Articles

It’s an all too familiar story – overhyped promises to flood your inbox with qualified leads, rank your site on the first page within a ridiculously short time period, guarantees to boost sales ten-fold using a little known advertising hack… and so on.

Most of the companies we work with have been burnt badly and approach us with ‘reservations’ (scepticism, frustration and their bullsh*t detection ramped up to the max). And who can blame them?

It is the more seemingly innocuous yet shady tactics that fail to ring alarm bells… often until clients are over-committed, locked-in or out of pocket.

Defeat the voice of reason in the buyer’s head Want to put one over on prospects? Pull a fast one on the unwitting, unwilling and unworldly? Screw, swindle, sham, and scam the saps? Course you do – go for the quick win and to hell with the consequences! Here are 10 ten manipulative ploys to defeat the voice of reason in the buyer’s head: Assumptive close with the illusion of choice – avoid ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions and give a number of options, all beneficial to you, and ask which the prospects...

As most businesses struggle with the fast-changing circumstances, the upshot for many is disruption to their sales processes and confusion as to how to adapt and what steps to take to build a pipeline during the pandemic. Events, expos and other in-person business activities – traditionally a major component in marketing plans and invaluable source of leads – are cancelled in the current landscape. Companies need to pivot to digital forms of outreach - yet approach such marketing as a...

With economic downturn looming on an unpredictable world-stage, companies are understandably searching for new ways to boost leads and sales while trimming marketing budgets and advertising spends. This is hardly surprising as, actually, converting cold traffic to buyers is extremely rare in the B2B space - most buyers (c. 95%) carry out extensive research prior to buying. So, why not kill two birds with one stone by thinking less conventionally and trying new ways of generating B2B leads and...

More content. More channels. More views. More subscriptions. More is, all too often, not better – simply increasing bandwidth does not necessary impact the bottom line. In fact, the upshot of pouring more manpower and budgets into a faulty funnel is often inflated acquisition costs and mediocre results. Rather that channelling resources into creating ‘more’, focus first on getting the basic rights so that you can captive the right audiences, capture leads and convert. Landing pages impact...

The inception and growth of a small business is much akin to a new relationship – dreaming and planning is fun and easy – building a foundation and consistently growing takes effort and consistency. So what are the traps that all too many SMEs fall into? The natural human tendency to avoid pain and seek out the path of least resistance often means that we tap our personal networks, build a certain level of revenue and then neglect to move beyond these networks. Such companies seem to be doing...

Far from being dead, email marketing remains one of the most effective lead-generation strategies – offering a very high ROI - and should be incorporated into every company’s marketing strategy. Yet many companies struggle and give up after a few failed attempts or continue using approaches that generate low response rates.  Here are 5 things to avoid and proven strategies for improving your open and response rates: A strong subject line should not only compel readers to open the email but...

SEO While the need for a strong search presence on Google remains strong, SEO has become increasingly complex and it takes consistent effort to earn your SERP place. Links remain among the most important ranking factors so, to make it easy for Google’s algorithm to determine the reliability and accuracy of your content, ensure you include lots of data and references to other (trusted) sources, creating your narrative’s meaning around insights that build on widely available datasets.  For the...

While much of SME online marketing tends to focus on building brand awareness though buying impressions or publishing display ads, here are hacks and tricks that can save you vast sums of adverting dollars in a, most likely, highly saturated marketplace. Incentivise satisfied end-users to invite friends to book a demo, sign-up or buy a product – this could be in form of a discounted rate, cash-back, or extra service – and they will become some of your best brand ambassadors.  A friend’s...

Let’s get straight to it: lack of consistency and lack of resources. Above and beyond, the most common reasons why most lead generations campaigns fail. Pretty simple, right? And yet, maintaining a healthy lifestyle is, on paper, beguilingly simple: eat well, exercise regularly and sleep sufficient amounts. Well, problem solved in that case – the global obesity crisis fixed with a few simple instructions. Creating a successful lead generation funnel is also a structured, step-by-step process...