How to Use Conversion Content to Turn Site Visitors into Qualified Leads

If you own a small business, trying to boost sales of your products using content marketing, you know it can be hard to get traction. You spend a lot of time (and money) struggling to generate leads with the content you create, but aren’t seeing the results you’re hoping for. Fortunately, there’s a simple formula […]

  • If you own a small business, trying to boost sales of your products using content marketing, you know it can be hard to get traction. You spend a lot of time (and money) struggling to generate leads with the content you create, but aren’t seeing the results you’re hoping for. Fortunately, there’s a simple formula to increase leads using content.

Consumers Want Content

According to a Hubspot survey, consumers on average will read between 3 and 5 pieces of content before they’ll speak with a sales representative. Said differently, offering valuable, relevant and informative content is critical to the buying process. Unfortunately, most marketers, including those who allocate substantial resources to content marketing, don’t know if their content marketing efforts lead to increased sales, and many don’t even have a formal plan for their content marketing campaigns.


In that same survey, B2B marketers report allocating almost 30% of their total marketing budget to content marketing, but more than half say they don’t know what content marketing success would look like. Only 30% felt their content marketing efforts were effective, and only 32% have a documented content marketing strategy.



Translation: Most Marketers Don’t Understand Why They Push Content

This isn’t to say that marketers are flying completely blind—certainly most are careful to link their content to specific marketing objectives, and many create buyer personas and target content to different market segments. What most don’t do is tie their content to specific stages of the buyer journey, from prospect to lead to qualified lead and, finally, to buying customer.



What Is Conversion Content And Why Do You Need It?

The goal of conversion content is to convert a window shopper into a buying customer—in other words, a visitor to your website into a qualified lead, actively considering buying your products or services. Certainly, not all conversion content appears on your website—some will appear in social media posts, for example, that link back to your site.


But once someone is on your site—whether what got them there is organic search results or sponsored adds or social media posts—you need to create a conversion path that moves site visitors from prospects to qualified leads. The first step on the path is a content offer, one sufficiently engaging that site visitors will click on a call to action to get it. That takes them to a customized landing page where you ask them to complete a form in exchange for the content. You then allow them to download the content.



How Conversion Content Is Crafted

Earlier you read that there’s a simple formula to generate qualified leads with your content. Here’s that formula, in 4 critical steps:

  • Create Your Content Offer: The content you choose must be appealing to the market segment you’re trying to convert—for example, if your goal is to sell accounting software to small business owners, you might choose a blog about new tax deductions for small businesses. Your content could be a white paper, case study, video, or eBook. In some cases, that content will already exist. At other times, you’ll need to brainstorm new content ideas. The bottom line is that however your content is created, it must be sufficiently engaging to make prospective customers want it.

  • Create an Action-Oriented Call to Action: The words you use in your call to action should be action-oriented and attention-grabbing, include keywords which match what’s in your content, and appealing enough that site visitors will want to click on it. For example, the seller of accounting software might have a call to action like, Read Our Blog to Get the 5 Small Business Tax Deductions You Don’t Even Know About.

  • Create a Customized Landing Page: The sole purpose of the landing page is to collect visitors’ contact information by persuading them to fill out a form. The landing page should be customized to a specific market segment (or buyer persona) as well as to where prospects are in the buying cycle.

  • Create the Form Which Gates Your Content: If you’re new to creating forms, you can get help from online forms tools resources. Using these tools, select your form. Choose fields for your form—in general, limit the number of fields to a maximum of 4 or 5 (prospects are reluctant to fill out excessively long forms), including first name, last name and email address.


Conclusion: It’s a Win-Win

In creating conversion content and an effective conversion path, you’ve demonstrated the reason inbound marketing is so effective—you’ve pulled customers to you by giving them something they want and need—and everyone’s a winner. Visitors to your website get information that helps them in their businesses, and you get the contact information you need to continue the conversation and move the buying process one step further. In the process, you establish trust and authority.

You need to ensure that your website is helping you achieve all of your business goals, from generating qualified leads to nurturing those leads to closing sales. To learn more about the ways we can improve your sales process and make your website work for you, contact us today.

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4 Strategies That will get you Success with Interruption Marketing

Answer these questions honestly:How do you feel about telemarketers? What about promotional emails? On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate most television commercials? If you’re like most consumers, you not only said, “don’t like ‘em” — you might have even gotten mad. Telemarketers are the bane of our existence, right? That’s […]

  • Answer these questions honestly:

    How do you feel about telemarketers? What about promotional emails? On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate most television commercials?

  • If you’re like most consumers, you not only said, “don’t like ‘em” — you might have even gotten mad. Telemarketers are the bane of our existence, right? That’s why more than 45% mobile users in India have registered on a “do not call” list. And most people now fast forward through TV ads. What about promotional emails? Well, no one likes their inbox cluttered with ads for products they don’t care about and don’t want.

So, Why are there still telemarketers and promotional emails, and TV Ads?

The simple answer is that they still work. According to John Pritchett writing about telemarketing for LinkedIn, for example, “Done properly, picking up the telephone is still one of the most effective tools for lead generation and demand creation.” And, although many consumers find a way around television spots, many others still watch them, and still make purchases based on their content.

As for promotional emails, even Hubspot (the leader of inbound marketing) agrees they’re indispensable to a comprehensive marketing strategy, and that consumers respond to them—for example, 66% of consumers report that they’ve bought products based on an email marketing message.


When Is It OK to Interrupt Someone?

People don’t like it when you interrupt them, right?

Well, it depends. If you’re telling a friend that you’re about to pay 15 Lakhs for a new car and he interrupts with, “Wait — I know a dealer who’ll give you that car for 13 Lakhs” — will you get mad, or will you thank him?

Interruptions are OK when they help people, give them smart advice or steer them in the right direction.


What Is Interruption Marketing?

Interruption marketing gets its name from the fact that it interrupts whatever someone is currently doing to grab his attention. Tech Target defines interruption marketing this way:
“Interrupt marketing, sometimes referred to as interruption marketing, is the traditional model of product promotion, in which people have to stop what they’re doing to pay attention to the marketing message or deal with it in some other way.”
Examples of interruption marketing include telemarketing calls, mail campaigns, email campaigns, television and radio ads, interstitial and transitional online ads, and “preroll ads” that play before video content. Whether or not these traditional marketing strategies work for your business depends on how you deploy them.

So what’s the Secret?

The trick to successfully deploying interruption marketing is to understand the fine line that separates curiosity and nuisance. If a telemarketer calls with a pitch on refinancing your mortgage, you’re annoyed — unless you happen to be thinking about refinancing your mortgage, in which case you might want to know more. A promotional email for landscaping services is a nuisance for many consumers — except those who are searching for top landscaping services.

Said differently, the secret to successful interruption marketing is understand your audience — what they want and how they want you to communicate with them.

Here are 4 strategies to make interruption marketing work for your business:


  • 1. Target the right people: when you send a product email to a prospective customer who has zero interest in that product, you don’t just lose that sale—you also create mistrust. That customer probably won’t pay attention to subsequent promotional emails, even when they’re about products he does want. You need to segment your email list based on who your customers are, what they want, and where they are in the buying cycle.

  • 2. Don’t make customers jump through a lot of hoops: whatever your call to action is, you need to make it easy as possible for customers to do. If you send an email with a link to an online form on your website, don’t ask for too much information, especially if it’s a new customer. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes—how much action would be too much for you to take?

  • 3. Appeal to their pain points: consumers are motivated to buy products and services that help them solve problems. You need to clearly understand what that problem is, how your product solves it, and how to most persuasively make that case to prospects. Generally, that means stating the problem upfront (it’s good to do this in the form of a question, as in, “Are you still trying to get rid of that annoying belly fat?”) to pique curiosity, then answering the question with your solution to the problem.

  • 4. Ask for their permission: you can’t bully people into buying your products — when you push hard, the natural tendency is for them to push back. You can make your statement of a given consumer problem as straightforwardly as you want, but you still need to ask for permission to make your case. If what you want, for example, is someone’s contact information, offer them something they want (like a discount or useful content) as an incentive. And, when it comes to emails, always (ALWAYS) be sure recipients have opted in, and always give them an opportunity to unsubscribe.
 

Conclusion

To drive sales and grow your business, you need to identify the weaknesses in your sales process — whether it’s generating leads or closing sales — and then craft a strategy to eliminate it. That means understanding your audience and leveraging the right technology to put your plan into action. To learn more about the ways our technology services can help you achieve your business goals, contact us today.

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What is Buyer’s Journey & Why it matters for your business?

If you want to succeed in any business, whether it’s online or offline, it’s essential to understand the buyer’s journey. This is something that occurs in all transactions. Identifying the various stages of this process allows you to refine and improve your marketing. Let’s take a look at the buyer’s journey and why it plays […]

  • If you want to succeed in any business, whether it’s online or offline, it’s essential to understand the buyer’s journey. This is something that occurs in all transactions. Identifying the various stages of this process allows you to refine and improve your marketing. Let’s take a look at the buyer’s journey and why it plays such a crucial role for your business.

What is the Buyer’s Journey?

With every sale, no matter how simple or complex, there are a certain series of steps. These vary according to the type of transaction. The buyer’s journey consists of the various stages that take place before, during, and after a sale. These are the typical stages:


  • Awareness – At this initial phase, the potential customer is aware of either a problem or desire. Either the customer identifies this need himself or the idea occurs to him because of something external. If you’re walking down the street, for example, and you see a pizza place, you may suddenly realize you’re hungry. Or you see a TV commercial for a car and you think that maybe it’s time to buy a new car.
  • Consideration – The potential customer is already aware of either a need or a specific product. He or she then thinks about whether or not to buy something. The more serious, expensive, or complicated the item, the more thought and research go into the decision. For example, if you are hungry, you may stop in the first restaurant you pass without thinking much about it. You’ll do more research, however, before buying a car or home.
  • Decision – This is the actual transaction. With a physical business, customers buy products at the cash register. If it’s an online store, items go into an online shopping cart and submitting payment information. Customers order services online using their credit cards or PayPal.
  • Delight – What happens after the sale is also part of the journey. The customer is either pleased or displeased with the purchase. He or she may ask for support. Experiences at this stage determine future behavior. A happy customer may develop loyalty and return in the future.

Depending on your business model, the buyer’s journey is either a simple, linear process or an ongoing loop where buyers return and the “journey” repeats itself.


How to Improve the Buyer’s Journey

Recognizing the buyer’s journey is the first step. What really matters, however, is knowing how to improve it. This means making each stage of the buyer’s journey easier, more comfortable, and more educational. Let’s return to each stage and see how this works.


  • Awareness – This is where advertising, marketing, networking, and content are so crucial. In order to make the most of this stage, it’s especially important to target the right customers and to understand their needs, problems, and desires.
  • Consideration – Your job at this stage is to convince customers that your business offers the best solution. Offering a USP (unique selling proposition) is important to differentiate yourself from the competition. Social proof in the form of reviews and testimonials are also powerful.
  • Decision – Make the actual buying process as convenient as possible. Remember, until the buyer actually submits the payment, there’s no sale. With online sales, shopping cart abandonment is a fairly common issue. This occurs for many reasons. One issue, however, is that customers find the process too complex. Similarly, a customer in a store may choose items and then decide to leave without buying them because the line is too long. That’s why it’s so crucial to present a simple and convenient buying experience for customers.
  • Delight – Offer high-quality support to make sure the customer is completely satisfied. If you’re using a sales funnel, an initial sale hopefully leads to upsells – more expensive products.

The buyer’s journey is always changing. Even if you stay the same, markets, competitors and customers change. That’s why it’s important to adapt and evolve. Test and track to identify areas where you need to improve. For example, customers at the awareness stage might need more information. Or your customer support at the post-sale stage may need an upgrade. Always look for ways to make each stage of the buyer’s journey easier, more informative, and more pleasant.

If you want to learn how to get more leads and sales from your business website, contact us.

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4 Reasons why your Marketing efforts are not paying off or converting?

Marketing looks simple from the outside, but it’s never as simple as it seems. After all, what do you need besides a great product or service, a catchy slogan, and a good deal? Well, sometimes that’s all you need… other times you need a bunch of other factors on your side. So if you, like […]

Marketing looks simple from the outside, but it’s never as simple as it seems. After all, what do you need besides a great product or service, a catchy slogan, and a good deal? Well, sometimes that’s all you need… other times you need a bunch of other factors on your side. So if you, like me, were wondering why your marketing efforts weren’t getting you slew of sales and new customers, these might be some of the reasons.

  • 1. You Don’t Know Who You’re Aiming At : If you run a business, you want to keep it as open to the public as possible. Anyone, young or old, men and women, from all walks of life, are potential clients. But when you’re marketing yourself and your business, you need to know who you’re aiming at. Because if you’re crafting a message, you have to ask who’s going to hear it. Are you aiming at older homeowners who need help around the house? Does your product appeal to teens who want to be in on the latest trend? Or are you talking to young, single professionals?

    What you say is important. Who you’re saying it to can make the difference when it comes to customer conversion.


  • 2. No One Is Listening : If a tree falls in a forest, and no one’s around to see it or hear it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still lying on the forest floor. What it does mean is that, for all intents and purposes, the tree may as well not exist.

    The same is true of your marketing, if no one is actually seeing it.

    You can create the most perfect video ad, but if it’s going to have an effect, people have to watch it. Flyers need to be seen, blogs need to be read, etc., etc. That’s why it isn’t enough to come up with a great marketing idea; you need to make sure you get it in front of potential clients’ eyes. That means promotion, and the search to figure out which venues net you the best results.


  • 3. You Have Competition : Every business has to deal with competition. Whether it’s that chain restaurant on the other side of town, the big box bargain store, or the corporate heavyweight, there’s always someone trying to do the same thing you’re doing. Your job, in this instance, is to do something your competition doesn’t do.

    That extends to your advertising, as well.

    Whether it’s offering a deal for new customers, pushing the fact that you’re a local business instead of a chain store, or making your service seem more personable and professional, your marketing has to make you seem different. And you need to deliver on the promises you make.


  • 4. You Need A Better Call to Action : A call to action is when you tell your audience what you want them to do. Whether it’s following your Facebook page, calling to make an appointment, or coming into the store to shop, you need to be clear with what you want your audience to do. Pick a single call to action, or two at the most, and put your emphasis on that. Because once you have your audience’s attention, you need to direct it to a specific end. Otherwise they’ll wriggle away, and continue on with whatever they were doing.
These are just a few of the reasons your marketing might not be getting you the results you expected. If you’re looking for more advice on how you can correct your course, and start getting the attention and conversions you’re looking for, simply contact us today!

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The Benefits of Buyer Personas and How to Get Started?

Unless you’re completely new to marketing, you know about the importance of defining your target audience. A cross section of your average customer helps you better target your efforts, and focus your messaging. Still, a simple demographic profile of your current customers may not be enough to help you succeed in creating a marketing strategy […]

  • Unless you’re completely new to marketing, you know about the importance of defining your target audience. A cross section of your average customer helps you better target your efforts, and focus your messaging.

  • Still, a simple demographic profile of your current customers may not be enough to help you succeed in creating a marketing strategy that actually resonates with your audience. That’s where buyer personas enter the equation.

What are Buyer Personas?

In many ways, buyer personas are derivative of your target audience. Rather than consisting of numbers, they take your audience research and present it in the form of a hypothetical, ideal customer. Here’s how one marketing platform defines the concept:

“A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. [It is built on] customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.”

Think of your buyer persona as the personification of your target audience. Rather than simply trying to target your marketing for females, 25-34 years old, with an income between $50,000 and $70,000, you’re looking to target Liz, a 29 year-old accountant. And as it turns out, personifying your audience research comes with a number of considerable benefits.


3 Benefits of Buyer Personas for Your Business

  • Buyer Personas Help You Understand Your Audience Needs – Putting a face to your target audience helps you better understand the situation in which your audience needs your product or service. If your goal is to create and communicate actual value, consider that 82% of companies using personas have improved their value proposition as a result.
  • Buyer Personas Help You Create More Personalized Content – Naturally, a better understanding of your audience helps you create content more personalized to their needs. Considering the significant advantages of marketing personalization, buyer personas can play a crucial role in helping you cut through the clutter and increase the effectiveness of your messaging.
  • Buyer Personas Increase Your Lead Generation Effectiveness – Research shows that B2B marketers who use buyer personas are 4 times more likely to exceed their lead generation goals. One case study saw a 97% increase in total leads, and 126% increase in qualified leads simply by utilizing the concept. In short, personas can (and should) play a vital role for any company looking to optimize their lead generation.

Of course, these are just a few of the many benefits that embracing buyer personas can bring for your business. Your marketing, sales, and even product development efforts can all benefit from the concept. The only thing you need to do is understand how to build your own.



buyer's persona

How to Get Started in Building Your Buyer Personas

Generally speaking, your business should build (or model) more than one persona. Even if your target audience is relatively homogeneous, some variations typically do exist and are important to account for. Most businesses focus on 3 to 4 individual personas to cover about 90% of their existing customers and leads.

The first key to success, of course, is comprehensive audience research. Put simply, you need to have a comprehensive quantitative understanding of your target audience. But qualitative aspects are important as well; try to use focus groups, surveys, and interviews to gauge your audience’s deeper-lying needs and wants.

Use our Free Persona Template to create buyer personas for your own business. Ultimately, you’ll want your efforts to result in a single sheet for each persona that sums up both their demographics and their desires.

Creating buyer personas is a complex process. But as outlined above, the benefits for your business can be significant. For help in optimizing your marketing and sales strategy through the use of personas, contact us.

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Why We Don’t Sell Any Project Without Discovery?

To us, our process is everything. It defines our work, and sets the course for us to produce results that will not just make our clients happy, but that we are proud of as well. Our core values remain the same for every project we take on, and one element remains steadfast: Discovery. Truly the […]

  • To us, our process is everything. It defines our work, and sets the course for us to produce results that will not just make our clients happy, but that we are proud of as well. Our core values remain the same for every project we take on, and one element remains steadfast: Discovery.

  • Truly the heart of our process, we stand by our principle that we don’t sell any project without discovery. This is for several reasons, and we will delve into these so you can get to know us and our work process a little better.

What Is The Discovery Process?

Clients and customers often find the discovery process tedious and boring, but it is absolutely vital for success. For example, take a doctor-patient relationship as a comparison. When you have a physical ailment, you turn to the doctor (an expert) with your problem.

You describe the symptoms, because that is all you are currently aware of but you often do not have a solution in mind. Doctors, on the other hand, are trained in processes to find the solution to your ailment. They have their own methods of diagnosis, and ask you specific questions to get to the heart of the matter.

In the same vein, we operate in a similar manner. When we are approached with a problem, whether it is a sales, conversion, or productivity problem, we understand what we need to do. To us, it is a description of symptoms plaguing your organization and we understand what questions need to be asked to get to the core issues.



What Is Our Discovery Process?

Simply put, we do a deep dive into your business. But we do not stop there because for us, it is about creating a holistic picture of your business. This means understanding the market and your position within it, the key competitors, major stakeholders and your business process.

We examine each aspect carefully and deliberately to make sure we have the full information needed to provide solutions that will ensure long-term success and sustainability. During this process, complacency is not an option and we know how much power lies within the information gained during the discovery process. Fully examining the market, key demographics and who the target audience is are just parts of the puzzle we put together to find solutions to your pain points.



Why Is The Discovery Process Necessary?

The discovery process is necessary for several reasons.
  • It increases project success – A project is only successful when all parties communicate, and are aware of what the problems are, what solutions may be used and how to go about the process. The discovery process is the first step in laying the groundwork to ensure a successful project where each party is happy with the results.

    Ultimately, much of the project’s success will lie in how robust the findings are from the discovery process. The latter informs many of the decisions made, and it is imperative that all of the information is available and provided in order to maximize time and resources.
  • It helps you understand the competition – The discovery process is also an opportunity to understand your competition, and what to learn from them (or what not to do). The findings from a discovery project can be leveraged in many different ways, especially in understanding your place in the market.

    It is also imperative because it helps you set yourself apart from the competition. By learning what other players in the space are doing, your business can use the information found to decide what needs to be done to separate yourself from the rest. Use that information to inform the rest of your project, and as a way to grow and evolve as a business.
  • Understanding buyer persona, customer journey, and business process is a key to success – Running a successful web business requires a great deal of thought, and a vast amount of data. Luckily, the discovery process will cut most of the work in half for you. One of the key drivers of successful web businesses is understanding the customer from start to finish, and how to make your processes more efficient.

    Not only does the discovery process help you understand who you are selling to, and what appeals to them but it also demonstrates how this target demographic makes purchasing decisions.

    Once you have successfully understood how to position yourself to be as appealing to your buyers as possible, that is half the work done. The discovery process will also shed light on your business process, and where there are redundancies and inefficiencies and how best to mitigate these problems.

To learn more about how our discovery process sets web businesses up for long-term success, please contact us.



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10 signs your website might be ready for an upgrade

You’ve made the commitment to digital marketing, but for some reason your website isn’t delivering the kind of traffic and leads that you were hoping for. A company’s website is its face, the basis for a potential customer’s first impression. Take a hard look at yours and see if it shows any of these 10 […]

You’ve made the commitment to digital marketing, but for some reason your website isn’t delivering the kind of traffic and leads that you were hoping for. A company’s website is its face, the basis for a potential customer’s first impression. Take a hard look at yours and see if it shows any of these 10 signs of needing an update.

  • 1. Too busy. Some websites are so overloaded with animated graphics, videos and sound files that a viewer gives up rather than deal with the chaos. For maximum impact, make sure every element in your website design provides useful information without unnecessary distraction.

  • 2. Not busy enough. A website with too much empty space and not enough meaty content will bore viewers, so they’ll move on. Your website needs to show viewers enough information (or links to information) that they feel welcomed and want to stay and read what you’re offering.

  • 3. Too shallow. A website with a lot of trite, obvious or irrelevant content tells your web customers that you don’t respect their time and expertise. Offer potential customers real information with links for further research if you want them to stick around to do business with you.

  • 4. Too technical. If you are selling technical products/services to a highly specialized target audience, then it’s okay to fill your website with the specs and graphs and data your customers are looking for. But if you are trying to market to the general public, tailor your content to their comfort level. Translate your marketing points into clear, accessible language that won’t intimidate your viewers.

  • 5. Too hard to find. A gorgeous website won’t do any good if your customers can’t find it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technique of imbedding key search terms in your web content so that your site will be found when people search using those terms. Your digital marketing vendor can help you update your site using this technique or there are online guides for doing it yourself.

  • 6. Not interactive enough. Web marketing is the art of getting customers to come to you by visiting your site and showing their interest so you can open a relationship with them. Does your site invite visitors to share their contact information? Do you have an automated welcoming email to send them, thanking them for their visit? Does it include surveys and other interactive tools that help you learn more about your audience? A top-notch website not only informs your customers about you, it gathers data for you about them.

  • 7. Too goofy. It’s tempting to try a little silliness as a way to engage customers, but a benchmark website successfully balances competence, authority and approachability. If your website looks too much like you are just having fun, it may be difficult for your customers to trust that you will take them seriously. Humor is a great icebreaker in marketing, but make sure to balance it with a healthy dose of serious information.

  • 8. Too predictable. Consumers doing research before a purchase look at a lot of websites. Yours needs to stand out from the crowd. Accomplish this with an elegant design, authoritative content, and creative use of non-text tools and interactivity.

  • 9. Too self-absorbed. A good website doesn’t expect potential customers to believe everything they read. Provide valid, working, credible links to source documents when you make an assertion. Don’t plagiarise from other sites. Your customers need to form a clear sense of your company’s connection to the larger industry and your awareness of current trends, news, etc. that may affect their relationship with you.

  • 10. Too hard a sell. Old-style marketing focussed on getting information in front of customers, no matter what. Today’s more nuanced, user-friendly marketing strategies focus on engagement, on getting customers to see why it’s a good idea to choose you as their vendor. Your website may still try to attract customers by denigrating your competitors or by playing on your viewers’ fears. Those tactics are too harsh for online media. Play up your company’s strengths, the great reviews you’ve gotten, the cutting-edge science behind your products. But don’t go negative, it turns people off.

Once you know how your website looks in the light of these common mistakes, you can begin to develop something better. If you have questions about how to make your website better serve your company’s needs, let us know. Our e-book, 3 Steps to Website Success, may be the tool you need to take your website to the next level.

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Lean Canvas, why it matters?

Behind every successful startup business is a well laid plan, right? Maybe not. The new trend is a lean canvas. The old-school business plan has met its demise because it just can’t keep up with the rapid changes necessary for startup success. After all, one of a startups early goals is dynamic growth. That means […]

Behind every successful startup business is a well laid plan, right? Maybe not. The new trend is a lean canvas. The old-school business plan has met its demise because it just can’t keep up with the rapid changes necessary for startup success. After all, one of a startups early goals is dynamic growth. That means a business plan can quickly become obsolete. A business plan is also created behind a desk as a theory. A lean canvas is created in the trenches, so to speak.

  • Attention Span: Reviewing a lean canvas is much more attractive to prospective investors than a typical business plan. Instead of perusing a multi-page document, investors are tasked with a one-page lean canvas. An entrepreneur is able to convey his mission in less than a minute of an investor’s time.

  • Exposure: The more eyes on the canvas, the more opportunities to reach the right person who wants to invest in your business. It is so much easier to share a single page document than a large file.

  • Time Is Money: In any business, that old adage is true. When problems arise, a business wants to solve their problems quickly and efficiently. A lean canvas offers a one-page model a business can use that offers problem solving at record pace. Considering that business experts at Harvard report that 75% of startups fail, it is important to be equipped with the best problem-solving tools.

  • Methodology: Business plans of old often took weeks of preparation. They were elaborate plans that laid out a path to success. But, judging by the numbers out of Harvard, it seems that such detailed planning did not really work out that well. The methodology of a lean canvas approach allows for more creativity, experimentation, if you will. Flexibility is integrated into a lean canvas because it can be adjusted according to customer feedback. Instead of being a soothsayer, projecting what you expect to happen with a business plan, entrepreneurs become a mirror, reflecting customer feedback on a canvas.

  • Perfection Fallacy: A business plan’s weakness lay in its self-confidence that if the proposed path is followed, the business simply cannot fail. The lean canvas turns this perspective on its head. The lean canvas says, “Hey, I expect bumps in the road. I even expect some of my ideas to bomb. But I have a quick response plan that creates fluidity within my business. I can adjust and recover quickly.”

  • Years To Launch: It has not been uncommon for a business or product idea to spend years being researched. That is time wasted and revenue lost. A product or service could have been engaging consumers and evolving, becoming more relevant, allowing feedback to shape it into exactly what customers desire. Master plans fail because they lack this real-world input.

Lean Canvas Success Kit:

The adaptability of a lean canvas is modeled after the most successful startups. Startups that survive do so because they are able to move forward quickly after experiencing a failure. They adjust, adapt, and are continually learning. A lean canvas has three tools, or principles, in its kit:

  1. Untested Theories: On day one, the entrepreneur is putting into action untested theories.
  2. Feedback: These theories will be tested through customer interaction, development related directly through customer feedback on the product or service offered.
  3. Agile Development: This is the concept of customer feedback driven development. By reacting directly to customer response, the evolution of the product or service is dynamic, rather than changing slowly and incrementally over time.

In conclusion:

The lean canvas method is gaining ground. More than two dozen universities, like Harvard Business School, Colombia and University of California Berkeley, are teaching future entrepreneurs this new startup methodology. Companies like Toyota Production System and General Electric have been making the shift toward lean start-up. This is what Pollenizer start-up mentor, Claudia Barrica-Larriviere, has to say about lean canvases:

“The beauty of the lean canvas is that it can be used in a hundred ways: it’s the Swiss Army knife of startup tool.”

By following lean canvas principles, startups are experiencing fewer failures. If you are ready to crush the competition and learn more about the process, please contact us.

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The Lean Canvas, Single Page Business Plan

The Lean Canvas was developed by Ash Maurya in 2010 and has quickly caught on because of its simple and powerful ability to transform business ideas into a lean and actionable model that allows for a more fluid transition when things change, as things most often will. In his book, Running Lean, Maurya talks about […]

  • The Lean Canvas was developed by Ash Maurya in 2010 and has quickly caught on because of its simple and powerful ability to transform business ideas into a lean and actionable model that allows for a more fluid transition when things change, as things most often will.

  • In his book, Running Lean, Maurya talks about the fact that most start-ups fail with their “plan A.” Therefore, developing a traditional 60-page business model does not always make practical sense. This is especially true when the model is based on untested assumptions. Maurya’s concept of “running lean” allows you to continually test and refine your business model by using a single page diagram he calls the Lean Canvas.

  • After creating a Lean Canvas diagram you can easily share it with clients and stakeholders allowing their input to inform you as you continually develop your business plan. A Lean Canvas is easily updatable and allows you to make changes along the way addressing the market needs more effectively and then testing for validation. The process is more cyclical and dynamic than the static form of a traditional business model.

How to Create a Lean Canvas

There are various schematics and templates available online for creating a Lean Canvas. However, if you are anxious to get started, just grab a blank sheet of paper and identify the following nine elements.



  • Problem – Identify the customer problem or pain point for which your product or service can solve.

    “All your initial energy should be channeled towards finding evidence of a monetizable problem, not towards acquiring more resources to build out your solution.” ~ Ash Maurya

  • Solution – How does your product of service seek to diminish or eliminate your target consumer’s pain point?
  • Unique Value Proposition – What does your company, product, or service offer that adds value to the goods or service you provide? Why should people care about your company? This is also where your company’s mission statement will come in. What is your company culture going to be like?
  • Competitive Advantage – How does your company differentiate from the competition? Do you have a patent or innovation —something that cannot be copied?
  • Key Metrics – These include any business process or activity that is measurable such as, market size, penetration, revenue per customer, as well as any data stakeholders request or would be interested in seeing.
  • Distribution Channels – How are your customers going to find your goods or services? How are you going to engage with consumers?
  • Customer Segments – Who does your company serve? Complete a demographic “sketch” of your target consumer.
  • Cost Structure – Define the costs of doing business. This includes salary, operational costs, distribution costs, back-end costs, marketing, etc.
  • Revenue Streams – How do you plan to generate revenue? What do you need to be profitable? What is the lifetime value of your customer?

One of the most exciting aspects of creating your business model via the Lean Canvas approach is that it is an organic, intuitive, and agile process that lends itself to brainstorming and thought provocation. All the while, it keeps ideas reined in, focused and organized. Preparing a Lean Canvas can help you identify value for your business that differentiates it from others. It is a fresh approach to business planning that is perfect for the startup since it replaces the traditionally taxing, overcomplicated, and outdated process of business model planning.


Four Reasons to try the Lean Canvas:

In case you aren’t convinced, here are the four main reasons the Lean Canvas business model approach makes sense.

  • Fast – Outline multiple business models and many scenarios in a few hours
  • Portable – The single page format is a lot easier to share when soliciting input from others.
  • Effective – The Lean Canvas is your best business pitch in diagram form.
  • Concise – Focusing in on the 9 elements forces you to discover the very essence of your business.

Business model planning can be an overwhelming experience for those just starting out. It can be a dreaded process for the more experienced founders. It shouldn’t be either of those things. Don’t let worries over business planning delay your startup; connect with us today and discover the many ways we can help get your business off the ground.

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10 Common Mistakes New Businesses Make

Mistakes are an inevitable part of life; as the saying goes, “We are only human.” But just like in personal aspects of your life, recognizing where things are going wrong in your business affairs and learning from them so you can avoid them in the future is a surefire way to reach success. Don’t disable […]

Mistakes are an inevitable part of life; as the saying goes, “We are only human.” But just like in personal aspects of your life, recognizing where things are going wrong in your business affairs and learning from them so you can avoid them in the future is a surefire way to reach success. Don’t disable your full potential. Check out these 10 common mistakes new businesses make.

  • 1.) Underestimating the Competition: Your products and services bring new, exciting options to the table for customers, but there will always be someone else out there in the same line of work dishing out bright ideas to attract your target audience, and your customers always have the choice to walk away.

  • 2.) Thinking You’ll Get Rich Fast: Overnight success is nothing more than a toxic dream you shouldn’t aim for. With hard work and dedication, the money will roll in but it’s essential your business has time to grow. Thinking otherwise will leave you discouraged and risk you giving up before you see progress.

  • 3.) Not Balancing Business and Personal Life: Being all business all the time is more likely to leave you burnt out and put your personal life at a complete stop than increase production and sales. It’s important to establish a schedule that keeps a healthy balance between both worlds.

  • 4.) Lacking in Leadership Skills: Successful companies have strong leaders running the show, so being a weak leader just won’t cut it. Set inspiration for your team, communicate clearly and consistently, and don’t be afraid to engage in leadership courses if necessary.

  • 5.) Opting for the Wrong Financing: Needing funds for multiple aspects might be essential, but you always want to look into details before settling with an investor or lender because if you don’t, your goal to get your business ahead could wind up burdening your company with debt and high interest rates.

  • 6.) Misunderstanding the Market: Every brilliant growth strategy revolves around knowing the ins and outs of your market from who your competitors are to what customers want. You don’t want to run with assumptions so be sure to research your market.

  • 7.) Not Establishing a Purpose: If your only reason for business is to make money, both your customers and employees will see through that. To gain and retain loyal customers and employees, you must clarify the importance behind what you do and make them feel a part of that greater purpose.

  • 8.) Not Recognizing Strengths and Weaknesses: As skilled and professional as you are, perfection is impossible. Knowing your strengths will enable you to hone into them and use them to their full advantage, but recognizing your weaknesses is just as crucial to your success factor. Acknowledging the weak points will allow you to bring on team members who excel in the areas you don’t.

  • 9.) Cutting Prices: You can find one of the biggest mistakes startup businesses make right on their price tags. They assume the lower the price, the more sales they’ll close but in reality customers see things as “you get what you pay for.” So they’re more likely to pay higher prices for high quality items.

  • 10.) Winging it Instead of Having a Business Plan: Finally, a successful business won’t thrive on a go-with-the-flow approach. You don’t want to attract employees that aren’t qualified for the job, customers who aren’t in your target audience, and run a company without setting any goals. Strategic planning is vital for business growth, so always have a clear plan of what you’re aiming for and what direction you want to steer your business in.
By acknowledging where most startups go wrong, you can save yourself from following their mistakes or take the proper steps to correcting your own. For more ways to gain startup success, visit our blog!

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