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Getting More Leads for Your Business Using A Virtual Assistant
Setting Goals and Delegating VA Tasks
1. Identifying daily/weekly goals
Start by cutting it down by daily goals and setting your target monthly revenue. Identify the number of new prospects you need to contact on a daily/weekly basis.
For example:
Daily cold prospects to contact: 980 prospects / 20 business days = 49 per day
So if your daily target is 49 leads, communicate this on the day the you orient your VA, and ask them if it is doable. From there, you can test the waters by assigning your VA the task of researching, but not contacting, roughly half your target number.
2. Delegating tasks
There are a number of ways virtual assistants can help you with lead generation, depending on your business model and marketing strategy. Generally, VAs are already trained and experienced in their own field. But as with any other employees, they also need to be acclimated to the new business approach every time. The key here is to start small and ramp up the complexity of the tasks as you get to feel your VA’s capability.
Hiring a Lead Generation Expert
3. Researching leads
If you’re not quite ready for the VA to contact leads directly, then save yourself from the time-consuming task of researching them.
First thing to do is to provide your lead generation virtual assistant a profile of your ideal prospect.
Then, they will use tools like search engines, social media, and LinkedIn to find these prospects. Ask your VA to find relevant leads by drawing from a specific list of companies and titles, using the “advanced search” function in LinkedIn, for example.
4. Contacting leads
Most lead generation jobs work from home individuals are equipped with good communication skills.
Give clear instructions on how to contact prospects by giving them scripts and templates or asking them to customize one. They can also jump into email marketing to introduce your company and your products/services.
Marketing Your Brand
Companies who blog have an overwhelming 97% more leads. ~ Social Media Today Click To Tweet5. Develop marketing materials
A VA can be a tremendous help in developing marketing material for your campaigns.
They can create relevant blog posts; marketing materials such as posters, copy ads, eBooks, and content that you can then distribute to drive traffic and move the leads down the sales funnel.
6. Assign other tasks!
Yes—you can absolutely hand over some time consuming tasks to your virtual admin assistant. allows you to allocate more time to lead generation is valuable. They can easily cover everyday, repetitive tasks related to your business, such as social media management, answering calls/emails, or even bookkeeping.
With social media posting, they can share articles, tweets, status updates, etc so you gain more exposure in the online arena. The more engaging you become, the more likely you are to attract and retain prospects.
7. Allows you to do your CORE function
Telemarketing works, but at some point you will have to pick up the phone. Home-based lead generation jobs will allow you to work on your full potential by extracting all those activities that take up too much of your time.
Here’s how Henri Schauffler of CEO Focus works with his VAs:
“A trained telemarketing team calls a select list for participants in my free business-building seminars for small business owners. Those interested are then sent an email.
The list of “RSVPs” is sent to me daily. I mail them a USPS letter with ticket and flyer. Then I call each one personally and get them talking about their business.”
Steps on Working with Virtual Assistants Successfully
- Be clear about what you want the lead generation freelancer to do.
- Keep a running list of what you should delegate.
- Create a job description and responsibility list for your VA.
- Say what you want your VA to produce, how they should behave, tasks he/she needs to complete.
- Ask your VA to help you create a Systems manual.
- Hold weekly or monthly meetings with your VA.
- Never hesitate to ask your VA for help or advice. Virtual assistants are excellent at helping business owners so make sure to ask and listen to what they have to say.
When you finally find the best VA to work with, enroll him or her in your vision and your goals. Make sure your virtual help is enthusiastic about what you do and is ready to roll!
Virtual Assistant Talent is an excellent source if you’re looking forward to hiring a part-time or full-time real estate lead generation virtual assistant. See how our highly qualified and trained VAs can assist in your everyday tasks and objectives. CALL 1-866-596-9041.
We would love to hear if these ideas worked for you! If you have questions or any Social Media related success stories, please leave a comment below.
Reference:
www.inc.com
www.salesschema.com
hireyourvirtualassistant.com
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7-Point Checklist for Small Business Owners in 2019
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15 Social Media Marketing Tips: How to Make A Strong Impression
Sales Enablement: Helping Customers Discover Your Product
1. Using social media to sell your products
Although social media is all about awareness and engagement, businesses can also promote their products and help customers in the phase of product discovery.
55% of respondents who discovered a product through social media proceeded to purchase later on. ~ Mary Meeker, Internet Trends 2018 Click To TweetIn this report, Facebook tops the social media channels where people find out about new products. Use this opportunity to make it easier and faster for your audience to move down your sales funnel.
Easy-to-Digest Content, Ads, and Stories
2. Omnichannel marketing
Omni, which means ‘all or every’ is about managing customer experience in all channels whether offline or online. The idea is that the customer’s journey may start in one channel and move to another seamlessly towards the end point—your product or service.
With the help of a Social Media Virtual Assistant, you can reach and interact with your audience anytime through the use of email marketing, online advertising, social networking, and other platforms because nobody today shops exclusively through a single medium.
3. 24-hour stories impacts how people consume content
Stories are visual content in a vertical format that lasts for a day and first became popular on Snapchat and later on copied by Instagram and Facebook.
These stories are easy to create, fun, engaging, authentic, and don’t last long so there’s that sense of urgency to consume them before they’re gone.
This means more and more brands will use this in-the-moment style content vs. overly produced, pre-packed content.
Currently, 400 million people are consuming Stories on Instagram on a daily basis, while Facebook is trying to integrate Stories to our daily routines. Click To Tweet4. Growing social media ad spend across marketers
One of every four Facebook Pages now use paid advertising as part of their social media marketing strategy.
But always consider not relying too much on one platform, either for organic or paid growth. One recommended way to do this is to just boost your top performing organic content.
Marketers increased social ad budgets up to 32% in 2018. Facebook accounts for 23% of total U.S. digital ad spending. Click To Tweet5. Invest some time in creating great content
In our blog Why you need to hire a social media manager for your business, we discussed how a social media VA can help you increase conversions by sharing your content on social media.
6. Join more communities through LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn is already making a huge push toward becoming a connection nurturing network among executives and younger demographics entering the workforce. It’s also constantly updating its groups in an aim to drive more community.
LinkedIn reports that likes, comments, and shares on the network increased more than 50%. Click To TweetEngagement and Influencer Marketing
7. Love and care about your social community
Connecting with your audience, responding quickly to customer inquiries/requests, and addressing issues are just few of the reasons for using social media marketing.
Businesses that monitor and participate in conversations with their followers and potential customers can expect more loyalty form their fans and develop deeper and longer relationships.
8. Working with influencers and micro-influencers
Working with the best influencers can be expensive so this is where micro-influencers (ordinary digital citizens) come in. Try tools like Mavrck, Neoreach, and Traackr to find key micro-influencers so you can test the waters of influencer marketing on a budget.
Example: a food brand may see better results by using a rising food blogger (micro-influencer) with 30k followers than a celebrity chef who may ask for 20x of the budget.
Facebook Groups are a hot spot for engagement and a place to focus social media efforts in 2019. Click To TweetSocial Media TV, Videos, Podcasts, and Live Streaming
9. Highlighting video content marketing
More on social media tips for business – The launch of IGTV by Instagram was one of the biggest social media trends of 2018. And according to Statista, more than 50% of digital videos are now viewed on mobile in vertical video format.
Among the top picks of marketers are: Live video or live streaming, interactive video, short videos, and vertical videos.
10. Share authentic stories and important moments
“Stories create a more transparent and meaningful relationship. That means less of static updates and more behind-the-scenes, raw, and intimate stories.” – Anna Crowe, Assistant Editor of Search Engine Journal
Business owners will need to tell more stories and moments that matter to the people, and not their brand. You can take your best-performing posts and evergreen web content and create one-minute videos or convert them to blog posts.
One-minute videos get 400 – 500% more reach on LinkedIn compared to Facebook. Click To TweetMessaging Apps, Automation, Chatbots
11. AI and automated messaging for customers
The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automated messengers for customer service support means that the expectations about the response time are increasing. Huffington Post reported that 60% of the Millennial population are the quickest adaptors of chatbot-based customer experiences.
12. Understanding how people use messaging apps
People widely use private messaging, whether it’s simply about reaching their families or staying in touch with their favorite brands. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, and WeChat hold a large percentage of the messaging market.
13. Personalized, Private messaging, and chatbots
Facebook Messenger and chatbots are one of the most effective ways to reach and build audience engagement—it’s email blasting done via messenger.
“Businesses that market via Messenger earn 60 to 80 percent open rates within the first 60 minutes.” ~ Kristi Kellogg, Founder & CEO of Dazzling Digital
Many experts predict that by 2020, more than 80% of all customer service interactions will be powered by AI bots. Click To TweetThe Importance of Trust and Transparency in Social Media Marketing
14. Making customers comfortable in sharing their data
Because of recent data breaches on some platforms, building trust with your audience is now more important than ever. Be transparent and prompt enough to update your customers on a recent change or admitting your mistakes and working on to resolve issues.
15. Earn and keep the trust of your followers
Finally, always aim to capture the trust and confidence of your customers every single day. With all the fake news and privacy disasters this past year, it’s imperative that you ensure people that their personal online privacy is in good hands.
Interested to start working on how to improve social media for your business? Reach out to us and we can discuss your social media marketing strategy and overall business objectives.
Our experienced social media virtual assistants (VA) can help you with sharing posts, lead generation, increasing your followers, customer support, and promoting your brand so you can continue to thrive online and make an impact this 2019.
Virtual Assistant Talent is a top-notch virtual assistant staffing agency helping professionals from different industries such as the real estate, insurance, small business, coaching/consulting, and executive leadership.
CALL US at 1-866-596-9041 and discover how our highly qualified and trained virtual assistants can help in your everyday tasks and objectives.
Reference:
www.searchenginejournal.com/
blog.bufferapp.com/
medium.com/
www.martechadvisor.com/
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Online Marketing
Top 13 Reasons Why You Need to Incorporate Video Marketing to Promote Your Business
Before, business owners and marketers shy away from using videos because they take a long time to make and required special software.
Nowadays, there are a lot of sites and software with editing tools that can be used for free. Some also include free effects and transitions to make your videos more fluid and attractive to viewers.
Videos can be informative as well as entertaining. As long as you’ve made videos that effectively represent your brand or business, your products or services will sell out quickly.
If you haven’t started using videos yet, here are 13 points to explain the importance of video marketing for your business.
1. Builds Trust with Your Audience
Trust makes conversions and sales happen. The concept of content marketing is not about selling but creating long-term relationships. Once you’ve established trust, people will come to you not just for information but for the products or services you’re offering.
When you’re in a brick and mortar store, it’s easier to build trust with customers through personal interaction. It’s quite difficult when you have an online store. Some costumers are still skeptical about making online purchases because of fraud and scams.
Build trust with your prospects first by introducing your brand or company through a video. Put up how-to videos or content-filled to keep your audience engaged. Once your audience understands and remembers your brand, you can publish videos promoting your products or services.
2. Explains Products or Services Effectively
A video can explain a variety of topics easily. It can show steps on how to use a newly launched product or discuss in detail how a new service is fulfilled and who are involved in the process.
Always remember to make videos with the intention to keep your audience engaged. When making a video, focus on one topic only. Throw in questions to trigger curiosity and include references for further reading. Inject some humor to excite your audience and avoid long texts and talking nonstop.
Want to simplify a complicated service? Show the process through an animated video. Live demonstration can work but animations are more fun and engaging. This way, customers remember your brand and recall more information about your products or services.
3. Gets More Social Shares and Web Traffic
Social media platforms have revolutionized from still pictures to moving ones. In fact, videos are found to generate 1200% more shares compared to text and images on social media.
The sharing potential offered by video marketing can effectively multiply your visibility and help you reach the audience you’re looking for. And given that your video will reach your potential consumers organically, the impact will be higher.
This is why video marketing is so powerful. It can capture a wide audience that will continue to share your video until it reaches your desired audience. Make sure to also use your website as landing page to increase traffic into it.
4. Boosts Your Conversions and Sales
There’s no denying the fact that online marketing can help you make money but some strategies don’t make sales as high as video marketing. If you know how to do video marketing properly, it will increase conversions and lead to sales.
Videos are visually pleasing and can trigger a variety of emotions. With a product or explainer video, you can build a connection with your audience. Once you’ve earned their interest and trust, your audience becomes customers.
5. Engages with Mobile Users
Mobile phones or smartphones are not only used for communication but also for entertainment or just to pass the time. In fact, people are getting obsessed with smartphones that they spend breaks burying their faces on mobile screens.
A big chunk of these mobile users also watch videos through mobile. The increase in mobile usage and video streaming is so dramatic that social media platforms like Youtube and Facebook incorporated ads into videos.
As the number of smartphone users grow, so as your video audience. Having a wide audience doesn’t guarantee conversions or sales though. An enticing video content still plays a big role in making your viewers consume what you’re offering.
6. Engage All Types of Audience
Even then, ads are usually short and straight to the point. Will you read a 300-word billboard ad or a lengthy facebook post without an image? I guess not. Your audience is a mix of the busiest, the laziest and everyone in between. Make sure your video content will engage a majority of your audience, especially the laziest ones. Consumers already know what they want, all you have to do is make them take action.
7. Viewers Want More Videos
We are living in the golden age of videos. They are so accessible that people just scroll through social media, find a random video and get sucked into a black hole where they end up watching video after video.
Information hunting has become easier as well because of videos. Customers are watching more videos to find products and make purchasing decisions. For example, you want to remove hard stains from your bathroom walls; you can easily find a demo video in YouTube that also includes recommendation for tools and products.
You don’t have to convince your audience to watch your videos. Just put your videos out, add relevant tags or interests, and your audience will do the rest. People want things to be comprehensive and videos can achieve that.
8. Search Engines and Social Media Love Videos
Videos drive organic traffic into your site and increase the time spent by visitors. An effective way to do this is by uploading your videos through YouTube and sharing them in your social media accounts.
YouTube is owned by Google which means all videos uploaded into it are also tracked by Google. It also affects your site’s search ranking so the more relevant and optimized the videos are, the higher the search engine rank.
People also love watching random videos on social media and they share anything they find entertaining. A fun video post that includes a link to your website will convert into website clicks which can potentially turn visitors into customers. Give potential customers the way to take the next step.
9. Rank High in YouTube
Information hunting is not only done through search engines like Google, you can also do it through YouTube. People use YouTube to search for educational or demo videos.
How-to videos in YouTube can teach anyone, anything from simple hacks to complicated web programming. A study shows that searches for how-to videos went up 70% in the last couple of years.
10. Get Unbelievable ROI
Return on investment (ROI) is the ratio of profit made in a financial year as a percentage of an investment. Entrepreneurs use it to see if their investment on a business is successful or not.
Although high quality video production involves a lot of money and time, it also produces a big payoff. 52% of business owners state that video marketing gives the greatest ROI in marketing so you’re assured that you’re putting your buck at the right place.
If you’re a start up or you don’t have the resources yet, you can use a smartphone or point-and-shoot camera to take videos and edit them using free editing tools. You can then upgrade to high quality or even animated ones when you have the funds. As mentioned earlier, video content matters more than aesthetics so get that all polished first before going for the upgrade.
11. Ads in Videos Work Wonders
Video ads are rocking social media platforms. Facebook learned that 74% of the total Ad Recall (the number of people that remember the ad) can be achieved within the first 10 seconds. So long as you’ve made sure your video is fun and engaging especially on the first 10 seconds, people will remember you, watch till the end or make the purchase. That right there is the importance of video marketing for your business.
12. Upgrade Your Email Marketing
Let’s be honest, emails can get boring and are not convincing enough. Why not incorporate your videos into your emails? Adding a video into your email can increase your click through rate by a whooping 96%. More clicks mean more conversion and more conversion increases sales.
13. Maximize and Recycle
Creating videos can be costly and time-consuming that’s why you have to find other ways to use them. How do you do that? For example, you want to repurpose your existing videos for other video marketing strategies. You can post an announcement on social media that you will do a talk about it and an episode or video will be posted at certain intervals and your audience can comment their questions for further discussion.
Video clips can also be turned into GIFs and teaser videos that you can use in other marketing strategies. You can use a GIF on a new social media post and a teaser video to promote a blog post or landing page.
Video marketing is proven to be one of the best marketing strategies. With the increase in demand for videos, you may eventually find it difficult to keep up with it.
Don’t miss out on a great business opportunity; don’t let go of video marketing. If you’re too busy, you can hire for technical virtual assistant. Let an expert video marketer bring in more conversions and sales while you reap the benefits of video marketing for business.
Looking for virtual staffing agencies or have questions about virtual assistant services? CALL US at 1-866-596-9041 and see how our highly qualified and trained VAs can assist in your everyday tasks and objectives.
We would love to hear if these tips worked for you! If you have questions or any Content Marketing related success stories, please leave a comment below.
References:
Yumyumvideos.com
Tarproductions.com
Business2community.com
Ngdata.com
Strategiccfo.com