Sure Oak

How to reach out to Steve Hartert:

Imagine your ideal browsing experience. Now imagine that experience involves filling out a form. How likely are you to complete the form? How likely are you to abandon and visit a different site?

If you’re more likely to jump ship and not complete the form, you aren’t alone. Too often, marketers try to make their forms do much more work than necessary, leading to a less-than-ideal conversion rate. Forms may be the gateway to collecting information, but if they’re too difficult and time-consuming to fill out, you’re unlikely to get any of the data you’re looking to collect.

To help you learn the best ways to construct and present online forms for marketing, we sat down with Steve Hartert of JotForm, one of the first online form builders ever created. Keep reading to learn some of the biggest takeaways from his interview.

Online Forms and their Uses

At their most basic level, online forms are a method of gaining insight into people’s needs and wants. At their most complicated, they are a means for businesses to gain a deeper understanding of their customer base than competitors can. Forms can be anything from a simple contact form to subscribe to a newsletter to an elaborate online survey. Of course, this data collection is only possible if your customer base is interested in completing your forms.

The best way to garner that interest? Make it simple for people to provide your company with their information. The easier it is, the more information your audience will submit.

So how do you create online forms that people want to answer? Steve gave us three key ingredients to help you get started.

How to Create Innovative, Successful Forms

When you first begin creating your form, it’s important to focus on the one key thing you want it to do. If you keep that in mind as you draft your form, you’ll find the rest of these tips much easier to execute.

Don’t “Kitchen Sink” Your Forms

One of the biggest mistakes Steve says marketers often make is trying to “throw the kitchen sink” at their forms. Forms should be geared toward the one key data point you focused on at the beginning of this section, not on collecting every possible data point on the web. This means only asking questions that are pertinent to that goal.

When it comes to online forms, success will only happen if you follow the rule of KISS (keep it simple, stupid). Flashy, convoluted forms won’t get you the data you need. Straightforward, easy-to-fill-out forms will.

Pay Attention to Design

The design of your forms is equally as important as the content they contain. Poorly designed forms tend to drive more users away than they draw in. If you want to see success, put energy into designing your form and making it something you’d want to fill out yourself. Don’t be afraid to take some time and make your user experience something you would want to experience as well, and try testing a few variations of your forms to see what performs best.

Understand Your Users

The needs and interests of your users should go hand-in-hand with your design. Who are you targeting? What device types are they using most often to access your website and online form? If the majority of your target audience uses their phones to fill out your form, and the webpage isn’t designed with mobile UX in mind, you’re likely to see a marked difference between your actual conversion rate and the conversion rate you were hoping to see.

No matter where you are in the online form creation process,

How to reach out to Lance Loveday:

Having a successful paid advertising campaign isn’t just a matter of paying some money and getting the website traffic and revenue you’re looking for. It involves data, analysis, and a good amount of trial and error. Don’t worry, though. We’ve got you covered. This week, we spoke with Lance Loveday of Closed Loop to get his tips on how (and how NOT) to do paid advertising — and the best time to start.

Ready to jump in?

Let’s get started.

When to Invest in Paid Ads

If you haven’t done paid advertising for your company before, it can be easy to feel as if you’ve “missed the boat” and have no way of catching up to (or even surpassing) your competitors. Luckily, it’s impossible to miss the boat. In fact, Lance says there’s no better time than the present to make changes and start investing in paid advertising.

One thing to keep in mind as you begin your investment, however, is that finding the sweet spot for your campaign can take time if you’ve never invested in PPC before. This is because you won’t have data from your previous efforts to determine what may or may not work.

To combat this difficulty, look to your competitors. What are they doing? Do they seem to be seeing success from their efforts? Yielding a high ROI is the name of the game, and it can take some time to get there. It requires ongoing analysis and optimization of your campaigns if you want to maximize the potential of PPC. For expert support, we can help with Sure Oak's paid search management services.

The Point of Diminishing Returns

When you begin investing in paid advertising, there will come a point when spending more money doesn’t yield the same amount of ROI. This is called the point of diminishing returns.  This point will differ for each company, as each will have a different level of ROI they are willing to accept in exchange for what they spend. And, obviously, not every company can afford to spend the same amount on their PPC efforts.

Before you begin any of your campaigns, you’ll need to determine the minimum ROI and lead or sales volume that you are willing to accept. You should also pay special attention to the data you’ve collected on your competitors’ successes and failures thus far. If you aren’t certain how to collect that data, that’s okay. There are many companies out there that are willing to do it for you, and those same companies can often manage the PPC process for you and help you continually optimize your campaigns for maximum value. It’s all a matter of whether you have the resources internally or if outsourcing is best for you.

Keep in mind, though, that no two companies are the same. Where one company succeeds, another may fail. Your paid advertising campaign should be just as unique as what your business offers.

Assumptions You Shouldn’t Make About Paid Advertising

Now that we’ve gone over the “do’s” of paid advertising, let’s get into the “don’ts.” In this week’s interview, Lance primarily focuses on false assumptions businesses and managers often make when they first get started with paid advertising.

The first assumption is that Google can be outsmarted to favor your ads over those of your competitors. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on which side of that assumption you’re on) Google cannot be manipulated or outsmarted. In fact, Google is constantly changing its algorithm to counteract such attempts. If you want to see the best results from your PPC campaigns,

How to reach out to Gregg Anderson:

The main point of sales is to make money, right?

Not necessarily.

According to Greg Rosner of PitchKitchen, the point is actually to develop relationships and win the hearts of your customers (which, in turn, leads to sales). This approach means focusing on your prospective customers’ need to resolve issues rather than your need to sell something. How does that correlate to your sales presentations? Keep reading to find out.

Common Misconceptions about Sales Presentations

Before we explain the best way to structure a sales presentation so it presents you (and your company) in a helpful light, it’s important to go over some common assumptions.

The first is thinking that your prospect is actually interested in your business or product. In reality, potential customers only care about the difference your product can make in their daily problems. Too often salespeople will make this assumption and go into monologue mode, rather than dialogue mode. This means their pitch is often “here’s why I’m awesome” instead of “how can I help you?”

To combat this tendency, Greg suggests imagining yourself as the prospect’s trusted guide. The Dumbledore to their Harry Potter, the Obi-Wan Kenobi to their Luke Skywalker. You shouldn’t be Superman in your presentation, ready to swoop in and solve everyone’s problems. Your job is to keep the story simple and customer-focused.

The second misconception salespeople often have is that they MUST put together a multi-slide, bulleted presentation each time when a simple conversation can sometimes achieve a much better effect. In fact, the best presentations are really just conversations. Remember the dialogue we spoke of earlier? That’s what mode you want to be in during your sales presentations, not monologue mode. You don’t need slides to do that.

Structuring a Sales Presentation

With that being said, let’s get into the best way to structure your sales presentations. Greg recommends organizing your presentations into 3 parts.

1. Challenges

In this section, you’ll want to discuss topics like the challenges your prospect is facing, problems they want to be fixed, and how changes in the world have affected their bottom line.

2. Solution

This second section is where you can discuss your products or services and how they can help your prospects reach their goals and solve their problems.

3. Success Stories and CTA

With this final section, you’ll want to tell the story of other clients you’ve helped, followed by your call-to-action.

One thing to keep in mind when you’re structuring your sales presentations is that people aren’t going to remember specific points you make or pieces of data. When they look back, your prospects are going to remember whether you had a dialogue and told a story. They’re going to remember how your presentation made them feel about your business and product, not what numbers you threw their way.

This is because humans are naturally drawn to stories, and they find it easier to remember information they can connect with on an emotional level. This means they need to be able to put themselves and their problems into the story you’re telling.

Final Thoughts

If the stories you tell are what’s going to be remembered, how can you avoid having a me-centric presentation?

Simple.

Focus on the bigger picture. Tell the story about prospects in similar situations who went on to become clients. Go into detail about the ups and downs that occurred when you were help...

How do you measure marketing success? If your answer isn’t an increase in revenue and new business, you may want to reevaluate your marketing efforts. Gregg Anderson explains why in this podcast episode.

How to reach out to Agnes Józwiak:

This week we sat down with Agnes Józwiak from the webinar software ClickMeeting to learn just how useful webinars can be for all industries in all parts of the sales funnel. She shared some great tips with us on how to choose the right webinar software for your needs and what webinars can do to turn your business prospects into fully engaged customers.

Ready to learn more? Let’s dig in.

The Power of Webinars

Webinars can have a huge impact on your bottom line. How you may ask? By engaging potential customers and giving them a behind-the-scenes glimpse into your company and the services you offer. Unfortunately, with so many opportunities for learning now available online, it can be difficult to capture and keep the attention of the crowd.

To do so, Agnes recommends giving webinar attendees the ability to access a recording of the webinar even if they don’t make it to the actual live time. Doing this will make those who register much more likely to engage with your content and sign up for your future webinars.

Another tactic she suggests is to host webinars on a variety of topics and for a variety of purposes. Don’t focus on just your business or the services you offer, but also focus on your customers’ pain points and needs. Don’t be afraid to change it up a little. Then, once you’ve established the angles you’ll be taking with your webinars, it’s time to figure out what software you’ll use to host it.

How to Choose the Best Webinar Software

Recording a webinar is easy, right?

Yes and no. With the use of a webinar software, you can customize things like the duration, registration page, and format with just the click of a button. Unfortunately, no two webinar softwares are exactly the same. Each offers its own unique features, and it’s up to you to determine how and if you want to use them.

Take ClickMeeting, for example. For their software, Agnes said ClickMeeting offers tutorials in the form of webinars, YouTube videos, easy-to-understand blog posts, and more, all to help users understand what features are available and how they can be used. What’s more, the software is also pretty intuitive. This is critical no matter what software you choose, Agnes said, because nobody has the time or money to invest in a software that can take months or even years to fully understand (we’re looking at you, Photoshop).

So how can you choose a webinar software that suits your needs? Agnes offered up 3 components that are important to consider if you want the best.

1. User Friendliness

Although this may seem intuitive, it’s still necessary. You don’t want your webinars to turn out awful, and having a good understanding of the software you use to put them on is critical.

2. Client (and Company) Success Stories

If a company can’t prove the success--and by extension, user-friendliness--of their software, then you have no reason to invest your time, money, and effort into them. Your webinars will basically be your babies and the software your babysitter. Would you rather pay the babysitter that lets your little ones run wild instead of doing the job you paid them for, or would you rather choose the one that ensures your webinars (and all their needs) are met promptly and successfully?

3. Automation

Webinars are quickly becoming major components of online interaction, and as a result, are rapidly evolving to fit the needs of various industries. The software you choose to work with has to be evolving with, and even ahead of, those industries’ needs.

How to reach out to Nicole Holland:

In today’s environment of easy-to-access information, podcasts are quickly becoming a major component of people’s daily learning and entertainment. So how can you leverage that interest for your business? Tom sat down with podcast guesting expert Nicole Holland to learn how she gets publicity from podcasts for herself and her clients.

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Publicity, according to Nicole, is when people recognize and know your brand. Too often people with big ideas struggle with making themselves and their companies visible to the public. That’s where publicity comes in. The more people are able to see and learn about your business, the more likely they will be to fall in love with those ideas you’re hoping to draw attention to. In turn, they will want more from you.

Nicole’s favorite way to get publicity for her business and those of her clients is podcast guesting. Where Nicole’s process differs from the norm, however, is in her execution of those appearances.

The common approach to podcast guesting is to appear on any and every podcast that will have you. Unfortunately, that approach isn’t the best for publicity. This is where Nicole’s process for strategic podcast guesting comes in.

You shouldn’t appear as a guest on a podcast unless it has an audience you’re synced with and a host you have a connection with. Luckily, she shared her 5 steps for creating connections.

5 Steps for a Successful Podcast Guesting for Publicity Initiative

Step 1: Development of Media Strategy & Podcast Specific Focus

When you only seek to appear as a guest on podcasts with topics that directly correlate to your business, or “surface guesting,” you cripple your efforts. To really get the best publicity out of your guest podcasting, you have to remember that your ideal buyers are people, not businesses. Focus on establishing personal connections with listeners in order to convert them to leads. Doing this will be the foundation for your guesting initiative.

Step 2: Pipeline Conversion Strategy

Once you’ve determined your ideal buyers and the message you want to target them with, it’s important to ensure your guesting is converting into sales. One way to do this is to create landing pages specific to each audience you speak to. This will help you track who’s coming to your website and from which podcast audience they originate.

After you’ve conducted an interview and set up your landing page for it, it’s important to promote the episode on all your media channels. You need to also get it in front of as many eyes as possible so you can get more people into your company ecosystem.

Step 3: Find Your Ideal Podcasts

There are multiple ways to find the podcasts your ideal customer is listening to. The first is to go on iTunes and search for your targeted keywords. These keywords should reflect the pain points and interests of your ideal buyer. Once you have the results, it’s time to put your framework from step 1 to the test. Determine what angle you can take as an expert and delve into the human aspect of each audience.

Your second option for determining podcasts to target is to ask your current clients what their favorite podcasts are. They are the perfect examples of your target audience.

Step 4: Nurture Relationships with Hosts

Once you’ve determined which podcasts you wish to appe...

With podcasts becoming such a mainstream method of gathering information, it makes sense to want to use them to grow your business. But what’s the best way to do that? Nicole Holland dives into the colorful world of podcast guesting for publicity in this week’s episode.

How to reach out to Kevin Koskella:

If you’re seeking new leads for your business, look no further than Facebook. With billions of users worldwide, the social media platform doubles as an interactive consumer database. The average Facebook profile openly advertises the account owner’s personal interests, the people, places, and things they like and interact with, and a variety of clues that may predict a Facebook user’s shopping preferences.

Embracing its potential as a marketing tool, Facebook Ads provides marketers with the ability to post and track ads, re-target select consumers from previous ad campaigns, identify similar audiences, and more to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of paid campaigns.

Still, as a marketer, it is important to keep in mind that most Facebook users visit the site primarily for personal and social reasons and not with the intention to shop. For this reason, Facebook Ads marketing requires a different set of tactics. Entrepreneur and Facebook Ads genius, Kevin Koskella, shares his Facebook Ads tips for converting leads on Facebook.

Kevin’s 6 Expert Facebook Ads Tips

1. Find Your Niche Audience

Don’t waste your budget on advertising to disinterested consumers. Without the right audience, it will be difficult to make meaningful conversions without overspending. To remedy poorly targeted advertising, Kevin suggests marketers make use of Facebook Ads tools like filtering by multiple interests.

Profiles indicating interests that overlap with your industry are more likely to convert than those that do not specify. The more overlapping interests a profile has, the more appropriate they may be as a lead. Consider sharing your Facebook Ads with audiences that share multiple industry-related interests.

2. Offer Something For Free

Avoid jumping straight into a sales pitch. Instead, Kevin recommends offering something of value in the encounter to pique interest and curiosity. You may offer a free service trial or product sample with the stipulation that consumers must provide an e-mail address and opt-in to marketing newsletters before receiving their free materials.

3. A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words

Today, the internet is saturated with advertisements and, to make an impact on conversions, an ad needs to be eye-catching and interesting to the surrounding audience. One of Kevin’s Facebook Ads tips is to focus on the images used in your ads. He claims faces grab attention more often than scenery, backgrounds, or patterns.

Kevin also recommends that marketers get creative with their use of text. Facebook currently allows up to 20% of the ad to be filled with text. The key is to strike a balance between the image and text that compels audiences to the call to action.

4. Avoid Ad Burnout

Just as consumers grow tired of viewing the same television commercials for months on end, re-using imagery, copy, or other design elements in your Facebook Ads can cause your campaign to go stale.

One of Kevin’s Facebook Ads tips is to avoid using any given graphic, layout, or design more than 3 times.

5. Use The Right Tools

Facebook Ads provides marketers with a variety of tools for zeroing in on the proper audiences and tracking campaign progress. In addition to Facebook Ads, Kevin recommends using supplementary tools like Adespresso. These analytics platforms allow marketers to view and track ad campaign statistics and adjust strategy as needed.

6. Don’t Give Up Too Early

The most important of Kevin’s Facebook Ads tips is that marketers should give the platform a fair trial before giving up. Start out with smaller,

How to reach out to Max Branstetter:

With social media becoming so widespread among the general population, digital marketers have begun appreciating its potential value as a marketing tool for businesses.

Max Branstetter, host of the Wild Business Growth Podcast at Hippo Direct, believes social media can be a powerful marketing tool if businesses understand how to utilize it properly. An expert in social media marketing, Max has developed his own archetypal social media networking strategy, dubbed the 1-Hour Social Media Strategy.

Social Media Networking Strategy:

Social media networking as a practice may have emerged years ago when ambitious marketers came across early online platforms, but strategists continue to refine it for efficiency and effectiveness. Max was inspired to look into the practice when digital strategist Gary V. began sharing his formula for successful social media networking.

This plan outlined a systematic method for marketers looking to grow an Instagram following and enhance their brand’s reputation. Gary V. encouraged marketers to reach out and leave their “2 cents” in the form of a comment to the top nine posts for ten separate hashtags throughout the day. According to Max, this type of social media networking can take up to three hours every day.

Although this structured method to networking may work well with the Instagram algorithm, most marketers do not have nearly enough time to dedicate to following it each day. To combat the time-consuming nature of Gary V.’s social media networking strategy, Max began thinking of ways he could improve its efficiency and reach.

Max’s 1-Hour Social Media Networking Strategy

Max realized that a strategy can only be successful if it is also simple enough to carry out. In developing his 1-Hour Social Media Strategy, Max set out to create a plan that the average marketer could implement for effortless, meaningful results with no monetary cost or investment.

The strategy aims broadly to grow a following, enable business networking, encourage engagement from other social media users--including industry influencers--, and ultimately, impact sales conversions.

Max’s social media networking strategy splits across three primary platforms: Instagram, Twitter, and FaceBook. For each platform, Max suggests allotting a certain amount of time to social media networking tasks, adding up to a total of one hour each day.

1. 30 Minutes of Instagram Social Media Networking

To kick off with social media networking, consider spending about 30 minutes each day on Instagram. In his 1-hour model, Max suggests reserving the largest chunk of time for Instagram networking because engaging effectively through the platform requires more time and effort than other sites. While using Instagram, marketers should consider the following rules:

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Follow Individuals and Businesses Relevant to Your Business

It matters who you follow on Instagram. For greater social media networking success, consider following profiles of those you aspire to be like professionally, those you hope to partner with in the future, and those with like-minded messaging to their followers.

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How to reach out to Nicholas Scalice:

While the majority of the marketing community seems intent on gaining website traffic, Nicholas Scalice, founder of Earnworthy and Landing Page School, has committed his career to help companies shift focus to concentrate on achieving higher conversion rates with their existing website traffic.

Nicholas specializes in landing page optimization, the process of refining a website with the aim of reaching higher conversion rates. Optimization often requires evaluating and updating a broad variety of website elements. When working with clients, Nicholas tries to consider how each aspect of a site can be upgraded in order to influence visitors to make a purchase.

With a seemingly never-ending list of site components and mechanics to overhaul, how does Nicholas know where his landing page optimization job begins?

Getting Started with Landing Page Optimization

Nicholas reveals his trick for staying organized when approaching the many elements of an optimization project: follow your funnel. Rather than stumbling through an un-ordered to-do list of arbitrary tasks, Nicholas works to optimize each step of the sales funnel from beginning to end, empathizing with consumers' viewpoints.

For each phase of the sales funnel, Nicholas asks himself 6 primary questions to guide his optimization strategy:

* Clarity: Is the purpose of the landing page obvious to site visitors?

* Relevance: Does the page provide helpful content for consumers considering making a purchase in your industry?

* Affinity: Is the atmosphere of your landing page appealing to potential customers?

* Influence: Does your brand appear popular with others?

* Trust: Does your landing page seem trustworthy?

* Action: Is it clear to consumers how they can make a purchase?

Nicholas explains that by using common consumer concerns to guide his optimization checklist rather than a standard list of website elements that can be improved, each of his landing page optimization jobs is uniquely tailored to the client’s business.

Oftentimes, Nicholas will turn to market research to learn more about how the landing page target audience thinks and behaves. This research often takes place outside of the landing page altogether. In some cases, Nicholas has uncovered valuable information by interviewing past customers about their experiences with the landing page. These kinds of conversations can reveal some of the key obstacles preventing site visitors from making purchases.

For those unable to speak with past customers, Nicholas suggests looking into paid surveys and other market research to create a well-informed landing page optimization plan.

Common Pitfalls in Landing Page Optimization

With years of experience behind him, Nicholas has encountered both amazing and terrible landing pages. He believes some mistakes are more common and simple-to-prevent than others.

According to Nicholas, the three major problem-areas for landing pages across the web are not making an enticing offer, targeting the wrong demographic, and false urgency marketing techniques.

1. Make An Offer They Can’t Refuse

Why should a site visitor subscribe to your newsletter? Aside from all the junk e-mails, do you have something of value to offer them? Nicholas encourages entrepreneurs to sweeten the deal by including something small but valuable to the consumer. With a little something extra along for the ba...