Chrome extensions are incredibly useful (and often underrated) tools for marketers. They allow you to tailor your daily online experience to your specific needs, your job, and your productivity. As a marketing consultant, there are plugins out there that can help you, your clients, and potential prospects.

There are many extensions that can help you do things like: gain more competitive insights for your clients, quickly audit and report on a prospect’s website performance, instantly record a short personalized 1-to-1 video to send in a cold email, analyze SEO, security, and design flaws on a website, the list goes on.

There’s a huge library of plugins out there, and it’s easy to become overwhelmed when looking through the extension store. So which ones are really worth adding to your stack?

I want to share some of the best extensions you can add to your marketing consultant toolkit. These tools will help you focus, find new customers, and make informed decisions about your marketing strategies (The links below are all for Chrome versions but many also have Firefox and Safari versions.)

1. Similar web

SimilarWeb can give some basics on traffic to a site including the breakdown of traffic channels and similar websites. It’s a competitive digital intelligence tool for a complete 360-degree view of your industry, competitors, and customers.

2. Quick SEO

Quick SEO checks backlinks and few other handy things. It provides you easy access to important SEO signals and data like PageRank, Backlinks, Alexa Rank, and Traffic estimate.

3. METASEO Inspector

METASEO Inspector is useful to inspect the meta data and schema found inside web pages that are usually not visible while browsing. The extension shows you alerts when the meta data is not within certain ranges, for example when the description tag is too short, or too long.

4. Built With or What Runs

These tools are website profilers. Either of these tools can give you a pretty quick analysis of the technology behind a site like WordPress and what plugins are present with a click of a button.

Above: Built With

Above: What Runs

5. MyWebAudit

This is a paid tool that runs a complete analysis of a site and produces a pretty report you can brand and use. MyWebAudit runs automated checks that provide a done-for-you audit system. It identifies the major design, SEO, security, and performance issues that cost businesses money.

6. Lighthouse

This is Google’s site speed test tool that can quickly produce some ideas about what might be slowing a site down.

7. WhatsMySerp

WhatsMySerp shows related search volume and CPC data right in the browser for most search phrases. You get unlimited on-demand keyword research data inside Google search results.

8. Facebook Pixel Helper

This tool shows if Facebook Pixel is installed. The extension works in the background to look for conversion or Facebook pixels and provide real-time feedback on the implementation.

9. Loom Instant Video

This allows you to launch Loom from any web page and is handy if you’re doing site reviews to capture what you are seeing on a site. You can record your screen, voice, and face to create an instantly shareable video in less time than it would take to type an email.

10. Email Hunter

This tool allows you to find email addresses associated with any website. Along with the email addresses, you can get the names, job titles, social networks, and phone numbers. All the data has public sources detailed in the search results.

11. Color Picker

This tool makes it easy to identify web colors, saving, and editing them on a given site a quick and simple job.

12. What Font

What Font helps you discover the fonts used on a website. It allows you to know the font name, its family, color, style, size, position.

13. Video Speed Controller

Fast-forward, rewind, adjust playback speed on any video. This video speed adjuster adds controls to web videos that allow to increase or decrease playback speed.

14. Grammarly

This tool checks your grammar in email and any other online app. You’ll get real-time feedback from Grammarly on Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and nearly everywhere else you find yourself writing.

15. Calendly

If you use this scheduling tool, the extension makes it easy to drop your calendar links into any doc or email.

There’s my list, but hopefully, you’ve found at least one Chrome extension that can help you become more effective at your job. Are there any essential or obvious ones I missed? Let me know in the comments.

In addition to working with thousands of small business owners each year, I also work very closely with coaches, consultants, and small marketing agency owners. These folks are, of course, small business owners in their own right. Still, this work gives me particular insight into the challenges, workings, and characteristics of this specific niche of business owners. (You can learn about the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network here)

With that in mind, I present the 5 biggest trends that will impact coaches and consultants in 2021 and beyond.

However, I need to add the 2020 disclaimer – I have no idea what 2021 will bring, and anyone who claims they do is delusional, lying, or just guessing. So, when all or none of what I’m about to share happens next year, please do not request a refund.

As much as anything, 2021 will be about re-evaluation, rediscovery, and a whole lot of recovery.

And that leads me to my first trend, which is pretty meta in a post about coaches and consultants.

1) Coaching and consulting practices explode

Good news, this is the business to be in next year. As corporate giants reassess their business models, some current staff will jump into the consulting world. These small, nimble firms will compete with the giant, slow-moving, expensive consulting options.

You can expect a lot more personal development going on next year and open the doors for wellness, mindset, and skill coaching practices of all shapes and sizes. (In fact, we created a Certified Marketing Manager Program for 2021)

Of course, look for coach certifications, coach training programs, and “coaches” coaches to follow this growth trend.

2) More and more firms crowdsource talent

Very related to trend number one is the continued shrinkage of siloed departments for everything. Marketing departments of the future will get very lean and depend upon quick-strike teams that can be assembled for specific initiatives and campaigns.

Look for freelancing sites such as Upwork to get in the game of assembling teams.

3) Social media engagement gets more specialized

Almost every social media platform got a little more complex last year. To stand out and grow market share. Features like reels, stories, and stitching enable content creators to produce in multiple formats that require shorter, attention-getting tricks to compete.

The simple fact is that for anyone other than the full-time social media influencer with a team, it’s become too crowded and too complicated to attempt to compete on multiple platforms.

Look for consultants to specialize and splinter into platform-specific tactics and look for businesses to rein in their social media participation in the same way.

Social media will continue to get more transactional, but only if done to near perfection.

4) People crave faster consumption

Spending eight and nine hours a day in front of a screen doing “work,” laced with video calls, has pretty much killed the appetite for anything streaming that is not full-blown entertainment.

Does the world need that streaming video of you driving in your car talking about how real the struggle is? Um, that’s a hard no. (If I cursed in my writing, this is where I would do it.)

Do we want short, punchy, maybe even a little funny, but to the point content? Can I have an amen right now? It’s a little ironic but consider this; we can consume about three times the amount of content reading than listening.

I’m from the Midwest, so I don’t talk very fast, about 150 words a minute. But I’m a speedy reader, about 600 words a minute. So, don’t assume that audio and video content is all people want. What we want is something that entertains or provides value quickly. (Although I’ll give a major plug for audio content due to its portability – you can listen while doing many other things.)

5) AI get very practical

I wrote about this idea in my general 2021 Small Business Trends post, but it certainly crosses over to anyone who produces or content or helps others produce content.

Almost every trend article you encounter this year will talk about AI in some fashion. While I mention it here as a trend, I do so for some of the practical things it now brings rather than the futuristic promise of the technology it implies.

Without getting too techie about the workings, the mid-2020 roll-out of Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 or GPT-3 made AI a useful tool for many applications.

No longer confined to those pesky bots on website help desks, AI is now being embedded in our basic typing functions. Maybe you’ve noticed that the application keeps suggesting finishes to your sentences as you compose an email in Gmail.

This isn’t simply a feature added by Google; this is AI at work powering routine tasks.

This fall, I wrote my latest book, The Ultimate Marketing Engine (HarperCollins Leadership Sept 2021), entirely in Google Docs. I was amazed how often the suggested AI helped me write better or at least easier sentences from a simple suggested start.

Look in 2021 for a host of tools, services, and websites aimed at making writing easier. Tools like HeadLime, Lately, DeScript, and MarketMuse will change how content is created.

AI applications can already write an article based on a handful of fed keywords. Now, is this award-winning prose? Well, no, but is that blog post you paid someone $15 to write near as good as AI – probably not. AI writers can get you 80% of the way there, and then you, the brilliant content strategist that you are, can spend your energy on making it sparkle and getting it read by others.

This will shake up the content creation, social posting, and freelance industries dramatically.

This crystal ball stuff is fun, but more than anything, stay curious this coming year, and you may indeed discover a new and exciting chapter in business and life because the only thing that I know for certain is that change is gonna keep coming.

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Free course teaches new and existing marketing consultants how to accelerate their growth and profit. – Enroll here – https://ducttapecoach.com

Certain practices go into creating a highly profitable marketing consulting or coaching practice.

Most people focus on the doing part – Doing the work to get a client, any client, and then pivoting to the doing part of getting all the stuff done.

Those are essential elements to be sure, but more focus on building a practice in a systematic way – one that starts with defining your business strategy and launches quickly towards building systems to attract and serve your best clients is the ticket to long-term success.

We’ve created a free course that takes advantage of our thirty years of business building and working with and collaborating with hundreds of marketing consultants around the globe.

The course is video-based and broken into the four key practice areas below.

The marketing consulting model

There are countless ways to deliver your services ranging from pure coaching to full-on “done for you” implementation. The key is to choose the model that fits your strengths and experience.

How to generate more ideal clients

Well, as most know, leads and clients are what makes a business a business. The key is to attract “ideal clients” rather than merely landing work from anyone. There’s a precise methodology for doing just this.

Business building basics

Packaging, pricing, and proposing your services – this is the stuff that sidetracks and ultimately derails most consulting businesses. Get this part right, and you’ll find it much easier to sell and service your clients.

How to better serve your clients

To create an exceptional client experience, you must develop and operate a repeatable client service process. Every client is onboarded, oriented, and served in the same manner – not because it’s more efficient for you that way (although it can be) but because that’s how you get good at serving ideal clients, and that’s how you generate referrals!

We invite you to access our free marketing consultant accelerator course in hopes that it gives you a great roadmap should you just be starting out on your own or helps you refine an element of your already existing business for more profit and better client results.

There is no opt-in, but you do need to create a log-in to access the course – ducttapecoach.com

Video replay from live Webinar – How to Use Online Tools and Tips to Present a More Virtual You

Recently I sent out a simple message encouraging folks to stay positive and keep pulling for each other and suggesting that you get comfortable using an array of virtual tools to stay top of mind with clients and customers as they get to know virtual you.

In addition to plenty of messages of thanks, I also received a few questions about ways to employ digital tools for virtual communication so I thought I would put my ideas down and send them out.

First of all, there are many ways to create engagement with all of the tools we have available today but here are my favorites. (Nothing beats in-person for connection, but much can be done virtually with the right approach)

Great Use Cases and Tools

1) 1-to-1 video using a tool like Loom – Loom is a browser extension and you can do an instant video or screen capture and embed a link in an email – I call this 1 to 1 video because it’s a great way to personalize a video or review a report. I have clients who show off plans, share a website design, highlight a trend in Google analytics, give context to spreadsheet data, do a website review, and all manner of saying hello in the most personal way possible. One of the best aspects of Loom is that once you hit stop it produces a link that you can copy and paste into an email. In most cases, the recipient can view the video right in their email.

2) Video meetings and webinars using a tool like Zoom – This is my current video meeting and webinar platform of choice – We use this for larger webinars, group or team meetings, and one on one live meetings with clients. Zoom is very lightweight from a user perspective, meaning pretty much anyone who knows how to click on a link can get connected to your meeting. You can record the calls, people can join via computer or phone, there’s a mobile app, and you have lots of tools such as screen sharing and annotation during the call.

You could even consider this as a local alternative to say a networking or referral group that you already belong to but want to take to a virtual space. These kinds of meetups could help you stay connected while staying in the office.

3) Live streaming using a tool such as StreamYard – This is my current live streaming tool as it’s pretty affordable and you can stream to multiple platforms at the same time – Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.  A lot of people use live streaming in corny ways, que up the shot walking down the sidewalk or driving in the car, but livestreams can be an effective way to get a short message across. As in all things related to communicating a message, the best livestreams include stories. StreamYard also allows for some nice branding on-screen while you are broadcasting and automatically records the video.

Tips to take it up a notch

While the right tools make virtual you available, there are some things to keep in mind if you wish to take full advantage of this approach

1) Sound is important

While you can technically get your message across using your earbuds if you want to impress get a podcasting mic such as Blue Yeti 

 (In video meetings this isn’t necessary but for many other applications it allows you to communicate with more authority in your voice.)

2) Upgrade your camera

Most modern laptops come with a camera but taking it up just a bit to something like a Logitech C922x 

 will allow you to have wider shots, better focus, and far better light absorption. Okay, I don’t really know anything about light absorption, but I know you’ll look better.

3) Lighting makes a difference

If your office is the spare bedroom in the basement get some LED lights or you’ll look like you’re in the spare bedroom in the basement. If you can natural light through a window on your face is the best (no lights or window behind you or all we will see is glare.) Many people use these inexpensive ring lights

4) Get rid of distractions

Again, if you work at home or in a busy office, your background might not scream the professional message you want to convey. Recently I discovered a company called AnyVoo that creates simple pop-up backgrounds that you can put behind you anytime you have a video call or webinar. You can have any design printed on the backdrop, and it’s easy to assemble and disassemble on the go.

5) Try different formats

Online, virtual training differs from traditional in-person interaction mostly due to the fact that it’s harder to stay focused online. Meaning you should keep everything shorter and break it up into chunks. Do a 30-minute webinar instead of an hour. If you want to do something much longer you’ll have to think of a structure that gives people a break.

30 minutes of teaching, break to complete an assignment, 30 minutes of discussion.

You might also enjoy this post – 7 Virtual Collaboration Tools I Use Everyday

My first interaction with John Jantsch was in April of 2016 at the annual Social Media Marketing World conference in San Diego, CA. I had just begun my digital marketing consulting business a few months prior and, to be honest, hadn’t read his popular book Duct Tape Marketing nor did I know anything about running a successful marketing business.

John’s breakout session at the conference was about growing an “insanely profitable marketing consulting practice.” My biggest takeaway was the packaged “value-based” pricing structure he recommended. Afterward, I crept on the Duct Tape Marketing website and liked what I saw. I loved the fact that they put the pricing of their marketing consulting services right there in the open and had cute names (and icons) for them like “Jumpstart,” “Catalyst,” and “Department.” I remember thinking, “this is how I want to model my consulting business,” but rather than joining John’s [Network and licensing the Duct Tape Marketing System] which he was also promoting, I simply mimicked them! Long story short, I invented my own similar packages named “Jumpstart,” “Pro,” and “Domination” with similar icons. I even ripped off some of their website verbiage. (Sorry, John. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?).

Look familiar? In 2017, long before becoming a certified Duct Tape Marketing [agency], I was ripping them off! (Sorry, John.)

Despite not joining John’s network of consultants at the time, he now had a fan, and I followed much of his content going forward, including reading Duct Tape Marketing and SEO for Growth. (I also recommend the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast).

I enjoy how John and Duct Tape Marketing clarify online marketing in such simple terms, especially search engine optimization (SEO). Marketing tactics like website design, SEO, content creation, and social media can be overwhelming, especially for small business owners, but they don’t have to be—the Duct Tape Marketing resources make sense of it all. They make it so easy!

Before Joining the Network

Fast forward two years and I had grown my digital marketing business to a fairly successful place with a monthly average of eight small business clients (i.e. dentistry, home builders, self-storage companies, etc.) on retainer and several other one-off projects. However, I had to learn many things the hard way, including how to price my services correctly, how to fulfill on my services and find reliable vendors, and how to properly grow my business. In a nutshell, I was an entrepreneur on an island figuring it out as I went. More notably, I could barely keep up with my workload because I was jumping from one task to another and, despite all the work, I was still not making much profit. I had gotten myself this far, but I needed a system.

Enter the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network

I don’t know what prompted me to sit in on John’s webinar in June of 2018, because I knew he’d be pitching the consulting network that I had first learned about two years prior—and I knew I was not going to invest any money into a training program—but regardless, I attended. AND boy, was I wrong. While sitting in on John’s webinar something hit me: This was exactly what I needed at this point of my business. A few days later I was signed up, and I haven’t been disappointed since.

I’ve invested in my fair share of courses and learning tools. Some have been good and more have been bad, but the majority of the training materials marketed to me tend to include a young man in his twenties (who is clearly too young to have enough life experience to teach me about growing a business or marketing) that is standing in front of some flashy backdrop (sometimes a fancy car or even a private jet) and usually promising to 10X my business overnight. If you make the mistake of purchasing such a program from one of these “so-called” gurus, what you usually get is simply a “fly-by-night” lead-generation strategy. Trust me, I know.

With Duct Tape Marketing, it was different. No hard sell and access to John Jantsch himself. I mean the guy hopped on two calls with me personally before I joined!

What first attracted me to the organization was the network of preferred vendors, a library of marketing materials, and the certification process.

Preferred Vendors

The Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network has a vast number of preferred vendors and providers (including discounts) to help you fulfill on several services, including website design, content creation, and reputation management. These resources have been vetted by other consultants so I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. For example, if I needed a copywriter, there are recommended providers for that. No longer did I have to take a chance on a vendor on my own to learn if they were any good (trust me, I had gone through tons of resources to land on the ones I use before DTM). Even better, I was already using many of the preferred vendors such as CallRail, GradeUs, etc., which meant I was on the right track, but more so I could now get a discount with many of these companies. (Yes, Duct Tape Marketing negotiates discounted rates for the group!)

Marketing Materials

As a member of the organization, you get access to tons of marketing materials such as ebooks, presentations, PDFs, and more. Members can use these materials as is or co-brand them, too.

Certification Process

If you’ve ever read one of John’s books, you might be familiar with the Marketing Hourglass. This is the backbone of the Duct Tape Marketing system that you will learn as part of the consultant certification process. The Marketing Hourglass is a unique approach to the customer journey map that takes a potential customer through the sales funnel of know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer. This was not only valuable to apply with my clients, but I was stoked to do it for my own business. During the 90-day certification process, I interviewed my top clients and developed my core marketing messages, ideal client personas, and a practical marketing action plan.

Come for the Tools, Stay for the Network

Aside from these three benefits, another selling point for me was the fact that I was one of the youngest members of this network! Let me explain. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve experienced other paid training programs for marketing consultants. Many of these programs seem to be dominated (and sometimes even run) by young “newbies” who, in my opinion, are more engrossed in their self-serving motives rather than providing real value for the clients they are supposed to be serving.

The fact that most of the members of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network have transitioned from successful careers in corporate America was a positive sign for me. It meant I was surrounded by people with years of experience and not by anyone wanting to get rich quick. Most importantly, everyone in the network, including John Jantsch himself, cares deeply about each other and providing real results for their clients. This organization attracts good people wanting to do marketing the right way.

This is Not a Course, It’s a System

In my opinion, the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network is part franchise, part course, and part coaching—but more than anything, it’s a system. As John preaches in his books that “marketing is a system,” becoming a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant means you have access to a system for your practice and your clients.

A System for Consultants

For consultants, you get a step-by-step formula (delivered through the certification process and online training resources) for attracting clients, developing a winning strategy for those clients, pricing your services, fulfilling on your deliverables, and scaling your business—all the things you truly need to grow a successful marketing practice.

A Marketing System for Your Clients

Through the program, you will learn how to deliver the proven Marketing Hourglass system to your own clients, which will likely earn you long-term satisfied clients who want to keep paying you because you are now essential to their business growth.

A Year in Review

Since joining the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network here are just a few of my results:

A Steady Source of Prospects

As a result of applying the Marketing Hourglass to my own practice, I have created a steady source of leads for my business. One of the tactics has been hosting several free marketing workshops in my city (also referred to as “speaking for leads”). Not only has this turned into actual paying clients, but it has increased my local influence and even lead to organic referrals simply by becoming better known in the community. I have also gained the confidence to create a ton of new web content and YouTube videos which have yielded a ton of leads from SEO. Needless to say, I am no longer having to scratch and claw for new clients, because I have a steady flow of new prospects each month.

40% Revenue Growth

One of John’s first pieces of advice to me was to increase my prices. I increased my base SEO services by 50%, but more importantly added two new levels of service at roughly $2,500-4,000 per month (a minimum of $1,500 more than my highest services previously). My confidence to do so came from the value I was able to add through additional services like reputation management, content writing, and social media, leveraging the organization’s preferred vendors. This has resulted in a 40% revenue growth over the last 12 months. I’m on pace for my biggest year thus far.

Continued Education

The Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network offers bi-monthly training opportunities in the form of webinars and peer calls. These have been one of the most valuable resources. They also have in-person learning events once a quarter. In the ever-changing world of Google and online marketing, I have learned so much and continue to become a better marketer by taking advantage of these.

John Jantsch (left) and me (right) during a July 2019 DTMCN masterclass in Colorado.

My Advice to You

You get out what you put in. Whether it is the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network, a book, or some other resource, you will get the results when you take action. I attribute my success to this. When I joined to become a certified consultant with Duct Tape Marketing, I committed to getting my money’s worth and it has paid off because I have followed the system. (As I heard another member say, “Just do what they tell you to do, and it works.”) Like I said earlier, I spent two years figuring it out on my own. I wish I had joined sooner and I would have had a system to plug into.

If you are considering growing a marketing practice, I encourage you to sit in on one of John’s webinars. Even if you don’t join this organization, take action. There are so many resources available that can guide you on your entrepreneurial journey, but you won’t get there until you take your first step. Go out and make it happen.

Author Bio:

Since 2005, Michael Quinn has practiced marketing in the following fields: broadcast news, local TV advertising, corporate marketing, and most recently, small business SEO. In 2015, he got the entrepreneurial itch after consistently generating nearly 500 leads a month for his employer using online marketing. This drove him to create the Michael Quinn Agency with the mission to help 300 small business owners revolutionize their business growth by 2025 using online marketing. His current team includes a PPC specialist, web developer, and marketing assistant. He lives in Fargo, ND with his wife, stepson, and dog Mater.

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch on the 5 Ways to Get More SEO Bang for Your Buck

Every business needs SEO. If you’re a consultant or marketing agency, every single one of your clients is looking for you to get them results. They want to show up in search engine rankings—and not just show up anywhere, but rank competitively so that they get noticed by new audiences.

For experienced marketers, SEO isn’t complicated or difficult. We all know that there are certain things we need to do, like creating a website with the proper structure and implementing a content plan. Once you’ve covered the basics, you want to take your efforts to the next level so that you can really deliver for your clients.

These five techniques can help you take what your clients already have and turn it into even more valuable SEO fuel.

1. Optimize Your Old Content

Many business owners have produced lots of content over the years. If your client has been blogging for 15 years, there’s a ton of valuable content to tap into! The key is to go back and re-optimize that older content. Removing broken links, getting rid of outdated resources, and updating to be relevant for today’s audience is a great way to give your client’s existing content a boost.

This is also an opportunity for you to link to newer internal content. If your client has since created several explainer videos on the topic, plus a great podcast episode, why not include links to this newer material?

2. Embrace New Formats

Today, content is about so much more than blog posts. And fortunately a format like video can help you create exponentially more content in the same amount of time.

Take, for example, what I’m doing with this podcast. I’m actually recording this as a video, and will pull the audio separately to create the podcast episode that you’re listening to now. I’ll also create a blog post to accompany this episode. That means that in about ten minutes of work, I’ve suddenly created content in three separate formats (video, audio, and written word).

3. Add Video to Your Pages

Speaking of video, if your client doesn’t already have video on their website, now is the time to include content in this popular format. Not only are people more eager than ever to consume content in video format, video also helps increase your ranking with the search engines.

One of the ranking factors for Google and other search engines is dwell time (essentially, how long a visitor stays on a given web page). Longer dwell times lead search engines to infer that the content on the given page is relevant to the viewer, which they reward by giving you a boost in SERPs.

I’ve noticed on our site that pages that have video embedded on them encourage people to stick around. Visitors usually stay on these pages one to two minutes longer than pages lacking video. Even if they don’t watch the entire video, a video clip that can hold their attention for even 30 seconds will keep them on the page for longer than blocks of text would.

4. Get on Podcasts

I’ve talked before about the SEO benefits of guest podcasting. Lately, there has been a shift away from guest blogging and towards guest podcasting. Lots of businesses have started podcasts, and they’re hungry for guests to fill those episodes. Why not get your client on relevant shows?

Guest podcasting is great for a number of reasons. The time commitment is minimal; in 20 minutes of talking, you can create an entire episode. Plus, since you’re a guest, it’s up to the podcast host to edit the episode and do all of the behind-the-scenes work.

Podcasters are happy to link to your client’s website, ebooks, and other resources. This creates backlinks for their site, which are an important external element in building reputation and SEO. Plus, the podcaster will promote the episode through their networks and channels, bringing additional exposure to your client.

5. Collaborate with Clients to Produce Content

The final step to boosting your client’s SEO is a bit more involved, but it’s a worthwhile investment. Each month, work with one of your clients to produce content. This could be a video or podcast interview on your own site, a case study, a co-created survey, or just about anything else you can dream up.

Put together a package of content featuring and partnering with your clients. Through this process, you’ll generate backlinks and great content for both of you. Collaborating with your clients is great for strengthening your relationship with them, plus it can help you close more deals for yourself!

Prospects love to see examples, case studies, and the like. Co-created content touches on all of those elements. And when you’re producing and promoting your own content, you’re showing off your marketing prowess to potential clients.

As a marketer, you understand how to nail down the basics of SEO. When you’re ready to take things to the next level, these five steps are a great place to start. By amplifying your client’s existing efforts, you’re getting the most out of each piece of content they create and generating great SEO results with less heavy lifting.

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Opteo. Opteo is a Google Ads optimization software that helps you automate the day-to-day tasks so you can handle more clients in less time.

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You’re probably well aware of how important business proposals are to getting clients and winning new business. If you’ve been writing a lot of them, you may have thought about investing in proposal software to make the process easier.

However, is proposal software really all that great compared to writing the proposals yourself? It turns out that there are quite a few reasons why you would want dedicated software for proposal writing.

It will make writing a whole lot quicker

Here’s the thing – writing isn’t as easy as it seems. For sales purposes, writing can be extremely daunting. If you’re great at closing sales, you don’t necessarily need to be a good writer. On the other hand, hiring a writer every time you need to send out a proposal (or having someone in-house) is just not practical.

Proposal software ensures you spend less time writing, as it comes with pre-made templates. Some apps, such as Better Proposals, come with templates for different industries, such as marketing or website design. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. Alternatively, you can create your own template based on a proposal that worked for you and edit the main information every time you create a new proposal.

By spending less time on writing, you will be able to spend more time learning about your clients and getting new leads.

Integrations make everything easier

One of the biggest issues with proposals in document format is that their use is very much limited. Modern proposal software comes with a range of different integrations that ensure your proposal is embedded into your sales process.

For example, you can pull data from your CRM into your proposal software, making it easier to fill out your proposal template. Moreover, your proposal will be added to the sales pipeline. Once the proposal goes out, you can integrate it with your project management tool to have a birds’ eye view of the progress of the deal.

In essence, integrations save you time, make creating proposals easier and let you be in full control of the sales process. If your chosen proposal software doesn’t have native integrations, you can hook it up with Zapier and the possibilities are endless.

You won’t have to worry about design either

Besides writing, another thing that sales professionals aren’t always skilled at is design. Who’s to guess which color goes well with blue and where you need to put your logo to make the proposal look aesthetically pleasing?

Proposal software eliminates this problem by giving you visual templates and all you have to do is edit the written content. Besides the general appearance, you can change font colors, headers, insert your company logo and much more.

Why does all of this matter? Proposals with a cover convert better than those without one. Even if you think appearance doesn’t matter, first impressions are crucial to getting your proposals signed.

Your proposals will be optimized for all devices

When writing proposals in word processing apps, you usually save them as text or PDF files. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always end up looking all that great. 34% of all proposals are first opened on mobile platforms. Proposal software makes all your proposals optimized across devices, so you make a great impression, no matter the device the client is using.

You can guide the client through the proposal

One of the recent developments in the world of business proposals is live chat. You can use a live chat app to communicate with the client as they are reading the proposal and answer any questions they may have. It turns out that it makes a difference – you’re 13.2% more likely to win the deal if you use this feature in your proposals.

You will get paid more quickly

For anyone working in B2B, you probably know the struggles with unpaid invoices. According to research, the average company has invoices unpaid for up to 90 days. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

When research was done on over 180,000 signed proposals, the average proposal was paid about 12 hours from the moment it was signed. There are several reasons for this. First, you can pay directly from the proposal, which reduces friction and makes payment simpler and easier. Second, half of all payments (52%) were made through credit cards (using integrations with Stripe, Paypal and similar).

The remainder was paid either directly or through invoices. This means that a large portion of your clients may be delaying payment through invoices simply because they find credit cards more convenient – which is an option you can set up in your proposal software.

You will avoid the death trap of PDFs

It’s fairly common to send out your proposals as PDFs. It’s what your clients are used to – you just attach them and send out in your emails. The clients print them out to review them and hopefully sign. Well, research has shown that PDFs are the number one conversion killer for business proposals.

On a fairly large sample, we discovered that sending your proposal as a PDF means decreasing the chances of the proposal being signed by as much as 78%. It’s not that something is inherently bad about PDFs, it’s just they tend to get printed. And once a proposal gets printed, the likelihood of signing plummets. The reasoning behind this may be that a proposal printed on paper gets shared among several stakeholders, decreasing the chances of being signed.

Conclusion

There are plenty of reasons to incorporate proposal software in your sales systems. Not only will you write proposals more quickly, but you will also get paid more quickly, have your proposals optimized across devices, have the option of live chat within the proposal and much more.

If you’re still sending out proposals in PDFs as email attachments, it’s high time you jump on board the proposal software revolution – your business will thank you for it.

About the Author

Adam Hempenstall is the CEO and Founder of Better Proposals, simple proposal software for creating beautiful, high-impact proposals in minutes. Having helped his customers at Better Proposals win $120,000,000+ in one year only, he has launched the first Proposal Writing University where he shares business proposal best practices.

It wasn’t too long ago that you could follow the formula below to attract and generate leads for your business:

• Develop a content upgrade, like an ebook
• Gate it behind a form on a landing page
• Drive people to your landing pages through blog posts, social media, advertising, and email campaigns
• People see the offer on the landing page, are interested, and give their contact information in exchange for the content
• Voila, you have a new lead that you can nurture to a sale

While content upgrades still work well as a lead capture tool, you need to now get creative with how to get eyes on it. The market is so saturated these days and so many businesses are now following this approach that it can be easy to get lost in all the noise.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and began testing an approach that I had seen to start to emerge that I want to share with you. While my results have been significant, it may take time for business who are just getting started to see the same results, but in my opinion, it’ll be well worth it in the long run.

The key is to continue to position yourself as the expert in your field, and the best way to do this is to create and aggregate content into one place to show not only your visitors that you know what you’re talking about, but search engines as well.

Have I lost you? I hope not! To understand what I’m talking about, take a look at the details below.

Creating content – An evolved approach

As content continues to grow in importance for your business, it now must take on an elevated position in your strategy and planning.

The use of high-quality, education-based content has become a necessary ingredient in creating awareness, building trust, converting leads, serving customers and generating referrals.

Marketers these days have a lot in common with the traditional role of publishers. The good news is that the days of creating an infinite amount of thin content are over. You can create content less frequently, provided you structure it correctly and include a ton of value within it.

Today we have evolved into the “less is more” approach. Big content projects, even if there are only three per year, is better than writing a blog post every week, just because you think you should.

I’m currently experiencing great results with something that I’m calling Hub Pages. This is something many have already started doing and I understand why.

Content planning has really risen to the strategic level. It’s no longer an SEO tactic or simply content marketing. While we should certainly use it for those things, we must plan it at a foundational level.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, content really is now air for your business as it impacts every channel, which elevates how we have to think about it.

Content becomes an asset over time

Content is no longer created for today or tomorrow. It is created as an asset that can be used throughout every stage of the Marketing Hourglass. Because of this, you need to think about the time and energy you need to invest to get it right.

Hub themes

I’ve talked about the Total Content System for years and it’s really driven by what I’m starting to call “hub themes.” These themes can be monthly, quarterly, or whichever timeframe you think is best.

Let’s say the theme for the month is “local marketing.” You’d want to drive all the attention you have to this idea of local marketing, so one of the main tabs on your website may become “The Ultimate Guide to Local Marketing.”

Instead of it just being a page that talks about local marketing services, it becomes a foundational page that has a tremendous amount of value about what local marketing is, with tons of resources and links that people can click through to for further information (it may even end up looking like a course).

All of the content you have pointing to it are like the sub-chapters of the hub theme. I not only have all of these internal pages driving back to this one hub page, I also include links to external, high-quality content on the page that can also be linked back to the hub page.

Hub pages are also a great way to organize existing content and get more use out of it. Driving it to, and including in, these hub pages is a great way to give old content new life.

With so many pages driving to one another, you’ll start to gain a lot of trust and authority from Google, which will eventually help to increase your rank in search engine results pages over time.

The role of content upgrades

Content upgrades are still the new free. When you put these hub pages together, still include content upgrades, like an ebook or webinar signup, on these pages. People will now see these content upgrades because you are driving more traffic to these pages and they are easier to rank for instead of individual posts.

So, what do you think about this approach? Have you started to implement these types of efforts in your business?

If you liked this post, check out our Guide to Building a Small Business Marketing Consulting Practice…see what I did there?

When you started your business, chances are you didn’t do it with the intention of working with high-stress levels and long hours the rest of the life. In an ideal world, many business owners have the idea to create a business and then let it run in the background without a whole lot of their own involvement.

The thing is, scaling your business in itself can be stressful and is often where many businesses fail, but it doesn’t have to be that hard. You just need to learn to let go a little bit.

I know, your business is your baby, but you must understand that there are very few things in your business that it makes sense for you to actually to do.

After owning a business for almost thirty years now, here’s something I firmly believe to be true: Your business is worthless until it can operate without you, and the only way it can operate without you is through delegation and outsourcing.

Take inventory

To begin your scaling process list all of the tasks you currently do in your business, which, if you’re just getting started, could be very long.

While this process could take a bit of time, the point of it is to understand what you can and should delegate. In the past, I’ve thought about this in two ways, so feel free to approach it in whatever way makes the most sense to you. The first approach is to categorize tasks into the following categories: work you hate, work you must do, and work you can’t do.

For each task, ask yourself if you could get somebody else to do it less expensively or with greater output than if you did it on your own. If the answer is yes, then you need to pass that work off to somebody else.

Another approach is to add values to the work you need to do, such as $5, $50, $500, $5,000. The idea here is that some work you do has greater value and is the work you should focus on and some work has little value and is the work you should delegate.

Don’t underestimate the value of outsourcing to somebody who could do the work far better than you. My bookkeeping virtual assistant charges $65/hr, and while that may seem high to some, it would take make so much longer than it takes her and wastes valuable time that I could focus on high-profit tasks related to my business. Plus, I hate doing this kind of work, so overcoming the mental block to actually get the work done takes a significant amount of time on its own.

Develop systems and processes

Let’s be real, much of the success of your business resides in the heads of your staff. So, what happens when they leave? Do they take your processes with them? Ideally, no, because you should have these processes documented.

Now, just to warn you, this part takes a lot of time up front but can save you incredible amounts of time in the long run. In order to delegate and outsource effectively, you must document your systems and processes for others to refer to. Why waste time on training numerous VAs and employees when you can have everything laid out for them to review for themselves?

You’ll need to adjust these documents occasionally, but aside from the initial development, this should really work behind the scenes for you.

Using a project management tool, such as Asana, is a great way to manage your delegated tasks and house your processes.

Focus on what matters

Small business owners often get bogged down with day-to-day tasks (I’m talking tasks as meaningless to your business as taking out the garbage) and easily get distracted with these smaller tasks.

After you come up with your inventory, start creating priorities and managing your days, weeks, months and even quarters based on doing more high payoff activities that you identified in the exercise mentioned above.

It was a great day when I was able to lock myself away and come up with a new product or service innovation, or simply get priority to-dos done without interruption. In fact, even today, I have “John Focus Days” blocked off on my calendar so that my team is aware those are the days when I’m in the zone and would ideally not be disturbed.

This is how scaling a business happens: when daily tasks are outsourced and you can focus on next steps to grow.

What you shouldn’t delegate

Now that you’ve made your list and a commitment to delegate, you also must figure out what you can’t delegate because there are definitely some tasks that should fall within your to-dos.

Even if you put together an awesome internal and outsourced team, there are a few things that small business owners shouldn’t delegate, including:

• Culture – The core beliefs, operations, and core story are areas you must continue to nurture and teach no matter how large your staff grows.
• Processes, overall strategy, and company vision – You must own the idea of where you are going and why you are going there, as well as how you plan to get your business there.
• Client relationships – Sure you can have your staff run day-to-day interactions, but make sure you still show your face and keep open communication with your clients. How your clients feel about your business and how they understand the results they gain by working with you are items of great value to your business and must be guarded and practiced by you.
• Hiring – As a small business owner, make sure you know who you have working for you. When it comes to outsourcing and delegation, this component is key.
• Finances – You at least need to track financials and make the ultimate decisions on large expenses or investments. While I have that VA who handles bookkeeping, I insist on staying on top of key performance indicators and managing the money inside the business.

At the end of the day, in order to truly scale your business, you must work to replace yourself in two key areas – the doing of the actual work that makes money and the selling of the work that makes money. Do that, and you’ll be on your way to setting your business up for success.

If you liked this post, check out our Guide to Building a Small Business Marketing Consulting Practice.

People are always going to have problems, so as a marketer or business owner, your job is to solve these problems for your ideal clients. This really is the key to business success.

Here’s the thing, problem-solving is easier said than done. You can’t take this lightly and can’t just go halfway with it because people will always look for better and faster ways to get what they’re looking for.

I’m not going to sit here today and tell you how to build your product, that’s your job, but I am going to give you helpful tips on how to market it.

Why people buy

It never gets easier to hear this, but at the end of the day, people don’t want or care about what you sell. All they care about are that their problems are solved, and your products or services are simply a means to an end.

Some of the most successful and satisfied entrepreneurs I know figured this out early on. They weren’t necessarily after all the fancy bells and whistles that could have come with their products and services at the beginning. Instead, they were obsessive in solving their customer’s problems. Once they figured out how to do that, they could add the “cool” factors.

Your customers don’t often know how to solve their problems, but they often know what those problems are, which is why they are searching for solutions like yours. Show them that you are the answer they are looking for and the experts equipped to make their pain points go away. As a marketer or business owner, that’s really all you need to do. Period.

How to discover problems

Do you have the answers to the following questions (this is a long list, but to truly be effective, you’ll want the answers to each and every one of them):

• Who are you selling to?
• What are their goals and dreams?
• How do they gather information to solve their problems?
• What are some things that are important to them?
• Do you know what the biggest unmet need is in your marketplace?
• What is the biggest pain point your customers experience?
• How hard have you worked to try to solve their problems in the past?
• Why is the problem so hard for them to solve?
• Who else is trying to solve the problem and how are they approaching it?
• What does success look like to them?
• What might hold them back from buying a product or service?
• How do they come to a purchase decision?

To truly get the answers to these questions, and understand them front to back, start your research by sitting down with current customers and simply ask them some of those questions directly.

Additionally, look at online forums and sites they visit and see what they’re talking about, and also take a look at your emails, look at your online reviews, and chat with your sales team to pinpoint common complaints or issues your customers are having. You’d be amazed at the amount of information that can come from those sources.

How to effortlessly include problem-solving in your marketing

Refocus your messaging

Your ideal customer should always be top of mind and it is imperative that your message is directed to them and resonates with them.

They want to see a message that revolves around solving their problems. It should be clear and concise so that they have little doubts as to how you can help them.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to focus on themselves, products, and services in their messaging. It’s important that you scan your content and refocus your message on your customers and the problems they want to be solved.

Create trigger phrases

This is a bit time consuming, but worth it. Break down the solutions you sell and the benefits of what you do. Map these back to what I like to call “trigger phrases.” These should be attention-grabbing statements or questions and should come from the point of view of your customer, not your own.

Develop an attention-grabbing headline

Take a second and write a bold statement that might be the first thing anyone who visits your website will see and test this headline with your ideal clients. Ask them to be honest and details in their feedback.

Online reviews can also provide valuable insight for writing these headlines. They can often write your promise for you.

Be educational and informative in your content

Be helpful with the content you create, even if it doesn’t directly discuss your products or services. Show that you are knowledgeable on the issues they are facing in a variety of formats. Content is essential to any business today so get started on writing blog posts, creating how-tos, recording videos, and so on. Through content, show them that you are experts in the field that will help to make their pain points go away. Providing actionable advice can go a long way.

Make your prospects’ and clients’ lives easier through content upgrades

As part of your lead generation efforts, provide valuable information through content upgrades that people can download by giving at the very least their email address. This allows you to nurture them with additional helpful information down the road, which will continue to remind them that you are there for them and have the answers they are looking for.

Be responsive to comments, emails, and social media

Remember, these channels should not be one-way streets, they should be conversation tools. By responding quickly and providing thorough answers on these platforms, you’re just giving them one more reason to trust you and see you as an authority in your field that has their backs.

Dive deeper than basic keywords

Keyword research is essential for speaking to and getting your audience’s attention, but to really have an impact, go further than the surface level keywords and focus on long-tail keywords to really get targeted and get to the root of their problems.

Personalize your lead generation efforts

While problem-solving in itself will help drive you towards success, to really make an impact in your market, you must be unique and creative in how you solve these problems because everyone in your industry is trying to address the same problems.

Are you focusing on problem-solving in your marketing efforts? Have you seen a change with this type of focus?

If you liked this post, check out our Guide to Building a Small Business Marketing Consulting Practice.