How to Disrupt Your Sales Funnel for Better Results

The sales funnel guides customers through a journey. Your business should aim to change the ordinary purchasing transaction into a fun-filled festival. Lead your team toward more sales with a creative approach.

Generating sales online is a process, not a single event. To acquire customers, a variety of marketing and sales strategies must be implemented to convert prospects into paying customers.

Moreover, a business’s sales funnel is only as effective as the team that runs and maintains the sales process. According to MarketingSherpa, 57% of B2B organizations identify “converting qualified leads into paying customers” as a top funnel priority, but 65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing.

If you desire better results, it’s time to do things differently. Disrupt your sales funnel with these five strategies:

1. Reimagine Your Ideal Customer

No business exists without its clients. However, every client won’t help build your business. Discover how your product or service can avoid fear, refocus desire, or channel pain.

Learn the psychology behind your ideal clients’ problems. The ideal customer profile should include more than the person’s age, gender, and job status. Demographics only offer broad descriptions of people such as, female executives aged 40-65 or mid-level managers at a consulting firm. You should strive to dig deeper.

Consider learning about your clients’ psychographics. Study their behaviors, habits, and lifestyles. Learn how they spend their money and time.

Source: Building An Ideal Client-Customer Profile

Analyzing your customers’ complaints can help you develop the profile. Ivana Taylor, a marketing strategist, states:

“When you think about it, a complaint actually uncovers what your customer is ‘committed to’ or is trying to do but doesn’t succeed. So if you uncover complaints about late deliveries, you have customers who have tight time commitments and that is a powerful profiling attribute.”

Lesson #1: SaaS Sales Funnel

Meet Jerry. He owns a custom software development company. After testing his marketing site and ads without landing any customers, Jerry sought out Lincoln Murphy of Sixteen Ventures.

Fed up with the lack of results, Jerry wanted to get moving. His initial thoughts were to reduce free trial time and set up a credit card wall. Murphy advised against this approach because punishing prospects wouldn’t increase Jerry’s conversions.

Instead, Murphy helped Jerry define his ideal customer. Who would immediately receive value from his software? More importantly, Jerry also described the wrong customer for his business.

After these simple exercises, Jerry realized that the wrong customers were signing up for his free trial offers. With a better understanding of his ideal customer, Jerry fixed his leaky sales funnel and started targeting his ideal customer.

Next Steps

• Create an ideal customer profile with your team.
• Restructure your sales and marketing strategies to fit your clients’ needs.
• Learn more about customers via surveys and focus groups.
• Analyze customers’ complaints to adjust your sales approach.

2. Transform the Onboarding Experience

First impressions always matter. When people visit your website, they should experience a theme park adventure. Prospects should be awed by your work, greeted by friendly help desk reps, and streamlined through a purchase process.

Don’t make false promises. Customers may expect a few minor mistakes when a new product rolls out. However, don’t launch a product to market if you are not ready to fully deliver on your promises.

When you set unrealistic public expectations, your customers move on, and your company will lose integrity. So, create a strategy where new users can quickly succeed.

Lesson #2: Groove’s Early Days

Groove offers help desk software to small businesses. The founder and CEO Alex Turnbull is transparent about the early failures of the startup.

The company initially had a wish list of features. Like most startups, the team thought more features would add more value to the product. However, each “new” feature did just the opposite and pushed their launch date back.

Turnbull and his team recognized that boatloads of features and ancillary apps didn’t equate to paying customers. Groove’s sign-up conversion rate was less than 2%.

This onboarding experience is pretty involved…

Much better! Source: 3 Early Fails That Nearly Killed Our Startup

In the end, the team learned to focus on what they did best. They launched a three-page site that was “hyper-focused on the benefits.” (See image above.) And guess what happened? Conversions tripled overnight!

Next Steps

• Show customers your product benefits, not features.
• Test assumptions often and early.
• Make the sign-up process easy.
• Create behavior-driven messages to get your clients to take action.

3. Reevaluate Conversion Benchmarks

Are you aiming too high or too low? Discuss metrics with your team members. From website traffic to free trial users to email signups, decide what it takes to convert prospects into buyers.

Develop sturdy conversion architecture. Your audience should be moving smoothly from the unaware visitor stage to the satisfied purchaser stage. Keeping potential buyers engaged with content updates and email newsletters work well. You also should try other cost-effective opportunities, like mini-workshops or webinars.

Metrics vary from business to business. Hence, there are no one-size-fits-all benchmarks, but Fred Spring, cofounder of 98toGo, recommends you focus on five metrics to check sales funnel efficiency:

1. Content Visits or Page Views
2. CTA Click-through Rates
3. Landing Page Submission Rates
4. Email Click Rates
5. Conversion Rates

Lesson #3: Reducing Churn by 22%

Mention, a real-time media monitoring app, struggled with its churn. The team realized it couldn’t sustain due to a huge leap in customer growth—from hundreds to over 200,000. They also knew “paid and free trial members were more valuable than users with a free plan” and that webinars were a great conversion tool.

Various techniques changed how the company offered value. First, users were segmented by membership type to prioritize help tickets of more valuable users. Automated marketing emails were sent to entice free trial users to receive “Pro Tips” after activation.

Mention emailed monthly case studies highlighting success stories, like the one pictured below. In addition, they created a webinar that demonstrated the service’s potential with examples from actual clients.

By increasing communication with its customers, Mention reduced it churn by 22% in a single month.

Source: 9 Case Studies That’ll Help You Reduce SaaS Churn

Next Steps

• Track actions leading to customer cancellations.
• Calculate customer acquisition costs and lifetime value.
• Show the value of your service; offer guides and tutorials.

4. Increase Human Follow Up

Automation can become dull and too predictable. Emails are good, but phone calls are even better. Give clients more human interaction.

The customer service experience is a make-or-break event. According to the 2011 Customer Experience Impact Report, 89% of shoppers have stopped buying from online stores after experiencing poor customer service. A research study also found that 31% of online shoppers in the US and UK are more likely make a purchase after a live chat.

Leo Widrich, co-founder and COO of Buffer, says, “Customer support is the very rare opportunity to connect to your customers on an emotional level. You can’t do that in any other way.”

Source: What Bad Customer Service Costs Your Business

Lesson #4: Make Another Call

Not every person falls in love with your product after the first showing. And most likely, it doesn’t mean they won’t purchase the product. It just means your team needs to engage the potential client more effectively.

Lead nurturing is about follow up. According to the Lead Simple Academy, “The goal is to stay in front of prospects in a way that creates value rather than annoyance.”

Create a follow up schedule. Set clear expectations for discussion topics and contact times. Be mindful that your frequency of communication will depend on the level of interest from the prospect.

Source: Dominant Follow Up Strategies

Next Steps

• Brainstorm how to amplify the customer service experience.
• Build an emotional connection with customers; skip the superficial relationships.
• Actually talk to your customers, and ask them meaningful questions.
• Create surprise reciprocity.

5. Reward Loyal Customers

Don’t get addicted to constantly wanting new leads. Break ground by rewarding your current customers with special offers and first-time access to new products. Generate more sales with the folks who love you the most.

Similar to other types of businesses, SaaS companies are susceptible to customer disloyalty. If you expect to earn recurring revenue, expect to give recurring value. By satisfying customers regularly, you decrease the risk of customer churn.

Jenna Hanington, a marketing content specialist at Pardot, suggests you consider the following three questions when making goals to increase your customer retention rates:

1. Are you actively cultivating relationships with your existing customer base, and not just with potential buyers?
2. Are you running upsell campaigns to encourage your current customers to try different products or services that you offer?
3. Do you have ways to reward loyal customers?

Source: Finding Benefits in SMB Loyalty Programs

Lesson #5: Flow’s Delight Days

The team at Flow, a collaborative task management app, strives to make their customers smile. The staff enjoys watching their users discover something brand new.

So, the team created Delight Days. The purpose of the designated day is to focus on taking the organization to the next level by working on “pet projects, small annoyances, and silly ideas.”

In one day, the team manages to suggest, design, and build concepts.

From creating new copy to updating tutorial videos, the short timeline gives employees a different workflow, while “ensuring that customers are always the #1 consideration.” It’s a simple reminder that happiness starts with the customer.

Next Steps

• Create a customer loyalty program that adds value.
• Initiate an email campaign to inform loyal clients about new services.
• Let your team execute projects for the sole purpose of improving the customer experience.

The same plan will get your company the same results. Mix up your strategies to achieve better results. From the onboarding experience to loyalty programs, your company possesses the potential to change your sales funnel process.

Forget stagnant business growth. Think exponential possibilities.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, the law and social responsibility. She inspires a new breed of innovative attorneys at Hearsay Marketing. Connect with her on Twitter: @shaylaprice

The Top 7 User Onboarding Tools to Grow Your Business and Improve Your Conversion Rate

Now that you’re acquainted with the user onboarding process, you may be wondering just how to get the most traction out of it. “Improving the signup process” is a tall order to fill, and you may feel overwhelmed when trying to juggle all the little pieces that make up the whole experience. Thankfully, there are a variety of tools to help you help users get more comfortable with your offer. Here are some of our favorite onboarding tools that span a variety of uses, ranging from email to demos:

Tutorial-Based User Onboarding

Sometimes, your prospective users need a little extra help getting to know your system and how it can work for them. A simple FAQ may not be detailed enough, but a video walkthrough may be too much to sit through and try to understand. Tutorial based onboarding can be used to provide users with contextual help.

Tutorialize

Tutorialize lets you add tooltip-style actions to your site or web based service. You can show the number of tooltips in the tutorial or stop it early. As part of the interactive demo, you can highlight certain parts of your site or service while other parts remain shaded, similar to a lightbox effect. Try the on-site demo for an example or start a 20-day free trial. Pricing starts at $14/month but includes company branding on the last slide. A non-branded version is available for $34/month.

Add custom tooltips to create a tour of your site or system

AppCues

If you need something a bit more robust to guide your users through your site or SaaS, consider AppCues. Similar to Tutorialize in that you can put sticky tooltips on your site, AppCues goes a bit farther in terms of customization. You can also include a full-screen “Welcome” page, a slide out or an in-app alert.

AppCues also offers the ability to segment users, so only certain groups see the announcement or tooltip, so you can track how well your new demo walkthrough is performing in terms of converting customers. AppCues starts at $45/month for up to 250 active users. The number of users goes up significantly with higher pricing tiers.

Oh, and did we mention that AppCues works beautifully with KISSmetrics too?

AppCues lets you segment users according to behavior and deliver custom styles of instruction

Email-Based User Onboarding

Sometimes you don’t need an on-screen tutorial so much as a way to guide users to get help when and where they need it. Traditionally, this involved a variety of solutions, including live help, a helpdesk/knowledgebase system, email-based support and so on. These outdated methods mean that you could lose a customer at any one of those steps. With email based user onboarding, you can prevent these losses while unifying your support into a more streamlined, analytics-based system.

Intercom.io

Intercom is a multi-pronged support platform that lets you observe what’s happening on your site, as its happening.   Where it truly shines, however, is in its email and in-app-based engagement system. For example, if you just released a new version of your software program, and wanted to update users who downloaded the previous version just a day ago, you can simply create a filter through the Intercom dashboard, and those users will be immediately visible. Then, just type in your announcement, and they’ll see it the next time they log in. This process works via email as well as in the app itself.

A video explaining Intercom.io’s “customer engagement” features

A simple slider-based pricing system lets you customize how much you pay for Intercom based on the number of users you have, and the end goal you want to achieve. For example, observing customers costs you nothing, while engagement, the package in the above video, has both a basic and pro plan with various integrations and features depending on your needs.

Autosend

Autosend’s main focus is to help you avoid losing customers at various stages of the product acquisition lifecycle. Autosend is driven by a customer’s behavior, so if it looks like they’re about to drop off due to lack of interaction with your product, you can send a gentle email, SMS or in-app message to guide them into the action you want them to take.

Perhaps one of Autosend’s best features is that so much of the system is already built from the ground up to perform. It has split testing capabilities and takes just a few minutes to set up with no coding know-how whatsoever. It also integrates with a variety of systems to help you create filters based on your best customers, your at-risk customers and more. You can also craft up-sells, down-sells and a variety of other options through the intelligent dashboard system.

Autosend starts at $199/month for up to 3,000 customers and comes with a free trial.

In-App Messaging

Many of these tools offer in-app messaging as one of the many features to their systems. But if you don’t need all the extra features and only want the instructional guidance of an onboarding system for your app, you’re in luck. There are several services on the market that are targeted to just apps and app developers, including:

Tour My App

Tour My App is a simple tool-tip system similar to Tutorialize. You can customize every aspect of the sticky note and see precisely how and when users interact with the tour. You have full control over how the tour appears, so users can’t simply click “Next” to skip through it. Rather they’ll need to complete a certain action, like typing or clicking, to continue. Tour My App also has some advanced features in that it supports dynamic elements and AJAX. It also tracks who has seen the tour so that they don’t see it again (unless you have an update).

Of course, if you need to make changes and update your tour for a new release, that’s easy as well. The finished product is a few lines of JavaScript that go effortlessly into your app.

The starter package is just $14/month, but the more advanced pricing tiers support features such as multilingual tours and funnel based analytics.

Miscellaneous Onboarding Tools

There are times when you really wish you had just a bit more precision in your onboarding process or the ability to create more of a training system that brings all the benefits of a good user experience to your employees. We’ve got you covered too!

MyTips.co

What if you had an onboarding system that would display landing pages based on smart segmentation? With MyTips.co, you can. On-screen tooltips can be delivered to just about anyone that fits just about any criteria. Want to display tooltips to users from a certain city? Want to show tips to only people who visited your pricing page? Done and done.

It comes with robust analytics too, so you can see just what effect your guided tour has on your users. And did we mention it happens to integrate beautifully with KISSmetrics? MyTips.co has a free package for up to 5,000 unique users and 3 tutorials/tooltips. Paid packages start at $59/month for up to 25,000 users and unlimited tutorials/tooltips as well as analytics.

Trainual

What if you had all the benefits of a detailed employee or user manual, but could see precisely how your employees or users interacted with it from an educational-based standpoint? You can embed nearly any type of content into Trainual, then add your team, and see where they may be struggling with material. You can also segment users so that they only see the training they need to, and are gated off from the rest.

In addition, Trainual will show you who completed what and when. See how far users or employees progressed in their training and email them a gentle reminder that there are new documents, videos or other files to learn from.   There’s an internal knowledge base too, so if they get stuck, they can always reach out and ask questions while other employees step in and lend a hand.

As with any effort, tools aren’t meant to replace testing or insights. When used together as part of your overall campaign and marketing strategy they can augment your existing work and help you learn valuable details about the very groups you’re working hard to attract.  With that being said, have you used onboarding in your marketing? What are some of your favorite tutorial and documentation tools? Share with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

The 10-Minute AdWords Management Workout

Image source.

As a busy marketer, you don’t have a ton of time to manage your AdWords account.

It’s not that you don’t care, you just have other things to work on. Like actually running a business.

Besides, why should you spend time in your dashboard when your efforts to date haven’t shown much success?

You’re doing work, but are you getting anywhere? GIF source.

Improving your AdWords account is much like building your muscles at the gym. It isn’t about working longer or harder. It’s about working smarter.

Just like your frequency of squats, there’s a point of diminishing returns where your muscles won’t continue to grow bigger or stronger.

But there are certain workouts that will bring you gains, you just have to know how to effectively use your time and how to make the biggest and most positive impacts on your AdWords performance.

Let me introduce you to the weekly 10-minute AdWords management workout.

(Psst. For an overview of the workout, check out the gifographics that KlientBoost has prepared for you over on their blog.)

1. Speed-add negative keywords (3 minutes)

Expected results? Your gluteus maximus of a click-through rate will increase and wasted ad dollars will be spared.

You already know that adding negative keywords on a regular basis helps you reduce wasteful spend (if not, read this super quick post by AdStage).

But did you know you can add negative keywords in just a snap?

You’ll want to look for search terms that don’t have your most common root keyword in them.

For example, let’s say you sell ice cream online and you want to quickly scan if some of your search terms don’t include the word “ice cream.”

To do so, go to your search term report inside your AdWords account, and quickly use the on-page search function of Command + F if you’re on a Mac, or Control + F if you’re on a PC. Then type in “ice cream” in the search bar.

You’ll want to sort your impressions column in descending order so you tackle the biggest performance killers first.

If something isn’t highlighted yellow, then take a closer look.

Then scan your entire search term report, while paying extra close attention to the non-highlighted search terms. These are usually the ones you will be adding as negative keywords since they fall outside of your root keywords.

As you’re scanning your search term report, add negative keywords to a spreadsheet and keep it on hand for our next workout.

Over time, you’ll start seeing fewer and fewer negative keywords that need to be added because you’re continually pruning and trimming.

Have multiple root keywords? Then use this approach on the different keywords you’re bidding on.

But be careful.

As you do this once a week, you may neglect what I call “search term creepers.”

These are search terms that get such few impressions and clicks week by week that they may go unnoticed as you scan through your search term report, but add up in the long run.

Search term creepers are usually pretty good at hiding. Image source.

To combat them, change your AdWords date range once in a while to the last 30 days instead of just the last seven days. See if they’re adding up impressions and clicks that you don’t want to pay for.

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Quickly add #AdWords negative keywords with this 3-minute campaign management workout.
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2. Negative keyword list adding (10 seconds)

Expected results? You’ll be saving time on the AdWords treadmill and saving money on clicks that are wasteful.

If you have multiple AdWords campaigns that share common negative keywords, then a negative keyword list will be your best friend.

Negative keyword lists help you save time by not having to copy and paste your new negative keywords across all your campaigns. Instead, you can keep them all in one hub and apply that negative keyword list to all or just a few of your campaigns.

If you followed my advice from the previous workout and have your spreadsheet filled with new negative keywords, you can now take that list and add it to your negative keyword list.

To find your negative keyword lists, simply go to the “Shared library” on the left hand side of your AdWords interface and then to “Campaign negative keywords.”

Your negative keyword lists are found through here. Specifically right here:

3. Bad ad pausing (1 minute)

Expected results? Better overall account well-being and improved average ad positions, average conversion rates and average cost per conversions. In short, you’ll sleep better at night.

Just like a horrible tasting protein shake, horrible ads have to be dealt with in order to make your workout more enjoyable and your AdWords performance stronger.

The idea here is to pause under-performing ads in the ad groups that have the most clicks and highest costs.

The reason why we want to make changes in the ad groups with the most clicks and highest costs is because it’ll have the biggest positive impact on your account, compared to just randomly making changes in different ad groups.

Think of it as doing bench presses (that can strengthen your entire upper body), compared to just regular dumbbell curls that just strengthen your biceps.

For this workout, you’ll want to go to “All online campaigns” and be on the “Ad groups” tab.

This is where you’ll find it.

Then, make sure you’ve clicked on the “Clicks” column for descending order (highest to lowest) and that your date range is around two to three months back.

Once you’re there, you’ll want to right-click on the top 10 ad groups with the most clicks and open each of them in new browser tabs.

This also prevents slow browser loading of going back and forth between ad groups.

Now to the fun part.

Go to each of the new browser tabs and pause the ads in each ad group that are performing worse when comparing cost per conversion, conversion rate, and click-through-rate (in that order) between the ads.

Here’s a look at two competing ads in which one got the axe. Can you guess which?

Make sure you have at least two ads running in each ad group for continuous A/B testing purposes. This will help take us to the next AdWords management workout.

4. New champion ad creations (1.5 minutes)

Expected results? You’re taking what’s already working and making it better. Building off your past success only makes you stronger.

Now that you’ve paused lower performing ads in the top 10 ad groups based on click volume and costs, it’s time to make new variations of the champion ads (the better performing ads you left running).

If you don’t, then you’re missing an opportunity to be constantly improving.

If your champion ads have similar ad copy in the top 10 ad groups (or even if they’re wildly different), then I’d recommend isolating one section of the ads (like description line 1) as the part that you’re testing.

Pick an ad section to isolate and test.

When you create multiple ads that share similar ad sections, then it’ll be easier and faster to see if ad performance has improved since you’re now gathering data faster than you would with just one ad test in one ad group.

Once you’ve decided which part of the ad you want to isolate and test, use AdWords labels so you can filter to see those ads later on after they’ve gotten enough data and clicks and compare them to the rest of your campaign or account.

You can highlight the new ads you’ve created and create a new AdWords label called “New Ad Test,” or whatever makes it easier for you to keep things organized.

Depending on your traffic volumes, you can quickly get an ad data snapshot like the one below (the yellow line is from your filtered ads from your AdWords label).

Those are some sweet, sweet numbers :)

To see if your ad testing has statistically significant results, you can jump over to KISSmetrics’ A/B calculator here and type in your clicks and conversions to see your confidence levels.

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Run similar #AdWords ad tests across multiple ad groups for faster results.
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5. Bad keyword bid lowering (1.5 Minutes)

Expected results? Just as there are 17 different ways you can perform a squat, all keywords perform differently when it comes to CTR, CPC and conversion rates. This’ll help you ditch expensive ones that increase costs and keep you out of shape.

If you have AdWords conversion tracking set up (I sincerely hope you do but if not, read this), then there’s a really good chance you know your average conversion rate and average cost per conversion across your entire AdWords account.

Think of these as your AdWords Body Mass Index (BMI) scores that you’re trying to improve so that you can finally get in that 80s aerobics video you always dreamed about.

Colors and fashion were so on point. Image source.

You have some keywords that are performing great, and then you have some that are, ehh, not so great (maybe the CTR is low, Quality Scores suck or the costs per conversion are higher than your account average).

One of the fastest levers you can pull on lowering your cost per conversion is by lowering your max CPC keyword bid amounts.

Let’s say your average cost per click is $5 and your conversion rate is 10%. This gives you a $50 cost per conversion.

If you lower your bids to be $4 and you’re able to maintain the same click-through and conversion rate, then technically your new cost per conversion should be $40.

But don’t do this on all your keywords. Identify which keywords are the most expensive by their cost per conversion metrics.

To do so, make sure you’re viewing “All online campaigns” and then go to the “Keywords” tab and sort your “Cost / converted click” in descending order.

Here’s a look at high-costing keyword conversions with at least 30 clicks.

This will show you the highest costing conversions and which keywords are responsible for them.

In the example above, you’ll notice that some keywords are much more expensive than your account average, and as long as you have enough clicks (at least 30), you can start slowly lowering their bids.

Quick workout note: If you lower bids too much, then you may also be lowering your average positions and damaging your CTR. You may find that lowering your bids puts them below “first page bid estimates” or doesn’t allow you to enter in the AdWords auction.

If that happens, then be quick to increase bids back to normal.

Make sure you have enough clicks (at least 30) for a keyword you’re about to lower the bid on. Anything less than that would be premature since the averages might not have had enough time to pan out yet.

With an understanding on how bid adjustments affect average ad positions and click-through-rates, you’ll want to slowly lower bids (5-10% of current bid amount) so that your average cost per conversions go down more smoothly.

6. High performing keyword bid increasing (1.5 minutes)

Expected results? Think of your keyword conversions as the number of leg extension reps you can do each set. Increasing bids is like eating more protein so you can start performing more reps.

Feeling a little winded? Good!

We’re eight minutes and 40 seconds into our 10-minute AdWords campaign management workout.

You’re making quick progress and your AdWords account is starting to look pretty dang sexy.

That’s a definitive yes Ryan. Thanks for noticing.

Just like we lowered bids on keywords that were too expensive, we’re going to do the exact opposite on keywords that are performing well, to get them to perform even better.

This time, you’ll want to reverse the “Cost / converted click” column in ascending order.

Now you’ll start to see which keywords are your best performers and their associated average ad positions.

Some sweet improvements are about to be made here.

If a good performing keyword has an ad position of 1.2 for example, then raising the bid won’t do much to improve CTR or give you more conversion volume.

But…

If it’s 1.7 or worse (your keywords are triggering ads that mostly show in spot #2, but sometimes in spot #1), then increasing bids will help you get more of those type of conversions since an increase in bid can improve the average ad position and therefore increase the click-through rate.

Here you can be a little more aggressive with keyword bids and increase them 10-20% at a time since there’s no fear of having them disappear in the ad auctions.

You may quickly notice that your lowest-conversion-costing keywords are keywords with zero clicks and therefore technically have the lowest cost per conversion of zero dollars.

To prevent this and to make sure you’re changing bids on keywords that actually have traffic, we’re going to save some time and create some custom filters you can use every week moving forward.

Which takes us to our next AdWords management workout…

7. Creating and saving custom filters (35 seconds)

Expected results? AdWords filters are like listening to your favorite songs while working out. They help you get in and out, and on with your life. Creating an AdWords filter will help you move through workouts 3, 4, 5 and 6 even quicker.

You’ll want to use filters to quickly showcase the worst or best performing keywords/ads based on the criteria you choose.

Think of filters as your personal spotters. Ready and excited to help out.

For the example above, let’s say you only want to decrease bids on keywords that have more than 20 clicks (because anything less than that would be premature) and a cost per conversion greater than $40 (this amount will obviously vary for your AdWords account).

The filter will then only show you those keywords that fit your criteria so you can make your bid adjustments on them.

You can then save the filter for next week’s workout with the goal of having the filtered “bad keywords” and “bad ads” become less and less frequent over time.

8. Checking for alerts (45 seconds)

Expected results? Sometimes it’s easy to forget the small things, like how certain workouts are actually supposed to be done. Think of the AdWords alerts as your own personal trainer that can prevent you from looking silly.

You’re going places. GIF source.

You’ve hustled through your workout so fast that you’re not even sweating – you’re raining like Shaquille O’Neal. Now it’s time to cool down from the intense AdWords management workout you just went through.

As you sit down to start stretching, thinking about that delicious post-workout chocolate milk, you remember there’s just one thing you forgot: checking for AdWords alerts.

Are there any conflicting negative keywords, disapproved ads or budgets that are hitting a ceiling?

If so, your little right-hand corner bell inside your AdWords interface will tell you.

No need to change everything it recommends though.

Click on any of the alerts to make the quick adjustment – if they make sense.

I say this because almost everything that Google recommends comes with the idea of having you spend more money, so take it all with a grain of salt.

If nothing strikes your eye, then it’s time to pat yourself on the back and drink that milk. You deserve it.

Good work!

Your workout is now over and you feel amazing. Instead of just running mindlessly on that elliptical, you actually came in and did what needed to be done to bring you closer to your AdWords goals: more conversions, lower costs per conversion and higher conversion rates.

All in record time.

Over to you. When it comes to effective AdWords management, what have you found to make the biggest impacts in the shortest time?

Climate Change – The Real Deal

It was in the spring of 2011 which was long remembered by the scale and horror of many violent tornadoes that tore through the Midwest and parts of the eastern United States. With the massive flooding of the Mississippi River in Illinois all the way to New Orleans created a catastrophic disaster. It seems like every spring has seen its share of storms where torrential rain causes immense suffering and loss of life. Once again we have drought conditions in many areas of our country and through out the world.

We realized that climate change increases the risk of hostility and conflict. The sea level rise today already cover the coastal landscapes around the world forcing people to leave their homes. In general, we are seeing migration, while due to the rising waters forced. This migration of refugees of climate change continues to grow each year. With drought conditions worsen shortages have become the strongest fresh water and food. Consequently, there has been and still is an increased competition for remaining resources never there. And this increased competition continues to exacerbate tensions, not only in all the countries concerned but throughout the world.

To understand the impact of climate change today is that one of its consequences has led to instability in Nigeria. This instability, now operated by the terrorist group Boko Haram continues to exasperate economic conditions worsen and throughout Africa. The drought and subsequent food shortages not only rising food prices intensified, has helped fuel the riots in early Syria. Today, with the country torn by civil war and the rise of ISIS caused serious risks, not only for the global economy, but has also had disastrous effects on humanity as well.

In the US, it has not been since 1920 in this country has experienced such devastation of nature in many places in a short period of time. Following all this devastation left much of the United States almost helpless. Too many lives lost, so much destruction, and many livelihoods in ruins was the result. Today, nature in all its fury unleashed chaos and destruction that continues to shake that nation. Man-induced climate change is attributed to a global quagmire of misery and death?

Throughout the centuries mankind has continued to upset the balance of nature. Man laid the foundation for the natural disasters that have transformed our world. Each nation is guilty of some environmental atrocity of one kind or another. Voluntarily or not the man continues to pollute, destroy, steal and our environment without worrying about the consequences of our actions, inactions and now to facilitate the devastation. To speculate that the Earth goes through its normal cycle of climate change as the reason why there are so many homes storms, longer droughts, earthquakes or massive flooding is too casual.

Monetary restrictions imposed by the reactions always change in the environment caused by human interference. The tragedies of humanity are imbued with blatant disregard for the environment, nature and all the inhabitants of the earth. Even with all the currently available more pollution than any other period of history is continuously discharged into our rivers, streams, lakes and oceans causing catastrophic damage to marine life technology, people from coast, all economies around the world . The need is very obvious, the technology is available, and resources can be provided to eliminate global pollution that threatens our very existence.

What it has happened since the arrival of the first industrial revolution in which man continues to drain the oil fields, groundwater deposits of coal and other minerals, which is a parody of our planet. Our continued reliability of fossil fuels on earth creates large gaps that contribute to the movement of earth plates along the lithosphere resulting from earthquakes, tsunamis, and even sink holes that cause terrible damage man and the nature. We also have to realize what humanity has done to the tropical forests of the Amazon. Destruction and almost total annihilation of the greatest resources of the stability of Earth’s climate, now it has become the greatest threat of the planets climate instability.

To not capitalizing the already abundant, automatic replenishment, and environmental sources of renewable energy humanity has made the land can not remain stable. Of course, the planet has experienced throughout the history of climate change, but mans continued escalation of fossil fuel consumption only increases and accelerates a change in the climate of the earth. When the weather changes drastically in a relatively short time period of great upheavals they have always happened. Worldwide, more frequently and with greater intensity have become. Always in the most horrible human suffering, nature and the environment and it is almost powerless to restore stability. All this while the costs to restore balance and stability today far exceeds the cost that would have been spent to prevent such disasters from happening in the first place.

All that is needed is the will of nations once and for all band together to solve the climate of the earth is directly related and influenced by human interference. To curb the acceleration of global warming, end the catastrophic pollution, and restore our depleted forests every nation must help restore the delicate balance of the earth. This, for humanity now be able to end the massive human suffering that causes more aggression and destabilization of nations worldwide-out. All this can be done using the technology available today. By making the sources of the first and second electrical obsolete industrialization is the fastest way to restore stability worldwide. The availability of solar, wind, hydro electric, magnetic energy and other green energy sources are easily available now. All that is needed is the political will to make them more accessible and affordable. The ability to restore the balance of nature on earth is at hand. And doing so could only alleviate many human tragedies that have placed man about to fall back into the caves of the Neanderthals.

How to Pitch Marketing Analytics Software to Your Company

The wonderful thing about the state of marketing in 2015 is that technology makes it possible to measure, test, and improve everything from your ad campaigns to your content to your product itself. Sophisticated analytics software can help you track reams of crucial data and respond in real-time.

It’s an exciting time to work in this field because marketers have never had so much tangible ability to affect their business’s bottom line.

But what if you don’t have the tools to collect all the information you want? What if you see the incredible power sophisticated data reporting can grant you, but your supervisors haven’t yet considered using sophisticated marketing software? How do you build a business case for a SaaS analytics tool like KISSmetrics?

If you’re responsible for tracking ROI and making sure your marketing has the right impact, it’s very likely you can benefit immensely from the ability to pull complex reports and react in real-time. However, since these superpowers are relatively new, you may have to do a lot of work in order to choose the solution that’s right for your company and then build a clear, easy-to-understand business case for it.

Even if it’s easy to get the cost approved, it’s still worth your time to do the legwork beforehand so that you choose the right software and know how to make the most of it. Here are some steps you can take to ensure you’ve got your bases covered and you’re able to succinctly, effectively choose and pitch an analytics solution:

1. Identify your business’s biggest challenge.

Before you begin, take the time to clearly define the primary challenge your business is facing. Do you need to acquire new users? Reduce churn? Figure out which segment of customers have the greatest lifetime value (LTV)? Increase the percentage of users who are paying?

It’s normal to have several problems you’d like to solve at any given moment, but chances are there’s a big one that — if effectively solved — could go a long way toward solving the others, too. This is a great time to ask questions of your colleagues. What do they see as the biggest challenge?

To get a clear picture of your funnel and to see some helpful benchmarks, check out Chapter Four of QuickSprout’s Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking.

2. Look at the existing data you’re collecting, and identify critical gaps.

You can have all the data in the world, but without taking a strategic approach to figure out what you hope to learn from it, you’ll never be able to use it to achieve anything great. Don’t fall into the trap of getting caught up producing endless reports for no good reason. Contextualize your business’s primary challenge, and think about how data can help you solve it.

What do you want to know right now that you can’t figure out with the information currently available to you? What decisions are being made based on hunches and assumptions (where software could help you measure and test different approaches)?

Do you know who your most valuable customers are? Where do they come from? What marketing efforts are being aimed at retaining them, and which of those efforts are the most effective?

Make a wish list of all the things you’d like to have hard data on, but don’ This point will be critical in helping you build a strong business case.

3. Do your research.

Once you have a clear handle on what it is you’re attempting to solve and what information you need to obtain in order to do so, it’s time to educate yourself on the capabilities and limitations of the analytics tools available to you. Even if you’ve worked with them before, it’s worth refreshing your memory on their various features and reports.

It’ll be especially valuable at this point to dig around for case studies and articles about other companies that have conquered problems similar to the ones you’re facing. If you’re a SaaS company interested in reducing churn, for example, a quick Google search produces a number of incredibly helpful case studies:

• How One SaaS Startup Reduced Churn 71% Using “Red Flag” Metrics (KISSmetrics)
• 9 Case Studies That’ll Help You Reduce SaaS Churn (ConversionXL)
• 3 Things We Did to Reduce Churn by 68% (Baremetrics)

This kind of reading is well worth your time. You’ll find it a lot easier to put together a plan that will help you identify the reports you’re hoping to produce once you have access to more data. And this level of strategic forethought is essential to the success of your pitch.

4. Anticipate constraints and objections.

Even if you think you have a rock-solid pitch put together, prepare to address concerns and objections. Ask yourself the following questions:

If the responsibility for the final decision were in your hands, what would you have to consider?

• Are there unique privacy concerns around your company’s data?
• Are there legal requirements in your industry or region that impact the type of information you can collect, and how you go about doing so?
• What budget are you realistically working with?
• What roadblocks might you face in implementing a new analytics tool?
• How will the cost of this software be affected by potential changes in your product or your user base?
• If you double your users, what will the cost be then?
• When you add a new set of features to your product, how easy will it be to integrate this tool?
• What ongoing development resources will you need to draw on, if any?

Consider each of these points, and gather as much information as possible so that you’re able to address them quickly and accurately during your pitch. Don’t waste time having to go out and do more research after you’ve put your business case together. It’s much better to be prepared in advance.

5. Speak with a sales associate.

Now is a great time to get in touch with someone in sales and discuss your needs. Explain the primary challenge your business is facing. Let them know what data you’d like to be able to collect. Ask how they would suggest you address the roadblocks you’ve identified.

Sales professionals are usually intimately familiar with the product they’re responsible for and are used to addressing these objections, so they’ll likely have great data and case studies they can share with you. They can also help you build a thorough, realistic implementation plan.

Set up an appointment or call. Have a list of questions ready. Be prepared to give them extensive context on how your business operates and what you hope to achieve by launching a new analytics tool. Take advantage of their significant product knowledge, and work with them to put your pitch together.

If you’re comparing multiple tools, this is also a good way to get an idea of what kind of support and guidance you can expect from each company you’re considering working with. The more helpful and knowledgeable their sales staff, the more likely they are to be supportive and available once you’re a paying customer.

6. Build your presentation.

Bring it all together now! You’ve done your research. You’ve identified the business challenges you want to address with a sophisticated analytics tool. You’ve educated yourself on your options. You’ve prepared information to help address objections and concerns. It’s time to put your pitch together.

Use real numbers where possible, and construct a clear picture of your current system’s shortcomings. Then point out the opportunities a new analytics tool can provide.

Try putting together what-if scenarios, such as these:

What if we found that Feature A was confusing our users and causing them to lose interest?

• What if we discovered that our users liked our old website layout better?
• What if we realized that one of our digital ad campaigns targeting a specific segment was producing far-and-away the most profitable customers in the long run?

Play these out, and use extrapolated data to illustrate your point. You’re trying to demonstrate the connection between valuable, hard-to-acquire data and the real business decisions that can result from this information. Your goal is to show that having access to improved reporting and more comprehensive information can help you and your leadership team make better decisions about your marketing activities and your product.

7. Make your pitch.

Set up a meeting and allow for as much time as possible. Keep the focus on the potential business impact of the software you’re pitching. After all of the research you’ve done, you should feel prepared for questions about budget, implementation, data security, development hours needed, and so on.

Be clear about the commitment required, and offer to do additional research if objections or questions you hadn’t prepared for come up.

If you get a “no,” suggest a three- or six-month trial period as a compromise. While you want to leave sufficient time to implement and properly test the impact of a new analytics tool, a smaller commitment may be more palatable if your leadership team is concerned about the investment or skeptical about how much tangible impact better data reporting can have.

8. If your pitch is successful, get really good at using the software.

Great, your pitch was approved! But the work doesn’t stop there. Get your hands on as much training as you possibly can, and be sure you’re really well-versed in the capabilities of your new analytics tool. Ask for the opportunity to lead the implementation, if possible, and consider who else in your organization may benefit from receiving training on the new software.

You’ll probably receive a lot of guidance from the software company you’ve elected to go with, but also check out other resources to hone your skill set. Here are a few you can start with:

• The GrowthHackers community
• The inbound.org community
• Lynda.com training videos
• This list of growth hacking resources

The sharper your data analysis and strategic marketing skills get, the more you’ll be able to benefit from working with an advanced analytics tool.

Conclusion: It’s worth putting in the time and effort.

Sometimes it’s difficult to convey the value of software tools, especially highly customizable analytics platforms that can be used any one of a thousand ways. However, by clearly defining your goals, building a wish list of data points you’d like to get your hands on, anticipating objections, and putting together a smart, data-supported presentation, you stand a good chance of getting the green light.

If your pitch is successful, you’ll open up a great opportunity to make huge, measurable gains in the effectiveness of your marketing activities and the success of your business.

About the Author: Kristin Eberth is a marketing pro based in Vancouver, BC, where she leads B2B marketing at PressReader. She writes about marketing strategy on her blog at kristineberth.com. Subscribe to her newsletter, or follow her on Twitter @kristineberth.