Oops… seems like you broke the internet…

 

Just kidding! We searched high and low but couldn’t find what you’re looking for, unfortunately.

Let’s find a better place for you to go…

Or check out our knowledge base aka BLOG

Brand Hacks: How to Grow Your Brand Organically Online

Brand Hacks: How to Grow Your Brand Organically Online

Why investing in your brand is not a nice-to-have but a must-have  A strong brand presence is key to success. A well-established brand conveys professionalism, trust, and identity. Therefore, building a brand is an investment in the future - both in the short and...

read more

Why investing in your brand is not a nice-to-have but a must-have 

A strong brand presence is key to success. A well-established brand conveys professionalism, trust, and identity. Therefore, building a brand is an investment in the future – both in the short and long term. Over time, it becomes easier to make your brand appealing to your target audience if you continuously strengthen your brand.

A strong brand has advantages that unknown or untrustworthy brands do not have: consumers are willing to pay higher prices, compare less, and make purchasing decisions faster and easier, which generates more revenue and less costs.

Thus, Coca Cola can afford to launch a contest page that is not conversion optimized and does not include testimonials, because everyone already knows what they get when they hear or taste Coca Cola. It is a brand we learned to trust and love in childhood – health aspects are of course excluded.

Consumers are also more willing to give their data to a well-known brand than to leave their contact information on a website they have not heard of before, or where various security factors are missing.

Another example would be the willingness to buy a Starbucks coffee for $4 – $8 compared to the coffee shop around the corner. Or why Swarovski can charge up to $95 for a ballpoint pen, while we would not pay $2 for it in the office supply store, and even get them for free.

There are many ways to build and grow a brand, but some are faster and more effective than others.

In this article, we will introduce you to the top 5 branding hacks that you can use to organically grow your brand.

Establish a strong brand identity

A strong brand identity is essential to building a successful brand. It is so much more than just a visual presence, which is often mistakenly equated with it.

During our current rebranding process, it is the centerpiece of our evolved brand identity. But we will reveal more about it soon.

Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll let you know as soon as we relaunch our website. You’ll not only be the first to know what’s changing, but we’ll also take you through the process. You can watch over our shoulder and learn the best tips from our challenges and steps.”

A solid brand identity includes a logo, color palette, typography, and language. Some would even say that every brand has its own personality. These elements must come together to create a consistent, unique, and recognizable brand. The potential customer must feel addressed, connected, and understood.

A strong brand identity can help build customer loyalty, strengthen trust, and ultimately increase your sales. But how do you establish a strong brand identity? Here are some steps you can follow:

1. Define your target audience

To build a strong brand identity, you must first know your target audience. Who are your customers and what are their needs? What problems can your products or services solve? The better you understand your target audience, the more targeted you can align your brand with their needs.

2. Define your values

What makes your company unique? What are your values and beliefs? Or what do you dislike? A clear definition of your values can help differentiate your brand from others and build an emotional connection with your customers.

3. Develop Your Logo and Visual Identity

The logo and visual identity are the first things customers perceive from your brand. Develop a logo and visual identity that reflects your values and personality. Ensure that your visual identity is consistent across all channels and marketing materials to create a consistent image.

4. Create a Brand Voice and Personality

The brand voice and personality are the way your brand communicates. Define a brand voice and personality that fits your values and target audience. Ensure that the way you communicate is consistent across all channels to create a consistent brand identity.

You’ve made it when the user thinks you’ve read their secret diary if they were to write one.

5. Spread Your Brand

To make your brand known, you must actively promote it. Use social media channels, blog posts, email campaigns, PR actions, partner companies, guest speeches or contributions, and other marketing activities to spread your brand. Make sure that all activities fit your brand identity and are consistent.

In summary, a strong brand identity is an essential part of a successful business. This is the basis for all other activities. It’s about building an emotional connection with your customers and differentiating your brand from others.

By understanding your target audience, defining your values, developing your logo and visual identity, creating a brand voice and personality, and promoting your brand, you can build a strong brand identity.

You must ensure that these elements are consistently used on your website, social media channels, and advertising. This way, your brand can slowly but steadily establish itself.

Hack #1: Use social media actively

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn are important tools to establish a brand and promote it organically. Here are some tips on how you can effectively use social media to promote your brand:

1. Choose the right channel

Social media is not a short-term game, but hard work that can pay off if done correctly. We’re not talking about follower numbers, but about engagement and sales to your target audience.

It is important to choose the social media platforms that your target audience uses most frequently. For example, Instagram is ideal for brands that want to share visual content, while LinkedIn is more suitable for B2B marketing. However, what is often forgotten is that at the end of the day, every B2B customer is also a B2C user and therefore often present on different channels for different purposes.

Research the different social media platforms and choose the ones that best fit your brand.

2. Develop a social media strategy

A social media strategy is essential to ensure that your activities on social media are aligned with your marketing goals and made measurable. Your strategy should include the following:

  • Choosing the channel you will use
  • Defining your target audience, their needs and pain points
  • The definition of goals, such as increasing brand awareness or generating leads
  • The voice used or the use of emojis on social networks
  • The planning of content and its subcategories that will engage and inform your target audience
  • The features used, such as posts, stories, reels or lives
  • The frequency of publications
  • The design of the social presence, as well as formats and, if applicable, initial design templates for various content types (which can sometimes differ slightly from the website)
  • Advanced accounts can also take into account how to deal with the community or hate comments.
  • Determining KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you will track to measure the success of your activities on social media

3. Create high-quality content & interact with your target audience

On social media, it’s not just about promoting your products or services. It’s also about entertaining, inspiring, and informing your target audience. Depending on the target persona and where the potential customer is in the customer journey, this can look very different. Create content that is engaging and relevant, and that encourages your target audience to share and comment on your posts.

Social media provides a great opportunity to engage with your target audience and generate excitement about new products and services.

Answer questions that users ask on your social media channels, and respond to comments and feedback. This shows that you listen to your target audience and that you care about their needs and concerns.

Hack #2: Use Content Marketing

Content marketing is another important hack to grow your brand organically. It refers to the creation and distribution of high-quality, relevant, and useful content that aims to reach, engage, and inform your target audience at each point in the customer journey. Here are some important aspects of content marketing that you should consider:

1. Target Audience Analysis

As explained in the section brand identity, you start with your target audience for content marketing. While the persona may be the same, depending on the step in the customer journey, a different medium and approach may be necessary. 

Before you start creating content, it’s important to understand your target audience. Who are they? What are their interests and needs? What are their challenges and pain points? What do they need and want right now in the situation they are in (when they see the content)?

By thoroughly analyzing your audience, you can ensure that your content is relevant and engaging to them.

2. Content Strategy

A content strategy is a plan for creating and distributing content aimed at promoting your brand and your products or services. It’s important to develop a content strategy that is aligned with your target audience and focused on their needs and interests. This can include:

  • Setting goals for your content, such as increasing website traffic or lead generation.
  • Selecting the right channels to distribute your content, such as social media, public relations, email marketing, or blogging
  • Developing an editorial plan for regular or automated content publishing 
  • Alternatively, the multiplier contacts to use, for example journalists, partners, influencers
  • Identifying topics that are relevant and useful to your target audience
  • Establishing metrics to evaluate the success of your content

3. Content Creation

Content creation can be challenging, but it’s important to create relevant and useful content that engages and informs your audience. Here are some types of content you can create:

  • Blog articles that cover relevant topics for your target audience
  • Infographics that present complex information in a visually appealing way
  • E-books, whitepapers, or guides that inform your audience and help them solve their problems
  • Videos that demonstrate your products or services or provide informative content
  • Landing pages that are only accessible to specific users
  • Emails, for automated relationship building with your target audience

4. Content Distribution

Once you’ve created your content, you need to make sure it’s seen and used by your target audience. Here are some ways to distribute your content:

  • Share your content on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok or LinkedIn
  • Use email marketing to send your content to your subscribers
  • Use influencer marketing by partnering with influencers in your industry to share your content and increase your reach
  • Publish guest posts on other websites to spread your content and back
  • Do a press release promoting your content’s landing page
  • Ask partners and affiliates to share your content

Hack #3: Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is an important part of any successful marketing strategy. SEO refers to a set of techniques used to ensure that your website is found and preferred by search engines like Google and Bing. 

With 80% market share among search engines in 2023, Google is definitely number one and therefore the search engine you should pay the most attention to. Unless your target audience is in Asia.

Here are some important aspects of SEO that you should consider to grow your brand organically:

1. Technical Optimization 

If you want to optimize your brand for search engines, technical optimization is an important component. Technical optimization involves ensuring that your website or blog is easily accessible for search engines and that they can understand and index the content on your site correctly.

Some of the technical factors that you should optimize include the loading time of your website, the use of structured data, the optimization of your URLs and meta tags, and ensuring that your website has an XML sitemap and a robots.txt file.

A fast loading time is particularly important as it is not only a crucial ranking factor but also improves the user experience. A poor loading time can cause users to leave your site before it has even loaded.

Using structured data can also help make your site more readable for search engines. Structured data can help your content appear as rich snippets in search results, attracting more attention.

Optimizing URLs and meta tags, such as title tags and meta descriptions, can also help make your site appear better in search results and receive more clicks.

2. Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of identifying keywords used by your target audience to search for information, products, or services related to your brand. Thorough keyword research can help you understand what your target audience is searching for and how you can optimize your content to be found for those queries.

3. On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization refers to optimizing the individual pages of your website to ensure they are relevant and useful to search engines and users alike. This can include:

  • Using relevant keywords in your title tag, meta description and headings.
  • Optimizing the URL structure of your website
  • Using internal links to connect your pages to each other
  • Using images and videos to enrich your content
  • Ensuring that your website is fast and user-friendly

4. Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization refers to any SEO techniques performed outside of your website to increase your authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. This can include:

  • Creating guest posts on high quality websites with relevant subject matter to generate backlinks.
  • Launching a PR campaign to gain backlinks from media outlets
  • Participating in industry forums and online communities to promote your brand 
  • Social media marketing to share your content and increase your reach, which consequently links back to your website
  • Using online directories to register your website and generate backlinks

However, be careful. Not every link is a useful or good one! You have to distinguish between NoFollow and DoFollow links. 

5. Content Creation

High-quality, relevant and useful content is an important part of any successful content and SEO strategy. By regularly publishing new, unique and high-quality content on your website, you increase the chances that your website will rank higher in search results and be found by your target audience.

It’s also a chance to answer your users’ questions and signal to them that you have just the right solution to their problem.

Overall, SEO can be a very effective way to grow your brand organically. However, it takes a lot of work, research and time to implement a successful SEO strategy. 

If you’re not sure how to leverage SEO for your brand, click here to book your discovery call with us.

Conclusion

In conclusion, branding is a long-term process that requires a lot of time and patience. However, there are several branding hacks that you can use to grow your brand in an organic way.

By using the right marketing and branding strategies, you can reach your target audience, build trust, and create a strong brand identity.

The hacks presented here are just a sample of the many other ways to promote your brand. It’s important to experiment and find out which tactics best suit your brand. 

Also, be patient as branding is a long-term process and it takes time to build a strong brand.

By following these hacks and continuously working on your brand, you can achieve long-term success and build a strong brand that stands out from the competition.

If you have more questions or need support implementing these brand hacks, book an initial consultation with us through this link.

We can help you identify the best quick wins and long-term actions through our growth hacking workshops or detailed strategies to grow your brand sustainably and efficiently by convincing your target audience and minimizing your workload.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are essential metrics used to measure the success of a specific aspect of your business.

They provide a way for your company to track its progress and determine whether your strategies are working.

In this blog post, we will explain the importance of KPIs in digital marketing and the different types of KPIs used in digital marketing.

Do you want to learn more about digital marketing? Click here and let’s schedule your free discovery call!

4 Benefits of Key Performance Indicators in Digital Marketing

Key Performance Indicators

1. Measure success

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential for measuring the success of a digital marketing campaign. They help determine whether the campaign is meeting its goals and identify areas for improvement on both macro and micro levels.

2. Monitor progress

KPIs enable businesses to monitor their progress and track changes over time, which is critical for identifying trends and patterns that can inform future strategies.

3. Allocate resources

By tracking KPIs, businesses can allocate their resources more efficiently, focusing on areas where they are most needed. This allows them to determine which aspects of their digital marketing strategy are working and which areas need improvement.

4. Improve decision-making

KPIs provide valuable data-driven insights that businesses can use to inform their decision-making. By tracking KPIs, they can make informed decisions about where to allocate resources, what changes to make to their strategies, and what actions to take to improve their results.

It’s important to remember that even if you think you know your target audience well, data-driven insights can often reveal surprising results that even the most experienced marketing professionals might not have anticipated. Our unique experiences, behaviors, and thoughts can affect our subjective perceptions, making it critical to rely on hard data to guide decision-making.

7 Driving Digital Marketing Key Performance Indicators

1) Website Traffic

Website Traffic measures the number of visitors to a website. It is a measure of the reach of a digital marketing campaign and the effectiveness of content in driving traffic to the website. Website traffic can be broken down into several subcategories, such as unique visitors, page views, and average session duration.

  • Unique Visitors: This metric measures the number of individual visitors to a website. It helps to determine the size of the website’s audience and provides insights into the reach of a digital marketing campaign.
  • Page Views: This metric measures the total number of pages viewed on a website. It provides an understanding of how much content is being consumed by visitors and can help determine the popularity of specific pages or content types.
  • Average Session Duration: This metric measures the average amount of time a visitor spends on a website. It provides insights into the engagement level of visitors and can help identify areas of the website where improvements can be made to increase engagement.

Website Traffic is a crucial KPI in digital marketing as it provides a way to measure the success of a digital marketing campaign in terms of reach and audience engagement. A higher number of website visitors can indicate that the content is compelling and that the digital marketing campaign is effectively driving traffic to the website. However, a low number of visitors can indicate a need for improvement in the digital marketing strategy or the website’s content.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to practices used to improve the visibility and ranking of a website in search results of search engines like Google. A well-optimized SEO can help increase website traffic by improving the website’s chances of being found by potential visitors.

2) Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate measures the percentage of visitors to a website who leave the site after only viewing one page. This metric provides important insights into the engagement level of visitors and the effectiveness of the website’s content and design in retaining visitors.

A high bounce rate indicates that the majority of visitors are leaving the website after only viewing one page, meaning that the content and design are not effectively engaging the visitor and keeping them on the site. This can be a result of poor website design, slow loading times or irrelevant,uninteresting content. Since search engines aim to provide users with the most relevant and user-friendly results, websites with a high bounce rate can be downgraded in search results. This means that a high bounce rate can have a negative impact on a website’s SEO.  Therefore, it is important to make a website user-friendly, provide relevant and high-quality content, and ensure that visitors find what they are looking for on the website.

A low bounce rate, on the other hand, indicates that visitors are engaging with the content and spending more time on the website, exploring multiple pages and potentially completing actions such as making a purchase or filling out a form. This can be a result of well-designed website structure, relevant and engaging content, and a good user experience.

It’s important to note that bounce rate can vary depending on the type of website and the purpose of the visit. 

For example, a high bounce rate may be acceptable for a blog post that provides all the information the visitor is seeking, while a low bounce rate is expected for an e-commerce website where the goal is to encourage visitors to explore multiple pages and make a purchase.

3) Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate measures the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action. This action can be anything from making a purchase, filling out a form, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading a piece of content.

Conversion rate provides important insights into the effectiveness of a digital marketing campaign in achieving its goals. A high conversion rate indicates that a large percentage of visitors are taking the desired action, meaning that the website’s content and design are effectively converting visitors into customers or leads.

A low conversion rate, on the other hand, indicates that the majority of visitors are not taking the desired action, meaning that there may be issues with the website’s content, design, or user experience. Digital marketers can analyze the conversion rate and make improvements to the website and digital marketing strategies to increase conversions.

There are several factors that can impact conversion rate, including website design and layout, the relevance and quality of the content, the call-to-action (CTA), and the overall user experience. Digital marketers can use A/B testing and other optimization techniques to improve the conversion rate and achieve better results.

4) Social Media Engagement

Social Media Engagement

Social Media Engagement measures the level of interaction and participation of users on a company’s social media platforms. This includes likes, comments, shares, and other forms of user interaction, such as click-throughs and impressions.

Social media engagement provides important insights into the reach and impact of a company’s social media presence, as well as the level of interest and engagement from its audience. A high level of social media engagement can indicate that the content is relevant and valuable to the target audience, and that the company is effectively building a relationship with its followers.

Low social media engagement, on the other hand, may indicate that the content is not resonating with the target audience or that the company’s social media strategy needs to be reevaluated. Digital marketers can analyze social media engagement and make improvements to the content and social media strategy to increase engagement and reach.

It’s important to note that social media engagement can vary depending on the platform and the target audience. 

For example, a B2B company may have a higher level of engagement on LinkedIn compared to Facebook, while a B2C company may have a higher level of engagement on Instagram.

5) Link Clicks

This KPI measures the number of clicks on links on a web page or in a newsletter or email marketing campaign. 

This KPI can help evaluate the effectiveness of a particular marketing campaign or website feature, as it indicates how many visitors actually click on links and move on to other relevant pages. 

Link clicks can also help measure conversions and sales, as they provide an indication of how many visitors respond to specific calls-to-action and ultimately become customers.

Link clicks can be further broken down into various details to provide even more accurate insights. Here are some examples:

  • Total link clicks: this KPI indicates the total number of clicks on all links on a web page or in a marketing campaign.
  • Click rate: The click rate indicates how many times a link was clicked compared to the number of people who saw the link. The click rate is often expressed as a percentage.
  • Origin of clicks: This KPI indicates where visitors who click on links come from. For example, they may come from social media, organic search results, or paid ads.
  • Dwell time on landing page: Dwell time on landing page measures how long visitors stay on the page the link leads to. A longer dwell time can be an indicator of a relevant and interesting page that keeps visitors longer.

5) Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) measures the return on investment (ROI) of an advertising campaign. It is calculated by dividing the total revenue generated from the campaign by the total cost of the campaign.

ROAS provides important insights into the effectiveness of an advertising campaign in generating revenue. A high ROAS indicates that the campaign is generating a high return on investment, meaning that the cost of the campaign is effectively being offset by the revenue generated.

Low ROAS, on the other hand, may indicate that the campaign is not generating enough revenue to offset the cost, meaning that adjustments may need to be made to the campaign strategy to improve performance.

ROAS is a crucial KPI for digital marketers as it provides insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of an advertising campaign in generating revenue. By analyzing and optimizing ROAS, digital marketers can make data-driven decisions to improve the performance of their campaigns and drive better results.

It’s important to note that ROAS can vary depending on the goals of the advertising campaign. 

For example, a branding campaign may have a lower ROAS compared to a direct response campaign, but the goal of the branding campaign is to build brand awareness, not necessarily to generate immediate revenue.

7) Email Open Rate and Click-Through Rate

Email Open Rate and Click-Through Rate

Email Open Rate and Click-Through Rate are two Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that measure the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns.

Email Open Rate measures the percentage of emails that were successfully opened by the recipient. It is calculated by dividing the number of emails that were opened by the number of emails that were sent and successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox. A high email open rate indicates that the recipient is engaged with the content of the email and is more likely to take action.

Email open rate = (number of emails opened / number of emails delivered) x 100%.

Click-Through Rate measures the number of clicks on links within an email, divided by the number of emails that were opened. It is a measure of how well the content of the email is resonating with the recipient and how effective the call-to-action (CTA) within the email is in driving engagement. A high click-through rate indicates that the recipient is interested in the content of the email and is taking action as a result.

Both Email Open Rate and Click-Through Rate are crucial KPIs in email marketing as they provide insight into the effectiveness of an email campaign. By analyzing and optimizing these KPIs, digital marketers can make data-driven decisions to improve the performance of their email campaigns and drive better results.

It’s important to note that these KPIs can be influenced by a variety of factors, including the subject line, sender name, content of the email, and more. Digital marketers should experiment with different strategies to improve these KPIs, such as segmenting their email lists, optimizing their subject lines, and testing different CTAs.

Conclusion

KPIs are critical for measuring the success of a digital marketing campaign and determining where improvements can be made. By tracking KPIs, you can get a better understanding of your target audience, the content that resonates with your business, and the results you are seeing from your digital marketing efforts. From website traffic to social media engagement and email open and click-through rates, there are many different types of KPIs that can be used in digital marketing. By using KPIs, you can make informed decisions about your digital marketing strategies and improve your results.

Ready to take your digital marketing to the next level? Let’s schedule your FREE discovery call with us! 

We’ll help you uncover the best strategies to reach your target audience, increase your online presence, and grow your business. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to transform your marketing game. Click here now and schedule your call!

In this article you will learn what process optimization is, why it is indispensable, and how you can optimize your business processes in 5 steps with 7 tools.

We can’t make the deadline! We don’t have enough senior staff to do it! My staff keep complaining about the workload! We don’t know where our customers are coming from! Social media takes up too much of our time and yet we’re not successful enough!….

If you’ve said at least one of these things before, you’re having trouble optimizing your processes. Let’s solve the problem!

Whether you’ve never heard of process optimization, or you know about it but are still struggling, this article is for you!

In just a few steps and with the right tools, you can optimize your time-consuming processes!

So what does process optimization really mean?

Process optimization is about adjusting processes to optimize their results while staying within their limits. These limits can be, for example, the project deadline, the budget, and the human resources allocated to the project. In general, it is about minimizing costs and maximizing performance, productivity, and efficiency.

For example, process optimization can create strategies to improve workflow, improve communication, anticipate change, and eliminate redundancies in project management.

In short, it keeps you from burning out, burning money unnecessarily, or managing haphazardly without knowing exactly which things are worth your time and which are not. It also helps you to keep recruiting costs low and to retain employees longer, as well as to recognize possible challenges early on.

Overall, the management and optimization of processes is crucial for digital transformation in all companies.

So how can optimizing your business processes benefit you?

Without a doubt, process optimization makes your company more competitive in the long run.

Let’s take a closer look at the other benefits for your business:

Risk minimization

By optimizing your processes, you can reduce the risks that can undermine a project’s progress. Visual and written mapping of activities makes it easier to standardize and formalize processes. This significantly reduces risks by reducing errors, duplication of effort, and questions about procedures.

This means that even junior staff can often perform tasks that require senior know-how. The learning phase of new employees can also be shortened.

Cost Reduction & Better Results

In the long run, you achieve better project results and reduce costs at the same time. The reason for this is that when processes are optimized, waste can be easily identified. This allows you to find errors, misused resources, bottlenecks that affect productivity, and so on. This in turn helps to solve these problems and reduce costs.

One of the biggest benefits of improved internal and external processes is the increased chances of delivering the quality that customers expect from a product or service provider. In this way, one can gain an important market position and deliver higher added value.

In addition, the quality of work and results is improved through process optimization. From the optimization of workflows to more transparency – the quality of the results is improved through the process.

Automation tools can help map processes, eliminate critical personnel dependencies, and eliminate data errors by eliminating low-value manual process work.

Optimized time management

You also optimize your time management by eliminating tasks that don’t add value without negative consequences. This maximizes time efficiency and creates more agile workflows.

Better problem-solving ability

Of course, you not only recognize errors, but also identify the root causes of the problems. This helps address errors at the source, so managers don’t have to waste resources mitigating the consequences instead of actually solving the problems.

Controlled compliance

With standardized and monitored processes, it is easier to comply with regulations. And in the event of an audit, the transparency of the processes facilitates the procedure and contributes to the desired results. Because employees do not work in isolation from each other, there are often parts of the process that are handled by different people. By mapping processes and analyzing workflows, employees become privy to the responsibilities of their colleagues. In this way, more transparency and accountability can be ensured.

How to optimize your processes in 5 steps

1. Identify / Visualize it

A smart move would be to choose a single problem, obstacle, or slow process in your business. Because in order to know what you can improve, you must first identify where there is a problem.

Understand what is causing the problem. The reason could be a lack of communication, a manager who doesn’t respond in a timely manner, or a supplier who is slow to act. Think about a process in your company that is costing you more than it should, or that is causing customer dissatisfaction or even stress between employees.

Set a goal that you want to achieve, for example to speed up the process or get it done without these hurdles. It’s about understanding the process and what it needs, rather than trying to add something new to solve existing problems.

You can use process mapping for this. As you map the processes, you can involve your team and those involved in the day-to-day operations to find out where there are problems. You should focus on one problem at a time.

Now ask questions about this process and try to find out what is the core of the process, the unchanging elements.

●  What is the ultimate purpose of the process?

●  What should the result look like?

●  Where does the process begin and end?

●  What activities are part of the process and go through the different phases?

●  Which departments and people are involved?

●  Which areas are automated and which actions are implemented manually and will have to be in the future?

●  What information is passed between the steps?

At this point you are asking what the process is, not how not how it should be.

2. Rethink your processes

Optimizing business processes can be achieved by leveraging existing resources. You may already have everything you need to make changes.

Maybe you just need to rethink a little or find creative solutions to problems. If you find that you lack tools that can help you solve the problem, consider expanding your toolkit. This will involve upfront costs, but you can make a compelling case for the benefits that will come from making the switch. 

It’s time to outline the process and think about how each step is executed, how the process flows, and what process optimization means to that process. Ask yourself and your team these questions:

●  Is there a better way to run this process?

●  How exactly will this process work?

●  How long will it take to complete the process?

●  How much time is lost to rework and error correction?

●  Where does the process get bogged down?

It is important to take a micro and a macro perspective. Every detail is important, for example, the way a landing page is written influences the perception of what your company can offer, because your landing page is one of your most important advertising tools and influences the so-called “customer journey.”

Compare the answers to these questions with those of the first point, and you will find that some tasks that seemed important to you are actually superfluous.

3. Analyze & Implement

After you have learned the process in such detail and identified the opportunities for change and the need for improvement, it is time to apply the process in a new way. This is a tricky part of process optimization.

Plan the process of “shoulds.” You should develop an action plan in which you define the boundaries, set goals, and assemble a team that will be responsible for implementing the change. At the same time, you should describe how you will measure success by defining KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

For example, if you plan to implement an automation tool to help you manage internal  processes such as communication between employees, you can measure success by comparing the time it takes to run it automatically versus manually.

There is no one way to do work – it can be a continuous improvement cycle in which you aim for better and better results. Repeat the steps for each new process that you think can be done better, and keep watching it to optimize it even more.

For effective business process optimization, it is crucial that all stakeholders accept the new process and implement the changes. It is therefore advisable to involve them to a large extent in the change process.

This way, you can collect data, review the results, and determine whether or not the improvements actually occurred. It may happen that the process does not end as you expected. Perhaps employees do not adjust well to the new process because the implementation was not done correctly; in that case, it is necessary to re-evaluate the process and the implementation of the optimization.

4. Automation is the key

Automate the processes that have been proven to work and implement them in the business to reduce costs, eliminate errors, and increase production.

You can use automation tools to handle repetitive, time-consuming, and costly tasks. For example, if you automate data entry, you’ll find that fewer of the errors often made by humans will occur.

CRM or project management software for business automation can help you keep records, store or match data, send notifications, track leads, and turn contacts into long-term customers.

Automated workflows also help to increase employee satisfaction, as employees are relieved of routine tasks and can instead focus on demanding analytical tasks.

Below you will find some tools that you can use to automate various tasks.

5. Continue to observe your processes!

Process optimization takes place continuously. Throughout process optimization, the watchword is: monitor, monitor, monitor. This means that every change or optimization should be followed up and monitored for success or failure.

After automation, you will surely find new improvement points and bottlenecks. Identify them, rethink the process, then implement and automate it.

Like (almost) all processes in business process management, this is a cyclical project that should be reviewed at least once a year and should also become part of the company’s DNA.

When the idea of optimization becomes ingrained in the corporate culture, it increases customer and employee satisfaction, as well as profitability. It can also reduce resource waste to an unprecedented degree.

One way to monitor processes with automation tools is through real-time reports and dashboards.

Make sure you use reliable software when optimizing your company’s processes. The results will only be worthwhile if the process works satisfactorily.

How should you carry out process optimization in your company?

Process optimization should be continuous and you should always be on the lookout for new opportunities for improvement, because this is the only way to keep your company competitive.

At the same time, employees must understand that process optimization aims to make their work easier and the company more productive.

By optimizing the use of resources, process optimization undeniably increases the efficiency of the company and provides added value for customers.

That’s why technology platforms help transform your business processes, just as integrated process management can improve or even revolutionize your business.

7 tools that simplify your work life 

Project Management

ClickUp

ClickUp is one of the most comprehensive and powerful project management software designed for teams and individuals.

Most professionals use separate apps for task lists, calendars, schedules, project management, document editing, communication, and collaboration. But what if you could use a single app for all these functions? With productivity apps like ClickUp, you can do multiple things in one place and automate them flawless.

ClickUp’s main focus is to eliminate the frustrations, inefficiencies, and interruptions caused by current project management solutions.  ClickUp is designed to save you time and make you and your team more productive.

ClickUp is available as a cloud-based app, desktop app, smartphone app, Chrome extension. You can use ClickUp for process management, task management, time management, third-party app integration, full workspace customization, team collaboration, and reporting.

If you want to try the app, you can start with the Free Forever plan, which includes 100 MB of storage for attachments, unlimited members, and unlimited tasks.

Social Media Marketing

Metricool

Metricool is a platform that helps you analyze, manage, and grow your digital presence with unique tools and features. It helps you unify all your social media and web analytics, plan your social media content, and manage your advertising campaigns.

The main advantage of Metricool is the integration of all your analytics data from the web and social media in one dashboard. All you have to do is go to the link in your dashboard and connect your website and social media accounts.

There you can find metrics on how your account has grown over time, how many followers you’ve gained/lost, how many clicks you are getting, etc.

One of the best practices of social media analysis is tracking the demographics of your target audience. With Metricool, you can find useful demographic data about your audience that you can use to better understand them and create targeted content and campaigns. You can analyze how your content has evolved and whether you need to change your content strategy.

Besides analyzing websites and social media, you can also track the performance of your ad campaigns directly from the Metricool dashboard. You get metrics like spend, clicks, conversions, impressions, CPM, and so on for each campaign.

With Metricool you can get customized reports for all the above metrics. You have full control over which metrics are included in a report and how the data is presented.

You can also create report templates that you can reuse as many times as you want.

Metricool also allows scheduling and automated posting of social media content with the autolist feature.

All in all, Metricool is our favorite tool that we use to automate our social media marketing.

Neuroflash

The AI-powered software from neuroflash for marketing copywriting helps marketing teams create short and long copy much faster, more intuitively, and more efficiently. Neuroflash supports human creativity with AI-powered performance prediction, which has been proven to lead to better performance and ultimately more confident copywriters.

Neuroflash allows you to visualize the opinion of your target audience in real time before the ad text goes online. The software helps you find suitable alternatives with keywords for better performance. It has a built-in artificial consumer brain that evaluates headlines and words based on audience samples of over a billion users.

Using natural language processing and neuromarketing science, the system creates alternative advertising messages that it predicts will perform better. The Create and Compare feature allows copywriters to create short marketing texts for slogans, headlines, metadata, Google ads, Facebook posts, product descriptions, etc.

Neuroflash offers Tester Pro capabilities to predict newsletter performance, email open rates, and lead generation. Finally, the Explorer tool can provide users with new content ideas. It also provides you with marketing message insights to increase their effectiveness.

Canva

Canva is a comprehensive design tool for those who are not experienced designers. Most people think of it as an image design tool, but it’s much more. You can design everything from printed materials to PDFs, invoices, flyers, infographics, and websites.

Depending on your experience, you can either start from scratch or use the templates.

There is a web version and apps for cell phones and desktops.

Canva is a graphic design tool that lets you easily create custom graphics. It’s easily accessible via mobile or tablet and user-friendly. You can use it not only to spice up your social media content, but also to design presentations, invitations, posters, brochures, business cards, and more.

If your business has a social media presence, you need to offer content that appeals to your target audience. Simple and boring graphics won’t do the trick. Luckily, Canva makes it easy to create aesthetically pleasing graphics and even videos that will grow both your social media profile and your brand.

DeepL

If you want to publish multilingual content, DeepL is the best translator for you. With the advanced features of DeepL you can simplify your workflow, save valuable time and scale your translation needs without compromising on translation quality.

Sales

Pipedrive  

In the fast-paced world of sales and building customer relationships, you need awesome technology to help you with your daily tasks. Luckily, there are services like Pipedrive CRM that help you manage your customer relationships efficiently and carefully. But what exactly does Pipedrive do? And what is a CRM anyway?

If you’re looking for ways to build new customer relationships and manage clients, it’s time to consider a leading CRM.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. A CRM platform serves as a central hub where you can manage all your customers and projects.

A CRM helps you track customers, know where they are in the sales process, and guide them through a systematic sales process. It also helps you ensure that your team members are all on the same page.

Modern companies need to be carefully streamlined. This applies to all departments. Companies use CRMs to gain useful insights into current project progress and what they are doing to reach customers.

Pipedrive CRM is a leading pipeline CRM service designed to make the sales and relationship-building process more efficient than ever. Pipedrive helps you easily import your leads, assign them to your sales reps, and move them through the various stages of the sales cycle. With sales panel integration, it can enrich all records with marketing data and provide important sales information.

Pipedrive is fully customizable. This means that you can set up your own unique sales processes and patterns without having to rely on the standard defaults. One of the most important advantages of Pipedrive is its incredible flexibility.

Pipedrive is not only there to remind about and report on the stages in the pipeline, but also to correlate them cleanly with data.

Ultimately, Pipedrive helps put your sales drivers and processes in a clear order. Some CRMs are better suited for collaboration and long-term goals. Pipedrive, on the other hand, is perfect for managing sales from start to finish.

Pipedrive CRM gives you a complete pipeline overview. This helps you achieve your sales goals and ensure that your prospects are happy, confident, and well informed. Why waste time with multiple programs and spreadsheets that clutter everything up? Always choose a leading pipeline CRM that brings together complex, critical data for long-term leads and financial success.

Accounting

sevDesk

sevDesk is a web-based accounting platform for entrepreneurs and small businesses, from cleaning services to civil engineering firms, or even musicians. The interface is available in many languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Greek.

sevDesk is available in three variants. Basic functions include management of invoices, quotes, reminders, products, customers, and tasks. In its most comprehensive form, the accounting solution also offers inventory management, price management, and supplier and item allocation. sevDesk also offers a dashboard and reporting tools. Collaboration is enabled through task management and assignment, audit trails, and access rights management.

Tax advisors can log into a self-service portal to access their client’s sevDesk account. It provides real-time data and allows exports with just a few clicks.

Free apps (iOS and Android) allow you to access sevDesk from any device. Daily backups are performed and data is encrypted with TLS. sevDesk is GDPR compliant and offers you digital archiving and a documentation log.

Internal Communication

Slack

Slack is basically a chat room for your entire company, designed to replace email as the primary method of communication and sharing.

In the workspaces, you can organize communication by channel to have group discussions, and you can send private messages to share information, files, and more in one place.

Plus, Slack integrates with a variety of other apps so you can manage your entire workflow from one platform.

Conclusion

Simply put, business process optimization is the improvement of business processes. There are countless ways to adjust a process to make it objectively better. These range from omitting certain tasks to adding new ones, from rewriting a specific process step to changing the order of tasks to improve the overall flow.

Companies that can consistently attract and retain the best talent are getting their employer branding right.” 

But how do you become an employer brand, what does employer branding mean for today’s business world, and how does it contribute to your company’s growth strategies? 

Employer branding is a concept introduced by Simon Barrow in the 1990s. In the recent decade the term employer branding has been interpreted as the full integration of branding practices into HR practices

In a nutshell, we’ll explain how important it is for employer branding  to have a basic structure based on your company’s values and your employees, and we’ll give you some useful application examples along the way.

Who does employer branding?

The most important player in employer branding is the management

If the management does not support the introduction of employer branding, the HR department cannot be successful in this area. 

On the contrary. In the background, management must clearly know what they stand for, support the implementation as well as live its communicated values – otherwise a successful employer branding campaign can quickly turn into a sh*tstorm and resource hog.

Even if the HR department leads the process, the process cannot be initiated without the leadership and clarity of management. 

So, should only management and HR be involved?

No, of course not!

The employer branding process should be channeled and elicited as well as carried out together with other employees.

Why is employer branding important if you have a sufficient number of employees in your company?

If you are a successful employer brand, you can offer your employees much more than a salary and a job. 

Of course, you reap what you sow: a work environment where there is cohesion even in times of crisis, where employees who feel a sense of belonging to the company and its values are committed to their work, where the number of resignations drops significantly and the number of job applications increases

It is also important to work with existing employees over a longer period of time in order to use your resources efficiently and effectively. This keeps margins and profits higher.

The resources spent on constant recruiting, onboarding and development of new employees, which usually takes months, can be a losing proposition for the company. 

So, if you’re complaining about the skills shortage, remember Bettina’s words and reread this blog post: “There is no skills shortage – those who have the skills just don’t want to work for you!”

What goals can you pursue by creating an employer brand? 

Keeping in mind that the employer brand is a product, there are 3 audiences to whom you want to market it: 

One is potential candidates. 

Potential candidates are talent outside the company that you want to attract to your company. You should be an attractive employer to these talents. This must also be apparent from the outside – online and offline.  

Another target audience is the employees of your company

Employees should be able to say, “I like working here, I’m developing, and I see a future for myself.” 

Another target audience is the workers who leave your company

The person leaving the company should be proud to have worked there and leave feeling like they had a good experience

Last but not least, social media or even platforms like Kununu or Glassdoor are popular research platforms for potential applicants. A well-founded negative evaluation here can quickly lead to lower applications.

Why values play the biggest role in building an employer brand?

weBOUND marketing Unternehmenswerten
https://www.weboundmarketing.com/de/werde-ein-webounder-stellenangebote/

This is one of the most underrated measures, but one that can bring the most leverage in employer branding: Know your company values as well as your personal values and communicate them properly to the outside world. 

Only then will potential candidates understand whether you are a good match for their own values, lifestyle, or interests. By communicating clearly about your values, you will reduce the number of unsuitable applications and streamline the selection process.

The easiest way to explain this is with an example:

“For me as a manager, the values of freedom and honesty have always played a major role. Of course, it is all the more important to me that this is lived in my company and also by my employees. 

In 2016, I founded weBOUND during an 18-month trip around the world and have since been running the company with all employees and freelancers working location-independently or remotely. 

It is very important to me to allow all participants the greatest possible flexibility (with the greatest possible security) as well as an honest interaction with each other. Sometimes this also means saying no to an idea, even if a project could arise from it. 

These values are also clearly communicated – online as well as offline.

Is my company the right workplace for everyone? No! For some individuals, the lack of an office or micro-management that they are used to from other companies is a dealbreaker. For others the flexible working hours, as well as 100% location-independent work that they can schedule themselves, is their dream.”

Bettina Wittman, Founder, weBOUND

What else should you look for to make your employer branding successful?

First and foremost, employees value the work climate as well as the social environment. Therefore, a safe and peaceful work environment should be created for employees that also fits their values. 

Some people may be intrinsically motivated, others more extrinsically motivated. This should also be kept in mind.

In addition to social opportunities, there should be, for example, a reward system, effective performance appraisal processes, employee satisfaction surveys, and development opportunities for them to recognize their talents and realize their potential.

Mission, vision, and appreciation

Where people work, there are expectations, challenges, and sometimes even irrational behavior and friction because at the end of the day, we are all driven by our emotions and the need to fulfill or maintain personal values. 

This can be security, sustainability, freedom, recognition, or harmony among many others. And these terms can also mean different things to different people.

The mission and vision of your company must be well communicated to your employees and lived at all levels. Only if company values are recognizable, can they be directly communicated to employees so that they make them their own. It is not enough to write this in a manual or to slap it on the website! 

Employees who take the company’s mission, vision, and values to heart are known to be more engaged in their work and more loyal to the company when their personal values align with the company’s values. 

One of the ways to make your employees feel valuable are actions like showing gratitude and responsibility along with trust, appreciation, smiling, giving them the opportunity to improve, being fair, standing by them on both difficult and happy days, respecting them, and giving importance to their opinions.

The value match between company and (potential) employees.

You can also create a slogan in the minds of all the mentioned target groups.

For example:

Employer Brand: Apple

                 Slogan: “Join Us. Be You.”

     Employer Brand: weBOUND marketing

                 Motto: “Our international team is not only our greatest asset, but also our family.”

Ultimately, effective employer branding requires innovative methods and clarity to explore your company’s values and desired employer appeal. 

It’s critical to know your company’s values because if you can’t clearly articulate and communicate your values, potential candidates won’t know why they should work for you. 

Identifying values and addressing blockages in the company, in the team, or as a leader with the St. Galler Coaching Model

Clearly formulated values make your employees feel connected to the company, which increases their motivation and loyalty. 

One way to shape the change and value creation process is the St. Galler Coaching-Modell (SCM). This model is a values-based model and offers the possibility to achieve real and sustainable change

Our founder Bettina, as a certified consultant of the St. Gallen Coaching Model, offers to help people and companies to identify and communicate their values and thus, on the one hand, to create clarity within their company, and on the other hand to attract more, better, and the right talents.

In this way, sustainable change can be facilitated, leading to more and better applications, as well as higher employee retention and satisfaction. Every employer branding campaign becomes even more successful as a result!

“The employer branding process should happen from the inside out.”

What does this mean? 

Quite simply, the most important components of the process are the managers and employees of your company. They will be your most important supporters in the branding process. 

You can do a great job of communicating your employer brand to the outside world, but if your employees are unhappy internally, the campaign won’t work and you’ll keep burning money. 

Besides, who likes to deal with unhappy employees or wants to keep hiring?

You can use these approaches as examples to make your brand an employer brand 

1- Make it clear on the career page of your website why you are the best employer*: candidates should immediately understand what your company stands for and what they can expect if they come to work for you. 

At this point, let yourself be inspired by the quote on weBOUND’s career page:

Become a weBOUNDer and help shape the digital world wherever you are!

At weBOUND marketing, we bring great talent together and offer a platform for you to grow with us. Because as the first international digital agency founded during a year-and-a-half trip around the world and still operating remotely to serve its clients globally, we believe that personal and corporate growth go hand in hand.”

2- Make sure you market your employer brand well on social media. 

You can use your company’s LinkedIn page or other channels to showcase fresh hires, employee stories and experiences, and posts about their hiring process. Because “storytelling is everything.”

weBOUND marketing LinkedIn Beitrag über 'International Student Day', mit dem 'Storytelling' über eine der Angestellten
weBOUND marketing LinkedIn post about ‘International Student Day’, featuring ‘storytelling’ about one of the employees
weBOUND marketing LinkedIn post about the team

You can also post examples of employees talking about their experience working at the company on the company’s Facebook or Instagram page. For example, introduce your newly hired employees to the public through your social media.

Introducing the new hire on weBOUND marketing’s Instagram page.

For example, you can use Reels on Instagram by creating a short video for each company value you’ve added. 

Further, a video could show how your employees work from anywhere, and the design and quality of the short video can show your professionalism. Your company’s value appreciation can be shown through team building events or a funny video about how the whole team is happy about a success. Be creative.

IGTV on Instagram or YouTube videos are also useful to post longer videos about employee stories, behind-the-scenes, or “About Us.” 

Anja’s Internship at weBOUND marketing

Each story can prove that your company is delivering on its core employee value proposition by focusing on employeebenefits, promotions, inclusion, or company lifestyle

Remember: it’s worth investing in your workforce! Promote your posts about your people and recruiting process and show the digital world that you’re the right place to work. 

Want to learn more about how to leverage social media for a successful employer brand? Then you should take a look at our blog post: Employer Branding – How to Use Social Media for Successful Employer Branding.

3- Don’t forget that qualified people can be found not only on social media, but also everywhere the internet reaches. 

Google now considers not only websites but also social networks in search results. Keep in mind how you can rank for the appropriate keywords through your own posts or, for example, interviews on other sites. 

By using the right keywords and SEO measures, you attract additional traffic to your site and create a positive feeling among people who see the content. If you see other people want to work with a brand, then you will want to work with them too?

For example, a person who sees your company’s inspiring recruitment ad while watching a marketing-related training video on YouTube might get excited about working with you. 

If you’re looking to step up your own employer branding efforts this year, we hope you’ll be inspired by the information and examples provided in this article. If you think we missed something, feel free to leave us a comment!

Subscribe to our monthly blog posts to stay up to date on the latest marketing news, trends, and resources.

If you have already dealt with copywriting a little, you will probably have stumbled upon some articles with headlines like “Get your audience to buy with just 3 words”. And although we wish that it would be so easy to lead users to conversion, it is almost never done with a mere 3 words.

Because behind a conversion there is so much more than just a so-called “power word” that directly pushes readers to a sale. The communication medium has to be right, as well as the targeting and layout of a landing page. But the most important thing is and remains the way in which you package your message and convey it to your target group: The copywriting!

Copywriting – What is that? 

Before we get into the matter, it is helpful to have a common definition of copywriting in which we clarify the meaning of copywriting in order to avoid misunderstandings. Because of the way it is written, copywriting is often confused with copyright, but has relatively little to do with intellectual property rights.

At the same time, there is often confusion when it comes to differentiating copywriting from content writing. You can think of it something like this: Copywriting and content writing may move in the same universe – and may even pay towards a common goal – but they circle on different orbits that can intersect here and there.

The crucial point that separates copywriting and content writing from each other is their purpose: content writing is the art of creating content that is intended to excite, inform, entertain and build relationships with your audience over a longer period of time. In the long term, of course, this should lead to a positive purchase decision. 

Content writing also helps you drive more traffic to your website. You can control this through the optimal use of so-called keywords. Ideally, the content – for example, a blog post – is also well written, but it does not necessarily have a use that is intended to seduce.

In contrast, copywriting is all about convincing readers of a specific idea, a specific product, a brand. The focus here is much more on the object itself, whose features and advantages are emphasized. The goal here is not only to convince but above all to move the audience to conversion, the purchase. 

And that’s exactly what we’re going to cover in today’s article: How You Can Use Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Persuasion to create influential copy and increase your conversion rate!

The Principles of Persuasion by Cialdini

In 1984 Cialdini published his book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”, still world-famous today, in which he introduces his 6 principles of persuasion. So if you paid attention in psychology class, the following 6 terms may sound familiar:

  • Reciprocity
  • Commitment and consistency
  • Authority
  • Scarcity
  • Sympathy and liking
  • Social proof

These are precisely the 6 principles of persuasion according to Robert Cialdini. Nowadays, in times of certain “information overload”, these are of particular importance as they help you to stand out in a world full of information and teach you how to convince people of your product or your brand using the right knacks. And that is exactly why the 6 principles of persuasion are highly relevant for copywriters.

Are you ready? Then we’ll go through each principle individually and explore how you can use it to write effective copy and cast a spell over your audience!

Reciprocity

If friends invite you to dinner or a party, there is a high probability that you will not appear empty-handed, but bring a small gift with you. And that is exactly what is behind the principle of reciprocity! 

Humans are naturally inclined to want to reciprocate to people that have helped us out or done something good for us. You can easily recognize this in a wide variety of cultural customs: Weddings, friendships in the neighborhood or in business relationships are often based on the desire to repay even small goodwill to the other person.

And you can take advantage of this tendency towards reciprocity in your copywriting.

In other words, you can use the principle of reciprocity to incentivize your potential customers to take a desired action by first offering them something that has some value to them.

You probably already know this from various login pages on landing pages. The main purpose of these is to obtain a person’s contact details in order to later win this person as a customer for the company.

In this case, the principle of reciprocity works like this: You are offered a certain piece of content on the landing page, be it a guide, a checklist or free consultation. That is the value that you gain. And the greater the value that you get from this content, the more likely you will feel the need to offer something in return.

But now back to your copywriting: Think about how you can pack so much added value into your texts that readers cannot help but want to thank you in some way.

Commitment and Consistency

Another desire that many people feel is the need for consistency in one’s actions. If we have already told all our friends that we will definitely take part in a half marathon next year, statistically the probability that we will train weekly and end up doing it is many times higher. After all, it would be embarrassing to give up after you have already informed everybody, would it not?

The principle of consistency is based on the fact that it is often helpful to enter into a certain type of commitment in order to ultimately stick to your promises.

And although it makes little sense in copywriting to force your readers to make the promise to buy your product – who even does that? – with a little skill you can still apply this principle to encourage a sense of responsibility in your readers.

 The right tactic here is to encourage your readers to initially make small “commitments” that gradually grow in their dimensions. You can achieve this with the help of questions, for example: They get your readers to formulate a clear “yes” and thus to make an initial small commitment that they would like to consistently fulfill. This little “yes” is the starting point of a journey of further approvals. Because after your reader has made a small commitment, the ease of convincing increases step by step.

 Incidentally, the subliminal demand for a multiple “yes” is also a tried and tested tactic from sales and telephone calls.

Social Proof

social proof reviews bewertungen

If you know one of the 6 principles of persuasion according to Cialdini, it is probably that of social proof. Because you certainly come into contact with it almost every day. Before you go out, do you check what people are wearing on the street to decide if a scarf is necessary? Social proof! Looking to buy a new phone, but read some reviews first? Social proof!

So the principle of social proof is all about relying on the opinions and experiences of others to make decisions. Our fellow human beings are a valuable source of information for us and the more we trust them, the more we value their opinions.

And this effect can also be clearly seen in statistics:

97% of all customers claim that customer ratings influence their purchase decision! (Source: Right Time Marketer) 

The main forms of social proof are as follows:

(Quelle: ReviewMonitoring)

And this is exactly why you should fill text on sales pages, landing pages or even in advertisements with real customer ratings, testimonials or any other form of user-generated content! Because this is how you show the interest and opinions of real people about your product, your service or your brand. And there is nothing and nobody that customers trust more than their own kind!

A little tip on the side: Statistically speaking, real or odd numbers seem more credible and increase conversion. For example, 287 customer reviews seem more credible and therefore have a stronger influence than 200 customer reviews, right?

Authority

The principle of authority describes the tendency of people to classify an opinion as credible and valid if it comes from a perceived credible expert or an authority figure, in short, from any recognized source.

You can also easily test this on yourself: Who would you trust to diagnose your engine failure? An engineering student who works in a workshop or a librarian?

Back to your copywriting! In order to convince your readers of the credibility of your content and thus also of the product or service you offer, it is essential to offer reliable information and sources.

You can do this by making use of trustworthy statistics from recognized sources or even by offering scientific evidence.

Of course, this is not possible for every industry and for every product. In many cases it is enough to rely on the authority of someone who is perceived to be competent and to insist on his or her personal opinion.

You can even find another example of social reliability on your mobile phone, on Instagram: If an account has a lot of followers and maybe even the blue tick, it immediately appears more trustworthy and this also affects the evaluation of its performance and any purchase decisions.

Scarcity 

Fear of Missing Out - Fomo

You probably know the good old saying “You always want what you cannot have”. Or simply the need to buy a T-shirt that you do not really need. But it is the last of its kind after all, so you absolutely have to have it!

The principle of scarcity is not about anything else: the more limited and exclusive an offer appears, the more we strive to be able to call it our own. In other words, it means that we suffer from a certain “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO) and consider scarce goods to be desirable. This effect is particularly strong when we are not the only ones who covet this offer, but are in competition with other interested parties.

There are many options open to you to induce a feeling of scarcity and thereby encourage your readers to want a product all the more. Whether you incorporate the information about the limitation into your copywriting, or whether you base entire offers on it, is ultimately up to you.

However, it should be after a real shortage and not an artificially induced one, otherwise the shot can backfire very quickly! Many consultants and online course providers on the Internet have already received criticism in recent years and partly ruined their good reputation in addition to the conversion rate. And that is far more difficult to get back.

Here are a few ways you can incorporate the principle of scarcity into your copywriting:

  • Quantitative limitation of your offer
  • Time limit for your offer
  • Phrases like “X people are currently viewing the same offer” or “Only X spots available”
  • Realistic information on the stock or the number of items
  • Time-limited special offers
  • Special offers for the first X customers
  • Etc.

Sympathy and liking

Last but not least, one thing above all must not be missing from the principles of persuasion according to Cialdini: sympathy! Because no matter how good your offer is, without sympathy it does not matter for many customers. In short, the likelihood that we will be convinced by someone depends on that person’s sympathy.

Dies kannst Du in Deinem Copywriting nutzen, indem Du die Punkte hervorhebst, die Dich und Deine Zielgruppe verbinden. Das kann beispielsweise ein Problem sein, das Du überwunden hast, mit dem sich Deine Zielgruppe identifizieren kann.

The most effective way to build sympathy quickly, however, is based on (interpersonal) similarity: People with whom we have a lot in common or at least appear to us that way appear closer to us in a certain way and we quickly build sympathy or even a close relationship with them. That is why the trend towards personal brands and also towards company brand messages is increasing. For example, the CEO’s Twitter account, which promotes the reach of the company account, or the YouTube marketer as the company’s personal brand.

You can use this in your copywriting by highlighting the points that connect you and your target group. For example, this can be a problem that you have overcome that your target audience can identify with.

Another way to arouse sympathy can also be created by the so-called halo effect. This states that conclusions are drawn from attractive external properties to positive values and internal properties. A chocolate bar with an exciting, pretty packaging is often described as tastier than a boringly packaged one.

And while we’re on the subject: A target group is also changing and growing. New trends emerge or the language changes: This is why designs such as logos or packaging (often) change slowly. In retrospect, however, they reflect our time.

For your copywriting this means: Use every way that you can arouse sympathy in your target group!

The Takeaway

If you take these things into account, your texts will definitely appeal to your target audience a lot more. But that is far from all. Copywriting could almost be described as an art that involves a deep understanding of the human psyche as well as fluent writing that encourages the reader to “learn more”. And last but not least, it is incredibly important that you know and understand your target group – in every section of the customer journey.

In other words: you have to know when your target group would like to hear or read which content in which form in order to carry out the action that you have defined in advance.

We help you to define and optimize these texts for your website or campaigns. Book a non-binding initial meeting or a mini-workshop and improve your texts in little time.

A full 74% of all employees feel that they cannot develop their full potential in their current position, a long-term study by the Middlesex University’s Institute for Work Based Learning discovered. But why? They lack further education, training or training that opens the door to their unperceived potential. (Source: The Learning Wave)

Do you also feel that, with the help of a little external knowledge or guidance, you could do a lot more for the company you currently work for? Or have you even found a training programme that is ideally tailored to you, your position and your goals?

Strengthening your own abilities and being able to use your potential even more is without a doubt a big step. But that is not all. Because the more knowledge and experience you gain in your area of ​​expertise, the more your employer will benefit from it as well. So if a company wants to be at the forefront, there is only one way: to strengthen, train and promote its own workforce!

Why further training on the job?

Why further training? More efficient handling of tasks, Faster handling of tasks, Building new competence, Increasing existing competence, Increase qualification, Increase employee-to-company bond, Generate a head start, Support special talents, Increase know-how in the company

Looking at the advantages of further training, two different viewpoints quickly emerge: On the one hand, there is the employee who of course gains the greatest effect from taking part in further training, an online course or more eduction. Because this person receives a direct learning effect that nobody can take away from them – they have internalized the knowledge.

Subsequently, however, the learning of new skills in the context of further training is of course also essential for professional life. Ideally, this increase in qualifications for you as an employee goes hand in hand with better opportunities for promotions, as well as a potentially better salary situation.

In addition to the numerous advantages that employees naturally derive for themselves from certain advanced training, the effect on the company in which they work should not be underestimated. After all, the content learned is aimed at supporting a specific corporate area and making certain tasks easier or even enabling them in the first place.

If an employer has its own employees trained or further educated in an area, the plan is usually to develop a competence that can be used in the company. The company’s own employees are a company’s most valuable asset – especially if investments have been made in their qualifications.

Further Training offline

It is hard to believe, but just a few years ago it was the general rule that training courses did not take place on the laptop, but with all participants in one room. And although the Covid-19 pandemic is currently making it difficult to hold training courses in physical environments, they have some unique advantages to them.

In terms of efficiency and flexibility, online training courses are clearly ahead, but there is one thing that hardly an online course can do better than offline training: The connection to other participants!

Because job training is not only a measure to bring new knowledge into a company, but also enables a fruitful exchange between the individual participants. Many future business partners have been met at courses and, after all, one always learns best from one another!

Further Training Online

Online studying setup with laptop, coffee and notepad

At the latest with the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic, further training on the Internet and online courses have gained a new type of importance. In times of a crisis, when events are postponed time and again, further education courses on the Internet offer the ideal opportunity to use this time productively and acquire new skills.

However, there is a lot more behind these rather obvious advantages: Online training courses can often not only be used by one person, but can also be completed by several employees and departments – this enables an extremely high cost efficiency. In addition, many online courses are available for a long period of time and can therefore also be used in the future.

But one of the greatest advantages is of course the flexibility of the World Wide Web: In contrast to offline training that takes place at a specific time, online courses can be completed flexibly and depending on personal circumstances. On the one hand, this also creates immense efficiency, while, on the other hand, it also has the benefit of individual employees being able to learn at their own pace and, thus, derive the greatest effect from the training!

5 Tips to convince your boss to pay for your further training
1 As for a personal meeting

In the first moment after you have come across a further training course that you would like to complete, you may feel the impulse to let your direct supervisor know about your plans. Perhaps you will even want to write an email in which you will inform your boss about all the details of the further training.

But in the stressful everyday working life, such letters quickly get the stamp “I can read that later” and disappear into the depths of the e-mail inbox. In addition, face-to-face conversations offer a much better basis for persuasion and negotiation: for most people it is much easier to answer “no” to a written request than to a real conversation.

In this case, writing is silver and talking is golden! Instead of writing a long e-mail to your supervisor with all the reasons and advantages related to the further training programme – or even just inserting a link – it is better to discuss this topic in a unhasty one-to-one conversation. This way, you can ensure that you present your arguments appropriately, enable direct queries and can also assess the emotional reactions of your counterpart.

Two colleagues sharing a high-five after a personal meeting

The situation of the conversation can be a decisive factor. Depending on the work environment, corporate hierarchy and philosophy, the impulse for such a dialogue can take place anywhere: besides the coffee maker, as part of an individual meeting, etc. However, if you want to be on the safe side, it is advisable to send an e-mail or message to ask for a personal interview.

For this purpose, you can use this blueprint:

Dear [insert name of your supervisor],

Since our last conversation about the reinforcement of my [insert skill] and professional growth, I have researched some suitable further trainings. In the course of my research I have come across an interesting programme, which presents an ideal coverage of my goals and interests: [insert name of the programme],

In particular, I have been convinced by [insert reason], and I am sure that this programme will help us to [insert specific benefit].

Does [insert company name] offer resources for professional development opportunities?

If possible, I would ask you for a brief personal meeting to discuss detailed characteristics of the training programme and a possible coverage with you.

[insert appointment proposal]

Please let me know if this is a possibility for you. Thank you in advance!

Yours sincerely,
[insert your name],

2 Be well prepared

Before you go into the personal interview and try to convince your supervisor to pay the costs for your further education, job training or an online course, you should prepare yourself well. Because, especially when it comes to monetary resources, detailed, precise data and hard facts are necessary in order to enable your counterpart to form a holistic opinion on your training plans.

So do your research in detail and collect as much information about the training as possible. Of course, keep potential queries from your supervisor in the back of your head so that you can answer them appropriately.

Online further training setup in bed with books and a laptop

The following topics give you reference points for your research about the training program:

  • Duration of the program: once, weekly, monthly?
  • Timing of the teaching units: Do they take place during working hours or in your free time? It is important for your supervisor to know whether the teaching units are compatible with your day-to-day work or whether absences are to be expected.
  • Costs of further training: Provide a cost estimate here that includes all costs associated with the further training, e.g. travel, course materials, in order to avoid unpleasant surprises later.
  • Content of the program: You should be able to give your supervisor a good overview of the content that the training includes, as well as be able to name some specific topics that are important.
  • Skills learned / qualifications obtained: What verifiable results will you achieve by participating in the training program? Do these fill existing knowledge gaps in the company?

However, the preparation does not end with the key points of the further training. In any case, you should also be prepared for unexpected questions and equipped with a few further arguments.

  • Your supervisor could ask you the following questions:Are there any financial subsidies, tax reductions or discounts for this training?
  • Why did you choose this course and not another option? If documents or training within the company exist, the question of why you chose an external training as opposed to the internal one could arise. Is it better than the one from your company? Above all, bear in mind that the superiors can be very proud of the internal documents, even if they may be out of date or inadequately prepared for you.
  • Will you be able to complete your day-to-day work to the usual extent despite the training? This is particularly relevant for training courses or advanced training over a long period of time.
  • How can the return on investment of this training for our company be measured?
  • How can you apply the content you have learned in your everyday work?
  • Is the learned content also helpful for other areas of the company? If so, how can you make them available to them or pass them on to them? Here, for example, there is the option of an internal knowledge database.

For the last 3 questions, it might pay off to keep a list of potential advantages or benefits of the training. Depending on the further training program, this could be, for example, completing certain activities faster, learning skills required in the company or keeping up-to-date with industry topics. As you can imagine, however, the individual advantages depend on the topic, subject area and the design of the training, as well as on the company you are employed in.

3 Grands and subsidies

Euro bills signalizing the cost of further training

Actually, this point goes hand in hand with tip number 2. But because the topic of funding is so important, we would like to highlight it here individually.

If you are in the process of gathering all the information about your desired training, invest a minute or two in researching funding opportunities or grants. Because if there are actually grants that the company you work for can claim, this means considerable savings for your manager. At the same time, however, the benefits that are drawn from your further training remain at the same level, which results in a better cost-benefit calculation.

In this way you create a win-win situation and get yourself a little closer to your goal – namely your further training cost being covered by your supervisor.

You can find all information on the subject of funding for training and further education in the education funding database of the Austrian Economic Chambers!

A lot is changing, especially in the digital sector. In order to support this, Austria also offers a range of different subsidies, some of which are also specialized in further education related to digitization. We have summarized these for you on our funding page: The right funding for your company!

4 Training in context

When it comes to persuasion, information that is put in the right context outperforms all other arguments. Think about it for a moment: An earthquake somewhere in the world does not really matter to you. However, as soon as it has taken place in your direct proximity and you have a real connection to this earthquake, its relevance increases rapidly.

In a similar way, you can imagine the effects of your further training on the company you work fro or your supervisor: Further training in almost any area can be rated positively because it ultimately increases your skills and qualifications. But only when these new qualifications have a real impact on your work performance will they become really exciting for your employer.

So if you want to present the training program to your supervisor, make sure to put it in the context of the company or your specific position. Do not just talk about the general content of the training, but specifically address those topics that will be of the greatest benefit to you, your work and the company.

This works particularly well if you not only talk about the content of the training program, but rather communicate the results.

How do your new qualifications impact your daily work life? Which return on investment do you expect?

The specific effects and returns on investment are highly dependent on the training and the company in which you work, and even more dependent on your own position. They could range from achieving your tasks faster to taking on more responsibility.

5 Your value to the company

Ultimately, however, further training is not only about the company you work for, but primarily about you. As a loyal employee, you are one of the most important factors in the success of the company and therefore the highest priority for your supervisor – and you should be aware of that too!

So before you do everything you can to convince your employer that this training is important for you and the company, be conscious of how great your value is for the company.

Especially if you have been working for a company for a while and no longer really question this, it can happen that you quickly lose sight of your own worth a little. Therefore, we list some questions below that can help you to objectively define your value for the company:

  • How long have you been working in this company? The longer you are a permanent part of a team, the better you know the tasks, cooperate with team members and the more important you are for the company.
  • How long will you continue to work for this company? If you are planning on getting a new job soon, do not get your manager to invest in your skills.
  • What would happen if you left the company? Would your department be able to continue working as usual? The more irreplaceable you are, the more important it is to invest in increasing your qualifications!
  • Is your position unique? Or are there still a lot of people in the company who do similar or even the same tasks?
  • Which functions of your job do you do particularly well? Are these in line with your planned further training?

How high your value for the company actually is ultimately depends not only on you, but also on the company itself. Also take economic factors and the current situation of the company into account when thinking about your value.

Convinced your boss – now what?

Wonderful, you have managed to convince your boss of your further training and are already looking forward to all the new content and skills that you will learn. But especially when the company in which you work pays for your training, it wants the greatest value to be drawn from it.

Therefore, your job is not done after the further training. Of course, it is now up to you to use the qualifications you have learned and thus to go about your day-to-day work even more professionally. But what if not only you benefit from the training – but your whole team?

When it comes to disseminating knowledge within the company and making it accessible in other departments, it is a good idea to create an internal knowledge database. Not only instructions or standard processes can be saved here, but also detailed information, such as from your training. But that is a topic for a separate article!

Do you also have the feeling that your company could benefit from an internal knowledge database? Let us know in the comments so that we can also create a resource on this topic for you!

A sales funnel is your best friend when it comes to saving time and effort: With the help of a sales funnel, you can guide your potential customers almost automatically from the first contact to the purchase without even lifting a finger.

 

But how exactly does that work? First and foremost, a sales funnel visualizes the customer journey of a potential customer before they finally decide to buy. This encompasses the phases from the very first point of contact with your potential customer, through building their interest, to conversion.

 

The classic structure looks like this:

Visualization of the phases of a Sales Funnel: Awareness, Engagement, Consideration, Purchase, Retention

Source: weBOUND marketing

You are new to the topic of sales funnels? In this article, we tell you all about the concept behind it: How To Triple Your Conversion With A Sales Funnel 

In each of these individual phases, a potential customer has different needs and intentions. A person who has just learned about your product or service needs a lot of knowledge to build a certain degree of trust. Further, this trust has to be nurtured step by step before your customer is ready to enter into a transaction. After all, you would not marry someone right on the spot after meeting them for the first time, either, would you?

 

Conversely, this means that you have to provide your potential customer with different content, information and media depending on the phase he is currently sitting in. This way you can successfully meet the customers expectations and build a successful sales funnel! 

The right type of Content for your Sales Funnel

Awareness

The first stage of your sales funnel is all about attracting attention and awareness among your target group. This is where potential customers discover your site for the very first time and become aware of your existence.

 

In this phase you have to intercept your potential customers and make sure that they go deeper into the sales funnel. This is almost the most important phase, because if no traffic is generated in the first line, you have no people to guide you through your sales funnel. Therefore, in the awareness-stage everything revolves around the perfect first impression that your visitors will not get out of their heads all that quickly.

 

There are endless possibilities for attracting attention and visibility. However, in this article we will only present a few, highly effective variants in more detail that allow you to reach many people at once.

YouTube-Videos

Make friends with the YouTube algorithm! Because the YouTube algorithm is a professional at suggesting users exactly those videos that they are most likely to love. Consequently, you will not even have to worry about how to get your video on the screen of interested people – YouTube does all that for you! 

 

The tactic is therefore seemingly simple: Create videos about the topics that are important to your target group and are in line with your product and upload it. In the best case scenario, you will do a little research about YouTube SEO in advance in order to optimize your upload for the search engine. From then on YouTube will take care of your video and that it will be seen by your target audience!

 

And the best is yet to come: Once uploaded, a YouTube video on a specific topic can quickly become a long-runner. This saves you time and effort!

Tracking - Why your business won't work without it

Guest posts

What is especially great about guest posting is that you and your business quickly come into view of many people in your niche who probably do not know you yet – and all of this without having to build this reach yourself. Because this has already been done by the host!

 

When creating your guest post, the aim is to present your expertise in the best possible way and to provide added value for your target group so that they have a reason to remember you.

Here, you have loads of options: Write a guest article within your niche, be a guest on a podcast, the list is virtually endless. 

Further possibilities to generate awareness could be: 

  • Build a Social Media presence
  • Use performance marketing
  • Engage in groups of forums
  • Optimize your website for search engine
  • Etc.

In this article, you can find 19 Ways To Generate Traffic and Brand Awareness For Businesses And Personal Brands 

Engagement

This is all about convincing your audience in some way and getting their email address or other kind of contact information from them. You need this in order to stay in conversation with your potential customers, to build a relationship with them and to lead them further in the direction of conversion. In order to convince your audience of your product, performance or your expertise, it will therefore be necessary to provide them with a certain amount of information about it or even a “taste” of your product or service.

A popular strategy at this point is to offer a free eBook or guide, which can be easily downloaded after submitting an email address. In itself, this is a good approach because you share your knowledge with potential customers. But nowadays, there is a huge amount of knowledge and information on the Internet that this is often no longer sufficient. If your potential customers want to find out something, they can usually do it with a short Google search. Instead, you should share something that has a higher value and will give your audience a structured result – no matter how small it may be.

 

Our favorite ways to do that are through the following options:

Checklists

So simple, yet so effective. Your checklist does not even have to be long: a simple A4 page is often enough. However, make sure to be really precise in the individual points. This is the only way your audience can really benefit from the checklist and will continue in the sales funnel.

Von PLANlos zu PLANbar: Deine Erfolgs-Checkliste für eine nutzerorientierte Online Kurs Planung

Are you interested in creating your own Online Course? Here you can find a Checklist for user-oriented Online Course Creation

Workshop

Whether as a webinar, in written form or as a mini online course: With the help of a workshop, you teach your audience valuable skills, which they can then apply and get a real result from. Once your audience has achieved their desired result through you, they will quickly build an immense trust in you and will move on just as quickly in the sales funnel.

Challenge 

Typically, a challenge lasts a few days, often a whole week. During the challenge period, you send your audience daily instructions on a new step they need to take in order to reach their ultimate goal. With the choice of platform, you are relatively free here: social media, email or even packaged as a workshop. In general, however, we recommend using an email sequence for your challenge for the following reasons:

 

  1. An email sequence can be automated so that it is sent out as soon as a person takes a certain action, e.g. fills out the registration window for your challenge. This saves you time and you will not have to worry about sending the right messages to the right challenge participants every day.
  2. If your audience knows that they will be receiving emails from you in the near future (because they signed up for the challenge, after all), they will open them with great curiosity. You can continue this curiosity after the challenge in order to guide your potential customers more easily to conversion in a later stage of the sales funnel.

 

The best thing about these 3 options is that they do not require constant maintenance and can run automatically: You create the landing page once with the download of the checklist, take care of setting up the email sequence for a day and after everything is set up, the process works by itself

Interest

In this often critical phase of your sales funnel, you not only want to arouse real interest in your potential customers, but also nourish or “warm up” them in such a way that they are ready to convert and buy your product or service.

 

So it is all about precisely identifying the problem or the desired state of your target group and presenting your offer as the ideal solution or way to get there. In this phase, you primarily present your offer and all the advantages that it brings with it. Attention! Always proceed in a solution-oriented manner: Because for your potential customer, it is primarily about the solution, not the product.

Email sequence

You've got mail

The classic way to warm up potential customers for the converison is of course with the help of an email sequence. And not without reason: Once you have the email address of a potential customer, you can send personalized messages and build a relationship.

 

Lead nurturing via email works particularly well if you combine it with a challenge sent by email. In this case, your potential customer is already used to receiving e-mails from you, so that they open them instead of pushing them into the spam folder regardless. Then it is up to you and how well you can advertise your offer in your email sequence.

Performance marketing

Ads? Really? Is that not more of a traffic source than a way to warm up potential customers? Generally speaking, we actually know online advertisements as a medium to attract attention in a target group for the first time. However, the retargeting options of today allow us much more: If a person follows you or your company on Facebook, Instagram and Co., you can present this person with a series of advertisements.

 

Similar to an email sequence, with a systematic stringing together of information in the form of individual advertisements, you can generate interest step by step and guide your potential customers towards the lower end, the conversion part, of the sales funnel. The best part about this is that you can customize the ads based on when and why someone interacted with your company.

 

Attention! A series of advertisements only works well if the person has already gone through the preceding steps of your sales funnel and has established a certain relationship with you: This person discovered you, for example through your guest post, and decided to follow you. In the consideration phase you have already helped them to achieve a small result using a workshop or checklist and with a retargeting ad you bring them back to your products and induce them to buy or any other desired action.

Conversion

Immediately before your potential customer can be convinced to buy, the point here is once again to convey a lot of trustworthiness. You want your customer to feel comfortable with the transaction and to stand behind their decision.

Testimonials

One of the best ways to build trust and positively highlight your or your service is to appeal to the voices of those who know best: Satisfied customers!

 

You are free to choose the format here: Written testimonials are commonplace and are therefore well received.

I have been working with Bettina for a while now. I was looking for someone to finish my website, Theatoo, and help me strategize a way to sell products on my eCommerce store. I have 20 years of experience in traditional marketing & sales, but I never really got into the world of online marketing. I needed to get some guidance from a pro. The decision was monumental. Bettina has been an outstanding consultant, very competent and confident in what she was doing. We decided together what steps to take and she implemented everything and went the extra mile. She put her charming touch on my many inputs and I must admit—she simply made them better. She definitely deserves a 5-star review.

By using videos of testimonials speaking you can breathe some fresh are into your marketing! 

When designing your sales page, be sure to include positive reviews, testimonials or happy messages that your customers have sent you about their results. It is even better to use a video instead of a written testimonials, because these appear more authentic and real than written testimonials, which can be forged more easily. This encourages potential customers who are currently sitting in the lowest part of your sales funnel and evaluating their purchase decision that your offer is valuable and meaningful for them.

Consulting

This is one of the few pieces of content in your sales funnel that is difficult or impossible to automate. Because for some products or services, holistic descriptions, product photos and instructions simply are not enough. This is where you should offer individual advice to answer all of your potential customers’ questions and ensure that they make the right decision.

 

Another positive aspect is that you can collect even more information about your customers here, which will subsequently help you to build a close relationship with them and make them a loyal regular customer.

Retention

After you have won a new customer, you should definitely not just let him go back into the big wide world. Because you have already invested resources in building a close relationship with this person. You can continue this relationship to get a loyal customer!

 

Why is that so important? The probability that an existing customer will buy from you again is 60-70%. In contrast to 5-20% for new customers. (Source: Altfeld)

 

In the end, it is mainly about staying in touch with your customers, not only to make them a regular customer, but also to ensure that they act as an advocate for your company by recommending you to others. Because Word of Mouth leads to 20-50% of all purchase decisions! (Source: McKinsey)

Surveys

Surveys are a great way to get customers to review the performance of your product or service. Positive experiences become even more solid in this person’s memory and you will be remembered by them.

 

Another side effect is that you can keep an eye on customer satisfaction and receive first-hand suggestions for improvement or positive customer voices for the upper phases of your sales funnel.

Social Media

Once a customer follows you on your social media channels, you can start a conversation with this person over and over again. Be it on Instagram or Facebook, use every opportunity to establish direct contact here and there: Instagram Direct Message, Facebook groups, etc.

Newsletter

A well thought out newsletter should not be underestimated. It is suitable for product launches as well as for building a customer relationship.

 

Of course, there is no end to the options here. All options are open to you to turn your customers into repeat buyers. For example, try special offers, additional email sequences or even customer events!

The Takeaway

Sales funnels are a great way to automate the buying process of individual customers so you can save time, money and effort. Nevertheless, sales funnels hold a multitude of stumbling blocks, especially if you are only just daring to approach your first sales funnel.

 

Therefore, in this article we have summarized 7 common misunderstandings about sales funnels so that you don’t have to experience these mistakes firsthand: 7 Myths And Truths About Sales Funnels – And How To Get Them Right!

One thing is certain: Hardly anything is more beautiful than the feeling of being valued by your customers and being able to experience their joy in your achievements. But what if this joy spreads too quickly and your appointment calendar is bursting with inquiries for discovery calls? Or the other way around: You want to create another source of income or new customer acquisition?

 

As an agency for online marketing in times of a global pandemic, which brought about a strong boom in the online area, we know this feeling. Due to a massive amount of calls scheduled with customers, you hardly have any time to actually get started on implementing their projects. And even if you wish to be able to accept and support every customer, your resources and capacities simply do not go that far. 

 

For this often painful problem, however, there is a very simple solution that represents the ideal compromise for you and your current or potential customers: An online product or online course! With the help of your own online course, you can not only open up a new range of customers but also give current customers all the tools to carry out simple services from your catalog independently. This way, you not only save time, but also automate your sales process for higher-priced services. And the best of all: You can help your customers to have a sustainable learning process and a better understanding of your subject matter!

 

As Confucius already knew, “Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will feed him for life. “

 

What is an Online Course

Knowledge database, online course, standard operating procedure, webinar, online workshop, and so on. But what exactly is what?

Legitimate question! Because what can sound very similar at a glance has different facets. In the following paragraphs we define relevant options for themselves:

 

Online Course

In essence, an online course is nothing more than an ordinary course – except that it takes place on the Internet!

 

A course leader – this can be you, another employee, a cooperation partner or an external, professional speaker – makes his knowledge, expertise and experience available to those who are curious about it. But instead of doing this in the context of an ordinary, physical classroom, the information is packaged in the form of written text, videos or graphics in such a way that it takes the user (sustainably) from situation A to B. In a nutshell, it is a modern and practical form of the curriculum as you know it from school or university.

These files are hosted on an online platform and can usually be accessed and edited by the learners at any time.

 

It can look something like this:

Possible Interface of an Online Course

(Source: Digital Distillery)

 

The following points are the deciding factors: 

  • An Online Course is decentralized. Instead of speaking in front of course participants every week, an Online Course is recorded or built once and can be made available for as long as you would like.
  • An Online Course is accessible 24/7. Course participants can work through it up to 100% flexibly.
  • An Online Course can be completed more than one time. That way, course participants have the opportunity to go through important concepts more than once to guarantee their maximum results.
  • An Online Course is usually intended to be sold as a product and used externally. Because of this, it is an interesting reach and lead source für businesses. The only exception are internal knowledge databases that are built like a course but are only meant to be used internally, e.g. for quality assurance during any process.

 

In the last point we have just mentioned that online courses are primarily intended for sales, i.e. not just used within a company. In the vast majority of cases this is the case, because online courses are often created to generate “passive” income.

 

However, it is of course also possible to create and use online courses for internal purposes. This can be useful, for example, to aggregate all the information and skills required for a vacant position and to pass it on to new people in the company.

 

Knowledge Database

Library Shelves full of books

In an online course, knowledge is collected and passed on. Sounds a lot like a knowledge database, does it not?

 

Well not quite. In contrast to an online course, which is primarily intended for sales and is therefore used externally, knowledge databases are intended for internal use.

 

In short, a knowledge database is nothing more than a way of inventory management for knowledge. It serves to document the knowledge of employees within a company and to make it available within the company. In its simplest form, this can simply be a folder with documents that is accessible to all authorized persons in the company. The information here can range from standard operating procedures to workshop files.

 

For us, the knowledge database is the basis of any successful and sustainable cooperation at a distance without (further) wasting company resources and nerves. So if you work from home or remotely, we recommend creating and using a knowledge database.

 

Working from the home office really is no easy task. In this blogpost, we have compiled several tips and tricks to help you out with decentralized working: Collaborating in Distance – How to Master the Home Office

 

Often, the internal knowledge database can also be developed into an online course.

 

 

Why you should launch an Online Course now

Online Courses have never been more popular

What used to be the absolute standard 100 years ago, has seen another strong upswing since 2014: Today the do-it-yourself movement is more booming than ever before. It does not matter whether it is about the perfect haircut, cooking wholesome pet food or setting up an eCommerce store – the desire and motivation to do things yourself is trendy!

 

Fortunately, there is the Internet, because the popularity of Online Courses is growing steadily as the answer to the tendency to do-it-yourself. More and more people are searching for in-depth information on topics of their interest and extensive guides on skills they want to learn.

 

According to Global Market Insights, the market value of eLearning in 2019 was already around $ 200 billion – a sum that will probably double by 2026, i.e. around $ 375! Developments such as advancing digitization and the COVID-19 pandemic are giving additional wind to the sails. (Source: Global Market Insights)

 

So this is your opportunity to share your expertise, your experience and your knowledge in a certain field with inquisitive people – and to make a profit from it! By creating your own online course, you not only help people, but also show what you can do and thus generate customers for your more comprehensive services.

 

Online learning vs. lockdown-boredom

Lockdown

For a year now, we have been confronted with lockdowns and consequently boredom. But what was initially considered to be an opportunity for a little relaxation has now changed to the desire of using one’s time sensitively, e.g. through further training and skills development. Instead of devouring one series after the other for days on end, many people have started to use their time efficiently and acquire new skills – through an Online Course!

 

Just a few years ago we might have attended a workshop for several days, a course at a local education center or even a university course. Due to the constantly changing lockdown regulations, this is currently only possible to a limited extent – much to the delight of the Online Course community!

 

Instead of attending a weekly course or even attending an 8-hour workshop for days, learning in 2021 is more flexible than ever before. Because Online Courses not only enable your learners to work through the course content at their own pace at any time of the day or night, but also to take any repetitions or breaks. And as we already know from school days, repetitions are crucial for learning success!

 

 

Online Course instead of learning-on-the-job

Most companies these days are mainly working from home. Instead of spending the lunch break with like-minded people and exchanging ideas, we now spend most of our working hours alone. Apprentices or interns often find themselves in the home office without direct inspiration or guidance from their superiors.

 

But not only interns learn new things every day in a normal work environment. Other employees and managers also benefit from communication with other employees or experts in their environment. Because offices or departments of any kind are often a stimulating breeding ground for new skills and comprehensive knowledge, which is often passed on “on the side” in everyday work. Days in the home office lose this opportunity to learn.

Two people in front of a laptop

All the better that Online Courses or your own knowledge databases in the company also provide a helping hand here: the potential to use Online Courses as a substitute for stimulated learning in everyday work is now widespread. So now not only Online Courses about yoga and mindfulness are in demand, but on all topics from financing options to online marketing strategy. So this is your opportunity to share your knowledge and also earn money with it!

 

But even in everyday working life, learning through Online Courses can be a real enrichment. The Fortune 500 companies prove this: More than 40% of the companies listed under Fortune 500 use eLearning regularly and extensively! (Source: Fortune)

 

 

Before launching your Online Course, think about these 3 things

Note: In the following section we assume that you already know who your target group is, how to build a curriculum that your students will love and want to finish. If this is not the case, then we would like to recommend you our checklist for free download, which ensures that you do not forget anything when planning and creating your course!

 

If you have read this far, we assume that you cannot wait to finally get your first or next online course off the ground. There are a few things to consider here. We have listed the most important ones here!

 

1 The right platform

As a company and responsible person, we have to ask ourselves the following question:

  • What influence does the platform have on the company and its future processes? Which structure fits this?
  • Which (existing) resources can or do we want to use?
  • Do I have time or do I have money to invest?
  • Where is the company and its customers located and what legal issues do I have to consider in this regard? (e.g. GDPR, payment & invoicing)
  • Am I tech savvy or already overwhelming myself to make simple changes to the website?
  • Do we prefer a higher setup investment or higher running costs?
  • Do I prefer several different software variants that I can combine or do I want an all-in-one solution?

 

Usually, we ask our clients all these and some more questions when they try to decide on a platform!

 

DIY hosting or hosting via eLearning platform?

Platforms like Udemy & Co are based on a membership: Users pay a certain monthly fee to get access to Online Courses of their choice. However, some Online Courses may require additional payments, depending on the provider. This is of course a great offer for users, because they have the opportunity to choose between an infinite number of courses and get their best value.

 

Because of these factors, Udemy is also enjoying great popularity among users: With more than 50 million students currently enrolled in courses, Udemy is the most user-intensive platform. (Source: Udemy)

 

For course providers, however, there is a certain disadvantage: Say goodbye to your rights! By offering your Online Course on a membership platform, the rights and responsibilities for this course are to a certain extent assigned to the platform. If the platform decides to grant its users a high discount on any Online Course, you will not receive your set price for your course.

Laptop with Skillshare Homepage

eLearning platforms can be a great option if you are not ready to create your own website for your course or if you just want to use them to generate leads for a larger course. You could do this, for example, by offering a small introductory course on an eLearning platform, but the premium course is only available on your own website.

 

But now let us tend to the most important question: Which of these options is right one for you? As a rule of thumb, we can stipulate that a course hosted privately by yourself is always recommended when your capacities allow it. Because here you have full control and rights over the structure and your content.

 

 

DIY course hosting using Wordpress:

It is clear to us: The first recommendation is always a DIY hosted platform: for example, based on Wordpress in combination with various plugins or, if necessary, themes. This means that you can implement your course on your own website or a subdomain using course plugins and thus have complete freedom with the design.

 

The following plugins can help you create your course

  1. LearnDash
  2. Memberbold
  3. Digimember

 

Course hosting with a membership platform

When it comes to Online Course platforms on a membership basis, you are spoiled for choice. Due to the increasing popularity of Online Courses and the often unsuitable or limited functionality of some platforms, a large number of new eLearning platforms have been developed in recent years.

 

Which of these platforms is the right one for you depends on various factors. One of the most important factors is your budget, because this is the first limitation of your choice. In addition to the price, factors such as the length of the course, the number of modules within a course or the ability to integrate other applications are also decisive.

 

A very decisive factor is also your home country or the country where your company is registered or where customers are located. Due to different data protection regulations, some tools are not compliant with the applicable data protection regulations in some countries, for example in Europe due to the GDPR. Others come from the USA and are therefore not invoicing under European law!

 

The following course platforms are not only popular with learners, but are also the top favorites of course instructors:

 

  • Elopage: Elopage is often our first choice for customer projects, especially in German-speaking countries. Online Courses can already be created with the free version, so that even small budgets are catered for. In addition to the usual course features, it is also possible to integrate e-mails or quizzes as the course progresses.
  • Clickfunnels: Although Clickfunnels is better known for funnel building, courses can also be built wonderfully via this platform. This also allows you to control all your systems for the online course, including the associated sales funnel, via one platform. This not only saves you money, but also a lot of time.
  • Skillshare: As a “learning platform for the masses”, Skillshare shows a slightly different approach. On a membership basis, as many courses as you want can be viewed per month, so you get a flat fee and no income per sale. Still, hosting a course on Skillshare is worth considering due to the extremely high number of users.
  • Teachable: As an all-rounder platform, Teachable is one of the most popular among course creators and course participants in the US. The interface is easy to use, the price-performance ratio is right, and best of all: Teachable supports all formats from audio, to photo, video, to PDFs to guarantee a comprehensive, successful learning experience. Danger! Teachable is not invoice-compliant and can therefore only be used outside of Europe.

 

2 The right format

A common argument against creating your own online course is camera shyness. Not everyone likes to stand in front of a video camera and talk to themselves all day long, and that is okay too. But that should not prevent you from creating your Online Course. Because contrary to expectations, an Online Course does not always have to include videos or even the spoken word.

 

Depending on the target group, topic and platform, your course can be structured using a wide variety of media or a combination of these. While it is of course a good idea for artistic subjects to teach in moving image format, this is not absolutely necessary for courses in business or programming. A presentation with audio, animations, screen recordings or even written text can also be offered here.

 

The most important thing is to always keep in mind what your course participants need in order to understand a topic in all its facets and then to be able to take it with them. You can find this out very easily by doing a little “qualitative market research”: Contact your future target group and find out firsthand how you can best bring a topic closer to them. After all, nobody knows their needs better than they do!

 

In the best case scenario, you will find a compromise between what your future target group would like and your personal preferences and skills.

 

 

3 The right additional services

An Online Course is rarely the end goal, but often functions as part of a sales funnel or helps you to acquire new customers almost automatically. Before you set up your Online Course, it is a good idea to consider what additional services your course participants might need in order to stay up to date or to take this step towards long-term cooperation with you.

Ideally, there is the possibility of additional one-on-one coaching or collected live sessions, which you can offer weekly or monthly. During these discussions, specific questions about the specific cases or even companies of your course participants can be answered. This way, they not only receive immense added value, but can also get a more detailed picture of your expertise. Through this trust, course participants will become your new customers in no time at all!

Every now and then it happens of course that course participants have bought a course because of a lack of budget instead of booking a service from your company. In these cases, a Facebook group, your own forum or any other community could be a great option: This way, contact with these people can be maintained and if the required budget is available, they will most likely come back to you! Regular, relevant newsletters can also support this.

 

Here you will find further advantages of a Facebook group: Why your business needs a Facebook group

 

The Takeaway

Few things are more valuable than knowledge these days. Therefore, Online Courses are in greater demand now than ever before. So if you have a certain competence, a strand of knowledge that can not only help others, but is also desired, now is your chance to create your own Online Course. It could be seen as your duty to share your knowledge so that others can learn from it – especially if there are hardly any relevant and well-prepared resources in your industry!

 

The previous paragraphs should already have given you a rough idea of ​​which factors are really crucial here. But such a far-reaching topic can hardly be packed into 10 minutes of reading time.

 

That is why we have packed all of our knowledge and experience from around 5 years of creating courses for customers and partners into a detailed Online Course: Here you will learn everything from the perfect pricing model to the right formats for your course!

Have you ever typed in “Get more clients online” in the Google Search Bar? Well, chances are high that you have been advised to build a so-called “Sales Funnel” or “Marketing Funnel” in order to have heaps of traffic piling into your website and ultimately transforming into clients on auto-pilot at any given time. However, as much information there is about this topic, there also is a lot of misinformation going around, confusing its readers and dulling your results.

 

In today’s blog post, we are going to tend to these misstatements and inaccuracies and give you the full picture, so that you can build a Sales Funnel that will work for your business exactly!

 

What is a Sales Funnel?

So, before we dive into this head-first, let us just define what exactly a Sales Funnel is and what it helps you achieve.

 

In its most basic thought, a Sales Funnel is basically the representation of your customer’s journey to a completed sale. In other words, there are different stages a potential customer goes through before actually buying. Think awareness, consideration and conversion. 

Visualization of the phases of a Sales Funnel: Awareness, Engagement, Consideration, Purchase, Retention

Source: weBOUND marketing

 

Through every single one of these stages, a potential customer has different intentions, needs and acts differently based on it. A Sales Funnel divides the customer journey into snippets, so that in every stage a customer can be tended to according to the specific expectations and requirements.

 

As we have already written a thing or two about Funnels, we are not going to go into depth right here. If you want to learn about Funneling from bottom to top, here are a few useful articles:

 

 

X Myths about Sales Funnels – Debunked!

Myth #1: Sales Funnels need to be long

In today’s society, there is a really strong urge to associate “bigger” with “better”. However, this really does not stand up to the reality. When setting up a Sales Funnel, there are a thousand and one different elements to try out and optimize with. Naturally, you like to give every one of them a try, learning what it does to your business. In the end, this could lengthen a simple, 3-step Sales Funnel to as many as 10 steps, making the whole process 3 times as long and much more complicated than needed. 

 

While it might seem quite fancy to draw out a multiple step Sales Funnel, it actually is not necessary. Much rather, it might actually take a toll on your performance. Since you might end up optimizing for too many things at the same time, you are likely to feel confused as to which optimization led to which result. In addition to that, Marketing is its most efficient when made as simple as possible for the consumer. In other words, you have to reduce their thinking processes by reducing the options you give them. This is what differentiates a Sales Funnel from a traditional website and also what makes it so much more effective!

 

So most often, it is much better to stick to the KISS-Principle:

The KISS-Principle stands for: Keep it Simple and Signifikant

Source: weBOUND marketing

 

Put simply, the KISS-Principle encourages you to craft a process as simple as it can be without taking from the quality of it. Often, this is reflected as a reduction of (unnecessary) choices the consumer can take. This does not only result in a clean, easy to navigate Landing Page. It also shows the people in the Sales Funnel the exact path they have to take without any disorientation or interruption.

 

In this way, the KISS-Principle helps you to build a foolproof Sales Funnel, that makes it very difficult for its users to drop out or leave beforehand. In the end, this results in the maximum amount of people reaching the lower Sales Funnel Stages and, in turn, converting!

 

Myth #2: The shorter a Sales Funnel, the better

Just a few sentences ago, we were telling you to comprime your Sales Funnel as much as you can. Now, we are saying that a shorter Sales Funnel is not necessarily always the best choice. Possibly, you are thinking that we should make up my mind already. However,  Sales Funnels are not as simple as they would be if they were determined by their length only. In reality, the quality of a Sales Funnel depends on a wide variety of factors, length only being one of them. 

 

And in turn, the ideal length of a Sales Funnel is dependent on the following factors:

  • The product you are trying to sell
  • The target audience you are trying to sell the product to
  • The price and quality of the product
  • The customer journey you are trying to map out
  • The brand-awareness

 

So while it is true that you should not draft a Sales Funnel any longer that it actually needs to be, you should also never minimize your Sales Funnel infinitesimally. This might lead to important steps of the Sales Funnel being determined as “non-necessary” and being neglected, while, in reality, they would be very much necessary for a potential client!

 

In the end, it all boils down to the point that, in a Sales Funnel, you need to give the users everything they need in order to transform from a prospect into a buying, returning customer. Not more than required, but most certainly not any less either!

 

Myth #3: Sales Funnels are only for Online Businesses and Coaches

“Aren’t Sales Funnels a thing for those americanized coaching-businesses, speakers or online businesses? Isn’t it too sales-y for our market?”” is something we regularly hear during Discovery Calls

Man in front of a laptop holding up a credit card

Most businesses treat their website like a business card, while it should rather be seen as the marketing and sales person of your company. In other words, your website is supposed to make an impression and sell for you 24/7, even when you are not there. Even worse, most companies have a conversion rate below industry standards without realizing it: A sales funnel can help to test and optimize each single page aside from your current website, no matter its status. But with communication channels arising it is crucial to have a system in place that helps converting traffic into leads or sales without being overwhelmed with communication and administration. 

 

So the answer is Yes, even if you are a local Business, an Online Sales Funnel can be very much the deciding factor whether your business will still be standing in the future. Do not miss out on the power of the Internet and let potential clients find you online. And yes, this also applies to local (Offline) Businesses that do not even have an Online Store!

 

Related Topic: The Ultimate Sales Funnel For Local Brick and Mortar Businesses

Frontdoor of a local Business

The only difference between an Online Business using an (Online) Sales Funnel and a Local Business is the usage of Digital Media. While an Online Business is more likely to have its full Sales Funnel automated online, an Offline Business’ Sales Funnel will often be a combination of the online and the offline world.

Visualization of the phases of a Sales Funnel: Awareness, Engagement, Consideration, Purchase, Retention

Source: weBOUND marketing

 

Going back to our Funnel visualization from the beginning, this could mean that a Sales Funnel starts online, e.g. to create awareness about the offline store and then slowly turns into an offline Sales Funnel by leading the prospects to the offline store, where they can experience the product and get advice from a Salesperson. In other cases, an Offline Business could use an Online Sales Funnel as far as to the “Consideration” stage. For example, by offering a discount online that can be cashed in a physical store or by booking a discovery call for a physical meeting.

 

As always, which Sales Funnel is ideal solely depends on your business, your products and your target audience!

 

Myth #4: Paid Traffic is a must for Sales Funnels

Another really big misconception about Sales Funnels is the thought that you need Paid Traffic in order to kickstart a Funnel. (Which I can already tell you, is not the truth!) 

 

Almost no other traffic source is as predictable and as easily maneuverable as Paid Traffic, which usually makes it the obvious choice when it comes to choosing a traffic source for a Sales Funnel. Especially smaller businesses that might have just started out benefit from the rate at which traffic starts to drop in, once a few dollars are spent on Ads.However, even though it might be the obvious choice, it certainly is not the only one and other traffic sources can be just as good, if not better!

 

Other traffic sources for your Sales Funnel could be:

  • Organic Search: Create SEO-optimized content that is filled to the brim with value
  • Organic Social Media: Build a trustworthy online presence and establish relationships with your following. Think Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. 
  • Q&A-Websites: Pose as an expert and link to your own sources
  • An existing Email List: Send out a Drip Campaign to your Email List. This one works especially well for established businesses!

 

A campaign style that sends pre-written emails, messages, or content to a range of customers over a period of time in order to entertain and develop a relationship with them. This can be used for sales funnels.

Find heaps of creative Traffic Sources here: 19 Ways To Generate Traffic And Brand Awareness For Your Business And Personal Brand

 

Myth #5: You need to be able to code

Building a Sales Funnel involves creating Landing Pages, linking to other websites and continuously optimizing these assets according to your analytics data. That sounds like an awfully complicated process, involving a lot of tech-y thinking and coding, am I right?

 

Well, we are glad to be able to lighten your spirits here. Because building a Funnel does not even have to involve a single line of code-writing! Over the past years numerous tools for Funnel Building that work in a modular building block system have been established. These simplify your life immensely by visualizing the process of your Sales Funnel and offering you certain blueprints.

 

When you are deciding for a tool, always make sure it includes these two things:

  1. A Drag-and-Drop Landing Page Builder so you can see the Landing Page you are building without having to code anything and by moving content blocks around .
  2. A visual, automated Sequence Builder, sometimes also referred to as blueprint. This will help you to line up your automated sequence, so that you can actually see which step of the Sales Funnel follows a previous step. 

 

Still looking for the right tool to build your Sales Funnel? Check out these: ClickFunnels for Landing Pages and A/B Testing, Funnelytics for Blueprints and Optimization or Active Campaign for Email Sequences.

 

So for all of those people, that have not yet taken a step towards their own Marketing or Sales Funnel, here comes the enlightenment. In order to build a converting Funnel, there are only two things you need: A little bit of patience and Google! Furthermore, there already is a ton of content about Funnel Building out there. Think blog posts, videos, how-tos solely dedicated to teach you how to build a Funnel that converts using these tools. 

 

Find more helpful tools around Sales Funnel in our toolbox!

 

Myth #6: Funneling is expensive 

Often, this myth goes hand in hand with the previous one. After all, Funneling Tools do not come for free. However, these tools come at different features and price points. This means that by choosing only the features that you actually require, you will definitely not be spending heaps of money on building your own Sales Funnel!

 

As previously mentioned, when you are deciding which Funnel Building tool you settle on, make sure that it enables you to build a Landing Page, a Checkout Page, enables (basic) A/B testing as well as to trigger email sequences after a person has taken a specific action, e.g. opted-in. Sometimes this requires multiple softwares or one that is a bit more expensive. Tools like Zapier help you combine those GDPR-compliant and for free or a small fee, depending on how many automations you need.

 

Tools that include these three features start at about 58€ monthly, proving that building your own Marketing or Sales Funnel can actually be quite affordable

 

Myth #7: Sales Funnel are One-Size-Fits-All

Have you ever heard about those funnel blueprints or “Done-For-You Funnels that have generated one million Euros and can give you the same results? All you have to do is download or rebuild it.” Unfortunately this is only half the truth. As much as Funneling-Gurus might tell you that there is a universal, One-Size-Fits-All Sales Funnel that will work for every product or service, every company and every target audience, is just simply a lie.

 

Over the past few paragraphs, we have introduced you into the nitty-gritty details of building the ideal Funnel and if you paid close attention, we always got around to the fact that while there are certain Funnel-blueprints that are likely to work in  a wide variety of cases, there is no such thing as a “Alltime Funnel”Because, if a Funnel is able to convert the traffic dropping in, does not entirely depend on the Sales Funnel itself. In most cases, other factors do not only contribute, but are also much more important. Think trust and brand value, the quality of your product, the validation of your offer or the type of target audience you have.

 

In other words: You can have the most beautiful landing page and perfectly aligned automations but if your targeting, copy, offer, payment process or customer service sucks, your results will too!

 

However, that is still not all! In the beginning, I mentioned that a Sales Funnel should not be seen as a one-time event. Ideally, once a customer has converted, said customer should be fed back into the loop within the right timeframe so that he will convert time and time again, resulting in a returning customer that feels connected to your business or product without feeling pushed. This is exactly where other factors, like customer service, customer relationship management and all the other parts of a functioning company step into the ring. 

 

The ugly truth: In the end, a great Sales Funnel does not only depend on product, offer and objective, but is much more a reflection of the business itself and how unique or trustworthy it has been perceived by the consumer. If the customers  don’t understand or trust you and what you’re offering or if you’re making it too hard for them to take action, then the best Sales Funnel will not result in expected conversions!

 

The Takeaway

In the end, a Sales Funnel is nothing other than one string of the Customer Journey that you map out for your ideal clients. So, in turn, you should not only get a grip of the technical and strategic components of this topic. Much rather, you need to understand the psychology behind your customer and a Sales Funnel in order for it to be converting the way you have always wanted to.

 

Is there any question you have around Sales Funnels  leave a comment down below and we will answer them as quickly as possible!

Connect with us on social media to receive industry updates and strategic tips before they have reached the masses.

All Rights Reserved 2024 | Legal Disclaimer | General Terms & Conditions

weBOUND is currently under construction. In the meantime schedule a free call or check out our founders's website.
This is default text for notification bar