Inbound Marketing is where customers come to you as result of SEO or content you have sent to them. Typically B2C works like this.  Since the customers are looking for your product or service, it means that they are already interested in what you are selling which means there is a high intent of buying.  However, since this type of marketing is not pushed onto customers, and expects them to come looking for the product, the volume of customers is not as high.

Outbound Marketing uses a ‘push’ strategy and more likely to be used in B2B. It is where the company tries to reach as many potential customers through ‘interrupting’ tactics such as ads, emails, banners, cold calls etc. Although some people argue that inbound marketing is a superior form of marketing. Outbound Marketing is a direct way of marketing. This means that it is proactive and not just reactive. People buy from people and referrals is one of the most popular successes for winning new clients.

Is Outbound Marketing dying out?

No. Outbound Marketing is evolving. With new data technology, cold calls and email campaign, relevant audiences can easily be targeted. CRM and other data tools have made lives easier for the sales people. Calls and emails can be personalized, allowing for a better response rate. Podcasts on radio can reach niche audiences. Distribution is key and outbound marketing tends to focus on mass-media.

Even with ad block or the ability to spam emails, outbound marketers have found a way to stay relevant. For example, it was found that the average attention spam is eight seconds. Marketers are inputting this knowledge into everyday marketing. Everything is cut short in order to attract attention. Less is more.

A perfect mix of both

Marketers have discovered that content distribution matters more than the quality of the content. Professional content marketers call it a 80/20 split. 80% of your time should be focused on sharing your content – this is where outbound marketing can come into play and 20% should be spend on actually creating your content. There are so many companies that have great and unique products and if they don’t get discovered ­– if no one sees their product within the mass of other excellent products, it simply won’t matter. Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, states that having a product that is not strategically distributed is like ‘’running into a field with a large metal pole hoping that lightning strike’’. He believes that it is not a winning strategy.

Depends on the nature of your business, we recommend inbound marketing when B2C and outbound marketing when B2B. Using TAMI market intelligence platform we can reveal all of your future customers if you are B2B. However for B2C you are a slave to Google and Facebook to pay for ads and hope the crowds will come.

The post Marketing – Inbound Vs Outbound appeared first on TAMI.

Introduction

Marketing is difficult; it’s in a constant state of change, and requires a good understanding of how we, as humans, consume every single day. Even more difficult is the shift towards marketing in a technology driven society. With that in mind, this article outlines some of the marketing tools that we use to promote our business, and how they have enabled us to better understand the technology of marketing. This understanding has helped us to greatly improve our Alexa ranking in a matter of weeks, and increase Google rankings for several relevant keywords.

Marketing in a Constant State of Evolution

An article published by The Guardian in 2014 spoke volumes about the shift towards marketing in a tech savvy world, and a growing expectation for marketing professionals to up-skill in this new, and constantly evolving, digital age.

But despite marketing agencies becoming more equipped to manage this digital beast, including everything from SEO to AdWords, & social media to PR, many companies are simply not able to outsource their marketing efforts. This is unsurprisingly typical of a start-up. By its nature, a start-up is faced with pervasive changes. This, coupled with marketing kept predominantly in-house, makes for an interesting combination and a commitment in keeping an open mind with a ‘can-do’ attitude! Essentially, you need to become the master of your marketing toolkit.

Inspired by this realisation, we wanted to create a guide that would provide a ‘helping hand’ so to speak, in coping with this phenomenon known as ‘marketing in a technologically minded world.’ Having tried and tested numerous different tools and techniques throughout 2016, we discuss the ones that have helped us enormously, noticeably on Alexa; after launching the company only last February, we managed to improve our global Alexa ranking (web traffic ranking tool) by 600,000 in less than 2 months.

Marketing Tools 101

There are far too many tools out there for us to cover everything, so let’s focus on three main areas that are (perhaps) the most difficult to manage:

• SEO
• Email Marketing
• Content Writing

SEO

This is one of the biggest areas of marketing, and arguably the most important, as its ongoing nature requires huge commitment from marketing teams…particularly as Google regularly changes its algorithms (see here for their latest update on Penguin 4.0). Many of the marketing tools we use in TAMI are inspired by a desire to improve SEO efforts, and here are our top 5 picks:

Screaming Frog

This is a fantastic tool for anyone trying to get their head around the more ‘tech’ side of SEO: alt text, canonical URLs, H1 tags, etc. You simply run your website through the system, and it returns every outstanding issue from an SEO perspective. Everything from missing meta titles to image files being over 100 kb, it’s all there. And what’s better is that the Screaming Frog guys kindly offer a great user guide on their website, including an explanation of each SEO element that the system reports on.

Top 3 appealing features:

1. They offer a free edition that will analyse up to 500 URLs per crawl (after that, a licence fee of £149 per year is required to remove the 500 URL restriction)
2. The depth of reporting, and website changes being accounted for in real time
3. The ease of installation on your computer

Check out Screaming Frog here!

Ahrefs

In terms of SEO tools for keyword research, backlink reports, etc. we’ve tried a few different ones, but Ahrefs came out on top. This comprehensive tool provides great insight into, not only keyword rankings, crawl reports, domain health, and backlink analysis, but also what your competitors are doing and how you measure against them. The main dashboard also provides for a great user experience, with very responsive and easy to use navigation tools. They also offer a free 14-day trial, and four different pricing plans with an opportunity for annual billing to save 20% on cost.

Top 3 appealing features:

1. In-depth analysis of competitor activity and SEO efforts
2. Keyword explorer tool provides great insight into global search volumes on Google
3. Responsive and helpful support team

Check out Ahrefs here!

Google Search Console

Search Console, part of Google’s Webmaster Tools, is most certainly a necessity for marketers. If you want to know how well you’re performing on Google, i.e. how you’re ranking for organic keywords and what sort of impressions and clicks your site URL is getting (and let’s face it, who isn’t interested in that??), then you need to start using this. It can be easily synced up with your Google Analytics account, and there’s a quick and easy guide on how to do that here. You can also check out their other features such as crawl errors, backlink reports, the mobile usability of your site, and ways to make HTML improvements.

Top 3 appealing features:

1. In-depth analysis of organic keyword rankings with custom date ranges, and easily synchronised with Google Analytics account
2. Completely free to use
3. Ability to filter by queries, countries, and devices

Check out Google Search Console here!

SEO Book: Keyword Density Analyzer

SEO Book is a website that I discovered relatively recently that has a fantastic little tool called ‘Keyword Density Analyzer’ – essentially, you enter in a URL and it provides a breakdown of the keyword density of that page/site, i.e. what terms are appearing most regularly, and whether they feature in the alt text, main body content, meta titles/descriptions, links, or images.

What’s particularly handy about this tool is that you can use it as a measure against competitors on the Google SERP. If you’re trying to rank on page 1 for a certain keyword, input the URLs of the sites that are already appearing on page 1, and take note of the density of that keyword you’re trying to rank for. It will give you a good indication of how prominent the keyword needs to be on the page in question, and where it should be featured. Currently, we are using this tool to help us improve our presence on Google for the terms: ‘lead generation’ and ‘sales leads.’

Top 3 appealing features:

1. Good analysis of where your keywords appear in meta titles, descriptions, alt text, links, etc.
2. Completely free to use
3. Great opportunity to measure against competitors

Check out the Keyword Density Analyzer tool here!

HitTail

Long tail keywords (usually 3 or more words in length) are incredibly important in SEO, and due to their highly specific nature, can greatly improve conversions over head keywords. HitTail is a great tool that analyses your website and provides suggestions on good long tail keywords to focus on. Not only this, but it also scores each keyword between 1 and 10, the higher scores increasing your likelihood to appear on page 1 of Google and increase traffic to your website. HitTail constantly works in the background to update keywords, so you’re always getting new suggestions. This is also hugely helpful, considering that we are interacting more and more with semantic searching on Google, i.e. search queries that aim to not only find keywords, but also determine the intent and contextual meaning of the words a person is using for search. HitTail offers a free trial for the first 15 keyword suggestions, and three pricing plans that range from pro to agency.

Top 3 appealing features:

1. Great suggestions for improving the presence of long tail keywords on your website
2. Good value for money on pricing plans – cheapest starts at $19.95 per month, and provides 7,500 keyword ideas
3. They offer custom written articles (400 words) for $19 that are original and SEO optimised

Email Marketing

Usually when it comes to email marketing, companies tend to use the same software for reliability. We have tried two different email marketing platforms, both with uniquely great features. I’m sure you’ve heard of them, but just in case:

Hubspot

Where do I even start? Hubspot is like an all-in-one inbound marketing package that offers blog hosting, CRM, email marketing, landing page creation, and plenty of other great features. We use it exclusively for email marketing and landing page creation. You may need a little bit of knowledge on html and basic design capabilities (and sometimes a bit of patience!), but the Hubspot Academy usually has the answers to your questions.

Hubspot contracts are billed annually, and there are three pricing plans to choose from. They also offer add-ons for reporting and advertising. If budget permits, Hubspot is an excellent tool to have in your arsenal.

Top 3 appealing features:

1. Real time reporting data on all email campaigns, with exportable key metrics and stats
2. Great landing page editors with designs that are easily customisable
3. Good tips and tricks on how to improve your campaigns with the Hubspot Academy

Check out Hubspot here!

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most easy-to-use email marketing tools I’ve come across. In contrast to Hubspot’s endless bells and whistles, MailChimp’s primary function is email marketing…but don’t let that deter you, these guys know a thing or two about good emails! They offer A/B testing too, so you can measure the performance of your campaigns and see which one works best.

Despite its simplicity, MailChimp is extremely sophisticated in terms of CSS…i.e. they make your emails look super cool and professional. And it’s completely free to use until you reach 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month – after that, you need to pay a small fee (which is very reasonable!) They also offer a paid add-on called Mandrill, a transactional email API for sending tailored eCommerce messages and automated emails.

Top 3 appealing features:

1. Ease of use in creating and designing email templates
2. Great A/B testing features
3. Hugely beneficial for start-ups and small companies with limited budgets – software is free up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month

Check out MailChimp here!

Content Writing

Content is king…as they say. And the first thing everyone learns in content marketing university is simply: ‘write good content.’ That said, here are a couple of the tools we’ve come across that have been enormously helpful in providing good ideas and new ways of producing content that is both relevant and interesting:

Answer The Public

This is a fiercely sophisticated tool, the homepage sporting just a simple search bar and a man patiently waiting for you to type in a query. In a nutshell, it looks for questions: the whos, whats, wheres, and whys of the topic you’re searching for, all over the Internet. Say for example you write about ‘eCommerce’ or ‘lead generation’, but you’re not sure exactly what to write about – Just use Answer the Public to find out what people are asking the Internet about eCommerce and lead generation. You will come across some great ideas and in a very visually appealing way. And it’s also free!

Top 3 appealing features:

1. Completely free to use
2. Ability to filter search queries by country
3. Great way to discover potentially unanswered questions about your industry

Check out Answer the Public here!

Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

While physically writing/typing the main body of text may be the hardest part, many people can also struggle with the headline or title of their content. Balancing SEO relevance, as well as appeal in the h1 tag can be difficult to get right, but there’s a nifty tool called the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer (bit of a mouthful!) that will analyse the emotional marketing value of your title…ok, so it might sound a bit fluffy, but hear me out. It compares your headline against three categories: intellectual, empathetic, and spiritual, and presents you with a score out of 100 – measured against the extent to which the title uses words that are intellectual, empathetic, or spiritual, and how this can resonate with readers. It also provides suggestions for how often these themes should appear in a headline based on the industry you’ve chosen. Although arguably more relevant in a B2C context, business people are humans too – anyone reading your content is likely to experience emotion and feeling…unless of course they’re a robot…which would be kinda cool.

Top 3 appealing features:

1. Completely free to use
2. Ability to filter search queries by industry
3. Great suggestions on how to improve on the use of emotion in headlines and provide a more compelling reason for readers to engage with your content

Check out the EMV Headline Analyzer here!

These are just some of the many tools out there that can help companies with their content writing, and two that we have found quite useful. Here’s a great article outlining even more helpful writing tools, whether it’s for productivity, style, and grammar, SEO, or just research and other general ideas. Have a look here!

In Summary…

The growing expectation for marketers to have a more technologically minded approach is alive and kicking, and it’s only a matter of time before this develops even further. Technology is constantly at the forefront of innovation and product development, but with the help of such fantastic tools as the ones mentioned above, marketing professionals can more easily adapt to the ever-increasing digital society that we’re doing business in. They are certainly working wonders for us, and I’m always on the lookout for new ways to become a marketing technology ninja. If you use any tools that aren’t mentioned here but feel they should be mentioned, please let me know and I can add them to the list!

The post 9 Great Marketing Tools That Will Help You To Drive Results appeared first on TAMI.

The Power of Email Marketing

Email remains one of the most effective digital marketing tools for both B2B and B2C marketers, outperforming social media and paid search when it comes to ROI. And as the majority of emails are now read on mobile devices, gone are the days of a stringent 9-5 window of opportunity: emails are more frequently read by people as they travel to and from work, or at home in the evenings. MailChimp is easily one of the most popular email software providers, but it’s a pretty crowded market place. So we wanted to delve in a bit deeper.

This article provides some interesting stats on email marketing, as well as 50 of the top recommended email marketing tools to use.

Some Interesting Email Marketing Stats

• The number of email users worldwide is currently 2.6 billion and is expected to grow to over 2.9 billion by 2019. (MediaPost)

• A large majority of U.S. adults — 72% — prefer communication with companies to happen through email. (MarketingSherpa)

• Email is the only digital channel that outperforms old media standbys in terms of how consumers prefer communcations with companies — postal mail (preferred by 48%), television ads (preferred by 34%) and print media, such as magazines and newspapers, (preferred by 31%). Only 11% of people prefer mobile apps and just 7% prefer online video ads. (MarketingSherpa)

• Email is the most effective digital marketing tactic for B2B marketers, with 31% saying it has the biggest impact on revenue. (MarketingProfs)

• Across all age groups, email is the preferred method of communicating with companies (with about three-quarters of consumers/buyers choosing this). However, while more than 60% of those aged 55 and older like to communicate with companies by postal mail, just 29% of millennials say the same. (MarketingSherpa)

• Personalized email subject lines increase open rates–but the effect varies considerably across industries. Personalizing the subject line increases open rates for consumer products and services by 41%, versus 13% for B2B emails. (MarketingSherpa)

• For consumer products and services, personalizing email subject lines also increases transaction rates by 49%, and revenue per email by 73%. (MarketingSherpa)

• And yet, only 35% of brands personalize their email subject lines. (MarketingSherpa)

• 46% of startups use email marketing. (TNW News)

• Digital marketers rank email as their top marketing tactic, with 54% saying it’s their most effective channel and just 11% calling it the most difficult. Mobile marketing and SMS, however, ranked near the bottom in the same survey, with just 9% citing it as their most effective tactic while 34% viewed it as the most difficult. (TNW News)

• Email is viewed as the most effective digital marketing tactic for customer retention purposes. But while 56% of marketers viewed email as an effective retention tactic, just 8% said the same for mobile advertising. (TNW News)

• Direct marketers say email has the highest ROI of any marketing tactics. Mobile falls near the bottom of the list, however, below direct mail and just ahead of paid search advertising. (TNW News)

• Asked about all the different devices they use to open and read emails, 93% of consumers use a laptop or desktop computer; 67% use a smartphone; and 42% use tablets. (Email Monday)

• Asked why they unsubscribe from brand emails, 33% of consumers said they do so because mailings are too frequent. 24% unsubscribe because the content is repetitive and boring. (SocialTimes)

Email Marketing Software Solutions: Top 50 by Alexa Rank

In identifying 50 of the best email marketing tools, we wanted to use a metric to measure this against. As Alexa is a well-established indicator of traffic levels to a website through sessions and unique visits, we were curious to see how well these email marketing providers fared when entered into the jaws of this global ranking tool. We also looked at how these rankings changed over the last 3 months and considered how well they ranked in the United States (marketers in the US seem to like email marketing a lot!)

So here’s our list of the top 50 email marketing providers according to their Alexa rankings*

Global Alexa Rank: 355

Global Alexa Rank: 412

Global Alexa Rank: 588

Global Alexa Rank: 714

Global Alexa Rank: 1,301

Global Alexa Rank: 1,731

Global Alexa Rank: 2,800

Global Alexa Rank: 6,450

Global Alexa Rank: 7,723

Global Alexa Rank: 11,125

Global Alexa Rank: 15,263

Global Alexa Rank: 16,641

Global Alexa Rank: 17,297

Global Alexa Rank: 18,370

Global Alexa Rank: 18,433

Global Alexa Rank: 18,530

Global Alexa Rank: 22,974

Global Alexa Rank: 24,398

Global Alexa Rank: 32,786

Global Alexa Rank: 43,557

Global Alexa Rank: 44,303

Global Alexa Rank: 50,208

Global Alexa Rank: 50,540

Global Alexa Rank: 51,159

Global Alexa Rank: 55,372

Global Alexa Rank: 57,501

Global Alexa Rank: 60,080

Global Alexa Rank: 63,393

Global Alexa Rank: 67,265

Global Alexa Rank: 74,627

Global Alexa Rank: 91,985

Global Alexa Rank: 93,716

Global Alexa Rank: 101,890

Global Alexa Rank: 105,888

Global Alexa Rank: 117,817

Global Alexa Rank: 141,099

Global Alexa Rank: 151,556

Global Alexa Rank: 152,014

Global Alexa Rank: 153,409

Global Alexa Rank: 166,080

Global Alexa Rank: 181,598

Global Alexa Rank: 204,516

Global Alexa Rank: 228,701

Global Alexa Rank: 268,052

Global Alexa Rank: 355,213

Global Alexa Rank: 380,182

Global Alexa Rank: 431,905

Global Alexa Rank: 443,361

Global Alexa Rank: 594,715

*Information obtained from Alexa.com on 25/05/2017

Email Marketing in Alexa’s Top 100,000

We can see from this list alone that there is a lot of competition among email marketing providers, with more than half currently sitting comfortably in Alexa’s top 100,000 websites. And it’s fair to say that they are deservedly there. If we look at the top 10 providers from the list and analyse their social media following, here is the breakdown:

While Alexa may only be an indicator of traffic to these websites based on those who have installer the toolbar, the social media following of these providers listed above only further justifies why they deserve to come out on top; they have thousands of advocates right behind them, they are highly active on their social media channels, and they always provide engaging content for these followers to read. This in turn will only drive further traffic to their website.

As email marketing doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon, we can only assume that the providers will keep coming too. However, this comes as a caution as this is a highly competitive market with very little room for a brand new USP that these top 10 companies haven’t thought of.

The post 50 of the Best Email Marketing Tools appeared first on TAMI.

We are becoming very excited about social media lately (in case you hadn’t noticed), and we’ve recently discovered the wonders of social media scheduling. There are a multitude of tools to use for this, and I’m sure you are familiar with them: Buffer, Hootsuite, CoSchedule, etc. But where has this sudden surge of social media organisation come from? Is it really necessary? Can’t we just use each platform individually to communicate with our audience? Well, of course we can. But that may not be the most effective way to manage our online presence.

We recently came across a great article by social media guru, and our neighbor Ian Cleary of RazorSocial, who has done a great job explaining the importance of social media scheduling, pitfalls, and some great tools to consider using. Check this out:

A Reference Guide for Social Media Scheduling – Tools and Tactics

Author: Ian Cleary

Scheduling content on social media is critical to your success. Here’s why:

Your audience is not online the same time as you and you want to give people the best chance possible of reading your content.
So…
…You need to schedule!!

Want to be convinced of scheduling? Want to know the tools and which to use. Read on!

Why is Scheduling Important?

Where are all your followers from and what are they doing when you send that Twitter, Facebook update etc? Your followers are probably from around the world, in different time zones. When you send that status update, they could be eating their lunch, on a call, drinking in the pub etc. The vast majority of users do not see your content.

Bonus: Scheduling your social media content correctly will result in more traffic to your website. You can increase this significantly more by downloading our guide on 31 tips to drive more traffic.

I was at a conference recently and one of the speakers talking about getting over 2 million potential impressions on Twitter. Do you know what that means? An impression is when someone sees an update in their stream.

Potential impressions means they have the potential to see it but we don’t know if they did. Actual impressions is where they seen the update. When was the last time you checked on Twitter to see how many of your followers see your tweets? The following is not totally accurate but it’s not going to be too far wrong:

Do you think Facebook is any different…? So you need to schedule posts and also repeat your shares. When we publish a new blog post, this is our typical sharing schedule:

Is that a bit excessive?

Well… I’ve never heard anyone about seeing our content twice.

Twitter is where we are most aggressive. For the first couple of days, I change the tweet I’m sending but when I’m sending content every month it’s the same tweet. Even with this aggressive sharing, less than 25% of your audience on Twitter will see the tweet.

Have I convinced you about scheduling?

Social Media Scheduling Pitfalls to Avoid

There are times when you should schedule and times when you should not. There are also times you should schedule but be very careful about it!

Getting it Wrong at Live Events

I remember scheduling some content to go out 5 minutes before my talk was due to begin at a conference. ‘We’re starting my session on social media in 5 minutes, come to room xx.’Sounds good? Well… I messed up the time zones so this was going out an hour and 5 minutes before the start of my session. Be careful of scheduling live events!

Sharing Broken Links

If you schedule content with broken links, they could be added to the queue and sent out on a regular basis. You should regularly check your links!

Scheduling Questions

Don’t ask your audience a question and schedule it to be delivered at a later date. You need to consider the content you are scheduling. If we’re scheduling blog content, it’s unusual to get a response, and even if I do, I can follow up with a reply when I’m back online. If you ask a question, make sure you are there to answer it!

Scheduled Updates and Breaking News

Be careful if there is some breaking international news or a crisis. Check that there is nothing that’s accidentally insensitive in your scheduled messages.

What Platforms Can You Not Schedule Content On?

Most social media platforms allow you to schedule but some do not. For the ones that don’t, there are some workarounds.

Google Plus personal profile

Google Plus allows you to schedule content for your business page but not your personal profile. There are some workarounds, though. For example, there is a Chrome plugin called ‘Doshare’. When you schedule a piece of content, it holds it until the time is right and then delivers it. But you have to have your browser open at that time!

Instagram

You cannot schedule content on Instagram. Instagram does this on purpose as they want live engagement. But the tool providers have a couple of workarounds.

For example, you schedule content through their tool and when the time comes around a notification pops up on their mobile app. You then copy the update and paste it to Instagram. Not a perfect solution but it works. Hootsuite and Buffer offer this sharing option for Instagram, where they remind you that a post is scheduled to go live, then you share it yourself. This helps you to schedule Instagram updates without breaking the terms of service.

Snapchat

There is no scheduling facility on Snapchat.

What are the Best Tools Available for Scheduling?

We have done out the following image which shows a range of management and scheduling tools that can be used. For a couple of the tools we ignored the ‘free’ price as they didn’t support enough social media networks in the price.

Here are a couple of other social network specific tools that we use regularly.

Schedugr.am

Schedugr.am is for scheduling on Instagram. It supports multiple accounts and you can schedule video or imagery.

When content is sent out, it is stored so you can easily re-share on a regular basis. When you schedule a piece of content, this instruction is sent to their servers. At this location, they have a lot of physical devices (e.g. iPads) and they programmatically use these devices to send the content at the right time.

So, do they have loads of these devices in their office…? Yes!

This is the only way of scheduling without any user intervention. From your point of view, you have to do nothing other than schedule the content so who cares what happens on the back end as long as it’s secure and Instagram doesn’t have a problem with it?

This service has been available for years so, if Instagram had a problem with it, they would have been shut down by this stage.

Tailwind

Tailwind supports Pinterest scheduling. You can use their browser extension (or the Tailwind app) to auto-add a pin to a queue and then the pin will automatically be shared at the relevant time.

When is the Best Time to Schedule?

The best time to schedule content is at a time when some of the audience you want to reach is available.

You don’t just schedule at the times when most of your audience is online for the following reasons:

a) Imagine if 70% of your audience was online at 7 pm. Scheduling at this time could reach 70% of the audience but you’re still missing out on 30% so you need to schedule at another time to capture the remaining audience. If you have an international audience, they may never be available in the middle of the night!

b) Sometimes, when most people are online, that is the busiest time of the day and the hardest time to reach people. For example, when status updates are shared on Facebook their algorithm makes a decision about who to share the content to. If it’s a really busy period, you are competing with more status updates.

c) It just may be the wrong time for something you’re promoting. You are probably more likely to get interaction from a tweet saying that there is a discount at your restaurant at lunchtime today as opposed to sending it in the evening when more people are online and promoting it for tomorrow.

As with all cases above, you still need to consider the busy periods but schedule the content at other times too.

Audiense (formerly SocialBro) provides a tool that identifies when your audience is interacting on Twitter. You can see that, although there are peaks, there are still times when plenty of the audience is online. If you pick the time when most people are online, that could be the busiest time on social channels so you may want to share at an earlier time.

If you’re smart, you won’t schedule on the hour because everyone else is…

When scheduling content on social media, share 5 mins before or after the hour to avoid competition

If you want to check the best time to post on Facebook, use your Facebook Insights and analyze the type of content posted and the time the content was shared.

How Often Should you Post on Social Media Channels?

That is a very difficult question as it depends on how engaged your audience is, the type of content you are sharing and the volume of great content you have.

In the following report by Track Social, it shows that the number of retweets you get reduces as you send more tweets.

Does this mean you should send fewer tweets? No… because overall you still end up with the most retweets when you send the most tweets. If you’re dealing with a local audience where you want social media to be more about interaction than broadcast then you’ll probably share less content across social channels. If you have global fans, you’ll need to send more content out to the channels at different times and you’ll need to repeat-share more. So, you need to consider your audience.

Of course, the frequency of the content distributed on each channel is different. Tweets disappear very quickly so you could be more aggressive with sharing on this channel. On Snapchat, you are creating stories and a story typically will require many updates. On Facebook, you will probably share a lot less frequently and, when you do send updates, you may do some targeting so that only the most relevant people see your updates.

Bonus: Scheduling your social media content correctly will result in more traffic to your website. You can increase this significantly more by downloading our guide on 31 tips to drive more traffic.

Summary

Scheduling is an important part of your social media strategy, and using the right tools will allow you to do it effectively. Look at the channels you use and the best tools for each channel, and think about how frequently you want to post. Then, set it all up.

Well I don’t know about you, but we are definitely sold on the concept of social media scheduling. Thanks for the great insights, Ian! You can read the original article here, and don’t forget to check out more of his great posts on the RazorSocial blog.

The post Social Media Scheduling: Tools and Tactics – An Article by Ian Cleary appeared first on TAMI.

As a startup, you probably keep your marketing efforts in-house. This means you’re also looking for SEO tools that are quite inexpensive, while also effective. This is a hard nut to crack, if the old saying: ‘you get what you pay for’ has anything to do with it. And we don’t want to sugar-coat anything – the majority of free SEO tools out there are either highly limited or questionably ineffective…

But we did a bit of research.

And we found 7 great tools that are both 100% free, and effective. Granted, some might require paid subscriptions, but they also offer free plans with some great takeaways and tips for improvement. We hope you find these useful!

Screaming Frog

We mentioned this in our last blog post about marketing tools, but we can’t stress enough how beneficial Screaming Frog is (particularly for startups). A simple scan of your website will return every technical SEO issue that the spider picks up. Their free edition analyses up to 500 URLS per crawl of the site, which should be more than enough to provide any startup with a good technical SEO report. And to reiterate from our last post, the Screaming Frog user guide includes an explanation of each SEO element that the system reports on – so if there’s any ambiguity around some of the terminology, this guide will explain it perfectly.

Very handy for: helping you to identify technical issues on your site that aren’t always easily spotted

Keyword Eye

If you’re just starting out with SEO and getting to grips with keyword analysis, then Keyword Eye is worth checking out. Unfortunately, Google Keyword Planner has changed its reporting for monthly search volumes and provides only a broad range of results. Keyword Eye on the other hand allows you to search for specific keywords or phrases, delivering results within a keyword cloud of suggestions: the keyword size represents the average monthly search volume, the colour indicates how competitive it is. By right-clicking a keyword, you can view the search engine results page that corresponds to the geographic location you’ve chosen, i.e. Google US, United States.

Very handy for: helping you decide on the right keywords and phrases for your website

Keyword Density Analyzer

Here’s another tool we talked about before, but again, it’s worth mentioning twice! If you have done your keyword research and started incorporating them into your site content, the Keyword Density Analyzer can help you identify the frequency of those keywords and where they appear, i.e. image alt text, main body content, meta titles/descriptions, and links. You can use also use this tool as a competitive measure. Find out what keywords your competitors are using on their website, and which ones have the highest density. Are they similar to yours?

Likewise, if you want to rank highly for certain keywords or phrases, paste in the URLs of the sites that are already appearing on page 1 on Google, and take note of the density of keywords you’re trying to rank for. It will give you a good indication of how prominent the keyword needs to be on the page in question, and where it should be featured.

Very handy for: tracking competitors’ keywords and measuring the keyword density of high ranking websites against your own

BrowSEO

If you’re looking for quick SEO analysis of your website, then BrowSEO is your go-to tool. Like Screaming Frog, it checks the technical health of your site. It also analyses redirects, headings, word count, and links. It also shows how your meta title and description appear on Google, and how many HTML headings you’re using. This is a good way of identifying how effective your on-page SEO is for content and wording. An information tooltip on the side also provides some advice on how to improve any issues that are flagged by the system.

The homepage of your website is stripped down completely and broken up into sections, with all links and images highlighted. This is a good way for you to view your site without styling features and see it for what it actually is! This is also a great way to identify design flaws!

Very handy for: identifying technical issues with your site, while also offering tips on how to improve them

SEO Score Checker

SEO Score Checker is a product of smallseotools.com, a great site that offers an array of free tools for companies. This one is an all-encompassing website test so to speak and provides you with a grade at the end (If you do well, they even give you a certificate to place on your website!) So if you ever wanted to know how well you’re doing from an SEO perspective, and you want to find out quickly, then SEO Score Checker is a must-have! It checks your titles, headings, broken links, IMG tags, keywords, sitemap, page/domain authority…just to name a few! And if you aren’t performing well in any category, it tells you why and offers a solution.

Very handy for: analysing the SEO performance of your website and identifying some quick-fix solutions

Backlink Checker

Link building is one of the foundations of SEO. And while we wouldn’t normally recommend a free backlink tool (as traditionally they don’t yield the best results compared to paid tools), Backlink Checker is another product of smallseotools.com, and a good starting point to identify what links are pointing to your site. This tool will not provide you with a huge number of results, but it’s free and it will give you some indication of the type of links you’re getting. From there, you can identify which links are good, and which aren’t so good. This can be a stepping stone towards a more in-depth tool such as SEMRush, Ahrefs, or Moz. For a startup, however, Backlink Checker does the job just fine!

Very handy for: starting off your link building efforts and identifying the good links from the bad

Noindex Nofollow Meta Tag Checker

The Noindex Nofollow Meta Tag Checker is actually a Google chrome plugin, but it’s quite beneficial in identifying whether a website/webpage has been crawled or indexed correctly. We installed this on our toolbar and realised very quickly that a recently added page on our website had a Noindex Nofollow status. This is important to know because without fixing the error, it means that Google will not crawl or index the page, and therefore it will not be included in search results. If you install this plugin and notice that one of your pages has Noindex Nofollow status, there is a quick fix for this problem within the SEO settings of your web hosting provider.

Very handy for: identifying pages on your site that may not be correctly indexed

Summary

We hope that these tools come in handy for you as they did for us. Everyone has to start somewhere, and it’s tools like these that can really make a difference for businesses and help them to build a foundation for their marketing efforts. Having some understanding of SEO is particularly beneficial, as it can cause headaches for even the most seasoned marketers.

Ultimately, while it may be the desire of company owners to avail of the services of an agency or consultant to fix SEO problems, but in reality, that is not often possible in the startup world; that reality involves getting your hands dirty with a more ‘DIY-esque’ attitude!

The post 7 Free SEO Tools that Every Startup Needs appeared first on TAMI.

A shift in marketing thought by academics such as Philip Kotler and Robert Bartels throughout the mid to late 20th century (which has spread even further in the 21st century), has only widened the gap between sales and marketing. An increasing reliance on inbound and technology platforms seems to have catapulted marketing into a different direction than where Sales is, and has been sitting comfortably for some time now. An article by Linx back in 2014 asserts that marketing is most definitely the discipline that is changing: “Gone are the days of thinking about marketing as a one-way communication tool.” This is of course in large part to do with advances in technology and changing social behaviours.

This inconsistency between the two disciplines has presented some debate over the years, resulting in squabbling over which department can contribute the most value to a company. Dave Nevogt from Hubstaff doesn’t hold back in this blog post entitled: “Marketing Trumps Sales: How We Built a Million Dollar Business Without Selling.”

But the reality is, sales and marketing departments should be working together rather than separately. Everyone is on the same team so the end goal is the same for all. The extent to which they work together will obviously depend on the size of the company, but there are certainly some key insights that Marketing could learn from Sales, and vice versa.

We’ve identified 5 key reasons why we think that Sales and Marketing should work together, and these are also the 5 reasons why we LOVE that our sales and marketing teams work together:

1. Improving Sales Reach Out

Although Marketing may be known as the changing discipline, developments in technology have also resulted in sales prospecting becoming more ‘virtual.’ LinkedIn is a great way for Salespeople to connect with new prospects, and sometimes scheduling demos via email is more convenient and more easily done than over the phone.

Also interesting is the fact that Marketing teams engage in lots of email campaigns, so they are well versed in communicating and writing compelling content to appeal to a wide audience. Therefore, it makes sense for this insight to feed into the sales prospecting funnel. Marketing should sit with Sales and provide some tips on how they target their audience through email content.

This can also help Salespeople to better target Marketing Managers, as they may not be au fait with their needs as well as they would a Sales Manager or Business Development Director. Although Salespeople spend most of their time communicating, that little insight from the Marketing team could help to spice up their sales pitches and help to really get that message across.

2. Better Campaign Measurement

Having good communication between Sales and Marketing will help tremendously when it comes to analysing the success of campaigns. For example, evaluating an email campaign can be time-consuming and complex if there aren’t processes in place to identify each stage of measurement. How do you keep track of the recipients who opened their emails or who clicked on a CTA button? How do you know which leads are the hottest?

This is where having a CRM system works wonders. We use Salesforce, which is a great way for Marketing and Sales to communicate the status of campaign opportunities with one another. Marketing assigns the leads to Sales based on the level of engagement from the campaign, which Sales will then follow up with. In the following days, Marketing can then run a campaign report to identify how these leads have progressed along the sales pipeline and assess how successful the campaign was. Having this dialogue between the two departments is vital to ensure that campaigns are measured effectively.

3. Improving SEO

Believe it or not, Sales can actually help to improve a company’s SEO efforts. By talking to customers and prospects on a regular basis, Salespeople are uncovering key insights about their online behaviour. The important saying: “You don’t define your business, your customers define your business” is not something that is always taken on board. Many Marketing teams may think that they know what customers want, but in actual fact, Salespeople are more likely to have a better understanding of the needs and wants of customers – between prospecting, account management, and after sales support, they tend to uncover a lot of information.

This can help Marketing to ensure that the website content is relevant and contains the right keywords to improve visibility on search engines. An example could be that the Marketing team decides: “We think people will find us by typing X into Google.” However, the Sales team can actually uncover the facts and relay these back to the Marketing team: “From speaking to customers, we know that they found us by typing X into Google.”

4. Generating Good Content Ideas

One of the biggest problems that Marketing teams face (or content writing teams in larger companies) is coming up with compelling and original content for their readers. We know that helpful guides and top tips prove very popular in the content marketing realm, but how do writers come up with ideas for each piece of content they write? Doing that on a regular basis can’t be easy.

As mentioned in the previous point about Salespeople communicating with customers, this provides a great opportunity for the Marketing team to turn comments and feedback into a blog post. If a Salesperson can uncover some of the pain points that a customer or prospect has within their business, then why not use this as the subject for an article that could potentially target similar companies who may show an interest in your company?

An example could be that you are a web optimization company, and one of your target segments is online retailers; if the Sales team discovers that a major pain point of these customers is a difficulty in turning browsing into conversions, then it’s likely that this could be an industry-wide pain point (in this case, we know it’s industry-wide!). This insight should be passed on to Marketing, who could generate a compelling blog post, e.g. “10 Quick Tips on How to Turn Visitors into Customers.” By promoting this post to the right audience, it could pique the interest of online retailers that could ultimately become your customers.

5. Lead Generation

Generating good quality leads for the Sales team will always keep you in their good books. Therefore, the Marketing department should pay extra attention to any interest that comes about via Social Media channels. Several of the hot leads that we had in Salesforce at one point originated from companies that followed us on Twitter. After qualifying that they were good leads to pursue, they were entered into Salesforce straight away and then assigned to the Sales team for follow-up.

Depending on time constraints for the Marketing department, a little bit of social media research can go a long way. For example, searching through Twitter hashtags and competitors’ followers could be a good way of generating new leads for the Sales team. Likewise, discussions from LinkedIn groups can be very beneficial in finding new companies and also identifying the right contact for Salespeople to connect with.

Summary

These are just some of the reasons why it’s important for Sales and Marketing teams to work together. While some companies have integrated roles that cover both departments, many organisations still operate them in silos. This age-old debate has surely run its course; it’s time to move on and strategize how both departments can work harmoniously and complement each other to continuously retain customers and generate new ones.

The post 5 Reasons Why Sales and Marketing Should Work Together appeared first on TAMI.

2016 saw a shift in the importance of email marketing and its impact on revenue. According to Salesforce’s State of Marketing report last year, 49% of marketers claimed that email was directly linked to their business’s primary revenue source – an increase from the 20% of marketers who said the same in 2015. This report by MailChimp also highlights some interesting statistics on the open, click-through, and bounce rates of emails by industry:

Despite research suggesting the importance of email in business, there also seems to be a wealth of information surrounding the common mistakes that B2B email marketing entangles itself in. Time and time again, we see content that makes a point in exemplifying the pitfalls of email and why it can cause a headache for so many companies. Yet few offer actionable insights to help prevent these headaches from persisting.

From our own research, we identified some of the reasons why we feel that B2B emails don’t always yield the best results, as well as some possible solutions for improvement:

1. Poor Subject Line

This may seem like the most obvious reason in the world (honestly, we’re not trying to insult anyone’s intelligence!), but this issue seems to crop up time and time again. B2B Marketing asserts that email open rates in the B2B realm are notoriously low, and argues that poor subject lines are partly responsible. An article by Capterra also documents some ‘horror story’-esque examples of terrible subject lines and how they are to be avoided.

The nature of the email will certainly have an impact on the type of intro, i.e. whether it’s a cold email, follow-up correspondence, etc. But deciding on your attention-grabbing title isn’t always straightforward. The window of opportunity for email engagement is becoming shorter and shorter; it has been argued that people have an average attention span of 8 seconds, therefore we need to consider certain factors when it comes to the subject line:

Keep it concise and to the point

No one likes unnecessary reading, and if your reader has too much work to do just by looking at the title, then good luck in asking them to read the rest! Keep the message relevant too; that might seem obvious, but sometimes we can become wrapped up in what we think the person wants to hear, that we lose sight of the actual meaning. Remind yourself of how the reader can benefit from your email, and base the relevancy of your subject line on this insight. And always make sure that what you’ve mentioned in your title is reflected in the body of the email too – no one likes being misled!

Don’t oversell it too much

Even if you are emailing the most seasoned of Salespeople, using a subject line that’s too promotional sounding can come across as awkward and desperate. Hubspot created a list of email subject lines that are overused, annoying, and presumptuous, and from a quick glance, it’s easy to spot the cringeworthy, and down-right ‘salesy’ ones: ‘Complimentary [product] demo’, ‘Coming in ice-cold, but hoping to help!’, etc.

2. No Clear Calls-To-Action…. Or Too Many!

According to John Bonini of Litmus: ‘When it comes to email, there are no bigger targets than your calls-to-action.’ Whether you’re sending out a large campaign or just one email, the call-to-action remains crucial in both cases. If you’re lacking a clear call-to-action in your message, you can’t really expect to have a high click-through rate…or a successful response at all for that matter. It doesn’t take a person very long to realise that what they’re reading is useless and a waste of their time – in which case, it’s likely that your email may end up in the spam folder.

Similarly, having too many calls to action can lead to an equally bad problem. Asking too much of a reader can deter or frustrate them if they aren’t sure exactly what’s being asked of them. An example could be an email that invites the reader to a product demo, while also asking them to avail of a free trial, and perhaps even respond to the email with feedback. According to Ellie Mirman, VP of Marketing at Toast, emails with just a single call-to-action can increase clicks by over 300%, and sales by over 1,000%.

When deciding on the right call-to-action to implement, consider the following:

What action do you want them to carry out?

Think about your over-arching message: what is the purpose of your email? Are you hoping to increase the number of trial signups to your platform? Are you interested in offering product demos to potential customers?

What is most likely to yield the best ROI?

How effective will your call-to-action be in terms of ROI? It could be that trial signups are a short-term success, but product demos are more beneficial in helping users to understand the product more easily, and thus making them more likely to convert.

How complex is the action that you’re asking the reader to carry out?

Whichever call-to-action you choose for your email, make sure that it’s quick and simple to complete. Asking too much of your reader may drive them away – a registration form with several fields to complete may deter them if they are short on time.

3. It’s All About You!

One of the greatest downfalls when sending an email (particularly one involving promotional content), is the lack of effort in trying to connect with the reader. Infusionsoft’s Vice President of Demand Marketing, Doug Sechrist, states: ‘Of course, your ultimate goal is to promote and sell your product. But to see better results from your email marketing program, focus on engaging your customers.’

Companies often become over-excited by the promotion they’re offering and shape the entire email content around that message. It should not be assumed, however, that the sender doesn’t understand its customers’ needs; rather, they have a lot of faith in their product or service (which is great!) and want to tell their readers all about it. The only problem is, the reader may not have heard about your product or service or doesn’t even know who you are!

They say, that to land in a person’s inbox is a privilege; therefore, a key question to ask yourself is: ‘Is my email content worthy of my reader’s time?’ Before you hit send, ask yourself whether you feel you have truly engaged with them – one way to find out is by checking whether your email includes:

Personalisation

Introducing your email with: ‘Dear Sir or Madam, or even ‘Hi’, will not offer much in return. Any email marketing tool we’ve ever used has always included personalisation tags to address someone: first name, company name, job title, etc. Including the reader’s first name is fundamental when it comes to personalising an email; not doing this clearly indicates that you don’t know who they are, nor have you bothered to find out. It doesn’t take much effort to include a personalisation tag in your email, but in cases where you don’t know the name of the person you’re contacting, avail of the opportunity to find out, especially if it’s a promotional based email: ‘I was hoping to speak with the person responsible for X, could you point me in the right direction?’

A Benefit

Another way to ensure that your email content is engaging and keeping the reader at the center of the message is to offer them a clear benefit. Why should they avail of your offer? What’s in it for them? If we consider that the average person has an attention span of 8 seconds and that an email reaching an inbox is a ‘privilege’, then we need to be certain that reading our message will be time well spent by the reader!

You probably want to tell them all about how fantastic your product or service is, right? Of course, why wouldn’t you? Just be mindful that this might not translate well if the reader doesn’t feel that your offering can benefit them in some way. You should never assume anything; always be clear on how this is a great opportunity for them. Think about your value proposition: how can your product or service solve their problem?

A Digital Marketing agency, for example, would more likely achieve success by offering the benefit of their service, rather than just information about it. Merely telling the reader in an email that they offer SEO and Email Marketing services lacks a compelling reason for ANYONE to want to find out more information. However, by focusing on the end result, this creates a more enticing appeal, e.g. ‘Improve your search rankings on Google’, or ‘Create compelling email content that lands in the inboxes of the right people at the right time.’

We Hope This Helps!

Hopefully, these tips have helped shed some insight if you feel that your B2B emails are delivering poor results. The next time you’re preparing to send an email, just double check that you have a concise and relevant subject line, you are offering a clear and compelling call to action, and you’ve made sure to engage the prospect and keep them at the heart of your message.

The post 3 Reasons Why Your B2B Emails Are Failing appeared first on TAMI.

After analysing 1 million eCommerce retailers, we have identified some key insights about the Social Media engagement levels of these companies. These insights include:

• 52% of eCommerce retailers analysed are failing to embrace Social Media, despite its increasing popularity
• Of the eCommerce websites analysed turning over in excess of $250K per year, 90% have a company Facebook page – showing a strong correlation between online volume and social media engagement
• The top 10 most successful brands utilising the ‘Shop Now’ feature on Facebook are musicians with over 40,000,000 likes and followers

The post Social Media Report: Facebook is Top Choice for eCommerce Retailers appeared first on TAMI.

Exercise: run a simple search on Google with the exact phrase: ‘Why Outbound is better than Inbound’ – how many results do you get that truly match your request? Probably none; in fact, the first result I get is for an article that quite literally says the exact opposite: why Inbound is better than Outbound…

People are scared; and not just because we’re sitting in Q4 of 2018 wondering where on earth the last 9 months went to, but because we’re reluctant to admit that maybe, just maybe, the ‘inbound bubble’ that came floating down to earth during the mid-2000s probably should have burst a long time ago. We’re afraid to question the validity of the arguments we read on a daily basis that seem to favour an ‘if you build it they will come’ approach towards sales and marketing.

Interesting however, are the Google results for the phrase: ‘Outbound Selling is Dead’ – what we see is an abundance of questions: ‘Is Outbound Selling Dead?’, ‘Is Outbound Selling Dead in the Age of Inbound Marketing?’, ‘Is Cold Calling Really Dead?’. It’s like we are on the cusp of acceptance for an inbound world, yet we’re not quite ready to hammer the final nail into the outbound sales coffin.

Don’t Get Us Wrong, We Think Inbound is Great!

Inbound obviously has significant merits; it helps to generate genuine interest in your business and cultivates lasting relationships with customers. No one can legitimately argue against inbound entirely as a sales and marketing strategy, and that’s not what this article is intended for either. But can we really just sit around relying only on inbound to make the magic happen and generate revenue? In an era where everybody is ‘doing’ it, yet the average person also has an attention span shorter than that of a goldfish, we need to consider how valid these arguments against outbound really are.

Here are 3 of the most common arguments that oppose outbound selling as a strategy:

1. Outbound is significantly more expensive than Inbound – source
2. Cold Calling doesn’t work – source
3. You have no prior information about the buyer – source

Now let’s talk about how each of these arguments lacks depth and conviction.

1. Outbound is Significantly More Expensive Than Inbound

Time and time again, we read about outbound being the ‘problem child’ of an organisation where companies struggle to justify the costs and direct their attention more towards inbound sales/marketing; evidently, inbound is deemed to provide more bang for one’s buck. However, when arguing over cost effectiveness between inbound and outbound, it’s important to note that outbound techniques are not always correctly represented. For example, in three separate articles claiming inbound to be more economical, the assumption is that budgets for outbound efforts are spent solely on advertising:

“It is easy to imply that Traditional Marketing which includes advertising on Televisions, Radio, Print, Bill Boards and so on use a huge amount of money compared to Inbound marketing.” – source

“Outbound marketing is the easy way out if you have money to burn (and you’ll often need that much). Buying TV commercials, print ads, and billboards can quickly get very expensive, and there are no guarantees as to your ROI.” – source

“Outbound marketing tactics are more conventional marketing and advertising methods that require some form of targeted outreach, such as billboard ads or radio spots” – source

Of course advertising is part of outbound, there’s no contention there. But if we were to assume that it was the only form of outreach then no wonder it’s deemed more expensive than inbound! What about email marketing, cold calling, trade shows?

Provided you get your messaging right
, email marketing can be a very effective form of outreach. However, it has been considered somewhat of a taboo in recent times and one can only assume that this is down to a certain 4 letter acronym. Despite this, and a painfully misinformed perception that companies can no longer target other European businesses by email, it remains a very effective form of outbound sales and marketing – it certainly works for us!

Tradeshows are also fantastic in generating new business, particularly if you’re strategic enough to attend instead of exhibit (think about the money you will save!), and spend your day networking with hundreds of potential customers. There are some great resources available for finding the most relevant tradeshows for your business – EventsEye is a good example.

Also, let’s consider the costs involved in having a good inbound strategy. Engaging websites, landing pages, SEO tools and content creation are not cheap; in fact, they require a huge commitment of both money and time resources. The average cost for an annual subscription to an SEO service is $1,800 (based on the pricing tables of SEM Rush, MOZ and Ahrefs), while content creation is an ongoing cost both to the budget and employee resources; whether it’s designing infographics, writing unique content, or collaborating with publications for link building purposes, etc.

2. Cold Calling Doesn’t Work

We often hear B2B Cold Calling being referred to as an ineffective sales tactic. This is due to a number of reasons, such as Companies no longer using landline phones, and Decision makers strongly disliking cold calls. One article from Hubspot claimed that “Cold Calling Doesn’t work 90.9% of the time”, an insight taken from an article published in the Harvard Business Review in 2010. If this were true then we would all be running away from the very idea of ever picking up the phone to sell again!

However, what the HBR article actually said was that only 9.1% of sales meetings result in a sale – it does not specify whether ‘meeting’ means cold call, an email exchange, or a face to face appointment following a phone call. So to surmise that this equates to cold calling being ineffective 90% of the time is simply incorrect. The article goes on to talk about the disconnect between salespeople and their ability to agree next steps with a potential client and close deals; researchers found that this disconnect was the driving force behind why so few meetings result in sales – they claimed that only 9% of all salespeople possess the skills needed for success. By that logic, the issue is not necessarily the effectiveness of tactics used to make the sale, rather the ability of the person making the sale.

While situational factors such as companies not using landlines, and individual preferences regarding phone calls are beyond the salesperson’s control, there is a lot to be said for sales training and needs analysis. Conducting cold calls without any sort of needs analysis research about the company beforehand is like going on vacation to Spain without packing the sun cream; it makes no sense. If salespeople are not trained to be researchers, observers and good listeners, then by all means let’s entertain the idea of a 10% success rate for cold calling.

As Close.io adequately put it, “They [salespeople] can launch into a pitch way too early, without first understanding what the prospect wants and if your offering will genuinely be able to help them at all.” Salespeople are not selling products and services, they are selling solutions; benefits; something to make life easier for that person on the other end of the phone. This means that they need to adopt a very consultative kind of approach and put themselves in the minds of their prospect.

3. You Have No Prior Information About the Buyer

One of the biggest arguments against outbound selling is the fact that you have no prior knowledge about your prospect; whereas with inbound selling, the prospect has already established an interest in your company and is considered a warm lead. But what does ‘no prior information’ really mean? Are we saying that we have literally no information about the company we are trying to sell to at all, other than their website URL, phone number and email address? Because that is simply not true; in fact, this touches off what we discussed above regarding salespeople conducting needs analysis before they engage in any selling; this is important in every aspect of outbound: cold calling, tradeshows, sales emails, advertising, etc.

From an inbound perspective it’s claimed that a prospect is considered a ‘lead’ by filling in a website form, downloading a whitepaper, requesting a demo, etc. However, this doesn’t mean that they are worth pursuing as a customer. Seemingly, only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales – does this mean that only 25% of all inbound leads are relevant and worth following up on? Because that doesn’t sound very promising! Based on discussions with our own clients, inbound represents just 2% of the entire market available to them. Interesting!

Also, why are we to assume that there are no helpful tools to provide this ‘prior information’ to companies about their prospects? Not to toot our own horn, but our lead generation platform (targeted towards businesses selling into the eCommerce market) is revolutionising the idea of outbound prospecting and turning it into something hugely cost-effective for companies. Here’s an example of the information our customers can uncover about their potential buyers…before they even pick up the phone or write an email:

• Estimated merchant size (online turnover)
• Industry
• Business location (country, city, postcode)
• Whether the website is accepting payments online, and who the providers are
• Whether the website is shipping products, and who the providers are
• Evidence of finance providers and multi-currency indicators
• Evidence of mobile sites
• Evidence of international website domains
• Evidence of same/next day, international and free delivery
• Social media following
• Access to key decision makers within the company
• Website visitor traffic data
• Website technology used

We equip our customers with vital knowledge about their prospects before they reach out to them, so they know that they are speaking with the right people about the right opportunities. In fact, our very first customer, a well-known parcel shipping company, informed us that not only did they manage to close a deal within 3 months of signing up with TAMI, but that the deal in question actually covered the cost of their subscription to the platform.

In Summary

Inbound will always play an important role in sales and marketing, that’s a simple fact – since launching TAMI, we’ve put huge effort into SEO, website engagement, and content creation to help us close deals. However, it’s illogical to brand outbound selling as ‘ineffective’ and ‘outdated’, when there are solid justifications for its contribution in business. Why can’t the two work in tandem when there’s a clear synergy between them? While allocating resources to inbound sales and marketing, we’ve also maintained a successful outbound strategy for nearly 3 years, and have won many Fortune 500 clients as a result of cold calls and email campaigns.

Outbound is not dead, so let’s stop acting like it is.

The post Debunking the “Outbound Sales and Marketing is Dead!” Myth appeared first on TAMI.