As we all are already aware, the year 2020 wasn't what you call a normal year. In this year, many things got impacted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic - more people started to shop online rather than go to a retail store, companies began to adopt a remote-first culture, and in-person conversations transformed into video conversations. So, one can easily say that the last year brought along a variety of changes. During this time, something similar happened in the advertising and marketing turf as well.

The recent trends in PPC show that marketers have started to use Artificial Intelligence and Automation for creating data-backed ads. Plus, they are focussing on the buyer's journey now more than ever. Therefore, whether you're an agency or an advertiser, you need to be abreast with the newest trends and features to take your PPC game to a whole different level.

Let's discuss the 10 important PPC trends to watch in 2021 to help you with the same:

1. Understanding your Audience and Buyer Journey is Important

In 2021, the most successful PPC marketers are concentrating on their target audience. At a time when there is less control because of AI and automation, what matters most are the people who are seeing your ads. Doing so helps in driving qualified clicks.

In order to move ahead of the pack this year, advertisers need to think about their customers and how they decide to purchase. Spend time thinking about the following questions:

• What information do they require?
• Where do they interact?
• What are they searching for?
• How to measure success at every step?

Tip: It is important to know who has the likelihood to convert versus who is worth prospecting. This knowledge will help you segregate and independently manage both of them.

2. Remarketing

In 2021, we definitely expect to see remarketing getting the recognition it truly deserves.

Hence, remarketing is a marketing tool that demands all your attention. It is an excellent means of engaging with potential customers that, in your knowledge, are already warm to what you offer. It is also more affordable as compared to other marketing methods.

Let's know a remarketing fact after which you may end up rethinking PPC:

Remarketing conversion rates rise over time

It is found that conversion rates tend to rise as more users look at an ad within remarketing campaigns. The click-through rates may decline with time, but those who click on your ad after seeing it a few times in the past are the ones who become likely to convert.

It is important to remember that people can be busy or involved in one or the other stuff going on in their lives. Keeping this in mind, remarketing acts as a gentle reminder to end what they began on your website, all while reinforcing your messaging and branding to the user when they see you.

3. Video Ads and PPC

Let's begin to understand the impact of a video with some stats - People remember 95% of a message from a video.

Now, let's check how the video will impact PPC this year:

• An increasing number of marketers will begin linking to products in video ads.
• Marketers will start including virtual reality (VR) to offer real experiences to viewers.
• Instagram Stories in video marketing will not cease to dominate.

Google has added one of the most fascinating video ad features called Bumper Machine. It makes use of machine learning to make 6-second bumper ads from videos (90 seconds or less) in order to display across Youtube.

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The full-funnel video strategy helps marketers in managing 6-second bumper ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, and skippable in-stream ads.

If you want to foster positive interactions with your potential customers, take note of the following online video advertising trends for this year and beyond:

• DIY videos: With the help of DIY videos on video-sharing platforms such as Tiktok and YouTube, you can easily promote your business. You don't need a ten thousand dollar camera and a professional film crew to create an engaging video ad on these platforms. The thing that matters the most in online video advertising is that you should be able to grab your audience's attention with your concept. For this, focus primarily on your video's content when you decide to create DIY video ads for these platforms.
• Storytelling: With so many videos and ads on the internet, your content should be able to grab eyeballs. A story helps create a connection with your audience and appeals to their emotions. To use this trend, think of how your services or products can impact people's lives. Ask yourself these questions - how were their lives before you came into it? How did they overcome their challenges with the help of the tools you offered? How is their life after using these tools?
• Silent films: A lot of times people see a video ad without the audio. So, you can create your video ad in a way that captures the viewers' attention even when the audio is turned off. For this, you can ensure the visuals in your video ad are gripping. Also, you can use captions in these ads to tell your story.

4. Voice search for PPC campaigns

50% of consumers could be voice shopping by 2022. Therefore, it is more important than ever to create PPC campaigns for voice search and get featured in voice search results.

The three significant ways in which voice search impacts PPC are:

• Natural language: People tend to use a more conversational and natural style when they use voice search. Thus, the use of short-tail keywords may not provide you an advantage.

• Question-oriented: A lot of voice searches begin with question-oriented keywords.

• Mobile-first: Even though plenty of devices have voice search, it is used more on mobile devices.

Here's how you can optimize your PPC campaigns for voice search:

• Analyze current search terms: Check the specific search terms which people have used to see your ad to better optimize for voice search. Visit Google Ads and head over to the Search Terms tab to click on Keywords. Now, see the searches that start with:

a. Hey Sirib. Ok, Googlec. Where do Id. Alexa

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• Concentrate on long-tail keywords and question phrases: Compared to text searches, voice searches are longer and more conversational. A majority of voice searches begin with questions such as how, where, what, etc. Tools like Answer the Public aid you in discovering long-tail keywords and question phrases.

• Know the searcher's position in the buying cycle: Usually, people who use the terms what or who are at the awareness stage. On the other hand, people who search for where or when are closer to the conversion stage. For PPC, bidding on where and when keywords may provide an advantage.

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As you have researched long-tail keywords, question phrases, and current search terms, you can create a keywords list to optimize your current campaign or incorporate them in a fresh campaign.

Note: When it comes to platforms, concentrate on Bing and Google. This is because Bing is the default search engine for Alexa. On the other hand, Google is the default search engine for both Apple and Google products.

5. Diversification is Key

Loss of control in Google may result in more companies shifting PPC dollars to Microsoft Ads and other search engines.

PPC marketers should diversify their skillset beyond Google Ads. Advertisers must become fully aware of the advertising platforms which provide them more control over their reach, messaging, and spending. One cannot depend heavily on Google Ads like earlier.

Remember, diversification is vital for an effective PPC strategy. It is time to diversify advertising beyond Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads Search and Display. This means testing Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Verizon Media's native ads.

There are many alternative PPC platforms you can use to diversify your ad spend. Here's a list:

• LinkedIn: This is an ideal advertising platform if you are a B2B company. You can reach millions of users using targeting options such as company, job title, education, industry, company connections, and interests.
• Quora: Quora has about 300 million monthly unique visitors. To influence people when they are at the consideration phase of the buyer's journey, advertisers can target the content or users as per their activity on the platform.
• AdRoll: AdRoll helps businesses in running ads on different channels from one place.
• Bing: For every search on Bing, 34 searches are made on Google (Ahrefs, 2021). So, you can definitely use this platform.

6. Perfecting The Ad Message

How you articulate your ad message is of paramount importance in 2021. You must, therefore, focus on gaining deep insights into buyer personas. A wrong message is an opportunity missed.

How to craft a successful text ad?

To reach your potential customers, your ads should be alluring, hold relevance, must empower, and be specific. Let's discuss the best practices for writing excellent text ads and the mistakes you need to avoid:

• Highlight what makes you different: Tell people about the services, products, or offers that make you competitive. For instance, if you provide free shipping, then mention it in your text ad!
• Include promotions, prices, and exclusives: People often conduct a Google search to decide about something. Hence, mention if you have an exclusive product or are offering a limited-time discount.
• Prompt the person to take action: If you are selling something, inform the potential customers what they can buy. If you are providing a service, share your contact information. Calls to action such as call today, browse, purchase, get a quote, etc. provide clarity about further steps.
• Include at least one keyword: Keywords in your ad will depict your ad's relevance to what people need. For instance, if you want to include a keyword called basketball hoops, your ad headline can be buy basketball hoops.

• Ensure your ad is matched to your landing page: Take a look at the landing page (the page you link to from your ad). It should feature the products or promotions in your ad. Your potential customers can leave your site if they don't see what they came expecting.

• Ensure that your ads are high-quality: Your ads should not have extra spaces, unclear URLs, and strange capitalization.

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7. A Great Mobile Experience is Crucial

Are you amazed to see this in a list of PPC trends? You certainly shouldn't be. If brands want to win this year, they must have an easy-to-operate and accessible mobile site. It may surprise you, but many people have not even checked out their website on a mobile, let alone other devices.

Now, more than ever, it is crucial to have an up and running mobile site. It will only help you get traffic that you can use to your benefit. The importance of a mobile experience that delights visitors and continues to bring them back cannot be emphasized enough.

Tip: There is a high chance that people who see your ads on mobile devices want to call you or know your location. You can show your phone number and location with call extensions and location extensions. Also, think about crafting ads that are specifically aimed at potential customers on mobile devices. For this, use your site's mobile version as a landing page.

8. PPC Automation

One of the significant trends in PPC advertising to look out for in this year is automation the use of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for automating labor-intensive tasks linked with Google and Bing ads.

Automation in PPC is not something new, but it is important to note that it will start to play a significant role this year.

Automation will be used for the optimization of PPC campaigns and PPC experts will willingly adapt it to:

• Put an end to low-performing ads and give priority to the ones producing the best results
• Recognize performance issues within an account
• Dynamically produce ads based on website content and user behavior
• Automatically create ad performance reports

Tip: DashClicks' White Label Dashboard helps you to manage your client's PPC Campaigns. If you are an agency and want a personal white label dashboard for PPC clients and manage things with the help of automation, you can check out DashClicks' White Label PPC. Sign up for the platform today. It's free!

9. Artificial Intelligence

As we are all already aware, AI continues to transform the world. When it comes to PPC, it will help marketers to create outstanding ad campaigns and will be specifically useful in:

• Calculating how ads impact quality scores (a quality score is a value that considers your relevance, landing page quality, and click-through rate)
• Predicting the CTR of future ads.
• Knowing the likelihood of conversion from a particular customer.
• Examining the bids which have the likelihood of getting maximum traffic.
• Optimizing keywords, campaigns, or ads when a particular event takes place (for example, when your CPC falls below a particular amount).

As AI becomes more aware of your audience's behavior, it can create targeted ads more accurately. This, in turn, increases the performance of your PPC campaigns as well as Bing, Google, and Amazon ads.

AI can power up Amazon Ads campaigns in the following ways:

• Make bid changes according to the predicted revenue per click of keywords.
• Automate bids for both long-tail and short-tail keywords.
• Provide comprehensive diagnostic information for active keywords.

The benefits of AI don't end here!

AI is incredibly useful in creating great reports. Adzooma, a Google partner, can make PPC reports in just a few steps. Here's is what you need to do:

• Link your Google Ads account
• Go to the reporting tab in the top corner and click on Create Report.
• Add the elements you need in the report along with images, your logo, and text.
• Choose the metrics you want, such as ACoS, keywords, etc. in the format you require (line graph, table, etc.).

And you are done! Your report will get created.

10. Virtual Reality Ads

Virtual Reality's growing popularity has given rise to new opportunities for advertisers. The goal of virtual reality ads is simple - to help viewers try out the product before they purchase it.

The significant ways in which VR can change PPC ads are:

• VR gives information about parts of the screen that the viewers are interacting with and the parts that they are looking at.
• It makes use of eye-tracking technology for ad activation. When the user looks at it for a few moments, the ad begins.
• The Gen Zers and the Millennials are using VR the most, and hence, it is easier to target them in the upcoming years.
• 360-degree videos are one of the best videos to make consumers know about and interact with your products.

Bottomline

To make the most out of your PPC advertising campaigns, you need to know and leverage these latest PPC trends. This year, there will be an increase in video ads (which also includes 360-degree videos). AI and automation will transform the way businesses make and run ads. Also, marketers who will optimize their ads for voice search are going to see improved results.

The biggest mistake newborn agencies make is to strive for high-ticket clients right from the onset. While it's a good idea to have high ticket clients onboard to generate instant revenues, the strategy won't take you any far as it has a fundamental flaw.

A large number of low-ticket clients is always better than having a small number of high-ticket clients. There are two primary reasons for that. The first reason is that this industry has a super high churn rate, which is three months only. Secondly, it's much more challenging to win a new client than upselling an existing client or offering them recurring services.

So, you should choose your method of prospecting carefully. We have laid out this entire process to help you understand the best practices recommended by Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, to grow your agency and boost its revenues.

Mantra: You need to LOWER CHURN to improve revenue growth in your agency. So, every step you take to reduce churn will ultimately help you increase your revenues and survive as a business.

1. Start With a Low Barrier to Entry Products

The best way of prospecting is to start with an irresistibly low barrier to entry products that people can buy easily. For a digital agency, it can be a professional-grade website. DashClicks tool InstaSites allows you to create instant websites for your clients within seconds.

With InstaSites, you can create a beautiful looking instant website based on a niche-based template and ready with content and graphics. It will provide a truly transformational experience for your prospects. You can offer a completely professional-looking website for $199 + $40 per month. So, it will become a source of recurring revenue for you for at least the next six months.

The fact is that a website is an inexpensive product that brings with it a lot of value. It's easy to sell to build relationships with a prospect. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to make a professional website, but with DashClicks tools, you can instantly create a ready-to-use website. If you share how the website will look like, they will be impressed with your speed and skills.

2. Use a Value Ladder Approach for Upsells & Downsells

After selling the website, you shouldn't sit idle. Instead, you should call up your client and ask them for feedback. Since most of your clients are probably local businesses such as roofers, plumbers, home services providers, masons, and carpenters, they must promote themselves as local businesses on the web.

They need to get their directory listings fixed as there can be several inconsistencies due to manual errors which can prevent your customer from being able to contact you. The customers who search for local businesses or services through their mobile phones or local directories such as Yelp can't find you if you have an incorrect building number mentioned there.

Price rebuttals are common, but if there is any other reason stopping them from buying your product or service, you can convince them of the value of the product versus its price. For example, you can push directory listing services to boost their local SEO and attract more local traffic.

88% of people who search for a local service on their smartphones visit the store the same day.

3. Sell Recurring Services (Monthly Payments)

The best way to become a millionaire is to have multiple clients paying you recurring fees every month rather than a few clients paying a one-time hefty fee.

What is a Recurring Payment?

Just like you pay for Google Apps, Kindle Unlimited, Netflix, loan repayments, kids' school fees, and perhaps your website hosting, there are millions of people and agencies who make recurring payments for a service.

Recurring billing happens when you allow a merchant to automatically charge you for specific services as per the schedule mentioned in your contract.

Many household items, electronic goods, and furniture items are available on a recurring payment basis from different merchants and physical and online stores such as Amazon. Recurring transactions are so common that the total volume of annual recurring transactions in the US alone is estimated to be around $473 billion in 2021.

Here are a few ways you can sell recurring billing to your customers:

1. Make recurring payments the standard way to buy or subscribe to your digital services.
2. Give many options to your customers and support as many payment types as possible.
3. Don’t overcharge and introduce a fair price point that your customers find easy to pay.

Here are the recurring methods suggested by Chad. If you buy white label services from DashClicks, you can easily offer your clients the following recurring subscriptions. DashClicks will do the fulfillment:

1. Create a website through InstaSites in a matter of minutes and sell it to your prospect @ $49/month + $199 Setup Fee
2. When they become your customer, share with them the value of local SEO for incoming traffic and sales and offer Directory Listing Services @ 199/month + $99 Setup Fee. Again, source these white label services
3. Offer them Social Media Posting services and charge $399/month + $99 Setup Fee
4. Offer them SEO services and charge $699/month + $199 Setup Fee
5. Offer them PPC services and charge $999/month (roughly) + $699 Setup Fee

Irresistible Sales Formula Training Course

Conversion of leads is the biggest challenge for marketing and salespeople. Here is an irresistible sales formula from Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, that will help you turn leads into high-value clients. The training course introduces you to proven prospecting systems that will assist you in filling the pipelines with qualified leads and teach you how to make those leads an irresistible offer.

Get Access to all our courses, tools, training & curriculums, mentors, and communities including Dash University and Call Center Secrets. To create a successful marketing agency, you can join Dash Elite Program and youā€™ll get free access to all of the above.

Note: Watch this video to know more about the Dash Elite Program.

4. Offer Promotional Prices on Long-Term Commitments

People are not likely to say yes to every sales offer, but they love discounts and offers. Capitalize on this psychology and offer them an irresistible package on long-term commitments. Shift your positioning and review your prices. Pick up your phone and check if they are hesitating to say yes to your previous offer.

If so, offer them a much better-discounted price for the long-term commitment. This trick will likely work and help you to add another customer to a recurring payment contract. It will boost your cash flow and offer you the ability to survive for a long time.

5. Build a List

None of your campaigns will succeed if you don't have a list of prospects. Lists are essential as marketers aptly say that the money is in the lists. Email lists, social media followers' lists, and even telephone numbers obtained from similar or lookalike databases can do the trick.

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The more extensive the list, the more money you are likely to make. Use these lists for email marketing campaigns and social media campaigns.

6. Build a Sales Team

Building a sales team is highly crucial to a digital agency. But, what about its structure and sales strategy?

Chad further explains it in this way. You can build a sales team of tele-callers, and sales reps referred to as “fronters” and “closers,” respectively. You can generate a list of your prospects as per the services you offer and your physical location. In this list, you can also include people who have:

1. Visited your website
2. Expressed interest in your business during an event, a meeting, or online interaction.

Source: Top 10 Fastest Ways To Add Additional Revenue to Your Agency

7. Overdeliver Since the First Customer Interaction

To decrease churn, you must overdeliver since your first customer interaction. If you make it a part of your mission statement, it will not go unnoticed, and soon people will get to know about you through word-of-mouth publicity. The standard churn rate is 3-5%, so, if you can manage it within this limit, you're doing a great job.

Over-delivering never fails to impress your customers, and it gets acknowledged almost immediately. Overdelivering leads to customer delight and loyalty, and it helps you boost your brand image. It also dramatically reduces the churn rate, which is a significant challenge for the agencies.

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8. Create an Easy Onboarding ExperienceĀ

Onboarding can be tedious both for you and for your clients because of lengthy documentation and paperwork. DashClicks white label dashboard makes onboarding a smooth process by taking care of all the repetitive tasks. DashClicks' intelligent onboarding process automatically gathers essential information from your clients. You can buy the service from DashClicks' fulfillment store and automatically allow your clients to access the white-labeled onboarding platform.

Most agencies complete the onboardings themselves, which chews up lots of your time, straining precious resources. The best way is to send them straight to your client via your white-labeled dashboard.

It will also help reduce churn in a big way.

9. Educate Your Customers

Educate your customers to reduce churn and grow your revenues. Certain aspects of digital marketing require education, especially when you're running a campaign, and your client has no clues about its purpose, scope, TAT, and estimated time to expect results. As a result, the churn rate is often high in SEO projects.

The core services such as SEO require a lot of communication between the client and the agency because people are generally unaware of its value, dos and don'ts, methodologies, and complications.

When you hire white-label SEO or digital marketing services from DashClicks, you also get access to a host of educational material from DashClicks such as their highly informative blog, Video blog, Marketers Mindset Podcast, Webinars, Private Facebook Group, and Support Center.

• Video Blog

DashClicksā€™ video blog is highly beneficial for the agency owners as it shares proven digital marketing strategies directly from the successful agency owners, including Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks.

• Dash University

Dash University is DashClicks’ education and training venture explicitly launched to help agency owners succeed in this challenging marketplace. Branded as a “university for agency owners,” Dash University educates you on what works and what doesn’t.

Dash University invites its members every week to a new live online training. With four distinct training styles, it helps you absorb all the information with minimal effort. Engagement and entertainment are the salient features of the university, so you can learn complicated stuff without feeling overwhelmed.

10. Increase Communication With Your Clients

ARC triangle is often used in Scientology, a 20th-century belief system invented by L. Ron Hubbard. The ARC triangle has three components:

1. Affinity
2. Reality
3. Communication

The triangle is often used to describe the dynamics of human relationships and emotional connections. Affinity is the degree of affection or love between two persons to be described as the emotional state. Reality reflects the state of mind or agreements on what is real. It forms the basis of our behavior toward others.

Communication is considered one of the most crucial in all of the three elements, and it happens through the exchange of ideas. According to Scientology, improving communication will improve all three aspects of the ARC triangle, including affinity and reality. So, if you drag one corner of this triangle, you'll also have to pull the other two in equal proportion to keep the triangle in its original shape. According to these principles, most of the human survival issues emanate from ineffective communication.

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Similarly, in the business environment, it's essential to establish effective communication. Poor communication will always result in conflicts, misunderstandings, and a lack of trust.

11. Offer Full Transparency

Your business relations become more vital when you have complete transparency. It leaves no room for mistrust and confusion, and as a result, the relationships last longer. Maintain transparency in terms of costs, business policies, and other vital issues. Your clients will appreciate that and reciprocate it with loyalty and long-term business.

Conclusion

These were some of the ways to add additional revenue to your digital marketing agency. Most of the methods recommended by Chad are already tested. Surrounding yourself with the people who have already done it is the best way to learn from them. Mentors and business coaches can help, but they can't provide you with expert advice because they don't have the experience of running an agency and marketing it. For expert advice, you can look forward to someone who's been doing marketing for quite some time. A mastermind community can also help.

Many marketing agencies make the mistake of putting too much stock into vanity numbers such as traffic and leads generated. While getting customers in the door is part of the process, it won't matter much if your sales team is unable to close the deal.

According to studies, a staggering 80% of new leads never lead to a sale, which leads to wasted time, funds, and a frustrated sales team.

However, this is in no small part caused by the fact that countless marketing companies fail to utilize proven marketing and sales tactics that can help improve this percentage. More still never make the effort to analyze the data from their failures and improve.

Below, we're going to provide you and your team with seven steps you can follow that are guaranteed to help turn marketing leads into closed deals.

1. Know Your Buyer

Countless classes, textbooks, and webinars exist promising to convert you from a zero-sale representative into a master. The truth is that selling a product to a lead is not as complicated as you may believe. The problem is that you need to be spending far more time listening to your audience than you spend talking.

Leads come in a variety of types. Many are motivated enough to research the industry to find a reputable company and eventually make a purchase. This person already determined that your product or service could benefit their life or help solve a major problem.

Others may happen upon your business thanks to careful marketing but are not yet ready to take the leap just yet. In some cases, they may not even be aware that they are experiencing a problem that could be resolved with your services. These leads require some nurturing and follow-up.

Finally, some leads may not be interested at all, whether it's due to financial means or general lack of interest. Your team should immediately filter these types of leads out and look to refine your demographic targeting strategies.

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However, in all of these cases, you won't know your buyer until you take the time to listen to their needs. Great marketing and sales are about forging a relationship. Your customers come first, and that comes with giving them the respect of treating them as more than a potential sale.

Make the effort to gather more data from the lead and allow them to give you the ammunition you need to close the deal. What is their biggest pain point? What are they struggling with and how might your product or service benefit them? What is their budget? Instead of walking into a sales encounter with a pre-planned speech, let them tell you how you can help them.

2. Respond Immediately

According to a lead response survey courtesy of Drift, a business is ten times less likely to make contact with a lead if they wait more than five minutes to make contact. Despite this alarming statistic, most companies don't make the effort to contact their leads in even five days.

With that in mind, your team is likely losing sales daily by not enforcing a lead management system that takes advantage of lead freshness. Think of a lead that's no more than five minutes old as hot. When your lead is hot, they're motivated to learn more, they have a problem they want to solve, and they're actively looking for you to sell them on your products or services.

A lead that's even thirty minutes old or longer moved on with their day, found solutions with competitors, or simply forgot about your company altogether. If you're one of those companies waiting more than five days, you've made your task of closing a sale that much more difficult.

While your company may not have the means to respond to every lead quickly, there are alternative solutions. The same study suggests that the top-performing companies are staying on top of trends by utilizing automated software such as chatbots to handle initial communications.

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This artificial intelligence helps the lead remain engaged and can benefit you by acquiring some of the necessary information you'll need as we discussed above in step one. Companies are also switching to dedicated lead management systems that allow you to automatically assign leads to key representatives for each marketing campaign. It will also hold your reps accountable to ensure they're moving quickly to close the deal.

(Source: Drift)

3. Nurture the Right Types of Leads

While managing your leads might already be a challenge, closing sales proves more complicated as 96% of visitors that click on your ads or landing pages aren't ready to purchase. This means that your marketing team still has a long way to go after successfully obtaining that initial ad click.

The amount of time you need to spend nurturing a lead will vary greatly depending on your industry. Examples of lead nurturing can include targeted email campaigns, a friendly check-in phone call, content marketing, social media marketing, and more. Each strategy can prove effective as they allow you to target specific buyers at their stage of the buyer's journey. Continued marketing also ensures that your brand stays fresh in their mind.

Even returning customers require nurturing. Brands that make the effort to satisfy customers with engaging content and compelling incentives produce 20% more sales opportunities with those leads as opposed to non-nurtured leads. Take the time to get to know your leads, even if it takes time and multiple follow-ups.

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Nurturing the right types of leads also means identifying and releasing poor-quality leads. If leads do not respond to your nurturing efforts, then it's likely time to target new audiences. You can also experiment with creating arbitrary deadlines that create urgency and push customers to follow up with you before their opportunity expires.

(Sources: Marketo, Invespcro)

4. Analyze the Data

While losing leads to poor marketing efforts or failure to close sales isn't ideal, it also provides the most useful information you'll receive to improve your strategies.

Marketing continues to evolve rapidly and companies that stay on top of the latest advances and trends are the ones that benefit the most. Advertising platforms on Facebook, Google, YouTube, and so on provide campaign-tracking algorithms that constantly analyze marketing performance. They are also constantly gathering data from your target audience.

These tools provide your company with a significant advantage by eliminating the time-consuming tedium of sorting through the data. However, your campaign managers need to utilize this information to fine-tune your campaigns and improve the overall quality of your leads. When your marketing team supplies better leads, your sales team should have a much easier time closing the deal.

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All of the pressure is not just on your paid search and social experts. The internet provides a variety of high-quality software that can help you manage and track the performance of your sales team.

An example of this includes call-tracking software such as CallRail, which you can seamlessly integrate into your website or ad campaigns. You'll be able to listen in on sales calls, understand how your team can improve, and implement that feedback into future negotiations. Utilizing the same CRM software across the entire company will also ensure that each team member is on the same page.

Utilizing the information provided and joining your sales and marketing efforts could lead to a 38% higher likelihood of closing sales.

(Source: Sujan Patel)

5. Differentiate from the Competitor

An issue you may be facing now is the fact that virtually all of your competitors are reading tips like these and doing their best to implement them into daily strategy. When competing companies are vying for the same leads with the same tactics, what can you do to differentiate from the competitor?

According to some of the top sales experts, it largely comes down to customer focus. Consider how many sales interactions you partake in without receiving as much as simple eye contact or a personable greeting. It's a common feeling for the customer to feel like they're just part of another sales and marketing machine.

While this step is similar to the ones mentioned above, it is necessary to stress how important it is to avoid an overly sales-y' approach and ask questions that cut to the core issues. Some of the most successful sales representatives frequently make contact with leads long before broaching the subject of the sale. All the while, they're making the customer feel heard, valued, and important.

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Additionally, the best salespeople not only know their industry but know how to use it effectively with customers. They identify with the customer's experiences and essentially visualize themselves as someone on their team. When both parties are on the same side of an issue, it becomes us versus the objective, not a company peddling an item that may or may not work.

While other strategies can help you differentiate your company such as discounts or free incentives, going the extra mile to forge relationships is all you truly need to jump to the front of the line. Customers will recognize it, and not only will they buy, but they'll also stay loyal to you for it.

(Source: SalesEngine)

6. Provide Incentives

This step encourages you to turn the focus inward and find ways to motivate your sales team. Many companies will utilize traditional incentive programs such as providing rewards to each months' top earner. However, newer companies are creating specific incentives that work to get the best out of each of your sales representatives.

One of the best motivators for an employee will always be cash. It's one of the biggest reasons why many sales companies still rely on commission to pay or supplement the pay for their teams. Companies that can provide unlimited commissions can motivate individuals that are driven to earn as much as possible each workday.

However, additional incentives such as paid time off, travel on the company budget, or a meal for the family can provide temporary motivational boosts. While your team is pursuing these incentives, they'll be taking the initiative to improve their skills on their own. With enough time, study, and hard work, your sales team will improve overall for all future interactions long after the incentive expires.

7. Ask to Close the Sale

While all of the previous steps focus on listening, observing, and establishing a relationship with the customer, it's important to know when it's time to stick the landing. Not every lead operates the same way, and many require that final push to recognize that it's time to commit to the deal. Still, many sales reps will lose countless leads every month by not completing this simple step.

If you're concerned as to whether or not it's time to ask, go down this list and ask yourself if you've satisfied the lead's needs. If you made prompt contact, made the effort to follow up, explained how your company can help with their objectives, and explained the deal, they will know if they intend to purchase.

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While a “yes” answer is ideal, a “no” does not mean the deal is over. Use this opportunity to ask more follow-up questions to determine if there are any concerns left for you to alleviate. If you ultimately lose the deal, thank them for their time, and promise to check back in at a later date to see if they were able to find a better solution. You may lose out on this deal, but maintaining the relationship can sow seeds for an opportunity down the line.

Starting Turning Your Marketing Leads into Sales!

With these steps in mind, your team knows what it needs to do to improve your marketing and sales processes. You can't win every deal, but listening to your audience and investing the time in the relationship will differentiate your company, bestow value to the individual and to what you're selling, and create loyal, returning customers for long-term success.

Follow these steps with every lead, and always continue to make the effort to analyze your efforts and improve with each sales interaction.

Social media is responsible for permanently changing the way we converse. Likewise, it directly impacts your ability to succeed as a business locally and online.

Social media lead generation strategies not only establish brand awareness, but actively encourage your audience to interact with you, each other, and, ultimately, help you achieve your goals.

If you've avoided the social media game this long, it's time to make a change. Below, we're going to give you the primer you need to learn about social media marketing, the best platforms to use for advertising, and the seven effective tactics that can show you how to get more leads on social media.

How Effective is Social Media Marketing?

To give you a clear answer to this question, it's important to consider the unique goals a company may have when using social platforms.

For many businesses and corporations, social media is one of the best tools to analyze consumer data in future strategies. A survey conducted by Sprout Social indicates that as many as 85% of executives are using or plan on using social for this exact purpose.

Social media is also a powerful way to increase brand recognition and promote a consistent flow of traffic to your profiles and your website. One of the latest studies courtesy of We Are Social and Hootsuite indicates that approximately 44.8% of the worldwide population is using social media for brand research.

Even countries trending toward the lower end of this study see one in three internet users turning to Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube before using any other resources. For added perspective, 4.66 billion of the world's 7.83 billion population use the internet regularly.

For sales-focused readers, the same study estimates that 27.5% of people using social media head online specifically to discover new products or services to purchase. Even when spending cash isn't the primary goal, statistics are showing that three out of four people will buy something online this month, regardless of gender or age group.

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What Social Media Platforms Should My Business Use for Advertising?

In terms of sheer numbers, Facebook continues to be unbeaten in terms of active users with 2.85 billion accounts. The runners-up include YouTube at 2.29 billion and Instagram at 1.39 billion. The rest fall below the billion-plus user threshold.

This doesn't mean that platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, or even Reddit aren't useful for achieving your business goals. For example, LinkedIn on average features users of a higher income bracket, with four of five members being the decision-makers at their companies. This makes it the most popular social network for B2B transactions.

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Twitter primarily appeals to the millennial and Gen Z demographic and generally allows for more fun, conversational approach. A different study courtesy of Sprout Social indicates that there was a 35% increase in ad engagements as the number of monetizable users continues to grow on the platform.

With that in mind, every social media platform is potentially viable depending on your unique business goals. Consider your motivations for exploring social media marketing, see how those goals fall in line with a platform's user base and begin creating your strategy from there.

How to Get More Leads on Social Media?

Now, we'll explain seven easy, yet effective tactics you can use to boost your social media performance and get more leads immediately.

1. Create an Optimized Business Profile

While each social platform might offer different customization options to take advantage of, there are rules you should always follow.

1. Upload a high-resolution brand logo or image that you can use for your profile picture. Ensure that users can easily identify the picture even when the image is cropped. Your business should aim for instant recognition.
2. Make sure your business information is always up-to-date. This includes having a valid phone number, email address, physical address, and business hours. If this information does not match up with other directory listings for your business online, it makes it that much more difficult to do business with you. At worst, it can harm your overall SEO score.
   Additionally, hyperlink your contact information if the platform provides this option.
3. Link your social profiles back to your website or landing page. Social media users can learn about you on the platform but will continue their journey by clicking through to your main location.

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2. Utilize the Platform's Advertising Features

The Facebook Ads center is one of the most popular and affordable tools across all social media platforms. You can immediately cross-publish and manage Instagram ads from the same location.

However, other social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google are making it easier than ever to manage and optimize your ads while lowering your cost-per-lead every month.

These systems utilize algorithms that constantly manage and track the performance of your campaigns 24/7. It can observe audience behavior, determine the optimal display dates and times, and ultimately eliminate poor-performing ads that are hurting your return on investment (ROI).

Continuously optimizing your campaigns also means having the ability to nurture your leads who have yet to make a purchase or opt-in. Nurturing means retargeting users at the stage where they previously left off. You can create ads that target those that visited your landing pages, filled out a form, or left an item in their cart.

Finally, all of this invaluable data allows you to create new campaigns for remarketing to the same audiences while also creating lookalike audiences that target new leads. The possibilities for advertising on social media are limited only to your strategies and creativity.

3. Use Social Proof Directly from the Platform

Today's customers are likely to be skeptical of a brand trying to work their way into their goodwill on social media. However, a little social proof can go a long way in quelling any doubts or concerns regarding your products or services. Customer testimonials are great to have regardless of where you advertise.

Thankfully, your customers won't hesitate to let you know exactly what they think of your business or offers on social media. You can use this to your advantage to let real people sell your brand for you. A 2020 study from Wyzowl states that as many as two out of three people are likely to purchase a product after seeing a review from another user that had a positive experience.

A significant part of using social media effectively is to utilize what the platform provides you. Speak with your customers, gather feedback, and incorporate the positives into your advertisements, while using the criticism to improve your brand.

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4. Determine the Right Incentive for Your Goals

To convert a lead into a customer, you need those contact details that will allow you to move the sales process along. However, savvy internet users won't give up that information without the right incentive or lead magnet. After all, no one wants yet another daily or weekly email in their inbox that ends up getting moved to the spam folder.

One of the best ways to help motivate users to provide their information is to provide them with an immediate incentive that's worthwhile. These incentives should be relevant to your brand and your offer.

A specific example could include a roofing company offering a free ebook containing expert tips homeowners can use to inspect their roofs and protect their homes. Your ad and landing page do the work of reminding the user of how important it is to protect their investment, while the free offer pushes them over the top. They get something useful out of the deal with no monetary investment, and you get their contact details for future interactions.

Other examples of powerful lead magnets could include entering sweepstakes for free prizes, coupons, or gift cards. As long as the reward for entering is a worthwhile one, you are sure to quickly generate details from leads with some promotional effort.

Consider what your brand can offer upfront without giving away the best parts of your business. Not only will you generate leads, but those future customers will remember how you helped them before they ever became a sales figure.

5. Sponsor Popular Content

If you engage with any podcast or video content in 2021, you've undoubtedly heard a sponsored advertisement. This is because many brands have found tremendous success by locating content online that already comes with built-in popularity. However, it's important to recognize if consumers of that content will identify with yours.

This doesn't mean forcing internet users to sit through a boring ad read. Allow content creators to sample your products or services for themselves. When they become fans of your brand, their use of your advertisements in their content becomes much more natural and features the built-in social proof we discussed previously above. Except this testimonial is perhaps more impactful as your audience is already a fan of the person promoting you.

Encourage your social media manager to research opportunities to connect with a variety of digital content creators. Doing so can provide a cost-effective, seamless way to bring like-minded brands, creators, and audiences together for success.

6. Target Advertisements to the User

Some forms of digital advertising can only target certain keywords or phrases. Social media provides you with the names, interests, and browsing habits of everyone who engages with your profile and your advertisements. These platforms provide you with the ability to create highly personalized ads that target specific users effectively.

Use the ad center of each platform to learn what topics, offers, or discounts appeal to different types of users and run multiple campaigns that target different types of users. They are much more likely to respond and become leads when a brand is speaking to them personally as opposed to lobbing a general offer at the biggest target.

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7. Talk to Your Audience

Perhaps the most basic tactic, but without a doubt the most important. Social media is inherently a conversational platform. Users share their likes, dislikes, passions, favorite content, favorite brands, and so much more. A brand that is simply trying to peddle its wares won't mesh well with the established norms of the digital space.

Engage with your audience regularly. Using social media for marketing isn't as simple as scheduling a daily post. It requires you to respond to user feedback, demonstrates the values of your brand and your team, and demonstrate authenticity to anyone that you might hope to become a customer someday.

Pay attention to what users are saying about your industry. Follow trending topics, keep up-to-date with hashtags, and help users understand what your business is truly about. Deceptions and misleading statements won't get you far, and the reputation that you will gain will stick with you for far longer. Engage with your audience and treat them as people, and they will treat your team in kind.

Start Generating Leads on Social Media Today!

With these strategies, your brand will begin to make noticeable strides on social media, regardless of the platform you start with. Social media can also effectively work in conjunction with other marketing efforts such as content marketing. Ensure that your campaign manager stays active on social and regularly utilizes your gathered analytics to create and promote new campaigns. With time, you will gain followers, likes, and shares just like the top brands.

Everybody wants their website to be robust, run smoothly, and be error-free. Website owners use Google Search Console to detect any errors. However, there is hardly an entirely error-free website.

In Google Search Console, you receive schema validation notifications containing enormous information about these errors and how to fix them. While performing SEO, you need to take care of many small things, including the schema errors that Google Search Console highlights.

Website owners must know everything about schema validation errors and how to fix them.

The article will also discuss the most common Schema issues such as “Either”, “Offers”, “Review”, or “aggregateRating”, “Should be Specified” errors, etc.

What Are Schema Validation Errors?

Most of these errors are primarily about the formatting of the Schema data. Google finds it difficult to interpret this information.

Search engines interpret Schema, the structured data, to understand what a web page is all about. So, critical information on any topic, such as the author of a book, its publishing date, and the number of pages it contains, can be coded as structured data. The search engine will highlight this information on the SERP itself to help users.

The rich results you see on the search engine result page are shown by search engines using the schema data on the web page. For example, let’s have a look at the below screenshot. Here is the search result Google displays for the query “fountainhead,” a famous novel by author Ayn Rand.

While a search engine needs just the URL and meta description to display search results, it needs more information to show rich results.

If the schema markup is done right, you will get a better Click Through Rate. But schema validation errors can get in your way and may prevent rich results from appearing correctly on the SERP.

You don't necessarily need a developer to do the schema markup as Yoast SEO, and many other website builders can do it for you. However, you may still come across schema validation errors

Before going forward, let's discuss how to add structured data to your website

What are Schema Validation Errors in Google Search Console?

Google Search Console (GSC) brings you essential insights related to traffic stats and errors affecting your SEO. So, it's a good idea to check your website for such mistakes regularly.

One such common issue that GSC alerts you about is a schema validation error. Such issues occur when you have structured your data incorrectly, and Google faces issues understanding it.

The best thing about Schema.org is that you're free to add as much information as you can to your website about your product or service, so search engines may fetch it if needed and show your site for relevant search queries.

Websites hardly get the opportunity to earn users' clicks. Since there is already a lot of competition on a search results page, web admins need to use various features to differentiate their website from others. So if your Schema is appropriately coded, you may get additional opportunities to get people's attention.

Here are some of the most popular schema markup that you can utilize:

• Organization: Specifics related to the organization
• Person: Details of a person
• Local business: Details such as an address, maps, opening times, contact details, etc.
• Products and offers: Details of product and offers
• Articles: Published as a blog post or a news article
• Video: Details required to rank on Google
• Event: Helps users get information about upcoming events
• Reviews: Fetches business reviews from Google
• Ratings: Displays average rating for a product or business

So, what can be an error here?

If the above information isn’t formatted correctly, or Google doesn’t find the desired info it’s looking for, it will flash it as a Schema validation error.

Three Schemas You Need to Avoid the “Either “Offers”, “Review”, or “aggregateRating” Should be Specified” Error

According to Google, the best way to use markups is to use all product markups, including offers, reviews, etc. It will attract eyeballs, increase the CTR and boost sales.

Customers are more inclined to look for offers and social proof while making a buying decision.

You get numerous opportunities to showcase the discounts, offers, and social proof on the result page with rich results. It attracts people to click on the page and also increases the chances of a sale. If a schema markup is not corrected at specific pages, schema validation errors will appear in Google Search Console.

Three errors you will commonly face are for “offers,” “review,” and “aggregateRating.”

In the code, it will appear in a “Either “Offers”, “Review”, or “aggregateRating” Should be Specified” warning.

We will use the following three schemes to fix this error:

• Offers

To make your product page visible, you need to share your offers. Whether these are organic searches or paid advertisements, your offers become irresistible to the users. So, using schema markups becomes highly effective in paid advertising. The more creative you are with your offers, the more effective your sales promotion would be. Cost doesn't trigger a buying decision, but it becomes essential for actual sales. Schema can be extremely helpful when you promote discounts and offers. Click here to know more about the offer schema.

• Review

If you are into marketing, you must be aware of the value of social proof. The Internet has only magnified it. We can instantly know about the experience, opinions, and feedback of numerous people around the globe who have bought the same product we're looking to buy. With a barrage of new products coming our way every day, modern customers have no option but to look for reviews online before they decide to purchase anything. So, savvy marketers use social proof as a tactic to attract clicks on search engines. And you can best do this by implementing the correct Schema.

• Rating

Star ratings are a visual form of product feedback. It's used to rate a brand, business, or services a particular business imparts. It's become so common that people take it as an indirect signal even to consider buying or dealing with a company. If a product did not show a rating, it's simply ignored. Rating is regarded as a convenient and abridged form of review. If you have sound social proof, your rating will reflect it. If you have a good rating, showcase it byĀ using the rating schema.

How to Fix the Schema Validation Error “Either “Offers”, “Review”, or “aggregate rating” Should be Specified”

If you want to know how many pages are affected by these errors, click on “Either “Offers”, “Review”, or “aggregateRating” Should be Specified” warnings in Google Search Console.

If you use WooCommerce, (a community mainly hit by these errors), the alert is not sounded for product pages; it’s for category pages.

The reason for this is that WooCommerce has built-in schema functionality for the product pages. Thus, it automatically sets schemas such as the name and description of the product along with its image, availability, URL, price, review, and AggregateRating.

So, in the case of WooCommerce, the errors can be on archived products and category pages. The error is caused because WooCommerce adds Schema to the wrong page, not a product page. We can fix it by removing the Schema here. If you continue to face issues, you might consider exploring a WooCommerce alternative like Shopify, which offers a more streamlined approach to handling product pages and Schema integration.

Locate the function.php file in your theme, and add a snippet of code. Here are the steps you can follow:

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard
2. Keep your mouse on “appearance” in the left sidebar << Select “theme editor”
3. Go to the “theme files box on the right << Select “functions.php”
4. Go to the bottom of the text box
5. Paste the following code:

/**
* Remove the generated product schema markup from Product Category and Shop pages.
*/
function wc_remove_product_schema_product_archive() {
remove_action( ‘woocommerce_shop_loop’, array( WC()->structured_data, ‘generate_product_data’ ), 10, 0 );
}
add_action( ‘woocommerce_init’, ‘wc_remove_product_schema_product_archive’ );

It will fix the schema errors on your archive and category pages. Google Search Console will also take off the warning issued.

However, it will not reflect immediately. You might have to wait for the warnings to disappear as GSC takes time to recognize the changes.

Other Schema Validation Errors

In simple words, Schema allows you to talk to search engines, and minor errors may result in miscommunication. With GSC, you can perform a health check on your site's Schema and get deeper insights into how Google views your web page.

The rich results test, a GSC tool, provides insight into how Google perceives your page. A much better analysis is obtained when used in conjunction with GSC.

Here are a few more errors and how to fix them.

• Missing Field Price

It is an error that happens when you enter the price in the wrong format. GSC shows a blank price error in that case. The correct format for entering the price is xx.xx. The dollar sign is not needed here. So, $34.99 would be mentioned as 34.99 without any dollar sign.

• Rating is Missing Best or Worst Values

To avoid surprises, first, include an aggregate rating in your Schema. After entering an aggregate rating, you can enter the lowest and highest rating, usually from one star to five stars.

• Keep a Positive Value in Property ratingCountā

A number for ratings can't be negative, so make sure it's positive. Even if it doesn't have any ratings, the numeric value can never be negative. In that chase, it will be zero.

Conclusion

Since search engines use Schema to understand the content of your website, make sure the codes are correct. Otherwise, GSC will flag it, and you'll end up wasting your time.

Last but not least, in case GSC flags schema validation errors in your site, it doesn't mean that it's a severe issue or your website may lose all its ranking overnight, but it is essential to fix it.

Using Schema successfully boosts your site brings traffic from new audiences, and improves CTR. And if GSC flags some schema validation errors, you can quickly fix them with minor tweaks.

Schema markup is an integral element of your SEO strategy, so make sure there are no errors in it.

With traditional marketing tactics getting less effective, marketers always look for innovative ways to acquire and grow their audience. And hosting a webinar is one such marketing tactic that has been proven time and again and highly result-oriented for lead nurturing and conversions.

Yes, you heard it right. It is a webinar ā the online seminar that we all know, yet we rarely make it a part of our online marketing strategy.

Webinars can drive your business to new levels, as they help you achieve conversions by making your product sound irresistible to the people who need it the most. Sadly, very few companies actually use them. Even many attendees aren't pleased about their first impression of a webinar. It reminds them of the salesy slides, boring speakers, and cliche topics.

Still, webinars continue to thrive as one of the most effective marketing tactics, and you probably know the reason. The difference lies in the way we conduct it and whether we use an effective webinar funnel or not.

Conducting a webinar is not a costly affair and is relatively faster. Furthermore, it is accessible for all. According to a study, 73% of B2B marketers and sales staffers admit that webinar is the best tactic to generate quality leads.

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You can make a lot of money by building a successful webinar sales funnel. So, in this article, we will discuss how to create excellent webinar funnels and how to optimize them for conversion. The post will also discuss how to use this funnel repeatedly and still generate revenue.

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So, without further ado, let's dive in.

What is a Webinar Funnel?

A webinar funnel is designed and frequently used to convert website visitors into leads and leads into customers. You can use inbound and outbound marketing tactics such as Facebook marketing, influencer marketing, SEO, or affiliate programs to divert traffic to your webinar registration page.

The people who fill up the registration form are then taken to a "Thank You" page to find a link to attend the webinar. If the visitors sign up before the scheduled time, they can join the live session using the link. If they miss it, they can request the webinar recording.

The process is pretty simple and can be explained with the help of these flowcharts.

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Hosting a webinar is a tried and tested method of generating leads and sales.

Apart from the webinar funnel, there can be several other types of marketing funnels that you can use. So, why do the marketers love the webinar funnel so much? The reason lies in its effectiveness and power to generate leads and conversions.

People love to consume video content more than other forms of content like blog posts, ebooks, and whitepapers. 72% of consumers prefer video content over blog posts. Therefore, compared to downloadable lead magnets such as eBooks, tutorials, or white papers, webinars produce more ROI.

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So, we can safely say that a webinar funnel is the most potent sales funnel for leads and conversions.

When you start experimenting with webinars, you also tap a sizable chunk of the audience that prefers watching videos to reading an eBook.

But, before you take a step further, go through the three most frequent but deadly mistakes people make.

Some Amazing Facts and Stats About Webinars

Now let's have a look at some startling webinar funnel facts and stats:

1. Approximately 20% – 40% of webinar attendees become qualified leads, which is an astonishingly high ratio.
2. About 5% of attendees ultimately become paying customers.
3. 74% of B2B marketers have the opinion that a webinar is the best marketing tactic to generate qualified leads
4. The webinar registrant to attendee conversion rates are between 35 – 45%
5. A longer promotion time results in more attendees

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Facts You Should Know to Make Your Webinar a Success

We have compiled some highly informative facts and stats from the Australian Marketing Institute's Blog Marketing Voice. These facts will immensely help you if you are planning to host a webinar:

1. Recorded webinars are becoming more popular.
2. Most webinars receive less than 50 attendees. If you’ve attendees in this range, you’re on the right track.
3. 84% of B2B customers choose recordings over live webinars. So, don’t forget to archive your webinars so users may watch them afterward.
4. The most popular webinar length is 60 – 90 minutes. 90-minute webinars attract 4.6 times as many attendees as 30-minute webinars. Still, 45 to 60 minutes is most prevalent.
5. Thursday is the most popular day to host a webinar.
6. For signups, target your audience between 8 am-10 am. It’s the slot when most recipients sign up.
7. Email is the most effective marketing channel to invite attendees. 73% of a webinar’s attendees come from email invites.
8. The most effective webinar titles are listicles (15 tips or ten killer tactics). The titles starting with words like “new,” “trends,” and “how-to” become pretty popular.
9. An average person attends about 23 webinars per year, so you can conveniently host it twice a month. (Source)

How to Build a Successful Webinar Funnel?

Webinars are gaining tremendous popularity these days as these are one of the most effective ways to reach your potential audience. Even though people prefer a Zoom meeting over a webinar, webinars are turning into highly effective marketing vehicles, as they are known to grab people's attention toward your brand.

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The primary reason is that you get the opportunity to present your topics during the webinar, which adds a personal touch, and you get your audience's uninterrupted attention for almost half an hour.

So, it serves many purposes, including creating brand awareness, building relationships, attracting new leads, and then nurturing them.

However, experienced marketers consider it the first step towards nurturing those leads into paying customers.

Here are the seven simple steps to build your webinar funnel:

1. Create a Website Landing Page

You can create a great landing page on your website to get people to sign up for your webinar. So, it would act as your campaign hub. Many landing page builder templates are available online, and you can use a template that matches your brand. Here are a few page elements that you can design specifically for the purpose so that more and more people can sign up directly from the landing page:

A. Write a Compelling Headline

A headline is the first thing your visitors see, so it should be compelling and attention-grabbing. While running paid ads on Google, you might be using your headline in your ad, so make sure it is clickable.

B. Add a List of Benefits

It is essential to share the benefits an attendee would receive by joining your webinar. People are always curious to know how something can help them and add value to their lives before committing their time and attention. It will help them sign up for the webinar and provide their email address.

C. Add a Call to Action

Even the best landing pages aren't going to work in the absence of a call to action. It should have high visibility enhanced by contrasting colors. It should be the first thing the visitor sees when they come to your landing page.

D. Keep Your Form Fields to a Minimum

Lead capturing is an essential element of marketing and outreach, but in the beginning, you should restrict it to just the email and the first name of the prospect.

2. Online Advertising

Now that your stunningly beautiful landing page is ready with eye-catching visuals and a compelling copy, it's time to promote it online. You can leverage your social media properties and share your landing page link to inform and invite attendees to the event.

Facebook and Google are respected worldwide for their online marketing capabilities. If you want to promote your webinar, both these platforms can attract hundreds of leads. Facebook hyper-targeting based on different demographic attributes can do miracles and get more and more people to sign up for your webinar.

Google pays more attention to intent-based search terms. Besides providing you several quality leads, it will also extend your brand awareness among the untapped audiences.

So, when a searcher uses a keyword that matches your campaign keywords, Google flashes your ad in front of them, expanding your reach. If their need matches with the webinar topic and you have used an enticing ad copy, they will likely click on it and sign up for the webinar. Google Ads has a very high CTR of 7%.

How to Increase Engagement and CTR on Google Ads?

Here are a few tips to increase engagement on your ads:

1. Your ad headline should be similar to your landing page headline. It will help you synchronize your ad with your campaign to achieve more conversions.

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2. To better target audiences, you should include your webinar topic keywords in your ad copy.

How to Increase Engagement and CTR on Facebook Ads?

When it comes to hyper-targeting, Facebook is the social media king. For example, in your field, you can choose English-speaking people who work in digital marketing and those who have liked your and your competitors' FB pages. That is why you can use Facebook ads to increase awareness and also to boost conversions.

To achieve the best results from Facebook ads, you should try the following:

A. Use Attention-Grabbing Images and Graphics

Facebook and Instagram are all about images. People look at the picture first and then read the content. So, make sure that the images you use are attractive and possibly color-contrasted. The visuals should explain the topic clearly without saying a single word.

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B. Try Hyper-Targeting to Reach Your Target Audience

As explained earlier, Facebook hyper-targeting capabilities can do wonders to your campaigns. You can try many things on Facebook, such as hyper-targeting based on its vast demographic data that enables you to target lookalike audiences, custom audiences, interest targeting, and website custom audiences.

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Facebook looks like a platform for retailers mainly, but it's also suitable for B2B marketing. The reason is almost everybody is on Facebook for work or personal reasons. So, you will find content marketers, digital marketers, chief financial officers, and even CEOs on Facebook. With decision-makers present on the platform, you can very well use it for B2B marketing.

3. Remarketing

Remarketing is a highly effective online marketing strategy. With decreasing attention span online, it is crucial to bring back the bounced traffic.

You eventually attracted targeted traffic to your website, but it bounced off due to some reason. Instead of reinventing the entire wheel and wasting time and money to attract new traffic, you should bring back your lost traffic.

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For webinar marketing, retargeting works in the following manner.

• You attracted a visitor on your webinar signup page, but they bounced off.
• Your remarketing “cookie” traces their IP address and follows them everywhere on the internet.
• Remarketing campaign for your signup page uses the ad copy like:
• “Thanks for showing interest in our webinar. Sign up before March 13 to reserve your spot!”
• The retargeting ad then diverts the recipient back to the webinar registration page.

Remarketing is said to increase the conversion rate by a whopping 147%. If you can direct the visitors to the specially designed personalized landing pages, the conversion will multiply further.

One of its significant advantages is increasing brand awareness even if it doesn't convert the page visitor.

4. Automated Email Marketing Campaign - Pre-Webinar

When someone signs up for your webinar, make sure that he attends it. Since it's a free webinar, chances are they might ignore, forget, or back it off. To make them participate in the event, you need to kick start an email marketing software campaign. As soon as a prospect converts and signs up for the webinar, you need to instantly send them a thank you email and share the benefits they will receive by attending it.

Soft marketing should start at this point, and you should begin to share valuable content with them. However, it should be very limited in the beginning. Don't do anything that may annoy or put off your customers. Also, tell them who you are and what your approach would be during the entire contract period. Share your mission statement, vision, and values. To sum up, you can take this opportunity to create some brand awareness as well.

Don't forget to send a reminder email a few days before the webinar. Send a third email a few hours before the webinar starts.

A few harmless emails would increase your attendance rate and would also act as icebreakers with your attendees, who are strangers to you and your brand.

5. Automated Email Marketing Campaign - Post-Webinar

As discussed earlier, your relationship with your customers doesn't end when they attend your webinar. It starts from that point, and savvy marketers know that the process of lead nurturing has begun.

A. Send a Thank-You Email

So, the first thing you can do is send a "thank you" email to all of your attendees. You're fresh in their mind, and it is the best time to capitalize on this warm new relationship. When they have just entered into your funnel, you need to engage them and keep them moving along the funnel. You should also take this opportunity to send them to your free trial page or VIP demo to encourage them to move to the next stage of the funnel.

B. Send the Recording of the Webinar

A few days later, you should send the webinar recording to the attendee to remind them about their experience. If you have made it publicly available by publishing it on your website, you can send them a link along with the transcript. You can start engaging them and also ask them to share the recording with their friends. Make sure that you don't hurry up and make a mess of your sales process.

Sale is a delicate process, so start sharing with them the links to your content related to the webinar topic. For example, if your webinar is about growth hacking, you can send them an eBook on easy-to-use growth hacking techniques.

6. eBook Landing Page

Sending an eBook as a gift to your webinar attendees serves many purposes. Apart from lead capturing, you can use an eBook to educate your products, create brand awareness, sign up people for your newsletter, etc.

If you have a dedicated landing page for your eBooks, it's okay. Otherwise, you can create a separate landing page for each one of your eBooks that can be used for lead capturing as well. This page will only have one easy-to-download PDF file with little to no distraction and a simple opt-in form.

The best way would be to create a unique and personalized post-webinar landing page. You would thank the attendee for participating in the webinar, offering a free helpful ebook. Ensure that the eBook has quality content and comprehensive information.

The attendees will love to receive an ebook with valuable and easy-to-implement tips that a person will not find anywhere easily. An eye-catching multicolor eBook with attractive typesetting, images, tables, and graphics can be fantastic.

7. Free Trial Landing Page

Your second post-webinar email will direct the recipient to your free trial landing page. Similar to the tactic we discussed above that involves creating personalized landing pages to download ebooks, we would suggest you create a unique landing page for your webinar campaign as well. The more personalized it is, the deeper connection you'll establish with your audience. Use your soft skills and persuasive copywriting to convert.

Once your prospect has signed up for the free trial, don't leave them alone. Offer genuine help and lots of support, so they can successfully use your product. Contact them to know if they have any questions. Maybe they are stuck somewhere yet feel reluctant to ask for help. When the free trial period is about to end, release another email that re-emphasizes the value of your product. Explain the benefits and support your claims through case studies and examples. Use videos as your preferred content format.

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The market is often unpredictable and if still, your prospects don't sign up for the paid program, maintain your calm. Send another email, thank them for everything and ask them to join you at major social media sites. You can provide them with the links to your social media accounts for quick action.

The Seven Most Dangerous Webinar Mistakes and Ways to Avoid Them

We have discussed above how many people don't have a very positive impression of a webinar. There can be several reasons for that, but the most prominent ones can be the non-interactive nature of your webinars. Here are a few mistakes people make while hosting a webinar.

#1. Being Non-Interactive

If the presenter is non-interactive and parrots the script through the microphone, the attendees will soon realize this, and your webinar will get deserted in no time.

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Even though the webinar format is already fundamentally interactive, the presenter should make extra efforts to engage. They should address the audience's pain points and keep them hooked through light humor and lots of practical examples. 88% of marketers admit that interactive content separates them from their competitors.

Keep the live chat feature on and ask your audience to drop questions. Occasionally ask them to drop different numbers such as 3,4, or 5 to confirm if they agree with you during their conversations. Host a live Q& session at the end. Make sure that your session is entertaining and you're clear in your communication. Furthermore, the webinar host should be passionate and energetic. The host should try to deliver helpful content without sounding too salesy.

Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, employs these methods in his highly engaging webinars.

Watch the entire webinar at YouTube: Get Clients for Your Digital Marketing Agency in 2019 on Autopilot - Marketers Mindset Ep. 1

#2. Being Too Salesy

Even if you have some free time, you wouldn't want to listen to a sales pitch. So, act as a problem solver during your webinar and genuinely try to solve users' problems. Try to tone it down and offer valuable and personalized content. Sale is a process, and you will lose your prospects if you skip the steps involved. However, it doesn't mean that making sales is forbidden in a webinar. You need to act as a problem solver for your audience rather than a pushy salesman who is only interested in selling his products and services. If your content resonates better, sales will follow for sure.

#3. Unplanned Presentation

If your presentation is not well-planned, people might abandon it midway. In other words, you shouldn't use your slide deck as a teleprompter. Prepare in advance and keep it exciting and engaging. Keep a brief copy ready for each slide and use lots of graphics and images. Visual content is better for retention as compared to audio content.

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Use storytelling during your webinar rather than making it look like a monotonous and boring classroom lecture, and you should do it throughout the session. Stories are up to 22 times more memorable than plain facts and theoretical stuff.

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#4. Choosing a Wrong Time

One of the reasons people don’t get much response and receive a lower count of attendees is that they schedule their webinars at the wrong time. Here are a few tips to overcome this issue:

If you have a series of webinars to conduct, schedule them at a fixed time each week. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are considered suitable for hosting webinars as the headcount is highest on these days of the week.

Similarly, the best time to conduct a webinar, according to WebinarNinja, is between 11 am to 2 pm in your audience’s primary time zone. But, since it’s not applicable for all kinds of audiences, better do a telephonic and online survey to find out their best and most convenient slot. According to GoToWebinar, 58% of webinars run between 45 and 60 minutes.

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#5. Inappropriate Pitch

Transitioning from free training to your sales pitch/offer can be the most challenging part of a webinar. If it’s not handled in an articulated manner, it may turn off your audience.

The good news is there is a simple workaround for this. During the transitioning, you can say something like this:

“So, now I would like to draw your attention to something that I’m fascinated with. I believe that this can change many lives and boost the prospects of struggling businesses. However, I need your permission before I share it with you. If you guys are interested to know more about XYZ(mention your product or services), then type “4” in the chat bar.”

#6. No Promotion Plan

In the end, don’t forget to promote your webinar across all the channels such as social media, blogs, your website home page, a dedicated landing page, and forums. Email marketing is also an integral part of the webinar sales formula. Email drives 57% of webinar registrations, which is by far the highest for any marketing channel. Registrations start flooding a week before and may happen on the day the webinar is scheduled for. Ask people to add it to their calendars. Send a lot of reminders till it happens. People are extremely busy, and they tend to forget things if not reminded. The promotion doesn’t end after the webinar is over. Almost 26% of people who sign up don’t even plan to attend. They want to watch the recording.

#7. Not Offering Any Gift or Freebie

Nothing is quite as bad as a thankless gesture. So, it can be a big mistake not to reward your attendees. A valuable freebie or a small gift can make a big difference when people don’t expect it. It’s an excellent way to attract a stranger toward your brand and product, get them to try it, and make them aware of its value. It needn’t be anything expensive, so an eBook, template, cheat sheet, access to an online course, or a downloadable product that might benefit them will do. A freebie or a gift creates a sense of reciprocity, so it works wonders for your marketing effort. It’s found that free samples can boost conversions by 25-30% in a restaurant. The same strategy can multiply your online sales by as much as 2,000%.

Conclusion

The most significant benefit of building a powerful webinar funnel is that it increases your customer touchpoints, creates interest in your brand, and gets you lots of sales and conversions. The 7-step process to building webinar funnels will change the game for you. Include webinars in your marketing strategy and use them for creating brand awareness, building relationships, and conversions. Do some A/B testing for landing pages and ads and see what works best. A slight variation in the landing pages may lead to a significant spike in conversions, which could translate into a business worth thousands of dollars.