By Mary Elizabeth Webb
Want to grow your business while saving time, money and get a great ROI to boot? Who doesn’t?
In order for a business to thrive in the 21st century, great marketing is as essential, if not more so, than the service you are offering. With the rapid explosion of apps, sky-high usage of the internet (31% of Americans are constantly online, while 85% of Americans are online daily), it can be daunting to think about how to track and engage potential new clients – particularly when you are focused on running your business itself.
That’s why outsourcing to a SaaS marketing agency like Wordsmiths, Inc., with expertise in everything from copywriting, SEO, graphic design, research, PR, analysis and content production, can be a pivotal step in getting your brand off the ground, helping to grow both your leads and revenue and make your business stand apart from the rest.
Let’s dive straight in, starting with demystifying what lead generation is.
What is a Lead?
‘A lead is an individual or organization with an interest in what you are selling. The interest is expressed by sharing contact information, like an email ID, a phone number, or even a social media handle.’
Leadsquared ‘What is a Lead?’ by Rajat Aurora
A lead is like someone saying you have my attention. Do you want to hold it? Often, you don’t have the time. You’re busy focusing on your business and as Ciencemedium suggests, the relentless increase in competition results in an overload of information, making it challenging to target, track and engage prospective clients. What’s more, finding and nurturing leads that don’t lead to conversions wastes valuable time, money and effort. Thankfully, the experts can do this for you, with results.
How a SaaS Marketing Agency Can Help
72% of marketers believe content marketing increases engagement and leads. Great SaaS marketing agencies like WordSmiths know exactly how to engage your customers and make your business visible and authoritative. Connoisseurs of conversions, SaaS marketing agencies are passionate about attracting, retaining and growing your audience and will always prioritize increasing your leads and revenue through areas of expertise, such as:
· SEO – Selection of the best-ranking keywords and the use of comprehensive site audits to make your business fly straight into a first-page ranking site
· Online PR Management – Increase your exposure on high-ranking, highly-valued sites
· Content Marketing Strategy – They’ll tailor goals to your business, execute a 12-month plan, and constantly track efficacy through measurable results
· Guest Post Management – Grow your brand on sites with high-authority and commendation
· Reporting & Analysis – Accountability and regular demonstration of ROI
· Gated Content Creation – Create original eBooks to convert leads
Combining their experience in each of these areas, they’ll entice your interested leads with a trail of delicious bread crumbs all the way to the gingerbread house.
Why Inbound Marketing is both the Present and the Future of Lead Conversion
‘The days of telemarketing, unsolicited blanket email campaigns and expensive print ads are gone. In fact, only 18% of marketers feel like this type of bold, in-your-face marketing generates the high-quality leads that they need.’
WordSmiths, Inc. ‘4 Things An Inbound Marketing Agency Can Do To Boost Sales’ Admin
Outbound marketing is where you go looking for leads, however the eruption of outbound marketing has created great irritation in the consumer. Are you often inundated with identical phone-calls and emails on a daily-basis? Do you find yourself disregarding them without a second thought? You’re not alone. As Heybuddy demonstrates, vast changes in the market, technology and the environment (as well the ability to block calls and emails) means that cold-calling and blanket emailing just don’t work anymore. Instead of gaining your trust and converting you from a lead into a sale, these types of attempts are more likely to drive you away.
While some outbound strategies take lots of time and effort and may yield no leads, inbound strategies allow you to engage an audience of people that you can more easily qualify as a prospect of lead,’ Hubspot ‘Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing by Brian Halligan.
In contrast, inbound marketing is where leads come looking for you. Through learning the needs of your desired target market, inbound marketing involves creating helpful, relevant content designed specifically to interest your leads, making it a valuable and memorable experience for them. In fact, according to the CMI, 80% of business decision-makers prefer getting information about brands from articles as opposed to adverts. And once they find your content engaging, they keep coming back to your site for more. Saas marketing agencies, like WordSmiths, use content creation and SEO to get a solid source of organic traffic, which then naturally converts by reaching the right people at the right time and bringing the right customers to you. Rather than a consumer’s journey beginning in a moment of irritation, they naturally find you as the result of their own interest.
Sound good? Let their results do the talking.
How SaaS marketing agency WordSmiths helped eCommerce site turn traffic into sales
WordSmiths started working with the eCommerce site 1937 Hemp Store in March 2020.
They laid down three key objectives:
1. Increase traffic and domain authority for the site.
2. Increase sales in a consistent and repeatable manner.
3. Increase retention signals to build the store’s returning audience.
What actions did they take to achieve these objectives?
First, WordSmiths built the website up to scratch so that it was well-recognized in the competitive digital market. As sales began to grow, WordSmiths began tracking performance on a monthly basis to ensure revenue was constantly recurring and to make sure they had a stream of returning customers, rather than stand-alone visits.
How did they achieve recurring revenue?
In a conversation, you naturally adapt to engage the listener, but online, it isn’t as easy to pick up on what the listener desires. This is why creating customer profiles is essential. First, WordSmiths ensured that the skeleton and flesh of the website were right by learning about the customer. Then, they employed the trusted art of storytelling to the website content. A common drawback of the blanket approach is that, more often than not, instead of appealing to everyone, it appeals to very few because it is so overtly generalized.
Consumers want personal, creative content that nourishes their specific needs, which are different to the needs of others. This is where a SaaS content-marketing agency like WordSmiths shines. Through creating measurable objectives, which were constantly revisited and reflected upon, working closely with the leaders of the company, responding to their needs, learning the customer profile and creative storytelling, WordSmiths created exactly the right content desired by the audience to make 1937 Hemp Store successful. Read the full story here.
What are the benefits of outsourcing to a B2B SaaS marketing agency?
When you are headfirst in your business 24-7, you often cannot see the thing you are looking at clearly. External parties have the benefit of seeing it afresh, as well as tried-and-tested strategies to identify what is working well and what definitely isn’t. More broadly, savings and gains, such as cost and efficiency, are a huge benefit of outsourcing. Here are some of the benefits of outsourcing to a B2B Saas marketing agency:
Top 8 Benefits of using a SaaS Marketing Agency
SaaS Marketing Agency Benefit #1: Lower Costs
As the costs are lower for outsourced marketing (you don’t have to employ a host of marketing professionals), you will be able to sustain it for longer, therefore making your business more and more successful. It’s a no-brainer, right? Repeat customers over a sustained period of time will become more invested in your service and brand, thus making even greater commitments to your business. Outsourcing enables you to develop greater interactions between yourselves and your customers, which creates greater investment and an all-round feeling of: ‘YES! Isn’t this why we went into business?’
SaaS Marketing Agency Benefit #2: Time-Saving
This is the textbook definition of cutting to the chase. They’re already experts in their field. Forget about having to research and pay for/create tools for analysis of your practices. They will do that for you, teaching you their methodology in the process. Your objectives will be achieved much more rapidly enabling a much faster route to results. You won’t have to spend time interviewing, hiring and training new employees. This will allow you to focus on what you do best.
SaaS Marketing Agency Benefit #3: Knowledge
SaaS marketing agencies like WordSmiths work very closely with their clients and through the benefits of sustainability, comes yet another one: You will learn invaluable skills from your outsourced agency. This leads to even greater efficiency, less risk and lower costs in the long-run.
SaaS Marketing Agency Benefit #4: Tools and Technology
Marketing agencies have many clients. Nissan, Sumo, Oracle and San Antonio Spurs are just a few who WordSmiths have helped to organically grow their business and retain their customers. The beauty of having many clients means the cost of the top-of-the-range technology and software Saas marketing agencies like WordSmiths have access to can be subsidized across their client-base. This makes it much cheaper for you to access without having the huge direct cost of accessing it directly. Meaning? You have the best of the best technology at a fraction of the price.
SaaS Marketing Agency Benefit #5: Trends
If there’s one thing you can always trust about great SaaS marketing agencies, it’s that they’ve got their fingers on the pulse. It is their purpose and lifeblood to know what is emerging, developing and just generally knocking everyone’s socks off (globally and locally). This is one of the most fundamental strengths outsourcing offers you – insight into what is working in both the global and local collective consciousness.
SaaS Marketing Agency Benefit #6: Less risk
Hiring your own marketing team amasses both costs and risks, which may pay off, however, if you’re a small business or a start-up, this could be completely unaffordable and having a panoply of marketing staff could stunt your growth as a business. A SaaS marketing agency like WordSmiths have a surplus of marketing skills to bring to the table, such as copywriting, web design, graphic design, PR management, SEO, CMS, research, the list is virtually endless! Together, you have one impeccably talented and efficient, tried-and-tested marketing system.
SaaS Marketing Agency Benefit #7: Reflection and Adaptation
Remember 1937 Hemp Store? Perhaps the most crucial and determining factor of their success was WordSmiths’ planning, reflection and adaptation. Agencies constantly review how well their strategies are working, amplifying what is good and ditching what is bad. They see it all and implement effective strategies to constantly improve, therefore in this light, your business is constantly evolving.
SaaS Marketing Agency Benefit #8: Trusted Expertise
Often, companies lack the in-house expertise to run successful marketing campaigns. You know what successful marketing campaigns look like. Take Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ campaign. Three simple words, a command-turned-mantra for millions which first appeared in 1987 and continues empowering women and men alike on a global scale to this day. Here, marketing expertise resulted in one of the most ever-present and powerful campaigns ever launched, whose reach and resonation is both boundless and timeless.
In stark contrast, a lack of expertise can be disastrous. Forbes demonstrated how in 2014, while dealing with the tragedies of two flight disasters, Malaysia Airlines launched a contest to win digital prizes based on people sending in their ‘bucket lists.’ The result? People couldn’t help but see the allusion between the two and this left a bad taste in the mouths of many. With trusted marketing expertise, the ability to synthesise information and strategies holistically throughout a company, this could have been avoided.
So, having considered all of the above benefits, could there possibly be any negatives to hiring a Saas marketing agency?
As with anything surrounding business, all variables must be considered.
Things to consider when using a SaaS marketing agency
Credibility and Authority
‘We would not be in business if it wasn’t for content marketing. The content marketing strategy that WordSmiths, Inc. has put together and implemented for our eCommerce business is our primary source of sales.’ WordSmiths,
Liliana Cisneros, 1937 Hemp Store’s CEO
Providing a service as vital as making a sinking-business-swim, you need look no further than testimonials. We call our businesses our ‘babies’ for great reason and our responses to saving graces always come from a place of infinite gratitude.
Credibility and Authority
Depending on where you’re at in your business, you might find cost is a challenge, however the adage ‘time is money’ is true for a great reason: Well-invested money yields glorious results. Mostly, costs are negotiable and with impassioned companies who understand where you’re coming from and what you can afford, you can usually compromise on a figure that suits both parties (have I mentioned WordSmiths?).
A final thought…
Why in its embryonic stages were you compelled to create your extraordinary service and business? What inspired such a massive undertaking and devotion that you believe the world wants and needs what you have to offer? What is the best way to ensure it is delivered? Can you currently achieve that as you are or could you back-burn a few low-priority money-sponges and pave the way for the greatest investment your company needs?
‘Our only security is our ability to change.’ John Lilly
Adapting and diversifying are essential to enriching our mind-sets, particularly if we want to succeed in a constantly-changing marketplace and world. If we stand still, we fall over (which seems contradictory as metaphor, but not in business). Business is about exciting people. Remembering what inspired those first steps taken into your beautiful path of creativity and innovation. Do you want to stand still, or jump into the future through allowing experts to pull out your best ideas and mould them into something that resonates with the exact people you want it to?
To conclude
Outsourcing to a B2B SaaS marketing agency can save you time, money, enhance your knowledge, help you progress much faster and build stronger relationships with your consumers. It can increase your customer-base, generate new valuable leads and conversions, create sustained-growth and restore that spring in your step you had when you first started your wonderful business.
