Episode 18 Transcript

Heather:

Welcome back you guys, we're on episode 18. Wow, I can't believe I've made it this far and I can't believe you guys are here with me. So thank you if you have been listening since the start of this podcast or even if you've just tuned in for the first time now. Welcome. So a big part of growing your business is getting the right systems in place, right? So big theme on this show is most of the people I interview, they say that the team is so important when you're scaling and growing your business. So not only do you have team, but you also have tools if you wanna grow beyond yourself, right? You have both. So I thought from time to time on this show, I would chat about the tools that are out there to help you scale and sort of some ideas that I've seen have worked over the years, not only in my multiple businesses, which I'm sure I'll start to tell you a little bit more about that as we go, and projects over the years, but also the work that I do with clients. Because after all the business that I have right now, I do have a digital agency called Website Love and we help business owners to grow their businesses online using online marketing. So guys, I have gotten my hands dirty over the years on a lot of dirty tools, but no, a lot of tools that are clunky, hard to use, but also some fantastic ones. So I've been doing this since 2008 was sort of when I got into online marketing. So I got a question today from somebody. So I was doing a scope call. Kind of like a sales call not quite a sales call yet I suppose it's more like I was chatting to a business and she asked me this question because she wants help with this So she said to me What's the best CRM or? Email marketing tool that I can use if I want to proactively start using digital marketing now you guys we're not talking a startup She's has an established business and is doing really well But she wants to start to track her leads that are coming in from the different channels online and to be more proactive with her digital marketing. And she wants a tool that can segment her leads and her, her, you know, prospects and do email marketing and automated follow-ups and SMS marketing. And you know, if they go cold, warm them up, manage sales pipelines, all of it. She wants a really great tool. She has a bit of a clunky tool. So she, um, maybe it's like you guys, you know, maybe you're in the same boat. I wanted to answer this question, not just from the conversation I had with her literally an hour ago, but to you guys as well, because you might be scaling up, you might be looking for the right tool, you might have never used an online sort of email marketing tool before, but you might be in the same boat. So I wanna start by naming a few that are out there. We have HubSpot, we have Entroport, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Keap, used to be called Infusionsoft, Clavio, Cartra, ConvertKit. Have I called yours yet? Should I keep going? There's more. We have constant contact, MailerLite Omnisend Zoho. Keep going? No, I'm not gonna keep going, I'm kidding. But you get the idea, right? I mean, I literally could keep going. There are so many of these tools out there that allow you to do emails to your database, that allow you to manage profiles of your customers, see their history with you, manage pipelines, all of it. So here's the thing, I've used a lot of these throughout the years. either personally for my businesses or for my clients, businesses building out funnels for other people. And I have seen them come and go these tools and they come and go based on trends, based on the sort of guru promoting something or an affiliate link or whatever it is. And I wanna dive a little bit deeper into that because I think it's important to give you context so you understand. tools that exist and where I'm going to go with this next. So what happens is that obviously myself as a service provider, we tend to have preferred tools that we work with. Why? Well, you just heard this huge list that exists. We cannot possibly know all of them. It's just it's just not even I can't even fathom trying to learn more than the handful that I know already because they change so much. So If you go to a company, uh, you know, an outsourced person, you hire somebody on your team, they're going to come with baggage of tools that they already know, like, and have worked with over the years. And that's just normal and how it, how it is, right? You find somebody that's an expert and they're going to have expertise in a certain area. So sometimes there's these like agencies or experts or gurus that are out there talking about the latest tool of the moment and everyone's like, Oh my gosh, I should do like what's So HubSpot's big right now, at least in Australia. Um, next, I almost thought it's like next level or something. There's, there's always one coming out and people are talking about it all over the place. So that, um, that's one reason why you might hear about one. It does not necessarily mean it's the best one for you. Please note that. Please hear that. It does not mean that it means that that's just because the person you're listening to in their marketing or in your sales calls, potentially hiring them, they're recommending it. The other thing is to, I don't know if you guys know this, but there's something called affiliate marketing. And how that works is if you promote something and it's the sales tracked back to you as the individual, then you get a commission. So there are big companies that partner up with a CRM system or email marketing tool, and they just promote that because if you sign up, they get an ongoing cut of what you pay in your subscription. So be aware that in a lot of cases when you go to somebody, they're going to have a recommendation. And it's either because A, they know it really well. Like I said before, we can't all be experts at everything or B, they get a commission or both perhaps. So ultimately really the tool does not matter as much as what you need it to do for your business. Cause most of these things that I just mentioned do very similar things. So. Where you want to start with this is you want to map out what you need your systems to do and then you find the right tool and team to help you build it. Now questions to consider. Do you sell products? You know, actual tangible products online? And do you need a segment based on what people buy? Like, do you need cart abandonment? Do you need emails that go out based on if somebody doesn't check out with the products in their cart? That's a potential question that you could ask. Um, do you want automation rules and triggers? So for example, if somebody clicks on this link in your email, um, or maybe doesn't click on that link, then you send them a follow-up email, or if they have gotten three emails from you and haven't clicked or opened on any of those three emails, then your team is sent a task to manually reach out to them. These are sort of if-then scenarios. their automations or triggers or rules that you can set up. So that's another thing that you might want to map out. And this conversation I was having earlier with this business, you know, she was sort of saying, I want to be able to contact them if they haven't responded. I want to know where they came from as far as, you know, which source was it from a directory that I was listed on and a local business directory. And they clicked on the link and they found me that way. And if they did... Did they sign up for something? And if they signed up for my brochure, then did they become a customer? All that, that's tracking. That's stuff you might want your CRM system to do. Do you want pretty designed email templates? Each system has different ways of you building an email to send out an email. Most of them are pretty decent, but how important is that to you? Do you wanna insert things like countdown timers in your emails? Do you want the easy ability to insert this specialized code, you know, for countdown timers or other things that you might want to embed or put in to your emails? Do you want to use custom merge fields? So, hi, first name, for example, in the email. Do you need to use SMS marketing that's automated in there as well? That's just the top of the iceberg or the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, what you want to do is think about in a perfect world. What do you want your system to do for your business? I would start with what you need. And then if you're not sure, because you might not know, you might, this all might be very new to you, then you want to work with a strategist or an automation expert to map out what's possible because as you scale your business, This is an important piece, these tools, these ways of growing your business. And obviously from there, once you're clear on what's possible, whether you know it, whether you research it, whether you talk to an automation expert, then you can find the solution that is going to fit for you. And that's the key, I think, not really the other way around. I've, I've seen so many people that hear the hype about a certain tool. They go and buy it. Um, and. either never use half the features or they're already locked in too deep because they built out some stuff and then it won't actually scale into what they need because they just don't know what they don't know. So sometimes it feels like our knowledge gap holds us back, right? I mean, we literally don't know what we don't know, but I just wanna leave you with this, you guys. Pretty much anything is possible these days with a CRM system or a tool like that where you store data on somebody, have profiles. see the historical records of what they've done with your business and you can send them email messages. Pretty much all of it's possible. You just need to arm yourself with what is possible for your business. That's a great place to start. And the last thing is you should be doing as much as you can to grow your business online, not learning the system inside and out. Like you should be focused on the other things to grow your business. Your job is to create the map, is to understand the strategy, it's to arm the team or find the team, to run the processes and the systems that you create. It's to make that happen. It's not to go out there and read comparison charts on a thousand blogs on which CRM system is best for you. So hopefully I've given you a little bit of, I guess, understanding of the fact that if you want to get a tool that's gonna work for you is to consider Who's telling you about the tool? Do you have the right team to support you with that? What do you want it to do? And ultimately, there are so many resources out there to all of us these days. It's just finding the right one for you. That's really it. And most of them can do similar things. Thanks you guys for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this one. I'm gonna just be pulling questions like this from people that I have conversations with. and my clients as well and I'll share them with you if I feel like maybe it will just give you some benefit into growing your business too. And before I leave, I just wanted to give a huge shout out to my new listeners in Texas in the USA. I just saw my analytics. I checked my analytics just to see where you guys are coming from and suddenly there's quite a few listeners coming in from Texas. So shout out to you guys. Thank you for somehow finding me. However you did, I appreciate it and glad you're here and you're listening and to everyone else. Thank you as well for being a supporter of the show. Remember to come back soon. I have some really cool interviews coming up. I can't wait to share with you. Yeah, so stay tuned. We have some good things in the pipeline. Thanks you guys. Oh, and I'm gonna use the little ending statement that I had in one of my recent episodes in a recent interview. And that is don't wear busyness as a badge of honor. I think that's what it was. Yeah, don't wear busyness as a badge of honor. Hmm. I liked it. It was good. It's from my interview coming up in my next episode. So you're going to have to check that one out and see where that statement originated from. All right, you guys talk to you soon. All the best. Bye.