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Can you really make money from blogging?

If your blog gets over 10,000 monthly unique visitors, then yes – you can monetize your blog and create a nice revenue stream with it.

The real challenge is making money from a blog that generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day.

Just as in life, there are different stages to a blog’s life cycle. You can’t compare your new blog to one that’s been around for years.

The truth is: it takes time to build an income from blogging.

No matter what you've read, blogging success doesn't happen overnight — but it is possible.

Identify the stage you’re in, and work from there. There’s no shortcut to getting blog traffic. Yes, I can show you how to drive traffic to your blog, but you have to be patient and consistent, and you have to work really hard.

This in-depth article will guide you on monetizing your new blog. There are still opportunities to make money with your blog, even if it's not as popular as this blog.

Without further ado, here are eight proven ways to monetize a blog that generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day: 

1. Offer Coaching Service to Motivated Clients

If you’re looking for a way to start making money within the shortest period of time, become a coach. Giving prospects and customers direct access to expertise is where it’s at.

Data from Disc Insights found that “as a whole, the life coaching industry takes in a yearly revenue of $2 billion.”

Jenni Elliot, the founder of TheBlogMaven.com, makes $397 on a one-to-one blogging intensive coaching session.

It doesn’t matter when you started blogging or how much experience you’ve gained in that time — offering a coaching service to motivated clients can bring in money.

Inevitably, your readers will face challenges in life. A coach’s responsibility is to help people manage their challenges, and react in a positive way instead of getting frustrated and giving up.

A lot of bloggers I know started out as online coaches. Initially, they struggled to attract regular clients, but they overcame the challenge by reaching out through social media.

The major reason why becoming a coach in your industry can help you earn extra income is because people want to learn new skills, or improve in certain areas.

Coaching services are in demand because of the dramatic results the process can bring.

As an example, after working with Walk of Life Consulting, 98 percent of clients reported that they thought their CV was more compelling using achievement statements, and 87 percent said their LinkedIn profile became 5X more effective. Here’s the rest of the statistics:

Life coaching is just one area to consider, and it’s increasingly popular these days. As a coach, you’ll help people deal with challenges in their personal or professional lives.

For example, if someone is a web developer, they may need a business or personal coach to help adjust to changes in the web development industry, increase their rates, and retain clients who will, in turn, refer others through word of mouth.

Why coaching? Well, the benefits are enormous. Take a look:

How can you use your blog to promote your coaching services business?

Start by creating useful and interesting content on subjects that matter to those clients and prospects.

For example, if you offer coaching services to freelance writers you might cover topics like:

• attracting new clients
• nurturing prospects
• generating and capturing leads
• retaining existing clients
• setting and raising rates
• weeding out difficult or “problem” clients
• branding
• content creation and copywriting case studies

When offering coaching services, you need a strong value proposition, because the market is already saturated. Having a strong reason “why” people should prefer you instead of your competitors will give you a necessary edge.

Tim Brownson, the founder of ADaringAdventure.com, positioned himself as “the life coach who gets people unstuck.” With his 10 years of life coaching experience, clients trust him for his ingenuity and knowledge.

If you’re driven to succeed as a coach, you don’t need to follow dozens and dozens of other coaches in an effort to “learn.”

Instead, pay more attention to your blog and create high-value content.

After all, you’re the coach. The only way to prove your expertise is through the content you create on a regular basis. Use blogging to increase your prospects’ success, preferably by including case studies wherever possible.

According to Jeff Molander,

Blogging is most useful when you strive to help [your prospects] believe what they want (what you sell) can actually happen for them on time, on budget and without pain. It removes the fear from buying.

When you become a life, personal, or business coach, you have three key jobs:

1. Teach prospects how to set and attain goals, overcome challenges, or avoid risks in ways they can put to work instantly;
2. Improve the prospect’s perception about their business and create confidence in them to trust your recommendations and reach their goals; and
3. Lead customers to constructive, proven processes, encouraging them to ask questions and increase their drive to succeed.

No matter what industry you’re in or cater to, offering a coaching service to motivated clients can help them reach their goals and make you money.

Peter James Sinclair benefitted from Yaro Starak’s coaching program, and he’s more organized and effective now.

Through investment coaching, Todd R. Tresidder helped Gary Craig, an entrepreneur, and former hedge fund owner, to grow his monthly cash flow from $5,000 to $50,000 per month.

Before you rush in and start offering coaching services to motivated clients, you have to understand that a coach is an entrepreneur. You’ve got to have that mindset because that’s what you need to thrive.

Mediocre coaches give up in the face of unfavorable circumstances, but coaches who’ve focused on improving their entrepreneurial skills thrive. When you think like the entrepreneur you truly are, you’ll command higher rates.

2. Become an In-Demand Freelance Blogger

If you’re a blogger, then you already have the skills to become an in-demand freelance blogger.

Linda Formichelli makes $250 per hour, and Elna Cain makes a full-time income as a professional freelance writer.

Brands are desperately looking for bloggers with relevant skillsets, and becoming a freelance blogger can transform your financial life.

According to a study by Upwork, 36 percent of the total US workforce freelances. Those freelancers earn a combined annual income of $1.2 trillion.

A freelance writer is a professional who writes articles on different topics for sites, emails, landing pages, etc.

Skilled freelance bloggers are increasingly needed as B2B and B2C companies recognize content is the ultimate tool for attracting leads and nurturing a loyal audience.

Data from Content Marketing Institute found that 21 percent of B2C brands spend more than $100,00 a year on content in 2020, and many are increasing their spending.

Yes, I know what you’re probably thinking, “But there are so many writers out there already!”

That’s true. But professional freelance bloggers who have WordPress, SEO, social media, and persuasive skills are much harder to find. So if you can add these skills to your writing, you’ll become an in-demand freelance blogger.

Initially, you’ll have to market your freelance blogging services through guest blogging on high-traffic blogs, consistent in-house blogging, social media marketing, and even Facebook ads. But eventually, your happy clients will refer more clients to you.

3. Create and Sell Online Courses

Another profitable way to monetize a blog that generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day is to create and sell online courses. You don’t need many leads or customers to make money with your first online course.

Here's the secret: start where you are and scale from there.

If your blog receives at least 50 visitors per day, find out exactly what those visitors want and create a course from there. The truth is that your first course may not be that “awesome” — but that’s okay.

You can always improve. It's time to avoid the excuses and get started.

Online courses are focused on a specific subject or topic. They’re organized and ready to be put into action.

Online courses have a higher perceived value than blog posts alone. That’s because your target audience can tell how much time you spent creating it. Consequently, they conclude that it must offer some form of value to them.

So don’t be afraid to create an online course – even on a topic that’s been thoroughly covered online. Bryan Harris launched his second online course to 22,000 email subscribers and generated $511,466 in invoiced sales.

Creating an online course is a great way to upgrade your blogging career. Instead of writing for everyone, you create a platform that delivers your best content exclusively to customers.

Online courses are incredibly popular. That’s why there are so many platforms to create and sell online courses.

Keep in mind that the online course market is evolving on a daily basis. Sites like Udemy, Teachable, and Course Merchant have become popular with marketers and technical instructors. And more platforms are coming.

Phil Ebiner makes $100,000 per year selling on Udemy. Even though he doesn’t own or control the platform, he does quite well for himself. He also uses his blogs and social media to promote his Udemy courses.

Then there’s Corbett Carr, who shared a video case study on 10 merchants who earned $1.6 million on Udemy in one year.

In fact, the average instructor brings in $7,000 from Udemy courses, though there is a wide range of outcomes.

Beyond leveraging third-party online learning platforms, you can create and sell your own online course at your blog.

Or you could use a premium online course plugin for WordPress, such as Zippy Courses, CoursePress, WP CourseWare, WooCommerce's Sensei, and so on.

As a blogger, you can create an online course on any topic that people are struggling with. It doesn’t have to be a complex topic like A/B testing – it could be as simple as “how to use Google Docs.”

Are you surprised? Well, here’s proof that this works: Joseph Michael Nicoletti created an online course that helps novelists write their novel with Scrivener and he makes between $20,000 – $30,000 per month.

You want your course to be engaging, useful, and unique. Follow these four tips for creating an engaging online course:

So how do you choose a course topic? Start with your best blog posts. If I were to create an online course on SEO, I’d probably start with my Guide To SEO – because people like it and will be happy to get an updated version. A few tweaks would make that guide another home run as an online course.

4. Write and Make Money from Kindle Books

Want to make money writing short ebooks?

Well, people are doing just that with Amazon Kindle publishing.

U.S. ebook sales revenue has experienced an impressive upward growth trend. There’s no doubt that the growth will continue. When it comes to reading ebooks, there are many mobile devices you can use, but Amazon Kindle is the most popular one in the US.

The good thing about writing and making money from Kindle books is that there are already millions of buyers who are ready to buy from Amazon.

You already know that Amazon is a trusted online shopping site – and you don’t have to work that hard to convince people to buy your Kindle book. People believe Amazon passes its credibility to your product, in a sense.

At the age of 21, Stefan Pylarinos started his Kindle publishing career. As a blogger, the bulk of his income comes from his Kindle books and an online course on how to create and make money with Kindle books.

Specifically, he made over $1.1 million in 2015 from his online business, which is actually based on Kindle publishing.

Stefan makes a decent income from his KMoney Mastery 2.0 course, which teaches people how to profit with Kindle publishing.

However, in order to make a living from Kindle books, you need to work extra hard and publish books regularly. The more quality books you have, the more money you’ll make. Stefan Pylarinos has over 20 Kindle books and still counting.

You’ll need to offer several short Kindle books because individually, they’re priced pretty cheaply – usually from $0.99 to $4.00. Probably doesn’t sound too encouraging, right?

However, if you price your Kindle book at $1.99 and sell 200 copies per month, your total income will be $398. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and many authors make more.

Chris Guthrie estimated the earnings of one Kindle book in one year at $377.87 per month, which adds up to $4,534.41 per year at a price of $2.99

You can use your blog to promote your Kindle books, give discounts, and give away free copies of your book in order to generate honest reviews (which are essential for boosting your Kindle book rankings & sales).

You don’t have to spend money to promote your Kindle books. With your blog, you’ve got the influence, authority, audience, and platform to make it work. Through blogging, you can launch and make your first $1,000 from Kindle books.

There are even some smart marketers out there who make a decent income from Kindle Books without writing. They simply outsource the content creation, then use their blogs to drive sales.

One of those smart marketers is Arman Assadi. According to him, his first ebook cost him $375 – $350 to get the book written, and $25 for a professional cover design.

At the time of writing this, he makes $2,500 per month by publishing Kindle books he didn’t write.

To learn more about Kindle publishing and how to make money from it, see the resource guides below:

• The Ultimate Guide to Making Money Publishing Kindle Books
• How to Increase Your Amazon Kindle Book Sales by 600% in a Week

5. Make Money From Private Label Rights

Private label rights is a strategy where you sell (or in this case buy) intellectual property and market it as your own.

As a marketer, you can benefit from over 50 ways to make money with private label rights (PLR) products. However, make sure you pay attention to the details.

First, don’t use the product word-for-word. Tweak it and make it at least 65 percent unique.

Once you understand your PLR usage rights, you can repackage and make money from it.

Before Panda struck in February 2011, PLR products were popular, and many marketers and bloggers used them to generate content for their sites.

In other words, PLR products are pre-written content that you can claim as your own without incurring any legal action.

In the past, you could start a new site, download a few PLR articles and publish them for your audience. But the game has changed.

Duplicate content is a serious violation of Google’s terms, and could get your site penalized.

However, you can still make money from private label rights as a blogger. If you’re a new/beginner blogger, you can leverage other people’s products.

Creating an information product (e.g., ebooks) from scratch is difficult. If you’re new to blogging you may not have the experience required. Worse, imagine after all the hard work creating the product, no one buys it.

Here are some reasons why product creation from scratch is tiring:

With a PLR product, you don’t need all of that.

Even if you’re not particularly knowledgeable about a certain topic, you can become an author in that field. For example, you can use PLR articles to write a Kindle book related to “plastic surgery” even if you didn’t study that in school.

You can also generate content for your blog using PLR content. When evaluating PLR products, look for these three factors:

• recently developed
• written by a reputable author
• published in limited circulation

Most bloggers and internet marketers struggle to make money with PLR products because they’re lazy. They use the content word-for-word on their blogs. Even when they create ebooks, most people don’t change anything.

If you find a valuable PLR product, you need to rewrite it and make it at least 65 percent unique. You can get quality PLR ebooks, articles, videos, and audio content from sites such as InDigitalWorks

Aside from rewriting the PLR articles or ebooks, you can do so much more with a PLR product. Typically, PLR content is based on profitable niche keywords and information that the target audience is looking for.  

You can use the insights of PLR products as research sources, and then create your own high-value ebook based on the information they provide.

Note: To retain your credibility, I don’t recommend you use PLR articles on your own blog.

Yes, you can learn from the author’s wealth of knowledge about a particular subject/topic, but do your best to always write your own content from scratch.

You can also use PLR products indirectly. For example, you could rewrite a PLR ebook and give it away to build an email list. Then you can make money from your list.

6. Create a High-Converting Funnel and Recommend Products

When people join your email list, what happens next?

Do you feel excited that you have email subscribers and then ignore them?

Follow-up and relationship building is vital.

According to Marketing Donut, “44 percent of salespeople give up after one follow-up, and the average salesperson only makes 2 attempts to reach a prospect.”

Following up on prospects to convert them into buyers is where the majority of sales will come from. Through follow-up emails, you connect with motivated buyers and sell at the backend.

A relationship is the easiest way to establish trust with blog readers and sell a product. It sounds so simple, but a lot of people aren’t doing it.

A relationship begins when you create awareness about your primary business. You then lead your prospects through a funnel, while delivering immense value with your content in every phase.

First, understand this: there’s nothing wrong with selling to your readers as long as the product is useful and valuable.

However, forget about the product and build a relationship with them. That’s where the funnel comes in.

The purpose of a marketing funnel is to attract strangers, convert them into leads, close the deal by turning them into customers and delight them after they have purchased your product.

The moment you drive potential customers to your funnel, they opt in to your list and they’re added into your follow-up autoresponder. Then you can start building the relationship.

You nurture them through your blog posts, videos, infographics, ebooks, and so on. Ideally, you ask them exactly what they’re struggling with, then use the questions to create relevant and high-value content for them.

Along the way, recommend affiliate programs and products, your own ebooks, or software.

Any product that will help them after you have established a level of trust with them should be shared with them.

After creating their first product, Gael Breton & Mark Webster gave away a part of it to collect leads. Altogether, they collected 301 emails, nurtured the leads, recommended their own quality product, and generated $2,684 in 30 days.

7. Partner with Influencers in Product Creation/Launch

Do you know why so many product launches fail?

Joan Schneider and Julie Hall from Harvard Business Review had this to say:

The biggest problem we’ve encountered is lack of preparation: Companies are so focused on designing and manufacturing new products that they postpone the hard work of getting ready to market them until too late in the game.

If you think that making money online boils down to driving traffic to your blog and generating email leads, you’re making a mistake.

Leads are only the beginning.

One recent study found that 79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance.

You need to generate the right leads. The truth is that you may not have this type of lead right now, but you can leverage influencers’ audiences.

Do you have an idea for a product? Most people struggle to launch their products because they go about it all by themselves. It's reported that 70 percent of all new product launches fail in the first year. The question is, why do some succeed when others fail?

There are several aspects of a successful product launch that you may not be able to handle alone. If you try to go it alone, you’re bound to waste more time, and there’s no guarantee you’ll succeed.

You have to understand that your efforts can only lead you far.

To make a real impact in the lives of people, you need to build relationships with influencers and leverage their influence to create and launch your product.

Of course, generating leads is important when launching your product. Even before you release the product (e.g., ebook, software, plugin) for sale, you should start pre-selling and communicate with prospects.

Ideally, you should build a landing page to collect emails prior to launching your product.

According to MarketingSherpa, “61 percent of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27 percent of those leads will be qualified.”

Leveraging influencers could turn out to be the most powerful marketing tool in your arsenal.

As an example, Sujan Patel connected and built relationships with influencers and expert growth hackers before launching an ebook, 100 Days of Growth.

And in six months, Patel and his partner Rob Wormley sold 10,000 copies of the book, which costs $27 per copy.

Here are a few resources to get started leveraging influencers:

• Influencer Marketing Guide
• How to Find Instagram Influencers for Marketing Campaigns
• What are Influencer Engagment Marketplaces (and How to Use Them)

8. Launch a Virtual Summit

No matter where you’re as a blogger, you can monetize your blog by launching virtual summits, which are growing in popularity these days.

Many bloggers use summits to connect and build relationships with influencers. Influencers can bring you credibility, reach, and engagement.

Virtual summits or conferences are powerful. According to Kristen Matthews of Convince and Convert,

Virtual conferences are the most underrated marketing tactic at our fingertips.

Many success stories keep pouring in from bloggers building their lists and income through virtual summits. For one, Aj Amyx earned $16,000 (and 2,300+ subscribers) with a virtual summit.

Here are some of the results of a virtual summit by Navid Moazzez:

There are bloggers and digital marketers making a six-figure income from virtual summits. You may be wondering whether a virtual summit is the same thing as podcasting. Well, here’s a clear description from Entrepreneur:

When Jan Koch launched his first virtual summit, he grew his email list by 600 percent, got featured on major industry websites, and become the go-to expert in his field.

To truly succeed at a virtual summit launch, you need to make it a win/win for the experts who will share their knowledge.

Choose a topic that will inspire people to action, and make sure you have a product to sell at the backend.

How to Montetize a Blog: Frequently Asked Questions

What are some ways to earn blog revenue?

Offer coaching services, on-demand products, and use the blog to build relationships and networking.

How can I convert users better?

Easier navigation, simple-to-navigate design, and clear copy that creates compelling results.

If I don't want to offer products and coaching, how else can I earn money?

Advertising and sponsored posts are always a good way to earn money if you are popular in your niche.

How to Monetize a Blog Conclusion

At the heart of blogging is a deep-seated desire to build and nurture an audience.

Most beginning bloggers struggle to make a living from their blogging efforts, because they believed that blogging alone was enough to make them money.

The majority of successful bloggers make the bulk of their money by selling and promoting other products or services.

For example, Darren Rowse makes more money from his Digital Photography School, and Ryan Deiss generates over six-figure income annually from SurvivalLife. There are countless success stories in this regard.

In a nutshell, if you can’t compete with other players in your industry, you may want to switch to other industries where you can become an expert, then get to work building links, get organic traffic, and promoting products and services to your blog readers.

That said, you have to be consistent. Success doesn't happen overnight.

Which of these methods do you think is the best way to make money as a blogger when your blog generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day?

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: 8 Powerful Ways to Monetize a Blog That Generates Under 1,000 Visitors Per Day
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/8-powerful-ways-to-monetize-a-blog-that-generates-under-1000-visitors-per-day/
Published Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2021 15:30:00 +0000

Lead generation is the process of creating consumer interest in your products or services. With lead generation, you can attract leads (your potential customer) into a marketing software system with the hope of nurturing them through the buying process.

Once a lead is generated, you can then instruct them about your offerings and begin converting them into a customer.

Without leads, your business will most assuredly fail, so today, I want to show you proven hacks that will grow your leads by 113 percent.

Ready? Here are my top lead generation tips.

What Is Lead Generation?

A lead is a person who indicates an interest in your product or service.

Lead generation is the process by which you generate this interest, and place people in your sales funnel. In inbound lead generation, this is most likely to happen by someone filling out a form and giving you their contact details.

Marketers, particularly B2C marketers, rely on several channels to drive leads to their businesses and boost their conversion rate:

• SEO
• paid ads
• social media
• email
• landing pages

Often, these channels don’t yield results marketers can bank on though. If you’ve spent a lot of time creating content, hoping to attract the right leads, but you still aren’t getting results, it can be discouraging. Hear this: you’re not alone.

At one time in my content marketing career, I struggled to acquire leads.

With a renewed focus on lead generation, I was able to turn this around, and you can follow these tips to do the same thing.

Why Is Lead Generation Important for Businesses?

Lead generation is a key goal for most businesses because, without leads, there are no sales, and consequently, no revenue.

Sure, a firm may have several important goals, but a large percentage of organizational goals focus on lead generation. When done well, lead generation can nurture qualified prospects from tentative interest all the way to the customers and ambassadors your brand relies on.

Lead generation is important because it asks the fundamental question, “what does your potential customer want?”

Once you’re able to answer that question and tie it to a high-converting landing page, you’ll consistently generate leads. You’ve still got to turn the lead into a customer, but it’s the starting point, and once you’ve got a sales pipeline full of leads, it’s much easier to tweak your sales strategies.

6 Proven Lead Generation Hacks

Hack #1: Lead generation starts at home—review your homepage messaging

For most marketers, their homepage receives the most visits. Tandberg (since acquired by Cisco), a leader in the field of teleconferencing,increased its lead generation by 50% from a simple homepage CTA that blended with other elements such as the headline, subtitle, and images.

If you’ve been actively promoting your site, your homepage will begetting visitors from referring sites, social media sites, search engines and other sources.

Stuart J. Davidson shared how he reached140,753 page views within twelve months, since re-launching his blog. Since the homepage receives a tremendous amount of traffic, don’t you think that reviewing andadjusting your homepage messaging might help you generate more leads?

I’m confident that it works; that it is, in fact, one of the best lead generation tips for you to absorb. For example, Alex Chris, founder of Digital Marketing Pro, said that one of the areas he tweaked, which led to over 400,000 visitors per month to his site, was the homepage. This also led to several thousand leads!

He showcased five sticky posts, together with a list of the latest posts. He also added a must-read section on his sidebar, which is important if you want people to find your best content the moment that they arrive at your blog homepage. This is how Chris’ homepage looks as I write this article:

Although the sidebar usually shows up on every page on most WordPress themes by default, you can permanently set it for your homepage only.

On the flip side, if you have an offer (e.g. an e-book, a report, software) on your landing page, you’ve got to ensure that your messaging (copy) and offer are in sync.

The two should synch, so that visitors will not be confused when they get to your homepage.

Hack #2: Link to your webinars directly in your content

One of the best lead generation tips you should take away from this post is how a webinar can work brilliantly in your favor.

A webinar is a relatively low-cost way to get your useful message in front of a targeted audience who actually asked for it when they registered.

A small consulting firm used webinars to generate over 100 new, qualified leads and resulted in six opportunity-based meetings. This, in turn, led to $50,000 in services being discussed.

And, 52% of marketers believe that webinars and seminars are the most effective methods for generating targeted leads.

If you can host a webinar and link to it directly in your content, your leads will take you more seriously, because you’ve provided value before asking them to register.

This is quite different from a webinar landing page that doesn’t offer much value to the user.

For example, the screenshot below shows how Quality Matters links to its webinar registration page from within its success stories (a blog post).

The challenge that most people face, when they host webinars, is getting enough people to register. But, you can drive webinar registration by linking directly to it. Uberflip knows how to invite blog readers to register for upcoming webinars right from a post. Here’s an example:

If you’re not using webinars todrive leads to your business, you have to start today. – Lewis Howes

When people are engaged, magical things can happen, right on the spot.

Engagement is the sole purpose of hosting a webinar. Stay time (duration) is influenced by the ease of entering into the webinar, the topic, and whether or not attendees stick around during the Q&A.

If you want to take your lead generation to the next level, you should consider hosting a webinar. Successful internet marketers know the power behind a well-planned webinar.

You can generate leads, nurture them and build a thriving business, solely with webinars. According to a survey conducted by ReadyTalk, 30%–40% of webinar attendees are turned into leads.

There’s no doubt that bringing the right people together in a virtual platform increases trust, leads, and sales. No matter what your industry may be, you have to recognize that people want to belong.

People want to learn from the experts.

And, you don’t have to be an influencer to successfully host a webinar.

The most important factor in increasing user engagement is how useful your webinar is.

In fact,38% of attendees will stick around if your topic is hot and what you’re sharing with them will yield significant results in their business and life.

If you’re a B2B marketer, one of the most effective ways to generate qualified leads, apart from word-of-mouth referrals, is webinars. When you bring people together for the sole purpose of educating them, you’ll generate hot leads.

However, you need to make your webinar a part of your content. Naturally, your blog readers, email subscribers, and customers might have developed an emotional connection with your content. When they’re reading your post, they have a mindset that you’re only interested in solving their problems.

Blogging is a great way to build trust. If you want more people to register, reserve their slot and attend your webinar, then you have to establish a level of trust with them. That’s when blogging comes into play.

The role of webinars in the sales process can’t be ignored, because most companies have experienced higher sales when they hosted a webinar.

The more useful and interesting your blog posts are, the better. Consequently, when you link to your webinar from within your content, it’s a sign that you want to offer more value to your readers without giving them the idea that you’re out to make some quick bucks.

When you have the attention and trust of your attendees, you can recommend a product or service that’ll help them. You have a responsibility to qualify your leads and map your leads’ buying journey. Every stage of the customer buying process is important during the webinar.

Yes, you can sell, but there is a smart way to do it, especially when you’re mindful of your brand and reputation. You don’t want anything that will hurt it or separate you and your audience.

Here’s exactly how to sell during the webinar:

Welcome questions: For each webinar that we host, we usually leave up to 30 minutes for questions.

Without a doubt, this is a sure way to tell attendees that we care about them and not their money. It created a stronger bond that led to more qualified sales and customers in the long run.

Give value before asking for anything: Whether you’re hosting a webinar, writing a blog post, or speaking at an event, you have to offer tangible help before asking for the sale or any other thing that would require the attendee to move out of their comfort zone (e.g., purchase your product). This how to draw in your potential customer – and, hopefully, keep them.

Educate them. Use interesting storytelling methodology to engage them. Address the questions that are occupying their minds. You can then pitch your offer because you truly believe that it can help them move forward.

Launch a poll: Polls can foster engagement and improve customer satisfaction. Polls are simple survey questionnaires that look like this:

For example, through a poll, Tomoson found that nearly 60% of marketers plan to boost influencer marketing budgets.

Similarly, you can use polls during your webinar.

Make them an irresistible offer: If you want to make more sales or acquire better leads, you have to offer your attendees what they can’t resist. If your offer is great and timely you’ll see an increased sales conversion that ranges from 5%–60%. Remember that when you sell or recommend an offer during the webinar, you need to brand your slides. In other words, your company logo, colors, and icons should be used prominently in the presentation design.

When you do that, your brand will always stay fresh in attendees’ minds. This is a priceless and efficient way to get the sale the moment that you ask for it.

Premium content: Another proven way to sell during the webinar is to offer premium content. It could be your new training videos that you haven’t released on YouTube or a few chapters of your upcoming book.

To grow your business and nurture a passionate audience and customers that will stand the test of time, you’ve got to feed them with premium content.

This is the type of content that offers tremendous value and scarcity.

This means that users can’t find it elsewhere, not even in a Google search. Hosting a webinar and linking to it from within your post is one of the ten most effective ways to promote your premium content.

A webinar is quite different from a blog post, video or podcast. According toAscend 2,

When you compare all of the lead generation tactics, webinars are the second most effectivedelivery mechanismof premium content for digital marketers.

Yes, you have to have adedicated webinar page on your site, but always link to both your old and your new webinars within your content. Our dedicated page now accounts for over 20% of our webinar leads per month.

Don’t forget the purpose of this section. It’s not about hosting a webinar, but rather link to your past and future webinars from within your content because you want to establish contact with first-time visitors to your blog and also cement the relationship that you’ve got with your customers.

If you want more people to register for your webinar, you’ve got to partner up with influential bloggers and leverage your homepage (which always attracts the most views).

You’ve also got to blog about your webinar and link to the landing page from your blog posts. Also, don't forget to market your webinar through social media. And, don’t be afraid of paid media or promoting your webinar through keynote speakers.

Linking to or citing a high-value webinar within your content will position you as a go-to expert in your industry who cares about people. Several marketers who applied this technique have succeeded wildly at lead generation.

Hack #3: Use Google as your login

You should use Google as your login because you can personalize your efforts. Effective marketing can be efficiently deployed when you see and address your customers not as a group, but as individuals. That’s why SugarCRM and Trello believe in connecting with individuals.

Most digital companies have not been using this hack to get more leads. The truth is that Google is popular, and most bloggers, content marketers, and online entrepreneurs have a Google account.

The social world has brought us convenience across the web. Our full names, residential addresses, phone numbers, and more are now stored on trusted sites such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This has made it possible for marketers to create a flexible and simple sign-up flow.

You can acquire more customers to your business by limiting the amount of information that they need to input in the forms. That’s how successful companies are built. It can work for you, too.

These days, you don’t need to request much information from your prospects before they can become qualified leads. Better yet, you don’t need them to fill a long-form before you can keep in touch with them.

Since they’ve got all of their personal details on trusted sites like Facebook and Google, you can just ask users to sign up using those sites. For example, you can sign up with Facebook if you want to join Pinterest.

Since Pinterest started using this strategy, they’ve increased their users. Pinterest now has over 50 billion pins and millions of active, loyal users.

Hack #4: Specialize: Separate your lead generation team from your sales team

If you want to convert the visitors that come to your landing pages and take your lead gen to the next level, you’ve got to continually test out your landing page elements, including the headline, subtitles, bullet points, call-to-actions, and more. Consider this a prime piece of real estate in your marketing strategy. In other words, take advantage of what is to offer and experiment with what drives the best results.

You’ve got to keep testing before you can get it right. A/B testing is not negotiable.

But, there’s an aspect of your content marketing strategy that you have to set limits on. It’s about who’s in charge of generating leads and who manages the sales process.

To grow your leads by 113% or more, you have to “specialize.”

In his classic book, Is It Wise To Specialize?, author John O’Sullivan shares the powerful influence of specialization on a child, and how early sports specialization can have an effect on a child’s athletic performance.

O’Sullivan recognized that we’re always tempted to do more. Life itself will push us beyond our limits, but we must learn to specialize. Niche down and identify areas where your strengths are.

When it comes to lead nurturing, which is an all-important aspect of running a successful online business, you’ve got to separate your lead generation team from your sales team.

According to Marketo, lead generation describes the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing [a] sales pipeline.

On the other hand, the sales team is primarily concerned with the exchange of goods and services for money; it’s the action of selling something.

As you can see from the two definitions, lead generation isn’t about selling. Sales also don’t dwell so much on stimulating interest, because that aspect is being coordinated by the team in charge of lead generation.

After selling to a customer, the sales team also has the responsibility of initiating a great customer experience that leads to a high rate of customer retention.

Retaining the customer is important if the business wants to thrive.

Each marketing practice requires a different mindset. For example, the team in charge of lead generation creates awareness for a product.

They also inspire, educate and persuade prospects to take action. But, the sales team is responsible for increasing the revenue of the organization.

Remember that the objective of having separate teams that will handle lead generation and sales is to improve your customer satisfaction.

That’s truly where the profit lies.

Hack #5: Use strong verbs to write powerful headlines that draw attention

A verb is a “doing” word. Or, better yet, it’s an “action” word.

If you want to create a lasting impression in your writing, you have to draw attention with verbs. But first, answer this question:

What makes a headline powerful?

Isn't it the structure, keywords used, length, topic, and, most importantly, the action word (verb) that appear in a given headline? Each of these can and should evoke curiosity and persuade people to click.

If you can give adequate attention to crafting your headline, you’ll not only generate targeted leads, but there’s a possibility that your search rankings will improve tremendously because of a lower bounce rate and the additional time that your visitors are spending on your page.

Copywriters all over the world know the power behind a well-crafted headline. It’s the same reason why Ted Nicholas believes that 73% of buying decisions are made at the point of the headline. And, eight out of ten people will click your headline if it catches their attention. So, what are you going to do about your headlines?

No matter the platform — your blog, social media networks, other blogs (when you write a guest post), or when you create any type of content that will drive leads — you’ve got to make sure that your headline contains strong verbs. According to Wikieducator, you’ve got toput muscle in your writing.

A strong verb is a specific, descriptive verb used in writing. Strong verbs are used to convey a direct message. You’ve always got to have it in the back of your mind that we live in a fast-paced world.

Think about it. We’re all about fast Internet, fast websites, fast food; we want everything now. There is no time to wait. Now, imagine how impatient your target audience will be if your writing isn’t straight to the point or doesn’t offer any immediate reward.

So, how can strong verbs enhance your writing?

When you use strong verbs in your headline, it’ll make you a better writer. Your writing will be concise and descriptive. This is exactly what your prospects want.

Here’s an example of a weak verb in this sentence:

• She is going to school

Though the sentence is correct, it’s weak. We can omit the “is going” and replace it with a strong verb. The question that you need to ask yourself is, how does she go to school? Does she crawl, skip, walk, run, ride a bicycle, etc.?

Let’s make the sentence better by including a strong verb:

• She walks to school
• She rides to school
• She skips to school

In the same vein, instead of using weak verbs in your headlines, you should replace themwith a strong verb. That way, you’ll convey your message or idea in a more concise and captivating manner.

Examples of strong verbs are:

• Nurture
• Terminate
• Improve
• Increase
• Revive
• Change
• Expand
• Boost
• Attack
• Focus
• Write
• Drive
• Engage

I’m not the only one who understands the power behind strong verbs. Authority content marketers, like Brian Clark and the entire Copyblogger Media team, use strong verbs to craft headlines that you can’t ignore. Take a look:

Seth Godin, the renowned author of over fifteen bestselling books, also uses strong verbs to write his captivating blog posts. Take a look:

Note: Strong verbs in your headline will not grow your leads 113% all by themselves. But, they can add flavor, meaning, conviction and clarity to your headline, so that your readers and potential customers will relate to your message.

Having strong verbs in your landing page headline, blog post headlines, and more will increase your conversions, especially when you testthem out.

For example, at a time, CityCliq, a company that provides low-cost, search engine optimized webpages for businesses, ran an A/B test. They used VWO software to test four different versions of their landing page headline:

• Businesses grow faster online!
• Online advertising that works!
• Get found faster!
• Create a webpage for your business

At the end of the A/B test, the fourth headline version, which sends a direct, more descriptive, more relevant, more concise and clear headline, outperformed the others. It generated a 90% increase in conversion rate.

In addition to using strong verbs in your headlines, you also have to focus on length. Headlines that are too long tend to be easily forgotten or ignored.

According to areport by the Guardian, an international news agency that's been creating headlines for decades, headlines with just eight words generateda 21% higher click-through rate than longer headlines.

If you can’t come up with headlines of exactly eight words, a study by Nielsen Norman Group revealed that headlines between five and nine words seem to garner higher click-through rates, too. So, the next time you write a headline, make sure that you integrate strong verbs.

Hack #6: Create an irresistible offer and syndicate across blog communities

Ultimately, you want to get people to say “yes” to your offer. As marketers, that’s exactly what we want.

It all boils down to creating a top-notch and high-value offer. This simple formula explains it better:

High value offer + persuasion = irresistible

If you have difficulty growing your leads, it could be that your offer isn’t compelling. It’s not irresistible.

How do you recognizean irresistible offer? Chris Guillebeau shared a unique perspective on it:

A compelling offer is like a slice of orange at mile 18. It’s a marriage proposal from the guy or girl you’ve been waiting for your whole life. An offer you can’t refuse is like the $20,000 Bonderman Fellowship offered every year to graduating seniors at the University of Washington.

You want them to say yes to download your latest e-book, yes to your email forms, yes to your webinar or yes to your premium physical product on Amazon.

An irresistible offer will help youattract clients and retain them. To do that, follow the irresistible offer rules, as laid down by Jonathan Mead, founder of Paid to Exist.

Remember that when your offer is scarce, relevant, in high demand and exclusive, it becomes desirable.

People will naturally want to get their hands on it.

For example, in 2004, when Google launched a private beta of their free email service (Gmail), only 1,000 leaders were invited to share their honest opinions. These leaders were also allowed to invite their fans, friends, and family to test out the free email service.

Guess what happened during the initial beta phase of Gmail? Demand was high because it was exclusive to a group of people — not to the whole world.

At a point, Google started selling Gmail service. In fact, its eBay invitations were sold at $150 and other specific accounts sold for thousands of dollars.

Isn’t it funny that a free email service can be sold for $150 or more, just because it was exclusive, robust, and praised by thought leaders? That’s the power of an irresistible offer. When you offer one, your prospects and customers will see the gap between their problems and your solutions.

If you’re looking for an idea to create an irresistible offer for your audience, let me give you an example. Let’s assume that you created a report that will help people save on money on plane tickets.

People read, apply your tips and share their success stories on how they saved $200, $380, or $350. Many others can testify of the ease of securing their tickets at a reduced cost.

As you can see, the report is compelling and offers some practical advice that works. In this case, the length of the report doesn’t matter. Even if it’s only two pages, it’s an irresistible offer, because anyone who wants to save on airplane tickets will be attracted to the report.

Domino’s Pizza had an irresistible offer. Tom Monaghan was on the verge of bankruptcy when he strategized on how to take his company to the next level. It was a risk, but a single promotional idea changed everything:30 minutes or less… or it’s free.

Most people ordered Domino’s Pizza just because of the terms. (They’ve since dropped the guarantee.)

BlueHost also delivers irresistible offers—their web hosting plan starts at $3.49 per month, whereas other competitors such as A Small Orange, Godaddy and Hostgator start at $4.00 per month.

The difference may not be clear to you, but to a total beginner who just started out with a site, this is compelling because they can save some money.Your compelling offer has to be something that people want to buy.

In the same vein, if you want to get more email subscribers, your lead magnet has to be highly valuable, free to download and exclusive. A typical example is Michael Hyatt’s:

In order to be sure what offers will be irresistible or weak, you’ve gotto test it out. In his book, How to Create Irresistible Offers, author Robert W. Bly says that it’s possible to improve the response rate to your promotions anywhere from 10%-90%, just by creating and testing different offers.

Derek Halpern uses a powerful lead magnet to persuade people to join his email list. Though a lot of people don’t like pop-ups since the majority of them annoyingly disrupt reading, his offer (headline) makes a bold promise, so people tend to respond to it, especially first-time visitors.

In all, the way people perceive your offer will go a long way in persuading them to become leads or to drive them away. Perceived value can be applied to your lead magnets for building a list. You couldpresent the retail value of the offer that you’re giving away for free.

See also:

• The Secret to Creating Irresistible Marketing Offers
• Make Them an Offer They Can’t Refuse: The 4-Step Blueprint to Tantalizing Landing Page Offers

Types of Lead Generation

There are lots of different ways to generate leads. A convenient distinction in lead generation is outbound versus inbound, although there will be a crossover between the two.

Different businesses will use different lead generation tactics, so it’s about tweaking the type of lead generation you do until you find what works best.

Inbound Lead Generation

Inbound lead generation is when the prospect initiates the interaction with your business. Most often, this is done through content marketing.

A potential customer will find your content through the search engines or a social media link, love your article, and fill in a form with their contact details. From here, you can use your email marketing to progress the lead through the sales funnel, building the relationship until the prospect is ready to buy.

Seventy percent of marketers are actively investing in content marketing as a lead generation strategy, and it’s something that businesses have focused on a lot more in recent years.

The main types of inbound lead generation are:

• videos
• blogs
• guides and e-books
• pillar pages and content clusters
• social media posts
• infographics
• newsletters
• press releases

These are all content types that are strategically placed so people discover them organically.

Outbound Lead Generation

Outbound lead generation is when you initiate the interaction with the prospect. This may be done through a paid advert on Google or social media, cold email outreach, direct mail, or many other channels.

While inbound lead generation has become very popular in recent years, outbound marketing is still very important. Most businesses will find the best strategy is a mix of both inbound and outbound marketing to achieve their lead generation goals.

Some outbound marketing options include:

• paid search ads
• social media ads
• radio ads
• TV ads
• direct mail
• cold email
• cold calls
• print ads

Each option has its benefits and drawbacks, so it’s important to consider your budget and find out what will work best for you.

Lead Generation and SEO

A basic requisite for lead generation is to have people interacting with your business.

In the modern world, this is most likely to happen online, which means you’ve got two options: organic traffic or paid traffic.

When you’re looking for an answer to a question, what’s the first thing you do? The vast majority of people will type a query in a search engine. Google processes more than 3.5 billion searches every day, and the businesses that appear at the top of these search results are benefiting.

Search engine optimization is the perfect tactic because you reach people at the exact moment they’re looking for the information you have. You know they’re engaged, and they’re ripe to be converted into a lead.

The other big benefit of SEO is that you’re not paying for each click.

You’re building assets through your content, and if you practice good SEO, that page will be able to keep converting leads year after year.

Lead Generation and Paid Ads

The problem with SEO and inbound marketing, in general, is that it can be a slow process.

When you create a blog, you’re aiming for it to rank at best a few months down the line. If you need immediate results, then paid ads can be a much better option.

By investing in paid search ads or social media ads, you can get your brand in front of a very targeted audience. This is great for your visibility and allows you to drive a high volume of traffic to your landing pages.

Unlike with SEO though, you’re paying for each click, so it’s vitally important that everything you do is optimized. From your headlines to your landing pages, everything has to be geared towards turning visitors into solid leads.

Running paid ads is something of an art, and it can take time, but with these essential paid marketing steps, it can become a big part of your lead generation.

5 Top Lead Generation Tools

Automation is a huge part of marketing and sales, and the right tools can make all the difference to your lead generation.

Here are some of the most important parts of your lead generation and the tools I recommend to help make your processes more efficient.

CRM – Zoho CRM

It’s one thing getting leads, but you’ve also got to be able to organize them.

Once someone gives you their contact details, what happens to them? Ideally, you want to put them into your CRM, from where you can organize your sales funnels.

In my list of the best CRMs, I found that Zoho CRM was the best option. It’s a great all-in-one platform that makes it easy to track your leads from prospect to repeat customer.

Email Finder – Voila Norbert

For outbound marketing, one of the most important things is being able to find new prospects to add to your sales funnel.

Many people use LinkedIn to research potential customers and find contact emails. People don’t love getting cold emails though, so as you might imagine, they don’t advertise their contact details too easily.

This is where a lead generation tool like Voila Norbert comes in. Once you’ve found a potential customer, it will find relevant email addresses so you know you’re reaching the right people with your email outreach.

Form Generator – Gravity Forms

Getting contact details is just as important for inbound marketing, and your forms play a big part in this.

It’s easy to think a form is just a form, but an optimized form will result in a lot more leads. Luckily, it’s easy to generate highly optimized forms using simple plugins.

For WordPress websites, I found that Gravity Forms is a great option, allowing you to quickly generate lead-generating forms.

If you want to see some more options, then check out my favorite form plugins for WordPress.

Landing Page Builder – Leadpages

Landing pages are an essential part of lead generation. Small changes to your landing pages can make a big difference to your conversion rate, and you want it to be as easy as possible to optimize this process.

In my article on the “4 Best Landing Page Creation Tools,” I found that Leadpages was the best option.

Leadpages offers tons of features with lots of highly optimized templates to choose from, simple A/B testing, and an intuitive layout, it’s a perfect platform to build successful landing pages.

Email Marketing Services – Sendinblue

Email marketing plays a massive part in nurturing leads.

Most leads are going to end up in your sales funnel because they’ve given you their email address, so you need the right email marketing service to help you with the process. In my article on the best email marketing services, Sendinblue was one of my top options because it’s so easy to use.

Sometimes it’s best to keep things nice and simple, and that’s exactly what Sendinblue helps you to do.

4 Amazing Lead Generation Examples

Lead generation is an art, and there’s always room for optimization. Here are some examples of companies that have had great success with different lead generation campaigns.

You’ll notice that many of these campaigns have similarities, and one, in particular, is the omnichannel approach. This is a great way to ensure you’re maximizing your reach and bringing as many leads into your sales funnel as possible.

Here are four amazing lead generation examples to check out:

• Comarch uses LinkedIn to fill its pipeline two years ahead of schedule.
• Magic of Colby uses cold email to book over 200 virtual events in one season.
• An online education provider boosts efficiency by over 50 percent.
• Ramaley Group refreshes its web presence and builds smarter sales funnels.

These case studies can give you some good ideas on how to improve your lead generation, but the most important thing is finding out what works for you. It’s important to pay close attention to your analytics and keep A/B testing your approach.

It’s all in the optimization, so make sure you’re testing everything out to get the best possible conversion rate.

Conclusion

Don’t get fooled by every fancy lead generation tool out there. Use tools for the right purpose—automation.

But, remember that driving quality leads and engagement to your business will take time.

Building any real, successful business takes time. Nurturing your social network presence, crafting a solid email marketing campaign, diligently working on creating and producing quality content–all of these tasks require a significant amount of time and focus. You’ll expend energy, but you have to move out of your comfort zone to achieve results – particularly when it comes to building your lead generation campaign.

You need data-driven content to nurture your leads. And, if you want to maximize your time, you have to repurpose your content and expand your reach so that you can drive fresh leads to your business.

You may not grow your leads by 113% in a week, but, with consistency, you’ll likely surpass that milestone.

“Hacks” are not some magical push-button tactics that don’t have a strong foundation. On the contrary, they’ve been proven to work and many successful brands and industry leaders still use them to acquire new leads and convert them into customers.

Real satisfaction comes from what you learn in the process of applying these proven lead generation tips.

It's the same with increasing sales. You have to make up your mind to learn along the way because your customers believe in you—and you can’t afford to let them down with outdated advice.

What other lead generation hacks have worked for you? Share your case studies, questions, or opinions.

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Lead Generation: What is it, Effective Strategies & Tools
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/lead-generation-hacks-6-proven-hacks-that-will-grow-your-leads-by-113/
Published Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2021 13:00:00 +0000

In the United States, I have been running television ads on CNBC and Bloomberg for NP Digital over the past month (4 weeks).

These channels are stock channels, if you don't know what they are. To be even more precise, I run my ads during stock market hours, which are from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM eastern standard time.

Sometimes, ads will air a little before or after the market opens. But that is about the time they air. They only air Monday through Friday, which is the time the stock market opens.

Before I get into the details of how the ads performed let me first give you some background information.

My theory behind TV advertising

Online advertising is getting more expensive. Look at Facebook and Google. It costs more to run an advertisement now than it did last year.

• Google and YouTubeAdded 108%
• FacebookThe average CPM was $11 and had an 89% increase.
• TikTokA 92% increase in sales
• SnapchatWith “the lowest”, a 64% increase

Why not do something different?

People run ads for clients in the advertising industry, but nobody runs ads on TV themselves, at least not in the United States.

Our team decided to give it a shot and take the plunge.

It could also provide an ROI as we are an ad agency that sees a lot of data. For many of our customers, TV ads are a more expensive option than Facebook ads and less expensive than Google ads to gain customers.

We thought it would add credibility. is only 4 years old, and even though we employ 450 people worldwide. Mostly because bigger brands are more likely to work with larger companies.

Even though we have big brands like Adobe, Western Union, or Sofi at our ad agency… and have won dozens marketing awards for the work we do, we still are small in comparison to agencies like WPP which generate approximately $12 billion annually in revenue.

In the business world, it is a common saying that you won't be fired for hiring IBM. It's the same with hiring large holding companies brands like WPP, Dentsu or Omnicom in marketing.

Slowly, it's changing as people value results more than anything else. Marketing is no exception.

My thought was that NP Digital TV ads would drive leads and help build our brand. I want people to remember that you don't get fired if you hire NP Digital.

Commercials

We ran 3 commercials.

These commercials were shown randomly across the 3 channels, with a close to even rotation over the duration of the 4 week period.

We wanted to increase website traffic, leads and branding by including our URL at the end.

Personally, I thought the ads were funny and clever. They also made us seem like a large agency.

It is important to remember that not all bald people were advertised. One woman wore a baldcap, while a few men wore a baldcap. So everyone could look a little like me.

These are the results

Here's an example of one week:

The cost of my visit was approximately $69.11, which is quite expensive.

We were able to tie leads from TV commercials for a staggering 0.

However, our brand inquiries did increase.

They were basically working from the end. People would then watch the commercial, search for “NP Digital” in Google, and then head to our website.

However, we still had 0 leads at the very least. Unfortunately, our tracking was not perfect.

A lot of my friends messaged to me saying that they had seen my commercial.

Even a person emailed us to say “bloody incredible commercial.” Although they weren't interested, it was nice to get the email.

Do I want to run TV ads again

TV advertising works for many businesses, particularly DTC ecommerce firms.

It wasn't, however, the most efficient for us.

Here's the funny part. They will still be run by me. It's something I would like to continue for another 11 months.

I believe in branding.

Think about shoes. You don't know the brand Nike, but you do know that you can buy them.

Same goes for Visa, BMW and Louis Vuitton.

Branding is priceless, and you must invest in it if you want your business to grow.

Here's an interesting stat: Did you know that people search for “Nike”, in the United States, on Google more than for “shoes”,? This is the power of branding.

My goal or rather, “hope” is to see us recognized by more people after we have spent $1.2 million. It will also help with the rule 7: Companies who interact with your brand seven times are more likely to spread the word and sign up for it as a customer.

I will also try to adjust the time the ad runs and possibly the channels.

I will eventually adjust the creatives and test new ads. But I will still run the three above for at most another quarter.

Conclusion

You must build a brand if you want to become a large company.

Brands are priceless. Your brand is what will get you more business over the long-term.

You don't have to do TV commercials to build your brand. You can use any channel. There are many options, from SEO to social media to TV. Even providing amazing services or building a product can help build brands.

Ask yourself why you are making a purchase the next time. You are likely familiar with the brand.

59% of consumers prefer to purchase new products from brands they know.

Do not take branding for granted.

My agency can help you with branding. My agency can help you with your branding.

What do you think about my TV commercials?

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: What I Learned by Spending $100,000 on TV Ads
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/lessons-tv-ads/
Published Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2021 02:18:21 +0000

Brand awareness refers to how memorable your brand or company is to your target consumers. It’s how easily people recognize your brand when, for example, they hear your company name or see your logo. 

How do you build brand awareness, especially if you’re a new company? Through a carefully crafted brand awareness campaign, that’s how. 

Below, I’ll show you what brand awareness campaigns are and why they matter, and walk you through the steps to building your own successful branding campaign. 

What Are Brand Awareness Campaigns?

A brand awareness campaign aims to improve your brand’s “recognizability” to your target audience. What does this mean? 

You’re trying to ensure your ideal customers have the right impression of your brand. You want them to associate your company with a particular product or type of service. You’re trying to promote your unique selling point (USP) and what makes your business stand out from the competition.  

Who actually uses campaigns for brand awareness? Honestly, every business can use them. Whether you’re a startup just trying to build a name for yourself in a crowded marketplace, or you’re trying to rebrand an old company, you can benefit from a brand awareness campaign.     

Why Should You Create a Brand Awareness Campaign? 

Brand awareness campaigns are worth it for three major reasons.

First, a campaign gives you some control over how people ultimately perceive your brand. Sure, you can’t tell people what to think, but you can certainly promote your brand in a way that nurtures positive associations.   

Secondly, brand awareness helps to build trust between you and your target audience. Why does this matter? According to 53 percent of people in a recent study, trust is the second-most important factor in deciding whether to shop with a new brand (price comes first.) 

The takeaway? Brand awareness campaigns help you build successful relationships with customers based on trust. 

Finally, trust builds customer loyalty. On the one hand, loyal, happy customers will promote you to their friends and family, which brings you more customers in the long run. On the other hand, over time, your customer acquisition costs will decrease. 

8 Tips for Building an Effective Brand Awareness Campaign

Daunted by the prospect of building a whole campaign from scratch? It’s actually surprisingly simple once you understand the eight key steps involved.  

1. Understand Your Target Audience

First, you need to know who you’re actually targeting. 

To start, look at your existing customer base. Who buys your products or follows you on social media? These are the people who already identify with your brand, so look at what they have in common. Think about what matters to them, what problems they have, and how your products help them. 

Then, do some market research. Where else do your customers shop? Who are your biggest competitors? Chances are that your target audience also shops with your competitors, so spend time doing your research here.  

Finally, analyze your results and build a profile for your ideal customer. What do you want them to associate your brand with? Your answer will inform your campaign.    

2. Focus on the Platforms Your Audience Uses Most

A great brand awareness campaign isn’t just about who you target. It’s about where you target them, too. Where does your ideal buyer hang out? Are they watching videos on YouTube, or posting pics on Instagram? Again, this all comes down to researching your target audience and identifying where your campaign will make the most impact. 

I suggest choosing one or two platforms and designing your campaign to suit those modalities. For example, if you opt for a Twitter campaign, choose a memorable hashtag and get tweeting. if you choose Instagram, create visually appealing posts and short, catchy Instagram Stories.    

Rather than spreading your energy across multiple social media platforms, focus on the ones your target customers use most often.  

3. Set Achievable Goals for Your Campaign

Next, set some concrete short-term and long-term goals. Decide:

• what you want to achieve from your campaign
• how the campaign fits into your wider, long-term plans for your brand
• which strategies you will use to achieve your goal e.g., PPC ads, social media posts, influencer marketing, and so on
• how you’ll track your progress

Without concrete goals, you risk running a campaign without direction or a clear purpose. Every successful marketing strategy begins with a set goal or outcome in mind, so spend time reflecting on what you hope to achieve. 

4. Partner With Complementary Brands

A brand partnership means working with a complementary brand to create value, increase your exposure, and expand your audience reach. 

You shouldn’t choose a direct competitor, but rather a company with a broadly similar target audience. 

Take the IKEA and LEGO partnership, for example. On the surface, their target audiences look different. When you look a little closer, both companies are all about building cool things. You can imagine yourself building LEGO at an IKEA table, or placing a LEGO toy on IKEA furniture. 

In other words, both brands conjure similar impressions, which is exactly what we’re looking for in a brand awareness campaign built between partner companies:

Choose a brand you can partner with to best show off your USP.  

5. Be Active and Engaging Online 

In a highly competitive marketplace, consumer engagement really counts. Whether you’re replying to tweets, answering customer support messages, or simply liking user-generated content on Instagram, every communication adds up over time. 

Remember, while you’re trying to build your brand’s presence online, you’re also trying to set the right impression. Do you want to be known as a responsive and engaging company that cares about its target audience? Then, start communicating!

Also, make sure you’re creating regular content. If you can’t post daily, then at least get online four or five times per week to build some traction behind your social media accounts.  

6. Highlight Your Brand Personality 

The whole point of a brand awareness campaign is to influence how people perceive your brand, so highlight your company’s personality each time you post something new. Keep your brand messaging consistent, and you’ll bring your target audience one step closer to making the right associations with your business.   

Warby Parker, for example, is a quirky eyewear company. To position their brand as fun, fresh, and engaging, they post content like cute animals wearing their glasses:

They also engage with customers by sharing user-generated content that most aligns with their brand:

In short, they see every post as an opportunity to promote their personality and build brand awareness. This is what you’re aiming for. 

Remember, your business is unique, so use your campaign to highlight what makes it so special.     

7. Improve the Customer Experience

For 80 percent of customers, the experience matters just as much as whatever products companies sell. Meaning, if you want to leave a positive, lasting impression on your customers, you should work on improving the customer experience.

• 86 percent of customers will actually pay more for a better shopping experience
• 91 percent of customers shop again with companies offering great experiences  

Finally, on average, UX-focused companies are up to 60 percent more profitable than others. 

In other words, your brand awareness campaign shouldn’t just be about talking up your company. It should be about showing customers how you can help them and why their needs matter to you. 

Not sure how your current user experience stacks up? Encourage customers to leave reviews or send feedback so you can see how to improve your service offerings. 

While it’s impossible to act on all feedback, take note of common themes and identify where there’s room for improvement. Although no one likes negative reviews, they’re actually a key tool for leveling up your business in the long run. After all, you can’t fix problems no one tells you about, right? 

In short, you can quickly boost your brand awareness by prioritizing the customer experience and showing people how much you value their feedback.      

8. Track Your Results

How do you know if your campaign is working? Well, you probably won’t unless you set some criteria for measuring your success. 

The metrics you measure vary depending on the marketing strategy used. For example, if you run a campaign on Twitter, you might track things like the number of impressions, shared tweets, and hashtag mentions. If you decide to run paid ads, you could use Google Analytics to track your click-through rate (CTR) and conversions. 

What’s important is that you measure your results and implement strategy changes if necessary.  

2 Successful Brand Awareness Campaign Examples

OK, so that’s how you can create a campaign, but what does it take to make your campaign truly great? To find out, let’s check out two companies that nailed their campaigns.     

1. Corona: Pay With Plastic

Corona is a hugely popular brand of beer, and it’s often associated with summer, drinking on the beach, and good times. 

Back in 2019, to celebrate World Oceans Day, Corona launched a campaign, “Protect Paradise,” to help protect the environment. They encouraged customers to clean up their local beaches and hand over the plastic in exchange for free beer:

The results are positive brand associations based on social responsibility and protecting our environment. The Twitter campaign alone generated 14.1 million impressions and a 1 percent engagement rate, which is pretty impressive.    

2. MoonPie: Super Bowl Commercial

If there’s one thing I love about MoonPie, it’s their distinctive, instantly recognizable voice. Back in 2020, MoonPie ran a commercial for the Super Bowl, and they released the news to Twitter followers in a typically fun way:

You’ll note there’s an emphasis on purchasing the product, too, which is a great example of blending voice with persuasive marketing. In the end, the commercial only ran at gas stations, but as expected, MoonPie turned the news into a funny tweet:

The upshot? You can use these types of campaigns to let your distinctive brand personality shine. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Brand Awareness Campaigns

Now we’ve covered all the key points, let me leave you with some takeaway tips. 

What Are Brand Awareness Campaigns?

A brand awareness campaign is designed to improve consumers’ awareness of your brand and what it stands for. It should boost your overall recognizability.   

Why Should I Create Brand Awareness Campaigns?

Brand awareness campaigns can help you stand out from competitors, improve customer loyalty, and even reduce your customer acquisition costs over time. If you’re looking to grow your business and build customer relationships organically, building a campaign for brand awareness may help.  

How Do You Create a Brand Awareness Campaign?

First, set a clear goal and identify your target audience. Then, focus on the platforms where your target audience hangs out the most and work on a few strategies at a time. Engage with followers and make them feel like valuable members of your community.   

How Do You Track Your Brand Awareness Campaigns?

You can track your campaign’s performance using analytics tools like Google Analytics. You can also use the metrics tools offered by social media platforms. However you do it, just make sure you’re tracking your campaigns!

Brand Awareness Campaign Conclusion

A brand awareness campaign allows you to shape how potential customers perceive your company. With the right campaign, you can directly influence what people think when they hear your brand’s name, and you can ensure that customers remember your name for the right reasons! 

In other words, it is the backbone of a successful marketing strategy, and it’s surprisingly easy to implement. However, if you’re still a little stuck on how to get started, check out my consulting services.  

Have you created a brand awareness campaign yet? Which strategies did you try?

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: 8 Tips for a Brand Awareness Campaign
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/brand-awareness-campaign/
Published Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Are you having trouble growing your e-commerce company?

Are you tired of low conversion rates

You are not the only one.

Only 3% of visitors to e-commerce websites converted into customers.

Yikes.

Yet, even in a global pandemic, AppSumo and Dollar Shave Club are still making millions.

You'd like to be part of their ranks but aren't sure where you should start. You feel like everyone else has a secret to your success.

A free webinar will be held on August 24th at 8 AM PST to expose the secrets used by the fastest-growing e-commerce companies to dominate online shopping.

We'll be discussing how each can be implemented to increase your e-commerce sales with Matthew Santos (VP of Products and Strategy, NP Accel) and Brooke Hess (Senior Director, Paid Media, NP Digital).

It's completely free. Register now.

What will you learn?

Since opening NP Digital, my agency, I have worked with many companies, from small businesses to large corporations, as well as some of the fastest-growing ecommerce brands in the world.

I have seen the unique strategies used by these companies to attract quality leads and generate targeted traffic.

The best part? These ecommerce sales strategies work for all brands. These strategies are great for any brand, no matter how big or small.

These are just a few of the things that we will show you:

1. E-commerce SEOYou can generate free, recurring and high-converting traffic using SEO techniques that no one else is discussing.
2. Paid advertisingEven with a modest budget for paid ads, you can multiply your results and increase conversion rates.
3. CRO for E-commerce:Discover the strategies that fast-growing ecommerce brands employ to increase conversion rate optimization (CRO).

These are just a few of the many things you will learn.

Conclusion

Looking for clues is one of the best ways you can be successful in business. You can find clues in brands' breadcrumbs and use them to your advantage.

These clues will help you spot them and provide you with actionable advice about how to implement these strategies to accelerate your e-commerce business' growth.

These tactics can change your game, no matter if you are just starting out or if you feel stuck.

Register now for the webinar and I'll be there on August 24, at 8 a.m. PST.

PSMy team can implement these hacks for you and manage your ecommerce business.Go here.

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: Upcoming Free Webinar: 7 Hidden Tactics From The Fastest Growing E-Commerce Companies
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/webinar-ecommerce/
Published Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2021 19:53:40 +0000

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Not long ago, conference calls were challenging to set up and manage. Not anymore. Today, I can click a few buttons and hop on a call with my entire team in a matter of seconds from the comfort of my home. 

The best conference call services go beyond basic phone calls, offering a suite of collaboration tools that make coordination simple. Sending invites, switching to video conferencing, recording the call–it's easy enough for your least technical user to manage.

It's not very expensive to get set up, depending on what you need, but you don't want to pay more than you should.

To make the process of finding the right one a little easier, I've put together a list of the top eight conference call services.

Keep reading for my take on how find the one option that's going to help your team the most.

#1 – RingCentral Review — The Best All-inclusive Communications Tool

RingCentral is an all-in-one business communications platform handles instant messaging, video, and phone. So, it’s an excellent choice if you’re looking for a communication tool that ties your whole office together.

Furthermore, it’s secure, easy to use, reliable, and accessible on any device. 

Plus, you’re in excellent company with more than 400,000 customers worldwide. 

And the best part? They offer an incredibly robust free plan for video conferencing. With it, you can meet with up to 100 participants (for up to 40 minutes) anytime from anywhere on any device.

The free plan also comes with incredible features, including:

• Simultaneous screen sharing
• Host controls and user management
• Custom meeting IDs
• HD voice and video
• Whiteboarding and annotations
• In-meeting chat capabilities
• Unlimited file sharing 
• Meeting recordings

And their premium plans include advanced features like phone support, reporting, single sign on, and advanced team messaging tools. 

RingCentral’s all-in-one office pricing is a bit expensive, with plans starting at $19.99 per user per month. However, those plans come with a ton of extra features, including everything you need to streamline business communications. 

So, it’s an excellent choice if you need everything from SMS messaging and video conferencing to business phones and internet faxing for your entire team. 

Alternatively, you can upgrade to a paid conferencing-only plan with RingCentral Meetings. Their Meetings plans include:

1. Essentials — $14.99 per organizer per month (for small businesses)
2. Advanced — $19.99 per organizer per month (for enterprise businesses)

Sign up for a free forever plan to get started with RingCentral today!

#2 – GoToMeeting Review — The Easiest Conference Call Software to Use

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use online conference call software, go with GoToMeeting. It’s an excellent option for both small and large businesses alike. Plus, it’s incredibly simple to set up. 

In fact, you can host or join meetings in one click from your phone, your laptop, a conference room, or any remote location. 

Furthermore, you can easily host and join audio, video, and web meetings as well. So, whether you’re the administrator or an attendee, it’s a smooth and seamless process for everyone involved. 

With GoToMeeting, you get a ton of influential conference calling features, including:

• Screen sharing of your desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet
• VoIP conference calling 
• Face-to-face HD video conferencing
• Intuitive, yet powerful, mobile access
• Meeting recording and transcription
• Internal and external instant messaging
• Smart meeting assistant
• Toll-free conferencing
• 25 video feeds per meeting
• Drawing tools

Plus, meeting participants can join using commuter mode, which helps them save mobile data and provides a distraction-free experience on their mobile devices. 

Unlike most of the other options on this list, GoToMeeting doesn’t offer a free plan. 

But their paid plans are incredibly affordable and accessible for businesses of all sizes. Those premium plans include:

1. Professional — $12 per organizer per month (up to 150 participants)
2. Business — $16 per organizer per month (up to 250 participants)
3. Enterprise — Custom pricing only (up to 3,000 participants)

Start your 14-day free trial to see if GoToMeeting is right for you!

#3 – Grasshopper Review — The Best Virtual Business Phone System

Grasshopper is a bit different than the other options on this list. Their software is a simple way to turn your personal phone into a business phone without worrying about buying new hardware. 

So, if you’re a solopreneur or small team looking for an easy way to set up business phones for your team, Grasshopper is an excellent choice. 

However, I don’t recommend going this route unless you actually need a virtual business phone system. 

The software is incredibly easy to set up. All you have to do is select your phone number, choose a pricing plan, download the app, configure your settings, and you’re good to go. 

It seriously takes just a few minutes and is incredibly easy to use. Aside from conference calling, you also get access to powerful features, including:

• Toll-free, local, and vanity numbers
• Custom greetings
• Personal extensions
• Call routing
• Multi-call handling
• Instant response text messages
• SMS messaging
• Internet faxing
• Voicemail transcription
• Auto-receptionist

While most of the app features are incredibly easy to use, conference calling is a bit less traditional than the other options listed here. Rather than participants joining your call, you have to call them, making it more aligned with old-school conference calls. 

But you get unlimited conference calls with up to ten participants and the added business-phone functionality all for an extremely affordable price. 

Grasshopper’s paid plans include:

• Solo — $26 per month for one phone number and three extensions
• Partner — $44 per month for three phone numbers and six extensions
• Small Business — $80 per month for five numbers and unlimited extensions

Sign up for a free 7-day trial to see if it’s right for you today!

#4 – ClickMeeting Review — The Best Conference Call Service for Hosting Webinars

Webinars are an excellent way to demo products, deliver online training, and host online events. They’re useful for everything from marketing and sales to education and large meetings. 

So, if you’re looking for a tool that offers webinar capabilities and conference call features, ClickMeeting is your best option. 

However, it’s a bit expensive, so I only recommend it if you plan to use it for both purposes. 

The software comes with a ton of excellent features for both conference calls and webinars, including things like:

• Paid and automated webinar sequences
• Webinar timeline views
• Independent subaccounts
• Custom branding
• Customized invitations
• Registration pages
• Waiting room with agenda
• Whiteboarding and screen sharing
• Chat translation
• Advanced analytics

Furthermore, they offer an extensive knowledge base so you can learn everything to make the most of your new software without calling customer service. 

However, keep in mind that all plans cap conference calls to 25 participants. 

ClickMeeting offers a free 30-day trial, but there isn’t a free forever plan. There are three options to choose from, including:

1. Live — $25 per month
2. Automated — $40 per month
3. Enterprise — Custom pricing only

Start your 30-day free trial to take ClickMeeting for a test drive today!

#5 – Zoom Review — The Best for Free Video Conference Calls

As more people shift to remote work, Zoom has become a household name. 

It’s one of the most popular video conferencing tools on the market—and for a good reason. 

Their robust free plan is more than enough for most users, making it an excellent and budget-friendly option for individuals and small businesses alike. 

Their free plan includes unlimited meetings with up to 100 participants for up to 40 minutes and unlimited 1:1 meetings with a 24-hour time cap. Furthermore, you also get free access to features like:

• Automatic calendar syncing
• Robust security encryption
• Role-based user access
• Waiting rooms and password protection
• HD audio and video
• Up to 49 videos on the screen
• Screen sharing and recording
• Hand raising and in-meeting chat
• Video and audio settings
• Dedicated dial-in numbers

All for free. So, if you’re looking for a robust and intuitive conference call service without paying a penny, Zoom is definitely one of the best options on the market today. 

However, if you outgrow the free plan and need something more advanced, you can upgrade to one of their paid plans, including:

1. Pro — $14.99/month or $149.90/license per year (up to nine licenses)
2. Business — $19.99/month or $199.90/license per year (minimum of 10 licenses)
3. Enterprise — $19.99/month or $199.90/license per year (minimum of 100 licenses)

Sign up for a free forever plan to see if Zoom is right for you and your team today!

#6 – Google Meet Review — The Best Conference Call Service for G Workspace Users

Google Meet is the upgraded version (and replacement) of Google Hangouts. 

And if you’re an avid Google fan and already use Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Google Meet is entirely free for you to use, making it an excellent and affordable option for businesses of all sizes. 

Furthermore, you don’t have to do anything to sign up if you already have a Workspace or Gmail account. All you have to do is head to the Google Meet page to open up a meeting room.

Doing so automatically pulls in your contacts and information, too. 

The best part is that all of Google’s tools and software integrate seamlessly. So, you can quickly and easily jump straight into a video chat from their Chat tool, your calendar, or even your mobile device. 

Plus, the free Google Meet tool includes intuitive features like:

• US and international dial-in numbers
• Secure Google global infrastructure
• Encrypted video conferencing
• No third-party plugins or software required
• Live captioning
• Low-light mode
• Built-in noise cancellation

On the Basic Google Workspace plan, you can host calls with up to 100 participants. Basic starts at $6 per month.

If you need more participants, you’ll need to upgrade to the Business Standard or Business Plus plans, which support 150 and 250 participants, respectively. 

If you already use Google Workspace, head over to Google Meet to get started!

#7 – Vast Conference — The Best for Assisted Conference Calls

If you’re interested in hosting formal, assisted conference calls, Vast Conference is the way to go. While they also offer reservationless meetings, their assisted conference call features are where they shine. 

Operator-assisted calls require a bit more planning in advance. However, all you need to do is call their reservation desk to set up a time and date. 

From there, you can choose the level of assistance you need for your event. 

Operators can help with the planning of your event, show up live during your event for technical assistance and call quality, and deliver call recordings and participant lists afterward. 

It’s like hiring the assistant you never knew you needed. On top of that, operator-assisted calls may also include:

• Welcoming and identifying callers
• Continuous assistance from staff
• Up to 6,000 participants
• A pre-conference room meeting
• Triple-checked event transcriptions

These types of conference calls start at $0.16 per minute per line for a standard event and $0.19 per minute per line for premium events. Plus, there are no contracts or obligations as these are managed separately from their reservationless meeting services. 

Vast’s reservationless plans are quite expensive compared to other options on this list. So, I don’t recommend it unless you’re using their operator-assisted services. 

Choose your plan to start planning your operator-assisted event today!

#8 – Bluejeans Meetings Review — The Best Conference Call Service for Sound Quality 

If you need meetings with crystal clear sound quality, Bluejeans Meetings is definitely the way to go. Every plan includes Dolby voice audio with built-in noise reduction, spatial audio, and dynamic leveling. 

Plus, you also get HD video, so you never have to worry about low quality.

Besides excellent sound and video quality, you also get access to a ton of influential conference calling features, even on the lowest-tier, including:

• Unlimited 1:1 and group meetings
• No time caps whatsoever
• 5 hours of hosted meeting recordings
• Meeting highlight reels and action item tagging
• Outlook and Google calendar integrations
• Video pinning and content slider
• Desktop and application sharing
• Remote desktop control
• Whiteboarding and annotations
• Advanced host controls
• Safe driving mode

Bluejeans is one of the most feature-rich options on this list. However, that comes with a steeper price point and fewer meeting participants allowed on each plan. 

Plus, keep in mind you get excellent crystal-clear audio and video quality, making it feel like everyone’s in the same room. It also helps reduce dialog delays and ensures everyone speaks at the same level. 

So if that’s something you need, the extra price is well worth it. Their pricing plans include:

1. Standard — $9.99 per month billed annually (for up to 50 participants)
2. Pro — $13.99 per month billed annually (for up to 75 participants)
3. Enterprise — Custom pricing only (for up to 100 participants)

Try it free for seven days to see if Bluejeans is right for you!

What I Looked at to Find the Best Conference Call Service

The best conference call service for you and your team depends on various factors, including the size of your business, the level of security you need, and extra features you’re interested in.

Some of the products I've reviewed like Zoom and GoToMeeting are great ways to give your team conferencing calling capabilities. Others, like Grasshopper and RingCentral, are much more comprehensive options–these will function as a business phone system.

One of the first things you have to decide is whether or not you want to pay a small amount for conference calling, or if it makes sense to pay a little more to get voice, video, texting, and call handling features that come with communications platforms like RingCentral.

It may help to start with a comprehensive list of everything you need. Then, you can use that as you go through the decision-making process. 

As you create your list, don’t forget to include the following considerations. 

Number of Participants

A conference call with ten people is vastly different than a conference call with hundreds of participants. 

So, it’s essential to consider your team’s size and the number of participants you expect for any given meeting. Some service providers include low limits, while others allow thousands of participants depending on the plan you choose. 

Security

Whether your meetings are confidential or not, security is an important feature to consider. It should be a priority, not an afterthought, so make sure you consider:

• The level of control over who can join the call
• 256-bit TLS encryption to make sure the line is secure
• Security policies of the service provider

Furthermore, pay attention to how the provider stores your data and what they’re allowed to do with it if you use their services. 

Mobile Access

Giving employees and other meeting attendees the ability to join using their mobile device is convenient for everyone involved.

Employees who work on the road or in the field will really appreciate the freedom to hop on a call wherever they are.

Having mobile access decreases the chance of someone having to cancel or move a meeting simply because they aren't at their desk.

Audio and Video Quality

A conference call with low audio and video can be incredibly frustrating. So, it’s crucial to choose a service provider with top-notch video and audio quality. 

Of course, your internet connection plays a role. But you should carefully consider choosing a conference call service with HD video and audio capabilities for a smoother experience all around. 

Additional Features

If you need other features, like a virtual phone system or the ability to host webinars, you can bundle conference calling services with software specializing in something else. 

You may also want to consider other features, like:

• Call recording
• Hold music
• Auto-assistant
• Internal communication
• Call forwarding
• Extension numbers
• Custom greetings
• Text messaging
• Internet faxing
• Waiting rooms

Hardware Requirements

It’s also important to consider if you need to buy new equipment to handle a conference call service you’re considering. Some software integrates directly with the hardware you already have, making setup and everyday use a breeze. 

However, others may require special equipment or something newer than what you currently use. And they may require professional installation, as well, depending on the number of users you need. 

Some may work with your employees’ personal phones, mitigating the need for separate business phones. 

Conclusion

GoToMeeting and RingCentral are my top recommendations for most people because they’re simple, affordable, and effortless to use. 

Plus, they include a ton of intuitive and powerful features that make connecting with coworkers and colleagues more straightforward than ever. 

But that doesn’t mean they’re the perfect choice for you. To recap all of my top picks, and who they work well for, here's the full list:

1. RingCentral – Best all-inclusive communication software
2. GoToMeeting – Easiest conference call software to use
3. Grasshopper – Best virtual business phone system
4. ClickMeeting – Best for hosting webinars
5. Zoom – Best for video conference calls
6. Google Meet – Best for Google Workspace users
7. Vast Conference – Best for instant conference calling
8. Bluejeans Meetings – Best for video and sound quality

So, don’t forget to consider the features and must-haves we talked about as you go about finding the best conference call services for you and your team. 

Which conference call software do you prefer?

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: The Best Conference Call Services (In-Depth Review)
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/best-conference-call-services/
Published Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

What would you do with ten extra hours a month?

Maybe you’d catch up on work, or take a day off to spend with the family. 

However you spend that time is better than fighting with payroll. And yet, the average small business owner spends hours pushing paperwork through each pay period.

At tax time, it's even worse.

It doesn't have to be this way. 

The best payroll services streamline the process of paying your employees by automating most of the time-consuming tasks. When its time to cut checks, you have the tools you need to stay on top of taxes, benefits, paid time off, and so on.

Nobody likes payroll surprises. Make sure it's easy for you to get people paid on time, every time, with as little busy-work as possible.

In this post, I've reviewed the top six solutions on the market today and included a short guide to help you evaluate your options. Keep reading to find the best payroll service for your specific needs.

#1 – Gusto Review — Best for Remote and New Businesses

For startups and small businesses with a remote workforce, Gusto is going to be the easiest way to take care of essential payroll and HR services.

Gusto is cloud-based and mobile friendly. Run payroll from any device with internet access, wherever you are.

It’s a full-service platform, which means Gusto takes care of tax filings, health benefits, and employee retirement plans. For companies where people aren’t coming into the office, having all this information in a centralized, easy-to-use platform is a boon.

Gusto makes remote hiring and onboarding is a breeze. Employers build an onboarding checklist and send the new hire an invitation.

Employees complete each step of the simple process. They enter bank information directly into Gusto, so you never have to worry about sending sensitive data over email. 

Once the employee sets up their account, everything they need is self-service. They can see all of their pay stubs and documents. Employees quickly gain confidence on the friendly, approachable platform.

The ease-of-use is really important to teams without any on-site training or coaching. Plus it’s going to eliminate busy work for you.

You never have to hunt down someone’s W2 again. As soon as it’s available, employees are notified and get on-demand access.

Coordinating remote work is hard enough without having to deal with multiple middlemen to answer basic questions about payroll. Gusto makes everything transparent, which saves time and frustration for employers and employees alike.

Gusto has a growing list of more than 50 integrations with popular tools remote teams depend on. Connect to accounting software like Xero and QuickBooks or time tracking software like QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets), Deputy, and Homebase.

Every integration cuts down on the information your teams are entering manually. Employees clock out and the data syncs immediately with your payroll. 

This creates fewer opportunities for errors and miscommunications, which can easily go unnoticed when people aren’t sharing an office.

With Gusto, the features you get depend heavily on which of their plans you choose:

The pricing for Gusto includes a monthly base price plus a per-employee charge:

• Core: $39/month + $6/employee
• Complete: $39/month + $12/employee
• Concierge: $149/month + $12/employee
• Contractor: $0/month + $6/employee

Gusto’s Core plan gives you full payroll tax service in any state, as well as access to direct integrations with time tracking and accounting tools. This product is all that smaller remote teams will need.

The Complete plan has a higher cost per employee than Core and gives you a greater degree of visibility and control over your payroll processes. You’ll get project and workforce costing along with customizable onboarding tools.

Gusto customer support has a very good reputation, regardless of the plan you choose. However, the Concierge plan gives you access to certified HR pros who can help companies navigate complex tax and benefit scenarios.

This is a really great option for companies that work with 1099 employees. With Contractor plans, you pay $6 per each worker. All the tax stuff is handled, and your contractors get the same great self-service features as your employees.

For large, established, enterprise companies, Gusto is probably going to be too light. They aren’t able to handle health benefits in every state, for example, and that platform isn’t going to run as smoothly if you have over 100 employees.

This is the tradeoff of having such an easy platform to use. For new businesses and remote teams, Gusto is everything they need and nothing they don’t.

The guided onboarding and intuitive platform ensure that everyone gets off on the right foot, even if there’s no traditional HR department to oversee the process. Add to that the unlimited chat, email, and phone support, and you have the complete payroll toolkit for small business.

Get started with Gusto today!

#2 – OnPay Review — Best for Simplifying Complicated Payroll

A lot of companies end up hiring a full-time payroll person once things get too complicated. A cheaper, easier alternative is to get OnPay.

This is an affordable solution that takes all of the complexity out of processing payroll. Anyone can learn how to run OnPay. It’s that simple.

There is one pricing plan with one low monthly rate and you get access to every payroll capability OnPay offers. No strings attached.

Say you have a business of less than 50 full-time employees and you want to offer a qualified small employer health reimbursement arrangement (QSEHRA). This is a good way to attract talent without having to offer a complete benefits package, but it can be a little tricky for a non-accountant to set up.

With OnPay, it’s easy to designate and track QSEHRA for payroll. Other providers don’t have this and you’ll be stuck trying to create a workaround or hiring someone to set it up for you.

These are just a few examples, but it’s true for Form 943 workers and other less common payroll scenarios that can easily trip up business owners. 

In fact, OnPay provides special modules for restaurants, farms, churches, and other organizations that can’t depend on traditional payroll templates to get things right.

None of these capabilities cost you extra, and you can count on OnPay to keep providing new services. During the pandemic, they made it as simple as possible for companies to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP):

Instead of having to wade through the complex government regulations, companies using OnPay could follow simple steps to complete their PPP application. 

OnPay is easy to navigate. It demystifies both common and edge-case payroll problems that trip up the average user. And if you run into issues, you can reach out to the OnPay customer service team. They are known for expert advice and solving problems quickly. 

As I said, there is a single pricing plan. So if you have OnPay, you have access to their customer service. With other options, you may have to pay for premium services to get prompt service. 

Customer service is always important with payroll, and only more so if you have lots of hoops to jump through. 

Unemployment insurance, garnishments, multiple pay schedules, PTO—OnPay has you covered. Getting set up is not hard and you can reach OnPay by phone, email, and chat if things don’t make sense.

OnPay doesn’t have any annoying limits. With every subscription, you get:

• Unlimited monthly payroll runs
• W-2 and 1099 capabilities
• Automatic tax calculations and filings
• Employee self-service onboarding and dashboards
• Intuitive mobile app for management on the go
• PTO, e-signing, org charts, and custom workflows
• Integrated workers’ comp, health insurance, and retirement
• Multi-state payroll

For employers who can’t stick with a routine payment schedule, the unlimited payroll runs are a must. You won’t have to think about extra fees for 1099 workers or upping your subscription to get more HR features. Pay any employee in any state any time you want.

OnPay offers free account migration and helps setting up the integrations you need. If you are tired of confusing payroll and hidden charges, get in touch with OnPay today. 

If you switch, your first month of OnPay is free.

Try OnPay free for 30 days to see if it’s right for you!

#3 – Paychex Review — Best for Replacing Your Current Payroll Service

Lots of companies switch from an outside payroll/accounting service to Paychex Flex to streamline HR.

Stuck with having to request filings and payroll information? If you’ve grown to the point where the middleman has become a bottleneck, that won’t work anymore.

Paychex provides self-service access to both the employer and employee. 

Now, you can get the same on-demand access with some of the lighter (and less expensive) options like OnPay. The thing is, OnPay doesn’t replace that outside expertise. 

With Paychex Flex, you get a dedicated payroll specialist. This will be your single point of contact at Paychex, which is much better than playing the old customer service lottery.

Don’t get me wrong, Wave and OnPay have excellent customer service reps, but they can’t stand in for someone who knows your business. That knowledge was a big part of the value from hiring an outside expert and no customer service call center can replicate that.

In addition to getting a payroll expert in your corner, you get the Paychex platform, which will accommodate any conceivable tax or benefits scenario. 

Instead of having to figure out workarounds, you can customize deductions and earnings with a few clicks. Paychex makes it easy to maintain accuracy and figure out when something’s wrong. 

I really like the flexible views, which let you drill down into individual payroll records, list out your employees, or switch to a grid-view for easy data entry:

The versatility of the platform, the depth of payroll capabilities, and the dedicated customer service rep combine to make Paychex Flex the best solution for replacing your old outside payroll service.

Enrolling employees in a retirement plan, for example, is a common reason that business owners have to hire help. With Paychex, you have a wide range of plans to choose from and an easy process to get set up.

Employees can check their retirement plan and contributions from their browser or phone and use the retirement calculator to track their savings.

There are also 160 pre-built reports and dashboards to help owners stay informed about the company’s financial health. Much of the insight and perspective of that would normally be supplied by an outside advisor is built right into the platform. 

Some of the other highlights include:

• Recruiting and onboarding
• Performance and learning management
• Powerful real-time analytics
• Payroll automation features
• Direct deposit, paper checks, and paycards
• Salary, hourly, and contract workers
• Paycheck garnishments
• PTO and benefits management
• Job costing and labor distribution

What if you don’t need every capability? That’s okay, as Paychex Flex comes is available at three different tiers: Select, Pro, and Enterprise. You’ll have to get in touch with sales for pricing, as it’s not on the website.

Paychex Flex Select is aimed at businesses with basic payroll needs. You don’t get the self-service onboarding, which is useful, but you do get the dedicated payroll specialist to help with any problems you have.

With Paychex Flex Pro, you get access to the full platform. This includes additional support for workers compensation administration and state unemployment insurance. With the Enterprise plan you can build out customized reports and additional tools to manage HR compliance.

Paychex has 191 integrations with banks, employee retirement plans, and of course, tons of the popular software applications associated with payroll. This allows companies to oversee a centralized system that tracks employees from recruitment to retirement.

With Paychex Flex, companies can keep everything in-house. The platform makes payroll a cinch and gives business owners the insight and confidence they need to move forward without an outside service.

Contact their sales team for a custom quote to get started!

#4 – ADP Review — Best Bundled HR/Payroll Service

ADP is a one-stop shop for companies that want to handle payroll and HR through a single provider. Over 700,000 businesses in more than 140 countries entrust ADP, which has earned a very strong reputation over seven decades of service.

With some payroll services that might be cheaper than ADP, you can run into annoying limits. Wave, for example, only offers tax services in select states. Gusto is a good option to handle payroll and HR, but only if you are in one of the 38 states that the company offers coverage. 

Plus, you only get HR compliance assistance with Gusto’s Concierge plan, whereas ADP makes options available regardless of what plan you are on.

When you are looking for bundled HR features, you may have complex payroll issues that a lighter platform like Gusto will struggle with. ADP can tackle any situation you can imagine.

Once you get set up, all payroll taxes are calculated and paid with minimal effort on your part. The system is set up to simplify the most complex retirement package or unique paid-leave package. ADP stays up to date with changing regulations, which keeps your books compliant and protects you from penalties.

Paychex is another full-service payroll provider with a deep feature set. When it comes to HR, however, Paychex is going to integrate with third-party services. ADP handles everything without the help of outside vendors.

If you just need payroll handled, ADP will knock it out of the park. Should you want more HR responsibilities taken off your plate, ADP can help with:

• Time & attendance
• Workforce management
• Recruiting & hiring
• Management & growth
• Benefits administration
• Retirement
• Group health insurance
• Business insurance
• Workers compensation

Unlike other payroll providers that connect you to HR service, ADP can serve as a full-scale HR outsourcing service or professional employer organization (PEO). 

This is great for companies that want to minimize their HR workload or outsource their entire burden. While some of the other solutions on my list will help you streamline processes, ADP can take them over all together.

ADP has a wide range of payroll service offerings for companies of different sizes. First, you have to select your package based on company size:

• Small Business Payroll: 1-49 employees
• Midsize to Enterprise Payroll: 50+ employees

ADP’s small business option is a sleek platform that comes with all the essential payroll and HR features you’d expect. Instead of trying to water down their enterprise offering, ADP created a separate interface that’s not freighted by the tools larger companies need.

The midsize to enterprise offering is a much deeper platform built to manage payroll regardless of how large your organization grows.

There are multiple plan options for both the Small Business Payroll and Midsize to Enterprise Payroll packages. You can see the small business plans laid out below:

Basically, the lowest tier is payroll only and you get more HR tools with higher plans. It’s the same story for the midsize/enterprise package.

You’ll have to get in touch with ADP to get a quote for how much the service costs.

Hundreds of thousands of companies depend on ADP for payroll and HR. If you are running into limits with another service or if you are tired of dealing with multiple vendors, choose ADP and never look back.

Request a free quote to see if ADP is right for you today. 

#5 – Quickbooks Payroll Review — Best If You Already Use Quickbooks

When QuickBooks Payroll launched, people who used QuickBooks' popular accounting software were like, “Yes, please.” It almost makes too much sense.

The integration is truly seamless. Quickbooks Payroll works through the same online platform. You can consolidate payroll, invoicing, cashflow, and expenses in a single place. All of this financial data syncs and updates automatically.

If you have experience with QuickBooks Online, everything is going to be legible to you. It’s a straightforward platform in its own right, but if you are already comfortable with the accounting solution, you can step right and get to work.

QuickBooks Payroll is optimized for up to 50 employees (including contractors) with a limit of 150. So it’s not for larger firms. 

While size is a limit, complexity is not. QuickBooks Payroll has a robust set of capabilities that work in all 50 states. 

Full-service payroll comes with every plan they offer. Once you enter payroll data into the system, QuickBooks processes payroll and takes care of all your tax filings.

• Unlimited payroll runs
• Automatic payments after the first run
• Health benefits
• 401(k) plans
• Wage garnishments
• Next-day direct deposit
• 24/7 live chat support
• Workforce mobile app

Employees really appreciate the next-day direct deposit, which is faster by a few days than some of the other popular payroll services. With premium QuickBook payroll plans, you can actually get a same-day direct deposit.

The customer service options are decent compared to other options. There’s live chat any time you need it and phone support during business hours. They also offer phone support on Saturday’s for a few hours.

The Workforce mobile app is great for remote and on-the-go employees. This is especially true if you have workers in the field because QuickBooks Payroll integrates with QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets), one of my favorite time clock software options.

Pricing for QuickBooks Payroll breaks down into three tiers:

The Core plan includes full-service payroll, which automates all your taxes and forms. It also covers 401(k) plans and health benefits.

With the Premium plan, you get access to more HR support, workers’ compensation administration, and QuickBooks Time is included for anywhere employee time-tracking.

Elite plans come with prioritized customer support available 24/7. They’ll also help you deploy the QuickBooks to ensure everything is set up right.

The reason QuickBooks payroll isn’t my overall choice is that it’s less budget-friendly than some of the comparable solutions like OnPay and Gusto. It’s a little more expensive out of the box and there are some annoying fees, like paying extra for 1099 workers.

But, if you are already set up on QuickBooks, this is an appealing option. It’s going to dovetail right into your workflows. 

It can be much more effective for businesses like restaurants, retail, and construction companies that use QuickBooks for their inventory and bookkeeping. Keep everything in one place. Gusto and OnPay aren’t going to do that for you.

Try QuickBooks Payroll free for 30-days and see if it’s the payroll puzzle piece you’ve been missing.

#6 – Wave Payroll Review — Most Affordable for DIY Taxes

If you are on a tight budget, Wave Payroll might be your best option. 

Especially if you are the do-it-yourself type.

This is because Wave doesn’t offer full-service payroll in all 50 states. If they don’t offer tax service in your state, you pay a lot less.

You don’t get to choose–tax service is either baked into the price, or unavailable in your state. Here’s how Wave Payroll pricing breaks down:

• Tax service state: $35/month base fee + $6/employee
• Self service state: $20/month base fee + $6/employee

These are the states where tax service is available: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia,  Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Pricing is predictable, too. It’s $6 per active employee or independent contractor. There’s no hidden fees, no extra charges.

Wave Payroll is affordable in the tax service states and a real bargain everywhere else.

The obvious downside is that you have to pay and file your taxes. 

Here’s the thing: Wave makes it so easy to figure out what you need to do.

If you are used to doing payroll taxes yourself, Wave is going to feel like stepping into a Ferrari.

But even if you have never laid eyes on a ledger, the DIY option is well within reach.

Wave Payroll is an excellent teacher. It’s easy to find your way around, even if you don’t know what everything means right away. There’s a ton of guidance and the documentation is really helpful. 

Learning is the best part of doing things yourself. With Wave Payroll, explanation and clarification is always a click or two away. 

The live chat is phenomenal. It feels like the human on the other end is really invested in improving their service. The quick response is critical to get you through first-time jitters and reservations, to say nothing of preventing errors.

Some of the features that take no time to master include:

• Automatic journal entries (if you use Wave Accounting)
• Self-service pay stubs and tax forms for your employees
• Workers’ compensation management
• Basic payroll reporting
• Automatic year-end tax forms (in tax service states)
• Timesheets for PTO and accruals

Wave Payroll works best with Wave’s accounting software, which is free forever.

If price is a factor in your decision, this makes Wave really attractive. There are fees for accepting payments, but you will never have to pay for accounting or invoicing again.

Wave keeps prices low across the board. Small businesses will be able to handle most, if not all of their finances through Wave. Doing the same thing with QuickBooks would be a lot more expensive.

You can also temporarily deactivate your Wave account and stop paying. This can be really helpful for seasonal businesses.

There’s just a lot of freedom with Wave, and very few charges. It gets out of your way and lets you get payroll done.

As I said, Wave accounting is free forever, and you can test drive Wave Payroll with a free demo here.

What I Looked at To Find the Best Payroll Service Providers

I’d love to say, “Here’s the easiest payroll service to use,” but I can’t. 

It depends on your situation. Two dry cleaners in the same town might have completely different experiences with the same service, based on how they pay their employees or the other business software they use.

How many times do you want to switch payroll services? 

As few as possible would be my guess.

Here are the major criteria you need to consider in order to pick a payroll service that’s actually going to make payroll a breeze.

Payroll Capabilities

Who are your employees and how do you pay them? 

Before you evaluate your options, map out every factor that could possibly influence payroll. This may include:

• Different types of workers (W2, 1099, hourly, salaried)
• Tax liability (federal, state, and local)
• Employee benefits (retirement plans, healthcare, PTO, stock options)
• Pay cycles (bi-weekly, monthly, unlimited)
• Payment (direct deposit, paper checks, Venmo, Apple Pay)
• Garnishments (child support, credit card debt, student loans)

These are just some of the major factors to consider. If your business is subject to unusual taxes or regulations, double-check with the vendor to make sure you’re covered. 

It’s going to be tricky to keep the books accurate if you have to work around the system rather than as it's designed.

The more mature payroll solutions, like ADP and Paychex, are going to support every conceivable tax and benefit situation. Lighter tools such as Gusto might not be able to handle complex retirement packages as easily.

If you don’t need all the capabilities of ADP or Paychex, the extra features are probably going to get in the way. Many small businesses can get everything they need from Gusto in a much more user-friendly and affordable platform.

Integrations

When your payroll service plays nice with your other business software, life is great. You don’t have to enter the same information in multiple places. In fact, a lot of data entry will be automated.

New hires are automatically on payroll. Whenever they clock in or record their tips, the information is all tracked and accounted for without any oversight on your part.

Integration with accounting, employee scheduling, time tracking, and HR software is a must. It really defeats the purpose of payroll software if you are constantly having to enter information manually.

Gusto is a standalone service, but it has direct integration with 52 of the most popular accounting, point-of-sale, time tracking, and business operations software.

Alternatively, you could look at bundling multiple solutions from the same provider. The payroll service from ADP is just one piece of a suite of financial and HR tools they offer. Quickbooks Payroll and Wave Payroll are the same way. 

Obviously Wave Payroll and Wave Accounting work together seamlessly. If you are already using one, it makes a lot of sense to use the other.

Customer Service

Managing taxes and benefits is hard on a good day. Congress makes one small change to the law and suddenly everyone has to rework how they do payroll to stay compliant. 

Is your payroll service on top of these changes? Can they take care of their end and help you sort out problems on yours? 

If you are hiring people in multiple states, it’s so easy to make a mistake. Is your payroll service going to catch it and alert you before the IRS penalizes the company?

Having a payroll service that responds quickly can solve a lot of problems before they start.

Another important aspect to consider is onboarding, both for your company and your employees. 

Does the vendor help you move your payroll data over if you are switching services mid-year? The more help they provide, the quicker and more accurate the transition will be.

Gusto and OnPay have a wonderfully simple employee onboarding process that is virtually hands-off for the employer. Beyond approvals, there’s little that isn’t handled by the employee and customer service.

Finding a payroll service that really supports you and your employees can make the difference between a frictionless experience and constant frustration.

Summary

For most users, Gusto and OnPay are my top recommendations. 

They’re all excellent for small and fast-growth businesses with the ability to scale to match your needs. Plus, they’re affordable and easy to use. 

However, different businesses require different solutions. Use the considerations we talked about as you go through the process of choosing the best payroll services for your business. 

To recap all of my top choices:

1. Gusto – Best payroll service for remote and new businesses
2. OnPay – Best payroll service for simplifying complicated payroll
3. Paychex – Best for replacing your current payroll service
4. ADP – Best bundled HR and payroll service
5. QuickBooks Payroll – Best payroll service if you already use QuickBooks
6. Wave Payroll – Most affordable payroll service for DIY taxes

Gusto and OnPay are phenomenal, but if you are the DIY-type, Wave might be the choice for you. And if you are looking to outsource more than the essential HR tasks, ADP is a very attractive option.

The only bad choice is sticking with spreadsheets, or a payroll provider that's not working.

Save time, eliminate mistakes, and get back to running your business with dependable payroll service by your side.

What payroll services do you prefer?

————————————————————————————————————————————–

By: Neil Patel
Title: The Best Payroll Services (In-Depth Review)
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/best-payroll-services/
Published Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2021 23:00:00 +0000

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