Small Marketing Teams

I have two questions for you…

1. What if you could provide specific answers to those questions without making prospects and customers dig for info on your website?
2. How would your business be impacted if you could use those opportunities to bring people down your funnel faster?

I recently lead a session for the HubSpot User Group in my hometown of Phoenix on How to Create A Chatbot In HubSpot That Turns Website Visitors Into Sales Conversations In Your Sleep.

During the two-hour seminar, I facilitated a discussion about both how conversational marketing is different than other types of inbound marketing and how to develop an on-site lead generation strategy using chatbots.

In this episode of the Small Marketing Teams podcast, I walk you through these same tips that I gave the HubSpot User Group. You'll learn how to build a chatbot that helps you impact every phase of the marketing and sales process.

Getting buy-in.

Getting approval.

Getting greenlit.

Getting sign-off.

This step is woven into the fabric of how companies move forward with new marketing strategies, projects, and tools. This gate can also be where good ideas go to die.

Has the following situation ever happened to you?

You have the right plan and the ability to execute for your company, but the executive team, CEO, or your direct supervisor gives you the thumbs down.

It could be your social media strategy, a new marketing platform, changes to your sales process, or any number of new ideas.

Even when you are 100% confident this approach will have a big impact on your business's growth, you still can't get people to sign off on moving forward.

Then, since you believe in your ideas, you reexamine their objections, change your business case, and they still put the brakes on your plan.

Thousands of small marketing teams are frustrated by this every day. You start wondering…

• Does my CEO really hate social media?
• Does my boss not think I can deliver?
• Does my executive team think marketing is a waste of money?

The truth is that they don't dislike or disagree with your ideas at all.

So, what is going on here?

In growing a company with a small marketing team and working every day to help small marketing and sales teams over the past 2 years, I have become a student of what holds companies back and the systems and mindsets you need to overcome those hurdles.

In this episode of the Small Marketing Teams podcast, I explain why the psychology of trust and risk are the real culprits and how you can overcome these challenges to get buy-in for your marketing strategies.

The conversation around how to get people to open, click, and convert on marketing and sales emails has been intense for almost two decades.

Some people swear by short emails. Others see success from emailing lengthy stories that build trust and relationships. You can also find studies that tout both approaches.

So, what are small marketing teams supposed to do?

Let's start by acknowledging two things...

1. The answer is not simple.
2. Most "experts" who are pushing a one-size-fits-all email length are either wrong, misleading you, or using outdated proof points.

The truth is that it depends on many factors, such as:

• Who you are emailing
• What they know about you
• What have emailed in the past

In the latest episode of the Small Marketing Teams podcast, I break down two long emails of similar length to prove that this discussion should not just be able wordcount.

I give your small marketing team a lens in which to view your email marketing strategy that highlights when to use short emails, medium-length emails, and long-form email copy.

There is an organization near Phoenix called Feed My Starving Children. They package up meals and send them to starving and malnourished children in places all over the world.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to participate in a Feed My Starving Children event at a local church.

There were 40 tables. There were 10 to 20 people at each table. Together, we packed 34,000 meals for these kids in 90 minutes. That's enough to feed 93 kids for an entire year.

That was one of three sessions planned for Friday night and Saturday morning. The goal was to pack over 100,000 meals between the three sessions.

What can small marketing teams, who are always trying to do more with less, learn from this type of system?

This experience with Feed My Starving Children gave me insight into how small marketing teams, like you, can get more done with limited resources and take on and beat companies four, five, six times your size.

In this episode of the Small Marketing Team podcast, I walk through 5 micro-system that you can begin implementing this week to help you move from slow linear processes to a well-oiled machine.

I don't get paid to set up basic marketing and sales automation. If that is what you are looking for, then I don't want your money.

In fact, you shouldn't pay anyone to set up basic workflows.

You or a member of your team should take an enter-level class from HubSpot or your marketing platform so that you can do it yourself.

It is that simple.

However, here is the thing that most people get wrong in how they view marketing and sales automation...

It takes a novice to set up basic and some mid-level business automation.

It takes a ninja to set up automation that takes into account all of your existing data objects, processes, and automation flows.

Getting expert help with marketing and sales automation is not about knowing the tools to set up a workflow.

It is about working with someone who can understand how automation will, won't, and can impact everything else you have done in your marketing platform and CRM.

Why, when I introduce myself to someone in a networking situation, do I try to not to use the term "marketing?"

The truth?

Marketing has a bad reputation.

People don't trust marketer. Marketing conjures feelings of manipulation.

Despite the rise of helpful, educational, valuable content marketing, marketing still has a credibility problem.

While marketing automation software can revolutionize the way your business gets found, generates leads, and brings those leads down the funnel, it is often met with skepticism.

While marketers know the value of marketing automation, I'm afraid that getting buy-in is always going to be an uphill battle.

Ready for the good news?

Inside many marketing automation platforms lies a multi-million dollar secret that many marketers and most executives don't know about.

It has been way too long since I published a podcast episode for you. That ends today! I'm back and excited to bring you fresh tips for growing your business - even if you are not a well-funded start-up or household name brand.

Over the past year, I dug deep into how marketing is changing. If you are experimenting with these shifts, then you will be well ahead of most companies - big and small - that ignore them.

In this episode, I give you six areas to focus on in 2019 that will help you make the most of these trends in how people find and buy from companies like yours.

Let's face it. Most companies are terrible at lead nurturing. They send boring, impersonal emails every few weeks over several months.

These companies think that they are staying top of mind with you, but they are really getting lost in a sea of similar emails that are not getting opened. Want proof? Check your inbox!

In this episode of the Small Marketing Teams podcast, I'll walk you through my counterintuitive approach to lead nurturing that has yielded much higher engagement rates than traditional lead nurturing campaigns.

When a buyer wants to buy from you, your salespeople love life.

When an inbound lead comes in at the top of the funnel, they are usually not ready to buy.

They are often not even ready to have a conversation with sales. That creates a lot of frustration inside your organization, especially if your sales team is used to sales-ready leads.

That creates a lot of frustration inside your organization, especially if your sales team is used to sales-ready leads.

Put yourself in your sales team's shoes. Now you have to follow up with someone who has not expressed an interest in talking to you.

In this episode of the Small Marketing Teams show, I'll give you the one mindset shift that will help your sales team methodically close a significant portion of your inbound, top of the funnel leads.

Have you ever made a sizeable investment in marketing or sales technology and then been let down by what it actually can and can't do?

I see this all the time and I want you to know that it can be avoided.

In this episode, we discuss why people feel disappointed in their marketing software and the steps you can take in the research and purchase process to go into an investment like that with realistic expectations.