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Want your business to grow like a bushfire but don’t want to spend money? Your wish has been granted early this year.

Here is a massive list of 400 free online tools and resources to help you become more productive, propel your design, social media and content marketing efforts to new heights and automate time-consuming tasks, so that you can direct all your attention and energy to more fruitful projects.

AI Tools for Business

What kind of article would we be writing about helpful tools in 2025 if it didn’t include AI? While this section spans all categories that we dive further into below, it is the only list fully focused on AI tools geared to drive your business to greater heights.

ChatGPT: The Classic. Helps with writing, brainstorming ideas, drafting emails, and answering questions. Best for general use.

Google Gemini: Like ChatGPT in terms of capability, but works inside Google Docs, Sheets, and Gmail to summarize, edit, and organize information.

Whitesonic/Jasper: A huge help to teams who don’t have copywriting capabilities. Creates blog posts, ads, and other marketing content quickly.

ElevenLabs: Turns text into realistic voiceovers for videos, podcasts, or product demos.

Otter.ai: Records meetings and automatically creates transcripts and summaries.

Github Copilot: Suggests code and helps developers write software faster. A big part of the reason you’re starting to hear the term “Vibe Coding”.

UXPin: Build or edit components of your design, prototype or website with a prompt or sketch.

OnlyMonster.ai: CRM and automation tool for agencies managing multiple creator accounts. It centralizes chats, analytics, and performance tracking to help teams automate workflows and scale efficiently.

Lindy.ai: AI and Automation go hand-in-hand. Create agents that handle tasks on your behalf.

Website Building Tools

resources

Image Source: Layers

Gone are the days when building a beautiful website could cost you an arm and a leg. Use these free website building tools to get your business online at no cost except your time.

Bootstrap Zero: Download hundreds of open-source and responsive templates and themes for bootstrap

Bootswatch: Another free resource for bootstrap theme although limited than Bootstrap Zero

HTML5 UP: Your source for free and responsive HTML5 themes, which are all fully customizable.

Landing Harbor: provides a free landing page for your mobile app – a great site to promote your business

Layers: WordPress theme that’s free forever. There is also a Pro version if you want to upgrade

Strikingly: Free responsive and mobile-optimized websites for the Strikingly domain

Templated: Free 800+ fully responsive CSS and HTML5 website templates

WordPress.org/Wordpress. Com: Free website builder and hundreds of free WP themes

Logo Generator

Image Source: ZenBusiness

Want to add a little oomph to your brand? Here are 5 free logo generators that you can use to create a slick and modern logo in just a few minutes.

Hipster Logo Generator: want a fresh and hip logo for your business – the name says it all

ZenBusiness: create a more professional looking logo in just a few minutes

Signature Maker: create your digital signature for free. It’s based on HTML5 so it works on most modern browsers

Squarespace Free Logo: free two-step logo generator from Squarespace with downloadable low and high resolution versions

Withoomph: free logo generator which shows you different versions of the logo

Business Name Generator

Image Source: Hipster Business Name

If you want your business idea to catch on and grow like a weed, do put a little effort into picking out a memorable business name. Sometimes the best ideas hide in plain sight, so give your imagination a tickle with these name generator tools.    

Domain: quick and free domain generator

Hipster Business Name: cousin of the Hipster Logo Generator – both of them are hip and very millennial

Impossibility: it calls itself as the “best domain name generator ever.” Try it to find out

Do you have a CRM that keeps you organised?

The most user-friendly CRM on the market. 14-day free trial.

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Painless setup, no credit card required

Lean Domain Search: domain name generator with some advice how to get the ideal domain name for you

Naminum: just type a keyword where your want to base your company name and it will give you numerous domain name suggestions

Short Domain Search: search for short domain names in seconds. The site has added new tools for more refined searches.

The Name App: helps you find a name for any ideas you have

Wordoid: let’s you create new and catchy words for your business or for your next product. Available in English, French, Spanish, and Italian

Invoice/Legal Docs

Image Source: Wave

Fancy cutting costs without losing performance? Then charge and don’t be charged with these free invoicing and legal docs resources for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Docracy: open collection of legal contracts and documents

Termly: Legally backed policy generators and consent management tools for websites, apps, and businesses of all sizes. 

Free Invoice Generator: the name says it all

Invoice to me: create a more itemized or detailed invoice using this invoice generator for free

Invoice.to: clean and easy to use; however, it’s still experimental according to its creator

Kiss: legal documents for startup investors and owners all for free

Shake: create a legal agreement and sign it in a matter of minutes for free. It’s optimized for mobile so it’s easy to use.

Wave: ideal for small business owners who are looking for fast and easy accounting and invoicing, and it’s for free.

Idea Management

Image Source: Germ.io

Don’t let your ideas go to waste. Snap them up at their infancy, test, experiment and watch them blossom into something beautiful using these free idea management tools.

Germ.io: turns your ideas into reality by tracking them and allowing you to collaborate with your team until you successfully execute them

Experiment Board: allows you to test your startup idea for free in the community even before you publicly launch it

Skitch: let your idea stand out with this free tool from Evernote.

Content Curation/Trending Ideas

Image Source: Buzzsumo

Struggling to keep up with the speed and volume of online content? Take advantage of these free content curation tools to stay abreast with the industry’s trending stories and never miss anything important.

Ruzzit: place of the most shared content on the Internet along with their popularity score and on what social media platform

Buzzsumo: gives you the trending content and shows you how well it competes against another content

Feedly: compiles all news feeds according to category or source. It can be customized and shared

Flipboard: works similarly like Feedly. You can create your own compilation or magazine which other users can follow and share.

Google Trends: displays trending searches in real time

Hubspot Blog Topic Generator: looking for the next idea for your blog topic? This tool is for you for free

Portent: it’s like a mentor on how to make a viral post

Reddit: a forum/community where you can get real trending news from the common people every day.

Swayy: gives you the latest and most interesting news on the web. However, the subscription is only free to one dashboard user.

Others: Google What’s Hot | Twitter Trending | Quora  

Tip: once you’re ready to scale the marketing efforts for your company, check out these online business tools that content marketing consultant, Ryan Robinson recommends for growing your traffic.                                                             

Image Editors

Image Source: Canva

Push your social presence to the next level with free image editing tools that will enable you to instantly create stunning visuals and professional-looking graphics to make your stories resonate

PicMonkey: edit your pictures, make beautiful collages, or create professional-looking graphics, PicMonkey has it for free

Pixlr: easy to use online photo editor

Canva: beautiful image, video, menu designs and more – for your blog, Facebook page, or website

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Ease.ly: allows you to create stunning visuals, such as infographics, resumes, or marketing presentations. You can share your works for free as well.

Meme Generator: create a meme instantly in just three easy steps. You don’t even need to upload a picture. Also available in 4 languages.

Pablo: increase or make your social presence stand out with these beautiful, free images from Pablo

Place It: more than 2,500 mock-ups and videos across all devices for free

Recite: make any quote memorable and visually enticing with Recite. Just type your favorite quote and choose from the ready-to-use templates. After that, you can share it to any social network or email straight to anyone.

Social Image Resizer Tool: resizes and change the file format of any image for web use

Image Optimizers

Image Source: InstaMockup

Optimizing images no longer means losing on quality. You can enhance image clarity before compression using an HD photo converter, which helps upscale low-resolution visuals without compromising performance. Resize and compress your images to make them load faster and take less disk space with free image optimization tools.

Compressor.io: reduce or optimize any image you have without changing the high quality of the image.

Dunnnk: Dunnnk is never short of beautiful mockups for Android and iOS devices, all of which have high quality

Image Optim: compresses your images without losing the high quality so that your images can load faster.

Image Optimizer: free online image optimizer, compressor, and resizer. It has now a downloadable version allowing  you to work offline, and it’s all for free.

InstaMockup: a free iOS tool which allows you to create beautiful mockups and allow you to showcase your product in real environments. Available for both iPad and iPhone.

TinyJPG: allows you to compress and optimize your JPEG and PNG images

Smush.it: WordPress image compression and optimization tool

Blogging and Writing Tools

Image Source: Grammarly

Have your inspiration fairies abandoned you lately? Feeling stuck in a rut with your writing routine? Take note of these free blogging and writing tools that will bring the joy back to you.

A5.gg: a small note-taking tool which allows you to take notes using your browser. The best thing about it – it automatically saves your notes so that it is still there when you return.

CoSchedule: analyzes your headlines and suggests how you can write them better in order to drive more traffic to your website

Editorial Calendar: a WordPress blog management tool which allows you to see your blog posts in one place

Egg Timer: a simple online timer which you can repeatedly use for free

Blank Page: makes writing easy, simple, and hassle-free

Free Summarizer: summarize your long sentences that still makes sense

GPTZero: an online AI checker that analyzes any piece of writing and tells you how much of it might be AI-written, with clear, easy-to-read results.

Undetectable AI: a tool that rewrites AI-generated content to make it sound more natural and human-like, helping you avoid detection while keeping your writing clear and authentic.

Liberio: create and publish an eBook straight from Google Docs

Known: a social learning community which allows you to write and collaborate with others. You can also publish it and let the community give you feedback and advice. Perfect for authors who are just starting out.

ZenPen: gets you to write without any distractions is ZenPen’s ultimate goal. That is evident in its no-frill UI

Story Wars: allows you to collaborate and share stories with other writers from across the globe

WP Hide Post: WordPress plugin that lets you control what appears on your blog. You can even control which part of a particular blog can be seen by the readers.

Social Locker: another free WordPress plugin which asks your visitor “to pay” for the content you made through a share, a like, or a Tweet.

Medium: a free blogging platform

Hemingway: a writing app that automatically corrects the syntax of your sentences highlighting them with different colors so you know what specifically is wrong with it.

Grammarly: an online editor that corrects your grammar and sentence cohesiveness. It now has a downloadable version.

SEO and Website Analyzers

Startup Tools SEOMator

Image Source: Seomator

Don’t let a poor SEO performance drag your site’s performance down the drain. Try these free SEO and website optimization tools to collect feedback, analyze and improve your SEO strategy.  

Ahrefs: checks your backlinks and analyzes your website

Alexa Ranking: analyzes the ranking of any site by providing you analytical insights

Browseo: it gives you feedback how search engines view your site

Broken Links: you don’t have to worry about 404s anymore with this tool as it finds any broken links and redirects them to the correct page

Copyscape: analyzes content if it’s plagiarized or not

Google Pagespeed Insights: another of Google’s useful tools which checks how your site performs

Google: Analytics | Keyword Planner | Webmaster Tools | Trends                                                   

GTMetrics: this is the tool if you want to know how fast your website performance is

Hubspot Marketing Grader: get feedback for your marketing efforts

Keywordtool.io: search for the right keywords for your content

Moz Local: find your local listing on any search engine

Nibbler: tests any website’s performance, popularity, and more

OpenLink Profiler: analyzes and checks backlinks from any website to ensure that you get the freshest and the best ones

Open Site Explorer: also a link analyzer tool

Pingdom: tests how long your website loads

Quick Sprout: provides a comprehensive analysis of your website

SimilarWeb: analyzes and provides insights for any website or app

Seomator: Seomator is the Online SEO Audit Tool and Website Crawler for Website’s SEO Health. In other words, Seomator provides In-depth Technical SEO Analysis and SEO On-Page Testing Tool for Websites Optimization. Same time, Seomator is the Sales Automation Tool that could be implemented directly on a company’s website to automate and increase sales. White-label Reports deliver directly to customers and save hours of work and life.

SEO Site Checkup: checks how well your website’s SEO performs and gives you feedback so you’ll know which ones need fixing

SERPs Rank Checker: checks how well your SERP ranking and SEO performs

Shopify e-Commerce Report: free business tools to grow your Shopify business

W3C Validator: validates the markup validity of any Web documents on any file format

Woorank: screens and analyzes the SEO ranking of your website

XML Sitemaps: allows you to create XML, HTM, and Text sitemaps which can be submitted to any major search engines

Send, Collect and Verify Emails

Image Source: Mailerlite

Email made easy, at no additional cost. These free email tools will give you back your time and peace of mind: create, send, track and analyze your campaigns for free.  

Beefree: makes writing emails much easier

Canned Emails: ready-made email messages you can use

Contact Form 7: a free WordPress plugin which allows you to collect your emails

Hello Bar: a tool which enables you to attract more email subscribers

Mailchimp: allows you to send your emails to multiple recipients with just one click. It also has a premium version which enables you to send your emails to more recipients.

Mailerlite: track your emails and find out who has already read them

Mailgun: allows you to send free 10K emails every month

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Mandrill: send to 12K emails every month for free

ManyContactsBar: free contact form for your website

Scroll Triggered Box: free WordPress plugin that boosts your conversion rates

Sendgrid: allows you to deliver your emails to 12K people every month for free

Sendinblue: email management tool which allows you to send free 9K emails every month

Sumome List Builder: convert your visitors into customers and subscribers

ZeroBounce: is a free email verification tool allowing users to verify email addresses in real-time.

Social Media and Community Management

Image Source: Bitly

Your time can be better spent connecting with customers and building your brand than counting likes and shares. Automate your social media with these free online tools to amplify your promotional efforts and increase the engagement.

Addthis: enables you to get more likes, shares, follows, and conversions

App Review Monitor: get insights from the latest app reviews straight to your inbox or Slack account

Bitly: shortens your links so you can share and send them much more easily

Buffer Free Plan: allows you to schedule your posts to any social media network

Digg Digg: a free WordPress plugin that shares your content on all platforms with just one click

Disqus: build your audience by increasing your engagement and allowing discussions

Click To Tweet: tool that lets you get more shares for your blog posts and content

Filament: a customizable share bar

Free Survey Creator: lets you create a survey and acquire feedback for free

How Many Shares: monitor how many shares your content has in various social media networks

Crowdfire: a simple way of growing your audience

Klout: social media analytics tool which rates your social media influence

Latergram:  a perfect tool for your Instagram account which helps you schedule your Instagram posts

MyTweetLinks: increases your Twitter audience

Presskit Generator: creates a press kit for your app for free

Ritetag: Chrome and Firefox browser extension that analyzes your hashtag

SharedCount: lets you track how many shares, likes, and tweets your content has

SocialRank: Twitter management tool

Social Analytics: a free Chrome extension which allows you to get the social data of any URL from supported social networks

Sumome Share: automatically optimizes your share button to increase your website traffic

WordPress Pin It Button for Images: WordPress plugin which allows you to place a “Pin It” button to your images

WriteRack: the perfect tool to create a tweetstorm

A/B Testing and Growth Hacking

Image Source: Optimizely

Take the guesswork out of website optimization by basing your decisions on real data rather than your own hunch. A few proven growth hacks can take your business a long way.

GrowthHackers: lets you create a fast and sustainable financial and customer growth

Hello Bar: lets you test your call-to-actions and keywords

Petit Hacks: helps you grow your conversion rate by teaching you retention, revenue, and acquisition hacks

Optimizely: helps you optimize your app or website

Customer Service and Survey

Image Source: Typeform

Keep the customers happy and their feedback rolling in by using these free online tools.

Batch: helps you engage with your mobile customers better

Free Survey Creator: helps you create surveys and get feedback

Helprace: a customer service platform which allows you to create a personalized help desk and feedback portal. The tool is free for up to 3 customer service reps

Survey Any Place: allows you to create entertaining surveys and create awesome respondent experience

Tally: lets you create free polls

Typeform: a form and online survey builder

Guides and Courses

Image Source: Skillshare

It’s never too late or too early to deepen your well of knowledge. Immerse yourself in a new learning experience for free.  

Build an Online Course: teaches you how to create a free online course

Coursera: free online classes from Ivy League universities and other top educational institutions

Codecademy: learn how to code in a fun way

Closed Club: learn from the mistakes of failed startup ventures

Email Course for Sponsorship: a free course that teaches you how to get sponsorships

FirstSiteGuide: teaches you how to make a successful blog or website

Hackdesign: gives you a free lesson on design every week straight into your mailbox

Khan Academy: free online courses on STEM and more

KeepYourFriendsClose: a free e-Book that helps you retain your customers for the long term

Launch This Year: helps you how to launch your online business

MailCharts: a free course that teaches you how to create effective marketing campaigns

Mixergy: learn the secrets of the most successful entrepreneurs

Primer: a free marketing lesson from Google

reSRC.io: programming tutorials and resources

Rocketship.fm: another program where you can learn from top entrepreneurs

Skillshare: free online courses and projects

Startup Notes: short but meaningful lessons from successful startups notebook-style

Startup Talks: watch and listen trade secrets from successful startup entrepreneurs

The Lean LaunchPad: dreaming of creating a startup venture? This is the site where you can learn how

TalentBuddy: another site that offers free coding lessons

Discover Tools, Startups, and Collaborators

Image Source: Product Hunt

Connect with fellow entrepreneurs, get inspired by the real-world stories, and stay in the know. Have your own piece of wisdom to share? Join a dedicated community!

Angellist: invest, create, or work at a startup

Assembly: collaborate and brainstorm with other people anywhere in the world

Beta List: discover and connect with up and coming startups

CoFounders Lab: meet and collaborate entrepreneurs near you

Erli Bird: where you can find and recruit beta testers as well as collect feedback from Android and iOS users

Founder2be: looking for a partner for your startup? This is the best place to start

Product Hunt: find new products in the market every day

StartupLi.st: the ‘Facebook’ for startups

Startups List: a massive list of startups anywhere in the world

Newsletters

Image Source: Mattermark Daily

Enjoy a constant trickle of knowledge and advice in your inbox at no cost! Learn from industry experts one free newsletter at a time.

Design for Hackers: free newsletter for 12 weeks that includes lessons on design

Email 1K: a free 30-day course that teaches you how to grow your email list

ChargeWhatYou’reWorth: a newsletter that teaches you how much to price yourself and your services

Mattermark Daily: newsletter about founders and entrepreneurs

Product Psychology: newsletter that gives you valuable insights on user behavior

Startup Digest: a personalized newsletter that gives you information about startups around your area

UX Newsletter: newsletter about research, design, and creation

UX Design Weekly: gives you a UX design link every week

Other Useful Tools

Image Source: Ad Spend Calculator

Tame the numbers and cost calculations with the help of these free online tools.

Ad Spend Calculator: gives helpful advertising and marketing advice for startups

App vs. Website: gives you the pros and cons of building a website or an app

Foundrs: equity calculator for you and your business partner/co-founder

HowMuchToMakeAnApp: gives you an estimation how much it will cost you to create an app

Pitcherific: teaches you the art of making pitches that sells

RingCentral Meetings: provides the power to conduct HD video conferences and screen sharing as part of a complete business communications solution. Employees can hold face-to-face meetings in high definition and share screens or documents with anyone, anytime, anywhere. As part of a complete unified communications as a service (UCaaS) cloud offering, it empowers employees to connect with clients and enable collaboration between teams across locations—as if they’re all in the same conference room.

Startup Equity Calculator: gives you an idea how much salary you should give for new hires

StoryXpress: helps to create and hosts videos that generate leads

Design

Image Source: Dribbble

These free premium resources and tools will open you the door to the world of design. These free premium startup resources and tools will open you the door to the world of design.

Dbf: best design freebies for Dribble and Behance

Dribbble: a treasure trove of inspiration and design freebies

Freebbblefree high-quality designs from Dribbble

Fribbblefree PSD files and other design resources created  by Dribbble users

Freebiesbuganother website where you can find free PSD files and other resources from designers

Free Section of Pixedenfree high-quality web and graphic design templates. There’s also a premium version for $6 a month

Free Section of Creative Market: gives out free random items every Monday

Graphic Burger: mouthwatering designs for free from the professional design community

Marvelonline collaboration tool where you can create prototypes and share your design

Pixel Buddhafree premium resources from professionals for professionals

Premium Pixels: collection of free design resources and WordPress themes

Placeit Freebie: more than 2500 high-quality mockups and videos for iOS devices for free

Renderforest – free tools for everyone to create professional intros, animations, slideshows and music visualizations in minutes

365 Psdfree downloadable PSD every day

UI Spacethousands of high-quality handcrafted freebies

Freepikfree vectors, PSDs, images, and icons

Tech&Allfree design resources, news, and PSDs

Linearity: is a graphic design software for the whole Apple ecosystem

SketchAppResources: free resources for the Sketch app

Web3Canvas: free design resources, tutorials, and more

Sources of Inspiration

Image Source: Awwwards

Don’t let a bad day turn into a bad life. Tickle your inspiration with these free tools and resources and restore your creative vibes.

Awwwards: website awards for best web design trends

Behance: website where you can showcase your design portfolio and search for others for inspiration

Crayonfree marketing resources

MaterialUpfree material design resources uploaded every day

FLTDSGNyour one-stop source for inspiration of websites and apps using flat UI design

Flat UI Design: flat UI design resource for websites and apps on Pinterest

Land-Book: find inspiration for your landing pages in this online gallery

Moodboard: lets you create and share your moodboard

Niice: search engine to find design ideas

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Site Inspire: free web design inspiration

UI Cloud: thousands of UI elements and kits in different categories

Oceanget feedback for your designs from fellow designers around the world

One Page Love: find inspiration for your one-page website

Pttrnsa massive resource for mobile UI interface in a wide range of categories

The Starter Kit: resource for designers and developers

The Best Designs: the best design inspiration for you

UI Paradefree UI tools and design inspirations

Color Pickers

Image Source: Adobe Color CC

Make your design experiences a breeze by using these free color pickers to extract dominant colors from images, create vivid color combinations and palettes for free.

0 to 255: a  no-nonsense color picker that helps you find the perfect color variations and combinations

Adaptive Backgrounds: a jQuery plugin that allows you to extract dominant colors from images

Adobe Color CC:  a collection of color combinations

Bootflatcolor combination collection for flat design

Brand Colors: discover the color combinations used by the most popular brands, such as Adobe, Amazon, and American Express

Coleure: absolute color management created with Sketch

Colllor: free color palette generator

Colorful Gradientscomputer-generated gradients for free

Coolors: create and share color palettes in a matter of seconds. You can also save your work for future reference

Flat UI Colors: beautiful flat UI color palettes. The site is launching more colors soon as well as more tools for designers and developers

Get UI Colors: free cool color combinations for flat design

Hex Colorrrs: free HEX / RGB converter

Material Palette: allows you to create and export your material design color palette. The website also has free  icons and colors for material design.

New Flat UI Color Picker: a wide range of flat colors for UI design

Material UI Colors: a collection of material design colors for the web, Android, and iOS

Palettonchoose the right color for your website using this free color scheme designer

Palette for Chrome: a Chrome extension that enables you to create a color palette using any image. Just right-click the image and choose “Palette Creation”.

PLTTS: lets you easily find a matching color palette

Skala Color: a free macOS color picker that is compatible with any format. It automatically recognizes colors and can be applied with just one click.

Stock Photography

Image Source: Pexels

Inject some life and energy into your site by adding professional, natural-looking photos from professional photographers from all over the wall.

All The Free Stock: free stock images, icons, videos, mockups, templates, and more

Depositphotos: high-quality stock photography, vectors, and videos for professional design needs.

Spark Adobe:helps you create a perfect marketing plan

Bucketlistlymore than 5,000 free creative common travel photos from around the world

Cupcake: free photos from Swedish photographer Jonas Wimmerstrȍm

Designers Pics: another free stock photo resource

Death to the Stock Photo: free stock photo sent straight into your email every month

Free Nature Stockroyalty-free nature stock photos by Adrian Pelletier

Foodie’s Feed: free high resolution food photos for your food blog

Function: photo packs for free

Gratisographyanother rich resource for high resolution photos for free

Getrefe: free high-quality photos in different categories

IM Free: royalty-free images and other web design resources for commercial use

ISO Republic: free high resolution stock photos for creatives

Jay Mantri: free-to-use high resolution photos by Jay Mantri. He also has contests where you can win free items

Jéshoots: free downloadable modern photos

Kaboompics: your get-to place for great photos

Lock & Stock Photos: free high-quality photos

Burst by Shopifyfree photography for entrepreneurs

Little Visuals: delivers 7 free photos straight into your email every week

Life of Pix: free high-resolution photography from professional photographers from all over the world

Moveast: free images that chronicles the journey of a man going east

Mazwai: free creative commons high-definition video clips and footages

Magdeleine: get a free photo every day

MMT: free photos for commercial use. The collection is updated weekly

New Old Stock: curated vintage photos from public archives

Pexels: one of the best stock photos in the web updated daily, and it’s for free

Pixabay: free downloadable stock photos for commercial use

Picography: free images you can use for any purpose straight from Ireland

Picjumbo: free exclusive photos that have never been published straight into your inbox

Public Domain Archive: free vintage and modern high resolution photos every week

Paul Jarvis: 20 free downloadable high-res photos you can use

Raumrot: absolutely free photos you can edit and modify

Stock Up: tens of thousands of free stock photos across 31 websites

Startup Stock Photos: free photos, images, and vectors

Stokpic: free 10 new photos sent into your inbox every two weeks

StockSnap: high resolution photos free from copyright restrictions

Super Famous: free high resolution photos you can use for any purposes as long as you credit the owner

Snapographic: use these photos in any way you like for free

Splitshiremouthwatering photos for free

The Pattern Library: free amazing patterns for your web design projects

Travel Coffee Book: free travel photos you can use in any way

Unsplashfree high resolution photos in a wide range of categories

Some more websites: Free Digital Photos | Morguefile | Public Domain Pictures | Free Stockvault | ImageFree | Rgbstock | Dreamstime | FreeImages | FreeRangeImages | FreePhotosBank

Icons

Image Source: Font Awesome

Refresh your website by adding some beautiful, high quality icons. These 21 online tools will help you to unlock and explore the potential of graphics.

Fontello: generate new icons and fonts for free

Flat Iconmore than 16000 of glyph vestor icons for free

Material Design Icons: an open-source glyph collection by Google with around 750 glyphs

Glyphsearch: search all free icons around the web

MakeAppIcon: creates any type of app icon for free

Endless Icons: free icons for flat design

Ico Moon: icon generator that gives you  more than 4,000 vector icons

The Noun Project: a collection of glyph icons from different artists

Perfect Icons: a tool that lets you create resolution independent icons

Icon Finder: free icons you can use in any way

Free Round Icons: Doodle Set | Flat Set | Vector Line Set

Icon Sweets: 60 Photoshop icons for your web projects as well as your iPad and iPhone apps

Make Appiconcreate an icon for your app with just one click

App Icon Template: create royalty-free icon for Android, iOs, and OS X platforms

SmartIcons: more than 1,400 downloadable icons for free

Ego Icons: clean and simple vector icons

FlatIconslets you customize your icons for flat design

To(icon): more icons all your for free

Typography

Image Source: Typekit

An ugly, inappropriate font can suck the life out of an otherwise robust website. Take advantage of free typography collections and choose a font that helps you visualize your idea.

TypeGenius: provides a wide array of font combination for any kind of project

Font Squirrel: completely free fonts for commercial use

Google Fonts: open-source fonts by Google 100% free

Beautiful Web Type: another Google resource to help you find stunning typefaces

DaFont: fonts archive which can be downloaded for free

1001 Free Fonts:  a massive collection of free fonts

FontPark: another massive archive of free fonts for any use

Font-to-width: a tool that helps you fit typefaces in their containers without scaling them

Adobe Edge Fonts: an accessible collection of free web fonts

Typekit: a smaller collection but have some great fonts included

Coding and Design Tools

Image Source: Codacy

Drive your business growth with these 22 free coding and design tools at your disposal. Take your mind off complex tasks (like reviewing code) and watch your idea take form.

Hive: unlimited cloud service for free

GitHub: a development platform which lets you collaborate, create, and share software

BitBucket: code collaboration tool

Chisel: contains an unlimited fossil repositories for free with an ISC license

Visual Studio: find most of the tools for developers and designers here

Landscape: gives you an early warning before everything turns unexpectedly.

Swiftypefinds the right results to your searches by browsing all cloud storages. The free version, however, has a limitation

Keen.io: collects event data from anywhere, add rich custom attributes, and send it everywhere

Coveralls: analyzes your code and tells you which part is not covered with your test suite. 

Codacychecks code style and tracks code accuracy throughout your sprints

Searchcode: helps you find billions of lines of codes

TinyCertSSL certificates for free

Opbeat: tool for JS developers which analyzes and optimizes your app’s performance

Pingdom: monitors websites’ uptime

Rollbar: monitors any app for full-stack error. Supports all languages

Loggly: tool that helps you improve log management

Devport: turns your apps, GitHub repos, and websites into a portfolio

Getting Real: a free eBook that teaches you how to create better web apps

Peek: gives you a f-minute video of someone who uses your app or site

Creator: helps you create better and faster apps

DevFreeCasts: collection of screencasts featuring different developes

Cody: library of code nuggets for free

Other Design Tools

Image Source: UI Names

Small things can make a big difference. Save time and improve your design experiences with these smart online tools.

UI Names: gives you ideas of names for your mockups and designs

UI Faces: collection of avatar faces for your UI

Copy Paste Character: design resource you can copy paste

Window Resizer: tool that allows you to see your design in different resolutions

Sonics: user interface sound effects for free

Focus and Attention

Image Source: Noisli

Need a little bit more than moral support to hit your productivity levels? Take your pick from a bunch of free online tools that can dramatically improve your focus and attention.

Noisli: background sound generator that helps increase  your focus and productivity

Noizio: sound equalizer that helps you relax and focus

Defonichelps you create immersive soundscapes

Designers.mx: listen to the music other designers are listening to while they work

Coffitivitygives you coffee shop ambiance while working

Octave: free UI sounds for the iOS platform

Free Sound: massive database of sounds and other audio snippets

Sonics: free sound and sound effects straight to your inbox every week

Deep Focus: relaxing music to help you focus from Spotify

Self Control: (for Mac users)helps you block websites that can easily distract you while working

Cold Turkey: (Windows) blocks distracting websites while you’re working

Team Collaboration

Image Source: Slack

Take the hassle out of team collaboration and benefit from a smooth idea sharing and project management experience. These free tools will introduce you to the world of smart people management.

Trello: helps you collaborate much easier

Evernote: your digital workspace

Dropbox: free cloud storage for up to 2GB

Time Doctor: a time tracking software that claims to increase your productivity by 22% with features like powerful customizable reports that include web and app usage, optional screenshot monitoring and more. In inbound marketing where tasks are abundant, you have to make sure every minute counts. Time Doctor helps you exactly with that.

Yanado: task and project management tool inside Gmail

Wetransfer: allows you to transfer up to 2GB for free

Drp.iofast image hosting and file transfer for free

Pocket: digital to-do later tool

Raindropbookmarking tool for Mac users

Flowdock: collaboration tool for a small team

Typetalk: easy to use instant messaging for team collaboration

Slack: team collaboration tool where you can share your ideas easily

HipChat: team chat for unlimited users

Google Hangouts: team chat and group video calls

Voveet: lets you have 3D conference calls with your team or clients

FreeBusy: helps coordinate the schedule of all team members

RealTimeBoard: online digital whiteboard

Witkit: secure and encrypted data storage with free 50GB of space

Any.do: team collaboration tool

Asana: team management and collaboration tool

Hubstaff Tasks: Easy Agile Project management software

GoToMeeting: free online meetings and web conferencing made easy

ProofHub: a tool design for remote teams tow work effectively

Freelancing and Remote Networking Tools

Image Source: Nomadlist

Bring your team together, upgrade your freelancing routine and tap into a community of nomads and entrepreneurs without spending a single dollar.

Founded X Startup Stats: gives you insight where to build your startup

Teleport: Startup Cities: planning to bring your startup to another city? Teleport helps analyze your budget and logistics for the move

Workfrom: find the best places to work remotely around the city where you are

Lastroomteam travel management tool made easy

Nomadlist: find the best cities in the world to live and work remotely

Internet is a bottomless treasure cove of fantastic free stuff — you just need time and patience to uncover the best pieces. Don’t stop at these 400 free online tools and resources, keep your eyes and ears open for new product launches and continue hustling like a real champ.

Over the last ten years or so, the marketing world has been flipped on its head.

The tactics that most businesses considered solid lead magnets, like taking out ads in popular newspapers or running TV commercials, have lost their appeal and been replaced with more acceptable forms of promotion, such as value-packed blog posts, podcasts, and social media campaigns. The shift has created a heated debate among marketers – inbound vs outbound marketing (and which is better?), starting a new chapter in the history of marketing.

With most businesses adopting an ‘inbound first’ strategy today, outbound marketing has taken a back seat, but it would be unfair to write it off completely. If you’re struggling to decide which approach would generate better results for your business, let me walk you through the most important aspects that you need to take into consideration.

When it comes to choosing a side in the inbound vs outbound debate, it’s best to have all the facts straight and think through all the possible scenarios; maybe a combination of both would work wonders for you?

Key Takeaways

  • Direction of Communication: Inbound marketing involves attracting customers to your business, often through content creation, SEO, and social media engagement. Outbound marketing, on the other hand, involves reaching out to potential customers through direct methods like cold-calling, traditional advertising, and email marketing.
  • Customer Interaction: Inbound marketing focuses on creating valuable content that pulls in customers and encourages them to interact with the brand voluntarily. Outbound marketing typically involves pushing messages to a broad audience, with less emphasis on two-way interaction.
  • Costs and ROI: Inbound marketing often requires a lower budget and yields a higher ROI over time, as it relies on building long-term relationships with customers. Outbound marketing can require significant upfront costs, especially in traditional advertising, with a ROI that can be more difficult to measure.
  • Longevity of Impact: The content created in inbound marketing can continue to attract and engage customers over a long period, while outbound marketing methods often have a more immediate but shorter-lived impact.
  • Targeting: Inbound marketing strategies tend to attract a self-selected audience actively looking for the type of product, service, or information you provide. Outbound marketing casts a wider net to a broader audience, which can result in reaching individuals regardless of their current interest level in what you’re offering.

Contents:

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a very broad term, but, in essence, it refers to all the marketing efforts that are geared towards earning customers’ interest and aligning with their needs rather than pushing your product or service no matter what.

It’s a relatively new marketing approach that emerged as a result of changing buyer expectations and can be seen as a product of the modern world. The rise of the internet and social media prompted marketers to look for new ways to engage with potential customers that relied more on the ‘pull’ than ‘push’ factor. According to Content Marketing Institute, 80% of decision-makers prefer to learn about a new brand via an article series rather than via ads. This speaks volumes about why inbound marketing has become the go-to approach, with 3 out of 4 marketers across the globe prioritizing inbound campaigns to outbound marketing. Implementing sophisticated inbound marketing strategies effectively requires specialized expertise and resources. For businesses looking to leverage these modern approaches without the overhead of a full-time executive, a fractional CMO agency offers a flexible and experienced solution.

Inbound Marketing Methodology

Image Source: HubSpot

Blogging is inbound marketers’ bread and butter, with 60% focusing their efforts on creating valuable blog content. Other inbound marketing projects include, but are not limited to, SEO optimization and improving organic presence, content distribution and amplification, marketing automation, interactive content creation, long-form content (eBooks, guides, whitepapers, etc), visual content creation (infographics, slides, etc), online tools, how-to videos, webinars, and more.

The sole purpose of creating all this content is to ‘get found’ by potential customers who are actively looking for information online. Inbound marketing is designed to help businesses to better align with the natural search process of a modern buyer (search engines, referrals, social media, etc) and facilitate the buyer’s journey instead of interrupting it. Digital catalogs are also increasingly used in inbound strategies, as they help buyers compare products and access key information during their research.

For businesses targeting specific geographic areas, local SEO is especially crucial—many opt for specialized services like SEO services in Virginia (or wherever they may be located) to boost their visibility in regional search results and attract nearby customers.

Since it allows a more targeted form of advertising, enabling a business to connect with a prospect in the ‘moment of relevance’, which is the time when a buyer is searching for a particular product, service, or information, inbound marketing campaigns cost 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing.

What is Outbound Marketing?

The main goal of an outbound marketing campaign is to market to the masses in hopes of grabbing the interest of a small number of people who actually need your product or service at that time. Considered a more “classic form” of marketing, outbound marketing has been around, literally, forever, with the earliest example of billboard advertising being traced to Pompeii, which had its walls blanketed with promotional messages.

Outbound marketing techniques focus on pushing the message out, without taking the buyer’s journey into consideration. It most often employs well-known (and highly disliked) techniques, such as TV commercials, cold calling, direct mail, pay-per-click ads, print ads, email blasts to purchased lists, and billboards. For law firms aiming to reach a broader audience, implementing targeted PPC for lawyers can be an effective outbound marketing strategy. By crafting specific ad campaigns, firms can connect with potential clients actively seeking legal services, thereby enhancing their outreach efforts.

As an “in your face” kind of approach, outbound marketing has been suffering a decline in popularity among both advertisers and consumers ever since consumers got a taste of a more personalized shopping experience online.

The Pros and Cons of Inbound and Outbound Marketing

The advent of technology and rapid social media adoption has led to a seismic shift in consumer behavior, which, in turn, has propelled marketers to become more innovative and user-centric. The inbound vs outbound discussion is a slippery slope since no one can wholeheartedly claim that one is better than the other; both approaches have their own pros and cons and your final decision should be informed by the needs of your business. Yet, in general, a quick overview of the good, the bad, and the ugly can be drawn to highlight the most prominent differences. Next, we’ll review the main advantages & drawbacks of inbound & outbound marketing.  

Inbound vs Outbound Comparison

Inbound vs Outbound marketing comparison. Image Source: Invoiceberry

Advantages

Inbound marketing: 

  • Non-Disruptive Marketing: Inbound marketing is often appreciated by consumers as it doesn’t feel intrusive. Instead, it educates and entertains, forming connections with consumers at the right moments.
  • Targeted Campaigns: Inbound marketing strategies are often closely aligned with the sales funnel, allowing for precise segmentation of prospects. This enables the personalization of content, thereby increasing conversion probabilities.
  • Increased Purchase Value: According to Annuitas, nurtured leads (a key focus of inbound marketing) result in a 47% higher purchase value compared to non-nurtured leads.
  • Long-Term Lead Nurturing: Inbound marketing recognizes that only about 25% of generated leads are ready for purchase within 12-24 months. The remaining 75% require nurturing, which inbound strategies are designed to provide.
  • Attracts High-Quality Leads: Inbound marketing primarily attracts consumers who are actively seeking solutions to their problems or ways to address their needs. These individuals tend to be further down the buyer funnel, thus requiring less time and investment to convert, providing better quality leads.

Outbound marketing: 

  • Face-to-Face Marketing: For B2B marketers, outbound strategies often involve face-to-face marketing, which is a powerful tool for enhancing brand awareness and nurturing business relationships.
  • Effective in Trade Shows: Outbound event marketing, including trade shows, is favored by 80% of B2B marketers as a means to increase brand awareness through personal interactions.
  • Broad Reach: The capacity to reach large audiences through brand advertising campaign makes outbound marketing tactics appealing, especially for companies with significant advertising budgets.
  • Long-Term Brand Recognition: Although immediate ROI might be smaller, companies with sufficient resources often use outbound marketing in hopes of attaining long-term brand recognition and market presence.

Disadvantages 

Inbound marketing:

  • Time-Intensive: Inbound marketing strategies require a significant time investment to yield noticeable results, as they involve building long-term relationships with customers.
  • Effort in Content Creation: Marketers need to dedicate considerable effort and creativity to produce unique, valuable content that can attract and retain the attention of potential customers.
  • Delayed ROI: Expectations for immediate success should be tempered, as it often takes at least 12 months for inbound marketers to see a substantial return on their investment.

Outbound marketing:

  • Broad Targeting: Outbound campaigns typically target large groups of people, many of whom may not be ready to make a purchase. This can result in lower-than-expected quality and quantity of leads.
  • Interruption Marketing: Often referred to as ‘interruption marketing’, outbound strategies may elicit negative responses from consumers if not carefully crafted and implemented.
  • Additional Expenses: Outbound marketing frequently involves extra costs related to printing, mailing, production, and more, which can inflate the overall marketing budget.
  • Limited Lifespan: Once an outbound campaign ends, its benefits generally cease as well, unlike inbound marketing where content can continue to draw in customers over time.

How to Get Started with Inbound Marketing

The secret to inbound marketing success is knowing your customer. For your campaigns to be successful and generate leads, the content must be easily discoverable, tackle issues that consumers are dealing with, and create value either by educating or entertaining the reader. Yes, easier said than done, but in the online world, all roads lead to market research.

The first step when starting any new marketing program should always be to carry out an audit of your current strategy and performance. Take stock of the marketing assets you have at the moment (i.e., website, blog content, social media accounts, videos, printed content, etc.), and evaluate your budget and team capabilities to have a clear idea of where you’re standing. Once you have a comprehensive overview, spotting gaps, and content opportunities will be a piece of cake.

The next step is research. Familiarize yourself with your target audience, their interests and pain points, the channels they use, and the types of information formats they prefer. Understanding what your prospects are attracted to will be a huge help when you start thinking about content creation. In the beginning, it’s enough to establish rough buyer personas that you can continue to update and improve once you kick off the campaigns, but keep in mind the most important questions that you’ll need answers to:

  • What is their demographics?
  • What is their role in their company, family, community, etc.?
  • What are their desires and aspirations? What are they trying to achieve?
  • What pains and problems are they trying to solve? How can you help them?
  • What’s their story?

Developing buyer personas brings a lot of clarity and direction to marketing campaigns, so don’t skip this step however tempting it may seem.

Tying this information to your customer’s buyer journey is also key. To be able to target your buyer personas, you must know how they become aware of products like yours, how they compare and consider them, and how they make buying decisions. This will provide you with the much-needed context of how to string all the information together. According to Kapost, companies that craft buyer persona-driven content see a 45% increase in their volume of Sales Accepted Leads (SALs).

Next on the list is defining your marketing goals. It’s an integral (and obvious) part of any marketing campaign, yet many fail to recognize the risks that come with skipping this step. Without setting clear goals from the beginning, you won’t be able to measure your campaign’s performance and determine its success or failure. So use the SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) goals methodology to align your campaigns with your business needs.

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing SMART Goals

With that out of the way, you can start putting your marketing plan together. This comprehensive document should be a living, breathing thing that you update as you collect new information and sync with your audience. Based on your buyer personas and campaign goals, work on your content strategy and conversion paths. Your content strategy needs to address the following aspects (not a definitive list):

  • Your value proposition (why should they choose you and not your competition?);
  • The keywords your prospects are using to search for your and similar products or services;
  • How frequently do you need to publish new content?
  • What kind of content do your prospects want and in what format?
  • What channels should you be using to distribute your content?

When it comes to conversion paths, make sure you map your content strategy to your sales funnel. Prospects at different stages in their buyer journey will require a different type of content to progress further – this will range from purely inspirational and educational generic content to raise awareness and attract new leads, to more product-focused content that’s optimized to drive conversions. So when you get to this part, consider the following questions:

  • How will you generate leads?
  • What ‘lead magnets’ will you use to attract new prospects? What content offers will you make to nudge them down the sales funnel?
  • How will this path be implemented on your website? This requires you to think about CTAs, landing pages, emails, forms, etc.

Now, all that’s left is to put these plans into action! To establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and get found in search engines, start creating unique, compelling content. Blogging, social media, premium content (lead magnets, such as tools, calculators, long-form, videos, etc.), and content outside of your website (guest blogging, podcasts, etc.) are the most effective tactics that you can try.

P.s. don’t forget to promote the hell out of your content!

How to Get Started with Outbound Marketing

Getting started with outbound marketing can be challenging. But it’s important to remember that a well-rounded marketing mix that draws on both inbound and outbound marketing tactics is a surefire way to hit the lead gen jackpot; in other words, it’s worth the struggle.

The main difference with outbound marketing campaigns is that you actively go out to look for prospects, usually via paid channels. Different outbound marketing tactics will call for different levels of preparation and input, but they can be a great way to amplify your inbound efforts and target specific opportunities. 

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing - How to Get Started

Marketers often turn to outbound tactics when the organic reach of their inbound campaigns is too low. For instance, if you write a 30-page ebook on a hot topic and create a special landing page for it offering a free download (or an exchange of content for an email address), a couple of leads per day simply won’t cut it. For your hard work to yield results you need to go out and shout about this great piece of free content to everyone and anyone who’s willing to listen. That’s where outbound marketing comes in.

Social media ads, pay-per-click advertising, email prospecting, event marketing, content syndication or direct mail – any one of these tactics can be used to push the message out to a wider audience and attract new potential customers. In order to target the right audience through the right channel, you need to evaluate your content offer and determine who’s most likely to take you up on it and what’s the best way to reach that segment of the market. 

Improving Your Inbound and Outbound Marketing Game

A combination of inbound and outbound marketing tactics is what drives the best results for most of the companies. Although these two approaches are often pitted against each other, aiming to calculate the ROI separately, there’s no reason why marketing efforts should be measured and compared that way. After all, they’re geared towards the same purpose. So instead of focusing on the inbound vs outbound debate, let’s look at how you can mix the different tactics to upgrade your marketing game.

Try content syndication to drive more traffic. Content syndication is the process of promoting your content, such as blog posts, videos or long-form pieces on third-party sites. These content ads are typically displayed at the bottom of the articles in the “Similar Articles Around the Web” section. When displayed on sites like Forbes, CNN, or similar outlets, high-quality content can drive quite a bit of traffic and help raise brand awareness.

Invest in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to amplify your inbound campaigns. PPC can take two types of forms – AdWords ads and display ads which appear on search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, or social media networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. PPC ads can achieve great results in driving targeted traffic to purpose-built landing pages or special offers that relate directly to the search terms used by prospects. By using highly optimized ad copy, marketers can target specific keywords and attract higher-quality leads.  

Automate your email marketing. Aligning your content strategy with your sales funnel will help you craft relevant content based on where in the buyer’s journey your prospects are. Automated email marketing campaigns will enable you to send that content at the right time and with the right offers, turning lukewarm leads into hot prospects and reducing conversion time. With the smart email marketing tools available to marketers today, even outbound email campaigns can be segmented and hyper-targeted. This further closes the gap between inbound nurture campaigns and outbound email blasts, the main difference being that inbound campaigns benefit from opt-in email lists.

Adopt a CRM system. Marketing automation and customer relationship management go hand in hand. Adopting a CRM will help you focus on providing value to the customers, personalizing and improving their experience with your business, and streamlining the buyer journey. Bringing together the customer data and all touch points will help you make sense of customer behavior and anticipate their needs. The insights you gather by using a CRM will not only help you cultivate stronger relationships with your current customers but will also contribute to developing both inbound and outbound campaigns in order to attract new leads.

Best Resources for Inbound and Outbound Marketing

Modern marketers are obsessed with optimizing and automating their efforts to achieve the best results in the shortest amount of time possible. So it’s no surprise that there are hundreds of useful tools and resources out there designed specifically to make marketers’ jobs easier. Here’s a list of some of the most popular resources that might come in handy.

Inbound marketing tools and resources

Must-read blogs:

Tools & resources:

  • Buzzsumo – find trending content on any topic
  • Keyword Planner – research the best keywords for your content and ads
  • Lead Scoring – rank your leads according to their likelihood of conversion
  • Unbounce – quickly build custom landing pages for your campaigns
  • SumoMe – build your email list and drive more traffic
  • Visme – add movement to your brand strategy with videos, animations, infographics, and more.
  • HubSpot Blog Topic Generator – easily generate a week’s worth of blog topic ideas
  • CoSchedule – organize your entire content marketing strategy in one neat calendar
  • Canva – create beautiful graphics for your blog and social media
  • Buffer – schedule and automate your social media posts
  • Marketo – automate your marketing efforts

Outbound marketing tools and resources

Tools & resources:

  • LeadGenius – identify and generate more leads
  • SmartDialer – all-in-one phone call service
  • Yesware – try email automation and tracking
  • Outbrain – experiment with content syndication

Inbound vs Outbound: the verdict

The best answer to the common question, “Should we be deploying inbound or outbound marketing tactics?” is a simple “yes”. One should not be replaced by the other, as the real magic happens when the two approaches are merged into one coherent strategy.

If you’re trying to decide which approach should dominate your strategy, be sure to address the following questions:

  • How soon do you need to see results? If your business needs an urgent uplift, you’ll probably be better off running a few laser-focused outbound marketing campaigns as they can produce immediate effects.
  • What’s your marketing budget? Big and bold outbound marketing campaigns, such as TV ads or adverts in underground stations, can have a tremendous effect but will also cost you a leg and an arm.
  • What are your competitors up to? Keeping a close eye on your competition will help you identify and capitalize on overlooked marketing opportunities. Remember that it is better to differentiate your business from your competitors than to engage in head-to-head competition.

Ready to take your inbound and outbound marketing to the next level? Request a demo or start a FREE trial today!

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FAQs: Inbound vs Outbound Marketing

1. What is the difference between inbound and outbound marketing?

Inbound marketing focuses on attracting customers through content and interactions that are relevant and helpful, whereas outbound marketing involves reaching out to potential customers through more traditional advertising methods like TV ads, cold calls, and direct mail.

2. How does inbound marketing attract customers?

Inbound marketing attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. It includes strategies like content marketing, SEO, social media engagement, and email newsletters.

3. What are some examples of outbound marketing techniques?

Examples of outbound marketing techniques include TV and radio advertisements, print ads in newspapers and magazines, direct mail campaigns, cold calling, and online banner ads.

4. Which marketing strategy is more cost-effective: inbound or outbound?

Inbound marketing is generally more cost-effective in the long run because it focuses on creating lasting relationships with customers through valuable content, while outbound marketing often requires ongoing expenses to maintain visibility and reach.

5. Can inbound and outbound marketing be used together?

Yes, many businesses use a combination of inbound and outbound marketing strategies to reach a wider audience and maximize their marketing efforts. This approach is often referred to as a hybrid marketing strategy.

6. What are the main benefits of inbound marketing?

The main benefits of inbound marketing include higher trust and credibility, better targeting and personalization, long-term sustainability, and higher ROI due to its focus on providing value to potential customers.

7. What are the primary goals of outbound marketing?

The primary goals of outbound marketing are to create awareness, generate leads, and drive immediate sales by broadcasting a message to a broad audience, often using interruptive methods.

8. How does SEO play a role in inbound marketing?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is crucial for inbound marketing as it helps improve the visibility of your content in search engine results, making it easier for potential customers to find your business when searching for relevant information.

9. What metrics are used to measure the success of inbound marketing?

Common metrics for measuring inbound marketing success include website traffic, lead conversion rates, social media engagement, email open and click-through rates, and content performance analytics.

10. What challenges might businesses face when implementing outbound marketing?

Challenges of outbound marketing include high costs, difficulty in measuring ROI, potential for audience annoyance, and lower engagement rates compared to inbound methods.

11. How can social media be leveraged in inbound marketing?

Social media can be leveraged in inbound marketing by sharing valuable content, engaging with followers, participating in relevant conversations, and using social media platforms to drive traffic to your website or blog.

12. What are some key components of a successful inbound marketing strategy?

Key components of a successful inbound marketing strategy include content creation, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, lead nurturing, and analytics to continuously improve and refine efforts.

13. How do customer personas influence inbound marketing tactics?

Customer personas help tailor inbound marketing tactics by providing detailed insights into the needs, preferences, and behaviors of your target audience, allowing for more personalized and effective content and interactions.

14. Are there industries where outbound marketing is more effective than inbound marketing?

Outbound marketing can be more effective in industries where quick, widespread awareness is needed, such as new product launches, political campaigns, or industries with less online presence and digital engagement.

15. How does content marketing fit into the inbound marketing framework?

Content marketing is a core component of inbound marketing, involving the creation and sharing of valuable, relevant content to attract and engage a clearly defined audience, ultimately driving profitable customer actions.

The adaption of stacks had been the talk of the town in the businesses and enterprises for years now. The idea of using stacks has benefited many, and a lot more are still contemplating whether to go for this or not.  This rumination is also shared by the salespeople who have started to focus more on adopting the technological advancements available these days.

The more a business concentrates on the refinement of its sales process, better the results are. To get an extensive sales stack and to move one step ahead towards automation, the understanding of an organization’s sales pipeline is all-important.

Evaluation of Sales Process

A sales pipeline or sales process make it possible for organizations to guide the potential customers all the way till the finalization of the deal. The quality of journey that an organization is providing to its prospects can have a significant effect on its growth. By looking into the sales process with a greater perspective, a successful sales process looks something like this:

  • Lead Generation
  • Lead Management
  • Product Demonstration
  • Deal Closing

Let’s discuss the steps of the sales process in detail and know how we can use CRM strategies with a sales stack. The exploration of these steps is imperative because senselessly adding new tools can make things difficult for you in the long run. The understanding of these steps can lead to the creation of a comprehensive sales stack for the businesses these days.

Lead Generation

The generation of lead can be approached in different ways including outsourcing, 3rd party lead sourcing, and manual prospecting.

It is preferable to select a lead generation strategy that best suits your business. Manual prospecting is beneficial only when a company has got enough time to deal with this.  Sales intelligence software can prove to be helpful in the manual prospecting. Manual prospecting is cost effective but time-consuming.

In case if you have less time but more money, then outsourcing and 3rd party lead sourcing are feasible options where a company can hire freelancers from credible platforms after meticulously picking the high performers.

Lead Management

Lead management is the step where CRM plays its role by efficiently managing the sales process. The CRM is undoubtedly one of the main things that sales stack is about. Although it can be difficult to handle the process, in the beginning, CRM strategies are effective in this regard.

A sales platform that incorporates CRM can tackle with all the marketing activities while taking it along the sales process. A CRM is considered as the keystone for a successful sales pipeline being the major database of all communication.

A sales process needs to make persistent attempts to get a positive response from a potential client. A sales stack itself allows to manage the personalization and automation side by side to achieve a positive response from a prospect.

lead-management-teamgate (1)

Product Demonstration

At this stage, most of the organizations have already started to get responses from the prospective clients in the form of personal meetings, phone calls, and demonstrations. The inability of an organization’s sales stack to manage this high volume of responses can prove to be a nightmare.

A comprehensive sales stack can enable an organization to utilize a cloud-based conferencing system and save the prospects from the trouble of downloading software to get a demo.

The strategies work well with the sales stack by making sure that the scheduled demonstration doesn’t contradict with the organization’s timeline in any way.

Related: GetApp Announces Teamgate as #3 of the Top 25 CRM Apps

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Deal Closing

The closing of the deal is the step when the prospect turns into a customer by committing to buy your product. It is also imperative to have such tools to make this deal closing process convenient.

One such tool is an online invoice template, which enables you to generate professional-looking invoices quickly and efficiently, streamlining the payment process and ensuring a smooth deal closure.

Acquiring tools for deal closing ensures that the prospect necessarily buys what he came for, and any glitches in this step can cause a prospect to move back and refrain from the deal closing process.

A CRM-Sales Stack strategy can ensure that a convenient deal closing experience awaits client. The satisfaction of a client is beneficial in the long run because the revenue of an organization gradually rises with the increased number of customers.

In a nutshell, a Sales Stack provides intelligent insights and makes multi-process management easy for the companies.

In this article, you’ll get a comprehensive guide to 100 powerful inbound marketing tools that can skyrocket your business growth. We’ll explore a variety of tools to automate, optimize, and enhance every facet of your inbound marketing strategy, ultimately leading to more leads and prospects.

Key Takeaways:

  • Learn how to streamline your marketing efforts using a multitude of automation tools.
  • Discover the importance of analytics and the top tools to get the most detailed insights into your marketing performance.
  • Uncover the potential of blogging and SEO tools in increasing your online visibility.
  • Understand how design and visual resources can play a pivotal role in your inbound marketing strategy.
  • Get introduced to the best tools for managing leads, social media, and streaming.

Nothing makes a marketer happier than seeing their efforts and hard work pay off. And there’s little we wouldn’t be prepared to do to see those leads trickling in.

We’ll write eBooks, spend weeks chasing influencers for three-line quotes and comb through pages and pages of data to string together sleek-looking infographics to get the prospects to notice us. Because every lead counts.

So let’s face it, if there was a way for us to amplify our inbound marketing efforts and raise the lead gen game, we’d snatch that opportunity with no questions asked.

And as the luck has it, we’ve gathered one hundred powerful tools that will help you automate, optimize and enhance your inbound marketing strategy and win more business.

Make yourself happy, dig in.

Research tools

  1. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a powerful tool for content marketing and is particularly helpful with finding trending content by any topic. It saves a lot of time that you would usually spend on browsing and googling popular topics. Buzzsumo will also show you many convenient statistics, like how many people are talking about a specific subject.

  1. Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is a completely free tool created by Google that researches the best keywords for your ads, video ads, etc. With this tool, you can build a completely new campaign or improve an existing one. It is an effective tool for both experienced and completely new advertisers.

  1. Looking for a new Entry

This used to be Klout.

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  1. Mention

Mention makes sure you keep track of all the real-time social media mentions and always stay in the know of what people are saying about you online. It also lets you follow and analyze your competitors and similar businesses. Mention also has some awesome features like Custom Insights and Find Influencers.

  1. TrustRadius Trustmap

The TrustRadius marketing TrustMap is a two-dimensional chart that compares marketing products based on end-user satisfaction ratings and research frequency by prospective buyers. You can use the tool to compare different marketing tools and read authentic reviews from real users.

  1. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is one of the best online survey tools used by millions. With this tool, you will gather useful information and insight about your target audience and clients by creating original surveys. Choose from more than 15 different question types, branding options and much more.

  1. AYTM

AYTM is another survey tool that provides professional market research. The main key components and features include the survey platform that lets you host, program and analyze your surveys, a proprietary panel with an access to 25 MM all over the world and the research services.

  1. Quora

Quora is a well known question-answer type of website that makes any research much easier. Here, questions and topics can be organized into boards that can be followed – this will help you keep up with your competitors and news in your market. With Quora, you can also follow relevant questions and discover many other ways to do research.

Analytics tools

  1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a very popular and effective analytics tool provided to you by Google. When integrated with Google AdWords, it becomes an even more powerful tool that lets you analyze and track your website and conversions. The main analytics data is displayed on the main page of Google Analytics, but you can also find and use such features as Advanced Segments, Location Demographics and much more.

  1. Hotjar

Inbound Marketing Tools Hotjar

Hotjar is an amazing tool for analyzing the online behavior of your users by studying heatmaps, visitor recordings, feedback polls and conversion funnels. This tool combines two most important things – feedback and analysis to make the analytics as accurate as possible.

  1. SumoMe

SumoMe is an extremely user-friendly WordPress plugin that can serve as an efficient analytics tool. The main goal of this tool is to help you grow your website traffic and email list. It offers many free tools for you to choose from, so by using them, you can analyze your content, users, visitors and much more.

  1. Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics is a part of Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC) that offers many online marketing tools. With Adobe Analytics, you can assemble, coordinate, organize and analyze your customer’s activity. Real-time analytics, segmentation, and predictive marketing through all Adobe channels.

  1. Ubersuggest

Want more traffic? Ubersuggest shows you how to win the game of SEO. Just type in a domain or a keyword to get started.

  1. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is another brilliant online application to analyze user activity on your website. This tool suggests useful features like heat maps, scroll maps, overlay reports, and confetti, which lets you determine all the clicks that have been made on your website and analyze them by search term and referral sources.

  1. Matomo

By choosing the ethical alternative, Matomo, you won’t make privacy sacrifices or compromise your site. You can even use Matomo without needing to ask for consent

  1. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a very advanced analytics tool that gives you the opportunity to analyze every action your user takes – not just the clicks. With this tool, you can also see when someone uploads a picture, shares a post, etc. Here you can also experiment with the A/B testing to reach the best results.

  1. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is a universal tool for any insights – both web and app. It works with a wide range of sources to receive as accurate data as possible and convert it into useful insights. SimilarWeb offers website analytics, industry analytics, and app analysis. Besides all this, you can also see traffic and engagement data and much more.

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  1. Quick Sprout

Quick Sprout suggests a direct connection with Google Analytics to offer you a reliable and accurate information and data. This tool will help you understand and use Google Analytics to the maximum – you will be informed about important activity on your website every day and receive personalized website alerts.

Blogging tools

  1. Triberr

Triberr is both a tool and a community to help you grow the traffic on your blog. It is segmented into categories called “Tribes” that are differentiated by topics. You can follow the tribe you are interested in to see all the newly published posts, interact and engage with other bloggers.

  1. WordPress

WordPress is a very popular and widely used tool for website and blog creation that has a wide range of templates and plugins for you to choose from and use for your own benefit. It is a very powerful tool, yet very user-friendly and easy to use. It is so huge that it supports more than 60 million websites.

  1. Grammarly

Inbound Marketing Tools Grammarly

Grammarly is a proofreading tool that can also be used as a plagiarism-detection application. Besides creating content and driving traffic to your website, it is also crucial to make sure that your content is free of grammar mistakes, so this super simple tool will help you out with that. Its AI-driven engines check plagiarism and detect AI text patterns to improve your texts’ structure and readability. Multiple features and stellar user-friendliness make Grammarly one of the best tools for content creators on the market.

  1. Yoast

Yoast is a SEO tool for WordPress users. Its main cause is to help people with their website optimization through many different courses, e-books, software and plugins like Yost SEO, Video SEO,  Local SEO, News SEO, Local SEO, Yoast WooCommerce SEO and other analytics, metric, comments, and functionality plugins.

  1. Readability Test Tool by WebpageFX

Readability Test Tool is an application to check the readability of a specific article, post or the entire website. You can check it by entering the URL of your content and clicking the button “Calculate Readability”. The tool is useful not only for bloggers but also for SEO experts, copywriters, and other specialists.

  1. Portent Title Maker

Portent Title Maker is a great tool when you need to come up with an original idea for your article title name. Simply enter your subject in the field and choose one of the generated titles. To get the best results from this tool, don’t capitalize keywords and use singular version of your keyword.

  1. Hubspot Blog Topic Generator

Hubspot Blog Topic Generator helps you create great titles for your post. When you visit the website, you will have to enter three nouns that describe what you’re writing about (or what the article is about) and press the button below. You will then be given a few popular blog topic ideas that you can use for your piece.

  1. Toggl

Toggl is a perfect tool for busy bloggers who like to keep on track with their time management. With this tool, you can see how much time you spend on each task and discover what is most time-consuming. Here you can also track how many time you spend on different projects, clients and analyze reports.

  1. Hemingway App

Hemingway App is an advanced text editing tool that is also available as a desktop app. It highlights your sentences in different colors that indicate sentences that are too hard to read, phrases that have simpler alternatives, etc. In the online mode, you can also edit your document and the desktop version offers such cool features as publishing directly to WordPress and much more.

Design tools

  1. Picsart

Picsart is an all-in-one platform where users can create, customize, and share images and videos with ease. It combines powerful editing tools, AI features, and a wide range of creative assets to help bring any idea to life—whether it’s for social media, marketing, or personal projects.

  1. Freebiesbug

Freebiesbug is a website where designers can find a number of free graphic resources for their designs. It is full of app designs, icons, mockups, website templates, illustrations, fonts, sketches and much more. You can browse by the category, use the search field or upload a freebie of your own.  

  1. Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a tool by Adobe Systems that offers three different design apps: Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video. Here you can create social and website graphics like Travel Journals, Quotes, Announcements, Advertisements, Pitches, Animated stories and much more.

  1. Xtensio

Xtensio is a platform every team or business needs to create beautifully crafted online presentations, reports, slides, or any documents. It functions with an easy-to-use drag and drop feature so users can do customization, living up to their brands.
Apart from being user-friendly, it ensures real-time collaboration and privacy of shared documents.

  1. Marvel

Inbound Marketing Tools Marvel

Marvel is a prototype creation tool for apps and websites. You can create straight in Marvel or transport your images from the cloud storage, Sketch, or Photoshop. The tool has a user-friendly editor that lets you link your designs and create prototypes for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Desktop, and Android.

  1. Ceros

Ceros is a cloud-based tool with a digital canvas that can be accessed by the entire team. Ceros allows you to create amazing, interactive infographics and animated designs. The tool is very convenient for both designers and marketers. After creating a unique design, you are able to see the insights of its performance.

  1. Figma

Figma is a collaborative design tool that gives you the ability to work on a design together with your team. Here you can create icons, interface design, responsive layouts and much more. Figma is very easy to use so you won’t waste your time trying to understand the tools and it also allows the integration with Sketch app.

  1. Fuse

Fuse is a design tool for creating apps on Android and iOS. An effective and quick way to create for teams, developers, and designers. With Fuse, adjust animation, UI, layout or anything else you like and test changes in real time. It makes it easy for people that are new to app development and is also very useful for the experienced ones.

  1. Placeit

Placeit offers more than 2500 mockups and demo videos. It is super quick to use and works as a great substitute for Photoshop when you want to place a screenshot of your website on a screen of a computer or a phone. You can choose between many different devices or simply use the search field.

  1. VSCO

VSCO is a very popular photo editing app available for both iOS and Android. It lets you edit your photos and images, add many different trendy filters and share it with other users of the app. The app is widely used by photographers and the youth and constantly updated by its developers.

  1. PicMonkey

PicMonkey is an online tool for design making and photo editing. It has some paid features, but even without them, the tool is pretty powerful. Besides designing and editing, you can also create beautiful collages, or use the “Touch up” feature that can whiten teeth or remove wrinkles in a photo.

  1. Infogr.com

Infogr.com is an application meant for creating stunning, interactive charts and infographics. You are free to choose between more than 35 charts, over 500 different maps and over 20 ready-made templates for infographics. Besides that, you can edit the style, colors and many other things in your design.

Visual resources

  1. Unsplash

Unsplash is a photo stock library that lets you download, edit and use all the photos for free without any copyright. The website is believed to be one of the leading photography websites in the world. Here you can browse new photos, view collections or simply use the search field.

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  1. Pixabay

Pixabay is an international website that offers more than 870,000 stock photos that are completely free. Here you will also find vectors, illustrations, and videos of high quality. All of the content you will download on this website is completely copyright free, so feel free to edit and distribute it the way you like.

  1. StockSnap.io

StockSnap.io is full of beautiful stock photos in high quality. It is also copyright free so no contribution to the author is required. When you visit the website, you can see the most popular searches that are displayed as tags under the huge search field. You can also view the trending and recently added photos or add them to your favorites.  

  1. Life Of Pix

Life Of Pix is another brilliant place to find free stock photos. Some photos are features, so you can browse them straight away when you visit the website or choose to use the search field. If you find it time-consuming to preview photos on a big display, you can simply switch to a different viewing display.

  1. SplitShire

SplitShire is a great resource of visual content: free images, photos, and videos. Besides the search field, you will also discover many convenient categories to choose from: animals, fashion, landscapes, mockups and much more. In free videos section, you can scroll down and view all the amazing video content that you can easily download.

  1. Death To Stock

Inbound Marketing Tools Deathtostockphoto

Death To Stock has a lot of content you can use for your creative projects and designs. It has a very convenient feature where you can subscribe to receive a monthly email with beautiful photos. On the website, you can also browse themed photo packs on a specific subject.

  1. PhotoPin

PhotoPin is a completely free tool that might come in handy both for designers and bloggers. In PhotoPin you will find millions of photos with Creative Commons licensing. A very neat feature that this tool offers to its users is that when you download a picture, you receive a contribution link at the same time, so there’s no need to search for it separately.

  1. Freepik

Freepik also offers some free stock photos but is mainly focused on free vectors, icons and PSD files. This website is probably one of the most popular free graphic resources among experienced and new designers. You can use the search field, or browse the vectors by popularity or recency.

  1. Flaticon

Flaticon is probably the biggest database full of icons in PSD, EPS, SVG, PNG and BASE 64 formats. Here you will discover more than 310,000 icons that can be customized to a specific color code before downloading. If you are working on a specific project and you need your icons to have the same style, you can find some icon packs as well.

Automation tools

  1. IFTTT

IFTTT is an amazing tool that lets you connect and create chains of applets. Applets are useful features that different apps are able to offer to their clients. For example, using a certain applet, you can set it up to receive an email when an Instagram picture with a chosen hashtag is posted.

  1. Zapier

Zapier is a great web automation tool for busy people that seamlessly connects one’s apps and automates the processes. Apps are linked in seconds and when data is shared, Zapier passes the data to “Zaps” that represent your workflows. This will help you to finish your tasks and processes faster than usual.

  1. Moosend

Moosend is a powerful email marketing and marketing automation tool. Its features are easy-to-learn and easy-to-use and it promises a minimal learning curve with maximum potential, due to its sophisticated automation, personalization and analytics features.  From designing beautiful email newsletters and landing pages with zero code knowledge to segmenting your email list and making educated decisions through data and analytics, this all-in-one marketing platform gives your business more for less.

  1. Skyvia

Skyvia is a tool that offers a cloud data integration service. It also lets you backup, manage and access your data from all your apps by using only one tool. Cloud data management is processed through SQL so you don’t need to bother about native web API’s of different cloud sources.

  1. Looking for new tools recommend

This used to be Hooks

  1. CloudHQ

CloudHQ synchronizes your apps and your data and lets you integrate your apps with cloud platforms you are using at the moment, including Google apps, like Google Drive and Google Email. The tool offers real-time backup of any data that is in your cloud. It also lets you integrate your dropbox with Evernote, Gmail, Sharepoint, and Basecamp.

  1. Automate.io

Automate.io is a tool that is able to connect all the apps that are located in your cloud. This helps you to automate such processes as marketing, business, and sales. Automated processes include sending automated emails, automate follow-ups and much more.

  1. Looking for new tools to recomend

This used to be CloudWork.  

  1. Integromat

Integromat is a powerful workflow optimization and automation tool. With it, you will be able to connect different devices, apps, and services. The main advantage of this tool is that it can integrate and automate almost any app that’ been created. It can be used in various fields: social media, online stores, customer support and project management.

Management tools

  1. Teamgate

Inbound Marketing Tools Teamgate

Teamgate is a powerful CRM tool that can be developed especially for you and your team – no matter whether you work alone, run a small business or manage a big team. It helps you curate and plan daily tasks, schedule your calls and appointments, create individual goals and view how close you have gotten to your goal. It also has a neat feature where you can view insights of your team’s sales score and an evaluation on how much better or worse you are doing compared to last year, month or week.

  1. Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is a widely used management tool because of its many features and other tools like CRM, task and project management, document and time management, calendars, chats and much more. It also offers a telephony service so you can call anywhere – domestically or internationally.

  1. Copper

Coppers CRM is a user-friendly, simplistic management tool that is focused on teams and interactions. It makes it really easy to keep on track with what your team is working on and keep an eye on the sales.

  1. Zendash

Zendash makes tracking your marketing performance simple and efficient. With its user-friendly dashboards and seamless integrations, it brings all your analytics into one place. Use Zendash to gain valuable insights, optimize your inbound campaigns, and make smarter, data-driven decisions to grow your business.

  1. Salesflare

Salesflare is a CRM that stands out due its focus on technological development. The tool is integratable with Office 365, Gmail, iCloud, Zapier and Exchange. It offers useful insights on sales and assists you with follow-up opportunities. The Salesflare takes care of all the data input so you can focus all your attention on sales and profits.

  1. Act!

Act! is a CRM and a brilliant management tool for managing customer relationships and contacts. This CRM is mainly meant for individuals, sales teams, and small businesses. Here you can choose between three different plans to suit your needs: Act! Pro, Act! Premium and Act! Essentials.

  1. Insightly

The name of this CRM tool speaks for itself – it can offer you many useful insights on your sales, team workflow and many other aspects. The tool is also packed with an array of great features, such as contact and lead management, task, events, reports, email integrations and so much more.

Lead collection tools

  1. AeroLeads

AeroLeads is one of the most powerful prospecting software on the web used by over 5000 businesses. It finds all the details of a business or person that includes Email, Name, Phone Number and social profiles. It also provides you with the service of giving you the email list or email database as per your requirements.

  1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is an amazing and very popular lead generation tool, especially for WordPress. It helps you convert visitors into subscribers by creating convenient and smart signup forms. It works with MailChimp, AWeber, Infusionsoft, GetResponse, Constant Contact and many eCommerce platforms

  1. Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder is a simple lead collection tool that helps to turn your visitors into subscribers. It is mainly focused on the B2B market and works by connecting to your Google Analytics account where it collects useful data about your website visitors. Offers integration with MailChimp.

  1. Leadpages

Leadpages will generate leads through social media, emails, web and text messaging. Here you can choose from a selection of high quality and performance templates and then customize them to your own taste. The customizable templates are mobile friendly and the tool itself can integrate with MailChimp, Salesforce, Infusionsoft and many other tools.

  1. Leadformly

Leadformly is a website that lets you create interactive lead generation forms and use them to capture more leads. After you choose a template you like, you can redesign it as you wish, then simply add the embed code to your website and wait for the results. It integrates with Salesforce, Sugar CRM, Infusionsoft, MailChimp, HubSpot, Marketo etc.

  1. Lead Forensics

Lead Forensics is a tool that will turn anonymous traffic into leads. With this tool, you can identify the leads in real-time and reveal such information as contacts, business name, financial data, demographics, etc. It also lets you analyze each case from the first click to sale.

  1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn has a special tool called Sales Navigator that is packed with features focused on social selling. It gives you custom lead recommendations, imports Salesforce data, constantly informs you with real-time sales updates and lets you measure your social selling stats and efforts. On their website, you will also find success stories and useful resources.

Social media tools

  1. Buffer

Inbound Marketing Tools Buffer

Buffer is a social media scheduling tool for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+. It will help you to save loads of your precious time and focus on your strategy.  You can easily schedule by using the website, installing the browser extension or on the go – with apps for iOS and Android.

  1. Quuu Promote

Quuu Promote enables you to share and promote your generated content via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. The entire system consists of three steps: first, you create a post using URL address, second, you select the most relatable topic and lastly, monitor and track your promotions via Quuu.

  1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is social media management tool that works with more than 35 popular social networks. It has many different tools that include Publisher, Engagement, Analytics, Insights, Campaigns, Platform, Amplify, and Ads. These tools are best for fields, such as social selling, marketing, customer service and Employee Advocacy.

  1. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a tool for social media planning and scheduling. One of the cool features of MeetEdgar is that it does not throw away your published posts, but keeps them in a safe library so you can analyze, edit and repost them later. Here you can also place your scheduled posts in different categories.

  1. Looking for a new tool

This Used to be Mentia

  1. Tagboard

Tagboard is a social search platform based on hashtags. It searches through social media content and finds relevant content in seconds. The tag search is processed through such platforms as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr. A very convenient feature is that you can automatically promote any posts you like.

  1. SharedCount

SharedCount is a very simple service and a tool for social media analytics. Its main feature is to quickly track URL shares and likes across the internet. After you enter the URL of your post, you will see how many shares, likes and comments it has collected on Facebook and how many times it was shared on Google+, Twitter, Diggs, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and Delicious.

  1. Agora Pulse

Agora Pulse is an amazing yet simple tool for social media management. It brings all the most popular social media networks to one place where you can easily track and manage the engagement. The tool offers many useful stats and insights and has a feature that allows you to run contests and promotions.

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  1. EveryPost

EveryPost is a simplified social media publishing platform and an app for both iOSand Android. With this great tool, you can manage your content, edit your posts, collaborate, schedule, publish and study the social media analytics to come up with even greater solutions for your business.

  1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a powerful social media management tool. It has many advantages to offer: Smart Inbox, Monitoring, Social CRM, Publishing, Analytics, Collaboration, Account Structure and Mobile – all these features in one simple tool. Sprout Social works perfectly for social customer service and social media marketing as well.

  1. Bitly

Bitly is a widely used and well-known URL shortener. Nothing is uglier than a long URL on social media or your website. Besides its main features, Bitly lets you optimize and share the links via Bitly, API or other partner integrations. With this tool, it’s also possible to track link analytics and stats.

  1. Tailwind

Tailwind is a free scheduling platform for Pinterest and Instagram. With this tool, you will be able to discover new interesting content, schedule your social media posts in advance, curate conversations and study analytics to reach better results in the future. You can use the free version or choose from plans meant for small businesses and large organizations.

  1. Tweepi

With Tweepi, you can Tweet faster and more efficiently. This tool was specially developed for one social media channel only with a greater focus on it and its capabilities. In the year of 2017, it already has more than 1,500,000 users. With this tool, you can follow relevant users, follow back, schedule tweets and much more.

SEO tools

  1. Übersuggest

Übersuggest is a tool that generates loads of keyword ideas for you. Simply enter one of the main keywords that describe your business and receive hundreds of similar suggestions. Besides that, you can also choose other options, such as browsing in the web, images, shopping, YouTube, and News section.

  1. Moz

Inbound Marketing Tools Moz

Moz is a great SEO tool and a software that performs 5 billion searches each day. It has two main services: one is called “Moz Local” and focuses on local searches by using your location information. The other service is called “Keyword Explorer” that lets you find the best keywords and offers many intuitive suggestions.

  1. SEMrush

SEMrush is another tool to help you find more keywords that are relevant to your business. Besides this useful tool, SEMrush can also offer SEO audit, position tracking, semantic core collection, backlink audit and much more. Next to SEO, the company also works with paid traffic, social media, content management and PR.

  1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a tracking tool for mentions across the internet, keywords, and backlinks. By using Ahrefs, you also gain access to other tools, such as position, size and content explorers, position tracker, crawl report and alerts that make sure you never miss a new mention.

  1. Backlinko

Backlinko is a place where you can find many marketing and SEO tips, tricks, guides, ebooks and blog posts about it. In general, the website helps you master the link building process, lift up the user experience, optimize and promote your content. You can also sign up for free updates and the newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a thing.

  1. Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a tool with the main focus on longtail keyword search. While researching the keywords, you can choose a specific time period and region so that the result would be more relevant. This tool also lists some advantages why it’s better than Google Keyword Planner: not grouped keywords, results are not banded, SERP comparison and much more.

  1. Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is a substitute and an alternative for the Google Keyword Planner. It finds the most searchable keywords that your potential customers type into Google Search Box. Every search term is estimated to receive at least 750 keyword suggestions, it is absolutely free and you can freely use it without any registration.

  1. Looking for new Adition

Used to be Keyword Eye

Streaming tools

  1. Crowdcast

Crowdcast is a simple and dynamic streaming tool that lets people share content via webinars, live courses, summits and Q&As. It’s very quick and easy to get started because you don’t have to download any files, the setup is very easy and there’s only one URL.

Livereacting is a platform that helps to boost your social media presence by creating and scheduling an engaging 24/7 live stream. It provides tools to automate interactive content, such as polls and quizzes, to maintain continuous audience engagement.

  1. Bambuser

Inbound Marketing Tools Bambuser

Bambuser is an interactive platform for live streaming. It benefits from another tool called “Iris” that focuses on simple mobile live videos. This tool can help you to create professional live videos, organize and manage them via Content Dashboard, and publish them through Player SDKs.

  1. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is a very popular streaming tool provided by Google. Through this tool, you can message your team or a single person, make a video or an audio call. In one chat, you can connect up to 100 people which is a pretty large number. To make your interaction even more fun and accurate, you are free to use emojis, maps, photos, stickers, and GIFs.

  1. Tinychat

Tinychat is a simplistic live video chat platform that can also be used as an app for iOS and Android. It is called a video chat, but it does not obligate you to participate in a conversation, you can just observe and watch. To start a chat room, simply click on the bright blue button that says “Instant Room”.

  1. Livestream

Livestream is a powerful and a highly developed live streaming tool. It has a high-tech live video solution with tracking and analytics so you can track the engagement, end to end hardware and software, 24/7 support and many different product solutions, developed for distinct needs.

  1. Twitch

Twitch is a streaming website with more than 9.7 million daily users and mainly focused on video game streaming. It has a few listings that show the most recent top live channels, Top PS4 Channels and Top Xbox One Channels. To start streaming, you can try a free trial to test out the features. 

  1. YouNow

YouNow is a broadcasting tool where people can stream live. On the left corner of the website, you will always find trending topics and in the middle section – trending broadcast that you can view freely. It is completely free and available both for iOS and Android as an app.

  1. Youtube

Youtube has a live streaming section called “Live” where you can stream videos of your own and watch other live streams of people gaming, playing music, racing, etc. You can choose between two different streaming options: “Stream now” that lets you send content and stops it at the right time and “Events” that gives you more over the content.

While working on these outstanding tools, you also need the right peripherals. One of the key things you need while working on marketing tools is AirPods. Whether it’s about watching marketing tutorials on YouTube or editing a sales video, good sound quality is necessary. Buy Airpods online or from a store and to make the buying easier, this guide on AirPods generations is important. From AirPods first generation in 2016 to the latest fourth generation in 2024, there have been major changes in them. Knowing how things have changed and what the key differences are between various generations is an important factor to consider before buying.

Final Thoughts

Growing a business is a day-to-day mission and we should take all the help we can take. Leveraging the right inbound marketing tools is crucial for the success and growth of your business. These tools not only help streamline processes but also optimize and enhance the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Make the most of the insights you’ve gained from these 100 powerful inbound marketing tools and watch your business soar to new heights.

Now that you’re armed with this knowledge, take the next step to further boost your marketing efforts – try Teamgate CRM.

It’s an innovative solution designed to perfectly align with your inbound marketing strategies, ensuring you harness the full potential of every lead and customer interaction.

How would you describe your sales CRM?

  • Easy to use?
  • Insightful?
  • A great time saver?

Probably not, right?

The fact is that most CRMs are a pain to use.  They suck valuable time from your day-to-day and are rarely kept up to date.

In fact, 87% of salespeople believe the reason they’re forced to update their CRM is so that their manager can police their activities.

This often results in salespeople just checking boxes, and doing the bare minimum to pass off as having completed their “obligatory CRM update”.

use-of-crm-systems-amid-increasing-b2b-pricing-pressures

However, companies who adopt a Sales CRM as a tool for Sales Enablement achieve some pretty impressive results…
Check this out:

crm-results

These results from Aberdeen Research prove that by having the right mindset to use a CRM effectively, impressive results can be achieved… and consistently!

Sadly though, an estimated 25-60% of CRM projects fail to meet expectations.

But fear not…

In this article, I’m going to share seven CRM best practices for 2017.  After reading all the way to the end, you’ll be able to identify the right sales solution to guarantee 2017 as your best year yet.

So let’s get into it:

#1 – Clean, Reliable, and Up-To-Date Data

clean-reliable-and-up-to-date-data

Having clean, reliable, and up-to-date information in the CRM is essential for team collaboration.

But let’s be honest… do you really want to spend your time checking through last month’s data, and cleaning it up?

Of course not…

This is why it’s essential you choose a CRM that does this automatically.  Some beneficial features that’ll save you time and keep things in check automagically include:

  • Duplication Prevention
  • Lead Age Indicators
  • Deal Movement Tracking – more on this later.

Unless you enjoy data entry, I urge you to check whether your CRM is capable of all of the above.  It’s 2017 and it’s about time your CRM acted like it!

Related: CRM Segmentation: Knowing Your Customers Better and Preventing Data Clutter

#2 – Company Wide Snapshot

company-wide-snapshot

Another CRM best practice for 2017: Clarity.

“Clarity affords focus.” – Thomas Leonard.

Your CRM dashboard needs to be the first thing you see every day.  It’s the central control and pulse of the company.

At one glimpse you should be able to achieve full clarity over your company’s most important metrics.

As a salesperson this may include:

  • Your sales goals
  • Current leads you’re working
  • How those leads are responding to communications you sent the prior day

As a sales manager you need to be able to see:

  • Your team’s goals
  • Lead sources and their conversion rates for accurate forecasting
  • Top loss reasons so you can support your team in areas of weakness

Ultimately having this kind of clarity and visibility over the company’s performance brings everyone that much closer together, and highlights areas of weakness that you can focus on improving for the most impactful uplifts in performance.

Without it, you’re simply lost at sea.

Related: Sourcing Data from All Angles for Valuable Market Insight and Your Rally Road Book Is Your Sales Forecast.

#3 – Segmentation

Segmentation is the first step towards personalization.  But taking a step back, lead segmentation is about organizing your data so that relevant contact information is never more than a click away.

A CRM best practice for 2017 involves the automation of lead segmentation.

What do I mean exactly?

Let’s say you’ve just finished an initial Online Meeting with a new prospect.

You’ve spent 15 minutes on the call via your CRM’s SmartDialler, and have managed to successfully qualify them into the next stage.

As such, you simply drag and drop the prospect from the “Online Meeting” column to the “Push Column”.

Segmentation

The lead gets automatically tagged, a follow-up task is created, and an email is triggered thanking the prospect for their time on the call.

Automagical.  This is 2017.

Related: Make and Receive Calls Without Leaving Your CRM: Introducing Teamgate SmartDialer and Beyond Sales: How To Make CRM Work For Any Profession

#4 – Source Tracking

This is by FAR the latest and greatest CRM best practice for 2017!

Source Tracking is a great way of accurately predicting sales forecasts based on where a new prospect has entered your CRM from.

For example:

  • Facebook
  • Google
  • LinkedIn
  • Bob’s DIY Podcast

….you get the idea.

source-tracking

At Teamgate we’re huge advocates of the Inbound Sales process.  This means we typically generate the majority of our new leads via web forms.

(By the way, you should be too!)

Now, based on where that lead has come from, we want to know the likelihood of that lead converting to a sale.

Fortunately for you and me, it’s 2017 and the top CRMs will track this automatically for you.

I can’t stress enough the importance of making sure your CRM has this capability.

It’ll highlight the lead sources that are most lucrative for your business so that you can invest more in what’s working, and less in what’s not.

Deal? Good.

Related: Networking and Capturing of New Leads with CRM

#5 – Deal Movement Tracking

Ever had a deal slip through the cracks?

Look, I know – we’re busy salesmen and it happens all the time, but there are measures we can take to ensure it doesn’t happen to you and me.

Deal movement tracking is brand new for 2017 and essentially allows salespeople to see the active movement a deal has gone through from stage to stage.

deal-movement-tracking

Why is this important?

With a quick look at your CRM’s Deal Movement board, you’ll be able to see in an instant which deals haven’t moved an inch.  Allowing you to jump right on them and move them forward.

No more deal slippage!

In fact, Deal Movement Tracking is a real timesaver if you return from a vacation, and want to see what’s happened whilst you’ve been away.

Simply fire up the Deal Movement Board and see all the progress that’s happened whilst you’ve been away – obviously great for sales managers, and highly motivating for salespeople!

Related: How to Stop Being the Second Best in Sales?

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#6 – Geographical Insights

Does your current CRM allow you to see where all of your contacts are based on a map inside your deals view?

Ok, so this one may not be relevant to all businesses.  However, if you’re an international company it’s a great way of quickly visualizing which countries are performing best for you.

Not an essential one in my opinion, but a great insights tool that requires no additional input on your part.

Seriously though, it’s very cool.  Just take a look at this example taken from Teamgate:

geographical-insights

#7 – Personalisation

Lastly, and probably one of the most important features of our CRM, as we move into 2017, is the ability to get personal.

As salespeople, we sometimes fall guilty about making our prospects feel like a number in a system.  Cold callers (yes, some businesses still sell like it’s 1982) have probably a lot to answer for on this front.

However, 2017 is the year to pay extra attention to personalization.

Why?

It makes our prospects feel like we care because we take the time to care about what’s important to them.

This is a quote I like to use a lot when talking about influential sales tactics.

“People don’t buy when they understand.  They buy when they feel understood.”

Like that?  It’s so true though, right?

So how can your CRM best support this in 2017?

Your CRM should have a contact timeline where all calls, emails, website, and link clicking actions are recorded automatically.

personalisation

 

This means anytime you communicate with a prospect you can see the specific user journey they’ve been on all right there in front of you.  And as such, you can speak to them in a way that fits the experience you know they’ve had so far.

Conclusion

Like anything, there are two types of people in regards to Sales CRMs.

  1. Those who blame it for their inability to perform to their highest level.
  2. Those who embrace is it as a Sales Enablement tool.

Hopefully, these CRM best practices for 2017 have got you thinking about all the things you could be leveraging from a modern-day sales tool in your own sales team or business.

In summary, our top performers are going to be capitalizing on all of the following:

  1. Clean, Reliable, and Up-To-Date Data
  2. Company-Wide Snapshot for instant Clarity
  3. Contact Segmentation
  4. Deal Source Tracking
  5. Deal Movement Tracking
  6. Geographical Insights
  7. Personalization

Let’s make 2017 your best year yet!

Other than ensuring that your SaaS product is running like a well-oiled machine, do you know the other thing that keeps developers up at night?

They would ask themselves how to increase their sales.

Mind you, acquiring new customers is one of the most challenging things that you should do when you are in SaaS. No wonder some companies would tap the help of a SaaS marketing agency to take the load off of their shoulders.

Nonetheless, acquiring sales is one of the most rewarding things about SaaS. That’s why we have listed down five tactics that can help you boost your SaaS sales.

Generate Leads Using PPC

Pay-per-click may seem a boring lead generation technique, but it can be the most efficient. After all, you just simply need to write the ad copies, create a landing page, run the campaign, and start seeing results.

Nonetheless, you can use this tactic to target your preferred users. A good example is a business manager who is looking for an alternative to the software that they are already using.

If you are able to attract his attention using your PPC ads, the next thing you should expect to happen is that he will click it, and he will be redirected to your landing page.

However, instead of directing a site visitor to a landing page that explains what makes your SaaS product awesome, we suggest that you use a comparison landing page. It is the kind of landing page wherein you compare your product versus leading brands.

A great example of this is MailerLite’s pricing and feature comparison page.

What makes a comparison landing page work?

For one, it gives your target users the information they need. It shows how affordable your SaaS product is compared to others, as well as the better features that you can offer. It simply answers the question, “What makes you the right choice?”

Stay Connected Using Social Media

Regardless of whether you are targeting individual users or business owners, there is a big chance that the majority of them haven’t made up their minds about your SaaS product yet.

The rest are divided between those who love you and those who hate you.

Luckily, you can connect to these three kinds of target users through social media. Here’s how:

Use Client Testimonials as Social Proof

User testimonials are the best kind of social proof that you can get, and you should leverage it whenever you have the chance.

You can turn it into a case study, for example, and share it on social media. Or you can feature one of your clients in a Facebook video to showcase how your SaaS product was able to achieve their goal.

A great example would be Shopify’s feature on Kurasu as part of their #Shopify1Million campaign.

Properly Address Negative Issues

Using social media to address negative feedback from haters has two benefits:

  1. It sets the record straight before it gets out of hand.
  2. It lets you demonstrate your superb customer service.

Doing so allows you to quell rumors and inaccurate complaints, as well as earn the respect of your audience.

Educate Your Undecided Prospects

As mentioned earlier, the majority of your target users are undecided about your SaaS product. Fortunately, you can use social media to educate them on what makes you a better choice.

Did they send an inquiry via Facebook? Make sure to reply promptly. You can also direct them to the right resources, be it to your website’s knowledge base section or to a particular post on your page.

The key here is to directly answer their queries so that you can educate them on the value of what you offer.

Get Featured on Review Sites

Here’s the thing, your clients definitely do their homework before making a purchase. In fact, 66% of software buyers said that reading product reviews could have an impact on their buying decision.

As such, it would be a good idea to get featured on third-party review sites such as PCMag. First, review sites make it easy for your target users to compare products. Second, they are deemed more trustworthy than vendor sites (a.k.a. your website).

There are various ways to get featured on review sites.

One, you can partner with tech blogs, give them free access to your SaaS product for a limited time in exchange for a detailed review. There are also paid options wherein you pay a review site to review your product and share it with their network or place it on a “Featured Review” section.

Getting featured on review websites does not only validate your product, but it also helps your own website to earn backlinks from credible sources.

Use Strong Trust Signals

In SaaS marketing, credibility is gold.

There is a big chance that your target user already knows what your SaaS product is, as well as the solution it provides. But can you deliver your promise?

This is where strong trust signals come in. It allows you to project that your product is credible and reliable.

Here are some quick tips on how you can display your credibility:

  1. Use well-known trust seals. Trust seals from the likes of Norton, BBB, and Visa or Mastercard helps allay your prospects’ fears and concern about data privacy and security.
  2. Feature client testimonial. As mentioned earlier, it is the best kind of social proof that you could get. That’s because it demonstrates that your products can deliver results.
  3. Provide case studies. Case studies illustrate what your SaaS product can do, just like a client testimonial. But in addition, it gives your prospects a walkthrough on a particular use case that may be similar to theirs.
  4. Put customer service contact details front-and-center. Doing so simply shows that you are accessible should a prospect need your help or has an inquiry.

Offer a Free Trial

It is a no-brainer that offering free trial has become the standard in the SaaS industry. Otherwise, it could hinder your conversion rate.

Sure, your trust signals can put your prospects’ minds at ease, but a free trial gives them comfort to give your product a try. Plus, being able to tinker your software allows them to evaluate whether your product suits their needs.

On your end, this is a great opportunity to generate and capture leads that you can nurture later on and turn into paying clients.

Nonetheless, it is a rule of thumb that your trial period should not be longer than 14 days. After all, most prospects jump ship after three days.

SaaS is like the F1 race of the IT industry. It is fast-paced and highly competitive. Thus, the best way to get ahead of the competition is not just to work hard, but also to implement effective tactics that can help increase your SaaS sales.

Startups – they can either be exciting, scary or both at the same time. The prospect of getting into business to address a pain point someone or another has experienced can be daunting, and thinking about how to keep your startup sustainable and profitable can also be a little frightening. But growing a startup (and keeping it afloat) is easier now more than ever. For the past years, growth hacking has been the way to go to make even the newest startups flourish. 

Growth hacking is exactly what it sounds like — it means to explore, experiment with, and ‘hack into’ the most creative ideas that revolve around making your product or service appeal to your market so that they help key aspects of your business grow. We’re talking experience marketing, UX and UI, data, surveys, and trial and error of all sorts. Yes, it will take more than just one growth hacking strategy to find out what makes your market tick.

But don’t be intimidated. Although growth hacking sounds like it has to involve a lot of things a lot of times in order for you to succeed, there are some standard ideas you can try to help hack your startup’s fast growth and fast track it to your market’s radar: 

1. Freebies

One actionable growth hacking strategy you can implement right now involves a little tweak in your website’s landing page (if it’s not already been done): instead of showing your latest product or a sale first, show a freebie first. Who doesn’t love a good freebie? Attracting first-timers to your start-up with a no-strings-attached freebie will help you gather pertinent information easier because the front isn’t that you’re asking anything from them (even though in reality you’re essentially generating leads), but a free, ‘opt-out-able’ resource for them instead. This is an especially popular growth hacking strategy for life coaches and the like. Showcase your freebie via a lightbox or a pop-up every time someone visits your landing page. If your product or service really resonates with them, then your market will only look forward to your email communications more and more.

2. And while you’re at it… Loyalty Programs

If you’re giving out freebies to people who have discovered your product or service for the first time, then all the more should you give something out to the people who keep your business a part of their constants to capture loyal customers. Give your loyal users a reward for something as simple as a referral, i.e., customers can get their own referral links they can use to give out to their network and everyone gets a reward in return. This is a favorite growth hack strategy for retail stores and ecommerce sites to get more people to sign up and at least view their site. The rest will then be up to how appealing their site really is to their target market. 

You can also reward your loyal customers with points, freebies after a certain purchase, or even free shipping forever once they reach a certain number of years engaging with your business.

3. Make A Worthy (Marketing) Investment

If you’re really dedicated and hell-bent on growing your business, then investing in the experts will benefit your goals the most. Invest in working with marketing and growth experts, as they’re the ones who really focus on collecting and analyzing data, on discovering and infiltrating potential markets, and on opening new distribution channels to move your brand forward. They can probably do all the growth hacking ideas in this article better than the words could explain it. So if you really mean business, touching base with growth marketing experts who know product innovation, user experience management, and technical target marketing will earn you back more of what you invested in them in the first place.

4. Look Big

If you wanna be it, show up as it.

You can easily make your business look bigger than it seems (especially to potential investors) if you stay consistent and begin your marketing with premium aesthetics. Something as simple as a consistent branded look will have most consumers trusting your business just because you look credible. Apart from that, simply having multiple contact numbers or multiple addresses/P.O boxes across the country will make you look less of a startup and more of an up-and-running company. If your service is able to reach a wider area (i.e. you ship internationally), all the better to boost your business with. Finally, don’t be afraid to publish customer testimonials. Social affirmation can definitely make a company look big and credible.

5. Look Even Bigger with Premium 

A good growth hacking strategy to try as well, if your business model allows it, is to ‘split’ your product between free and premium. By allowing everyone to experience your product or service for free, you’re getting your foot in the door by giving them their most basic needs from your business. Strategically pepper this free version with invitations to go premium, constantly citing how it truly is an upgrade from the former. Several photo editing apps and music apps use this growth hacking strategy with much success!

Are you ready to make it big? Try these growth hacking ideas for your own start-up today and let us know just how well it worked out for you!

Many B2B businesses use social media just to be present.

However, just being on social media and regularly putting your content up doesn’t guarantee that your sales will immediately go up.

You may invest thousands of dollars in making high-quality content, and your sales still will be floppy and unstable.

So, what are you missing out on?

The secret is in building strong relationships with your followers/customers/target audience.

In marketing, specifically in customer relations management (CRM), it’s commonly known as social selling.

Social selling is the strategy to develop relationships that become a part of the sales process. This strategy is often applied using social networks and involves:

  • sharing relevant content
  • direct interaction with potential buyers
  • personalization and personal branding
  • social listening techniques (involving user-generated content, influencers, customer support, etc.)

Ultimately, it’s not just about sharing content that’s high in value. The relationships between a business and a potential buyer are multifaceted. It’s all about building a strong connection, and businesses are paying more and more attention to become closer with their customers.

What do the numbers say?

According to Impact, with the reference to several statistics sources:

  • Businesses that employ social selling, are able to attract 51% more opportunities than their competitors, and outsell their non-social competitors in the 78% of the time.
  • Companies that use social selling strategies are 40% more likely to hit their revenue goals.
  • 39% of businesses reported that social selling helped them reduce the time they had to spend researching potential leads.

Sales for Life has put together a comprehensive infographic, describing the benefits of social selling for B2B:

  

Ultimately, Impact reports that 31% of businesses named social selling the main strategy that helped them build stronger and deeper relationships with their buyers.

So, what essential steps should you follow to drive your sales with social media, using CRM and social selling?

Let’s take a look.

1. Automate to Boost Sales

First of all, let’s discuss the technical part of driving sales.

With any social media platform, you’re already targeting thousands if not millions of people, potentially getting thousands of leads. Managing this all without using technology is barely possible, and since social selling is about a personal approach, personalization can be hardly achieved without involving technology.

So, unless you thought ahead when created your online store, and chose a tool with all top popular social media platforms integrated, the first and the most important step is to automate customer relationship management.

At Teamgate, we developed a number of highly effective tools that help businesses effectively manage their relationship with customers on every stage:

  • Collecting leads by converting visitors into qualified leads, grabbing leads from social channels, like LinkedIn, transferring email requests to the Sales CRM as new leads, and even including missed calls as qualified leads.
  • Identifying and organizing leads by prioritizing them more strategically to grow revenue.
  • Managing and accelerating sales to multiply sales and build a highly personalized connection with your customers, no matter where they are located.

Of course, to track the progress, your business will be provided with automatically generated analytics and reports.

What are the benefits of sales automation?

First of all, CRM automation tools provide businesses with a sales dashboard, which helps to keep track of sales activity and progress.

In addition, all contacts are easy to manage, thus, allowing a more personalized approach.

And, of course, you will be in line with your KPIs and sales goals, as automation makes it easier to trace lead opportunities as well as bottlenecks, and other issues.

2. Take Advantage of B2B Influencer Marketing

Now, let’s take a look at the content strategy that performs the best in terms of driving sales on social media.

Of course, you’ve heard about influencer marketing. It’s one of the most versatile content strategies that has helped many businesses to become household names and gain millions of new buyers.

Commonly perceived as an effective B2C marketing strategy, influencer marketing, however, is expected to be one of the most in-demand solutions to help B2B businesses boost sales.

According to Marketing Land:

  • content shared by an influencer can provide a B2B business with 11x higher ROI
  • 92% of businesses who’ve employed influencer marketing say that it’s the most effective strategy when it comes to reach audiences and attract leads
  • that’s why 71% of businesses, both B2B and B2C, invest in ongoing ambassadorships

How are B2B businesses incorporating influencer marketing?

Here’s an example.

Cherwell Software, a B2B company specializing in IT Service Management software, launched the campaign to increase brand awareness, promote thought leadership, and increase sales by targeting more IT companies.

To achieve their goals, they invited 15 influencers – field experts – to co-create content that promotes next-generation IT Service Management solution. As a result, these experts produced blog posts, an e-book, developed a landing page as well as organic and paid content to reach the goals of the campaign.

What’s the result?

Their content, the e-book, in particular, was viewed 170% more than other content, and this campaign was accountable for 22% of all sales during the year.

What’s the place of social media in all this?

It’s well-known that influencer marketing is mostly about social media. Influencers share the content that they co-create on their social platforms. For B2B businesses, this can be Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

By doing so, they help you reach out to more audiences, as they redirect their followers to your business via their content. As a result, you get more potential leads, which you can then convert using CRM automation tools.

3. Go Live

Now, since we’ve discussed the type of content that helps achieve personalization in order to drive sales, let’s take a look at content that can be used for social listening and direct interaction with potential buyers.

They say that there’s no universal type of content for every social media platform. That’s not exactly true, however. “Videos have proven to be effective on every social platform, with 98% of people giving their preference to video content, comparing to only 67% of people who support static content”, says Neightan White, a researcher at TopWritersReview.

Over the past year, live video has become one of the most in-demand content types on social media. Brands regularly go live to communicate with their followers and answer frequently asked questions.

HubSpot, for instance, has been very active on Facebook, regularly going live to cover the latest trends on social media and answer the most asked questions:

 

Facebook live video function includes a live comment section, where a brand can communicate with the customers, allowing a better connection and a more personal approach.

Will it work for you?

This is exactly the type of content you’re looking for when it comes to CRM and social selling.

People are already loving this content type, as it brings brands closer to them. 80% of consumers have already confirmed that they would rather watch a live video than read a blog.

For B2B businesses, live videos work with the same effectiveness as with B2C brands. This content has a significant impact on lead conversion, bringing you more potential buyers, and ultimately, increasing sales.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s a common idea that it’s harder for B2B brands to have an effective social media strategy. It’s often perceived that B2B brands can only gain new customers and drive sales by taking part in long boring meetings.

This is far from reality, however.

Today, B2B businesses can lead a successful social media strategy that can help them drive sales even more effectively than long boring meetings.

Achieving your sales goals, in this case, depends on your relationship with your followers, who are also your potential buyers. Using CRM automation tools and producing high-quality content that brings value, creates a personalized connection, and allows direct interaction between a brand and a customer, has a significant impact on successfully achieving your sales goals.

 

Inbound organizations are 4 times as likely to rate their marketing strategy as effective. (HubSpot)

Inbound lead generation is the holy grail of marketing. No business can survive without leads and almost every business struggles with keeping their sales funnel full and happy. Why is that?

Mostly because there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy that can guide marketers through the process of attracting, connecting and converting prospects into paying customers. That would be too easy. 

There is, however, a skeleton of the most effective ideas that can be used to drive sales for any type of business. So, if you’re like any of the passionate marketers who find themselves in deep waters when leads dry up, take out your ideas book because you’re about to get inspired. 

#1 Develop and automate your sales funnel

Mapping inbound lead generation to your sales funnel will enable you to effectively target prospects in every stage of the buying journey by producing relevant and engaging content in the form of blogs, guides, videos, infographics and more. Inbound lead generation is only effective when it’s targeted to specific segments and optimized to progress prospects towards a conversion and ultimately, a sale. It will help you to address and overcome common objections, attract qualified leads that have a genuine interest in your product and prioritize higher value prospects.

Once you develop your sales funnel, you will immediately spot the drop-off points that indicate optimization opportunities and get a deeper insight into your customers’ mindset — what’s driving their actions, what problems they’re trying to solve and how close to a purchase/conversion they are. Marketing automation will give you the means to automatically send the right content to the right customers at the right time, resulting in reduced sales cycle complexity and conversion time. According to Pardot, 77% of buyers want different content at each stage of their research. What’s more, studies show that nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

Good news is that almost every marketing effort can be automated. For instance, Buffer lets you schedule your social media content in advance, Zapier makes it easy to connect different apps in order to automate workflows, while IFTTT brings the apps and devices you use every day together, streamlining your experiences. Email automation is also a crucial part of inbound lead generation strategy, so ensure it’s implemented with your sales funnel in mind and creates maximum value for prospects. 

#2  Make data-driven decisions

Effective inbound lead generation campaigns are highly reliant on customer and market data. Acting on a hunch in the marketing world can be a really costly mistake. If you produce content that’s irrelevant to your target audience or is undiscoverable due to low-quality keywords, you will not only waste your time and energy, but also clog your sales funnel with unqualified leads.

Inbound lead generation often focuses on feeding the top of the sales funnel, which represents the awareness stage and deals with prospects that have no knowledge of your brand or don’t even know (yet) that they need your product. The only way to get in front of this crowd is to aim broad, targeting various angles and pain points that could grab their attention. Before you begin crafting your inbound lead generation strategy and producing educational content, use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or Semrush to establish the most valuable keywords with high search volume and conversion potential. For example, creating content around generic, popular keywords like ‘blogging’ or ‘sales tips’ will put you in direct competition with thousands of other content creators who are exploring this subject. But if you dig deeper and discover narrower, longtail keywords that concern a specific, niche topic, your chances of getting to the top of the search results and staying top of mind increase significantly.

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A rich list of target keywords will help you generate ideas for your content campaigns and tools like Buzzsumo will help you identify what type of content performs well for any topic or competitor. Making well-informed decisions is a stepping stone to inbound lead generation campaigns — your content must solve a problem for your customers, not fill a gap in your editorial calendar.

#3 Sharpen your copy to tap into emotions

Lots of people take copywriting for granted. Just because you can put a sentence together, doesn’t mean you’re a copywriter. Crafting highly converting copy is a skill that takes a lot of honing and can lead to significantly higher conversions when done right. In turn, a bad copy is a surefire way to lose prospects immediately after they land on your website or your landing page. Copy that’s too vague, salesy or misleading can even hurt your brand and earn you some bad karma.

Focusing on benefits rather than features is one of the most important rules of good copywriting. What’s the difference between the two? Benefits-focused copy strives to answer the question “what value will my customer get out of using this?”. Features-focused copy, on the other hand, tackles the more technical questions, such as “what part of my product lets the customer get that value?”.

Unless you’re targeting a very niche, technical audience, your prospects won’t care much about the specifics — you’ll need to connect with them on a deeper level and evoke emotions to prompt them to take the desired action. Packing your copy with action verbs and focusing on storytelling rather than plain selling is guaranteed to lead to better engagement and higher conversions. 

Remember that writing for the masses will weaken your copy. You should focus on trying to convert a smaller number of better-suited people rather than trying to please every visitor. Ensuring your copy is peppered with the right amount of attention-grabbing CTAs will help you generate more leads through the content you create.

#4 Use natural imagery and avoid stock photos

inbound lead generation with natural imagery

Image credit: Stocksy

Finally, someone has stopped the awful, cheesy stock photography from infecting every blog and website on the planet. It’s been proven, time after time, that human brain processes and engages with visual information much better and faster than any other medium. Inbound lead generation campaigns often involve highly visual content, such as videos and infographics, in an effort to lock people’s attention and generate enough interest to influence their decisions. 

Thanks to the rise of the new generation free stock images libraries, such as Unsplash or Stocksy, embellishing your content with high-quality, natural imagery is easier than ever before. Great-looking images can have a massive impact on lead generation efforts if they’re purposefully woven into the rest of the content, adding an additional motivation for consumers to click through, share or buy.

However, keep in mind that the images you use should follow your brand guidelines (more about this later) and contribute to your brand identity. If you illustrate your content with random photos that look great but add little to no value, you’ll risk losing consumer’s interest as soon as they realize the content doesn’t match the visual they chose to click on. 

#5 Design smart opt-ins

Imagine walking up to a stranger at a grocery store and asking for their email address because you’d like to send them something you think they’ll love. Would you be more surprised if they happily shared their personal contact details with you or if they gave you a finger? The same rule applies to online communication, especially when it comes to the buying/selling relationship between a business and its customers.

Inbound lead generation campaigns often focus on capturing email addresses – whether you’re inviting people to register for your webinar or download a free ebook, the ultimate goal is to get into their inbox and send personalized follow-ups in order to bring them back to your site and ultimately, convert.

In the digital age, email address is a powerful currency whose value grows over time. It takes more than a boring signup form to convince people to exchange their email address in return for something particularly valuable to them. Tools like Sumo and OptinMonster will make email list building feel like a walk in the park — you can create beautiful pop-ups that appear on clicks, timers and before visitors exit your site, add sliding bars or sidebar forms and watch your traffic and mailing list thrive. 

#6 Make your lead generation forms friendlier

People are growing really impatient with long, poorly designed lead capturing forms. The immediate gratification that all online users seek is an extremely powerful factor when it comes to lead generation forms. People want what they want and they want it fast. The form is a hot spot for turning visitors into leads for your business, so making sure it’s optimized to cause as little frustration as possible is key.

If you’re not having much luck with getting visitors to fill in your forms, try reducing the friction by removing unnecessary form fields and cutting down on the number of required fields. Adding a prominent call-to-action button, placing the form above the fold and reassuring visitors that their personal details are in safe hands should also contribute to boosting your conversion rate. Make your forms look less like forms by using non-standard user interface elements, such as clickable images or toggle sliders, and use conditional logic to get more information from your users and be able to target specific audience segments. 

#7 A/B test everything

inbound lead generation using ab testing

Image credit: mobileseopros

Crafting a stellar landing page from scratch can require serious design and copywriting know-how. You will make mistakes, and that’s fine. What’s not fine is to think that once a campaign or a landing page is launched, you should hurl yourself at building the next one. Wrong.  

Sometimes, a tiny, seemingly insignificant tweak, such as changing the color of a CTA button, can skyrocket your conversions. A good rule of thumb for any business that’s experimenting with online marketing techniques is to A/B test everything. Running targeted experiments will give you unprecedented insight into your customer base, their preferences, and habits. It’s the only way to ensure you’re always running the best performing version of your website or campaign.

Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is one of the best A/B testing tools for marketers. It lets users tweak, optimize and personalize their website with minimal IT help and takes the guesswork out of conversion optimization. You can also use Google Analytics (GA) to track and measure the impact of changes that you make, but bear in mind that it’s only a basic feature, so your findings will be limited.

#8 Provide value and overdeliver

“Promise an atlas, deliver the world” is a killer advice for those seeking to take their inbound lead generation to a higher level. The only way to earn your customers’ trust is to continuously provide value without asking for anything in return. In a similar way that online retailers run merchandising campaigns to entice their shoppers to come back and spend money with them, businesses invest in educational inbound lead generation campaigns to deliver value-packed content in the form of free ebooks, video courses, cheat sheets, workbooks, and more, to nurture the leads that aren’t ready to make a purchase yet.

Giving top quality content away for free is a reliable way to build rapport with your visitors and position yourself as an expert in the field. If you keep releasing genuinely useful content on regular basis, you will be able to build a loyal and engaged customer base as well as attract more top-of-the-funnel traffic. 

And if your content hits a sweet spot with your customers, chances are they’ll share it with their social networks, giving you extra exposure and potentially driving more traffic to the site. Long-form content is also an excellent way to build links and get some SEO juice, so if you do it right, the benefits of over delivering are crystal clear.

#9 Establish brand guidelines and stay consistent

You may have spent hours crafting the perfect logo, spent a lot of money on a copywriter who crafted the perfect tagline and even printed a ton of beautifully designed business cards – but none of this will stay consistent if you have not established your brand’s guidelines. A brand guideline is a set of tools and design rules on how to use your brand’s elements. The brand’s guideline usually comes in a book or PDF format, laying out how your brand works and how different design elements come together to form your brand’s identity. The brand’s guideline is used by anyone working on your brand – a designer, a copywriter or anyone else creating marketing material for your brand. 

The elements in the brand’s guidelines will differ from business to business, but every guideline should have the following: 

  • Color palette – a set of colors used throughout all your brand’s graphics
  • Tone of voice –  are you funny, persuasive, informative?
  • Typography – a typeface for headings and body of text associated with your brand (you may create your own typeface)
  • Different versions of the brand’s logo – video, social media, print
  • Content style – is your content image-heavy? Longform? Bite-sized?

It may be tempting to adjust the color of your logo for a certain marketing piece, but the change may be unrecognizable to your audience or client and so it will not generate any leads. The guideline will put in place a set of rules, which will ensure your brand’s elements are used consistently and effectively.  

Luckily, you can easily create your guideline yourself. Fortify and Canva both offer free templates to get you started right away or create your own original templates, Hemingway app will help you write impactful and consistent content and Adobe Spark will provide you with all the tools you need to create your logo and other graphics.

#10 Use analytics

inbound lead generation using google analytics

Analyzing your data will allow you to better understand your consumers and how to reach them. Invest time and effort in getting to know your users’ journeys through your site, which will help you to benchmark marketing campaigns that are not working. Among many analytical tools, FullStory offers the unique opportunity to not only get to know your consumers on a deep level by tracking their engagement with a new feature or analyzing campaign conversion rates, it also allows you to see (in video format) their journey on your website – where they went, what issues they encountered and what prompted them to make a purchase or drop off. These insights are made available across your whole team, which will help you to make executive decisions how to best use your resources. 

Analytical tools may also be a key to generating a significant amount of new leads. For example, use tools, such as Hotjar, to identify the hotspots of lead generation on your website. Hotjar offers click and scroll heatmaps (among many other great features) to measure the most engaging and capturing content. The data may reveal that certain keywords are generating a large number of leads, as a result, you can focus on those keywords when writing content for your site or marketing campaigns in order to generate more leads. 

Use Google Analytics (GA) to measure and increase your ROI and drive more traffic to your site. GA is a very robust tool and provides you with an enormous amount of data on your social media traffic referral, page visits and average time per page. Use the tools provided to identify content your consumers enjoy and which channel reaches them best, and produce more to generate new leads. 

#11 Optimize your content for search engine optimization (SEO) and social media optimization (SMO)

The foundation of your inbound lead generation efforts is the content you produce. Produce valuable and relevant content to attract and engage your target audience. Ensure your content is impactful and drives your audience to share it. High-quality content will help you break through the noise and generate more leads.

Content with value is important in increasing your SEO, because search engines equate high-quality content with a high-quality website. Keep track of your content and conduct a content audit to see how much of your content falls into the following categories – informative or promotional. Ensure that you produce a good mix of content, including visuals, and start sharing it on social media. Identify the keywords you want your website to be associated with in search engines and use tools such as Google Keywords to increase your SEO. The more popular your content is on social media, the more Google considers it to be of high value, so it boosts your SEO rankings.

Increasing your SMO will automatically increase your SEO, so it is important you optimize your content for that. Since SMO is all about your presence on social media, start by engaging with your audience. You must comment, like and share your own, as well as others’ posts. Include a CTA button at the end of your posts and encourage people to share, comment and like. Become a leader and provide well researched, high-quality content, which will add value to your readers’ lives. Make it easy for your followers to share your content by providing share buttons, ensure all your social icons are clearly visible on your site and provide subscription options (email, newsletter, RSS).

#12 Use social proof and testimonials to build credibility

In order to successfully generate more inbound leads, you must produce content that your followers will trust. One way of building credibility is using social proof. It can be anything from a recommendation from a friend to an expert’s review. If you can get an expert from your field to recommend your product, make sure you make it loud and clear on your website – people always seek for advice and reviews before making a purchase. Having a well-known figure backing you can be a great way to secure those inbound leads. 

Don’t forget to include and ask for testimonials from your clients. Testimonials are among the most persuasive forms of social proof, as those are the words of a consumer and not an expert and so are perceived as more relatable/trustworthy. Allow the newcomers to make decisions based on what others like them have experienced. Include a high-quality photo to accompany each testimonial, as recent research has shown it makes the testimonials more believable.

Another way to increase your credibility is by increasing the engagement on your content. The volume of engagement (likes, shares, comments) indicates the value of your content. If your post receives a thousand retweets it is more likely that more people will click and read your content. This will also help you increase your SEO and your audience reach, which can generate new inbound leads.

#13 Employ urgency

Last but not least, inducing the sense of urgency is a great way of generating new inbound leads or nudging an undecided consumer to make a purchase. One way of employing urgency is by creating a deadline and using time-sensitive language in an email or a newsletter. Use language such as ‘Limited time only’ or ‘ends tomorrow’ to urge traffic to your site to make a purchase. Include a countdown clock in your newsletter and across your social media, to remind your followers of the urgency. You may wish to send a last minute email for a more dramatic effect. 

Create demand and need with scarcity. Urge your followers with ‘only 3 left’  and ‘while stocks last’ products and offers. The rapidly dwindling supplies can convert the unsure followers into inbound leads. However, ensure that you are honest about the quantities of stock, your followers will find out if you’re lying and they won’t be happy. Invest time and effort into your headline and keep your body of text concise and brief. You want your followers to feel the pressure of the scarcity of your product – you do not want them to get lost in your newsletter.

Finally, use a clear Call-To-Action button. All your efforts will be wasted if you do not tell your followers what you want them to do with the information provided. Make your CTA a highly visible link or a button with action-orientated wording. You can also use Fomo, a tool which showcases recent consumer actions to increase conversion on your site and helps you generate more leads.

Increase-Your-Sales-Leads-Productivity-Without-Breaking-Down_DONE

Takeaways

According to Hubspot, 65% of marketers admit that generating traffic and leads is their top marketing challenge. One way to think about the inbound lead generation is to imagine it like a spiderweb — every campaign is a silk thread; the more threads you have, the bigger is your web, the higher are your chances of catching something. It takes time and skill to spin a wide enough web but it will last you a long time, too. Without leads, your business will perish.  

A diverse inbound lead generation strategy will most certainly lead to a boost in sales. But the main takeaways to consider include:

  • Map inbound lead generation to your sales funnel to be able to effectively target prospects in every stage of the buying journey.
  • Use data to drive your decisions: research keywords and trending content to start from a strong place.
  • Get serious about copy — focus on communicating the benefits of your product rather than features, keep it actionable and tap into human emotions.
  • Take advantage of free high-quality natural stock images — there can never be too many images.
  • Use tools available to you to streamline the process of building a mailing list and driving traffic.
  • Make sure your lead generation forms are asking for essential information only and are simple and convenient to fill in.
  • Spend time A/B testing changes to your website, email or content campaigns to launch with confidence and improve your conversions.
  • Create skyscraper educational content to educate and engage your visitors.
  • Establish your brand guidelines early on, so that you can align all of your marketing efforts.
  • Use analytics to better understand your customer’s journey through the site.
  • Ensure you’re producing the right mix of content, including visuals to optimize your site’s SEO and SMO.  
  • Boost your credibility through social proof.
  • Induce a sense of urgency to prompt your buyers to make a snap buying decision.

Lead generation starts with understanding your customers, so always ask yourself “what’s in it for my customer?”

According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2016 report, more than 70% of sales professionals questioned said that closing more sales is their top priority for 2018. It appears that everyone wants to know how to increase sales.

No surprises there, right?

However, the sales territory has become more complex than ever before due to big changes within the industry.

Changes that leave the majority of businesses expecting inbound marketing services to deliver value up front, allowing for an easier close.

So why is it that we didn’t see the results of these marketing efforts last year?

The answer is simple – inbound marketing is not enough.

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At the end of the day, you need to have a deeply integrated sales and marketing process which merges both teams seamlessly. However, the first place is to start:

  1. Communicate Inbound Sales advantages to your team: However, make sure you’re familiar with the methodology yourself first.
  2. Don’t be afraid to experiment: you need to develop what we like to call “The Inbound Sales Mentality”. 


Let’s take a look at some actionable steps you can take towards creating the right approach to increasing sales in 2018!

Build An Inbound Sales Mindset

build-an-inbound-sales-mindset

As with marketing, the Internet has changed things. The buyer has more information at their fingertips than ever before, thus, the power to pick and choose from many different providers of products and services.

But it should be noted, where a good inbound marketing strategy will attract the best leads, effective inbound sales will actually close the deal and land money in the bank.

Read that last sentence again, because I think a lot of marketing guys forget this.

Remember – marketing guys crank it.  But salespeople bank it.

Focus on one particular actionable step at this stage:

You want to educate yourself first: The free hubspot Inbound Sales certification is one of the best places to start. If you don’t have time for that – find a professional or certified agency that can educate you.

Less Input, More Output

less-input-more-output

Let’s cut to the chase and acknowledge it for what it is; doing more doesn’t get you more.

Working more, doing the busy work does NOT guarantee bigger margins – in fact, much the opposite.

It’s almost 2018 and your sales team needs to be both time-savvy and smart.

Start with the classic 80/20 Pareto rule as this methodology will teach you how to increase sales.

In terms of increasing sales, focus on the 20% of prospects which produce 80% of your sales.

Actionable steps:

  1. Get your team implementing an 80/20 rule mindset: make sure to communicate it properly to ensure that your team is 100% on board with your vision.
  2. Prioritise your most active buyers: Do this instead of investing time and resources in re-engaging the less active customers in your database (using the 80/20 rule you’ll find this type of segmentation execution easier than ever).
  3. Develop trust with those buyers: Provide personalised messaging throughout all cycles of communication.

Don’t Sell (yet) – Help Instead

dont-sell-help-instead

One of the biggest mistakes sales teams make – when they think how to increase sales they think directly about what they want to do – SELL as soon as possible and SELL more.

Don’t Rush! This type of mindset creates long-term problems with today’s buyer who are not always interested in buying something instantly unless your product is hands-down the best in the market – which is pretty rare in today’s highly competitive business environment!

With Inbound sales you’re not running a sprint but a marathon, which I can assure you, is worth all the upfront hard work.

Actionable steps:

  1. Review your current assets and knowledge library: there is always something you can help with first and sell later (e.g. free consultation)
  2. Make sure you are helping in a personalised way for a client that finds your help relevant and making him easier to close
  3. Work directly with your Inbound Marketing team to provide creative solutions that would be helpful to the client (e.g. content creation tailored to specific business)

Choose A CRM That Saves You Time

Take a look around…

Your team is inspired with the new Inbound Sales methodology you’ve introduced.

More deals are being closed than ever before when you focus on your best buyers.

Everything seems to be working. Yet, when the business cycle closes we will need new leads again to reach sales quotas.

At this point, you are already asking yourself and your team, how to increase sales again so we can stay on top?

In order to achieve continuous momentum where leads are generated automatically, you need the right tools to manage, analyse, and improve your Inbound Sales.

First and foremost every business needs CRM.

But does your current CRM live up to 2018 standards to support Inbound Sales?

If you don’t have a CRM you should be worried; 2018 might not live up to your high hopes.

Actionable steps:

  1. Review your current CRM features: Does it support Inbound Sales?
  2. Calculate where your team is spending the most time: Is it inputting, importing and exporting data on daily/weekly/monthly basis, or are you focussed on communicating with the 20% of prospects who bring you 80% of the results?
  3. Calculate time taken on generating reports: Measure the time you and your team currently take to prepare reports for management and internal team meetings.

Related: Reasons Why Sales Stack is Non-Optional for Startups

Give Value For Free.  Expect Nothing in Return.

give-value-for-free-expect-nothing-in-return

Depending on your business, think of something you could provide that would be seen as “going the extra mile” when providing help.

Prospects will be blown away by free premium products or services your business commits to provide without any fluffy commitments.

This will show that you believe in the value you’re providing, but more importantly, you’re ready to invest in the prospect up front.

Actionable Steps:

  1. Review your current offerings: Could some of them be turned into a premium content that you could give away for free?
  2. Calculate (if you haven’t already) Customer Lifetime Value: If it exceeds your long-term expectations for selected buyers, make sure to award them with free premium content they can use to their advantage.
  3. Plan and create future premium content: What could you create that would work alongside highly tailored future offers?

Personalize The Whole Sales Experience

personalisation

I cannot stress this enough.

If inbound marketing provides value, inbound sales should provide a distinct sales experience from introduction and connection calls, right through to closing, and monthly reviews.

Actionable steps:

  1. Review your most active buyers: What do they like? What are their needs? Start with simple things like general communication, before adopting this throughout all your marketing and sales collateral.
  2. Arrange meetings that prospects actually enjoy attending: Convert those boring office meetings into something more imaginative; lunch, dinner or a major sporting event.
  3. Allocate additional resources: Hire additional resources to help make your prospects feel special and understood (e.g. personal account / VIP manager).

Close by advising not selling

close-by-advising-not-selling

Most sales managers think of closing as the finish line, the point where most sales teams pop open the champagne bottle, often before a prospect has signed on the dotted line.

With Inbound sales, think of the close as the starting line where and an even bigger opportunity may be waiting just around the next bend.

As experienced inbound sales professionals you are not selling, but advising right through to the point of a final decision.

And even then your main focus should be to keep supporting your buyers 100% after the deal is closed – this is how you increase sales at the end of the day.

This way you’ll not only build trust (with the opportunity to upsell), you’ll also build a reputation. This will undoubtedly convert the buyer into an advocate of your products and services, bringing new leads into your sales funnel without you having to lift a finger.

Actionable steps:

  1. Review your current closing techniques: Think about how you can continue down the sales path with extended lifetime support.
  2. Improvise with your closing phase vocabulary: Shift your focus to “advising” rather than “selling” or “closing”.
  3. Make a list of offers you can upsell or even give away: Preferably free things you could offer to buyers after they become a customer, as a piece of unexpected additional value.

Summary

In a nutshell, to really crush your 2018 sales quota you’ll need a team of devoted sales managers who will:

  1. Have an Inbound driven mindset
  2. Focus only on the biggest, most impactful areas
  3. Invest in the right, most up-to-date tools
  4. Be ready to help first, sell later
  5. Be comfortable with over-delivering through gifting premium content
  6. Adjust suitably throughout the buyer’s journey
  7. Close, but continue to advise with a focus on building loyalty and respect.

What You Need to Know About Inbound This Year

10 years ago blogging was a highly effective inbound marketing and sales strategy. Today, a brand needs more; a brand needs sparkling video, informative and interesting articles, quirky social media content, and ever-changing, vibrantly imaginative lead magnets in the attempt to remain competitive. It’s a lot to take in, but the truth is, inbound marketing moves quickly. Very quickly.

Things are forever changing, big-time. A combination of new technologies and ever evolving consumer behaviour is forcing the hand of inbound marketing to adapt even further. Sometimes it can feel like too much, just trying to stay in the loop. But, we all know one important thing; burying your head in the sand gets you nowhere.

But, try not to despair, we’re here to offer you a heads-up on this year’s hottest inbound trends? So, sit back and make sure to read the whole way through, because we’re about to reveal all the main trends you need to be aware of in the coming year.

Starting here…

Trend 1 – Virtual Reality Becomes a Real Thing

In the past, there was a notion that virtual reality requires expensive or complex equipment. But, that was before Pokemon Go appeared on the scene, offering users a virtual reality game requiring nothing more than an internet connection and a modern smartphone. Welcome to the future.

Inbound Marketing Virtual Reality

The game peaked at 25+ million active daily users, definitively demonstrating the fact that virtual reality is now a reality, a viable technology, engaging customers like never before.

Add to this the fact that 75% of Forbes’ most valuable brands are already actively investing in virtual reality, and we guess you know what that means for the future. Virtual reality technology is already built into many everyday devices, and in the coming year we’re going to see marketers enrich their content by means of this exciting new medium. A lot.

Before you think, “oh, we don’t have the budget for that”, consider this. Companies like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are finding low-tech means of employing virtual reality in their current marketing strategies.

Specifically, McDonald’s are helping customers turn cardboard boxes into smartphone-compatible virtual reality glasses. Their virtual reality marketing campaign doesn’t cost a fortune, and yours doesn’t have to either.

Here’s another trend we’re going to see a lot more of…

2. Interactive Content Everywhere

Did you know that one particular kind of content makes up 84% of Facebook’s social media shares? It’s crazy, but true. The humble quiz.

Want another wild statistic? BuzzFeed – a website famous for its quizzes – boasts an incredible 96% completion rate from participants. Who wouldn’t like that?

What these statistics reveal is that interactive content offers off-the-scale engagement potential. What the statistics don’t tell you is how few ‘serious’ businesses, and B2B organisations, are actively utilising them to their best advantage.

In fact, outside of some very discerning marketing teams – like the one behind the blockbuster T.V. series, Walking Dead – few have any interactive content at present.

In the coming year expect this to change dramatically, as quizzes, interactive whitepapers, responsive infographics and contests spread like wildfires across the plains of inbound marketing.

And, here’s another thing you can expect? An inundation of interactive mobile content, and here’s why.

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3. Mobile Will Be #1

Mobile phones have become responsible for 90% of Twitter video views. They also represent 80% of all social media traffic and, for the first time ever, over 50% of U.S. internet traffic (51.2%).

What this means is that mobile has displaced the desktop as the principal manner in which users access and interact with content. Take this on board. Mobile isn’t just a side-project; nor is it an auxiliary strategy or the secondary option. Mobile is the main means by which users connect and interact with inbound marketing.

If you want to stay competitive accept this fact and adjust accordingly. For example; users spend 89% of their mobile media time in apps. If you don’t have one, you’re short-changing your inbound marketing efforts.

In the past, information like this was nice to know, but not critical. Today, it’s imperative that you stay tuned-in and abreast of game-changing information like this.

Fortunately, you don’t have invest valuable time personally overseeing and handling this mobile-to-desktop change. In the coming year, you’ll see help arrive in the form of…

4. Robots Will Help Your Marketing

Firstly, no, not those robots!

If you’re a marketer, you may already know that an on-site, live chat function improves lead generation by as much as 400-800%. This is real news. Adding live chat functionality potentially allows you to convert your inbound traffic into actual customers, at a pace previously unimaginable.

The downside is that a live chat operator can be expensive. Even if you hire an overseas employee – for let’s say, $5 an hour – that’s still $100+/day to keep the live chat function actionable at all times.

Or at least it was – until the ChatBot came along.

Inbound Marketing Chatbots and Robots

Yes; ChatBots are back, and this time they’re smart enough to convincingly pass for humans. One of them aced the Turing test last year. In the corporate world, 25 (!!!) ChatBot start-ups were highlighted by Venture Radar.

This dramatically indicates that ChatBots are about to enter the ‘mass adoption stage’, helping you to convert inbound traffic better, and more profitably than ever before.

5. Quantity to Trump Quality. (Sometimes)

The story has long been that quality trumps volume when it comes to content. Recently, it seems, some people are starting to have serious doubts, and here’s why.

In 2015, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. His content strategy? Produce as many articles as possible – even if they’re not particularly good. Ouch!

To fulfill this strategy Bezos enlisted robots and low-quality writers to create content concerning topics, such as – this is not a joke – Logan Dooley’s 11th place finish in the Olympic Men’s Trampoline event.

The outcome?

The Washington Post currently publishes a new post every 1.2 minutes (that’s a staggering 1,200 per day). Soon after implementing this mass-content strategy, Bezos’ publication beat the New York Post, hands down, in online traffic, for the first time ever.

The premise of this case study opens the door for mass content as a viable strategy.  Don’t get me wrong, quality will remain hugely important, especially high quality, but volume is making headway. In the future it’s expected that you will see more publishers release more content than ever before.

6. Marketing Through Influencers

Influencer marketing isn’t a new phenomenon. What is new is using it as an inbound strategy. In the very recent past, we saw ‘inbound’ enter users’ conversations outside of traditional advertising channels, and we fully expect this trend to gain momentum into the future.

Here’s a prime example of some brilliantly executed inbound-influencer marketing. Kit Harrington – the actor who plays Jon Snow on the Game of Thrones series – appears in a comedy clip where his character attends a contemporary dinner party.

The results, along with being hilarious, led to 12+ million YouTube views, countless shares and a surge in inbound traffic (we assume).

Inbound Marketing Influceners

Take another example, this time from the sports news industry. Uninterupted – the sports news platform of professional basketball star, Lebron James – features videos from multiple NBA players, driving tens of thousands of views to its content, outside of traditional advertising routes.

If that’s not an effective inbound strategy, then what is?

Inbound Marketing Influcener

Uninterupted’s videos may not have solicited millions of view, but keeping in mind that it was designed as a long-tail content strategy, the numbers really are staggering. In the future you can expect to see many more influencers involved in the world of inbound marketing.

Together with what we’ve just said about change, there are two long established industry stalwarts who have no intention of going anywhere, at least not in the near future.

7. Blogging and SEO

Inbound marketing is arguably the most effective means of promoting your product or service – at least in the digital age. With continually evolving strategies involving webinars, quizzes and virtual reality content all about to make their mark, we shouldn’t forget the ‘bread and butter’ tools of successful inbound marketing. SEO and Blogging have no intention of going anywhere in a hurry – no matter how it may feel at gut level.

Let’s start with SEO. According to a HubSpot report, leads emanating from Google and Bing’s organic results, converted at a whopping 15% rate. Meanwhile, up to 80% of all users ignore paid ads in search engines. The conclusion is that SEO is indispensable – and will continue in that vein.

The same goes for blogging. Around for a long time as a means of promotion and marketing, many may get the impression that this dog has had its day. But, the fact remains that companies who publish an average of 4 blog posts per week still manage to garner 350% more traffic than those who don’t.

In other words, the biggest news for the coming year is simply this; favourites are going nowhere. SEO and blogging will continue to be a major part of effective inbound marketing – even as more and more high-tech solutions become available.

To summarize, let’s go over the 7 inbound marketing trends you can expect in the coming year:

  1. Virtual Reality Becomes a Thing
  2. Interactive Content Explodes
  3. Mobile Becomes Bigger than Desktop
  4. ChatBots Improve Your Inbound Marketing
  5. Quantity Matches Quality in Importance
  6. Influencers Become a Big Part of Inbound
  7. Blogging and SEO Remain Crucial

That’s a lot of change – but in a manner, inbound marketing is going to remain pretty much the same as it’s ever been.

The main function is still about reaching out to your potential customers with content that they want and need. It’s still about using every weapon in your arsenal to engage website visitors and nurture your leads.

What’s changing, is that companies are doing what they’ve always done, but now, they’re employing new weaponry, like robots, virtual reality technology, and complex interactive content.

The big question is this; what does it all mean for your company?

Technologies like virtual reality may indeed be much more accessible, but for now they remain far out of reach for the average business.

However, in reality, all that means is you should continue to practice the best inbound marketing strategies available to you, while keeping an eye on the evolving trends which can, and will, eventually change your industry.

7 Ways to Create Highly Converting Content Quickly

And to help you do just that, below you can download our Free PDF with 7 Ways to Make High-ROI Content Quickly. It may not feature robots, but it will make you significantly more effective at using the tools you already possess in your inbound strategy.

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The British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once said that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The sheer power of numbers to influence people’s thinking and decision-making is only getting stronger, as we’re struggling to make sense of the vast amounts of information coming at us every day. With numbers, the story is always simple – it’s either good or not so good for your business to do (or not do) something.

Sales is a fast-paced job that requires a lot of energy, planning ahead, and strategic thinking. Who’s got the time to collect interesting statistics (AND make sure they’re not lies) from around the web? Exactly, not sales reps.

So we got out there and gathered the most remarkable, eye-opening sales statistics that will shatter your old beliefs and perceptions.

A taster: According to InsideSales, if you follow up with web leads within 5 minutes, you’re 9 times more likely to convert them.

Email

Sales Statistics Emails

35% of email recipients open an email based on a subject line alone. (Comparehare)

There’s so much science behind writing a strong subject line. With a huge number of people using a subject line to decide whether to hit delete or take a peek inside, a poorly performing one can quickly become a sales rep’s worst nightmare. To connect with prospects and showcase the benefits of a certain product, or to deliver unique value, one must first entice the prospect to click through to the email. If you can improve your subject lines by implementing best email subject line practices, such as, for example, including words “alert”, “sale”, “new”, or “video”, your team will be able to boost their performance.

Email is 40 times more effective at getting new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined. (McKinsey)

Acquiring new customers is the single most important mission of every sales team. Time management and task prioritization are hugely important when it comes to generating a good amount of leads and hitting sales targets. If your sales team knows which channels perform best, they can throw all their efforts at them and improve their numbers. Email, it seems, is the king of lead generation.

Lead nurturing emails generate an 8% higher CTR compared to general email sends, which generate just a 3% rate. (HubSpot)

We have talked extensively about the importance of building a robust sales process. One of the key parts of that process is lead nurturing, for only a small fraction of all sales leads eventually convert. Since email is the preferred communication tool online, crafting better and more targeted lead nurturing campaigns helps sales teams qualify leads and move the really interested ones down the funnel much faster and more efficiently. Lead nurturing emails differ from general emails in many ways. They can be adapted to every lead’s stage in the buying cycle, they use more targeted and personalized language as well as provide higher value to prospects inspiring trust and loyalty.

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92% of buyers say they delete emails from unknown senders. (A Sales Guy)

This is an anxiety-inducing stat for sales teams that heavily rely on cold email outreach campaigns. Buyers are increasingly protective of their “personal” online space and guard their contact details fiercely. Violating that personal space will almost always end the seller-buyer relationship before it even gets a chance to spark. A much better way for sales teams to capitalize on the power of emails is through content marketing and lead nurturing campaigns. Once you get people’s consent to send promotional messages in the future, the spam folder becomes less of a threat to sales email campaigns.

The average sales rep spends up to 4 hours per day following up on leads by sending emails and faxes, following up on calls, formatting proposals, and doing other admin tasks that can be eliminated using pre-drafted templates and automation. On average it could take about 45 minutes to create an email proposal the standard way, and only 2 minutes if a template was used. (Insidesales)

For a sales team, nothing costs more than wasted time. Using email automation and customizable email templates to cut down on admin workload is an excellent way to enforce prioritization and optimize sales processes. If a sales rep can have extra 40 minutes following up on warm leads, s/he stands better chances of closing more deals every day. A good CRM can prove to be essential to create a database of customizable templates that can be personalized using unique customer and product data and to execute email automation to perfection.

You might also like: 8 Marketing Gurus Share Their Email Closing Phrases That Land All the Deals

CRM

teamgate

Image source: Teamgate

Lost productivity and poorly managed leads cost companies at least $1 trillion every year. (CMO Council)

Losing productivity and money is a bleak prospect for any sales team. A robust sales CRM can help you keep the lead generation and management under control as well as spot (and fix) any issues in almost real-time. Unloading the information off their heads and leaving no room for human error, sales reps can focus on building relationships rather than concerning themselves with unimportant details.

95% of buyers choose a solution provider that “Provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process.” (The Whole Brain Group)

The purpose of content marketing is to give prospects the answers that they need. As they scour the internet in search of the type of information that appeals to them, they can quickly progress from the lowest awareness stage to a ready-to-buy mindset. To ensure your product or service stays top of mind as prospects move down the funnel, it’s a great idea to engage them at relevant times and offer relevant content. That’s where a CRM comes in handy.

You might also like: Sales Closing Techniques to Get Your Prospects to “Yes, I want it” Faster

71% of sales reps say they spend too much time on data entry. (Heinz Marketing)

If tasks can be automated, why waste your sales reps’ precious time on data entry? A CRM will give them more time to actually work their leads and not worry about the small stuff.

Inbound

Sales Statistics Inbound

Thursday is the best day to prospect. Wednesday is the second-best. (Brevet)

Need to kick your inbound lead generation into a higher gear? Make sure you’re acting on the right days and times to achieve the best results.

49% of B2B marketers use sales lead quality to assess content marketing success. (DMN3)

The alignment of sales and marketing teams has a huge influence on the success of any inbound lead generation campaign. It’s not uncommon for these two teams to blame each other if the results are disappointing. Using a CRM as a tool for both teams to track and record the performance of their campaigns would take the guesswork out of content marketing.

Approximately 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy. (Marketo)

Just because someone is browsing your website, doesn’t mean they want to buy something right away. In fact, it’s very unlikely they would. Adopting a CRM helps sales teams better organize their lead nurturing campaigns and approach the sales process in a strategic manner.

83% of B2B marketers use content marketing for lead generation. (MarketingProfs)

Does marketing generate the right kind of leads? What content has the highest ROI? What can it tell us about our customer base and their needs? Content marketing is one of the best and most popular tools for lead generation that can accelerate your sales cycle.

High-quality lead generation is the top challenge for 61% of B2B marketers. (Marketing Insider Group)

The right content for the right prospects at the right time in their buying journey is a content marketer’s mantra that shines some light on the difficulty of the task. Automating reporting, tracking the number of SQLs (sales qualified leads) generated through content and monitoring the influx of leads – and all in one tool – is a dream come true for busy sales teams.

Cold Calling

cold calling

It takes an average of 8 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. (Brevet)

Reviewing the sales pipeline and planning (and prioritizing) the next day’s to-do list can help sales reps to manage their time better and allocate enough time for all tasks. To ensure you’re tackling the most important tasks during your most productive time of day, be sure to put a reliable CRM in place.

85% of prospects and customers are dissatisfied with their on-the-phone experience. (Salesforce)

Customer experience is crucial in securing a lead, and an unhappy customer is more likely to share their unsatisfactory encounter with others, leading to damaging word-of-mouth marketing. So, increase your chances of securing a lead by preparing for your call. Avoid giving your prospect the opportunity to end the call before you even started by opening your pitch with “Do you have a moment to discuss X?”. Instead, provide them with information about your product and how it can help them.

93% of converted leads are contacted by the 6th call attempt. (HubSpot)

Unfortunately, cold calling is not fun, and it takes a lot of effort, but it’s an excellent sales technique to master. With practice, it will not only get easier but also you’ll get better at securing deals. Having a call script will take away some of the pain of cold-calling, so whip one up, get your call list out and start ringing.

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You might also like: 5 Cold Calling Sample Scripts for Any Situation

The best time to cold call is 4 pm – 5 pm. The second best time is 8 am – 10 am. The worst times are 11 am and 2 pm. (InsideSales)

Being persistent when cold calling is not enough to ensure success. In fact, may even be ineffective if you are missing the optimal times to make those calls. Ensure that you prioritize and organize your schedule in a way that you are hitting the peak times for cold calling to ensure your sales success. Take it one step further and contact your prospects by sending a little something to introduce yourself before you make the call. They will remember you fondly, and it’ll help you take a step closer to converting your lead into a sale.

Copywriting

copywriting

It’s worth investing time in writing headline copy. On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. (Copyblogger)

Like email subject lines, headlines need to be crisp, intriguing, and true to their meaning to capture the reader’s attention. If you’re experimenting with content marketing, make sure your headline copy is catching fire.

Emails with “You” in the subject line were opened 5% less than those without. (Stynson)

People find the use of “You” in the subject line a little too straightforward. Drop it from your copy to avoid annoying any of your recipients and replace it with something that creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity. Invesp found that the open rate increased by 22% when the FOMO effect was invoked.  

Using “Daily” or “Weekly” in subject lines boosts open rates whereas “Monthly” hurts them. (Sadestra)

Don’t overcomplicate your email schedule, use the best practices to nail the lead nurturing techniques. This stat suggests that your email newsletters or simple messages should go out either daily or weekly to meet the prospects’ expectations.

The last 5 minutes of a sales presentation is the most memorable, so end with a story – 63% of attendees remember stories. (SERP)

Since most of lead nurturing happens through email, try to incorporate and master storytelling to win your prospects over. Building positive associations through engaging stories will help you gain prospects’ trust and achieve better brand recognition.

Emails with “Free” in the subject line were opened 10% more than those without. (HubSpot)

Including a free bonus or extra in your offer can help you swing the prospects’ opinions and get them to engage with your product. Upgrade your offer and take advantage of this copywriting hack!

At Teamgate, we’re big fans of building a repeatable sales process that guides and supports sales teams through the entire sales cycle from the first touchpoint with a prospect to the close of a deal.

According to Marketo, when sales and marketing teams are in sync, companies become 67% better at closing deals, but only 30% of CMOs have a clear process or program to make marketing and sales alignment a priority and a mere 44% of companies are using any kind of lead scoring system.

To reach the kind of synchronization state that drives higher sales, a company needs to follow a clear-cut process with explicitly defined rules and criteria. A Harvard Business Review study found that there is an 18% difference in revenue growth between companies that define a formal sales process and companies that don’t. So it seems that creating a reliable, scalable sales process is of utmost importance to all companies that have their eyes set on growth.

If you’re wondering how to pull this tricky task off, we’ve gathered the most pertinent advice that will guide you the right way.

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Understand and document your current sales cycle

The average sales cycle length is the amount of time it takes to close a deal, measuring from the first touchpoint with a prospect to the conversion point, averaged across all won deals.

An analysis of pipelines of hundreds of companies has revealed that the average length from Lead to Opportunity (or from MQL to SQL) is 84 days and the average length from Opportunity to Close (or from SQL to Deal) is 18 days. That puts the average sales cycle length at 102 days. This, of course, varies significantly based on the source of the opportunity, the quality of leads, the complexity of the sale, and so on.

However, before anything else, it must be said that there is no single right sales cycle. Different markets, products, and internal team dynamics mean that the only way to develop a world-class sales process is to know your typical customer sales cycle like the back of your hand.

The most important step to building a killer sales process is to audit your baseline and document every step that a lead goes through until it converts. If you’ve never done this before, you’ll be surprised to see how much chaos and confusion can cloud what seems like a straightforward process. Only by knowing what needs to be changed or improved can you confidently begin implementing new tactics and strategies. 

Average Sales Process 102 Days

The average sales cycle length is 102 days. Image Source: Pexels

To trace back the steps your sales reps took with each lead, accurately answer these questions and you’ll quickly see a clear picture of the current state of your sales cycle.

  • How did you learn about new leads? When were you notified? How were they distributed?
  • What was the initial form of contact – a phone call, an email, a face-to-face contact? How long after they came in?
  • What questions were asked and how were they answered during the first conversation?
  • When were you able to make contact with the new leads (1st call or email, 1st follow-up, etc.)?
  • How did the sales rep handle and coordinate the follow-up? Did they use a reminder tool, made a note in your CRM system or relied on their memory?
  • What sales material did the lead receive? At what stage in the cycle was it given to the lead?
  • What was the main reason for your closed-lost leads?
  • Roughly, how long did it take for the lead to move from one stage to another?

Knowing where you stand before you make any changes to your sales process will help you measure their impact and ensure the right decisions are made along the way.

The goal of every sales team is to shorten their sales cycle. The shorter a company’s sales cycle, the faster they make money, simple as that. That’s why sales cycle length is one of the most important metrics measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of a company’s sales team. Poring over the sales cycle statistics to find points in which leads slow down or speed through in the hopes of discovering ways to optimize the process, is a number one priority for sales operations professionals. Here are three ways how to measure the length of your company’s sales cycle:

    1. When a lead is created. The most obvious way to recognize the beginning of a sales cycle is to track when a lead is created in your CRM. Then, to know the length of your sales cycle, you simply look at when that deal is closed. It’s worth noting, though, that lead duplication issues and the variability of when leads are created and when they’re worked can skew your analysis.  
    2. When an opportunity is created. Some sales teams choose to consider the time when a lead is converted into an opportunity as the beginning of the sales cycle to have more contextual information on their deals in the CRM and reduce the time it takes to clean the leads. Because the changing of the lead status is a manual task carried out by a sales rep, there is often a risk of it not being created along consistent criteria. Enforcing strict rules for the process when a lead should be converted to an opportunity is crucial to ensure you have an accurate view of your pipeline.
    3. When the sales conversation starts. Measuring the actual conversation length of closed-won deals is probably the most accurate gauge of how long it takes for a lead to convert. However, this method also carries the human error risk, as it relies on a sales rep to update the CRM for every email they send or every prospect they target.

The solution that many sales teams are finding is to automate the entire process. And it can be done by choosing a modern sales software like Teamgate that can analyze conversation length, automate CRM data entry, and create reports by rep, deal, team or company to reduce the burden of sales cycle analysis.

The typical stages of a sales pipeline and how to create one

Think about sales stages as milestones in your sales process, signaling how far from the typical conversion point your leads are. Although the exact stages and their names vary from company to company, the basic idea is the same – leads are either in an open stage or in a closed stage, such as won or lost.

As an example, here are the default stages in Teamgate. You can customize them as you like.

Teamgate Default Sales Process StagesFor the sake of this article, let’s focus on the typical stages of a sales pipeline:

  • Lead generation. At this stage, a company focuses on finding and attracting new prospects through marketing campaigns, aiming to capture their contact information (inquiries). The most effective B2B marketing methods used to generate leads include email, events, and content.
  • Lead nurturing. Once a lead expresses an interest in a product or service, they’re usually entered into a lead nurturing campaign to establish the pain points and continue to foster the relationship. Marketing automation is the go-to tactic to further qualify leads and send the best ones to sales. According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost.
  • Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). Based on your definition of a marketing qualified lead, your CRM can use lead scoring to track meaningful activities and behaviors to determine which leads are more likely to become customers. This is a vital stage in your sales process that will help you ensure your sales team is fed high-quality, sales-ready leads.
  • Sales Accepted Lead (SAL). Once sales receive a lead from marketing, they need to check if it matches the key targeting criteria and either accept it or decline it. Typically, SALs are identified as having a verified propensity to buy.
  • Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). SQLs represent a quantifiable business opportunity with a clarified need, timeline and budget. They are close to making the final purchase decision and can either move to closed won or closed lost opportunities.  
  • Closed deal. At this stage, around 27% of opportunities convert to deals, according to Capterra. Assisting with implementation is one of the tactics that sales reps use to improve and speed up the conversion process.
  • Post sale. A sale is not the end of the pipeline, as the customer relationship continues to develop and both sales and marketing teams should work to further engage buyers and add value through loyalty programs, upsells and cross-sells.

If you’re just creating your sales pipeline, there are a few basic rules you can follow to build clearly defined sales stages and a smooth process:

  1. Remove ambiguity. Make sure each stage of your sales cycle is self-explanatory and immediately clear. The best way to examine the current status of your sales cycle is to test it on a new hire. If a new sales rep can’t see a difference between Stage1 and Stage2, it means you have a problem.
  2. Define stage criteria. One of the factors that will determine whether your sales stages are easy to understand is knowing the ‘trigger’ that moves a lead from one stage to another. To maintain consistency and clarity in your pipeline, ensure that every sales rep knows why and when to change the status of a lead.
  3. Take on the buyer perspective. The new school of sales teaches that the sales process should reflect how a customer buys, not how a sales rep sells. This means your sales stages should be part of a buyer’s journey, not the seller’s steps. Map out your buyer journey to identify the key stages and replace seller-centered milestones, such as “Demo Completed” and “Trial” to buyer-driven stages, such as “Evaluating solutions” and “Technical Fit Assessment”.
  4. Ditch the linear way of thinking. The order in which milestones are achieved is becoming less and less important, as sales reps start recognizing that different customers make decisions differently. Rather than sticking to a rigid, linear process, allow your buyers to progress through the funnel as they like, even if that means they sign up for a trial before watching a demo. Focus on the list of activities that need to happen to make the sale possible and let the buyer follow their own path.   
  5. Monitor and iterate. Since every company is unique and follows a different sales process, there is no single optimization strategy that can kick your business into higher gear. However, you should make it a priority to track the time leads spend in each stage of your sales cycle to quickly identify optimization opportunities. If you notice that leads tend to linger at one stage or even drop out altogether, you will be able to put some measures in place and prevent deal loss.

The benefits of a daily routine for your sales team

Poor time management will always result in disappointing sales performance. Sales reps are often masters of multitasking, but even the best can benefit from a daily routine that helps to set the priorities straight and ensure the key tasks are accomplished on time. To help your team drive the sales performance through the roof, introduce some practical habits that will become part of their daily schedules.

  1. Review and plan before you wrap up for the day. Take 10-15 minutes at the end of each day to review your pipeline and prioritize the next day’s to-do list. Check your calendar events, meeting notes and emails to ensure no important information falls through the cracks endangering your ability to close.
    Teamgate Agenda Sales ProcessHere’s an example of Teamgate’s agenda that comes in handy for busy salespeople. 
  2. Start your day strong. While you’re sipping on your first cup of coffee, review your to-do list from the day before and scan through the inbox to see if there are any high-priority issues that need to be addressed immediately. The key here is not to get distracted by the gazillion of low-importance emails and requests. Sticking to a plan will help you stay on track no matter how many tasks you have to juggle.  
  3. Group your tasks. The best way to tackle the most important tasks during your most productive time of day is by organizing your tasks into groups. Instead of handling each task independently, set time aside for a set of tasks that require a similar level of energy and type of approach to reduce the time wasted on readjusting and refocusing your attention. By carving out a certain amount of time for each group of tasks and scheduling them into your calendar, you will be able to better manage your time and keep your mind focused.  
  4. Automate where possible. With so many useful tools at their fingertips, salespeople are learning to free up time in their schedules and focus on doing what they do best – engaging with customers and closing deals. Leverage technologies available to you to make sure your time is spent on activities that have the best ROI.   

Conclusion

The biggest mistake you can make is to treat your sales process as a one-and-done project. Making a habit of tracking your sales performance metrics on a daily basis and reevaluating the sales process every five to six months is a surefire way to ensure your sales process map is regularly updated and remains a work in progress, as it should.

Instead of wasting your time on manual data entry, cold leads and tasks that detract your attention from the most important task at hand – selling, improve and modernize your sales process with the help of a smart CRM that will keep you at your game.

Here’s a simple truth: there is a way for your business to generate more leads with less money, enjoy better returns, and attract more qualified leads. It also comes with the added benefit of stopping your prospects from hating your gut.

It’s inbound marketing.

The days when smashing out 80 calls a day to generate new leads was considered a progressive tactic are gone. Our dwindling desire to speak to strangers over the phone has led companies to reevaluate their efforts and look for new ways to attract potential customers.

It seems they stumbled on a goldmine.

Should you be doing cold calling?

Let me answer this by asking you another question. When was the last time you came across a success story entitled something along the lines of “How I used cold calling to grow my startup to 11 million users”? Exactly, the last time you were taken aback by a story like that was never.

The thing is, cold calling is an intrusive, old-school sales tactic that triggers more hate and resentment than getting stuck behind a slow walker while rushing to an airport gate. In the olden days, before caller ID and texting, cold calling was the way to get leads for businesses of all types and sizes. In theory, calling prospective clients to chat about a product they’re likely to need doesn’t sound half bad. You could even argue that you’re making their life easier. But when was the last time you picked up a call from an unknown number? Well, there you have it.

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Consumers are increasingly more protective of their personal information and privacy and less and less likely to answer calls from unknown numbers. Getting through to cold leads is becoming a mission impossible. Which, in turn, points to the shrinking ROI of cold calling.

According to a research by Lead Creation, 55% of senior sales professionals who took part in the survey thought the effectiveness of cold calling has greatly decreased over the past five years.

A number of other respectable sources back up these research findings:

  • According to InsideView, 90% of C-level executives said they “never” respond to cold calls or e-mail blasts.  
  • HubSpot reports that cold calling costs at least 60% more per lead than other methods, like social selling. The newest HubSpot’s State of the Inbound report has revealed that only 19% of buyers rely on salespeople for purchase decisions.
  • Only 5% of business lead phone calls lead to a sale (DSWA)
  • Customers don’t want to deal with salespeople until they are 70% down the path of the buying process (HubSpot)

The reality is that the Internet, and Google, in particular, have changed the way we gather information and make buying decisions. With access to a vast amount of information at our fingertips at any given moment in our buying journey, we have learned to find answers to product-related questions without speaking to sales reps and only interact with them when we pretty much have our minds set. To put it simply, Google has killed the annoying kind of cold calling and brought about a new trend – smart calling, which is more of an inbound marketing tactic than anything else. But more about this later.  

Can cold calling be wrong for your business?

Companies that invest heavily in cold calling efforts always run several risks. First of all, the biggest red flag is that the ROI has been steadily decreasing. It’s getting more and more difficult to get the right people on the phone, not to mention maintaining their interest and converting a sale at the first touchpoint. Having learned how to navigate the online world, shoppers prefer to be attracted to a brand for its authenticity, superiority or capacity to deliver on specific expectations, rather than to be bombarded by irrelevant sales messages.

Then there’s the hate factor. The modern consumer values personalized communication, storytelling and brands that have a bigger purpose than to simply shovel money. Basically, everything that cold calling isn’t. The abundance of information that our brains need to process every day and the energy we use to keep pace with the world around us leaves little to no room for unplanned decision-making. Dealing with an unwanted call stirs up a lot of unpleasant emotions. When associated with a brand, these emotions can cause a great deal of damage. People hate being sold to and until cold calling is used to establish a connection rather than to push a product or service, it will fail to meet the changing buyer expectations.

So should you be doing cold calling?

It depends. Though an unwelcome outbound marketing technique, cold calling can turn out to be a tremendous asset for businesses that know how to spin it right. When married with clever inbound marketing techniques, cold calling can be upgraded to smart calling, help businesses gather feedback, develop personal relationships and understand their users better. For example, if you’re just starting out, cold calling can be a quick and cheap way to validate your business idea, figure out common buyer objections and evaluate the effectiveness of your pitch.

For businesses that are mainly concerned with getting more qualified leads rather than customer feedback, cold calling should only be an option if integrated with a robust inbound marketing strategy.

So to get the best out of cold calling you need to get the hang of the inbound sales process.

Introduction to inbound sales process

Inbound sales is selling the way prospects buy.

The old-fashioned way of selling was to build the entire sales process around the business needs instead of focusing on the buyer. With the advent of the internet, though, this has flipped on its head. Rather than basing everything on an assumption that a prospect wants your product or service, a smart inbound salesman (or saleswoman) finds a way how to get the prospect to hand all the important information over, allowing for a more personalized, targeted communication. Once a potential customer expresses explicit interest in the product or service, a skilled sales rep can leverage that knowledge and tailor the pitch to highlight the right product benefits.

By focusing on buyers’ personal needs, pain points, frustrations, and goals, businesses can craft more personalized pitches and align their product to meet the customer’s needs.  

Let’s see how the inbound sales process is developed.

#1 Start with defining your buyer’s journey

Traditionally, salespeople would focus all their energy on following some sort of script structure and checking certain boxes, as they were trained by their manager, instead of actively listening to the customer and trying to address their pain points. This is exactly what drives customers mad — they don’t want to be prospected, “warmed up” or closed. They’re looking for a solution to a problem or guidance on how to achieve a particular goal. If a sales rep can’t help, Google certainly will.

To be relevant and create value for the customer, salespeople must understand the different stages of a buying journey and how that affects a prospect’s expectations. The journey can roughly be divided into three different stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. As they progress through different stages, prospects narrow their choices and form a clearer vision of what they want and why. To make sure your company tops their list, the marketing department needs to work closely with the sales team to cover all bases.

When trying to figure out the specifics of each stage, try asking yourself the following questions:

Awareness stage. How do buyers gather information and learn more about the problem your product or service is solving? How do buyers describe or define the problem your product or service addresses? How do buyers decide whether the problem needs to be prioritized?

How to identify buyers at this stage:  they visit your blog, interact with your social media, share or otherwise engage with your content.

Suitable content ideas:  blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, reports with original research, videos.

Consideration stage. How do buyers educate themselves on available solutions? How do they perceive the advantages and disadvantages of different solutions? What influences their decision when choosing the right solution?

How to identify buyers at this stage: they visit your product pages, check out your benefits and feature pages, “About us” section and area of expertise content.

Suitable content ideas: long-form content, such as guides and ebooks, webinars, live interactions, comparisons, and reviews.

Decision stage. What criteria do buyers use when evaluating your product or service? What objections or concerns do they have that might put them off from converting? What differentiates your offering from your competition? Do buyers expect to be able to trial the product before making a purchase? Besides the final purchasing decision, do buyers need to make any other important decisions, such as consider implementation or training strategies?

How to identify buyers at this stage:  they read your case studies and testimonials, look up comparison articles and reviews, visit pricing pages and “contact us” section of your site.

Suitable content ideas:  case studies and testimonials, demos, trials, product literature.  

Answering these questions before you pick up the phone or draft a sales email will help you look at the process from a different perspective and ensure your buyer journey is optimized to keep the prospects moving down the sales funnel towards a purchase.

You should also consider developing buyer personas to segment your customers based on their needs, pain points and goals. This will help you to create targeted content for each persona at different stages throughout the buying journey.

Inbound Marketing Define Your Buyers Journey

Image source: Jinbound Blog

#2 Develop your sales process   

Once you have fully grasped the different stages of your buyer journey and how the prospects progress or why they drop off, it’s time to develop a sales process that supports this journey and increases the likelihood of conversions.

The inbound sales process is perfectly aligned with the buyer journey, supporting customers with timely additional information as they move from identifying a challenge or opportunity that they want to pursue to deciding which solution best meets their needs. The three main things you need to remember about inbound selling is that it is personalized, buyer-centric, and advisory.

The best way to tackle this is by following a four-part framework:

  1. Identify
  2. Connect
  3. Explore
  4. Advise

Inbound Marketing Sales Process

Image source: HubSpot

Identify. There are several ways how you can separate active buyers from the passive ones and identify potential leads. The easiest way to tell whether someone has entered the awareness stage is to look at your analytics data. If someone visited your website, read a blog post, filled out a form, opened an email, engaged with you on social media, or left any other kind of clue to suggest they are active in a buying journey, they move from the “Strangers” category to “Leads”.

Connect. Typically, this is the stage where the outbound calling would start. You obtain a list of leads and hammer them over the phone, regardless of whether your product is the right fit or not. Inbound salespeople, on the other hand, focus on leading with a personalized message that is aligned with the awareness stage of the buying journey. For example, based on the buyer persona that the prospect resembles most (e.g., HR director at an eCommerce company or CEO at a tech startup), the sales rep can offer a free consultation, an ebook or a whitepaper on the subject that the prospect is exploring. The goal here is to help the lead educate themselves about all the options available to them. If the buyer accepts the offer (downloads your ebook or books a consultation), they are considered a qualified lead.

Explore.  At this stage, the inbound salespeople are still unsure whether they can help the prospect, so they initiate exploratory conversations to develop additional trust and uncover buyer goals. That’s when you can pick up the phone and see what the lead is really worth. However, it’s important to understand that the purpose of a call here is to learn more about the prospect’s challenges to be able to determine if your product is a good fit. Through strategic questioning and smart value proposition, inbound sales people can guide prospects to draw their own conclusions about whether a product is the best solution for them. Once a match is established, a qualified lead becomes an opportunity.

Advise. During this stage, inbound sales reps put all the information they’ve gathered from speaking to buyers into context and tailor their offering to the unique situation of the buyer. The sales reps strive to showcase these opportunities how their product is uniquely positioned to address their problem and why it’s better than any other solutions out there. If a buyer finds the offer a perfect fit, they convert and become a customer.

Inbound marketing is so effective because it allows consumers to progress at a speed that they find comfortable and gives marketers and salespeople enough information about each prospect to make their buying experience more organic and enjoyable.  

Marketing qualified lead vs. Sales qualified lead

We have already established that a lead is a prospect who has explicitly expressed their interest in a product or service and is actively searching for more information. However, leads can also be categorized to indicate a specific stage in a sales cycle. As the names suggest, different teams can be responsible for handling different types of leads. So what’s the difference between marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs)?

Marketing qualified leads

Most of the inbound marketing leads are generated through marketing campaigns, but not all marketing leads are qualified. MQLs are easily identified based on their behavior on your site or towards your brand. Typically, MQLs are prospects that demonstrate a deep engagement with your product and send buying signals, but can not be described as fully fledged opportunities just yet. They are referred to as marketing qualified leads because they are more sales-ready than your usual leads and should be nurtured further by the marketing team before they can be handed over to sales. Marketers often design special trigger campaigns to identify MQLs. For example, someone downloading a buying guide, signing up for a free trial or requesting a demo is considered an MQL as it exhibits purchase intent.

Sales qualified leads

Sales qualified leads, or SQLs, are higher on the value chain than MQLs because they basically mean that the prospect has been vetted and accepted as a potential customer by the sales team. In theory, converting an MQL into an SQL should be quite easy — once a prospect raises their hand identifying themselves as a viable customer, everything that a sales team needs to do is nail the product demo and close the deal. However, every company defines an MQL differently, so the range of quality is very broad. Receiving a low-quality MQL is a huge pain for the sales team, as they’re unable to offer the kind of level of personalization that a buyer needs and often revert to autopilot, delivering a generic message that doesn’t clearly articulate how a product can solve the buyer’s problem or help achieve a goal.  

What you should do instead of cold calling

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again — stop cold calling and start smart calling. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy in sales, especially when it comes to speaking to unqualified leads. Once your prospects enter the decision stage and are pinpointed as SQLs, be ready to engage them in a conversation and gently guide them to a buying decision.

Here’s how you can turn your SQLs into customers.

Discovery call

Not all discovery calls go well, but those that do almost always lead to a sale. A seemingly innocent part of a sales process, discovery calls are actually hard work and play a major role in the success of a sales rep.

The purpose of a discovery call is to delve deeper into a prospect’s situation, get a better understanding of their needs and goals, and learn more about their pain points. Only with this information at hand can a sales rep successfully position the product as the best solution and cement the deal.

One of the most important things to remember when scheduling a discovery call is to go into the conversation with a clear plan of the next steps. For example, if a sales rep establishes a product fit, he should strive to set up the next call or meeting right away, while he has the prospect on the phone. One of the most popular tactics used to nudge SQLs further down the sales funnel is demo calls.

Demo call

Specifically designed to demonstrate how a product will improve the prospect’s life and maybe even turn their struggles into strengths, demo calls is one of the best ways to convert the leads. The information gathered during a discovery call can be put to good use now, as the sales rep gets a chance to craft a highly tailored pitch addressing all the issues / goals discussed earlier.

By aligning buyer’s needs with the product offering and emphasizing relevant features and benefits, a sales rep has a much better chance at converting the lead into customer. As long as the lead doesn’t feel like they’re being “demoed”. At this point, it’s best to avoid industry jargon and empty sales messages and focus on leveraging the information you already have.

Cold calling is dead

And no-one is mourning.

Consumers are clearly embracing inbound marketing and prefer to be educated and nurtured (even if they know it’s all in the hopes of achieving a sale) than being subjected to irrelevant pitching.

What was once considered a ‘necessary evil’ that generated enough leads for businesses to compensate for a low morale of the sales team, is no longer the go-to tactic among successful sales rep. Knowing what buttons to push and how to approach every lead to build rapport and convert them into customers has given salespeople a renewed vigour for their craft. If you want to sink your teeth into this powerful sales process, stop cold calling and work your inbound leads instead.

As we’ve looked at the best practices of lead capturing quite recently, continuing with a topic about lead management seemed logical. So, this post is all about actions that one should take when they already have a solid amount of leads captured. It doesn’t really matter whether you use spreadsheets or a CRM to manage your sales process, tips shared in this article can be applied in any case.

But before diving into details, let’s point out why lead management is important:

  • It helps business to understand which tactics bring in the best leads.
    • Therefore, it allows to optimize your sales strategy.
  • It documents the full history of lead’s interactions and experiences with your company.
    • Therefore, your sales process becomes more personalized and consultative rather than generic and pushy.

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Everything’s in Your Hands

Keeping things well-organized comes with the feeling that everything’s in your hands and you’re ready for whatever comes next. You know that unexpected guests won’t make you panic, you will find whatever you’re looking for in a tidy room and all that jazz. Likewise, keeping your sales leads organized can help you feel more confident and ready to qualify or convert them whenever necessary.

Smart Ways to Manage Sales Leads

Every person has their own way of keeping things organized, but here are some tips and tricks useful for everyone:

  • Customized fields is a good way to ensure that you track all the information necessary to match your business needs. The more information about a lead you have, the easier it will be to qualify and convert it. Teamgate users can set custom fields once they start using the CRM or later if they think that something useful is missing.
  • Tagging your sales leads allows to differentiate them from one another and categorize to conveniently perform actions, e.g. exporting, adding to a mailing list, etc. Moreover, tags can be useful when looking at reports. Teamgate does not only provide a number of default tags, custom tags are also supported to ensure that your business needs are satisfied.
  • Make sure your leads are not duplicated. Try keeping the list as clean as possible because this allows to focus your efforts on the right leads. To make de-duplicating easier and quicker, you may want to start using a CRM. Such systems automate the workflow; for example, Teamgate marks possible duplicates and allows users to instantly merge them.
  • Track status of your sales leads to make sure necessary actions are taken on the right time. By assigning leads status values, you can segment them based on previous sales activities, keep sales reps on the top of the sales funnel, prioritize the outreach, enable follow-ups, and nurture your leads.
  • If you follow these advices, sorting and filtering your leads will not only be easy but also beneficial. By sorting and filtering you are able to find necessary leads a lot quicker. Also, this helps to categorize leads and perform actions with multiple items at the time.

Finally, staying organized is nothing without planning. Make sure to plan your sales activities in advance and stay on schedule. A CRM may be of great use in this case, because most of the CRMs, including Teamgate, support event calendars and reminders. Well-organized sales leads and activity schedule is a good way to start lead nurturing.

Building Relationships Pays Off

Lead nurturing helps to raise company’s profile in the eyes of potential customers and build relationships with them at every stage of your sales funnel. Investing additional effort in lead nurturing definitely pays off. Therefore, we have put together a list of things to consider:

  1. Nurturing campaigns must offer value and create brand awareness. Build the relationships with potential customers by providing them with relevant and valuable content. From blog posts to videos, from infographics to e-books, and so on – create content that would attract, engage and serve your target audience.
  2. Focus on acquiring quality leads. Remember that quantity is less important, especially if you own a small business and have limited sales resources.
  3. Create targeted content, because if you understand who your audience are, you’re more likely to reach out to them. It’s time your marketing and sales teams put their efforts together because sales can identify what they look for in a lead and this is what marketing needs to create well-targeted content.
  4. Use multiple communication channels. People may prefer different ways to be contacted and, luckily, there are various channels available,  e.g. email, landing pages, web forms, ads, newsletters, social media, phone, etc. You can use them in combination, e.g. to retarget leads using different channels, or on their own, e.g. send newsletters to certain leads only.
  5. Communication has to be timely and two-way. Don’t miss a chance to interact with your leads, make sure to contact them as soon as possible and present the value proposition or next steps. Also, provide the opportunity to contact you, it can be via a live chat, social media, phone, or email.

Finally, consider automating the process of lead nurturing. Using a CRM helps saving time and ensures you don’t miss necessary follow-ups. For instance, instant automatic emails can make your prospects feel welcome and informed. Or, if you keep your leads database well-organized, you can easily communicate with particular categories by sending newsletters. For example, Teamgate supports an integration with the powerful email marketing platform MailChimp. You not only can automate the distribution of newsletters but also track the statistics without leaving the CRM.

Know What You’re Looking For

Sales Leads Management

Deal management can also be enhanced by lead scoring, which is used in conjunction with inbound marketing tactics to decide which of your leads are ready to convert. To make sure that lead scoring helps you close more deals, it is also important to follow the other tips in this article. Good organization of leads and careful nurturing contributes to getting the most out of lead scoring. This works vice versa too – lead scoring helps to categorize leads and identify those that need nurturing.

As lead scoring is not a particularly simple process, we made sure to describe it in detail. In a nutshell, here’s what you need to know about it:

  • Efforts of sales and marketing have to be joined to identify the ideal leads and decide on the lead score criteria.
  • Lead scoring is necessary if you have enough leads and want to focus the effort on the right ones.
  • To score your leads, you need lead capturing forms on your website to collect relevant data.
  • Capturing and funneling the data to CRM software is the most convenient way to score leads. Then, you can start tracking the interactions with your potential customers.

Improving the Never-ending Cycle

Tracking interactions of your leads allow you to collect and analyze information. This comes in handy with the processes of lead scoring and qualification. By tracking leads you get to know who they are, what impact nurturing has on them, and when it’s the best time to convert.

First and foremost, rather than striving to collect all the possible data, focus on the most relevant which would help to qualify and convert captured leads. The next step is data analysis, which, there’s no secret, is the most convenient when automated. Teamgate Insights offers a number of templates that facilitate the analysis. For example, you can:

  • Quickly identify where your leads come from.
  • Follow the trajectory of leads to get the big picture of your lead management process.
  • Audit leads history to understand how lead criteria are tied to the amount of opportunities and closed deals.
  • Analyze data to decide on lead score criteria, or revise it.

Manage Sales Leads Teamgate Insights

To sum up, tracking your leads and their management cycle helps to identify where optimizations can be made. We suggest to consider using a CRM to automate this process, because the time saved for the analysis can be invested in the optimization as lead management is a never-ending cycle.

Too Much Work? Think of Automating!

Long story short, you may want to keep your leads systematized to nurture, score, and track them easier. Building long-lasting relationships with potential customers start with lead nurturing and you should have a strategy for it. Moreover, you need to think of your ideal customer profile to be able to score your leads and get the most out of lead scoring, i.e. successfully qualify and convert the leads. Finally, tracking interactions and analyzing data is the key to success, because lead management is a continuous cycle, which has to be improved constantly. 

If you’d look back at the tips we’ve shared in this article, you would probably agree that automating some, or all, the processes might be a good idea. This may sound like a cliché statement, but using a CRM software would save time and help your team, to work more efficiently. Just think about it, you would be able to deal with different types of leads, categorize them and apply different nurturing strategies quicker. Also, you would have a chance to look at reports and decide on lead scoring criteria, identify necessary improvements, understand where your leads come from, and much more. You wouldn’t ever get lost in your spreadsheets again because CRMs help to keep everything well-organized and accessible.

By the way, what we’ve discussed here is only the beginning of a sales process. So, stay tuned for more articles about the next steps in the process and some extra tips and tricks.