MSP Marketing Lessons Learned from Dr. Seuss

If you were ever a child anywhere in the world, a human being really, then you have already read the most important book on MSP Marketing ever written. That book is Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. Think about it, through persistence and a great deal of patience Sam-I-am was able to get his friend to try something he had never had before and was certainly convinced he would not like – Green Eggs and Ham. However, this was not accomplished until Sam-I-Am changed his strategy a bit, and that’s how MSP Marketing works sometimes. You see, Sam-I-am believed he could get his friend to like something he had never tried before and continued to ask him whether he liked Green Eggs and Ham as he offered him a big ole’ plate of it.

I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-am

The problem here, of course, is the fact that Sam-I-am was asking the wrong question. How can someone possibly like something they had never tried before, but constantly asking the same question over – even after getting the same negative response over and over again, will get your business nowhere. It wasn’t until the message shifted from “would you like them…” to “Try them! Try them!” that the friends behavior shifted and he became more receptive to trying Green Eggs and Ham. The caveat here is that the friend expected to be left alone once he finally tried Green Eggs and Ham. It wasn’t until he tried them that he realized he did in fact like Green Eggs and Ham.

Sam! If you will let me be, I will try them. You will see.

Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do! I like them, Sam-I-am! And I would eat them in a boat! And I would eat them with a goat… And I will eat them in the rain. And in the dark. And on a train. And in a car. And in a tree. They are so goodm so goodm you see!
Much like in business, if you want prospects to try your offerings then you must ask the right question or questions. The goal is to get someone to try what you have to offer so they can judge for themselves whether they like what you have to offer them or not. The persistence of Sam-I-am pays off in the end and let’s face it: if everyone had that level of persistence then pitching to customer’s and closing deals wouldn’t be such a head-scratcher – assuming you’re asking the right questions and positioning your company just right. If you want help with your MSP Marketing then read a Dr. Seuss book, as you will learn it’s all in how you present yourself and your offerings to others without coming across as heavy-handed or unwilling to refine your strategies when necessary.

End Email Campaign Fatigue

Think about the emails you receive personally and professionally on any given day. You can think of the ones that you open habitually and the ones you toss without ever reading the subject. Why is that? If you do it, so do the recipients on your email list. Understanding your audience, knowing your voice, and thinking critically about your current email system will transform your email campaign. You want your recipients to open your emails, but you have to get to know them and the emails you are sending first.

What are WE Dismissing?

I use ‘We’ to remind you that WE all do this. I think SPAM emails and frivolous junk mailers have traumatized users and their email accounts. We all need resuscitating, and your existing email campaign in not excluded. Let us think about what we delete and what we save. The first thing you need to understand: deleting and dismissing is a habit. Users naturally open emails from businesses and senders they are fond of or immediately recognize. What does this company have to offer me, what has it done for me in the past, and how can I benefit from this email in the future? Recipients are capable of answering these questions instantaneously. How does your company’s name resonate with your recipients? If you fail to stand out, the recipient will include your email in the ‘check-all’ box and delete your message without thinking twice about it. Again, it is a habit. How can you change that? Honestly, it is a phase and a process to which a company must by committed. (Also check out: 5 ways to Piss off Your Email List).

Revamping Your Email Campaign

Your company can reinvigorate its email campaign by relying on a simple system that changes your audience’s email habits. Think of it as the horse-and-carrot system. You need to grab your audience’s attention, which usually happens when the user receives a pop-up or email alert. (Try this: 5 Tips for a Successful Email Campaign). Next, you have to want to get them to bite by opening the email. Finally, you must reward your recipient. Exclusive promotions, coupons, deals and exceptional content help you conquer the final phase. As your email campaign rehabilitates its recipients, consumer engagement and activity boosts your business. Now that you have their attention, rehabilitate the email itself. Your business can reorient the current email system without losing sight of the brand:
  • Be smart when sending. Do not overload your audience with multiple emails throughout the day. Ease up on your frequency. Create an effective email schedule that reduces redundancy and fatigue.
  • Get your hook down. Make the email subject attractive, while trying not to look spammy.
  • Send audience-specific emails. This goes back to understanding your audience. Divide your recipients up and send out emails with content about which the audience actually cares to read. Do not be afraid to send out a few test emails to assist you with making better decisions about content and recipient response. You will soon discover what works and what does not.
  • Work on your landing page as much as you work on your email. Once you gain the critical click to your site, do not lose the prospect or client with an unfriendly or complicated landing page.
  • Make the emails mobile-friendly. If your user cannot open an email, or the image takes too long to load on his/her smartphone, the user will delete it and future mailings from you.
 

5 Tips For Launching A Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is a powerful tool that is an essential element of any marketing strategy and can extend your reach beyond your website, which will create new sales opportunities. Email marketing campaigns make it possible to communicate and build relationships with prospects, gather important data, and helps boost marketing ROI. Here are 5 tips for launching a successful email marketing campaign.  

Build Your Email Marketing Subscriber List

The easiest and most common way to build your subscriber list is to integrate an email opt-in form on your website. This would include your homepage, About page, contact us page, and another option to consider is having a pop-up form. Be sure to not require too much information to opt-in for the newsletter, as the less information required for someone to sign up the more likely they are to do so. Typically, only requiring an email address and first name results in the highest opt-in rates.  

Make the Links and Calls to Action Obvious

In our previous blog, we delved into three tips for creating effective calls to action, which you can read here. While a call to action is used to drive the reader to click-through to whatever it is you’re trying to promote, calls to action are useless if they are buried in your content or don’t make sense. Not only will you want to place your links and calls to action in the natural line of sight of the reader, you will also want to use images or buttons that make it obvious to click on them for additional information. Placing links and calls to action above the fold will help mitigate any concerns of readers missing them.  

Make it Mobile-Friendly

Smartphone usage has skyrocketed over the last decade and according to Litmus, 43 percent of email is now opened on a mobile device. That number is up 138 percent from 2010 and will likely continue to grow. Ensuring your email marketing campaign is mobile friendly is key to ensuring it doesn’t get sent to the trash nearly immediately. Because of the limited real estate you get with mobile devices you’ll want to stick to simple layouts that make the most of the real estate you do have. What that means is not overloading your email with images because different smartphones handle loading images differently when an email is opened. For example, Apple’s iOS enables images automatically but Android-based devices do not, so readers won’t see them unless they manually enable them. You’ll also want to avoid using tiny fonts, so stick to a minimum font size of 12pt for body text and ramp it up to around 22pt for headlines. Additionally, don’t stack links on top of each other because it makes it too difficult to click the link you want on a smartphone screen and limit your subject lines to around 50 characters.  

Write Compelling Subject Lines

Since we’re on the topic of subject lines, there are key strategies to maximizing your click-through rate by creating compelling subject lines for your email marketing campaign. This also happens to be one of the most important elements to a successful email campaign. First and foremost, you’ll want to avoid words that light up the “spam” alarm in our brains such as “guarantee”, “free”, “call now”, “urgent” and “order now”. You’ll want to keep your subject line to 50 characters or less and include your company or brand name while also personalizing the subject line. For example; “Lance, Here’s Your TRIdigital’s April Newsletter!” The example subject line above is 49 characters long, including spaces, and quickly gets to the point and lets the recipient know exactly what they’re getting without setting off their spam detectors.  

Test Your Email Marketing Campaign Before Sending

All of the advice in the world will not alleviate the need to test your email marketing campaign before sending it out to the bulk of your distribution lists. There are multiple ways to test out your campaign, which range from testing out the design, copy, and subject lines as well as multiple combinations of each one. One of the most effective ways to test your campaign before officially sending it out is to perform A/B testing. A/B testing is also called split testing, is a testing method that allows you to test a hypothesis about human behavior – which for this purpose is which subject lines or email design gets the highest click-through and open rates. People from your distribution list will be provided two different versions of your email campaign, based on the rules you set in place, and the version with the higher conversion rate is the one that you would want to move forward with.

3 Tips For Creating Effective Calls To Action

When crafting effective calls to action that generates leads, which leads to prospects, which ultimately should lead to new sales and clients, there are multiple things to keep in mind. It may seem pretty obvious to you, and it’s obvious to us, what a call to action is and what its purpose is but not everyone is clear on it. So, what is a call to action? A call to action is used to drive the reader to click-through and is typically denoted as an image that drives that desired action. A call to action can also use words, in addition to images, to urge the reader, listener, or viewer of a sales promotion message to take immediate action. Any form of advertisement without an effective call to action, or a call to action at all, is considered incomplete and completely ineffective. Here are 3 tips for creating effective calls to action.

Keep Your Calls to Action Highly Visible

It’s important to make sure your call to action is in the reader’s line of sight and something that gets their attention and focus. That doesn’t mean to be annoying with something similar to a pay wall or something that forces a person to enter contact information to get to your content either. Writing and visuals that fall in line with the reader’s natural eye movement will capture their attention, even if it means pushing your call to action more in line with the actual content itself.

Keep Your Calls to Action Simple

Regardless of whether you are using an image or an offer in a speech or video, you want to make sure the instructions are simple and the path to the desired engagement is as easy as humanly possible. You can accomplish this by not having more than three custom fields of a form needing to be filled out, or something that requires no more than two clicks or so. In keeping things simple for your reader, listener, etc., you will benefit from a higher click through rate.

Add A Sense Of Urgency

Does a reader or user have a limited amount of time to take advantage of a particular offer? Are there only a certain amount of tickets or seats or widgets available? Without offering up a compelling reason why someone should click through on your materials and advertisements the simple fact of the matter is they won’t. Adding a sense of urgency to every call to action is a vital component to creating an effective call to action.

Why Writing Great ‘About Us’ Page Content Matters for Your Business

The one area of your business website that provides you the most opportunity for visitors to get to know you, your business, and to simply learn about your story is on the ‘About Us’ page and the page content. Unfortunately, the ‘About Us’ page content on websites is often overlooked as a vital tool that can be used to convert more prospects into clients, visitors into sales, and so forth. Even when a company’s ‘About Us’ page isn’t overlooked the content on that page often misses the mark. For example, the content will either focus on ugly blocks of information that doesn’t flow together and leaves the reader confused and disengaged, or there simply won’t be enough content going on that adds any real value to the page. If you want your company’s ‘About Us’ page to really work, you will need to answer crucial questions that matter to visitors – and no, that question doesn’t have anything to do with how long you’ve been in business or your years of personal experience. Here are 3 tips to crafting an ‘About Us’ page that can work for your website.
  1. There’s a Story
You have an opportunity to allow people to really get to know who you are, your business, the people behind it – the why’s, how’s, and what’s of what and why you do things. Talking about the motivation for starting the business, what drives you to succeed and help others are just as important as telling people how much your services costs and what you do. Be sure to include photos, relevant achievements, and list a few of the biggest accomplishments of the company into your page content to help add credibility and personality.
  1. Show Some Personality
Don’t be that faceless corporate machine in your ‘About Us’ page. People want to do business with people and highlighting the personality and culture of your company and the people that work there is key to making that human connection with others. Pretend you’re having a conversation with a friend when writing your ‘About Us’ page and don’t be shy. Show off something more than boring professional cropped headshots where no one is smiling and the backgrounds are all boring and look the same. Showing personality can help you cross that great divide that is the internet and allow others to feel as if they’ve connected with you in some way. Google is well known for being one of those fun companies. TRIdigital Marketing likes to have fun too, so check out our ‘About Us’ page if you need some inspiration.
  1. Don’t Bury It
How many times have you visited a company website and found it difficult to learn more about the company and the people running it? What about contact information? Don’t treat your ‘About Us’ page as some redheaded stepchild by locking it away in a closet or basement on your website. It’s a critical piece of content that should be easy to find for prospects and clients alike. It should also be noted that ‘About Us’ pages are some of the most frequently visited pages on company websites. (No redheaded stepchildren were harmed in the making of this blog)

2 Simple Tips to Get More Out of Your Email Marketing

Email marketing, when done correctly, can be an effective way for you to drive business to your website and get more leads. However, if you do it wrong, you could lose your email subscribers, drive away business, and ruin the credibility of your brand. As a business owner, you should make it a priority to stay up to date with all of the latest email marketing trends and change your email marketing strategy accordingly. We’re here to help! Check out these 2 simple tips to learn a few ways you can get the results you want from your email marketing efforts. Strategic Subject Lines Obviously, no one will read your email unless they open it. And, to get them to open it, you need a compelling subject line that causes your reader to take action. Here’s how:
  • It’s all about YOU: Including the word “you” in an email can boost your open rates by up to 2%! (Source: Hubspot)
  • Personalize: Be sure to use your recipients’ first names in your email whenever possible to boost open rates.
  • Keep it short: Try to keep your subject lines at 30 characters or less to maximize open rates. (Source: Hubspot)
  Design and Write for Mobile With each passing year, more and more people are reading emails on their mobile devices. So, it’s absolutely crucial for you to optimize your email campaigns and newsletters for mobile devices. Here’s how:
  • Get to the point: Your call-to-action should be straightforward, and there should only be ONE call-to-action to avoid confusing your readers.
  • Strategic imagery: Make sure all of your images and buttons are optimized for easy viewing and clicking on mobile devices.
  • Clean design: Don’t clutter up your reader’s screen with bulky walls of text or overwhelming images. Keep it simple and easy to read.
  What other email marketing strategies have worked for you in the past? Let us know in the comments below!

2 Business Marketing Lessons Learned From Classic Nintendo Games

I recall countless late nights as a kid, playing video games on my Nintendo, trying desperately to get to higher and more challenging levels, and eventually beating those games. Video games have always been a great way to escape; they can also help with hand-eye coordination, and even give us a sense of accomplishment after completing them. But here are a few business marketing lessons you can actually learn from playing those classic video games:  

Develop A Solid Strategy

Do you remember playing Super Mario Bros. for the original Nintendo game system? If you did, you probably remember your journey as a little plumber, hitting coin-filled boxes with your head, shooting fireballs at turtles, and running and jumping around willy-nilly until something randomly killed you. But as with most video games, if you wanted to get to the ending and reach your goal (in this case, saving the princess), you had to start playing strategically. You had to learn the layout of the level, and time your every move. Beating that game required the ability to strategize, and the same goes for marketing your business.  

Fact: Only 35% of B2B content marketers have a documented business marketing strategy.

  That’s an unfortunate statistic because that means that 65% of B2B content marketers are preventing the growth of their business by failing to strategize properly. Some effective strategies include the use of infographics, videos, case studies, blogs, and conducting actual market research to identify what your clients are looking for. By utilizing a mix of these types of web content and business marketing tactics, you are able to strategize much more effectively, ensuring that your company gets to the next level of success.   mega-man-3-screenshot

Stay Determined

If you ever played the NES classic video game, Mega Man, then you understand the concept of unrelenting frustration. In the game, you are a robotic man with a laser cannon for a hand, and your objective is to travel to various stages, fighting other robots, and ultimately defeating their creator, the evil Dr. Wily. The reason the game is so frustrating is because the rate at which your character dies is incredible. You could look at a robot wrong, and you would suddenly explode for no reason (not really, but you get the point), forcing you to start the level over from the very beginning! Argh! One key to beating the game (like with Super Mario Bros.) was, of course, having a strategy. But the most important thing you needed above all was determination. And that is something you need mountains of when it deals with marketing your business as well.  

Fact: 79% of leads never convert into sales.

  How often do you hear about businesses that generate tons of leads, but end up closing very few, if any, of them. It’s unfortunate, but statistically, 73% of all B2B leads are not sales-ready. That means, in order to convert those leads into clients, you must nurture them. You must stay determined. Some lead nurturing tools include marketing automation, utilizing personalized emails, and targeting leads with specific and relevant content. By nurturing your leads properly, your conversion rate increases significantly; not only that, your ability to build a long lasting relationship with your client increases as well, and this could lead to positive testimonials, as well as referrals, helping your business grow.   Can you think of any other business lessons you’ve learned from video games? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Digital Marketing Trends to Generate MSP Leads & Close More Deals

Digital marketing is an erratic, yet necessary beast. Just when you think you know what works in the business-to-business world of online marketing for MSP leads, all the rules change. Keeping up with endless changes might seem impossible, but all you really need to do is find a few quality current digital marketing trends that offer results and add them into your marketing plan. Actually taking action is the most important step of any marketing plan. Here are a few digital marketing trends that offer results you should be using to generate MSP leads: Get the Best ROI with Conversion Optimization Everyone wants a website with good SEO. You want people to find your website when they type keywords and phrases into a search engine related to your products and services. What you really need to pay attention to is your conversion rate. Are website visitors clicking on links? Are they filling out forms to learn more or set up a consultation about how you can help them? Understanding what your website visitors do and why will produce better conversions. And you’ll get more customers. Turn your existing website MSP leads into customers and watch your ROI skyrocket. Make Mobile Marketing Efforts a Priority Business owners use their smartphones and tablets to research products and services for their businesses. If your MSP website isn’t mobile responsive, they’re going to skip you and find a competitor’s website they can view from their mobile device.
  • 92 percent of executives own a smartphone used for business.
  • 77 percent of executives use their smartphone to research a product or service for their business.
YOU are the Product When selling a service online rather than a physical product, you should remember YOU are the product. You have to market YOU. IT companies and MSPs are selling your time in exchange for the promise of solving challenges for your clients instead of a tangible product. Every one of your competitors is selling the same products and services – the only way to convert your MSP leads into customers is to market what makes you different. Tridigital can help you with that.

3 Business Lessons From SpongeBob Squarepants

I wasn’t allowed to watch SpongeBob as a child. Maybe it was because SpongeBob’s hometown is called Bikini Bottom. Maybe it was because one of his best friends is named Sandy Cheeks. Or, maybe it was simply because the show is laced with subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) adult humor. But guess what? Now I’m an adult, so I can watch it whenever I want… Take that, Mom! Needless to say, when I found out that “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water” was coming out this year, I rushed to get tickets. I couldn’t wait to watch the misadventures of the lovable sponge and his group of friends. And the movie didn’t disappoint. It was hilarious. Not only that – it made me stop and think about something… SpongeBob Squarepants provides some interesting business lessons for entrepreneurs. Here are a few of my favorite business lessons: Focus on Originality and Innovation Think about the way that Plankton runs his business. Instead of creating his own recipes, working on his marketing (The name of his restaurant is the Chum Bucket… really?!), or hiring some talented help, he focuses all of his energy on stealing the Krabby Patty formula from Mr. Krabbs. He isn’t doing anything to innovate. He’s not investing time and effort into building his own brand. He’s not researching new ways to improve his strategy. …Nope. He’s simply trying to steal someone else’s. I’d be willing to bet that if Plankton focused on creating an innovative business plan for his own company instead of stealing someone else’s successful formula, the Chum Bucket would be in much better shape. He might even give Mr. Krabbs a run for his money! Hire Loyal Employees Mr. Krabbs isn’t the greatest boss – he’s money-hungry, and he doesn’t always have others’ best interests in mind when he makes decisions. However, he made a great decision when he hired SpongeBob. SpongeBob is completely loyal to Mr. Krabbs, and he has a great work ethic. Not only that – he wakes up excited to go to work every day, he’s an expert at what he does, and he has a great attitude about his job. Make similar hiring decisions when you’re bringing on new employees, and your business will thank you. Work Hard and Don’t Compromise Your Integrity SpongeBob is goofy and emotional. And he’s downright annoying sometimes. But he has one major redeeming quality – he doesn’t compromise his integrity. Not only is he incredibly hard-working at his job and loyal to his boss, Mr. Krabbs – he’s also incredibly loyal to and supportive of his friends. SpongeBob just isn’t a selfish guy, and it shows. Be like SpongeBob and keep your integrity and your work ethic intact. It may be tempting, as your business grows, to adopt some less-than-ethical workplace practices because it seems like the easy way out. But trust me – it isn’t.  …Can you think of any other business lessons that can be learned from SpongeBob? Let us know in the comments below!

2 Explosive Marketing Tips From The Fast And The Furious Franchise

The iconic first race scene in the original film The Fast And The Furious features Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) driving side by side at breakneck speed until Toretto triggers his NOS at the last second and blows by Brian for the win. As he’s beaming with pride for getting so close to a victory, the first thing Brian says to Toretto is, “I almost had you.” Toretto quickly replies, “You almost had me? You never had me. You never had your car!” And the crowd of spectators around them erupts with jeers and laughter. Maybe you don’t see it now, but if you think your marketing is at the peak of its game, then you’re just like Brian. You think you’ve got a firm grasp on your marketing, but in reality, you’ve never had any control over it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are a two marketing tips you can learn from The Fast and The Furious franchise that will help you blow by your competitors with ease.   Don’t Oversell Your Marketing A few racing scenes, a few epic looking fights, some humor, and a bit of sex appeal, all in a two-minute commercial. That’s all the marketing team at Universal Pictures needs to make you go, “whoaaa!” and convince you to go see the new Furious 7 movie. Imagine now, if they had released a 10-minute commercial that only had boring, but informative dialogue. There would be nothing to get excited about. You’ve got a lot of information to share, and that means you’ve got a lot of content you want to show your customers. But when you’re trying to attract potential clients, it’s important to keep the information simple and easy to digest. Include critical information like how you can help to alleviate a pain point, how your company stands out from your competitors, and the best way to reach you if they have any further questions. Simpler is generally better.   Find A Good Formula, But Stay Innovative In a few years, you’ll be watching a film called 10 Fast 10 Furious and wondering how you got suckered into watching the 10th installment of a film that seemed like it was supposed to taper off after the third one. The reason you’re still watching is because the formula of the film works. You’re there to see familiar faces, heart-pumping scenes where the crew tries to hi-jack some mysterious cargo off of another 18-wheeler in daring fashion, and listen to all of the gloriously cheesy dialogue. Once you’ve tried a few ways of marketing your content, it’s time to do some testing to find out what your clients like. This will help you compile the data you need to find YOUR formula. Once you have a steady formula, however, your job has only begun. The reason the Fast and The Furious franchise has continued to thrive against all expectations is because they know how to build off of their formula, and change things up when needed. They add new and interesting characters, additional elements of romance or seduction, and they always seem to find a way to top all of the action of the previous film (when you saw a car drift for the first time, weren’t you like, “whaaaaatttt the?!!”). The most recent installment, Furious 7, has revealed a scene where the crew skydives off a cargo plane in their individual cars, keeping you wondering how they’re ever going to land without breaking their cars/bodies into a million pieces. The lesson here is to keep challenging yourself, keep innovating and keep your customers engaged with the new and vibrant content. Sure, you’ll want to keep churning out massive amounts of “informative” content over and over again, and as quickly as possible, because it’s easy and “it works,” but the truth is, if you don’t take the time to make your content concise and compelling, while pushing the boundaries of innovation, you’re never going to have control of your marketing. In fact, you never had control. You never had your car.   Interested in getting a much-needed marketing boost? Want more marketing tips? Contact TRIdigital today for a free consultation and let’s work together to shift your marketing into high gear!