Saturday 30 September 2017

Weekend Favs September 30

Weekend Favs September 30 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • Kapa99 – Kapa99 is a subscription service dedicated to solving all your graphic design needs.
  • Drag – Organize your inbox – Transform Gmail into organized lists (like Trello, in Gmail).
  • FullContact – Know everything about your Gmail contacts, right from your inbox.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape



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A Guide to Facebook Advertising

A Guide to Facebook Advertising written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

As users, we encounter Facebook advertising on a daily basis without much consideration of the thought, research, and effort that goes into the content in our feeds. When the tables are turned, and it comes time for business owners to build their own Facebook campaign, the world of social media advertising can suddenly become a baffling process.

There are overwhelming benefits to pushing through and learning the basics to create your own social media strategies. A study conducted in 2016 by eMarketer found that more than 95% of social media marketers considered Facebook to be the most effective social media marketing platform.

This huge support is largely due to the fact that successful Facebook advertising allows businesses to target their campaigns effectively; it doesn’t discriminate smaller businesses, as a few hundred dollars can generate significant conversions if used effectively; it’s a much more intuitive system to learn compared to search platforms such as Google AdWords; and individual advertisements are incredibly flexible and customisable, with 11 different forms currently available.

We’re going to assume that you’ve set up your Facebook Ads Manager account, and have selected ‘Create ad’ from the top left drop-down menu. Navigating to this stage is very straightforward, but there are plenty of step-by-step resources available.

1. Your Campaign Objective

The first question you will be asked is what you want your campaign to achieve. The options given will cater to just about any stage of your business journey, whether you’re just starting out or want to expand internationally. Most businesses select the ‘Conversions’ option, however, lead generation, boosting brand or local awareness, and increased engagement are also popular choices.

This choice is an important one and will help Facebook to auto-optimise your ad settings. Don’t forget to give your campaign a date-inclusive name in the next step, which will help you to navigate between campaigns as your strategy becomes more complex.

2. Your Targeted Audience

The aim should be to get your target audience sitting between the 500,000–1,000,000 mark. Too high, and you will waste a fortune trying to sort the wheat from the chaff. Too low, and you won’t reach your optimum impact potential.

Approach this section armed with some audience data and customise everything, from age and gender through to physical location, likes, and job titles. For first-timers, letting Facebook auto-select your ad placement is a safe choice.

3. Your Ad Type and Creative

The creative of your Facebook ads drive lead generation with copy, imagery and/or video. While images and headlines will be best at stopping people mid-scroll, it is equally as essential to capitalise on this pause with a captivating description and strong call to action. Your initial object will determine which type of ad you choose, in turn determining the optimum image specs, video length, and text breakdown.

  • For increasing website traffic or leads, choose between link click ads, video ads or boosted page posts.
  • For increasing product or sales leads, choose between carousel ads, dynamic product ads, Facebook lead ads, canvas ads and collection ads.
  • For increasing Facebook page likes or engagement, choose between page like ads and page photo, video or text ads.
  • For increasing application installations, choose between mobile, desktop and Instagram mobile app ads.
  • For increasing event attendance or in-store visits, choose between event ads, offer claims and local awareness ads.

In general, I recommend keeping each ad aligned with a single message, insisting that less is more when it comes to copy, while images should be bright and contain your single-minded value proposition to reinforce your text.

4. Your Campaign Budget

Facebook offers two options: daily budget limit and lifetime budget. The former allows you to nominate an average spend per day, for example, $10, which Facebook will spend in the best way possible. Despite the name, it is more of an average than a daily limit, as some days will be identified as better performing, so Facebook may decide to spend up to $12.50, while other days will be quiet and it will only spend $7.50.

Most experts suggest a moderate daily budget, set to an unlimited lifetime—which you can pause or cancel at any time—as a good introduction to Facebook advertising campaign performance. Leave the bidding to Facebook at this stage while you’re still learning what clicks are worth for your campaign.

5. Your Campaign Progress

Back in Facebook Ads Manager, your campaigns will be laid out before you so you can keep an eye on how everything is tracking. Play around with sorting via audience or objective, as well as focusing on individual ad sets. Explore your advertising metrics, such as cost per click (CPC), impressions and conversions, and as you become more familiar with your campaigns, you can update which metrics you can see.


Author Bio

Mike Bird is a co-founder of digital marketing agency, Social Garden, which specialises in data-driven lead generation & marketing automation to grow companies’ revenue in the finance, property and education verticals in Australia.



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Friday 29 September 2017

Design Inspiration: 15 Exciting Website Advertising Campaigns

Design Inspiration: 15 Exciting Website Advertising Campaigns written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The online advertising campaign is one of the most influencing marketing tools today. The secret of its striking effect is hidden in the peculiarities of human perception. Near 90 % of the information, people perceive visually. Thus, the visual effect which is used in design plays a determinative role in advertising. Using them correctly, you have all chances to modify reality according to your business purposes and create an inspired, memorable and well-directed advertisement.

We would not go in the depth of the theory of marketing approaches and rules just demonstrate you a few of the best latest campaigns. For your better understanding of the tools and marketing strategies which have brought them success read a few words about meaningful tricks helping to develop inspiration marketing design.

Design motivation tricks

Your campaign should motivate people to buy your product since it should be aligned with the needs and interests of your target auditory. Thanks to digital tools for investigating and gathering data about internet users you can find needed information in a few clicks. Remember, data matters for being in touch with your clients.

Despite focusing on the product, the advertisement should have the social background. Advertising report of Nielsen’s Global Trust shows that the most resonating in marketing context are humorous, value- and family-oriented, real-file situations.

Colors you use for designing advertisement matters. The scientists have proved the strong interrelation between hues and human feelings. You should know exactly what emotions you want to provoke in your audience. To choose the background, you may address to Robert Plutchik’s wheel of emotions. Consider, the saturated and rich colors are currently in trend. Indeed, coloristic should be balanced and look natural.

The advertising message is the core element of the marketing campaign. It should be short, clear, extremely focused and appealing to audience’s aspirations. It is worth admitting that typography style is the primary tool for making accents. Large, rich and contrasting typography is today the central trend of web design 2017.

15 Exciting Website Advertising Campaigns

1. Damien

2017 Internet Advertising Competition Award, Best Advertising Online Ad,

Promoting the horror series “Damien,” companies registered “Page Six SixSix” with incredible topical banner and live action video. They created the analogy with Devil hinting on the horrible essence of the series and mystical context. The emotion of horror was transmitted through each element of design.

2. White64 motors

2017 Internet Advertising Competition Award, Best Advertising Website

Presentation of the first autonomous flying sleigh appeals to the child’s beliefs of everyone. At the same time, they virtuously link these beliefs to the new opportunities of their product saying:

“ Innovation Just Got a New Face. Santa Got a New Sleigh”

3. Giants and Gentlemen (G&G)

2017 Internet Advertising Competition Award, Outstanding website.

The website was created to inspire potential employees and clients. Just from the campaign’s start, company’s staff has grown by 50% and 7 clients were added.

4. Tootsy Pop Interactive

2017 Internet Advertising Competition Award, Best Advertising Rich Media Online Campaign.

Marketing purpose: engaging viewers using the classic Tootsie Roll character Mr. Owl, increasing engagement through device motion gestures, incorporating a game for kids and appealing to parents with a nostalgic look at a Tootsie Roll campaign.

5. PBS kids

2017 People’s Voice, Website: youth

It is the bright example of targeting: colors are bright and incredibly enjoyable, thematically imagery and elementary functional – all what is good for children visual perception.

6. Spotify

2017 Webby Awards, People’s Voice

This campaign brightly demonstrates the importance of social context. The message: “Thanks 2016. It was the weird” captures people’s attention and then claims about program’s improvements.

7. Google – year in search 2016

2017 Webby Awards, People’s Voice, Website: Best Use of Video or Moving Image

As in the previous example, we can see that urgently social advertisement was rewarded with people’s voice. Indeed, all the social background is actualized by means of sounds, colors, movement’s effects – all is now in marketing and web design trends.

8. Larry King Now

2017 Webby Award Winner, Web Personality (Channels and Networks)

A simple and clear advertisement which demonstrates successful using of trend elements: a large typography, calm but rich hues, minimalism alongside eloquence.

9. Women’s footprints in history

2017 Webby Award Winner

An example of crafted combination between the text message and visual effect: one help remember the other; brilliant interplaying looks holistic – as it should be.

10. Milwaukee Ballet

2017 People’s Voice / Webby Award Winner, Best Home Page

One more web design trend 2017 – video effect as the Home Page. The fact that the company has got both people’s voice and professional reward confirm that this marketing approach works.

11. Through the Dark

2017 People’s Voice / Webby Award Winner, Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics

Classical combination of white and dark focus attention on animation and core advertisement message – Google Play music is the way to the light.

12. IFLY KLM 50

2017 People’s Voice / Webby Award Winner, Best Visual Design – Aesthetic

The word ‘breathtaking’ is used not accidentally in the text message. One can see that the image, combination of colors, nature’s landscape and phenomena alongside the design idea create a really breathtaking effect.

13. 2015 Digital Annual Report Airbus Group

2017 Webby Award Winner, Websites: Corporate Communication

You can here see contrasting typography and its appealing effect: the word “Ahead” is larger and more saturated to appeal people’s striving to be always “Ahead” of the others. Light blue color – color of lightness and elevation; what can be better associated with the safety of fly?

14. BBC Culture

2017 People’s Voice, Best Cultural Blog/Website

Effective use of the images with the background of the real life’s stories

15. Clear Score

2017 People’s Voice, Websites: Financial Services/Banking

One more bright demonstration of emotional appeal: the words “free” and “freedom” appear twice in the text message. Background greatly enhances the human emotional need for being free.

It is the short list of the Internet Advertising Competitions’ winners, but just a few examples brightly demonstrate the core marketing tricks and reflect the latest tendencies in the web design and advertisement. Even if you have not found here anything consonant with your vision, you should be already charged with the inspiration to act. Do not delay for later, the trends and tricks are changing in an extremely short period.


About the Author

Petra MainerPetra Mainer, the novice solopreneur (founder of GradeScout), studies Information Management, and now she is eager to start writing about everything worth reading in the digital sphere. Follow her on Twitter.



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Digital Marketing News: LinkedIn Top Content, Twitter Gets Character & Apple Goes Google

The Content Preferences of LinkedIn Members [Infographic] What kinds of content do LinkedIn users prefer? A new infographic shows that LinkedIn users prefer content that's informative, educational and relevant. MarketingProfs Giving you more characters to express yourself Twitter recently announced they're giving us an additional 140 characters with which to convey our deepest, Tweetiest thoughts by upping their character count to 280. They believe this will encourage more active posting on their platform. Twitter Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search results on iOS and Spotlight on Mac Apple has finally made the plunge with Google - when you search with Siri on your iOS device or Mac, you'll be shown search results from Google. In other news, none of that would have made any sense 20 years ago (according to Josh Nite). TechCrunch Adding LinkedIn’s Profile Card on Office 365 Offers a Simple Way to Build a Professional Relationship LinkedIn and Microsoft have made it official recently with the anticipated rollout of the ability to integrate your personal LinkedIn profile card with your Office 365 profile. Full details and how-to's are available, and the release will happen over the next couple of weeks. LinkedIn Know Their Intention, Get Their Attention: New Ways to Connect and Measure on YouTube Google has announced four new tools to help brands and users "capture the attention of your audience on YouTube." These tools include Custom Affinity Audiences, Video Ad Sequencing and more. Inside AdWords Instagram Hits 800 Million Monthly Users, Adding 100 Million in Just 5 Months AdWeek reports: "After announcing this morning that Instagram has 2 million advertisers, the Facebook-owned app also says that it has 800 million monthly users, up from 700 million in April." AdWeek Report: The future of paid-search marketing is machine learning and AI "Machine learning-optimized campaigns saw 71 percent better conversion rates and lower CPCs than those not using it." At least, that's what Search Engine Land makes of the recent report from Acquisio. Search Engine Land Only A Third Of Ad Execs Trust Their Audience Data, Measurements According to a recent survey, only 33% of advertising executives consider their data to be completely trustworthy. Only 29% said they felt their audience analytics/measurement was completely accurate. MediaPost What were your top digital marketing news stories this week? We'll be back next week with more digital marketing news! If you have something to share, pass it along to the newsroom or Tweet me @Tiffani_Allen or @toprank.

The post Digital Marketing News: LinkedIn Top Content, Twitter Gets Character & Apple Goes Google appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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Thursday 28 September 2017

Why Retailers Need To Move Beyond Cross Channel Marketing

The retail marketing power has shifted for the marketer to the customer in recent years as digital has disrupted what we used to think of as tried and true retail practices. With the proliferation of channels beyond the store and the Web site, the way customers engage with your brand is on their terms.

With this shift comes the expectation that you make it easy for them to engage with your brand, when they want to, and how they want to, no matter where they are.

What should matter to retail marketers looking to survive in today’s tough, digitally transformed, retail landscape?

Stay Focused On the Right Thing  

The best-performing retailers, whether it is ModCloth, Amazon, or The North Face are not focusing on the marketing channels, but are focused on enabling seamless, low-friction customer experiences with their brands. The customer does not think about your brand in the terms of marketing channels.

They want to view your retail store as a window into the brand, but can access inventory and quickly and easily buy through their mobile device, or the website or even the store if they so choose.

They also want the product or service delivered to them quickly, no matter where they are, be it at home, work, a hotel on the road, etc. Retail marketers need to break down their siloed thinking and embrace that modern retail marketing success is driven by a seamless customer experience.

The Numbers Do Not Lie

This past December, Steve Olenski, Forbes contributor, influencer and Director of CMO Content & Strategy for Oracle Marketing Cloud shared the 4 Cross Channel Marketing Stats Marketers Need To Know Going Into 2017.

Read Steve’s post for sure but I’ll summarize the 4 stats here for you:

  1. Two-thirds of all shoppers regularly use more than one channel to make purchases. 
  2. The average shopper makes on average 9.5 visits to a retailer’s site before deciding to buy.
  3. Customers who shop on more than one channel have a 30% higher Lifetime Value than those who shop on only one.
  4. Only 5% of marketers say they are “very much set up to effectively orchestrate cross-channel marketing activities.”

It’s All About the CX

As I mentioned earlier the best brands in the world are not focused on marketing channels per se but the experience they provide across those channels.

Most marketers rate Customer Experience as a top priority for their organization year after year, but very few companies are actually able to deliver on their vision. How often do we hear stories of customers with open service tickets receiving an email promotion targeted towards “happy customers”? Or display ads shown promoting a product to a customer who just recently purchased that very same item?

When investigating where these customer experience initiatives fall flat - or even fail to get off the ground – it is very often see data issues at the root of the problem.

Marketers struggle with data silos within their own organization as they try to integrate customer data across multiple systems - email, web, commerce, service, loyalty, social, etc.

Even if they are able to successfully unite data across these systems, once customer start to move across devices and channels, most marketing systems lose track of who’s who. Add in the final component of anonymous audiences who move throughout the digital world, and the average marketer is facing an impossible task.

If you can’t be sure who you’re speaking to at the end of your marketing campaign, there’s no way you can provide a positive Customer Experience.

Keep It Simple

Retailers today need an all-in-one solution that helps retail marketers develop direct relationships with customers through seamlessly orchestrated cross-channel digital experiences—online and offline—that facilitate and strengthen customer interactions across a constantly growing list of digital touchpoints.

Watch this brief case study to see how one leading retailer uses Oracle Marketing Cloud technology and expertise to deliver a perfect customer experience that speaks to the mood and the moment of the consumer using cross-channel orchestration at this women's vintage fashion and lifestyle brand.

Image source: Pexels



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Transcript of Winning Your Dream Clients

Transcript of Winning Your Dream Clients written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

John: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jake Jorgovan. He is the founder of Outbound Creative, an agency that helps other agencies find and win their dream clients. He’s also the author of, I think it’s still upcoming book “Win Your Dream Clients,” founder of Lead Cookie, and does a lot of work on helping companies prospect and win clients on LinkedIn. Jake, thanks for joining me.

Jake: Thanks for having me on here, John. Excited to be here.

John: Now you have a podcast as well that you’ve been doing. You want to tell us about that?

Jake: Yeah, my podcast is called Working Without Pants. I interview other agency owners and consultants, and most of it is kind of on sharing their story and diving deep into that question of how do they get more clients, which is kind of what I’ve focused my entire career around.

John: Maybe I’m old school, but I have gone to work every day with pants on.

Jake: Yeah, I’m sitting here in sweatpants right now, so I guess that I am wearing pants today but they’re sweatpants.

John: So, tell me about this dream client. Maybe I actually ought to get you to define what makes a client a dream client rather than a client that said they’d pay you.

Jake: Yes, so basically the whole concept for the Dream Client campaign came up where I basically read “The Ultimate Sales Machine” by Chet Holmes many years ago. This was back when I had my own video production and animation agency. Basically at that point, what I did was I got pretty serious about that. It’s this idea of saying if you had to go and figure out a list of, let’s say, just 25 of who would be your absolute perfect customers, and then build a plan to go after them. I’ll first of all say before we dive into this topic that the Dream Client campaign is not for everyone. It’s for people who are already doing extremely well and you feel that your capabilities are above the customer level that you’re working with. That’s where we were at my agency. We were doing very groundbreaking technical and creative work, and we knew we had the portfolio to get to that next tier of customers.

That’s where we went out and we launched the Dream Client campaign. For us, that was basically going after the top 25 event producers, because what we did was animation and graphics for stage productions. We found a list of the top 100. We scraped through every one by hand and picked who the top 25 were. We just started going after them and basically just would not stop until we got meetings with them. We probably booked meetings with seven to eight of them over the course of a few months. Then the first one of those that converted to a customer was actually Walmart’s corporate conference. We got to do this insanely massive project bigger than anything ever that we had done, and it was because we had had great work. We knew we were capable of producing at that level. We saw what else was out there, but we were just ready to take it up that notch. That’s where the Dream Client campaign came in for us and how I started with all that.

John: I sing that song a lot. There are a lot of consultants out there that their life would be much better with six or eight more clients, and yet they are out there spraying the internet to try to find them. I think that that idea of identifying 25 you’d like to work with and spend massive amounts of time impressing them is probably a far more profitable way to approach, especially if you’ve already said, “This is somebody I would really like to work with,” then you’ve kind of got that qualification thing out of the way.

Jake: Yeah. The danger I’ve always warned people is that you can aim too big. I ran some Dream Client campaigns a couple years ago for some customers, and we got them meetings with the director of digital marketing at Budweiser. They were just like, “You guys, this is awesome. Glad we’re meeting here, but you guys are too small for us.” It’s possible that you can aim too big for that, so I always kind of warn people before you go down that route that you need to be high-performing and just ready to take it up a notch. That’s when the Dream Client campaign makes sense for someone.

John: Are there components? Are there standards? I’m sure obviously there are lots of different things and ways in which you have to customize it, but are there some standard approaches to a Dream Client campaign?

Jake: Yeah. The standard things, you first just start off by really thinking through who that is, building that list. 25 I think is probably a good number to start with. Then basically what you want to do is just start planning out what your steps are going to be. When you’re doing this, it’s all going to be some form out outreach or some form of starting that relationship with them. To do this, you’ve got to be prepared to just keep going after them. Keep doing whatever you can to get in front of them, try to meet them at events. Trying to interview them if you can or just trying to get a meeting, trying to mail them things in the mail. You just do whatever it takes to get that relationship started, get that first meeting, and then nurture and build upon it from there.

This is stuff that takes often and over a year to start to see actual revenue realized from this, but it’s a super powerful tactic that if you’ve got the relentlessness and you’re willing to have someone tell you no and still keep going after them, then it works well. It’s not for the faint of heart or the people who are adverse to selling.

John: Well if you want some impetus for starting a podcast, Jake just gave it to you. A great reason to start a podcast is to interview your top 25 dream clients. It would be great content and it’ll open the door at least, because that person’s going to respond to, “I want to interview you” a lot more than, “I want to come tell you about our company.”

Jake: Yeah, and that’s the thing. I wish I had a podcast back when I did my own Dream Client campaign because that’s what I tell so many people to do now. Just start a podcast and interview your target customers. You’re going to learn so much and build relationships with them, and build relationships with other partners in that space. It’s one of the best tactics I’ve ever started. It’s been great.

John: I know you also do some lead mining for organizations with a newer venture called Lead Cookie where you’re helping people identify and engage folks on LinkedIn. Tell us a little bit. I’m going to set this up by saying that I think there’s a lot of companies out there doing that. It’s a pretty hot thing right now. I personally know that I get a lot of spammy stuff on LinkedIn. Help us understand, is there a way to do this that is both effective and is not going to come off spammy?

Jake: The whole psychology that we take with it is that people don’t want to be sold; they want to buy. That’s kind of the whole mentality that we basically take with this approach. When we’re reaching out to people, we’re never just saying, “Hey, buy our services” because there’s a lot of that junk you get on LinkedIn. It just annoys me and I don’t even read it whenever I realize it. What we’ll typically do is reach out and just start something very casual, just saying, “Hey, I saw you had a similar interest in design thinking,” or we’ll try to build on a similar interest or something about the industry. Just say, “Hey, thought I’d reach out and connect,” something very low friction. That’s the initial connection request, just something very low and casual and saying that they looked interesting, or you saw that they were interested in this and thought you’d connect with them. That’s the simple one, and then after that, whenever they accept it we send them another message that’s, once again, not sales-y. We’re saying, “Hey, thanks for connecting. Let me know if you’re interested in talking more ever. I look forward to talking with you,” or just, “Have a great wee” or something like that.

We put a little tagline in there, and this is the signature where we just put kind of a simple maybe five to ten words that’s going to position you. We were talking about Juliet before this, but hers is “I help franchisors track franchisees through marketing.” Find some short and sweet little tagline that you put as the signature to all those. The idea is that you’re never actually pitching them, but some people see that and they say, “Oh hey, I’m interested in learning more” or, “Tell me more about what you do.” By doing that, people start to come to you and start to say, “Hey, I’m interested in learning more” or, “I’m looking to find more franchisees” or something like that. That simple thing of just putting the tagline in there to position yourself properly but not making the pitch and letting them come to you is the approach that we’ve taken. It’s been working really well.

John: When I talk to anybody about LinkedIn as a marketing tool regardless of industry, the first place everybody goes is cleaning up your profile. I’m not going to ask you how important that is because I know the obvious answer you’re going to say, “Important.” What are some ways that can make your LinkedIn profile work for you?

Jake: Again, the biggest thing is that tagline that you have there. The tagline that you put on your profile, which is like the first thing you see under your name, is pretty much the most important thing. Whenever we work with our clients, that’s where we put most of the focus on getting that 100% right because we’ll use that in the messages we send out. It also appears anywhere on LinkedIn that you post on your newsfeed or you comment on someone, or you’re in the messenger window. That tagline is everywhere. Getting that right and positioning that, and I’m sure, John, you’ve got other content out there on how to do some proper positioning-

John: Sure.

Jake: Getting that positioning just right is probably the single most important piece of it. Then the rest of it is to make sure that your profile isn’t just about you. A lot of people just start writing all their credentials and their work history. No one really cares about that. You switch it and you take almost a kind of sales page format or start talking about the company and how you solve their problems, what you do for them and switching it around that, and then maybe having a little bit about you in there but really making it more about what you do for other people than making it about yourself.

John: It’s interesting because I do think the advice is “well nobody cares about that stuff.” There is a point they will care about that stuff, but they don’t care about that stuff first. All your credentials and who else you’ve done work for, and all the great services you offer. Once somebody knows you, likes you, and trusts you, then that stuff does become important. I don’t think we’re saying never have any of that, but there is a journey that they have to go on before that stuff I think is important.

Jake: Yeah, I like to lead in with something about them and maybe even just do a line break and then have the part about you. I think that’s a good, simple way to frame that.

John: We’ve been actually designing websites that way today. Above the fold on the homepage needs to be a big honking problem statement that is accompanied by a promise for you to solve that. I think people have to get drawn in that way because a lot of times, I find anyway, most people, many businesses anyway, know something’s wrong but they haven’t necessarily attached their problem to your solution. You’ve got to help them make that connection.

Jake: That is exactly right.

John: There is, and this I did a little bit of snooping on Lead Cookie to find this. I had not heard of this tool called Dux-Soup, which is a little tool that I think you employ in helping drive traffic to somebody’s LinkedIn profile with the idea that if people are visiting it, maybe they’ll find something they like there. You want to talk about that Chrome extension?

Jake: Yeah. There’s two of them out there that I’ve used and they’re both pretty good. There’s eLink Pro and Dux-Soup. There’s a bunch of other features to them, but typically I don’t like to use the automated messaging features because that just scares me to have a robot sending things on my behalf.

John: Sure.

Jake:  What we do use it for is there’s a tool in there where you can basically put up a search que, so you build a really detailed search que of your target customers, and you tell Dux-Soup to go and it starts visiting profiles. It doesn’t message them, it doesn’t say anything to them; it just visits their profiles. If you’ve ever gotten those emails where you see the notifications from LinkedIn saying “so-and-so viewed your profile,” well what happens is you start showing up. If you’re doing 500 a day, that’s 2,500 a week that you’re showing up and that has viewed your profile section. Not everyone checks that, but you can still expect a good 5% to 10% of people will actually check that pretty regularly. If your tagline, once again all it shows is your name, photo, and tagline, if your tagline hooks them then they’ll click into your profile, read more, and then maybe they’ll connect back and actually engage with you. I typically see anywhere from 10 to 25 new connection requests every week coming through from running that plugin.

John: Do you need to have what LinkedIn calls a pro account to use a tool like that, or is it …?

Jake:  Yeah, you upgrade to sales navigator. You can do it on premium, but it’s not as ideal as they’ve removed a lot of the search features. To do most of these tactics effectively that I’m talking about, you would have to use the LinkedIn sales navigator tool.

John: That’s where all the more advanced search functionality comes in.

Jake: Yeah, it gives you that advanced search functionality. It lets you search more people. You can get really detailed into who your ideal buyer is.

John: So, let’s say ultimately we’re not just trying to have nice, friendly conversations on LinkedIn; we’re trying to sell stuff. If we’ve targeted people and we have gotten their attention, and now we’re starting to engage, is there a point at which we can comfortably go in for a more sales-oriented, at least, “Hey, I’d like to make an appointment, I’d like to show you what we do?” Is that a natural progression or is there a point in which that just needs to be part of the campaign?

Jake:  What we typically do is again, like I said, we take this approach where we try to get people to come to you. You have a lot of people that are asking you questions, or they’re maybe even asking you about your services or starting something that way. Sometimes, people respond and they’re just immediately showing some sort of interest or talking about their own paying point or need because your positioning has already set that up perfectly. Then the other thing that happens is sometimes that doesn’t quite happen, or sometimes people are just friendly and they just engage in a conversation. What we typically do there is what I try to tell people is to try to think through what are some questions you can ask that are going to position the conversation in a way that’s going to, first of all, help you qualify them and also keep the conversation going. I’ve been using this for my own consulting, which my tagline is “I help agencies and consultants win their dream clients.” A lot of times, I’ll compliment them and say, “Hey, your portfolio looks great. I love this project you did for so-and-so. How do you guys go about getting most of your clients?”

That’s a really good tell-tale sign for me on what they’re doing right now, and that’s going to help me qualify if they’re actually a good fit or not.

John: So then, obviously like you said, you’re engaging in a conversation. Is part of the goal, then, to move them off of LinkedIn?

Jake: Yeah, at some point once you actually get into a conversation or you identify the need, or you actually make that pitch or that ask at some point. If someone came back and they said, “Oh, we’re just doing word of mouth and referrals,” then I’ll say, “Oh, well I can probably help you with that or build up a new lead generation channel for you. Would you want to set up a time for a call?” Yeah, so I typically would then try to move that and push that to a phone call once you’ve got someone qualified or showing that interest. At that point, I typically recommend using some sort of booking widget or getting the conversation to email. I use Calendly a lot through LinkedIn just because you don’t have their email yet technically, unless you were to go hack LinkedIn and pull it out of there. Typically, you just try to do a booking widget or get their email so you can send them a calendar invite.

John:  Yeah, I must admit, and I’ve shared this with other folks, I’m a big fan of Email Hunter, which is a Chrome extension that can help you find people’s email addresses, only because you’re going to use them in very responsible ways. Jake, we are in September of 2017 as we’re recording this, depending upon when people are listening to it. Is “Win Your Dream Clients” the book out yet, or when will it be out?

Jake: It is not out yet. It’s one of those that I started and I hit the pause button partially because Lead Cookie took off quite quickly. I had this idea for Lead Cookie. It was like, “Hey, I’m going to try this out” and pretty quickly, I had a full-fledged business that is scaling really quickly, so the book has slightly been put on the back burner. I have the majority of it written, but need to finish it out at some point, which will happen but not quite sure when I’m going to actually get that one released.

John: Ah, okay. What’s the best place you want to send people? Obviously leadcookie.com is one of them, but where else would people find out more about the work you’re doing there?

Jake: Yeah, leadcookie.com would be the main site and then also where I put all of my podcasts, and I also blog on a regular basis and where the book will eventually be published is at jake-jorgovan.com. Or, they can go to workingwithoutpants.com if they want to find the podcasts there and see a picture of me without pants on.

John: Well, we will have links to all of that in the show notes. We probably will not have a picture of you without on your pants on. We’ll save that for your visit to your website.

Jake: That sounds good.

John: Jake, thanks for joining us and hopefully we’ll run into you out there on the road someday.

Jake: Thanks a lot, John.

John: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Duct Tape Marketing podcast. Wondering if you could do me a favor: could you leave an honest review on iTunes? Your ratings and your reviews really help, and I promise I read each and every one. Thanks.



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Winning Your Dream Clients

Winning Your Dream Clients written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Jake Jorgovan
Podcast Transcript

Jake Jorgovan

My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Jake Jorgovan. He is the founder of Outbound Creative as well as the company Lead Cookie. He and I discuss how to find your ideal clients.

Prior to starting Outbound Creative, Jorgovan ran business development for a video production agency and won the business of multiple Fortune 500 clients and A-List touring artists. Since leaving that agency, he has been working with other companies to help them win their dream clients. Along the way, he launched a podcast called Working Without Pants where he interviews agency owners and consultants to uncover the secrets of their success.

Questions I ask Jake Jorgovan:

  • What makes a client a dream client?
  • What are the standard approaches for getting a dream client?
  • At what point can you go in for the sale on LinkedIn?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why podcasting is useful for connecting with your dream clients
  • How to effectively connect on LinkedIn in a way that doesn’t come across as spam
  • How to make your LinkedIn profile work for you

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Jake Jorgovan:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!



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