As we approach 2025, the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace. It’s a world full of shiny new tools, AI-driven tactics, and the latest buzzwords—but succeeding in this ever-changing environment requires more than just chasing trends. True success comes from having a clear, adaptable strategy that aligns with your goals.

That’s why we’ve tapped into the expertise of our Elite Marketing Program coaches. These are not just industry experts; they’re leaders who have guided countless businesses to real, measurable results. Learn more about their work and explore their expertise:

• Lauren Petrullo: https://mongoosemedia.us/
• Monique Morrison: https://www.moniquemorrison.ca/
• Amara Omoregie: https://amarareps.com/
• Dave Albano: http://jozamarketing.com/
• Scott Cunningham: https://merchantmastery.io/
• Renée Boudakian: rubiconfranchisepartners.com

Their insights offer not just predictions but actionable strategies for navigating the challenges and opportunities of 2025. This isn’t about jumping on the next bandwagon. It’s about focusing on what truly matters—building a solid marketing foundation, embracing personalization, and leveraging AI and automation in a way that deepens your connection with your audience.

These answers capture the heart of what the Elite Program is all about—helping businesses cut through the noise with clear strategies, proven systems, and the latest insights to drive sustainable growth.

Read on to discover how our Elite coaches are helping businesses prepare for 2025—and how you can too.

1. What’s the Most Important Trend You Believe Will Define Digital Marketing in 2025, and How Can Businesses Start Preparing Now?

Lauren Petrullo

Content will curate your audience. This answer is going to be drastically different depending on the size of the business, but in general, you need to have better content and lead with personalization whenever possible. The more I sound like one of the many you’re talking to, the more I’m gonna ignore you as one of the many I don’t care about. With AI and emerging tech, it’s easier than ever to provide personalization in your marketing.

Monique Morrison

I think with the onset of AI and how quickly it’s transforming and its capabilities, we will see that as the biggest trend. It allows smaller companies to implement predictive and personalized customer journeys, especially in the retail and eCommerce space, and I believe that will be an important trend to jump on in 2025.

Amara Omoregie

I think there’s a difference between what’s trending and what needs to trend. What will trend in 2025 will be the shiny object that is AI and all of the cool things that you can do with it… that’s a given. We’ll see more tools rise, and old ones fall. During all of this ebb and flow as marketing technology continues to hockey stick, the ability to connect with humans on a deeper level will be what people will resonate with. What needs to trend is knowing our customers better and using technology to build deeper relationships with customers.

Dave Albano

Without a doubt, it’s AI. This should come as no surprise. You’ve been living under a rock if you haven’t realized the importance of this, but it’s shocking how many small businesses are ignoring it when it’s going to radically change the face of how we do business.

How to start preparing? If you haven’t already:

1. Dedicate at LEAST 1 hour a week to explore ChatGPT (upgrade to the paid version for $20/month to unlock its “current” potential—it’s only going to get better from here).
2. Subscribe to a reputable source for regular AI news and updates (e.g., Matt Wolfe’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mreflow).

Scott Cunningham

• Coaching businesses: Throughout 2024, we saw a big shift from high-ticket, one-call-close coaching offers back to low-ticket front-end programs that allow coaches to first build trust with their audience before committing to high-ticket programs. The buzzword of the year was that we are in a “trust recession,” and we need to allow people to experience our value before committing big. I predict that businesses who made this pivot will thrive in 2025, and those who didn’t will struggle to compete.
• eCommerce ads: AI is becoming more of a factor in building meta audiences, and I predict that people won’t be frantically testing new audiences so often. From what I’ve seen, and from what I’ve been told by high-level Meta reps, letting ads run gives AI more time/insights to adapt, instead of constantly changing things and causing it to re-learn.

Renée Boudakian

AI-powered personalization is going to fundamentally change digital marketing and transform the customer journey experience.

The big opportunity lies in building AI-powered dynamic, hyper-personalized systems that:

• Adapt messaging based on actual performance.
• Learn from real-time customer behavior.
• Optimize for individual preferences at scale.

How can businesses start preparing now?

1. Conduct an audit of your first-party data—understand what customer signals you’re capturing and where the gaps are. Focus on collecting quality behavioral signals and ensure your data is organized and accessible.
2. Perform an audit of your tech stack—most current marketing tools don’t talk to each other well enough to support real AI personalization. Now’s the time to fix those gaps and build connections between your platforms to prevent future headaches as AI capabilities expand.

The companies that win won’t be the ones with the biggest AI budgets—they’ll be the ones who build smart, scalable systems while staying focused on actual customer value.

2. If You Had to Pick One Growth Strategy to Double Down on in 2025, What Would It Be and Why?

Lauren Petrullo

Long-form video content. People will consume before they convert. With long-form content, they’re getting to know you before they even talk to you, putting you in a place where calls are with pre-sold prospects. Also, as AI evolves, video still has a year or so before it’s as competitive as blogs. Content written with AI has exploded over the last 3 years, making it more competitive than before as the barrier to entry and opportunity to compete is at its lowest. With long-form videos, you can then bring in the multi-lingual aspect and compete in a blue ocean while your competitors are struggling in crowded waters.

Monique Morrison

We’re doubling down on our loyalty systems and predictive AI strategies for our retail and eCommerce clients. For service-based businesses, back-end AI systems that automate clerical work and time-consuming tasks are essential, especially for those tasks that are not done efficiently but are necessary for the sales process. We’re implementing systems from Buy Back Your Time that allow our clients to focus on revenue-generating tasks rather than being bogged down by low-value but necessary operations.

Amara Omoregie

Organic. Period.
On a few different levels:

• SEO → GEO: Creating content strategies to not only appear in organic search but to have responses shared from your brand and cited in generative/AI search experiences (e.g., Search GPT, Perplexity).
• Social SEO: Positioning your social content for discoverability on the platforms and in organic search when possible, while building backlinks and shares to boost your brand.
• Forums and Communities: Reddit and Quora are dominating search. People want help, and like-minded people want to discover new things. These areas are ripe for innovation.

I’d triple down in these areas. If you do, you’ll build a moat around your business.

Dave Albano

Robotic Process Automation—it’s going to transform businesses. When you can build automated “bots” that have agency to replace humans and hours and hours… even DAYS of research, repetitive tasks, content production & distribution, voice call handling—you name it—your competitors will leave you in the dust if you don’t jump on board.

Scott Cunningham

• Live events: These have been our highest ROI activity for filling sales calendars and bringing in deals.
• Low-ticket community: We are doubling down on our low-ticket community and using webinars to fill it. Following our insights into how to navigate the trust economy, we’ve also learned that webinars are a great way to fill low-ticket communities because people first get to spend time with you on the webinar before committing to your low-ticket community.
• The Trust Tri-Fecta: Webinar or event → Low-ticket community → High-ticket community.

Renée Boudakian

Double down on building automated marketing and sales systems. Map and automate your customer journey, from first touch to repeat buyer. This creates predictable revenue that scales without draining your team’s bandwidth.

In 2025, your most valuable asset won’t be your content or products—it will be your automated acquisition system that converts while you sleep.

3. How Do You See Customer Behavior Evolving in 2025, and What Steps Should Businesses Take Now to Meet Those Changing Expectations?

Lauren Petrullo

Customers want to know more than ever and get frustrated if you miss out on sharing critical answers they need. You NEED better conversation starters and an outlet for the person to ask their questions rather than assuming you’ve provided the answers they need. If you’re letting customers struggle to find answers, you’ll lose them as customers.

Set up phone numbers and chatbots to answer questions WHEN they have them. STOP ASSUMING. People crave connection, and with “Prime’s same-day delivery” mentality, every minute a customer waits for a critical answer drastically affects your conversion rate.

Monique Morrison

AI really took off in 2024, and many have adopted chatbots and other AI communication tools. In 2025, I believe customers will become more aware of AI interactions and gravitate toward companies that can provide truly human or human-like experiences.

This will be a critical time for companies to balance the power of AI with the expectation for authentic human interactions.

Amara Omoregie

Customers are sick of funnels. They hate being forced to get on a rollercoaster and not being able to get off until the ride is done.

Meaning, they want to learn about what is out there without having to talk to a sales rep, download an ebook, or watch an hour-long webinar. They want to be empowered to make their own decisions. Whoever gives their customer the most agency to make decisions will win.

Dave Albano

BECAUSE of the rise of AI, trust is going to be at an all-time LOW and inauthenticity will be at an all-time HIGH. Businesses will need to go ALL-IN in cultivating authentic, transparent relationships with their prospects and customers and provide even more value by giving more in delivery than they receive in return financially.

Scott Cunningham

I believe that 2024 was the year of the trust recession, and I expect this behavior to continue in 2025. I think we need to show more empathy in our marketing towards our customers and their lack of trust, rather than ignore it.

I also think we need to work harder, and listen better, to earn that trust.

Renée Boudakian

The market is shifting from “wait and see” to “show me now”—businesses need to adapt their delivery speed and accessibility accordingly.

• Fast Wins Beat Big Promises: 2025’s customers are done with “it takes time” excuses. They’ll pick the company that delivers a 20% improvement now over promises of 100% in six months. If you’re a marketing agency, start by fixing one leaky funnel stage this week. Small, concrete victories build more trust than grand transformations.
• Break Your Solution Into “Now, Next, Later”: Give them something they can implement today (template), something for this week (quick process fix), and then your bigger transformation. When they see results from the quick wins, they’ll trust you with the longer journey.

4: What are the most effective ways to build trust with cold audiences in a crowded digital landscape?

Lauren Petrullo

The best way to build trust with cold audiences is through authenticity and upfront value. SHOW me. PROVE your deserved attention. Gen Alpha grew up on YouTube subscriptions, and they’ll be incredibly powerful purchasers in the coming years, with many already self-made millionaires. Gen Z grew up with influencers and #ad controversies—no one’s getting fooled. If you’re providing value in a gated capacity or pretending it’s valuable but really just advertising, they’ll know. So lead with authenticity. No one is perfect, especially not your customers. Be raw, vulnerable, and valuable. Don’t just talk about it; show how you walk it, and you’ll gain attention. By providing actionable ideas, you’ll command loyalty.

Monique Morrison

Getting out and being in front of cold audiences is crucial. Showing you’re a real person and listening to followers creates immediate trust with new audiences encountering your brand.
One tactic that has worked well is running contests for email subscribers, with bonus entries for commenting on an Instagram reel with a question. We then reply to those questions with another reel, which has boosted organic reach, engagement, and comments outside of contestants. When people see that you’re listening and responding, they’re more likely to engage. This has been a winning tactic this year.

Amara Omoregie

Shift their state of awareness almost immediately. And I don’t mean bragging about your company/brand. I mean, if they are unaware, make them problem-aware. Problem to solution. Solution to product. Product to brand/most.
Why?
If you can solve an unsolvable problem.
If you can treat a group of customers better.
If you can end people’s suffering.
If you can make people aware of solutions that didn’t exist.
If you can change the status quo.
You’ll get the right kind of attention, from the right people, at the right time, and they’ll trust you.

Dave Albano

Strip away big “productionalized” content pieces, especially in video, and shoot your reels, stories, video ads, etc., in your day-to-day element (e.g., walking down your neighborhood street) on your phone. While technology has evolved, what has NOT is PEOPLE… we still connect best through face-to-face eye contact, and the best way to do that in digital is through close-up videos in selfie view.

Scott Cunningham

We’ve been running ads to a webinar, where we offer a free $1500 gift to those who attend. Then at the end of the webinar, we give everyone a $1500 ticket to a three-day live virtual bootcamp, where all they need to get the ticket is join our $39/month community. This has been working very well for us.

Renée Boudakian

Demonstrate proof. Feature concrete results, verifiable case studies, and authentic customer stories—let real outcomes speak for themselves.

5: Many business owners feel their growth plateaus because they’re constantly in ‘reactive’ mode. How can they step back and create a scalable system that can handle growth without constant intervention?

Lauren Petrullo

Most of the time, business owners need to fire themselves from the operation side. HIRE someone who has done it not once, but at least twice before.

Often, it’s ego stopping you from reaching your potential. You assume because you got your business to where it is today that you’re the solution to get it to where it’s going tomorrow. That’s absurd.

If you’re afraid to invest in quality talent, then you don’t truly believe in your growth. Most people aren’t great at being entrepreneurs and business owners—it’s like 1% of the 1% that are successful.

There are MANY who could be intrapreneurs or strong supporting roles to get you out of reactive mode and back into your zone of genius.

Monique Morrison

In addition to what’s taught in ELITE and Scalable, most business owners would benefit from a strong executive admin to manage their time.

Also, AI and automation can handle many tasks that often distract from revenue-generating work.

The reactive mode often comes from not having time for high-value tasks due to a lack of systems to handle lower-value ones. This imbalance leads to a pattern of either a great marketing month or a great fulfillment month but rarely a balanced approach to both.

Amara Omoregie

Business owners need to quit collecting shiny objects and piecing together makeshift solutions. Your tech stack isn’t meant to be a bird’s nest of mismatched tools and trendy platforms.

Think about a lemonade stand. The fundamentals are dead simple: Go where your customers are. Put up a sign. Stock your product. Open for business. This is all foundational.

From there, you test everything. Your pricing. Your location. Your recipe. You watch the data – which spots bring the most traffic, what times drive the most sales. Then you adapt and improve.

Digital marketing has made it dangerously easy to skip the fundamentals. To shoot from the hip without a plan. That advantage becomes your burden when your systems turn into a tangled mess.

RevOps (revenue operations) brings back that simple lemonade stand clarity to your digital operations. One integrated system. Every component working together. Clear metrics. Real feedback. Continuous improvement.

Don’t be afraid to make educated guesses about your future. Just make sure you’re testing against a plan and using that data to get better. That’s how you build a resilient, scalable business instead of another bird’s nest.

Stop chasing trends. Start building systems that solve for your customer. RevOS keeps it simple, measurable, and scalable.

Dave Albano

Well Duh… that cues up ELITE and the Growth OS nicely now doesn’t it ;).

I’ll bite. Join a program with trusted advisors and experts that have already done what you’re trying to do, and implement the proven frameworks & systems they provide to scale predictably.

Scott Cunningham

You need a KPI tracking tool for every stage of the customer journey, and you need to actually use it.

Our team has been using DM’s Growth Scorecard for years, and it is our holy bible of accountability. It can be overwhelming/intimidating thinking we need to be insanely proactive at all times.

Our scorecard allows us to move small things forward bit by bit that creates a big impact. (AND, there was a period where we stopped using it, and things fell off. So I think we need to prioritize the basics).

Renée Boudakian

• Document & Systematize Core Operations: Map and create clear workflows for the critical 20% of tasks driving 80% of results.
• Automate → Delegate → Eliminate: Start by automating repetitive tasks, then delegate remaining processes to capable team members, and ruthlessly eliminate activities that don’t drive growth.

6: How can businesses leverage AI and automation to scale their efforts while maintaining a personal connection with customers?

Lauren Petrullo

My favorite way of leveraging AI right now is through personalized AI chatbots, where the chatbots even call prospects.

Start personal conversations with leads to discover their true questions rather than guessing what they’re looking for.

With AI and personalized connections, you position yourself to care about your customers as if they’re in a 1:1 conversation with you—at scale.

Monique Morrison

It’s essential to train any AI interacting with customers to be conversational and engaging, making it as human as possible.

There are many back-end tasks AI can manage that usually consume time. When those are automated, it frees up space for more one-on-one conversations and personal connections.

We’ve used AI to analyze customer actions and purchases, allowing us to use predictive marketing. For example, integrating our Shopify database with Airtable lets the AI analyze the data, which we then use to guide our communications with customers.

Amara Omoregie

Automate what works. Set that baseline, and make sure that AI can produce the same quality or better when it comes to its outputs.

Never settle with AI. It has the capabilities to take the best of what we do and make it even better if we provide enough context.

Dave Albano

Do the “Handoff”… Use AI & Automation to INITIATE conversations in “triage” sessions to find out what they really need, then pass prospects/leads/customers off to a real person via calendar scheduling, direct phone transfers, etc.

Scott Cunningham

Never ask AI to do all the heavy lifting.

Feed it your own frameworks, processes, and case studies so it’s not telling stories that anyone can tell. It needs to tell stories unique to you.

Also challenge AI responses, or give it options to vote on, and get it to explain why it chose what it chose.

Renée Boudakian

• Automate the Routine, Personalize the Meaningful: Use AI for repetitive tasks (scheduling, basic support, data entry) but keep high-value touchpoints human (strategy calls, problem resolution, relationship building). This lets your team focus on conversations that matter.
• Create Smart, Adaptive Workflows: Build systems that recognize customer patterns and trigger appropriate human intervention. For example: Have AI handle initial support inquiries, but flag emotional or complex issues that require human attention.

7: What’s the best approach for creating content that resonates with audiences in 2025? How should brands be adapting their content strategies now?

Lauren Petrullo

When creating content in 2025, start by crawling into your ad comments, emails, and customer service FAQs.

Begin by creating content to answer questions they’re already asking.

Yes, you can focus on SEO, but if you want to resonate, don’t focus solely on the algorithm—focus on quality.

Answer your current customers’ questions. They’ll share your content.

Decentralization of SEO is coming, and the focus needs to be on directly answering, quickly, and with quality to win the content game in 2025.

Monique Morrison

See my answer to question four.

In addition to creating short-form content based on audience questions, we also turn those questions into longer-form content and email content.

Open rates have been strong for emails where the subject line hints at solving a customer’s problem directly.

Amara Omoregie

Helpful.

Creating content to rank is so 2010.

Create content that people will come back to over and over for reference.

Writers need to learn how to write again.

Do actual research—not just SEO research, but topical research. We need topical authority and information.

SMEs need their brains picked clean of the good stuff.

Google is getting sick of crawling hundreds of variations of the same exact content, so pretty soon, pages are going to get deindexed for not being helpful.

The more web pages there are on the internet, the more it affects our carbon footprint, so it’s up to us as marketers to stop the proliferation of low-value content.

Dave Albano

Trends and market tastes will always evolve.

It’s your job as the content creator to have your finger on the pulse of what’s trending, what people are asking, on what they’re searching, on what their wants/needs/fears/aspirations are.

Turn to AI for research (ChatGPT can search the web now) and the age-old favorite: AnswerThePublic.

Then where possible (platform-dependent) serve up your content dynamically to target your various avatars and audiences by segment.

Scott Cunningham

In our eCommerce world, I’ve been teaching brands to write long-form origin story ads that have been working better than anything else lately.

Show that you are the biggest nerd in your category, and people will look at you as the expert you are.

Renée Boudakian

Share Real Stories.

“I was drowning in client emails last year” creates more intrigue and connection than “Here’s how to manage your inbox.”

When you share your honest struggles and unexpected wins, people see themselves in your story instead of seeing another expert talking down to them.

8: What are the most effective ways to increase customer retention and loyalty in 2025, especially as competition intensifies?

Lauren Petrullo

Personalized interactions while leveraging AI.

You need more touchpoints and effective communication based on where they are in their buyer’s journey with you, addressing their needs—not where you are in relation to them paying you.

Monique Morrison

One big shift in 2024 has been automatically enrolling customers in loyalty programs instead of making it an optional step.

We’re also enhancing our indoctrination series to offer additional bonuses and free gifts with each new purchase.

The welcome email typically has the highest open rates, as customers are most excited then, so we leverage this moment.

Part of our approach includes a survey to identify the customer’s pain points, which AI analyzes for product fit and to create customized email content that addresses their biggest concerns.

We use two separate processes for leads and customers.

Amara Omoregie

Over-serve your customers.

Over-educate them.

Have them be a part of your journey.

Give them access to new products without having to pay (e.g., samples, GWPs).

Recognize your VIPs with great perks that have mutual benefit.

Right your wrongs, especially in public.

Be honest.

Share your roadmap for improvement.

Celebrate the wins of your customers.

Empathize—like Chewy when subscriptions end when a pet crosses the rainbow bridge. They send flowers and a card, and they donate the last bag of food to the local shelter.

Dave Albano

Same as #3.

Further, if you look at THE best companies in the world with the best retention (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, Apple Music, HBO Max, Disney+, etc.), they target their pricing by being 1% of the average Social Security check in the U.S., which is $1787 as of Oct 2024 (Source).

1% of that is $17.87, or that $15-$20 range such that ANYONE can afford them.

Scott Cunningham

Keep adding more value when customers are up for renewal.

We do it in our coaching program, offering renewal bonuses.

Just this year we offered our mastermind members new quarterly review meetings to keep them on track with big goals.

This is something we constantly brainstorm as a team to ensure we keep leveling up the customers’ experiences.

The same goes for eCommerce.

Renée Boudakian

Make Customer Problems Your North Star.

Every dollar you’ll make in 2025 is hiding in a customer problem you haven’t fully solved yet.

The best product roadmap is your customer’s list of frustrations.

When you become obsessed with their challenges, customer retention & loyalty is a byproduct.

Design Your Offer Ladder Around “New Levels, New Devils.”

Success creates new challenges.

Your offer stack should solve each new problem that emerges from conquering the last.

When you guide customers through their entire journey, solving each evolution of their problems, they never need to look elsewhere.

The key to retention is being their trusted solution provider at every level.

9: With so many marketing tools and tactics out there, how do you prioritize which strategies to implement? How can business owners avoid ‘shiny object syndrome’ and focus on what truly moves the needle?

Lauren Petrullo

I prioritize what can work with my existing systems and tools first.

Learning a new product or tool is exhausting.

I need it to yield atypical returns with minimal additional effort.

To avoid shiny objects, ask yourself: if you adopt this new tool or tactic, are you okay with zero returns for the next 6 months?

If yes, because the return in 6 months is worth the investment, go for it!

Otherwise, focus on optimizing existing resources and avoid adopting new ones.

Monique Morrison

The growth lever canvas is key here.

Having someone empowered to say “no” when new, shiny tools and programs could derail progress is also essential.

We use the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) method, which, combined with the growth lever canvas, keeps us focused on what truly matters.

Amara Omoregie

If it doesn’t align with a growth initiative already in play or improve the customer experience, put it on the back burner for another time.

When a business has its customer acquisition engine dialed in and is hitting targets consistently, then experiment.

Not when the stakes are high and there isn’t much room for error.

Commit to being methodical and disciplined until you have the runway to be experimental with shiny objects.

Most shiny objects are just that—and not worth anything.

Digital snake oil and hype.

Dave Albano

You must have the correct STRATEGY first, and plug in the tactics INTO the strategy, not the other way around.

See #5

Scott Cunningham

Never scrap something completely if it’s working.

I think it’s ok to allocate 5-10% of your resources/focus testing new experiments to see if you could do better.

But keep most of your focus on the things that are producing.

For example, before pivoting ad budget from our VSL funnel to our low-ticket community funnel, we allocated a small fraction of our total spend to see if we could fill the community, and also to see if we could ascend the community to our core offer.

It turns out we could, so we allocated more spend to the low-ticket community funnel.

The takeaway is, don’t tackle too many ideas at once where you are spread thin on focus.

Choose one thing to test against your main thing.

Get proof of concept.

Then pivot some focus to the new thing that’s working.

Renée Boudakian

Build a Customer Journey Scorecard.

Use a simple traffic light system (red/yellow/green) to visualize each stage of your journey.

If lead generation is red but your sales conversion rate is green, you don’t need another sales tool—you need better lead generation.

Focus resources where the actual bottlenecks are.

Double Down on What’s Already Working.

Before chasing new tactics, look at your current wins.

If LinkedIn is driving real sales conversations, invest more there before testing TikTok.

Scale what works before exploring what’s new.

The key is letting your scorecard guide your priorities—turn reds to yellows, yellows to greens, one stage at a time.

Closing Thoughts: Strategy Over Tactics for 2025

If there’s one lesson to take away from our Elite coaches, it’s this: strategy always trumps tactics. While shiny new tools and tactics can grab attention, they won’t deliver sustainable growth without a solid foundation. The businesses that succeed in 2025 will be the ones that focus on their customers, leverage personalization and AI strategically, and implement systems that scale.

The insights from our Elite coaches aren’t just theories—they’re real-world strategies proven to drive results. And that’s what sets the Elite Marketing Program apart. We’re here to guide you, to help you focus on what matters, and to build a marketing engine that drives growth predictably.

Don’t just adapt to 2025. Lead the way.

Join the Elite Marketing Program today and start building your strategy for sustainable growth.

Click here to learn more and apply.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing in 2025: Predictions from Our Elite Coaches appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Ever wonder what the most successful agencies did differently than everyone else?

Was it luck, skill, hard work, the industry they chose, or something else?

Through my consulting work at Revenue Boost, I’ve worked with and taught over 400+ agencies how to scale their business.

From this, I’ve seen consistent patterns & traits in the ones who grow effortlessly…

Versus the ones who stay stuck for years – no matter how hard they work.

One key difference in approach stuck out to me.

I’ll illustrate what this one difference was with a story.

Once upon a time…

Two marketers graduated from business school with big plans to start their own agency. 

Ready to conquer the world, they started cold calling, cold emailing, and doing everything under the sun to get clients.

And although they had the SAME levels of work ethic and talent…

One of them now has an 8-figure agency.

The other one of them is still freelancing odd jobs, barely making ends meet.

What did the successful one do differently?

He took a big risk and started turning down clients and projects.

Instead of offering everything to everyone, like most agency owners…

And being a jack of all trades but a master of none…

He decided only to serve Plumbers and be the best dang’ plumbing marketer on the planet.

With a goal to make their pipeline fuller than a broken toilet pipe.

He mastered the art of niching down and realized it would be easier to be the biggest fish in a small pond.

And you should too – and in this article, you’ll learn exactly how to define your own niche.

Now it may seem scary to turn down clients…and it may feel like you’re limiting yourself by focusing on only one client-type.

But it’s exactly the opposite. You’re actually limiting yourself by being everything for everybody.

Niching Down Can Help 2x-3x Your Revenues

One of my clients Lauren ran a digital agency offering everything under the sun.

Social media, paid ads, web dev, SEO, and she offered it to clients from many different industries.

Because of this, her agency stayed stuck at $25,000 a month and she couldn’t break through.

On top of that, she and her team worked so much harder than they had to and operations were messy.

Every client needed different things, required customization, and nothing was standardized.

We sat together to audit all her past clients, and we found that Medical practices were her best clients.

They were easy to sell, stayed the longest, and gave her the least amount of headaches and complaints.

So, she changed her entire business model to ONLY service this industry.

Then, she developed a standardized offer for that industry, rather than customizing everything.

One offer, to one target market. Afterwards, she started cold emailing businesses in her niche with her new offer.

The Results?

 She 2X’d her revenues and grew to $52,000 in monthly revenue in not even four months time.

All from making one simple shift. One decision that can make everything easier, and you can do the same.

See, most agency owners and marketers start out with one or two clients, and then they get referred new clients from various industries.

Before they know it, they’re marketing everything for everyone and have NO idea who their ideal client is.

The Problem with Running a Business This Way Is That It Becomes Impossible to Scale.

Every single new client requires a ton of research, thought, and brainpower.

Because each new client has different needs, it leads to having no standardized processes and systems.

Which keeps the founder stuck in the business and unable to hire a team.

The other problem that arises is acquisition.

There are hundreds of thousands of agencies on the planet, and it’s really hard to stand out.

UNLESS you specialize.

When you specialize in a niche – let’s say, SEO for plumbers…

Then you aren’t competing with every other agency on the planet. You don’t look and sound just like them anymore.

Now, you’ve created your own tiny pond in which you can be a big fish.

There are way fewer agencies that specialize in plumbers or SEO, let alone both. So, you’ve eliminated the competition with one decision.

If a plumber was looking at two agencies – one that was a general digital agency and one that specializes in helping plumbers…

They almost always choose the agency that specializes in their industry and has testimonials from people just like them.

Not to mention, it’s easier to market when you have a clear niche in mind.

You know who you’re writing your content for…

You know who to send emails and social media DMs too…

You know exactly who to target in your ads….

You know what podcasts you should get booked on

And so on and so on.

Plus, you can charge whatever prices you want. Because you aren’t compared to the hundreds of thousands of agencies out there – you have a unique offer now.

Committing to one niche makes marketing easier, it makes selling easier, and it makes scaling easier.

You only have to be good at doing 1 thing for 1 person, and you can build systems and processes around it. This way, you can hire a team to take it over and be able to work less.

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Now how do you do it? What if you don’t know who your ideal client is?

Step 1: Audit Your Current + Past Client List.

Write down every single client you’ve ever served, and group them by niche. Industry, location, size and so on.

Once you group them together, one niche might stick out for you already as your favorite type of client.

If it doesn’t, use my 7-Point checklist and rank each niche on a 1-5 scale.

These 7 criteria points are what makes a great niche.

#1 – Total Addressable Market:

How many businesses are in this market? Is it large enough to support your bigger goals? Is the market shrinking or growing? Make sure the niche is big enough for you and that it’s not declining.

#2 – Purchasing Power

Is this market (or at least a segment of it) able to afford what you want to charge?

Think back to if you’ve received a lot of pricing objections when you’ve sold to these people in the past.

#3 – Lifetime Value

How long did these clients stay? Were they one-and-done projects or did they stay with me for eternity?

The bigger the life-time value, the more money and time you can spend to acquire a client.

If the niche typically churns in a few months or only works with you for quick, one-off projects…

Then you’ll have to spend so much energy on sales and marketing to keep the business alive.

#4 – Strong Need & Pain

Does this market have an important problem to solve, one that they have to fix? Or, is what you sell just a “nice to have”?

If the latter, it’s going to be very hard to get clients.

If they can’t live without your solution, then getting clients will be a breeze.

#5 – Desire to Solve that Pain

It’s one thing for a market to have a problem, but they must also have a desire to solve that problem.

Even if they have the need that you fulfill, that’s not enough – they also have to care about fulfilling that need.

#6 – Easy to Reach

Is the market fairly easy to find online? Can you reach them via most advertising platforms and social channels? Are their groups and communities online?

If you’re targeting businesses that are hard to reach online, you’re creating one extra barrier to your success.

Step 2: Choose 1 Niche After Ranking Each of Your Past Clients.

Tally up all the rankings and pick the 1 with the highest score.

Don’t worry about making the wrong decision.

Consider this an experiment.

You aren’t married to your new niche, you can always change back in a few months if it doesn’t work out.

Step 3: Create a Pre-Packaged Offer for Your New Niche

The whole point of niching down is to create more focus and simplicity in your business

Part of this is about WHO you sell, part of this is about WHAT you sell them.

Start out by choosing 1 problem to solve for them, and 1 solution to that problem.

List out what the deliverables will be and what you want to charge.

Keep it simple! You can build upon this later.

Step 4: Test the Waters and Go Land 5 New Clients.

Before you make any drastic changes to your business, such as letting go of clients, changing your branding and website…

Test the waters first, and verify if this new niche is the direction you want to go.

Go land another 5 clients or so, and that’ll be enough to identify if these are really our ideal clients or not.

You might think they are at first but you’ll know for sure once you serve more of them.

Wrapping Up…

You know now the problems of being a jack-of-all-trades with no clear focus.

Every new client is a ton of work and requires customization…

And getting new clients is difficult because there’s nothing that stands out about your agency. You’ll look and sound like everyone else.

This means when you do niche down, and sell 1 offer to 1 target market…

Your workload will decrease. Each new client will be easier to serve than the previous one.

You’ll become world-class at helping your clients from all the focused repetition

You’ll quickly develop a reputation and become a big fish in a small pond.

In every way, it’ll become easier to grow, scale, attract, and retain clients.

Plus, you’ll have more fun and the business will be simpler & easier to run.

And with this knowledge…

You’ve learned the 5 simple steps to niching down.

So…

Time to get to work!

Put this into practice and watch it transform your business.

The post Profit More, Work Less: 4 Steps to Niching Down For Your Agency appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Why do we read books like Traction, Scaling Up, and the E-Myth and still struggle with implementing systems, defining processes, and training people in our agency?

Those are incredibly comprehensive methodologies. And yet digital agencies still suffer from feast or famine months, inconsistent results and timelines on projects, quality control, revisions, and much more. It’s not because they aren’t excellent at what they do. I

t’s not because there isn’t value in their service. It’s often because they haven’t defined the three most important elements of delivery: the how, the when, and the why. 

Complicating our operations early on can lead to a ton of failure in implementing them. Business owners overcomplicate their own processes, hesitate to write things down, and then there’s a ton of operational drag in the company.

Couple that with split attention and paper-thin resources and you have yourself an agency that spends most of its time putting out fires, reacting to problems with clients, and generally building a culture of “the Founder/Creative Director/Leader will fix it” mentality. 

Before we chat through how truly simple this can all be, let’s first go back to the beginning. 

When we start our companies, we’re told to hustle. And hustle hard. We’re coached that it takes a ton of effort to create momentum, close deals, hire people, and manage projects. And that is all true. There is a ton of work that goes into getting a business up and running.

The challenge is that we all adopt this habit of burning the candle at both ends and the middle all for the sake of growing the business. And we bring that habit into the next stage of growth when our business needs… you guessed it… exactly the opposite. 

In Mike Michalowitz’s book, Profit First he opens by insisting the reader understand and accept a fundamental truth: our business is a cash-eating monster. The truth is, our business is also a time-eating monster. And it’s only when we realize that as long as we keep feeding it our time and our resources, it’ll gobble everything up leaving you with nothing in your pocket and a ton of confusion around why you can’t grow.

Truth is, financial problems are easy compared to operational problems. Money is everywhere. You can go get a loan or go create more revenue by providing value easily. What’s harder is taking that money and creating systems that produce profitably. Next level is taking that money, creating profit and time freedom. 

In my bestselling book, The Sabbatical Method, I teach owners how to fundamentally peel back the time they spend in their company, doing everything, and how it can save owners a lot of money, time, and headaches by professionalizing their operations.

The tough part about being a digital agency owner is that you likely started your business because you were great at something. Building websites, creating Search Engine Optimization strategies, or running paid media campaigns. And then you ended up running a company. Those are two very different things. 

How to Get Out of Your Own Way and Create Some Simple Structure for Your Agency…

1. Start Working Less 

I know this sounds really brash and counterintuitive, but I’ve seen it work wonders for clients and colleagues alike. I often say you can’t see the label from inside the bottle and I’ve found no truer statement when it comes to things like planning, vision, direction, and operations creation.

Owners who stay in the weeds of their business while trying to build the structure are like hunters in the jungle hacking through the brush with a machete, getting nowhere with really sore arms. Instead, define your work day, create those boundaries of involvement, stop working weekends, nights and jumping over people’s heads to solve problems.

It’ll help you get another vantage point on  your company and your team can build some autonomy in the meantime. 

2. Master the Art of Knowledge Transfer

There are two ways to impart knowledge on others: apprenticeship and writing something down. Apprenticeship began as a lifelong relationship and often knowledge was only retained by ONE person who would carry on your method.

Writing things down used to be limited  (before the printing press) to whoever held the pages.

We’re fortunate that today, we have many ways of imparting knowledge to our team. And creating this habit early on can save a business from being dependent on any one person who has a bunch of “how” and “when” up in their noggin.

While you’re taking some time to get out of the day-to-day, start writing things down and recording your screen (use a tool like loom.com) while you’re answering questions.

Deposit those teachings into a company knowledge base, a central location for company resources. Some of the most scaleable and sellable companies I’ve ever worked with had this habit down pat. 

3. Define Your Processes

Lean in. No fancy tool or software is going to save your company. Every team I’ve ever worked with who came to me with a half-built project management tool suffered immensely from not first defining their process. This isn’t easy to do, but it can be simple.

The thing that hangs up most teams to dry is simply making decisions. If you can decide how you do something, when you do it and why it’s happening that way, you’ve already won. I know exactly what you’re thinking: our process changes all the time, per client, per engagement, etc. That’s fine.

Small businesses should be finding better, more efficient ways to do things all the time. Developing your processes and creating a maintenance effort to keep them accurate and updated is going to be a liferaft in choppy seas. You’ll be able to cling to it when the agency gets busy. 

“I’m so busy, how can I possibly work less and make time for this?”

You can’t afford not to do this work. Burning the candle at both ends and the middle will catch up eventually and in some form or another. Whether it’s burnout, clients churning out of the company, a team member leaving, some huge, unexpected tax bill.

I’ve heard all the stories and they all suck. It’s easier than ever to start a business and it’s harder than ever to keep one. This work might not be sexy, but it gives us the freedom we craved when we began our companies. 

Start small and simple and watch your company become more predictable and your team more efficient.

The post Foundations of Agency Success: Simplifying Operations for Growth appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

As a marketer, I understand how today’s marketing campaigns face fierce competition. With so much content and ads competing for eyeballs, creating campaigns that stand out is no easy task. 

That’s where strategies like tagging come in. 

It helps you categorize and optimize your marketing efforts. It also helps your campaigns cut through the noise and reach the right audience.

To help you out, I’ve compiled nine ways brands use a tagging strategy to create an impactful marketing campaign. 

Let’s get to it. 

How Brands Use a Tagging Strategy

Tagging involves using keywords or labels to categorize and organize content, products, or customer data. You attach tags to specific items or information to make searching, sorting, and analyzing data easier. 

There are various types of tags, including meta tags, analytics tags, image tags, hashtags, blog tags, and more. 

So, how do brands use a tagging strategy to make their marketing campaigns stand out?

Improve Social Media Engagement

With over 5 billion users, social media provides an easy way to connect with your audience, build relationships, and promote your offerings.

Use a tagging strategy to boost social media interactions. Consistently use hashtags that align with current trends and topics. This encourages people to interact with your content and boosts content visibility.

You can also use tags to monitor brand mentions of your products or your industry. This allows you to engage with your audience promptly.

Consider virtual social media assistants to streamline your tagging strategy. These AI-driven tools can suggest relevant hashtags, track mentions, and automate responses. Implementing them can save time and resources while ensuring consistent engagement across your socials.

Build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with over 1 billion members across 200 nations. It offers excellent opportunities for individuals and businesses to build and nurture their brands.

However, simply creating a professional profile isn’t enough to build a personal brand on LinkedIn. 

Use various tags to increase your visibility, establish thought leadership, showcase expertise, and attract the right connections. For instance, use skill tags to showcase your expertise and industry tags to attract connections and opportunities within your industry. Use certification tags to help showcase your expertise and credibility to potential employers or clients. 

Facilitate Customer Segmentation and Personalization

Personalization matters—more so in today’s data-driven world. In fact, 65% of consumers expect your brand to adapt to their changing preferences and needs.

To meet this expectation, consider using a tagging strategy.

Segment your customers based on shared characteristics, such as demographics, interests, purchase history, cart abandonment, and behavior.

Here’s a summary of the steps to customer segmentation.

With your customer segments ready, use tags to tailor your marketing messages and offerings to specific segments. Imagine sending targeted email campaigns based on what your customers need. That’s the power of segmentation and tagging in action!

Enhance SEO and Content Discoverability

Tagging content can have a profound impact on search engine optimization (SEO) and content discoverability. When users search for specific topics or products, well-tagged content is more likely to appear in search results, driving organic traffic to your website. 

Additionally, tags can help you analyze the most popular topics with your readers. Then, the results of this analysis can help you adjust your content strategies accordingly.

And get this— certain AI tools can help analyze your content and suggest relevant tags and keywords. Using these tools in addition to a tagging strategy can help optimize your SEO strategies and boost content discoverability.

Partner with the Right Influencers

Influencer marketing has become a go-to marketing approach for modern brands. Recent stats show that 85% of marketers and business owners believe influencer marketing is an effective marketing strategy. 

But how do you find the perfect influencer for your campaign? 

Utilize tags to identify influencers who are relevant to your niche. Beyond this, find influencers who align with your brand values and target audience.

Additionally, look for influencers who use hashtags that are relevant to your campaigns. For instance, fashion influencer Chiara Ferragni uses #adv (advertising) and #ghd (good hair day) hashtags in this campaign.

Monitor industry-specific hashtags and mentions to discover influential voices and build profitable relationships with them. 

Track Hashtag Performance

Tracking your hashtag performance helps you understand your campaigns’ engagement, reach, and effectiveness.

To achieve this goal, assign special hashtags to each marketing project. This helps you see which hashtags generate the most engagement and reach, enabling you to refine your tagging strategy. 

Here’s an example of a hashtag performance report for the #SuperBowl2024.

This curated list of hashtag generators by Attrock discusses the top tools for your consideration. You can analyze each and choose the one that best fits your needs.

Categorize Content Accordingly 

The human attention span is shrinking. The last thing you want is for your audience to have difficulty in finding or navigating your content, get frustrated, and bounce.

Untagged content can be difficult to navigate and manage. As any marketer knows, content is important in digital marketing campaigns. 

To categorize your content, identify the main categories by topics, themes, campaigns, target audiences, or product lines. Then, assign relevant tags based on the categories you’ve identified. After that, implement a consistent tagging strategy for existing and new content. 

Organizing your content using tags can also help streamline your content management workflow. Most importantly, readers can easily find the content they’re looking for, thereby boosting overall user experience, engagement, and conversions.

Boost Your Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing remains a powerful marketing tool in today’s digital world. It’s also another area where brands use a tagging strategy to directly reach their target audience.

Use tags to segment your email list and personalize your marketing messages. Then, you can send targeted emails based on factors like purchase history, interests, and demographics. 

Personalization can significantly improve open rates, CTRs, and overall engagement and conversion rates. It’s a simple yet impactful strategy to make your email marketing strategy more effective.  

Plus, you can use tags to track how well your emails perform with each group. This helps you understand what content resonates best with your audience and provides insight on how to improve your emails going forward.

Enhance Analytics and Reporting

Every marketer appreciates the immense value of data. For brands using tagging strategies, tags are powerful tools for gathering valuable data. 

Analyze how users interact with your tagged content. See which tags generate the most clicks, shares, conversions, and other forms of engagement. Gain insight into audience preferences and campaign effectiveness.

This granular data about your marketing efforts allow you to make data-driven decisions, allocate resources effectively, and refine your marketing strategies.

Final Thoughts 

There isn’t a single correct way for brands to use a tagging strategy in marketing. You can use a tagging strategy however you see fit. However, the bottom line is that this strategy offers you a simple yet powerful way to create attention-grabbing and unique marketing campaigns. 

Fortunately, tagging strategies are useful across various marketing initiatives, from social media and email marketing to SEO and more. 

So, if you’re ready to elevate your marketing campaign, build a strong brand presence, and stand out among the competition, consider employing effective tagging strategies today.

The post How Tagging Strategies Transform Marketing Campaigns appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Are you torn between using long-form or short-form videos for your small business marketing campaign? Well, you are not alone. Despite 89% of consumers wanting to see more brand videos, there is no one-size-fits-all answer about the ideal video length.

However, this should not deter you from creating an effective video strategy. In 2023, people watched an average of 17 videos per day, highlighting the influence of video content in today’s digital landscape.

Both short-form and long-form videos offer unique advantages and come with their set of challenges. Join me as I uncover the benefits and limitations of each video format to help you make informed marketing decisions.

What are Short-Form Videos?

Short videos typically range from 30 seconds to less than 10 minutes long. They are popular on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.

Short-form videos deliver brief yet engaging messages that quickly capture the viewer’s attention. Here are some popular types of short-form video content.

• TikTok Challenges
• Instagram Reels
• Snapchat Stories
• YouTube Shorts
• Twitter Video Ads

Benefits of Short-Form Videos

A previously cited report shows that 39% of marketers find short-form videos, ranging from 30-60 seconds long, more successful. The same study reports that 44% of customers prefer watching a short video to learn about a brand’s offerings.

So, it is evident that short-form videos have their benefits. Let’s take a closer look at some of them.

Attention-Grabbing 

Short-form videos capture attention quickly, making them ideal for the fast-scrolling nature of social media platforms. Your audience is more likely to watch them in their entirety compared to longer content.

Cost-Effective Production 

Creating short-form videos requires less time and resources compared to longer videos. As a small business owner with a limited budget, using short-form videos can be cost-effective. 

Increased Engagement

Short-form videos engage viewers due to their crisp and concise nature. This results in more likes, comments, and shares that boost your content’s visibility and increase brand awareness. 

Integrating short-form videos into your influencer marketing campaigns can further amplify your reach to new and diverse audiences. 

Highly Shareable

Short videos are highly shareable. This makes it more likely for your viewers to share them, increasing their virality. 

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There are multiple benefits of adding video to your website including increased engagement, improved SEO, and enhanced user experience.

Limitations of Short-Form Videos

While short-form videos offer many advantages in content marketing, they also present some challenges.

Limited Message Depth

Due to their brief duration, short-form videos may struggle to convey complex or detailed messages. Longer videos might be more suitable if you need to communicate intricate information.

Competition for Attention

Standing out on platforms flooded with short-form video content can be challenging. You must create content that stands out to avoid becoming lost in the sea of other videos.

Shorter Lifespan 

Short videos may lose their relevance with time. They can quickly get buried in users’ feeds, leading to a shorter visibility and engagement period than longer, evergreen content. 

This means you must consistently create short-form videos to maintain audience interest over time.

Limited SEO Impact

Short-form videos may be more challenging to optimize for search engines than longer, more keyword-rich content. This can affect the discoverability of your content outside the social media scene.

What are Long-Form Videos?

Long-form videos are typically longer, ranging from a few minutes to several hours. They extend beyond a few minutes to several hours, providing ample time for in-depth topic exploration and detailed content. 

These videos are particularly suitable for educational content, product demonstrations, and narrative-driven storytelling. Long-form videos are common on platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. Common types of long-form video content include:

• YouTube Series
• Webinars
• Educational Tutorials and Courses:
• Behind-the-Scenes Content 
• Interviews and Conversations

Advantages of Long-Form Videos

Long-form video content is the fastest-growing segment, with videos above 30 minutes experiencing tremendous growth over the years. Let’s explore some of the benefits behind this growth.

Establishes Expertise and Credibility

Long-form videos allow you to provide in-depth information about various subjects, establishing your brand as an authority. Potential customers will likely trust and rely on your insights when you consistently deliver valuable content.

Builds Strong Audience Connections 

The more your audience watches your videos, the more they become familiar with your content and brand. This consistent engagement promotes trust and loyalty, helping you create deeper connections with your audience.

Provide SEO Optimization Opportunities

Long-form videos keep your audience engaged for a longer duration than short ones. This signals search engines that your content provides value, resulting in higher rankings and increased visibility. 

Besides, these videos provide opportunities to optimize for relevant keywords. This Attrock guide offers more insights into the value of SEO for your small business. 

They Are Sustainable

Unlike short videos, well-produced and valuable long-form videos have an extended shelf life. They can continue to attract views and engagement over an extended period, contributing to a sustainable content strategy.

Instagram reels are also a part of short videos and you can get benefits from this platform by integrating it with your website. You can learn how to embed Instagram Reels on websites and get extra benefits from your Reels.

Drawbacks of Long-Form Videos

Despite their benefits, long-form videos also have certain limitations, including:

Attention Span Challenges

Between distractions, juggling tasks, and information overload, user attention span quickly diminishes. Viewers may lose interest and disengage from your long video before its conclusion.

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Complex Production Process

Creating high-quality long-form videos requires more resources, including time, equipment, and skilled personnel. This can be disadvantageous, especially for small businesses with limited budgets.

Platform Limitations

Some social media platforms and video hosting sites may limit video length, making it challenging to distribute long-form video content. You may then be forced to repurpose your content to suit various platforms. 

Short-Form or Long-Form Videos: Which Are Better?

Now that you know the benefits and limitations of each format, which one should you choose? Short-form or long-form videos?

Well, it all boils down to considering several factors, such as: 

Content Objectives

What do you want to achieve from your video marketing campaign? Short-form videos are highly effective for quick brand exposure and generating buzz. Long-form videos, on the other hand, contribute to a more in-depth understanding of the brand.

Target Audience Preferences

Audiences with short attention spans likely prefer short-form videos, while long-form videos appeal to those seeking a more immersive experience.

Similarly, short-form videos may appeal more to younger audiences, while older demographics may prefer the depth of long-form content.

Platform Dynamics

Various platforms support different content formats. Short-form videos are well-suited for platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. On the other hand, platforms like YouTube and Vimeo are better for hosting longer videos.

Industry Type

Short-form videos would be ideal if your industry thrives on trends, entertainment, and quick messages. However, long-form videos are effective for industries requiring in-depth explanations or educational content.

Bottom Line 

Ultimately, choosing short-form or long-form videos depends on your business’s specific needs and goals. Since both formats have advantages and limitations, making a choice may prove difficult. 

However, it doesn’t have to be an uphill task. The key lies in recognizing when to incorporate each video format into your marketing strategy. Understanding your audience and its needs allows you to combine both formats strategically, maximizing the benefits of each. 

Continuously analyze performance metrics and adapt your video marketing strategy accordingly to ensure optimal engagement and conversion rates.

The post Navigating the Video Marketing Maze: Short-Form vs. Long-Form appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

You ask the head of marketing how the team is doing and get a giant thumbs up.

“Our MQLs are up!”

“Website conversion rates are at an all-time high!”

“Email click rates have never been this good!”

But when you ask the head of sales the same question, you get the response that echoes across sales desks worldwide — the leads from marketing suck. 

If you’re in this boat, you’re not alone. The issue of “leads from marketing suck” is a common situation in most organizations. In a HubSpot survey, only 9.1% of salespeople said leads they received from marketing were of very high quality.

Why do sales teams hate marketing-generated leads? And how can marketers help their sales peers fall in love with their leads? 

Let’s dive into the answers to these questions. Then, I’ll give you my secret lead gen kung-fu to ensure your sales team loves their marketing leads. 

Marketers Must Take Ownership

“I’ve hit the lead goal. If sales can’t close them, it’s their problem.”

How many times have you heard one of your marketers say something like this? When your teams are heavily siloed, it’s not hard to see how they get to this mindset — after all, if your marketing metrics look strong, they’ve done their part, right?

Not necessarily. 

The job of a marketer is not to drive traffic or even leads. The job of the marketer is to create messaging and offers that lead to revenue. Marketing is not a 100-meter sprint — it’s a relay race. The marketing team runs the first leg and hands the baton to sales to sprint to the finish.

via GIPHY

To make leads valuable beyond the vanity metric of watching your MQLs tick up, you need to segment and nurture them. Screen the leads to see if they meet the parameters of your ideal customer profile. If yes, nurture them to find out how close their intent is to a sale. Only then should you pass the leads to sales. 

Lead Quality Control is a Bitter Pill that Works

Tighter quality control might reduce your overall MQLs. Still, it will ensure only the relevant leads go to sales, which is a win for your team and your organization.

This shift will require a mindset shift for your marketing team: instead of living and dying by the sheer number of MQLs, you need to create a collaborative culture between sales and marketing. Reinforce that “strong” marketing metrics that result in poor leads going to sales aren’t really strong at all.  

When you foster this culture of collaboration and accountability, it will be easier for the marketing team to receive feedback from sales about lead quality without getting defensive. 

Remember, the sales team is only holding marketing accountable so the entire organization can achieve the right results. It’s not sales vs marketing — it’s sales and marketing working together to get a great result. Nothing more, nothing less. 

We’ve identified the problem and where we need to go. So, how you do you get there?

Fix #1: Focus On High ROI Marketing Activities First

What is more valuable to you:

• One more blog post for a few more views? 
• One great review that prospective buyers strongly relate to?

Hopefully, you’ll choose the latter. After all, talking to customers and getting a solid testimonial can help your sales team close leads today.  Current customers talking about their previous issues, the other solutions they tried, why they chose you, and the results you helped them achieve is marketing gold.

On the other hand, even the best blog content will take months to gain enough traction to impact your revenue.

Still, many marketers who say they want to prioritize customer reviews focus all their efforts on blog content and other “top of the funnel” (Awareness, Acquisition, and Activation) efforts. 

The bottom half of the growth marketing funnel (Retention, Reputation, and Revenue) often gets ignored, even though it’s where you’ll find some of the highest ROI activities.

Most marketers know retaining a customer is easier than acquiring a new one. But knowing this and working with sales on retention and account expansion are two different things. 

When you start focusing on retention, upselling, and expansion, your entire organization will feel it, from sales to customer success. These happier customers will increase your average account value and drive awareness through strong word of mouth, giving you one heck of a win/win.

Winning the Retention, Reputation, and Referral game also helps feed your Awareness, Acquisition, and Activation activities:

• Increasing customer retention means more dollars stay within your organization to help achieve revenue goals and fund lead gen initiatives.
• A fully functioning referral system lowers your customer acquisition cost (CAC) because these leads are already warm coming in the door.
• Case studies and reviews are powerful marketing assets for lead gen and nurture activities as they demonstrate how you’ve solved identical issues for other companies.

Remember that the bottom half of your marketing and sales funnel is just as important as the top half. After all, there’s no point pouring leads into a leaky funnel. Instead, you want to build a frictionless, powerful growth engine that brings in the right leads, nurtures them into customers, and then delights those customers to the point that they can’t help but rave about you.

So, build a strong foundation and start from the bottom up. You’ll find a better return on your investment. 

Fix #2: Join Sales Calls to Better Understand Your Target Audience

You can’t market well what you don’t know how to sell.

Your sales team speaks directly to customers, understands their pain points, and knows the language they use to talk about those pains. Your marketing team needs this information to craft the perfect marketing messaging your target audience will identify with.

When marketers join sales calls or speak to existing customers, they get firsthand introductions to these pain points. Often, marketers realize that customers’ pain points and reservations are very different from those they address in their messaging. 

Once you understand your ideal customers’ objections, anxieties, and pressing questions, you can create content and messaging to remove some of these reservations before the sales call. This effort removes a barrier for your sales team, resulting in more SQLs.

Fix #3: Create Collateral That Closes Deals

One-pagers, landing pages, PDFs, decks — sales collateral could be anything that helps increase the chance of closing a deal. Let me share an example from Lean Labs. 

Our webinar page has a CTA form that allows visitors to talk to our team. Instead of a simple “get in touch” form, we created a drop-down segmentation based on the user’s challenge and need. This step helps the reader feel seen, gives them hope that they’ll receive real value from the interaction, and provides unique content to users based on their selection.

So, if they select I need help with crushing it on HubSpot, they’ll get a landing page with HubSpot-specific content (including a video) and a meeting scheduler. 

Speaking directly to your audience’s needs and pain points through these steps dramatically increases the chances of them booking a call. Why? Because instead of trusting that a generic “expert” will be able to help them with their highly specific problem, they can see through our content and our form design that Lean Labs can solve their most pressing pain point. 

Fix #4: Focus On Reviews and Create an Impact Loop

A lot of people think good marketing is expensive. You know what’s even more expensive? Bad marketing. 

To get the best ROI on your marketing efforts, you need to create a marketing machine that pays for itself. When you create this machine, you need to think about two loops: the growth loop and the impact loop.

• Growth loop — Awareness Acquisition Activation Revenue Awareness: This is where most marketers start. 
• Impact loop — Results Reviews Retention Referrals Results: This is where great marketers start. 

Most marketers start with their growth loop and then hope that traction feeds into their impact loop. However, the reality is that starting with your impact loop is going to be far more likely to set your marketing engine up for success. 

Let me share a client story to show you what this looks like in real life.

Client Story: 4X Website Leads In A Single Quarter

We partnered with a health tech startup looking to grow their website leads. One way to grow website leads is to boost organic traffic, of course, but any organic play is going to take time. If you’re playing the SEO game alone, quadrupling conversions can take up to a year or longer.

But we did it in a single quarter. Here’s how.

We realized that the startup’s demos were converting lower than industry standards. A little more digging showed us why: our client was new enough to the market that the average person didn’t trust them enough yet to want to invest in checking out a demo. So, what did we do?

We prioritized the last part of the funnel: reputation.

We ran a 5-star reputation campaign to collect reviews. Once we had the reviews we needed, we showcased them at critical parts of the website and then made sure those same reviews were posted and shown on other third-party review platforms. 

Remember that reputation plays are vital, and they’re one of the plays startups often neglect at best and ignore at worst. What others say about your business is ten times more important than what you say about yourself. 

By providing customer validation at critical points in the buyer journey, we were able to 4X the website leads in a single quarter!

So, when you talk to customers, always look for opportunities to drive review/referral conversations and use them in marketing collateral throughout the buyer journey. 

Fix #5: Launch Phantom Offers for Higher Quality Leads 

You may be reading this post thinking, okay, my lead magnets and offers might be way off the mark, but how will I get the budget to create a new one that might not even work?

It’s an age-old issue: marketing teams invest way too much time and resources into creating lead magnets that fail to generate quality leads. 

One way to improve your chances of success, remain nimble, and stay aligned with your audience without breaking the bank is to create phantom offers, i.e., gauge the audience interest in your lead magnet before you create them.

For example, if you want to create a “World Security Report” for Chief Security Officers, don’t do all the research and complete the report as Step One. Instead, tease the offer to your audience before you spend time making it. Put an offer on your site asking visitors to join the waitlist for this report. Then wait and see how that phantom offer converts. 

This is precisely what we did for a report by Allied Universal that ended up generating 80 conversions before its release.

The best thing about a phantom offer is that it’s a win/win scenario: 

• Best case: You get conversions even before you create your lead magnet.
• Worst case: You save resources by not creating a lead magnet no one wants.  

Remember, You’re On The Same Team 

We’ve talked a lot about the reasons your marketing leads might suck. However, remember that it’s not all on marketers, either. At the end of the day, marketing and sales professionals are on the same team. They are not in competition with each other. They are allies working together toward a common goal. 

Smaller companies — or anyone under $10M in net new revenue — shouldn’t even separate sales and marketing into different departments. These teams need to be so in sync with one another that your best bet is to align them into a single growth team, one cohesive front with a single goal: profitable customer acquisition.

Interested in learning more about the growth marketing mindset? Check out the Lean Labs Growth Playbook that’s helped 25+ B2B SaaS marketing teams plan, budget, and accelerate growth.

The post Why The Sales Team Hates Your Leads (And How To Fix It) appeared first on DigitalMarketer.