Published on: 25 January 2019
Last Updated on: 05 July 2021
CRM software (or customer relationship management software) refers to technology that companies use to manage and analyze customer data and interactions. By using CRM software, companies hope to improve customer relationships, increase sales, and increase customer retention.
If you’re starting a new business or have an established company and want to see your sales increase (and who doesn’t?) then integrating a CRM software might be just the ticket.
The perfect sales tool
The value of CRM software can often be misinterpreted. Often, employees may perceive the adoption of CRM software as a way to police their activities as opposed to an invaluable piece of software that will help them meet their sales quotas. CRM software will allow your team to consolidate all customer data into one easy-to-access and read section. From contact information to communication history, everything is one easy location. This makes serving customers easier and faster.
How will automated CRM software help my business grow?
New technology means new ways to promote further and grow your business, and automated CRM software is no exception to the rule. An automated customer relationship management system is all about making it easier to manage customer interactions. By doing this, you will notice that you will be saving tons of time on collecting information since all that will already be stored within the CRM platform.
When you’re dealing with customers and attempting to make a sale, the last thing you want to do is a waste of time. If you’re forced to exchange information between sales reps and scramble to find information, your customers (either current or prospective) are likely to get frustrated. Using CRM software streamlines your connection to your customers by making sure that every authorized user within the company has access to the same information, all in one place and all at the same time. Knowing other people have access also helps encourage more active input by employees about any new conversations or interactions with a customer.
Automated CRM software can help automate some of the more tedious tasks, like adding form submissions to lead lists. This will free up your employees for more hands-on tasks.
Integrations with automated CRM software
While automated CRM software can do things like automatically record and store email, phone interactions and even social media interactions, the automation possibilities don’t stop there. If you automate your sales with Spiro’s CRM, you will get the benefit of the program guiding your sales team through the sales process, offering suggestions for further actions, like creating contacts or reminders and automatically highlight inconsistencies in the pipeline. This will mean less wasted more, more successful sales, and more accurate reports.
SalesForce Automation
You can further expand the functionality of your CRM software with SFA tools. When SFA tools are integrated with a CRM platform, they can help make it easier to navigate the sales process and offer improvements. SFA will help track every interaction with a customer, which helps make sure that your marketing efforts are optimized for the best possible results. This will help streamline sales operations by allowing SFA tools to monitor the entire sales funnel.
Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.
Marketing is an essential part of business growth because people will buy your service only when they know about your existence. And people will know about you only when you promote your business on various platforms where they are looking for your product or services. Therefore, marketing tools play an essential role in spreading brand awareness.
Digitization has provided an equal platform for every large and small business; all you need is the right knowledge and skills to use marketing tools to grow your business.
What are Marketing Tools?
Marketing tools are techniques, strategies, and materials used by marketing specialists of brands to create, enhance, and promote their products and services in order to expand their visibility. They are used for market research, generating leads, data analysis, content creation, SEO, and other categories of marketing.
To increase productivity and make marketing time cost-efficient, there are various marketing tools in the form of software that helps you with various activities related to marketing.
Here We Have Listed Ten Must-Have Marketing Tools:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools
HubSpot CRM
Zendesk
Social Media Tools
Buzzsumo
Buffer
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
SEMrush
Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension
Content Creation and Design Tools
Canva
Adobe Spark
Lead Generation Tools
Unbounce
Instapage
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools
These tools let you interact with your customers through data analysis of gathered information. They compile data from various communication channels such as the company's websites, calls, emails, live chats, and other marketing materials posted on social media platforms. The data analysis helps a business know about customer behavior, their needs, and demands to provide them better services, which is an integral part of growing a business as they help to form business growth strategies to retain customers and drive sales.
1. HubSpot CRM: being free, every small business can have access to this incredible free tool. The tool saves a lot of time for the sales team as it gives you complete visibility of your entire sales pipeline on a clean and visual dashboard. It lets you connect to the prospects through free meeting scheduling, live chat, email templates, click-to-call functionality, and more.
2. Zendesk: it is an easy-to-love sales tool that will boost the productivity of your sales team, make data-driven decisions, and deliver enhanced customer experiences. Additionally, you can build and manage a pipeline that aligns with your business.
Social Media Tools:
social media helps to expand enormously, as most of the world's population is an active member of at least one social media platform where you can connect to them on a personal level. Therefore, it is highly important to manage what you post and how your followers respond to your content. Social media tools help you schedule your posts and get the right analytics from the posts, even from the channels where it can be hard to get the information.
3. Buzzsumo: The tool explores premium content that can help you get more likes, links, and shares. It analyses a vast amount of data to enhance your social media marketing strategies. Moreover, it helps you find influencers who can be an asset to your campaign. Another most important feature of the tool is that it tracks comments and trends to make a real-time connection with your audience.
4. Buffer: it is one of the most affordable and intuitive tools to manage your social media activity. It analyzes the data, helps your plan and schedule your posts, filters out important comments, and responds quickly to them. Additionally, it lets you track down your activity and analyze your progress to make better strategies.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
SEO is an integral part of digital marketing, as only an optimized website of content is visible on the search engines such as Google, which are the primary gateways for customers to enter a conversation with your brand. Therefore, you need SEO tools to manage and plan various SEO-related tasks such as keyword research, content optimization, or checking your current page ranking.
5. SEMrush: It is an award-winning tool used worldwide as a single platform to do SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC, and social media marketing. Specifically for SEO, it uncovers millions of local, and national keywords, analyzes any domain's backlinking profile, tracks your SERP position on a daily basis, and runs technical SEO audits.
6. Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension: this add-on browser is easy to install and is compatible with both Chrome and Firefox. The extension shows monthly search volume, CPC, and competition data of keywords on multiple websites. Therefore, it will save you time that you can utilize to strengthen your business growth strategies.
Content Creation and Design Tools:
Content such as social images, logos, blog posts, or eBooks is the most influential way to attract people's attention to your brand. And there are many tools to create them.
7. Canva: the tool lets you create professional designs with premium features such as brand kit and background remover. It lets you can plan, create, and edit the content on your own or with your team. Additionally, the Built-in comments feature helps you communicate, work, and resolve suggestions in real-time. Therefore, with Canva, you can create world-class designs and share them with the world in just a few clicks.
8. Adobe Spark: it is a collection of three web/mobile apps, namely Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video, to allow the creation of social graphics, flyers, logos webpages, videos in various themes, and other types of content in no time. It has thousands of templates that any beginner can use to create effective content.
Lead Generation Tools:
To expand your business, you need to generate leads, and it is the most challenging part of marketing. Lead generation tools will help you make the lead generation process easy and simple as their automated features increase the process of conversion.
9. Unbounce: with this tool, you can launch overlays on top of any web page that has a call-to-action feature. You can customize the triggers and targeting rules to choose who sees the offers and when. This feature helps to make your brand reach the relevant audience whose chances of conversion are maximum. Additionally, you can personalize your overlays by making your copy adaptable to what your audience searches for.
10. Instapage: the tool lets you create and optimize relevantly, on-brand, mobile-responsive post-click landing pages and experiences without the help of a developer. It helps to increase visitor engagement and conversion with unique landing page experiences for every ad and targeted audience.
The main motive behind using these tools is to enhance the productivity of your sales department. You can make the best use of these marketing tools by hiring an expert who knows them in and out to save your time by focusing on your product and services and letting them do the rest of the job.
The best part about these marketing tools is that they are affordable, and some of them even offer free trials and templates. So, even if you are short on funds, you can still make use of these marketing tools to grow your small business.
Author Bio:
Joe Martin is a long-time contributor in the tech industry as a leader at Adobe, CMO of CloudApp, and SVP at Scorpion. With his business and marketing degress from Utah and Stanford and his work in tsech he brings a unique balance of strategy and execution to help businesses large and small grow.
Building a successful business on Amazon requires a decent amount of virtual footfall to your online store. This means generating traffic is one of the biggest priorities for Amazon sellers. But the thought of all the different tactics you can use and implementing them in the right way can feel incredibly overwhelming.
We’ve compiled a guide to getting more traffic to your Amazon listings to help you out.
First Things First… Know Where You Stand
Before you go ahead and implement the different traffic generation tactics out there, it’s important to know where you stand amongst your competitors and in the overall landscape of your industry.
There are three things you should do first to set you up for the best success. Do these, and you’ll have a better understanding of what you need to do to stand out to potential buyers and a keen knowledge of the keywords they use to search for products like yours.
a) Competitor Analysis:
Looking into what your biggest competitors are doing helps you understand where your brand fits in. You can also glean some inspiration for traffic generation techniques that have been working for them.
Start by looking into the keywords they’re using on products similar to yours and the words they’re using to describe their products. Your competitors likely have products that show up top on Amazon search results, so following their lead will ensure your products get the same recognition.
Start by typing your product into the search bar and exploring the first few results that show up. What keywords do they use? How are they describing the products? Do you notice anything different or better about their listings compared to yours?
b) Category Analysis:
Category analysis works as a follow on from competitor analysis. It lets you uncover the keywords that are used to describe products like yours. Not only will this give you some ideas for your own listings, but it will help you figure out what makes the popular listings in your industry so successful.
If you sell red dresses, for example, type “red dresses” into the Amazon search bar and take a look through the top results. Compare the differences between these listings and yours and identify any particular wording or phrases that crop up often.
c) Keyword Analysis:
After running competitor and category analysis, you’ll have a deeper understanding of the words your customers are using to search for products like yours. Use a keyword tool to find other relevant words and phrases to use and sprinkle them throughout your product listings, like in your product titles, descriptions, and image captions.
You can also use Amazon’s search bar suggestion to find commonly searched for phrases relating to your products.
Easy Ways to Increase the Traffic to Your Amazon Listings
After analyzing your competitors, product categories, and keywords, it’s time to focus on actually getting traffic to your site. Here are the most effective tactics our clients at Urtasker have used to increase their traffic.
1. Amazon SEO
SEO isn’t just a Google thing. After all, Amazon is also a huge search engine. Thus, optimizing your listings will help them show up higher in the results.
Amazon rankings consider several factors. These include keywords, how well you products sell, the number of reviews you have, and the quality of the content you have on your listings.
To optimize your listings, start by:
Incorporating keywords into your product titles and descriptions
Showcasing high-quality images on your listings
Writing clear and concise product descriptions
2. Create High-Quality Content
Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate traffic to Amazon. Like writing blog posts, creating downloadable, and recording videos and other kinds of content to share with your audience.
Start by creating content that ties into your products. For example, if you sell teapots, why not create a blog post about different tea recipes for “mocktails”?
Post this content on your website or blog to attract people from different channels. You’ll attract visitors from Google and social media who might be looking for tea mocktails to make, and your posts will then direct them to your store.
3. Leverage Reviews
Reviews are one of the number one ranking factors on Amazon. The more positive reviews your products have, the more likely they are to rank high in search results.
Reviews are great for two reasons:
They help you understand what potential buyers actually want from you - simply scour your reviews for words and phrases they use that you can incorporate into your listings
They will push your products up higher than competitors with less reviews
Encourage past buyers to leave reviews by sending out a follow-up email, asking them on social media, or using built-in Amazon features like the Review Request tool.
4. Make Use of Amazon’s Enhanced Brand Content and A+ Pages
Amazon helps its sellers out by providing a few powerful content features. Enhanced Branded Content lets stores show off their products by adding special content features to their listings. Rather than the usual listing layout, you can brand your product pages and include high-quality images to create a story around your products.
This is what a standard product listing looks like:
And this is what a product listing using Amazon’s Enhanced Brand Content Looks like:
As well as Enhanced Branded Content, Amazon also offers A+ pages which similarly offer sellers the chance to create a story around their products using images, infographics, and other visuals.
Here’s an example of an A+ Page in action:
5. Run Amazon PPC Ads
Amazon has a range of different ads you can run onsite to ensure your products show up in the right searches (and, therefore, generate more traffic).
Sponsored Product Ads show your products above the search results so they’re the first thing shoppers see when they make a search. There are also Headline Ads that allow you to create an eye-catching banner that goes at the top of search pages.
Here is an example of a Sponsored Product ad in the search results:
To ensure your ads perform at their best, use the right keywords from your analysis, laser-focus the audience you want to target, and set a healthy budget. Be sure to measure and tweak your ads so your results continue to improve.
6. Run Lightning Deals and Promote Your Products on Deal Sites
Lightning Deals are a feature that allows sellers to promote a limited number of discounts on a product of their choice during a certain timeframe. This attracts customers who might otherwise not have seen your products.
Running promotions like this makes it easier to drive traffic to your products, especially if you want to create a sense of urgency in your listings.
As well as Lightning Deals, there are a host of Amazon deal sites that users can sign up for to get products at a discounted rate in exchange for a review.
This will expose your product to a wider audience of potential buyers who might have missed it otherwise, and it will provide you with the reviews you need to start bumping your products up the search results.
7. Create Social Media Ad Campaigns
Amazon has plenty of onsite ad options to keep you busy, but you can also run ads outside of the platform to drive people to your product listings who aren’t already on the site.
Create campaigns with highly targeted audiences on Facebook, Instagram, and Google, making sure you implement the most popular keywords related to your products.
8. Social Media Marketing Without Ads
If you’re not ready to splash out on social media ads or want to add another spoke to your social media marketing wheel, you can run organic social media campaigns.
Promoting your products on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn helps you reach new audiences and increases visibility on your products.
It helps to create a social media posting schedule to ensure you stay consistent with your posts. We recommend choosing just one or two platforms to focus on to start with, so you don’t get overwhelmed and spread yourself too thin.
From there, you’ll be able to see which platforms resonate best with your buyers and where your products seem the best success.
9. Carry Out Email Marketing
If you want to generate traffic and build deeper connections with your customers so they keep coming back, email marketing is the most effective solution.
With access to buyers’ inboxes, you can share exclusive discounts, launch news, and updates from your brand to keep your products fresh in their minds.
What’s more, you can regularly send links to products you think they’d enjoy, boosting your traffic and product visibility.
10. Upsell On Your Best-Sellers
Your product listings are the perfect place to promote your other products. It’s likely that a couple of your products are more popular than the others, and you can use their popularity to guide shoppers to your lesser-known products.
This increases traffic across all your products and gives you a chance to upsell, which means higher AOV and higher LTV.
11. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliates promote your product in exchange for a percentage of every sale they make through their personal link. This benefits both you and your affiliates, which makes it an excellent way to generate traffic.
Identify key players in your industry who have an audience suited to your products and partner up with them. Provide them with a unique link they can share with their followers and attribute every sale they make to them.
This will help you reach audiences you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to reach and increase your visibility across multiple different segments.
Ask your top affiliates publishers to analyze their Amazon Associates affiliate commission data. And then optimize their website’s content based on their review. They can do this by integrating their Amazon Associates data with We Can Track into Google Analytics and Google Ads.
12. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing involves teaming up with top social accounts in your industry and encouraging them to share your products with their pre-built audiences in exchange for payment or another incentive.
Identify who the top accounts are in your niche or accounts that have an audience you’d like to connect with and reach out to them with a proposal.
Work on building influencer relationships, as these people already have audiences that trust everything they say. As a result, trust is automatically transferred to any product recommendations they make.
Influencers tend to have large followings too, which means you can put your products in front of more people and generate more traffic.
Traffic is Everything!
To get more sales, you need more traffic. You can’t put the horse before the cart.
However, with these easy tips, you can start implementing traffic generation techniques today to increase the visibility of your products and, ultimately, get more sales.
Read Also:
Beginners Guide: How You Can Grow Your Biz With Amazon
Choosing a Quality Prep Center For Your FBA Business
Methods of Optimizing Local SEO That Is Essential For Small Business
Online Marketing: Selling Your Product And Services
Utilizing the Dropshipping Model for Your Ecommerce Business
HVAC repair is one of those services every homeowner or property manager needs at one time or another. So why aren't you getting as much business as you want?
In many parts of the country, HVAC repair is a highly competitive business. In fact, 70% of new HVAC businesses fail in their first year. Our intention isn’t to scare you but to help you recognize the importance of a strong marketing plan and help to know about the HVAC estimating software working procedure.
If you're looking for new ways to market your HVAC business, the methods below have proven to be successful time and time again.
Best Ways to Market Your HVAC Business :
There are plenty of marketing ideas online, but how do you know which ones will actually work? Here are a few of the most important and reliable methods:
A Great Website :
We truly can't emphasize this one enough. With smartphones in nearly everyone's hands, the first thing a consumer does today when they hear about a company is search online.
A professional-looking website is no longer just a helpful addition. If you don't have one, customers get suspicious. They start wondering if you're a legitimate company or if this is just a side business that you aren't knowledgeable about.
There are sites online that will help you create your own website, even if you have no web design experience. You could also choose to hire a professional designer for a more customized and high-end look.
If you're looking for examples of strong HVAC websites, look at the site for Hays Cooling and Heating. They have a professional look and they give customers everything they need to decide that this is the right company for them.
Content Marketing :
Let's stick to the online sector and talk about content marketing. Content marketing is the strategy of making your site an informative resource for customers, rather than one giant sales pitch.
Content marketing will factor into your initial web design as well as your continuous updates. If you update your site frequently, you'll show up closer to the top of the list of results when someone searches for an HVAC company on Google or other search engines. The best way to do this is with a blog you update regularly.
Keeping with the content marketing strategy, your blogs should be helpful and informative. Base them around real questions people are searching for. These blogs are also great to share on your social media profiles, so they further enhance your online presence.
Networking with Other Contractors :
Unfortunately, you're in an industry that is plagued by mistrust. In HVAC as well as many other types of home repair, there are some businesses and contractors who don't do their job well while taking money from customers unjustly.
This means most homeowners and property managers are slow to trust their contractors. When they find one they trust, they tend to ask them for recommendations for other specialties as well.
Develop relationships with plumbers, home builders, cement layers, and other construction-based specialties. We're not talking about a formal arrangement. Just make sure they know who you are and what you do good work. If one of their clients is looking for HVAC services in the future, those contractors are more likely to refer them to you.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising :
We all know how pervasive Google is as a search engine. When it comes to digital marketing, one of your primary goals is showing up higher on Google's search results. So why not go directly to the source?
Paid ads through Google will put you at the top of one of the first pages when customers Google a relevant search term. You can also set any budget you're comfortable with, so nearly any business can afford some level of paid search engine marketing (SEM).
Referral Codes :
Remember that discussion about how slow customers are to trust contractors and home repair companies? This makes customer referrals another powerful marketing tool.
You don't have direct control over whether a happy customer refers you, but you can give them an incentive. Rather than posting general coupon codes online to drive business, give referral codes to past customers. If a new customer hires you with a previous customer's discount code, the new customer gets a discount and the previous customer gets credit toward future services.
Exhibit at Local Home Expos :
Many cities and regions have occasional home expos. These are shows where homeowners can learn about all the latest updates on the services they may need, while also meeting their local service providers.
Not everyone likes to socialize and sell themselves, but these expos are vital opportunities. You have an audience full of people who are potential customers, so be sure to get involved.
Signage on Your Van/Truck :
Half the battle with marketing is simply getting your name out there. The more a customer sees your name, the more they'll see you as a legitimate, trustworthy company.
One cost-effective way to spread the word is by using the space on the side of your van or truck.
This actually serves two purposes. First, it gives you more visibility. Second, it gives you a more professional image. If you pull up to a customer's home in a branded van with a name you're trying to stand behind, as opposed to a beat-up anonymous truck, it adds a layer of credibility.
Building Your Online Reputation :
Here we are, back at trust again. Online reviews are one of the most important ways to get new business (or avoid losing new business).
Looking up online reviews is common practice for consumers today, especially if they're making a large purchase like an HVAC repair. Build your online reputation on Google, Yelp, Angie's List, and more by encouraging happy customers to post reviews.
Setting Up Your HVAC Business for Success :
An HVAC business isn't always an easy one to start, and it takes dedication and planning to make it work. But with the tips above, you can build up your business and secure a future for your company.
For more help starting or growing your business, check out our business tips blog.
Read Also :
Know Why Content Marketing Is Important For SEO
4 Points To Consider When Creating A Great Content Marketing Strategy Today
How To Deal With Debt By Doing Business Marketing Smartly?
