The Top 7 Technologies You Must Be Maximizing If You Want To Scale Growth & Operate In A World-Class Way In 2023
First, Happy New Year!
Our team hopes that 2023 will be the best year of your life. Living your, “Best Life,” and taking things to Higher Profits and Beyond in Business are wonderful benchmarks to reach for, but the most important thing we must do these days is to tackle the task of identifying, then getting rid of, and moving past the distractions sidetracking your team from keeping optimal focus and coming up short with your Goal-Getting Initiatives.
The path to travel to get back on track is simple: WE MUST MAXIMIZE the Pareto Principle.
The 80/20 rule – otherwise known as the Pareto Principle, states 20% of the technologies you’re using to grow revenue and operate more smoothly (the inputs) are generating 80% of the Impact and Results you are getting (the outputs).
So, if you’re not sure what Technologies are included in the 20% list – you’re going to learn them by reading this blog. At this point, just knowing you have the desire to learn more about this topic is good enough 🙂
Here Are The Top 7 Technologies You Must Have Working Seamlessly And
Systematically In Your Business If You Want To Be Maximizing The 80/20 Rule!
1. You must have a Website that contains many of the ‘bells and whistles’ that will Showcase your Company in as High-Tech and High-Touch as possible through the eyes, ears, and hearts of those experiencing your business online. An easy litmus test to use is to ask yourself if you are getting a “warm and fuzzy,” feeling from your Website and if you would purchase from your company, based on how information is being displayed on your Website?!
Be honest with yourself now! LOL!
Here are the 20% of the Items that will Generate 80% of the Impact and Positive Outcomes for your company on the Web in 2023.
- A Welcome Video that has humans speaking (either employees at your company or customers praising your business) or a 360′ Tour of your physical location(s).Having the Video is certainly a wonderful start… However, using a Video Host that provides Analytics so you can learn more about the Video’s Performance is a great idea.If you use Video frequently, the most cost-effective service we have seen is $50 per month and is called Sprout Video.
- Share as many 5-Star Reviews as you can.One Strategy that removes any doubt about whether a Review is real or not is to use Screenshots of people paying you praise from the actual Review Site.It is a great idea to set up a Video Testimonial Day at your company.If you’re looking to Maximize the Impact of Reviews, you should have Business to Consumer (B2C) Reviews and Business to Business (B2B) Reviews.
- Use Segmented Shopping Areas on your Website that lead to a Curated Product Feed and Digitized Catalog.This feature is used on every Bravo/Unilog site, but studying which Product Categories or Brands are getting the most Engagement, Inquiries, and Sales are key!
- Use Widgets (most are free) to Showcase the Content you are Creating on ALL of the various Social Media Channels that you Publish Content on.This should not be confused with having your Social Media Icons of choice displayed.
- Build Landing Pages to solidify how serious you are about serving clientele in your Most Profitable Zip Codes and Geographic Areas. (We call these Location Landing Pages and use the Data from Google Analytics and from Google Ads to determine which areas to highlight!)It’s also EXTREMELY BENEFICIAL to build Dedicated Landing Pages that have Images of that space, Pics of the People that customers will be dealing with, and anything that is Custom (for example, are there different hours if there is a counter and showroom in the same building?) that anybody interested in visiting your space would find helpful.
- Install a Calendar Software on your Website that will allow Appointments to be Scheduled while you’re sleeping.FYI, you can always “vet” those contacts who book appointments to see if they qualify after the fact.One of the top Calendar Softwares used these days (that also has a free version) is called, “Calendly.” If you have multiple locations, you can have calendars for each location that will only notify and send reminders to the personnel for that location.
- Your Site should be Systematically Sending Important Data to your CRM platform, Project Management And ERP system, POS software, and more.The “Automation Economy,” is absolutely awesome, but having people to manage the processes and perform “Quality Control” will take things to a whole new level!
2. Your website must have “Heat Mapping” installed on it.
If you are aware of how the Audience Behavior area of Google Analytics works, you know you can look at how people are navigating a website and what content they are specifically engaging with.
You can know specifically what pages get viewed the most, where people are leaving the site from the most, and much more.
However, as great as it is, Google Analytics only shows the “global level” of things.
In short, you cannot look at any 1, 2, 5, or 50 isolated viewers at a time like you can with Heat Mapping Software. Our company uses heat maps of individual users to assure the Design of a Website is optimally done so that as much profit as possible is coming through or on the site.
3. You must be tracking every Phone call, form fill-out, live chat submission, appointment scheduled, wishlist, sale via eCommerce, and person clicking for directions to find your physical location (if applicable) via a Google My Business Page in your Google Analytics account.
You would be BLOWN AWAY how many times we look over a company’s Google Analytics account and find that NOTHING is being tracked from their website.
A simple rule to live by here is IF SOMETHING ISN’T BEING TRACKED AND MEASURED, IT CANNOT BE IMPROVED OR SCALED!
Now, if you don’t have an active Paid Advertising Campaign or eCommerce enabled on your website, this IS NOT as detrimental to your bottom line.
However, if you care about making more insightful and disciplined decisions (which we hope you do), then tracking conversions in Google Analytics and goals in Google Ads is a must.
If you do have Paid Advertising driving back to your website, YOU MUST MAKE SURE everything is being diligently tracked. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to calculate an accurate cost-per-lead or customer acquisition cost, which will forever keep you guessing as to whether your advertising initiatives and all of the associated costs for that are profitable. If a firm is working with you to do your SEO, PPC, Social Media ads, or more and is not doing the first 3 items listed here, I would ask a 3rd party firm (perhaps us) to “audit” their work immediately.
4. You must have all of the Metrics that Matter Most populating to A Business Intelligence Dashboard that lays everything out in simple terms.
20% of the Metrics that get Measured from the Internet are Responsible for Generating 80% of the Results and Revenue!
Here are a few of the Top Metrics that Matter to our clients that you also must be Measuring:
- In-State VS Out-Of-State Website Visitors
- Total Time A Visitor Spent On Your Website
- Top Devices That Your Website Visitors Are Using
- Total Contact Page Visits VS The Number Of Actions Taken
- Total Number Of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
- Total Number Of Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
- Click Through Rate: From Your Google Ad Campaign
- Market Reach / Impression Share: From Your Google Ad Campaign
- Revenue Generated On The Site VS Through The Site (YES, there is a difference)
- Total Number Of Abandoned Quote Carts Or Abandoned Orders
*If you’d like us to create a Business Intelligence Dashboard for your company that shows the following information below, please email John Gosselin, our Director of Showroom Marketing.
5. You must be using a Project Management Software that has a Client Interfacing element to it.
Every business goes about this, “must have” differently.
But at the end of the day, supply chain disruptions, lead time issues, being short-staffed, and more have made it imperative to have a digital paper trail with all you’re doing.
Some companies use their CRM, some use their ERP, and some use spreadsheets and email to track where each pending and open deal is at the moment.
Regardless of your company’s preference here, IT IS UNACCEPTABLE for a sales associate to say that their sales pipeline lives in their head or in a notebook.
As a Sales Manager or General Manager, how can you improve a teammate’s progress without being able to see their pipeline?
As an Owner, it’s as simple as, “If you cannot see and study it (your company’s sales pipeline), it doesn’t exist!”
For the “client-facing side” of this must-have item, everything regarding an active project or pending transaction should be accessible in an easy-to-digest and easy-to-find format.
We have all experienced not being able to track an important piece of info down in an email or something getting misplaced or lost in an email thread. #TheWorst
So, if you’d like to leave that mishap or inefficiency behind, you’d better sign up for a Project Management Software or change your standard Operating Procedures immediately.
6. You must have a Google Ad Account to attract high probability B2B and B2C buyers + an email outreach and LinkedIn and/or Instagram Direct Messaging System for attracting trade accounts and specifiers.
If you are a wholesaler, distributor, B2B reseller, or a company that sells products or services through a back-end, B2B eCommerce platform or front-facing webstore, having a Google Ad account is vital because there are new accounts looking for what you bring to market, that did not know who you were previously. So, if you choose not to have a Google Ads account as a wholesaler, you don’t just miss the 1-time sale, you are also missing out on the lifetime value of that account – which could be 10-25x higher than you would have ever expected, projected, or anticipated.
There are LOTS OF ORDERS that get started via a webstore by one person that often get followed up with by another employee who executes the purchase via a phone call.
If you are a brick-and-mortar retailer of any kind, dealer, B2C reseller, or a company that sells products or services through a front-facing webstore, having a Google Ad account is vital because more consumers than you’ll ever realize prefer an in-store experience – especially at the beginning of their buying journey. How do we know, well, it’s because we personally drove almost 50,000 clicks from Google Ads to a brick-and-mortar business in the 4th quarter of 2022.
Long story short, businesses like this get A TON of inquiries from consumers who often go “through” the internet and then buy via the in-store experience.
Using Email & Social Media Marketing To Grow Sales Is An Artful Science
Because of the trackability and automated capacities that email marketing provides, it is imperative to have an Outbound Marketing Program in place to develop more B2B relationships and grow the number of accounts your business serves. (Click to see a live outbound page)
In short, the key to running an effective Outbound Marketing Program is to construct a database of several thousand ideal specifiers and people in the trades and commit to developing a relationship with them over 90 days. From there, there will be 3 emails sent to them over the course of 3-4 weeks. During and after emailing, you should track what every recipient does when they receive the message.
They can only do a handful of things when they receive the message:
- They can open the email reply
- They can open the email and not reply
- They can open the email and click through to the landing page that is linked in the email copy and call you or submit a contact form from the landing page
- They can open the email – click the link – and then watch a video that will be on the landing page
- They can do nothing when they receive the email message.
Regardless of what the recipient of the message does, you must Measure, Monitor, Adjust and Control all of the actions if you want an optimal outcome to occur with these contacts. Although there is some manual follow-up with this method of marketing, the return can pay off handsomely.
From the social media side of things regarding Outbound Marketing, all you would do is apply the same principles as you would need to do email marketing, but just run the programming through the direct messenger side of things through whatever social media engine you desire to grow sales and cultivate relationships through.
Regarding generating an ROI: NOT ALL SOCIAL MEDIA ENGINES ARE CREATED EQUAL!
7. You must have a Software installed on your Website that Captures the Contact Info of the people who visited your Website, but didn’t call, fill out a form, or make a sale (for those with eCommerce active on their website).
Although this sounds too good to be true, getting contact information for the B2B and B2C visitors who browse your website is very real, and 100% possible. However, getting the contact info is one thing, but it’s what you’re going to do with their name, home/business address, and email address moving forward is most important and exciting.
We can offer some suggestions for how to best utilize the contact records you’re able to capture. However, for now, knowing which contacts that reach your website and that had the highest “intent to buy” or inquire is what’s critical.
Please let our Showroom Marketing Team know if you have questions about any of the elements included in this piece. For your convenience, here is an easy-access link for you to set-up a convenient time.
