Denamico Blog

How to Choose the Best CRM for Your Sales Team

Lexi Lampner — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 19:13:00 GMT

If this is the beginning of your quest for a solid CRM, for now, don’t get caught up in the functionality and capabilities. The features are important, but hold on! More importantly, consider the challenges your sales team faces to figure out which CRM best suits your team’s needs.

While your objective now is to find a CRM that addresses your sales team’s needs, your best bet is to select a CRM that can function as a central database and has comprehensive core tools for multiple teams.

A CRM is a way to increase revenue

Businesses derive the most value from a CRM when sales, marketing, and customer service are using the same system — and recognize its value.

52% of companies struggle to work with disparate systems, but an integrated CRM provides for a holistic perspective on the happenings of your company, and will provide all the metrics and forecast information you want.

How CRMs supercharge your sales team

CRMs increase efficiency and save time by managing your company’s contacts and keeping records of communication. With this, customer relationships are contained within a single system that makes it easy to track a buyer’s journey and see how and where you can help existing clients.

An integrated CRM — with email, marketing, and social media tools — has the potential to shorten the sales cycle and turn customers into advocates. A Nucleus Research report finds that companies achieve a $8.71 ROI for each dollar spent on a CRM.

Having a centralized database makes it possible to accurately track progress, prospects, future income, and red flags. What’s crucial for your sales team is that they have a consistent sales process, and can track where prospects are engaging with your company to better understand prospects’ needs.

For a CRM to serve its maximum function, everyone on your sales team should be using the software to maintain data accuracy. If there's an inconsistency in individual sales reps’ processes, the team is robbed of time that they could be using to make more sales.

CRM options for sales teams

Available CRMs on the market range from basic customer management to sophisticated systems that allow you to track detailed information, run several campaigns automatically, and set individual as well as company goals.

How to choose the best CRM for your sales team

Talk with your sales team
Evaluate your existing CRM
Look for CRM training resources
Check third party reviews of the CRM vendor
Consider the onboarding process
Think about the growth of your team

1. Talk with your sales team

In choosing a CRM, ask your sales team about their greatest challenges and barriers in their day-to-day. If your sales team feels they’re spending too much time on administrative tasks, a CRM with automation capabilities will be highly beneficial.

Without a CRM that all salespeople are using to automate tasks like sending emails and follow-ups, your sales team’s process is siloed. What’s more, they likely have to perform many manual tasks like setting reminders on when to send an email, follow-up, etc.

A CRM solves for a siloed sales process through integrations ranging from something as simple as email or Slack. Be cognizant of which integrations each CRM you’re considering offers. It could be that your company would benefit from 100 integrations, or maybe just a handful.

Either way, choosing an integrated CRM that your sales team knows how to use — and feels comfortable using — is crucial. If the ease of use isn’t there, your sales team won’t be motivated to use the CRM you’ve so carefully selected.

2. Evaluate your existing CRM

Now, maybe your company is already using a CRM, but your team doesn’t quite know what to do with it. This is a far more common problem than you’d think. If your salespeople are using a CRM without knowledge on how to maximize its functions, it’s relatively useless.

Whether you have a CRM in place now, or you’re looking for one for the first time, consider how you’ll actually get your team to use it. Even CRMs with the most attractive interfaces and high ratings still demand a user’s understanding of the platform.

3. Look for CRM training resources

Some CRM platforms have their own learning centers / academies, where teams can watch videos and complete practical exercises on how to navigate nearly every function of the CRM. Other platforms without robust training resources may appear similar in functionality, and perhaps more “cost-effective” at face-value, but without educating a sales team on how to use the CRM, they’re being thrown in the deep end. Oftentimes, in these cases, the very challenges you seek to solve will persist.

4. Check third-party reviews of the CRM vendor

In choosing a CRM, pay close attention to the customer service offered by the company. There are CRM platforms with 24/7 support, while others have limited customer support, or charge extra for ongoing support. Consider this seriously because when your company adopts a new CRM, your sales team will have questions, and you want a CRM platform with representatives that will answer them — and fast.

Here are a few tech review sites to help you:

5. Consider the onboarding process

You’re going to want to ask whatever CRM platform representative you speak with about how to onboard your team. Onboarding support may be offered at the very beginning of your implementation stage, and may come at an additional cost.

Some CRM vendors do provide onboarding services, where a representative will help your team through the process and help hold them accountable, but at the end of the day, your team is internally responsible to build out and customize the system. Think about who on your team will be responsible for this, and how they’ll get it done.

Know this: it will be time consuming, so if you delegate the task to an existing employee, it will take away from their other work, especially if they’re unfamiliar with the platform.

Depending on the size of your team and the scope of the build-out, companies may hire a CRM specialist internally, or (and more cost-effective than a new employee) an implementation partner. With this, the CRM’s functions and features are maximized so that your team is smoothly onboarded and confident in using the new platform.

Ideally, the CRM you choose will allow your company to efficiently track and increase sales, save time, and use data to yield accurate reports for strategy. With the right system, your sales team will spend less time on unnecessary tasks like manual data entry, giving them more time to focus on selling activities.

6. Stay within your budget, but make sure the CRM is scalable

CRMs range from no cost to $15 per month to thousands of dollars per month depending on the size of your team and the functionality of the CRM. Be cautious when investing in a CRM because of an attractive price tag. Buying into a cheaper option can come back to bite you, especially if your company is growth-focused. Some CRMs are inexpensive but provide only the bare necessities and aren’t conducive to companies that plan to scale.

Consider your company's future before you make your choice. An inexpensive CRM may work for what’s now a team of five, but at the point where you scale your business and expand to a team of 20 or 100, the CRM may lack the capacity and functionality you need.

Bottom line:

If you want to get the most value out of a CRM, make sure its capabilities align with your company’s goals; otherwise, you’ll be forced to go through the whole process of choosing a CRM again.

Be proactive and realistic about the expectations of the CRM and your growth goals — you might end up spending a few extra dollars, but in the long run, you’re getting a higher value product with a greater return on investment — after all, increasing revenue is the point of a CRM altogether.

Want to take your tech stack to the next level? Join us at DenamiCON for an afternoon of beer and business growth.

Get the Fric(tion) Out of Your Flywheel!

kristin@denamico.com (Kristin Dennewill) — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 19:58:28 GMT

If you're the leader of a small or medium-sized business, there’s a good chance you have read "Good To Great" by Jim Collins. It’s on many leaders’ Top 10 Business Books list. But have you read Collins’ little gem called "Turning the Flywheel"? This petite, on point, page turner is essentially a guidebook to implementing the flywheel architecture he references in "Good To Great."

Collins believes that building a great company or social sector enterprise is never the result of just one amazing innovation, process, moment, or lucky break, but rather the result of turning a very heavy flywheel and gaining momentum. You start pushing the flywheel inch by inch until you finally get it to turn once. You keep pushing, removing the fric(tion), and it starts to gain momentum. Collins’ research for “Good To Great” found that a flywheel moving with compounding momentum, is what leads to building a great company.

Getting a business to turn like a flywheel sort of reminds me of this:

But in reality, it often feels more like this…

Collins met with Jeff Bezos and the Amazon team in 2001 to help them build their flywheel. They came up with a model whereby if you add "fuel" to any part of the flywheel, the momentum accelerates. This is what the 2001 Amazon flywheel looked like:

Since then, the Amazon flywheel has been extended, and new technology accelerators, such as artificial intelligence, have enhanced its momentum. But the original architecture is still working, and is what has enabled the company to continuously create value for its customers and all stakeholders.

HubSpot is another company obsessed with the flywheel. HubSpot’s CEO, Brian Halligan, described some of the reasons why in this HBR article. In comparison with the traditional sales funnel, the flywheel does a better job of capturing how word of mouth and momentum impact revenue.

At Denamico, we’ve also created a flywheel to visually explain how we help our clients reach their goals. When you strengthen any section of the flywheel, it enables it to spin faster.

Each client we work with is different and has unique strengths, challenges, and goals. But what is constant across all clients is that Data, Technology, and Processes are incorporated into their flywheel somehow. When the Data, Technology, and Processes are aligned, their flywheel turns more easily, and gains momentum.

An example of this in action is with our client, Sunspace Twin Cities, a distributor of porch windows. The owner, Brandon Williamson, was already investing in technology, knew the importance of processes, and focusing on only the right data. But he needed an outside opinion on how to align them so that the three worked together to make his business more efficient. One way we helped him optimize is flywheel was by segmenting their website traffic and leads into two categories: B2B (building contractors) and B2C (homeowners). That allowed them to market to each of those groups in a more relevant way, and get the Sunspace flywheel spinning faster. The result was a 40% increase in revenue within one year.

PURIS Foods, a manufacturer of plant-based ingredients, wasn’t getting the conversion rates they wanted from their landing pages. We helped them rebuild and customize their landing pages in a way that resonated with their prospective customers. It also made it easier for PURIS to recreate those landing pages for future use in-house, without having to rely on our team the next time. This change to how they used their existing technology was like adding fuel to a section of their flywheel and as you can see here, the impact was significant.

235%	1000%	500%
Increase in time spent on page	Increase in form submissions	Increase in new contacts

Sunspace Twin Cities and PURIS Foods are not alone. As we’ve spoken with many different clients and companies this year, we’ve found that most organizations are struggling to scale growth because these 3 areas are not aligned:

Data · Technology · Process

With this in mind, it was pretty easy to decide on a topic for DenamiCON, our annual conference on business growth. We wanted to talk about solutions to some of the most common challenges businesses face today. Things like…

How can I know at any moment what is in our pipeline?
Does my sales team know which leads to focus on?
My sales team is amazing. But could they be closing even more?
My biggest barrier to growth is finding good employees. Is there a way to automate recruiting?
How can I calculate my marketing ROI? Is that even possible?
We have systems for everything, but they’re all siloed. Isn’t there a way to get the data I need from one integrated system?

If any of these challenges sound familiar, I encourage you to join us at DenamiCON where we’ll be tackling them head-on.

DenamiCON is a workshop style event where we’ll roll our sleeves up, we’ll learn, and we’ll have fun. And when you go back to the office the next day, you’ll feel inspired because you’ll have a plan for making your flywheel spin faster, creating momentum. When that happens, you not only take friction out of your flywheel, you take it out of your life. And who doesn’t need some of that?

We hope to see you there!

What to expect at DenamiCON 2019

rachel.butzler@denamico.com (Rachel Butzler) — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 16:43:47 GMT

Using Data, Tech, and Processes to Improve Efficiency and Profitability

DenamiCON 2019 is just around the corner! Our annual conference seeks to bring together industry leaders and digital marketing professionals to explore emerging technology and strategize for business growth.

This year, DenamiCON will be held on October 23rd at Surly Brewing from 2:30-6:00pm. To get a sneak peek at what the event will be focused on, I sat down with Denamico’s Chief Strategist and DenamiCON content leader, Adam Stewart.

Why are data, processes, and tech so important to businesses today?

No aspect of your business is an island. Even though your Sales, Marketing, and Support teams may think that they function independently, they are each integrated into every part of your business, and they benefit from your whole business working in sync as one cohesive system. So when we look at data, processes, and tech, we are searching for the places that they overlap, the gaps between them, and how they can be optimized.

There are so many opportunities available for organizational growth when these three elements work together. We’re excited to have the opportunity to open up that digital space so that you can visualize how you can harness data, processes, and technology to grow your business.

How important is data to a business’s success?

Well, it’s important to remember that data goes far beyond the information you might find in a Rolodex. Collecting a lead’s contact information is important, but there are hundreds of other data points that you can collect information on.

Behavioral data captures how people are interacting with your digital content, whether that be in your emails, on your website, or on social media. This can help you to map a customer’s path to purchase and look for trends across your customer base. Then, you can use that data to understand your customers better and make informed decisions going forward.

But just because you can collect data doesn’t mean that everything is going to be useful. When you sort through your data, you’ll need to identify which metrics are actionable insights versus data for data’s sake. Take a look at your business as a whole and get perspectives from multiple departments on what data they would find useful.

There are lots of data collection tools out there. You don’t need to be using HubSpot to collect this data, but we certainly find it to be a beneficial tool that can bring in data from multiple sources and display and analyze it all in one dashboard.

Why should businesses consider automating their existing processes?

First, you should map out your existing processes based around your buyer’s journey and your goals. Once you’ve honed in on your processes and identified any manual bottlenecks, you can consider those processes as prime candidates for automation.

It can seem kind of scary to introduce tech into your processes. After all, how many times do we hear the “robots are coming to take our jobs” complaint. However, the goal isn’t to replace anybody but to make your work easier, more streamlined, and less accident-prone.

Many people don’t even think about what could be automated in their day-to-day because they don’t know that the technology exists or they haven’t considered automation due to a “this is the way it’s always been done” mentality. But as your business grows, you’ll need to increase your capacity, and technology is a great way to improve your efficiency without adding a lot of cost.

What tech does my company need?

The answer to this question is as unique as your one-of-a-kind business.

Start by asking yourself the following questions:

What tech does your company already use?
How could your systems be integrated so they communicate with each other?
Do they overlap?
Is there an all-in-one (or all-on-one) solution that would better meet your needs?

Here at Denamico, we have our ear to the ground when it comes to tech. We want to share what’s out there with DenamiCON attendees to help you to decide what will best fit your business needs. And if you identify that any of your existing systems are redundant, we can help you save time and money by suggesting alternatives that can provide you with a better value for the data you want to collect and the processes you want to digitize.

Many businesses don’t understand that all of their teams need access to information to make better, more informed decisions. We see countless opportunities for businesses to grow when they acknowledge these facts.

DenamiCON provides an opportunity to take stock of your existing tech stack. We’ll help you figure out what tools you should be using to streamline processes and make the right data more available to your teams. The more you can align your data, tech, and processes, the more efficient and profitable your business can be.

What’s the benefit of the workshop format?

DenamiCON will introduce a different perspective into the mix. Sometimes companies are so focused on operations that it can be hard to see what could be improved. So when leaders from a wide range of industries gather in the same room along with Denamico’s tech experts, they’ll get fresh eyes on the issues they are facing. In a workshop format, participants have a greater opportunity to share ideas and uncover solutions not only from the Denamico team, but also from each other.

We’ll also provide you with a workbook to take back to your company and work through as a team. When you get multiple perspectives from different departments, you’ll have a better idea of what data your business should be collecting, what processes could be improved using tech, and what tech tools you can use to accomplish your goals.

Who should attend DenamiCON?

If you want to grow your business, DenamiCON is for you. We’ll teach you how data and technology can help you to streamline your operations, understand your customers better, and make informed decisions faster.

We would love groups to attend together from one company, especially if they are from different departments. The more ears you have in the room, the more perspectives you will be able to incorporate as we dive into the workbook exercises. Afterwards when you return to work, you’ll have more people who can share the concepts we’ll be covering with their respective departments.

Of course, individual participants can greatly benefit from attending as well. We’ve designed the workbook so that you can take it home and use the concepts you learned at DenamiCON to lead your team through the exercises. The key is to be able to use the workbook to apply the concepts to your own company — whether that happens around the table at DenamiCON or back on your home turf.

Ultimately, we want you to come away with a clear idea of what data to collect, what processes you can automate, and what tech to use. In doing so, you’ll improve the efficiency and profitability of your business.

If your business could benefit from improved efficiency and increased profitability, join us at DenamiCON!

14 things (and counting!) that you can do with HubSpot Integrations

rachel.butzler@denamico.com (Rachel Butzler) — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 14:54:54 GMT

How can I make my business more efficient?

You’ve been keeping up with the latest tech tools to make your business run smoothly in the increasingly digital marketplace — great work! But as your apps start to accumulate, keep in mind that the taller your tech stack, the more likely it is to topple due to human error.

Relying on your team to remember to update the data in all of your applications can be risky and inefficient. It’s way too easy for information to get lost in the shuffle. It’s only a matter of time before someone forgets to transfer information manually between your tech and causes someone else to inadvertently drop the ball on a hot lead, an order request, or a customer inquiry.

How can this efficiency gap be solved? By integrating your tech stack through HubSpot.

Benefits of an integrated tech stack

All of these tech tools exist to make your life easier, but as you add applications, the burden of labor falls on you to make sure that they are all working together. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could sync automatically?

If you’re using HubSpot, synching your applications isn’t just a pipe dream, it’s possible — and easier than you’d think.

No one likes manual data entry, but you can’t afford to let potential sales fall through the cracks. To keep these impediments from affecting your bottom line, let’s take a look at how HubSpot’s digital integrations can save you time and eliminate errors.

At INBOUND 2019, HubSpot identified technology integration as one of the biggest challenges facing businesses today, emphasizing the need for humans and technology work together.

HubSpot plays nice with others

HubSpot’s mission is to help organizations grow better as an all-on-one solution. But despite the versatility of the platform, the brains behind HubSpot are smart enough to realize that they can’t specialize in everything. In order to meet your unique business needs, HubSpot has opened the doors to third-party tools that can integrate HubSpot with your business operations.

If you’ve ever thought that you couldn’t do something in HubSpot, think again! Here’s a list of 14 things you can do in HubSpot using integrations and the top tools — listed alphabetically — that you can use to get the job done.

1. Manage Your CRM

Your sales and marketing efforts are only as good as the CRM that supports them. If your customer database is full of duplicate contacts or inaccurate information, you might be wasting your energy sending out content to dead emails or mailings to outdated addresses.

Insycle

A clean CRM is a useful CRM. Save time by merging duplicate contacts and improve the quality of your data by creating consistent formatting for key fields like names, phone numbers, and titles. Schedule your customized CRM cleanup to run automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Salesforce

Are you already using Salesforce? By integrating with HubSpot, you can let your sales team keep using a familiar interface while your marketing team leverages HubSpot’s powerful and comprehensive marketing platform. Salesforce and HubSpot will automatically sync their data so that both systems are always up-to-date.

2. Collect New Leads and Gather Data

You’ve got the website traffic...now what? Capture information from your leads and customers so that you can continue to nurture and delight them.

SnapApp

Turn your most popular content into lead-generating machines by embedding qualifying questions into your blogs, landing pages, and PDFs. Gather insights about your prospects and use performance data to supercharge your campaigns, deliver the right content at the right time, and improve your sales outreach.

SurveyMonkey

Automatically sync responses to your CRM and create new contact records from unknown visitors. Create lists, set workflow triggers, update lead scoring, and more based on survey data.

Typeform

HubSpot forms are great, but sometimes you need a little bit more flexibility. With Typeform, you can create trackable and mobile-ready quizzes, contact forms, and sign-up forms that automatically sync with the HubSpot CRM.

3. Host Videos and Pull Video Analytics

Video is a powerful marketing tool, but how can you measure its effectiveness? These tools gather the data you need to evaluate the performance of your video content.

Vidyard

HubSpot and Vidyard are BFFs, making your marketing smarter by segmenting, qualifying, and nurturing leads based on how they interact with your video content. Feed video data back into HubSpot to score leads, segment customers, and trigger lead nurturing workflows.

Wistia

Not only does Wistia host your videos and track their performance, it also offers features like opening cards and CTAs. If a visitor converts on your video, their viewing data will sync with their HubSpot contact record automatically.

4. Manage Documents and Proposals

When your documents and proposals are anchored to the HubSpot platform, you can ensure that everyone will be able to find and access the latest version.

PandaDoc

Automatically populate contact information from the HubSpot CRM into new quotes, proposals, and contracts. Attach documents to the appropriate contact or company record and receive HubSpot notifications when your documents move on to the next stage.

HelloSign

Close contracts faster when you follow up on an e-signature request from within your HubSpot CRM. Keep tabs on your document and see when your client receives, opens, and signs it right on the contact’s HubSpot timeline.

Proposify

Use the Proposify tool to build and edit professional-looking proposals — from a template or from scratch — within the HubSpot platform and attach them to a deal. Sync contact and proposal properties between between the two platforms and get real-time updates in the HubSpot timeline.

5. Support Sales and Service with Chat

53% of customers would rather live chat with customer support than call a helpline. By connecting your chat with HubSpot, your interaction doesn’t start from a blank slate and you’ll be more helpful to the customer, allowing you to provide a better customer experience.

Drift

Chat with people who are visiting your website and automatically log the conversation on the contact’s HubSpot CRM record. Create customized follow-up based on the contact’s activity and conversations.

Zendesk

Give your sales team context for their next phone call by providing transparency into a contact’s support experience from from within a contact's HubSpot record. Delight your customers by triggering workflows based on their interactions with your service team.

6. Integrate Your Email and Calendar

Keep your activity in sync by linking your email and calendar to HubSpot. Already have a preferred email marketing platform? No problem — HubSpot can connect to it.

G-Suite and Outlook

Both of these integrations allow you to track emails and log them to the CRM, as well as use templates and snippets right inside your email tool. You can book meetings to your calendar right from the HubSpot CRM and create branded booking links to share with reps and prospects.

Mailchimp

If you’ve already built out your email marketing or newsletters in Mailchimp, you can continue to use it with HubSpot. Simply send your HubSpot contacts to Mailchimp, and it will notify you of any sync errors.

7. Organize Internal Operations

Nothing throws a wrench in your operations quite like human error. Miscommunication between departments is easy to resolve when you integrate your tools.

Asana

Want to create consistent internal communication between your teams? Build a workflow in HubSpot that will automatically create follow-up tasks in Asana for a seamless hand-off.

Jira

Create transparency between departments with Jira ticket visibility on the customer’s HubSpot record, so everyone is on the same page.

Slack

Stop flipping back and forth between your digital tools. Create HubSpot tasks, receive notifications, and use slash commands to search for materials — all without leaving Slack.

8. Streamline Data Reporting

You could spend hours just transferring data into spreadsheets, let alone deciding how to display it. With these slick tools, you can see how your campaigns or website are performing in a well-designed, intuitive interface.

Databox

View data from multiple sources, including Hubspot Marketing and Sales, on any device. With one-time set-up, you’ll avoid the endless copy-paste drudge. Build custom reports to dial in on your KPIs or take advantage of pre-built reporting templates.

Lucky Orange

Want to know what’s resonating on your website? Generate heatmaps for any webpage to see exactly where your visitors and HubSpot contacts engaged with your content. Take action on these insights to improve your conversion rates.

9. Utilize Video Conferencing and Webinars

Forge a personal connection with your leads and clients by interacting face-to-face.

GoToWebinar

Sync your landing page forms with your GoToWebinar event, send invites and reminders using HubSpot’s email tool, and use registration and attendance information to create targeted follow-up campaigns.

Zoom

Create a video conference meeting from any HubSpot contact record, send reminder emails using workflows, and use webinar data to craft customized nurturing emails to follow up.

10. Manage Event Registration, Payment, and More

Events are a great way to build your brand awareness, but they take a lot of time and energy to put on. Save yourself time by digitizing your event logistics and syncing contact information to HubSpot.

Eventbrite

Bring the power of your HubSpot CRM into your offline events by collecting new leads, tracking your event registration, and nurturing your contacts after the event.

11. Track Your Calls

Send, receive, record, and track outgoing and incoming calls directly within your HubSpot CRM. What could be easier?

CircleLoop

Keep an eye on your customers’ needs with this cloud-based business phone system. Call activity and recordings are automatically logged against the right contact in HubSpot.

CallRail

Track your customers’ journeys from discovery to purchase by looping offline activity into your HubSpot data so that you can evaluate which of your marketing efforts are working best.

12. Send Snail Mail

Be unexpected. Your contacts are sure to take notice when your nurturing efforts show up in their physical mailbox.

Enthusem

Send hyper-personalized mailers triggered by HubSpot workflows. When someone interacts with your mailer’s content in the digital space, you will receive a notification so that you can tee up a timely conversation.

Inkit

Diversify your nurturing efforts with custom postcards. Build direct-mail campaigns using your HubSpot CRM and use workflow actions to trigger customized mailings to your leads based on their activity.

13. Sell Product and Collect Data from Sales

In today’s digital age, your website is just as important as your storefront, so shouldn’t your customers to have the same experience online? The ability to take digital payment and utilize shopper activity data for marketing initiatives is, in a word, priceless.

Shopify

Sync your store data to HubSpot and take action on previously hidden e-commerce opportunities. Engage customers with abandoned carts, create product-specific retargeting ads, and more.

Stripe

Eliminate the back and forth of billing via email. Start accepting credit cards and get paid directly from quotes created in HubSpot’s native tool.

14. Everything Else

Didn’t find what you were looking for? Check out the HubSpot App Marketplace for the 350+ integrations HubSpot supports. Don’t see your favorite tech tool listed in their library? Don’t sweat it — there’s an app for that!

PieSync

Create an automatic two-way contact sync between HubSpot and your favorite app with no technical help needed. Stop spending time on manual data entry, avoid duplications, and eliminate data transfer mistakes.

Zapier

Connect HubSpot to any of 1000+ supported third party apps for automatic, seamless data transfer. Build processes to schedule, delay, or parse your data before transfer, with no coding experience needed.

Make your life easier

These are just a few of the integrated apps and tools that work with HubSpot. There even more that automate processes within a company like billing, social media publishing, communication, and project management. The more you can automate, the more you can get done at a faster rate with fewer mistakes and less money spent.

Wondering about your next integration with HubSpot? Contact us to amplify your tech stack!

Gearing up for INBOUND 2019

rachel.butzler@denamico.com (Rachel Butzler) — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 14:00:00 GMT

What is INBOUND?

INBOUND is an annual experience presented by HubSpot in Boston, MA. This year it’s taking place September 3-6, bringing together curious, inquisitive professionals with big names and innovative industry thinkers for game-changing keynotes and breakout sessions. HubSpot users from around the world gather to network and share ideas at this highly anticipated industry event featuring more than 250 world-class speakers.

This year, Denamico is sending four of our HubSpot rockstars to share what they’ve learned this year and pick up insights and tips from other HubSpot users around the globe. Before they head out, we’ve asked them what they are most looking forward to at this year’s INBOUND event.

What we’re looking forward to at INBOUND 2019

Brendon, CEO and Co-founder of Denamico

This year Brendon was selected as a breakout session speaker, a highly coveted role awarded to only the top tier talent from HubSpot’s most successful agency partners. Right now, he’s putting the finishing touches on his talk, highlighting Denamico’s integration of HubSpot platforms to support client success.

“I'm excited to speak about how we combine the HubSpot CRM, CMS, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service Hubs with our knowledge and experience of building efficient processes around these for our clients that result in great customer experience. INBOUND attendees who sit in on my session will see a case study of what we did, step-by-step, for a client that earned us the HubSpot Impact Award earlier this year. I feel the value for attendees will be knowing how and when to use all the possible tools we have available in HubSpot and that it does not need to be complicated to be successful.”

Emily, Senior Strategist

As a Senior Strategist at Denamico, Emily is often called upon to create innovative solutions in HubSpot to resolve client challenges. Last year, she was a featured breakout session speaker at INBOUND, and this year she’s looking forward to soaking up new ideas on how to solve the puzzles that Denamico’s clients will face in 2020.

"I'm looking forward to conversations with HubSpot executives — it's always fascinating to pick their brains on where they see the market heading and what that means for their product. HubSpot has always been really open and transparent with their partners; they're not afraid to get into the weeds with us!

I also get excited about meeting with other agency leaders. The HubSpot Partner Community is extremely collaborative and open to sharing what's working for their clients, so it gives you an opportunity to talk to others who may have experience with something that's new or challenging you. I always come back from INBOUND feeling really inspired and excited about where things are going, and full of new ideas on how we can help our clients grow their business more efficiently and effectively."

Allison, UX / UI Designer

Allison is our team’s design guru, who was recognized this summer by HubSpot as a Champion User — one of the most active users on the HubSpot Marketing Hub. This year, she’s headed to INBOUND looking for new techniques and insider tips on building top-notch content for our clients.

“I’m looking forward to attending the ’Level the Playing Field: How Technology and Design Empower Businesses to Take on Big Brands’ session because as a designer, I’m always looking for ideas on how to display client content in new and engaging ways. New tools are always being released to make this process easier, so I’m excited to hear what Adobe has in store for a more ‘on-the-go’ approach to publishing content.”

Adam, Chief Strategist & Operating Officer

Adam keeps the Denamico gears well-oiled and running smoothly, so undoubtedly he’ll come back with meticulous notes and bursting with ideas for how to improve our clients’ campaigns. This year, he’s looking forward to hearing from the HubSpot co-founders.

"I'm always excited to take in the Spotlight by the head honchos Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah cause they exude compassion and gratitude for the entire HubSpot community. Plus, they highlight what's on their minds, cool new stuff in the works, and even throw some humor in the mix. Like past years, Christopher O'Donnell swoops in afterwards to dive into more detail on the 'latest and greatest from the HubSpot product roadmap.'

In terms of breakout sessions, I'm looking forward to soaking in some gems from Verne Harnish as he urges us to face 'the most important question you can ask to scale a business.' Bring it on INBOUND19."

Boston, here we come!

INBOUND 2019 is just around the corner, but registration is still open until September 3 if you want to join us!

Attending INBOUND 2019?

Let's connect! Schedule a time to chat on our calendar.

If you can’t make it to INBOUND, we’ll be sharing some of the insights that we picked up during our own Denamicon event this fall, on October 23, 2019 at Surly Brewing in Minneapolis. We hope to see you there!

6 Ways to Make Your Blog Work Harder

rachel.butzler@denamico.com (Rachel Butzler) — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 16:20:00 GMT

If your company has a blog, have you ever thought to yourself, "Why are we doing this? Where's the ROI?"

Whether or not the company blog was established with a clear objective in mind, you can improve its ROI by implementing a bit of strategy. Most company blogs are created with these two goals in mind:

Generating awareness of your company by drawing in as many readers as possible.
Persuading readers to take an action like filling out a form or buying your product.

As seemingly simplistic as these objectives might be, many companies fail to consider these two goals as they continue to churn out content week after week. These blogs publish regular entries, contain useful information, and are well-written, but at the end of the day, they struggle to generate meaningful results. How can your business's blog avoid the same fate?

The smartest blog managers plan and create their blog content strategically to increase the opportunity to achieve these objectives. Want to take your strategy up a notch? Here's 6 ways to improve the results of your blogging efforts:

To generate awareness of your company by getting more readers:

1. Create blog titles that are search friendly

When writing blog titles, headings, and subheadings, think about the problem you’re solving for the searcher. What question would someone be asking in order to find your blog post? Thoughtfully wording your title and using bot-friendly HTML structure to highlight your headings can drive visits to your site long after your blog is initially published.

In today's world of digital assistants and smart home devices, voice search is becoming increasingly popular and more people are using conversational speech in their queries—asking questions of Google, Siri, and Alexa as if they were talking to a friend. In order to show up in these search results and generate greater awareness of your brand, your content should answer the searcher's questions using natural, uncomplicated speech.

4. Include a mix of topics that will capture both short-term and long-term traffic

When building your editorial calendar, you should think about whether each post idea is likely to capture traffic over time or just within a few days or weeks of publication. For example, a 2019 predictions blog post is likely to be very popular during December 2019 and maybe January 2020, but probably won’t continue generating traffic for long afterwards. Posts about your services or industry-specific topics aren’t likely to generate huge numbers right away, but a useful topic with engaging writing will gradually gain readers over time.

Another consideration is the longevity of your subject matter. It seems like technology is changing at an increasingly fast pace, so if your industry is affected by the rapid change of tech, it is to your advantage to diversify your blog content. A balanced mix of short- and long-term traffic drivers ensures steady readership and consistent growth over time.

3. Include internal links

An internal link is a hyperlink that points to another page on the same website. They’re important for helping your readers find other information they might be looking for on your site.

Prioritizing internal links also assists search engines as they crawl your website to determine what kind of content you could provide for their users. When deciding how high you’ll rank in search results, one of the factors that Google considers are the number of internal links on your site. This signals that your site will be easy to navigate, providing a positive experience for searchers.

4. Include outbound links

You might be thinking: Wait, why would I send people AWAY from my site? Hear me out.

If you want to be considered credible, providing links to quality external pages that support your information will validate your claims and show readers that you've done your homework. Of course, you'll want to be selective about your sources. Unmonitored user-generated content, advertising, and link farms are rarely seen as helpful by your audience and could even be detrimental to your ranking if Google flags these links as not useful or spam. On the other end of the spectrum, linking to high quality, authoritative content is a way to build a trustworthy reputation and add value for your readers.

Another great way to drive traffic to any blog or website is to feature perspectives and viewpoints of others, especially experts in your field. Reach out to anyone who might have something valuable to add and ask them to answer a few questions. Publish their answers, include outbound links to their website, and ask them to share with their followers on social media. This approach positions you as well-connected in your industry and drives new readers to your site.

If your primary goal is to get readers to take action:

5. Add calls-to-action

Picture this: a reader who is your ideal customer stumbles on your blog, reads it, and gets fired up. They want to learn more about your offerings! They read all the way to the end of the blog post and they’re not quite sure how to get more information. They might click through your site navigation, but if they don’t find what they’re looking for, they might move on to a competitor—you lost them. Don’t let this happen!

Add contextually relevant calls-to-action (CTAs) to every blog post. CTAs provide opportunities for you to meet your visitor's needs while guiding them toward purchase. For example, a blog post that lists some reasons to consider your product or service could wrap up with a CTA button that leads your visitor to a landing page offering a free trial. Once the visitor fills out the form on the landing page, you can follow up with them and potentially nurture them to purchase. It’s a win for them because they have more of what they were looking for and a win for you because you have the information you need to build a relationship with them.

6. Include re-engagement opportunities in your page template

Your blog page template is all the parts of your blog pages that stay the same even when the visitor clicks to read additional posts, usually in the form of a header and/or a sidebar. Ideally, this area will display opportunities for your visitor to engage further: a form used to subscribe to future blog posts or emails, a list of past posts, or an option to sort posts by topic. If you have space, it’s great to include an additional CTA to provides one more opportunity for your visitor to engage with your site and for you to gather information that will help you to nurture your relationship with a potential customer.

What are you waiting for?

These tips might sound basic but at the core they are all about being helpful to your reader, whether you are making it easy to find your site in the first place or to find the information that they need once they reach your page. Follow these 6 simple tips, and your blog will show up in more searches, effectively drive traffic, and effortlessly collect customer contact information.

Looking for more ways to optimize your website? Click the image below to get a free website assessment from Denamico (see what I did there? 😉).

Upgrading to a CRM: 8 Best Practices You Need to Know

rachel.butzler@denamico.com (Rachel Butzler) — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 14:00:00 GMT

If you’re implementing a new CRM, here’s how to do it right the first time.

Nearly every business collects the contact information of its leads and customers, but what you do with that information can be the difference between middling sales and booming success. How and where you store your contact information can make a huge difference in what you are able to do with the data you collect.

Are you ready to take your marketing and sales tactics beyond the basic mailing list? You’re going to need a scalable, flexible solution for storing, sorting, and tracking the activity of your contacts. If you’re struggling with trying to maintain your contacts in a Rolodex, spreadsheet, or through your email inbox address book, it’s definitely time to implement a CRM.

What is a CRM?

A customer relationship management software solution, known as a CRM, is a tool used to organize your contact info and manage your relationship with current and prospective customers, clients, and other contacts. There are a TON of CRM providers — at Denamico, we specialize in using the Hubspot CRM — but all of them provide a digital space to hold your contacts and track your interactions.

The Benefits of Implementing a CRM

With a CRM, not only will you be able to store more information than just a Google Contact record or line in a spreadsheet, but you’ll also be able to see the big picture view of your leads and customers’ activities. You’ll be able to identify trends and make decisions based on actual data rather than gut feeling alone.

A digital record of your customers will also allow you to sort them into targeted groups for marketing purposes. Whether you are interested in doing a mailing to a specific geographical area or sending an email to a specific interest segment of customers, you can create lists based on any property you collect information about.

The best CRMs will integrate with your existing systems to streamline and automate your business processes, making sure that none of your potential customers slip through the cracks. And, there's no need to have someone replying to every single incoming lead — the CRM will collect the lead’s information and automate a follow-up email, nurturing the relationship with the customer automatically. With a small amount of set up, you’ll reduce your daily maintenance work significantly and eliminate friction for the customer.

So, if you’ve decided to jump in to a CRM, whether this is all new or you're trying to revive your old CRM system, here are our top tips to ensure that your implementation goes smoothly.

8 Tips for Implementing a CRM

1. Senior leadership should be a champion for the change

While your CEO is likely not going to be using a CRM system on a daily basis, it’s crucial to get the support of the corner office to ensure the success of your implementation.

A CRM Landmark study states that “The greatest likelihood for success is found among companies that see CRM as ‘critical’ or ‘strategic.’ Affording CRM a lesser level of importance, the study says, ‘actually detracts from success because it sends the message to employees and middle management that CRM is not a priority.’"

The trickle down effect is real. If your senior management is committed to and excited about your new CRM system, you are more likely to succeed in company-wide adoption and consistent use.

2. Get buy-in from the end users by involving them in the decision and rollout process

Despite its strategic purpose, any new tool can appear to be an unwanted shake-up if the end users are not consulted. In order to avoid being perceived as a burden, allow your end users to voice their opinion on which CRM system you choose and provide insight as it is being set up. If the end users feel as if this change is being forced upon them, none of them are going to maintain it or use it to its full potential.

You will experience less resistance when you are more transparent about the transition to a new CRM. As you progress through the implementation process, take the time to explain what stage your business is at in the transition, what employees can expect in the next phase, and how they can prepare for the change.

3. Define first, implement second

It’s a common mistake: You get so excited about the possibilities of a new CRM that you create properties and set up operations processes without even stopping to consider your existing systems. This can leave your system jumbled and your staff confused. Instead, begin by mapping out all of the established terms and core processes that your team uses which will now be handled in the CRM. By keeping your departments’ established naming conventions and process stages, your employees will be more likely to embrace the change and quickly adjust to working in the system on a regular basis.

As you assemble the CRM system, it is essential to establish internal usage guidelines. If everyone who uses the CRM sets up their own properties instead of using the established company-wide values, you’ll end up with a system that’s cluttered and not useful to anyone. To prevent this from happening, you can assign one member of each department to act as a “super user” who can act as a gatekeeper to identify potential duplicate properties and run proposed adjustments past the system administrators.

4. Clean up your import

For better or worse, your CRM system is only as good as the data you put into it, so it’s essential to clean up your data before you upload it to the system. A fragmented import will lead to a CRM that is disorganized and difficult to use.

A clean CRM is essential to ensuring that none of your contacts slip through the cracks. Your CRM will be most useful if you keep the values in a property all in one format. For example, you should make sure that all of your contacts’ addresses include their home state in a single format – either spelled out (Minnesota) or abbreviated (MN) – so that it will be easier to pull and sort your mailing lists.

Names are especially tricky to manage. A standard way to organize names is to have separate properties for first and last names, but some organizations may need additional name categories on record like title or informal address for mailings or nametags. No matter how you decide to divide up your properties, the values in a single category should be uniform in format across your contact records so that you can easily filter and search your database.

5. Utilize segmentation

As you collect information about your leads, look for opportunities to further target your messaging and actions. If you have an opportunity to identify your customer’s job title, demographic, or what products they are interested in, take advantage of it.

Use what you know about your leads to build and deliver content that will appeal to them directly. Using your CRM, you can filter your leads to create segmented lists and send targeted content to potential buyers. As a result of your attention to their individual interests, your customers are more likely to engage with your brand.

6. Use the right tool for the right job

Your new CRM is a powerful tool, but you should take care to leverage its new functionality correctly. Make sure you are using the correct type of property to collect your data in forms.

Whenever possible, avoid using a blank text field to collect information that needs to be in a uniform format for filtering inside your CRM. For example, if you are asking people to input their home state, give them a dropdown bar to select their answer instead of a blank text field so that the submissions are in your established uniform format. Your ultimate goal is to gather information while keeping your data as clean as possible so that you don’t have to clean it up later.

7. Integrate with your other applications

Just because you are using a CRM doesn’t mean you have to give up the rest of your tech stack. As much as you can, make sure your systems are talking to each other. Nobody wants to do manual entry or weekly uploads if they don’t have to.

Integrate your CRM with your other applications using tools like Zapier, piesync, or if you are using the HubSpot CRM, you can use one of the 308 different technology integrations already established across 15 categories, including lead generation, ecommerce, and calling. These tools exist to make your work easier, so let them do the work of communicating with each other whenever possible.

8. Provide adequate training

Frustrated employees might just throw up their hands and refuse to use the CRM if they feel that they did not receive enough training to understand how to use it. Schedule a block of time for your employees to meet and learn the system together. Make sure there is enough time to walk through the software and to answer questions.

Depending on how quickly your employees pick up the system, you might want to have a second training and additional training sessions throughout the next year for those who need a review or have just joined the company. Additionally, you can assign and train an adept employee from each department to act as a “super user” to provide hands-on advice and on-the-spot answers for the rest of the department throughout the onboarding process and beyond.

Big changes are worth it

There are many reasons to implement a CRM, but ultimately, having a digital record of your customers that is integrated with your existing systems will streamline and automate your business processes while making it easy to nurture your customer relationships. You might experience some resistance, but by using the tips above you can be sure that you’re setting up your CRM the right way the first time!

Which social media platforms should my business be using?

rachel.butzler@denamico.com (Rachel Butzler) — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 17:02:00 GMT

Benefits of social media

At this point in the game, social media has become a part of our daily lives. Almost 70% of Americans are on social media and that number continues to grow every year.

With so many people spending their time on social platforms, it’s crucial for businesses to join in as well.

By using the social media channels where your current customers and potential prospects already choose to spend time, you’ll be able to boost brand awareness, engage them with interesting content, and earn their trust as a relevant brand.

But with the plethora of social platforms out there, it can seem like a daunting task to tackle all of them. Creating engaging social content is a challenge, and the thought of taking on the myriad of mediums is enough to make many small business owners throw in the towel.

But just remember, it’s not so much about being on all the platforms, it’s about being on the right platforms — the ones where your customers are.

If you’re using social media for your business, you can relax — there’s no reason to be active on every single social platform. The key to success is maintaining a consistent presence on the select channels that appeal to your target audience.

How to determine which social media platform(s) to use

Before you decide which platforms to use, you should take a step back and look at your company’s unique position and objectives.

You can narrow down your options by evaluating these four elements: your goals, audience, content type, and ads.

1. Determine your main goal

What is your main goal? Do you want to boost brand awareness? Encourage active engagement? Provide product updates? Answer customer questions? Drive traffic to your website?

While this is by no means a comprehensive list of potential goals, think about what you’re trying to achieve and make sure that the social platform(s) you choose are going to help you reach that goal.

2. Identify your target audience

What age is your typical customer? Are you a B2B or B2C business? If you are focusing on social platforms where your target market isn’t spending their time, you are wasting yours.

3. Pinpoint your preferred content type

What kind of content do you want to post — Video? Photos? Text? How frequently do you intend on posting — Weekly? Daily? Multiple times a day?

While you want to create an engaging experience for your audience, don’t set yourself up for failure by committing to a content type that you can’t create or a schedule that is too aggressive for you to maintain.

4. Evaluate your ad options

Do you want to run ads? Some platforms give you options ranging from simply boosting posts to executing complex targeted strategies.

How much do you want to spend? The cost of advertising varies from platform to platform, but a highly targeted campaign on the right platform might be worth a higher cost if you’re sure to reach exactly the right demographic.

Once you’ve determined your audience and objectives, you’ll have the tools to identify which social platforms are perfectly suited to help you reach your customers and your goals.

Social platforms to use

While there are many options, you should make sure that the social platforms you choose are a good fit for your business goals, target audience, content type, and ad preferences that you’ve identified.

No doubt, you’ll be familiar with some (if not most) of the platforms on the following list, but you might not have considered how they could be used for business. Consider the benefits and disadvantages of each platform as you evaluate which ones line up with your ongoing business strategy.

Facebook

Facebook was introduced in 2004 and quickly established itself as one of the top social platforms. The most widely used social platform today, it also allows you to share a variety of content types.

Advantages of Facebook:

Largest consumer reach – as of Q4 2018, Facebook had 2.32 billion monthly active users
Users of all ages and backgrounds
Lots of content options – video, photo slideshows, stories, post sharing
Highly targeted advertising options, which are generally quite affordable
Ability to provide customer service via Facebook Messenger

Disadvantages of Facebook:

Decreasing use among Gen Z – while many baby boomers have taken to this social platform, unfortunately many under age 25 are abandoning the site so they aren’t on the same platform as their parents and grandparents

Instagram

Instagram launched in 2010 and has since grown into one of the largest social platforms in the world. Businesses can use it to share visually engaging content.

Advantages of Instagram:

Owned by Facebook – overlap of audience, 1.1 billion users per month
Content is visual, including photos and stories – great for telling your brand’s story
Best for building awareness and engagement with your audience
Engage with influencers and partners for “social media takeovers”
Top platform for teens – users under age 25 spend an average of 32 minutes per day on the app
Introduced shoppable posts/checkout feature in 2018 – provides the ability to buy products without leaving the app

Disadvantages of Instagram:

If your products or services don’t lend themselves well to visual content or you don’t have a dedicated designer or photographer on staff, it may be challenging to produce content that will engage your target audience

Twitter

Twitter launched in 2006 and is now one of the leading news and social networking sites. It’s ideal for businesses wanting to update and engage with their customers and prospects in just a few characters — 280 to be exact.

Advantages of Twitter for businesses:

321 million monthly active users, with approximately 46% of users visiting the platform daily
Short posts allow you to be hyper-relevant and live-tweet events
Great way to provide customer support – 85% of SMB Twitter users provide customer service via the platform

Disadvantages of Twitter:

Users expect frequent posting
Scheduling time to tweet can often interfere with daily on-the-job activities

YouTube

YouTube is the top social site for videos and is now owned by Google. Businesses can take advantage of YouTube by posting helpful videos and embedding them throughout their site or on other social platforms.

Advantages of YouTube:

1.5 billion users per month
Second largest search engine after Google
Video is a great way to showcase products, demos, thought leadership — very engaging
Everyone loves it – Millennials show a strong preference for YouTube over traditional television, and baby boomers turn to YouTube to learn about products and services

Disadvantages of YouTube:

Difficult to stand out as there are so many content creators using the platform
Advertising can be pricey

LinkedIn launched in 2003 and is a great way for businesses to network, look for new employees, and post relevant industry and company information.

Advantages of LinkedIn:

260 million monthly active users
Professional audience – reach senior-level influencers and decision-makers
#1 social channel for B2B marketing – 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content
Advertising is highly targeted – enables you to reach extremely specific audiences with ease

Disadvantages of LinkedIn:

Advertising is expensive
Requires a learning curve to learn the ins and outs

Pinterest launched in 2010 and is a visual social platform that serves like a digital scrapbook. Businesses can use the site to highlight highly visual content like photos, illustrations, and infographics.

Advantages of Pinterest:

250 million active monthly users
Drives online sales – 93% of Pinterest users report that they use Pinterest to plan future purchases and 87% reported that Pinterest has helped them decide what to purchase
A rising platform for shopping – recently introduced “Catalog” function
Great for inbound link generation

Disadvantages of Pinterest:

Disproportionate number of female users – 41% of women say they use the site versus just 16% of men
Not ideal for all industries – popular content revolves predominantly around food, fashion, decor, and makeup

Snapchat

Snapchat, released in 2011, is a popular multimedia platform for businesses to showcase timely content. The platform’s format of shared images and videos that disappear after a short period of time promotes daily user engagement.

Advantages of Snapchat:

301 million monthly active users
Great for reaching young customers – 82% of Snapchat users ages 18 to 24 say they use the platform daily, with 71% indicating that they use it multiple times per day
Geofilters offer opportunities to increase user engagement
Average daily active users open the app over 20 times per day and spend an average of 30+ minutes on the app each day

Disadvantages of Snapchat

Relatively homogenous user base – features a niche demographic of 13 to 34 year olds, and about 70% of that demographic are women. If your business doesn’t have a target audience in this demographic, Snapchat may not be the appropriate platform

Yelp

Since 2004, Yelp has functioned as a local search service powered by crowd-sourced reviews. While it isn’t a place where users necessarily go to interact with each other, it is a platform where customers can interact with and reach out to your business.

Advantages of Yelp:

145 million monthly users on average
Allows you to create a reputable brand image
Reviews boost SEO and account for 8.4% of organic results
Utilize reviews to grow your business – 89% make a purchase within a week of visiting review sites and 29% will do so within a day
As a paid option, an enhanced business profile allows you to block your competition's ads from appearing on your profile page and lets you place ads on your competition's profile pages (unless they have also paid the fee).

Disadvantages of Yelp:

Advertising is expensive
Enhanced business profiles start at $300 per month
No control over posted reviews, though you can respond to them

Industry- and demographic-specific suggestions

Even if you’ve evaluated your business goals, target audience, content type, and ad preferences, you might still be stuck — and that’s okay. Here are a few tips to get you started:

In the B2B or SaaS industry? Start with LinkedIn to reach a business-focused audience.
Interested in reaching a local audience? If your retail outlet, restaurant, or service center needs a boost, start by showcasing your business on Yelp and Facebook.
Want to share beauty or fashion content? Pinterest and Instagram are a great place to start.
Trying to reach a younger audience? You might want to try your hand at Snapchat and Instagram.
Got video content to share? Get it out quickly on Facebook. Is your video horizontal? Make sure you upload it to YouTube. Is it vertical? It’s perfect for Instagram!

Your social strategy should be as unique as your customers

It is worth mentioning that the list above is by no means comprehensive. While we think that these few platforms might be key for most businesses, your niche audience might be found on other platforms like Periscope, Tik Tok, or Reddit, to name a few. In fact, by the time this is published, there will probably be a few more new platforms to consider!

No matter which social media platforms you choose to use, what really matters is that you focus your efforts on creating quality content that will engage your customers.

You are the expert on your unique customer base, so you’re in the perfect position to determine which social media channels will allow you to connect with them best while fulfilling your business goals. Go forth and be social!

Why Having a Mobile Optimized Website is So Important

rachel.butzler@denamico.com (Rachel Butzler) — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 17:01:00 GMT

Mobile devices are the new preferred method of web browsing and shopping. Is your digital content ready?

If you’re reading this, you probably own a smartphone. You might even be reading this ON your smartphone! With the power of the internet in our pockets, today’s consumer is empowered to make informed decisions on the spot, without having to step into your store or talk to a salesperson. So how can you reach into those pockets? With your not-so-secret weapon: your website.

In 2018, BrightEdge reported that nearly 60% of its clients’ web traffic came from mobile devices, and that number can be even higher in certain industry categories like Food and Beverage according to a Hitwise report. With those statistics in mind, is your digital content ready for mobile traffic?

Your website is your best salesperson — available 24/7 to your potential customers. But if it isn’t user-friendly on the device that a visitor is most likely to use, what good is it? As online browsing and commerce shift to smaller screens, it’s important for businesses in all categories to consider mobile optimization.

What is mobile optimization?

Mobile optimization is a strategy for making your website and other digital content compatible for mobile phones to provide an optimal user experience.

While mobile browsing is convenient for potential customers, there are some limitations to working within the mobile medium such as limited screen size and performance due to network lags.

So, with these hurdles in front of you, why should you bother investing time and effort into mobile optimization? The answer is simple: Optimizing for mobile should be important to your business because it is important to your customers and the search engines that serve them content.

Why is mobile optimization important to potential customers?

Visitors to your website are there for a reason — they want to see your content! But when your potential customers encounter poor layout, frustrating navigation, and images that won’t load, they are likely to bounce away from your page.

The stats speak for themselves: 43% of consumers are unlikely to return to a slow-loading mobile site, and 40% of consumers will go to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience on your website.

When someone visits your store, you wouldn’t make it difficult for them to get in the door or display your products on broken racks, so why would you present your business online any differently?

Your website visitors are potential customers, so you should present them with an exceptional experience, no matter the device they are using.

Why is mobile optimization important to Google?

With so many people browsing on mobile, it’s imperative for Google to prioritize the devices that most of its visitors are using.

Google’s ranking system determines what gets shown in search results, and Google has begun mobile-first indexing. This means that Google’s algorithms are primarily using the mobile version of your website to rank it for search results.

It’s in the best interest of Google and other search engines to provide their users with the best possible experience, so of course they are going to serve up results that align with those goals. If you want you want Google to serve your content to its users, you should make Google’s goals your priority. This means having a website that’s well optimized for mobile.

Mobile Optimization Best Practices

Because user experience is so important and most visitors to your site are viewing it on a mobile device, it’s in your best interest to follow mobile optimization best practices. We’ve gathered our top 10 here for you:

1. Make your website search engine friendly

This gets a bit technical, but it all comes down to this: when you help Google, Google helps you. By adding descriptive information to the backend of your website, you create additional structured data to help search engines crawl and rank your site.

Because search engines benefit from serving their users the highest quality information possible, any additional header tags, meta descriptions, or schema markups that you provide can give the search engine “bots” more of a structure to grab onto while crawling the code of your website.

Why does this matter? The more the search engine knows about your site, the more it can serve your site to users with queries that match your content.

2. Adopt a responsive website design

While you can change up your existing desktop website design to be more mobile-friendly, a responsive website is the real key to user-friendly content viewing.

Responsive site designs will automatically resize and adjust your content to accommodate the size of the screen it is being displayed on, reducing the need for excessive zooming or horizontal scrolling. This can include simplifying menus and rearranging on-page modules to better display your content without taking away from the user experience.

3. Optimize for load time

The time that it takes for your page to load on a mobile device can be a deciding factor in whether or not a visitor will stay on your page or bounce.

Ideally, your site — or, at the very least, the content above the fold — should load in 1-2 seconds. Google reports that 53% of mobile site visitors will abandon a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Not only does page loading speed matter to your users, it’s also a factor in search engine ranking. Google wants to send its users to pages where they will have a great user experience. So, if your lagging site is going to frustrate viewers, Google’s algorithms will be less likely to recommend your site to users by displaying it near the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).

You can take steps to reduce your load time by performing site optimizations like minimizing redirects, removing extraneous code and scripts, resizing and compressing content, and leveraging caching.

4. Streamline your content and navigation

On small screens, real estate is limited, so make the most of what you’ve got. Every piece of content should contribute to your message — focus on the value of your content rather than the volume. As the old adage goes, sometimes less is more.

While you are making the most of a small space, don’t forget to consider your navigation. Most mobile users can intuitively navigate using a simplified menu, but you should make it easy for them to get back to your homepage if needed. Above all, make sure that your simplified navigation is consistent across your site.

5. Make sure your text is large and legible

No matter how good your viewers’ eyesight may be, if the text on your website is small it will be downright tiny on a mobile device.

You can avoid frustrating your visitors by limiting the number of fonts on your website and using a simple, sans-serif, non-stylized font that’s at least 14 point size for your main blocks of text. If your viewers have to zoom in on your text to be able to read it, it’s too small.

The amount of text on your page also plays a part in optimization. It can be disorienting and frustrating for viewers to navigate an enormous block of text with no breaks. Keep your text blocks bite-sized and consider using bullet points to break your content into smaller chunks.

You can also try breaking up text with strategically placed whitespace, imagery, taglines, or testimonials. Your readers will thank you!

6. Optimize your images and videos

Images and videos are powerful marketing tools, but you’ll need to be careful to ensure that they enhance — not overpower — your visitors’ mobile experience. In order to optimize for load times, as mentioned above, you’ll want to size and compress your images appropriately and be selective about how many photos you use.

You should also keep user experience top of mind. An image that is too large to fit on the screen or too small to serve its purpose of showing product detail doesn’t help your potential customers. You can resolve this issue by implementing a responsive design, which will automatically resize your images to fit the viewer’s screen, and making product images expandable to show greater detail.

Video should also be used strategically. Keep in mind that most mobile browsers don’t support Flash videos, so avoid using this outdated technology. A responsive video player is also key for user experience. If your video loads at full size without adjusting for screen size, it may be too large to view and can slow page load times.

7. Design your site for touch navigation

Since your users are using their fingers, not a mouse, to navigate your site, it’s essential to make clickable elements just the right size and far enough apart. It’s annoyingly easy to accidentally click on elements if they are too large or in the path of a scrolling finger, and just as frustrating to attempt to click on tiny links that refuse to engage.

When designing your site, keep touch screen navigation in mind so that your users don’t lose theirs!

8. Simplify all forms

If your page contains forms, keep them short with as few fields as possible. If your form creates too much hassle for the visitor, they might choose to abandon your page altogether.

Additionally, you can reduce friction by removing unnecessary form fields, which can give your conversion rate a boost. Even marketing guru Neil Patel saw his conversion rates increase by 26% when just one form field was removed.

If you must collect information beyond the bare essentials you need for marketing, make it clear which fields are optional so that visitors can self-select how much information they want to share.

9. Avoid intrusive pop-ups

It’s happened to everyone — you are trying to read an article or examine a potential item for purchase when you’re interrupted by a huge pop-up advertisement blocking your view. It’s annoying, right?

Your visitors came to your page for content, not ads. When used in the right way, pop-ups can provide helpful information or deals that visitors might be interested in. However, these are best implemented when they don’t block users from viewing your site or interrupt an otherwise pleasant user experience.

Not only are pop-ups annoying to your visitors, but as of January 2017, Google also penalizes intrusive website pop-ups with a decreased ranking. It’s in Google’s best interest to provide its users with an optimized browsing experience, so if you’re still using full-screen pop-ups, Google is less likely to send its users to your site.

Certain pop-ups are still admissible if they are required by law, such as age verification or GDPR compliance cookie opt-ins, but if you absolutely must have a pop-up ad or prompt for newsletter sign-up, make sure that it is small enough that it doesn’t detract from the content on the page.

10. Add a click to call option

In the digital marketplace, potential customers are likely to research your business online before visiting your store or reaching out to you, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to get in touch with you. Make it easy for them to reach you by including a click-to-call link or button in your contact information.

No one using their smartphone is likely to write down or remember your number long enough to manually type it into their touchpad. By making this a one-click process, you reduce friction and increase the likelihood that potential customers will commit to purchase.

Don’t forget about email

While your emails aren’t going to affect your search engine rankings, you should still consider your audience when creating email content. According to Adestra, in 2017 global trends showed that mobile was the preferred method for opening emails, hovering around 60% of all opens compared to desktop and webmail.

Image sourced from Adestra

Many website optimization principles can be applied to emails as well. Keep the mobile experience in mind at all times — simplify your designs, pare down your text, and create clear and clickable calls to action.

It’s all about the viewer

While you might want to cram your website full of awesome info about your product or service, you have to think about what device your viewer is using and how that device will affect their experience visiting your site. By optimizing for mobile, you are actually optimizing for business overall.