Digital Marketing

How Can On-Demand Marketing Services Help You Market Better?

October 17, 2020 by Workdom Marketing Specialist

Many companies, whether they’re small startups bootstrapping their way to success, or large, established brands, are finding that on-demand marketing is a game-changer for them. But what makes on-demand marketing better than the traditional methods of online marketing? Let’s take a look at several advantages that you’ll want to keep in mind when considering whether or not on-demand marketing is right for you:

On-Demand Marketing Saves Money

Probably the first concern on many business’ minds is saving money, especially when the future is full of uncertainty. On-demand marketing can help save thousands of dollars over the cost of hiring and training an entire team of marketing staff along with paying related benefits, insurance and more.

Because you only use your on-demand marketing team when needed, this type of structure has the ability to save more money over a longer period of time without sacrificing marketing quality or campaign momentum.

On-Demand Marketing Saves on Training Time

With traditional hires, there’s a great deal more onboarding and time needed for proper training to get them “up to speed” on what needs to be done. On-demand marketing gives you the opportunity to jump right into the strategy with people who understand their roles and how they fit into your overall marketing plan.

On-Demand Marketing Lets You Concentrate on Areas that Need It

Rather than letting your marketing team sit idly by while you prepare your next campaign, on-demand marketing allows you to be laser-focused on areas that need attention, whether they’re:

Branding
Social Media
Customer Acquisition
Customer Retention
Email Marketing
And more

This helps you to properly “shore up” areas of your business that may have been more neglected in the past, allowing you to create a comprehensive, multi-pronged “plan of action” where everything is synchronized and optimized to perform.

On-Demand Marketing Gives You Access to Experts

Another significant advantage of on-demand marketing is that it provides you with access to experts. These are people who eat, live and breathe the very latest in their respective fields — be they email marketing, social media, branding and much more.

This means that not only are you able to tap into their considerable knowledge but you can also leverage different facets of on-demand marketing at different times to help you reach and exceed your business objectives.

Imagine having an expert for Facebook ads, an expert for branding, an expert for email marketing, on-demand and ready to work with you to coordinate a campaign that delivers an improved ROI without breaking the bank. Effective. Affordable and easy, all at the push of a button.

On-Demand Marketing Can Make Your Next Launch or Campaign a Hit!

As you can see, having an entire marketing team on-hand and ready to jump into action can make a significant difference in how your campaign is received by customers, including improving your ROI and ROAS — key metrics that you’ll already want to be measuring and refining.

Even if you’re not exactly sure how to approach your marketing, or you want to make an impact with your brand, having the right team can mean the difference between success and failure. However, selecting the right people for the job can be time-consuming and costly. On-demand marketing is ready to spring into action when you are and ready to help you see every campaign through to completion.

A Proven Track Record of Resounding Success

Many of our clients have achieved such remarkable success, that we have become their “go-to marketing team”, enabling them to maximize their resources while running a lean and agile operation.

If you’d like to learn more about how on-demand marketing services can help your business thrive at any and every stage, reach out and chat with our senior advertising executive professionals today and let’s talk! We’ll take the time to get to know your strategy, plans and goals and help you craft a customized plan of action with results that are measurable and impactful.

Learn more by contacting our team at Workdom today.

Why Most SaaS Businesses are Chasing the Wrong Metrics (And What to Do Instead)

October 9, 2020 by Workdom Marketing Specialist

In the SaaS industry, it’s common to develop an obsession with measuring and tracking everything. But some metrics are more important than others, and some just aren’t important at all. In a world of data science and analytics, we often believe that capturing all this data and information will somehow make it crystal clear to us what we need to do in order to be successful. But there’s so much information, and with that, a lot of fluff and filler.

Here’s how to free yourself from the digital clutter, and focus on what matters.

Pay Attention to Your KPIs

At the core of your marketing initiatives, there are going to be some metrics that you’ll want to focus on specifically — your Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. These are the indicators that show how well your business is actually performing relative to the objectives you’re setting for yourself. In other words, these are like the lifeblood of your business that reflects its health and wellness in terms of growth.

It’s very common to think of KPIs as things like your keywords, clicks or even your search engine rankings. While although those look like they’re KPIs, they really aren’t. They’re not an honest measure of how well your business is doing and are more like a superficial “readout”, or a snapshot of your business at any given time.

Below are a couple examples of this:

Clicks vs. Leads

One of the biggest metrics that’s thrown at SaaS businesses is clicks. Clicks on your email links. Clicks on your website pages. Clicks on your social media ads. With clicks being thrown this way and that, it’s easy to think that clicks must surely matter and should be incorporated into your evaluation plan.

But it’s not just the person on the other side of the screen (or phone) that’s doing the clicking. Lots of things get counted as clicks that probably shouldn’t be. In addition, many times, people confuse clicks with leads. If someone clicked on your SaaS ad, saw that it wasn’t for them and left, would you consider them a lead? Not at all.

Now, with that being said, clicks are often mentioned as measurable metrics because they are important. But realize that clicks aren’t the be-all-end-all of SaaS marketing metrics. Competitors can click your ads (and your emails), and robots from various search engines and other automated programs can do the same.

Bounce Rates

Likewise, bounce rates don’t tell the full story of how “sticky” your site is. You could have a high bounce rate but solid customer retention. You could have a low bounce rate but struggle to capture user attention. Bounce rate is like having a single piece of a much larger puzzle. You need more information from the other KPIs in order to make a well-rounded marketing decision. Bounce rate, just like clicks alone, doesn’t tell the whole story.

Rankings vs. Revenues

This is another common metric that SaaS companies seem to fall in love with — and it’s understandable. After all, your ranking in search engines determines how many people find you and subsequently sign up. But you could have the top ranking in the search engines and still not make the money you’d hoped you would, occupying such a place.

It’s easy to get a little too carried away with search engine rankings instead of looking at revenue. A higher ranking in the search engine doesn’t always necessarily translate to making more money — it’s what you do with that traffic to get it to convert that matters. So although it’s easy to think of ranking as a success metric, it’s what you do with that success that ultimately matters.

What Metrics Should Your SaaS Concentrate On?

Of course, these are just some of the many metrics that your SaaS should concentrate on. It is by no means an exhaustive list, and despite the fact that many SaaS companies are based on the same core idea, at times they may need to concentrate on very different metrics as an accurate measure of their success.

Reach out to our senior advertising professionals at Workdom today and let’s talk more about the metrics your SaaS company should be measuring and how to start getting information on the metrics that matter to your bottom line.

Medical Device Companies: Here’s How to Market to Busy Doctors and Physicians

October 2, 2020 by Workdom Marketing Specialist

Let’s be honest — when it comes to marketing medical devices, the industry as a whole has been rather slow to catch up with the modern age. Although technologically, the products are truly something futuristic and innovative, marketing seems stuck in the past, where brochures and trade shows are the norm. Stock photos abound and online marketing usually consists of uploading said brochure as a PDF.

The truth is that it can feel uncomfortable to break out of that zone and try something new. Especially because regulations and compliance hang over you like a heavy cloud at all times. But you’ll want to break out of the mold, because doing things that your competitors aren’t is what will set you apart and still keep your message compliant in a way that perfectly reflects what your audience truly needs.

Here’s how to do just that:

Go Outside Your Industry

Sometimes it can be beneficial to look at what other industries are doing. How are they using their printed materials? What are they doing at events to stand out? How are they using apps and other promotional initiatives as an edge over competition? For example, you could help drum up excitement about a new product by hosting a pre-launch event — taking time to understand the core issues that doctors and physicians face in regards to the product and how it solves them.

You may find that they don’t view the issue as something as crucially important as you do, but it will still give you insights on what they do feel is important, and those insights might be surprising. Doing a pre-launch event in this way prevents you from going full-speed in the wrong direction, talking about facets of your product that would ordinarily create a disconnect between you and your audience.

Maintaining Regulatory Compliance

In an age where we can order takeout directly from our smart refrigerators, you’d think that medical device companies would be just as cutting edge with their web presence. But even live chat is highly regulated and trying to formulate a response in real-time can be a challenge.

With that being said, however, you cannot treat communications online with the same stoic approach. People go online, including physicians and busy doctors, to research and compare their options. Having set protocols in place in terms of what questions you can answer (and what you cannot) helps present the “ground rules” for a discussion.

Start a Blog and Publish to it Frequently

At least twice a week, create material about your device — but not sales material. Instead, talk about the issue that your product solves. Why is that important? Why should people care? What are they concerned about? How does your device help them solve that problem? What sets your product apart from your competitors’?

You may think it’s overwhelming (and maybe even overkill) to create a blog. How much can you talk about this device or product, and who will actually take the time to read it? You may be surprised to know that you already have the content in place. You may just have to delve into it a bit deeper than what a brochure does.

For example — share case studies and what the results could mean for doctors and physicians. Show how research and development is done. Show how affordable the device or product is compared to others or compared to continuing to doing things without it. Don’t forget to add in social media so that word can spread on its own.

Above all, the call-to-action at the end of your post is not to have them invest in your product (which they alone will likely not be able to decide), but rather to take the next step using the interest you’ve already generated — encourage them to download a white paper or to set up a one-on-one consultation with you for a demo or even just to know more about your product.

Getting Started and Standing Out

As you can see, marketing your medical device or product online may have its own unique set of challenges and certain hurdles that other products don’t. But there are certain steps that you can take that are worth the time you invest in them, and can reap rewards well after the initial marketing push.

To learn more or to get a custom strategy developed for your specific needs while keeping regulations and compliance front-of-mind, contact our senior advertising professionals here at Workdom today. Our specific knowledge about the medical device industry and what can and cannot be said in promotions is second-to-none, and our team has the skills and understanding to help you move your marketing campaign forward with confidence. Reach out to us today to learn more!

Marketing Biotech Services in a B2B World

August 21, 2020 by Workdom Marketing Specialist

Biotech companies have recently sprung back into the spotlight as a potential channel for the development of a Coronavirus vaccine. But whether you conduct biotech research, develop products or are otherwise involved in the life science industry, marketing your services can feel like an uphill battle. What are the best ways to market biotech services in a B2B world? How can you make your products and services stand out?

As a company with years of experience helping biotech companies reach larger, more engaged audiences, we at Workdom understand that the best ways to market biotech services to a B2B audience comes with a combination of traditional and digital marketing methods.

While core traditional marketing channels like television ads and trade shows still do a great deal to help spread the word about your products and services, this can be further amplified online with the right team on-hand to provide you with on-demand marketing services. Developing your digital marketing strategy should therefore start with the following:

Create Your B2B Marketing Persona

Your brand persona is a detailed combination of demographics and psychographics about your target audience. This persona can be similar to an actual person — with a name, age, gender, socioeconomic status and so on. Filling out these details on what essentially amounts to an “imaginary person” makes it easier for you to understand the impact (if any) that your advertising has on them.

Probably the most crucial life science-oriented question you can ask this persona is “what are they struggling with” in regards to ways your product or service can help? Look at the full picture: their goals and aspirations, their routines, their media consumption habits. How can your product or service help them?

Remember, you’re not just marketing to a single person, but rather a persona that encompasses the entire business you’re hoping to attract. It’s a much different approach than targeting consumers. Nevertheless, many of the same steps apply whether it’s B2C or B2B, but B2B companies are more focused on things like the system, the convenience and of course, the results.

Build Up Brand Awareness

Everyone has heard of Proctor & Gamble or Johnson & Johnson. These companies have become household names precisely because of their branding. However, they also have decades and decades of brand experience which has shifted through the years. The Proctor & Gamble of the 1840s would scarcely be recognizable to us today (notwithstanding their branding shift towards just their initials P&G).

Biotech companies are understandably cautious when looking at digital channels and in particular, social media. However, understanding that each network has its style (Facebook is much more casual than, say, LinkedIn) means adjusting your voice and tone to fit each one, without muddling your brand.

It’s a tall and complicated order to fill, which is why it’s best to coordinate with a digital strategy team to nail down your plan for those social networks that you plan to target. If you’re not sure where traffic is coming from in the first place, it’s time to embrace analytics. As people working in a science field, viewing data and drawing correlations based on that information is second nature to you. Websites offer that kind of concrete information as well — you just have to know how to tap into it.

Consider the Marketing Options Available to You

Creating a persona and working to build up your brand is much more than creating a sort of bare-bones idea of a prospect and shouting “notice me!” from the rooftops. In the online world, there are a lot of trends, and it may seem like a smart move to “go where the people are”, because chances are, the companies that you’re looking to target are there as well.

But trends come and go, and the last thing you want to do is invest a lot of time and effort into something that fizzles out as soon as you get some momentum going. No one has time to keep a finger on the pulse of chasing down every trend and fad and hashtag.

Instead, root yourself in those networks and marketing options that are tried and true: website optimization, social media networking, video marketing and more. These have been around a long time and are only growing more and more sophisticated. Those biotech companies that embrace and grow their methods using these tried-and-true channels will grow far more than their competitors that try to chase every shadow or every rising influencer out there.

Every good biotech company involved in B2B marketing looked at each of the marketing channels before them and decided if they had the people, the time and the funds to devote to growing and nurturing it. It’s a serious conversion you’ll want to have — but not one that you have to do alone.

Contact us at Workdom today and let’s work on creating a customized digital strategy for your B2B marketing efforts. We understand the biotech and life sciences world and want to help you take your product or service to the next level. Consult with our senior advertising professionals today to learn more.

Can Demand Generation Still Work in the B2B Marketing World

July 31, 2020 by Workdom Marketing Specialist

In the early days of big data, B2B companies were on top of the world. They started leveraging demographic data to send out personalized emails and curated recommendations.

And it worked.

However, like all marketing strategies, big data, and the many ways to slice, carve and mold it soon became indispensable to the B2B world. Now, suddenly, it wasn’t just you that was sending personalized emails and tailored information to distinct demographics, but all of your competitors were soon doing it too.

That meant the race was on to outmaneuver the competition and become more entwined with the data, more involved with the customer experience and always one step ahead of everyone else.

The Real Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

For B2B marketers, the big prize — the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, is making sure that enough demand is generated at every stage of the user’s journey — not just at the beginning of before they take the plunge and hit that order button. So how do you do it?

Demand Generation in the Awareness Stage

The awareness stage is the point at which customers don’t even realize they have a problem that your business can solve. They’re just starting to become aware of it which means that you can use big data to find out what kind of questions they’re asking, and help them move to the consideration stage.

Demand Generation in the Consideration Stage

Demand generation in the consideration stage means going further than just throwing up their link when a prospect has a question. It means providing the user asking the question with a free demo or one-on-one consultation to learn more about their problem, and most importantly, the solutions that the B2B company has to fix it.

Anything that you can do to help nudge the user in the direction of viewing your content over your competitors is a win — that means investing in great content of all varieties. Not just blog posts, but also white papers, checklists, charts and much more.

Demand Generation in the Acquisition Stage

This is the part where most lead generation efforts would throw their money. Get the prospect right as they’re about to move from consideration to acquisition. Sadly, all too often what happens is that there’s a glut of information at this point — but most prospects will ignore it in favor of the company that helped them all along.

At this point in the demand generation strategy, the customer has learned that they have an issue, and they’re considering your product or service to solve it. Now you have to get them to take the next step by ensuring that they’re making the right decision — a decision made with confidence and plenty of solid information. That means case studies, testimonials, statistics and more that bolster your offer so that the competition, even with their pervasive use of big data, can’t match your efforts thus far.

Demand Generation to Maintain Retention and Loyalty

Once you’ve got the customer to buy into your offer, are you finished? Not at all! Now you have to continue stoking that demand, like a fire that smolders. This means following up with them to see if they have any questions, but also to ask how they’re going with the service, and provide them with tips, advice and even onboarding or training if it is particularly complex.

From this point on you can judge where they are in the process to determine if there are other relevant services or add-ons that might benefit them. As every B2B company and industry is different, it doesn’t hurt to try out different approaches and test what works best for you.

So as you can see, demand generation definitely still works in B2B, even though there are far more companies now on the playing field vying for the attention of prospects. If you’re having trouble creating demand for your products and services in a B2B market, why not reach out to us here at Workdom and talk to our senior advertising professionals about a strategy that’s customized to your specific needs?

We can help device tactics that position your products or services as the best option for your B2B consumers and advise you on the best strategies at each stage of the customer buying journey so that your users get the full spectrum of attentiveness and assistance that they can come to rely on from your brand.

Using Live Chat Effectively for Marketing in 2020

July 17, 2020 by Workdom Marketing Specialist

Live chat is a little-used option that can significantly improve your marketing in so many ways: customer acquisition and retention being the main two. But if it’s so powerful and has so much potential, why don’t more companies use it?

Simply put, it’s cumbersome to staff and having the right people with access to the right resources can make or break your success with it.

From the user’s perspective, they could be in a queue of dozens of people, only to be greeted by an automated message to “visit our website or check our FAQ” after waiting for so long.

With results like this, it’s easy for prospects to be skeptical and even hate live chat, and companies mistakenly think it’s not just worth the investment.

But that would be doing a true disservice to what this marketing channel is actually capable of, when you take the time to approach it like any other marketing initiative and learn how to really make it work.

With that being said, we’ve come up with several ways to help you use live chat effectively for marketing in 2020. So if you’ve got the staff, the technology and you’re ready to unleash live chat and make it the best it can be for your visitors and customers — read on:

Be Proactive

You don’t have to wait until a prospect reaches out to you for more information. You can be (gently) proactive with customers by asking if there’s anything you can help with, or if they have any questions that you can help answer for them.

In fact, a Harvard Business Review study showed that businesses that reached out proactively were seven times more likely to qualify their leads if they followed up within the first hour than if they waited. Don’t wait! Be proactive!

Don’t Blanket Every Page with Live Chat Functionality

This might seem counterintuitive — after all, you want to maximize conversion rates and live chat helps you do just that, so it would make sense, on the surface, to put a live chat icon everywhere.

But instead, put it on the pages with the greatest possibility of having someone reach out to you. For example, on a FAQ page, pricing page, or contact page. This greatly increases the chance that the customer or prospect will find an answer to their question, and it will also save you and your staff time and money since you’ll be proactive about reaching out on pages that are most likely to lead to questions from your users. A win-win for both parties!

You may also want to consider putting live chat functionality on your landing pages or individual product pages, so that customers can get clarification before they take the next steps, such as ordering or requesting a trial or demo.

Gauge the Context to Determine if There’s an Opportunity for an Upsell or Downsell

This is going to be a situation that you’ll need to evaluate from prospect to prospect or customer to customer, but depending on the context, there may be a prime opportunity to upsell or downsell. For example, if you sell laptops online, and the customer has a question about the specs of a certain brand, it may be possible to upsell them a warranty of 2 years, or downsell to 1 year. Likewise with accessories.

But again, don’t overdo it, since you’ll need to evaluate it on a case by case basis to determine if the possibility exists and how best to proceed.

Ask the Right Kinds of Questions

Last but certainly not least, don’t forget to ask the right kinds of questions with your live chat users. Simply saying “let us know if you have any questions” isn’t a question. If you’re able to see what pages they’re on when you proactively initiate a chat with them (or they with you), you can reference that product in your question — “I noticed you’re looking at our ACME widgets — can you tell me more about what you’re looking for in a widget?” And then let the user take the lead from there.

The right kinds of questions can also open up the opportunity for you to help guide their purchase. But the bottom line is that every live chat connection is going to be different, and having a one size fits all approach isn’t good for anyone — business, prospect or customer.

If you need help creating a strategy to leverage live chat for marketing to the fullest, we encourage you to reach out to our senior marketing professionals here at Workdom. Contact us today and let us know more about your plans and goals and we’ll work with you to create an unbeatable strategy that delivers a fantastic customer experience at every stage of your funnel.