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Have you ever ever mentioned the 2 little phrases, “ok” or “I am good?” The phrase “good” has grow to be a standard cop-out for transferring past the established order. However saying to ourselves, “Enterprise is nice sufficient” may be the lock on the door resulting in greatness.
In a approach, good is absolutely not good in any respect. It is a false sense of feat that’s wrapped up in complacency. After I realized that being okay with “good” was not going to assist me obtain my goals, I modified my mindset and my enterprise’s plan of assault.
Final yr, I made a decision nothing would get in the way in which of our enlargement and hitting the following stage.
I elevated my advertising and marketing price range by 5% from 2022 to 2023, and in consequence, our income elevated by 8%, including over $7 million that yr. And that call continues to be paying off — income is up about 20% up to now this yr.
Listed here are some key strikes I’ve made that helped us attain our highest annual income ever final yr — $104.6 million.
Associated: Easy methods to Flip Advertising right into a Gross sales and Income Engine
Junk mail leads generate 600% extra income per lead than digital sources
I’ve mailed postcards to promote my enterprise, PostcardMania, each single week since I began in 1998, and I’ve solely ever elevated my mailing amount — with one exception. The one time I reduce was in 2008, and it was a complete catastrophe. Our revenues plunged about 15% the next yr.
Junk mail takes up a big portion of my advertising and marketing price range. It is not the most affordable approach to generate leads, but it surely’s completely irreplaceable in my advertising and marketing combine. Postcards generate the very best high quality leads amongst all different lead sources, from natural search to pay-per-click to social media.
Here is the proof: In 2023, we generated $229.41 in income for each postcard lead whereas we solely generated $37.09 in income per lead from pay-per-click. That is a large distinction of 519% — and 6 instances extra income! And that is solely taking new orders into consideration, not repeat orders from clients who know and love us.
And that is simply the income we will monitor instantly again to postcards. There are such a lot of extra leads that are available from an “natural search” or one other supply that has been getting our postcards within the mail for years. It is my perception that there is much more income from postcards that is incorrectly attributed to different sources, however we will save that for one more time.
If you wish to take your income to the following stage, I encourage you to bump up your advertising and marketing spend — a 5% spend improve resulted in a 7% income improve for me — and contemplate including unsolicited mail to your arsenal to 6x your income per lead.
Including and regularly bettering dwell chat elevated gross sales conversations by 16%
Fewer and fewer individuals are keen to achieve for the phone today once they want one thing. In actual fact, research present that the majority shoppers (63%) want to make use of dwell chat to work together with a enterprise.
We added dwell chat to our web site in 2016, and it improved our gross sales conversations (folks keen to speak on to a gross sales rep) by 16%. Nevertheless, I do not advise that you just throw up a chatbot and name it a day.
The success of our dwell chat system is rooted in the truth that we’ve actual human beings on the opposite aspect of the display screen. When you’re utilizing bots — even fancy, AI-trained bots — you are going to run the danger of upsetting prospects and clients who need solutions and never a rote regurgitation of the FAQs they’ll discover in your web site.
Final dwell chat tip: Do not set it and neglect it. Mess around with colours, messages and placements, and see which mixtures elicit the perfect response out of your web site guests. We changed a generic message on our thanks pages with a dwell chat immediate, and it had an amazing impression on lowering the lag time between when a prospect is in your web site and once they’re on the cellphone with a gross sales rep.
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Embody video in your Meta adverts to extend social media leads by 105%
When you’re a social media consumer, you have in all probability observed increasingly movies making their approach to your most important feed. In actual fact, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed throughout a latest earnings name that fifty% of all folks’s time on Meta platforms is now spent consuming video.
Catching on to this, we determined to place our 139 video case research — actual enterprise homeowners speaking about their profitable campaigns — to work for us on Fb and Instagram. We uploaded lists of our present shoppers and prospects and generated lookalike audiences much like our personal lists to focus on with our video adverts.
Because of this, our social media leads doubled. In 2022, our common variety of social media leads per week was 174, after which in 2023, the common lead depend elevated to 356 per week! That is a 105% improve.
The analysis is conclusive — video returns are outpacing static pictures. One latest report discovered that movies drove virtually 30% extra clicks than easy static picture belongings. One other research discovered that video adverts drive 48% larger gross sales charges than static adverts.
Research show it, I’ve examined it myself, however you could be questioning you probably have the price range to execute it. There are alternatives so that you can incorporate extra video commercials in your advertising and marketing technique at a low price. We simply started providing video adverts on each social media and Linked TV channels like Netflix at small enterprise costs.
By working with the proper advertising and marketing company, it’s potential to execute a video promoting plan that will not overwhelm your advertising and marketing spend. Plus, the quantity of income that these video adverts are going to be bringing in for you can be properly definitely worth the upfront funding.
Associated: 3 Advertising Blind Spots That Are Holding You Again (and Easy methods to Repair Them)
So, are you going to take the blue tablet of staying good this yr or take the crimson tablet and journey down the tougher path to greatness? I problem you to take a better have a look at the laborious actuality of the place you’ll be able to enhance for higher outcomes and a greater enterprise.
