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Smarketing
Smarketing is a strategy in which sales and marketing departments cooperate and communicate to achievetheir company’s goals. It helps generate leadsand increase revenues.
In this article, we’ll find out why smarketing is important and review the steps necessary to implement this strategy.
Why is smarketing important?
Since all companies strive to increase sales, they need to improvetheircustomer acquisition and retention. To do it, marketing teams communicate with the sales departments since salespeople can indicate the stages of a company’ssales funnel where most leads stop performing any actions. Afterward, marketers can remove these gapsand decide whether it’s better to generate leads by teaching how to use a company’s service with demos, sending informative emails, writing guest posts, or providing educational content.
The cooperation between sales and marketing helps brands prosper and establish their positions as industry leaders. With this strategy, on the one hand, salespeople receive information necessary to make warm callsand have insights about their leads’behaviorand other important facts. On the other hand, marketers better understand theirprospectsand the places they come from.
This information enables your marketing team to figure out what leads are more likely to convertinto customers and provide them with the best service and conditions to do this. Hence, your marketing team can relocate their effort and resources efficiently to increase ROI.
Now that you know the benefits and importance of smarketing, let’s move to some steps that can help implement this strategy.
6Steps to Implementing a Smarketing Strategy
Define common goals
Ensure communication between teams
Share your experiences
Arrange regular meetings
Create an information-sharing agreement
Utilize collaboration tools
We’ve prepared six steps that will enable you to leverage the strategy for your business. These steps are imperative if you want to get new leads and increase yoursales volume.
Define common goals.It’s essential to establish common objectives for your campaigns and other shared tasks tocoordinate yoursales and marketing departments’ work. When the teams are working towards achieving specific goals, they can easily unite for the common good. Since each team has its own strengths important for your company, marketers and sales managers should cooperate and utilize their skills and knowledge to achieve excellent results.
Ensure communication between teams. Your company will be able to reach certain goals only when your teams can effectively communicate, understand, and listen to each other. That’s why they should meet and discuss their campaigns, objectives, and other tasks altogether.
Share your experiences. Members of sales and marketing teams should pay attention to each other and show empathy. Both sales managers and marketers can feel stressed or under pressure during their workday. Therefore,they need to support each other and share their successes and failures in achieving your company’sgoals. The best way to find a solution to an urgent problem is by using the power of cooperation.
Arrange regular meetings. Since communication is a critical factor, your sales and marketing teams should meet at least once a week. Use this time to share experiences, successes, and challenges, analyze your recent campaigns, and discuss new ideas. Choose representatives from each team to attend the meetings and report about your current situation.
Create an information-sharing agreement. Ensure that the teams you work with have access to the necessary data since it is crucial for understanding metrics, leads, the performance of marketing campaigns, etc. However, having access to data isn’t enough. You should develop a clear and effective strategy to use the information you have correctly and make the right business decisions. Besides, consider using a CRMto automate the process and allow team members to manage the sales funnel and monitor your company’s metrics. LIKE.TG’s CRMallows you to manage your sales process and communicate with customers effectively.
Utilize collaboration tools. To ensure effective collaboration between sales and marketing teams, make use of special tools for communication, sharing documents, assigning tasks, and tracking their progress. It’s especially useful if some of your team members work remotely. Firstly, create a shared team email account to store all information in one place andmake sure your teams have access to it. Secondly, leverage video conferencing platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom to communicate with your teams online. Thirdly, make use of Google Docs. It enables real-time collaboration and is time-saving. Moreover,consider implementingproject management tools like actiTIME, Trello, Wrike, or ClickUp to ensure seamless communication and delegate tasks effectively.
To conclude, implementing smarketing techniquescan have lots of benefits for your business. It increases revenue and improves customer experience and relationships between and among your teams. Hence, pay attention to the steps above to implement this smart technique.
Selective demand
Selective demand is the demand for a specific brand, rather than for a general product category. This approach occurs when brands create messages intended to increase their brand identity and drive interest to their products.
In this article, we'll give you a bird’s-eye-view of selective demand and provide you with some tips on how to boost it.
Selective vs Primary Demand
You can present your advertising message using two different options. Let’s discover each of them to understand the difference.
Selective demand
Most marketing campaigns involve a selective demand approach because companies seek to show customers their competitive advantage. This motivates consumers to choose products or services from one company over competitors. This type of advertising correlates with the goals of your business (to attract more clients, distinguish yourself from competitors, and receive higher revenue).
You can easily distinguish a selective demand from a primary message as it includes a brand name, company’s product, and information about the unique benefits of this particular brand. It’s a time-consuming process as companies fight for market share and customers.
Primary demand
If a company creates an advertising message that aims at driving interest in a product without focusing on its brand, they’re using primary demand. With such messages, companies try to convey the advantages of buying general products.
Generally, primary demand only occurs in two situations: when companies introduce a product to the market for the first time and when manufacturers want to generate interest in their product. The “Got milk?” campaign clearly demonstrates the second scenario. It was created in 1993 to encourage the consumption of milk and later used by milk processors.
Now that you know the peculiarities of each approach, let’s find out how to increase selective demand.
How to increase selective demand
We’ll provide you with three steps to boost your selective demand:
Define your brand’s competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is the ability of your brand to stay ahead of present or future competition. You need to evaluate the strong and weak sides of your competitors and determine what you can improve to be ahead. As soon as you define your brand’s strongest sides, communicate them through all of the marketing channels that you use to reach leads and customers.
Promote your company on various marketing channels. There are plenty of marketing techniques that help you promote your company: email marketing, blogs, webinars, pay-per-click advertising, and social media marketing. All of them can positively influence brand awareness and help you reach more people.
Ensure excellent customer service. Make sure that you have great customer support and salespeople who are always ready to answer questions, provide leads and customers with all the necessary information, and sell your products and services.
To sum it up, selective demand occurs when a certain brand wants to make people choose their products over others. Determine your strongest sides, provide excellent customer service, and promote your brand on various channels to boost your selective demand.
SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a website optimization for further website promotion in search engines rating.
The higher the position of your website occupies while searching, the higher the probability is that a user visits your site due to the reason that almost 100% of users use only the top three links while searching. Only about 20-50% of users visit the tenth link of the first page. The second page of a search engine is visited only by 10-20% of users. Therefore, any resource wishes to occupy the top 10 positions, but unfortunately, the number of competing websites is increasing, and it is not so easy to occupy the initial positions. That is why a question occurs: How to conquer this summit and to be a leader? SEO here is extremely useful.
SEO is Divided into 3 Parts
The first part
It is the work inside the website. This work includes the correction of possible errors, adding or modification of the content, HTML-code of the website pages, interlinking, etc. This is so-called internal optimization. You should also take into account that the algorithms of various search engines differ.
The second part
It's the website development. At this stage, you have to bring the resource to the first positions with the help of the groups of events, performed out of the sites (on the other sites, forums), the aim of which is to increase the necessary reference mass and to promote the site according to the targeted requests, as well as to increase its authority. This process is called website promotion or external optimization.
The third part
It is the maintaining of the achieved positions and improving the results obtained. To keep the occupied areas you should observe both your own and your competitors’ results; change keywords, texts for links, and site content.
Shopper marketing
Shopper marketing is an approach that implies enhancing consumers’ shopping experience at the point of purchase. It aims to analyze customers’buyer journey and increase engagement across all stages.
In this article, you’lldiscover the role of shopper marketing and get to know some effective tactics.
Why is shopper marketing important?
Business owners are always looking for ways to increase consumption, and shopper marketing helps them do just that. This approach is focused on raising consumers’ demand and engagement on their path to making a purchase.
Implementing shopper marketing means analyzing customers’ behavior and all the external factors influencing their purchase decisions. Since this approachis great foronline and offline stores, we’ll shed light on the factors affectingthem both.
Shopper marketing is effectiveat leastthanks to all the valuable data you can obtain. Conduct research, make observations, and create focus groups to collect insights that will be the foundation of your strategy. If you ownan offline store, track your buyers’ behavior before they enter it, when they move from aisle to aisle, and after they leave it. Note what makes them stop, look through specific products, and monitor what makes them put an item back.
Analyze the products shoppers buy most frequently and those that aren’t popular among them. Study their buyer journey to discover how long it takes visitors tobecome buyers, reviewing your merchandising techniques down the road. Talk to your clients todefine theirmotivations,know if they prefercheaper alternativesto your products, and identifyyour percentage of price-sensitive customers. All this data will provide you with a clearer picture of youraudience’s preferences and driving motivationsat the point of purchase,so you’ll be able to use this info to enhance your buyers’ experience and blow up sales.
Shopper marketing is often confused with trade marketing, so let’s discover the difference between these approaches.
Shopper Marketing vs. Trade Marketing
The main difference between these two marketing approaches lies in the focus of their activity. Trade marketing is focused on retailers, wholesalers, and distributors, aiming to increase the demand withina chain. Conversely, shopper marketing is focused on buyers. This approach aims to create an environment that will driveconsumers to make a purchase and ensure the best customer experience.
Now it’s time to unveil some effective shopper marketing tactics.
Shopper Marketing Tactics
In this section, we’lltalk about shopper marketingtactics with examples for both online and offline stores.
POS materials
These items are placed in stores to attract shoppers’ attention to certain products on sale. They also help visitors navigate the store and find their favorite brands’ products. POS materials include displays, wobblers, shelf talkers, shelf stoppers, posters, danglers, etc.
Demos and Product Sampling
Demoshelp marketers promote new products, increase awareness, and, most importantly, let shoppers test the product and evaluate its benefits. Store visitors are offered to taste products or try cosmetics before buying. This way, marketers increase shoppers’ trust.
Design and Ambience
Design and ambiance assist marketers in creating a positive shopping atmosphere. Music and scentscan help youmake visitors stay in yourstore and move from aisle to aisle for a long time. The choice of music depends onyourindustry, but slow and quiet songs tend to make people stay in stores for longer. Christmas songs help increase sales during winter holidays, andjazz and classical musichelp sell high-value products.
Pleasant scents don’t leave shoppers indifferent either. People love the smell of freshly-baked bread, coffee, and fruits.
Chatbots and Live Chats
Nowadays, almost every brand haseither a live chat on its site or a chatboton popular social media platforms. These are personal assistants that introduce a store to users,presentrelevant products, and helpplace an order. Users enjoy interacting withbotsusing buttons, quick replies, and input since they can save time looking forcertain products. LIKE.TG offers drag and drop builder to create a chatbot or a live chat for your website to convert visitors into customers.
Below you can see how Warby Parker helps site visitorsusing a live chat. Users can click a button to get help with the most common issues,findanswers to their questions usingthe search bar, or chat with the help of user input.
You can create a chatbot for Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Telegramwithout any coding skills for free with the LIKE.TG chatbot builder.
Geo-Targeted Ads
Facebook and Google provide users with the opportunity to create geo-targeted ads. This way, you cancreate relevant messages, content, and ads for users based on location data.Such an ad is a great chance to attract more people to local services, such as car repair shops, plumbers, medical services, etc.
Congrats, now you know the objectives of shopper marketing, the way it differs from trade marketing, some effective techniques, and examples.
Single opt-in
Single opt-in — is an email subscription method. It means that users are added to your mailing list right after they enter their email address and click “Subscribe.” There’s no need to confirm the subscription with a confirmation email.
Single opt-in and double opt-in methods are two options available for email marketers. They help facilitate email list growth with the help of a subscription form. Both methods are legal and easy to use. Read on to find out the difference between single opt-in and double opt-in and get to know how to create a subscription form with LIKE.TG.
Single Opt-in vs Double Opt-in
The fundamental difference between these two methods lies in the number of steps a user must take to subscribe. Consequently, it will affect the number of conversions.
Single opt-in is the simplest subscription method since it only requires a user to share their email address. There’s no need to check their inbox to confirm the subscription.
Look at the single opt-in form below. Givenchy offers users to subscribe to receive exclusive deals. They only need to enter their email address and they’re automatically added to the list.
Double opt-in requires an additional step. Using this subscription form method, a user receives a confirmation email and has to follow the link to join your mailing list.
Firstly, a user enters their email address and clicks “Subscribe”.
Then, they must confirm the subscription in their inbox.
A user should follow the link to join Etsy’s mailing list.
Now let’s take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of a single opt-in subscription method. They will help you choose the necessary option.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Single Opt-in
There are two main reasons that brands choose a single opt-in subscription method. Check them out below.
Advantages
One-step subscription. Marketers go for this method due to its simplicity. It’s quite obvious that a significant part of potential clients will be too lazy to go to their inbox and confirm their subscription if they don’t yet know what to expect from a brand. So, having only one field to fill in seems like the best choice.
A quick way to grow an email list fast. If your short-term goal is bringing in new leads, a single opt-in form will do just that. A one-step subscription form results in higher conversions since users only need to share their email address. Moreover, a brand can start communication with new leads immediately without waiting for a user to confirm their addresses.
Despite such attractive benefits, single opt-in does have disadvantages that make some marketers choose double confirmation.
Disadvantages
Lower email deliverability rate. Due to the simplicity of this subscription method, you can get a list full of invalid addresses. They include emails with typos, recycled spam traps, and invalid email addresses entered on purpose by your competitors. As a result, your email will either bounce or your competitor will mark them as spam. All of these will harm your sender reputation.
Low-quality mailing list. It’s no wonder that people who confirmed their desire to be a part of your community two times are more engaged. They have certain expectations and know what they want from your brand. So, emails sent to subscribers collected with single opt-in will have lower open rates and CTR.
Now that you’re fully aware of two sides of the same coin, it’s time to choose a method you like and create a subscription form. No matter which method you prefer, the LIKE.TG subscription form builder provides both single opt-in and double opt-in options.
How to Create a Single Opt-in Subscription Form
Register with LIKE.TG
Choose a subscription form type
Design your subscription form
Choose the necessary subscription method
With our drag-and-drop subscription form builder, you don’t need any technical skills. Besides, it won’t take you more than half an hour to create a form. You can start collecting your mailing list right now for free. Follow the steps below.
Step 1: Register with LIKE.TG
If you don’t have an account yet, create it. Alternatively, you can sign up with Facebook or Google.
Step 2: Choose a subscription form type
Go to the “Subscription forms” tab and click “Create a new form.” Now, choose the type of form that best fits your goals and choose the mailing list where all the addresses will be added.
Step 3: Design your subscription form
On the left, you’ll see all the options available. Drag any element to your form and edit its style, colors, font, and background in the right panel. You can add any field you need to collect customer data.
Step 4: Choose the necessary subscription method
Go to the “Form options” in the upper right corner and navigate to “Opt-In Settings.” With “Enable double opt-in” disabled, all the users who share their email address with you will be added to your mailing list immediately. Remember that single opt-in is set by default.
Then, go to the “Post-subscription message” and customize the text if needed. Users will see it after they enter their email address.
If you decided to use the double opt-in method, just click “Enable double opt-in” and edit the text of your confirmation email.
That’s all. For more detailed instructions, follow this step-by-step guide. Start collecting your mailing list right now!
SMART goal
A SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely) goal is an approach used to set accurate and reachable objectives. It helps decide on the right goals that can be achieved within a specific timeframe.
In this article, we’ll unveil why it is important to set SMART goals, define the criteria for setting them, and reviewsome examples. We’ll also find out how to set SMART goals.
Why is it important to set SMART goals?
Startupowners often set unrealistic objectives that result in rapid failure. Defining SMART goals is necessary if you want to avoid this scenario. The method helps improveyour company’s productivity and effectiveness in different situations. A business can gradually increase its revenue and boost customer service, customer experience,customer loyalty, and usability. With SMART goals, entrepreneurs can develop a step-by-step marketing plan, set deadlines, control their progress, avoid unnecessary expenditures, and reduce the risk of failure.
You need to defineall the aimsyou want to reach in more detail and be specific, timely, and realistic. With measurable and achievable objectives, your company will be able to develop a detailed marketing plan and move faster toward your key target.
Setting your goals based on the SMART approach allows you to improve the probability of reachingyour desired results. In the next section, we’ll review thefive criteriathat can help youdefineyour goals correctly.
5 Criteria for Setting SMART Goals
For many companies, it’s often a problem to seta goal thatis possible to reach. That’s why there are several criteria you should follow to set clear objectives your brand can attain within a certain time frame.
Specific. Try to be specific and avoid using generic words and phrases to reach the objectives you strive for.Make sureto move all your motivation and efforts towards the achievement of your primary target. There are several aspects you should pay attention to before settingyour goal. You need to consider the resources you have, limits you might face, reasons why achieving this objective is essential for your business, aims you want to attain, people involved, and location.
Measurable. It’s crucial to set the goals you can measure. By having such objectives in mind, you’ll focus on your achievements and deadlines to reach your target. Ask yourself “how much,” “how many,” and “how to find out if it’s achievable” to set accurate goals.
Achievable. When defining the goals, don’t overestimate your abilities — they should be realistic to attain. Make sure you have enough information, money, personnel, an effective strategy, a detailed plan, and experts who can help you reach your target.
Relevant. It’s critical to ensure that the goal is relevant to your business needs and canhelp your company bloom and grow. Check whether it’s worth spending time and effort to achieve it.
Timely. Every goal should have a deadline— the time when you can seetangible results. You need to take this fact into account when delegating tasks.
If your goals comply with all the criteria above, you’ll have a clear direction and be able to develop a marketing plan. Next, you’ll find out how to formulate SMART goals.
How to Set SMART Goals
With SMART goals, you have an opportunity to obtain more clarity on your wants and business plans. Follow thesefive tips to get this right from the first try:
Decide what you want to achieve.
Think about success and what it means for your company.
Find out whether the goal you set is reasonable.
Make sure to adjust youraims to your overarching goals.
Develop a schedule, and decide on the deadline to reach your target.
Let’s review several examples of SMART goals in detail so that you can better understand how to use the method.
Examples of SMART Goals
We willcreate some fictional scenarios and develop SMART goals for each of them.
Example 1
Speak is a language school that strives to increase the sales volume of its English courses and attract new students. At this moment, the company manages to attain 100 potential clients, and 25 of them have converted into students. It indicates that the conversionrate is 25%. Let’s set the SMART goal for this scenario:
Specific: Improve conversion rate.Measurable: Double the conversion rate.Achievable: The school has all the necessary resources,butits team should use a WhatsAppchatbotbesides email campaignssinceit is a preferred communication channel among the school’s customers.Relevant: An increase in conversions will help improve the company’s reputation, credibility in the market, and revenue.Timely: The school is ready and has all the necessary resources to improve its marketing plan and see tangible results within 20 days.
The final SMART goalis “to double conversion rates within 20 days.”
Example 2
A yoga teacher, Mia, sells her online course to people on Instagram and Facebook. She successfully sellsher online course to 50 people each month. During the last year, the number of Mia’s students reached 600 individuals. After identifying the most effective channels for reachinghertarget audience, the yoga teacher decided to define a new goal. It’s necessary to increase Mia’s sales by 50%. Let’sdevelop a possible SMART goal for this situation.
Specific: Attract new customers.Measurable: Attain 1200 clients.Achievable: Mia’s team should identify the most effective communication channels and eliminate those that bringpoor results to acquire more customers. Mia needs to increaseher budget to do this.Relevant: An increase in the number of customers will have a positive impact on Mia’s revenue, recognition, customer base, and position in the market. Timely: 12 months.
The goalis “to attract 1200 clients during one year.”
Setting SMART goals is one of the primary conditionsof success. Define your objectives the right way to develop an effective plan for your actions and make your business prosper.
Sender reputation
Sender reputation is a score assigned to a sender based on the quality of email campaigns, their frequency, size, and user’s interaction.It determines whether email service providers will deliver emails to users’ inboxes or not. However, there’s no single metric to measure it. Choosing a reliable email marketing service liberates you from caring about sender reputation.
Why is sender reputation important?
Influences email deliverability
Saves recipients from fraud
Identifies the level of success
Influences email deliverability. Email service providers, like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and others, are responsible for delivering emails to customers’ inboxes. Metrics that form the sender reputation, like email authentication, open rates, number of deleted messages and fake addresses, etc., are the main criteria that ESPs take into consideration.
Saves recipients from fraud. ESPs use the sender's reputation to identify and suppress cybercriminals, who aim to manipulate people’s trust.Cybercriminalshide under successful brands’ names to trick subscribers out of their personal information like their card number, or passwords.
Identifies the level of success. If your company has a solid sender reputation, it shows that subscribers like your email campaigns. On the contrary, if the sender's reputation gets low numbers, it is high time to take action and find out why.
Six Factors Influencing the Sender Reputation
Email sending volume and frequency
SPAM complaints
SPAM traps
Bounces
User interaction
Unsubscribing
Email sending volume and frequency. It matters how many emails a company sends during each email campaign and how often it takes place. If your IP address is new, your sender reputation is still low. In this case,sending a massive number of emails will look suspicious for internet service providers, so they are likely to add your IP to a blacklist.
SPAM complaints. This measurement counts emails that subscribers marked as SPAM. Getting to a spam-box is the worst-case scenario in email marketing.
SPAM traps. It looks like a real email address, but it doesn’t belong to a real person. A mailing list includingspam trap addresses is a signal for ESPs that a company doesn’t use an opt-in strategy. ESPs restrain mailing activity from the law violators and blacklists them.
Bounces. Soft bounces are temporary problems that don’t depend on the sender’s actions. Hard bounces, however, indicate the fake addresses in the sender’s mailing list influencing sender reputation in the wrong way.
User interaction. The users’ behavior towards an emaildemonstrates how valuable these emails are for the audience. High open rates, forwards and shares on socials mean that people enjoy emails while low open rates show that subscribers ignore newslettersand may delete them without regret next time.
Unsubscribing.An increasing number of unsubscribedusers means that email campaigns are irrelevant or the frequency irritates the audience.
How to Check the Sender Reputation
Mail-Tester
SenderScore
Monitoring the factors above gives an overall picture of your sender reputation. However, there are tools like Mail-Tester and SenderScore to get more specific information.
Mail-Tester
This tool analyzes an email's structure for any spammy words, files with prohibited content, technical issues, etc.
Copy a random address to send a test email to.
Create a mailing list for tests. Paste address from Mail-Tester. You can also add your business and personal addresses if needed. Build an email campaign and send it to the recently created mailing list.
Go back to Mail-Tester. Examine the results.
SenderScore
This service provides data about a domain, which is sending emails, and SSL information — small data files that digitally bind a cryptographic key to a company’s details.
Add an IP address or a domain name.
Look into the metrics.
Best Practices for Improving Your Sender Reputation
Verify your mailing list
Clean mailing list
Use double opt-in
Warm-up your IP
Improve your open rates
Allow setting preferences
Create valuable content
Verify your mailing list. If you collected email addresses long ago and haven't sent any email to their owners yet, verify your list. This way, you'll remove the spam traps, outdated and invalid emails, and addresses with typos. This is a great chance to increase your email deliverability and sender reputation.
Clean mailing list. Monitor how your subscribers react to your emails. If there are recipients who haven’t opened your email for an extended period, send a reactivation email. In case it doesn’t work, cut them loose.
Use double opt-in. Double opt-in ensures that only real and interested people without fake email addresses will join your mailing list.
Warm-up your IP. A new IP address is called “cold” because it hasn’t gained ESP credibility yet. Earning a good sender reputation takes a lot of time. Gradually increase your email sending volume to warm up your IP and bear the quality and relevance of your email campaigns in mind.
Improve your open rates. Pay attention to your open rates. Sender’s name, subject line, and preheaderthese form subscribers' first impressions of your email. Try different variations of these elements to find out what suits your audience best, and it will result in more opens.
Allow setting preferences. Give your audience a chance to set their preferences towards the frequency and types of emails. You can also ask your subscribers to share their information to create more personalized emails.
Create valuable content. Among all technical issues, providing subscribers with useful content is still the essence of email marketing.
Shoppable content
Shoppable content is an ad, video, image, or social media post a customer can click through to make an instant purchase. It helps a brand increase sales, provide a better customer experience, increase customer loyalty, and boost conversions.
In this article, we’ll uncover why shoppable content is important for eCommerce and unveil the types and examples.
Why is shoppable content important for eCommerce?
Brands offer different options for customers to shop. They can do it in-store, on websites, via apps, and others. With the rise in the use of social media, people can shop without leaving a platform by simply clicking a photo, video, or post. According to statistics, 4.62 billion people worldwide now use social media, and around 55.5% of US social media users aged 18 to 24 have purchased via social media networks. Since the number of customers on social media increases and they prefer to buy products online, companies provide shoppable content.
After clicking a shoppable ad, video, image, or social media post, customers proceed to the brands’ websites to complete the checkout or complete the transaction. It makes the purchasing process simple, fast, and convenient. With shoppable content, people can get what they wish without delays and a long sales funnel. By posting interesting and shoppable content, brands reduce the number of abandoned shopping carts and provide a better customer experience. As a result, customer loyalty increases.
Many people like to make instant shopping decisions and buy products fast. However, the long purchasing process might discourage them from buying and going through the checkout. Shoppable ads, images, and videos help avoid this scenario, and the odds of conversions improve.
Now that you know why shoppable content is important for eCommerce, it’s time to explore the types.
Types of Shoppable Content
The type of shoppable media you’ll choose for your business depends on the target audience, product, and industry. We’ll list the 4 main types for you to consider.
Social media posts
Social media is a perfect place for your shoppable posts. Various communication platforms allow you to drive users’ attention to your product without interrupting their browsing. Posts on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok include images of products and tags. Once users tap a product, they can see a window with a price and a link to the brand’s website. If they are interested in a product, they can click the link to proceed to the website and complete the order.
For example, JLo Beauty uses this type of shoppable content on Instagram to educate people about the available products and price points. The post also encourages subscribers to purchase and explore the benefits.
Videos
A video is a form of content that helps customers see the product in detail. It enables you to improve customer experience. Many people decide to buy a product after exploring a brand’s video. Shoppable video increases customer engagement and raises brand awareness.
For instance, with the video, IKEA shows its products in action.
User-generated content
Collecting social proof helps you earn customers’ trust. You can do it easily with user-generated content. Reviews, influencer posts, videos of opinion leaders, feedback, and recommendations will come in handy if you want to influence purchasing decisions of your target audience. These posts are more trustworthy so that they encourage users to buy your product. Consider collaborating with an influencer or collecting customer reviews to share them on your account.
For instance, Rare Beauty features a global stylist wearing the brand’s pencil and gel. This person has thousands of followers who listen to her advice.
Ads
Ads might disturb users’ free browsing, so they use ad blockers to avoid annoying advertising. However, shoppable ads are different in nature. These ads manage to grab attention and entice customers to purchase.
For example, Nom Nom uses Facebook to promote its ad and encourage customers to buy its product. The ad also includes the “Shop Now” button.
Now that you know the types, let’s walk you through some amazing examples.
Examples of Shoppable Content
You can encounter many excellent examples of shoppable content on social media networks like Instagram and Facebook.
Crocs
The famous shoe manufacturing brand uses shoppable content to its advantage. On its Instagram account, Crocs shares its product and invites customers to purchase by clicking the links that lead to the company’s website. This way, they entice users to purchase one when they scroll through their Instagram feed.
Habitat
Habitat, a brand that sells furniture and home accessories publishes Facebook posts to reach customers. The company shares attractive offers on the platform with the opportunity to click the “Shop Now” button and proceed to Habitat’s website where people can buy.
Eureka Street Furniture
Based in Australia, Eureka Street Furniture invites customers to shop online on Facebook. After tapping the image, the user can instantly see the prices of products depicted on it. The “View shop” button below the post enables visitors to explore products in the brand's shop on Facebook and then open the website if they decide to complete the purchase.
Congrats, now you know the types of shoppable content you can leverage to promote products. Hope our examples inspired you to create some posts, images, and videos that allow users to instantly shop for products.
Sender ID
Sender ID is the email validation system designed to prevent spoofing. Sender ID, for the large part, relies on SPFwith only slight differences.
What is the difference between Sender ID and SPF?
The main difference between Sender ID and SPF is that Sender ID is there to improve the primary deficiencies of SPF. The principal weakness of SPF is that it does not identify the address in the header, which indicates the sending party. It often happens that the address checked by SPF is different from the one in the header of the email. The header addresses are shown to the users and serve to reply to an email. It means that SPF checks only the "mail from" email addresses.
Sender ID and SPF are almost identical, with only slight differences.
Microsoft held the critical part of the patents of the Subscriber ID, which were licensed in a manner that did not conform to the rules of GNU General Public License, and which were not suitable for the implementation of free software. In 2006, Microsoft placed the patents under Open Specification Promise, which conforms to free and open-source licenses.
Search engine marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a type of marketing aimed at promoting a website on search engine results pages. Securing your website a high position in search results, SEM helps you generate more traffic and gain more customers.
What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
It’s difficult to avoid ambiguity while speaking about the differences between SEO and SEM. Pushing your website to the top of the search engine results page (SERP) may include organic promotion and paid advertising, such as PPC ads. SEO has always been viewed as organic promotion, while views on SEM have changed with time.
At first, the term SEM involved both paid and organic strategies. In this case, SEO appears as a part of SEM. However, now marketers use the phrase “search engine marketing” more and more for paid activities only, which makes SEM and SEO two different categories. To avoid confusion, in this article we’ll use the word SEM for paid search advertising only.
Why is SEM important?
Coupled with SEO, SEM helps your business be on the top of search results in Google, Bing, and other search engine players. The first page of search results gets over 71% of all the clicks.
Search engine marketing becomes more and more significant as a traffic generation channel. While click-through rates of organic search results have fallen by 13% in the first quarter of 2019, SEM skyrocketed by 75% in the same span.
Better yet, audiences are loyal to SEM. 75% of people said paid search ads help them find the information they search for, and over 30% clicked on a paid search ad because it directly answered their search query.
This data shows that search engine marketing is a great traffic source and customer acquisition channel. Read on to learn how your business can benefit from SEM.
Benefits of Search Engine Marketing
Higher conversion rates
Better brand awareness
Immediate results
Consistent traffic
It’s tempting to neglect paid search activities and invest in other marketing channels instead. However, SEM has tangible advantages. Let’s take a closer look at some of them.
Higher conversion rates. Using keywords, search engine marketing only catches customers who are potentially interested in your proposal. Half of the audience that comes to a retailer's website from paid ads is likely to make a purchase compared to those who come from an organic link.
Better brand awareness. SEM not only converts audiences who already know your brand; it can also boost brand awareness by up to 80%. When people search for something and see ads, they may not click on them, but still can recognize the product, brand, or even the URL.
Immediate results. While pushing your website to the top of organic search results often takes months, paid ads appear on top and bring results immediately. They help you reach your target audience instantly.
Consistent traffic. While your SEM campaigns are running, they generate additional traffic to your website. According to Google, 89% of this traffic is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused. This number is consistently high among different industries, such as automotive, healthcare, or travel. Put simply, SEM generates sustainable traffic all the time during your ad campaigns.
With all those benefits, search engine marketing looks too appealing to leave it on the table. Now it’s time to discover how SEM works.
How does SEM work?
From a searcher’s perspective, SEM looks like answers to their queries with “ad” or “sponsored” labels beside the search results. Search engines show them at the top of the results page. It helps paid ads gain more visibility compared to organic results.
From a marketer perspective, SEM appears to be a bit more sophisticated. Business professionals use a bunch of networks, such as Google Ads, Bing Ads, and so on. To start advertising, a marketer chooses the network and sets up the campaign by themselves.
To craft a campaign, you need to choose keywords – the words related to your promotion and used by searchers to find the information they need. For instance, if you are promoting running shoes, your keywords might be “running shoes” or “buy running shoes”. You can use specific, or long-tail, keywords to target your audience more precisely. Another option to make your campaign more effective is implementing other criteria, such as searcher’s location, age, gender, the device they use, or a certain time of the day to show ads.
Once your campaign is ready, SEM platforms decide when and where to show your ads considering competition with other brands targeting the same keywords. This system is called an Ad Auction. Your place on the SERP depends on the maximum amount you’re ready to pay for a click and your rating on the platform.
There are a ton of visual formats for how your ads will appear on the search results page. Let’s dive into this subject and unpack some popular types of search engine marketing.
Types of SEM
Text ads
Google shopping ads
Responsive ads
Local services’ ads
Here’s the point where the meaning of the term “search marketing” becomes a conundrum again. Referring to SEM as a whole lot of search promoting ways, we can divide it into organic search activities (SEO), paid activities, and local search, or marketing your business locally.
Meaning SEM as paid activities only, it’s possible to talk about different types of ads used by search engines. Let’s discuss the types the most popular platform – Google Ads – offers its users. Here are some of them:
Text Ads
This type is the most popular and easiest to craft. Text ads include headlines, body copy, and links to your website. Depending on the cost of the ad and the search engine, they may appear above, to the right of, or below organic listings.
Google Shopping Ads
This type of ad is based on the same principles of using keywords as the previous one. The difference is the visual part – Google shopping ads include pictures and prices. This format is perfect for selling products.
Responsive Ads
This format boils down to letting Google automatically adapt your ads to different searchers’ behavior patterns. All you need to do is type several headlines and descriptions for your campaign; the ad platform will test all of the possible combinations and show searchers the top-performing ads.
Local Service Ads
This option was made for local businesses, such as coffee shops, plumbers, real estate agents, and so on. Local service ads allow you to advertise only in a certain area and receive leads directly from potential customers.
Although we’ve only listed Google ad types, other search engines use similar formats. For instance, with Bing, you can find ads analogous to text ads and Google shopping ads.
We’ve unveiled search engine marketing benefits, essential work principles, and several types of ads. Let’s discover how to implement SEM in your marketing strategy.
How to Use SEM
Create a strategy
Collect a list of keywords
Add organic search promotion
Experiment with different types of ads
Check your campaign regularly
Launching a new complicated marketing channel from scratch can be tough. To make your experience with SEM smoother, stick to this list of the essential steps.
Create a strategy. Start by setting short and long-term goals for your SEM and align them with your business needs. For instance, if you want to gain more revenue, decide how many new customers you need to acquire to achieve this result. Then, define the amount of traffic you need and the budget you have. It will help you understand what campaigns, and with which frequency, you should use to meet your goals.
Collect a list of keywords. Before rolling out a paid campaign, generate a list of keywords associated with your business. You can copy keywords from competitors, generate them with online tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, or brainstorm with your colleagues. You are free to use more specific or general keywords and combinations of both. The main rule here is to only go for relevant words.
Add organic search promotion. Paid and organic search engine promotion activities work better together. Produced correctly, they reinforce each other and bring greater results. So, remember to add or tailor SEO to your SEM. To start search engine optimization from scratch, follow the tips from our guide on building an SEO strategy.
Experiment with different types of ads. Different types of ads may be more or less effective for certain businesses. To find the best option for you, try various ad formats, such as text or shopping ads. Test several ad platforms; chances are that underestimated paid submissions with Yahoo will be more effective for you than popular Google ads.
Check your campaign regularly. To evaluate the effectiveness of your search engine marketing campaigns, remember to keep track of their results. Check them once or twice a week to be able to make changes in case something goes wrong. Record all of the data and look for trends.
These basic rules will help you roll out and maintain search engine marketing. If you want to take your SEM game a notch higher, you’ll need to implement advanced strategies.
SEM Strategies
Voice search optimization
SEM automation
Device customization
Alternate ad platforms
Like every marketing channel, SEM changes every now and then. We’ve picked four strategies, which will help you stay on top and crush your business goals.
Voice search optimization
33% of adult audiences reported using voice search monthly at the beginning of 2019. Half of all searchers have used voice input in 2020. Voice search shopping is predicted to be a $40 billion market in two years. To stay ahead, you need to apply voice search optimization to your search engine marketing.
Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done – options for voice search optimization are quite limited. However, you can adjust your search ads right now. First of all, include more long-tail keywords – it will help your ads appear in more search results.
Another trick is to make your content more conversational. Notice how people chat in everyday life and apply this style to your search engine marketing.
SEM automation
Investments in search advertising are predicted to reach over $151 million in 2020 with annual growth of around 6%. For marketers with limited budgets, this means colossal competition and, probably, a drop in conversion rates. Thus, you’ll need to become even more creative to win the race.
SEM automation will help you get rid of routine tasks and find more time for planning strategies and activities. Consider using the Google Adwords automation features, such as smart campaigns, automated bidding, automated rules, and more.
Device customization
In 2019, 52% of internet traffic worldwide was generated on mobile devices. Probably, your potential customers see your ads on mobile screens rather than desktops. Track the amount of traffic from different devices and try to adjust your search engine marketing to the most prevalent type.
Optimize your ads and content connected with them for mobile to get more customers. For instance, Google mobile users would love to see ads with shorter headlines – 12-15 characters in comparison with 15-20 characters for desktop devices.
Remember to optimize the landing page for your ad leads too. Try to reduce the loading time to less than one second and make your webpage convenient for mobile users. You may also go for bigger buttons, lighter images, simpler design, and so on.
Alternate ad platforms
Google is considered to be the most popular platform for search ads – it makes up more than 70% of the market. However, the share of this giant has been falling for the previous three years, while other market players gain market share.
Take a closer look at other platforms, in particular Amazon. Not only this service is growing year after year, but it also has interesting features, especially for those who sell goods. The bottom line is Amazon ads have higher conversion rates; people may discover your brand on Google, but they come to Amazon with the intent to purchase. It makes Amazon ads the perfect channel to interact with your prospects in the lower stages of the marketing funnel.
Knowing more about SEM strategies, you may think it’s time to call it a day. However, there is always some space for improving your performance. To take it to the next level, consider adopting some industry best practices.
4 Best Practices to Improve Your SEM
Personalize Your Ads
Create Urgency with Countdowns
Align Your Ads with Landing Pages
Use Similar Audiences for Remarketing
We’ve collected several best practices to help you enrich your paid search program. Think about implementing some of them into your search engine marketing strategy.
Personalize Your Ads
Personalization is a must-have for every marketing channel; it brings amazing results. Adding personalization to your marketing activities helps you return 5-8 times more money than you’ve spent. Better yet, it can boost sales by 10% or more. To make your ads more relevant for your potential customers, you can tailor them by device or by the audience.
Use IF functions in Google Adwords to craft personalized messages. For instance, you can offer different discounts to different types of users: new customers, returning customers, cart abandoners, and so on.
Create Urgency with Countdowns
People fear missing an important opportunity, for instance, a great offer or bargain. It is called FOMO, or the fear of missing out, and can be used successfully in all possible marketing channels. You can play on this psychological trait in search engine marketing too.
Add an element of scarcity to your campaigns by using a countdown timer in Google Ads. It will count days, hours, and minutes until a certain event. You can set up countdowns in any text, responsive search, and other types of ads.
Align Your Ads with Landing Pages
Don’t underestimate the importance of search ads and landing pages they send searchers to. However, even if both are done perfectly, they do not always work their best in combination. If your ad doesn’t match your landing page, people will leave without making a purchase. On the other hand, the harmonized landing page and ad lead to a 39% increase in conversion.
Make sure your ad and landing page have the same design, addresses the same audience, uses the same call to action and copywriting style. To get even better results, follow our guide on increasing the landing page conversion rate.
Use Similar Audiences for Remarketing
Marketers and business owners realize how important it is to know your audience. They create typical buyer personas and try to target people based on their demographic data.
You can do the same thing for your search engine marketing in two clicks. Google collects data about your existing remarketing audiences. Better yet, it can recommend showing your ads to people with the same interests. All you need is to choose a campaign, select the “Audience” tab, and click the “Similar audience” bar. According to Google, this simple move may result in 60% more impressions, 48% more clicks, and 41% more conversions.
Here are some popular practices brands use to improve the performance of their search ads. Let’s learn a couple of new tricks from search engine marketing examples.
SEM Examples
Practice is the best teacher, but sometimes overlooking other brands’ tactics leads to better results. We’ve picked several examples of search engine marketing from different companies for you to adopt.
Numbers for Higher CTR
Numbers have a magical effect on the human brain – we consider them more valuable and trustworthy. Thus, texts with numbers tend to outperform text-only ads. For instance, numbers in headlines resonate with the audience more than any other type of headline.
The same principle works in search engine marketing. According to WordStream’s experiment, ads with numbers in headlines showed a 217% increase in CTR and a 23% improvement in conversion rates compared to the non-numbered ones.
The SEO agency Searchberg decided to make the most of the power of numbers and used them twice in their ad headline. At first, the company indicated the exact price for its service to underline the accessibility. Then, Searchberg added the number of days you need to see the result of their work. Combined, these figures create reasonable anticipation in prospects and boost the credibility of a company's proposal.
Sitelinks for more clicks
Extra links in search ads are a golden opportunity to hook more potential customers. You can tailor them to be shown on specific devices with tons of variables. It allows you to create a more personalized experience for different viewers and compose various calls to action. Better yet, sitelinks help you segment prospects instantly sending them to different landing pages.
The most significant advantage of sitelinks is their effect on conversion rates. Google claims that ads with sitelinks have a 10-20% higher CTR. To make those links even more effective, adjust them to the searcher’s needs and keep them short and sweet.
Look at this search ad from the travel agency CheapOair. The headlines of each link are concise and straightforward, which makes them crystal-clear for a reader. Better yet, they are tailored to the searcher’s query “Alaska cheap flights” – four of them offer reasonably priced plane tickets or great bargains.
Social proof for better performance
Social proof underlies and increases the credibility of every business. The majority of people tend to believe user reviews as much as personal recommendations. Testimonials on sales pages increase purchases by 34%. So, the efficiency of social proof is beyond controversy, but you might wonder how to use it in search engine marketing.
The term “social proof” encompasses a wide variety of formats, such as case studies, influencer marketing, ratings, and so on. The easiest way to implement them in your SEM is to refer to your exact number of your customers, add brands you work with, or show your ratings. The trick here is to make sure the latter is high enough – consumers will ignore star ratings lower than 3.3.
EconomyBookings promotes its car rental service and refers to its rating on Google. The company has good marks – around 4.9, which sky-rockets its credibility. To increase it even more, EconomyBookings adds a reference to the reviews on its website. There is no possibility to show the exact mark, but the service makes an impression by writing the line “70k+ positive reviews.”
Additional marketing activities can improve search results. For instance, email marketing provokes your subscribers to interact with your website more actively, which eventually affects its rankings. To reinforce your SEM with email and messenger marketing, web push notifications, chatbots, and more, sign up with LIKE.TG.
Sales volume
Sales volume equals the number of units sold by a company during a particular accounting period, for example, a year.
In the video below, Edwin Dearborn shares effective tips to increase your sales volume.
Why is sales volume important?
Unlike total sales, the sales volume metric focuses on the number of products sold rather than monetary profit. It may seem that sales volume is notas important as total sales, but that is not the case. Sales volume is an essential indicator of business health. It allows you to track the performance of marketing campaigns, evaluate the efforts of sales representatives, and choose the best places for physical stores.
Evaluating total sales, marketers endeavor to increase their revenue while monitoring sales volume to look for strategies to sell more products. If you have several offline stores in one city and the volume of items sold differs a lot, you should pay special attention towhere you put your new storesince shopping opportunities underlie this factor.
Besides, you can track sales volume from each of your sales reps individually. This will help you find out the most effective member of your salesstaff, say goodbye to unmotivated colleagues, or invest in their education.
You'll also get a clear picture of your top-selling products and those that need either more promotional activities or should be discontinued.
Read on to discover how to calculate your sales volume.
How to calculate your sales volume?
As we compare sales volume to total sales, let’s take a look at the calculations for both business health indicators with an example.
To find out your sales volume, you need to multiply the number of items you sell per month by the necessary period — a year, for example.
If you sell 300 light bulbs a month, your sales volume would be 3,600.
300*12 = 3,600
This means that you sell 3,600 bulbs a year.
If you want to find out your total sales, you need to multiply your sales volume by the cost of a bulb. Let’s say the price of a bulb is $15.
3,600* $15 = $54,000
So, your annual total sales would be $54,000.
So now that you know how to calculate your sales volume, you may be interested in some methods that will help you increase it. We’ve shared some effective tips below.
8 Strategies to Increase Your Sales Volume
Identifythe unique values of your product
Put customers’ needs at the heart of your business
Nurture and qualify your leads
Invest in marketing promotion
Speed up your sales cycle
Reward loyal clients
Align your marketing, sales, and support teams
Motivate and reward your sales reps
Remember that these methods should concentrate on optimizing your work with both prospects and sales representatives. Make sure that you take into consideration each aspect described below.
Identify the unique values of your product. This step is a must when developing a new product. Answer the following questions: “What makes our product unique?” “Why doesour product stand out in a row of similar products?” and “Why should people buy out product?” Having this list of unique qualities at hand will help you easily persuade prospects that they need your product.
Put customers’ needs at the heart of your business. If you know nothing about your clients’ problems and preferences, they won’t come back to you. People love brands that appreciate their customers’ choices and do their best to improve. For example, if you own a cosmetics store and want to launch a new line of face foundations, you should research and consult with a dermatologist to produce different variations of the same productfor clients’ problems, wants, and needs. You should consider age, gender, skin types, presence of skin problems (large pores, acne-prone skin, redness, bruises, wrinkles, etc.), the level of coverage, SPF presence, the type of finish, etc. This will help you create the best product for each client.
Nurture and qualify your leads. People are not ready to buy when they first meet your product. Hence, you need to qualify your leads based on their willingness to buy and financial opportunities. If you evaluate them as unqualified leads, they need nurturing. This process entails providing people with relevant content based on their stage in the sales funnel. This content should answer their questions, remove objections, and build trust in your brand. You can nurture your leads via email campaigns and chatbots for messengers. LIKE.TG offers its clients to send up to 15,000 emails and create up to 3 botsfor free every month.
Invest in marketing promotion. You may sell unique products, but what’s the good in that if nobody knows about them? Well-thought marketing campaigns will help you increase your outreach dramatically, acquire more leads, and boost brand awareness. Choose a reliable marketing service that provides a set of features for this purpose. LIKE.TG allows marketers to reach their clients and bring in more leads on almost every digital channel available today. Inform clients about sales and hot deals, remind them about items left in their shopping cart, communicate personalized offers, and answer their questions via email campaigns, web push notifications, SMS, and chatbots.
Speed up your sales cycle. This term entails the sequence of steps necessary to sell a product. Your task is to sell more products in a shorter period of time. The faster you do this, the bigger your sales volume will be. We recommend investing more time and money into the best-performing channels, automate routine tasks via emails and chatbots (such as handling orders, reservations, answering FAQs), work on customers’ possible objections in advance, simplify the ordering process and site navigation, make a one-step checkout, make use of social proof, personalize communication, create acustomer profile, and arrange meetings with prospects.
Reward loyal clients. Let customers know that you appreciate their choice. Working on building customer loyaltyallows brands to increase retention, boost sales, and facilitate word-of-mouth. For this purpose, create a loyalty program. Give them points for using your service or buying your products and let them exchange them for a product or gift. Encourage customers to share their feedback. It will help you reveal what clients appreciate the most about your business and reveal your weak points and improve. Build a warm and long-lasting relationship with customers. Send them birthday emails, remind them about plan expiration, and recommend the product they may like.
Align your marketing, sales, and support teams. These departments complement each other perfectly since support and sales teams know both customers’ pain points and what they like about your brand. Pass this information to the marketing department, and it will plan communications accordingly. You may even improve and optimize your product if you cooperate effectively.
Motivate and reward your sales reps. These are exactly the people who make the biggest impact on your sales volume offline. So, you should hire them wisely. Following a pre-written script no longer works, so reps should be savvy people able to adjust anytime. Create the sales plan, mention the number of deals you expect to achieve each month. If a rep overachieves your sales quota, reward them with a commission. If they miss the quota, analyze the probable causes or consider hiring another more experienced specialist. Remember that your staff should be highly-motivated, and the salary isn’t the only element of motivation. Create a positive and friendly working atmosphere, improve team bonding, and be ready to help your colleagues.
Congrats, now you know why sales volume matters, how to calculate and increase this metric. Register in LIKE.TG to build long-lasting relationships with your clients and promote your products on any channel you need.
Sales prospecting
Sales prospecting is a process that implies identifying and interacting with qualified leads to convert them into customers. Examples include calls, direct mail, events, and social media networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. It helps companies convert prospects into customers, increase revenue, and improve ROI.
In this article, we’ll unveil the importance of prospecting in sales, review 10 prospecting techniques, and 7 tips. We’ll also show you how to prospect using LIKE.TG.
Why is prospecting important in sales?
The success of every business depends on the number of customers it has and the purchases they make. Prospecting is essential to generate leads and convert them into consumers. It enables business owners to create a pipeline of clients for their brands. Besides establishing a customer base, the process helps build trusting relationships with potential customers.
With sales prospecting, sales representatives send emails, make cold calls, and reach potential customers at events to increase the company's customer base. The more qualified leads they attain, the more people are converted.
Prospecting is a complex process that implies finding potential customers, interacting with them through the most effective channels, and encouraging them to buy. Email campaigns, calls, events, and social media networks are the touchpoints for communication with prospects.
Before contacting leads, sales reps should conduct research, qualify prospects, and create a personalized sales pitch. Going through all the stages is crucial for finding something in common and establishing good relationships with potential clients. Prospecting helps understand leads’ needs, preferences, problems, and interests and communicate a relevant offer. When sales reps reach potential customers with a personalized pitch, they increase the chances for conversion.
Now that you know about the importance of sales prospecting, it’s time to check out some best prospecting techniques. They will come in handy when you look for new leads for your business.
10 Prospecting Techniques
We’ve decided to provide you with a list of the most effective techniques that prevent you from racking the brain on how to start with prospecting. Let’s have a look!
Introduce your brand to prospects. First of all, you need to initiate the first contact with your potential clients so that you can make warm calls and send warm email campaigns. You can do it through shared connections, paid ads, or influencer recommendations. This way, your brand’s name will be familiar to leads before you make the actual contact.
Make calls. If your potential clients have already heard your brand’s name and the product you offer, it’s easier for you to make warm calls. Warm calls will help you explain your product’s benefits. By communicating with prospects in real-time, you can increase the chances of conversions. Calls allow you to provide personalized offers based on customers’ needs and problems. You can hear their requirements directly through the phone and search for the perfect solution together.
Send email campaigns. Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels which enables you to reach potential consumers with news, product releases, and attractive offers based on browsing history and wishlists. With email campaigns, you can send targeted offers that meet customers’ requirements. LIKE.TG empowers you to create professional, personalized emails and schedule the sending time to reach the right clients at the right moment.
Demonstrate your expertise. To earn the credibility and trust of prospects, you need to show that your product and company is the best solution available. If you want to become an opinion leader in your industry, consider running a blog, creating guest posts, and becoming a speaker on webinars, trade shows, and other events. This way, you’ll establish brand recognition.
Use social media networks as a medium. Since more and more people use social media to search for brands, listen to recommendations on particular products, and order items, consider prospecting through these channels. Use Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok as sources of information about prospects, tools for communication with them, and promotion channels for your products. With social media, you can explore the necessary information about customers and reach them with highly targeted offers. Paid ads will help you with that. Targeted advertising will reach people based on the criteria you choose. For instance, if you sell pizza in one specific city, the ad will communicate the message to prospects from this city with related search history.
Implement a referral program. Referral marketingis a wise way of attracting qualified leads without your sales reps’ intervention. Your existing customers will do everything by themselves if they perceive your brand as a good one worth recommending to friends and family. Offer an incentive to current and potential clients to join the program. You can encourage new customers to make the first purchase for a specific sum of money to get even more benefits. As a result, you attain high-quality leads by spending little money on the lead generation process.
Consider hosting a webinar. Webinars allow you to reach a wider audience and attain more prospects for your brand. You can position your brand as an expert in the industry and show your competitive advantage. With webinars, your brand can engage with the audience and demonstrate the benefits of your product. It’s a cost-effective way of generating qualified leads and building brand awareness.
Represent your company at various events. By attending trade shows, conferences, and other events, you can increase recognition. First, search for events related to your industry and participate in them. By doing this, you can reach people interested in your product. You just need to communicate with prospective customers face to face, speak to a wide audience, and show what makes your product stand out. If you manage to demonstrate your product in the best light, you’ll be able to convert them.
Monitor QA forums. Forums are the perfect channels to educate your audience. Quora and LinkedIn Groups can serve you as mediums for communication with prospects. Search for questions related to your industry and answer them. Start by providing tips relevant to your industry and eventually introduce your product. Once you gain trust and show your expertise, you can continue with product promotion. Position your product as the best solution to their problems.
Use Twitter for communication. Twitter is a great social media network where you can discuss topics and share opinions. With Twitter, you can establish relationships with your prospects and build brand awareness. To discuss a topic, interest, or trend, you should use a specific hashtag. Consider joining a chat based on the product you offer by searching for an appropriate hashtag. Chat runners share the topic of the discussion under a specific hashtag, and users provide their opinions and questions under this chat hashtag.
Now that you know how to prospect, it’s time to find out how to use LIKE.TG to your advantage and convert more leads into customers. Let’s dive in!
How to prospect with LIKE.TG?
Sales prospecting can be challenging for your company. That’s why it’s important to use automation tools. LIKE.TG is a multichannel platform that allows you to reach your leads through multiple channels for free. In this section, we’ll uncover how to use the platform to achieve your main prospecting objectives.
Add subscription forms to your website
Subscription forms are designed to collect customers' personal information. With subscription forms, you can get prospects’ phone numbers, names, emails, and social media. By adding such a form to your website, you can collect contact information of your site visitors, increase engagement, have more touchpoints with your prospects, and build your email list.
With LIKE.TG functional form builder, you can create a subscription form from scratch or select one of the pre-built templates. Change your form's style, text, and format to meet your brand requirements. You can add a lead magnet to increase the likelihood of users sharing their personal information with you. The platform enables you to add files and images and display the subscription form on any device for free.
Below you can see an example of a subscription form designed in the service.
Create pop-ups
A pop-up is a small window that appears while browsing a website designed to collect site visitors’ data, inform about events, discounts, and special offers. A pop-up appears based on the conditions (behavior and user engagement). With these forms, you can convert visitors into customers by engaging with them.
LIKE.TG empowers you to create pop-ups and add them to your website within minutes. Consider using ready-to-go templates to create a smart widget. You can develop pop-ups for different scenarios and craft your interaction with potential clients based on their behavior and actions on your site.
Below you can see how to create a pop-up using one of the ready-to-go templates.
Send email campaigns
Email marketing is a great approach for reaching prospects and telling them about your product in detail. Besides educating leads, you can interest them by providing personalized offers. Discounts and special offers for products they were browsing, the information they needed, and news about product releases. Email campaigns are suitable for educational, promotional, and informational purposes.
In LIKE.TG, you can send 15,000 emails per month for free. The platform’s drag-and-drop editor enables you to design emails to your liking without any knowledge of the code. Use personalization and segmentation features to divide your prospects into groups and send them relevant email campaigns. For instance, if leads have specific products in their browsing history or wishlist, you can send them campaigns informing them about discounts on mentioned items.
Below you can see an email campaign created to inform subscribers about the upcoming webinar.
Connect a free CRM
CRM allows you to automate interaction with prospects and clients, securely store customer data, and manage deals in one place. With a CRM, you can accept orders, keep an eye on the sales process, gather customer personal information for your customer list, and run marketing campaigns. If you need to check the status of your deals, it’s enough just to open the CRM. We recommend you use CRM from LIKE.TG for free to directly interact with your prospects through the most effective channels from the CRM, collect and store information, and track your deals for free.
The screenshot below shows the Kanban board with deals and their statuses.
Now that you know how to use LIKE.TG to reduce the workload on your team during prospecting, it’s time to uncover some valuable tips on how to succeed in this process. Check the next section to find some effective approaches.
7 Tips for Successful Prospecting
In this section, we’ll unveil some effective tips to work with your potential clients successfully. By using these best practices, you’ll be able to become closer to your main business goal. So, let’s start.
Develop a buyer persona. Before prospecting, you need to find out who your ideal customers are, their needs, problems, requirements, preferences, age, gender, occupation, etc. To receive this information, you need to conduct research first. During this time, you’ll be able to get all the data you need for your ideal profile. Once you gather this information, you can find a personalized approach to your audience. A buyer persona will guide you through the process.
Establish a presence on social media channels. Social media networks have already become a part of every person’s life. Users read news, search for information, look for products, and purchase items through Facebook and Instagram. Consider creating content for your Instagram and Facebook accounts (stories, posts, reels, and paid ads). All these tools will enable you to reach a wider audience and educate them about your product.
Share relevant content with your leads. To convert leads into customers, you need to demonstrate the value and benefits of your product. Consider sharing detailed information about your product with potential clients through the most effective channels, such as email campaigns, landing pages, tutorials, videos, and blog posts. You can share all materials by sending them to your leads’ inboxes. With LIKE.TG, you can create and send relevant email campaigns about your promos, product benefits, features, and discounts right to leads.
Create videos to demonstrate your product. Video is the best tool to reach your potential clients and show the real you. Instead of creating production videos, consider making amateur videos with sales reps sharing information about your products and the results it brings. Add these videos to your articles and accounts on social media, and send them to prospects’ inboxes. You can tell how to start using your product, share tips and tricks, and explain new topics.
Improve your call strategy. Making calls is still an effective technique when applied right. To have a constructive dialog with leads, you need to prepare your sales reps first. Make sure to research these people’s needs, issues, and requirements to create an effective sales pitch. You need to understand your prospects’ problems to provide the right solutions. Get ready with your pitch, and any questions prospects might have. Consider developing a script so that a sales rep knows how to act when having this or that situation.
Support your clients at every stage of their customer journey. After closing the deal, you need to follow up with your customers. Send them relevant email campaigns with products they are interested in, answer their questions, and share tutorials on how to start with the service. This way, you show customers that you care and ensure they use your product or service effectively.
Write scripts for different communication channels. It can be challenging for new salespeople to find the right approach and convert leads into customers without preparation. For such situations, it’s necessary to create scripts as references. Although some companies don’t use scripts to sound natural, this document is still relevant. When a sales representative communicates with your potential customer for the first time, it can be difficult to adapt to the situation and provide the right responses. So, if you want your new salespeople to use the right language, avoid pauses, and work with objections, write scripts. Later, your salespeople will know your product perfectly and be ready to work with customers without them.
Congrats, now you know what sales prospecting is and why it’s crucial. Hope that our tips and techniques will be useful when working with prospects. Use LIKE.TG to automate the sending of information to prospects and following up with them.
Scrum
Scrum is a project management framework in which teams complete tasks in sprints. Everyone has a role and a defined goal.
In this article, we’ll unveil how scrum works, its principles, pros, and cons. We’ll also review the difference between scrum and kanban and uncover how to implement scrum.
How does scrum work?
Teams using scrum for project development focus on constant improvements. They don’t know everything from the start but explore the peculiarities and evolve when they receive new experiences and knowledge about the product. The framework is well-structured, so the teams can adapt to the needs and desires of customers. It consists of short cycles which help prioritize work and focus on improvements.
This project management framework adapts to the requirements of any organization and helps finish tasks in stages. However, each company should ensure transparency, eagerness to improve, and seamless communication among team members to achieve the necessary results.
Now that you know how scrum works, let’s discover its pros and cons. The next section will enable you to uncover the things you might face when implementing this project management framework.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Scrum
Once implemented, the scrum framework can bring many benefits to business owners. Let’s review all the advantages you can reap after incorporating this project management system.
Scrum helps you
manage your time and resources efficiently;
reach the company’s goals within a given period of time;
deliver higher visibility to team members through meetings;
ensure that all the changes and improvements are mentioned;
make sure that you see all the efforts of your team members;
work on large projects;
reduce costs;
work in different environments and situations;
obtain quality work and high productivity;
initiate creative approaches between team members like brainstorming;
divide big projects into small tasks (sprints);
test all development processes;
increase customer satisfaction;
cover stakeholders’ and customers’ inputs.
However, as with any other agile framework, scrum also has drawbacks. It
has no definite due date;
requires training for a team to understand the system and how it works;
has a high possibility of failure if team members aren’t cooperative;
might require changes within the company;
can cause challenges for big projects;
requires experienced team members.
Now that you know the advantages and disadvantages, it’s time to explore key scrum principles. The next section will help you figure out whether it suits your team and product.
Scrum Principles
Scrum, as any other framework, has its principles. In this section, we’ll review each of them in detail. They set the direction, and team members should follow these fundamentals to obtain effective results.
Self-organization. Since a scrum team often consists of up to nine people, self-organization is crucial. Every team member should know what tasks to complete and what work to do. Every employee should be ready to work independently and in a team. Every person should contribute to the successful final result. That’s why it’s necessary to be a self-organized person who can manage time and resources efficiently.
Cooperation. Team collaboration is a must in a scrum team, which is often quite big. Although everyone always has specific tasks, team members still need to communicate to align the direction of product development. Every employee should be aware of the work of each team member.
Adjustments during the development process. A product can’t be perfect after the first development process. Everything needs alterations and improvements. So be ready to provide them. Consider using iterative development to make some changes to your product faster and easier.
Time orientation. Since teams with a scrum system finish tasks in stages, you should stick to that time and have your tasks completed. A team has a specific period of time called sprint assigned to each piece of work and must be ready by the due date. Team meetings also have a predefined time to start and end. Time orientation enables you to finish your project at a necessary date and ensure that every goal is reached at the right time. As a result, a company avoids delays and time inefficiency.
Tasks prioritization. In a scrum system, there’s task prioritization. It means that your team should organize the existing tasks by urgency and their importance for your product. The most important tasks need to be finished first.
Now that you know the principles, let’s proceed to the difference between scrum and kanban. It’ll help you make the right choice.
Scrum vs Kanban
Since there’s still confusion between a scrum and a kanban system, we need to unveil the difference. We’ll uncover it in detail in this section.
Scrum is a project management framework that divides work into sprints (fixed time boxes) during which a team should deliver a ready product. With this Agile system, team members have a structure for the project and a schedule for completing each task. Team members don’t wait for the final deadline of the project to finish all the tasks, because they complete them in phases. This system is designed to help companies manage big projects. A scrum team usually consists of around nine people, including a product owner and a scrum master. Since the tasks are delivered one by one, team members can instantly react and adapt to changes. As a result, the final product complies with all the requirements.
Kanban is a project management framework perfect for companies in continuous flow (move an item through the production process without stops). A company sets a deadline, and team members chase it to deliver the necessary results and an excellent product. The kanban board enables you to visualize all your tasks and set a direction for all your team members. The productivity and efficiency of workers improve when they know and understand what and when to do. Moreover, the system allows businesses to perfect transparency across departments.
Simply put, scrum enables you to structure your work while kanban helps you visualize it. Both frameworks bring benefits to the right companies.
Now that you know the difference, it’s time to figure out how to implement scrum. If you researched and identified scrum as your perfect project management system, let’s find out how to incorporate it into your company.
How to implement scrum?
To incorporate the framework, you need to stick to a plan. We’ve prepared a list of steps necessary to take steps when you use scrum for your projects. Let’s dive in.
Determine the elements. The two essential elements in every scrum project management tool are the product owner and the work team. The product owner should know the objectives and determine the manufacturing needs. Product owners also take care of the risks the product development team might face. A work team usually contains from four to nine people. These individuals should be ready to work independently and organize their work in an appropriate way. These employees are expected to perform, test, and implement the tasks. At the end of each sprint, the team should present the results of their work in accordance with the deadline. You should also have a scrum master who controls the effectiveness and progress of the work team. This person leads team members to the successful accomplishment of the project while removing obstacles. Moreover, you need to determine sprint duration. Usually, one sprint lasts between one and four weeks.
List your key goals. Developing a great product requires you to list all the activities you should do. You need to cover the functionalities, pending activities, and task priority to make a good project and reach all your goals. Before diving into the sprints, you should understand how much time you need to accomplish each task. Make sure to do all the necessary calculations to figure it out. You should also recheck the information you have about the project and the tasks to avoid any conditions that might influence the duration of each sprint.
Define the sprint. The completion of each task should be done based on pre-defined deadlines. It’s necessary for the team's effective work and the project's successful development in time. That’s why ensure that your team can manage a specific number of tasks within a given timeframe.
Conduct meetings. If you want to see the results of your team’s work, consider organizing meetings regularly. Carry out a demo for your team, including a scrum master and product owner. This way, you and all team members will understand the progress. Use project management tools to track the progress of each item and plan your meetings. As a result, the workload of your scrum master will reduce.
Review your work. Review and demonstrate your progress to everyone involved in the process of product development. You’ll be able to assess whether the results of your work meet the initial requirements. If you aren’t satisfied with the work, you and your team can make some essential decisions to improve the situation. Show only finished tasks with working functionality.
Analyze the problems. Identifying the problems allows you to avoid them in the next sprint. That’s why make sure to find out what went wrong and why it happened. Share this information with your team so that they can bring in new ideas on how to eliminate these issues. Find a constructive way of making your product better for customers.
Start a new sprint. After analyzing the previous work, you can step forward and start a new sprint. Consider using your experience and knowledge to deal with the next stage. Avoid making the same mistakes and ensure incorporation improvements.
Congrats, now you know what scrum is and how it works. Hope that our guide will help you implement the system.
Scheduled email campaign
A scheduled email campaign is an email marketing campaign that a company sends at a particularly scheduled time, not instantly after creating. Scheduled emails play a significant part in email marketing strategy.
Why are scheduled emails important?
Easy multi-campaign management
Reduce mistakes
Help send your email at the right time
Assist in holiday marketing
Easy multi-campaign management. It is more convenient to use scheduled emails for those who have to manage a lot of campaigns within a short period. There is no need to send each email campaign manually.
Reduce mistakes. Working out a schedule for email marketing efforts helps to avoid human factor mistakes. If you need to automate the routine but not ready to use a more advanced Automation 360 feature, then scheduled emails are a fantastic idea.
Help send your email at the right time. You may find out the best time for sending emails to your audience. If you aren’t able to send emails yourself at non-working hours, scheduled email is the option that enables you to set time for sending future email campaigns when it is convenient.
Assist in holiday marketing. Email scheduling helps to get ready for holidays like Christmas, New Year, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc., long before they take place. You can also create a scheduled anniversary email campaign beforehand to celebrate with your subscribers.
How to Schedule Emails
Create an email campaign
Set “Sending time
Check the time zone in account settings if necessary
Create an email campaign. Fill in all the necessary data. Customize the elements to your liking in a drag-and-drop editor. Add text and images into the components. Here’s how to create an email campaign.
Set “Sending time”. Choose the time you want to send your email campaign automatically.
Check the time zone in account settings if necessary. If you send a scheduled email, for instance, to a foreign segment of your mailing list, you should click on time zone in parentheses under “Send message on” and edit the time zone settings of your account in a new tab.
Sales promotion
Sales promotion is a set of marketing technologies aimed to stimulate the demand for particular products and increase brand awareness. Limited in time, it creates a feeling of time-sensitiveness, generates new leads, and keeps existing customers engaged.
In this video, Anna, a LIKE.TG marketer, shares top sales promotion tips.
Sales promotion is one of the core elements of the promotion mix. To build long-lasting relationships with users, you need to find out the types of sales that work with your target audience. At the same time, you should provide customers with value that’s relative to your field of expertise.
Benefits of Sales Promotion
It helps to generate new leads
Allows re-engaging with your existing audience
Skyrockets revenue
Increases brand awareness
It helps to generate new leads. Sales promotion can boost your product image since it encourages sharing information about it within social groups related to your business. If you sell training football shoes, people keen on playing football will share the message.
Allows re-engaging with your existing audience. Once a person subscribed to a brand’s email newsletters, they will receive regular sales promotions. It is a way to keep the audience engaged and maintain a close connection with the company, which is crucial for building loyalty.
Skyrockets revenue. Sales promotions help companies to increase the number of sold goods, even though they need to lower the price to achieve that goal. Of course, merely reducing the price is not enough, people should need your product, while the discount is only another reason to make a purchase.
Increases brand awareness. Sales promotion is a way to make a name for your brand because people are more likely to talk about a сompany that proposes benefits and saves their money. That’s what sales promotion does.
Sales Promotion Objectives
Launch a new product
Attract new clients
Stay competitive
Make existing customers buy more
Sell during off-season
Run clearance campaigns
Although the main goal of sales promotion is to increase demand in a particular product, you can reach several important goals. Understanding them will help you create an effective promotion strategy.
Launch a new product. If you're going to expand and turn your small coffee shop into a bakery, you need to reach new market segments. You can attract new customers by offering a free cookie with each cup of coffee or suggest visitors set their own price once in a while.
Attract new clients. This objective should be your long-term goal since it allows your business to grow. Your potential clients are likely your competitors' customers, so analyzing their product and benefits, you can offer something more valuable.
Stay competitive. Researching and analyzing your competitors will not only help you attract new clients but constantly improve your product and customer service.
Make existing customers buy more. It's always easier to make an existing customer buy more than attract new clients. Provide each client with a personalized approach — it will help you build customer loyalty. As a result, clients will promote your brand organically.
Sell during the off-season.Goods like swimwear, boats, tents, air conditioners, refrigerators are definitely more popular in summer but you should consider special strategies to sell them throughout the year. Offer time-limited discounts, "1+1=3" campaigns, and other marketing tricks.
Run clearance campaigns. They're especially popular before summer and winter. As dealers need to make room for a new collection, they often run total clearance campaigns when users can buy goods from old collections at extremely reduced prices.
There are several types of sales promotions that will help you reach your objectives.
Types of Sales Promotion
Price deal
Loyalty reward program
Bonus-pack deal
Giveaways
Coupons
Mobile couponing
Sampling
There is a variety of ways to run a successful sales promotion, but let’s focus on some most frequently used ones, using a cup of coffee as an example.
Price deal. It is a temporary cost reduction, for instance, 20% off for a coffee for a week.
Loyalty reward program.This means that customers collect points or credits when they buy coffee. If they get 10 points, for example, they will have one coffee for free.
Bonus-pack deal. It means that a customer can get more products paying the original price. For instance, they pay a dollar for one cup of coffee and get free candy, which gives some positive emotions and makes them come back in the future.
Giveaways. These tactics aim to increase brand awareness. It means giving some items for free in exchange for personal information to use in further marketing. For example, offer a free cup of coffee in exchange for a phone number, which you can use for many purposes: promotingnew sales, sharing updates and news with short text messages, etc.
Coupons. You can sell coffee for the original price and give a coupon, which will make the next purchase 5% cheaper.
Mobile couponing. It stands for coupons received on mobile phones via SMS. To get a discount, a customer needs to show the coupon on their smartphone.
Sampling. Choosing this promotion type, companies give a sample of the product; for instance, the first cup of coffee to promote a new taste.
Sales Promotion Techniques
Discounts
Time-limited offers
Seasonal promotions
“1+1=3"
Holiday promotions
Gifts
Contests
Reward points
Special prices
First-purchase coupons
Free shipping
In this section, you'll see some popular techniques as well as less used methods that will help you increase sales without much effort.
Discounts. This technique is as old as the hills. Small companies and big corporations use this method to sell more. One of the reasons it's so popular, even today, is that discounts are great for both consumers and retailers. Sellers can clear room in their warehouse for new arrivals and customers can buy more at reduced prices. Keep in mind that a normal discount shouldbe between 5-20% since clients won't even notice less than 5% discount, but more than 20% off will make them feel suspicious about your brand.
Time-limited offers. This technique works even better than a big discount. With this trick, marketers manage to create a sense of urgency and fear of missing out on their products. You can give clients 24 hours to grab this special offer. To make this technique perform better, you need to advertise your promotion on each channel you use. This will bring more sales and increase your site traffic.
Seasonal promotions. People often buy ski suits in summer and air conditioners in winter to save money. Selling products during off-seasons can be a real challenge, so we strongly recommend you to run seasonal promotions. Sell items from old collections at reduced prices and don't forget to advertise your campaign via email and social media.
“1+1=3"."Buy one and get one for free" and "Buy 2 items and get the third one for free" are very familiar marketing tricks. Such campaigns help you sell products at a low price or save money shopping together with a friend. Retailers can significantly boost sales with this technique reinforcing clearance sales.
Holiday promotions. Christmas, New Year's Eve, Halloween, International Women's Day, and Valentine's Day are great chances to skyrocket sales. People are extremely generous when buying presents for their friends and family. Launch your holiday campaigns in advance, and invest in advertising via email, PPC, social media, and other channels. This will help you increase brand awareness and site traffic.
Gifts. Who doesn't like freebies? If you are a startup or about to launch a new product, go for this technique. It will help you reach big audiences fast, build brand recognition, and collect user-generated content which is especially valuable for every type of business.Let users try your service for freefor 7 days, launch a campaign that will let each client who spends $100+ receive a gift, or give away free samples with each order.
Contests. Competitions are a great opportunity to boost user engagement and increase brand awareness and sales. You canlet your audience to create a slogan for your brand, a new advertising message, design, or share creative ideas on how to use your product in an unusual way. Make sure that the prize correlates with the effort spent on participating in your contest.
Reward points. You definitely should reward clients who buy from you regularly - people love brands that appreciate their choice. So, with this technique, you can start building customer loyalty. Give points to each client whomakes a second purchase or spends a certain amount of money. Then, let them exchange those points for a product they like.
Special prices. Marketers usually run a 1-day campaign when users can buy everything at a fixed price.These prices usually look tempting for users and they can’t overcome the feeling of missing out. The goal may be an annual clearance of goods. You can set a fixed price for each product category of your store. For example, sweaters for $5.99, jeans for $9.99, coats for $15.99. This technique works.
First-purchase coupons. It always takes time for people to give money to a new store especially when buying expensive products. To make them think over the purchase faster, offer a special incentive. You can send a welcome email to a new visitor with a coupon to get a 10 or 15% discount off their first purchase. For better performance, limit this appealing offer to a couple of days.
Free shipping. Very often users leave your site without buying just because of expensive delivery options. To win back these potential clients, you can run a time-limited campaign that allows them to receive their orders for free if they spend a certain amount of money. If you sell medium-priced goods, do not make this fixed sum too high. Otherwise, people won’t fall for this trick.
Now that you know a bunch of effective sales promotion techniques, choose the most profitable methods for your business, and try LIKE.TG to run an effective campaign via email, SMS, or Facebook.
Sales Promotion Examples
Email marketing
Facebook marketing
SMS marketing
Email marketing
It is one of the most efficient digital marketing channels, with the ROI up to 4000%. Marketers usesales promotionfor lead nurturing, reactivation, promotion, etc. To succeed, marketers combine sales with educating materials. In this sales email, Grammarly offers users a chance to upgradeto a premium plan and shows the multiple benefits and suggests taking advantage of the 40% discount limited it time.
Email is also an effective platform for holding giveaways. You can create a giveaway campaign on specialized resources like Rafflecopter, and keep users engaged with giveaway emails along the way. The example below shows how the Apple Music Festival encourages people to participate, using the names of famous artists who are going to perform there.
Facebook marketing
Facebook is one of the most powerful advertising platforms due to its global coverage and detailed targeting options. Facebook marketing allows using various types of ads to fit any demand and budget. Here’s an example of a carousel ad with a 10% discount by iHerb.
SMS marketing
This channel is excellent for instant updates and flash sales. It works out well for local businesses. The example below shows how sales promotion in SMS marketing can create a sense of urgency, stimulating people to visit a restaurant for lunch.
Sales Promotion Ideas
Give an adequate range of discounts
Target sales promotion to the right people
Take advantage of the shopping holidays
Create a sense of urgency
Develop a loyalty program
Use sales promotion to generate leads
Offer free shipping
Give an adequate range of discounts. Avoid more than 50% discounts, because they make you look desperate. Don’t give discounts, like 2% either, as they won’t thrill your customers.
Target sales promotion to the right people. Find out which people are likely to buy a particular product you want to promote. For instance, if you run a sports shop and you want to increase the demand for skateboards, target your promotions to teenagers and young people.
Take advantage of the shopping holidays. Marketers have developed a system of consumerism based on traditions. As a result, people spend more money on shopping in particular days called shopping holidays. These are Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, New Year, Halloween, to name a few. Any holiday meaningful for a specific group, like Mother’s day for women, can be a reason for companies to promote sales.
Create a sense of urgency. Create time-limited offers to make your audience feel they are going to miss something important. Time-sensitiveness is an excellent incentive for people to purchase since it appeals to their emotions.
Develop a loyalty program. This technique will help you keep your customers engaged for an extended period. Offer to collect points from every dollar spent, so in the future, your customers could use them to pay for new purchases in your shop.
Use sales promotion to generate leads. Use a discount as an incentive to subscribe to your email newsletters. Lead magnets help to cover this process during the subscription.
Offer free shipping. It is the right motivation for people from distant regions to decide to buy from you.
Watch this video to find out how to increase sales quickly and promote your products at the right place at the right time.
Scrum master
A scrum master is a person responsible for adhering to the scrum process in the company. According to the Agile methodology, a scrum masterensures that their team works smoothly and efficiently andpinpoints the opportunities to improve the workflow and develop the product more efficiently, bringing more value to customers.
In this article, we will describe the role of a scrum master, talk about their responsibilities and essential skills, cover the difference between scrum masters and project managers, and provide a step-by-step guide on how to become a scrum master.
What is the role of a scrum master?
The Agile methodology is becoming more and more popular among IT companies. This approach to project management enables businesses to accelerate the delivery of value to customers. Instead of releasing the entire product, the Agile team gets the job done in small parts. They rely not only on pre-created detailed plans but also on urgent changes.
There are businesses that use onlya fewtechniques from the Agile methodology. However, a great number of companies useevery single principle of this methodology in their work— this is wherea scrum master steps in.
The primary role of a scrum master is teachingteam members to communicate effectively with each other and with business representatives. These people help companies optimize theirbusiness routine to raise efficiency. Scrum masters are leaders, but not in the traditional sense of the word since they have no formal authority over their team.
In some companies, scrum masters playthe role of a link betweena product owner and their team. They guide the product owner on how to achieve their businessgoals and, at the same time, help resolvecertain issues that can emerge during the development process.
The primary mission of a scrum master is to create conditions for self-government in the team and not let this self-governmentcollapse due to micromanagement or a directive management method.
In the next section, we will review scrum masters' responsibilities to better understand what they do in the company.
Scrum Master Responsibilities
The profession of a scrum master is comparatively new. Moreover, in the ideal Agile world, the team itself manages the processes. However, in real life, almost every company that works with Agile needs a scrum master.Hereis a list of scrum master's most common responsibilities:
Teaching the team the Scrum methodology. This isa key task for scrum masters who work with a teamthathas recently started using the Agile methodology. They should helpteam members implement the Scrum practices and optimize the way their company works.
Holding "stand-ups" and sprint planning meetings. According to the Scrum methodology, "stand-ups," during which the team discusses current tasks and creates a roadmap, should be held on adaily basis. Scrum master also holds sprint planning meetings, where participants evaluate their future work, break it down into sub-tasks, and plan specific actions.
Reviewing the results of the sprints. During the meetings, scrum masters review the results of the sprints and highlight what can be improved. They also capture team members' feedback.
Working as aboard administrator. Every companythat uses Agile has a scrum board. The responsibility of a scrum master is to keep all the cards up to date and check them regularly.
Organizing personal meetings. A scrum master has to hold personal meetings with other team members. The aim is to resolve disagreements around certain processes and workflows to developa team and improve internal communication.
Consulting with the team. It might be challenging to organize the work according to Agile at once. The responsibility of a scrum master is to exchange views and decide how to managea scrum team together with the team itself. Scrum masters might have personal consultations with team members who have certain problemswith their work processes.
Analyzing reports. Scrum masters should analyze performance statistics regularlyto understandall the processesa company is going through.
Removing obstacles. The responsibility of scrum masters is to provide intensive and productive work. They shouldeliminate external blockers and help the company deal with internal barriers.
The Scrum Guide does not list all of the responsibilities of a master. Therefore, scrum master responsibilities may change from company to company.
Now let's move onto discussa set of skills essential for every scrum master.
Top4 Scrum Master Skills
There are certain skills that every scrum master should have. Check them out below.
Hands-on knowledge and experience. It iscrucial for scrum masters to constantly improve their knowledge and skills of the Agile methodology to have an optimal decision in any situation. A scrum master is responsible for organizing scrum processes and should be ready to change their usual way of working.
Leadership skills. Scrum masters are the leaders who motivate and teach their teams. Consequently, they should understand who should be given more freedom and who needs to be micromanaged. A scrum master needs to know how to find an approach to different people and be able to organize an effective workflow.
Strategic thinking.A scrum master should understanda company's key strategy and follow it, keeping thisbusiness's success in mind. The ability to analyze current data and plan future actions according to it, flexibility in decision-making, andrational thinking are essential in this field.
Stress tolerance. Scrum masters face challenges and changes every day, which requires them to be stress-resistant. They need to be ready for everything. Even in the most difficult situations, scrum masters should motivate the team and look for solutions to their problems.
It takes years of hard work to develop all these skills and become a professional. Mind that if you have skills 2-4, you can also become a project manager (PM). In the next section, you will discover the difference between project managersand scrum masters.
Scrum Master vs. Project Manager
These two positions may seem the same. However, they are quite different. In this section, we'lltalk about the peculiarities of each one.
Both specialists have the same goals. They focus on how to get the job done and solve workflow problems through management and coordination. However, their approaches arequite different.
Project manager
Scrum master
Works from a position of control and plays the traditional role of a leader.
Acts asateam leader but does not lead in the traditional sense of the word.
Managesa project and its team and isaccountable for achieving theproject's goals.
Helps their team improve and optimizecertain processes but can only advise without making decisions.
As we can see, PMs are more about management and strong leadership, whereas scrum masters are more about coaching. They support team members and train them to work according to the Scrum methodology.
Now Agile is becoming more and more popular. Lots of successful companies hire scrum masters every day. Learn more about how to get into this profession in the next section.
How to Become a Scrum Master
There are several opportunities that allow you to become a scrum master. You can start as a project manager and then master your scrum skills, or you can start in the Agile world right away. Your way of becoming a master matters littlebecause qualification playsthe most vital role in Scrum.
Discover more about Scrum by self-education.All the must-have theory is stated in the Scrum Guide. You can also read the books by Jeff Sutherland, one of the founders of Scrum.
Attend courses. Scrum founders and certified trainers conduct training courses and give certificates to Scrum specialists. Scrum master skills are an obligatory basis for everyone, and if you have them, you can be recognized as one.
Grow as a professional. If you wish to further improve your knowledge and skills of Scrum, aftergaining more than a year of experience in the role of a scrum master, youcan take Advanced Certified Scrum Master Training (A-CSM).
Mind that the Scrum certificate is valid for two years. If you want to renew the certificate after these two years, you must get a certain number of Scrum Education Units. They are given for completing Scrum courses, participating in Global Scrum Gathering and Regional Scrum Gathering, teaching Scrum, and other activities aimed at improving your Scrum qualifications. Such a system shows that your knowledge is relevantand significantly increases the value ofyour Scrum certificate.
It is not difficult to find a job as a scrum master. However, to become a professional, you need to fully accept the principles of Agile and be able to use them for the success of your team.
Congrats, now you know much more about the profession of a scrum master.
Sales slump
A sales slump is a decrease in sales during a period of hard work that emerges by chance. A company’s team can’t predict it because it happens randomly.
In this article, we’ll unveil how to get out of a sales slump.
How to get out of a sales slump?
After months of hard work and successful deals, sales representatives often experience unpleasant conversations with prospects, unanswered phone calls, rejections, and many unclosed deals. Sales slump happens randomly without any dependence on the level of your productivity, salespeople’s efforts, or key message. Startups and large enterprises can face it at any time. You need to take several steps to overcome unsuccessful deals during this time. You’ll find some effective tips below.
Apply the most effective approaches. Look through successful deals with customers. Focus on the tactics that worked. For this purpose, check the activity in your CRM. High-performing months will hint at the methods that work well with your prospects. You need to recall the sales pitch you used to attain high conversions.
Contact customers with successful deals. Reaching out to your existing customers is always a great idea. Besides providing you with self-confidence and inspiring you to work on your deals, your clients can help unveil why they decided to purchase with you. Give them a call or reach them through email. By communicating with current consumers, you can uncover whether they need your help or assistance. After-sales service is crucial since it establishes trust with consumers and ensures solutions to problems with the product. Moreover, you can upsell additional products if clients look for them.
Work with consistency. Your business will overcome a sales slump over time, but to ensure successful deals in the future, you need consistency. Work on your strategy, set your key goals, and schedule specific daily sales activities. You can do it when prospects aren’t willing to get in touch. By creating a plan, you can establish consistency in your work and nurture your leads. It will help build trusting relationships with your prospects and encourage them to purchase.
Ask your team for help. There’s no need to hide the current sales situation, as this can happen to any sales representative. On the contrary, share your experience with your team members at the nearest meeting. Lean on their support and positive sales experience. During the meeting, you can find out whether other salespeople have the same situation. Collaborate with your team to develop an effective plan to help you get back on track with successful deals.
Listen to industry leaders for motivation. Searching for top salespeople in your industry and listening to their tips might help you get motivated for your work. Moreover, educational videos, webinars, and seminars provide you with new approaches to win deals. Sometimes you need to listen to industry leaders to change something in your strategy and increase conversion rates. Look for YouTube videos, podcasts, or read motivational speeches to get a clue about successful sales.
Look through customer success stories. You can receive inspiration by reading success stories and case studies. It’ll allow you to figure out how your product helped these customers and the tactics salespeople used to sell the product. Search for customer feedback to find out what clients say about your brand and what they appreciate the most. Their reviews empower you to improve your strategy and approach prospective customers from a different perspective. You can also get new ideas from customer reviews and success stories.
Review communication with prospects that didn’t close. Facing rejections and unsatisfied leads isn’t an easy task. However, it’s crucial to understand the reasons and find a pattern when you have a sales slump. Divide these prospects into groups based on the reason why they churned out. Potential clients might reject you because they don’t need or already have your product, want to buy it from another brand, or don’t have the necessary money. After categorizing leads, search for a common pattern. If you identify more significant reasons behind their rejection, revise your strategy and tactics.
Change your work environment. If you experience burnout, which is why your sales slump, you should switch to non-sales activities. Give you time to relax and gain new strength for new successful sales. Get busy with activities you are good at. Consider writing a new sales pitch or organizing a team meeting. It will help you find the motivation to go on with sales.
Congrats, now you know what a sales slump is and how to overcome it. Hope that our tips will help you defeat the sales slump. With LIKE.TG’s bulk email service, chatbots, web push, and pop-ups, you can improve your sales situation.
Sales velocity
Sales velocity is a metric that shows the speed at which you convert leads into clients. Calculating it will reveal the performance of your pipeline, sales team, and the health of your business in general.
In this article, we’ll unveil the importance of this measurement and explain how to calculate your sales velocity and increase it.
Watch the video where Dan Martell shares a strategy that will help you boost your sales velocity.
Why is it important to track sales velocity?
This measurement is one of the A-list metrics each business should monitor. It shows how fast you manage to move your prospects through the pipeline. The higher your sales velocity rate, the more deals your team closes during an accounting period.
It is quantified as a monetary value. For example, the sales velocity of your team consisting of 5 reps is $5000 per month. You can measure the productivity of every sales rep and compare the performance of your teams from different regions or countries. This way you’ll get to know who brings more money to your business. Finally, you can take measures to motivate, educate, reward, or fire colleagues.
Besides, this measurement allows you to identify the stages at which your leads drop out and never convert. This will help you analyze your pipeline andlead nurturingstrategy and optimize themaccordingly.
Now let’s move on to calculating your sales velocity.
How to Calculate Sales Velocity
The formula you need to measure this metric is below.
Sales velocity = (Number of opportunities× average deal size× win rate or conversion rate)⁄ sales cycle length
As you see, there are four essential values you should know to calculate your sales velocity. Let’s take a closer look at each factor influencing this measurement.
The number of opportunities. You should have a clear picture of the number of leads you can close a deal with in your pipeline. You can divide them by country, region, store, sales rep, etc. Remember that this number includes only qualified leads. It means that these people are the decision-makers, have financial opportunities, and do need your product. According toSales Insights Lab, 50% of leads aren’t a good fit for your company. Don’t try to collect as many contacts for your database as you can — they won’t bring you any revenue. Instead, focus your efforts on people whose problems you can solve.
Average deal size. It shows how much money your company receives after an average sale. To calculate it, divide the total revenue from all deals by the number of deals. If you are a SaaScompany or work on a subscription-based model, you can rely on your customer lifetime value. Keep in mind your customer acquisition costbecauseif the total revenue doesn’t cover the costs of attracting new clients, you won’t profit.
Win rate or conversion rate. It shows the percentage of leads that you’ve converted into clients. To calculate this measurement, divide the number of closed deals by the number of interactions. If you want to know the percentage, multiply by 100. For example, if you had 500 leads at the beginning and 150 bought from you, then your conversion rate is 25%. This metric will help you evaluate your sales strategy performance. You’ll be able to discover the weak points where you lose leads and make the necessary changes.
Sales cycle length. This value shows how much time you need to convert a lead into a customer. Sales cycle length depends on your product price, complexity, and the number of stages a prospect should go through to close a deal with your brand. Usually, B2Bclients need much more time to make a purchasing decision.
Now, when you are aware of the factors that influence your sales velocity, you know which direction to choose to improve this metric. Below we’ll share some practical tips each brand should consider.
How to Increase Sales Velocity
Re-consider your lead generation strategy
Qualify and score leads
Automate nurturing leads
Build trustful relationships with your customers
Educate your sales reps
In this section, we’ll provide some best practices to fine-tune each factor mentioned above to boost your sales velocity.
Re-consider your lead generation strategy. This step should be the first point of your investigation. Pay special attention to customer acquisition channels. You should analyze your most profitable opportunities to capture leads. They can include social media platforms, retargeting, influencer marketing, chatbots, etc. To improve your lead generation, provide them with special offers relevant at each stage of the sales funnel, make use of lead magnets, and simplify your site navigation.
Qualify and score leads. The first term implies the process where your sales reps evaluate leads in terms of financial opportunities, the power to make a decision, and the need for your product. To cope with it effectively, select anappropriate framework. Scoring leads allows you to understand how much value each prospect can bring to your business. This way you can identify the best fit for your business without wasting time and money on every prospect. In addition, you can create tailored offers for each type of lead. Follow five steps to build a lead scoring plan.
Automate nurturing leads. To save time for nurturing each lead, we recommend that you put this process on autopilot. Collaborate with your customer support and sales teams to identify prospects’ frequently asked questions, stages at which they get stuck, and common issues that postpone the purchase. After that, you can create a series of educational lead nurturing emailsto be sent automatically right after a lead joins your mailing list and performs a certain action. With LIKE.TG Automation 360, you can do just that for free.
Build trustful relationships with your customers. No one will buy from you if they know nothing about your brand. You need to build brand awareness to make people choose your company. Show prospects that your brand is worth their trust. Share your most successful cases, provide social proof, encourage customers to follow your brand on socials. Let them see the people behind your brand name. This tactic will contribute to building long-lasting relationships with your audience.
Educate your sales reps. Monitor how they treat each lead. Make sure your reps know how to present your company, handle objections, and win over customers. This way, you’ll get to know your strong and weak points and be able to assess your selling techniques. Let your team attend conferences, workshops, and seminars to improve their skills. Motivate your colleagues and reward top performers.
Congrats, now you know the factors that influence your sales velocity and how to improve it. Register with LIKE.TG to enhance communication with leads via emails, SMS, web push notifications, and chatbots.
Sales turnover
A sales turnover is the number of items or services a company sells during an accounting year or a specific timeframe. It helps businesses ensure that a company has enough inventory to complete orders on time and determine whether they need a restock.
In this article, we’ll unveil the importance of calculating sales turnover and ways to do it. We’ll also make the difference between a sales turnover and revenue clear.
Why is calculating your sales turnover important?
Estimating sales turnover for a business is crucial since it helps calculate revenues, manage inventory, and avoid unnecessary spending. After figuring out the measure, a company owner can assess the profitability of the brand and take the necessary measures to improve it. The figure also provides brands with a clear understanding of the number of items in stock and the number purchased. Having a clear picture of inventory is essential since it prevents customers from inconveniencing by waiting for weeks for the order to arrive. It can happen when a company has many orders and insufficient stock to fulfill them.
The sales turnover rate is especially useful during the holiday season when there are great promos and discounts and people rush to buy items for an attractive price. Calculating sales turnover helps business owners make sure that they have enough products for their customers. There are even more reasons to calculate your sales turnover. It enables you to:
identify growth and success rates;
find out new effective advertising strategies;
calculate the number of items purchased and available;
estimate common revenue;
calculate returns.
Now that you know why estimate sales turnover, let’s proceed to the next section to compare sales turnover and revenue to avoid any confusion about these two terms.
Sales Turnover vs Revenue
Since people often misinterpret these terms and use them interchangeably, we need to uncover the difference. We’ll review each concept in detail so that you can identify them within your business.
Sales turnover defines the number of items customers purchase from a specific business within a given timeframe, usually a year. It unveils the effectiveness of inventory management and helps control it. With its help, company owners always keep their hands on the pulse when a brand needs to buy new inventory or sell old items. After calculating sales turnover, brands can identify the right production levels to help prevent overstock or shortage of items.
Revenue defines the amount of money a brand receives from selling its products. It allows businesses to assess their profitability, size, success, customer base, and share. After estimating the measure, company owners can decide what steps to take next: produce more products or change their strategy to win more clients.
Now that you know the difference, it’s time to uncover how to calculate the measure.
How to calculate your sales turnover?
In this section, we’ll provide you with short instructions on how to identify the measure for your company. Let’s dive in.
Determine the sales period. If you need to calculate the indicator, identify the sales period. You should have accurate data for this timeframe to estimate the right measure. Make sure to select a completed sales period you hold full information of. Remember, getting the right figures for a running sales period is impossible. For your estimations, you can define a monthly, quarterly, or annual sales period.
Calculate the cost of goods sold (COGS). The next step involves identifying the cost of your items. To find out COGS, you need to sum up the initial and additional inventory expenses. After you finish with this step, subtract the total number of ending inventory from it. The final figure will be the cost of goods sold.
Identify average inventory. Determining your average inventory requires you to sum up your starting and ending inventory. After, divide the sum by two.
Estimate sales turnover ratio. Finally, to figure out the turnover ratio, you need to divide COGS by the average inventory. The figure you will get is your sales turnover ratio.
Say there’s a company owner who wants to estimate annual sales turnover to find out how many items it’s vital to provide the necessary products to consumers in the upcoming year. Brand’s team calculated that the company had $400,000 in starting inventory, $100,000 of extra inventory expenses, and $40,000 of ending inventory. The team estimates that COGS is $460,000 (subtracting ending inventory from the sum of starting inventory and extra inventory expenses).
The next step is calculating the average inventory. They add the cost of starting inventory to the ending. It’ll be $400,000 + $40,000 = $440,000. After, divide by two. The final result will be $220,000.
Finally, they need to divide the cost of goods sold by their average inventory. It’ll be $460,000 / $220,000 = 2.09. This means that the company succeeded in selling average inventory more than two times during one year period.
Congrats, now you know what a sales turnover is and why it’s crucial. Hope that our guide will come in handy when estimating it for your company.
Sales plan
A sales plan is a document that encompasses goals, target audience, and sales strategy aimed at attaining necessary results. It enables a company’s team to predict business-related risks and avoid them.
In this article, we’ll uncover the importance, components, and examples of sales plans. We’ll also find out how to write a sales plan and explore 8 tips to follow to create a successful sales plan.
Why is it important to have a sales plan?
Planning is an essential point for any business, especially when talking about sales targets. Before selling your product, you need to outline your main goals and the ways you can achieve them. This includes various sales strategies, tactics, and approaches. Once you have your objectives identified, you need to create a plan where you can mention all the details of your marketing strategy.
A sales plan enables you to predict possible problems and risks related to your product and sales. As a result, you can eliminate these risks before the problem arises and escalates. When you have a clear plan of action, you can be confident about the correctness of your decisions. Besides, you can keep an eye on the product’s sales performance and decide what else you can do to get closer to your short-term and long-term goals.
A sales plan will also come in handy if you conquer international markets. This document will serve you as an overview of customers’ needs, requirements, and preferences in different countries. Also, it’ll contain sales strategies that suit different geographics. As a result, you can successfully reach your goals.
Now that you know the importance, let’s discover the components of a sales plan.
What should a sales plan include?
A sales plan is a comprehensive document covering many aspects of your business. You need to create it as detailed as possible to attain your objectives faster. Your plan should contain the following sections:
mission;
company goals;
revenue expectations;
target market;
business performance for the previous period;
market trends;
industry conditions;
competitor analysis;
marketing strategy;
sales strategies, tactics, techniques;
software;
human and financial resources available;
tasks and responsibilities of different departments;
metrics.
It’s time to reveal how to write a sales plan.
How to write a sales plan?
Creating a sales plan might require you to spend some time defining goals, revenue targets, tasks for departments, but it’s worth it. In the end, you’ll have a clear roadmap for a certain period your company’s team should follow to get great results in sales. If you don’t know where to start, we’ll help you. Follow our guide to clarify the details of the process.
Determine your major goals. The first and foremost is to define your main goals. Think of the things you want to achieve related to sales. For example, sell 500 items in one month or earn $20,000 in one year. Make sure that your goals are specific, achievable, and measurable. Besides accurate sales targets, you can also think about more general things like the growth of your brand, new markets, or the production of new products.
Make your targets more specific and accurate. If you are ready with more general objectives, it’s time to proceed to the next stage and identify more specific goals. Be realistic and set goals possible to reach. Let’s imagine that you want to enter the Latin America region. In this case, you need to list all countries where you want to present your product. As an option, give tasks to your team members to research which countries will accept your product.
Assess your resources. At this stage, you need to evaluate your human resources and money opportunities. Analyze whether you have enough employees to bring your plan to life and financial support to purchase all the necessary inventory.
Choose KPIs. Key performance indicators are necessary to figure out whether your plan works and brings you closer to your main goals. Choose the most appropriate metrics. It’s perfect to have 3-5 indicators to control business performance.
Allocate time wisely. There’s no need to rush since this process can be time-consuming. Your company’s team will help you manage all the tasks efficiently. Have a week or more to develop an accurate and realistic plan that includes all the details of your sales strategy, tactics, goals, revenue targets, etc.
Now you know the steps necessary to write a sales plan, so let’s proceed to the next section to explore tips for creating a successful plan.
8 Tips for Creating a Successful Sales Plan
Sales plans vary in different companies. However, there are some critical points you should consider in your sales plan to be more effective. The following tips will provide you with a clue.
Make sure that you have realistic objectives.
Set deadlines.
Consult with sales representatives.
Conduct competitive analysis.
Develop a budget proposal that encompasses previous performance data and forecasts for the future.
Write specific plans for each department of your company.
Analyze issues your sales representatives find challenging.
Use special tools to simplify your work.
You need to do profound research and work with your teams to understand what information to include in your sales plan. For sure, it’ll require your effort. However, after you do all the work, you’ll be able to develop a plan that will lead you towards success and growth.
Now that you know some tips, it’s time to grab some inspiration from the examples below.
Examples of Sales Plans
We’ve prepared different examples of sales plans you can consider for your business. The type you choose depends on your business objectives, so take a closer look at each of them to find a perfect option.
Market expansion. If you decide to reach new markets, you should consider this sales plan. This document outlines your tasks, goals, and metrics to track your progress. With its help, you’ll address the needs of a new target audience in a completely new geographic area. Besides, a market expansion plan usually includes distribution costs, logistics, and time zone.
New product. The main aim of a new product launch is to bring ROI. That’s the main focus of the new product sales plan. When you create this type of plan, it’s a must to conduct a competitive analysis, identify sales strategy, and take care of your brand positioning.
30-60-90-day plan. This is the most general sales plan which focuses on a timeframe by which you should reach certain goals. You can set a deadline to do something in 30, 60, and 90 days. For example, you can decide to acquire 10 new customers in 30 days, increase ROI by 10% in 60 days, and reduce churn by 2% in 90 days.
A sales plan is an essential element of your business that helps predict all the possible risks and prevent them. Once you have a roadmap, you know in what direction you should move to attain your targets.
Sales pitch
A sales pipeline is a way to track prospective customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. It helps control each sale’s progress, generate more conversions, and increase revenue.
In this article, we’ll compare a sales pipeline and a sales funnel, explore the 7 stages and 4 metrics of the sales pipeline. We’ll also uncover ways to make your sales pipeline better.
Why is a sales pipeline important?
Having a clear sales pipeline is crucial for every business. Users with different intentions browse your website in search of solutions. Some look through the best possible options, and others are ready to interact and convert into consumers. To keep track of prospects who can become your consumers, you need a sales pipeline. Your sales representatives will lead your potential customers from the start until deals close, increase conversions, and boost profits.
A sales pipeline guides your sales reps to reach key business objectives. They can monitor all deals and make sales forecasts. If a company succeeds in implementing a comprehensive sales pipeline, it’ll have a clear picture of the brand’s health and sales progress. After categorizing deals in the pipeline, sales managers can increase their work efficiency. They identify deals with higher conversion rates and work with them first to increase profits. When a business uses a CRM, it can transfer and store the necessary information on the cloud and reduce manual work. As a result, the company's team will close deals faster.
Now that you know why a sales pipeline is important, let’s uncover the difference between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel.
Sales Pipeline vs Sales Funnel
People often use the two terms interchangeably to define prospects’ place in the sales process. Yet these concepts indicate different things. We’ll review the sales pipeline and sales funnel in more detail to show you this difference.
A sales pipeline is a visualization of prospects’ position in the sales process. The stages include prospecting, lead qualification, demo, proposal, negotiation, closed deal, and post-purchase. A sales pipeline represents the sales process from the perspective of sales reps and describes the actions a sales manager makes to move a lead toward a successful deal.
A sales funnel is a marketing model that represents a journey a lead goes through from becoming aware of the product until the act of the purchase. The stages include awareness, interest, decision, and action. A sales funnel focuses on the decision-making process of customers.
The difference is clear, so it’s time to proceed to the next section to review the 7 stages of the sales pipeline.
7 Stages of Sales Pipeline
A sales pipeline consists of seven stages sales representatives take control of. We’ve prepared a list for you to consider when you decide to develop a sales pipeline for your business. Let’s dive in.
Lead generation. At this stage, marketers take a closer look at creating accurate customer profiles. Focus on customers who brought your company's biggest profits to find out the similar characteristics. Align the work of your marketing and sales team to deliver the right content to people. Use brainstorming of the two teams to find the best ideas for the content of your website, email campaigns, web push, pay-per-click ads, etc. This will help you gather insights and create valuable and informative blog posts, videos, and infographics for visitors. Besides, consider implementing referral marketing since it helps bring in qualified leads that are more likely to convert into customers.
Prospecting. At the prospecting stage, consider a personal approach to your leads. Use industry events as a moment to communicate with your audience and establish trusting relationships with them. You can raise relevant topics to show your company’s expertise and make a positive first impression. Before selling your product, show your expertise to establish trust and credibility. People should know about the company they buy from and its experts.
Lead qualification. According to statistics, 61% of marketers consider lead qualification their main challenge. Brands qualify prospects to avoid wasting their time and money on attracting leads who have no interest in their solutions. For this reason, you need to make sure that the prospective customers you’ve identified are a good fit for your business. Leverage the BANT (budget, authority, needs, and timeline) method, at the qualification stage. After using this technique, you’ll get to know the main customer insights critical for your company. Then create a list of companies that compete for the same customers’ attention and offer a similar product. Figure out what these prospects like and dislike about other vendors’ products and decide whether these people fit your description.
Contact. Now that you have your highly qualified leads identified, it’s time to contact people likely to purchase from you. Use a phone call, video meeting, email, demo, physical meeting, or even messenger. There are several things to consider when conducting a meeting or a call. Before setting it up, select the people involved. Decide who will represent shareholders and decision-makers. Secondly, get ready with the agenda. Although you might have some questions from potential customers when you speak about your product, you still need to have a plan to run the meeting smoothly. Webinars, data sets, and case studies will come in handy when discussing results.
Proposal. Outline the prospect’s pain points, the solution that addresses these problems, pricing information, and terms. To win customers, personalize your offer to meet their needs and requirements. Make every customer feel special and delight them with your solution. Communicate the benefits your potential customers will obtain once they use your product. Make sure to include some accurate data and statistics about the results your solution brings. Besides, ensure that your proposal encompasses FAQs to prevent leads from having no answer to some common questions.
Negotiations. At this stage, sales reps and marketers answer some last questions and sign the contract. The parties of the deal discuss the scope of work and expectations and adjust pricing. These steps are necessary to develop a beneficial partnership for both a business and a customer. Digital signing will simplify the process and help avoid several problems.
Retention. Once you close the deal, your work isn’t finished. It’s equally important to retain this client. So you need to keep in touch with customers and keep them updated on your products and news.
Now that you know the stages, let’s jump into the next section to unveil how to build an effective sales pipeline.
How to build an effective sales pipeline?
Your business needs an effective sales pipeline to win customers and close more deals. That’s why we’ve prepared a short step-by-step guide on how to do it.
Determine the stages of a sales cycle. Make sure that the stages you define match the nature of your business. They should encompass the way customers make their decisions and feedback from different company departments, including marketing.
Identify goals for each stage. Each sales cycle stage needs to have its objectives since sales reps are highly target-driven. You should identify the number of customers to win to reach the goals. Make sure to analyze the time the sales team spends on sales and non-sales activities to distribute time to perform specific tasks correctly.
Develop a sales process. If you create a sales process from scratch, you need to define the activities to do at each stage of your sales pipeline. The stage of the sales process determines the tasks your team should perform. For instance, you focus on adjusting the budget, approving it, and composing a proposal document at the proposal stage.
Create a database of prospects. Sales managers have a list of leads, prospective customers, and clients in front of them. It keeps them updated on the actions they should take to reach these people. Creating a database in CRM enables you to store all necessary data, track interactions, and plan. Your sales reps can always access the software and update data. They can add new leads, tasks, and other marks so that every department knows about the progress of the deals.
Train your sales team. Your sales representatives should be strong communicators who understand customers' needs. That’s why consider conducting training to educate your team on how to communicate with leads and customers to win their love. Make sure that your sales managers know your product, have a strong pitch, and are confident in their own words.
The process of building an effective sales pipeline is clear, so let’s jump into the 4 key metrics to consider.
4 Key Sales Pipeline Metrics
You need to keep an eye on the most critical metrics to make sure that you go through the sales cycle smoothly. We’ve prepared a list of the key indicators for you to track and stay updated about your business health.
Customer lifetime value. LTV enables companies to predict the revenue they will generate over the entire relationship with a specific customer. With its help, marketers estimate the profitability of a customer and assess the potential of a business for further growth.
Win rate. This measure shows the number of prospects a brand managed to turn into customers. Entrepreneurs track the measure over specific periods to see the changes. If the win rate is low, marketers change the strategy, train sales reps, and leverage new marketing tools. If the win rate is high yet your total sales don’t meet your expectations, revise your marketing strategy and tools.
Average sales cycle. This metric shows the period a company needs to close the deal. After identifying the length of an average sales cycle, marketers find out what deals have longer sales cycles. With this information, you’ll be able to figure out the problems in these deals and find the solution to manage them. Automate the process with CRM to shorten the sales cycle. Often, it’s a human factor that causes the slowing down of the sales process. LIKE.TG offers business owners to make use of its CRM for free. You can control all your deals and facilitate communication with leads through various channels on one platform.
Customer acquisition cost. The measure indicates the cost a company spends to win a new customer. After calculating CAC, brands gauge how much they spend on marketing, salaries, and other efforts to bring a new consumer. It helps marketers evaluate the effectiveness of customer acquisition strategy and make some changes to improve it.
Now that you know the metrics, let’s explore the ways to make your sales pipeline better.
3 Ways to Improve Your Sales Pipeline
In this section, we’ll review the three ways to improve your sales pipeline. Let’s explore them in detail.
Provide users with guides, eBooks, and white papers. To build a list of leads, you should gather their contacts. To do it, you need to ensure your website visitors with valuable materials. Ask users to provide their contact information in exchange for your guides, eBooks, and white papers. Once you receive their contacts, you can send an email campaign that contains the additional information this person was interested in.
Interact with prospects on social media platforms. Now, when many people worldwide spend their free time on social media networks, businesses need to develop their accounts on these platforms. Sales reps should communicate with leads to establish relationships with them and encourage prospects to convert into customers. Marketers should provide relevant content that might come in handy for visitors, deliver the right message to the followers about the brand’s product, and implement various programs to show users the benefits they can obtain.
Leverage a CRM. CRM will help you keep the information about all your deals, customers, and leads in one place. With its help, you’ll avoid losing any essential data about your prospects and consumers and keep track of your sales progress. Check out our CRM to figure out how it can help you manage your business.
Congrats, you know how to build an effective sales pipeline, and we hope you’ll do it soon. Make use of our tips to make it perfect and close deals faster
Sales forecasting
Sales forecasting is the process of predicting the company’s revenue within a specific period in the future. Sales forecasts estimate the number of products the company will sell and the time period needed to do it.
In the article, we explain why sales forecasting is important and highlight its benefits. We provide the factors affecting sales forecasting and outline its methods and examples.
Why is sales forecasting important?
Companies with accurate forecasts are more likely to grow their revenue over the previous year and two times more likely to become the top company in their field. Such inspiring statistics show the importance of sales prospecting and its direct influence on the companies’ success. We explain this process is so powerful below.
A sales forecast is a benchmark that helps make more conscious business decisions. It allows businesses to predict their short-term and long-term revenue, and plan their investments accordingly. Companies can estimate their budget for a certain period and be sure that they will have enough costs.
Moreover, sales forecasting helps plan the usage of resources better. Business owners can make decisions about shipping the raw materials, hiring staff, and spending on marketing based on the forecasts. It allows them to optimize companies’ decisions according to the current situation in the market.
The sales forecasting process is an obligatory part of work in successful companies. Read about its benefits in the next section.
Benefits of Sales Forecasting
Some junior marketers may neglect sales forecasting and think this step is challenging and unimportant. However, it is not so. Below we provide the main benefits of sales forecasting and explain why this process is necessary.
It helps estimate future revenue and plan the budget. Smart sales forecasting allows your company to develop a competitive strategy based on this information. Knowledge of the approximate future income lets you optimize spending, feel more confident in making investments, and avoid mistakes in budget planning.
It shows the company’s needs in staff and resources. Sales forecast helps estimate the number of employees and raw materials your brand will need to work successfully. Forecasting allows you to ensure that the business has all the necessary resources and avoid problems with inaccurate management.
It helps develop a well-defined marketing strategy. Sometimes revenue predictions may be dissatisfying, and it is the reason to consider changes in your promotions. Based on the current forecast, you can identify the roadblocks in the customer journey and improve them to close sales faster and smoother.
It represents possible problems with your company’s health. By predicting future revenue for a certain period, you can find out some seasonal problems with demand. Sales prospecting is a great way to discover these possible issues and make necessary changes before directly affecting your revenue.
It helps companies grow faster. Understanding brands’ future earnings is necessary for business owners to make informed decisions. You can use sales forecasts as benchmarks to focus on the most profitable products and audiences. Such a strategy leads to higher flexibility, increased revenue, and faster company growth.
Now you understand why accurate forecasts play an important role in business development. Continue reading to discover the factors that affect sales forecasting and their peculiarities.
4 Factors Affecting Sales Forecasting
Below we provide the most critical factors that affect sales forecasting accuracy you should consider.
1. Business conditions
These factors include the general economic and legislative state of the country. People tend to be more confident in their purchases and spend more money if the national economy is strong. Moreover, general trends for inflation or deflation influence consumers behavior and, consequently, sales forecasts. You should also pay attention to the general price levels and people’s income while predicting your company’s revenue.
One more factor is new laws and political changes. They can increase or decrease the level of your sales. Take into consideration the import and export policy if you use materials from abroad. Remember that we can not control general business conditions, so your company should be flexible and react to all these factors while developing a strategy and predicting future sales.
2. Industry changes
These factors include changes in market share, product innovations, new companies in the industry, and trends in product promotion. For example, if your competitors raise prices, some clients can switch the brand and start buying from your company, increasing predicted revenue. On the other hand, if your competitor suggests an innovative product, you may lose some clients.
Marketers should pay attention to the trends in the industry and change their strategies accordingly. It is important to improve your products constantly. Increasing average deal size with upselling and cross-selling can positively influence your sales.
3. Internal conditions
They include pricing policy, marketing strategy, number of employees, product quality, financial distribution, etc. Changes in these factors can increase or decrease sales and, consequently, affect the forecast of your future revenue. The good thing is that we can influence internal conditions directly.
For example, if you hire a new sales manager, the number of deals can also increase. On the other hand, the company may lose revenue if there are not enough workers in a certain department. To make an accurate forecast, you should consider all possible changes in the company and predict sales based on the existing development strategy.
4. Sociological conditions
Sociological factors include all the demographic information related to your clients. While making a sales forecast, you should take into consideration the size of the population, the level of your clients’ education, social status, personal income, etc. Public moods can sometimes be unpredictable, but they influence sales too.
One more important factor is seasonal changes in demand. For example, according to Cloudways, holiday shopping made up 19.5% of total annual income in retail. Moreover, even the weather can influence sales of such products as clothes, travel vouchers, coffee to go, etc.
Some of these factors are easy to predict, but some can be unexpected. You might be confused about doing an accurate forecast with so many variables. In the next section, we provide the most effective sales forecasting methods and techniques and explain how to use them with examples.
7 Sales Forecasting Methods and Examples
Continue reading to discover 7 sales forecasting methods to make your sales predictions as accurate as possible.
1. Intuitive forecasting
The essence of this method is that business owners ask their sales managers to predict the company’s future income based on their feelings and subjective opinions. Intuitive forecasting is rarely accurate because many employees tend to be optimistic and can not pay attention to all possible affecting factors. Moreover, such predictions are difficult to scale. However, many business owners use intuitive forecasting when they only found their company and do not have enough resources to make more complex forecasts.
Imagine that your company has 2 managers and you ask them to forecast your sales for the next year. One manager predicts 2000$ of revenue, the other one — 3000$. The arithmetic mean of these two predictions is 2500$ a year — it will be the intuitive forecast for your company.
2. Historical forecasting
This method is a quick way to predict future income based on historical data. For example, if you want to forecast sales for the first quarter, your manager may look at the results of the previous years and assume that demand will be the same or a little higher. The disadvantage of such a method is that it does not consider changes in the market and your own sales pipeline.
For instance, your revenue in spring 2021 was 1400$. You can assume that in spring 2022, your company will earn 1400$ too. If your sales are constantly increasing, you can add historical growth. Imagine that you grow 10% a year, so in spring 2022, your revenue may be 1400 + 1400*0.1 = 1540$.
3. Forecasting based on the length of the sales cycle
Marketers use this method to predict future revenue based on the time needed for the clients to make a purchase. You can use it if your company has a limited number of potential clients. Moreover, if there are a few different pipelines for different products, you can separate leads and predict the total company’s revenue. The advantage of this method is that it is completely objective and can be scaled. The disadvantage is that continuous new data tracking is required to make accurate forecasts.
For example, if the approximate amount of time your clients need to make a purchase is 2 months and four leads have been considering for 1 month, there is a 50% possibility that they will buy your product. Imagine that you have only these four leads and the cost of the purchase is 5000$, so your sales forecast is 10000$. ((4*5000$)*0.5)
4. Opportunity stage forecasting
This method is similar to the previous one, but it is based on the lead’s stage in the buying process. You can divide your sales cycle into several parts and assign the percentage of the probability that the customer will make a purchase to them. Then you multiply the potential cost of each purchase in the period of purchase by the likelihood of its closing and sum up all the results.
The advantage of this method is that it is rather objective and easy to calculate. On the other hand, if there are any changes to your strategy, the forecast will be inaccurate. Moreover, it can be based only on the limited number of potential clients.
For instance, your company has two potential clients. One of them is in the first stage and 30% likely to purchase the products for 2000$. The second one is in the last stage and is 80% likely to purchase for 4000$. The sales forecast will be 3800$ (2000*0.3 + 4000*0.8).
5. Portfolio forecasting
This method combines all the previous ones. To use portfolio forecasting, marketers take into consideration the historical data, the length of the sales cycle, the number of leads, the possibility of closing each deal, and the sales representatives' intuitive predictions. A combination of all these factors shows a more holistic picture of the company’s sales. On the other hand, this method requires lots of data that is rather difficult to combine accurately.
Imagine that the company sold products for 6000$ during the same quarter in the previous year, which is a historical forecast. Now there are four clients that may buy products for 2500$ each that are 50% likely to make a purchase. Consequently, the opportunity forecast is 5000$. At the same time, sales managers predict 7000$ in revenue. Based on these numbers the simplified portfolio forecast is 5000$ ((6000+5000+7000) / 3).
6. Test-market analysis forecasting
Marketers use this method to predict the success of the products based on pre-launch testing. Usually, companies suggest their new goods to the limited groups of potential clients divided into a few segments. According to the market response, businesses can predict the approximate demand and the number of products sold within a set period.
Test-market analysis results are easy to scale. This method allows you to increase consumers’ brand awareness and attract their attention to your product launch. However, this method does not take into consideration market trends and internal factors, such as pricing policy changes. It is also very important to keep in mind the period when the customer needs to repeat the purchase.
For example, you sold 100 products that cost 5$ each to 300 people during a pre-launch. Your total revenue is 500$. The total number of your target audience in the country is 30 000 consumers, which is 100 times more than the number of consumers in pre-launch testing. Consequently, your revenue after the launch will increase 100 times, and your company will earn 50 000$ before the consumers need to repurchase.
7. Multivariable analysis forecasting
This is the most accurate but the most complex method for sales forecasting. It requires lots of historical data, sales cycle length, test-market analysis statistics, the possibility of closing the deals at all customer journey stages, individual sales managers’ performance during the stated period, etc. Companies use analytical tools and different machine learning algorithms to reach the best results in revenue predictions.
The advantage is that multivariable analysis forecasting is reliable. AI calculates all the forecasts, so marketers do not need to deal with lots of numbers. However, tools for sales forecasting may be rather expensive for small businesses. To get accurate forecasts, you need to update data regularly. Moreover, it is sometimes difficult to understand the principles used by AI to make sales predictions.
Congrats, now you know what sales forecasting is and why it is important. You understand how to use the prediction methods and what factors affect your forecasts.
Sales optimization
Sales optimization is using technology to maximize your sales performance and increase the number of conversions. You can do it by studying interactions with the target audience and improving them to sell more effectively.
In the article, we explain what sales optimization is and provide the top 9 strategies to blow up your sales.
9 sales optimization strategies to drive more revenue
According to Statista, the average conversion rate of online shoppers was about 2.14%–3.23% in the third quarter of 2020. If you think this percentage is extremely low and want to generate more sales check out 9 effective strategies below.
Set short-term and long-term goals. To improve your sales processes, it is vital to understand the company’s future actions. Define potential growth areas, predict possible roadblocks and find ways to overcome them. Describe your brand’s aims and create a plan for the next few years. Then divide it into the parts, establish goals for each part, and set deadlines. Share this plan with your sales team to be on the same page.
Create profiles of your buyer personas. According to Madmarketer, 71% of companies that exceed goals in revenue documented their ideal clients. Analyzing and describing the audience you work with can help you understand their behavior and provide better service. Moreover, having definite consumer profiles will allow your sales representatives to concentrate on your buyer personas and avoid wasting the budget on uninterested leads. To study your target clients, focus on their demographics, needs, pains, motivations, and emotions that trigger them to buy. Share this information with your team and use it during the sales process.
Study your pipeline. Improving roadblocks is as important as looking for future ways to develop. To understand your company’s issues, examine all the stages of your sales pipeline. Discover the length of the client's journey, the number of conversions, customer acquisition cost, and return on investments. The most important metrics can differentiate from company to company and depend on your goals. Then fix the leaks in the pipeline to make the sales process smoother.
Use business automation tools. According to Emailmonday, 56% of businesses use marketing automation. It allows companies to save their employees time, regulate operations and streamline processes. Chatbots are a current trend in business automation that helps answer FAQs faster and free your workers for more important tasks. LIKE.TG provides a cutting-edge chatbot builder that lets you create bots for Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Telegram. You can set up auto-replies, add content, insert buttons and accept payments right into the bot. Try it for free to optimize your sales right now.
Build long-term relations with clients. Most companies are focused on getting a quick profit and don’t concentrate on building strong relationships. This strategy allows businesses to survive but not to develop. Smallbizgenius states that 65% of the brand's revenue comes from regular customers, so it is vital to improve their satisfaction and loyalty to reduce brand switching.
Try different marketing strategies. You can interact with the audience across various channels within an omnichannel marketing strategy. Test different formats and understand what converts clients better. There are many ways to advertise your products, such as social promotions, ads on TV, influence marketing, etc. LIKE.TG lets you launch bulk email, SMS, and web push campaigns. You can personalize marketing messages, segment target audiences, and use A/B testing to make sending more effective.
Empower your sales team with CRM. Findstack states that 74% of sales reps are sure that using a CRM gives them better access to customer data and helps provide personalized service. This fact is crucial because 80% of people are more likely to buy from a company that offers a personalized experience. If you are looking for a platform that will help you streamline your sales — try the built-inCRM from LIKE.TG. It allows you to manage the deals, store clients’ information, check the tasks’ progress and connect with customers in two clicks. Moreover, you can integrate the CRM with other LIKE.TG products to make it even more powerful.
Analyze the results regularly. Continuous tracking of your sales performance lets you improve roadblocks as fast as possible. You will find unnecessary stages of the customer journey and speed them up or optimize them to prevent leads from leaking out. Also, studying your sales processes helps define the most profitable segments of clients, prioritize them and increase profits.
Choose the right people and improve your sales reps’ qualifications regularly. According to HubSpot, 20% of sales reps generate 80% of sales. It means that the choice of employees is crucial. Once you put the team together, create a client-centric culture within your company. Explain your values to the workers and motivate them to transmit them to the customers. Identify KPIs according to your goals and track the staff performance. Also, it is vital to improve your employees’ skills regularly. Provide training and courses within the company to educate them on optimizing sales. You can also use our blog as a free source of information to find out the ways to improve your digital marketing strategy.
Congrats, now you know what sales optimization is and how to improve your sales. Use these ideas to optimize processes within your company and drive more revenue.
Sales pipeline
A sales pipeline is a way to track prospective customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. It helps control each sale’s progress, generate more conversions, and increase revenue.
In this article, we’ll compare a sales pipeline and a sales funnel, explore the 7 stages and 4 metrics of the sales pipeline. We’ll also uncover ways to make your sales pipeline better.
Why is a sales pipeline important?
Having a clear sales pipeline is crucial for every business. Users with different intentions browse your website in search of solutions. Some look through the best possible options, and others are ready to interact and convert into consumers. To keep track of prospects who can become your consumers, you need a sales pipeline. Your sales representatives will lead your potential customers from the start until deals close, increase conversions, and boost profits.
A sales pipeline guides your sales reps to reach key business objectives. They can monitor all deals and make sales forecasts. If a company succeeds in implementing a comprehensive sales pipeline, it’ll have a clear picture of the brand’s health and sales progress. After categorizing deals in the pipeline, sales managers can increase their work efficiency. They identify deals with higher conversion rates and work with them first to increase profits. When a business uses a CRM, it can transfer and store the necessary information on the cloud and reduce manual work. As a result, the company's team will close deals faster.
Now that you know why a sales pipeline is important, let’s uncover the difference between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel.
Sales Pipeline vs Sales Funnel
People often use the two terms interchangeably to define prospects’ place in the sales process. Yet these concepts indicate different things. We’ll review the sales pipeline and sales funnel in more detail to show you this difference.
A sales pipeline is a visualization of prospects’ position in the sales process. The stages include prospecting, lead qualification, demo, proposal, negotiation, closed deal, and post-purchase. A sales pipeline represents the sales process from the perspective of sales reps and describes the actions a sales manager makes to move a lead toward a successful deal.
A sales funnel is a marketing model that represents a journey a lead goes through from becoming aware of the product until the act of the purchase. The stages include awareness, interest, decision, and action. A sales funnel focuses on the decision-making process of customers.
The difference is clear, so it’s time to proceed to the next section to review the 7 stages of the sales pipeline.
7 Stages of Sales Pipeline
A sales pipeline consists of seven stages sales representatives take control of. We’ve prepared a list for you to consider when you decide to develop a sales pipeline for your business. Let’s dive in.
Lead generation. At this stage, marketers take a closer look at creating accurate customer profiles. Focus on customers who brought your company's biggest profits to find out the similar characteristics. Align the work of your marketing and sales team to deliver the right content to people. Use brainstorming of the two teams to find the best ideas for the content of your website, email campaigns, web push, pay-per-click ads, etc. This will help you gather insights and create valuable and informative blog posts, videos, and infographics for visitors. Besides, consider implementing referral marketing since it helps bring in qualified leads that are more likely to convert into customers.
Prospecting. At the prospecting stage, consider a personal approach to your leads. Use industry events as a moment to communicate with your audience and establish trusting relationships with them. You can raise relevant topics to show your company’s expertise and make a positive first impression. Before selling your product, show your expertise to establish trust and credibility. People should know about the company they buy from and its experts.
Lead qualification. According to statistics, 61% of marketers consider lead qualification their main challenge. Brands qualify prospects to avoid wasting their time and money on attracting leads who have no interest in their solutions. For this reason, you need to make sure that the prospective customers you’ve identified are a good fit for your business. Leverage the BANT (budget, authority, needs, and timeline) method, at the qualification stage. After using this technique, you’ll get to know the main customer insights critical for your company. Then create a list of companies that compete for the same customers’ attention and offer a similar product. Figure out what these prospects like and dislike about other vendors’ products and decide whether these people fit your description.
Contact. Now that you have your highly qualified leads identified, it’s time to contact people likely to purchase from you. Use a phone call, video meeting, email, demo, physical meeting, or even messenger. There are several things to consider when conducting a meeting or a call. Before setting it up, select the people involved. Decide who will represent shareholders and decision-makers. Secondly, get ready with the agenda. Although you might have some questions from potential customers when you speak about your product, you still need to have a plan to run the meeting smoothly. Webinars, data sets, and case studies will come in handy when discussing results.
Proposal. Outline the prospect’s pain points, the solution that addresses these problems, pricing information, and terms. To win customers, personalize your offer to meet their needs and requirements. Make every customer feel special and delight them with your solution. Communicate the benefits your potential customers will obtain once they use your product. Make sure to include some accurate data and statistics about the results your solution brings. Besides, ensure that your proposal encompasses FAQs to prevent leads from having no answer to some common questions.
Negotiations. At this stage, sales reps and marketers answer some last questions and sign the contract. The parties of the deal discuss the scope of work and expectations and adjust pricing. These steps are necessary to develop a beneficial partnership for both a business and a customer. Digital signing will simplify the process and help avoid several problems.
Retention. Once you close the deal, your work isn’t finished. It’s equally important to retain this client. So you need to keep in touch with customers and keep them updated on your products and news.
Now that you know the stages, let’s jump into the next section to unveil how to build an effective sales pipeline.
How to build an effective sales pipeline?
Your business needs an effective sales pipeline to win customers and close more deals. That’s why we’ve prepared a short step-by-step guide on how to do it.
Determine the stages of a sales cycle. Make sure that the stages you define match the nature of your business. They should encompass the way customers make their decisions and feedback from different company departments, including marketing.
Identify goals for each stage. Each sales cycle stage needs to have its objectives since sales reps are highly target-driven. You should identify the number of customers to win to reach the goals. Make sure to analyze the time the sales team spends on sales and non-sales activities to distribute time to perform specific tasks correctly.
Develop a sales process. If you create a sales process from scratch, you need to define the activities to do at each stage of your sales pipeline. The stage of the sales process determines the tasks your team should perform. For instance, you focus on adjusting the budget, approving it, and composing a proposal document at the proposal stage.
Create a database of prospects. Sales managers have a list of leads, prospective customers, and clients in front of them. It keeps them updated on the actions they should take to reach these people. Creating a database in CRM enables you to store all necessary data, track interactions, and plan. Your sales reps can always access the software and update data. They can add new leads, tasks, and other marks so that every department knows about the progress of the deals.
Train your sales team. Your sales representatives should be strong communicators who understand customers' needs. That’s why consider conducting training to educate your team on how to communicate with leads and customers to win their love. Make sure that your sales managers know your product, have a strong pitch, and are confident in their own words.
The process of building an effective sales pipeline is clear, so let’s jump into the 4 key metrics to consider.
4 Key Sales Pipeline Metrics
You need to keep an eye on the most critical metrics to make sure that you go through the sales cycle smoothly. We’ve prepared a list of the key indicators for you to track and stay updated about your business health.
Customer lifetime value. LTV enables companies to predict the revenue they will generate over the entire relationship with a specific customer. With its help, marketers estimate the profitability of a customer and assess the potential of a business for further growth.
Win rate. This measure shows the number of prospects a brand managed to turn into customers. Entrepreneurs track the measure over specific periods to see the changes. If the win rate is low, marketers change the strategy, train sales reps, and leverage new marketing tools. If the win rate is high yet your total sales don’t meet your expectations, revise your marketing strategy and tools.
Average sales cycle. This metric shows the period a company needs to close the deal. After identifying the length of an average sales cycle, marketers find out what deals have longer sales cycles. With this information, you’ll be able to figure out the problems in these deals and find the solution to manage them. Automate the process with CRM to shorten the sales cycle. Often, it’s a human factor that causes the slowing down of the sales process. LIKE.TG offers business owners to make use of its CRM for free. You can control all your deals and facilitate communication with leads through various channels on one platform.
Customer acquisition cost. The measure indicates the cost a company spends to win a new customer. After calculating CAC, brands gauge how much they spend on marketing, salaries, and other efforts to bring a new consumer. It helps marketers evaluate the effectiveness of customer acquisition strategy and make some changes to improve it.
Now that you know the metrics, let’s explore the ways to make your sales pipeline better.
3 Ways to Improve Your Sales Pipeline
In this section, we’ll review the three ways to improve your sales pipeline. Let’s explore them in detail.
Provide users with guides, eBooks, and white papers. To build a list of leads, you should gather their contacts. To do it, you need to ensure your website visitors with valuable materials. Ask users to provide their contact information in exchange for your guides, eBooks, and white papers. Once you receive their contacts, you can send an email campaign that contains the additional information this person was interested in.
Interact with prospects on social media platforms. Now, when many people worldwide spend their free time on social media networks, businesses need to develop their accounts on these platforms. Sales reps should communicate with leads to establish relationships with them and encourage prospects to convert into customers. Marketers should provide relevant content that might come in handy for visitors, deliver the right message to the followers about the brand’s product, and implement various programs to show users the benefits they can obtain.
Leverage a CRM. CRM will help you keep the information about all your deals, customers, and leads in one place. With its help, you’ll avoid losing any essential data about your prospects and consumers and keep track of your sales progress. Check out our CRM to figure out how it can help you manage your business.
Congrats, you know how to build an effective sales pipeline, and we hope you’ll do it soon. Make use of our tips to make it perfect and close deals faster
Sales performance management
Sales performance management (SPM) is an approach to managing your business processes to sell more products and drive more revenue. It uses real-time insights to create a holistic image of the sales performance and make data-informed decisions.
In the article, we explain what sales performance management is and why it is essential. We also describe the top 5 software to manage your sales performance effectively.
Why is sales performance management important?
According to Korn Ferry, only 53% of sales reps succeed in making or exceeding their quota. These statistics prove that many companies on the market have issues with sales performance. SPM aims to increase the number of successful deals and help businesses drive more revenue. Read more about its importance below.
In today's dynamic market, it is necessary to react to changes quickly and adapt the strategy to the current situation. Sales performance management lets you get an overview of the sales processes and define the leaks in your pipeline. You can build a flexible sales ecosystem based on real-time insights provided by AI. Use machine learning to get alerts about problems with your sales performance and improve them immediately.
Also, SPM helps with sales forecasting. You can predict the success of your future campaigns manually or automatically using analytics collected by the software. Sales performance management services provide different possible scenarios for you to make more informed decisions and understand their consequences.
Finally, SPM helps control and increase the effectiveness of your employees’ work. It allows companies to improve their territory management and balanced distribution of quotas and bonuses according to your team's success. You can also use interactive elements and gamification to motivate staff to work better and increase your sales performance.
Now you understand the importance of sales performance management. Continue reading to discover the best software that can help you create action plans, improve your sales and increase profits.
Top 5 Sales Performance Management Software
Effective sales performance management is impossible without powerful software that lets you automate the majority of time-consuming processes. In this section, we describe the top 5 platforms for successful SPM and outline their peculiarities.
Anaplan
This software provides insights into the sales performance in real-time and forecasts future results for you to make data-driven decisions. Anaplan helps plan and incentive sales, track market changes, manage your employees' work and collaborate with different departments to get better results. We describe the main features of this service below.
Sales management. With Anaplan, you can design account segmentation strategies, identify key performance indicators and define quotas and territories to make your team’s work more effective. This cloud-based software helps foster real-time collaboration across different departments and, in such a way, increases the efficiency of your staff.
Building a flexible strategy. This service allows companies to predict their revenue, anticipate market changes, evaluate various strategies and prepare for different scenarios beforehand. Anaplan has a single platform for agile sales planning and management that lets employees from different departments align their efforts.
Team management. You can identify the gaps in your workers’ skills and get a holistic image of your human resources by studying headcount and key talent metrics. Anaplan also lets you build compensation plans, track the relevant metrics and turn these plans into reality to motivate your representatives to perform better.
Analytics. This software provides a few real-time scenarios to consider while planning your future actions. You can also increase the accuracy of your predictions not only by internally collected metrics but also by AI insights and machine learning suggestions.
Pricing is discussed individually.
Look at the screenshot below. Here is a pricing analysis in Anaplan. You can track volumes, revenue, margin, and trends. It lets companies set up the optimal prices on their products and, in such a way, drive more revenue.
Xactly
This cloud-based software aims to automate manual processes and optimize your operations, providing data-informed insights. Xactly helps with go-to-market planning, pipeline and employee performance management, and process extension. Discover more about its main features below.
Territory, quota, and credit management. This platform lets you control and maintain transparency of quotas according to the company’s goals and reduce the administrative burden on your team leaders. You can build a strong strategy, and make it more flexible and less affected by changes in personnel and territory.
Administration of everyday changes. Xactly helps automate routine tasks and scale them easily to save your reps time for more important issues. You can also optimize sales operations with the help of AI to avoid manual mistakes.
Powerful analytics and customizable dashboards. This platform allows companies to gather data on consumer behavior and analyze the pipeline to define ways to improve their sales performance. You can also track the work of your employees and identify problems immediately using customizable dashboards. Moreover, Xactly helps manage compensation programs to motivate employees to improve the results of their work.
Tailored solutions. The service provides customizable solutions to optimize processes and overcome unique operational challenges in different industries. With the help of Xactly, you can improve your rosters, territories, quotas, and credits.
Integrations. Xactly has an open and scalable architecture that allows you to customize processes in the way your company needs. This software can connect seamlessly with your company's existing systems, such as CRM, HCM, ERP, and others to make your work more effective.
Pricing is discussed individually.
Below there is a Home tab in Xactly. You can open analytics dashboards, track year credits by type, discover quarter and period attainment and find out more about accepted payments.
Board
This cloud-based platform has a hybrid in-memory architecture that helps in business planning and analysis. Its flexible data model lets companies unify information to create a single view of their sales and be confident in their data security. You can generate unlimited future scenarios to optimize your strategy and have the best performance. We provide more Board features below.
Data management. This service unifies and organizes information from different sources in data models, where sales reps can change it anytime. Also, Board offers a set of pre-built data connectors, so you can reach the data in a few clicks and enhance it easily.
Sales planning. You can forecast sales, plan quotas, territory, and budget according to a what-if analysis provided by the platform. This service lets you modify data during the forecasting and, in such a way, change the results of your sales predictions in real-time.
Analytics and reports. You can create on-the-fly calculated metrics with Board’s formulas and use them immediately to analyze your sales performance. Explore all collected information in detail as the service provides automated possible drill-down paths. Also, you can conduct your analyses using data from different data sources.
Workflow management. This software helps model key business processes based on pre-built rules. You can get alerts and create trigger events if certain conditions are met. Entry data simultaneously with other users and see the changes in all levels of detail.
Building business intelligence applications. Board’s HTML5 technology lets companies build and launch applications for your business needs. You can do it without coding and use the apps immediately from any device.
Integrations. You can implement the software on-premise, on-hosting, or on-cloud and change the work model anytime you need. Such flexibility lets the Board create seamless integrations with other tools, applications, and CRM systems to manage activities in a single platform.
Pricing is discussed individually.
Look at the client account in the Board below. Here you can discover more about customer behavior patterns, find out key value drivers, and track buyers’ preferences to provide more personalized experiences.
InsightSquared
This software provides machine learning-driven insights, demand generation analytics, and SaaS reporting to help you improve your sales processes. You can discover more about the customer journey and the way to improve it, get pipeline and revenue forecasts, and find out the ways to optimize your sales processes. Discover more about its features below.
Data tracking. This service lets you collect data connected not only with your sales reps but with everyone involved in creating your customer journey and delivering experiences to consumers. All the information from the software and other integrated tools is collected right in your CRM to ensure complete records of all interactions.
Analytics. You can capture and analyze all the data through the sales processes automatically. InsightSquared has real-time dashboards and reports that make every update visible immediately. This software helps visualize the sales funnel, track the effectiveness of your interactions, and provides insights into what influences customers’ decisions.
Account management. You can add new reports and dashboards, create your hierarchy, and segment sales forecasts in the way you need to make work more effective. Also, InsightSquared lets users filter the data by any field and track changes in metrics in real-time.
Pipeline management. This software allows companies to manage all their sales processes from one central dashboard and detail the pipeline at any level to understand the current performance better. You can discover the reasons for the changes in sales using reports that InsightSquared can generate at any time.
Team management. The service lets you track the performance of each team member, identify the leaders and discover the weak points of your staff. You can break down the activity of each account over time and gain insights into how certain actions influence your sales.
Pricing is discussed individually.
There is an analytics dashboard in InsightSquared. You can track buyers’ activity, find out about the places of interaction and switch the tabs to discover more about the sales opportunities that AI predicts.
People.ai
This software helps teams manage the data about their sales and revenue. Its main advantage is patented filtering, SOC II-Type 2 certification, and data encryption that help keep your information secure. Discover more about People.ai’s features below.
Pipeline management. You can connect all stages from the top funnel buyer engagement to the purchase to create a well-defined sales pipeline. Unify the data about buyers with account and opportunity information to get a holistic image of your sales performance and define the ways for future development.
Integrations. People.ai integrates easily with your existing stack. You can empower your systems with new revenue-related data, such as emails, meetings, calendar events, etc., and get a deeper understanding of your sales processes.
Data and opportunity management. This software automatically captures and analyzes buyers’ and sales reps’ activity and provides insights into their engagement. People.ai provides AI-powered suggestions on the activities that impact the outcome of a deal and how to improve them.
Pricing is discussed individually.
Below there is an Opportunities tab in People.ai. The software lets you track the cost of each deal, its stages, close dates, and engagement scores. You can also filter the data by any metric.
Congrats, now you understand what SPM is and why it is important. Also, you know the top 5 best sales performance management software and how to use them to improve your business processes.
