Inbound Marketing

Your Tech Stack Questions Answered!

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One of the questions I get asked the most – is what tech platform should I build my site on! Since more and more businesses are going online there are more options for your website. Keeping up with the latest and greatest tool can be a bit overwhelming. After spending all day with yours eyes glued to your screen, scouring and reading multiple list of reviews, your bound to be fed up and end up picking the most basic and cheapest option.

I understand exactly where you’re right at, that’s why I’ve done this part for you! After more than 10 years in web automation here is a run down of the basics of what you need and our recommended platforms! 

Your domain is the name of your website. For example, www.yoursite.com is the name of your domain. A domain costs about $12-15 per year depending on where you register it. 

Your hosting is where you will store your files. It is like a virtual file cabinet for your website, images, videos. There are different plans based on how many sites you have. 

A few platforms to register your domain are:

GoDaddy

Ionis by 1&1

A few platforms we like for hosting are:

Ionis by 1&1

Liquid Web

WordPress is our platform of choice to build a website. It has the most flexibility and there are a lot of plugins available to make it do anything you want. 

Go to wordpress.org to grab the open source files that you can download and use to build your site.

WordPress is like the file cabinet. But you still need to organize the layout and design. You do this with a theme.

The theme we like and use right now is called “Elementor”. You can check it out here.

Your email platform is sometimes included with your hosting plan. This is the ability to send emails from your domain name ie [email protected]. 

We like and use GSuite Apps to handle our email. This has a little higher cost (about $6/user/mo), but since it also includes the ability to create and share documents on the cloud, we find it’s worth it. 

What this means is that you can use your own domain with gmail to send and receive emails as opposed to having to login to your hosting account or having your hosting account forward your emails to a personal gmail for example so you can access them. 

Having all documents on the cloud is also a huge advantage. Our team doesn’t have to worry about having 5 different versions of the same doc as we can collaborate on one doc and always see the most updated version in the cloud. 

Email marketing is a tool that you can use to create different lists of emails and send a series of automated emails to your different lists. The prices for these tools range from $15-$199 per month

The one we use and recommend is Infusionsoft as it has Email Marketing, a CRM, and a Shopping Cart in one. 

Other tools that work well are:

Active Campaign

MailChimp

Aweber

All three work very well. Active Campaign is a little more similar to Infusionsoft in that it has built in functionality to build campaigns in a visual layout. Mailchimp and Aweber are great if you are just getting started.

To take payments online you need 3 things. 

  • Merchant Account
  • Gateway
  • Shopping Cart

You can either set up all 3 things separately or you can use tools that combine two or three of them together. Some examples of 3 in 1 are: Paypal and Stripe. Both paypal and stripe allow you to sign up with just their service and they provide you with buttons that you can put on your site so you can sell your products or services. They do charge a commission of around 3% per transaction as well as a transaction fee. 

The most common method is to get all 3 services individually, like the following. 

Merchant Account ($15/mo + 3%)

A merchant account is the ability to process credit card transactions. You can sign up for a merchant account directly with your bank. Be sure to request a “Cart Not Present” account! This is usually the cheapest way to process credit card transactions online. 

Gateway ($20/mo)

A gateway is how you connect your merchant account to your shopping cart. The most common one is Authorize.net and when you set up your merchant account with your bank you can request an authorize.net account as well. 

Shopping Cart (Varies)

A shopping cart is how you collect payments online. It is the tool you use to create order forms so that your customers can put in their credit card information online in a secure place.  We use Infusionsoft as our shopping cart. Other shopping carts are also available. Some examples are SamCart, ClickFunnels, Kajabi. Before jumping out and getting a shopping cart, you will want to make sure it is compatible with your landing page builder (and many times it is included with your landing page builder.) 

Landing pages are pages that are built to either capture leads, or sell your products or services. Since the look and feel of landing pages usually varies from the main site, these landing pages are sometimes built with landing page builders. 

Some of the one’s we use are:

LeadPages

ClickFunnels

ThriveThemes

We usually install these on a subdomain of the main site. For example:

  • Go.yoursite.com
  • Start.yoursite.com
  • Launch.yoursite.com

The words “go”, “start”, “launch” are examples of subdomains. 

If you are selling a course then you will need a members area to deliver your course content. An LMS stands for a Learning Management Software. 

If you use Infusionsoft like we do, then Memberium is an easy to use membership software that you can set up on a subdomain of your site. For example: courses.yoursite.com or members.yoursite.com. 

Another popular one that we recommend is LearnDash. Learndash can be used in conjunction with Memberium as well. 

Learndash allows you to organize the content in your members area and also to roll out access to the content on a weekly or monthly basis. Another membership tool is Kajabi.

Live Webinars

For live webinars, we use Zoom. Most of us today have an account with Zoom for meetings. If you are going to hold a webinar, you can upgrade to have the functionality of a webinar. I love how they allow you to just upgrade to get webinars for one month and automatically cancel it for you after 30 days. 

There is also a built-in functionality with Zoom that allows you to live stream directly to Facebook. This allows your audience to choose how they want to attend a live webinar.  It can also allow you to have more people participate in a live webinar if you are at your capacity with your Zoom account. One of our clients recently used a combo of Zoom and FB Live to have a webinar with 16,000 attendees!

Automated Webinars

Once you have a few live webinars you are going to want to create what is called an “evergreen” campaign where people can watch your webinars at will. Our software of choice is EverWebinar. We’ve tried many and despite the limitations, still find that it meets most of our expectations. One of the cool things that you can do is to tag contacts based on which stage of the webinar they got to. For example, you can tag them based on registering, attended, stayed till the sales pitch, and so on. You can then customize your automated follow up email campaigns based on how far they got into the webinar!

Video Storage

For video storage the big three are Wistia, Vimeo, and Youtube. Most online tools out there will allow you to embed videos from one of these three locations.

We prefer Vimeo as it has advanced data and tracking capabilities and after the video stops playing, you don’t see ads to other videos – sometimes of your competitors!

If you are just getting started, you can use Youtube and set the videos to private so they are only seen on the pages you have them embedded.

Another option is also self-hosting your videos on Amazon S3. We do this for our church videos and then embed them on our site since we have so many! This is actually the cheapest option but requires a little bit of technical support to set up. 

Have you ever seen how some people have it where after 3 days, the sales page automatically changes to a closed page? There are a couple of ways to do this.

If you have Infusionsoft, what you can do is instead of linking directly to the sales page from your email campaigns, you can use a custom field to insert the link to the sales page. Then after a certain number of days, change the link in the custom field to point to the closed waitlist page. Once this is done, even if the contact goes to a previous email, they will still see the closed sales page. 

Another way to do this is using a tool called: Deadline Funnel. I don’t prefer this method because it breaks if the contact does not have a “cookie” on their device which can happen if they sign up for the information with one device, but later choose to click from an email to the sales page from a different device. Since no “cookie” is present, it shows the sales page as closed even though the email they just received says they have 2 days left to purchase for example! 

The way it works is to set it up to automatically display a different url (usually the waitlist page) after a certain amount of time. There is a timer that displays at the top of the page letting people know how much time they have left to purchase.  Once set up, anyone that visits the site for the first time, will have a certain amount of time to purchase before the sales page closes down.

Note: Most of the time when launches are done, the pages are closed manually by someone staying up till midnight on the night of the launch (or doing it first thing in the morning!)

Over the years, we’ve used a lot of appointment scheduling tools. The one I like best and we use now is Acuity Scheduler. Accuity works really well if you have a team of coaches that you need to set up with personal calendar links for your students as well!

Some Appointment Tools are:

Sometimes you will need to connect two tools together that do not have a direct integration. To do this we usually use Zapier or PlusThis (for Infusionsoft). 

Zapier is a connector. It basically saves you the cost of hiring an API developer to build and maintain custom code to connect two online tools. 

Recommended Tech Stack…

As you can see, the cost of running an online business can quickly add up and there are a lot of choices to make. 

Here is my recommended tech stack for getting started that still allows you to have enough flexibility for growth:

Domain Registration

GoDaddy

Hosting

LiquidWeb

Website

WordPress with Elementor

Email

GSuite

CRM/Shopping Cart/Marketing Automation

Infusionsoft

Membership Site

Memberium + LearnDash

Landing Page Builder

LeadPages

Merchant Account

Bank + Authorize.Net (Cart Not Present)

Appointment Scheduler

Acuity Scheduler

Video Storage

Amazon S3

There you have it! So what does your tech stack look like?

Goals, Strategies, and Tactics for a Successful Inbound Marketing Campaign

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Goals are not strategies and strategies are not goals.

Having coached 118 entrepreneurs over the last 18 months, I have found that there are 3 types of business owners.

  • Dreamer David
  • Goal Setting Gary
  • Analytical Andy

Click Here to Download Your 2015 Goal Setting Worksheet

Dreamer David has a business and has enjoyed moderate success but has not sat down to formulate a plan.  If you ask him what his goals are, he will tell you to have thousands of clients and make millions of dollars, yet he does not have a plan or strategy on how to achieve his dreams!

Goal Setting Gary owns a successful business and has a plan on how to get to the next step.  He is not very good at measuring or following through but he can not only see the big picture, but has a basic idea or general understanding of what the next steps are.

Analytical Andy is the business owner that is going to take over his market.  He is a number cruncher and tests everything.  Not only does he know what his goals are, but the exact metrics he will need to achieve the goals over the next 30, 60, and 90 days.

Most small business owners fall somewhere between Dreamer David and Goal Setting Gary.

During one of the first strategy sessions with a new coaching client, one of the very first questions I ask is what their goals are.

What I have found is that even though the concept of SMART goals is something most entrepreneurs are familiar with, most still struggle with creating goals for their own business.

Smart goals stand for goals that are:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-Bound

This is a start but it fails to take it one step further.

For example, if I ask a client what their goal is and they tell me:

“I want to send a newsletter to my list in the next 30 days.”

By the definition of a SMART goal, it meets all of the requirements.  It is however not a goal but rather a tactic that might be part of a strategy to achieve a goal.

One easy way to see the distinction is to remember that goals cannot be assigned or delegated, but tactics can.

To summarize:

Goals: The result you want to achieve.
Strategies: The methods you will use to achieve your goals.
Tactics: The individual tasks needed to be completed to implement strategies.

In the post from yesterday we discussed setting your three big goals for your business based on revenue, leads, and prospects.

Today we are going to talk about creating strategies and tactics to achieve your goals.

To do this, download our Goal Setting Worksheet here.

List your goals in the column on the far left.

Next identify 3-7 different strategies that you could implement to achieve each of your goals.

For example, lets say you have a goal to generate 200 new prospects to your email marketing list per month.

This is your goal.  This is the result that you want to achieve.  You cannot assign this goal to anyone. You cannot tell your assistant – generate 200 new prospects to my email list per month.

There are several strategies that could help you to achieve this goal.

For example:

Setup a new lead magnet for 2015 and add it to the website.
Setup paid Facebook marketing ads to drive traffic to a landing page for the new lead magnet.
Blog 2 times per week and promote the blog posts through social media.

The three examples above are strategies.  They are still not tactics or tasks because they cannot be assigned.  They are not goals because they are not the results you want, but rather a method to achieve your goals.

After you have identified 3-7 different strategies for each of your goals the next step is to breakdown the individual tactics or tasks needed to complete the strategies.

Let’s take the strategy “Blog 2 times per week and promote blog posts through social media” as an example.

The tactics or tasks might look like this:

Plan out topics on the editorial calendar.
Check for headlines using Buzzsumo.
Write out content summaries and assign to writers.
Publish blog posts and add photos to the blog posts.
Promote blog posts on social media by pulling out 10 excerpts and scheduling one excerpt per day to post to social media accounts.

This is where it gets tricky!  You don’t want to spend months mapping out every single task for every single strategy.  At some point you need to actually take action!  Focus on mapping out the next steps for the next 30 days for each of the strategies.  One to three is sufficient.

Now the fun begins.

Using a project management system such as Asana, you can map out your goals, strategies, and tactics and then assign the tactics to your team.  Don’t forget to assign due dates for your tactics!

Finally, set a time weekly, monthly, and quarterly to review the progress of your goals and map out new or additional tactics.

The whole process as described above could take anywhere from one to four hours so don’t get discouraged if it takes a while to set-up.

The next step is to setup a system to measure the progress of your goals.  We will discuss that in our next blog post!

How to set measurable and achievable goals for your inbound marketing strategy for 2015!

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Today is January 1st, 2015. Where has the time gone???

Are you ready for your best year ever? I know I am.

To get ready for the New Year and purpose to have my best year ever, here are some things I have done that I hope can be a help to you.

1. Clean off the desktop / laptop / phone etc. One of the first things I do is create a folder on my computer called 2014 Files. I then pull ALL my files from the last year into that folder.  I then create new folders for 2015 and anything that I know is relevant I pull it into the folder or as I use it I pull it into the 2015 folders. This insures a fresh clean start each year without having to delete files. I also don’t have to waste hours going through my files and deciding which one’s I should delete or keep.  Since I have Time Machine enabled on my mac if my computer ever does get too full, I can easily delete the older files as well.

2. Set Goals. I will say that I am a goal orientated person. If I don’t have a goal, I feel lost.  There are so many programs out there teaching you on the importance of setting goals and how to make sure you stay on track to achieve your goals, so I won’t go into that … today.

What I do want to discuss is the three main goals you should set for your online marketing.

The three big goals are:

  • Revenue
  • Leads
  • Prospects

…and if you wanted a fourth one, you could add “Traffic” to the list!

Goal 1: Revenue

First set a revenue goal.  Look at what your online marketing generated last year and set a goal for the next 12 months. I like to break it down into monthly because then it is easier to measure throughout the year.

For example: if last year you generated 120K of total online revenue, that works out to be about 10K per month.  Let’s say that your goal for 2015 is to double that so your first goal would look something like this:

Revenue Goal: Generate 20K of monthly revenue by the end of 2015.

Goal 2: Leads

The next step is to figure out how many qualified leads you will need to generate your revenue goal.  In our scenario if you want to generate 20K per month and your average transaction size is 2K, then you will need to generate 10 clients that will pay you an average of 2K per month.

If you know you need 10 clients, the next step is to think about your sales process.  How many people do you have to talk to to be able to acquire one client?  In other words, what is the conversion rate of your sales process.  If you have to talk to 10 qualified people to get 1 client, then you will need to talk to 100 qualified people to achieve your goal of 10 clients.

Since this would be your yearly goal, then you would take the number of 100 and divide it by 12 months.  That would put it around 8-9 sales conversations but there is another factor to consider.

Client Retention.  In order to reach our goal you need to consider the lifetime value of your clients.  How long do your clients generally stay onboard?  3 months? 6 months? 18 months?  If it is less than 12 months, you will need to acquire more than the 10 clients to meet your yearly goals.  Let’s not get bogged down in the math and just say we need about 120 qualified leads over the year to achieve your revenue goal.

Your goal might look like this:

Leads Goal: Generate 10 qualified leads per month that result in 10 sales conversations and 1 client.

Goal 3: Prospects

The next thing to consider is how many people that opt-in to your email marketing list are qualified and ready to make a purchasing decision.  If you are capturing leads from your site (like you should), how many of those prospects are qualified and convert to leads.

There are ways to improve this metric but to start, think about what your average was for the last year.  How many people opted in to your email marketing list?  How many sales conversations did you have with the prospects from your list?  How many prospects will you need to generate the 10 qualified leads?  Let’s say that only 5% of the people that opt-in to your email marketing are qualified, that would mean that you will need to generate 200 prospects per month to achieve your leads goal.

Prospects Goal: Generate 200 opt-ins to email marketing list per month.

Bonus Goal: Traffic

The next step is to consider how to reach the 200 people to opt-in to your email marketing list!  Some people think that there is paid and free traffic online.  In reality, all traffic is paid traffic.  There is a cost to anything you do online to create traffic.  Traffic can easily be purchased with ppc ads or it can be earned with an Inbound Marketing strategy.  Either way, there is a cost to implement.

Let’s say you are depending on SEO (search engine optimization), to drive traffic to your site.  If your opt-in rate is again about 5% then you will need to generate about 4000 unique visitors to your site each month.

Traffic Goal: Generate 4000 unique visitors to site per month.

There you have it!  Three Big Goals for your online marketing for 2015.

In our next blog post I will go into how to map out your different strategies on how to reach your yearly goals!