Abask Marketing: Copywriting, Content Strategy, and Conversion Marketing

Why You Need A Sales Funnel

Rebecca Batisto — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 19:39:55 +0000

Listen up, friends. Let’s layout a customer journey that turns visitors into loyal customers that cannot stop talking about you.

I think by now, we all know what a sales funnel shows: the journey a customer takes from the moment they first know your brand through the decision-making process and on to becoming a customer and even referring your services to others. So, there’s no reason to go into all the nitty-gritty, but let’s get the basics covered:

Your sales funnel should be looked at frequently.
Your goals (KPIs, OKRs, whatevers) should track each stage’s success in the funnel.
The sales funnel should be helping people that fall out of the funnel to come back in.
The sales funnel is a tool that should be used by marketing AND sales (seems like a no brainer, but ask your sales team about the sales funnel and watch the vacancy signs pop up)

So, let’s take a look at the sales funnel and what goes where.

Here’s a sales funnel that we use for a couple of clients.

We spend 40% of our time on the Awareness Stage.

This is where we fill the funnel. We network, we make connections, we welcome them to our community/ brand/ product.

100% of the people in your sales funnel have been in this stage at some point, so it only makes sense to spend most of your time here.

We use social media and search engine optimization to extend our reach and network with more people. We make connections through trade shows and networking events. We introduce our services by email and send people to our website. We measure this stage through reach – how many people did we reach? So, at a trade show, the number tracked would be the number of people that bought tickets to attend. Not the same as the number of people we met, swapped business cards with or chatted with over lunch, but the attendees all had the opportunity to view your brand, so that initial contact is what we count, even if it’s one-sided.

We spend 30% of our time in the Interest Stage.

From the awareness stage, the goal is ultimately to make a connection. That pushed the potential customer (or lead, as we say!) to the next stage of your sales funnel.

Now, we’re gonna blow them away with our charisma… and our good deals.

This is where we start to nurture our leads. This is the stage you were in when you are a child asking if you could pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease go to the party. You offer up your own credibility and all the reasons why you should go – you talk about how reliable you are, how your friend is going, how you’ll look like a baby if you don’t go – you sell! Here we try to offer useful information for the small payment of an email address. The email address takes your lead from a visitor to a true lead. Once they have filled something out, you can now contact them, track their presence on your website, and have an actual (albeit still one-sided) conversation.

The measurement of this stage is usually email addresses. It could also be open rates, attendance, or click-through rates, but the most common is the actual email address.

We spend 20% of our time in the Evaluation Stage.

Now that we are friends, we want to take it to the next level.

Yep, we want to go steady.

We want you to focus on us over all others. We’re going to tell you why you should. We’ll walk through our prices, but more than that, we’ll go through our value.
This is an important distinction because it doesn’t matter whether you, your brand, or your service are expensive. It matters more what your customer is getting in return for the money they’re spending.

The measurement here is the number of proposals that are requested.
We, the marketing team, don’t manage the finances for our clients, so the more people we have in the evaluation stage, the more likely it is that one will close.

The marketing team takes a tea break at this point so that the proposal team can do their thing.

We spend 10% of our time in the Retention Stage.

Now that you are our customer, we need to be sure that you stick with us.

So we offer loyalty programs, visit with little goodies once a month, ask for feedback, and track customer satisfaction.

The most important measurement here are the surveys filled out. In the past, we’ve measured by survey scores. Still, the number of surveys completed is a better measure in my opinion, because angry customers love a survey, and super happy customers will complete a survey if the time is right. Apathetic customers are the people you need to look after, so those are the people to monitor and bring back into the fold.

There we have it!

Now, start building your own sales funnel.

The post Why You Need A Sales Funnel appeared first on Abask Marketing: Copywriting, Content Strategy, and Conversion Marketing.

12 Topics For Email Marketing

Rebecca Batisto — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 15:58:08 +0000

Email marketing is an integral piece for a successful sales funnel. The biggest benefit of email marketing over social media is that you own your list. On social media, you can get shut down at any time. You wake up one day to find that your whole page is unpublished and you have no idea what to do next. Email marketing is different. Yes, you still have rules, emails can bounce, and you can even get a domain blacklisted, but the rules are easier to understand (be kind, don’t spam people are the basics) and your list is yours forever and always. You know exactly who you are talking to, who read the email and who clicked on your links. You are building a two-way relationship that you can nurture and grow.

But (you knew there would be one, right?) email takes more time.

You have to come up with ideas, designs, and contact lists before you can even start to schedule. And from there, you need to build your customer’s journey with calls to action and perhaps drip campaigns… and STOP! Let’s not fall down a rabbit hole here. Let’s go back to the first step and break that into bite-size pieces.

Ideas for your email marketing campaigns

The Onboarding Email

This is the first email you send out when you have a new client or a new subscriber. It’s a basic hello email. Now, I don’t want to make you nervous, but this is the email where you establish your rapport with your customers. The voice you use – formal, casual, fun – is the voice your customers will expect from you. We always recommend casual as it’s the easiest way to build a relationship, but it all depends on your audience. I wouldn’t be too casual if I was writing for a funeral home, but a staffing firm could add in a joke or two!

The Review/ Testimonial Email

This could be an email where you request a review from your customer or it could be the email where you encourage a sale by sharing a really good testimonial. My recommendation: don’t ask a client for a review until their project is complete or they have worked with you for at least three months.

Product Launch/ Product Sale/ Person Joined

The news email boosts credibility and gives your clients an opportunity to reach out to you. Proving you’re alive and growing might seem like a silly reason to email someone, but you’d be amazed how many contacts we receive after sending out an update.

The Invitation

Are you hosting a game of virtual bingo? Are you sponsoring a movie premiere? Are you simply going to a networking event? Why not invite a client?

The Lesson (ie the blog)

This is probably the most common email sent out. We send out emails to let our followers know that there’s a new blog, or a downloadable resource. After all, the end goal of your job is the same as mine and the same as every other person’s: we are all here to help someone.

The Event

Something happened. We reacted. Here’s how that affects you. This is the email that companies scrambled to create in March 2020 when we all started working from home, in bubbles, with masks and a daily shower of sanitizer (a.k.a. COVID-19).

The Value To You

The value to you comes soon after the onboarding email and should make a recurrence every now and then. Every company at some point attempts to write its value proposition. This is a huge endeavor (I know because I’m asked to write it at least once a year), where everyone who’s anyone at the company gets to give their two cents on the company’s main value to clients. Here’s a little secret: making a big deal of this task will make the task exponentially more difficult.

You know your value. So, soon after your introduction email, explain it to your new contact. Then, show them how this value worked out for another client. Be specific – use graphs and stats – but, keep it light as well. This one is a more difficult, but vital email. If you need help, reach out to us for a quote: https://abaskmarketing.com/quote/

The Holiday

It’s a holiday! Let’s email people! Let’s send them a cute little email to say we’re all celebrating together.

(Also include any special offers or dates you’ll be closed)

Your birthday!

It’s your connection’s birthday! This couldn’t be a more perfect time to send an easy and personalized message! Check out niftyimages.com to set up personalized messages each time.

Loyalty Rewards

At Abask Marketing, we love to set up loyalty programs for our clients. Doesn’t matter what business you’re in, we can create one for you! We have created loyalty programs for staffing firms, healthcare companies, cruise lines, and insurance agents. This list it as one email, but with a loyalty program, we actually have hundreds of new opportunities to email clients.

Want to know more about setting up a loyalty program? Get in touch here: https://abaskmarketing.com/contact

We noticed…

You’re following your client on social media, right? You have Google Alerts set up for each customer, right?

So, when you see an update, you have an email topic:

“Congratulations on your new office!”
“You had a baby? Congrats!”
“You are sponsoring a golf tournament? How do I get involved?”

My Recommendation To You

This is a tricky email to create. To send a recommendation for someone’s business, you really need to have the right tone. You are pointing out an area in which they could improve, but written poorly, it could come across as if you’re putting them down. I like to word it in a way that says, “I see how fast you’re growing! It must be hard to keep up with everything. I noticed that your website hasn’t been updated in a while. If you are overwhelmed, we could help with that.”

So, there you have it! A quick rundown of 12 of the emails we send out each year. I’d love to hear what you think. Leave us a comment below.

Bonus Email:

Want to know about the email that has converted more than any other for us at Abask Marketing? We are talking 100 contacts from one email sent to less than 500 people.

Click the button to have it sent to your inbox:

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Every writer should be in a mastermind group they love

Rebecca Batisto — Thu, 27 May 2021 18:00:00 +0000

The first time I heard about a Mastermind group was when listening to Amy Porterfield’s podcast. Amy, and many other marketing wizards have been members of a mastermind and found that the group is essential to staying on track and growing a business you love.

How can that be wrong? If you have ever joined one of those Facebook groups that you thought would be a great place to meet like-minded people and get advice about how to improve, only to find that your voice couldn’t be heard over all the noise and the rules, you’re going to love the Mastermind idea.

What the heck is a Mastermind?

The term was first coined by the motivational author (note – a writer!) Napolean Hill in the 1920s. He talks about it in his book, “Think and Grow Rich,” where he explains the benefit of bringing together two or more people to bounce ideas and work toward a purpose together. The idea has grown to become a small group working together to further individual goals.

Imagine having your own group of like-minded people. All at different stages, but basically aiming for the same target. All willing to listen and help each other. AND the best part of all is that none of them are pushing a course or making crazy promises to get you into the group. That, my friends, is a mastermind.

How does a Creative Mastermind Work?

My mastermind started as just a little fledgling group of writers, but it quickly became a big part of my life. A fellow writer reached out to a small group of folks in one of those Facebook groups I mentioned to see if we would be interested in reviewing each others’ blogs. Which we did. It worked so well that she and I became fast friends and started to brainstorm how to keep the feedback and support going. We started a Trello board (for us, Facebook was too much of a time sucker) with writing goals and rules and each of us had our own list (that’s a Trello thing meaning you have your own space) where we wrote out our quarterly goals, our own rules for writing and what we hoped to accomplish this week.

We only have two real roles in the Writers’ Mastermind and those two roles rotate through the group every week. On each weekly call there is a hot seat (more on this in a mo*) and an editor. It’s the editor’s job to keep us on schedule, to remind people to chat offline and to present the Best of the Week award and call out the Fall Shorts. It’s not fun being an editor, but it’s even less fun being a Fall Short, so it keeps us motivated.

What does a Mastermind Meeting look like?

Each week, we jump on Zoom for a 30-minute Mastermind Meeting. Each participant plays one of three roles: Hot Seat, Editor, Participant.

The editor takes a kind of roll call and asks if anyone needs help from the group. Those people will be given 10 minutes at the end of the call.
Then one person gets the *hot seat. That person has 10 minutes where we focus on their goals and anywhere they might be stuck. This has to be super focused on the facts and not so much the emotions (like, “I don’t think I’m qualified” or “What if no one cares?”) That person gets feedback and help from the group. Then the editor gives the floor to those people that need help. They can state their issue and hope the group will give them feedback via email.

It sounds like a lot of rules, right? It is. We make sure that our group is small enough to be forgiving, but we also don’t want people that aren’t committed. Sometimes, life hits you with a rough week or turns your week upside down and you have to roll with it, but if tasks are continuously not completed, sometimes it’s good to have someone asking why. You could be avoiding those tasks for a very important reason. Maybe you’re scared and need a kick in the butt, or maybe it’s just not what you want to be doing. And facing that fact could save you a lot of time and energy.

If you’re interested in joining our Mastermind, we currently have openings for folks that are looking to grow a copywriting business. Sign up here:

THE END
(but it doesn’t have to be…)

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