Category: Tools

How can LinkedIn Outreach Automation help you get ahead of your Competitors?

December 7, 2020 No Comments

Are you new to LinkedIn? Your competitors aren’t for sure.

Maybe you fiddle with it from time to time.

Or you are well into the league, has grown over time into an active user with tons of conversations, a truckload of connections, and other invitations pending.

The question is; do you realize the full potential of the networking platform that stands strong with more than 600 million professionals and counting?

With LinkedIn being acknowledged as the single most powerful B2B platform, the story is due for a solemn turn for most users.

Once you learn to reap the benefits out of this soil correctly, it can be your field of gold.

In other words, LinkedIn could turn out to be an effective source point for multiple benefits:

Valuable leads
Significant information
Business recommendations
Increased market share, and
A significant brand presence to up your game.

The glitch being, where on earth would you find so much time to be able to join conversations, post relevant content regularly, connect, reach out, and follow-up potential customers?

By all means, it’s not an undoable task, but a quick reality check says, most small or mid-sized businesses lack the appetite (read budget) for the same.

From individual players to businesses that rely hugely on LinkedIn for customer accusation, automation is the answer.

LinkedIn automation has significantly helped businesses to expand their outreach and boost chances of netting qualified leads, like nothing else in comparison.

In this post, we mull over the essentials involved with LinkedIn Automation to help you gain a competitive edge, nice and easy!

Read on to find out how.

Why automate LinkedIn in the first place

Look around!

This is the age where social media rules the roost of the society, artificial intelligence and machine learning is opening up newer fronts of discovery like never before. With businesses wanting to do more out of technology, there’s no shying away from automating your efforts.

LinkedIn’s automation came into existence with one single goal–To enhance your outreach efforts and help save time for other important tasks.

LinkedIn’s automation tools have singularly made it possible for business owners and dedicated marketers to remain active on the platform, without sacrificing other doings; this gives them a competitive edge.

And, all this makes sense.

Imagine the time one has to invest in churning and filtering the potential leads, reaching out with a perfectly crafted marketing message, and effectively follow-up the same.

When you choose to automate such tasks, you invariably direct yourself towards saving more than seventy percent of your time. Plus, you also get maximum time to build your personalized message, once the prospect comes back with an initial response.

That’s it!

You are bettering your chances of conversion, right on track!

For sales professionals, inherent LinkedIn features like Sales Navigator comprise several preset doings that enhance the visibility of one’s extended networks, along with a personalized algorithm that directs you to the key people you want to reach. Automation tools like Lead Connect have taken the game up a notch by working seamlessly with LinkedIn Basic and Sales Navigator.

No wonder why LinkedIn automation tools are increasingly getting popular with marketers and business owners alike and your competitors are probably using them already. It’s simple to use, mimics a personalized approach, easy to install, safe, and supremely affordable.

How to make the most out of LinkedIn Automation

Now that you have a fair understanding of LinkedIn automation, let’s take a look at how you can use one to gain command over your competitors and streamline your sales game.

By viewing and tagging potential leads– Viewing and tagging help you light up curiosity across many potential leads. Automation tools trigger notifications that bind back the potential lead to your profile. Thus, one must ensure their profile is complete and up to date, as it would serve as the face of your business when the lead lands up on your page for the very first time.
By making personalized connections– Once you have used a LinkedIn automation tool to tag profiles, you are already a step ahead to touch base in a personalized way. This means you are harping on the right string to pull the lead towards you. As your network flung far wide, you will need to back up your efforts with relevant content to amplify chances of conversion. Using a LinkedIn automation tool, you will need to message the first degree connections in your network. Additionally, make use of the search and filter option to limit your personalized message to your preferred list of sectors and industries, or key people.
By working with existing contacts– While aiming for new qualified leads is always a good thing, one should never ignore their existing contacts. LinkedIn mail is known to have a higher opening rate compared to the traditional cold ones.
Using an automation tool, you will also need to upload your contacts and program to automatically shoot messages across your existing contact list with relevant info, updates, and easy to grab marketing offers.

By using your LinkedIn database across other channels–When looking to better your sales game, it is imperative that you place your stakes equally. Don’t limit yourself to one channel.

After you are done building your target potential list and have sent connection invitations, download the data, and use them on an off-platform basis.

Don’t forget the human touch

Undeniably, LinkedIn automation tools can significantly affect your lead generation game and you can get more leads than your competitors and spend less time doing it. Nevertheless, there are a few things that can do better without it.

You see, the sales process is a game of uncertainty, and personal interaction with your prospects goes a long way in securing a deal.

Once your automation strategy has pulled in the initial response, it is recommended that you assume a more direct approach in building rapport.

Drop a personal message, ask for an appointment, and take the first step towards building a relationship. If your prospects do not give way in the first instance, there will be a time in the near future when he will return for your services.

While there have been several discussions in the past regarding the use of LinkedIn automation tools violating the policies of the platform, one needs to choose wisely to play safe.

Take Linkedfusion for instance. A cloud based approach that makes use of unique IP that guarantees authentication and does away with chances of being spammy. Plus, relying on cloud means it can enhance reaching out the prospects in line with their respective time zones, along with tons of other features like Smart inbox (for tagging conversations and filtering chats), email reporting, and graphical analytics to measure your outreach efforts.

In essence, it all boils down to finding the right mix–a little bit of automation paired with your personal human touch can usher positive results all the way to beat your competitors.

Have you ever used a LinkedIn automation tool to amplify your conversion efforts?

I am Richard Mullins and love to write on a wider range of topics, such as Technology and the Internet, Software, Marketing, Home Improvement, Home Décor, Automotive, and more. I have years of writing experience in the field.

Best Marketing Automation Tools for your Business

February 27, 2019 No Comments

Marketing automation has been a popular topic for a while now, yet not everyone seems to be taking full advantage of it. As advanced tools become more and more available, it’s only a matter of time before automation completely changes the way marketers work. It may be worth to start thinking about using proper marketing automation tools in your strategy – and here’s how to make that happen.

What is marketing automation?

Automation means improving and to some extent, even replacing manual or intellectual labor by machines. In the case of marketing, this becomes possible thanks to relevant marketing automation tools. Such software allows you to automate repetitive tasks, optimize your efforts, reduce human error, and as a result, make your job as a marketer much easier while optimizing your digital marketing strategy.

The main idea behind marketing automation goes way beyond that, though. It’s all about reacting to people’s behavior once you caught their attention, and make sure you keep them engaged – preferably through the whole marketing funnel. The more you (and thus, the marketing automation software) know about your web visitors or users, the better you can serve them. That’s precisely why proper marketing automation tools take advantage of machine learning and predictive analytics to be able to draw conclusions from the data available and suggest or even execute the best possible action. With such software, you can easily manage all your communication channels, personalize messages, and eventually turn your visitors into your clients.

What can you automate and optimize, exactly?

Email marketing

With email marketing, you can easily target and reach the right audience with relevant content. Apart from sending out mass emails, you can even define specific triggers to respond to your recipients’ actions right away correctly. Luckily, many tools can let you automate your email marketing campaigns. Take OutreachPlus as an example. You can easily send personalized e-mails on a scale, track the results of your campaigns, and even influence the acquisition of new potential customers. Once you’re at it, it can also be beneficial to monitor your competitors’ email marketing strategies.

Social media management

If you own a lot of profiles across social networks, having a social media marketing automation tool will help you manage them properly. Yet again, there are many tools created for that purpose, even though the majority has pretty much the same features. When searching for the best option to suit your needs, though, it’s worth to select the one that stands out and offers something more. Something that you could use not only for drafting, scheduling, and keeping track of all posts but also for automating the whole process even further, such as Kontentino.

Speaking of social media, though, there’s also another activity worth automating – social listening, especially if you want to keep an eye on what your competitors are up to. Luckily, Competitors App monitors both Facebook and Twitter to give you valuable insights. You can read more about monitoring and analyzing the moves of your competition on social media.

Landing pages

With proper tools, you can easily create well-designed, interactive landing pages that will allow you to capture more leads (or serve any other purpose of your choosing). Unbounce, for example, is a compelling landing page builder that has some great features in store. It can even automatically replace some keywords on your landing page to match specific phrases that your prospects search for.

Lead generation

Speaking of capturing leads, you can also engage with your visitors via push notifications to encourage them to leave their contact details or perform a specific action. It’s also a great way to keep your web visitors informed about any exclusive deals, offers or updates, as well as deliver your content to those who could genuinely be interested in it. PushPushGo is an excellent example of such a tool, as it allows you to track and analyze user behaviors on your site, and target the right audience at the right time.

Plus, if you need to retarget specific groups of customers, try doing so with RocketLink. You can not only set up push notifications with this app but also target people who have shown interest in your content by clicking on the link (which is shortened, by the way). What’s game-changing about that? Most likely, the fact that you can link to other websites while still using a relevant Call-to-Action that will drive traffic to your site, landing page, or a specific form.

Pretty much everything

Certain all-in-one marketing automation tools can serve most of your inbound marketing needs: building landing pages, capturing leads and creating databases, sending out email marketing campaigns, scheduling social media content, hosting and publishing your blog, analyzing data, and integrating it with your sales team. They come with a price, though. Advanced marketing automation software has tiered pricing, which means that its price grows along with your business. Still, Hubspot is definitely worth taking a closer look at if you’re interested in such a solution and able to afford it.

What to take into account when choosing a marketing automation tool?

If you’re considering to invest in marketing automation, it’s always a good practice to establish your needs first. Then, compare pricing, usability, and integrations with your existing software. Naturally, you may want to go for a powerful all-in-one marketing automation tool at first – but it may turn out to be too expensive. At the same time, you might not need to take advantage of that many features daily. That’s why it’s important to know what to look for when doing your research.

Choose your marketing automation tool wisely

Rapid technological development changes the way marketers work. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, though. By taking advantage of marketing automation, you can save a lot of time and often money as well. Especially since collecting and segmenting your databases, effective planning, and even analyzing your actions are now easier than ever. It’s all possible thanks to advanced marketing automation tools that become more and more available.

It’s important to remember that seasoned marketers should remain in charge, though, carefully observing the results of each campaign and drawing conclusions themselves. That’s precisely why digital solutions can’t entirely replace human labor. And rightfully so.

13 Best free tools to manage and grow your startup

October 22, 2018 No Comments

Founding your startup can be hard and challenging. Exhausting and time-consuming. The biggest reason why startups very often isn’t a bad idea. It’s a lack of knowledge and experience. That’s the reason why we have created a list of the best free tools you can use to manage and grow your startup.

The startups fail mostly because their foundation is crushed down. Foundation of your startup can be two things:

Business Model
Team

If either of these foundations fails, your startup will, in most cases, fail too.

But what are the biggest reasons why will your business model fail?

I started my journey when I was seventeen. I was so lucky that I had a great mentor. The biggest lesson I learned from him is:

“Time and money are equally important resources.”

This is mindblowing!

If you have time, but no money, you will don’t go so far. Also, if you have money but no time, you will fail very fast.

This is the reason why we have created an ultimate list of the [number] best free tools that will help you to manage and scale your startup.

We will start from the beginning, and the first tools which will we mention will help you to organize your team and yourself better.

Organization tools

Organization tools help us to plan better and be flexible. With excellent planning skills, we will never forget some task or pass the deadline.

1. Google Docs

Google docs are one of the best tools for your work. Personally, in the previous few months, I saw a significant amount of people who are using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office.

Before all, the reasons for this are:

Access everywhere on any device
Multi-user editing, writing and commenting
Free to use with your Gmail account

Google Docs is suitable for your everyday writing and planning your marketing, sales, and business.

For your tables, data, lead generation, etc. – you can use Google Sheets. For your presentations, Google Slides will work very, very fine!

2. Trello

Trello is an excellent tool for planning your and your team’s workflow. They have a “free forever” plan, which will satisfy your needs very good at the beginning.

Trello is mainly used for task planning and scheduling your workflow. It’s mainly based on a KanBan methodology, which means that you can create boards and items/cards inside of them. Later, you can move your items from one column to another one.

In Trello’s free plan, you can invite as many team members as you want.

Trello will help you to schedule your tasks better, never forgot some assignments, and monitor your teams’ responsibilities.

3. Evernote

Quickly, Evernote can become your best friend. It’s a note-taking tool.

With Evernote, you can easily see all your notes on all of your devices. You can write notes wherever and whenever you are.

Evernote has a lifetime free account, which will be enough at the beginning. With your free Evernote account, you can sort and filter all of your notes, so you can later easily find what you need.

4. Calendly

Calendly allows you to schedule all of your meetings and appointments easily.

Just create your calendar with your free time, share the link with your prospects or business partners, and they will choose which time suits them best!

5. Slack

Slack is a free communication tool. It allows you to communicate with your team in private channels, and channels with different topics.

You can invite as many people as you want, and you can create whatever topics you want.

6. Dropbox

I supposed everyone heard about Dropbox, so there is no big need to explain what’s its’ main purpose.

Dropbox allows you to share files among your team members within seconds. You can access all of your files both from your computers or mobile phones.

Everything you need to do is to drag your file in your Dropbox desktop folder, and all of your team members will see it!

Tools for Business Growth

If you want to build an enduring business, you will need to grow. Every month, you should see at least a few percents of your income growth. Here are a few ways how can you grow your business:

With excellent Customer Development.
Understanding your customers’ behaviors.
With offering a great service
Providing Value
Better sales

So, here are a few tools which can help you to grow your business:

1. Typeform

Typeform is an excellent tool for customer development. With Typeform, you can create amazing and engaging customer surveys with cutting-edge design.

Typeform will help you to get attractive and valuable data about your customers’:

– Satisfaction

– Behaviors

– Problems

– Needs

– Your product feature and improvement ideas

2. ConvertFox

ConvertFox is a free customer messaging platform. With ConvertFox, you can see all the data about your customers (for example: when was the last time they have used your product).

You can use your customers’ data to segment your customers by the following rules:

– Paying customers

– Active trial customers

– Customers who finished their trial but didn’t continue with a paid plan

– Customers who just signed up for their trial, but never used it,

– And a list goes on and on.

ConvertFox will also help you with communicating with your customers.

Their free plan supports 500 customers, which is remarkable enough if you are at the beginning.

3. Agile CRM

Agile CRM is suitable for small and medium businesses. With their free plan, you can have up to 50 000 contacts and companies in your database!

Agile CRM allows you to plan your sales, track and gather your prospects, and, best of all, to see who is a hot lead and who is not!

Agile CRM is a great software for you since its’ free plan has everything you need when you are at the beginning.

4. Poptin

Poptin allows you to convert your website visitors into leads and customers easily.

To set up your Poptin account, you need a few minutes. After that, Poptin will show your website visitors appropriate messages at the right time!

For example, if you have an e-commerce shop and your website visitor is just about to leave your check-out page, Poptin will show them a message with a 20% discount on the item they are interested in.

5. Freshdesk

Ah, we all hate customer support, but in business, it’s essential. Excellent Customer Support is what makes a good business. Very often, companies are using Customer Support as their competitive advantage.

Freshdesk is one of the best customers that support helpdesks out there. It’s super simple to answer questions, and half of the processes are automatic.

In Its’ free forever plan, you will have everything you need till you don’t scale your startup!

5. Grammarly

If you are planning to write content, then you can’t write it without a Grammarly.

No matter how good your English knowledge is, Grammarly must be an inevitable part of your daily routine (I’m using it right now).

Grammarly will point on your mistakes and make its’ suggestions to correct them. It will improve your English knowledge. At least, it doesn’t let you look like a fool. 🙂

The most important free tool you will surely need.

All the tools I have mentioned above are perfect for your business. If you want to scale your company, then you will probably need to use them.

But there is one tool which is most important of all of them.

It’s your attitude.

Your attitude is what can make you either successful or not.

Work hard, and always have hope.

Read other competitive articles for your business

Competitive Intelligence Business – Competitive intelligence (CI) is a term you may have come across before. Like many industry buzzwords, it isn’t immediately apparent what CI is and how it can be useful to your business. But don’t worry, because we’re going to explain the ins, outs, pros, and cons of CI.

BEST COMPETITORS GUIDES

Monitor competitor website changes
You can get alerted when your competitors are making changes to their website.

Find competitor keywords
Finding your competitors’ keywords is essential for your business. It means that you focus your entire website on targeting high volume, quality keywords.

Track Social Media Pages
Social media competitive analysis is the constant monitoring and analyzing the moves of your competition on social media.

Competitor Email Monitoring
Tracking your competitors’ emails takes some time, but it’s well worth it!

How to do competitor analysis
One important step is to conduct an effective competitive analysis to evaluate your competitors’ brands.