Is Cold Calling A Beneficial Way To Drum up Business?

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Cold Calling|Is Cold Calling A Beneficial Way To Drum up Business?Cold calling is a difficult tactic to master when looking to drum up business as it can be seen to may as a harsh way of selling. But for those that have already expressed interest, is it really such a bad idea? With a number of strategies as well as the best times for cold calling, could it be the secret your business needs to drum up sales? In this article, we will be looking into whether or not this is the right way to drum up sales for your business.

Gets Your Business Noticed

Though this is considered outdated by some businesses, the act of cold calling can still be a highly effective way of getting your business noticed. Whether this is with customers or through a long term B2b cold calling strategy, you are getting your name out there to a number of other businesses, providing them with insight into the product or service that you are looking to offer.

Gives A More Personal Touch

Though email marketing and social media are highly efficient ways of drumming up business, there are other options such as cold calling that give a far more personal touch. Though this can generate the initial lead, this can then blossom into more interest and lead to a conversion later on down the line allowing you to develop a relationship between you and the customer. This is beneficial for a sales team as this allows them to take a general interest in a client or business and help to sell them a package that will help them to achieve their long-term goals.

Can Be Used Alongside Social Media Campaigns

Social media campaigns are a great way of drumming up business but using cold calling to contact those that have downloaded an E-book or provided you with their phone number through a website can be the perfect way of drumming up business. Though this will be a challenge depending on the target audience that you are looking to reach, this can be an efficient way of drumming up leads for your business and even acquiring new business later on in the process. Though this is a lengthy process, there is a success rate you gain from cold calls that are yet to be replicated by emails or social media campaigns.

Is Highly Beneficial For Inbound Sales Strategy And Lead Nurturing

Inbound sales strategy is crucial when you have made the first call as you want to be sure you are able to close the sale. Whether this is converting the lead through regular phone calls or you decide to organise a meeting to go over new proposals, this can all lead to your business acquiring new clients. When dealing with b2b clients, it is important to keep this as professional as possible as this is likely to be a long-term investment and even the potential of repeat business for a product or service.

Whether you are looking to use cold calling as a new tactic for your sales team, or you are looking to cut back on the use of this potential outdated sales trick, there are a number of benefits that come along with cold calling.

7 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Small Business Marketing Consultant

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | 7 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Small Business Marketing ConsultantIt’s suggested that businesses spend 8% of their revenue on marketing costs. But what happens when that 8% feel wasted?

If you’re not seeing the fruits of your labor, it’s time to rethink your marketing strategy. And who better to help you do that than a small business marketing consultant?

Keep reading to learn why partnering with a small business consultant might be the smartest move your business makes all year.

1. Consultants Understand Your Audience

Who does your business serve?

If you can’t rattle off an in-depth answer complete with demographics, you don’t have a clear enough picture of your target audience.

Your audience defines everything from your company’s voice to the channels you use to advertise. Simply put, you need to understand your audience and that’s something a firm can help with.

2. A Consultant Keeps You Focused

A consulting firm isn’t only here to give ideas, they’re here to shape the ones you already have.

By providing structure, your consulting firm partners can help you establish a clear and attainable plan for your business. That goes for your short term and long term goals.

3. Less Spending Waste

Anyone can spend money on a Facebook Ads campaign. But spending money doesn’t guarantee results.

Consultants know what channels to use and how to maximize their efficiency. As a result, you’ll save money.

4. Firms Can Help You Branch Out

Rebranding is the process of changing your company’s image. That can be literal, such as changing your company’s logo, or more figurative, like adopting a new persona or changing your voice.

But a new brand image comes alongside shifting goals and audiences. Like defining your audience, this requires plenty of in-depth research.

5. Consultants Can Help You Scale

Every business wants to grow. But are you ready to grow alongside your company?

Your goals for scaling and your current situation may not always match. And if you’re not careful, you could end up spending too much on unnecessary hires, resources, and outdated messaging.

6. You’ll Have More Time to Run Your Business

Your time is best spent working on the things you do best. And hiring a consultant takes a ton of pressure off of your shoulders, allowing for just that.

You’ll have more time to focus on the tasks that demand your immediate attention while your partners focus on growing your business.

7. Better Resources Means Better Results

Even if you have the know-how to run a great marketing campaign, purchasing the materials needed can drain your wallet. Software alone can cost thousands of dollars.

Your consultant partners will have state of the art resources that your business can use to maximize its potential. As a result, you won’t have to go out and invest in these resources yourself.

Why Your Company Needs a Small Business Marketing Consultant

Whether you’re looking to take your product global or you’re keeping things on a local level, a small business marketing consultant can help your business reach the heights you’re after.

Between their expertise, resources, and growth-centric approach, a consultant is more than worth the money. Think about reaching out today.

And if you’re looking for more content to help you grow your business, make sure to check back with our blog.

4 Rules To An Effective Logo

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Logo|4 Rules To An Effective LogoAnyone who has ever thought about trying to market a business or design a brand will know how important the logo is. And anyone who thinks about this for a moment will be able to determine why it might be quite so important too. Without an effective logo for your business, you can’t really expect it to do what it is meant to. A good logo will draw in attention to your business, make it considerably more popular and make the marketing a lot more effective on the whole. It will have a way of making the brand stick in people’s minds. If you want to make sure that you are achieving all this, then you are going to need to think about what you need to do to make an effective logo. In this article, we are going to look at just a few of the most important rules for making that happen.

Simplicity

One of the most important things you can say about the design of a logo is that it needs to be perfectly simple. The simplicity is what draws people in and it is for that reason that you need to think about working on this as well as possible. The irony here is that simpler designs are often the most difficult to create, and you will probably find that you are going to have to think about it long and hard before you can create a simple logo design which works. At the other end of the scale, you don’t want it to be over-simplified, as that is going to mean that it is completely ineffective in that way instead. So find this balance as well as you can if you want to really make sure that your logo is going to be effective.

Application

The way that the logo is applied is as important as the design, so we’ll take a moment now to discuss this too. Application in this sense means where you put the logo, and how you use it. You need to make sure that it is going to be effective for the branding of the business, which probably means using it wherever you would have your brand appear. But that can be hard if your logo is not likely to lend itself well to various specific kinds of places. You want to try and design a logo, therefore, that will look good anywhere. If you see your logo on a drawstring backpack, you want to feel that it looks right, as well as seeing it on a letterhead, the side of your building, or on the news. Think about the application from the start, and you should be able to have much more success with your logo.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Logo|4 Rules To An Effective LogoOriginality

All of this is unlikely to be effective unless it is also original, so make sure that you are working on that too. Originality is hugely centrally important to your logo being successful, and it is something that can be hard to make a reality. If your logo is not original, then that ultimately means that you are going to have trouble with people considering it to be anything special. You want to stand out, in short, and that is not going to happen if your logo does not stand out from the others as well as possible. The best way to achieve strong originality is to make sure that you are focusing on what it is that makes your business unique, and then trying to introduce those elements into the logo itself as best as you can. You can do this more easily than you might think, and it is going to mean that your logo is much more successful indeed.

Boldness

As well as the above, you are also going to need to make sure that your logo is bold. It is very difficult to achieve this in line with the other rules, especially simplicity, but that is why it is so effective when you make it work: after all, that means that you are going to be able to expect much more from your marketing overall. Having a bold logo that really makes a visual impression in a strong way is hugely important for your marketing and branding, and something that you need to work on as much as possible to make it a reality.

If you can make these things come true, your logo is going to be much more effective, and your business will have much more luck in general, so make sure you focus on these.

How to Ensure a Great Turn Out at Your Brand’s Next Event

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | How to Ensure a Great Turn Out at Your Brand's Next EventAre you planning a big event for your business and wondering how to go about promoting it effectively in order to see a decent turn out? Here are some helpful tips to aid you in generating the highest amount of interest at the lowest possible price.

Leverage social media

R. Couri Hay Creative Public Relations company insists that your most powerful tool when it comes to promoting an event is social media. Even if you do not have a sizeable following to start off with, fear not. The majority of social media platforms offer paid advertising opportunities that will allow you to maximize your reach and hone in on your target market with extremely detailed targeting. The paid advertising can be customized to suit your budget and offers accurate, interesting metrics to assist you in tracking your progress.

Focus on multifaceted marketing

While social media is your most powerful tool, it isn’t your only tool. In order to see the results that you are hoping for, you will need to create a multifaceted marketing plan which outlines how you intend to use each available tool to promote the event. Fix up your website and ensure that the event information is front and center, have a large sign made for outside your business premises, have flyers made, send out a mass emailer, and contact a PR company to help you spread the word even further.

Consider hiring an influencer

Ultimately, it does not matter how well marketed your event is if the event itself does not come across as appealing to your target market. Go the extra mile to truly give them a reason to attend. Aside from freebies and epic entertainment, a great way in which to do this is to hire a relevant influencer to host the event or to announce their attendance. For instance, if you own a shoe brand and are launching a new design, invite a popular fashion blogger to promote and attend the event, and perhaps to give the opening address. His or her fans will be keen to see them in public, and will trust their opinion, therefore making it more likely for them to come (and bring their friends!).

Report back

It is absolutely essential that you provide an insider’s look into how your event went down and just how successful it was – even if it wasn’t. If you can make it look as though it was unmissable and that everyone who was there had a wonderful time, people are much more likely to show an interest in attending the next event that you host. Also be sure to encourage all attendees to speak about their event experience on social media using a specific hashtag. You may even wish to run a competition in order to amp up the engagement even further, such as a competition for ‘best dressed’ at the event via Instagram.

Now that you know how to effectively promote your event, it is time to get working on making it the success that it was always destined to be.

3 Strategies To Build Brand Awareness

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | 3 Strategies To Build Brand AwarenessBrand awareness is crucial to any business, particularly when launching a new product or service. Think about it – customers aren’t going to buy from a company they don’t recognize or believe is trustworthy and credible. Hence why you must focus on brand awareness in your marketing campaigns and consider innovative ways to introduce customers to your products and services. Brand awareness helps attract new customers, secure valuable repeat business, and boost sales and profits. With this in mind, here are three effective strategies to build brand awareness.

1. Collaborate with influencers

Collaborating with influencers is an excellent way to build brand awareness, increase organic traffic to your site, and boost sales. Influencers have a large audience who follow them and trust their opinions. Having an established influencer recommend your product or service to their followers can instantly improve your brand image, expand your reach, and attract new customers to your business. However, investing in influencers can be wasted expensive if you don’t choose the right ones to work with. Here are some useful tips to help you choose the right influencers for your brand:

  • Find an influencer who posts content in your specific niche. Their posts need to be relevant to your brand and align with your values.
  • Make sure their audience is actively engaging – are they liking, commenting, and sharing their content?
  • Check they are posting consistently and have an active presence on social media channels. Advice on coschedule.com suggests this should be – “one post a day on Facebook, one to two posts a day on Instagram, and approximately 15 tweets a day on Twitter.”

2. Use video marketing

Video is a powerful marketing tool that can be used to build brand visibility and establish you as an authority in your industry. A recent study suggests that a massive 84% of internet traffic will be video by 2020. Video is one of the most engaging, interesting, and popular methods of content with consumers. These statistics clearly demonstrate why all businesses should be using video media as part of their marketing campaigns. Fortunately, there are many companies offering videography and editing services – For example, Its Bernard has worked with many companies to build brand awareness and increase sales through effective video marketing campaigns.

3. Do SEO research

Most people don’t look past the first few pages of search engine results. This means consumers are unlikely to even see your website if you don’t rank highly in search engine result pages. Finding ways to improve your SEO strategy is, therefore, an effective way to build brand awareness and increase traffic to your website. Start by researching ways to enhance your SEO. For instance, identify which specific keywords and phrases are most effective in your particular niche, then find ways to include these naturally within your content. Keep in mind that search engines like Google are constantly updating the ways they rank content. Hence why it’s so important to stay up to date with the current SEO trends. If you’re struggling to improve the SEO ranking of your website, then consider outsourcing this responsibility to SEO specialists.