You must have researched the latest trends in digital marketing that might be crucial for you. However, the list is quite long, and it is impossible to follow each trend. To make it less overwhelming, we have curated the seven most important digital marketing trends that will ensure your success in 2022 and beyond.

This article also provides you with tips and solutions to leverage those trends. So, you can easily replace hard work with smart work and achieve fantastic results.

Apart from the basic knowledge of online marketing, you also need to know what impacts the industry and how it affects your strategies.

Video marketing, AI, voice search, big data, conversational marketing, and marketing automation are the hottest trends in digital marketing. However, these trends have also become prime concerns for marketers as they lack the tools and strategies required to follow the trends.

Here is the list of seven trends you can leverage to supercharge your digital marketing campaigns in 2022.

1. Video Marketing

Besides being the most engaging, video is globally the most absorbed format of content. The success of TikTok is an indicator of the growing craze for short videos, and there are obvious reasons for that. Due to lack of time, people want to consume a short video with a crisp message rather than a long article. Marketers are savvy, and they understand it.

It's reiterated time and again that people buy swiftly after watching a brand's video.

According to a study by Wyzowl, nearly 85% of people purchase a product after watching its marketing video, thus creating a valid ground for marketers to invest in video marketing. During the pandemic in 2020, 92% of marketers confirmed that video marketing was a crucial element of their online marketing strategy.

How Can Marketers Leverage It?

• Make a video marketing strategy and tap into the enormous potential and reach of short video sites such as TikTok, Instagram’s “Reels,” and YouTube’s “Shorts.”
• Create tailored content for each platform
• Try Live Streaming videos
• Capture viewers’ ‘short’ attention span through short videos and use crisp messaging to move them down the funnel.
• Use the ultra-short videos to highlight the key product features
• Capture micro-moments of customer interaction to boost branding
• Share sneak peeks to engage customers
• Create awareness using short videos
• Create user-generated video content
• Create tutorials & educational videos
• Experiment with video advertising
• Create shoppable videos
• Organize virtual events

2. Interactive Content

Interactive videos are pretty compelling and engaging. If you haven't used interactive videos yet, it's time to learn how to create and use them to achieve your marketing objectives. In interactive videos, users can interact with video elements and get a more personalized experience, giving them more control over the flow of the video.

Click here to interact with a Honda Civic interactive video.

You can interact with such videos using different elements, such as drags, clicks, hover, keystrokes, and buttons.

Linear videos have been known for their engaging experience and educational use worldwide. People love them because videos are suitable for retention and memory. Interactive videos make it even more immersive.

They entice the users to react and be a part of the flow. ¨77% of marketers believe that interactive videos dramatically increase people's attention span and are very good for engagement.

Interactive videos are also linked with a high conversion rate of 12%.

Here is how you can use interactive videos.

• Use branched story-type content that uses the power of storytelling but allows the viewer to choose their narrative. So, instead of linearly and passively watching a video, the viewer answers questions at decision points so they can accordingly navigate to the following clips. In that case, the viewers may choose to watch the most relevant content. It works like a video game, where you need to create multiple plots, and the user can choose the story he wants to visit.  
• You can create clickable points in a video known as hotspots. The user can choose a hotspot to get further information on it. Such types of interactive videos are highly effective in conversion.
• Create 360-degree videos with a multi-dimensional perspective of a place or product. These videos are pretty immersive and offer a very close experience to virtual reality. Here also, you can select the hotspots.
• You can conduct interactive video quizzes that provide an incredibly immersive experience. The user is asked multiple-choice questions. After they choose an answer, they are presented with the correct answer. It is widely used in online education.

3. Big Data and Deep Learning

Data science will continue to grow, and businesses will use big data in almost every industry. According to Statista, the global volume of big data will swell to 180 zettabytes by 2025. It will acquire a projected value of $103 billion by 2027, equal to around half of the turnover of the entire software industry.

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So, it would be impossible to ignore big data in the future. The most extensive use of big data in digital marketing would be in advanced ad targeting methods for enhanced customer experience and acquisition. Businesses will also use big data to implement affordable KYC processes and deploy BI and Web Analytics tools.

4. Voice Search

With the advent of mobile phones and the development of voice-to-text technology, AI voice search has become commonplace. It has compelled companies to adapt their online marketing strategy accordingly. Voice search has transformed many things, including the keywords and search strengths used in text-based searches. So to rank in the top 30 days, you need to work on the entirely different keywords and phrases people use during voice search.

Nearly 60% of users search for local businesses using voice search, whereas 40% of the adult population use voice search almost every day. The monthly volume of voice searches is 1 billion. Google Assistant, which operates on AI and voice search technology, performs nearly 1 billion actions. Its success depends on how it responds to those voice commands and queries.

With the proliferation of audio content and voice searches, more and more businesses will leverage them to create brand awareness. Voice-based ads will also be played along with the answers to users' queries, just like the radio ads. Most of the voice searches use "trigger words" such as "what," how," "top," "best," and "easy."

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For an enhanced brand experience, marketers should tweak their strategies to accommodate voice search.

5. AI-Powered Optimization

If there is something impacting content creation, chatbots, and search engines, in a big way, it's artificial intelligence or AI. In a PWC survey, 52% of US-based companies rapidly adopt AI.

AI-based content creation software Jasper can generate original and creative content. It can create SEO-based blog posts, social media, and web pages.

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You can also use AI to analyze customer behavior and search patterns. The tool can also be used for social media monitoring and to gain insights into the customer experience.

Google is a global leader that uses AI as a core element in its value proposition. Google uses AI to match its search results with users' search intent. And they do it with high precision to offer an excellent customer experience.

For example, searching Google with "olive oil" as a keyword will display diversified results. The first kind of results will include the health benefits of olive oil, whereas the second category of results will be the E-Commerce related results. The term "olive oil" doesn't give you any hint about the search intent. However, adding "buy" before it as a prefix flashes only the E-Commerce results to help the customer buy the product.

All your time and effort employed in keyword optimization to win traffic and ranking will go down the drain if you get the search intent wrong.

You can use a tool like ClickFlow, which fetches data from current top-ranking pages in your niche and helps your content team create the best-optimized content.

You can use AI to search for the relevant subtopics and keywords. It will make your article comprehensive, addressing the needs and concerns of a big chunk of your audience and raising its chances to rank among the top search results. AI will provide you with everything you should do to optimize your article and help it rank higher on SERPs. So, you will get insights into the required word count and overall optimization grade of your content.

6. Conversational Marketing

Imagine entering a store where nobody is at the counter and nobody to assist you. You'll get impatient soon and probably decide to walk out of the store. Conversational marketing is all about assisting website visitors in their purchase journey.

Chatbots are created for this purpose. They are intended to help the visitor and capture their contact details. Furthermore, chatbots enhance the user experience rather than decreasing it through annoying pop-ups and opt-in forms. 82% of the customers want an "immediate" response when they need some information.

Chatbots come in handy when brands need to immediately respond to customer queries. They trigger conversion. The instant personal connection can change the game and boost your sales.

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Conversational marketing is available across multiple channels now. When you plan to meet customers on their terms, they find it least intrusive and more acceptable. It means conversational marketing allows you to interact with them on their devices, time-slots, and platforms, and it suits them the best.

David Cancel, founder, and CEO of Drift, shared crucial insights about modern-day consumers. He said that customers expect the items they need immediately, not later. If you want to succeed in your digital marketing campaigns, be available across several channels and adapt your communications according to how they like.

The ultimate aim of conversational marketing is to be available when the customer approaches you and improve the user experience. It's supported by a feedback-driven environment aimed at enhancing user experience. The result is high engagement and customer loyalty.

Here are some tools you can use to implement conversational marketing.

• Chatbots: AI-based software applications enable language processing and help you understand what a human wants.
• Personalized videos: A customized video message aimed to make you feel special. They are used to boost landing page sign-ups, increase email conversions, promote events, improve customer satisfaction, etc.
• Personalized emails: It uses subscribers’ data to provide relevant offers and ensure a warm customer experience.
• Virtual selling assistants: Virtual selling assistants use Artificial Intelligence to increase the quality of the pipeline to close it faster. They are intended to engage every potential website visitor through human-like conversation
  

7. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is sweeping the digital marketing industry, and it's one of the significant trends in 2022. With increasing data size and complexity around marketing processes, it has become crucial to streamline them to make them smoother, faster, and more effective. Marketing automation is aimed at streamlining marketing processes. Automation helps marketers in lead collection and lead nurturing, which are two significant challenges for marketers.

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Traffic doesn't translate easily into leads unless we use different CRM and lead nurturing tools. It requires software that can capture leads 24x7 and nurture them stage by stage in the marketing funnel. Only this way can you achieve a qualitative and impressive conversion rate.

Tips for Implementing Marketing Automation

Here are some of the most potent and effective marketing automation tools you can use to efficiently streamline your marketing processes and manage your campaigns.

• Leverage the DashClicks ecosystem and experience next-level marketing and automation softwares to help them quickly propel their business forward.
• Generate more revenue for your agency and create a truly transformational impact on the businesses your clients serve through white-label fulfillment services.
• Reporting can be a pain for the agencies. Create in-depth performance reports in seconds to help close deals faster through the InstaReports app.
• Leverage the power of automation when managing leads and deals within your sales pipelines with the help of the Deals app.
• Leverage technology and create a custom website in seconds from hundreds of niche-based templates using the InstaSites app and save your time and effort.  
• Tracking Analytics is no more a headache now. Monitor and report on all of your marketing campaigns in one place with the Analytics marketing report app.
• Projects, the project management app helps you manage your projects, teams, customers, and more.

Final thoughts

These are the seven crucial digital marketing trends you can't ignore in 2022. If you sincerely follow these trends, you can change the game as an agency. Change is the only constant in life, and According to JF Kennedy, "those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

As an agency, you should be ready to embrace these future trends in digital marketing, adopt new technologies, and implement new strategies to survive and stay competitive. 

To ride the automation trend, sign up for these marketing automation tools for free.

Welcome to the second episode of Whiteboard Wednesday.

In this episode, we will discuss the complete A-to-Z process to becoming a super affiliate and creating recurring revenue that lasts forever.

Using this method, you can earn money by promoting somebody else's product or service. So, you don't even need to create any product or service or set up a brick-and-mortar business.

All you need to do is develop a process to send traffic to the sellers' landing page with your affiliate code. We'll discuss the whole process from A-Z today and explain how you can sell someone else's products and services and make recurring revenue.

This article will benefit you even if you haven't ever tried affiliate marketing before.

We will explain it with DashClicks as an example. DashClicks offers an exciting affiliate program where you can send visitors to sign up for the platform. We at DashClicks track this information, and the marketers get paid for it as soon as the customers start purchasing DashClicks' products.

The Affiliate Model

Let's dive into what an affiliate model looks like.

The ultimate aim of this model is to send traffic to a sign-up page. If you do it right, you can easily earn thousands of dollars in commission every month.

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You must have a strategy to ensure consistent income from affiliate marketing as most people start link spamming, which hardly works. DashClicks has Pro, Plus, and Premium plans for its customers. When somebody signs up and becomes a paid user, they must be paying $97, $297, or $597 a month respectively.

If they sign up using the affiliate link you share, you also get your affiliate commission every month without doing anything.

The Commission You Earn

DashClicks further divides its affiliate commission into three tiers. If you bring up to 19 users through your affiliate link, you get a 20% commission. From 20 to 39 users, you will get 30%, and if you bring more than 40 users, you will get a 40% commission. This is the best passive income you can earn for a lifetime.

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All you need to do is generate traffic and use your affiliate link. In the case of DashClicks, your target audience comprises marketing agencies, digital marketing mentors and trainers, hosting providers, directory services, and SAAS companies. You need to send these people to DashClicks, and you'll get paid for that.

However, it is crucial to pick the right product because, as an affiliate marketer, your entire success depends on it. You must have a strong belief in your product, and you should be comfortable promoting it.

So, before you even start, let's know what DashClicks does.

What is DashClicks and How Does it Help You?

DashClicks is a platform meant only for a few people. So if you want to succeed, it is essential to understand what leads to failure.

Most people don't succeed at affiliate marketing because they don't have a robust strategy. Once they get an affiliate link, they post it everywhere on social media and send it to their friends and contacts.

This is a classic example of link spamming that doesn't yield any results. This way, you don't get serious customers, who will pay you every month.

However, those who do it right earn thousands of dollars every month.

In the case of DashClicks, the product is the agency software or the platform we sell, and the audience is primarily the agencies. The affiliate marketers are the connectors here.

DashClicks is a platform that helps you run your agency. It also allows you with prospecting. With the help of our InstaSites tool, you can instantly create fast-loading websites for your clients. InstaReports helps you to generate digital marketing reports.

You can use both these tools for prospecting. Our CRM allows you to structure your sales organization and create things like deal automation etc.

DashClicks also offers a project management system known as Projects and a website builder that helps you create a professional-grade website to maximize conversion.

Finding a connector, therefore, becomes significant.

The connector addresses her audience and gives them a light bulb moment, so they may realize that they need DashClicks.

How to Find Connectors?

There are various ways to find connectors. We have people working inside DashClicks, who work as connectors, and many super affiliates promote DashClicks outside of our organization.

Many coaches and business consultants can become DashClicks' affiliate partners. They can create courses on successfully building and running a digital marketing agency and drop their affiliate link in the study material.

It also includes fulfilment work. You don't need to hire staff or go somewhere else to fulfill your clients' orders as DashClicks provides all agency solutions under one roof. All you need to do is to focus on marketing and managing clients. So, you can quickly become a solopreneur and run your business from your Home Office.

It adds value when you include such information in the course with their standard solutions.

We need a connector to connect the service provider or supplier and the prospective clients who can use those products or services to make their life easier. In this case, DashClicks is the supplier, and agencies are the prospects. Affiliate marketers will play the role of a connector here.

Become a coach or consultant. Teach people how to go out and scale a digital marketing agency. It helps you fill-up the pipeline and fill up your calendar.

The vehicle is InstaSites.

So when you offer a tool that can create a website in seconds, prospecting becomes a cakewalk, and you quickly start filling up your pipeline.

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Don't do link spamming. Create lead generation pages. The idea is to get recurring affiliate commissions.

To do the strategy, you can use this tool ā€” InstaSites.

Some affiliates are making hundreds of thousands of dollars. As an affiliate marketer, your success lies in winning clients who will continue to buy the product to ensure everlasting commission and monthly income.

Build a Sales Funnel Fast

To generate such quality leads, you need to create a sales funnel. You can share a downloadable pdf file with them to be used as a lead magnet. You can use it to collect visitors' email IDs.

The PDF may include handy topics for the agencies, so they may quickly get tempted to download it. The topics in the PDF file can be "25 innovative ways to scale your agency."

You can provide another link to sign up for the free tool to make this strategy work. As people move into the funnel, it creates a stock effect, making you a successful affiliate. As we disclosed above, many of our affiliates earn hundreds of dollars every month.

The best way to send consistent traffic is to use InstaSites. However, you need to educate your audience about this tool and explain how they can create their clients' websites in seconds.

It will help you close the deals quicker. Instead of a PDF tutorial or a cheat sheet, you can create a video. Your next challenge is to bring traffic to your web page or the course you developed as a mentor.

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When you drive traffic to the sales funnel, get the visitors to opt-in with their email. You can even charge a small amount, such as $97, for your mini-course.

People also use YouTube videos for this purpose. They create educational videos and upload them on YouTube, where you can get visitors daily. You can add your link in the description.

You can also promote your links through blog posts. Create instant websites and share them with your prospects to close deals faster.

Another creative idea is to create stunning 60 seconds videos for TikTok and share your affiliate link with it. You can use DashClicksā€™ InstaSites as your vehicle for this entire process. You can make your affiliate commission in the back end.

How DashClicks Speeds Up Your Conversion Rate?

DashClicks is the platform that allows you to automate onboardings, and that's completely hands-off. Once your clients sign up using your link, they also go through the indoctrination, education, and product tours.

So, the system speeds up conversions. Therefore, when someone signs up as a free user, they can build only three instant websites a month.

But, when they get used to this value-based prospecting approach and are constantly educated about the platform, they would like to go further than that and build a lot of instant sites for their agencies to maximize their clientele and revenue.

It helps when you attract agencies into your ecosystem first and make them used to the benefits of recurring revenue and an all automated approach. It creates winners, and it's highly successful in this field.

Many things help you in the digital marketing segment, such as blogs, YouTube videos, and laser-targeted ads. If you run ads for your course, it can work wonders.

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However, if you look at it, you're not juggling with these many things. All you need is a source of traffic and drop a link. Everything else is automated.

So, here you need to run the ads to your landing page.

Affiliate Marketing Simplified

We are trying to simplify the entire procedure because people believe that affiliate marketing is challenging and doesn't work, etc.

However, if you drop links everywhere and expect people to sign up, it wouldn't work unless there is a connector or marketer in between.

The good news is various affiliate marketers are doing it successfully for DashClicks.

There are various Facebook and LinkedIn groups to find your audience, i.e., agencies. In these groups, people ask questions.

These questions are primarily about day-to-day issues agencies face. You can use the opportunities to suggest the solutions DashClicks platform offers to address such problems. There are many training videos on DashClicks' YouTube channel and blog, which you can recommend successfully running an agency.

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When you offer your affiliate link as a solution to their problem, they end up using the DashClicks dashboard and purchasing it. However, again, you need to be a little bit descriptive here.

For example, if someone asks about a sound CRM system, instead of just dropping your affiliate link, you can suggest that DashClicks is a great CRM system that they can use for free.

You can also add a "Loom" video to explain using it. It will prompt them to use the link to sign up because it is highly contextual. It will also ensure your affiliate commission.

Similarly, people look for white-label services, outsourcing Facebook ads or SEO fulfillment services, and you can instantly grab this opportunity to suggest the platform.

However, adding context is the key to success. The more convincing your comment is, the more likely the agencies are to use your link.

Similarly, the more groups you are active in and the more questions you answer, the more likely you will earn your affiliate commission.

So, use all sorts of strategies using a sales funnel and attracting traffic through creating YouTube videos, writing blogs, and making podcasts on specific issues faced by the agencies.

You can use blog comments, YouTube videos, and Facebook comments to divert organic traffic. And to attract paid traffic, you can run Facebook and Google ads.

The paid ads will take the visitor to the landing page.

Use instant websites and share them for prospecting. Use webinars and 30-minute videos to explain how agencies can use it to succeed.

At the bottom, add your link to take the visitor to the sign-up page of the DashClicks platform.

If your sign-up rate is 10%, you can multiply your ad budget to convert hundreds of customers. So, if you get a customer who signs up for the $297 package, you'll get a 40% commission per month, which would amount to about $120. If you get ten such customers, your assured monthly income would be $1200.

Final Words

With practice, you'll become even more proficient, and then you can run paid ads to scale the process.

The best part is that once the customer signs up, the process becomes utterly hands-off as the DashClicks ecosystem, including the fulfillment and support teams, takes care of it. All you need to do is to focus on traffic and conversions.

Just comment on ten people's posts on various forums such as Facebook, Reddit, and Quora, and you'll achieve your target.

All you need is to become a great and powerful connector and connect the agencies with the platform. Your success as an affiliate marketer is almost guaranteed.

So, to sum up, create one piece of content and repurpose it ten times, and share it everywhere. This is a powerful affiliate method you can try.

You can join DashClicks' Facebook groups and YouTube Channel for even more information.

With more than 4.62 billion social media users in the world by January 2022, an overwhelming 58.4% of the total population is on social media today. That is precisely the reason why you can't ignore social media when it comes to online marketing. The growing importance of social media also calls for adequate knowledge of social media marketing.

How to Grow Your Social Media Presence?

According to the latest stats, over 9 in 10 internet users use social media. However, even then most marketers cannot tap the vast potential of social media. Unable to understand the way social media works, some businesses end up doing it the wrong way.

They get too pushy, market-y, or overly friendly and, as a result, dim their prospects significantly. To grow your social media presence and achieve your business goals, you should learn the art of engaging your audience. It would also help if you do it without annoying them or losing their attention.

This article discusses the ways you can leverage social media for your business, the right way!

1. Provide Real Value

Social media is indeed a miracle of our times. Since it's so widespread globally, it provides numerous opportunities to a marketer for promotion and targeting.

Apart from using it to educate your audience and connect with them, you can also use it for advertising, tracking trends, and monitoring social conversations.

Social media is crowded with businesses, individuals, and influencers. That's why it also comes with a host of menaces, such as fake news, bought engagement, and sponsored content.

Owing to all this noise, people often don't trust an unknown person or brand on social media and look for content sources that seem authentic. So, how can businesses win the loyalty of the masses and attract new consumers?Ā  Simple! By offering real value to them through well-researched, intelligent content, and engaging conversations.

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2. Avoid Seeming Fake and Deceptive

A popular method to gain the trust of your audience is to emphasize 'authenticity' in your social media presence. In simple words, avoid things that look fake and deceptive.

There is a visible shift towards authentic marketing these days. People prefer to buy from businesses that share their beliefs and ideologies over those that are just interested in plugging their products.

They like to interact with a person that is fun, friendly, and authentic. To succeed on social media, businesses should offer an enjoyable experience to their audience.

There's no magic pill to succeed in social media, but you can achieve your goals if you understand the way social media audiences think.

3. Bridge the Gap Between a Marketer and a Trusted Friend

No one likes to use social media to interact with businesses, so marketing is mainly considered an intrusion. Therefore, marketers are expected to befriend their audiences and post engaging and entertaining content.

However, marketers aren't really friends, so their messages can come across as formal, dry, and uninteresting. This approach obviously doesn't work and fails to attract much engagement.

Engagement begins when you start bridging the gap between a marketer and a trusted friend. Here are a few things you can try to do that:

• Be human: A business should ‘appear human’ throughout its interactions. They should reciprocate the feelings expressed by their audience, listen to them, and use humor in their conversations. But at the same time, they should also maintain their brand identity and help people resolve their issues. People love to interact with a responsible human face, even if they represent a brand. It adds credibility and gives way for improved customer experiences.
  
• Show Credibility and Avoid Vanity: Theoretically, your job is over after setting up a social media account and filling in the necessary profile info. However, to succeed on social media, you need to go beyond branding as there is no place for vanity on social media. Interact with your audience, joke with them, have conversations with them, and engage them with authentic, interesting content.

4. Leverage Influencer Marketing

People tend to trust leaders, be it in real life or social media. Who would trust a nameless and faceless social media manager's words? That's perhaps the reason why influencer marketing is so popular. Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have numerous brands leveraging influencers to tap into newer audiences. You can easily find influencers endorsing everything from big-name brands to small-time, local brands.

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So, if you want to promote your business faster and need quick results, leverage influencer marketing. It becomes even more crucial when your brand is relatively unknown.

Here are some ways you can leverage influencer marketing for your social media campaigns:

1. Tie up with a local influencer having a good outreach to promote your products/services in a way that seems authentic to their audience.
2. Involve micro-influencers as they usually have a higher engagement rate.
3. Use their insights to broaden your marketing initiatives and make them even more effective.
4. Establish long-term relationships with these influencers and tap into their ever-expanding audience pool.

According to a 2018 Brandfog study, consumers are 93% more likely to purchase from a brand once they interact with a top-ranking official or CEO of that company on social media. So, when you post a message or video from the CEO, don't forget to share their title and credentials.

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5. Don't Push Too Hard

As in life, it's important to not push too hard on social media, lest you end up annoying and driving away your audience. Offer friendly advice, tips, and information that can add value to their lives, aside from marketing and promoting your brand.

Building a social media presence isn't easy. Most marketers try to sell too hard on social media, and soon lose their credibility as a result. Had the marketing been more natural, they wouldn't have lost their reputation. It may sound tempting to try copy-paste tactics like using too many hashtags, promoting mindlessly, or posting too frequently, but it can be a recipe for disaster. Being too sales-y, aka annoying on social media, certainly backfires.

In short, avoid shortcuts and instead think of ideas that can provide lasting value to your customers.

6. Create Quality Content & Stunning Graphics

Creating quality content has tremendous benefits; it multiplies your social media traffic manifold and generates more engagement. Great content also gets shared by users, leading to more and more people finding out about your brand!

People don't share content that doesn't excite them or add value. So, if you are seriously thinking about creating ripples on social media and going viral, work hard and employ your resources to develop and promote great content.

Similarly, stunning images and graphics can up the ante for your social media marketing. Images are the soul of social media and are perfect for grabbing attention and increasing engagement. Use high-quality images with vibrant colors and pictures instead of text to convey your message. People love to share images more than text. So, images can help you succeed on social media and achieve better results.

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7. Don't Get Distracted By Vanity Metrics

It would help if you also stayed away from vanity metrics such as likes, shares, views, etc. These metrics can be highly misleading, as you will get nowhere if there are hundreds of shares yet no conversions or sales. So, you should focus more on real-value metrics such as the number of new followers and clicks, etc. to measure the success of your social media campaigns.

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You can also get a bit creative and coordinate an offline adventure or experience for your campaign. Surprise your fans with custom-made images, gifts, and rewards. You should also use some popular niche-based social platforms apart from mainstream ones such as Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Conclusion

To sum up, social media has fantastic potential for marketing and promotion. But that can only come true if marketers understand their audiences and focus on engagement and adding value.

Effective use of social media can create tons of opportunities for your business. However, it requires thought and planning. If you do it right, you can achieve outstanding results. Since around two-thirds of the human population is there, you can't take their attention for granted. So what are you waiting for? Get creative and think outside the box today to stay ahead of the pack and shine bright in the constellation of social media!

Welcome to our first episode of Whiteboard Wednesday.

Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, a prominent white-label agency, has extensive experience running a successful digital marketing agency business. He has effectively turned a small startup into a transnational white-label services company that has served thousands of clients so far.

During this time, he explored the ways to escape the daily grind and constant struggle agency owners go through to survive and grow.

To address this problem, he decided to use these insights and launched a SAAS-based agency platform that automates everything and saves time and hassle for the agency owners. Meanwhile, it allows you to focus on the most crucial jobs, i.e., prospecting, marketing, building a sales pipeline, and nurturing leads.

Think Outside of the Box

Marketing and sales are constantly evolving. Strategies that were a massive hit a few years ago can become unpopular and useless faster than you can expect. Tactics like the “free consultation” or the “I’m the best marketer spiel” are no more perceived as magic bullets. It’s crucial to think outside the box to ensure success in this highly competitive industry.

After serving thousands of clients across the globe, he developed a tried and tested magic formula for prospecting. This formula not only provides value but also creates awareness about your agency. According to him, these small wins can be the stepping stone to grabbing long-term accounts that are much bigger.

What’s Whiteboard Wednesday All About?

Through Whiteboard Wednesday, Chad wants to share what he has learned within his agency, including successes, failures, and the high-level moments ‌he has had.

The objectives of the Whiteboard Wednesday Tutorials are as follows:

1. Inspire agency owners to replicate our success
2. Share strategies and tactics that agency owners can use for their agencies
3. Help agency owners increase revenue, build better processes, build a team and do better fulfillment
4. Get a better prospecting method to ensure getting more new clients every month
5. Create efficient and sustainable processes to add and maintain clients

It’s a game-changer since hardly anyone would be practicing it yet. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the step-by-step formula to build a sales pipeline faster and with more certainty.

How to Replicate the Prospecting Goldmine?

To make money from your digital marketing business, you should have an irresistible sales plan. You wouldn’t want to be the 50th person calling a company that you’re a digital marketing agency, and you would like to offer a free consultation or something like that. It doesn’t work anymore! And that’s probably the reason ‌new agencies struggle to find new clients.

First of all, you must have a need-based product, and you should not think about the kill every time. You can offer website building services as an integral part of your sales plan.

Here’s the step-by-step formula to do that:

1. Download the lists of your prospects
2. Conversion #1: Pitch a front-end offer
   A. Start cold-calling using an irresistible offer — A free website
3. Share with them the pre-built website & bring the prospect into the sales funnel
4. Give a demo of the website created with our InstaSites tool and activate it if the customer likes it
5. Conversion #2: Make the Back-End Offer
   Sell your website for an upfront setup fee and a fixed monthly fee
6. Conversion #3: Sell directory listing and other SEO services with a recurring fee

The ultimate aim should be to add as many people to their marketing bucket as possible.

Source: Ep.1 - 33:37

Most agencies fail because they are too focused on generating traffic and probably not aware of what conversion steps #1, #2, and #3 are all about and why this process works. So, we will delve into the details now.

How to Download the Lists of Your Prospects?

You can easily download the list of your prospects using www.leadcarrot.io.

Source: Ep. 1 - 12:05

To generate traffic, you can use:

1. Phone Calls
2. Facebook Group
3. Email marketing
4. Walk-ins
5. Webinars and conferences

Lead Carrot is a tool that allows you to download the lists of the prospects according to your search criteria, such as the nature of business and location, etc. It crawls the web and provides you with the prospects' phone numbers, emails, Google My Business information, and their social media handles.

For example, if you are targeting roofers or painters in your area, you can download a list of 5000 painters along with their phone numbers. After that, you can cold call and pitch for your free website offer.

1. Start Cold-Calling Using an Irresistible Offer

A website is a product every business needs. So, you can offer a free custom-made website to your prospects. Furthermore, you can scale it further to upsell other agency products such as directory listings, SEO, etc.

DashClicks developed a tool known as InstaSites that helps you create a professional niche-based website on the fly. This tool is a game-changer for the agencies. The tool offers you more than 200 niche-based website templates that you can choose from. All you need to do is fill up a form and hit the submit button. The tool automatically injects the content and other vital information from the form into the website to help you build the website on the spot.

2. Pitch a Front-End Offer “ A Free Website

Usually, agencies would charge 5K dollars to build such a website, but since you want to make it an irresistible offer, you can charge just $97 as a one-time setup fee and just $49 per month as recurring charges. Most agencies fail because they tend to focus on the kill but forget about the relationship-building part that improves their prospects.

It makes it an irresistible offer since the website you offer is much better than their current website, and you offer it at a fraction of what they will pay for a similar website. It will help you quickly fill up your clients' bucket. It's much easier to sell an affordable product than an expensive high-value product.

It moves the customer into your SALES FUNNEL, which means they enter your world, so you can easily talk to them, build long-term relationships, and upsell other products.

A. Use a Hook

It would help if you had a" hook" to sell. Most agencies struggle with their sales process as they don't have an irresistible offer or the hook that can instantly attract prospects. Using a "hook" is highly crucial to succeed as an agency. It's an initial idea that sweeps people off their feet. The free website can be used as a hook in the present scenario.

B. Make a Sales Pitch

Here is an example of a good sales pitch:

"Hey, what's goin' on? This is Chad calling from Social Agency. I just wanted to give you a heads up that we are calling all the roofers and painters in our local area. We went ahead and built out a free website for your business. So, I would love to send you a preview of what our website looks like. I can send it to you in an email or a text message. Which one do you prefer?"

C. Prepare for Rebuttals

Our experience tells us that rebuttals are natural, and some of the most common rebuttals are as follows:

Rebuttal #1: Sorry, I already have a website. I'm good.

You can quickly answer this rebuttal in this way. "Hey, that's cool that you already have a website, but I built you a website that looks ten times better, and it's free. I would love it if you took a look at it. There are no hard feelings if you don't want it."

Rebuttal #2: I'm not interested right now.

Here is the perfect response:

"Yeah, but the website is already built. Our team went out and built the whole website for you. And it took us a lot of time to do that. We would love to show it to you. We will send you a link. You can check it out, and if you don't like it, no hard feelings. If you do like it, it's free, and we will activate it for you."

After that, the customer will most likely drop their defenses and agree to check the website you've built for them using the InstaSites tool.

You may have a question here. Why are we repeatedly using the word "free website" when not?

The pre-built website is free for the customers to take a look at. It doesn't cost you a single penny to build this website. It's professionally built for conversion and engagement. But, if the customer likes it and gets it activated, they will be charged a one-time activation and setup fee of $197 and $49 per month for maintenance.

Why It Works

This tactic has a high success rate because, ultimately, the customer doesn't lose anything. They get a quality product at a much lower price. Agencies would typically charge around 3K to 5K dollars for a similar 30-page website.

The customer will most likely provide you with their email address and contact details and agree to look at the website at the end of this conversation. However, you need not hang up your phone and instead schedule a demo just after the prospect agrees to take a look.

Book a Demo

You need to inform the customer that the demo will be over a 20-minute Zoom call with the activation experts, who will review the website.

They will answer customers' queries, review the pages, and if the customer likes it, they will activate the website on the call. Such instant activation aims to ensure a smooth transition from a review call to booking. It will ensure that you regularly collect a revenue of $197 + $49 per month in the following months.

If you go by this method, your calendars will be booked for many weeks to come.

Using the "Stacking" Tactics to Your Advantage

You can stack up different elements to make your demo a success. For example, you can stack these offers.

The website comes with:

1. SSL Certificate
2. Hosting
3. Drag & drop website builder
4. Dashboard (DashClicks sub-account)
5. CRM
6. Marketing Automation (Inside DashClicks Dashboard)

Make this offer sound better and irresistible.

Before you take their credit card details, make your offer even more convincing.

Your website comes with:

1. 30 relevant pages with all the necessary information
2. All the content
3. Royalty-free stock images
4. Pre-SEO
5. Fully responsive interface

Customers must be aware of the market price of a website of such a size and caliber, which is around $3K to $5K.

Now, the customer has two options—they can pay $3000 for this website in the market or get an offer from you and pay just $197 plus $49 towards the first month’s payment. Most people would want to go with the second option.

You can tell them that the total upfront fee of $250 to be charged in the first month is the setup and activation fee, and the recurring fee of $49 per month is for the SSL certificate, website builder, hosting, etc.

Source: Ep. 1 - 47:55

With this, the imaginary customer "Bobby the painter" gets inside your bucket. Now, you can sell additional equally essential products for a website owner.

Conversion #2: Make the Back-End Offer

You can set up or use call center services to step into this stage. Here is the secret recipe to enter into this stage.

Wait for seven days after website activation. Now that the website is activated, the owner, "Bobby the painter," is happy. You are now Bobby's go-to guy for any technical issue he faces with the website.

After exact seven days, you can call up Bobby using the following script:

"Hey Bobby, what's going on? I'm Chad from Social Agency, and I'm super excited to tell you that your website is up and running. How did you like the website? Do you have any questions for me? I just called you up to know if you need any support for your website?"

At the end of the call, you can add this:

"Hey, by the way, Bobby, before we hang up today, I'm looking at your website, and it's so awesome. We are running a crazy promotion today. I would love to increase traffic on your website to boost revenue for your business. We are running a listing manager program.

So, we will list your website on 70+ directories, including the most prominent ones such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, and many other directory networks. It will boost your website's online visibility and backlink profile. As part of this promotion, directory listing services are available for just $99 per month. It's on sale for today only. The setup fee is $49 only."

The last sentence uses a slight pressure point.

This is conversion #2.

On average, your customers are likely to continue your website package for seven years.

Rising the Value Ladder

You can continue adding at least one person to your bucket almost every day, and you can make a lot of money. You can repeat the same procedure discussed above, download a list, cold call every person on it, offer them a free website, and book a demo.

As a recurring fee, you're now getting $49 per month for directory listing services and $99 per month for website hosting and web builder. So, on average, you'll get $150 per month from every customer added to your bucket.

You cannot add customers to your bucket and climb up the value ladder if you offer standard services such as SEO or PPC.

If you can successfully use this value ladder, just a single customer would pay you $150 per month for the next five years, and you will not have to do anything to get this money.

Final Words

It is a tried and tested procedure, and we at DashClicks have been practicing it for the past several years. All we know is that it works methodically. We are also supported by a call center for the past two-three years.

Here is a strong message for all the agency owners.

"CHANGE YOUR WAY OF PROSPECTING."

To succeed with this strategy, you should also change your mindset. Most people will try it for one week, and if it doesn't work, they will quit. According to Mr. Kodary, "75% of people are likely to fail in this strategy because they have the wrong mindset." To succeed, you must have the right mindset and practice perseverance. Dashclicks' InstaSites tool is the primary driver of this strategy.

You can use DashClicks CRM to build a sales pipeline and schedule appointments. Automate your deals using the Deals app and start filling up your bucket. Deal automation will also help you in a huge way while adding clients. It automates your repetitive tasks and saves you a lot of time and hassle.

Marketing is the decisive factor in the success of a small business. It kicks in the entire process of sales funneling, starting from attracting prospects to converting them into customers. So, if you do it right, marketing becomes the key to your survival and growth.

Many would confuse it with creating awareness about a brand. Though partially true, it's not the ultimate aim of marketing. It's also not about beating your own trumpet in an already noisy world. Marketers have now started viewing marketing from a different perspective altogether. They prefer to see it as a tool to connect a business to its consumers.

Businesses are doing everything possible to engage their audiences. It necessitates a business marketing plan that should entail the entire modus operandi of how you'd reach your ideal customers.

There are several methods to market your small business or startup, but you should focus on the most effective strategies that can change the game for you.

Marketing Ideas for Small Business

Marketing is a process of targeting your ideal customer and nurturing leads by sharing the right messages at the right time. It all revolves around adding value and making their lives better.

However, you can't do it if you don't do a proper marketing audit to identify your target audience and make your marketing message appealing.

Here is a list of 121 small business marketing ideas to fulfill your dream of running a successful entrepreneurial venture.

1. Make a marketing plan keeping in mind your target audience.

2. Do market research to understand its dynamics and find essential information about your ideal customers.

3. Make your buyer persona and further refine it to reach the right audience.Figure out the value you can add and identify a powerful unique selling proposition (USP).

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5. List your product features and service specifications.

6. Relate product features to benefits and use them for your marketing message.

7. Add your mission statement and key marketing message to your business cards.

8. Create and publish white papers, industry research, trends, and brochures to spread your word out.

9. Create a website and offer an excellent user experience. Even a single landing page will do, but it should provide enough information to help users make a purchase decision.

Gifts, Giveaways, and Outreach

The first step of any outreach campaign is to entice your prospects through irresistible offers, gifts, and giveaways. It is probably why many eCommerce companies offer a discount for people when they visit their website for the first time.

Here are a few outreach ideas you can try.

10. Use the power of giveaways and seize the opportunity trade shows and networking events offer.

11. You can offer several gift items people hang on to, such as pens, notebooks, keyrings, stress balls, etc.

12. Keep an elevator pitch ready and use it for quick prospecting. Use the following tips to craft the elevator pitch:

• Use an irresistible offer or hook people can’t ignore.
• It should reflect your enthusiasm.
• Keep the facts and stats ready to support your claims.

Networking and Partnerships

Networking and partnerships help small business owners in a huge way. Participating in local events enables people and local businesses to learn about you. It gives you the required visibility and advantage of working with like-minded people and experts.

You'll also get institutional and technical assistance and support from business groups and government institutions.

13. Participate in industry events, seminars, meets, and conferences.

14. Leverage the power of networking, use business networking and connect with local networking groups.

15. Attend business workshops, especially the ones taking place in your neighborhood.

16. Join your small business technical assistance center, local small business development center, the local chamber of commerce, or use tools like commercetools CMS to enhance your business capabilities.

Direct Mail

Direct mail sounds like an old practice, but it's still very much in fashion. It has become even more relevant because it has a very high level of reach and penetration. It can be a bit expensive, but it's five times more effective than email in terms of sales. A targeted list is the prerequisite, though.

Here are a few direct mail ideas you can try.

17. Start a well-planned direct mail campaign.

18. Apply multiple tactics and do A/B testing to determine which approach works the best.

19. Use a compelling call to action in your direct mails.

20. Experiment with different direct mail formats such as tear cards, enticing envelopes, and inserts to attract your prospects.

21. Approach customers who have bought from you in the past with free samples and rewards to regain their business.

Advertising

Advertising is the sub-domain of marketing, so don't confuse it with marketing. Marketing is a broader concept, whereas advertising is an aspect of business marketing that deals with sending the right message to your audience. Everything counts in advertising, including its timing, message, tone, and platform you use, and it's planned according to your audience's mindset, psychology, needs, culture, and emotions.

Here are some of the best ways to advertise your business:

22. Tap the advertising channels to help you reach your target audience. For example, you can buy a spot on the radio.

23. Identify magazines, journals, and other publications your ideal customers love to read. For example, Cosmopolitan, the women's magazine for fashion, is widely read by women across the globe. Car and Driver is the most popular magazine for auto lovers.

24. Go traditional and rent a billboard having a lot of visibility. People still look at them while waiting at the traffic signals.

25. Besides handouts and pamphlets, use stickers and magnets for advertising on the rear window of your car.

26. Buy advertising space in your local newspaper.

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27. Buy ad space on a website related to your niche, but you also need to ensure that this website is popular among your audience.

28. Another forgotten traditional technique is to use a sidewalk sign to promote your products and services. It surely attracts the eyeballs of the locals. So, if you have a local business, it can be an effective medium for promotion.

Social Media Marketing

Very few businesses are able to actually survive if they aren't a part of our social media ecosystem. Almost everybody is on social media, and if you aren't active on it, you are missing out on many opportunities. Just like being a part of a group of like-minded people on social media, customers want to follow their favorite brand's progress, view updates, and make connections with their community.

Social media can help you achieve your marketing objectives by promoting products, creating awareness, generating and nurturing leads, defining your brand image, and building lasting relationships.

Here are a few killer social media marketing ideas for small businesses.

29. Use various social media platforms, including some lesser-known platforms like Foursquare, Pinterest, Reddit, and Tumblr.

30. Don't underestimate the potential of growing platforms like Twitch, Discord, TikTok, Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, Caffeine, and Instagram Reels.

31. Don't forget to create your personal and business profile on LinkedIn. It increases your online visibility and opens many vistas of opportunities for you.

32. Regular blogging brings numerous benefits, such as increasing follower growth and engagement. So, invest in blogging and do it consistently; create different versions for different platforms.

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33. Creating short videos on TikTok can be magical if you wish to tap a younger audience.

34. Leverage the power of Instagram. Pay attention to the visual quality and maintain an attractive aesthetic. Create short videos for Instagram Reels.

35. Research your audience and popular keywords in your niche, and then create an editorial calendar for your blog and social content. Cover the topics that might add value to the lives of your target audience and address their pain points.

36. Create an informative website and optimize it using the best SEO practices.

37. Leverage the enormous power and reach of paid search using Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Choose the platform as per your audience type.

38. Social media influencers enjoy a dedicated fan following. Hire them for promotional posts and tap newer audiences.

39. Vlogging is the latest craze. Create video blog posts and attach a familiar face to your brand.

40. Leverage YouTube marketing and create YT videos to boost your online visibility.

41. Online directory listings offer numerous benefits for a local business. Save time and get your business listed in desirable directories at an affordable cost using white-label directory listing services.

42. Leverage the power of Facebook advertising. It offers laser-sharp targeting based on your customer characteristics and personality types.

43. Leverage the world's most extensive professional network. LinkedIn brings you many opportunities by allowing you to connect to people according to their niche, job profile, and location.

44. Try a Facebook Live video demo. To tap into the power of live streaming, you should have a Facebook page. It's an utterly personal way to engage your fans.

45. Analytics offers many marketing benefits, including Google Analytics or social media analytics. It helps you improve your campaigns. To learn more, refer to this actionable guide on Google Analytics.

46. Always be on the lookout for what's trending. It can be a new practice prominent brands are tapping into, new platforms and tools, etc.

47. Update yourself with the latest trends in local search marketing and use them to your advantage. Local search marketing is highly effective in terms of conversions and ROI

48. Track your online reputation regularly. To learn more, refer to the definitive guide to online reputation management.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is considered even more "intimate" than following a brand's social media account. People give their email addresses only to the brands they are interested in, making it a powerful means of communication.

Here are a few killer email marketing tactics you can try:

49. Capture your prospect's email through opt-ins on your website.

50. If you want free publicity, you can organize sports events or sponsor a local sports team.

51. Ask for your prospects' email in exchange for gifts, access to a platform or event, an ebook, or a free download. You can also try contests, coupons, and incentives.

52. Build an email list and regularly send emails to them.

53. Subscribe people for a free monthly email newsletter. Click here to know more about cold email marketing.

54. Track the performance of your email marketing campaign. Various tools offer inbuilt analytics. You can also use A/B testing to know what works best for your campaign regarding content, promotional offers, frequency, open rate, CTR, and sending different emails to different customer segments.

55. Optimize your email signature and include links to your website and social media handles.

56. You can use email marketing tools such as Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, Constant Contact, Hubspot Suite, Moosend, or Drip.

Customer-Focused Marketing Tactics

Here are some more customer-focused and innovative ways to promote your business:

57. Organize contests and promote them aggressively.

58. Create coupons or tie-ups with other brands and offer vouchers and discounts.

59. Launch reward-based loyalty and "frequent buyer" programs.

60. Launch a brand ambassador or an affiliate marketing program.

61. Launch a customer of the month program and announce it on social media.

Pro Tip: Check federal regulations before you promote any giveaways or contests. Check and follow the related rules.

62. Focus on building relationships.

63. Conduct customer satisfaction surveys to check out how satisfied people are with your services. The customer satisfaction ratio is directly linked to your revenue and survival as a business.

64. Use the power of referrals. Request your happy customers to provide referrals.

65. Leverage charity events and humanitarian work. Besides getting the opportunity to work for a noble cause, you'll also get free publicity.

66. Leverage the power of networking. Tie up with local businesses and cross-promote your products and services with them.

67. You can also create a buzz by joining a professional organization and delivering value to the community.

68. Leverage holidays and make a plan to promote the next holiday. It can trigger sales from "ready to buy" customers.

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69. Identify your best and most loyal customers and plan holiday gifts for them.

70. Surprise your bonafide clients by sending them birthday cards, greetings, and gifts.

71. Positioning yourself as an expert or mentor always helps. Neil Patel, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Tom Bilyeu, Tony Robbins, Brian Dean, Rand Fishkin, and even Mark Zuckerburg are renowned mentors apart from business owners and entrepreneurs. Educating others helps you build trust and allows you to make sales happen.

72. Leverage content marketing. Enticing, informative, and engaging content attracts customers to your website, where you can encourage them to buy. Move beyond advertising and create useful and value-adding content.

73. Conduct free teleconferences and webinars. These are some of the most effective techniques for building email lists, lead generation, and boosting sales flow.

74. Leverage podcasting. While live podcasting continues to grow, podcasts are slowly gaining prominence in Google search.

75. Make press releases a part of your marketing strategy. Share press releases to local newspapers and periodicals and paid services like PR Newswire, etc.

76. Repurpose your blogs into videos, podcasts, and infographics. Share such content pieces on different platforms. For example, you can slice your YouTube videos into small videos for TikTok, Instagram Reels, Twitter, and Facebook.

77. Use storytelling in your sales copy and ads.

78. Publish a book to help your target audience and widely promote it. Offer it for free during events and seminars.

79. If you are too busy with day-to-day business operations, recruit a marketing expert or hire a consultant.

80. Increase your PR activities by hiring a PR professional.

81. Hire a trained copywriter to write attention-grabbing sales copy to boost conversion and sales.

82. Hire a search engine marketing agency or, still better, hire PPC services from a professional white-label agency.

83. Another cost-effective method is to hire an intern for regular marketing tasks. You can also go to sites like Fiverr and hire a virtual assistant to help you with daily marketing tasks.

Agency Management Tools & Apps

You can use various tools and apps to help you manage your agency tasks swiftly and efficiently. If you're on a tight budget, you can use such tools to automate tasks like scheduling social media posts.

Here are a few killer tools and apps that will save you from the daily grind:

84. Monitor and report on all of your marketing campaigns in one place using the Analytics App. You can try it for free. For example, you can integrate your Google and Facebook Ad campaigns into the dashboard to monitor your campaigns performance in real-time.

85. Now handle your sales CRM and get your contacts data at your fingertips through Contacts App. It's not an average sales CRM; it helps you effortlessly manage your people and business contacts with beautiful contact cards.

86. Manage all your data in one place with the Dashboard app. Use dozens of pre-built widgets across all your apps and extract your data into one unified dashboard for better monitoring and management. Create your dashboard view using drag-and-drop widgets to create your perfect view. It enables you to run your entire business with one platform.

87. Experience the power of automation when managing leads and deals within your sales pipelines with the Deals app. Additionally, this app also allows you to generate reports, gain insights, and showcase your leaderboard. Sales is an extremely tough and exhausting job, but this app creates a truly transformational experience for your sales team.

88. Improve your workflow and turn data collection into an exciting experience with a powerful Forms app. Online forms are designed to meet all your data collection needs. Manage unlimited form submissions with the Forms app, and collect them straight away from your dashboard.

89. If lead management is a hassle for you, try the Inbound app and organize all your leads like never before! This app can streamline and manage your inbound leads across different platforms. Later on, you can assign them to your sales reps, so they can easily track progress and do a follow-up. With this app, you don't need to log in to multiple third-party softwares to manage inbound leads; you can fetch all those leads in one place.

90. If you need in-depth performance reports, use the InstaReports app; Data is complex, so you should prepare reports so that everybody can understand them and interpret the complex facts. The InstaReports app offers a grading scale that is easy to comprehend and helps in decision-making. If you manually try to compile this much data, it might consume several days, but with InstaReports, you can do it in a matter of seconds.

91. Are you struggling with website building for your clients? InstaSites app, the instant website builder, comes to your rescue in this. Create a custom website in seconds from hundreds of niche templates. You can choose from hundreds of pre-built niche-specific templates to design your dream website for your clients with a few clicks. These site templates come ready with the content, thanks to the white-label fulfillment services from DashClicks. So, you don't need to create content for most web pages.

92. Projects, a projects management app, is good news for agencies as it allows them to swiftly manage their projects, teams, customers, etc. The Projects app helps you execute your tasks with lightning speed.

93. If website management becomes a hassle for you, download the Sites app. It allows you to create and manage your websites using a drag-and-drop website builder. You can swiftly edit your website using the app's custom content management system (CMS). So, you don't need any IT background or coding skills to manage your website.

94. With the Templates app, you can create custom email and SMS marketing templates. It streamlines your communication across the organization.

Other Marketing Ideas

The ultimate objective of marketing is to differentiate your brand. You can go a bit crazy, creative, or even provocative to grab the attention of the masses.

95. Partnerships work wonders for a business. Identify a complimentary brand and cross-promote each other's products. This way, both parties will find newer audiences.

96. Invent a lucky charm for your business and aggressively promote your brand using it.

97. Launch your startup business coaching for your target audience and cite your business as a case study. You'll get many benefits through free publicity, strong branding, lead generation, etc.

98. Distribute corporate gifts and branded wearable items such as t-shirts, caps, sweatshirts, polos, fleece jackets, shorts, wristbands, office stationery, etc.

99. Get your office building and the car painted in your brand colors. Add logos everywhere.

100. Sign up for the most popular business coach or mentor online and get yourself trained in cutting-edge business skills and strategies. They will help you scale, revamp, and restructure your business if needed. They will also teach you marketing skills to outperform your competition.

101. Research the businesses doing it right in your niche and generating handsome revenue, and learn from them. You can also borrow ideas to succeed if you don't want to reinvent the wheel.

102. Use Amazon's "trigger phrases" while marketing your products. Amazon filters its top reviews according to the trigger phrases that define the customers' pain points in your niche in customer lingo. You can use that to exploit search results and reach the right audience.

Here is an example of a few trigger phrases for Amazon Kindle eBook readers:

You can also fetch such trigger phrases from forums and online communities and collect them in a file.

103 Ask for success tips from your suppliers and vendors. Since these guys have been in your business for a long time, they are the best people to advise you on the best practices to survive in your industry.

104. Subscribe to industry magazines and publications to get tons of valuable insights and information. It will also help in lead generation.

105. Use emotions in your advertising. Apart from the four basic emotions, i.e., happiness, gloom, fear/surprise, and anger/disgust, you can use a wide range of mixed emotions to connect with the audience. It always works.

106. A deeper understanding of the local demographics will always help. It includes purchasing power, taste, and buying behavior. If you don’t want an unexpected outcome, spend some time understanding the local demographics.

107. Make it a practice to listen to customers’ queries, needs, and concerns. When you prioritize listening to them, you get deep insights into what they expect from you. It will also help you generate lots of content ideas for content marketing.

108. Set Google Alerts and track every “brand mention.” Tracking brand mentions is a good way of social media monitoring and getting to know what people are saying about you and your products. Likewise, it’s also crucial to know if other businesses mention you, link to your website or social accounts, or simply complain about you.

109. Over 42 million people in the US speak Spanish, so it’s a good idea to translate your website into multiple languages. It will help you target new audiences.

110. Optimize your website to load faster. Fast-loading websites attract more traffic and enjoy better Google rankings. To achieve this, you can compress files, optimize images, remove heavy elements and reduce the number of active plugins.

111. Add fresh content and regularly update your website and give a reason for visitors to come back to your site again and again. Add value by providing helpful content. Update your website by adding new landing pages dedicated to new products or events, etc.

112. Reduce your response time. According to Forbes, the average lead response time was 47 hours. Businesses that respond within an hour of receiving the leads are almost seven times more likely to have meaningful conversations with decision-makers. It clearly shows that the sooner you respond, the higher are your chances of closing the sale.

113. Respond to all online feedback. Customers like the seller who cares about what the customers say and responds to them. Whether negative or positive, make it a priority to respond to customer feedback as soon as you receive feedback from a customer. You should monitor customer feedback on your eCommerce platform, blog comments, Yelp, Google, or other review sites.

114. Leverage blog commenting. When you leave thoughtful comments that add value and provide additional information on other blogs in your niche, you create awareness about your brand and attract the eyeballs of the audience visiting those blogs.

115. Create a digital brochure. You might have used your printed brochure for offline publicity. Consider creating a digital brochure in PDF format and promoting it everywhere, including your social media accounts and through email marketing. Upload it to a visible place on your website. You can also use additional graphics to highlight it and attract eyeballs. Encourage people to download it.

If you want to keep it in an online form with additional interactive features, consider converting your PDF brochure to a flipbook format.

116. Focus on personal branding and thought leadership. People respect influencers and follow their advice. So, when you promote yourself as an expert, people trust you and flock to you for advice and industry updates. You can create your personnel website for this purpose. Apart from that, you can also try these things:

• Participate in industry events
• Get featured in media outlets
• Write columns for industry-specific websites or blogs
• Host or get invited to a YouTube or podcast channel of another influencer in your niche

117. Use retargeting to bring back your ad and site visitors. Retargeting is extremely powerful. A study claims retargeted visitors are 70% more likely to convert to your website. Stats also confirm a tenfold increase in brand searches after running retargeting ads.

118. Make it easy for mobile users to contact you. You can make your phone number “tappable” so they can call you with a single tap.

119. Use Canva to create stunning professional-grade graphics and banners. You don’t need to know Photoshop or Illustrator to do that. With Canva, you can create beautiful marketing templates, banners, and graphics to use on your website, social media, email, etc.

A Canva template

120. Try SMS marketing. The average CTR of SMS marketing is an impressive 35%, which is pretty high for any marketing platform these days. The open rate is 99%, which is surprisingly high.

121. Use more visual content for your marketing. Visuals convey messages faster, making them invaluable in creating engaging content. Whether through professional graphics or eye-catching photos, having the right materials enhances visual appeal. Consider unique and personalized items such as a coffee table book photo album to showcase your business’s journey, milestones, and achievements; this can resonate deeply with clients and visitors.

Conclusion

These are the handpicked ideas and tips that will help you succeed in your small business venture. Your ability to understand your audience and their buying behavior is highly crucial to your success. Apart from that, you should also work smarter using apps and technology rather than doing everything manually. It will reduce the cost, time, and efforts involved and help you execute things faster and manage your campaigns in a better way.

Rapid digitalization and proliferation of the Internet in the past two decades have allowed us to connect with almost anyone in the world. Facebook helps us find relatives and friends and stay in touch with them, whereas Instagram enables us to communicate directly with celebrities and share stunning pictures and visuals. Twitter allows us to stay abreast of the latest news and trending topics, and LinkedIn helps us connect with the people in our industry or niche for business purposes.

Still, you can’t turn these connections into relationships. A relationship requires awareness, commitment, and a certain level of trust, even if it exists purely in the social media realm. So, a relationship isn’t just a click away, contrary to what most digital enthusiasts claim. It needs nurturing and time to grow.

However, if you look at the trends, businesses hardly have the patience or inclination to develop customer relationships. They want quick results. It happens mainly because digitalization has brought everything to our fingertips, and everybody seeks instant gratification.

However, the truth is far from it. Regardless of the environment and technology you live in, people’s reactions are based on their emotions, feelings, and motivations.

It can be big marketing to treat online profiles simply as digital existences. There are real people behind these digital profiles who would like to be treated as humans. So, if you expect people to respond to your marketing, focus on building relationships rather than completing transactions. Remember also, that you build relationships with people and not digital profiles.

What is Relationship Marketing?

Unlike transactional marketing, relationship marketing aims to build long-term relationships with your customers. When you implement it as a strategy, you start achieving your business goals swiftly. It includes almost everything from generating revenue and sales to attracting more clients, getting repeat purchases, and making loyal customers.

Relationship marketing aims at providing the best customer experience through top-notch service and building trust. In transactional marketing, brands focus on completing sales, making it a closed-minded and myopic approach.

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Brands that resort to transactional marketing may soon lose their customers to their competition as they don’t invest in building lasting relationships. When closing sales becomes their primary focus, they move from one customer to another, increasing their churn. A high churn rate can become fatal for a company. It can become even more lethal if you run a subscription-based business.

You can run customer success programs to arrest churn. According to The Customer Success Association, “Customer Success is a long-term strategy that is scientifically engineered to offer proven value that is also sustainable. It’s professionally directed to maximize customer value and achieve business goals through it.”

So, to sum up, customer relationship marketing is a long-term marketing approach. You might think that most businesses must be practicing it because of the apparent benefits it offers, but the research proves otherwise.

Tracking Relationship Marketing Industry Trends

Every business owner knows that establishing long-term customer relationships is crucial, and 85% of companies affirmed this in a Super Office study. But are they really investing in relationship marketing? If studies are to be believed, the truth might shock you.

According to a 2013 Econsultancy study, 30% of businesses invest in relationship marketing. Whereas in 2021, only 24% of companies used relationship marketing as their long-term marketing strategy. So, there was a sharp drop in the number of companies practicing relationship marketing in these six years.

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The study also revealed that relationship marketing is linked to a higher ROI as compared to transactional marketing.

So, why are companies not taking relationship marketing that seriously? It’s not a lack of awareness but a lack of strategy that prevents them from taking the plunge.

This article discusses how to formulate the strategy to implement relationship marketing into your marketing plan.

How to Formulate a Sound Relationship Marketing Strategy?

You won’t get much traction if you only use a few tactics such as offering discounts, personalized services, and introducing loyalty programs & rewards. It is simply because you can’t refer to these tactics as a strategy.

Start by bonding with your audience. Use social media for forging friendships and leveraging the power of feelings. It’s a given that no marketing campaign or offer can ever score over customers’ emotions.

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Customer relationship marketing allows you to go into the heart and minds of your customers. Here are some of the ways you can do that!

Take some of the biggest, most successful product/service-based companies in the world. We’re talking about companies such as Tesla, Apple, Nike, Amazon, and Starbucks. You’d think they don’t need to invest in relationship marketing anymore, but you’d be wrong. All of them, in fact, is highly customer-centric brands.

The love & respect for these brands is so high that if someone talks negatively about any of these, their customers get offended and defend their beloved brands.

What else can you wish for as a brand?

Again, it is not limited to just B2C brands; emotional bonding also affects B2B brands.

In B2B transactions, too, someone who visits your website watches your videos or downloads a white paper isn’t a business but an individual.

These individuals have feelings, so you can easily tap into their emotions and build a bond with them. It’s their emotions that will make them spend their money on your brand and not facts, stats, or logic.

Here are a few tips to formulate your relationship marketing strategy.

1. Be Real; Show Your Vulnerable Side

Tell your real struggle, and don’t just brag about your achievements. According to Adam Enfroy, you need to show your vulnerable side, so that people can relate their struggles with yours. Authentic stories that showcase your weaker side help you establish an instant emotional connection with your audience.

2. Build Trust

Deliver on your promise throughout the customer journey and build trust through positive reviews and testimonials on your website. The important thing is to ensure that these reviews and testimonials are authentic and verifiable. You should also bring your communities together to inspire and build trust.

3. Use Storytelling

Since humans are emotional creatures, storytelling has emerged as a powerful technique to establish emotional bonds. Tell them stories about your business that may include the following:

• Inside stories
• How you treat your employees
• Your mission and vision
• How your business was founded
• How you overcame the fierce challenges and failures

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You can also ask your audience to share their stories. Videos are the best content formats you can use to inspire trust and bring authenticity to your stories.

4. Personalize Your Communications

According to a University of Houston Victoria research paper, personalized interactions enhance the recipient’s experience. For example, you can try sending handwritten personal notes to your customers along with their orders. They will love it.

5. Keep Your Communications Consistent

Consistency leads to better customer experience, and excellent customer experience inspires confidence. So, keep your communications consistent across different locations and individuals. It would also help to keep it uniform across various advertisement campaigns and sales presentations.

6. Strive to Provide an Excellent Customer Experience

To give customers a fantastic experience, treat them exclusively. You can use CRM to craft custom messages and videos to make them feel valued. Address their queries and offer solutions to their problems. Ask them to provide their feedback and suggestions and inspire them to create user-generated content. It will help you boost your brand image. It’s a proven fact that excellent customer experience is the only factor that helps you make loyal customers.

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7. Offer Real Value

Successful businesses have a purpose-driven strategy and offer real value to their customers. This is the reason it’s tough to replace them in the marketplace. They don’t position themselves as product suppliers or sellers. Instead, they focus on adding value to their customers’ lives. For example, many cosmetic companies don’t perform testing on animals and people love them for it.

Here are some of the companies that offer cruelty-free products.

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It can be a cause, social responsibility, environment-friendly products, charity, or affordable products that people perceive as valuable.

Conclusion

Successful organizations try everything in their capacity to turn every customer into a long-term one. Long-term customers can ensure your success and growth and protect your brand against market fluctuations. With the help of an army of loyal customers, you can successfully decrease your marketing and advertising costs and scale your business.

Technology has impacted business activities in many ways, but the bottom line is still the same, and that is building, nurturing, and growing your customer relationships. Be mindful of how your customers feel regardless of the competitive advantage you may have over others.

With the relationship marketing strategies mentioned in this article, you can directly appeal to your customers’ emotions. Profitability keeps you in business, but if it becomes your ultimate objective, you may soon find yourself in deep trouble.

So, the best strategy for a business is to stand for a good cause and build a community of passionate supporters, who will likely turn into your brand advocates. Customer relationship is the most crucial element of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), so you should focus on relationship marketing to survive and grow in this highly-competitive, cut-throat environment.