Month: October 2018

Categories
Content Marketing

Is Your Website Content Relevant, or Boring?

You’ve probably heard a million times that “content is king” and that you need to create as much of it as possible for your website and other online platforms. Content isn’t worth anything, though, if it isn’t high-quality and relevant to your goals and message. Your audience needs to find it useful and applicable to their lives. Otherwise, it is just more junk clogging up space on the internet.

In today’s post, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about how to achieve that goal. Ultimately, it’s about knowing your audience, but there’s so much more to it than just that. Let’s get started with customer personas and go from there!

Build a Customer Persona

“Personas” (or avatars) are essentially made-up representations of your demographics that stem from creativity and research on your target audience. Like creating characters in a book, their development requires fleshing out who they are, right from their age and gender all the way down to their likes and dislikes.

Creating personas always starts with research; in some ways, it’s very much like getting to know who a friend really is. You’ll use research on people you’ve already sold to, as well as surveys conducted with random peer groups, to find out exactly what your target audience looks like.

But why make personas? They give you the power and tools you need to create content that appeals to each subset of your demographics, which can be incredibly powerful. With your content better targeted, you will (hopefully) start to attract a more refined audience that’s much more likely to want exactly what you have to offer.

Develop Content Around Real Questions

People who are interested in your product or service have real questions. Your job is to answer those questions as best you can (without boring them or overselling them).

Sites like Content Ideas, Answer the Public, and Yahoo Answers are great resources when it comes to figuring out exactly what people are asking about your niche. You can use the info you find on these sites to create content that answers the questions you already know people are asking. Your content will not only be relevant, but it will rank well because of its Q&A nature.

Common Sense Keyword Research

Admittedly, there’s a little more to keyword research than just common sense (if only it were that easy). But applying some common sense to the results is critical to your relevance because it helps you make sense of what you see.

Your main group of keywords came from questions you asked yourself about your products, services, and business. Your secondary set of keywords should come from the questions people are asking that you can easily answer, or the problems your audience has that your business can resolve.

What keywords are people using when they are looking for information about solving a problem your product or service already solves? Use those keywords to create content that naturally answers those questions.

Remember, the use of keywords on your onsite pages should be natural and flow properly within your text. Stuffing them into the body of the article is old-school, makes for awkward writing, and may drive readers away from your page.

Look for Trending Topics

Creating content around trending news topics in your niche can help your site stay relevant. The news doesn’t even have to be directly related to benefit you.

Here’s a useful example: you have a site or store that sells baseball gear, uniforms, and fan apparel. Creating a series of content about the teams and players in this year’s World Series will draw in people interested in baseball; they’re more likely to buy during their visit than, say, someone who has never watched a game. Your site becomes a resource for fans and you gain exposure for your products.

Add More Visuals

Already adding visuals? Add more. Seriously. The more the better. Don’t skimp. If you usually add one image per blog post, add three or four instead.

Droning on about statistics? No matter how relevant they are, they’ll stand out more in the form of a chart or infographic.

Have a great video that relates to the blog post? Find one on YouTube that isn’t from a direct competitor and embed it right there in the middle of your article or blog post.

Visuals make text less boring, lessening the risk of that coveted warm lead bouncing off your page and into the great wilds of the Internet. By adding more to look at, you engage your reader and ensure they spend much more time on your page (which boosts your rankings, too).

Shake Up the Format

Don’t use the exact same style of content for every article or post you put on your site. Give each page a bit of flair. Make a video the feature on one page, with some relevant text to support it. Add some shorter blog posts with infographics or short supporting videos. Create long-form text content with plenty of visual images to keep people’s eyes on the page. Even bulleted or numbered lists can break up the page and keep people who skim content for subtitles and bullets on the page a little longer.

Actionable Content is Key

Sharing information with people is one thing; giving them actionable steps they can take to get started with a new skill or on a new path is completely different. Both forms of content can be valuable, but content with a call-to-action or a specific instruction is more relevant because it inspires the reader to take action. This type of content makes you a trustworthy resource people will return to in the future.

Source Your Content

Listen, I get it. Writing quality content doesn’t mean pulling a bunch of brand-new ideas out of your head. You can’t do all the research for every statistic – and you shouldn’t, unless you happen to be the world’s leading expert on that specific topic.

That said, you do still need to convey authority by backing up your claims. Make sure the statistics and quotes you share are linked to quality, trustworthy sources.

If people read your content and question the information or sources, they will be less likely to purchase your product. That’s exactly why you should only link to content that is relevant and authoritative – government sites, .EDU, well-known experts, and academic resources are a great place to start. Backing up your claims shows your audience you did your homework and know what you’re talking about.

Edit Your Meta Descriptions

Your meta descriptions are the little blurbs that show under the initial title and link in search engine results. A lot of website owners don’t even realize they have control over what shows up in this area, but meta tags are a critical part of SEO.

The SEO apps you use on your website should give you a place to easily update the text so that the search results don’t default to the first line of the blog. This is the place to write a captivating hook – something that grabs the reader’s attention, lets them know what they’re in for, and entices them to click. Incorporate a keyword if you can do so naturally; otherwise, do your best to make it exciting.

Remember, content means nothing if it isn’t relevant to your brand. But relevance isn’t a mysterious, mythical creature; it’s the link that ties your content and your target audience together, giving them a reason to return for more. Make a couple of tweaks to the content you’re distributing on all platforms and I believe you’ll see an overall improvement in leads and conversions.

Categories
Digital Marketing

How to Create a Usable, Workable Customer Persona

We talk a lot in marketing about knowing who your target audience is, but in many cases we don’t dig much deeper than age ranges, geographic locations, and interests.  All of this is great, but it still produces a picture that often requires significant customization and adjustments after the fact. Trial and error, if you will.

What if you drilled down further and developed a customer persona, or an avatar of sorts. A sort of laser-targeted picture of the people you really want to sell to or work with? That’s not just an interesting idea – it’s quickly becoming a must.

Here’s what you need to know:

What is a Customer Persona?

Customer personas are fictional. We all know that, but they can be based on some of the data you’ve collected in your marketing research. They represent a creative way of taking your ideas about your target demographic and envisioning a more detailed representation of what those people really mean to you and your organization. This deeper level of understanding will help you to better target your marketing by developing more creative campaigns that are truly appealing to each segment of your market.

You should, for the purposes of this exercise, always create both a positive and a negative persona. The negative persona will help your marketing team clarify exactly what type of customer you don’t want to attract. This is just as important as the positive buyer persona, as it will ensure your marketing dollars end up in exactly the right place.

Sit Down and Create the Customer Persona

In an ideal world, you’ll have more than one buyer persona; even three or more. Create as many as you need to in order to properly represent the people in your target market. Inject a little imagination into the process. Your personas should have names, ages, jobs, behavioral patterns, background stories, and hobbies. They might even have some not-so-appealing personality attributes, fears, and challenges.

The first thing you need to do is take a look at your current customer base and divide them into groups. Evaluate your current marketing strategy and determine what your main targets have been in terms of demographics, age, ability, or even need for your product. Choose your three biggest performing groups; those will be the ones you develop personas for first.

Gathering Data for a Customer Persona

What information have you already gathered about the people in your chosen groups? Are they subscribed to your customer newsletter? Have they been answering survey questions on your website? Does your marketing team have information they’ve been gathering, either digitally or via telephone calls? This is the starter data you need.

If you don’t yet have much information, there are a variety of ways to get it. Start by adding a question to your newsletter sign-up form (or another embedded form on your site), and then tailor the question asked to be non-invasive, yet categorizing. For example, if you sell pet supplies, you might ask if they have dogs, cats, or both.

If you’re marketing to business owners, the type of relevant question will obviously change. Instead, you might query how many employees they have, how much they make each year, or how much they spend on certain services.

Once you have your categories, conduct surveys or interviews with the customers and referrals in each of them. Remember that people are much more likely to answer your questions if you are upfront about the fact that you aren’t trying to sell them anything (at least, not right now). Be polite, thank them for their past purchases, appreciate their interest, and just get straight to the point.

Some will say no, others will be gracious. C’est la vie in the marketing world. If you want to improve your chances, think about adding an incentive that’s good enough to inspire participation without netting you fake answers for free stuff. Small gift cards, discounts, and swag work well.

How many interviews do you need to do? Usually, just a handful for each category. Stop calling people if things become too predictable – for example, if they’re all giving the exact same answer to the same question. Getting the same info multiple times so often that you can predict a pattern is a sign you’re ready to move forward.

How to Dig Deeper and Get Creative

Now, it’s time to get creative. Sit down and ask yourself a series of questions about the person who would best represent each of these groups. Try these on for size:

  • What is my buyer’s age and gender; what generation is he/she part of?
  • Is my buyer single or married; with kids or without?
  • Does my buyer have a happy home life?
  • What type of education does my buyer have?
  • What type of job does my buyer have?
  • What is my buyer’s average income?
  • Does my buyer like their job?
  • Does he/she have any work-related challenges?
  • Does my buyer have future career goals?
  • Does my buyer own or rent their home?
  • Does my buyer like and use technology?
  • Does my buyer like communicating via email, social media, or some other method (e.g., telephone)?
  • What daily challenges does my buyer face?
  • What other roles does my buyer play in his/her life?
  • Is my buyer an employee, a student, a caregiver, or a parent?

 

You may ask some of these questions in your interviews already. Or, you can fill in the gaps with other forms of research. People are generally pretty happy to participate in research, but you should always give the option to opt out of questions about gender, age, or race. Why? Because they can be misperceived as discriminatory, even if that’s the exact opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.

What to Do with Your Personas

What are you going to do with your brand new buyer personas? First, you’re going to pass them on to your marketing team so that they can create dedicated ad campaigns targeting your persona groups. The more you can tailor your ad to the persona in mind, the more they’ll identify with it and respond when they see it.

The other thing you’re going to do is use your personas to train your sales and customer service teams. The more they are familiar with the people they’re speaking to, the better they will understand their actual needs. They’ll also be better prepared to deal with their objections without sounding like they’re reading canned responses from a script.

Give each of your personas a name – literally, a first and last name. Consider them characters that represent your audience, not just a demographic. Embrace them as part of your team because there’s so much they can teach you.

Remember; your personas may evolve and change over the time just as your audience evolves and changes. This is okay! The more complete your persona relationship, the more useful it will become when it comes time to design your campaigns.

At the end of the day, it’s all about having fun, being creative, and getting results from just being the kind of business who really wants to know their target market. And when customers feel like you really know them, they’re more likely to be loyal, passing on great leads.

Categories
SEO

SEO and Current Events: What You Need to Know about Link Baiting

You’re watching the news and you see a popular story item trending just about everywhere – especially on online outlets and across social media. The first thing you might think to do is create a blog or social post of your own to take advantage of the viral nature of the story, but that isn’t always the right choice. Link baiting can be effective in some cases, especially if you are a news outlet yourself, but it is rarely the best choice for all businesses. In fact, sometimes it’s just plain inappropriate to incorporate current events into your online strategy.

Wait – What IS Link Baiting?

Link baiting is an online tactic used when you create website content with the sole intention of having people link back to it from other sites. While the concept of creating as many links as possible seems like a great idea, it’s just not that simple. It’s important to make sure the content you are putting out there is relevant to your goals, contains valuable information, and isn’t pure spam for the sake of rank.

The idea that any link is a good link is just a misconception. In fact, Google can and will penalize your website if you start publishing irrelevant content just for the links.

Is Link Baiting the Same as Clickbaiting?

Link baiting and click baiting sound similar, but they aren’t the same thing. Click baiting is when a news organization or blog writes a sensational headline that is designed to make a person click but doesn’t necessarily deliver on content. In a lot of instances, the content ends up having nothing at all to do with what the headline suggested. This is not a method you want to use.

In contrast, Link baiting has a defined goal and delivers exactly what the intended reader expected. This makes it a step above pure clickbaiting, but does not mean it’s any less inherently risky.

SEO and Current Events

Publishing content that ties into current events can be tricky. While your site may gain some traction from the SEO value of the keywords and the popularity of a topic, it can also suffer if the issue in question is controversial or badly matched to your audience. You must ensure the content provides some sort of value to your clients, even if just as a handy resource or entertainment piece.

Let’s use Hurricane Michael as an example. At the time I sat down to write this piece, Hurricane Michael was about a day away from the Florida Panhandle. Could your website leverage this current event? Maybe, maybe not. Here’s a few examples that demonstrate good link baiting:

  • Medical: Medical sites might write about hurricane prep from a health perspective – making sure you are stocked up on medication or having the proper access to generators for medical equipment.
  • Home Renovation: Home supply companies have a unique opportunity to use current events to their advantage. For example, a building supply center could provide valuable content on how to properly board up a home or minimize exterior damage.
  • Insurance: Insurance companies and agents can write about hurricane prep from a myriad of perspectives. Options include home preparedness or even specific details on how to ensure your home is properly covered from an insurance standpoint.
  • Electric and gas: These companies may have valuable information about how to stay safe and protect your home in a storm. This includes advice for turning off breakers during times of flood and how to stay safe after a storm passes.
  • Pets: Pet supply companies, veterinarians, and relief groups have loads of valuable content available for storms. This includes how to make sure your pets are taken care of during a storm and/or what to do if you find livestock or pets outside (or even wildlife).
  • Restaurant/Food: Restaurants and food suppliers, or even food retailers, also often get in the game with current events like storms. They give great advice on what foods to stock up on and how to safely prepare foods in the event there is no power or proper storage.
  • Churches/Faith Groups: Religious organizations offer significant comfort in times of high stress, and frequently lead charity recover efforts. They can offer words of encouragement, prayer, or advice for their specific audiences.
  • Disaster Relief: Emergency prep groups, such as the Red Cross, share information that can literally be the difference between life and death for citizens in a storm. They help homeowners determine the amount of supplies needed for a family and tell them how to store those supplies.

 

It’s OK to tie your content and it’s headline into a relevant current event, but only if it really makes sense. It would be short-sighted of a beauty supply store, candy shop, video game outlet, or purse manufacturer to try to tie a hurricane into relevant website content – and it might even come off as gratuitous and offensive.

There are, of course, always exceptions. Thinking of the same example, if those businesses were running some sort of event to benefit people in need before or after the storm, using the current event would probably be fine. This might look like a clothing store using their location as a distribution point for food and water, phone charging, or e even free outfits for displaced individuals. Even then, the content should be targeted specifically to that event and shouldn’t include any other sort of business information.

Here Is What NOT to Do

Never, ever run a flash-sale or special promotion around a current event unless it is a positive event. Supply stores may run sales or give discounts to make it easier for community members to protect their homes, but a “Hurricane Flash Sale” to offer free shipping or a discount on makeup or luxury clothing would be tone-deaf and insensitive. It’s also far more likely to backfire and create bad press than do you any good.

How to Find Relevant Current Events

Finding current events that are relevant to your industry isn’t difficult. You can do a simple news search each day by going to Google and hitting the “news” option after you type in your keyword of interest.

Another effective method for staying up to date with industry news is by setting up a Google Alert. Head to alerts.google.com and enter the terms you’d like to keep track of. When the words you flag come up in new articles or blogs, you’ll receive an email alert you can search for relevant, usable content.

Think outside the box when it comes to relevant content. For example, a lot of sports organizations are showing support for Breast Cancer Awareness by wearing pink during games this month. While you have to be careful about using a subject like this to make a sale, medical providers and groups that offers support services to breast cancer patients and survivors can definitely incorporate headlines that feature different teams or players and their efforts to support the cause.

Take a closer look at your current target audience. What are their interests other than your product or niche? Look for creative ways to draw direct or indirect relationships between the niches you might see featured in the news and your own. Your content doesn’t need to be boring. With a little creative research, you can create content people will be thrilled to share.

Finding my suggestions helpful? I’d like to help even more. Let’s work together and take your SEO project to the next level. Connect with me here.

Categories
Digital Marketing

How to Get Useful High-Quality Leads from Your Customers

Looking for new leads isn’t every business owner’s favorite task. It’s time-consuming, and some people are just uncomfortable cold-calling, following up with strangers, and networking in general. All of those are issues you should try to overcome, but we’ll talk about strategies to help you meet that particular goal another day.

In the meantime, let’s get back to the point: leads. You have one thing in common with every other business owner you meet – you all have current and past customers, and both can be an incredible source of referrals if you use them right.

The Pitfalls of Asking for Leads

Unfortunately, that’s also where most businesses get it wrong. It’s really common for marketers to either ask for leads in the wrong way or avoid asking all together, assuming if someone wants to provide a referral they’ll take action on their own.

That’s a problem. Sure, your customers will likely refer people to you out of a sheer desire to help (you or them) once in a while, but most just don’t ever think of it. The second their exchange with you ends, they forget you exist.

So here’s where the quandary exists. You want to remind your customers to make referrals, but you also don’t want to make them feel forced or pushed, nor do you want to appear desperate. Here’s a few strategies for getting it right.

Expectations and Referral Programs

Start by creating a formal referral program for your business. Build it into your processes, giving it the most visibility at times when customers are the most pleased, rather than just asking every customer for a review. Hell hath no fury like a customer asked to refer their friends right after you manage to frustrate them into leaving.

Instead of focusing on the referrals, focus on your service. Customers who have a great experience are more likely to share your value with others. But it’s about so much more than just being “good;” you need to exceed their expectations every single time. Optimize, tweak, and improve until you get it right.

Once you’re sure your service is on point, it’s time to focus on creating loyalty and inspiring growth within your referral program. Clients who receive good customer service will remain loyal to you over time. Loyalty translates out into a willingness to refer their peers.

Define Your Ideal Customer

Spend some time determining who your ideal client really is. Do they work in a certain niche or have a certain revenue value? Do they have a unique need you can fulfill? If you can answer these and other demographic-specific questions, you’ll be able to find the unique motivators that drive people to refer in the first place. This makes it easier for you to target the people you ask for leads and referrals.

Review Your Existing Client Base

Who are your best customers? Make a list of the clients or customers you find easy to work with, even when times are tough. Depending on the nature of your business, this list could be as short as a few people or hundreds of thousands of individuals long. It’s all valuable!

Remember: like minds tend to stick together. Friends of your best customers usually have similar shopping styles, interaction styles, and personalities. If you ask an ideal client for a referral, you will probably receive a lead that meets your ideal customer criteria.

Ask for Social Media Reviews

Social sharing is great for exposure, but soliciting reviews is quickly becoming a grey-area tactic. While it used to be recommended that you offer a client a discount or reward for leaving reviews on certain platforms, this practice could now do more harm than good based on changing review platform rules. For example, Amazon is now actively banning companies who pay people, either through cash or products, to create “glowing reviews.”

However, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are a different story. There’s nothing wrong with encouraging people to share positive thoughts. Ask your clients to be social in their sharing. Have them post  photo on Facebook or Instagram with a short blurb about their experiences. Make sure you ask them to make the post public and to tag you and/or your business in the description.

Take Advantage of Positive Opportunities

Keep your eyes open for opportunities to ask for referrals. The best time to ask for a lead is directly after you really please someone, land a new account, or generally experience significant success. People with recent positive experiences or outcomes are more likely to feel happy and motivated – more motivated than someone who is feeling neutral or upset over a loss.

You can create your own opportunities for positive feedback. Try using SurveyMonkey to send the occasional customer feedback survey to your clients. Ask them for their feedback and really pay attention to what they have to say. If a customer chooses to leave a name and gives you glowing remarks, take the time to thank them and ask if they know anyone else you could help. You might even ask a direct survey question about whether or not the client is likely to offer a referral.

Utilize Your Content Marketing Strategies

Your content marketing strategies are critical. They play an enormous role in helping you to land  clients, especially within the online sphere. You continue to create great content to distribute via your email list, but are you encouraging your readers to share your content with others? Adding a simple prompt encouraging your customers to share with a friend will grow your email list so you can nurture them as new leads.

Don’t Forget to Make Referrals

Giving referrals to others shows you are invested in their success. Take a look at your own clients and determine whether or not you know anyone who could use their services. Showing you value and trust their business enough to offer a lead will make a memorable impact. When they come across someone who needs the service you have to offer, they’ll probably return the favor.

Offer Incentives

No matter what type of business you run, offering incentives for referrals shows gratitude and tells your audience you aren’t just asking for something for nothing. The key is to make sure you are offering something your client really wants. It might be as simple as a $5 gift card to a coffee shop or as complex as a free year of service after so many referrals. Whichever approach you use, just ensure it has value in their eyes.

Here’s a tip: give the incentive for the referral alone, regardless of whether or not you close the sale. The sale of your product or service is your responsibility; it isn’t fair to try and put it on customers in exchange for a lead. In fact, that’s exactly why some multi-level marketing companies get such a bad rep. Make sure your clients know you appreciate the efforts they’ve made on your behalf – full-stop, without asking for more.

It takes a lot of time and effort to run a business. Leveraging your existing relationships to create new leads is one of the smartest time-saving, streamlining strategies in prospecting. What your customers say about you speaks volumes about how they feel about you and how well you’re doing. Capitalize on the opportunities presented and use them to grow your business.

Growing your business isn’t easy, but I believe SEO is still one of the best ways to succeed in today’s complicated online world. From technical SEO to content, I’m always available if you need a hand. Reach out and connect here.

Categories
Outreach

Keeping Automated Outreach Marketing Personal

How can something be automated and personal? Don’t the two terms contradict one another? In marketing, you hear two things preached more often than anything else: focus on building quality relationships with your customers through personalization, but automate your marketing where you can.

After all, there are only so many hours in a day, and quite a bit to be done to scale your business. And if you’re in the startup phase where you can’t necessarily afford to hire staff for sales and marketing, you’re stuck doing the grunt work yourself.

One complaint many influencers have is the “spray and pray” approach marketers use to get coverage for their business, product, or service. Instead of taking the time to get to know more about each influencer and the work they do, thereby crafting a somewhat personalized pitch, they get a list of influencers and mass email everyone.

They hope that some of them will respond with interest – but I’m here to tell you that won’t work. You’ll get far more bang for your buck by focusing on building relationships with influencers. When they get outreach requests that don’t address them by name and clearly is being sent to multiple people at once, they tend to ignore them.

In this post, I discuss how you can create a balance between automated outreach and personalization. You can apply these tips to automation and personalization to various areas of your marketing strategy – not just influencer outreach, though the recommended tools address influencer marketing specifically.

Dig Up Details – More is Better

If you’re reaching out to someone and asking them to do something for you, you’d better take time to learn about them. Of course, you want contact information, but you should take the time to read their work – tell them what you like about it. And if you understand a problem they’re having, offer content that will help them solve it. This shows them you’re paying attention to them as an individual, not just using generic approach for everyone.

Divide Prospects into Buckets

To help provide personalization, while still making it easier to use automation and templates, divide your influencers into buckets, based on factors that don’t change, such as age, gender, and niche.

Keep Brand Voice Consistent

Your brand voice will make it easier to differentiate yourself from the competition. If you’re a small business, consider using your personal brand, so it’s easier for you to provide personal and engaging content. and make it easier for customers to identify with you.

Automation Tools to Help You Get the Job Done

Finding Influencers

There are a number of tools you can use to find influencers, which are especially useful if you’re looking for the best of the best in your industry, or for influencers in a highly specific niche. I covered three of the major ones in my Influencer Marketing 101 post. Rather than sound like a broken record, I’ll just share some platforms for brands looking to connect with influencers.

  • Upfluence: Upfluence is essentially a search engine to help you find influencers. Short list the influencers you’re most interested in contacting based on the filters you’ve applied to your search. Use the integrated emailing tool to contact the influencers.
  • Linqia: This is an AI driven discovery engine to find influencers that connect to the right brands, to ensure the audiences get exposure to the brands and campaigns they will actually respond to. Pricing is based on alignment with customer goals, such as reach, engagement, and conversions.
  • Brandsnob: BrandSnob is an iOS platform that connects brands and influencers. Brands can find and book the influencers they believe are the best fit for their campaigns. You can use your own list of influencers as well. Android is not available yet, but will be in the future, so Windows and desktop users can benefit as well. There are no subscription or booking fees for brands to use the platform. Instead, the platform takes a small fee from the influencers and content creators for each campaign they work on.

Tracking Email Opens

  • Sidekick: This is an email plugin from HubSpot that can track email opens as well as clicks, and provide some information about the person you’re emailing. It connects the email address to profiles it’s used with.
  • Yesware: Get email templates, track opens, and track link clicks. It connects with Gmail and Outlook – and syncs with Salesforce. After a free trial, pricing starts at $15/user/month, or $12/user/month when paid annually.
  • Bonus: Make sure email addresses are legit with Kickbox. This tool works with a number of customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to make a smoother workflow. It saves time because it validates the email addresses you’re sending messages to. Pricing is based on the number of verifications you need, starting at 500 verifications for $5. The first 100 are always free, and additional can be purchased on demand.

Building Outreach Templates

  • Gmail’s Canned Responses: This is the simplest way to build email outreach templates – based on a feature that’s available for free in Gmail. Simply leave blanks to remind you what to put in. Just proofread before sending.
  • Mailshake: This tool integrates with Gmail to provide various templates for cold emailing – guest posts, lead generation, link building, PR pitches, and content promotion. Pricing starts at $19/month/user.
  • Quickmail: This is a sales and marketing CRM complement that gives you the ability to send personalized cold emails. You can also use it to track open rates, split test your emails, schedule your messages, and more. If you have an upgraded service plan, you can track link clicks and integrate it with other services. After a 14-day free trial, you’ll pay either $49 or $69 per user per month depending on the plan you choose. Switching to annual billing means you’ll pay either $39 or $55 per user per month.

Sharing Large Files

If you need to share files and assets with influencers that are too large for email, simply create a shared folder they have access to and put the files there. You can use, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive.

Following Up with Influencers

  • FollowUpThen: This tool allows you email yourself reminders about when you want to follow up with influencers. You can send reminders in general, or only if the recipient hasn’t responded.
  • Boomerang: This is a Gmail integration that allows you to write an email when you have time, and then schedule it to be delivered at another time.

Managing Your Outreach

  • BuzzStream: This platform is intended for personalized influencer outreach. You can build a list of prospects, then learn more about them, segment them according, and send out personalized marketing communications. This tool helps you keep track of who is working with you and who has chosen not to. Pricing starts at $24/month per user. More advanced plans offer additional features and discounts on additional users.
  • Ninja Outreach: This is a platform that makes it possible to find influencers and automate your outreach from a single tool. Pricing starts at $69/month for one user after 14-day free trial. There’s a Chrome extension so you can add influencers you find on your own while browsing the web.
  • Nimble: This is a sales and marketing CRM designed to help you keep better tabs on your influencer contacts, allowing you to build and nurture your relationships with them.

Tracking Campaign Performance

  • Pitchbox: This is an all-in-one influencer platform that works well for large-scale campaigns. It’s a CRM for campaign management you can use to track how well your campaign is performing.

Making it Easy for Your Influencers

Use a tool like Instapage to create a landing page to provide everything your influencers will need over the course of the campaign. This way, they won’t have to search through email exchanges, downloads folder, or cloud storage to find the things they need. Instead, they can bookmark the link to the landing page and go to it whenever they need information or assets.

Outreach Can Get Complicated, But It Doesn’t Have to Be

With the right tools and a little planning in place, you can make the most of the time you spend finding and working with influencers. I hope this guide helps improve your efficiency and guides you in the right direction.

What other tools do you recommend?

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