Sales automation – what is it?

At a certain stage of the company’s expansion, proper sales management requires a certain change of mind – or rather, the willingness to delegate some responsibility to special software. Software devoid of the human factor, of course, will not replace the salesperson in convincing the customer that this product or service will be the best choice for the lead – at least not at the present stage. However, it can revolutionize the company’s approach to sales organization. After all, it cannot be denied that the “traditional” model of sales management has several disadvantages, of which two are in the lead:

– Sales specialist’s time is limited – the more small sales-related obligations a salesperson has to fulfill, the less time (and energy) he has to actually sell;
– Even in the best organizations, leads are sometimes “wasted” – for example, when they were not communicated to the right person at the right time or their potential was misjudged.

The Sales Automation software allows you to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the damage caused by the above-mentioned points. It saves the time of the sales department on all “fronts” and – properly configured – deals with the organization and classification of leads. All this is done with the inevitability and immediacy of a computer program. In short, the Sales Automation module in HubSpot:

– Improves productivity by replacing the salesperson in many necessary organizational tasks;
– He makes sure that the lead is not “lost in action”;
– It ensures consistency of sales data between all departments in the company;
– Allows you to associate a given lead with activities that he performed on the company’s website – for example, he visited specific subpages or completed a given form;
– Offers the ability to send internal messages to all members of the sales department;
– It allows you to see the entire history of cooperation with a given lead – conversation records, logs of activities performed, etc. on a clear timeline.
– In conjunction with the Marketing Hub, it enables full automation of e-mails – for example, automatic dispatch of an upselling offer, reminders about the need to settle an invoice or a request for an opinion on a product / service.

What does our Head of Sales Donald Cooper say about HubSpot Sales?

HubSpot enables me to manage my sales team with greater efficiency. Detailed data analyzes and non-standard reports allow you to study the sales effectiveness of salespeople and observe their ability to build relationships with customers. Thanks to the possibility of tracking leads on our website in real time, I can select the most engaged ones and configure the appropriate e-mail notifications for my team. This is just a drop in the ocean of possibilities that HubSpot offers us. It is definitely worth using them to develop your business.

It should not be forgotten that while Sales Automation in the right hands is an advanced tool that can be a catalyst for the dynamic development of the company, the software will not be able to use its capabilities without proper configuration. Sales automation is a powerful ally of the merchant, but without it is nothing more than galaxies of ones and zeros. The introduction of this type of software to the company must therefore take place in a thoughtful and organized manner, and all people who will use Sales Automation in the company should be properly trained. Don’t worry – in the vast majority of cases it pays off.

Sales Automation CRM

The most important element of Sales Automation is certainly CRM (customer relationship management) – software for managing customer relations. The times when all related processes were organized using Excel’s spreadsheet should be rightly called the past – the CRM system can be compared to the transition from a cab to a modern car.

HubSpot Free CRM as part of a wider ecosystem perfectly meets the needs of enterprises in establishing and maintaining relationships with potential and current customers. What is it about?

Sales automation in HubSpot – for the merchant

Let’s start from the beginning, i.e. adding contacts to the lead base and initial selection. The marketing module in HubSpot allows you to develop a personalized workflow. In this way, based on the source from which the lead comes, the data he provided and the activities he performed on the website, it is possible not only to automatically enter it into the contact database, but also to categorize a given lead.

People who have participated in, for example, a company-organized webinar on a specific topic, will rather be interested in such a service or related options, rather than in another part of the offer. The source of the contact may also be advertising on Facebook or Google Ads, the form on the website and many others. There are many options for classifying leads thanks to the almost complete customization – other examples are categorization by position (with a CEO with a high probability the conversation will look different than with a junior specialist), the size of the company and any other value you set.

The Sales module in HubSpot allows you to create message templates with personalized tokens, thanks to which the system can automatically fill in such elements as company name, name or position. This provides a noticeable time saving in relation to writing content, and even the typical copying of a template from another source and adapting it to a given lead. HubSpot does it for you.

What’s more, thanks to the e-mail tracking function in HubSpot, the trader will see in the system that the message was opened by the addressee, the link in it was clicked or the file attached to the message was downloaded (notifications can also be displayed on the desktop in the form of push notifications).

If the lead ignores the sales email, the sales chances drop, but are still more than zero. The Sequence feature in HubSpot Sales allows you to automatically send several messages at specific intervals to remind a potential customer of the offer. And when the dialogue is established, HubSpot will immediately remove the contact from the list and stop sending any more e-mails.

Thanks to the integration with the Google calendar or the calendar available in Microsoft Office 365, HubSpot will also help the salesperson to arrange a meeting with a potential customer. It is enough to send a link with the available hours to the lead, and the lead can quickly and conveniently click on a suitable date. The meeting will automatically appear in your calendar.

Sales automation in HubSpot for a manager

HubSpot is also a powerful convenience for leaders of sales teams. In many organizations, reporting is a very time-consuming (and often necessary) job. HubSpot has a solution for this – customized reports can be automatically generated and then sent via e-mail to members of the sales team, management board or other people associated with the process.

Another advantage of HubSpot as a CRM are the enormous possibilities of automatic categorization of leads. From basic classification options – for example based on company size, location, industry or type (B2B / B2C) to fully definable custom fields that can be useful in a given activity. What’s more, with HubSpot you can also create a scoring system for potential customers.

What is it about? Thanks to the recording of various events and the possibility of adding your own fields, a given lead can be subject to automatic evaluation. For example, failing to pick up the phone several times will result in receiving negative points, and reading the article on the subpage of a specific service will result in a positive ranking. You can extend the entire algorithm with even such elements as e-mail address analysis – if the customer is potentially interested in a service or product with a high price, and the company e-mail is on a free domain, it can be initially assumed that the cost probably exceeds the customer’s capabilities.

With the right number of factors and giving them the right weight, HubSpot can present the potential of cooperation with the client using a percentage value. Of course, it will only be an auxiliary indicator, but if properly configured, it will be surprisingly effective in scoring.

HubSpot and the power of integration

Even the best designed and configured CRM system would be of little use if it could not be integrated with other services. Enterprises use many external services for various purposes – from lead acquisition, to analytics, to logistics and many more. In the case of sales automation, HubSpot can be integrated with different types of software, used in principle at each of the steps mentioned above.

– For example, Sales Navigator will help in “catching” leads,
– LeadSpace or LeadGenius can be useful in obtaining information,
– When arranging calls, apart from the Google and Microsoft calendars, you can also use Calendly or Arrangr,
– In the analysis of sales calls, it is worth taking an interest in tools based largely on artificial intelligence: these are, among others, Wingman or Avoma,
– ClientPoint or PandaDoc will work well in developing valuations and sales proposals,
– In report automation, your (and HubSpot) ally will be, for example, QuarterOne.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg – the number of tools you can integrate with HubSpot is truly impressive – and sales automation is just a slice of the platform as a whole.

Why does Google support small and medium enterprises?

According to data from the World Bank, companies from the SME sector constitute as much as 90% of all companies. The same applies to the majority of advertisers, i.e. Google customers, who are currently facing the loss of customers and employees. That’s why Google has decided to help those whose business may suffer the most during an epidemic, as well as those who play such an important role in the market and whose survival is so important.

How does Google support the SME sector?

As part of support for companies in the SME sector, Google provides additional funds for advertising campaigns run in Google Ads (including search, advertising and YouTube, as well as in all types of campaigns). Advertisers who have been running their campaigns on Google in the last 10 months of 12 in 2019 are eligible for the program. Paraphrase-Online.com specialists reports that also newer advertising accounts or campaigns that were conducted in a shorter time and whose expenses oscillated at a higher level can also count on an additional advertising budget.

How to apply for an additional amount of advertising from Google?

You do not need to apply for funds. Google itself qualifies our company and transfers the appropriate amount to our advertising account. Importantly, the amounts received for advertising cannot be transferred to another account, divided or refunded. So, if our company operates in the SME sector, it probably has already received support. We will also receive an email when the funds are credited to your account.

How much advertising money can you get under the program?

The additional amount for the ad is expected to reach all advertisers by July 1. According to Google information, it depends on past Google Ads spending, the country of billing address, and the currency in which the campaign is being run on the Google Ads account. The earned amounts for advertising can fluctuate significantly, but the maximum amount paid will not exceed $ 1,000. Currently, at Paraphrase-Online.com, we monitor the inflows to our clients’ accounts and inform those whose accounts have already appeared. According to our observations, they currently range from around $ 40 to $ 250.

Advertisers can use amounts sent by Google until the end of 2020. Importantly, the unused sum will automatically disappear from the advertising account after December 31 and cannot be restored.

If you want to develop your content marketing strategy in a company, from scratch, starting from the blog, publishing content based on SEO or also establishing a company profile on social media, including on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or YouTube.

Why is it worth having a content marketing strategy?

Content specialists will surely give you many reasons. However, if no one has ever tried to convince you to create a content marketing strategy for your company – here we are!

Having a clear content marketing strategy is much easier to present and explain the activities of the marketing team to other teams in the company that often do not understand or see the benefits of strictly content activities. A clear strategy gives them the opportunity to engage in various initiatives and facilitates communication between departments, e.g. sales and marketing. If you still think that not everyone in the company may be interested in what will be published on the company’s blog or Facebook, I present an example:

A. Your company sometimes publishes something on a blog, usually when the copywriter had a moment off. The person commissioned to take care of the fanpage uploads a maximum of two posts per week on Facebook – but these do not collect much likes (and no one even dreams about comments). Your company on both Google and Facebook has a maximum of 5 reviews – three written by friends of employees and two negative (of course, no one answered) – does this remind you of something? This is a very common example of a company that does not manage its content activities and does not have any pre-determined content marketing strategy. This can be changed very simply. How several guidelines will improve communication that will positively affect the content delivered to your company’s recipients? – about this in example B.

B. With the help of the Content Marketing guide, step by step, or using other sources and your own experience, you create a content marketing strategy – you specify a group of recipients, audit existing activities and check what should be improved, and what went well, you dedicate specific people who will posted on social media and on the blog, you set the publication schedule and distribution method. Finally, this strategy is also presented to other departments, which will most likely add some of their comments and inspiration.

Effect?

People dealing with publications have in store ideas for content (in addition in various formats), what’s more, the sales department eagerly uses published content and uses the more interesting fragments, e.g. sharing them with potential customers who may be interested in given issues. The analytics department sends some nice data from which you can then create an interesting infographic or blog entry. Both the website and fanpages notice more traffic, and customers encouraged by the sales department write some positive reviews. It doesn’t stop there, of course.

Of course, the presented scenario only looks simple. To create a content marketing strategy, and then to enforce it and improve the published content over time, you need to work a bit. Nevertheless, you can start with small steps.

Benefits of having Content Marketing strategies in a company

We marketers are well aware of the benefits of our activities. We know perfectly well that thanks to our publications traffic on the site increases, and this translates into an increase in requests for an offer or an increase in purchases. We also see that the original texts on the site and communication tailored to recipients in social media brings an ever wider group of readers and gathers more and more active fans who read eagerly browse company profiles. It’s logical for us! However, for people who do not deal with marketing on a daily basis, our work often seems incomprehensible, and its benefits are often questioned and undermined. That is why we decided to convince the doubters, including this entry.

Here are the benefits for which you should have a content marketing strategy:

– building the company’s image and recognition (in a relatively cheap way),
– strengthening the position of the website in Google – by providing more content, well optimized for SEO,
– complementing other marketing and sales activities,
– positive impact on relationships with customers: brand fans, brand followers and potential customers,
– strengthening the company’s position as a leader among competitors (maybe your competition is still conducting its activities as in example A),
– as a result of these actions: increasing sales.

And a lot more! You can convince yourself of them only if you finally start acting!

Content Marketing – discussed forms of publication

Let’s start with the fact that content can take many forms. So we are not only doomed to simple blog entries, although these never go out of style. Definitely, in 2020 you need to be tempted to diversity and provide information to recipients in various forms, such as:

– blog entries,
– interviews,
– checklists,
– short entries, e.g. in social media,
– guides
– ebooks
– presentations,
– graphics,
– infographics,
– pictures,
– collages,
– Memes,
– short video formats,
– longer video formats,
– live video,
– webinars,
– podcasts,
– case studies,
– reports,
– sheets,
– reviews,
– diagrams,
– games and quizzes,
– competitions,
– UGC – that is all forms related to your product or service that your recipient / customer creates.
– and others that creativity will allow.

Since there are so many options, how to decide which channels and formats will be the most suitable for a given business and target group? Calm head, we are already answering!

Content Marketing activities

There is nothing to hide, this post is also a content marketing activity. We want to give knowledge, but also create a community of marketers around us. Maybe today they do not need our support, but maybe in six months they will go to a new company, they will be faced with new challenges and then they will remember us.

At Paraphrase Online, we’ve focused on several transmission axes, the key to providing industry knowledge.

We create customer guides, blogs and educational entries, we share infographics, we are transparent as a company. Of course, each form also has preferred channels. For example, about transparency, payroll and results are best shared on Linkedin, where the business environment involved is particularly interested in such data. Infographics are great sellers on social media (including on Facebook), and e.g. blog provides us traffic straight from the search engine.

You can use our knowledge and experience, their cumulative dose has been made available on our blog.

PR + SEO = SEO PR

Simply put, SEO PR is a combination of search engine optimization and public relations activities, which is enriched with SERM, i.e. managing reputation in the search engine, by promoting positive materials about a selected brand and responding to negative ones.

SEO and PR combine primarily content, or content. They are needed for both activities. In order to combine SEO with PR, it is necessary to create valuable content for these two areas of marketing. It is not difficult, but requires the development of detailed guidelines and is more time-consuming than creating typical “pretzels”. The development of such content is associated with higher costs, because you need to write a virtuoso of a pen who will understand the issues of building image on the web as well as the principles of search engine optimization.

SEO PR – why is it important?

The issue of SEO PR is considered increasingly popular and important, and all because the creation of a positive image on the web is a key issue for most companies. It is supposed to bring benefits to both SEO and PR activities – the combination of these fields strengthens SEO activities and helps in positioning public relations materials.

The use of public relations in SEO pays off for every brand. Benefits will benefit both a little-known brand that just wants to promote, and a large company wanting to prevent and control image crises. SEO PR is also useful when you want to build an expert position on the market and fight for high-end clients.

How to use PR in SEO?

SEO PR often reaches for companies in a crisis situation, when, for example, a lot of negative information about the company appears on the web. In such a situation, campaigns are often one of the solutions often used, during which a number of positive image messages are published. The effect is to reduce the visibility of adverse content. However, SEO PR should be implemented in a marketing strategy in times of prosperity. It will be an effective tool that will help promote the company and its products, and at the same time build consumer confidence and e.g. an expert image. Thoughtful actions will also allow you to obtain valuable links in a natural and quite safe way, and often (importantly) free. For valuable content, the portal may agree that the press release be included for free with the link.

In summary, using public relations in SEO activities,
– A positive image of companies is created,
– Increases search engine visibility,
– Increases organic traffic on the site,
– Increases sales,
– Builds a group of new recipients.

How to make PR valuable for SEO?

SEO RP activities should be conducted in accordance with current Google recommendations and naturally fit in with strategies to build the company’s image. If you want to conduct them, remember to avoid “artificial” actions at all costs – search engine algorithms are more and more sensitive to them and capture them better. Therefore, it becomes necessary to prepare an analysis for UX and plan the creation and distribution of content. In order not to get lost in these activities, it is recommended to create an SEO PR strategy that will determine, among others target group, task calendar, topics covered by SEO PR, issues related to SEO optimization (e.g. list of dedicated keywords, content structure, structural data encouraging clicking on the message), content distribution and promotion tools.

It should be remembered that even the best prepared and implemented SEO strategy will not bring results if you do not constantly monitor and control changes. For SEO PR, good timing and upcoming trends are important. The need for quick response means, with SEO PR, it is worth combining with real time marketing. Orientation in the current situation will allow to use them in favor of the promoted brand or product. You can even use Google Trends to analyze trends.

If you want to use PR in SEO activities, you should not forget to build correct relations with the media. In an era when the Internet is saturated with content, you cannot delude yourself that you will send a low-level text to the portal with a link, and it will place and promote it. To get the press information to a widely read medium, PR should be conducted at a high level and create attractive, unique, timely, correctly substantive content, interesting from the point of view of the reader (and not the company) that you want to reach. At the same time, you cannot expect the publisher to always publish information for free with a dofollow link attached. To avoid disappointment, publication conditions should be set in advance, with links only when the article enforces it. An active link in a PR message should be an integral part of the content, e.g. redirect to content sources, examples, solutions to a given problem, etc.

Tools for SEO PRs

It is also difficult to talk about the effectiveness of SEO PR if you do not use the tools available on the market. They will help in obtaining data, monitoring effects and changes, building image in search engine. SEO PR tools that are worth paying attention to are:

– Keyword analysis applications – they will help you choose the right phrases that will be used in published PR materials; both the free Google keyword planner and free applications can be used to search for keywords;
– Network monitoring tools – their task is to inform about mentions that appear about the brand; this allows for a quick response to them, and also indicates where to place bulilding links; SEO tools can be used to monitor the network.
– Applications that monitor search results;
– Content and content publishing platforms, as well as Google Ads and Facebook As promotion tools that will increase the visibility of produced content;
– Internet forums – can be used not only for “whispers”, but also for substantive statements of the brand, in which he will give extensive statements on the topic in which he wants to specialize; in these statements, you can add a dofollow or nofollow link naturally (if possible);
– Brand ambassadors – cooperation with influencers is an increasingly popular solution; it turns out that the correct definition of its rules can have a positive image effect, as well as increase visibility in search results;
– Applications for running a virtual press office – they will enable easier management of databases of cooperating journalists and faster sending them of press releases; many platforms for running e-press offices also allow the journalists with whom they cooperate to retrieve information.

The brand’s reputation in the 21st century is the most expensive currency. Positive opinions and the image of an expert can be won even with a larger competitor that offers cheaper products / services. SEO PR will ensure both the visibility of the page in the search engine and put the brand in a good light. Importantly, thanks to activities carried out effectively, brand visibility on the web will grow rapidly, and Internet users will easily find published content even by asking Google general questions related only to the long tail of search. Entrepreneurs who wondered whether investing in SEO PR should dispel their doubts.

How to use SEO PR articles?

A. When entering the company, ask for all company publications available on the Internet. Review them for possible link placement (no matter if Dofollow or Nofollow) – and under the name (brand) put a link to the main page. At the same time, if possible, rebuild a sentence so that you can add one more link, e.g. to a category, product or service.

B. If the customer does not have a list of articles, use footprints to search for articles in the search engine, for example:
– “company xxxx”
– “about company xxxx”
– “at xxxx”
– “by xxxx”
– “by xxxx”
If you already have a list, contact the editors of these articles and try to put a link there.

C. Make sure that all new PR publications contain a minimum of 1 brand link (sporadically brand + keyword) to the homepage.

D. If possible, put several products with links to them in the article, the full name of the product may be an anchor (don’t forget about nofollow, because it may be necessary).

E. Use all possible Social Media channels to promote your brand – positioning them results in queries about the company name, brand, domain name – search results are the company’s URL and profiles. SERM is also part of PR.

F. Remember what keywords you are fighting for above all:
– name + reviews
– name + portfolio
– name + rating
Unfortunately, in the case of phrases such as “name + scammers / bankruptcy” will be a huge challenge.

G. Browse the positioned website – implement all possible extended parts to obtain “knowledge graph” – that is the box describing the company: local business, website, organization.

H. Use PBN platforms to get interesting spots for publishing articles (sometimes it’s cheaper). An interesting option is the publication of the article on portals that are in Google News – there is then a chance for a carousel with such articles to appear on brand queries.