Best of Growth Spurts – Our Favorite Posts from January
We regularly update our Growth Spurts blog with actionable marketing & technology advice, news and information. These articles are often hand-picked to address issues and projects we’re working on with our clients, but they are relevant to most business owners involved with any aspect of marketing their business. Here are our 5 favorite posts this month:
On Content Marketing
10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing – Content marketing – your blog, downloads, white papers – is quite often one of the biggest marketing expenses, and one of the most difficult to measure.
Adwords and email gives the satisfaction of seeing immediate, measurable results. But your investment in “content”? It’s often a big unknown.
The goals in this article help put that investment in context: Invest in content, and you invest in your business. Consider: building trust and rapport with your audience; attracting new prospects; deepening loyalty with existing customers; helping with SEO; and even attracting strategic partners.
And to help you develop your 2017 Content Marketing plan, this article – B2B Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – gathers 25 content marketing stats all in one place … dive in, explore and learn.
On Email Marketing
13 Things to Start, Stop & Keep Doing With Your Email Marketing in 2017 – Email marketing is a powerful tool to encourage your audience to engage with content and to nurture leads in your database along the buyer’s journey. Understanding the points made in this article will ensure that your email marketing is 2017-ready.
On Exit Planning
First Impressions are Critical in the Sale of a Business. What Impression Does Your Website Give? – For business owners contemplating selling their business, one of the many factors that can help them achieve their exit revenue goals is better and more cost-effective marketing. This includes their online presence, which starts with the company website. Not sure if your website will help or hurt your ability to sell your business? Our alliance partner at Business Transition Academy outlines five factors to take into account.
On SEO
8 SEO Trends You Need to Pay Attention to in 2017 – SEO is a constantly changing landscape. This article highlights eight trends to be aware of as we start 2017, including:
- HTTPS is no longer just an option. Security issues aside, Google has confirmed it’s a ranking signal.
- Social media will be an even larger referral traffic goldmine.
- Mobile-first strategies have become a necessity.
- Links will continue to be important, but they should be a by-product of excellent content.
Continue reading for details on these and 4 more SEO trends for 2017.
The Most Effective SEO Tactics – According to recent research from Ascend2, marketers say creating relevant content is the most effective search engine optimization (SEO) tactic. Results also show that it’s the most difficult to execute. Read the article.
On Analytics
How Google Analytics Ruined Marketing – Strategy => Content => Channel. This article reinforces the need for all marketers to understand the difference between a marketing strategy (what message are you trying to convey) and a marketing channel (what’s the best method for conveying that message).
It also reinforces one of Sales Renewal’s key beliefs that “there is no ‘digital marketing’ and ‘traditional marketing.'” Sure, there are digital channels and traditional channels, but they all should be used to support the marketing strategy. Read the article.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Learn 13 Things to Start, Stop & Keep Doing With Your Email Marketing in 2017, 8 SEO Trends to Pay Attention to in 2017, How Google Analytics Ruined Marketing, and More.
First Impressions are Critical in the Sale of a Business. What Impression Does Your Website Give?
It’s often been said that perception is reality. This is especially true when you’re selling a business – first impressions really matter. And these days, most impressions of a business start with your website.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
For business owners contemplating selling their business, one of the many factors that can help them achieve their exit revenue goals is better and more cost-effective marketing. This includes their online presence, which starts with the company website.
Not sure if your website will help or hurt your ability to sell your business? Our partner at Business Transition Academy outlines five factors to take into account.
Read Original Article
Sales Renewal’s Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition Is In Beta
Sales Renewal is beta testing a new tool – the Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition – that business owners who are considering selling their business can use to assess how much to invest in marketing to meet their revenue goals at the time of sale. We’d love feedback on the tool and the resulting report.
Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition
As with the original Marketing Investment Analysis (see below), the Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition asks you to answer a series of high-level questions (24 in all) and typically takes 15-20 minutes to complete online. Sales Renewal will then review your answers and, within 3 business days, deliver a custom-to-your-business report with insights into how confident you can be that your projected marketing budget can deliver your projected annual revenue at the time of sale.
Once officially launched on October 15, the Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition will be available for $250, but during this beta period, the tool is available for free. If you’re considering selling your business and are interested in testing it, please provide your email below and you’ll be taken to the survey automatically.
Building on the Marketing Investment Analysis
In 2013, Sales Renewal launched the original Marketing Investment Analysis, which is designed for businesses in any stage of development. This affordable questionnaire and resulting 4-page, custom-to-your-business report provides specific programmatic and budgetary recommendations for marketing your business and will help you answer the three most common questions asked by business owners:
- Am I investing the right amount in sales & marketing?
- Which marketing programs or tactics will be the most effective for me?
- How much should I invest in each?
The Marketing Investment Analysis costs $250 and is available here.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Sales Renewal has just launched a new tool – the Marketing Investment Analysis, Exit Planning Edition – that business owners who are considering selling their business can use to assess how much to invest in marketing to meet their revenue goals at the time of sale. We’d love feedback on the tool and the resulting report. Learn how you can be a beta tester here…
Best of Growth Spurts – Our Favorite Posts from June
We regularly update our Growth Spurts blog with actionable marketing & technology advice, news and information. These articles are often hand-picked to address issues and projects we’re working on with our clients. We believe they are relevant to most business owners involved with any aspect of marketing their business, and we offer a regular summary roundup of the most popular/interesting posts.
On Exit Planning: Miscalculation: The Little Big Horn Of Exit Planning – Any business owner disagree with: “It’s far better to start planning two years earlier than you think necessary than five minutes too late”? The article’s author recently surveyed business owners and found that owners frequently underestimate what needs to be done to transfer their businesses to the person they choose, when they want, and for the amount of money they need. Find out more here.
On Content Marketing: 10 Techniques to Successfully Amplify Your Content Marketing – Write it and they will come? Only if you follow through by letting people know your content exists. These tips will help with one of the most important steps in content marketing: “amplify”, or get the word out. Some of our go-to techniques: Keep sharing your most popular posts; Update and republish relevant, evergreen posts; and Curate similar content (and include a link to your original post). Read all the tips here.
On Email Marketing: Using Email Addresses for Retargeting – Take your email list to the next level by combining it with re-targeted advertising. Even if you have a very small ad budget, you can take advantage of the re-targeting options available on Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Read more.
On Local Marketing: 10 Things People Still Get Wrong about Local SEO – Do you still believe targeting keywords for Local Search is irrelevant? Claiming a Google listing will automatically increase search visibility? A huge radius will make you rank better for local cities? Find out how Google really ranks your business on SEO.
On Analytics: Four Key Metric Groups for B2B Marketers – This article reviews four of types of metrics key to succeeding in the B2B marketing space:
- Lead generation metrics (ROI of ads & campaigns; raw leads; quality of leads);
- Top of funnel metrics (Visitors to most popular landing pages; Organic / non-paid traffic; PR and non-paid media impact)
- Community & nurturing metrics (Email metrics; Time to respond for user questions)
- Customer satisfaction / loyalty metrics (NPS score; Survey data )
Read the article for details about each of these metrics groups. How many of them are you using?
Sales Renewal’s insight:
We regularly update our Growth Spurts blog with actionable marketing & technology advice, news and information. These articles are often hand-picked to address issues and projects we’re working on with our clients. We believe they are relevant to most business owners involved with any aspect of marketing their business, and we offer a regular summary roundup of the most popular/interesting posts. Continue reading…
Miscalculation: The Little Big Horn Of Exit Planning
In a 2014 survey of business owners, we included these two questions
1. When do you want to exit your business?
2. What prevents you from planning your exit?
75% responded with some version of “I have little or no sense of urgency” and “I’m not planning until I’m ready to exit.”
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Any business owner disagree with: “It’s far better to start planning two years earlier than you think necessary than five minutes too late”?
Read Original Article
Liquid Capital Breakfast to Feature Presentation by Sales Renewal
Liquid Capital Associates is organizing a breakfast on Wednesday, April 27, during which Sales Renewal will provide participants with an overview of the marketing essentials every business needs to increase sales in 2016. The presentation cuts through the noise and offers an unbiased approach every business can use to quickly start growing their leads. Participants are introduced to the essential marketing programs all businesses need – SEO, content marketing, email marketing, local promotion, and more – and will learn how to create and deploy a big-picture plan that pulls these different programs together. Smaller firms might find these marketing essentials sufficient for their business, while larger firms will be able to use these essentials as a solid foundation upon which to build (or as a checklist to see if they’ve missed something essential).
The breakfast takes place at the Brae Burn Country Club, 326 Fuller Street, Newton, MA, starting at 7:30am. Please register in advance via Eventbrite.