Author: Grant Duncan

Categories
bingads demandgeneration googleads

Boosting Leads While Slashing Budget: Our Successful Strategy with High-Intent Paid Search Keywords

Last year, we cut our paid search budget by 50% after doing the “split the funnel analysis”. Pipeline from paid search even went up the month after! That’s b/c we only cut keywords that had never produced an opp or customer.

But wait, there’s more! We just added new paid search keywords.
Specifically adding more high-intent paid search keywords that we have never tried bidding on in the past.

We found these new keywords to add from:
1. People mentioning the terms in the “How did you hear about us” required free text field
2. Conversations with ICPs & our internal employees

After we did this:
We immediately saw a jump in the # of leads from paid search.

Now we’ll wait and see which turn into opportunities. If these new keywords never produce an opp after a period of time, then we’ll prune them.

Moral of the story: keep doing the dance with paid search keywords

Categories
culture leadership

Mastering Leadership: A Comprehensive Guide to Navigating Cultural Differences

Navigating cultural differences is a critical skill of a leader.

Here’s an example:
Some cultures never say “yes” the first time they’re offered help. If you don’t know this, you may take their first answer as their true intention. Whereas actually, they expect to be asked again once or twice before they’re “allowed” to say yes.

There can be a give and take:
The person asking can ask more than once
The person getting asked can say their true intentions the first time they’re asked

Two books I recommend for learning more about navigating cultural differences: 
The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
Foreign to Familiar by Sarah Lanier

What resources do you like on this topic?
How have you seen issues come up because of cultural misunderstandings? 

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgeneration retargeting

Unlocking the Power of Retargeting: A Comprehensive Guide to LinkedIn, Facebook/Instagram, and YouTube Strategies

We’re retargeting people across LinkedIn, FB/IG, and YouTube.

See our strategy below. Steal it yourself or tell me how we can improve it 😊

On LinkedIn, we are retargeting users that have done the following AND match our target job titles:
– 180 Day Website Visitors
– 180 Day Company Page Visitors
– LI Ad Clicks (Updated Monthly with new campaigns)
We’re also excluding customers and competitors.

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On Facebook/Instagram, we are retargeting website users that have hit our Marketing website. We are excluding customers and competitors from the Metadata Metamatch audiences. We also exclude actual web app product users.

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On YouTube, we are retargeting all website visitors who have visited our marketing website. We exclude actual web app product users.

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So… try this out yourself! And/or tell me how we can make it better!

Shoutout to Blake Strozyk / Bull Media for helping us co-create these strategies and execute them.

Categories
b2bmarketing competitiveintelligence productmarketing

Unlocking the Secrets of Effective Competitor Comparison: A Step-by-Step Guide by Kirill Kurmytskiy

We just launched 3 competitor comparison articles, big kudos to Kirill Kurmytskiy for his work on these! Here’s a breakdown of the structure and key elements he used:

– Don’t make it totally one-sided. Prospects can sniff that out.

– Use images to convey the differences (Venn diagram, radar chart, product screenshots, etc.)

– Talk about different product philosophies / focuses (if applicable)

– Explain key product capability differences & differentiators

– Include positive G2 examples from both

– Show a feature matrix

– Add links to sources of info

– Talk about how both products could be used together (if applicable)

What would you add or change to these? How do you like to structure competitor comparisons?

P.S. if you don’t mind, ask your Customer Support leader to consider using Zingtree 🙂

Categories
b2bmarketing design generativeAI

Leveraging Generative AI and Omar I. Hamoda’s Expertise for Revolutionary Ad Design: A Shoutout to Zingtree

We’re using Omar I. Hamoda’s design & editing talent + generative AI (Midjourney) to take our ads to another level!

Pushing the boundaries of what will be scroll-stopping + communicating our message.

We use the text copy above the ad images to further communicate our message too.

Can we give a round of applause to Omar!?

Also, if your company has a contact center, tell them to check out Zingtree 😊

Categories
b2bmarketing demandgeneration pipeline

6 Proven Strategies to Boost Your Sales Pipeline Mid-Quarter: An Insider’s Guide

When pipeline creation is trending lower than expected mid-quarter… 🧐

Here are my favorite levers to increase it during the same quarter:

1️⃣ Looking at where the conversion rates are falling off & dig into why. 
It may uncover some process issues that could improve things in-quarter.

2️⃣ Review lead follow-up by the Sales rep / SDR & see if any didn’t get the right follow-up / Sales forgot to respond
(Ideally, this is automated with alerts but most companies don’t have this set up)

3️⃣ Reach out to old leads to see if things have changed on their end & they want to restart the conversation

4️⃣ Double check your audience targeting, ad frequency, CTRs, etc. in paid social
(Ideally always ongoing but most only check this monthly)

5️⃣ Increase impression share on top-performing paid search keywords 
(You spend more but may be able to take money from another area to cover it)

6️⃣ Talk w/ peers to see if it may be b/c of an industry / economic slowdown

What are your favorites for generating more new pipe in the same quarter?

Categories
b2bmarketing pipeline

Boosting Revenue with Effective Pipeline Strategies: How Paid Search, Social Referrals, and Rebranding Can Drive Your Business Success

A few of the programs that have driven substantial pipeline and revenue for us have been:

– Paid & organic search
– Paid & organic social
– Referrals

What’s made all of these work better for us?

– We have significantly re-worked our positioning & story
– We created new content
– We underwent a new rebrand

What are your biggest pipeline drivers?

Categories
b2bmarketing customersupport productmarketing

Creating a Successful 2023 Support Tech Landscape: An Unbiased Approach to Positioning Your Brand

Have you thought about making a tech landscape for your industry? We just created the 2023 Support Tech Landscape.

Here’s why and how we did it 👇

Why:

It didn’t exist for Customer Support, so we had a green field opportunity

We get to choose how we position ourselves in the mental map of prospects

We get to highlight the drawbacks (and strengths) of other categories of products

This is a dark social share-worthy piece for people to share with colleagues that will drive traffic to our website and help people learn about us

How:

1. We asked Support leaders NOT affiliated with Zingtree – not current customers – to write the article so that it came across more objectively

2. I suggested the categories to use

3. I suggested the structure to use:
-category definition
-short description of each vendor in the category
-pros and cons of each category

4. They wrote it

5. We reviewed and shared feedback

6. Design turned them into images

Have you created a tech landscape before? How would you improve ours? See the full article in the comments.

Categories
marketing newjobsameme

Embarking on a New Journey: From Zingtree’s Success to a Fresh Start in the Corporate World

Big news: I’m starting a new adventure!

I’ll announce the new company I’m joining on Monday. It’s even cooler than the outdoor walking desk I’ve built! (I’ll post about this hobby project tomorrow)

Although it’s difficult to leave behind the great people and plans of Zingtree, I’m thrilled to take on this new exciting opportunity.

During my time at Zingtree, I saw significant progress across the entire company & especially in Marketing. I’m thankful to have been a part of this growth. A few highlights:
-Pipeline & ARR growth
-Move to a modern demand gen approach
-Rework of the company positioning & messaging
-Rebrand & new visual identity

Collaborating with all of my colleagues at Zingtree was incredibly enjoyable. I’ll miss you all!

I’m grateful to Juan Jaysingh & David Apple for bringing me on board initially & upholding the culture that I appreciated being a part of.

I’m excited to witness how Zingtree will continue to grow to new heights!

Stay tuned for updates on my new journey! And I’ll continue to build in public with practical strategies & tactics 🙂

Categories
generativeAI marketing

Revolutionize Your Content Strategy with AI: Introducing a Fully Automated, Customizable Blog Post Generator

My second invention: a customizable blog post generation product using generative AI 🤖
And I made it fully automated end-to-end (from prompting to publishing).

-Take in a long list of relevant prompts (or generate them for you)
-Add any relevant context to bolster the prompts (optionally automated through an API)
-Generate articles using OpenAI’s API
-Auto-publish or auto-schedule to your website blog & also save them locally
-All of the API parameters are customizable, so you don’t get stock answers like ChatGPT, Jasper, etc.

I’ve started using it myself on a consumer-facing product website, and it works like magic.

If you’re interested in using it at the company you work for, reach out to me ($10K+ annual contract).

And yes, I’ve been working on hobby projects in the two weeks I took before starting the new job 🙂