Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Big Idea or Enduring Question: How do you provide a way to clone Chatter group with members to your users?  Chatter Group is primarily geared towards boosting collaboration among users within an organization. Similar to a public group, a Chatter … Continue reading →
The post Getting Started with Salesforce Flow – Part 59 (Clone a Chatter Group with Members) appeared first on Automation Champion.

 

 

According to Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. That’s why keeping your customers close pays off not only in terms of maintaining loyal relationships but also in economic terms. With that in mind, I guess the question you should ask yourself, is how do you keep your customers coming back? 

 

In this article, I’ve highlighted the Top 7 reasons why your customers don’t return, even when you do your very best.

 

1. The product is causing dissatisfaction

 

As hard as it may be for you to admit, your product may just be unsatisfactory. Either it’s a service or an item that for some reason doesn’t meet your customer’s expectations. The good thing is that it is really easy to deduce what is causing the dissatisfaction by checking the reviews on various websites. 

 

Now, if it is an issue with the quality of the product delivered, you don’t want to cut corners on it. With the enormous competition and market expansion, it is crucial to provide the highest quality when it comes to products or services, otherwise, you will face a huge churn of your customers. 

 

Another reason might be that the product does not do what is expected of it. For example, someone buys a winter hat, and it turns out not to be as warm as it should be in the customer’s mind.

 

3. Disintegration with brand values 

 

Customers inevitably have their own preferences when it comes to certain views, and now more than ever they look for brands to validate their opinions. As an example, numerous customers are switching to a more sustainable way of living, as 67% of them now identify as environmentally aware. But when the brand previously chosen by those who care about the ecosystem does something against their values, they simply switch to the one that is closer to their perceptions. 

 

It’s obvious that not every brand can meet the needs of every customer, whether it’s political, environmental, religious, or even ideological beliefs, but listening, calculating, and analyzing the needs of your target audience is a real milestone for keeping them with you for the long term.

 

3. Blatant lies

 

Lies are bad, we all know that at least I hope we do. But there is one more very common sentence, saying: Everybody lies. Everybody, but companies should not, to maintain the trend of returning customers. Sadly, companies often abuse their customers’ trust by saying only half-truths or just dodge the facts. Need an example?

 

One of the clothing brands wanted to simply trick their customers by promising t-shirts of the best quality, sewn locally from high-quality materials.  Fortunately, the truth will always come out and customers realized that the shirts were actually store-bought from a very popular, cheap company, using materials that are poorly sourced.

 

So yes, just be careful with your promises, and if you do make them, make sure you fulfill them.

 

4. Annoying shipping fees and slow delivery

 

One of the advantages of online shopping is that it uses fewer resources than traditional shopping, so it is often chosen over shopping at local stores. Although customers realize that it will take some time to deliver their purchases, they expect it to be faster rather than slower. 

 

Buyers have a general understanding that shopping for a product online involves shipping charges and delivery time, but their patience is wearing thin. Make sure you don’t charge extra for delivery and that the shipping time is not exceeded. If there is no way to skip the extra charges, at least make sure package arrival will be on time, otherwise customers will switch to shops with cheaper and faster delivery.

 

Tedious return policy

 

While on the topic of shipping, let’s stop here and talk about returns. A customer wants to return a product they got from you, no matter the reason. When they tumble upon almost a minefield they have to cross to return the purchase and in fact, it seems much easier to just buy another one, you can be sure you’ve earned yourself a churn.

 

6. Customer Service is simply bad

 

Customers often have questions, and who better to answer them than good old-fashioned customer service? Just a quick phone call, a question, an answer, and done! Another customer is happy, and the world seems to be a bit better place. 

 

Well, easier said than done. In fact, customers with questions sometimes spend hours on the phone trying to reach any available consultant, and when they finally hear a voice from the handset, it turns out to be an automated “no consultants available at the time, please try again later” message. 

 

Trust me, that drives people crazy. Crazy enough to turn away from your business.

 

7. Ignoring the feedback

 

This one might as far be the absolute worse, since ignoring customers’ feedback is a clear statement that their opinion is simply irrelevant to you. The thing is, statistics clearly show that customers love the personal approach. 68% of customers expect brands to demonstrate empathy. Therefore, if you see the feedback, that something could be conducted better, take it into account and don’t ghost your customers.

 

Conclusion

 

These examples are the most common when it comes to why customers don’t return. If you consider yourself a reliable entrepreneur with a reputable company, surely you know how to handle things, to keep both, you and your company pleased. But if you want to skip some steps by ignoring customers’ opinions and engagement as well as their needs, be careful! You might end up as an example in the next list of why customers do not return.

Hey! What new good automatic tools/bots are in the market? Are they useful when working on various social networks with multiple accounts? Also, how well do they perform while using social media proxies? I currently work with social marketing tasks and want to expand my possibilities.
submitted by /u/Internationalsoap2 [link] [comments]

An email list is one of the most important assets a company can have. Unlike social media, where you depend on algorithms that sometimes seem like a fortune wheel, with an email list, you have ownership over what you share and when. 
A few years ago, the Internet was flooded with headlines about the death of email marketing. But one thing is for sure: Email marketing still works flawlessly today. In fact, it’s one of the most effective tools. As research shows, email newsletter subscribers:

Arrive onsite from direct links at a higher percentage than search engine results or social media
Spend 80% more time at a site than other visitors
Are twice as likely to buy a product or service  

However, before you can reap these benefits, you must build your email newsletter distribution list. And the easiest way to capture emails is using signup forms. 
Why should you use an email signup form?
When done right, email signup forms can bring significant advantages. Before we get into the ways to implement a signup form with no coding experience, let’s talk about the reasons why you should use it in the first place.
First and foremost, when people are filling a signup form, they’re welcoming you into their inbox. As a result, you get more opens and clicks. 
The average unsubscribe rate for an email list is 0.1%. However, with permission-based signups, you can build a list of subscribers who want to hear from you. This way, your attrition rate decreases, your open rates increase, and your conversions are more meaningful and robust. 
Besides this, a well-designed, catchy signup form will directly contribute to increased subscription rates. So, instead of chasing readers that don’t want to receive your emails, you can attract the right audience. 
Bottom line: Email signup forms can help you balance out attrition rates and grow a list of permission-based, engaged subscribers.
How to build your newsletter list with no coding experience
For many business owners, signup forms are like a black box. They seem complicated and daunting.
But what if you can build your newsletter list with signup forms that don’t require any coding experience? 
Let’s look at a few.
Attract website visitors to sign up
There’re many ways to implement a newsletter signup form on your website. From a pop-up that opens the moment visitors land on your website to signup forms from the side or at the bottom of your page, you can easily create a form that will help you grow your newsletter list. If you’re not sure what is the best decision, you can always A/B test your signup form placement.
With Campaign Monitor creating a signup form is simple and straightforward, and it doesn’t require any developer skills. You can easily customize the headline, add a logo, change the background color, button text, and decide what fields you want to include. After the basic settings, add a thank you text, and you’re ready to go.

Create a separate page
Signup pages are standalone web pages with a unique URL you can share online or add to an email signature to attract new subscribers. Same as signup forms, you can easily create and customize a signup page with no coding experience. You don’t need a server to host a signup page because Campaign Monitor hosts it for you.
After you customize the signup page using the editing tools, you can click Save and generate a link.

Turn followers into subscribers
Why limit yourself to gathering email subscribers on your website only? If you have significant social media followers, you can use that opportunity to convert followers into subscribers. 
With 2.74 billion monthly active users, Facebook is still the most popular social network in the world. You can encourage Facebook fans to sign up for your email list by posting a link to your list’s signup form directly to your Facebook page. Besides this, you can use third-party integrations such as Facebook Lead Ads by Zapier, Leadsbridge, and Integromat to connect your Facebook audience to Campaign Monitor.

Source: SXSW
Get customers to sign up in-store
We live in an omnichannel world. Instead of relying only on digital channels to grow your email list, think outside the box and use your store to engage customers in conversation and ask them for their email address. You can turn a regular iPad into an email collection point and have customers enter their information while the cashier rings them out. 

Source: (screenshot from a CM demo)
Best practices for high-performing signup forms (with examples)
Now that you know how to create signup forms in just a few clicks let’s talk about the basic principles that will help you make them more effective.  
1. Keep it simple
Clear is better than clever. From the number of fields asking for information to color schemes and even vocabulary, your form should be straightforward without being boring. The fundamental mistake many companies make is trying to get all the information in a single email signup form. Rather than adding too many fields, keep your focus on the goal — getting the email address. 
The British jewelry brand Monica Vinader has a simple, minimalist signup form that promises subscribers to share style tips, exclusive sales, and private events in exchange for their email address. 

Source: Monica Vinader
2. Get the context right
You would be surprised how many businesses bury their signup pages somewhere on the “Contact us” page or at the bottom of their website. Instead of playing hide-and-seek, place your signup form in the upper part of your website, where visitors can easily find it. Have a clear call-to-action and try not to make it too intrusive. 
The coffee roaster and retailer Blue Bottle Coffee uses a simple signup form. It’s the first thing you notice when you open their website, it’s in-line with their brand, noticeable but not intrusive. Visitors can add their email address or decide to scroll without having an unpleasant user experience. 

Source: Blue Bottle Coffee
3. Tell them why should they subscribe (and deliver on the promise)
Transparency is a sign of respect. Clearly state what information you’ll be sending out as well as its frequency. Set expectations right from the start and always deliver on the promise. If you want to build a future-proof newsletter list, you want people to subscribe for the right reason. If you promise one thing and then deliver on something completely different, expect frustrated subscribers and a high attrition rate. 
The manufacturer and retailer of cool socks, underwear, and swimwear, Happy Socks gives visitors all the reasons they should subscribe. Besides the 10% discount on the first purchase, they promise to share special promotions and early access to new collections. 

Source: HappySocks
4. Offer an incentive 
People love free stuff, discounts and gifts. It’s human psychology. If you want to grow your newsletter list, offer your new subscribers something tangible for signing up. It can be a discount or a gift. In some cases, it’s free content. From ebooks and guides to checklists and printables — offering something in exchange for an email address can help you grow your list faster. 
If you decide to use this approach, make sure to follow up with a strong email nurture program to keep subscribers engaged and turn them into loyal readers (and customers).
The DTC underwear and loungewear brand MeUndies gives visitors a 15% discount if they sign up. The form is simple yet in-line with the playful brand identity, so it doesn’t go unnoticed. 

Source: MeUndies
5. Include social proof
The first thing we do when buying a product is navigate to the review section for reassurance. We want proof that we’re making the right decision. The same is true for newsletter subscriptions. Showing that others found value by joining the list or buying the product or service encourages people to do the same. 
This behavior is rooted in psychology and the so-called bandwagon effect. In other words, a person’s tendency to adopt some attitude because everyone else is doing it. Being part of a community of like-minded individuals gives people the affirmation they’re constantly looking for. 
The project management tool monday.com uses the power of social proof to convince people to join for a free trial. The fact that more than 100,000 teams rely on monday.com for their project management needs can be the spark that will urge people to sign up.

Source: monday.com
6. Use a catchy call-to-action
Standing out from the crowd and getting people to give you consent to email them can be challenging nowadays. You need something catchy. Something to draw visitors’ attention and make them eager for what they’ll receive.
Having a teasing call-to-action intrigues people or makes them laugh. Either way, you reach your goal: a new email address on your newsletter list. 
The delicious protein bars RXBAR makes their signup form hard to resist by offering customers an exclusive new offer for signing up. Instead of lengthy forms with unnecessary fields, they focus only on getting the customer’s email address.  
 
Source: RXBAR
7. Respect user privacy
User privacy is one of the biggest concerns in today’s digital-first world. This is key to building trust as well as following General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines for user information privacy and use.
When asking subscribers for personal information, you should be able to answer a simple question: why? Why do you need the information, and how do you plan to use it? 
If you visit the website L’Oréal Paris, you’ll notice a signup pop-up form that asks for your first and last name, email address, and birth date. Before entering the details, visitors can read the Privacy policy L’Oréal states that they collect information to provide tailored and personalized content, services, advertisements, and offers to customers.

Source: L’Oréal Paris
For more tips, tricks, and best practices to power your email marketing strategy, watch our webinar on how to get the most out of a signup form.
Wrap up
Email marketing is one of the best ways to find customers who are interested in purchasing. In order to effectively reach out and grab the attention of potential subscribers, it’s essential to have a strong email signup form.
Use the tips in this post to create the most effective signup form and set the foundation for future business growth.
You don’t have any more excuses. Create a newsletter signup form and start building your list today.
 
The post How to Create a Signup Form with No Coding Experience: 7 Best Practices to Get More Subscribers appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Looking for the best email validation and verification tools? Check out these top performers that integrate with GetResponse’s all-in-one marketing platform.

A webinar is a video presentation, seminar, lecture, or workshop delivered over the internet.
Although once declared dead and outdated, webinars are very much still relevant. Many businesses are now rethinking the benefits of a virtual event, especially during the time of social distancing. In fact, ON24, a virtual platform, hosted 19,292 webinars in April of 2020 alone, which amounts to roughly 640 webinars per day.
Given their popularity, you may be interested in getting on board. In this post, we’ll give the most heavy-hitting statistics about webinars that make a case for using them in your marketing strategy.

Webinar Stats To Know
General Webinar Stats

67% of marketers in 2020 were increasing their investment in webinars. (LinkedIn)
The global webinar market is estimated to reach 800 million by 2023, up 253 million from 2015. (MarketWatch)
Marketers say that webinars are cost-effective as they help lower the cost-per-lead. (ON24)
95% of survey respondents said webinars play a key part in their marketing efforts, and 38% consider webinars critical to their digital communications. (ON24)
53% of marketers say webinars are the top-of-the-funnel format that generates the most high-quality leads. (Demand Gen Report)
Professionals say that video-based learning is their preferred learning format, and 85% prefer the video to be webinars. 94% of respondents also report viewing webinar content monthly. (BrightTALK)
Viewers in 2020 watched three times more webinar content than they did in 2019. (ON24)
91% of webinar marketers in 2020 say they’ve been successful, which is a 10% increase from 2019. (Wyzowl)

Webinar Conversion Stats

76% of marketers say that webinars help them reach more leads, 75% say it extends brand reach, 69% say it helps scale marketing efforts, and 49% say that it helps them reach targeted accounts. (ON24)
A survey from April of 2020 found that webinars had a 61% registration to attendee conversion rate, up from 55% in 2019. (ON24)
Webinars hosted on a company domain generate 3x more audience participation. 91% of professionals who watch webinars say their next step is to visit a website for more info. If they’re already on your site, you’re increasing the probability of conversion. (BrightTALK)
Communication webinars have the highest conversion rate (67.05%). (ON24)
Email is the top promotional channel for webinars. Up to 57% of registrations come from that channel, and the conversion rate is 27% higher. (GoToWebinar, BrightTALK)

Webinar Content Stats

81% of marketers use Q&A as an engagement tool during webinars, 69% provide resources for download. (ON24)
When asked what they’d most like to see in their webinars, consumers reported that they would most like (22%) to see a host or presenter that takes questions from the audience. (HubSpot)
Survey respondents rate webinar video integrations as a 7.8 in importance on a scale of 10. (ON24)
60-minute webinars attract more attendees than 30-minute webinars, and the average attendee viewing time is 57 minutes. (WorkCast, GoToWebinar)
Thursdays are the best days to host a webinar. (MegaMeeting)
Marketers prefer webinars that are live and on-demand. (Statista)
Consumers reported being most likely (27%) to sign up for a webinar that teaches them something about a hobby or passion, and 18% would attend a webinar that taught them something about their career or industry. (HubSpot)
Consumers report that the most engaging webinar format is a presentation that teaches them how to do something specific. (HubSpot)

Webinars Are Here To Stay
As these statistics demonstrate, webinars are not dead; they are here to stay. Case in point, 53% of marketers say that they plan to include webinars in their 2021 video strategy, up 11% from the previous year.
If you’re interested in learning more about using the channel in your marketing, read this guide to understand how to create compelling webinars and learn from experienced marketing HubSpotters on their best practices for taking webinars from good to great.

When I only worked from home occasionally, I would spend all day shifting around in my uncomfortable dining chair. Once work from home (WFH) became an everyday thing, I knew my current setup wouldn’t cut it, so I bought a great office chair.
I didn’t pay the extra money for assembly – a decision I’m convinced furniture companies want you to regret – and three installation attempts later, I have my chair.
Yeah, the backrest is a tiny bit crooked, but it still works as intended, giving me the extra support and comfort I need to do my job. That’s what I imagine corporate sponsorships feel like, minus the crooked part.

When your business needs additional support and resources for events and projects, corporate sponsors can make a huge difference. But it’s not as easy as just reaching out to companies you want to collaborate with.
Find out how a corporate sponsorship works, how to secure one for your next event, and how to write a sponsorship proposal.
While financial support is usually synonymous with sponsorship, that’s not the only way a company can contribute to your event. Here are three main types of sponsors:

A media sponsor will help your event or project gain the publicity needed to attract attendees. The sponsor may invest in ads in the local newspaper, TV commercials, or other marketing efforts to help you gain exposure.

An in-kind sponsor will offer things other than money. Looking for a venue? They may provide that. Need food vendors or prizes? That’s another way they can contribute. They could even help you secure a keynote speaker. This type of sponsor provides the resources you need to accomplish your event goals.

A digital sponsor will assist in the execution of tech-related activities for your event. This can be providing the hosting platform or an app.

So, what’s in it for the sponsors? For one, associating with a company that has a positive brand image can be an effective way for a brand to improve its market perception. It’s also an opportunity to gain more exposure and reach audiences they may not yet have access to.
On the sponsored side, attaching your company to an established brand can also boost your credibility and help you reach more consumers in your market.
Examples of Corporate Sponsorships
1. Essence’s “Dear Black Men” event

Image Source
In June 2020, Essence held a virtual summit designed to celebrate the Black community and Black men in particular. The “Dear Black Men” event was sponsored by Bevel, a consumer goods brand whose target audience reflects the event attendees.
The second sponsor was Advancing Black Pathways, JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s fellowship program that centers its work around empowering members of the black community.
Given the topic and the target audience, these sponsors were a great match for this event.
2. A Free Bird, Org

Image Source
Storage Mart is a nationwide storage company that’s core values include supporting philanthropic initiatives. A Free Bird is a nonprofit organization helping children battling cancer find joy in the arts.
One thing to note is that A Free Bird has a webpage dedicated to sponsors. In addition to reaching out to sponsors, your company can also proactively set up a page to attract and direct companies interested in supporting you.
3. Victoria Film Commission

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Victoria Film Commission (@visfilmcommission)

Both companies have more in common than just the name “Victoria,” and that’s locality.
The Victoria Film Commission is a nonprofit with a mission to promote Southern Vancouver Island as a film destination.
In a statement, Chateau Victoria Hotel & Suites revealed that supporting local businesses is a part of their mission, given that it is owned and operated by a local.
How To Get Corporate Sponsorship for an Event
1. Plan internally.
Before you reach out to sponsors, there’s a lot of prep work to complete. Start by gathering all the information you’ll need to attract sponsors.
The first is the vision for the event or project: What is the purpose, and what do you want audiences to gain from it?
Say you’re the newest affordable office supply company in the market. You may want to host an event to solidify your brand as a go-to store for office items.
Next, what are the goals of your event? How will you measure success? This is an important factor to consider, as it will inform which sponsor you choose. You’ll want to work with a sponsor with event goals in sync with your own.
What comes after is figuring out your attendees. How many attendees do you expect, and who are they? This is arguably the most important factor for your sponsors, because they’ll want to know if your audience aligns with the persona(s) they’re targeting.
As a furniture company, you may expect professionals between 20 to 30 years of age who have recently entered the workforce and are looking for affordable supplies to stock in their office. A brand that also targets young professionals would be a great sponsor.
If you’re a nonprofit fighting world hunger, for instance, you’ll want to find a company with a mission that includes philanthropic efforts like these.
Another big selling point are your event assets. How are you attracting consumers to your event or project? This could be a well-known speaker, interactive activities, or innovative presentations.
And lastly, based on these factors, what resources are you missing? This will help you determine the type of sponsorship your brand needs so you can draft your proposal using the right language.
2. Build a nurturing workflow.
Getting a sponsor can be a long process that requires a lot of relationship management.
You can’t just send an email to your sponsor and consider it done. It may take a few (or more) conversations to secure an agreement. While that may seem tedious, both parties need to ensure it’s the right fit.
Before you even reach out to your sponsors, build a workflow to streamline the communication process. Here’s an example of the automation you could set up in your CRM:

Reach out to X sponsor and include a link to schedule a call with Y team member. If scheduled, the team member will receive an email with the details of the sponsor and preliminary screening questions.
Send follow-up email in three days if contact has not responded to initial reach out.
After the initial call, send event details over to the sponsor.
Follow-up with X sponsor to ask thoughts on event details if no response after three days.

These are processes you can automate in your CRM platform to facilitate communication between you and potential sponsors.
3. Decide what brands to reach out to.
Now that you’re ready for outreach, decide who is the best fit for your brand.
Don’t know where to start? Look at brands that have already sponsored other businesses in your industry. This creates an easier point of entry. You can also look at your competitors. What type of brands are they collaborating with?
Once you have an idea of who to contact, do some research. Look at the company’s mission and values to see if they align with your own. What about its audience? Is there an intersection between your target audience and theirs? That’s a selling point you’d want to highlight in your sponsorship proposal.
Track the company’s current brand perception – you can leverage this information to convince them why partnering with you would be positive for their image.
You’ll also need to evaluate their local presence. If your sponsor has no presence in your region, they may not be the best fit, as you’ll want your sponsor to bring more exposure to your event.
In addition, be sure to check that the companies you’re considering have sponsorship guidelines. Some brands have strict eligibility rules, and you wouldn’t want to waste your time reaching out if you don’t meet their requirements.
4. Find out what your sponsors are looking for.
Learn everything you can about the company to see if it will be a good fit for your event. This means reaching out to the company and asking questions like:

Who is your target audience?
What are your marketing goals?
What do you look for in a company you sponsor?
How do you measure the success of a relationship with your sponsor?

These questions will help you get to the heart of what your potential sponsors are looking for and write a proposal that speaks directly to that.
5. Prepare your sponsorship proposal.
Your sponsorship proposal can make or break your chance of getting a sponsor. So, you want to take your time tailoring it to each sponsor you’re reaching out to. Every proposal should have:

An overview of your brand
Event details
A breakdown of what you need from the sponsor
Incentives
A personal touch

Let’s dive into each of these points here.
6. Start your sponsor search.
It’s time to reach out – where do you go?
The easiest place to start is online. Websites like SponsorMyEvent are designed specifically to bring brands and sponsors together. You can start there during your initial search to narrow down potential companies.
If you’re going the traditional offline path, use LinkedIn to identify the right employee to call or email. You don’t want to waste any time reaching out to employees who aren’t in a position to discuss the sponsorship.

Corporate Sponsorship Proposal
By including the following elements in your proposal, you will make sure your proposal stands out and get one step closer to securing your sponsors.
1. Brand Overview
When reviewing your proposal, the first thing your sponsor will likely ask is, “Who’s this brand?” This is your opportunity to make a great first impression and WOW your sponsor.
Tell a story about your brand, your mission, your values. You can dive into how your company got started or focus on your company’s recent path. Either way, you want to aim for emotional appeal.
You can get into the nitty-gritty later. This is where you capture their attention and make them want to sponsor you.
2. Event Details
This section is where the meat of your proposal starts.
Describe your event or project. What is the goal, and what does success look like?
Then, cover your attendees. Who is the target audience for this event? Your sponsor will want to know if your event will allow them to reach their key demographic. If not, focus on how your event will help them accomplish the marketing goals they outlined during your initial conversation.
3. Required Resources
When it comes to asking for what you need, don’t beat around the bush.
Describe exactly what resources your team will need from the sponsor and how they will be used.
Let’s say your team has determined that you need a $10,000 contribution for your upcoming event. You’d include that along with a breakdown of the cost allocation, as follows:

Location rental: $2,000
Keynote speakers fees: $5,000
Decor: $1,000
Food vendors: $2,000

If your team needs a non-financial investment, outline what you’ll need and why it’s important for the execution of the event.
4. Incentives
One question potential sponsors may have when reviewing your proposal is, “What’s in it for us?” This is your turn to highlight how they can benefit from working with you.
During your initial research and preliminary contact with the company, you should have learned what the company is looking for. This could be a better brand image or exposure to a target segment. Use your proposal to highlight how this event will help them accomplish their goals.
Many brands can also be incentivized by being included in the event in the follow ways:

Adding their logo to all event marketing collateral
Giving them a designated booth at the event
Offering a presentation slot

5. A Personal Touch
Finally, your proposal won’t be complete without adding a personal element to your presentation that ties right back to the sponsor.
There’s nothing worse than a generic pitch. Make sure to include elements in your proposal that connect you to the sponsor. Whether that’s their market entry story, their values, or their latest initiatives. Include anything that can help close the gap and convince your sponsor you’re meant to work together.
Securing a corporate sponsor requires a lot of planning and strategy. But if done right, not only will you gain a partner for your next event, but you’ll foster a relationship with a brand that can continue to support you in the future.

Determining your audience profile is a critical step in ensuring your campaign is successful.
An audience profile can help you personalize your campaign’s messaging to reach those most likely to convert, and limit the amount of spend you might’ve otherwise wasted on underperforming ads.
Here, we’ll explore the information you need to include in an audience profile, how to write an audience profile, and audience profile examples.
Plus, we’ll dive into a media audience profile and how that type of profile can help you increase the success of your paid ads campaigns.
But first — what is an audience profile, anyway?

What information should I include in an audience profile?
When creating an audience profile, you’ll need to include the following:

Demographic information: This includes personal attributes like geography, age, education, occupation, and income.

Psychographic information: This includes attributes related to personality traits, interests, attitudes or beliefs, and lifestyle.

Goals, challenges, or pain points: For this section, determine your audience’s goals, challenges, or pain points as it relates to your product or service. How can your product or service meet your audience’s needs? What search queries does your audience use to find your product or service? For instance, if you’re selling an 8-week mindfulness program, then your fictional character likely has a big challenge with focusing and finding time to ground himself in the present moment.

Values: What does your target audience value? This includes bigger-picture values and motivators, such as “nature”, “socializing”, “a sense of belonging”, or “autonomy at work”.

Preferred channels: What channel(s) does your audience spend the most time? This could be social channels, such as YouTube or Instagram, or search engines like Google. The preferred channel depends on the type of campaign you’re running. If you’re running a paid advertising campaign, for instance, you’ll want to determine if your audience spends most time on Facebook, Google, or somewhere else.

Preferred content type(s): Once your audience finds your content, what format would they prefer it in? E-books, blog posts, or case studies? Or podcast? Video? Determining the format will help you best serve your audience.

Buying behavior: Is your audience impulsive, or do they need weeks — if not months — before making a purchase? Are they open to your product or service anytime during the year, or only during a certain season? If you sell beach chairs, for instance, your target audience is likely relatively impulsive during the summer months, when a beach chair is most necessary.

It’s important to note — an audience profile is different than a target market, or buyer persona.
A target market includes every single prospective buyer for your product or service. For instance, perhaps you sell software that can be used for different use cases in different industries. In this case, a target market includes the prospects in each industry who could benefit from your product — all with different needs, goals, challenges, and beliefs.
An audience profile, on the other hand, is one fictitious person who you’re targeting with an upcoming campaign.
An audience profile also isn’t a buyer persona. A buyer persona is the final person who will ultimately purchase your product or service, but in many cases, you’ll want to market to anyone who can influence the final buyer. For instance, your audience profile might be a social media manager, even though the buyer persona is a company’s CMO, since she’ll have final sign-off.
Next, let’s dive into how you can write an audience profile.
How to Write an Audience Profile
1. Determine the goal(s) of your upcoming campaign.
Before writing your audience profile, you want to know who you’re targeting with your marketing campaign.
For instance, are you creating high-intent advertisements to target buyers with your products or services? Or, alternatively, are you hoping to increase attendees at an upcoming marketing event?
You’ll make a different audience profile depending on your goals. If you’re hoping to increase sales for your product via a social media advertising campaign, then your audience profile will look similar to your buyer persona.
If, instead, you’re hoping to increase views to your YouTube channel, then your audience profile will look like a fictional character based off your YouTube analytics to determine who enjoys watching your content.
2. Dive deep into analytics.
Once you’ve determined your campaign goal, use data and analytics to create a prototype of your persona.
Start with Google Analytics to explore demographic information related to your website visitors. Take note of age, gender, location, and types of device — additionally, figure out from which channels your audience arrives. Is it typically organic search, a social channel, email, or paid advertising?
You can also use CRM data to further explore what customers convert at the highest rate. For instance, you might use your CRM to determine which industries convert the most, or which pages have the highest conversion rate, to refine your audience profile depending on existing customers’ behavior.
Finally, use channel-specific metrics to fill in the missing pieces. If you’re planning on running a Google ads campaign, you might dive into past high-performing ads and who clicked on those ads.
Alternatively, if you’re running a Facebook campaign, you can use Facebook’s lookalike audience feature to reach people who are similar to your best existing customers.
3. Use qualitative metrics to determine your audience’s biggest challenges.
To fill out the challenges/goals/pain points section of your audience profile, it’s a good idea to take a look at customer reviews or focus group intel to determine the biggest challenges your prospects and customers face.
You can also use keyword research to find high-intent keywords related to your products or services, which might help you determine your audience’s biggest challenges, as well.
For instance, let’s say you’re creating a new advertising campaign related to a social media listening and scheduling tool.
You might first leverage Ahrefs or another keyword explorer tool to determine questions people ask related to a given search query. In this example, I searched “social media tools” to find similar questions related to the search keyword:

I also searched “social media tools” on Google and looked at the People Also Ask feature to dive deeper into questions, pain points, and challenges related to social media tools:

Combined with your qualitative, customer-focused research, you’ll be able to uncover the biggest challenges of your audience, and how you should tailor your campaign to target those pain points.  
4. Collect psychographic data using Google Trends or influencers in the industry.
If you work for a B2C company, consider consuming content from top influencers in a given industry to determine psychographic data for your audience profile.
For instance, if you’re selling fitness gear, take a look at the social profiles and blog posts of top fitness influencers. What do they care about? What do they value? What activities do they do in a given day? These characteristics can help you round-out your audience profile.
If you’re working for a B2B company, you might read industry case studies, reports, or join webinars to determine the interests, values, and behaviors of your target persona within a given industry.
An example of this might be reading “2020 Trends in Sales Management” if you’re hoping to target sales managers at your target companies.
Ready to get started creating your own audience profiles? Let’s take a look at two examples you can use for inspiration before you create your own.
Audience Profile Examples
1. B2B Audience Profile Example: Marketing Maria

2. B2C Audience Profile Example: Athletic Andy

Media Audience Profile
Media planning and buying can’t happen without an audience profile.
For instance, media buying — buying campaign or advertising space on various channels, or sharing targeted campaigns and ads — can’t happen without media planning.
And media planning, at its core, is “determining how, when, where, and why your business shares media content with your audience. The process includes deciding what media will be shared on what channels to boost reach, engagements, conversions, ROI, and more.”
Ultimately, then, both media planning and media buying need pre-defined audiences to be successful. If you haven’t taken the time to create an audience profile before purchasing ad space, you risk wasting money and resources on audiences who ultimately won’t convert anyway.
An audience profile can affect where you place your advertisements. Once you’ve created an audience profile, for instance, you might find your audience persona spends most of her time on LinkedIn. LinkedIn advertising solutions, then, can help you best reach your target audience.
An audience profile also influences the design of your ad. You’ll want to design ad copy around your audience’s interests, pain points, and preferences — something you can only do once you’ve created an audience profile.
For instance, The Economist might’ve created an audience profile and determined their audience likes education and knowledge, but doesn’t like getting bogged down with too much negativity, particularly from news outlets. As a result, a simple tagline, “Brighter days ahead”, helps attract and convert the right audience through their ads.

Ultimately, your audience profile is a vital foundation for ensuring you’re effectively attracting and converting those best-suited for your brand.
However, an audience profile can vary depending on each individual campaign — so feel free to keep this post bookmarked for the next time you need to alter your audience profile for a new advertising or marketing campaign.

Do you remember the last time you signed up for a webinar? Were you on the edge of your seat waiting in anticipation for the event?
If you’re like me, it’s more likely that you signed up and attended the first ten minutes, and then started flipping through emails or answering Slacks. Or, worse — you signed up for the event and totally forgot about it.
Let’s be honest: most webinars aren’t great. They’re certainly not inducing Netflix cliff-hanger levels of anticipation and excitement.
But they’re also an effective form of lead generation, nurturing, and sales enablement. In fact, if you do webinars right, you can attract new prospects to your business, establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry, and increase business revenue.
This article will cover the biggest mistakes to avoid if you want to build a world-class webinar program.
Here, I’ve included some lessons based off my own experience launching and revamping the webinar program at CXL, as well as insights and quotes from other successful marketers.
Let’s dive into the top nine webinar mistakes — and what to do, instead.

1. Your webinar isn’t valuable.
People will forgive a bad slide deck design.
They’ll forgive a webinar hosted at an inconvenient day or time. They might not notice if you don’t introduce your speakers properly — and you can even get away with forgetting to send a link to the recording afterwards.
But if you’re not providing value, you can’t possibly succeed with your webinar.
There’s simply no point in hosting a webinar if it’s not delivering something useful, or entertaining.
What is value? That’s tough to answer universally. The best way to determine if your webinars are valuable is through qualitative feedback and quantitative proof.
On the quantitative side, are your webinars growing in attendance over time? If not, while there could be other reasons (such as lazy marketing), it’s often because interest and trust is waning in your content. Ideally, you want not only new attendees, but repeat attendees. That’s how good your content should be.
Qualitatively, if you’re not getting any emails thanking you for your amazing content, that’s cause for concern. At least one person should be raving about the content by the end of the presentation.
If you’re not hitting that level of sentiment and response, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and make sure you actually have something worth saying. You can collect feedback deliberately as well, using a survey like NPS or CSAT.
Examples of valueless content include:

Pure sales pitches
Basic, superficial information
Misaligned content (i.e. the substance doesn’t match the title of the webinar)
Boring, long-winded presentations
No actionable takeaways for your attendees

What to Do Instead
A good rule of thumb for me is to ask, “Would people pay for this?” If the answer is no, then I don’t want to publish or promote it.
Granted, the webinar is going to be free. But the point is you want it to be good enough that people say to themselves, “How is this free? It’s amazing.”
If you’re not creating value, your webinars won’t deliver the results you’re looking for.
2. Your webinar is too sales-y.
Your webinar should not be one big sales pitch. If it is, you’re doing it wrong.
This is a poor way to interact with an audience, but it’s still remarkably prevalent.
According to Virginia Zacharaki, Marketing Communications Associate at Moosend: “One of the main keys of a webinar is to raise awareness for a brand, feature, or technique using valuable content.”

“The sales-y tone of your speaker can lead to the audience’s loss of interest, whereas focusing on finding actual solutions and giving insights makes you a trusted expert.”

“It is only logical that awareness enhances the consideration stage of decision-making and moves the prospect further along the buyer’s journey.”
In other words, people sign up for webinars to learn things — not to receive a hard sales pitch from a vendor.

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Granted, you can, and should, use webinars as an opportunity to increase sales. You just want to make sure you’re leading with unique value first.
What to Do Instead
When I began designing webinars to promote CXL Institute, I made sure the content was product-relevant, but not a product pitch. Since CXL Institute sold expert-led courses, this was a relatively easy transition  — we simply asked those same experts to lead our webinars.

We chose to construct the webinars to be completely tactical. There were no slides — only screen shares. I didn’t do a lengthy introduction of the speaker. Instead, they dove in and provided their valuable insights.
We only pitched their upcoming course at the end of the webinar by offering a 20% discount to attendees.
It’s okay to pitch a product, but you’ll want to do so in a way that blends educational content with a subtle product nudge.
A framework I like to use for this is “Product-Led Content.” 
You want to design your content (and webinars) to center around a problem that your product or service solves, and weave your product throughout genuinely instructional content. This way, your solution is an obvious consideration, but the audience still gets value even if they aren’t interested in your product.
3. You’re marketing your webinar to the wrong audience.
How you construct a webinar is important — and so is the audience to whom you promote it.
How you approach your audience targeting depends on your company and webinar goals. For instance, if you’re using your webinars for customer education, then you’ll want to target your webinars to, well … customers.
In many cases, though, webinars are used as a lead generation tool to attract new customers to your product or service. In this case, many of the same general marketing best practices (customer research, buyer personas, customer journey mapping, and segmentation) apply.
Andriy Zapisotskyi, Growth Manager at Mailtrap, puts it like this: “Pay attention to where you distribute your webinar and focus only on your target audience. Irrelevant audiences may harm your email list, and an email with the invitation to the webinar will end up in the spam folder instead. Warm-up and validate every signed-up lead to improve email deliverability.”
Beyond the simple hit to your attendance rate and open rate, if you market to the wrong audience, you’ll find it hard to generate sales and ROI from your program.
What to Do Instead
First, take a step back and ask yourself where you’ll be promoting your webinar and how you’ll get attendees. When I host webinars, my team and I promote them on our Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, on our co-hosts’ social media channels, and through our email lists. It’s a limited audience, but the point is to slowly build trust and repeat attendees over time.
Many companies do paid advertising to get webinar attendees. In this case, you need to ask yourself if you’re truly attracting the right attendees.
This can be deduced quantitatively. If you’re getting sign-ups but no attendees, something is misaligned. Similarly, if you’re getting attendance, but your attendees aren’t becoming leads, you need to change your approach.
4. You’re not making your webinar engaging and interactive.
If you’ve ever learned a second language, you know that immersion and interaction is more effective than passive consumption.
When you participate, you get to make mistakes or learn lessons in real-time. You get instant feedback, and you also use different parts of the brain when you trigger active participation.
Most webinars are one-sided. The attendees sign up and passively listen to the presentation (or, more likely, check their emails or scroll Instagram).
If you can disrupt that, you can drive greater engagement, learning, and retention. All of this helps to build trust, and yes, increase sales and ROI from your program.
What to Do Instead
The easiest way to trigger participation is to ask people to introduce themselves and where they’re from at the start of the webinar.
I also like to give homework before the webinar, and a summary quiz after it’s over. This ensures attendees will come prepared and excited to the webinar, and they’ll also retain knowledge when it’s over.
Chris Schelzi, Head of Growth at AppSumo, gives this sage advice: “Ask for what you want! Many people hosting webinars are demoralized by the lack of engagement — but so few people ask for it.”
“I recommend, at the beginning of the webinar, starting with a few simple engagement questions for the audience: ‘Where are you joining us from today?’ ‘What’s the #1 thing you’re looking to get out of this session?’ etc. These questions will prime the audience to use the chat.
“Additionally, make sure to do this throughout the presentation. Don’t be afraid of pausing while you wait for people to respond. A few seconds can feel like a few minutes, but people love to see and hear you interacting live with their questions.”
5. You’re ignoring the holistic marketing system.
A webinar doesn’t exist in isolation.
Instead, you want to look at a webinar as being one piece to the larger puzzle of your entire marketing strategy.
Where does your webinar fall in your customer journey? Is it top of the funnel — and if so, what steps will follow this webinar to push the prospect further down the funnel? Or is it bottom of the funnel, in which case, what touchpoints preceded this one?
Mapping this stuff out is uncommon but absolutely essential. Similar to how you ensure there are CTAs on your blog posts, it’s critical you use your webinar as an opportunity to move prospects further along the funnel.
What to Do Instead
This tip is less tactical, and more strategic. The number one thing I would do is map out your customer journey and define which webinars fit in at which stages of the journey.

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Adam Enfroy, blogger at AdamEnfroy.com, gives this advice: “Did you warm up your leads via consistent emails? Did you ask them to join a VIP list to prove they will take action? Are you matching the webinar offer to what your readers actually want?”
“While there are a lot of tips and tricks to running an effective webinar, don’t forget that everything you do leading up to the webinar is just as important.”
6. You’re pursuing too many goals with one webinar.
One single webinar cannot possibly serve every business or marketing need you have. Webinars can be used for onboarding, customer education, support, lead generation, and lead nurturing — but not all at once.
This same principle applies to many areas of marketing. For instance, you can write a blog post that serves one or two purposes, but it shouldn’t seek to serve all audiences at once.
Juliana Nicholson, Principal Campaigns Manager at HubSpot, gives this advice: “It’s tempting to try to use one webinar for every part of your flywheel. Marketers want the biggest audience exposure possible, a tool for reps to use in their sales process, and a way to delight customers. This is hard to pull off.”

“Unless you are putting on a multifaceted event, I recommend marketers focus on one goal at a time, and let that drive their strategy from start-to-finish, rather than attempting to boil the ocean.”

What to Do Instead
Reverse engineer a webinar, starting with your goals. What’s your KPI — new leads, total customers attending, increased NPS of attendees, or something else? Narrow the scope.
Choose one of these goals and construct your webinar with that purpose in mind.
7. You’re not acknowledging the realities and limitations of the format.
Despite your best intentions, you have to realize that a webinar is a webinar.
It’s not a live workshop, and people’s attention will be scattered. You can do your best to keep people engaged through interactivity and high-value content, but you still have to acknowledge that most people will do the video equivalent of “skimming.”
Shane Hedge, co-founder and CEO of Air, calls this the importance of “script-to-screen alignment.” Essentially, it means highlighting the important stuff and making your presentation “skimmable.”
Here’s his advice: “A webinar is not an in-person meeting. It’s not a standalone video. The audience likely has multiple tabs open and may only pay attention during key moments where the content draws them in.”
What to Do Instead
Summarize your presentation before you begin and after you finish with key points. Draw people in periodically with engaging questions and interactive workshop moments. Include multimedia and screen-sharing instead of just sharing slide-after-slide.
And make sure to send an email recapping the main points and linking to further resources.

8. Your webinar is poor-quality, or you don’t have adequate equipment.
If you’re serious about webinars, you’ll want to boost the quality of the presentation. This comes in three forms:

Video quality
Audio quality
Presentation quality

To start, presentation quality is the easiest to upgrade with little extra investment. Either work with a designer to spruce up your slides or use a platform like beautiful.ai to design them. Then, make sure your slides are publicly accessible to the webinar audience.
Video quality is the toughest to improve. For starters, make sure your webinar software is solid. I personally like Zoom, but there are other alternatives you can consider.
Here’s an article on how to run webinars with HubSpot to help you with the tactical specifics.
Finally, almost all quality complaints will inevitably be about the audio. If you’re going to invest in equipment, I recommend a good microphone (the Blue Yeti is popular). Any good USB microphone will be better than the default option on your laptop.
What to Do Instead
Don’t skimp on quality, especially when it comes to audio and the details of your presentation.
Poor video quality — at least to a point — can be forgiven (remember, many people are going to be checking email in-between slides).
Get a good microphone and invest in a designer for your presentations.
The latter also helps if you want to publish the slides afterwards on a platform like Slides by HubSpot.
9. You don’t follow-up with your attendees.
Finally, a common mistake companies make is put all this effort into a webinar — creating it, finding partners, writing copy, designing a landing page, promoting or advertising it, and delivering it — and then skimping on the follow-up.
First off, most people who sign up for a webinar won’t attend. That’s just the nature of the game.
But even those who do attend likely want to get a recording of the presentation. That’s the bare minimum, but many companies fail to deliver that.
What to Do Instead
The magic is in the follow-up. Very few people will be ready to buy your product or services immediately after one webinar.
It’s vital you schedule a nurturing sequence to execute immediately after the webinar is complete. The first email should be a recap with resources, notes, and a recording of the presentation. The second and third can be education or promotional, depending on the stage of the funnel at which you’re delivering the webinar.
No matter what, don’t make your webinar be the last touchpoint. You’ll get much higher ROI if you think carefully about the follow-up.
Webinars don’t have to be boring. In fact, they can be fun, valuable, and tremendously effective. Some marketing programs have been built on the backs of webinars.
While this article covered nine discrete tips to creating better webinars, at the heart of it all is good judgement and keeping in mind the value you’re providing. If you do that, the minutia won’t matter as much.