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 “Because the purpose of business is to create a
customer, the business enterprise has two—and only
two—basic functions: marketing and innovation.
Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest
are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique
function of the business.”
Peter Drucker
Management Consultant
ABOUT SCOTT

Scott’s entrepreneurial experience stretches across a variety of companies

and industries. He co-founded the largest college daily deal site,
CampusDibs, grew FoundersCard, a Membership community for
entrepreneurs, from its infancy to millions of dollars in annual revenues,
and now leads growth at the largest recruiting and talent crowdsourcing
company in the United States. He also invests and consults through his
firm, The Pony Group, based between Austin, TX and New York, NY.
When not working, you can usually find him on the hockey rink, on the golf
course, traveling or exploring the restaurants of New York.
Table of contents

Introduction
Chapter 1:

Building Your Marketing Strategy

Chapter 2:

How to Build a Marketing Funnel

Chapter 3:

How To Get Started With Content Marketing

Chapter 4:

Top Five Things to Include in Your SEO Checklist

Chapter 5:

Building Your Social Media Strategy from the Ground Up

Chapter 6:

Building An Email Marketing Strategy

Chapter 7:

Paid Web Marketing

Chapter 8:

How To Make Your First Direct Mail Campaign Successful

Chapter 9:
 Three Tools To Help You Run Your First Direct Mail
Campaign
Chapter 10:

How To Get Press As A Startup And The Tools To Help

IN TRODUCTION

I didn’t set out to write a marketing book, much like I didn’t originally set
out to be an entrepreneur. I went to college to become a ceramics major,
then when the reality of making coffee mugs the rest of my life set in,
I made my first pivot. While on a three-month expedition in Alaska,
I decided I wanted to become a photojournalist and shifted all of my
coursework after two years of college to Journalism.
The dreams of working for National Geographic were becoming more of
a reality when I got a job fresh out of college leading photography programs
across Southeast Asia in places like Burma, Cambodia, and India. My
performance as a summer employee led to a full-time job that included
building out our massive 300+ page glossy catalog published at the same
printer that National Geographic used. I learned about marketing in this job,
and as Facebook and Google advertising was in its infancy, I learned how to
create ads, run campaigns, and make them convert. The CEO was originally
opposed, but the initial $100 I had to run the campaign turned into
thousands of dollars of new trip sales.
That was my second pivot, which would take me down the path of business
and entrepreneurship. I eventually left my photojournalism and war
photography dreams behind me, along with that role as a Director of
a travel company. I took the leap and co-founded CampusDibs, which
would grow to be the largest daily deal site in the country with a presence
across over 300 colleges and universities.
My next endeavor as one of the company’s first employees took that
company from its infancy to nearly 25,000 members paying hundreds of
dollars per year in dues.
There was a pattern, not only in my ability to build and grow companies
generating millions of dollars in revenue, but also in my ability to make this
happen in different industries. I took time away from working for a single
company to act as a Fractional CMO to multiple early-stage startups and
began investing in others. In the noisy world of marketing, which has seen
more new tools, hacks, and secrets, I realized that most of the companies
starting out were looking for their golden ticket and ignored the
fundamentals of a cohesive marketing strategy.
I found myself being invited to give presentations about the foundations of
marketing for small businesses, startups, and larger companies, which
inspired blog post after blog post. My clients were paying me tens of
thousands of dollars as a consultant to help them build their marketing
strategy and implementation plan. As my client list continued to grow,
I realized that the fundamentals remained consistent across various channels
like paid ads, SEO, email marketing, and social media. There are obviously
industry specific channels, or tweaks to make when it comes to selling to
consumers or selling to businesses, but when you took away the noise, the
foundations remained the same.
Houses and buildings are the same. When you strip things away, you have
similar materials that get put together in different ways, but a house will
need a foundation, floors, walls, windows and a roof, regardless of its size.
As houses and buildings get bigger, there are more complexities, and more
expensive materials that can be used, but a $100 faucet’s functionality
remains the same as a $10,000 faucet, it just might have more features.
Building a business has many parallels and that is why I have laid out my
guide to building a marketing strategy for startup founders and business
owners. As you read through this book, it will guide you through the
fundamentals of your marketing strategy, then the resources and tools to
also build your marketing program, test it, and improve upon it. You can
also find more resources at ThePonyGroup.com
Now, let’s get started down the path of growing your business...
CHAPTER 1:

Building Your Marketing

Strategy

Whether you are a startup or have been in business for many years,
a marketing strategy is essential. Promotion is just as necessary for B2B
(business to business) as it is for B2C (business to consumer) companies
and a strategy needs to be used by companies of all sizes. If you’re
struggling to spread the word about your business or simply want to
streamline your marketing operations, this guide will help you launch a new
product, achieve your goals and layout, make sense of, or re-imagine your
marketing strategy.

Competitive Analysis and

Market Research
The first step in improving your marketing is analyzing your present market
conditions with a Competitive Analysis which is where you identify your
main competitors and their present situation in the market this will help you
identify where you fit and how you can improve your business. An effective
competitive analysis and market research plan helps you understand your
business’ uniqueness. You may then use this information to attract, maintain
and grow your target market. During this process, consider the following
questions:

Is there a space in the market for our product/service?

Which businesses are realistic competitors, and which are reaching
out to a different target market?
What is our present market share and is it possible to improve it?
Which strategies are your competitors presently using?
Which strategies have your competitors used in the past?

One of the simplest ways to conduct a competitive analysis is to draw out

a grid. List your competitor products or services on the left and a list of
main common features along the top. Put a checkmark against each unique
product/service. Identifying key features of their and your products will
help in driving your marketing campaign. Another common type of strategy
planning grid is to use a SWOT analysis, which stands for Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. This allows you to brainstorm and
outline the foundations your strategy will aim to protect or look out for.
Using the four SWOT categories, you can plan not only by looking back
and learning from your previous marketing efforts, but also by identifying
future market changes that could threaten your plans.

Essential Elements of your B2B

Marketing Strategy
Below is a list of essential methods to apply in the course of your marketing
strategy. Not all will apply to your industry or even your business. Some
methods may be out of your budget, so try to use the right affordable
combinations and plan for different stages of growth and what strategies to
implement at certain times.
1. Prospecting For Leads
Prospecting is the first step in lead generation and building your
marketing funnel. This is essentially building a list of potential
customers. This is not an easy process as it’s not always
straightforward to predict, but marketing professionals use prospecting
to improve both quality and quantity of customer leads. The simplest
method is to compile a list and calculate the most to least likely to
become customers.

Inbound Lead Opportunities

Inbound marketing is a natural progression of the web as a business
tool. You are effectively leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to lead
prospects towards your marketing or sales material, website or other
resource. They may take the form of special offers with a call to action,
promotional video content, free downloads or relevant content on
social media.

Outbound Lead Opportunities

This is the opposite of inbound leads. Instead of leading clients
through encouragement, outbound means you’ll contact them directly.
Typically, this involved sales emails, phone calls and other direct
methods of potential customer engagement. It’s time intensive and
some businesses feel it is no longer useful. In its favor, it sometimes
creates a personal touch that some B2B customers prefer.

Lead Generation Opportunities and

Associated Channels
Lead generation is arguably the most important method of customer
outreach, even in a B2B marketing strategy. Here are the most
common channels presently in use.
2. Content and SEO Strategy
Few lead generation methods are more important than web content and
effective SEO(Search Engine Optimization) planning. Build an
audience by providing valuable and relevant content to your audience
that is in line with your brand’s voice. For an effective SEO strategy,
it’s strongly advisable to research the most effective keywords with
websites or apps such as SEMrush, to examine relevant content with
Buzzsumo and harness Adwords. For your marketing strategy, this can
often be a channel that produces great results by positioning your
thought leadership in search results without having to pay for ads, then
result in your content also being referenced for other articles. We will
dive deeper into this channel later in the book.

Social Media
Social media is good for visibility and SEO, and it provides customers
with a choice on how to engage with you; it’s just as relevant for B2B
as B2C. Typically, you should have a Facebook and Twitter page, but
you should also consider LinkedIn, an official YouTube channel,
Vimeo and Instagram too. These latter platforms are visual based and
essential if your product or service is visual in nature like clothing or
graphic design. It is important to use a calendar planning tool to
maintain a consistent flow of content, planning your social media
voice, and also to ensure an understanding of who is responsible for
which aspects of your social media. Marketing may run your social
channels by actively posting, yet sales may have a responsibility for
some aspects from inbound leads, and customer support may step in
for any replies and messages.

Email Marketing
Email marketing typically provides the highest return on investment in
a marketing strategy. Though many businesses no longer prefer
outbound lead marketing, email marketing remains popular and
successful if used right. B2B and B2C organizations use email
 newsletters for similar reasons, as it can keep existing customers up to
date on offers, new products and services, and it’s useful for
understanding business performance.
By using the right message at the right time, you can not only nurture
leads to become possible customers through things like thought
leadership, or entice them with special offers, but you can also build
a rapport so when someone is ready to consider your services, you are
in the right place at the right time. With the data you gather, it’s
possible to compile a profile of a typical customer, and those unlikely
to require your products or services based on click through
information, email open rates and other information an email service
provider like Mailchimp provides in their reporting.

3. Paid Media Spend

Businesses in all industries with a social media presence spent more on
paid media in 2017 than in 2016. This trend continued through 2018
with Instagram reporting exponential growth for business use. Paid
media is targeted advertising through social media that allows you to
direct your advertisements at specific target audiences, acting as
a more intelligent form of outbound lead generation. When considering
channels to include in your marketing strategy, this can be the most
expensive, and sometimes produce slower results for a B2B business,
but when done correctly, it can bear the most fruit when tracked
properly for attribution. For B2C businesses that understand
acquisition costs, this can be a way to quicken traffic and sales.
Not only can you use sites like Facebook or LinkedIn to target new
prospects at the top of the funnel by introducing them to your brand,
but you can also use retargeting to reach people that have visited your
site and haven’t become a customer. Segmentation can even look at
how recently someone has visited your site and provide different
messages depending on where they are in your marketing funnel.
Google AdWords and Bing SEM, or search engine marketing, are
excellent tools to reach a prospect when they are actively searching for
a product or service you provide. Using paid Adwords in Google, you
 can bid and feature your business with an attractive message and reach
people as they research or look for a service that your business can
fulfill. If you haven’t used paid advertising, our guide later in the book
will help you understand and get started.

4. Other Opportunities
Direct mail, brochures, pamphlets, local newspapers, radio, and even
television are still effective methods to use in your B2B marketing
strategy. For some industries, they may even be the best types of
customer outreach. Businesses in some industries even use sites such
as Periscope to broadcast live video, inviting live interaction.
Facebook recently added a live video function; this is quickly
becoming a modern version of the webinar to share thought leadership.
LinkedIn is also currently rolling out their live video. Keeping your
eye out for PR and press opportunities is also a worthwhile endeavor
through both your local relationships, as well as national resources like
Help A Reporter Out. We share more reasons why PR can be your
company’s best friend and the resources later in the book.

Action Item Checklist for your

B2B Marketing Strategy
Now that you have designed your strategy, it’s time to plan how you’re
going to organize your marketing outreach.
Decide on your goal: what do you hope to achieve from your marketing
program. Is it to establish your position in the market, increase profit
margin, or reach out to an untapped demographic?
If possible, break down this goal into an achievable timeline of milestones
and set dates by which you intend to reach those targets.
Use a calendar and plot each target onto it.
Create a list of the methods most likely to be more effective for your type of
business, perhaps divide into three categories of most likely, least likely and
the grey area.
At the end of each target cycle, examine the success or otherwise of each
marketing tactic. Which produced the best results? Which produced the
worst results?

Tools / Technology
You’ll find a range of marketing, organization and planning tools available.
You may have heard of such powerhouses as Salesforce and NetSuite.
These packages are modular, which means you may choose individual
software applications to buy as a Software as a Service (SaaS). There is also
Marketo, a marketing management package that helps high-growth
companies automate many aspects of their marketing strategy.
Then there are the smaller more streamlined packages and tools such as
WhoIsVisiting, a website analytics packaging that delivers data on the
profile of your typical website visitor. This is ideal if you wish to identify
your core market by monitoring your visitors in order to devise a marketing
strategy.
The biggest name in inbound marketing and web content is HubSpot. No
matter the size of your business, it has everything to allow you to automate
your marketing, provides templates, and helps you build personalized tools
for email campaigns. It’s also a great resource for website building,
analytics, and provides regular content to improve your content marketing.

Timeline Guidelines
Having a marketing plan requires targets and deadlines by which to achieve
them. Once you have identified what you want to achieve and how you will
go about achieving it, it’s time to break down the strategy into a series of
small and achievable goals.

It should go without saying, but each deadline within your timeline

should be achievable, but also allow some flexibility should any
problems arise
Keep it simple, easy for everyone to understand and clear on what
you are trying to achieve and by when
Ensure everybody knows what their role is and the target time by
which they need to complete each part of their own tasks
Stay in regular contact with meetings, group emails or online chats
Ensure all team members have access to the right tools, data,
technology and everything else at the right time so they may achieve
their goals
Set a final end date by which all elements will come together to
(hopefully) achieve your goals
CHAPTER 2

How to Build a Marketing

Funnel

“Marketing funnel” is a term for the process through which a lead turns into
a loyal customer. It covers the journey from their first exposure to the brand
or product to their conversion into a customer, and ends with them
becoming fully engaged and loyal to your company and its products. A
funnel is a fitting metaphor for the process of gaining loyal customers: there
are many people who take the first steps, but few who complete the process
to conversion or retention.
In this chapter, we’ll break down the six stages of the marketing funnel,
explaining how they work together and each play a key part in customer
acquisition and retention. When building a marketing strategy, the
marketing funnel must be carefully planned and properly implemented to
ensure you achieve successful results.

Exposure/Awareness: The Top

of the Marketing Funnel
The first stage is creating awareness of the brand to the target audience,
which requires a variety of marketing techniques, which may vary
depending on the industry to which your business belongs. Some of the key
tools to give your brand exposure include online marketing such as SEO,
advertising, content marketing, direct mail, and PR. You can also raise
awareness effectively in person at events such as trade shows, or through
direct marketing campaigns using leaflets or billboards. This stage is also
known as lead generation.

Discovery
Discovery refers to the potential customer’s phase of learning about the
brand, prior to any interaction with it. Examples can include reading the
company website’s ‘About’ page, casually browsing the products in an
online store, or scanning social media accounts such as the brand’s official
Twitter or Facebook page. This is your opportunity to pique their interest. In
order to move this person along to the next part of the funnel, you need
a very strong website and social content. Skills required to achieve this
include copywriting, web design, video editing, and social media
management.

Consideration
This is the crucial stage where the potential customer is deciding whether to
take the plunge and make a purchase, sign up, or whatever action counts as
a conversion according to your company’s goals. Tactics for closing the
deal include special offers, trial periods, automated email campaigns and
case studies. A smart strategy is using digital and social advertising to target
people who have visited your website before as all it might take to go back
is a reminder to finish what they started. This is called ‘retargeting’ or
‘remarketing.

Conversion
Conversion refers to the moment when a potential customer becomes
a customer, completing the action around which you have constructed your
marketing funnels, such as the checkout process for an e-commerce
business, or a SaaS product being selected and purchased. It’s important
that the conversion process is smooth, with no roadblocks such as website
errors or unclear information as you don’t want the user to get lost while
trying to convert into a customer. This stage of the funnel requires user
testing and regular monitoring for bugs or out-of-date information.

Relationship
Some people would see conversion as the end of the marketing funnel, but
if you want to create repeat customers and loyal supporters of your brand,
you need to maintain a strong relationship with them and nurture the
relationship to grow. Popular methods include email marketing and social
media. Make sure there’s an option to subscribe to your mailing list when
making a purchase, and include the company social media links in the
confirmation email. A strong PR campaign will also help to keep your
brand in the minds of customers, even if they haven’t signed up to your
mailing list or followed the company on Twitter.

Retention
Customer retention is vital for long-lasting business success. Convincing
someone to make another purchase should be easy if you’ve kept them
engaged by following the steps above, especially relationship building.
Some of the most effective customer retention strategies include “surprise
and delight” (an unexpected special offer or gift), emails timed to certain
events such as birthdays, and using customer service interactions to
capitalize on upsell opportunities. The personal touch makes the customer
feel invested in your brand, so they prefer to stay loyal rather than try out
competitors.
Summary
Understanding your marketing funnel as a new business, or an existing
business is one of the core fundamentals in a business. Much like filling
a funnel with water to fill a water bottle, if you have leaks at any stage of
your marketing funnel, you’re losing the opportunity to gain a new
customer, or increase your revenue. As you develop your marketing
strategy and begin to select the proper tools to build your marketing funnel,
ensure that each stage is carefully considered and monitored to ensure you
are maximizing your chance for success.
CHAPTER 3

How To Get Started With

Content Marketing

Did you know that content marketing costs 62 percent less than outbound
marketing, yet generates more than three times as many leads? It’s hard to
argue with those numbers. Any business that isn’t using content marketing
to drive leads is missing out. When many people say that you should do
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, often they are confusing it with the
far less complex strategy of content marketing. SEO can be extremely
technical and detailed, but ultimately, SEO revolves around building
content that people will want to read and ultimately help you rank higher in
search engines like Google and Bing.
But what if you have no experience with content marketing? Don’t worry.
Following the steps outlined in this chapter will help you to create a solid
content strategy which will perform well from the start and make your
content strategy a great success.

Create a Visitor Persona For

Your Content Marketing
Just like earlier in the book when discussing your broader marketing
strategy, you want to further identify, who is your ideal visitor? Creating
a detailed visitor persona helps you to answer this question and keep your
content marketing blog posts targeted and useful to the readers and their
interests.

Your persona should include details like:

Age
Gender
Career
Education
Problems and challenges

Get inspiration for your persona by looking at your current audience.

Google Analytics can provide insights like age, gender and browsing habits.
Sending surveys to your mailing list via Typeform or other survey apps can
help you dig deeper, and interviewing previous customers lets you get into
even more detail.
You can create multiple personas, but be wary of going overboard. Your
content marketing strategy requires a clearly defined audience to work well.
Rather than thinking, I want to target a broad segment like entrepreneurs;
think, I want to target business owners of companies between 10-20
employees trying to optimize their sales process, and are similar to the
customers that invest in buying my software platform.

Write Blog Posts That Solve

Your Persona’s Problems
Now that you have developed your content audience’s persona, you need to
create content that he or she is going to be looking to read.
Here’s an example. You run a parenting site, and one of your ideal personas
is “Single Mother Sally,” a working mother whose biggest challenge is
balancing her job and her family. Knowing this, you can write blog posts
that cater directly to her, like, “Easy Weeknight Dinners for Working
Moms.” The same example can be used for our sales software persona, by
writing about “Ten tricks to shorten a sales process,” by using a software
platform like yours, or “How to select a CRM for a growing sales team.”
Plan posts in advance and create a content calendar to make sure that your
posting schedule stays consistent. Try to include a wide range of post types
to appeal to your persona. These could be quick Q&As, in-depth posts
which explain a topic in detail, tutorials showing the reader how to do
something or listicles, like “Top 10 XYZ” — think about what will work
best for your audience.

Optimize Posts for Search

Engines
Make sure your posts are found by optimizing them for search engines. If
you’re using WordPress, install the Yoast plugin to see an SEO “score” for
each post, and get tips about where to include keywords and other data.
As a general rule, you should choose one keyword for each post and aim to
include it 2 – 4 times, once in your title, at least one subheading and once in
your first paragraph. Make sure all images include alt tags and captions, and
when sharing video content, always include a transcript. These simple steps
will make your content much more search engine-friendly as well as
accessible to people with screen readers and disabilities.
Carry out keyword research by looking at the terms you currently rank for,
analyzing which keywords competitors use, and using keyword research
tools like Google Keyword Planner in AdWords. The right keywords can
help drive organic traffic by targeting people just as they’re searching for
a solution to their problem. Other SEO research tools include SEMrush and
Buzzsumo, but there is no shortage of tools now available.
Market Posts on Social Media
Once you have a clear content plan, you need to make sure people are
actually reading your posts. Use scheduling tools like Hootsuite and Meet
Edgar to post automatic social media updates whenever you publish blog
content.
You could share snippets of posts to entice readers and promote
engagement, or create graphics that are designed to be shared. Interacting
with others is a great way to build up an organic following, and could open
up opportunities for cross-promotion.
Now that you’ve begun your foray into content marketing, ensure that you
post quality content that provides value to the consumers regularly to keep
your visitors engaged and build your business up as a thought leader. It
helps to build your calendar and set aside time each week or month to
ensure you adhere to a schedule.
CHAPTER 4 :

Top Five Things to Include in

Your SEO Checklist

Now that you understand content sits at the core of a strong SEO strategy,
using a good SEO checklist can ensure that website content, blog posts,
even social media posts or advertising pieces contain the elements needed
to drive traffic to your business. As we have discussed, SEO doesn’t need to
be overwhelming, so here are the basics to help you get started.
Additionally, since many business owners or managers handle their content
creation duties only when they have a free moment, having a list to work
from can help that process move more quickly and efficiently.

What to Include in Your SEO

Checklist
While every business has unique content needs, for maximum SEO results,
there are a number of things that need to be included in every post. A
comprehensive keyword strategy should be planned to earn you organic
search results based on in-depth competitive research using Google
Analytics, keyword research tools like SEMrush, Moz, and others. Once
you have identified your competitive organic keywords or the keywords
that you want to be discovered from on search engines, ensure you follow
the basics:

1. Keyword In The Title

Including your primary keyword in your title (and meta title) lets
search engines and readers know quickly what they will be reading
about. However, it’s a mistake to think that if one keyword is good,
multiple keywords will be better. For instance, if you have a tee shirt
eCommerce website, include “tee shirt” in the title, so it would be “red
tee shirt.”
Don’t try to do what is called “keyword stuffing,” which means trying
to fit everything into a title, where it stops making sense. While this
may have worked a decade ago, it is most likely going to get you
penalized. An example of keyword stuffing if you are a t-shirt
company and also want to get found for keywords like “tank tops,”
you don’t want a title to be, “red tee shirt tanktops” just to try to rank
for multiple keywords. Think like you would be searching for
a product, otherwise, the search algorithms will penalize you for trying
to beat the system and your efforts will be lost.

2. Keyword(s) In The First

Paragraph
Similar to the title, using your primary keyword early in the article,
ideally in the first sentence, helps search engines easily identify what
you are writing about. Following our tee shirt company example,
you’d want to specify what type of tee shirts you are writing about in
the first sentence or at least the first paragraph, such as “Red California
tee shirts” or “Red Funny tee shirts.”

3. Image Captions And Alt Text

It can seem like a waste of time to type in captions and alt text for your
images, especially if the subject is obvious to readers. However, those
captions can make a big difference in your SEO results. Using your
 titles in the image titles is also a great way to make sure your images
are discovered, especially if you are selling products. You can use the
same naming options incorporating keywords as noted above.

4. Original Content
This should go without saying, but posting unique, original, never-
before-published content is essential to good SEO results as well as to
keep your readers coming back for more. Aside from the obvious
plagiarism reasons, original content will better resonate with your
readers.

5. Create A Unique And Engaging

Meta Description For Each Page
This may not be the most glamorous part of content creation, but your
meta description is the first thing potential readers see on your site.
Make sure to keep your blurb at 155 characters or less to make sure
that none of your words are cut off in search engine results.

Creating SEO-friendly blog, social media and website posts that rank well
with search engines like Google and Yahoo doesn’t have to be complicated
or time-consuming. Simply start with a good idea and follow your SEO
checklist to achieve success.
CHAPTER 5

Buildi ng Your Social Media

Strategy from the Ground Up

Social media is no longer a luxury. It’s now a vital part of a business’

outreach to customers for both B2C and B2B. But with so much social
media content, it is easy for businesses to get it critically wrong, especially
if they are only just beginning to discover the benefits of social media
marketing. It’s no longer enough just to have social media sites — your
business needs a strategy and effective implementation. From small
proprietors all the way up to multi-national corporations, your business
must get this aspect of marketing and customer interaction right.

Developing Your Social Media

Strategy
First things first. As a B2B organization, you need to think about what you
want to achieve with your social media outreach. This should summarize
everything you expect to achieve as well as those aspects you hope to
achieve. It should cover some or all the following.

Consider Goals and Expected Outcomes

The first part of your strategy should be to define your short and long-term
aims. This may seem to be a broad question, but without knowing where
you want to go, you couldn’t possibly hope to work out how you will get
there. Common goals and outcomes include:

Improving brand awareness, brand loyalty or audience retention

Directly increase organic web traffic
Directly increase sales through new channels
Respond to customer expectations for ways of connecting with you
New sign-ups for newsletters, email marketing, and other outreach
tools

You may choose one or more of the above, but be mindful of your
resources, capabilities and customer expectations. Depending on your
industry, only one of these may be relevant or achievable. Listing your
outcomes will help with everything else. Use a SMART strategy to
understand whether these are achievable and what could be considered
a realistic timeframe for each.

Consider How/If Social Media Outreach

Aligns with Organizational Goals
It goes without saying that what you want to achieve from your social
media marketing should remain true to your company’s overall Mission
Statement. It should also align with whatever your customers have come to
expect from their interactions with you. It’s bad for the direction of the
organization and for effective resource management if the social media
message is presenting something different from the rest of your marketing
strategy — worse if they contradict each other. The potential for creating
a lack of professionalism and lack of awareness can reflect badly on your
business practices. Therefore, you should consider social media as part of
your overall business strategy and not separate from it.

The Tools and Methods for Achieving Them

Now you understand what you want to achieve from your social media
marketing and those aspects which align with your company values, it’s
time to think about which outlets will work for you and which do not align
with your expectations and company plan. This is a minefield. After all, you
don’t want to waste valuable resources on platforms that will not gain you
customers or is not suitable for your organization. At the same time, you do
not want to pass up on any potential presented through the wide range of
social media options.

Social media websites: Facebook, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn

and Twitter will not come immediately to mind when you’re selling
B2B, but don’t discount automatically. Using or ignoring these sites
should depend largely on your customer profile
Images and video sites: Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube,
Vimeo, and other image and video are increasingly expected from
customers and their power to capture and retain an audience is in no
doubt. Visual media still make up a significant minority of web
content but represent a significant majority of viewed content
Influencer marketing: This is a relatively new concept for both
B2B and B2C with the most focus on the latter. However, it has its
uses in the B2B sector and as businesses begin to experience fatigue
with traditional web advertising, it could be a great way for you to
reach out
Social media management tools to help you keep on top of your
accounts and processes. Hootsuite is the most obvious, but never
overlook Buffer. These help you stay organized, what you are
posting, where and when so you are not overwhelmed
Creative media websites such as free image sites Unsplash and
Pixabay which provide high-resolution images for commercial use.
You should harness these resources to create original content for
your business use in services such as Canva. Creative content is vital
to reaching out to your audience and you need to make it original,
even when using copyright free imagery
Social Media Strategy
Implementation
Now you know what you want to achieve, it’s time to go about putting your
plan into effect. It’s important not to rush, to consider the process step by
step and examine progress. Also, be ready to adjust the plan if it is not
working.

Audit Your Existing Social Media

Do you know which social media outlets you’re currently using? Are they
effective? If not, is the problem that you are not using them to their full
potential? A full audit should include understanding what your B2B
customers expect from your social media outlets and, most importantly,
whether you’re using the right tools to reach out to them. Discard those
platforms where you do not get any feedback and customers are not
reacting; it is a waste of your resources and time. It may be worth surveying
your customers about which platforms they would expect to find you.

Curate the Right Content

There are two aspects to this. Firstly, curate the right content for your
customer. From written blog posts to images, short video clips of live
events to longer informational videos, reach out to your customers in the
ways they expect you to reach out. That means the right tone within the
content as well as the correct types.
Secondly, content expectations vary by platform. Some are interchangeable,
but some will be unique to that platform. This is a good opportunity to
examine your competitor’s social media presence, look at some of the
highest and lowest performing accounts to understand what the former do
right and the latter do wrong.
Also, remember that customer outreach is what you present as well as how
you present it. No matter where and how it’s important not to make the
content too focused on sales. Customers want organic and helpful content,
not to be bombarded with a series of advertisements. A good rule is the
80:20 rule. That is, 20% advertising and 80% useful material.

Monitor Your Channels for Feedback

The best way to know whether you’re achieving your outreach goals and
whether you’re providing the right content is to habitually monitor
feedback. This will include examining the number of likes and shares,
comments and messages and the amount of other organic traffic. Respond
to comments and message promptly and traffic will return. The advantage
that B2B has over B2C is that nearly all your feedback will be useful to
you. This aspect should not be overlooked because it presents
professionalism and duty to your existing customers and attention to
potential future sales.
Consider appointing a social media manager to monitor these sites. If
resources do not permit, it should become a dedicated task for whoever is
responsible for your marketing.

Conduct a Regular Review

Trends change; you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect to maintain
the same level of success and results. Social media outreach is ongoing and
not a one-off task. As some platforms improve or decrease in popularity, as
new features and algorithms are introduced, you should research and
consider utilizing these new tools. One example is Facebook’s introduction
of live video in 2017. It’s not just useful for a B2C audience; broadcasting
from a trade show or product launch can stoke interest from your B2B
customers too.
It’s 2018 and presently, Influencer Marketing is on the rise; so is 3D video
and VR technology. By the end of the year, new trends will come to the
fore. To maintain present success, you should move with the times, with
technology, with methods and adapt.
Build a Social Media Calendar
Pacing yourself and your posts will ensure your readers receive the right
content at the right time. One way to do this is through a social media
calendar. It needn’t be anything complicated; a simple spreadsheet will help
you keep on top of your posting schedule for videos, posts, sales materials
and campaigns. You will also discover when your audience is the most
receptive to your social media content and adjust accordingly. It’s a superb
tool for ensuring buy-ins and work planning. Plus, with Cloud technology,
these resources can be shared and viewed between all team members in an
instant.
CHAPTER 6

Building An Email Marketing

Strategy

Are you still not sure about dipping your toes into the lucrative waters of
email marketing? If so, perhaps you don’t realize what an effective way it is
to share your message, or maybe you’re simply overwhelmed by the
strategies involved. If it’s the former, you’re missing out on an incredible
marketing opportunity. Email is often the most misunderstood area of
marketing, because people forget that the content is as important as the
methods. While email marketing can seem overwhelming, this chapter
breaks things down into a few bite-sized pieces to help you start building
exceptional email marketing campaigns that advertising legend David
Ogilvy would be proud of.

The power of email marketing

Here are some stats that show why email marketing is one of the best ways
to build a relationship with present and future customers:
If you’re confused by all the stats and acronyms (e.g. CTA and CTR)
surrounding email marketing, you’re not alone. Many people are grappling
with how to ‘convert’ prospects, and how to improve their hit-rate.
Actually, it’s similar to any other marketing endeavor, in that planning and
preparation are crucial.
For example, when you’re trying to reach a customer, you know how
important it is to:
 Know your customer — often referred to as a ‘buyer/visitor
persona’. The better you know your customers, the better chance you
have of providing them with relevant content.
Know where your customers are in the buying cycle . Some people
will know nothing about your product or service and will need an
education on all the various features and benefits. Others will
already need a product or service like yours and will be actively
searching and comparing what different companies have to offer.
Segment your market according to different buying cycles/needs
— this is important whether you’re communicating through print,
telephone, or email marketing. The more appropriate your message,
the better your chance of success. One study shows that companies
sending automated emails with a message corresponding to
a customer’s buying cycle is 133% more likely to achieve their goal.

With this in mind, you’ll quickly see that ‘one size fits all’ is not the way to
embark on email marketing
So — where do you begin with your email marketing?

Here are 4 aspects to get you started:

1. Compile lists of contact email addresses

Building lists of contacts is a vital first step, and will be an ongoing
part of your marketing plan.
According to Hubspot’s inbound marketing course stats, 25% of your
contact list will become outdated every year. If you don’t keep your
lists current, you will start to get bounce-backs and your emails will be
relegated to spam folders. When this happens, you could actually
damage the reputation of your company. It is also strongly
recommended that you never purchase lists from third parties as the
quality can be low and it can damage your business reputation.
While the temptation can be there to purchase lists from third parties,
 experience has shown these ‘rented’ lists will result in extremely poor
results, spam complaints, and can also risk having your business incur
penalties due to the CAN-SPAM act. While we could create an entire
chapter on the necessary items to be compliant, most email service
providers have checks and balances to ensure your emails are designed
to be compliant. The biggest penalties come from using purchased lists
that you are not authorized to email. Penalties include fines up to
$16,000 per violation it’s also shown to be bad for your business’
public relations as it destroys your credibility.
To maintain a vibrant list, you must find new contacts. Generally, you
need to offer something to get an email address in return. It could be
that you provide an interesting white paper regarding your industry,
a relevant article, a special offer, or a giveaway of some description.
The way you do this will often be through social media, or through
a targeted email — this is often referred to as a ‘call to action’ (CTA).
Once people are interested in what you’re offering, they’ll be taken to
a ‘landing page’ on your website, where they’ll be able to redeem what
you’re offering. The trade-off is that they’ll need to give you their
details in order to get the offer. This way, you are constantly bringing
in new contacts to augment your lists. The best practice for obtaining
contact information is asking for ONLY the information you need but
you can ask for more with a bigger freebie such as a name & email
address for a small cheat sheet and full contact information for an
ebook or course.
Keeping all this information current and engaging effectively with
existing customers and new prospects while deleting the emails that
aren’t current or are bouncing is impossible with just an Excel
spreadsheet and Outlook! You need a good platform that will help you
make your email marketing effective and we outline several in our
resources section.

2. Decide on an email service platform to manage your email

campaigns
When you’re starting an automated campaign, your marketing
 software will enable you to program triggers that will allow automated
response emails to be sent. This will be familiar to you if you’ve ever
ordered something and have immediately received a follow-up email.
The platform you choose will enable this, along with generating stats
and reports on your customer activity.
Here are some points to consider:
Integration with other software: if you’re involved in digital marketing
you probably have certain software running — such as Customer
Relationship Management software (CRM). You should look for
a platform that will integrate with what you have, including any
activity on social media channels. This way you will be able to pull
through the data you already have, but will also be able to add on
a whole range of different metrics to help you make better marketing
decisions.
Viewing options: almost 50% of people read their emails on their
smartphones, so the platform you choose must ensure a good layout
for mobile devices. If there’s anything wrong with the way your email
is displayed, expect it to be instantly deleted.
Some popular platforms include:
MailChimp
HubSpot
GetResponse
SendinBlue
iContact
ActiveCampaign

It is best to research different platforms, deciding what is best for your

business. There are questions you should ask, such as:

Is the platform right for the size of my business? Most platforms

charge depending on your number of contacts, while MailChimp is
free if you have less than 2,000 addresses and send up to 12,000
 emails per month.
Does it integrate with various social media platforms, or sites such as
WordPress, so that I can get a wide range of analytics?
Does the platform allow me to customize emails and add design, and
does it have helpful automated templates (such as a landing page
creator)?
Is the software user-friendly so that I’ll easily be able to produce
fully-integrated campaigns?
What kind of support does the platform offer? Does it offer tutorials
to help me get started?
Are the analytics details easy to decipher?
Does it offer free stock images (adding graphics definitely helps
make your email more readable)?
The good news is that many platforms offer you a free trial, so you
can ‘try before you buy’.

1. Devise a strategy for an email campaign (including

nurturing and drip campaigns)
With your software and lists in place, it’s time to concentrate on your
strategy, as email marketing should never be totally random. Firstly,
you need to have a clear goal for your email campaign. It will be
difficult to produce great content if you don’t have a defined objective.
With your goal in mind, you’ll be able to prepare a series of strategic
emails that will move your prospects steadily towards taking action
and becoming customers. This process is known as a nurturing or
‘drip’ email campaign (based on the idea that constantly dripping
water is impossible to ignore). Marketers see this process as creating
a sales funnel, with the emails informing and engaging people to move
them through various stages of the buying cycle. The content of these
emails is vital, and each should build on the last.
When planning your content, remember that the excitement of “you’ve
got mail” expired decades ago. These days, most people consider
 wading through their emails a boring chore, so you really need to
innovate to dazzle. The following points may help:
The golden rule is to focus on providing value, rather than trying to
sell immediately — even though this may seem counter-intuitive. A
good campaign warms up slowly towards a strategic goal. In other
words, create trust before attempting a hard sell.
Don’t think about your own needs — you need to do a role reversal
and stand in the place of your customer and establish what the reader
of your email really needs.
Having segmented contact lists will help ensure that content is tailor-
made for a specific audience. No one likes receiving an email that is
clearly generic — fortunately, almost every platform will allow you to
personalize your emails with names.
Make certain that your emails sound as though a real person is
speaking — the best way to engage is to forge a human connection.
Think of some of the dreary emails you receive and try to do
something different, such as entertaining or educating your customers.
Also, make sure to speak to the customers in the voice that they want
to hear — this can be a tricky thing to master but it works wonders in
the long run. Some segments like highly visual emails, some like
mostly words — test out a variation and see what gets the most results
so you can figure out what type of content each segment enjoys.

2. Analyzing your results, optimizing, and planning the next

step

A vital step in reviewing an email marketing campaign is analyzing the

stats generated by your chosen platform to evaluate your areas of failure
and success. This way, you can make adjustments for your next campaign.

The following ratios will give you great

insights:
Delivery rate — this will show you how up-to-date your lists are.
Remember, you have no chance of success unless your email reaches the
targeted person. If it isn’t delivering at all it could be an out-of-date email
address.
If you receive a ‘soft’ bounce , it means you’re getting into your contact’s
inbox, but are likely being relegated to a spam folder. Not cleaning your
lists of soft bounces and hard bounces can penalize your email
deliverability, because email systems will report your email domain address
as untrustworthy over time if your bounce rates are high.
Open-rate — this will tell you how many people actually click on your
emails. It’s a good metric, but probably has more to do with a great subject
line. It doesn’t always mean that action is taken. A word of caution —
writing an enticing subject line that gets your email opened will backfire if
your content doesn’t match what you’ve promised! So be exciting but
TRUTHFUL - in other words, don’t click-bait!
Click through rate (CTR) — voila! This means that the person has engaged
with your email and is pursuing what you’re offering. Improving a CTR is
what all email marketers aim for.
Conversion rate — this metric allows you to see whether people have
taken action and have placed an order — usually within a few days of
opening the email (the chances of a sale decrease dramatically after a few
days).
Abandoned cart — this metric gives you the perfect opportunity to send
a follow-up email. If someone has gone to the trouble to place your product
in the cart but hasn’t checked out, perhaps a small nudge like a gentle
reminder that they still have things in their cart is all that is needed.
Churn rates — this is the number of people who unsubscribe when your
email hits their inbox. It’s disappointing, but at least you know that this
person is no longer a part of your target market.
The reason you keep track of metrics is not simply for information but to
guide your future action. If the stats look poor, make small changes and see
what works and what doesn’t.

Summary:
Although these 4 steps are important, ultimately your copy and content will
be king. If you don’t get this right, it won’t matter how good your lists or
your platform are, but if you generate outstanding content you’ll build
strong relationships with your customers and have people excited to receive
your next email.
The downside of email marketing is that, if it’s poorly executed, you could
lose people’s trust, head straight for spam, be unsubscribed or worse, be
banned from sending emails altogether. The upside is that there are 4.3
billion email accounts out there; 95% of online consumers use email and
91% say that they check their email at least once a day. No other form of
marketing is as universal as this and it’s never been easier to reach your
target market, which is why mastering this skill could be just what your
business needs.
CHAPTER 7

Paid Web Marketing

In a recent report, it was revealed that the average web user spends between
25 and 30 hours online every week. Some age groups spend more time on
social media than watching television. Paid web marketing now earns
massive percentages of marketing budgets. It is not in doubt that the
internet is a major source of entertainment, and for shopping for goods and
services. This means it’s also one of the best outlets for businesses to build
an audience.
In 2014, total spending on web advertising exceeded $137.4bn (USD) and
according to eMarketer was expected to hit $333.25B by the end of 2019.
Businesses spend anything between 20% and 50% of their marketing
budget on paid advertising, with Facebook and Google Adwords generally
being the most frequently used platforms. It’s quite clear that most
businesses already value paid web marketing; it’s no longer a luxury — it’s
a vital form of marketing outreach. Without it, businesses are unlikely to
grow and highly likely to lose ground to their competitors. With more
marketing budgets shifting from TV and Radio to the internet, it is also
becoming more complex. If you’re still new to online advertising, this guide
will help you understand each channel and the basics to determine which
channels may best be suited to your business.

Top Paid Marketing Methods

Facebook Ads
When purchasing paid advertising space on Facebook, users may target
advertising to selected demographics such as age, gender, and location. A
more advanced feature is called “retargeting”. This keeps your product or
service at the front of a customer’s mind by displaying adverts for items
they have already researched. This is where ads for products viewed on
Amazon(or other sites) appear in the Facebook feed later. As a business,
you have more chances to reach your intended audience by selecting ads to
appear to customers based on their web retail history, including during
a Cart Abandonment (when customers place items in their shopping cart but
don’t complete the transaction before leaving the site). With Facebook (and
almost all other paid advertising platforms), once you have reached your
spending limit, the ads cease.
Quick Tip: Customer awareness is the key to retargeting. Turn abandoned
shopping carts into sales. This can be one of the easiest and quickest ways
to capitalize on Facebook advertising. Facebook’s documentation has
a great guide to help you get started: Getting started with custom audiences
(retargeting) on Facebook.

Instagram
Instagram has experienced exponential growth for business users with more
brands than ever before signing up to Instagram for Business and shifting
away from Facebook. The image and video sharing platform may not be
suitable for all businesses in all industries, but the power of visual
advertising is not in doubt in the majority of cases. They use the same
system as Facebook so if you’re already using Facebook ads, you’ll feel
right at home coming to Instagram. You are able to appeal to demographics
based on age, location, interests, income and other criteria to streamline
your advertisements to the right people.
Quick Tip: Make sure your photography is on point and on brand.
Instagram is all about images, but don’t forget the hashtags to help spread
the word.
SnapChat Advertising
The messenger that uses brief video clips to have conversations may not be
the first platform to use for advertising, but the past several years have been
a period of growth for Snapchat for business users. Video ads are highly
appealing — despite representing just 5% of web content, it is around 95%
of viewed material. Snapchat is a natural progression of the importance of
video advertising, especially in a time when businesses have just 6 seconds
to capture the attention of users. The average Snapchat user opens the app
around 18 times per day — which is a lot of advertising time. With
Snapchat Adtools, you’ll be able to track your progress, too. This is fresh to
the paid web marketing eco-system, but an advertising channel many
looking to reach younger audiences need to have on their radar.
Quick Tip: This platform requires innovation; use it to put a human face on
your brand.

Search Engine Marketing

Search marketing encompasses the use of search engine ads such as Google
Adwords, but other methods too. While Google is the largest search engine,
it is still estimated that Bing sees about 20-30% of the internet’s search
traffic, and as such can often be an economical alternative to Google
Adwords. As noted before in our content marketing section, organic SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) is another well-known tactic for search
marketing. Researching common keywords likely to drive visitors to your
website and other content, and placing such keywords strategically in your
content, is one of the oldest and most effective methods available today.
Search marketing also includes using free methods such as web listings,
which is especially important for a brick-and-mortar business with
a physical location.
Quick Tip: Always use keyword research tools — most of these platforms
have this ability, to effectively plan your paid advertising strategy. Knowing
the most popular keywords within your niche will improve visibility. Other
paid tools, including SEMrush and Moz are also popular.
Google Adwords
AdWords is the world’s biggest search engine’s paid web marketing and
advertising product working on a cost per click (CPC) basis. While more
advanced advertisers can utilize a CPM or “cost per 1000 impressions”,
a beginning Adwords advertiser is likely best off using the CPC method.
Google Ads appear at the top and bottom of each search page with a small
“Ad” icon. The advertisements only cost the organization if the person
searching for the specific term clicks on the advert. The reasons for using
Google Adwords are compelling: it is claimed that 80% of web users click
on an advert instead of other links. Other search engines use similar
methods, and these are cheaper, but they don’t get the traffic volume that
Google can command. One of the most useful tools for Google Adwords is
the segmentation option, which allows users to tailor when ads appear
based on the day of the week and time of day, depending on the user’s
mood and buying habits. More robust advertising options exist for e-
commerce businesses, including featured product ads.
Quick tip: Use specific long tail keywords. “Office furniture supplies
Seattle” is more effective than “office supplies” and you will have less
competition that you are bidding against. Remember, highest bid wins, but
you won’t always reach your maximum, since bidding is based on what is
called a dutch auction.

LinkedIn
Linkedin is a very popular Business-to-Business paid media channel,
though it is a more expensive one. The businesses selling high-priced
solutions to other businesses find that this channel can be lucrative for
reaching top executives and driving product awareness. With options to
target specifically to the c-suite, you can reach some executives you may
not otherwise be able to find on other platforms like Facebook. While there
are also tactics you can employ to improve your company’s organic reach,
or tactics for sales teams to use, using LinkedIn advertising to reach specific
decision makers at scale can produce significant ROI.
Summarizing Your Paid Web
Marketing Opportunities
Paid web marketing isn’t for everyone but it can be a very cost-effective
way of reaching your target customers, depending on your business, such as
an e-commerce business with low-cost products could see great results,
while a high price specialty business service may not see as much success.
As with all channels of marketing, it is best to consider all of the marketing
channels available to you and determine which are best to put your money
and efforts toward.
CHAPTER 8

How To Make Your First Direct

Mail Campaign Successful

Experience has demonstrated surprisingly high returns when direct mail is

done correctly and with the right processes in place. As the infographic
below illustrates, sourcing independent research by the Data & Marketing
Association, 79% of consumers act on direct mail immediately, and 51% of
people prefer direct mail from local shops. When done right, direct mail is
your key to profit.
If you are a small, mid-size, or even purely online company that is ready to
add your first direct mail campaign to your marketing strategy, here are
a few fundamentals to make sure you have in place before your big snail
mail send goes out:

Use A Targeted List

You have a number of ways to gather a new list of prospects. There are list
brokers out there that will verify lists and work with third-party marketing
companies to rent you a list, or in some cases will just sell you the list of
contacts outright, so you can use them again and again. DMN, or Direct
Marketing News, maintains a listing service as well. Other services can
generate a lookalike list of your current customers, just like Facebook does
for your Facebook advertising. While email we strongly recommend against
borrowing a list, direct mail is a method to fill the top of the funnel and
often you are looking for a new audience within a region, where something
like a postcard to a targeted zip code you are opening in would be relevant
to drive awareness.
If you are an earlier stage company, your budget may not quite be to where
it can afford these custom lists, so you can get scrappy. Do you have a list
of prospects already? Outsource your data scraping to someone who
specializes in data on Upwork. They often know where to find addresses for
people and businesses and it can free you up from doing the searching
yourself. Scraping tools may even help you target a particular zip code if
that is what you are after.

Use Referral Codes And

Landing Pages
Coupon codes or referral codes do two things, they help you track
a particular promotion, and they also can provide an incentive to pay
attention or buy from you. Some businesses, however, do not have the
ability to discount, give anything away, or provide a coupon code; but
bringing the ad, or mail piece in to a restaurant or retail location can help
you monitor the success of brick & mortar redemptions, while a coupon
code that can be redeemed online will allow you to track online traffic. If
you have a business that operates both online and in a physical location,
you can reconcile these two channels and glean valuable insights into your
customers and promotions.
If you have a website without coupon code capabilities, a custom landing
page specifically for those that received your offer will help you out in
measuring success. Depending on your budget and technical know-how,
a couple landing page creation options are Unbounce, VWO, and Instapage
to name a few. A page may look just like your homepage, but you can have
a custom URL such as example.com/junesale to track site visitors in Google
Analytics. Your web development team may also be able to help you
determine a more customized solution to measure conversions based on
your technology platform.
Advanced: If you really want to take your game to expert level, you can
create a custom phone number that directs back to your primary phone line,
but can show you who is calling based on the number they dialed. This can
also be helpful if you want to make area targeted promotions and make it
look like they are calling a local phone number.

Presentation Makes A Big First

Impression
You’re not going to impress people much by misleading them. AMAZING
OFFER INSIDE may work sometimes, as might FREE MONEY, but
people know that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is and
you’ll go straight to the trash can.
Express your value and you’ll find your leads to be more qualified than
those looking for an exceptional offer you might be advertising for, but
under-delivering. The way your direct mail is presented is also going to
have an effect on success. For example: I used to run campaigns with
custom plastic referral cards for a membership community and because of
our success and ROI, we would use priority mail envelopes with
handwritten labels. We were targeting executives, so these small extras
were a higher cost, but ensured the envelope made it to their desk and not
the recycling bin.

Target Your Prospects Across

The Internet
Remember when I said you need to have a good list? When you put that list
together, if you can get phone numbers or emails as part of your list, you
must. There may be an additional cost for you to acquire this information,
but when you can then use their email address, phone number, and home
address to design a retargeting campaign using digital advertising on
platforms like Facebook or Twitter, then email them to follow up at a lower
cost than sending out another direct mail piece, you’ll see your response
rates and targeting go up significantly.
A variety of studies say it takes anywhere from a few to several dozen
touch points from a brand before a sale can be made (Salesforce says 6-8
touchpoints ), so you want to be able to follow up. If you have that phone
number, by all means, call and ask to make sure they received your offer,
catalog, or real estate listings in the mail. You paid to get it there, and you
should invest the extra few cents per contact so you can have their email
and phone number as well. Make sure you maintain the same messaging, as
this consistency is key for your campaign’s success.
CHAPTER 9

Three Tools To Help You Run

Your First Direct Mail Campaign

Direct mail conjures up the ideas of an envelope filled with coupons,

perhaps some real estate postcards, and a few credit card offers. Hopefully,
the last chapter helped you understand its potential value. You may think
that most of those items you will put in the trash, however, there is still
a reason why so many companies still use, and succeed, with direct mail.
It is estimated that 70—80% of all mail is opened, regardless of whether it
is ‘junk mail.’ Though it can seem more costly, the response rates are
approximately 2.7 times higher with direct mail compared to email.
You are now starting to think to yourself, how can I get started with direct
mail, what vendors can help me send a direct mail campaign on a budget?
Here are a few great tools to help you design, print, and send your first
direct mail pieces and keep an eye out for part two on direct mail campaign
best practices next week:

Mailjoy:
Website: http://www.mailjoy.com/
This new direct mail solution is like Mailchimp meets snail mail. They
provide you easy to use templates to design your postcard direct mail
pieces, then you upload your address mailing list, you sign off on the final
design, click send, then they even provide you deliverability reporting to
see how successful your send is. Their pricing starts at just $0.70 per mailer
and no minimums. That’s barely more than the price of the stamp you
would otherwise need to use and far fewer headaches with the design. A
perfect mailing solution for small businesses and startups.

Bond:
Website: https://bond.co
It is fairly common that someone on the receiving end can decipher
a generic direct mail piece from a personal letter. Bond is a fantastic
solution to those wishing to provide a high touch note, but don’t necessarily
have the time to hand write 100 or more letters. This is a fantastic solution
for salespeople, realtors, or event organizers. They are a bit more expensive
when you get started, as you’ll need a $500 investment to set up your
custom handwriting, but after, you can start to send custom notes on
personalized notecards to prospects.

MOO:
Website: https://www.moo.com
This UK-based printer has become my go-to for business cards, and with
good reason. They always get a compliment. Do you need some help
getting a design in place and putting things together, but have the office
power to put them in envelopes, and send them out yourself? MOO is
a great option for you. They have a variety of sizes and templates for you to
base your design from, then the printing abilities to send you a beautiful
finished product with reasonably quick turnaround time.
Do-it-yourself bonus:
Canva:
Website: https://www.canva.com/
You are a scrappy startup, and you have a local printer you already work
with, you have some sense of design, and want to find a way to put this out
on your own. If you need a hint of help as you’re not an Adobe Illustrator or
InDesign creative genius. Canva is your answer and will help you with
almost any other design project you may need, including presentations,
posters, Facebook posts, and more. Use Canva to build the perfect creative
design for your direct mail piece, and take it to your favorite printer. Get it
from design to post office as quickly as you can find a printer to print it,
then use your own stamp to send it with.
CHAPTER 10

How To Get Press As A Startup

And The Tools To Help

How does my startup or business find a way into the press as the major
brands do? Every tech startup or early-stage tech company thinks that a hit
on TechCrunch for their launch is like the holy grail. There are several
reasons why press and media coverage on TechCrunch, Forbes,
Entrepreneur, or other publications can lead to success. Press is an integral
part of any company’s growth strategy and marketing funnel and this
chapter covers the reasons why it can be valuable to a startup and
businesses of all sizes; we also cover what tools can help you achieve
success.

Press For Startups Drives User

Growth
When you get press coverage on a site that receives high volumes of traffic,
you are going to receive some of that traffic through the links included in
the article. This can also obviously happen with television. In fact,
Rackspace has a great blog about Shark Tank entrepreneurs and what is
called “The Shark Tank Effect ” when high volumes of traffic hit your site.
Aside from that direct traffic, you will also see a boom in organic traffic by
people Googling and finding your site that way. This is why it is incredibly
important to have a well-designed website that not only looks great, but also
is optimized for conversions. When visitors reach your site, you will want
to guide them through the page and lead them to the actions you want them
to take but first, you must decide, whether that is an email capture,
a purchase, or to sign up for a service.
If you know you will have a big press hit in the near future, be sure to have
others take your site for a test drive to ensure that your site does not have
any broken sections (like your checkout process), and is optimized to
perform for heavy traffic loads. Through careful planning and site design,
you can capitalize on a news or blog article and turn that traffic into users
and ultimately revenues.

News Media Builds Credibility

Think back to the last time you were researching a new brand and noticed
that they have been featured in specific trade publications, on popular blogs,
or in leading news media sources. It likely gave you an extra vote of
confidence and trust in the site you were visiting. For businesses, when you
receive press attention, especially in a positive light through great reviews,
or by showing thought-leadership, you’re elevating your brand to another
level that drives your credit score higher among consumers.

Media Articles Harvest

Investments
Depending on your business, you may one day be looking for investments.
Being able to point to a Techcrunch article, or feature interview that showed
up in a top publication can serve as a badge of honor for you and your
company. Not only does it show credibility, but it also shows that the press
has cared enough about your product for their readership to know about it.
When you go to pitch investors, being able to point to a handful of major
press mentions and articles within larger publications can help boost your
street cred in the boardroom and elevate your chances of earning an
investment. Of course, it won’t guarantee it, but just like how a consumer
looks for a product that fits their needs, the press is another factor along
with your user numbers, revenues and other KPI’s that an angel investor or
VC might use to evaluate your business. If you are looking for investors, an
article in a major publication can act as market validation to help bring the
investors knocking on your door.

Get Your Press Machine Rolling

With These Tools
As you now understand, the value of getting press is an exceptional one that
sometimes can provide you brand value, result in sales and revenue, or lead
to a future investor. That said, the days of hiring an expensive PR firm, or
freelancer at the cost of thousands of dollars isn’t in every business’s
budget, nor is it always necessary. Today, there are a variety of options and
sources that are great for early-stage companies, startups, and small
businesses that have a bit of time, and not even necessarily any money to
put toward their PR efforts. Here are a few of our favorite PR tools for
getting the press that we recommend:

Publicize Zero
Publicize Zero provides access to an extensive free list of tech reporters
along with a suite of do-it-yourself PR tools that allow anyone to dig in,
build a press kit, and reach out to garner your first articles. They also have
educational tools in their free version, then if you have even a small budget,
they have several levels of affordable packages available to take over your
PR for you. Conrad Egusa and his team have solved a longtime pain point
for businesses of all sizes by bringing PR services and solutions to the
masses.
Pressfarm
Looking to boost your SEO and backlinks and get a bit of PR along the
way? Pressfarm touts itself as a growth hacker’s tool for finding journalists
to write about your startup. Low cost and starting at just $18/month, they
have packages for a variety of company sizes and PR purposes.

HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

Looking for how to get press with no budget? No worries! Help A Reporter
Out, which was founded by Peter Shankman and now owned by Cision, is
an email list that goes out several times a day across a variety of topics from
finance to healthcare to technology and travel. This list is comprised of
articles that reporters are actively working on and looking for sources to
speak to. If you see a topic you are an expert on, you should submit your
pitch or reasons why you’d be a great source for the reporter, and if you’re
a fit, they’ll set up interviews. Depending on your business, it can also be
a great way to find expert sources for your own blog posts, or even generate
topics for new content in your newsletters. Signing up as a source for the
daily digests they send out is totally free and just make sure you reply
promptly to ensure greater success. They don’t even charge you to submit
your pitch!

Ninja Outreach
While the other tools will help you reach and catch some of the big fish,
Ninja Outreach gives you the opportunity to find influencers, bloggers, and
others that may be interested in your products, services, or business. Using
this tool, you can search and build lists based on factors like website traffic,
social media followings, and a number of other factors, then actually set up
a campaign to email out and pitch them. This can also work both ways, if
you’re a content creator, such as a podcaster, you can find influential guests
that may be interested in interviewing on your show. It is a low monthly
cost, but one that can have very high returns.

Influence & Co
If you have a bit of a budget (we’re talking in the thousands of dollars), or
are a business that really relies on thought leadership to elevate your brand,
then Influence & Co is an incredible option. Utilizing a very talented pool
of writers and their network with leading publications like Entrepreneur,
Forbes, and others, they have the ability to work with businesses to build
executive influence and thought leadership, or develop your own blog
content on your behalf. They develop and get your articles placed in the
places you want to be. Of course, the cost isn’t low, but for many brands
and executives, they can be an invaluable resource.
Final Notes

You made it through, and now your journey begins. As an entrepreneur and
business owner, I know time is valuable, and I hope that I have provided
you the tips, tools, strategies, and resources to help you see a great ROI for
the time you have invested in reading my book. As you move forward,
remember to always keep things simple and not to get distracted by the
newest technologies, but instead to stick to the fundamentals as you build
your strategy and begin to execute it.
I would love to hear your successes or help you work through any
challenges you are facing, so please don't hesitate to reach out to me at:
[email protected]
As an added bonus for making it this far, you can head to the following link
for many of the tools and resources outlined in this book along with many
more:
https://theponygroup.com/marketing-tools-resources/

Happy Marketing!
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