1. PromoRepublic

PromoRepublic is a powerful social media marketing and management tool that will help you work with all your social media pages, simultaneously, in one place. You can significantly save time and money while building an impressive brand experience and customizing your service with your logo, colors, and website domain.

The White Label tool from PromoRepublic offers:

• Improved collaboration with your clients and teammates in a limited client interface to get notifications, comments, and approvals. 
• More than 100,000 editable and ready-to-use templates and visuals from more than 20 industries, or your own visuals from scratch with access to 200+ fonts, shapes, and banners.
• Automated scheduling and smart posting with the best scheduled time for every post, depending on your industry, type of info, and social network.
• Detailed ready-to-present reports for your clients with all the work results, insights, and essential metrics. 

Pros:

• Scheduling, calendar view, and best posting time recommendations;
• Page connections for multiple social media links;
• Educational webinars and other content on how to get the most out of the product;
• A great library of editable posts and post ideas.

Cons:

• Doesn’t integrate with 3rd party plugins or apps;
• No video content and templates.

Book a demo and learn more about branding, design, hosting on your website domain, customized emails, and onboarding training. 

2. SERanking

SERanking is an all-in-one SEO analysis and marketing tool that offers real-time ranking positions of the website’s keywords across major search engines, SEO/PPC competitive research, in-depth website audit, backlink checking & monitoring. You can:

• Use your own domain/subdomain without a single link to SE Ranking. 
• Add and manage users with custom access to rankings section, website audit, performance-based invoicing, and other SEO facilities.
• Set automated or manually generated reports to be sent from your corporate email (use your own SMTP server if preferred).
• Choose your new domain color scheme, upload a custom header and footer. Use your logo at the newly created domain, reports (.html, .pdf or .xls) and emails.

Also, your selected domain needs no hosting – it just needs to be in your domain registrar account. And the best part is, that all these features are absolutely free as it is already included in your pricing plan.

Pros:

• Easy and accurate ranking tool;
• Reporting tool with autoreport and manuals to easy check SEO progress;
• Website audit and changes monitoring;
• Lead generation widget.

Cons:

• You have to pay an extra to access some of the tools;
• A little too much information and features for new users;
• No 24\7 support.

Create accounts for your employees, colleagues, or clients with custom access to the following sections: analytics & traffic, tools, website audit, competitors, marketing plan, backlink monitoring & checking, performance-based invoicing, reports.

3. Netpeak Spider

Netpeak Spider is a desktop tool for a day-to-day SEO audit, fast issue check, comprehensive analysis, and website scraping. It is used for in-depth SEO analysis, custom scraping of website data, website analysis after implementing changes, analyzing competitors’ promotion strategy, audit in a few clicks to quickly evaluate the state of the project, getting full site structure, working with huge websites (100K+ pages), collecting data for diverse research, and exporting comprehensive reports about optimization progress.

Netpeak Spider white label feature helps generate a site audit report in PDF with key aspects of SEO on-page analysis equipped with diagrams and graphics with your logo, contacts, and recommendations for a client or a team. White-label reports that allow branding is a Pro feature of Netpeak Spider, so the price starts from $39/month, $31.20/year, or $23.40/3 years. 

Pros:

• Crawling data and metrics from every webpage on a website;
• Building tree with a calculation of internal page ranks;
• Get a report with different technical errors;
• Performance report.

Cons:

• No version for macOS;
• Only desktop version of the software.

4. Mention

Mention is a convenient white-label tool for monitoring the web, social listening, and managing social media. It helps monitor over 1 billion sources across the web daily, including press articles, review sites, forums, and blogs. You can check and make sense of posts across social media, filter and analyze data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, draft, schedule, and publish posts from multiple channels.

Pros:

• Easy to use Dashboard;
• Great customer support;
• Fast search through tons of info.

Cons:

• Needs search set up for proper work;
• Gathers only mentions from the day you start to use Mention.

5. Monday

Monday is a visual platform for managing any projects and tasks. It is straightforward, intuitive, and helps create an optimal workflow in minutes. It has 200 ready-made templates based on the experience of real teams, and a convenient visual interface will allow any team member to quickly get involved in work without training.

It all starts from the board. Groups, items, subitems, and updates are synchronized in real-time to keep everyone in the context of changes across projects, workflows, and any other tasks. Status buttons show current team progress, and all updates are tracked on one screen. Send notifications to team members, add files and link boards to make it easier to track the situation. Save time, streamline processes and projects, control all moving parts. Kanban boards, calendar, timeline, Gantt charts, maps, forms, workload graphs, and master spreadsheet present your data in various formats. 

Pros:

• Easy access and easy management;
• Excellent for client follow-up.

Cons:

• No mass drag and drop;
• Lack of Social Media integrations.

6. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a reliable, powerful, and dynamic MA and CRM automation platform. It gives you the email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tools you need to create incredible customer experiences by automating many behind-the-scenes marketing, sales, and support processes.

ActiveCampaign’s white labeling options can add value to an agency account, as well as an average customer. Enterprise account holders can change a lot of things about ActiveCampaign, including:

• Custom domain – Change from [name].activehosted.com to [name].[company].com.
• Logo Rebranding – Replace ActiveCampaign logo.
• HTML/CSS Rebranding – Modify button colors, borders, font colors, font size, and much more.
• Add/remove buttons and other options – Coding accomplished by the agency.
• Remove all references and links to ActiveCampaign.

Small business account holders can also customize some, but not all, options.

Pros:

• Ease of use – well-designed and intuitive user interface;
• Affordable – pricing starts at just $9/month with no upfront setup fees;
• Zapier Integration;
• Automation split testing – (to test entire sequences against each other, rather than just test individual emails);
• Machine learning – (predictive sending, predictive content, and predictive win-probability scoring of leads).

Cons:

• Difficult to navigate throughout Reports;
• Support is quite spotty.

7. Weblium

Weblium is a white label AI-powered website builder that allows users without design or coding skills to create a complete mobile-friendly site. AI Supervisor keeps an eye on the design consistency, while 200+ blocks adjust perfectly on all screen sizes, including mobile.

The logic for creating sites in Weblium is the same as in WordPress. There are blocks, columns, and rows that help any untrained user to create great pages. Once the site is created, Vebium takes care of all updates and security issues. In addition, there are SEO tools out of the box that allows you to add meta tags and alt-text for images or change page URLs. 

Pros:

• Easy for beginners;
• A lot of design options.

Cons:

• Lack of integrations with email automation tools and CRM systems;
• Lack of templates of basic niches.

8. Duda

Duda is a low-code web design platform with powerful team collaboration and client management tools. It is suitable for web professionals and agencies of all sizes for building and managing websites at scale. Duda platform enables building feature-rich websites that are perfectly suited to desktop, tablet, and mobile and automatically optimized for Google PageSpeed.

The platform provides web professionals with a combination of unique tools for importing a client’s existing content from across the web or any structured dataset directly into a website template. An intuitive drag-and-drop interface enables you and your team to build pixel-perfect websites with no need to code. Web design assets can also be shared across an entire team. There is more to building websites than just design and development. Duda offers various tools for collecting customer feedback, securing your sites, and reducing time to publish.

Add your brand to all of these areas:

• Client login screen;
• Website builder;
• Website preview tools;
• Roles and permissions;
• Client dashboard;
• On-the-go editing;
• Template gallery;
• Email communications;

Pros:

• Simple website builder with slick and easy templates;
• Has plenty of apps and widgets to use;
• Customization is enough for people at a beginner or intermediate level.

Cons:

• No free pricing plan available, and other pricing plans are quite expensive;
• SEO tools are lacking compared to other website builders.

9. Moosend

Moosend is a powerful email marketing platform with smart features, marketing automation, and an awesome user interface. Use it to manage multiple email campaigns and mailing lists and design and send responsive newsletters created on the built-in campaign editor. Upgrade your marketing campaigns with intelligent email automation, personalization tags, landing pages, subscription forms, and meaningful campaign reports. Agencies sending out their newsletters using Moosend can replace everything using their own details so that nothing gives away that you are using their super cool email marketing services. 

Pros:

• Low cost;
• Fast email delivery;
• Modern and easy to use UI;
• Full integration with eCommerce platforms;
• Quick and helpful support team.

Cons:

• Support hours limited to some countries due to the time zone gap;
• Templates styles need to be more modern.

10. Lumen5

Lumen5 is a white-label video maker tool for social media marketing. With its help, you can create videos from your existing content and make videos a regular part of your marketing strategy. It allows creating white label social videos automatically by analyzing the text through AI and putting music, video, and images together accordingly. 

When you work for multiple clients, you may see a problem with having to change settings each time you produce a video for a different company. Lumen5 allows you to create Brand Presets where all these specific settings are stored. You then simply have to choose the correct one, and you’re ready to roll. If you work in a team, you can invite as many others as you need to work on your videos, speeding up the workflow considerably.

Pros:

• Web-based video editing service;
• Collection of royalty-free media;
• Great automatic features.

Cons:

• No image or sound editing features;
• The maximum video length is 5 mins.

11. Voucherify

Voucherify is a white label referral program. It helps you go beyond basic refer-a-friend programs and introduce personalized and customized referral campaigns into your apps and websites.

With this white label software, you’ll get:

• Fully integrated and ready-made solutions;
• Branding and customization options;
• Easy features customization with flexible API and SDKs.

You can connect with customers via any channel and any device and manage your referral program budget. For example: precisely define when and how the referrers get their rewards, set up its expiry date, analyze trends with built-in referral analytics, track marketing channels to better understand what drives performance, and test several referral scenarios in A/B experiments to find an optimal referral strategy.

Pros:

• Fully integrated and ready-made;
• Branding and customization options;
• Easy features customization with flexible API and SDKs.

Cons:

• Slightly quirky UI for handling downloads in the dashboard;
• The search tool is case-sensitive and does not search partial codes.

12. DashThis

DashThis is an automated marketing reporting tool created to help marketers save hours of work and create their reports in the blink of an eye. Customizable dashboard with 34+ connected integrations and custom-data manager, dashboard templates, creation and edition service, and sharing possibility. 

Pros:

• Displaying data in a clear and aesthetically pleasing way;
• Integrating with most of the systems you use on a regular basis in web design and digital marketing;
• Allowing you to quickly create new charts/graphs/reports for clients.

Cons:

• Some integration issues one in a while;
• No offline-reporting capabilities or sending PDFs through email;
• Limited chart types.

13. Pics.io

Pics.io is the all-in-one cost-effective DAM solution for distributed teams. It helps you store all your digital assets in a centralized library: easily accessible at any time, and simple to search and share to work productively. 

What can you do with Pics.io:

• Maintain an easy-to-use, centralized digital library;
• Aggregate every media asset into one accessible location and make them easily discoverable for any team member;
• Access to the right content, at the right time at any place;
• Ensure the latest files, content, and design are on-brand, compliant, and up-to-date;
• Enjoy unlimited storage on top of your cloud storage.

White-labeling allows you to create your own signup and login pages for your teammates to recognize and feel a connection with your brand. You can create a custom domain name to match your brand, customize websites with your logo and colors. 

Pros:

• Seamless linking to Google Drive;
• A familiar process to upload files;
• Good customer support and an easy onboarding process.

Cons:

• Not a full-featured DAM solution;
• The interface is rather bare-bones;
• Limited options on websites to display assets.

14. InvoiceNinja

InvoiveNinja is an open-source invoice, expense & task management platform that helps you create email invoices, track payments and expenses, and time billable tasks & projects for clients. 

The full list of features include:

• Invoice and auto-billing;
• Online payments;
• Quotations and proposals;
• Streamline workflows;
• Time-track work;
• Expenses and reporting;

You don’t need to stick to common pricing options. There is info on the site that if you self-host, you don’t need to pay any monthly fee to use the Invoice Ninja platform. If you choose to white-label your invoicing (i.e., remove all Invoice Ninja branding), the fee is $30/ year.

Pros:

• Works out-of-the-box;
• Functionality and flexibility;
• Great support.

Cons:

• Lack of integrations;
• Recurring invoices can be difficult to use and understand.

All these tools will help your agency not only become more efficient, streamline and automate many processes, but also increase the cost of your services. You can easily choose one or several services and programs, find a convenient cost and test it. Many of them have free plans or trial periods. More details on each white-label tool can be found on the websites with the links provided.

The post Best White Label Tools for Agencies appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Indeed, ignoring such a treasure as white label tools is a crime. They are simple, easy-to-customize, and some of them are free (or at least partly free). Most marketing agencies are already using a pack of tools to manage their business, so you should own a couple as well not to trail far behind. The time has come to equip yourself with an arsenal of mighty tools! To make it easier for you, we have prepared a detailed list of instruments you can use to boost revenue and optimize the way your team works. Let’s get started!

Summary of our picks: Top White Label Marketing Tools in 2022

1. 1. Best for social media marketing: PromoRepublic
   2. Best for SEO services: SE Ranking, Agency Analytics
   3. Best for brand image establishment: Mention, Synup
   4. Best for CRM: Sendible
   5. Best for data gathering and reporting: Dashthis
   6. Best for marketing automation: Mautic

How to choose the right white label marketing tool?

Tools listed below are diverse – they are used for different marketing purposes. That is why, it is important to arm yourself with the right ones, those that meet the needs of your business and your customers’ demands. White label digital marketing services could provide various services, such as SEO, PPC, social media marketing, blogging, conversion optimization, and more. First, the pack of required tools depends on the scope you span. Second, you should analyze your work processes efficiently. 

In general, everything that could be automatized should be automatized at least partly – this is the main rule of the modern digital market. Following this formula, you have a chance to avoid project protraction and numerous human-factor mistakes. 

Top white label marketing tools to try out

1. PromoRepublic

Free plan: No | Free trial: Yes
Main goal: Social media management

PromoRepublic is a multifunctional social media management and white label marketing platform. With its help, agencies and marketers can easily optimize their SMM activities. The pack of features presented by PromoRepublic includes instruments for posts scheduling, content creation, and performance analysis. Also, the tool can boast of a huge library of templates, where marketers and SMM specialists can find numerous ready-made templates with high-quality images. Aside from a rich collection, the scheduling and analytics features will suggest the best time to publish your posts, so that thousands of eyes will see them.

Pros: 

In-built image editor

Great branded reports for your customers

Advanced analytics with the most important metrics

Cons:

No scheduling for Instagram

Best for:

Professionals and small businesses

Works great with different social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn

Pricing plans:

Standard – $49/month

Professional – $99/month

Enterprise – custom pricing

2. Sendible

Free package: No | Free trial: Yes (14 days)

Main goal: Social media management, CRM 

Sendible is a multi-purpose tool for social media/email/SMS marketing, CRM, targeting and retargeting, automation, and others. Its wide suite of features and tools can cover most of your white label needs. The best thing about Sendible is numerous customization opportunities, which allow you to rebrand onboarding processes to your preferences and create multiple accounts. 

Also, the app works perfectly to help agencies tailor social media strategies for brands. You can use it to manage several social media platforms at a time, like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Sendible creates clear and precise reports to let you provide your customers with concrete numbers and results.  

Pros:

Convenient interface

Content recommendation engine 

Predesigned report templates for your customers

Cons: 

Not all metrics are covered in the analytics

Best for: 

Professionals, medium and large businesses

Suits for different social media platforms  

Pricing plans:

Starter – $29/month

Traction – $99/month

Growth – $199/month

Large – $299/month

3. Agency Analytics

Free package: No | Free trial: Yes (14 days)

Main goal: Customers’ campaigns reviewing, tracking, and reporting; dashboards  

Agency Analytics lets you create and customize dashboards for your customers. Not only you can track, manage, and interpret the results of your marketing efforts this way. Also, with neat branded reports, you will make your company look really professional and reliable. This one is great digital marketing software for agencies that strive for better revenue and brand name establishment. Custom reports may include numerous juicy features, like your logo, company’s name, etc. 

Pros:

Convenient all-in-one reporting app

A pack of advanced SEO tools

Cons:

No free packages, only a trial version
Best for:

Professionals 

Works for 50+ platforms to build branded dashboards

4. SE Ranking

Free package: No | Free trial: Yes (14 days)
Main goal: SEO 

SE Ranking is an SEO tool designed for white label goals. If your customers need some SEO assistance, this one might be a winning solution. Whether you are a SEO expert or webmaster, you can set up your or client’s domain by entering the name – no hosting required. 

SE Ranking provides numerous customizable tools for optimization needs. With its help, you can easily perform a website audit, track backlinks, monitor position ranking, etc. SE Ranking is a worthy SEO platform to add to your white label marketing arsenal.  

Pros:

Advanced rank tracking

Smart progress reports and manuals

Competitors traffic analysis (organic and paid)
Cons:

Low keyword ranking limits
Best for:

Professionals, small and medium businesses 

Perfect for white label marketing agencies focused on SEO services
Pricing:

Optimum – $39/month 

Plus – $71/month

Enterprise – $151/month

Custom – starting from $39/month

5. Synup

Free package: No | Free trial: Yes (14 days)
Main goal: Reputation management

When talking about white label tools, we usually focus on those for social media marketing, reporting, and SEO. Synup is pretty unique here – this app can be used by white label marketing agencies to improve customers’ brand awareness, brand image, and sales results. With its help, agencies can easily distribute and optimize content across various digital channels and improve content performance. 

Synup helps control and manage the brand’s online presence, research customers’ comments, and create positive service reviews. Synup’s dashboard provides performance metrics, profile, and review analytics. 

Pros:

Automatizes numerous processes and saves time

Insightful reporting

Worthy toolkit for an average price
Cons:

Confusing UI
Best for:

Professionals

Suits for social media marketing well
Pricing:

Starting from: $30/month

6. Dashthis

Free package: No | Free trial: Yes (15 days)

Main goal: Data gathering and reporting

Dashthis is a tool designed for marketing agencies that help customers improve SEO, SMM, PPC, etc. The application has a reach customizable dashboard with numerous widgets and features. All of your SEO, social media, and email marketing data can be united in one report to give you meaningful insight and a full picture of your efforts. Reporting is adjustable, convenient, and automated. To impress your customers, you can add their logo to reports, change fonts, headers, and add notifications. Dashthis will save a lump of your time if you are used to manual data collection and interpretation. 

Pros:

Intuitive interface 

Integrates with Instagram Ads, Google Analytics, and Mailchimp

Custom features for experienced users

All the important metrics included 

Cons:

Creates basic reports without advanced suggestions or forecasting 

Limited chart types

Best for:

Beginners, individual marketers and SEO specialists 

Pricing:

Individual – $33/month 

Professional – $109/month

Business – $209/month

Standard – $339/month

Enterprise – $499/month

Elite – depends on the amount of chosen features

7. Mention

Free package: Yes  

Main goal: Social media management and brand awareness

Mention helps companies improve brand awareness, find new clients, and boost their online reputation. As the name of the tool suggests, it gathers your customers’ brand mentions online – considering this data, white label agencies can offer detailed reports on the company’s reputation as well as respond to negative and positive comments. Also, the tool allows you to perform the same research with your competitor’s brand to analyze their online presence. 

Pros:

Great online database of million sources in 40+ languages

Smart reporting

Helps you find influencers and analyze competitors 

Cons:

Might be a bit expensive for small businesses 

Keyword search is limited

Doesn’t store data in the archive – once the comment is deleted, it is lost

Best for:

Professionals and large businesses 

Pricing:

Solo – $25/month

Pro – $25/month

ProPlus – $167/month

Company – $450/month

8. Mautic

Free package: Yes
Main goal: Marketing automation 

Mautic is a practically free white label marketing automation solution with an open code. You can install it to your server and customize it with all the required brand features, like logo, domain name, design, etc. The platform helps users manage their social media campaigns, email marketing strategies, and create meaningful reports. This tool automatizes the workflow when used wisely.

Among the other apps we have already reviewed, Mautic is not specifically for white label marketing, but you can use some of its features for your projects. It is a pretty powerful instrument to make your own automation solution tailored to customers’ needs – they might be interested in what you can offer in this regard.

Pros:

Advanced and potentially profitable

Saves your customers’ costs for automation 

Cons:

Hard to set up and manage

Requires in-depth expertise  

Best for:

Professionals 

A pretty serious tool for teams that like challenges and experiments

Pricing:
Free open-source platform 

9. White Shark

Free package: No

Main goal: PPC management 

If your agency specializes in PPC advertising solutions, then White Shark is the right white label project management software for you. Also, this platform can help you and your customers with local SEO solutions. The tool provides valuable insights into Adwords and Google Analytics, as well as instruments to create and manage full-fledged campaigns that increase ROI and boost brand performance. 

The platform is straightforward and easy to use, while numerous customization options will help you adjust the settings properly and make them fit your needs. Tools for in-depth analysis and different network issues detection will definitely make your SEO efforts more fruitful. 

Pros:

Filters and search to detect network issues

Traffic monitoring and reporting
Cons:

Showcase of the information is cloggy

Might be a bit confusing for beginners

Low rating on the web

Best for:

Professionals 

Agencies that provide advanced SEO services and PPC management help

Pricing:

Monthly Budget – $500-$10,000

Monthly Management Fee – $200-$600

One-Time Setup Fee – $200-$600

A quick review of white label marketing

It is hard to imagine a modern digital marketing industry without white label services. Young businesses might lack the expertise and skills to manage all aspects of their workflow while growing and large companies might need extra help from partners to handle their in-house strategies. Brands seek additional support to boost their performance and this is where white label agencies step on the stage.

With rapidly-evolving marketing strategies and technologies, white label agencies work to provide the following services:

1. Social media marketing
2. Analytics and measurement
3. SEO
4. Graphics design
5. Digital advertising
6. Chatbots 

White labeling is used in numerous industries, where products can be resold, customized, and used by brands. Digital marketing is not an exclusion – professional account managers, SMMs, copywriters, web analysts, and SEO specialists unite in agencies to deliver high-quality assistance to aspiring brands. They usually rebrand existing products, templates, and services to help clients get the most of their business ideas. 

Conclusion

Digital marketing agencies work hard to deliver outstanding services to their customers and these tools make the way to success shorter. After scrupulous research, we have chosen and listed the best white label tools for social media marketing, SEO, CRM, brand awareness, mentions, analysis, and more. These applications are great for boosting your customers’ business performance, dealing with statistics, creating meaningful reports, and improving overall performance. Use them to optimize your work processes and deliver only the best services to your dear customers!  

FAQ:

What does white label mean in marketing?

White label means that the agency rebrands existing products or strategies and offers them to customers. In general, with white labeling, brands don’t have to invent a bicycle – they can save time and benefit from a reinvented product, service, or marketing plan.

What is a white label solution?

White label solution is a kind of partnership when one company creates goods and sells them to another company, so the latter one can use these goods as their own. In the world of digital marketing, white-label solutions mean that a successful company has its own advertising technologies and plans to sell. Other brands buy ready-made solutions to improve their business or hire professionals that implement innovations into existing brand strategies. 

What is a white label social media?

In social media marketing, white label means reselling pre-made social media marketing solutions under your brand (having your logo and name on the product). 

Is white labeling profitable?

Yes, because white label brands are not expensive to create, but they have great potential to bring significant profit. Using white label solutions is cheaper and faster than creating everything from scratch. And vice versa – white labeling your brand allows you to sell it to numerous customers and therefore get a significant revenue.  

The post Top 9 White Label Marketing Tools to Reap Larger Profits appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Mostly, a browser of any agency owner being looks like a chain of tabs which includes Google Spreadsheets, emails, dozens of articles to read, and some project management desks. Along with all these vital things, pop-ups and notifications grab attention or, wait. It’s better to say,  divide your attention.

Then this frequent situation leads to a lack of time, hard work, and tight time trouble with which, not everyone can cope. Constantly being in, “I don’t know what to grab onto” mood can hardly be called appropriate when it comes to personal effectiveness.

The truth is, this happens to almost every person who needs to work with a computer. The good news though, this problem can be solved.

As Peter Drucker once said “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else. One cannot buy, rent or hire more time.”

What Is Time Management

It’s only 24 hours in the day, so making the most of your time is crucial. Whether you’re a newbie agency owner or a veteran knowing the ropes, it’ll be difficult for you to control every single minute of your day. No wonder, time is a thing many professionals can’t get enough.

If you don’t want to be a victim of a monster called ‘missed deadlines’, you need to learn as much as possible about effective time management.

17 Best Tips for Time Management

No matter what tasks in your to-do list, you can manage your time better to plan, execute, and achieve goals.

• Set Measurable Goals

According to goal-setting research reported by Harvard in 1979, people almost never set goals for the future. It appeared that only 3% of respondents had both written goals and concrete plans.

Then, these same students were asked about the level of income they have reached in 10 years. This 3% of students who recorded the goal earned 10 times more than 97% combined.

Business leaders use a plethora of methods, tricks, strategies, and tools to figure out how to achieve their goal-destination.

Bill Gates uses what’s called the OKR method to better manage goals for time management, clearly see the objective and ways to get there. Generally, OKR calls for setting objectives that have to be achieved and metrics that will measure their achievements.

To help the ideas come to reality, Richard Branson writes down all his goals. He believes marking off every completed task helps keep him motivated. Writing takes your goals to the next level: visual level!

• Define a Routine

Before you leave work, find at least 10 minutes at the end of the day to make a plan for tomorrow. There’s a 1-2-3 rule which allows you to define one really important task, two other larger tasks, and 3 or 4 smaller tasks. According to this technique the major mission of a day it’s not only a task: this is the #1 result you want to get for a certain # of hours.

That especially works for agency owners with a long-term business goal. Due to their habit to get caught in everything in every aspect of the business, they often suffer from a not doable list of tasks.

Therefore, forcing yourself to choose the tasks means you will accomplish tasks you really need to do, rather than go with the flow of random tasks that happened to be done.

The formula isn’t complicated:

• 2 big tasks, 2 hours each = 4 hours
• 3 small tasks, 30 minutes each = 1.5 hours
• Total Working Hours = 5.5 hours

A little caveat: If you have one must-do thing, move it in the first place instead of 2 big tasks.

• Log Your Time With Tools

If you need to get done what you really need to get done, find out what tools may help you stay focused on what really matters. Every year hopeful entrepreneurs give birth to thousands of projects and tools which of them work well for you is possible to understand only after testing them out.

For marketing agencies that have many clients, it’s good to use collaboration tools. PromoRepublic allows agencies to stay white-labeled, so if you have 10 clients (or more), you can show each of them a content calendar to no one of them to know about each other. Whatever piece of content you’ve prepared for them will be unique, what’s more, your client can leave their “this is good” or “let’s change it” right inside the calendar. Try PromoRepublic for free to ease your client-agency collaboration.

• Learn to Say NO

When it comes to organizing your own time the most important word is a polite “no.” There will be no hard feelings if you refuse and say ‘No’ to tasks that are not among the priorities you have chosen.

By saying no, you become a much better boss, friend, partner, colleague. You need to learn to feel what you really want – you will never say no if you do not understand.

The problem often is not about denying at all but saying “no” to a certain person — the client, family member, friend. In the meantime, the inability to refuse leads to a waste of time, effort, money.

As a result, you have to fulfill the promise, at the expense of something else that was scheduled for the same time.

Having learned to say “no,” you can learn how to set priorities correctly: sometimes to say “no” to someone means to say “yes” to your interests.

• Set Time Limits

Before you start doing your favorite and fascinating work, you sip some tasty coffee for a while, surf websites mindlessly, scratch your head, and then still request to postpone the deadline.

In a popular TED video, Daniel Pink, a business analyst, shares an experiment ran by Sam Glucksberg of Princeton University. The idea of which was to ask participants to solve a brainy task: stick a candle so that it does not smear wax on either the wall or the floor. One group was told that their results would set the standard — the starting point for the next survey, the other was offered a cash reward. Participants from the first group solved the problem 3.5 minutes faster than their competitors fighting for the prize.

It became obvious to scientists: if a task requires at least elementary mental effort, money does not play a special role.

Although, if it is worth doing something simple, say moving a chair, the reward still works very well.

• Make Short Breaks

Per a study published in Computers in Human Behavior, personal procrastination at work may positively influence your effective time management. 

Psychologists from the US and Israel come up to unexpected conclusions that small pauses help workers reduce stress and do work better. That’s all because the brain needs to reboot. When your timer goes off, take a 10–15-minute break.

The study even has a couple of tips on how to while away the time cyber-goofing-off. For instance, “if you don’t like someone at work, try to make myself feel better by watching funny cat videos”.

• Prioritize High-Performing Channels

Many small businesses that aspire to a greater social media presence look to large brands as their role models and seek to emulate the behavior they see i.e. maintaining active accounts on all the major social media networks. For many companies, this isn’t just difficult – it’s counterproductive.

Contrary to common misconception, you don’t necessarily need to be on every single social media platform, only those that are the most relevant and active for your audience. WordStream, for example, has a very active presence on Twitter, as that’s arguably the social media platform of choice for digital marketers, PPC experts, and many of our readers – but we’re not on Pinterest, simply because it isn’t relevant to our content or the needs of our audience.

Only focus your time and effort on social media channels that are delivering the results and engagement you want, and don’t waste time creating updates for channels that aren’t showing any return.

• Outsource Specialized Projects to Contractors

Tackling brand-new projects that you’ve never worked on before can be exciting and great for professional development, but sometimes, these kinds of projects are the very worst time-sucks.

If you’re asked to do something that’s outside the typical range of your expertise, consider outsourcing the work to a contractor. Discuss this possibility with your manager if you’re feeling overwhelmed or anticipate that a project will take too much time to complete yourself.

• Beat Procrastination with Zeigarnik Effect

In psychology, the “Zeigarnik effect” states that people tend to remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks more clearly than completed tasks. If you have a list of tasks, try to start each of them – then the memory will not give you peace of mind until you return to them.

Human nature is tricky: we feel the powerful urge to complete things. Literally, we will put effort to get tasks out of our system.

You can easily apply this effect when you learn new tools or develop your skills.

• Create Dashboards

Face facts, the information age changes the way we consume, acquire, and organize information. This sounds a bit blurry, but only making the right decisions help businesses move toward their goals.

It’s all pretty much the same when it comes to business. Dashboards will provide you with feedback about the progress report.

Marie Lamonde, Content Marketing & Communications Specialist at DashThis, says

“To measure and track our team’s productivity, we create different dashboards and reports that we can either consult each week or month depending on the team and the objectives we set. For example, our sales team has a dashboard per month with their sales objectives, and they consult it each week to make sure they are on track. Our marketing team also has dashboards that they consult each week to see if their campaigns are doing well, and another monthly report to see the overall performance with some year-over-year data as well.”

Also, it’s a great idea to use reporting tools for your productivity improvement. Check out our webinar and find out how social media reports can make your life easier.

• Audit Your Time Managing

By doing a time audit, you can boost your productivity. This is something like stopping and think about the black holes that suction up our priceless time.

First, identify any time drains during your day. What drains it? Do you spend too much time on social media? It’s not difficult to sort yourself out. Now iPhones reveal how long we’ve been using certain apps and let you place limits on app usage. You can also use a work time calculator to check how much time you actually spend on productive tasks. With this data, you can clearly see the areas to improve.

Secondly, it may be like you allowing other people to waste your time. These things requires some management. For instance, if a colleague comes to you at work to tell a story about their super romantic (sappy) date or a new sort of garlic-fishy flavored cat food — these are all having nothing to do with your work (probably) — try to track how much time you donated.

• Get a Mentor

This isn’t a biological need, but you can’t even imagine how lucky you will be if you encounter a person who opens up new horizons for you — a mentor is essential for the personal development process.

Every human being can get lost because of a number of reasons. The right person can motivate you, fire up the energy inside you, and give you the impetus to face all sorts of difficulties with dignity.  

Business leaders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg had the upper hand at success by being able to lean on mentors for support and advice.

If you haven’t met a person who can help keep your businesses innovative and relevant, don’t get frustrated.

Gavin believes that mentors can 100% help you to be more productive in managing your time better. They’ve often been there and done it, so will have the answers to some of the questions that may have taken you a lot of time to figure out.

“But it needs to work for both parties. I don’t have a single mentor, but take inspiration and learn from lots of different people if and when I need them – with the internet you can have 100’s of mentors!” he adds.

• Take Care of Yourself

Focus on your wellbeing, your physical and mental health. Remember to eat well, get enough sleep, and exercise. It gives you the energy to do what you love. Daily activity outside soothes your mood, makes you feel and look better.

In the fast-moving world, you need to slow down to ease your thinking into a more playful dialogue about what it means to live.

Marie Lamonde, from DashThis, a marketing reporting dashboard tool, believes that’s having a balanced lifestyle is crucial. She makes a calendar that helps her keep some time for exercise, leisure, and family in order to be more productive.

“Our brain will come up with fresh new ideas once it’s relaxed,” she notes.

• Make your communication smart

How much time did you spend on the last meeting with your team? Sometimes people tend to spend days talking about excellent ideas, innovative approaches, or problems to fix.

At the meeting talk only about the important things — about the work at hand. Have a clear purpose in mind. It’s nice if you want to share how great Bali and coconuts are, but leave the emotion-sharing part for lunchtime. Work is work, especially at work.

Also, respect the time of others. Don’t schedule the meetings at the end of the day (your colleagues have their personal life!).

• Get Rid of Productivity Myths

Psychoactive drugs seem to fire up long-desired productivity and creativity. But it’s still unclear whether this fact is self-deception or an unhealthy lifestyle’s propaganda.

The most popular productivity booster is caffeine. Although coffee used to be thought as a marvelous pepper-upper, it doesn’t give extra energy. It just frees up sources of energy that you already have. That’s why a cup of espresso makes you feel awake, energetic, and able to tag all your tasks as “resolved.” However this magical feeling doesn’t last long — when the reserved energy runs out, the stronger feeling of tiredness appears.

The thing is, a small cup of coffee won’t badly affect you. Caffeine powers up the adrenal glands, which then produces adrenaline and cortisol. Therefore, a large amount of caffeine can cause anxiety and irritability.

Your mind can be hit by new ideas, most in a relaxed state when thoughts wander without a certain direction. Caffeine narrows the zone of our attention and therefore can cramp creativity.

• Delegate!

Since the best way to see how people go wrong is to actually do it for yourself — does this sound familiar to you? If so, that means you can’t work with a team.

Then you will never rise above the role of the duty-performer. It’s sad but true: all-task-doer-makers drive cheap cars, never become famous people, and never write memoirs.

A really intelligent person at a certain stage understands that it is impossible to hog the blanket. The sooner the ability to delegate and negotiate comes, the fewer chances to find yourself having no money and no energy.

When it comes to productivity, Marie Lamonde emphasizes that she delegates some of her responsibilities to employees she can trust.

Once you have less on your mind, you can spend more time with your family, disconnect from work from time to time, and relax.

• Block Out Distractions

This includes emails, phone calls, and having dozens of tabs opened in a web browser. There’s nothing more powerful than the concentration (in a reasonable sense, of course).

Eve Edelstein, Director of the Human Experience Lab at Perkins+Will, believes that our 5 senses; touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing, strive to distract us away from focusing on work. No wonder it’s pretty hard to create a detailed report in a place where somebody talks on the phone or slurps. Her survey showed that 68% of workers can hardly concentrate and get tired quickly when the level of background noise exceeds the volume of normal speech.

In his interview to The New York Times, Cal Newport, one of the originators of deep work, says:

“In order for a session to count as deep work, there must be zero distractions. Even a quick glance at your phone or email inbox can significantly reduce your performance due to the cost of context switching.”

Wrapping Up: How to Manage Time Wisely

Three of the most effective ways of managing time efficiently are the most boring rules in the world. You have heard about them a hundred times. It just so happens they work the best:

– eat well

– sleep enough

– get some physical exercises

Keep at them (and these 15 above) to successfully manage your day and utilize your time to the max!

The post 17 Best Time Management Tips for Agency Owners appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

You can have quality staff and an excellent strategy of work, but it’s all nothing without good promotion. Marketing is a very fast-changing industry and that’s why you always need to be in connection with the promotion of your brand. Marketing agencies need to integrate the right processes and follow their strategies. 

When you have your own marketing agency, it’s easy to lose yourself in clients and their needs and also forget about promoting your agency as a brand, business, and cool place to work with. It’s really important to remember that every day lots of your potential competitors appear and you should be interested in creating a good look for your agency. 

So, how can and what should we do to be chosen by a client among other marketing agencies? Let’s check some offers on how to market your marketing agency.

Mouth Marketing 

It’s older than dinosaurs, but… People trust recommendations from their friends and information that they get from people, not from advertising. The study found that 84% of consumers say they either completely or somewhat trust recommendations from family, colleagues, and friends about products. Work for results and quality. These two things should make your clients satisfied and they will bring new clients to you because of good reviews. Never miss deadlines, put life into work, and communicate with clients. Communication is one of the most important things in your relationships with clients!

Blog

Well, hello, we also have a blog and think that it’s an amazing place to share some thoughts and experiences. It will bring new customer segments and knowledge for zero costs. Also, you can invite some interesting specialists and bloggers who can create useful content for potential customers. Here you should pay, but the result would be great if you choose the correct bloggers with the same vibe in your agency.

Also, you can publish your articles and content on other websites to share your experience with new audiences and show that you are well acquainted with the industry. For example, you can visit Social Media Today (http://www.socialmediatoday.com/) and ProBlogger (http://www.problogger.net/). These sites have good traffic so many people will see your content and appreciate it. Don’t forget to put the link to your own site, this will improve your SEO.

Website

Website is like the face of your company in this digital era. Make sure that your website is friendly to customers — nobody wants to waste time trying to deal with something difficult on the internet. Take the time to put together a thoughtful brand and a cohesive, professional website. You can find top-notch templates for SquareSpace and WordPress that’ll make your site appear as if you spent thousands on developers. Your site should include your portfolio and the potential client would see all the interesting things for him in one place. 

Networking 

Networking is good for your business and its a fact. Plan to attend some events where you can communicate with different people and get new contacts. It’s a good opportunity to find new potential partners, to talk about business, and think about collaboration. Seems that if that person with whom you got acquainted needs advice about marketing, he would contact you. 

Social Media

Nowadays social media is not only the place where people communicate and waste time. It’s a good tool to be in contact with the audience and sell your service. Regular sharing information about your company’s progress and useful information that shows you from the professional side is too good for your brand. The best way to build your marketing agency through social media is by being very active on Twitter. There you can get lots of organic traffic without any payments for advertising. Follow interesting people, reply to them, show yourself and you will be noticed. Twitter users are really good with sharing content, especially if it’s really good. 

Content Marketing and SEO 

Content marketing is also a powerful thing. Quality content can create a good history for your brand and make it more attractive to people. 

1. Showcases thought leadership to website visitors
2. Increases organic search results and targets relevant keywords, which exponentially builds traffic to your website from qualified buyers
3. Drives website visits back to your site from social media and gives you your own content to share on your social media profiles
4. Provides you with the opportunity to build premium content pieces that can be gated, if you choose, to collect a lead list
5. Builds a newsletter list of customers and potential customers, which you can then utilize to spread the news about your agency

Outline Your Marketing Goals, Strategy, and Tactics

Always remember that we work for the client so we usually need to understand who are our audience and for what we are doing all this work. When you are able to answer questions like these (and also your team agrees with all of these answers), your team will be prepared to strategically define what your goals are and how you will reach them. Initial strategies will be outlined, tactics will be chosen, and finally, your creative team can get the wheels in motion and do what they do best. Creativity is one of the main parts of marketing. Be creative!

Finding brand ambassadors is really hard. And who can tell about the company better than your employees? If you’ve been having a difficult time building a following that regularly engages with your business and shares your content, consider asking your employees to pick up the slack.

People usually share something from their workplaces on social, so we can use their accounts as a platform for promoting our agency. Their audience will get content and information from people they trust. 

Time Management

If you are good with time management, you can call yourself lucky. Clt of productivity must be destroyed, but if you can share your tasks during a day and even weeks — it can help you. Build a plan for the day to catch all the tasks and don’t lose something. When your mind is clean, you will do more useful things for your company. Don’t try to follow all the tasks at the same time. Studies have shown that we have higher willpower, self-control, and focus in the first three hours after we wake up. Just saying!

We share our opinion about how to market your marketing agency. But also as a bonus, we have an excellent webinar on How to Market Your Agency As Well As Your Clients. It’s free and very useful. You will learn:

• How to outline an agency promotion plan
• What ways of promoting the agency can be
• How to add in alternative revenue streams
• Tips and examples for optimizing the process of promoting an agency

And the speaker is Dylan Hey — Co-Founder at HeyDigital Agency, Host of The SaaS Marketing Show, Agency Growth Expert.

“Marketing agency that doesn’t know how to market themselves is kinda ironic. And it’s not rare. Usually agencies that help people to promote their product couldn’t do it for themselves.” (с)

Hope that after this article you will find your way and market your agency so well as you do it for other people. Share with us your stories and experiences!

The post How to Market Your Marketing Agency in 2021 [+ Free Webinar] appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Let’s sort out why Instagram needs professional profiles, how to switch, and what benefits can be derived. 

How many types of Instagram accounts?

There are currently 3 Instagram account types:

• “Personal account” on Instagram.
• “Professional/Business account” on Instagram.
• The “Creator’s” account

What is a Professional Account on Instagram?

These are accounts that are geared toward the sale of specific goods and services. As a rule, it makes sense to open such profiles if you have organized your own production or provided services, such as owning a beauty salon. It is vital because the main issue of promotion is the content. If you have your own production or beauty salon, you can get as much content as you need! If you are just selling goods, then it can be difficult to organize the process of obtaining content. That’s why it’s very advantageous to have your own small production of unique goods, because by creating an Instagram account, you get powerful advertising support, almost without spending any money on the production of promotional materials. In this case, the promotion plan constantly shows the audience the product, tells them about it, demonstrates it from different angles, and causes a desire to buy. 

You can read more about a Business Profile here.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/nike 

What is a Personal Account on Instagram?

The first thing every Instagram user does is create a personal account.

This is done in order to post their own photos, their own views on certain things. All this is because everyone has an opinion, and it may be the leading one for someone. If you have followers on a personal account, you are a leader of some kind of opinion for your followers.

Posting photos of dishes can cause interest in finding out its recipe, publishing a post from some restaurant, you’ll be asked about the atmosphere and service in the institution and so on.

And not only your friends who are subscribed to you but also complete strangers can ask you questions.

When you reach the moment when your account has over 500 or more than 1000 followers (depending on the topic), you’ll start to get advertisers’ interest. And there will be more interest when the number of subscribers continues to grow.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/chloewest28 

What is a Creator Account on Instagram?

There are also purely content-based projects on the social network, which resemble communities of people interested in a certain topic. Unlike other social networks, there are no separate functions for creators’ accounts, but you can decide for yourself how you want to promote your profile. The difference between accounts is that you’ll have to create a content plan in advance, for example, schedule all posts for at least 30 days, and then start auto-posting with a third-party service. Content accounts, however, actively respond to changes in the media space. They publish relevant news and tips. Such accounts make money, as a rule, by advertising other publishers or selling goods and services (for example, they can participate in affiliate programs of online stores or training programs, banks, insurance companies, and so on).

Cooperation can be different. Here are the main types:

• A gift for a review (product stays forever);
• Product for testing for feedback (sent once, then returned);
• Invitations to various events (movie premieres, media events, etc.);
• Providing a service for free or at a large discount;
• Buying relevant advertising;
• There are also cases when bloggers themselves take the initiative and send offers of cooperation to various stores and brands. This is done either through advertising exchanges or manually. The choice is up to you.

Source: https://trendhero.io/blog/instagram-accounts/ 

How to switch your profile type

You can switch to a creator account on Instagram in just a couple of clicks. Go to your Instagram profile settings, select “Account,” then “Switch to professional profile” (if you have a personal profile) or “Switch to creator profile” (if you have a business profile).

You will be offered to choose a content category. There are more than 40 items in the recommended ones. If nothing from this list suits you, type manually in the search bar.

You will also have the option to show this category on your profile or not. If you forgot to check it, you can return to this option from the general settings menu.

You can return to the personal or business profile in the same way from the general settings menu.

Business Profile vs. Creator Profile Instagram Account Types

Creators on Instagram have all the same features as business accounts. However, new features have been added to them:

1. Advanced audience statistics

Everyone who earns money on Instagram needs an audience and reach. For a business, these are potential clients, leads, and conversions, and for a blogger, this is the cost of advertising, which depends on each subscriber. Therefore, the creator has extended statistics: in addition to the standard indicators (likes, comments, saves, reposts) for any given period, you will observe the schedule of subscriptions and unsubscriptions. All data is stored for up to 3 months.

The data is tied to the content, so it will be much easier to understand which posts attracted the most newcomers (or caused a wave of unsubscribes).  

2. New sorting parameters in Direct

Influencers get written to frequently: some for business, others just for fun. Instagram has divided Direct into two folders for authors: the main folder and a general folder to ensure that important conversations are not lost in the wave of messages. Offers from advertisers and personal correspondence can be kept in the first tab, ordinary messages, and spam – in the second.

Immediately following the transition, it is advisable to categorize all dialogs into folders. To do this, go to the Details section (the icon at the top right) and click Move. In this case, your conversation partner will not know about the changes. 

You can also sort correspondence requests as soon as they are approved. 

3. Creator tab in the settings

Promotions are launched through the Facebook ad cabinet, but you can track the statistics on payments and analyze the branded content without leaving Instagram. There is a new item for creators in the settings:     

4. The ability to hide contacts

Popular bloggers are inundated with messages and calls every day. Instagram understands that sometimes it is impossible to handle all incoming requests, so it allows creators to hide contact information from the profile. 

5. Advertising and branded content

Today, any professional account allows you to set up targeted ads and pay to promote posts. The content creator can also officially place sponsor tags on posts. Such advertising increases the status of the creator and the trust of the audience. Partners will send you their ads, which will be published on your page automatically or after moderation.

6. Privacy settings

Unlike the standard profile, the professional account (creator or business) cannot be closed. It is already different with categories: the creator can hide it if he wants, which cannot be done by the administrator of the business page. There is also another important setting for creators and companies for the content they publish – the age limit (general and for each country).

Pros and cons of a business account

An Instagram business account has both pros and cons. The main disadvantage is a possible drop in reach. The management of Facebook itself, which owns Instagram, admits that the priority in the display will always be given to personal profiles rather than to companies. Mark Zuckerberg stated this in one of his publications on the social network. Therefore, businesses will have to get their reach through paid advertising.

The bottom line

Each Instagram account type has its pros and cons and has a lot to offer each user. The most important thing is to weigh everything carefully and choose the type that will positively impact your business and help your agency get more clients.

The post Instagram Account Types: Which Is Right for Your Agency to Get More Clients appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

What is B2B social media marketing?

According to Techopedia, social media marketing refers to “methods that target social media and applications to spread brand awareness or promote specific products.” Social media marketing campaigns typically focus on:

• Creating a social media presence.
• Creating content to share.
• Generating customer feedback.
• Ensuring engagement.
• Supporting the entire customer interaction process from start to finish.

Moreover, according to the research company Eloqua, for 82% of B2B brands, social networking is the main way to increase company recognition.

Companies often have a question about B2B social media marketing: “Why do we need it?” The words “trendy” or “everyone does it” are not answers for serious business. And even the opportunity to say that a B2B company in a narrow niche has more than 11 thousand subscribers in social networks is not the main goal.

The competition in B2B is not always the difference in price because the corridors of RRPs from manufacturers may limit the dealers.

Often all companies have roughly the same delivery terms and conditions, forms of payment, and warranties. In circumstances where the main criteria are difficult to choose, the secondary ones are significant.

For some, the preponderance will be expressed simply: “I’ve never seen this company before, but this one appears periodically on my Facebook feed and posts not only memes or quotes of famous people.”

Others will start comparing potential partners by their presence on social networks, the number of followers, frequency, topics, and design of publications, likes, and comments — this shows that the company works and has an established community of customers.

And the company’s official pages on social networks are essentially the only way to get a glimpse “behind the scenes” of the company. But somewhere you’ll see promotions, discounts, a diploma from an exhibition, and discounts again. And somewhere — human stories about employees (a bit of the profession and personal life), photo reports about maintaining corporate traditions (say, board games on Wednesdays), and detailed case studies from satisfied clients.

Top 5 B2B social media platforms

Linkedin

A social network for professionals, LinkedIn is one of the most convenient platforms for B2B social media marketing campaigns. Here you can quickly find potential clients in the B2B segment because this resource was developed specifically for business communication. The audience of LinkedIn has more than 300 million users. Daily audience: 2.7 million.

A study by Oktopost reported that 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn. It’s hard to argue that any other social network is more important than LinkedIn to B2B marketers. LinkedIn provides incredible opportunities for everything from building brand thought leadership to targeting specific leads with organic content and their evolving advertising and sales solutions. In 2021, the community is still the leader in B2B social media marketing.

Twitter

Event marketing is one of the most effective sales tools in the “business to business” segment.

Microblogging service Twitter is the easiest way to inform the important news quickly for busy business people. It’s a network that allows users to communicate through short messages and link to important web pages.

It’s a handy tool for B2B marketers. In particular, potential consumers can be discovered here and grouped into private lists. By tracking users’ messages, you’ll learn about their interests and preferences. This is the first step to effective interaction with a future partner.

Twitter’s search algorithm and use of hashtags allow event organizers to quickly spread the word about conferences, workshops, seminars, and other events.

YouTube

Video content is one of the most in-demand and popular types of content for any audience and venue. And if you still regard YouTube as a huge collection of kitty videos, we will disappoint you:

According to Forbes, 52% of executives at large companies watch training videos on YouTube at least once a week.

The format of your YouTube posts can be extremely varied: from tours of your office to expert advice and fun interviews with employees.

If you want to give your brand a human face, it’s better to show that very face with a video rather than boring text that risks getting lost in the background of a thousand similar posts. Of course, they are 100% suitable for the company website, a summary, or business news, but not for a social network.

Facebook

Business pages and theme groups are the main tools for B2B on Facebook. In addition, business page owners have access to convenient email marketing tools that allow them to send newsletters to subscribers or group members. A well-thought-out brand presence strategy on Facebook is one of the elements of modern PR.

Moreover, Facebook is one of the fastest-growing networks. Recently, its daily audience exceeded 1 billion people! The network has also enabled personal company-to-customer communication and the ability to buy and send messages directly through advertisements.

Also, don’t forget that Facebook, along with LinkedIn, will always be the No. 1 platform if you do business with foreign companies.

Instagram

You need to think of Instagram as an opportunity to tell your story as part of a larger online marketing strategy. You need to develop a conversation between the brand/business and your subscribers/customers. The closer they are to the business, the more likely they are to become super fans. Instagram is the easiest way to achieve this: comment on other users’ posts, repost, participate in Real-Time Marketing. Give your Instagram page a chance to surprise and fill your subscribers’ feed with beautiful photos and interesting facts. Using this approach, you’re sure to get the response you need among those billion people who visit Instagram every day.

Top 5 tools for B2B social media marketing

To succeed in promotion through social networks, you need to understand modern tools for B2B social media marketing and know which will be more effective and profitable for the particular brand and the chosen social network for promotion.

PromoRepublic

White-label tool for managing social networks that allows you to: create content using an integrated library of templates, schedule the best time to publish using detailed analytics, monitor your performance on social networks, as well as create comprehensive and understandable reports for clients. You can read more in our other article about tools for managing social networks.

Plan: free trial

Social networks supported: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn

Buffer

A business platform that gives you the ability to manage all your social media accounts from one app. In addition, it allows you to plan and analyze publications, track engagement metrics for each account.

Plan: free plan and free 14-day trial

Social networks supported: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest

Zoho Social

This is a B2B social media platform for scheduling, posting, monitoring, and analytics for multiple social media channels. Plus, you can track your brand mentions and keywords and even delegate work.

Plan: free trial

Social networks supported: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google My Business

Eclincher

This social media management app has features such as content scheduling and auto-posting, engagement, task delegation, and in-depth analytics. It also has a special social inbox feature to collect information about all user interactions with your brand across different accounts in one place. 

Plan: free trial

Social networks supported: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google My Business

Postcron

This B2B social media management platform has autoposting capabilities for both single posts and up to 1,000 posts straight from Excel and Google Docs files. In addition, the app has a smart calendar feature where each user can add watermarks and their company logo to photos for posts.

Plan: free trial 

Social networks supported: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter

Strategies. Key points

Without a B2B social media marketing strategy, working in social networks is a lottery. A strategy is a step-by-step plan for achieving results.

Goal setting

The answer to the question “Why do I go to social networks?”

“To get a public page,” “I want a lot of subscribers,” “I want to increase sales.” These are not goals that are important for SMM strategy.

Specifics are needed:

• “I want my social media group to generate 20 leads per week with a cost per lead of no more than N amount of money.”
• “I plan to increase sales by 10% in relation to 2020 due to work in social networks.”

Goals should be measurable, specific, and realistic. Break down big goals into tasks: what needs to be done to achieve the goal.

Analytics and KPIs

Decide on the KPI, which parameters you will keep track of, and how you will forecast the next month’s results.

Explain how exactly the KPI reflects the goals and objectives of the promotion and how you will evaluate the success of the work.

Popular KPIs for SMM specialists are the price of leads, price of clicks, price of subscriptions, growth of activity and engagement (in %), growth of subscribers, increase of reactions (likes, reposts, comments, saves). As KPIs, you can use such significant indicators as:

• Increase in organic reach of posts;
• ER (audience engagement ratio);
• frequency of content generation;
• the average response time of an SMM specialist to a message or comment.

Promotion methods

Include in the B2B social media marketing strategy all the tools you will use to achieve your goals, starting with a list of sites — specific social networks in which communities/accounts will be created. The tools may be as follows:

• Content creation and publishing.
• Targeted advertising.
• Working with bloggers.
• Placing content in third-party communities.
• SMM strategy includes terms and conditions of work, formats of cooperation — for example, bloggers can publish guest posts, and you can order native advertising.

Target audience analysis

The basic component of SMM strategy. Because promotion, aka B2B social media marketing, is 100% work with the audience. To make a portrait of the target audience, you can use:

• A brief that the client fills out.
• Conversation with representatives of the sales department or staff marketer client.
• The results of customer surveys, if they were conducted.

Basic target audience analysis includes:

• gender
• age
• marital status
• education
• geolocation

Plus additional characteristics if you’re working with young mothers, brides, military, some other narrow groups.

In the analysis of your target audience data about their consumer behavior, you can also include how often they come back for a repeat purchase, how regularly they use the company’s products or services, whether they use the product themselves or together with their family. If the company has a CRM, all this data can be obtained from the customer.

Analysis of company pages in social networks

If the company for which the SMM strategy is being developed is already present in the social networks, it is important to analyze its communities. Connecting special services, you can get a full cross-section of statistical information on the page and posts — the number of subscribers, the number of likes/dislikes of the page and each post, the number of displays of posts, coverage, comments, and reposts.

It’s also important to visually assess the design of the public page and the profile header.

Content policy

The section includes recommendations for rubrics (competitor analysis comes in handy) and SMM content formats.

The content policy describes the types of SMM content — informational, selling, expert, entertaining — and defines their ratio. This is necessary so as not to bore the audience with constant selling posts or overfeed them with frivolous entertainment. Alternating types of SMM content protect against monotony, which can make the audience unsubscribe.

The Role of Marketing Automation in B2B Social Media Marketing

For many of us, the term “B2B social media marketing automation” sounds a little strange, as if it were for companies like Google or Microsoft. But the future has arrived, and with it, marketing automation has already made its way into the lives of many companies, both small, medium-sized, or large. 

The benefits of automation:

• Time normally spent on routine tasks is freed up for other work.
• Coverage increases.
• Around-the-clock interaction with your audience.
• Ability to pay attention to a large number of visitors to the account.
• Setting up services in accordance with preset filters allows for an unmistakable and targeted expansion of the target audience.
• Possibility to develop several accounts at once.
• The ability to view and analyze data on the results of a particular promotion method, which will help to change the tactics and strategy for working with the audience in time.
• Creation of detailed and clear reports for clients.

As a result of automation, you save the time of your employees and increase coverage and ROI.

5 Lessons B2B Marketers Can Learn from B2C Marketers

Of course, B2B social media marketing needs its unique approach. But who says that B2B marketers have nothing to learn from B2C?

Plan a Segmented Social Plan

Take the time to examine your social audience and create content that speaks to your audience. A/B testing is a good idea. For a small portion of your marketing budget, you can run multiple Facebook ads for different segments. Make sure your content calendar is a mix of posts that appeal to all your key demographic areas.

Get Ready to Engage

Remember, even if you’re a B2B marketer, the business you’re trying to win has a person in charge of researching products and services. They might ask questions. You need to be there to answer them. B2C companies know the value of interaction and how it can move a customer through the sales funnel.

Be Creative

Visual posts are widely the most well-received, so don’t be afraid to create a contextual, visual post that delivers your message in a consumable way. B2B marketers are too afraid of seeming casual, but they shouldn’t be. If they take a lesson from B2C marketers who create fun, engaging, yet relevant social posts, they’ll be doing the brand a favor.

Promote Your Blog

Leverage each social channel to promote your blog post on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Change your messaging for each based on the channel you’re using. Facebook users want a CTA lead-in that speaks to their needs. Sharing on Twitter means you probably need to tweet the same blog post several times. LinkedIn should get only the most thought-provoking and valuable content, positioned in a way that seems intentional and deliberate.

Run a Promotion

While B2C marketers know that sales and promotions can increase foot traffic and drive engagement, B2B marketers should know that the right coupon code, offer, or discount can make companies choose their service or product over another’s.

The post B2B Social Media Marketing. What’s Working in 2021? appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

How your agency is perceived online as people search and find information about you will determine whether they will contact you and want to purchase your product or service. So you have to understand: Do you have an online presence or not? How easy is it to find you?

Your online presence constantly projects how you want to be perceived. And today, we’re going to tell you 10 effective ways to improve your online presence.

Why develop your online presence?

• Consumers are spending more and more time online

Any information about a product or business of interest on the Internet today makes it much faster to purchase or choose a supplier. In the case of B2C, users want to make buying decisions here and now and on their own. They are helped in this by the completeness and availability of information online: reviews from other customers, having a website with useful content, chat rooms, etc.

Traffic from mobile devices has equaled the volume of traffic from desktops, and in some niches, it has even overtaken it — this is a separate significant trend that will only grow. It is a signal to many companies that your site should be correctly displayed on mobile devices, or simply put, have a mobile version.

• A confident online presence enhances and strengthens the image of the company

Today, it is very important to have a blog as well. There you can share helpful information with potential clients and suppliers, create value for your company in the eyes of your customers, constantly collect feedback through comments, and adjust your strategy to market needs. Maintaining social media pages also increases your company’s transparency in the eyes of your customers. It can even be habit-forming in regards to content and selling your product as the final step. We’ve told you before about how to increase your social media presence. So we suggest you read this article next as well!

• 24/7 availability increases the speed of decision-making for working with your company

Now any customer support is perfectly realized online with minimal costs. You get the opportunity to get new leads during off-hours of employees: the user simply fills out a request form on the website. The nearest trend in this direction is the development and implementation of chatbot technology for closing one-type questions from users, making your company more accessible and effective for clients in the market.

• Optimization of operating costs

Technology online is becoming so accessible that it no longer requires costly developers to create full-fledged websites, online stores, and applications. Just hire a technically savvy and willing to understand the subject. Modern digital tools do not require large budgets, a large team, or advanced development skills, which reduces the burden on a company’s operating costs.

• Increase the responsiveness of customer interactions

The Internet and available online tools allow you to deliver information and offers to the customer faster, as well as gather feedback and adjust to the customer. The more questions from your customers you learn to close online with your website, social media, or blog, the fewer questions they will have in the future. Thus, it will take less time to close the deal.

So, the next important point: is it easy to find you on the Internet?

This is the main question to start with if your company has been on the market for a long time. But if you are just starting your business, starting to develop and promote yourself online, then you need to get such a result that the answer to the question in the title is “Yes.”

Ways to improve your online presence

Now, let’s proceed to the tips for improving the online presence of your agency.

Strategy → Action

A person’s path to order does not always consist of three simple steps: see an advertisement → go to the site → place an order. Many users at the top level of the typical sales funnel may not even be aware of the brand’s existence or its online store. Offering them to buy something right away is not a good idea.

Therefore, work on your online presence should be broken down into several key steps. Start by creating a balanced digital promotion strategy and choosing the most appropriate tools. Start from the AIDA model. 

AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) is a model of consumer behavior accepted in marketing practice that describes the sequence of actions leading to a purchase.

Update your website to keep up with the times

Consumers, especially online, are capricious and impatient. They don’t want to wait a few minutes for your site to load or for them to find the “Search” button on it. In their opinion, if your site is hopelessly out of step with today’s requirements, it’s better not to have one at all. What’s more: according to Stanford Web Credibility Research, 75% of online consumers judge an agency or brand by its website. Worth thinking about it!

Of course, there are now many designers with which you can easily create your own site. But often, many people find them hard to understand, and it’s much faster and more reliable to hire a separate developer who will do everything the way you want. It’s worth the expense and will noticeably increase your online presence!

Media and search campaigns

Spread the word that your agency went online. To do this, launch an extensive media campaign in Google Ads and campaigns for new users in Facebook Ads.

Billboards, YouTube ads, website banners — these are all types of media advertising, and they all serve the same function — to draw the audience’s attention to the product and drive sales. If the consumer does not respond to it immediately, there is a high probability that he will remember it later.

Media is not only banners but also video and audio. Depending on the preferences of the target audience and existing business objectives, a different format is chosen for each marketing campaign. 

Use more keywords in your agency blog

There’s not much room to use keywords on the basic pages of your site, such as the home page or services and contacts. Let’s be honest. It’s only in the latter two that you can somehow use them. How, then, to use more keywords? This is where your agency’s blog comes to our rescue. 

Your goal is to appear as often as possible in search results and for as many of your potential clients’ search queries as possible. Each article on your blog must be carefully worked out using as many keywords as possible to achieve this goal. The more often you appear at the top of Google, the better your online presence. And it also brings increased credibility and traffic to your site. According to HubSpot, companies that pay enough attention to blogging have 55% more visitors than competitors who don’t bother to do so.

Choose social media wisely

Online presence depends on the quality, not the number of channels you use. There are plenty of social networks — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and so on. First, choose the ones that have the most of your target audience and focus on them. It’s much more effective to actively maintain accounts on a couple of social networks than to waste effort on multiple platforms with low returns.

Audience before followers

Once again, it’s not quantity but the quality that counts for your online presence! No matter how many followers you have, their number by no means guarantees activity in your account. Your agency may have 3, 5, or even 10 thousand followers. But what is the point if only 300 of them interact with your posts? Publish useful and interesting content to your target audience, and the number of likes, reposts, or comments will noticeably increase under each subsequent post. Think about the value of your content, and your active audience will only grow!

Don’t be afraid to ask for reviews!

Reviews are the most crucial tool in building trust in your agency. And they are the ones that affect how you will show up in local Google searches. More positive reviews mean a better online presence for you. It’s not enough to perform well if no one knows about it. Ask a satisfied customer to leave a review on your website or Google, and new customers will start showing up more often!

Welcome guests

Many companies and niche media outlets are eager to publish guest posts by other companies and agencies. And many of them have a well-developed online presence. Negotiate with them about the possibility of publishing your post or series of articles. That way, you’ll solve several problems at once:

• Improve your online presence.
• Introduce your brand to more Internet users
• Increase your credibility as an expert
• Improve your SEO with a link to your website in the publication

You can also do guest posting on your profiles — the author of the publication will surely share the link with your audience, attracting more people to your page!

Let your employees share your content with their followers

LinkedIn says: employees often have 10 times as many active subscribers as the company itself. And if they share company content, it gets 8 times more engagement than when the company distributes it exclusively through its own channels.

Your employees are a fast, reliable, and free way to increase your online presence. Share a new publication in your agency’s chat room and ask your colleagues to repost in their personal accounts. If you’re on good terms with your employees, they can automatically become something of an advocate for your brand.

Make your content inclusive 

One of the main requirements of today’s online world is that content must be such that both an average user and a person with disabilities can interact with it. For example, add a version of your site for visually impaired people or the ability to listen to the text on each page. According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in four adults in the United States has some form of disability. Along with this, the assistive technology industry is also actively developing. Don’t miss the opportunity not only to increase your online presence but to gain a grateful new audience who will choose you over your competitors because you’ve thought about their needs in advance.

The post 10 Effective Ways to Build Your Online Presence for Agency Growth appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

A proposal is a powerful tool that turns your prospects into clients. It includes the information your clients are the most interested in, namely – how exactly you can solve their problems and help them achieve their objectives. Follow the steps outlined below to learn more, find out how to compose a winning proposal, and make your potential clients gasp in amazed delight.

Before we start: what is a social media proposal?

A proposal is not a social media management contract or a pitch. This document is rather a presentation you send to your potential client to make them “wow” and choose you as a marketing partner. You should send one after a consultation with a prospect (make sure that you understand their needs at this point), but before you sign a contract.

As the title of the document suggests, it is written to propose concrete services to your client. The idea is to list a series of strategies and steps you are going to take to help them reach the desired results. Your task is to explain how social media marketing can benefit one’s business and then prove that you are qualified enough to implement the best practices in life. The proposal shows the results of your research and experience to prove that you are exactly the one they have been looking for. 

How to write a social media proposal?

First of all, your proposal should cover the following questions:

• What exactly are you going to do?
• Which customers’ goals do you plan to achieve?
• How will you do that?
• Which strategies and tools are you going to use for concrete objectives? 
• Which of your team members is going to be engaged in the process? (optional)
• How does a customer’s business transform after your manipulations? 
• How much does each of your services cost?
• How much time do you need to reach particular results?

Now let’s uncover a couple of practical steps on proposal writing.

1. Determine business and social media goals

Ask yourself some key questions. What are the goals of my client’s business? What are they working toward, and how can they use social media to achieve their goals? Before you start writing a proposal, make sure to discuss these points and the customer’s vision. With answers to these questions, you will be able to set the right goals.

2. Learn about your clients’ audience

Don’t make assumptions about the clients’ audience on your proposal. Collect as much data as possible, and then use it to improve your strategy. You can start from things like social media demographics or social media engagement. Have a look at the statistics, find out what you can bring from it. At this point, it is crucial to involve other marketing channels your customer may already have. This may include mail-outs, SEO, etc. Clients’ reactions and behavioral patterns will give you a full picture.

If you already have a relationship with a client, ask them to share data that they have about their audience. And, if you have access to their social media accounts, use analytics to take core information about it.

3. Get to know the competition

Who are your clients’ key competitors? You should mark at least five core competitors and put them in your list to understand who you will benchmark against. With this data, you will have a clear picture of your desired goal. After that, look at the brands they are following.

When you identify competitors, use social media tools to monitor their activity. Don’t forget to create a matrix to map out how competitor social media efforts are positioned in relation to each other. Look carefully – if you will find a gap, you know that you can fill it with your social media strategy. Is there something their marketing campaign is missing? Maybe they offer paid delivery or don’t cover some important services? This means that you must provide them to get a competitive advantage. In your social media strategy, you will have to promote these features to allow clients to make a clear distinction between competitors and your prospect. What is more, see which social media strategies are missing on the competitors’ accounts. Do they post content frequently enough? How useful or entertaining their content is? Check which type of content gets more attention from users to know what to pitch in.

4. Conduct a social media audit

Perform an investigation to find out which social media channels your clients are currently using. Which platforms are the most popular and why? Remember that different niches should land on different social media platforms, regarding their main features. For example, there is no better place for visual content than Instagram. Artists, photographers, and clothing shops need an Instagram account for sure. As for Facebook, it is great for long posts, guides, and informational content.

5. Develop a content strategy

If you have successfully completed steps 1-4, you can create your content strategy. This is the point where you should work out what type of content will be created or curated, how your content may vary depending on the platform you are working with, and how it should be posted. You should pay attention to design, style, and tone of voice. They should work as one – this is something that makes a brand memorable and appealing. Make sure to distinguish the strongest and brightest features of customers’ brand image and think about how you can make them even greater. In your social media campaign, you should highlight and strengthen them as much as you can.   

You should use your clients as a source of information as much as possible – get everything you need because it will depend on how successful your social media proposal will be. Addressing their needs directly and quite literally is the key.

Additional tips for writing a social media proposal

If you know how to write a social media proposal, it’s good, but you can’t do it like a robot with one algorithm. So, we will show you some tips to make your proposal non-standard.

• Address the clients’ needs and objectives

Here you have an opportunity to show clients that you understand their business needs and goals. Keep it simple and be as specific as possible so that you leave a little room for discrepancy and ambiguity. Be ready to discuss questionable points and answer questions. 

• Present social media goals and objectives

Here you should have from three to five social media goals and objectives. Each objective should be supported by the platforms, metrics, and end date.

• Outline your tactics

This is the core point in writing a social media proposal. You will launch your social media strategy using all information from your research and social media audits.

Summary

A clear and engaging proposal for your clients is an integral part of your marketing toolkit and a great way to present your company in the best light. In addition, a straightforward and transparent document that lists the conditions of your cooperation, services, deadlines, and costs guarantees that you will have fewer misunderstandings and controversies in the process. The more detailed, interesting, and tempting your proposal is, the higher the chances that your prospect will turn into a client right away.

FAQ

How do you write a social media proposal?

First, talk to your prospect to have a clear picture of his/her needs and expectations. You need to collect as much data as possible to develop a winning strategy on how to achieve those goals. Second, make a plan of action and explain it in your proposal. Don’t forget to provide concrete numbers: deadlines, schedule of your activities, and costs. 

What is the media proposal?

A social media marketing proposal is a document you send to your customer after consultation but before you sign the contract. This text aims at convincing your potential client that you are the best agency/person to cooperate with since you have a clear understanding of their needs and know what to do in order to achieve them.

How can I write a proposal?

To compose a winning proposal, you should find out everything about your prospect’s needs and think about the strategies to meet them. Describe your plans in detail, list the prices and deadlines. 

Is a proposal a contract?

No, a proposal is not a contract yet. This document is usually written and sent to your prospect before you make a contract. In fact, your proposal should be convincing enough to motivate a prospect to sign a contract and make a deal with you.  

The post How to Write a Successful Social Media Proposal for your Agency appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

A marketing portfolio is a great way to promote your best work when you need to showcase what you’ve already done as a marketer or connect with potential clients.  Everything you’ve worked on will be well-organized and accessible. There’s no need to prepare extra files or send lengthy emails describing your previous experience.

In the article, we will explain what a marketing portfolio is, why it’s important for your agency, and how to create a successful and professional marketing portfolio.  

What is a Marketing Portfolio? 

A marketing portfolio is an organized collection of relevant work that shows potential employers your abilities and expertise. It also helps you chart your professional growth.

A marketing portfolio includes a company brief, professional accomplishments, career summary, contact details, marketable skills and abilities, your work samples, testimonials, and awards.

Why Do You Need a Marketing Portfolio?

Clients looking for a marketing agency need to be sure that the agency they want to hire is trustworthy and will provide a return on their investment.

Proof that you’ve done similar work before and got amazing outcomes is a great way to establish trust and credibility with potential clients. A marketing portfolio can also be used to demonstrate the breadth of your talents and experience.

In the digital age, it is preferable to create a marketing portfolio as a website. A marketing portfolio in the form of a website can serve as an inspiration for potential collaborators. Your clients will be able to visualize the types of projects you’ll create for them if you show them interesting examples of your work.

Placing your professional portfolio online can also help you build credibility in your field. It also helps in developing your employer’s brand; people will find your company and contact you about job openings.

What to Include in a Marketing Portfolio

Here’s a checklist of the components you should include in your marketing portfolio:

• A company brief (short bio): highlight your interests, experience, and knowledge. This is also a great place to include a mission statement – an explanation of why you believe your company’s work is important.
• Career summary: include your professional accomplishments to highlight your experience and provide context to your work. You can include information about employees’ work records and academic backgrounds.
• Contact details: make it easier for your potential clients to find your professional email address and phone number in your portfolio. If you have any social media accounts related to your profession, such as Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook pages that cover your work, you should also link to them. 
• Work samples: this is the most important aspect of your marketing portfolio. Share the most successful and good-looking projects, as well as details of the workflow and your approach to work. Each explanation should be accompanied by compelling visuals and data-driven metrics.
• Testimonials: place positive customer testimonials along with your work examples to make a powerful first impression. Assuring people that your work was well received by clients might help to increase the credibility of your claims.
• Awards: don’t forget to add to your portfolio any public acknowledgment you have received, whether it is an award in your field or a mention in a publication. This will help you establish yourself as an industry expert.
• Call to action: a call to action (CTA) is a piece of advertising that encourages your viewers to take a specific action. Make sure you include one at the end of your portfolio.

Your portfolio’s sole objective is to demonstrate how successfully your agency performs the work you do, therefore only exhibiting your best, most recent work. 

It’s important to remember that you don’t have to exhibit all of your work. What you should be aiming for is a selected set of works that you’ve done previously on various projects. 

Your portfolio should demonstrate your greatest work, regardless of what type of marketer you are. If you only include old projects it may seem like your agency is no longer operational. It can also give the impression that you are unable to keep up with the ever-changing marketing industry, which is not a good sign if they hire you to do this. Including substandard work in your portfolio can be just as bad as including old works.

How to Create a Digital Marketing Portfolio Clients Love (Examples and Strategy)

We have put together a guide on how to build a marketing portfolio that will showcase your best work and get your audience’s attention:

• Choose an online platform

A convenient way to get started with your online portfolio is to create a professional website. You can choose between these website builders: 

• WordPress is a versatile site builder with plans for every budget;
• Wix is a free website builder with a variety of templates that you can customize;
• GoDaddy is a free website builder that allows you to create mobile-friendly sites with modern templates;
• Weebly is a free site builder with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface;

• Create an attractive landing page

Keep in mind that the landing page of your professional portfolio website is often your audience’s initial impression of your brand. Your homepage should scream about what you are doing. Make it obvious from the start what your company is about. Use one or two sentences to introduce your site and company, briefly describing your professional objectives. You should also make the landing page pleasing to the eye and simple to browse. Don’t overfill the page with heavy photos or blocks of text. Remember that your purpose is to direct your visitors to other parts of your site, not to keep them on the page. With this in mind, make your homepage as straightforward as possible.

Furthermore, near the top of the webpage, you should include enticing calls-to-action (CTAs), such as  “Contact me” or “Choose your project now” buttons.

• Create a strong About Us page

Remember to include the About Us page. On this page, you can provide a brief description of your company as well as links to your social media profiles. This page should describe your professional experience and accomplishments in a way that sets you apart from other industry professionals. It should explain how you got to your current situation and why your organization is doing what it is doing.

You can also include multiple customer testimonials to back up your claims and demonstrate that you are committed to your professional ideals.

• Show off your best work

Your work samples are the most important part of your portfolio. Create a separate page titled Portfolio or Work Samples to begin. This is where you’ll put your best work on display. 

You’ll probably have several options to pick from. Rather than attempt to showcase all of them, carefully select the ones that best represent what you’re capable of. Keep in mind that in this case, quality outweighs quantity. First of all, site visitors don’t want to go through dozens of samples to find your greatest work. Second, a thorough analysis of five projects is significantly more fascinating than a cursory analysis of twenty.

• Describe your workflow

Explain the work process of each project. You can place these explanations next to examples of your work, or share case studies and other insights on your website’s blog.

Include the following aspects in your workflow explanation :

• Each project’s objectives
• The difficulties you encountered and how you overcome them
• An outline of the process from beginning to end
• The final product and outcomes

• Make it easy for people to reach you 

Make it easy for visitors to contact you by including your contact information on the website. Consider where people might look for your contact information and include it there. This includes the footer of the website, the About Us page, and a separate Contact page.

A contact form should also be included on your website. Visitors will no longer have to copy and paste your email address into a new tab, but will instead be able to send a message immediately through your website.

Marketing Portfolio Examples 

• Incast

Incast, an influencer marketing agency, helps brands and social media influencers form collaborations. Instead of going to a separate page to find their marketing portfolio, visitors can learn about their work simply by scrolling down their homepage. They provide numerous examples of pet films they developed for social media, using both eye-catching visuals and excellent data to demonstrate their effectiveness. 

• Dani Hart – Growth Gal

For the past two years, Dani Hart and Sean Ellis have been helping to create the GrowthHackers community. Dani recently made the decision to concentrate on her own business and build her marketing portfolio.

The simplicity of this marketing portfolio is what makes it so enticing. Dani Hart also emphasizes the importance of explaining her marketing strategy before discussing her accomplishments. Anyone interested in working with her will know exactly what to expect right immediately.

• Marijana Kay

Marijana Kay focuses her writing on SaaS and startups, which you’ll notice immediately on her homepage. She’s also interested in long-form writing and has worked with companies like Pipedrive and Recart.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve put together an agency portfolio, you’ve got a powerful tool that’ll help you attract more clients and unconsciously induce them to contact you.

The post How to Create a Professional Marketing Portfolio for Your Agency [2021] appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

If you don’t want to waste time reading, you can get all the useful information at our academy. Our webinars have collected a huge amount of both basic and advanced useful information for business owners from the owners of a successful business. All of the information we’ve gathered is up-to-date and available for free.

And in this article, we’ve compiled the top 9 non-obvious but effective ways to attract more clients. So read on! But first, let’s determine whether there is a problem with agency growth at all.

Reasons why it’s not easy for agencies to find clients

Absolutely all agencies have problems with growth. During Smart Insights interviews, many agency founders said they have trouble finding new clients. Other respondents shared another problem – ranking for target keywords. And almost all of them reported tough competition.

Hubspot, in its 2018 Agency’s Growth Report, also found this problem:

Source: https://www.hubspot.com/

The study showed the following. 79% of agencies are confident they can close their clients. But only 60% are confident in their ability to attract new leads.

Source: https://www.hubspot.com/

But this data only points to the root of the problem — namely, the agencies’ inability to reach and attract the target market.

Why is this happening? Many people interviewed by Smart Insights reported relentless competition among large agencies and even freelancers. In addition, they drew attention to the oversaturation of marketing channels.

So it becomes evident that some advice is still needed. And below, we will look at some tips. Tips for people who wonder “How to get clients?” can be divided into two categories — tips for beginners and advanced ones. If your agency is still relatively new, here we’ll break down a few options you can use. 

Tips for Beginners

Use freelance marketplaces

It’s easy to find profiles of both market leaders and smaller companies on international sites. For many agencies, freelance marketplaces become the main source to get clients at the beginning of their journey. Many newbies take on almost every task, from keyword selection to setting up analytics. You can use marketplaces even when you’ve already grown noticeably as an agency. But you’ll need to choose your clients more carefully. Look at business opportunities, client history, ability to pay, communication, and many other key factors. This source has both advantages and disadvantages. You may get a quick order, but you may not notice that the client is inadequate because of the speed. They can sabotage your profile with a single review.  Even if you are 100% right, marketplaces often take the customer’s side since they are the ones bringing them money.

Marketing buzz or recommendations

This is the most grateful way to get clients. It feels damn good when your clients are happy with your results and recommend you as a professional to their community. The loyalty of an audience that comes from a recommendation is maximized. Everyone loves those customers, and to get them, you need to do your work with high quality and give your clients more than they expect from you. Satisfied clients will talk about the quality of your services, and new people will seek you out on their own.

Also, don’t forget about the feedback on your site or other platforms! However, not many agencies ask their clients for it. Most wait and hope that a satisfied client will be able to share their impressions of your work. And sometimes, it does happen. However, at the current pace of life, most of your clients are simply too busy and may not think about the fact that you also need assistance in developing your business, albeit in such a non-time-consuming way. So don’t be afraid to ask for feedback on your work right away!

Create a corporate blog

When you wonder how to get a client, do not hesitate to publish your achievements and findings on your site. Such a way will give a good increase of traffic to the site, increasing the position in the organic search results, and attract the attention of your future clients and partners. With each published article, you can get several inquiries for your services. It also builds your reputation in the market as a specialist.

For example, you can write there not only about your niche but also about your colleagues. The agency’s reputation is created by its employees, and often clients want to go to a particular specialist. On this basis, the following conclusion — demonstrate the professionalism of your team and form an image of experts.

Use contextual advertising

Advertising your own services in search engines and social networks is another very simple but quite effective method of getting clients. From the previous point, an important point to remember comes to mind. To set up your advertising, you must have a user-friendly site — with examples of your work and prices. From the pitfalls of this method, we can note the high cost per click and a rather high conversion price.

One of the cheapest and most practical options would be to choose Facebook ads. In addition, this platform allows you to research your client’s gender and geographic location. This is a significant advantage when you are building a marketing strategy for your product among potential clients.

Don’t forget LinkedIn

Update your social media profiles, especially LinkedIn. Add your agency as a new place of work, include your position, and describe exactly what you and your agency do. It’s also a good idea to build a network of over 500 contacts and ask your clients or former colleagues to leave recommendations on your profile. Potential clients often check the agency and staff’s LinkedIn profiles before they ask for a service. And if you have few contacts or a poorly designed profile, it can be a reason to choose another agency.

LinkedIn is a good place to make the right connections. The main rule is not to send spam. If you have found the right person for you, first of all, find common interests with them. Before you sell something, try to get to the heart of their business and think about how you can really be useful to them.

Want to understand how to identify good and bad clients specifically for your agency? Trying to build the proper positioning to attract more customers? Join our FREE roundtable, “User Acquisition for Digital Agencies: How To Find New Clients” and discuss these questions with our marketing experts. Best lead generation tactics are just one click away → REGISTER NOW

Advanced Tips

So, we’ve looked at a few options for beginners. Now we are going to look at some more advanced ones. If you’ve used the options above before and are looking for something more unobvious, read on!

Become an expert and prove it

Becoming an expert in your niche is a good alternative to industry rankings for smaller agencies.

Often companies, before turning to an agency, try to do everything on their own. At the same time, they look for recommendations on working with platforms on various thematic resources. Your goal is to publish articles describing your approach to setting up campaigns, little know-how, and tips for beginners. When potential clients run out of options and start looking for a contractor, they are more likely to choose a brand that has already gained their trust with expert knowledge.

You can acquire it in other ways as well. If you can find a few extra hours and a sociable employee, hold a series of webinars on the types of services you specialize in. To do this, you can:

• Arrange with educational platforms a series of educational masterclasses;
• Hold webinars yourself, using one of the online services with a free account (e.g., Zoom); in this case, it will be more challenging to get coverage of your target audience because you will have to invest in advertising.

Try to give listeners at least one non-standard piece of advice. It will help stand out among the endless repetitions of basic things.

A more complicated but more effective option is to take part in industry conferences. Quite often, at such events, you can meet business owners. The list of speakers is usually confirmed several months in advance, so announce your desire to participate in advance. You’ll need a relevant topic, a few cases to illustrate your experience, and some preparation. There may be auditions for the selection of participants. You should come there with a ready-made public speech. 

By the way, visiting conferences is also suitable for networking. Even if you are not a speaker, nothing prevents you from getting acquainted with the person sitting next to you and making new acquaintances during the coffee break.

In general, any publication of your own expertise in digital communities will be beneficial. These include discussions on Twitter, forums, groups in Slack, Telegram chats, and so on.

Participate in tenders

Usually, tenders are held by large companies when they want to buy something for a large sum. The client company announces a tender and invites several service providers to participate. The tender is held at a strictly scheduled time, during which all participants offer their prices and conditions.

Tenders are a great way to find a big client and make yourself known in the market. It is necessary to be able to offer comprehensive client solutions and a professional approach. Of course, it may be that you will not be able to work with the desired client on the first try. But that is no reason to give up. Start preparing, gathering information for the next stage, even if it will start in a year.

Of course, we would like to offer you some reliable algorithm or methodology for winning tenders. But they do not exist. Your victory will always depend on three factors:

• Your competitiveness (how much you are willing to lower your price);
• The correctness of the application (very often, participants are rejected for incorrect applications);
• The ability to find tenders in which there will be few or no competitors.

Create the right expectations and emphasize the benefits

In the eyes of future clients, every agency wants to look like the best on the market. But there is a fine line between emphasizing strengths and creating inflated expectations. For example, the phrase “we’ll get you to the top of the search in 6 months” can be fair if you specify low-frequency and low-relevance queries for this.

It pays to be specific and realistic about future results. Unlikely optimistic predictions guide clients, and then they get disappointed and terminate the contract.

Real cases from your practice are an exception. If you managed to achieve impressive results at least once, you can and should talk about it. You can’t guarantee the same return from every campaign, but you can’t argue with the facts. Case studies are the best proof of expertise. Use them to demonstrate your advantage. 

Become your own client and promote your marketing agency

This growth strategy may seem illogical, but it’s effective if you do it right. Clients know that the best way to measure your experience is through your results, not your promises.

Use your own services. When you become your client, it means you are determined and willing to deliver results for “yourself.” You will be able to promote your agency (as if another business had hired you).

In fact, you can use the results you get (perhaps an increase in rankings in organic search of your agency’s website) as proof that you’ll attract new clients. Case closed. You got clients and a great case study for your portfolio at the same time! 

The bottom line

Bringing in new clients can put a lot of pressure on your team. Make sure you’re ready to take it on. Outsourcing and automation are the main companions of a growing agency, and it pays to deal with them before the number of orders grows. Also, don’t forget to update your knowledge of all new promotion methods. For example, you can take advantage of our webinars by industry experts.

Use agency-focused advertising automation systems. They make it easy to create and import client accounts across platforms, controlling all campaigns in a single window. Mass processing tools for keywords, budgets, audiences, and ads reduce the basic chore that’s inevitable when you start a new project.

ROI (up to 35% of ad spend) helps earn money at the expense of scale and serves as an additional motivation for sales. It also provides additional opportunities for bonuses and discounts — another reason to work with you.

Summarizing the article, we can say that there is no perfect method of attracting clients to your agency. It all depends on the individual characteristics of the brand. The criteria of success even in crisis remain the same: quality work, flair, professionalism, the ability to motivate the target audience. Always remember that sales are a systematic process, especially if you aim at large orders and long-term cooperation. People buy from someone they trust, and it doesn’t matter from what source the client came to you.

The post How to Get More Clients [9 Tips to Maximize Agency Growth] appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.