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Lead Generation

What are some growth hacks a startup needs to approach to hit the sales target?

4

Answers

Mark Beckett

Marketing ideas, expertise and experience.

You could start with my APELA framework. Awareness: The first consideration is the size of your target audience. If your product or service is only relevant to a small number of people, it will be more effective to reach them directly by LinkedIn or email. If on the other hand, they are numerous then indirect will be more effective (E.g. paid search and social, partnership marketing and targetted advertising) If the buying cycle for your product or service is long (e.g a car) then you must create awareness and maintain recall. This is best achieved by capturing contact details via inbound content-based marketing (automated ideally) and sending out a regular newsletter. If on the other hand your product or service has a short sales cycle (e.g. coffee)then you need constant visibility. Either way, you need awareness and recall. For more about APELA and the next 5 stages of the customer engagement chorology: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/meet-apela-chronology-customer-engagement-mark-walmsley/ God luck Mark Walmsley mark@markwalmsley.co.uk

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Bruce Gibbs

I enjoy helping companies be successful online.

The first question you need to answer is who is your audience? Who are you trying to reach with your advertising? If for example, you were promoting a local restaurant, Facebook may be a good choice. If you are trying to reach business owners, LinkedIn may be a good choice (its more expensive though than the other choices listed). Also you need to determine if you want to narrow or segment your advertising. Google does allow you to target your advertising in multiple ways but Facebook targeting is more granular as its users share more details regarding Likes and Share, which is all tracked and packaged for advertisers (although the data is not tied to any particular user). With all that being said, I like AdWords, Facebook, and Bing. AdWords of course is the most popular so if I had to choose between AdWords and Bing I would gravitate to AdWords (although Bing may be worth you conducting a test). You will probably go through your $1000 budget faster on AdWords than on Facebook so that's something to consider also. I would recommend retargeting but you'll probably need a bigger budget to do the campaign justice. I hope all of this helps. Feel free to give me a call if you would like additional information.

Nacho Harriague

15yrs in tech | Gaming, SaaS & Media

Hi there, I think there may be an issue with qualification in your process and these prospects you are targeting may not actually be hot leads but people in a research phase. Any qualification process, even simple ones like BANT could give you a better understanding on which leads are closer to making a decision vs. just looking around. Have these been inbound or outbound leads? How many customers have you closed with the previous 2 month process, and were they inbound or outbound? I may be wrong, but I believe you are trying to close leads that have not been properly qualified. I would need a bit more background to give you a better answer.

Spencer Gallagher

CEO Cactus - The Agency Growth Consultancy

There are three main models. Firstly, reciprocity, we recommend clients to your agency to partner with and the agency recommend clients back to buy your service. The value exchange needs to be equal, but when this works it usually forms the strongest of strategic partnerships. Secondly, there is a commission structure. The main challenge for this model is often an agency is developing tens or hundreds of thousands through their sales to clients yet the commissions from products are often only hundreds or thousands and whilst they provides a passive income, by themselves the commissions are not lucrative enough. Also it’s hard to remain front of mind with the Agency account or sales teams. The third model is created by creating a value added partner programme. Where on top of commissions, because the agency, has been trained and certified in your product they can also benefit from an introduction to new clients, from the partner product, where they can sell the their services on top of the commissions they make from integrating the partner. Most CMS, hosting or ecommerce vendors have these types of programs. Happy to pick up more details on these on a call.

Yvette Parker

Brand Growth Pro, Project Management

Hi, if you are stateside, I recommend a great assurance and tax accounting firm, Elliott Davis. If you need to discuss how to structure your business - call the Greenville,SC office and speak to Charles Duke (this is his wheelhouse). I specialize in identifying new revenue within the categories you have created. I'd appreciate the opportunity to review and strategize on a call. I have worked with several clients in the wedding space successfully.

Luke Belcourt

Your Friendly Canadian Design & Marketing Pro!

It sounds like you are on the right track. In today's world, people consume so much content every day that it makes very difficult for businesses to break through that clutter and get their attention. The big takeaway I think you should continue to focus on is making your message more relatable. If you want to get someone's attention you need to perfectly target their interests, pain points, wants, needs, lifestyle etc... and gear the message to where it feels like you are speaking directly to them. Now this isn't always easy when you are dealing with lists because you have to be broad. However, one thing you can try to do is get really niche with your segments. Take that list and try to isolate various groups so that you can hit them with a revised message that is more targeted to them. These "sub" segments could be based off of geographic area, gender, age etc. With a better understanding of your offering and audience I can certainly provide better examples and other tips here if you would like to book a call!

Luke Belcourt

Your Friendly Canadian Design & Marketing Pro!

Hi there, My name is Luke, I work for start up and I should be able to give a little more insight from the employee perspective as I am in a similar situation right now! I think what you will find in this particular situation is there is no one right answer. Only you will understand the relationship you have with this individual and how you believe they will want this to be approached. I think the best way to prepare for this it to try and get an idea of their expectations. If you have a rough idea how they see themselves valued, that should help better bridge the gap in your offering. I know from my perspective as an employee I would want to come into that meeting with no bs and have a well though out offer ready for me. For you, I think it is important to base this off not only on what that person has done / their role now but also identify what you expect from them moving forward and give him the opportunity to communicate the same things back! If you have any more questions for me from a "employee perspective", feel free to book a followup call.

Nitesh Sharoff

Accelerated Growth using Rapid Experimentation

Yes, absolutely! You need to activate the GDPR consent forms and then add a form to your site. I'd explain it to you but this guide does a really good job: https://mailchimp.com/help/collect-consent-with-gdpr-forms/ If you need any help do let me know!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What are some of your biggest SEO Challenges?

4

Answers

Luke Belcourt

Your Friendly Canadian Design & Marketing Pro!

I think with most, the challenge is in the expectation. We need to stop treating / valuing SEO in the same way we did 10 years ago. The sad truth is the dynamics of SEO and the role it plays in your marketing has changed a lot over the years but unfortunately most businesses are not realizing this and it is creating a tonne of waste for them. To keep it simple - in today's marketing climate there are far better investments for your time and money. When it comes to SEO (or the end result of organic) you should be focusing on building your social presence and leveraging a relevant blog. With these, it doesn't always take much to get results. I work with a company where blogging was an afterthought. However, even though we invested zero into SEO, by just having a few well written, relevant blog posts, they started generating hundreds of unique visitor a month... and yes they are converting into clients. So lets just say now we are now allocating more money into community and content :). There is no shortage of proof that you do not need to spend a bunch of money on crappy SEO services, hacks, back-linking etc. to get results.

Matthieu Mazzega

Entrepreneur and UX Lead

Hi there! You should take a look on bubble.is and also ideable.co, it may definitely fit with what you're looking for!

WordPress

Memberships Plugins.

3

Answers

Srikanth Rakonda

8 Yrs Experience With Digital Marketing

You should try clickfunnels. You can create entire membership funnel and you can share your funnel with others..This solves your problem.

David C

I help you buy, sell, plan, value a business

Here is a website with some additional information: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/study-canada/work/work-off-campus.html If you have further doubts, just email Service Canada and tell them what you plan to do and they'll let you know. David Barnett

Mehdi Roshan

Project manager and Social Network Expert

Dear Key, Can you please explain a little more? Setting up a a concurrent user system by WooCommerce is possible with normal membership systems. please you add some details about what specific feature you are looking for then probably I can help you better. If you like we can have a fast call meeting about it as well.

Nicholas Jones

Design Thinking | Consultant

I think the question is which is more important to you, the platform or the individual fundraiser? The site will gain attention through each "poll," however, marketing the site alone may not ensure the success of the different polls. But if it were me doing it, I'd market both. The truth is they are one in the same. If people don't care about what is being challenged on the site, you have no website. Vice versus, they won't care about the website, if you don't have exciting challenges.

David Favor

Fractional CTO

Likely best to setup some phone conversations with people here you find provide advice which seems to resonate with you. USP may be useful + likely better will be to buy highly targeted traffic (to local area) + also use Meetup + other networking venues. Search for my name + Meetup in Clarity + likely you can take what you find + generate a highly lucrative lead gen system.

Pasindu Withanage

Co-founder & CEO @ Thiken

You could potentially try to get a good amount of products on your marketplace through your friends and family as a start. Also make sure that you go city by city so that way you can focus on one city and once you are doing great there you have the credibility and the experience to move to a new city. You could also look at other marketplaces like facebook marketplace, craigslist or letgo and duplicate some of the postings on your site (Check for the legality of this). But you can definitely talk to some of the people that are selling on these platforms and try to get them to post on your platform as well. If you have some investment money behind you, you could buy some stuff off garage sales, craigslist etc and put it for sale on the platform. Then you can advertise the platform to the general public through social media etc.

Professor Obi

Joseph Chikelue Obi | Professor | Doctor | Advice

Developing an Online Classifieds Business is not an Easy Task ; most especially in this Day and Age. Before you Start , I would strongly advise you to visit Gumtree.com ; to Carefully study how they have successfully converted it from a Free Classifieds Website into a (Global) Money Making Machine. Good Luck !

Nicholas Jones

Design Thinking | Consultant

The real question should be what type of life do you want to live? Each individual you mentioned will have different expectations for paying for a service. That will reflect on the type of life you personally want to live. So first, start thinking about your life and how you want to live, what type of clients do you want and then start building customer personas. From their you will get a general idea of who you want to serve, hence where to create your niche. Let me know if you need more guidance, I'm always open to helping you.

Nicholas Jones

Design Thinking | Consultant

So, is the charity whats receiving the funding or is your for-profit company. From the sounds of it, it seems the for-profit company is more important than the for charity. I would raise money for your for-profit company and create a structure that when your "profit" company does "X,"you're not for profit company gets "X." Think Warby Parker, buy a pair of glasses they give a pair of glasses. Or bonobos. I know this isn't exactly what you were looking to hear, but I only say it because you seem to be a caring individual putting the not for profit first to help others, but you can continue to help others if the for-profit succeeds. Otherwise, you should create a not for profit.

Nicholas Jones

Design Thinking | Consultant

You can use apps like https://aligntoday.com/ to help you manage clients, as to the best platform there is no one best. You can use upwork, clarity, fiver and a lot of self promotion. Go to networking events, pitch days, blog on medium, create youtube videos. It's a consistent combination that will help you build a sustainable career. Attract people with the knowledge you have.

Nitesh Sharoff

Accelerated Growth using Rapid Experimentation

The answer is: it depends. Noone can really give you a 100% accuracy answer. Marketing is all about experimentation, people surveyed different checkout pages and every industry seems to find different results - mainly because their audiences differ. (Age groups, etc) With email, it's much of the same. That said, here are some tips: *Headlines* By far your most important piece to email marketing. Do a small A/B test for the headline to maybe 10% of your mailing list. Your headline is by far the most important part to email marketing - weak headline, low open rate. *Personalisation* Emails coming from a "person" as oppose to a company do really well. And if you can, always address it to the individual (first name etc). *Email length* This really depends. You see long sales letters do well, you see short and snappy emails do well. It depends on the action/service/price you're asking the user for. If it's a free app, as commitment is minimal you can probably keep it short. If it's a paid app, you may need a follow up sequence and a longer email (or video). If you provide me with a little more detail, I'm sure I can help - if you even just drop me a message with a little more info about: 1. Your product 2. Your email subscribers (Where you obtained them) 3. Your price point 4. The problem you are solving 5. Any demographic data on your users I can help you with some more detailed recommendations. I hope that helps. Thanks, Nitesh

Nicholas Jones

Design Thinking | Consultant

First, make sure you know who your product and or service is for(customer persona). Next, segment the data according to your prospect information. After, Create exciting AD's to capture their attention (you can do a small ad test and split test the ad to make sure it's useful.) Have the add lead to more information and then into a buy! Capture abandon services, then target with a different ad. Remember, you always want to provide them value in your service, so make it about their needs not what you think they need.(this requires you understanding your customer) If all this is too much, you can always create a simple AD dependent on what you want to accomplish and push that.

Taylor Barr

Affiliate/Referral/Partner Program Expert.

Don't doubt yourself:) My suggestion is: start off doing the reviews and getting the word out there. It doesn't have to be perfect. As you gain traction, confidence, and understanding of the market - you can always go back and update the reviews. You will surprise yourself; the journey of learning the industry is often the motivation to provide good content and value for your readers. Those who fail, often put the monetary aspect in front of it. Hope it helps and good luck!

David C

I help you buy, sell, plan, value a business

Hi, The problem with small businesses is that profit is totally under the control of the operator. Lots of personal expenses can get buried in the company to lower taxes. This is why you don't want to be a minority shareholder. This deal should be structured as debt. I do these deals often and wrote a book about it in 2014 called Invest Local. You can get it from Amazon and it's on Kindle and audio formats. Hope this helps. If you'd like to discuss the specifics of your case, just arrange a call. thanks Dave www.DavidCBarnett.com

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