Business Growth Blog

I spend hours every week reading blogs (literally). It’s how I get my information. I can instantly spot a good company blog vs. a bad company blog.

Here are 10 tell-tale signs you’re wasting valuable time and money on your blogging efforts.

I found this infographic on the HubSpot Blog that breaks down a bad prospecting email. It really caught my attention because I have recently seen an email that looks just like this one. I think the author, Leslie Ye is right on with this analysis. Writing good prospecting emails is hard work, and this is a great example of how NOT to do it.

A website home page has a lot of work to do. It has to be both smart and good-looking. It has to have a cool vibe about it that speaks to your company’s personality. It has to have interesting offers, different ways to reach you, and lists of things for visitors to do – all without being cluttered, messy, or overstuffed. Forget it, right?

Don’t worry, it’s not as impossible as it sounds. If you take it one step at a time and break it down into what’s important, constructing a website home page can be a manageable project with long-term rewards.

If I had a dollar for every time this happened to me, I’d be rich.

Ring ring!

Me: “Hello? This is Krista.”

Solicitor: Long pause from automated dialer... “Hello. May I please speak with Krista Moon?”

Me: Sigh...Didn’t I just say my name was Krista? “This is.”

Solicitor: “Hello, Ms. Moon. How are you today?”

SERIOUSLY?!

Blogging and email marketing are increasingly becoming standard practices for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Creating content and sending messages is very easy now-a-days, which puts us in the midst of a never-ending data explosion.

Videos, articles, chats, streams, texts, emails, pictures…With so much content available, people have to pick and choose very carefully what they want to give time to. Only content that is relevant to the issues, thoughts, or concerns a reader has will get noticed, and only content that adds value in some way will get their time.

Sometimes I come across articles I want to read, but it physically hurts my eyes to look at them. I get so much information thrust in front of me every day that I'm forced to pick and choose very carefully which articles I dedicate my time to. (I wish I could read all day, but work must get done!)

When I find an article I want to spend time on, my curiosity has been piqued and I look forward to getting the information. If I find it difficult to read (visually or textually), I end up feeling let down. And then I furrow my brows, click my tongue, and quickly leave the website.

What's the best way to stay relevant in this ultra-fast changing world of sales? In this article, I'm going to share with you a little bit about my journey developing my inbound sales and marketing craft and the absolute best sales resource ever...

As soon as I finished my teaching certificate I got my first...sales job. (Classroom teaching wasn't for me.) I didn't really know anything about sales except that I liked educating people about how to solve their problems (the teacher in me I guess) and as with most salespeople, I liked "being on the road" and "making what I'm worth".

I recently received an email campaign Marketo put together to target HubSpot users such as myself. My agency is a HubSpot Gold partner and we’ve been using their technology to manage our marketing efforts for many years now. Marketo is one of HubSpot’s biggest competitors.

The purpose of the email was to let me know that Marketo is better than HubSpot (from their perspective anyway) and ask me to schedule a meeting for further discussion.

When I dissect the exchange between me and the Marketo rep and the emotions it invoked from my perspective as the prospect, it reinforced many of the things I’ve been writing about regarding buyer personas, sales messaging, and differentiating from the competition.

Read more to get a real life example of the prospecting process and see firsthand what sales strategies can engage - or disengage - a potential customer.

Most websites are set up for prospects near the end of the sales cycle. They're focused on driving prospects to "contact" the company in some way (demo, trial, consultation, etc.). But, not everyone that comes to your site is ready to jump actively into the sales process. They just want more information about their problem and possible solutions. They want to self-educate so that when they do end up talking to a salesperson, they can feel more confident about what is going on.

If you're not providing content that's aligned with all the stages prospects go through to make a purchasing decision, you're limiting your opportunities and opening the door for your competitors to snatch up good potential customers.

Read more to see an example of how to align your website content with each stage of the sales cycle.

There’s a widening gap between the way prospects buy, and companies sell. Prospects are using Internet research to self-educate through the first two-thirds of the sales process, but the majority of corporate websites and marketing strategies are entirely focused on the late stages of the sales cycle. Unfortunately, this approach puts companies at a huge disadvantage.

Read more to find out how to position your website and marketing strategies so you can engage prospects as early as possible in the sales cycle, have more influence over their buying decision, and get on their short list of potential vendors.