile search.

Most businesses use Facebook. But if you want to define your strategy further, I'd say go for specifics. Instagram and Pinterest are great for visuals. LinkedIn is the best for B2B marketing. Twitter is for short, punchy pitches.

Creating compelling content with a CTA is your perfect combo for this lead generation program.

4. Referrals

Do you want to get high-quality leads with less effort than it takes to do cold calling? You should consider having a referral strategy.

Referral marketing can grow your customer base. The goal is to let your existing customers spread the word about your brand, and you'll expand your reach. This, in turn, will help you gain more customers.

The best time to ask for a referral is right after a customer made a purchase. Send your winning referral script or template, and once you've closed a referral, give a warm "thank you" to the original referrer to encourage them to do more.

5. PPC

Ever heard of pay-per-click? This is where you target the right keywords, make them appear in places like Google Ads, and ensure they're related to your business. You can get leads through clicks from prospects interested in contacting you, sign up in your mailing list.

It's essential to choose the right lead generation techniques to use. Not all of them work for your business, so you have to assess your strategy. Don't be afraid to try and test different strategies. Give them a trial period, and track the leads you get. If you earned more than you paid, it's worth it. If not, go ahead and try something new.

What is Lead Nurturing?

Now that you've got a handful of leads, what's next? You continue the conversation. So, you build relationships with them, move them through each stage of the buyer's journey until they are ready to make a purchase.

It's not as easy as following up with a prospect until they're ready to buy from you. True nurturing is a process. It isn't doesn't happen overnight.

It takes roughly five touch points of contact to become a factor in your prospect's mind. So expect to spend up to twelve emails before your lead trusts you enough to buy from you.

It's all about being customer-centric. You have to get inside their heads and answer these questions:

• What do they need?
• What are the pain points that you'd like to address?
• What keeps them up at night?
• What are their hopes and dreams?

The best way to do this is through consistent communication and engagement. You have to listen and get to know more about your target market. The better you understand your target market, the more you'll create a better lead nurturing strategy and get more conversions.

Benefits of Lead Nurturing

The purpose of a lead nurturing sequence is to stay in touch with prospects who're not ready to buy right now. You want to show up in your prospect's life at least once a week with content that is relevant, valuable, and entertaining. When done right, here's what you can get from it:

• Maintain and grow relationships: Nurturing leads brings you closer to your prospects. You can establish rapport and eventually develop relationships.
• Boost sales ratio: Lead nurturing drives conversions. This will increase sales of your products and services too.
• Automation: The good news is you don't have to spend most of your time qualifying and nurturing leads. You can automate your lead nurturing program by using software like a CRM. For example, you can use a tool to schedule calls, send emails, and guide prospects in your sales funnel.
• New leads: Satisfied prospects turned into customers will provide word-of-mouth and referrals. This is another way to generate new leads.

Lead Generation vs Lead Nurturing - which is better in marketing?

Neither, really. Lead generation and lead nurturing work hand-in-hand; you need both if you want to consistently attract high-quality leads and move them through the buyer's journey until they're ready to buy.

Once you get new, qualified leads through lead generation, nurture them until they grow into meaningful customer relationships. Educate, entertain, and inspire. I have this saying: Help, don't hustle.

You want to help your prospects. So I like to deliver a result in advance of a sale. It makes the buying process much more fluid.

Then start testing and optimizing methods. If you want to explore content marketing, create a formula that provides value to your target audience. Or, if you're going for email marketing, test different email templates and find out which generates the highest number of leads.

The goal is to drive more sales but focus on the next step in the sales process. When you focus on the end, you don't sell the next step, and you lose potential customers.

But before achieving that:

• Create and develop valuable customer relationships
• Analyze your results
• Update your sales and marketing strategy

If you've done your homework, you've just created a lead nurturing sequence that answers their questions and builds trust. And you'll start raking in dollars.

Next Steps In Your Lead Generation And Lead Nurturing Process

So that's the difference between lead generation and lead nurturing. You need both strategies if you want to attract qualified leads and convert to customers consistently.

Now here's what to do next. Grab a pen and paper or a blank Google doc and write out what marketing assets you currently use to generate leads.

• Are you solely relying on referrals to grow your business, or do you have a lead magnet?
• Where are there gaps that you can fill? So, what marketing assets can you build to help attract more qualified leads? Do you need to open a LinkedIn account? Should you invest more time into SEO and crafting video blogs?

Then you need to think about what happens after you’ve acquired a lead.  

• Are you still relying on quick discovery calls, or have you written an email lead nurturing sequence?
• Do you manually send these out to your email list, or are you using a CRM to carry the load?
• How are you converting new leads to new customers?

If you don't have a lead nurturing email sequence yet, I've written a blog article showing you how to quickly convert prospects to customers.

I’d love to hear from you. What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to generating and nurturing leads?  

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.

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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.‍‍

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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‍

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.