Are your webinars getting the attendance and results that you'd like? Here is 2 videos showing you the 3 simple steps you can take to maximise your attendance (by up to 50%) and your connection on your webinars.
Facebook Lead ads?
ARE YOU USING FACEBOOK LEAD ADS?
Everyone is doing Facebook marketing these days. But not everyone is doing it right.
Many are using Facebook lead ads, however not connecting to their database or Marketing Automation System to get the required information out straight away.
Here's a short video on how you can get connected quickly using Zapier to make sure your LEAD ADS respondents, get what they signed up for, (what your ad is about) Straight away
Enjoy & See you next week!
Start with these 9 items
9 Things You Should Already Be Automating
For small businesses, time is money.
Wasting time on tasks you can—and should—automate is money lost.
Money lost needlessly since determining which tasks to automate is simple:
- Complete all tasks once
- Develop a system for repetitive tasks, and
- Automate the system you developed
The following 9 repetitive processes are things you should automate—today.
1. ABANDONED CART
Given that shopping cart closure rates average 33%, your Abandoned Cart sequence is something you should automate. Infusionsoft® lets you:
- Create a tag that identifies prospective purchasers that enter your cart
- Send them a polite follow-up email if they abandon your cart
- Send another email in 1-2 days to revive their initial interest
Create emails with fun subject lines like “You were so close to being part of history…” But follow up on that 67% in sales.
2. CUSTOMER REFERRAL SEQUENCE
Happy customers are more likely to refer you to others. Which is why you should automate your Customer Referral Sequence to turn successful relationships into results.
How? Create a Referral Partner in Infusionsoft®:
- Survey customers to see who’s had a shareable experience
- Make sure their experience was a positive one
- Send an email with a clickable link and ask if they’ll share it on social media
Nothing’s more powerful than customer recommendations.
BEHAVIOUR-BASED SEGMENTATION & EMAIL MARKETING
People are “more likely to buy right after they’ve bought.”
Which is why you should automate a Behaviour-Based Segmentation sequence to:
- Tag customers according to when they bought first, and when they bought again
- Customize follow-up email series to when customers most recently bought
- Market products to customers that are similar to their most recent purchases
Let your app run on a schedule, while you analyse what customers are buying and offer more.
GOOGLE DOCS REPORTING (WITH ZAPIER)
Automate your business reporting by connecting Google Docs to Zapier.
Google Docs allows you to collaboratively edit documents with other people in real time. Integrate it with Zapier and:
- Make the functionality of every app you use interchangeable
- Create, save or copy from one app type to another, instantly
- Automate tedious tasks in your workflow like generating manual reports
In short, simplify data management, business reporting and save you time.
REPETITIVE PROCESS TEMPLATES
You should always automate Repetitive Process Templates. Infusionsoft® allows you to create automated templates that are simple, scalable and run on a schedule.
Note Templates, for example, allow you to:
- Create processes with detailed descriptions
- Tag groups and individuals responsible who will receive notifications
- Specify frequency, costs, expenses and follow-up sequences
All template types link to others. So it’s easy to create a process and link it to an email campaign to save yourself time.
LEAD GENERATION & SALES CALL FOLLOW-UPS
Automating a Lead Generation process saves you hours of composing emails and tracking leads.
- Send out emails series to prospects who opt in to your sales funnel
- Create workflows and follow-up nurturing emails
- Send out series of prospecting emails to targeted groups
Automating Sales Call Follow-ups is harder. Human-to-human interaction is still the most successful way to close a deal. Consider outsourcing to a company specializing in outbound calling.
POST PURCHASE FOLLOW-UP CAMPAIGNS
It’s always easier to sell to existing customers. So automate your Post-Purchase Follow-up campaigns and “create strong collaborative ties” using:
- Welcome SMS messages that greet new customers to the fold
- Post-purchase thank-you pages that express gratitude for customer purchases
- Follow-up email series that nurture customers by providing additional value
Keeping current customers in the loop positively predisposes them to you. It also makes them want to buy from you again and refer you to others.
CUSTOMER FEEDBACK & CALLBACKS FOLLOWING BAD RATINGS
You should automate Customer feedback campaigns. Send customers ‘quick’ surveys to rate their customer experience on a scale of 1-10.
Most people respond when only a single click is required. Next:
- Segment positive responses from negative ones
- Send thank-you emails to all respondents.
- Have your sales team call negative responders
Acknowledge, clarify, address and confirm you understand the objections of negative responders. And then apply what you learn.
INVOICING
If you’re still manually invoicing, you should automate this process immediately and stop duplicating your efforts. Link invoices to existing customer accounts to:
- Improve process time, efficiency, forecasting abilities and employee morale
- Reduce the need to manually code invoices and the chance of human error
- Invoice, receive payments and pay suppliers—on a reliable schedule
Do this and you’ll create satisfied suppliers who are “more willing to negotiate terms and costs because of your great payment history.”
To learn about how automating processes streamlines your business, read “Automate the Right Processes and Work on Your Business, Not in It!”
8 Essential Solutions
8 Essential Problem-Solving Automation Solutions for Your Business
Today, with so many automation solutions available, it’s hard to know which one to choose.
Here’s a quick look at 8 different essential automation solutions that will help you streamline your business offering.
There’s nowhere better to start than…
Comprehensive automation packages catering to the needs of small businesses
- Infusionsoft®
Infusionsoft® is a comprehensive small business platform that handles operations for over 125,000 subscribers. It offers 4 scalable annual plans, all of which include:
- Full process CRM and Marketing automation
- The capacity to send 5 emails a month each to 2,500 contacts (for the “Essentials” starter plan) and up to 20,000 contacts (for the “Team” plan)
- An in-house support team available 24/7 to assist you with questions
Plans allow a minimum of 3 users to work on your network. With the highest level plan allowing up to 10 users.
If you choose the “Essentials” plan—or the “Deluxe” plan geared for Sales Automation—you’ll need to source a reliable add-on, e-commerce option. One like…
- WorldInternetOffice
WorldInternetOffice is an inexpensive shopping cart service for small business owners new to e-commerce. Unlike Infusionsoft®, which allows a free 30-day trial period, WorldInternetOffice charges $3.95 for a 4-week test-drive.
But this test-drive is plug and play. Within 15 minutes, you can link your new shopping cart to your main automation platform and start processing orders. You can also:
- Accept order payment in any currency, calculate tax by country and shipping and handling charges and set up custom “Thank-you” pages
- Offer discounts, integrate various payment options, set up billing cycles, recurring and installment payments
- Apply commissions to first orders, analyze sales performance and much more
Now that you’ve automated your daily operational functions and have a shopping cart in place, it’s time to learn how…
The “Eye” Has It When It Comes to Making Prospects Say, “I Want It!”
To attract prospects to your sales funnel—and keep them there, you must offer content they want. There’s no hotter lead magnet or nurturing device than FREE how-to…
- Webinars
Webinars are an absolute must-have if your business is to catch the eye of busy prospects. Follow the three rules below to get prospects to opt-in to your list:
- Make webinars short and easily consumable
- Address a burning need your customer—new or recurring—has
- Create webinars regularly
Keep webinars no more than 5 minutes in length, target subjects customers ask you about—and “specify the subject clearly in your webinar’s title”—and you’ll position yourself as a helpful authority prospects rely on.
A great webinar application is…
- GoToWebinar
Nothing builds authority more than holding a live webinar that engages global participants in interactive content.
GoToWebinar is a popular choice because you can:
- Rehearse beforehand, have multiple presenters and link to video uploads
- Integrate webinar sign-ups with your CRM to manage lead generation
- Create polls on-the-fly to boost participation and analyze real-time metrics
Another great webinar tool to try is…
- EverWebinar™
Recorded popular webinars make excellent evergreen lead magnets. But, to be effective, recorded webinars must look like live webinars. An EverWebinar™:
- Has the feel of a real-time event and even simulates live audience participation
- Offers participants multiple time attendance options, including a just in time (JIT) option that creates urgency and ups attendance rates 80 – 90%
- Helps you build email lists, pre-qualify them and A/B test at the same time
Now that you understand the lure of webinars, it’s time to discuss…
Daily interactive options that drive attendee engagement—on a schedule
- Zoom Video Conferencing
In a global economy you need an affordable conferencing application that supports remote teams. Zoom offers straightforward video and web options that:
- Are ideal for meetings, training events, technical collaborations and town halls
- Provide access for 500 video participants and 10,000 viewers
- Have voice, video and screen sharing options for content-rich experiences
To manage your Zoom meeting schedule, you’ll need…
- AppointmentCore
AppointmentCore is a digital scheduling assistant that interfaces seamlessly with Infusionsoft® and Google. It will:
- Show minute-to-minute availability and eliminate email tag
- Send individual emails, email blasts or campaign invitations to coworkers and clients and book them automatically into your calendar
- Schedule in a buffer zone so you have prep time before important meetings—and are never overbooked
Finally, with so many applications running, you need a process coordinator like…
- Zapier
Zapier links all of your web applications, increasing productivity and eliminating inefficiencies with a single click. Use it to:
- Zap information instantaneously between all your apps
- Identify ways to streamline CRM workflows with trigger-to-action mapping
- Complete tedious, routine processes—behind-the-scenes
In short, let Zapier handle time-consuming administrative tasks, while you grow your business.
If you want to learn more about essential problem-solving automation solutions, read “10 Top Automation Applications to Build Your Business.”
Don’t work in your business!
Automate the Right Processes and Work on Your Business, Not in It!
With the rise of e-commerce, what you automate makes or breaks your business.
With limited time and resources, it’s vital you focus on tasks that promote your company’s growth. And you need to automate all tasks that require manual labour.
But which tasks should you automate first?
Simple, the ones that slow your response time to customers.
Your BPA (Business Process Automation) Plan needs to help you maintain your competitive edge. It should help you be nimble and ultra-responsive to customer needs.
It should:
- Allow potential customers to find you, and then buy from you, quickly, easily and repeatedly, and
- Perform flawlessly, on a schedule, freeing up your time for continued business development and new customer acquisition.
This is a tall order. And one that makes business owners stall as they decide on which business processes to automate first
Luckily, there’s a systematic approach to BPA that helps you automate business processes in a way that’s tailored to the specific needs of your business.
To begin, Lauren Simonds of Time recommends automating “time-consuming tasks that require attention, but don’t necessarily qualify as income-producing activities.”
Which means the first processes you need to automate are the ones that allow you to…
Always work one-on-one with customers closer to the sale
When it comes to growing your business, nothing replaces a human touch. So, the processes you automate first are the ones which allow you to interact with customers. Especially, customers who’ve expressed an interest in your product and are positioned to buy.
To decide which processes contribute to better sales, map out the entire end-to-end sales and accounting CRM process of your business. Note where your business workflow grinds to a halt or slow down due to manual processes.
The following list has typical sales activities. It helps determine any high-time, low-value tasks you currently engage in during each of them.
Activities you need to examine closely are:
- Re-engaging existing lists
- Capturing leads and systemizing sales conversions
- Automated delivery of products
- Asking customers for referrals and feedback
- Upselling activities
- Streamlining the sales process
- Long term nurture
- Attracting new traffic
Your goal is to prioritize your business processes. That way as many tasks as possible can run automatically behind the scenes.
Identify “time-consuming processes that occur repeatedly and automate them,” business process analyst Pratik Dholakiya advises.
You should follow this is advice, given that the vast majority of hands-on tasks performed during the sales lifecycle disrupt workflow. When you automate these tasks, you’ll have more time to focus on building relationships with new and recurring customers.
To start…
Automate all manual time-wasters susceptible to human error
Your business is in a constant state of flux. As are your business processes. Locking down yourself, or your employees, on operationally greedy tasks prone to errors makes no sense.
If you’re to have the time to work one-on-one with customers closer to the sale, you must eliminate tasks like:
- Cold-calling
- Compiling customer dossiers
- Manual invoicing
- Database management
- Sales results analysis
- Meetings to identify process slowdowns and inefficiencies
Your business will only grow, if it’s efficient. Let the built-in analytics your BPA offers perform all complex operations behind the scenes. Print off data reports, as you need them, to decide where best to focus your efforts.
Draft sales letters, regular content, product bulletins and business correspondence as needed once and let your automated system send them to your list, on a schedule.
Do the same with email autoresponder series that you send to nurture and keep customers at all stages of the sales lifecycle in the loop.
Offer free downloadable lead magnets like short how-to guides, checklists and automated webinars online to attract new customers and as bonuses to your regular content to re-engage existing ones.
Automate the invoicing process and accounting series. Send new and old customers quick automated surveys with drop menus to select from so you learn more about them
In short, automate the repetitive parts of your business and allocate most of your time to what systems reviewer, Mary Shacklett, considers the most vital use of your time, “customer-facing processes.”
Do this and you’ll…
Free up your valuable time closest to cash and make more sales
The days of manually compiling huge Access databases of customer profiles are gone. For your business to remain agile in the face of change, you must maximize your sales piece. Do this by automating tasks that disrupt workflow and detract from the growth of your business. And free up time for personalized customer interactions.
Nothing replaces great person-to-person interactions. Nothing. So, automate busywork and spend time developing key relationships with customers. Differentiate yourself in the marketplace with your one-on-one skills, not your business inefficiencies.
To learn more about automation systems that handle each step of the end-to-end business process, read “8 Essential Problem-Solving Automation Solutions for Your Business.”