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Archives for August 2020

Generate leads with a Digital Sales Funnel During and after COVID 19

August 17, 2020 by Peter Spoleti / Vertex Markets Inc. 1 Comment

While sales for many have slowed during this pandemic, there are still ways to generate leads that will get you through these tough times and set you up for success after this pandemic has ended.

Digital Marketing Sales Funnel

It isn’t just the retail sector that have seen their sales decline during this pandemic many types of businesses have been hurt during this crises. With hot spots popping up around the country and some businesses forced to re-shut down or endure increased regulation to stay open at reduced capacity, it seems the economy is  in a holding pattern waiting for either permission or science to get things moving again.  Even if currently in some industries it’s been difficult to close deals now is the time to generate leads, filling the sales funnel and start moving them through the process then closing them as things move towards normalcy.  (Whatever normalcy might look like in the future.)

Hone your online sales process.

Many businesses who held their own or even those who thrived during this pandemic were those who embraced selling and marketing online, embracing a viable digital marketing program.  Let’s step back a second, first if you’re not selling an inexpensive or impulse buy, it will be difficult to generate sales immediately from a basic advertising or digital campaign.

It’s believed, it takes three exposures to a company before someone makes a purchase.  These days with more of the sales process online the actual number is much higher.  Today, it is estimated prospects are interacting with your business through your website, social media, email, and phone 20 times before making a purchase.

Few salespeople have the time or the fortitude to follow up with a prospect 20 times before seeing results.  That’s where a sales funnel, digital marketing and artificial intelligence come to the rescue of your bottom line.

What is a digital marketing sales funnel?

“Sales funnel” is a posh term for a sales process, as soon a someone learns about your company to the time they make their purchase.  Your sales funnel also know as your revenue funnel or sales process it is directing your prospects through their buying journey.

A well designed and properly executed sales funnel has five stages: awareness, interest, decision, action and connect.  While it assists the business in converting their leads into sales.

It’s critical to build a great funnel.  One that helps you identify the correct buyer early, and makes buying your product a happy experience.

The Steps associated with setting up a sales funnel.
  1. Know Your Target Audience. You need to understand your target audience before you begin to create your sales funnel.
  1. Build Your Buyer Personas. You can build different buyer personas targeting your marketing campaigns for the different variations of your customers.  Develop different but accurate buyer personas from research based on collected data and probing questions.
  1. Plan on Generating Traffic. If potential customers aren’t aware of you or the products or services you sell, they can’t purchase them from you.  Therefore, you need to implement multiple lead generation strategies to drive traffic to your website.
  1. Plan on Engaging Your Audience. Your lead generation efforts aren’t going to be enough by themselves if you fail to engage your audience.  They need to learn about your products and/or services.  This can be accomplished with a worthwhile digital marketing strategy.
  1. Have a strategy to convert Your Leads. Lead conversion is the final stage of the sales process during which your prospects convert into paying customers.  To ensure this step doesn’t take too long; minimize the number of form fields, keep the number of steps for completing a purchase low, implement one-click options for sign-in and sign up.

Automating you sales funnel is critical and makes it efficient.  Take advantage of the A.I. automated CRM systems available to your business to act when necessary to move your prospects down your sales funnel on the journey to turning prospects into customers.

Ways to fill your digital sales funnel:
  1. SEO & PPC will bring you leads. But which should you invest in PPC or SEO to receive the best ROI on you digital marketing investment? The answer is both, PPC & SEO are two sides of the same coin they are two different but vital digital marketing functions.

SEO and paid marketing target two quite different audiences.  PPC targets your “unbranded” audience.  Those are the prospects who are likely to buy from you if they only knew you existed.  The other side of that digital marketing coin is SEO, it targets “branded” audience.  Those are the segment of you target market who have some sort of an existing relationship with your brand.  They’ve heard of your brand.  They may have even done business with you already.  Or, maybe they are an existing and or repeat customer.

So to get the best return on your marketing budget you need a combination of both PPC and SEO or you risk missing out on a chunk of traffic and leads which each program will bring to your site and the benefits which come from that traffic.   Related article: “SEO for small businesses to increase profits & organic search results”.  A good SEO campaign and the right Keywords can turn your website into sales funnel filler and generate profits while you’re working other areas to grow your businesses.  SEO is one of the most used digital marketing strategies to help drive traffic to your site.

2.Create a blog.  You should be producing content to build your brand.  You’re investing a lot of time producing relevant quality content make sure your target market is finding it once it’s released into cyber space.

Your blog content can provide a review and relevant information your target market is looking for on the onset of their purchase journey.  Used correctly a blog can generate traffic to your website and your other social media sites, improving your Google rankings and growing your brand.

Blogging can also help fill your sales funnel potentially generating significant revenue for your business. However, you need to create engaging content for your audience.  The trick with that is don’t only write on the topics you believe your audience is interested in reading about, ask them the topics they are interested in reading about, and include those topics on your blog and social media.

  1. Will a Facebook chat-bot drive traffic to your website. Traffic translates into increased leads, which can become increased sales and subsequently increased revenue for your business.  

Google has over 200 ranking factors embedded into their ranking algorithms.  We’ve already touch on SEO earlier in this article to help drive traffic to your site.

Another digital marketing technique used to generate traffic is chat-bots.  Currently you can create your own Facebook chat-bot with the help of, Manychat, and HubSpot’s chat-bot builder, plus many others.  According to research 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger each month.  With such a large number of people using the platform, you can increase your traffic if you use a custom chat-bot for your customers.




  1. Set up a single page sales landing page. Using a landing page is common practice in digital marketing. They usually are designed to contain a description of your product or service with some reviews.  To help make your landing page a success design it with eye catching content, easy to read, and catches the prospects attention starting them on their purchase journey towards your products or services.

Your content may be the ticket that gets the prospect to the show, but if you’re late raising the curtain to that show it might result in losing a lead.  Therefore, making your landing page interactive enough is the key.  Use bots to interact with people guided to your page.  You have piqued their interest don’t let them get away due to a poor user experience.

  1. Establish your reputation as an expert in your field. By establishing yourself as an expert in your field you build trust between yourself and prospects and current clients.  By building trust, people will prefer doing business with you instead of your competition.

It isn’t going to happen over night it will take time to establish yourself as an expert in your field.  Dedicating a set amount of time every week to accomplish this goal and make it consistent.  Create and post content to your social media, comment on peoples post with knowledgeable and relevant comments, email blast original articles to your database, guest author on other industry relevant blogs, create a You tube channel, do a webinar.  You don’t have to do all of these suggestions but start doing something to get your name out there.  Establishing yourself as a though leader will start yielding results sooner than later.

  1. Referrals, money in the bank. Every salesperson knows the golden rule of prospecting “Always ask for referrals” but not as many as you think follow that golden rule.  Your client just paid you the best compliment they could they purchased your products or services, they trust you the relationship is at a high, there is no better time to ask that new client for a referral.

Another rule business owners should live by is “the customer is king”.  You always want to keep the king happy.  If your clients, new or old, are happy you’ll be more comfortable asking them for referrals. And if the “king” is happy with you they’ll be more willing to refer your business, possibly becoming an advocate for your business.

Make it easy for your customers to make referrals keep the lines of communication open offer their referral a discount and them a valuable freebie for referring your business to others.  And always keep in mind the old saying, most businesses know to well, a happy customer brings in two more, but an angry one has the potential to take away 12.

  1. Enhance your mobile presence. A mobile app or mobilizing your website?  There are more than 3.5 billion smartphones in the world, so you can’t afford to ignore mobile interaction.  A mobile app connected to your sales platform can provide a better customer experience and help to increase revenue.  However, you shouldn’t rush into it.  Do your research, decide on the correct functionality you want to offer and execute properly, bring your customers in on the planning process  after all they’re the ones who will be using it. Solicit input from them on features they would like to see in a mobile app.  When you feel you have the right design and functionality and believe you either have or can hire the right resources to effectively manage your app, then make the leap.

If you’re not quite ready to launch your app don’t worry.  You can and should, (if only for the sake of your Google ranking) make your website mobile friendly.  A large percentage of consumers now rely on their smartphones and tablets to access the internet and subsequently your website, don’t upset them by them not being able to read your website on their non desktop devices.

  1. Develop an email marketing campaign. The rumors of the death of email marketing are greatly exaggerated.  More crowed then in the past and you will need to step up your game but email marketing when done effectively is still alive and kicking.

An effectively designed email campaign meant to introduce your blog, other new products or initiatives can serve you well to get the word out and spark interests in your new venture.  Afterwards, touching base regularly with well-crafted relevant content can help to drive leads to fill your sales funnel, educate your target market on your product and services, draw favorable comparisons between you and your competitors, and introduce discounts or special offers to your clients and prospects, to name a few uses for email marketing campaigns.  In other words, email marketing is a great way to keep the conversation alive between your business and your customers and prospects.

Your clients will be happy to hear from you if you don’t send them irrelevant quotes and images, or emails just selling yourself.  Use your email campaign to provide value added, provide educational content on how to solve their problems, better run their business, or industry specific news or innovations.  In their eyes, build yourself as an industry thought leader and resource, so when they’re in the market for your products or services you’ll be on the top of their list of trusted companies they want to do business with.

  1. Trial Period. This technique works well with SAAS products. Many people are reluctant to make a purchase until they are sure the service is right for them.  A free trial of 2 weeks to 1 month takes the risk out of the purchase for them.  This is also a great chance to introduce, and get the user hooked on the qualities of your services, your premium features and show them how your service is one they can’t live without.
  1. Offer a free mini course. I left one of the more challenging suggestions for last.  It may be the most time-consuming option suggested in this article but if done correctly it will also produce some great results.

Offer a mini course delivered through daily email lessons.  While it sounds overwhelming, it can be automated, the daily lessons don’t have to be long, and you can leverage existing resources to create the course.  The reason this yields result is because you’re building trust and over a period of time.  The trick is to give away enough information that people find value and begin to see results, thus seeing the value of a continued business relationship and the desire to receive additional services from you after the mini course has ended.

How does this apply to COVID-19?

If the data has shown anything it has shown that people are spending much more time on their computers and on the internet moving a much greater percentage of their product researches and purchases online.  With so many people working remotely and enjoying additional free time due to a lack of a commute to and from the office.

People who previously had crazy schedules, who didn’t usually have time to consume content or attend a webinar are now finding time to do both and enhance their business and personal skills.

This makes for a great time to get in front of your customers and target market and build stronger current relationships and foster new relationships.

Keep in mind these are tools designed to create lead generation to fill your sales funnel.  They are usually top-level sales funnel leads its up to you to guide them through your funnel.  It’s important to design a process that includes following up with prospects, nurturing the relationship, and ultimately transforming those leads into sales and loyal customers.  Combined with an automated email platform, such as Constant contact or HubSpot, to help implement these tools is a great solution for generating new leads during this pandemic and after it.

Filed Under: B2B, Business Development, Covid-19, Digital Marketing, Slider

Alternative Investments and 401(k) Plans

August 16, 2020 by Channelchek Leave a Comment

Alternative Investments Will be Allowed in Defined Contribution Retirement Portfolios

Will retirement planners be comfortable with investments that are not regulated by the SEC? The participants of defined benefit pension funds have long enjoyed the potential for higher returns in alternative investments. So why haven’t these investment options been included in defined contribution (DC) plans? After all, private equity deals and hedge funds further diversify asset mix, increase potential return, and help provide capital for small businesses. These are just some of the reasons this unregulated asset class, once reserved for the very wealthy, will now be permitted by the Department of Labor (DOL) under ERISA protections.

Impact on Retirement Plans

The guidance came about after a review by the DOL, which then issued a letter dated June 3, 2020. The letter specifically offers legal protection to target-date-funds (TDF) that include allocations in private equity investments.  The main purpose of the guidance is to assure companies that offer investments in funds that include private equity, that they are permitted, thereby reducing their liability. The formal letter was prompted by lawsuits from employees, against Intel, Verizon, and others. Their cases caused other companies to steer away from these investments. The uncertainty of suitability effectively limited the options of employees seeking to diversify or maximize the potential for their retirement savings. Employees may still choose options that don’t include non-registered investments, but for those that want the potential benefit, their employers may now comfortably offer them.  

According to the Employee Benefits Security Administration, Acting Assistant Secretary Jeanne Wilson, “This [DOL information] letter should assure defined contribution plan fiduciaries that private equity may be part of a prudent investment mix and a way to enhance retirement savings and investment security for American workers.”

The DOL letter highlights that private equity should not be available as a stand-alone option when creating a plan that has protection under the guidance, as well as other considerations, including:

  • The impact of the private equity allocation on diversification, expected return, and fees on a long term basis.
  • The ability of plan fiduciaries to oversee private equity investments vs. hiring an expert consultant.
  • The percent invested in private equity, noting that the limits illiquid assets to 15% for registered open-end investment companies.
  • Whether plan participants will be permitted to take benefit distributions and move into other investment options.
  • Agreement by plan fiduciaries to value private equity investments according to accounting standards and subject those investments to an annual audit.
  • Whether the long-term nature and liquidity restrictions of any private equity investments align with the ability of plan participants to take distributions or change investment options as they wish.
  • The adequacy of disclosures provided to participants regarding the character and risks of the plan investment option that includes a private equity component, so as to allow participants to make an informed assessment before investing.

Take Away

Investment options that include private-equity may now legitimately be offered in 401(k), 403(b) and 401(A) plans to participants without the employee first qualifying as an accredited investor. Target-date-funds with longer investment horizons can include unregistered equity-based options that may enhance retirement growth when compared to investment choices containing only publicly traded securities. The option of asset allocation TDR funds with a private equity component gives individuals access to options used by professionally managed defined-benefit pension plans. Private equity investments within TDFs would provide further diversification, perhaps reducing investment risk and could lead to enhanced returns for participants above returns achieved solely in the public market.

Alternative investing, 401K

Filed Under: Finance, Investing

Advertising Budgets are Going Where the Eyes Are

August 14, 2020 by Channelchek Leave a Comment

Ten years ago 15% of Ad Money was Spent on Internet Ads, Guess what that Percentage is Today?

Soap operas, magazines, TV sports, local radio; they all allow niche target-advertising.  But, their slice of the advertising-dollar pie is shrinking precipitously. This trend has been in place for a while and still accelerating. Traditional ways to reach motivated buyers are losing out to the newer competitors for ad-dollars. In 2020, this has become even more complicated.

The days of scanning through newspapers for sales or dentist office magazines to learn more about a product are almost nostalgic. Ad-Targeting is much more refined in the new digital world. With a more accurate dataset of consumer likes and dislikes, online advertising has leaped to the forefront of marketing strategies. Marketers have recognized the consumer trends and have adapted to meet them; targeted digital advertisements allows them to be significantly more strategic.

Advertising Spending Trends

A bit over a decade (2009), the internet represented only 15% of all U.S. ad spending.

               Total dollars spent: $117 Billion

               TV: 39% of ad spending

               Print Media: 34% of ad spending

               Internet: 15%

Today (2020), more is spent on internet advertising alone than all U.S. ad spending of ten years earlier.

               Total dollars spent: $263 Billion (est.)

               TV: 28%

               Print Media: 11%

               Internet: 53%

 

Share of U.S. Ad Spending by Medium, 2009 (left) vs. 2019 (right)

Internet ad spending captured nearly half of ad dollars in 2019, up from about 15 percent a decade ago.

2020 and Beyond

The average social media user spends 2-plus hours a day browsing their feeds. The larger social media providers are monitoring people’s usage, likes, and dislikes. This creates a massive smart-platform for target-marketing products. The platforms continue to update and improve their methods, including increasingly higher levels of sophisticated algorithms—essentially artificial intelligence to connect a to users in their niche. The relevance of ads that users encounter is now superior to that they would see or hear from more traditional outlets. The big providers, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram, all offer promoted advertisements that pop up on users’ pages while they scroll their feed. On average, users connect with three or more of their social media accounts a day.

Social Media ad spending is forecast to increase by 20% to $43 billion in 2020. Television advertising has been hard hit, not by social media competition, but by the lack of aired sports competitions. With the postponement of 2020 Summer Olympics $1.2 billion, the cancellation of March Madness and sports in general, the NBA and NHL playoff cancellation could cost $2 billion, and the seasons could cost around $700 million.    New estimates forecast that U.S. TV advertising spending will decline between 22.3% and 29.3%, mostly due to the curtailment of sports programs.

Google ad revenue is projected to be $39.5 Billion in 2020; this is down by 5.3% from 2019. The decrease is a direct result of the steps to curtail the coronavirus, which shut many businesses down and caused others to go into “safety mode” by cutting their spending. However, spending is expected to rebound at unprecedented rates, up 20% in 2021 as businesses begin to restart.

Ad spending on podcasts is forecast to grow 15% from 2019 to around $3.4 B by year-end. Around 40% of Americans now listen to podcasts on a monthly basis. Companies are adapting to new sectors to reach new markets.

Take-Away

Although 2020 has provided some one-time reshuffling of ad-dollar resources, the trend toward social media platforms is firmly in place. This is worth noting if you manage a media company, adapting and changing business models may put you in a position to take advantage of these changes. Investors may find undervalued traditional media companies that have been tossed out with others– those that a bit of research indicate are making smart moves. As for social media outlets, it looks like advanced data-driven technology is giving them their day in the sun.

Alternative investing, 401K

Filed Under: B2B, Digital Marketing, New & Trends, Slider

Tips on Getting the Most Out of Online Networking

August 10, 2020 by Peter Spoleti / Vertex Markets Inc. Leave a Comment

Networking has always been a necessary activity for all salespeople, business development professionals, business owners and many other departments in most businesses. We will all agree that business is an interactive and social venture whether it takes place in person or online.

 Very few businesses could survive without their employees maintaining and nurturing current relationships while also making new connections, also most jobs are procured through networking, not applying online, (sorry LinkedIn).

Online networking

Traditionally, networking happened mainly through face to face meetups, at trade shows, professional events, happy hours, traditional networking groups and professional association activities.  Although, in this new age of technology, and made even easier by the ranks of Zoom, Adobe connect, Go to meetings and many others, plus fueled by the pandemic, these days online and virtual networking have taken a large chunk out of face to face and traditional networking.

There are some of us which online networking was a natural extension of in person activity but not for all of us.  For those of you who may want some tips to help you hone your online networking skills we’ve listed a few tips to help you maximize your online networking experiences.


You must Give to Get.

The “Give to Get” motto is, give value added before expecting reciprocation, it works both in face to face as well as online networking.  You shouldn’t go into any networking situation with your first though being “what can I get out of this”, new business, a new client, or a new job.  Yes, that is the goal you’re hoping for, but to arrive at that point you’ll need to bring something to the table for the individual your looking to network with, something of value.  It could be, beneficial knowledge sharing, a skill you can apply to their benefit, or a beneficial introduction they are seeking.   Whatever it is, always go into the conversation thinking how can I help them. The more beneficial to them your value added is the quicker they’ll want to reciprocate to keep the relationship moving forward.

Pick the platforms most beneficial to you.

There is no shortage of social networking platforms, and everyone knows the big names, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  These platforms are helpful with meeting new people, but don’t overlook the benefits of the lesser known business & professional group communities and platforms or try to get access to private networks and platforms managed by industry associations or individual businesses.

Keep in mind joining and working too many platforms can be time consuming.  So to achieve the best possible results and make the best use of your time it may be worthwhile to concentrate on platforms or communities which provide and use technology to help you meet the right people. If Not, you could be wasting a lot of time without receiving much of a return on your investment.

(View a related article on digital marketing)

Remember Value added, Not Spammy.

As mentioned earlier, provide value added, its critical not to start a potential relationship with spam it may be the first and last conversation you have with them. Sometimes even the free added value you are using to collect data are viewed by people as fake of spam.

Treat it like a first date, (after all, you are trying to develop a relationship) ask people about themselves then participate in the conversation show interest in their responses, seek out their interest business and personal.  People respond and want to be around others whom they feel they are connecting with, whether it be in person or online.  Find common ground with whom you are speaking with then forward them an article on those topics. Be genuine, then when the opportunity presents itself try to take the conversation offline to a Zoom meeting or meet face to face, (and until the situation changes follow proper social distancing guidelines and local regulations, of course).

So many connections to make so little time to make them.

Connect with the right people, it just seems to be common sense.  But doing so is probably the most essential piece of the networking puzzle.  So many people so many choices on whom you can connect with, but the question is whom should you connect with?

To make it easy, its most advantageous for both parties if your connecting and engaging with people who you can help (remember, give to get).  Identifying those people is harder than you may think.  It takes an investment of some time to learn about a person and learning if they are someone who you can help may not present itself so quickly.

Therefore, invest some time and effort into researching the platforms you’re engaging on, does their technology provide assistance providing and driving introductions to you, is it helpful, make one to one intelligent connections on your behalf,  These attributes increase the likelihood that connections will become something which is meaningful and mutually beneficial

If these features aren’t present in the platform you are engaging on, try creating an ideal contact profile which mirrors current beneficial connections.  Then do the necessary manual leg work to narrow down the field of candidates that fit your profile.  Reach out to all of them with an engaging connection request following up promptly on any connection request you receive, don’t make it pitchy, remember “Give to Get”

Filed Under: B2B, Business Development, Covid-19, Slider Tagged With: business development, Online networking

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