How to Transform Your Website With Your Personas and Goals In Mind

Here at Sage Lion Media, we specialize in transforming our client’s websites to optimize their buyers journeys and encourage a seamless experience for their customers. Whether you are a non-profit news site, like our client The Wildlife Society, or an e-commerce brand, like our client Wilderton, we have the tools to transform your website and take it to the next level.

The Wildlife Society is a non-profit organization that supports wildlife professionals and students in their journey towards improving the future of wildlife, conservation, and the environment. When they approached us for a website update, their primary goal was to promote their memberships and annual conference. However, their existing website was cluttered with outdated information and difficult to navigate due to the sheer number of web pages. Despite the large scale of the project, we have a proven process that works for any website.

Our process consists of 5 key objectives: 

1) Establish buyer personas

We always begin our content transformation process by defining the personas and pain points of our clients’ customers. Buyer personas are a way to understand who your ideal customers are and how to market to them by analyzing psychographic and demographic data. Through building a buyer persona, you will better understand the customer’s pain points (or the problem your customer has that your product or service can solve) and what triggers them to purchase or sign up for your service.

It is typical to make more than one persona since there is never just one standard customer you are trying to target. Having personas made before writing the new website content allows us to better understand who we are speaking to and how we want to speak to them.

2) Define the brand tone

Next, we use the buyer personas as a guide to defining the brand tone. In this step we aim to understand the do’s and don’ts of how we want to speak to and market to each persona at each stage of the buyer’s journey. The content, tone, and goals will differ significantly at the awareness stage compared to the consideration or decision stage. Understanding this journey will help organically guide your customers through the website and ensure you have content that speaks to each part of their journey. 

3) Map out the customer journey

Once we understand the personas and how we are speaking to them, we then create a map outlining how we move each persona through the website through each step of the buyer’s journey. Establishing goals, calls-to-action (CTAs), and landing pages is critical at this stage. To do this, we look at each stage of the buyer’s journey and move each persona through the website to reach a goal.

4) Perform an audit

Content transformation doesn’t always mean you have to start from scratch. Auditing the content on the current website before you start the process of writing new content is extremely valuable. Through the audit, we can identify pieces of content that can be repurposed, updated, or deleted. Here we also identify gaps in the content and propose new landing pages that need to be created based on the previous step. Having an audit will create an organized outline of what needs to be done for the new website.

5) Fill in the gaps

Lastly, we create the missing content. After you have audited the website, we will clearly understand where the gaps are.. In this step we establish a site-map, clearly define the roles of the team, and begin writing content with the personas, brand tone, and customer journey clearly defined and in mind.

Is your website in need of a content transformation? Contact us today for a consultation and take one step closer to your new website.


5 Reasons to Set Up a Loyalty Program for Your Outdoor Brand

No matter what your product or service is, outdoor companies face a ton of competition within the industry. As an outdoor brand, it is essential to find ways to keep your customers engaged and build brand loyalty among your competitors. Loyal customers do not just care about a great product but also how the brand engages with them and rewards them for this loyalty. Building loyal customers also encourages repeat purchases and referrals to friends and family. One of the best ways to reward your customers and build loyalty is by setting up a loyalty program. 

Loyalty programs have tons of benefits for your brand and your customers. According to Invesp, 76% of consumers think that loyalty programs are a part of their relationship with brands, 50% of consumers will change their purchasing behavior to reach a higher tier within a loyalty program, and 64% of retailers believer their loyalty program is one of the best ways to stay connected with their customers. Building a customer loyalty program is a mutually beneficial way to build brand loyalty, grow your brand, and create a community while rewarding your customers for sticking around. 

“76% of consumers think that loyalty programs are a part of their relationship with brands, 50% of consumers will change their purchasing behavior to reach a higher tier within a loyalty program, and 64% of retailers believer their loyalty program is one of the best ways to stay connected with their customers.”

Invespcro.com

Still not convinced? Here are 5 reasons why you should consider setting up a loyalty program:

1) Increased Repeat Business

Brands who have loyalty programs tend to have increased repeat business because their customers are being rewarded for their purchases. Offering incentives such as free or discounted products, exclusive access, and special offers will encourage customers to continue to shop your brand rather than shopping around for the best deal. 

2) Enhanced Customer Retention

Customers who feel valued tend to stick around and continue to do business with your brand. Although your brand may always want to be growing and gaining new customers, customer retention is just as important, if not more. As your brand continues to have increased repeat business, your customer retention is also going to increase making a group of brand loyal customers. Loyal customers often refer their friends and grow your brand through word of mouth marketing. Since this is part of customer retention, we suggest also setting up a referral program to go along with your loyalty program to continue to incentivize and reward your customers.

3) Improved Customer Engagement

When you create a loyalty program, you have the opportunity to create a new email segment consisting of your most loyal customers. We recommend creating one list consisting of all your loyalty members and additional separate lists if you have a tiered loyalty program. Segmenting your loyalty members will improve email engagement because these customers are typically seeking deals, exclusive offers, and other announcements. Being part of this segment is another incentive to join the loyalty program since they will receive exclusive emails as part of their membership. 

4) Receive Better Reviews

One way we’ve seen brands give customers opportunities to receive more reward points is by rewarding them for leaving reviews. Think of it this way – your customers enjoy your products enough to join your loyalty program so they will enjoy it enough to leave a positive review. Positive reviews help attract new customers, increase overall revenue, and convert prospective customers who need a little extra convincing. Overall, this will eventually lead to more loyal customers and members of your loyalty program. 

5) Increased Revenue

By increasing repeat business, incentivizing your customers, and having valuable customer engagement, businesses can see a significant boost in revenue due to their loyalty program. Customers participating in the loyalty program often spend more to reach the next reward or become a part of a higher tier, leading to larger average order sizes. 

Are you interested in setting up a loyalty program for your brand? Set up a consultation with us to discuss different plan options and get started on building yours today. 


3 ways to use sweepstakes to build an engaged audience

Sweepstakes are more than just a giveaway

Running an effective sweepstakes is one of the most powerful marketing tools to help you build an engaged audience for your outdoor brand. In today’s day and age, having a large audience or contact list is not enough. New privacy restraints from companies like Apple have caused major data discrepancies in the email marketing sector for marketers and brands alike leading to unreliable reporting due to incomplete data collection in your CRM, such as lower email open rates. The solution? Understanding your audience and speaking to them directly. 

Across industries, we see sweepstakes being launched to hundreds of consumers where companies are only requiring names, email addresses, and sometimes extra things like social media follows to enter. While collecting emails on your entry form grows your contact list, the quality of your audience will likely diminish to individuals just seeking free products and will be unlikely to engage with your emails or convert to a customer in the future. When you create your entry form for your sweepstakes, we encourage you to ask 2-5 questions that will give you better insight into who your audience is. 

While collecting emails on your entry form grows your contact list, the quality of your audience will likely diminish to individuals just seeking free products and will be unlikely to engage with your emails or convert to a customer in the future.

Understanding your audience is important so you can effectively curate your marketing efforts in ways that will resonate with your audience and improve the chances of success and engagement. Once you start speaking to your audience directly, you will show them that you understand their problems and improve your KPI’s while doing it.

Here are our top three ways to build an engaged audience through your sweepstakes:

1. Psychographic Data

The first key to success with sweepstakes is to collect psychographic data about your audience. The easiest way to do this is to ask 3-5 questions as part of the form needed to enter the sweepstakes. We urge you to be intentional in the questions you ask your audience so the data will be useful in the future. We recommend starting with basic demographic questions such as name, age and location. Next we suggest asking questions that will help you understand your audience and inspire future content. Our client Pond King, a pontoon boat and pond management company, asks questions about fishing habits, what activities they enjoy doing on the water, and purchase intent in the future. Since asking these questions, we have created valuable content and segments that have helped us understand their audience and boost engagement. 

audience graphic

2. Personalized Content

Once you have launched your sweeps and begun collecting psychographic data, it is time to build personalized content to help you stand out and improve your marketing performance. In today’s digital age where consumer’s inboxes are flooded with marketing emails, consumers appreciate a high level of personalization in the content they receive. Examples of personalization in email marketing can include: using the customers name in the subject line, sending them content that responds to the psychographic data you have collected about them, and tailoring your marketing emails to products or collections that interest them. Overall, personalization in email marketing will lead to increased engagement, higher conversion rates, and greater customer loyalty. 

3. Iterations

Building an engaged audience takes time and iterations. Once you’ve begun collecting psychographic data and personalizing content, you must analyze the data and feedback from your marketing campaigns and adjust as needed. This may mean refining your questions in your sweepstakes, adjusting your buyer personas to include new information, or building new informational landing pages that you can run advertisements to. The sweepstakes is not only meant for your current customers but also to attract new ones and build your customer retention. 

marketing metrics

Running an effective sweepstakes for your outdoor brand requires being strategic in the creation of your sweepstakes. The best strategy is to ask meaningful questions to your audience to collect and utilize psychographic data. Personalizing your outdoor marketing content to the consumers needs and desires will create loyal and engaged customers that feel understood and attract new ones that will feel more connected to your brand. By following these best practices, you can improve your marketing performance and have a better engaged audience. 

Are you interested in launching a sweepstakes? Contact us today for a consultation. 


How to Build a Buyer Persona and Why They Matter

Even the best marketing strategies and tactics can only get you so far if you do not know who you’re marketing to. Creating a buyer persona is an integral part of marketing. Buyer personas help outdoor marketers and businesses understand the needs, desires, and habits of their customers while also predicting what triggers them to buy their product or service. 

What is a buyer persona?

The point of a buyer persona is to better understand who your ideal customer is and how to market to them. A buyer persona is your ideal customer avatar that represents one of your key target audiences. We recommend making more than one persona since often your data will be composed of a variety of people. Your personas will be created by assessing the demographic and psychographic data that you have accumulated since the start of your business. 

Follow this blog and learn the 6 steps to building your buyer persona.

1. Demographics

First let’s think about demographics. Demographic data is collected information used to inform researchers and outdoor marketers about the characteristics of your outdoor customers. While this may be surface level information, it is integral to understanding your audience and building your persona. Demographic data can help you answer the following questions: How old is your audience? What part of the world or country do they live in? How much money do they make per year? Do they have a family? Are they single or married? These high level questions are the first step in identifying the persona you will be building. 

Demographic data has helped us understand key features of this persona including income range, age, family, education, and location. We recommend choosing a photo for your persona that will embody these characteristics so you can better visualize who you are speaking to. 

2. Psychographics

Psychographic data is collected to better understand why the population buys and does the things they do through collecting data about their lifestyles, behaviors, and habits. Psychographic data is harder to get but is extremely helpful in building and validating buyer personas. The best way to collect psychographic data is to ask your audience directly through surveys and forms throughout your website. Psychographic data helps us build a bio for our personas as seen in this example:

Creating a bio for your persona unpacks the lifestyle, hobbies, and the interests of your outdoor customers and helps marketers understand the language to use while writing things like website copy or ads. 

3. Build a User Story

Once you understand who your persona is, build a user story for them. A user story describes what the persona is ideally looking for without necessarily identifying how your product or service can help. Building a user story helps outdoor marketers understand potential pain points and goals that their products or services can help ease or how they can fit into the personas lifestyle. 

user story example

The user story can be brief but should have enough information to help frame the goals and triggers of the persona. 

4. Identify Goals and Triggers

The goals of the persona should take into account the lifestyle and values they hold. Are they on a budget and looking to save money? Do they want to spend more time with family? Do they have time for a high maintenance project or product? Look back at your profile, bio, and user story to estimate what these goals will be. 

Triggers are the things that push your persona to finally purchase the product or service. Maybe they’re looking for a replacement for something they’ve had for years or are seeking a solution to a new problem they’ve been having. Understanding your persona’s triggers will come in handy when the customer is getting close to a purchasing decision. If you touch on their pain points in your ads or website copy, they will feel more inclined to buy. 

5. Understand Your Persona at Each Stage of the Buyer Journey

The buyer journey is broken down into awareness, self-educating, consideration, rationalizing, and decision. As your persona moves throughout these stages of the journey, the way you should interact with them will vary. In the awareness stage, they may not even know they have a problem or that your company exists. In this stage it is important to show them your brand and products without pushing sales too much. Once they realize your product and brand is right for them, your interactions are going to eventually lead to a sale. To understand this journey, map out potential questions your persona may have as they move through each stage and create landing pages and ads that help move them to the next stage.

6. Build the Persona

Once you’ve completed each of these steps, download our buyer persona template and fill out the document to build your persona. 

Creating buyer personas is the first step in transforming your outdoor content and marketing efforts. Humanizing your data this way will help your outdoor marketing team stay on track and be consistent with your messaging across all channels and generate more sales for your brand.

Are you interested in starting your content transformation? Contact us today for a consultation. 


How To Leverage Video In Your Sales & Marketing Campaigns

Generating views for videos can be quite hard for any company. Some have never tried to develop a video marketing campaigns for their users at all. This is an untapped gold mine for a lot of businesses. And deserves the attention of anyone looking to generate leads on the web. Your video marketing campaign(s) should be centered around your viewer and use the following for engagement techniques.

Video marketing campaigns is the next frontier for data mining

Unique & Creative Content

Any video marketing campaign should start out with a vision of how you want your viewers to interact with your brand. Whether you are looking to be informational, demonstrational, or abstract, you should put yourself in the shoes of your viewer. To better understand how they will digest your content. The creation of engaging content can be extremely powerful for developing your customer base and creating brand recognition.

Personalization

Personalization in video marketing campaigns can be leveraged with various data points. Mainly your user’s current or past web behaviors. This could be a first name, the name of company employees, and any other data point you could think of. This kind of personalization engages the viewer and demonstrates a perceived knowledge of their business and/or industry. Personalized advertisements make us feel like something was created specifically for us.

Longer Videos

While our attention spans may be shortening, longer videos are engaging users at high rates. If complex topics require time to explain, the explanation should get the time it deserves. The viewer will quickly understand the value of a long-form explanation.

Someone sticking around for a longer video is more likely to convert into a customer as well. Or at the very least, tells us they’re an engaged & valuable contact.

Interactive 360 Degree Video

VR experiences and augmented reality continue to improve and enter households across the nation. The possibilities are endless for demonstration videos, action videos, walkthroughs, and so much more.

Many users who find these videos entertaining say they would be willing to interact with brand videos if they were deployed. Major brands continue to enter this space and you could potentially benefit from the production of these types of videos.

Searchability – Search Engine Optimization

Videos contain metadata related to the topics found in the video. If you produce a long-form video, your video could be packed full of valuable keywords. This provides positive ranking effects on your website.

Businesses live and die on Google therefore it is important to have a plan for getting ranked on search engines for the keywords related to your product or service.

Using any or all of the above will help you create clients or customers that stay engaged with your product or service. Choose the ones that you think you can engage with and provide the best value, or contact us for a consultation today.


SEO vs. SEM: How the Outdoor Industry is Paving the Way

Depending on what you may have read, what others have told you, and your own past experiences, you may have formulated thoughts on SEO or SEM and how they can impact your bottom line. Built and managed the right way both of these avenues can lead to huge potential ROI. We have seen the greatest success in running these campaigns side by side and can attribute that success to a few factors which we will discuss below.

Long road for SEO

SEO & SEM: What’s the Difference?

SEO is the practice of implementing content and technical changes on your website to send Google and other search engines the right signals for the keywords you would like to rank for. SEM involves paying for clicks or visibility in front of the audience of your choice. This can include ads on Google, Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn and more. While SEO is a much more organic play with factors involving domain age and links from other websites pointing to your site, SEM is much more predictable. You have much more control of who sees what and how they interact with your media with an SEM campaign.

Combining SEO and SEM for a Marketing Powerhouse

If you are able to rank organically on the first page of a search engine results page, you are in the mix and should be driving valuable traffic to your website. If your traffic is not converting, it may be time to look at building a brand story. Once you’ve established this traffic, you could look at turning on ads for the keywords you are on the first page for. The real estate you cover on the page will keep your product or service at the top of the viewer’s mind. Even if they scroll past your paid ad, they are more prone to visit your site via the organic listing because they’ve seen you before. This leads to higher click through rate for your organic traffic and costs you nothing. As long as you have a proper margin established with your product you can find out exactly how much each lead will cost you and audit viability on various keywords as you move through the process of research. The key is finding and building out keywords without as much competition. They may not carry the volume, but they will convert at a much higher rate. This typically comes in the form of more specific keywords built into your paid ad campaign.

What if I Have a New Website?

New websites are much harder to rank organically than sites that have been around for years. Brand new websites look fishy to Google from the start and it is important to get off on the right foot as Google and other search engines crawl and index your website. It takes time to build up content and begin to establish yourself as a knowledge resource with Google. The more content you create and the more people who link to that content creates more trust with Google and other search engines. This process takes time, and depending on the competition you are trying to enter the space with, you could be looking at years to see the results you are truly looking for. Paid ads become an efficient and measurable way to generate leads in this lead time. Some people have referred to this as the “reverse SEO” strategy, but we call it common sense. You can’t sit on your hands watching your rankings move from page 9 to page 2 with no direct increase in leads or sales for months and not get antsy.  Creating, refining, and executing an advanced SEM strategy can generate the leads and cash flow you are looking for initially while you execute your SEO strategy. Once you reach the first page in organic listings, you could scale back your ad spend and evaluate maximization of your ROI. Having the right partner to create and manage your SEM campaign can be the difference between success and failure.

There are many ways to integrate SEO and SEM into the same strategy, creating a cohesive and engaging process for your audience. Combining these two important marketing tactics can revolutionize your leads, conversions, and sales. Contact Sage Lion Media to learn more.


5 Top Video Marketing Recording Devices for 2020

As we approach 2020, it is important to stay on top of changing industry trends to ensure you are staying at the forefront of video marketing content. Users love being fed fresh, high-quality content and we have put together our top 5 video recording devices coming in 2020.

Portal+ from Facebook

With innovative and fresh ideas constantly coming out from the Facebook team, it is hard to discount the power this social media behemoth has. Facebook portal is primarily used for parents and other family members who are far away, but there are many more uses for this tool than chatting with family. With AI technology in their camera, it tracks you as you move around the room. This could be an excellent tool for someone looking to present via facebook live. Product demonstrations and tutorials could move out to your user base with buttery ease and you’ll look great doing it because the quality is HD, depending on connection.

Mirrorless

Mirrorless cameras continue to shine in the space and only continue to improve in quality and processing power. The Sony Alpha line dominates the space. And further adjustments to the device have only made it better. Having the ability to interchange your lens for different types of shots sets this camera (and the DSLR) apart from other options. Mirrorless cameras are light and easy to manage. You may run into trouble with previewing low light shots since the mirrorless camera cannot receive as much light as a DSLR or regular 35mm camera.

DSLR

The acronym DSLR has stuck with the video marketing community for years. This once innovative technology continues to improve in processing power and speed. Unlike its mirrorless counterpart, DSLR cameras work in very much the same way as 35mm cameras. With mirrors being used to reflect the light. This helps your efforts considerably in low light situations. DSLRs are also able to preview images in much better quality because of the advanced mirror system found within the body of the camera. Both mirrorless and DSLR options have the ability to interchange lenses on the fly. Envision yourself capturing a wide angle shot for creative effect, and then utilizing a superzoom lens for more detailed, close up shots of your product or service.

GoPro Hero 8 Black

GoPros have been part of industry standard since 2004 since the product’s launch. Constant improvements have continued to section this device off as a powerhouse for action video recording. With features like automatic image stabilization and 360 degree video recording, the GoPro Hero 8 is sure to have something that will please you and your consumers. The camera continues to add features and functionality to improve you video recording experience and quality overall. Addons like microphones, lights, and preview screens improve upon this experience. We are always excited to see what the GoPro team comes out with next.

Smartphone

Our handheld devices are powerhouses of technology so it makes sense to utilize these tools as well. Your phone is typically always on your person, so a quick video, live recording, or picture can happen at a moment’s notice. As the hardware and quality improves in our devices, so does the potential for video marketing. If you add on features and tools like image/video production applications, external tools like image stabilization and clip on lenses, you are sure to have a polished product come out on the other end.

Stay on top of trends and changes to the outdoor industry in our blog found here. The space is constantly changing. You should have a guide to help you clear out the unnecessary information. And keep you in front of your consumers with the best tech available.


Do’s and Dont’s of Content Marketing in the Outdoor Industry

Much of our approach to content involves building a story for your outdoor brand. There are a few key foundational ideas in building this story which led us to produce a list of do’s and dont’s of content marketing in the outdoor industry.

Have a Content Marketing Strategy

A content strategy unifies your content marketing efforts across many avenues. While developing this strategy is definitely important, sticking to it is even more so. A well-built strategy will have exact deadlines and be closely monitored to quickly determine when things have moved out of the timeline. Often, communication can break down across team lines. But having a comprehensive content strategy ensures everyone is writing for the same goal. No matter the topic or client.

Make Your Customer The Hero Of Your Content Marketing

Painting your user as the hero places them as a protagonist. Maybe your customer sees you as Yoda, but more importantly, they see themselves as Luke Skywalker. Understanding the desires of your potential consumers, and positioning yourself as a guide with solutions is key to content creation that converts.

Have a Content Marketing Checklist

Creating and sticking to a content marketing checklist ensures your valuable content is being spread across vital channels quickly and efficiently. For example, as you post your blog to your website, you can have it auto-upload to your facebook wall or story. Confirm it was posted properly, and check it off the list.

Track All the Data

The amount of data we are able to collect using Google is staggering, so customizing it and honing it down to 2-3 key performance indicators can keep you out of the tall grass when looking at the data itself. Determining the metrics you want your users to hit helps you to understand what it is you want your customers to do when they interact with your website or product.

Don’t Get Tunnel Vision

We get so consumed in our own brands and own identity that we forget to see what others are doing. This may be in the form of competition research or simply browsing the web. Analyzing specific assets you like on other websites and finding ways to incorporate them into your strategy (the right way) can set up your business for success. A tool like evernote can easily snap, store, and organize all of your findings into something manageable and shareable. Paying attention to outdoor industry trends leads to more creativity and fresh ideas.

Don’t Talk About Yourself

Explaining your offering and gloating are two different things. You should stay far away from gloating about your brand. One, it doesn’t paint the user as the hero (as mentioned above). And two, it really doesn’t do much for the user if you aren’t engaging and offering a solution. Stay away from words like “we” or “our company” and try to limit the “since 19xx” quotes.

Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself

Content strategy is complex and always changing. You should not get down if your blogs are not converting like you originally thought. Look at all of this as a work in progress to educate yourself and your potential customers. Authority is built over time. Taking the step to simply DO it is just half the battle. Keep it up!


5 Reasons to Increase Your Content Marketing Efforts

We all build content intended to convert traffic into leads and then into customers. Each company with a desire to be successful wants to establish itself as a knowledge source in the space. We write blogs such as this one to try to establish some of that trust and authoritativeness, as well as expertise.

Most companies know they need to increase their content marketing efforts, but many don’t know where to start. Here are a few reasons to start today.

Brand Reputation

As you produce more and more content, you become a one-stop resource for your users. The typical user wants to learn about your company and investigate your service or product. Building content intended to inform, engage, convert and create trust with your users is how a successful company gains a supportive following. An excellent experience centered around your content will keep them coming back for more.

As your brand reputation and awareness increases, so does a return on the investment. Content is becoming the way you establish and nurture the relationships with your customers.

Conversions

Conversions are the lifeblood of your business and the overall reason to engage in paid media advertisements, content marketing, and SEO. However not all conversions are created equal. There may be leads that need to be nurtured over time to produce the kind of traction you are looking for. 

Purpose-driven content builds a user flow you want your users to follow when they engage with your product. Giving direct calls to action and trying to inform the periphery about your product while not having to be as hands-on can help you produce better results more quickly. A good content marketing plan puts the tools in the hands of your users to spend money with you in some way. Whether this is through donations, product purchases, or newsletter sign-ups, we know how to convert your readers into paying customers with outdoor content marketing.

SEO

SEO is an attempt to build out web pages with the intention of ranking higher on Google. The first step to a comprehensive SEO campaign is research. Identify what people are searching for to find your product or service. If you build your brand according to the building a story brand guide, and include specific keywords you think will convert users, you will start to see more organic traffic rolling in. 

Organic traffic should be easier to convert since these potential customers are actively seeking a solution. We all go straight to Google to find the services and products we need. The user interface and user experience on your website will eventually become your success or downfall.

Cost Effectiveness

An engaging content marketing plan for the outdoor industry is extremely cost-effective. Many companies build their services or products on paid advertisements. But this route can just lead to frustrations down the road if you don’t keep it up. If 70% of your traffic comes from paid ads, you are heavily relying on those paid ads to perform.

We understand you are an expert in your field. And every piece of content you produce is going to develop the trust with your users to understand your business. Content is a much more natural way for you to engage with your users.

Many times paid ads are built to convert quickly. You have an ad running, and a landing page used to collect information. But giving them the option to deep dive into your content will leave them feeling knowledgeable. And if they would like to reach out, making it an easy and positive experience is imperative to converting that traffic.

Traffic

Using content marketing to generate trust with your users leads to higher traffic and more eyes on your product or service. Therefore, creating unique, insightful and engaging content will improve the “first impression” your new users receive. And then greatly contributes to nurturing your returning visitors as they progress through your website. 

Google understands how users interact with your website. Establishing your brand as an educational resource in your space keeps them coming back for more. If you pair this with a monthly newsletter for people to sign up and receive updates, you will have an easier time offering valuable resources to your website traffic over time.


What To Do If You’re Struggling With Top Of The Funnel Strategies

If your company is struggling at the top of the funnel, we’ve got 5 tips that will attract prospects to your website and convert qualified leads into sales.

Your outdoor company has built a beautiful website and the sales team is ready to answer any questions prospects have. But they’re waiting…and waiting…and waiting.

The sales team has received a few calls and emails but only a handful are qualified leads and they’re not converting. What’s an outdoor marketing team to do?

What Is A Marketing Funnel?

The marketing funnel is the process of turning prospects into customers. Today, we’ll just go into the three most common stages of the marketing funnel. But if you’re interested in turning your loyal customers into brand promoters, check out this blog post.

Top of the funnel strategy

All versions of the marketing funnel start with awareness. Prospects need to know your company exists and understand your services or products before they can become a customer.

The next stage is consideration. This is where prospects turn into qualified leads. These prospective customers are more invested in learning about your outdoor company. With the right lead nurturing, they can be converted into customers.

The final stage of the marketing funnel is conversion. The prospect has gone from visitor to qualified lead, to customer.

Deeper Dive Into ToFu Marketing

Marketers love seeing more visitors on their website and views on their blogs. Attracting visitors to your website is what top of the funnel (aka ToFu marketing) is all about. And if you want to turn visitors into loyal customers, you need a strong top of the funnel.

Customers at the top of the funnel are just beginning their search to address a problem. They know they need something new but aren’t sure what they’re looking for. An example of this would be, planning to go fly fishing in Montana but not sure where to find the best rivers for cutthroat. These prospects are just browsing the infinite web to gather information.

Marketers can use ToFu marketing strategies to bring awareness to prospects as they search for solutions to their problems.

The key to top of the funnel marketing is driving quality traffic to your site and nurturing them into a lead.

When marketers focus more on the amount of traffic they get to their site, they end up having a low conversion rate. They can also frustrate their sales team when they hand off “leads” that aren’t truly leads. Just because someone has landed on your site, doesn’t mean they’re ready for sales to give them a call or send them a personalized email.

Top of the funnel marketing is all about bringing awareness to your brand and guiding potential prospects in the process of solving their problem. When we work with clients on ToFu marketing, we approach projects looking for short-term wins and long-term gains.

Short-Term Wins

We live in a world where people want results instantly. We want our clients to see leads right away so we develop a strategy for short-term wins. When it comes to top of the funnel marketing, our focus in the short-term is keywords, meta descriptions, and a PPC strategy.

Man placing hand next to the keyboard of a laptop

Focus On Keywords & Meta Descriptions

Building content around keywords can drive prospects to your website. When people search for yourkeywords, make sure your meta descriptions are accurate and the content is relevant so you don’t increase your bounce rate.

Have a Pay-Per-Click Strategy

The easiest way to attract people to your website is to use broad keywords in pay-per-click campaigns. They may not always turn into leads but this will raise your brand outreach with more eyeballs on your website. It’s much easier to rank for broad keywords than long-tail keywords.

Long-Term Gains

As those begin to gain traction, we transition into long-term gains. And long-term gains is all about quality content. The key to top of the funnel content is to convert and nurture using the content you feel solves their specific pain point.

Social Media Is Your Friend

Facebook is still the ruler of social media but with their on-going algorithm changes there is a constant battle of iteration and decision making which tends to lead us into analysis paralysis. Quickly adapting to these changes will ensure your campaigns are fine tuned for any issue that might arise. Social media is a low-cost to entry spot for brand awareness. Social media is a long-term gain because it takes time to build up your page. You need engaged fans and valuable content like videos to become a trustworthy source of information. Social media isn’t free but targeted ads can be a low-cost way to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your page or website.

Create A User-Friendly Website

This might sound obvious but it must be said. I’m sure you’ve found yourself on a website that took forever to load, was hard to navigate, or wasn’t mobile-friendly. And what did you do? Immediately leave. It’s important for companies to invest in their website so it not only looks professional but encourages users to stay on the site.

Camera set up overlooking canyon

Generate Valuable Content

What is the first thing you do when you need to solve a problem? Ask Jeeves. I mean Google! And from there, Google can take you down a spiral of blogs, videos, podcasts, and more to help you solve that problem. No matter what product or service you’re selling, adding relevant content to your site will help not only attract people to your site but generate qualified leads. If you are a lodge that takes anglers on fly fishing excursions, then create blogs that talk about the best rivers for cutthroat trout or a video on how to release a deep hooked fish. Providing solutions helps outdoor companies build trust with prospects.

Slow & Steady Wins The Race

Why would you ask a prospect to buy your service or product the second they subscribe to your email list? Remember that top of the funnel marketing is all about awareness. Prospects are just learning about your company so it’s important to nurture your leads. Send them a welcome email with links to blogs or videos that might help them solve their problem.

Generating Qualified Leads At The Top Of The Funnel

Building a strong marketing funnel takes work at the top. It’s important to spend time educating prospects and building awareness if companies want to generate more qualified leads. Your company can be positioned to keep your funnel full with our 5 tips that focus on short-term wins and long-term gains.


Outdoor Video Marketing Trends You Must Know For 2020

Our team has put together an infographic outlining the important upcoming outdoor video marketing trends that will impact the digital marketing industry as a whole.

As we approach 2020 it is important to understand the ways you can adapt to critical marketing updates in technology. Sources like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have all garnered massive followings. With huge potential for getting your product or service in front of the eyes that need to see it. For outdoor brands especially, outdoor video marketing has become a way to build brand awareness. It also helps drive engagement and converts leads into sales. But how can you create a video or ad that customers actually want to see?

Shoppers spend a third of their time online watching videos. And 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week. And where the views go, ad dollars follow: video advertising is increasing 40% year-over-year.

Outdoor Video Marketing Trends For 2020 Infographic

Keep us in mind as you look to broaden your brand and fill the outdoors with your product and people supporting.

Outdoor video marketing trends change which means you need a solid partner that can get the job done for you every time something new pops up.

If you’re in the market for innovative ecommerce and/or digital marketing solutions, view our inbound marketing services today!


Creating An Effective Call-To-Action

Quality content on a blog post or website is key to attracting prospective clients. At Sage Lion Media, every email we send, blog post we write, social media post we create, a call-to-action is included. In our blog today, let’s review what a call-to-action is and some best practices when creating an effective call-to-action.

What Is A Call-To-Action?

So what is a call-to-action? A call-to-action (CTA) is “an image or line of text that prompts your visitors, leads, and customers to take action,” according to Hubspot. It’s important to encourage prospects to contact your office or sign up for an event after reading a blog post or email. If they don’t, what’s the point of creating engaging content?

CTAs take prospective clients to a higher valued page on your website. If the call-to-action says, “Read more…” in the meta description on Google, this gets your prospect to your site. The page you direct that prospect to on your site should include another CTA which takes them further down the sales funnel.

Inbound Marketing Methodology by HubSpot

Best Practices

Since CTAs are all over websites which shows it’s not rocket science to create. However, creating an effective call-to-action takes a little more finesse. Such as a converting CTA that sends a clear message about why they should click and delivers that promise immediately. Including an action verb is Rule #1 when creating a call-to-action that converts. But just because you said, “download” or “click” doesn’t mean prospects will download or click.  Here are Sage Lion Media’s rules to an effective call-to-action:

  1. Actionable Messaging. Yes, you need more than an expressive verb to get people to click on a CTA but this is the first step. Without an action verb, you’ll just have a fancy graphic, words, and zero clicks.
  2. Make it clickable. You can have the most creative copy in your CTA but if it doesn’t look visually appealing and clickable, you will miss out on a lot of prospects.
  3. Create urgency. Nobody wants to be left out so let prospects know they need to download your ebook NOW! Include a countdown next to your CTA that informs prospects your ebook is only free for 48 hours. If you’re trying to fill up spots for an event, say, “Spots are limited. RSVP today!”
    Image of cell phone with download offer
  4. Focus on placement. CTAs should be weaved in naturally to a blog post. Typically you’ll find a call-to-action at the end of a blog but you can also place one in the middle, on the sidebar, at the top of the page. Whatever makes the most sense. Don’t go overboard and have a CTA in all locations.
  5. Color matters. A CTA needs to stand-out. If the webpage is blue, the CTA should be a different color. Easy enough! Pick a contrasting color that is still in your theme so it will pop out on the page.
  6. Size matters too. You want people to easily see the CTA but it can’t be too big that it takes away from the main content.
  7. Clear and concise. An effective CTA is short and to the point. A prospect should know exactly what they’re getting once they click on the link.

Pro tip: We like to do A/B testing on CTAs for our clients. We’ll play around with wording, placement, and sometimes the color to see what gets more clicks.

Start Creating

While a call-to-action encourages a prospect to take one more step down the sales funnel to become a lead. That action can be a link in an email that says, “Shop Our Lightweight Tents Now” and guides the prospect to your company’s brand new line of backpacking tents. Whatever you want your prospective customers to do, creating a CTA that gets clicks can turn those prospects into leads.


Building a Story for Your Outdoor Brand

In 2017, Donald Miller published Building a Story Brand and it has become a measure of standard across the internet marketing space. The overarching message instructs the reader to clarify their message so their customers will listen. So many of our clients come to us with a version of struggle related to the solution Donald presents.

Whether you are struggling to get your customers to engage with your brand, or you’re just trying to get your brand off the ground, we have the track record and knowledge to provide results with creative and engaging media. None of this ties together without clear and direct messaging exemplifying your brand.

Make Your Customer the Hero

Building a brand story based around your consumer develops a sense of trust and relationship someone wouldn’t experience with other forms of content buildout. Positioning yourself as a guide along the customer’s journey to finding and committing to their solutions keeps you at the top of your customer’s mind. You are developing a trigger point in the consumers mind that relates your product or service to a solution. 

Here is the flow of nearly every story in the words of Donald Miller:

“A CHARACTER who wants something encounters a PROBLEM before they can get it. At the peak of their despair, a GUIDE steps into their lives gives them a PLAN, and CALLS THEM TO ACTION. That action helps them avoid FAILURE and ends in a SUCCESS.”

Generic customer journey map image
Customer Journey Map Example

Nearly every book you read, every movie you watch follows this plot line and we naturally notice when stories don’t develop in this fashion. Why shouldn’t your brand story follow the same model? To lead them through this process, we answer three questions. What do you offer? How will it make my life better? What do I need to do to buy it? If we can answer these questions well, we make the customer the hero and the product their solution.

Talk About Your Customer’s Problems

Relating to and engaging with your customer’s problems sets you up to understand why you are doing what you are doing. You’ve developed a product or service as a solution to a problem, but your customer may not know they have a problem. Writing about your customer’s problems shows you are just like them, and have created a product for them because you’ve experienced some of the same problems in the past. If you put those problems front and center in front of your customer’s you’ll let them use their own imagination to find you as their solution. Even though you have led them to water, they have to be the ones to drink. There are three types of problems any customer may face.

There are external problems, internal problems, and philosophical problems. External problems are physical, tangible problems, like products or services they need. Internal problems are problems they face internally, these are deeper, more personal fears and then we have philosophical problems. These problems are bigger than the basics of purchasing a product or understanding oneself a little better. If your product or service has a deeper meaning or impact, it would be worth employing this form of content as well as writing about internal and external problems.

Position Yourself as a Guide and Call Them to Action

As we’ve defined previously, customers are not looking for another hero. These folks are looking for a guide. When you think of fly fishing, what brands do you think of? When you think of hunting, which brands do you think of? Those brands have established themselves as “guides” for fly fishing and hunting, respectively. When someone considers these items, they know where they can go to get the information they are looking for and can trust. As the internet continues to expand and content farms keep pumping out generic content intended to rank on google, it is becoming more and more important so instead of clicking through organic search results, these folks are going directly to websites for information.

Once you have established yourself as a guide, it’s time to call them to action.  “Direct” calls to action come in the form of making a purchase, filling out a form, or picking up the phone. “Transitional” calls to action are things like testimonials, free trials, and free content. You probably come across transitional calls to action all the time without even realizing it.

Provide a Happy Ending

The last thing a hero in a story wants is a bad ending. It is important for you to paint a picture of success involving your product or service. Some terminology could include “imagine yourself in 6 months”, or “if this problem was solved”. This puts success in the mind of your consumer and ties your product to it. A solid happy ending will include one or more of the following:

  1. Win some sort of power or position/status.
  2. Be unified with somebody or something that makes them whole
  3. Experience some self-realization or transcendence that makes them whole

If you can satisfy these basic human desires your client will leave with confidence and trust in anything you offer. Learn more about how Sage Lion Media develops engaging stories for outdoor brands by visiting our content marketing services page.


2 Tactics After Attending a Trade Show To Increase Sales

Whew, this year’s IFTD was a whirlwind and a big success here in Denver. While at the show I met up with a bunch of clients. Hung out with old friends. And met several new prospects. As the show wraps up I’m getting ready to follow up with a few leads I had positive interactions with. Here’s a simple framework for developing meaningful conversations with new leads and increase sales.

While it’s easy to plow through your emails and play catch up the first day of an event, you don’t want to lose track of the contacts you made. Redirecting some of that focus to your new leads can ensure those long days on the show floor don’t go to waste.

1) Actually Connect

This seems like a no-brainer but less than 30% of all trade show exhibitors have a plan or process in place for following up with leads. Here are some tips to follow:

  1. Avoid Boilerplate. Don’t go online and search for an email template for conventional follow up. Doing this will ensure one thing, you’ll look like everybody else. 
  2. Try video. According to HubSpot adding video to your sales emails can increase the open rate by 5X. We’ve seen similar results in the last few years and include a simple video in nearly all our sales emails. One possible subject line for your follow up email could be “[Prospect name], I made you a video to say thanks for the time at IFTD. 
  3. Thank the prospect for their time. And remind them of your conversation. These conventions can be a whirlwind for people walking the show floor. A recap of your conversation can help jog their memory for what you talked about. 
  4. Ask them to do something. It can be as simple as booking time on your calendar (we use a HubSpot meeting link) or as complex as downloading a piece of premium content. But asking your prospect to take an action will give you valuable insight into how interested they really are and allow your CRM and automated workflows to start collecting contextual data.
IFTD Trade Show Hall
IFTD Trade Show Hall

2) Classify Your Leads

Not everyone you meet is going to be a sale and you definitely need to know which ones are worth emailing directly. It’s worth developing a specific goal for each business card you collected at the show. We like to split our leads up into the following buckets: 

Connected but not ready to sell

These are contacts who you meet throughout the show or at the after-parties. They may be junior members of a team or just interesting people you want to keep in touch with. I typically try to connect with these people through social media. I feel LinkedIn is the best platform to do that. It’s an opportunity to stay in touch through your channel and expose them to your news feed posts and so that you can see theirs. 

Qualified to do business

These are the new accounts I’d like to target. My goal is much more direct as we discuss specific business opportunities. I like to schedule my follow up meetings at the show, so I already have it on the calendar. I will send a personal video email within a few days of the show, thanking them for their time and remind them of the talking points we discussed at the event, so they’re prepared during our phone call. 

Nurture

The last group of people may or may not be business opportunities. But they could be people who are your peers in the business. You may want to build a lasting relationship with them to bounce ideas or vent about problems. If you’re in the same city, asking for a recurring meeting might be a great way to build your network. You might also watch out for interesting articles you both find useful and shoot them an email about it from time to time.
IFTD and other industry trade shows are a great opportunity to meet new people and reconnect with old friends.

Following these simple strategies can help you increase sales, make sure your time is used efficiently and develops long lasting successful business opportunities.


Top 5 Outdoor Industry Marketing Trends That Will Matter in 2020

Outdoor Industry Marketing in 2020

The landscape is ever changing in the world of internet marketing as a whole as well as the outdoor industry’s niche, but the core values stay the same. As a product owner or service provider, you want to capture potential leads looking for your product or service, educate them on why your product or service is a better choice, and then make the process as easy as possible to convert those folks into a sale. Here are a few of the trends we are seeing as we approach 2020 in the outdoor industry.

Video Marketing

Video Marketing for the outdoor industry is becoming more and more popular as the user base shifts into a more technologically advanced crowd. With new technologies and strategies emerging regarding live video, augmented/virtual reality, and a high propensity for “vlogging”, engaging and informing your users in the creative avenues they are looking to be engaged and informed in is vital to a successful outdoor industry marketing campaign.  While the tech is advancing at a fast pace, so are the ways in which we can display that content to users. TikTok has emerged as a massive platform for video sharing, and the old faithfuls in Facebook and Instagram remain staples to any social media strategy in the form of paid ads or organic rankings/results, and 5G gets it to us more quickly and with better quality than ever.

Inbound Sales Tactics

Inbound marketing involves the placement of your product or service in front of your potential buyers with the intention of having gathered some information on them by the time you make contact. Some of the avenues for doing so would be shoppable content. This involves utilizing services like Google shopping, Amazon, and so on. Having your products available for purchase in the areas people are looking for them leads to sales and brand recognition. Instagram has also started allowing users to “swipe right to buy” on various products, allowing those who have engaged with your product and are interested to have the easiest path possible to purchase. Product Demonstrations and tutorials are also becoming more and more popular. Giving your users the tools to understand and utilize the product from the start can set you apart from the competition.

Outdoor Industry Marketing

Voice & Visual Search

In 2020 it is estimated that 50% of all searches will be done with voice. This stat has certainly made the rounds, but what does it mean for your marketing efforts? The main area your strategy will change in relation is the types of keywords you will rank for in the future. For instance, someone may go to Google.com and type “New Outdoor Products”, while someone performing a voice search may phrase it as “What New Outdoor Products are on the Market?” While the core of the search remains the same (new outdoor products), the included keywords change the types of results that may come up. Massaging your content to include these more “conversational” based keywords is key to capturing this potential. Another area where search is improving is visual searches. People can now use their phone cameras to explore products to find out which product is in front of them. Say a friend has a really cool new gadget or product, you would be able to pull out your phone and perform a Google search based on what your camera finds. Ensuring your product is available and optimized on the various platforms ensures this process is as seamless as possible.

Paid Advertisements for the Outdoor Industry

Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Allow More Customization than Ever

Paid ads have always been a staple of our marketing campaigns here at Sage Lion Media and we are constantly researching for changes in the space. Using tools involving machine learning and artificial intelligence, we have the ability to personalize ads at scale and segment your audience using more advance information. In 2020 users will see fewer organic results and many more contextual ads specifically targeted to the user. Ad personalization allows you to attach some type of personalization to the ad. It may have the person’s first name attached in the form of a “Hi Jerry, are you looking for ________?” or it could have something related to their previous experiences while browsing the web or with your product specifically. This personalization is intended to lead to higher conversion rates and more customization. Audience segmentation allows you to display advertisements to different subsets of people based on demographics and other factors. An example of this would be displaying more visual based ads to the 24-32 year old subset, and a more informational ad displaying for those in an older age group.

Content Marketing for the Outdoor Industry

Content is and will always be king. Your words tell the story you are looking to tell and should be built to bring your users along a journey. Some emerging trends we see popping up are experiential based content strategies, more focus on user interface and user experience, brand partnerships, and a real push for visibility on content based communities like reddit, LinkedIn, Slack, Facebook, Quora, and more. Creating an outdoor content strategy from the ground up with these new platforms in the mix keeps you at the top of mind no matter where your potential buyers are looking.


How to Optimize Your Facebook Ad Funnels Using Video

Needless to say, marketers must be more creative than ever to not only attract audiences, but also keep their attention. Many businesses use Video Facebook Ads as a key part of their digital marketing funnel. Using video is a great way to boost your funnel strategy and ultimately drive conversions. 

The average human’s attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish. While the average human attention span was around 12 seconds in 2000 — note, this is around the time that smartphones began entering our lives — it has fallen to eight seconds today. And the average goldfish’s attention span is nine seconds. 

Video qualifies 66% more leads
Infographic courtesy of Oberlo

Here are some key steps to build out your full-funnel advertising strategy on Facebook with video!

Know How Your Marketing Funnel Works

Your digital marketing funnel is the journey that prospective customers take from being unaware of your brand to becoming a customer. It’s important to know how your marketing funnel is structured so that you can optimize your cross-channel strategy. Ask yourself questions, like:

Digital marketing customer journey funnel
  • How long does it take for a prospect to travel from the top of funnel, when they’re unaware of your brand, to the bottom, when they become your customer?
  • Do you have any leading scoring in place to segment users?
  • What kind of content will resonate best at each stage of your funnel?
  • Are there holes in your marketing funnel that cause you to lose your prospect?

Know Where Videos Fit into Your Funnel

If your marketing funnel is a path that guides buyers toward a buying decision, how do you keep buyers on that path? Video is a critical tool for engaging your audience and building customer relationships, sharing information and communicating your brand story, and promoting products and services. And your users want to see videos — 54% of people report wanting to see more video facebook ads from marketers.

Video engages users longer
Infographic courtesy of Oberlo

Take Advantage of Video Facebook Ads in Your Ad Manager

Facebook’s campaigning tools make it easier for you to target your audience depending on where they are in your funnel. Check out these tips below:

  • Make videos as engaging as possible, and get to the point quickly — remember, goldfish attention span!
  • Check out Facebook’s recommended video specs before uploading to ensure the highest quality viewer experience.
  • Sequence your ads to effectively guide customers through the funnel by telling a story and/or presenting information to viewers in a specific order
  • Create content tailored to people at different stages of your funnel. Facebook allows you to target individuals who have engaged with your content before. Below is a screenshot of the custom settings dropdown:
Example of Custom Audiences in Facebook
Example of Custom Audiences in Facebook

Tailoring content to different levels of engagement can significantly boost your funnel strategy.

By setting up campaigns and catering your content, you can more effectively guide your audience through the different stages of your sales funnel. 

Video Ads Are an Effective Way to Boost Facebook Campaigns

Of course, creating video ads is easier said than done. Luckily, digital marketing agencies like Sage Lion Media are here to help. If you’re in the market for innovative ecommerce and/or digital marketing solutions, contact us today!

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Using Lead Scoring to Find Hidden Customers

Lead scoring is a dynamic process that needs to grow over time. Treat your first foray into lead scoring as an experiment. You need to work closely with your sales team to make sure the leads you are identifying are really qualified to purchase. If you don’t have a sales team, then you need to monitor your data closely for any sign that it’s underperforming or that potential customers are abandoning.

Nobody’s signing up for our newsletter… We just aren’t getting any calls… Our site just isn’t converting enough leads…

Have you looked at your visits to leads to sales conversion rate and said any of the above?

We have many times.

As an Outdoor Inbound Marketing Agency, our number one job is to help get more people outdoors. That means more sales, more donations, and more leads for our clients.

We understand that anyone who lands on a site is a potential lead or sale waiting to happen. Sometimes, they need a little help getting there. That’s why we use content to teach, guide and nurture them along their buyer’s journey.

We see too many missed opportunities because clients assume their customer’s buyers journey is linear.

For Example: Customer lands on the website > They sign up for a coupon > They buy something.

But that’s not how the majority of visitors use a website. It is far too simplified in today’s digital world. First or second-time visitors to your site aren’t ready to buy yet, so a coupon won’t do them much good. They are still trying to figure out why they even need your product.  Or if your product will solve their problem

Visitors who are most ready to buy were probably going to purchase today and because of the coupon, you just lost an easy deal.

That’s not a great business strategy. We need a way to deliver specific content to leads at just the right time in their “Buyer’s Journey”

The first step for building out a Buyer’s Journey is mapping out the process from visit to conversion.

Instead of a straight line, your buyer’s journey is a complicated process of various touch points spread out across all your digital marketing efforts. To fully understand how your customer is interacting with your site, you need to walk in their shoes. Spend some time on your site adding things to your cart.

How did it feel?

Did you address any of their concerns or pain?

Does your content leave you wanting more?

We like to map a buyer’s journey in a graphic. This helps us understand how our visitors are interacting with different marketing efforts across all our channels. In addition, it lets us group pieces of content together for future retargeting efforts.

Once we’ve done this we are able to identify where our customers need “help” to cross hurdles and then automatically assign them a lead score based on their readiness to buy.

Higher lead scores mean more opportunities for engagement on your website and are more likely to buy. Lead scoring through HubSpot then allows us to give first-time visitors different content from buyers who are ready to purchase today. Our visitors are happier because we are able to deliver content that educated them, our clients are happier because we are able to convert more visits to leads and leads to customers, and we’re happy because it gives us many more opportunities to nurture and educate visitors at various touch points along their journey.

Finding Hidden Customers

The first time we turn on lead scoring for our clients using HubSpot we always find hidden customers who are waiting to have that final question answered before they purchase. They often just need a little nudge to get off the fence.

Lead scoring pulls those customers to the forefront and we are all able to see these missed opportunities. Once we have a handle for where they are we are able to deliver more targeted messages to their inboxes, or deliver more specific ads to them via social media, or simply pass them onto a sales team for further nurturing.

Generally speaking the more refined you can get in your message the more likely you are to find success.

Experiment and re-iterate

Evaluating each lead in this manner will help you dial in your scoring and build a robust accurate tool you can use to find hidden customers on your site.


Growth Driven Design: What’s Wrong with Traditional Web Design?

We’ve been doing traditional web design for almost 12 years now. In that time a common theme has continuously repeated itself. A potential client usually has one of these four problems with their website.

  • Our website is broken, features that used to work no longer function.
  • We haven’t updated our website in years, we’re too busy.
  • We need (insert hot new feature here), because everyone else has it.
  • Nobody can find us on Search engines.

If you haven’t made a blog post in six months, that’s going to hurt your rankings. Or if you’re creating content that is not being shared maybe you’re talking to the wrong people. In addition to creating a website that it woefully out of date and ineffective in building an engaged client base, traditional web design is incredibly risky. Traditional web design suffers from the following risks:

Significant up-front costs

A typical small business can expect to spend $15,000 to $50,000 on a new website. In traditional web design, this money is often paid before any measurements are taken on the effectiveness of the site. That’s just bad business.

These problems are endemic to the current web-design cycle that is prevalent in the industry. Traditional Web Design Process is built around a redesigned website every 1.5 to 2 years. The site sees modest growth after relaunch then stagnate while waiting for the next cycle to begin. The other problem with traditional web design is search engines reward sites that provide consistent content updates.

Growth-Driven Design Ebook, Sage Lion Media

Significant time commitment

Time is money, too, especially in a small business environment. Launching a new website often requires a substantial time commitment from staff and management over the course of up to six months. With everything on your plate right now, can you imagine taking all that on?

No follow-through

It’s six months after the launch of your site. You’ve spent thousands of dollars in design fees. You’ve spent dozens of hours away from running your business. The website looks great. But, does it meet your goals? Some parts of the site, probably. EVERYTHING? No way.

Web designers really don’t know for certain what is going to be effective for your unique product or service needs. Design decisions are typically based on hypothesis and experience, not data. And, traditionally, web designers are not around to follow up on the effectiveness of what they just built for you.

Growth Driven Design Can Help Your Business Grow

I hesitate to say traditional web design is broken, but it’s seriously flawed. Luckily there is a better way. Using our web design principles we create a launchpad site that allows us to collect data on users. We use that data to refine the site over time. So instead of a huge upfront cost for a site that provides temporary success, we become a partner with you and grow a successful site based on data, not guesswork.

If you want to learn more be sure to download our Growth Driven Design Ebook. It goes into extensive detail on the GDD process and benefits of the system to your business.

Originally Published: September 28, 2016

Updated: March 7, 2019


4 Reasons Your Nonprofit Should Have A Blog

Content marketing is dominating marketing trends and if everyone was blogging and doing it well, we’d leave you alone. However, due to shrinking budgets and overworked staff, blogging has taken a backseat for many nonprofits. Producing quality blogs and posting consistently can be taxing for a nonprofit. But what if we told you:

These are powerful stats. As much as we want to fight this trend because of lack of time and resources, blogging can have an impressive impact on a nonprofit. Blogging gives nonprofits the chance to share their story, motivate donors, and keep people abreast of important issues.

Consistency Is Key

According to HubSpot, companies that prioritize blogging efforts are 13x more likely to see positive ROI. When companies produce 16+ blog posts per month, they get 3.5x more traffic and 4.5x more leads than companies publishing 0-4 a month. For nonprofits, this translates to higher awareness and a growing donor list. Now posting 16 blogs a month for any size nonprofit is asking a lot. But the point is, if you’re not blogging regularly, you won’t see positive results.

Quality Over Quantity

More blog posts can lead to higher web traffic but it is important to produce quality posts. If you’re pumping out blog posts just to hit a certain number, readers will sense that and quit reading. Not only will they quit visiting your website, they’ll tell others. Telling an effective nonprofit story that resonates with potential donors and volunteers is more important than posting three blogs a week.

Blog Content Ideas

I am aware of the time and budget constraints nonprofits have. And since I’m feeling generous, below are ideas you can incorporate into your content marketing strategy.

1. Numbered Lists

People love to read lists. They are easy to skim which encourages readership and shares when posted on social media. Here are examples nonprofits can use:

  • 5 Ways To Get Involved In Your Community
  • 8 Ways The Outdoors Can Improve Your Happiness
  • 4 Reasons Kids Should Be Outside More
  • 10 Startling Facts About Wildlife Conservation

2. Guest Blogging

When you’re short on time, asking someone else to write a post can help you stay consistent and give a fresh perspective. Ask a corporate sponsor to write a post. This can help them with brand awareness. Maybe a volunteer has been dying to share their experience and wants to write a blog. Guest blogging is a great way to mix up your blog.

3. Photo Essays

Blogs with images get 94% more views so why not create a post full of them! You’ll still want to include some copy to introduce and close the photo essay but this is a creative way to share your story. Some photo essay ideas are:

  • A successful fundraising event
  • A before and after of a project you completed
  • Faces of the people who have benefitted from your nonprofit

4. Interviews
Interview volunteers, donors, staff, or the people you’re helping. If you’ve written some lengthy blog posts earlier in the month, post the interview as a video instead. While you know the value of your nonprofit, hearing it from a donor or volunteer can help inspire others. People want to hear real stories and interviews can do just that.

Start Blogging Now!

Blogging is vital for nonprofits to share their story and create change. If blogging is not a part of your content marketing strategy now is the time to consider adding it.  You can’t have a website in 2019 without a blog.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective content marketing strategy, contact us today.

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Originally Published: February 1, 2018
Updated: March 3, 2019


Should You Hire A Marketing Agency Or An Internal Team in 2019?

As small to mid-sized outdoor companies grow, it becomes tougher to be the CEO wearing all the hats. You feel trapped between your need to grow and the realities of hiring an employee. And you’re unsure if you need a marketing agency or freelancer to help you. Continue reading…


The Perfect Recipe To A Successful Lead Nurturing Campaign

A lead nurturing campaign is a series of (ideally) automated emails that move a lead from the top of the funnel to the bottom. Automated emails are ideal because depending on the volume of email sign-ups you receive, emailing each prospect can be timely.

Hubspot has a free, automated lead gen tool we like to use for our clients.

Email marketing is an essential tool for turning qualified leads into loyal customers. For every $1 spent on email marketing, outdoor companies can expect an average $38 return. If you’re marketing to businesses like we are, 86% of professionals prefer to use email when communicating. And contrary to popular belief, 91% of consumers want to receive promotional emails.

What Is A Lead Nurturing Campaign?

Customers and leads need to be nurtured because 50% of the time, they’re not ready to buy. And when companies focus on lead nurturing, they generate 50% more sales.

Outdoor marketers can capture leads through calls-to-action that take a visitor to a landing page where they can sign up to receive an offer or fill out a form. From there, marketers can start the lead nurturing campaign.

Welcome emails, like, “Thank You For Signing Up,” generate 320% more revenue on average than other promotional emails.

Now that you recognize the value of email marketing, would you be shocked if we said, welcome emails, like, “Thank You For Signing Up,” generate 320% more revenue on average than other promotional emails? Ok, we were a little shocked by this number too but it helps us prove to our clients that lead nurturing campaigns have a huge impact on sales. And creating an email lead nurturing campaign can help turn prospects into loyal customers.

Creating A Lead Nurturing Campaign

An effective lead nurturing campaign needs 6 ingredients:

  • Segmentation
  • Timeliness
  • Strong Subject Line
  • Relevant Copy
  • Tracking
  • Exit Strategy

Segmentation

One of the main reasons lead nurturing campaigns are so successful is it’s a chance for companies to get to know their customer. The more they know about the customer, the better they can serve them. You can’t help your customer until you understand their problem. So if they’re looking for a camo jacket for hunting, you wouldn’t send them irrelevant information on rod holders for walleye fishing. Segmented campaigns have a 14% higher open rate and 100% higher click-through rate than non-segmented campaigns.

Segmented campaigns have a 14% higher open rate and 100% higher click-through rate than non-segmented campaigns.

So how can you segment if you know nothing about the customer? In the first email you send, ask! One of our clients has 2 different target markets: therapists and families seeking therapy. When they subscribe to the newsletter, we have them fill out a simple survey asking them to help us curate content that matters most to them.

Image of form with multiple questions

Timeliness

The other day I was doing some online shopping on Chaco’s website. I signed up to receive their newsletter, clicked on some shoes I liked, and then left the page. I liked the shoes I was looking at but I got a call from a client and within an hour, forgot about Chaco and the shoes. A couple hours after I left Chaco’s website I got the following email. What a nice reminder!

Ecommerce Call to Action

Lead nurturing emails need to be timely. You don’t want leads to forgot your product or service and how you can help them solve their problem. But you also don’t want to annoy them. For products, we recommend emailing once or twice a week for a set period. Services take a little more time as you need to build greater trust before someone invests money into your guide service or wilderness therapy program. But these aren’t universal benchmarks. Track and see what works best for your company.

Strong Subject Line

Leads need to open your email whether it’s a lead nurturing campaign or just a monthly newsletter. Personalized subject lines perform 29% better than non-personalized. If you can personalize it, do it. You also want to add urgency and relevancy. Avoid salesy, click-bait subject lines. And always test when you can! We love A/B testing so we can better serve our client’s customers.

Young woman typing on apple mac laptop during the day

Relevant Copy

When a lead clicks “subscribe” after reading a blog on best fly fishing rivers in Montana, the follow-up email should have something to do with fly fishing rivers in Montana. Send them an email with the best bait to catch Yellowstone cutthroat trout. If the lead filled out your survey saying they are a therapist looking for educational resources on wilderness therapy programs, send them an email about what to look for in wilderness therapy programs.

You want to show leads you care about their problem and want to help them solve it. And since these are your first emails to a lead, try not to sell them a product or service right away. Provide value and nurture the lead before you pop the question.

Tracking

All campaigns should be tracked. Especially a lead nurturing campaign. Are leads opening the emails? Clicking through? What are they clicking on? What A/B tested subject line worked better? Keeping track of the success and failures of your lead nurturing campaign helps you improve. If no one is opening your third email, switch up the subject line. If leads are only clicking on one article in the email, delete the second one.

Entrepreneur speaking and laughing with a client outside

Exit Strategy

You turned a lead into a sale, now what? Attract more leads? Sure! But when we go back to Business 101, we know that gaining new customers costs 5-25 times more than keeping an existing customer. So instead of rushing to gain more leads, follow our inbound marketing methodology and delight your current customers. Leads that turned into customers through your lead nurturing campaign are engaged with your company, so keep them engaged. If they bought a boat seat, send them an email on how to install the seat. If they booked a room at your lodge, send them an email with the best restaurants nearby. Show your current customers you are the premier outdoor company by exceeding expectations.

Creating An Effective Lead Nurturing Campaign Can Lead To More Sales

A lead nurturing campaign guides your customer further down the sales funnel through a series of “getting to know you” emails. It’s easier for outdoor companies to solve a customer’s problems when they understand what they want and need. Show your customers you care through personalized, timely, and relevant content and watch your sales grow.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective lead nurture strategy, contact us today.

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Originally Published: August 7, 2018
Updated: March 4, 2019


Customer Retention: How Valuable Are Your Current Customers?

We talk a lot about driving more traffic to your website, converting prospects to leads, and leads to customers. But do you remember learning in Business 101 that it costs more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one? That’s why it’s so important to always think about customer retention.

Acquiring new customers for your outdoor business is vital for growth. We get it. But don’t forget about your current customers. They have already purchased a product or service from you. If the experience was good, they’ll likely come back.

Your current customer base can also write a review, tell their family and friends, and even defend your company from criticism. So isn’t it time to turn your customers into promoters? We think so. In this post we’ll go over:

  • How valuable your current customers are to future profits
  • Other factors that play a role in customer retention
  • How to delight customers and turn them into promoters

The Value Of Current Customers

Business executives looking at reports and discussing next steps forward

The inbound marketing process attracts new customers, converts them into leads, closes the sale, and then delights.  And yet only 29% of businesses are focused on maximizing the lifetime value (aka delighting) of their customers. All stats prove the value of current customers far exceeds the value of new customers.

  • The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% compared to 5-20% for a prospect.
  • A customer is 27% more likely to purchase from you a second time, 45% a third time, and 54% a third time.
  • 80% of your future profits will come from 20% of your current customers.

Customers have endless choices. There is no longer one outdoor gear company. There are hundreds. And if a customer has a bad experience with your brand, they can pick a new one to buy all of their summer camping gear. Separate yourself by being one of the few companies who focus on keeping your current clients more than just satisfied. Focus on wowing them at every touch.

Customer Retention Factors

Customers have so many options to choose from when it comes to the latest outdoor gear or outdoor services. Several things factor into why a customer chooses one company over the other:

  • Price: Many companies say they don’t want price-conscious customers and instead, value-based customers. Keep reading because delighting customers adds value to your product or service. But no matter how valuable your product or service is, the price is top-of-mind for customers.
  • User experience: If customers can’t easily book a room online at your rustic cabin in the woods, you might lose them as a lead. If your online store for fly fishing rods takes forever to load, your prospect will look elsewhere. Creating new online experiences for returning customers will maintain or increase your customer retention rate.
  • Communication: When communication is clear, transparent, and two-way, customers are more apt to come back. Communication is more than when you’re talking to a client on the phone. It’s being honest and factual in blogs. Clear directions in an email. And fast replies to Facebook messages.

Price, user experience, and communication will most certainly help you retain customers. But now it’s time to turn those customers into promoters.

Customer Retention

Everyone wants reasonably priced goods and services. They want their online shopping experience to be easy. And honest, transparent communication will keep them coming back. But when you delight your customers, you exceed their expectations and turn them into a promoter.

Delighting customers means:

  • You answer their questions. You can do this with a blog post, responding to fans on social media, or replying to an email in a timely fashion.
  • You help them out. Go beyond answering customers questions and provide additional resources or recommend additional services.
  • Customers achieve their goals. Your product or service should help customers achieve their goals. You can find out your customer’s goals through surveys and creating buyer personas. But if your customer’s goal is to catch more fish, your fly rod or fishing guide better help them achieve that.
  • You’re excited to help them. Customers take note when your team is enthusiastic and excited to help them. Even if it’s just showing a customer where the bathroom is. Customers want warm and personable interactions with your company.

Young woman looking down at laptop, smiling in a coffee shop

It’s easy to turn customers into promoters when you focus on delighting them. A promoter is the millennial’s version of word-of-mouth marketing. Promoters of your brand write reviews, engage with your company, defend your company, and tell friends and family about how great you are. You can turn customers into promoters by:

  • Giving them something. We all love free stuff so give them free stuff! It doesn’t have to be huge either. Send them an exclusive hat only available to customers who have purchased a certain amount. You can also give them a discount for being such a loyal customer.
  • Get their feedback. If a customer keeps coming back to buy your company’s goods or services, there’s a reason. So get their feedback! Loyal customers want to be heard and if you recognize them by inviting them to a focus group they’ll feel extra special.
  • Providing even better service. Southwest Airlines is known for their exceptional customer service. But loyal customers get even better service. A-List Preferred customers not only earn more points but they have a special number to call for quicker service.
  • Inviting them to a special event. Invite your loyal customers to the grand opening party of your second rock climbing gym. Take your top clients to a sports game and wine and dine them in a suite.

Put Your Current Customers First

Delighting customers is the last part of the inbound methodology and one many marketers forget. Putting your current customers first turns them into second, third, and fourth-time buyers. Bonus: they also become brand promoters!

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective inbound marketing strategy, contact us today.

 

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Are Meta Descriptions Hurting Traffic To Your Website?

In December 2017, Google upped the character limit to 320 and it left us wondering, “do I need to update my client’s meta descriptions?” This thought snowballed into a series of questions around meta descriptions followed by a lot of Google searches and researching. What we found out was:

  • They’re important
  • Character length matters depending on the article you read
  • Meta descriptions affect click-throughs
  • How to write an effective meta description

Meta Descriptions Are Important

Those little blurbs that appear underneath your search results. Google pulls in thousands of search results for products and services so you need to stand out.

Image of Sage Lion Media's Meta description from a Google search

We had a client who wanted to improve their SEO. We ran a web analysis on their site and while there were several things we needed to fix, we noticed they had zero meta descriptions for their products. I chatted with our content creation specialist and we decided to create descriptions for each page on the site. We knew it’d be timely and she was given a tight budget to stick to. She worked her tail off and updated all the meta descriptions and then we waited. Within a month, we saw huge improvements on Google Search. I can’t attribute all the success to updating the meta descriptions but we found more people were clicking on the links because they provided an accurate description of the product.

Character Length

Creepy coin eating piggy bank GIFMoz is an SEO tool we use for our clients and they wrote an in-depth blog post on how many words you should include in your meta description. And instead of boring you with all the details, I’ll just tell you that 150-160 characters are the sweet spot. And the fact that Google reverted back to shorter meta descriptions.

So to answer my first question, “do I need to update my client’s meta descriptions?” No.

Click-Throughs

Meta descriptions alone won’t affect your SEO rankings but the copy you create can affect how many people click on the link. It’s important to use captivating copy that is relevant to the page. Nobody likes clickbait articles and landing pages so make sure your meta description is accurate.

Another thing to include in the meta description is keywords. When people search for “custom built sprinter van,” Google will highlight those keywords in the meta descriptions in the search.

Image of Van Life Custom Meta Description in a Google Search

When Google highlights the keywords I typed into Search, I’m more apt to click on those links than pages that don’t. This again goes back to creating relevant and accurate meta descriptions.

Creating An Effective Meta Description

Any short copy you create needs concise, informative and attention-grabbing. But they can be quite challenging since meta descriptions need to use keywords, encourage clicks, and stand-out. It’s often the first touch your brand has with a new prospect.  You only have 160 characters to get people to click on your link so:

  • Use action words: The point of the meta description is to get people to click so tell them to click! Or learn, discover, find out, read, experience.
  • Use keywords: I mentioned this in the section above but it’s worth noting again. Keywords show that your content is relevant to the person searching. But don’t go overboard. Make sure keywords are used in an authentic and natural way.
  • Be accurate: This is worth noting again. Don’t increase your bounce rate on the site by providing inaccurate information. Clickbait articles are tacky and unprofessional and you don’t want potential customers to think that about your business, do you?
  • Answer the prospect’s question: Don’t you love it when you type in Google, “family-friendly campsites over Memorial Day,” and the first 5 searches that appear answer your exact question? I do too! So write meta descriptions that do that. Think about what your prospect will be typing in Google and how your site can provide value to their search.

Stop Hurting Traffic To Your Site

Everybody wants more traffic to their website so they can convert, close, and delight. Since Google is always changing their algorithms, one thing we can hold onto is creating engaging and relevant meta descriptions that provide answers and benefits to a prospect’s questions.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective content marketing strategy, contact us today.

 

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The One Tool You Need For Better Engagement At IFTD

IFTD is coming up quick and if you’re like me, you’re looking for leads. Of course, I’m excited to check out the shiny, new gear and have late-night “meetings” with old and new friends. But if I came back to the office with a tan, hangover, and no leads, my team of marketing gurus would not be thrilled.

There are several things you can do before, during, and after the show to maximize ROI but the most important thing is to have a CRM. Now before you roll your eyes and say, “Not another ad for some expensive CRM system that my sales team and I will hate,” what if I told you it was free? And it’s easy? Automated? Easily organizable?

Are you still rolling your eyes? I’m sure some of you are and if so, I get it. Luckily this is a short read so you won’t get dizzy with your eyes rolling around. So let’s get to the point.

Hubspot CRM

Hubspot CRM is 100% free and will stay that way forever. There are some really amazing CRM systems out there and I’ll admit that Hubspot isn’t the best one on the market. But a lot of those CRM systems cost a gazillion dollars and have way more features than any small to mid-size company needs. And if you’ve ever been in sales and were forced to input a ridiculous amount of information into a CRM after one call, email, or visit than I’m sure you understand that CRM systems can go overboard.

So why not take advantage of a completely free CRM system that you and your sales team might actually like? And if you try it at IFTD and hate it, you didn’t spend a dime. Okay, moving on for those still rolling their eyes.

Email Notification

If you’re reading this then you most likely received an email from me and clicked-through to this blog post. Not to creep you out but I know exactly how you got to this blog post. Yes, I’m talking to you, Tom. How? With Hubspot’s email notification.

With Hubspot’s free CRM you can track exactly who is opening your emails, what they’re reading, and what they’re clicking on. From there, you can spend more time reaching out to prospects that are actively engaged in your product or service. And sure, other CRMs do the same thing but do they also give you real-time notifications directly to your email or even Gmail account? And is it free?

Build Custom Sequences

There is too much happening at IFTD for me to waste time sending emails during the show. And after the show, you and I will probably be getting a beer together. Again, talking to you, Tom. So quit wasting time in the hotel room sending emails and set-up automated and personalized emails to your prospects. You can easily spend one hour setting up a series of emails and schedule them to go out before, during, and after the show to a select group or individuals.

Meeting Calendar Scheduler

I remember the days when I sent at least 5 emails to one person just to pin down an hour of time to meet. No more! With Hubspot you can send a shareable link to prospects that syncs with your calendar and lets leads pick a time right away.

Interactions In One Place

It’s easy to see how your prospect is engaging with your service or product with Hubspot’s CRM. Find out if they opened your email or clicked on any links. And if they did, you can create a task to send a follow-up email or give them a call.

Image of Hubspot's contact record dashboard

Convinced yet?

Yes, I’m partial to Hubspot because they make managing marketing initiatives for our clients and Sage Lion Media simple. But their CRM offers everything our agency needs for managing contacts, automating processes, logging activity, and providing robust data. We’d love to help you get it set up, there is still time before IFTD this year.

Book a 10-minute chat with me and we can help you implement the CRM heading into IFTD.



How We Crushed Our Client’s Sales With Databox

We juggle a lot as an inbound marketing agency. Each client has a different product or service which requires a different strategy to achieve their goals. While some agencies struggle working with a variety of clients, we thrive! I’m not saying we don’t want to pull our hair out sometimes but we love the challenge!

Technology has made staying on top of client tasks and goals much simpler. You hear us rave about Hubspot all the time and I’m not going to say they’re my number one choice in managing marketing goals, tasks, and automation but…(they’re definitely #1).

Databox logoAnother tool we started using this year is Databox and they quickly moved into our top 5.

What Is Databox?

Databox keeps “your KPIs front and center” by pulling data and analytics from different sources like Google Analytics, Hubspot, and Facebook. From there, you can create Databoards that track different goals.

Track Google AdWords

Databox data dashboard. Figure 1.

Track Facebook Ad Campaigns

Databox data dashboard. Figure 2.

Databoards are simple to manage and can easily be shared with my team as well as clients. Everyone is able to log-in to Databox and see how sales, marketing, and the overall business performed on a daily basis. From there, we can manipulate our strategy to make sure we crush our monthly, quarterly, and annual goals.

Crushing Goals

We are constantly finding new ways to improve with Databox and last month we crushed it! Our clients have lofty goals heading into the summer and one client in particular set a goal to increase online sales in April by 180% from last year.

Spoiler! We hit our goal by 134%! Almost double the sales from last year.

Databox data dashboard. Figure 3.

But how?!

We are lucky to have a Google Adwords whizz on our team and for this particular client, we wanted to attract more people to the site with ads from Google. We created a Databoard that tracked our Google Ads and keywords and kept an eye on it daily. We’d see which ads and keywords were performing the best and the worst. We’d remove ads that were getting zero clicks and put more money toward ads performing well.

Databox data dashboard. Figure 4.

Not only were we tracking ads and keywords but the performance of landing pages, emails, and overall conversion rates.

Databox data dashboard. Figure 5.

This plethora of data helped us easily stay in control of our Google Adwords campaign and maximize our client’s ROI. Needless to say, when we called our client for their monthly review they were ecstatic.

Give Me More Data!

We like tooting our own horn with all the positive data Databox provides but it isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes when we log-in we notice traffic to the website is down, conversion rate is dropping, or blog views are low.

Databox data dashboard. Figure 6.

And instead of running to my closet to cry for 20 minutes like my youngest daughter likes to do, we dig through the data a little more to find out why. Why are views, traffic, and clicks down? The “Goals” section allows us to quickly check in on our client goals and adjust our efforts accordingly.

Are You Convinced?

If you are a data junkie like we are then Databox is your new BFF! If you want more information on Databox, head on over to their site or contact us below to schedule a free consultation.

LEARN ABOUT INBOUND MARKETING

Are You Missing Leads By Not Tracking Calls From Your Website?

Are you that person that rolls your eyes when you see a friend calling you instead of texting?

Yea, me too. But when it comes to business, phone calls are important. Especially when your product or service can’t be sold through e-commerce. One of our clients manufactures and distributes heavy machinery. Their product is not something you can “add to cart” after you’ve perused the site.

With inbound marketing techniques, we increased new user traffic to their website by 131%!

Our client noticed an uptick in phone calls to the company but there was no way to track if those calls came from our superhero inbound marketing efforts (even though we knew they did). Insert: call tracking. Tracking phone calls to your sales department can help guide your digital marketing efforts.

Today we’re going to go over what call tracking is, why digital marketers should be tracking calls, and our favorite call tracking service.

What Is Call Tracking?

Call tracking is exactly how it sounds. Digital marketers can use unique phone numbers on digital ads, CTAs, etc. to see where the calls came from. Depending on the call tracking service, outdoor marketers can also record the phone call, see the length of the conversation, track if it converted to a sale, and several other metrics.Tracking users web activity after they call your business

Why Digital Marketers Should Track Calls

Outdoor companies that close sales over the phone or provide a service should track their calls. And if I’m being 100% honest, I think every company with a phone should track their calls. The insight companies receive through call tracking can help maximize their ROI on marketing campaigns or help them understand their customer base more.

Real-Time Analytics

Call tracking allows you to have unique phone numbers on each digital ad or CTA your company has created. Every time the number is called, you can see exactly what advertisement led to a phone call. Based on the phone calls, you can see what ads are working and which ads you need to stop wasting money on. You can also adjust the tone, play with wording, and see if the ad performs better. Marketers can even track the customer’s journey on your website depending on the service you choose (we use CallRail).

Quality Assurance

If one salesperson is outselling another, wouldn’t it be wise to understand why? Call tracking services allow you to record inbound calls so you can help train your sales team. Salespeople can learn from each other how to close sales and delight customers.

Integrate With CRM Systems

Salespeople can save time tracking phone conversations when a call tracking service integrates with your CRM. Certain call trackers (like CallRail) will automatically send calls as leads and activities to our CRM of choice Hubspot. Marketing and Sales can see where and when the lead found your outdoor business on their dashboard.

Screenshot of the Hubspot contact record dashboard highlighting web analytics

How Do I Start?

There are several call tracking companies that provide a laundry list of benefits. If you didn’t notice, the service that got us hooked to tracking calls is, CallRail. After speaking to different companies, we found CallRail offers the best features for our outdoor clients at a fair price. The reports we provide each month help us make better marketing decisions moving forward. It also helps us become more transparent with our clients as we can show them when a digital ad flopped and what we’re doing to fix it.

Call tracking services provide a plethora of information that outdoor digital marketers can get lost in. While you don’t need Sage Lion Media to get a CallRail account, we could help you save time and money if you do. CallRail is a service anyone can sign up for but when you work with us, we take care of creating an effective inbound marketing campaign.

We take the time to make sense of the data and provide you the most meaningful information. We manipulate the tone, images, and content of advertisements and CTAs so your sales team gets the most qualified leads. We integrate your CRM, Google Analytics, and website with CallRail.

If you have the bandwidth to take full advantage of a call tracking service then we recommend CallRail. But if you’re not sure and want more information on how Sage Lion Media can convert, close, and delight customers through CallRail contact us today.

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How To Get More Customer Reviews & Improve Your SEO

People want to be heard loud and clear when they’ve had a negative experience with a product or service. Rarely do people leave positive reviews. Even though you might get repeat customers and awesome sales, you could lose potential customers who saw your 1-star average on Facebook, Google, or Yelp. Maybe it’s time to, dare I say, ask for reviews?

Yes! It’s OK to ask customers to leave reviews. Especially since only 23% of customers review your business online. Today I want to discuss the importance of online reviews, how to increase your reviews, and why you should monitor them.

Online Reviews Matter

We all know word-of-mouth marketing is the best kind of marketing. We trust our friends and family to steer us in the right direction for a quality product or service. Online reviews are the digital version of word-of-mouth marketing. 93% of consumers say online reviews affect their purchasing decision!

If people are deciding between two companies that rent converted camper vans and they see one company has an average of 4-stars and the other has 2-stars, who do you think they’ll pick? Now you could argue and say 4-star has over 100 reviews while 2-star only has 5. But, when companies don’t have many reviews, bad reviews will skew the overall average. Since 68% of customers want to read four or more reviews before they can trust your business, you better find ways to increase your reviews. We’re here to help with that!

Ways To Increase Reviews

Before you ask for reviews, make sure you have an easy review process. Have a link handy that you can email to customers. Put it in your email signature. Create a cool business card with the link to hand out. Add a call-to-action on your website. Whatever it is, simplify the process. If your customers don’t know where or how to leave a review, they won’t do it.

1. Ask In Person

When a customer returns a converted camper van and is handing you the keys, ask them to leave a review! That simple. Give them a business card with a link or ask for their email so you can send the link. A person-to-person request is effective when you’ve performed a service. Most likely, you’ve spent more time with this customer so it won’t be awkward.

2. Send An Email

Sending a personal or automated email asking for a review is another way to increase online reviews. If your business is performing a service, I’d recommend sending a personal email. Actually, if you have the time, always send a personalized email. People miss the “personal touch” from business so this is another chance for you to make them feel special.

But I get it. You’re busy! So am I. Sending a personalized email for each product or service sold takes a lot of time. Setting up an automated email is more efficient and you can still add a personal touch. Every time I order something on Amazon, a week later I get an email asking to leave a review. I don’t leave a review for every product but I leave more reviews than if they didn’t ask. Creating an automated email like Amazon can help increase the number of reviews your business receives. As proud Hubspot Partners, we have created several workflows for our clients that makes automated emails a breeze.

3. Ask On Social Media

If you have a large following on social media and few reviews, ask your fans! You can even ask your small fan base for reviews. Include links to Google and Yelp.

Monitor Reviews

Once you ask for reviews, people will leave them. And when that happens, it’s important to monitor and respond to them. If someone leaves a positive review, thank them! Ask how your converted camper van made their road trip to the Grand Canyon better! Get the name of the sales rep that recommended that awesome pair of hiking boots. You want your customers to stay engaged with your company so keep them engaged.

It’s even more important to respond to negative reviews. Getting feedback on a product or service can help your company do better. If the review is about a poor attitude from an employee, respond and let them know you’re having a company-wide training on customer service. If a customers ski jacket zipper broke on the first-run, ask for their address so you can send them a new jacket.

People look at positive and negative reviews. If customers see you are trying to rectify a negative experience, they’ll trust you have their best interest at heart.

Leave Us A Google Review

Online reviews can be that one last piece of information a potential customer needs to pick up the phone and call or press, “add to cart.” And how you handle reviews can show off your company’s awesome culture. So leave us a review on Google. Do you find our blogs helpful? Or are our topics irrelevant? Did we increase your companies leads? Whatever it is, we’d love to hear from you.


Hubspot Adds Instagram

Sage Lion Media loves Hubspot. Hubspot makes marketing simpler for our agency and managing our clients. With their marketing automation tools, we have more time to prospect, brainstorm, and chase fresh powder after a snowstorm in the mountains.

Hubspot is always improving their marketing automation tools and this month, they announced some pretty big news. Facebook has recognized Hubspot as a Badged Marketing Partner. With this partnership, Hubspot has the ability to directly publish to Instagram!

Why Is This Big News?

Facebook is a powerful social media marketing tool with 2.1 billion daily active users. After Facebook bought Instagram, their daily active users skyrocketed. Instagram expects to hit 1 billion active users this year!

Instagram is becoming a prime marketing tool for outdoor businesses to showcase their brand and create a new community of followers. Currently, social media marketing tools have the ability to create Instagram posts and even see analytics. But it is a convoluted process to schedule and publish a post. Most social media marketing tools give you the ability to create the post in their app, but then you have to copy and paste your post directly into Instagram. For businesses with more than one Instagram account, it’s a lot of logging in and out and memorizing usernames and passwords.

With Hubspot and Facebook’s new partnership, social media marketers can save time by scheduling posts for all social networks!

What Else?

Hubspot offers a robust, analytics feature for social media accounts. It’s simple to track engagement, clicks, contacts, and more. They also make it simple to manage different accounts and stay on top of the latest social media trends and best practices. Hubspot will incorporate these same features with Instagram making it easy to track, monitor, and manage all of your social media marketing efforts. Hubspot has also added some new features with Facebook.

  • Hubspot now allows you to host, upload, and publish Facebook videos with their social tools.
  • Marketers can dive even deeper with Facebook Ad targeting by syncing Hubspot lists with Facebook Audiences.
  • Integrate Facebook Messenger in Hubspot so you can monitor all messages from one app.

Hubspot Loyal

Hubspot has been a lifesaver for our agency. We are able to stay ahead of our client’s needs and provide detailed analytics with their software.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective social media strategy, contact us today.

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Understanding Keywords For Your Outdoor Business

Every website is vying for that number one spot on Google Search. It could be the main website, a blog post, or a landing page but each and every one of us wants to be the first thing people see. While search engine optimization (SEO) rules on Google are constantly changing, keywords have stayed fairly consistent. Understanding keywords for your outdoor business can lead to impressive results on Google Search.
Continue reading…


The Latest In Social Media

We are 3 months into 2018 and a lot has happened with social media. From Kylie Jenner costing Snapchat $1.3 billion to Facebook potentially slapping businesses in the face with its new algorithm. Let’s look at what’s been going on in the world of social media marketing. And I promise to make no more Kardashian/Jenner references.

Facebook Algorithm Change

Mark Zuckerberg wants to get back to the roots of Facebook. Connect people with people. Several users have been frustrated with the number of posts from brands, businesses, and media so Facebook is changing its algorithm. Users will now see fewer posts from pages and more posts from friends and family.

So what does this mean for marketers? Everyone is still unsure of the new algorithm’s impact on business but here are some ways to continue standing out.

  1. Quality content has always and will always be king. Facebook wants “meaningful interactions” which means, comments. When brands and businesses post on Facebook, share content that is engaging. Facebook will prioritize these posts.
  2. Facebook loves video content and will continue to include them on user’s homepage. But Facebook loves live content even more. In his post in January, Zuckerberg said, “Live videos often lead to discussion among viewers…live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos.” Live videos create a conversation and that’s what Facebook wants.
  3. Brand ambassadors have been trending for social media marketers. Instead of focusing on the “big fish,” start connecting with real people. If a brand ambassador has a personal Facebook page, ask them to share content on there. Have a diehard fan with a lot of Facebook friends? Surprise them with a bunch of free stuff and have them review it on their personal page.

Other News for Facebook

  • Facebook is seeing a decline in users. Last year, they lost 2.8 million users under the age of 25! Social media platforms like, Snapchat, are swooping up Gen Z.
  • And finally, some good news. Facebook is making it easier for businesses to see how their Page is performing. Post views will now be based on viewable impressions. Previously, reach was defined as a post showing up in a users News Feed. Post views will now only count when the post enters the user’s screen. This will give businesses a more accurate view of their post views even though they might see a dip in reach.

Twitter

A decline in daily and monthly active users has plagued Twitter for a while but there might be some bright light. Even though the US has seen a 2% drop in daily active users, people who use the app are spending more time on it and engaging more. Why? In November of 2017, Twitter upped its character count in a tweet from 140 to 280. This has made it easier and faster for users to tweet. Tweets that reach the 280 character limit are also being liked and retweeted more often. These users also have more followers and mentions.

Twitter has also improved their ads which has seen a 75% increase in engagement from 2016 to 2017. Rumors of Twitter being on its deathbed have echoed around Silicon Valley but businesses looking for quality engagement with their fans might want to think twice. There are over 67 million Twitter users in the United States. Majority of those users are 18-49 which means they have buying power. While other businesses are pulling back on Twitter, we’ll stay in the conversation with the apps engaged Tweeters.

Anything Else?

The world of social media is evolving for better or worse. One of the better changes is Hubspot’s new integration with Instagram. As a valued Hubspot Partner, we are ecstatic about this!

And as an inbound marketing agency, we want to help your business attract the ideal customers and convert, close, and delight them so your outdoor business can prosper. Social media is an amazing tool and we understand the work that goes into it.


Google Chrome Is Coming For Your Ads

Have you noticed fewer ads the last few days?

The day of ad reckoning is upon us. Last June Google warned us they would start blocking annoying ads natively within their Chrome browser. Well, that day has come and gone, and the web seems like a nicer place right?

I want to shed a little light on what’s going on and how it might impact your outdoor marketing efforts. Especially if you rely on pop-ups to drive conversions.

It won’t block all ads, just the ones we all hate.

Google is trying to curb a rising problem, too many people are installing adblockers on their web browsers. In 2017 they joined the Coalition for Better Ads, they created standards for how marketers should improve ads for consumers. The ads shown below have identified as experiences that are banned from the standards.

Chances are you’re probably using some of these types of ads right now.

The two that we are concerned with are Pop-Up Ads and Large Sticky Ads.

Pop-up Ads

Pop-up ads are a type of interstitial ad that do exactly what they say — pop-up and block the main content of the page. They appear after content on the page begins to load and are among the most commonly cited annoyances for visitors to a website. Pop-up ads come in many varieties – they can take up part of the screen, or the entire screen.

Included ad experiences tested: Pop-up Ad with Countdown, Pop-up Ad without Countdown

We’ve had pretty good success running these types of ads. They can be a great source for driving visitors to a call to action or getting them to sign up for a newsletter. When used correctly they can even provide value to the end-user.

Two forms of pop-up ads are currently under review and are exempt from being blocked. Ads that take up 30% or less of the content and Exit Pop-Up Ads that appear after a user has ceased active engagement with content. Eventually, these ads will be submitted for review and blocked.

Large Sticky Ads

Large Sticky Ads stick to the bottom edge of a page, regardless of a user’s efforts to scroll. As the user browses the page, this static, immobile sticky ad takes up more than 30% of the screen’s real estate.

A Large Sticky Ad has an impeding effect by continuing to obstruct a portion of the page view regardless of where the user moves on the page.

We don’t use these as much and never over 30% of the screen, but it’s worth noting. I have seen plenty of outdoor websites that add signups and specials in these lower areas. Blogs are notoriously bad for using this kind of ad.

If you use some of these types of ads don’t panic.

Google is probably out scanning the web looking for ads as we speak. To know if your site has been flagged you’ll need to check your Ad Experience Report in Google Search console. But it’s not actually in your search console yet. You need to hit this link to see your report.

First of all, you have time to adjust should you be flagged. You have 30 days to address any issues on your site. If you don’t, Google Chrome will automatically block the ads on your site. Visitors will see a warning that you are a bad advertiser and ads are being blocked.

Our strategy moving forward

As I mentioned we’ve been using a few of these ads on some of our client websites, because frankly, they work. Especially when you have a compelling offer. First of all, we’re not panicking but we are watching.

On any site we run pop-ups we are waiting for Google to crawl the site and update the report. Once we are flagged we will respond accordingly. There is still some gray area out there about what’s technically a pop-up and what’s not. So we’ll wait for Google to tell us if we’re in violation. So far we haven’t been flagged anywhere.

If we’re flagged we will rely on user triggers to display our ads. We use Opt-in Monster and HubSpot Lead flows to serve our pop-ups. Both have triggers we can use to only show ads that meet the requirements stated in the Coalition for Better Ads. These triggers include things like:

  • Exit Intent (someone trying to leave the site).
  • Ads that show up after certain interactions.
  • Not requiring users to wait a certain number of seconds before content is shown.
  • Showing different ads to mobile or desktop users.

We also want to continue to create unique and innovative ways to be seen by our client’s customer base that fall within Google Chrome’s ad standards.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective inbound marketing strategy, contact us today.

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2018 Inbound Marketing Trends

It’s a new year which means new marketing trends to help grow your business. While some trends in 2017 are still relevant like blogging and social media, we did some research to see what new marketing tactics will help your company thrive in 2018.


7 Last Minute Checks Before A Trade Show

Trade shows can have a huge impact on any size business. Over 80% of attendees have some sort of buying power so if planned correctly, companies can network with potential customers and even close deals on the spot. This is a chance for salespeople to take a break from the cold calling and emails and make a lasting impression in person.

Since trade shows can be costly, it’s important your business has planned well in advance with goal setting, booth design, premarketing, etc. To maximize your ROI, take a look at these last minute checks to ensure a successful show!

1. Charge Everything

Laptops, phones, iPads, tablets, anything that needs to be charged, charge it. The last thing you want is to be showing a demo on your computer and it dies. Or capturing a lead on your iPad and “low battery” pops up and there’s still five hours left in the show. Since 24-hour battery life on most electronics isn’t a thing, it’d be wise to pack extra batteries and power cords as well. And if you’re not located next to an outlet or you’re not sure, bring extension cords.

2. Have A Backup Plan

Having a backup plan for everything that could go wrong will give you peace of mind and will also continue to maximize your ROI at the show. Here are a couple scenarios that can happen to anyone and how to plan ahead:

  • The booth was shipped well in advance but with holidays, extreme weather, or just incompetence, there’s no guarantee everything will arrive on time. Pack a company branded tablecloth and marketing materials in your suitcase just in case you arrive at an empty table.
  • The marketing team put together an amazing slideshow for a meeting you planned with some prospects but the trade show doesn’t have the proper cords to hook it up. Pack extra cords and also print out copies of the slideshow on some nice paper in case there are tech issues.

Even if you plan for the trade show a year in advance, things happen. So always plan for the worst and just pack extra of everything.

3. Update Your Credit Card App

A lot of trade shows give exhibitors the ability to sell their merchandise to attendees. Whether it’s a B2B or B2C show, make sure you have the software to close the sale on the spot. There are several credit card apps you can download on a phone or tablet but you’ll want to check that it’s up to date. If it’s been a while since you’ve used the app, double-check it’s the most updated version. You don’t want a bunch of frustrated first-time customers who waited in line to buy a thermos, rod, or energy drink because the app needed a new update.

4. Pack Snacks & Water

Rule number 1 in trade show etiquette is to always have someone at the booth. Most companies send at least two representatives to manage the booth but if you’re a small company, your partner planned a lunch meeting, or someone is sick, you might get stuck at the booth by yourself.  Instead of leaving your booth for an hour to grab something to eat, pack some granola bars, a sandwich, or some nuts to munch on. Bring a water bottle as well because networking will leave anyone parched. And lastly, pack mints. No one wants to smell onion breath. No one.

5. Double-Check Your Lead Capture

The cost to convert a lead from a trade show is 38% less than a sales call so it’s vital to have some sort of lead capture. Collecting business cards is always a nice backup plan but fewer people carry them around these days. It also can be tedious manually inputting them into your CRM. Talk with your marketing team in advance about setting up a form on your website people can fill at your booth that automatically puts them in your CRM. Apps like Leadature, is another solution for capturing potential customers at the show. No matter what method you use to capture leads, double-check the day before and on the day of the show. If something goes wrong, see step 2.

6. Email Current Customers

The main goal of a trade show is to get new customers but this is also an opportunity to strengthen current relationships. A few days ahead of the show, email your current customer base and let them know you’ll be at the trade show. Delighting your existing customers with free passes, drink tickets, or some cool marketing swag can help with retention and future sales.

7. Post On Social

Not only do you want current customers to know you’re at a trade show but fans on your social media want to as well. Within your fan base are tons of potential customers who might be attending the same show. Leading up to the event let them know your booth number with a tweet or Facebook post. You can even post your schedule on Facebook and ask fans to message you to set-up more meetings. While at the show, post a Facebook Live video of you giving a demo of a new product.

Trade shows are the perfect opportunity to have face-to-face interactions with future and current customers. It’s important to take full advantage of this opportunity and using these last-minute checks will help you leave a lasting impression. If your trade show is in the Denver area, check out our post on making the most of your trip!

Good luck out there, exhibitors!

 


Why Outdoor Wilderness Programs Should Use Inbound Marketing

In the past, most outdoor wilderness programs focused their marketing efforts on traditional outbound strategies, including trade shows, telemarketing, print ads, and radio or television ads. But with the availability of technology, the focus has quickly shifted to inbound marketing strategies such as blogging, podcasts, webinars, search engine optimization, infographics, YouTube videos, and eBooks. The focus of inbound marketing is being discovered by customers, rather than going out to find them.

Inbound marketing helps draw prospects to your wilderness site, and gradually converting them into customers. Here are a few ways you can use inbound marketing for success.

1. Create Brand Awareness For Your Outdoor Wilderness Program

Outdoor wilderness sites can dramatically improve their brand awareness especially around the different programs you offer. You can tell success stories and highlight unique aspects of your trips that sets you apart from your competition. Potential clients are spending a lot of time researching options and comparing data points. Use videos, social media, and blog posts to start attracting those clients to your website.

Once you turn the money off for a pay per click campaign those leads stop filtering in.

2. Get More Leads With Less Money

Just like outbound marketing methods, inbound marketing requires some upfront investment. However, as your marketing resources grow, leads are pulled to the site over time compounding your growth. Unlike a paid-for-click (PPC) campaign where the leads go away once the money stops flowing, an inbound marketing plan will continue to organically attract users to the site over time.

3. Establish Credibility

Before people sign up to go on one of your trips, they want to be sure they are reserving a spot with a credible outfit. Inbound marketing offers outdoor wilderness programs a great opportunity to establish credibility with their customers.

For instance, if you are booking a month-long trip, you could create a series of blogs or videos that offer an overview of experiences that happen on a typical trip. In the process, you could answer common questions asked by families and prospects in the research phase. The more prospects see you as an authority in your industry, the higher your chance are of obtaining that business.

4. Target Qualified Customers

Inbound marketing is all about pulling in already interested customers. Unlike outbound marketing, you’re not throwing money at advertising that  is marketed to everyone. Instead, you are using specific keywords, blogs, and social media posts to attract the perfect customer. When you create content that your customers are searching for, it makes it easier for them to find you. They’ll sign up for your newsletters since you’ve established yourself as a thought leader. You’ll also save money since these leads are more qualified than leads coming from TV ads or other traditional marketing strategies.

5. Enhance Organic Search

Getting people to your website organically is all about SEO. And how do you increase your SEO? Blogs, keywords, social media, videos. When people are searching for wilderness therapy companies, they might start by Googling, “What is Wilderness Therapy?” “How can Wilderness Therapy Help My Teenager?” When you create blogs addressing these questions, you’re able to get these prospects on your website…organically.

Inbound marketing is a new way to approach prospects. While leaving the comfort of traditional marketing is scary, inbound marketing will help you gain more qualified leads, nurture those leads at the right time, increase brand awareness, and so much more. Are you ready to dip your toes into inbound marketing? Check out our blog on how inbound marketing can help you attract the right clients.


How Inbound Marketing Can Help You Get More Outdoor Therapy Clients

Quit handing out 10 cent trinkets at your trade show booth and start having meaningful conversations with future referrers. And please save your money on purchased email lists and grow your list organically.

These are just a few of the differences between traditional marketing and inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a proven way to help grow your wilderness therapy business and attract the right clients. By attracting ideal clients through relevant content creation, opening the door for meaningful conversations, converting leads, and leaving a lasting impression on every customer, you can grow your wilderness therapy business.

Let’s take a look at how you can attract the perfect clients for your outdoor therapy business with inbound marketing.

Inbound Lead Generation vs. Outbound Lead Generation

Traditional Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing

Traditional or outbound marketing is the old school way of finding clients. It usually consists of plastering your message on every medium and hoping your customers will find you. Outbound marketing tactics tend to be interruptive to potential clients leaving a bad taste in their mouth.

Today the customer has all the power. They can research you and 50 of your competitors over a cup of coffee.

According to Hubspot, “Inbound marketing is focused on attracting customers through relevant and helpful content….and does not need to fight for potential customers attention” like outbound marketing. Wilderness therapy companies can use inbound marketing to attract qualified prospects with valuable content on blogs and social media.

Inbound Marketing isn’t some sleazy, sales trick where the customer leaves wondering why they even bought your product.  It’s attracting the right customers who are already interested in what you’re selling but might need help understanding your product.

Let’s take a look at the 4 steps to start attracting not only more but the right outdoor therapy clients to your business with inbound marketing…and it all starts with your website.

Attract phase of inbound marketing

Attract strangers to your website

Websites are essential for wilderness therapy businesses to have. It is a way for potential customers to contact you with questions, see your services, and learn more about the company. It’s also an opportunity for you to pull in already interested clients to your website. Valuable content creation and a strong social media presence are two ways inbound marketers can attract ideal clients to their websites. Let’s take a look at blogs and social media.

Blogs

While it seems like everyone and their dog has a blog these days, the amount of companies that post blogs regularly and write content that their future customers want to read is quite small. It’s a missed opportunity for several outdoor therapy businesses but a chance for you to take advantage of! In 2013, Hubspot found that 92% of companies who blogged regularly acquired a customer through their blog.

Making blog posts a weekly or monthly habit is important but also making that content interesting to your future customers is the difference in attracting ideal customers. Remember how I said earlier that inbound marketing is attracting people already interested in outdoor therapy? It’s a lot easier converting those website visitors into customers when the content you write are topics they’re already searching for. Blogs shouldn’t be just about self-promotion. Wilderness therapy companies can write posts about:

  • Five Mental Health Benefits Of Being Outside
  • Four Tips For Dealing With Difficult Teenagers
  • How Does Social Media Impact My Teen?

These are just a few things your potential customers might be searching about. By being found in topics your audience cares about you become a trusted source of information and potential customers begin to value your services.

Social Media

Just like a website, social media can positively impact your business if done correctly. And just like blogging, posting valuable content regularly can attract the ideal wilderness therapy clients. The blogs you start creating are perfect to include on your social media calendar. Here are some other ideas to include that will attract people to your social media and get them to your website:

  • Put a human face on your brand. Social media is a chance for you to leave the sales pitch at the door and start acting like a real person. Post videos of your staff having fun. Have a Q&A with your CEO or therapists. Share images of the outdoors.
  • Connect. Ask open-ended questions and get your audience to engage with you. When they do start interacting with your brand, respond! Don’t leave them hanging. Have a two-way conversation with your fans.

Convert phase of inbound marketing

Convert Website Visitors Into Leads

Now that your website activity is going up, it’s time to turn those visitors into leads. To do so, you need to create a method that captures your visitor’s information. Call-to-actions (CTAs) on blog posts and landing pages is a simple way for you to guide visitors on your website. You can encourage them to sign up for your newsletters, download success stories, or sign up for a webinar. Whatever it is, you want to be able to get to know your website visitors so you can start addressing their needs and building trust and credibility.

Close phase of inbound marketing

Closing Time

You’re pumping out content and tracking website visitors….now it’s time to close. This is the hard part and possibly most time-consuming. It can take up to 13 interactions with your lead before he or she pulls the trigger so it’s important to stay hopeful and be patient. Managing those “touches” with your lead through a CRM system can help you stay on top of it. Hubspot found that CRM tools can increase revenue by 41% per salesperson.

Email marketing continues to be the most effective marketing channel to close leads.  In your emails you want your content to be less sales focused and more about solving their needs. Include FAQs and admission steps, as well as why your outdoor therapy company is the best for their needs.

Delight stage of inbound marketing

Delight

While “delight” is the last step in the inbound marketing strategy, it really should be included in each step. Making sure that your potential and current clients feel heard and happy throughout the whole experience is what gets you more referrals. Whether it’s responding to a question on Facebook in a timely manner or resolving ax payment issue, it’s important to provide excellent customer service at every turn. Help improve your customer experience with survey and feedback tools. Nobody is perfect so make sure you’re learning your weaknesses and growing.

Are You Sold On Inbound Marketing?

Have you heard the quote, “I’d rather have four quarters than a hundred pennies?” The quote is about friendship but I think it applies to inbound marketing as well. Would you rather have 100 people calling you that don’t fit your ideal customer? Or four people who will truly benefit from wilderness therapy and can refer similar clientele?

Inbound marketing is a shift from traditional marketing but when done correctly, clients will start calling you instead of the other way around.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective inbound marketing strategy, contact us today.

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You Weren’t Expecting To Cold Call: Inbound Sales To The Rescue

I started Sage Lion Media because I was passionate about the outdoors and pretty good at design. Having to sell my services was nowhere in the picture. I thought my work and a small link back to my website from the footer of our projects was all I needed to climb the ladder of success. That was enough, for awhile but the business slowly plateaued, I just couldn’t grow without making changes.

Luckily 2017 was a year of changes here at Sage Lion. We stopped being a design agency and transformed into a GROWTH Agency. Our number one mission is to help our clients grow. I owe a huge amount of this transformation to my Hubspot Coaches Katie Carlin and Dan Tyre. I was recently nominated by Katie and chosen to participate in Dan’s Pipeline Generation Bootcamp. Dan is a Director at Hubspot and was charged with helping me learn how to pick up the phone and call prospects. Good luck.

But over the course of eight weeks with 8 other “lions”, individual homework assignments, intense roleplaying, and one on one coaching I slowly came to realize the phone can be a powerful tool for developing leads and mastering the inbound sales process.

Here are my takeaways.

What motivates you?

I can show you the most amazing technique for improving your sales process but if you aren’t motivated to do them, every single day, you’ll quickly find excuses not to do them anymore. I’m too busy, let me just check this one thing, then I’ll call. Being able to re-center yourself around what’s truly motivating you will keep you grinding through the bad days. I’ve got a picture of my motivations pasted right next to my computer. It really helps.

Having a little fun can set you apart from the junk that ends up in your prospect’s inbox.

It’s ok to have fun

This one is pretty easy for me. I’m naturally a likable kind of guy and I enjoy chatting with people most of the time. The problem is your targets don’t want to talk to you. So how do you get around that? Try to have some fun. Send quirky email subjects.

One of my recent favorites to a saltwater guide: I spooked you like a trout angler casting to a permit.

Include .gif’s in your emails.

Subject: Hello from the outside…

Are you in there?

The reason I’ve been reaching out is that I see opportunities on your site to attract more clients. I know that my company can make a huge difference in Sage Lion Media LLC’s outreach and I would really love the opportunity to talk.
 
Is there a good time to catch you at your desk in the next few days?
 

Having fun makes you memorable and the best part is they actually work…

You can’t assume every person is going to hang up on you.

Be there to help – seriously

Don’t go into a sales call trying to sell. You’ll probably get slaughtered. I go into every call looking to help my prospects. Before I call I’ve spent around 20 mins looking at their site and trying to find opportunities to make the site work harder. The other side of the coin is the people you are calling may actually need help and they know it. You can’t assume every person is going to hang up on you. Every time I pick up the phone I remember to breathe, I glance at my motivation board and tell myself they need your help.

You need to practice

If you’re like me and you’ve never done sales calls you need to start role-playing. It’s weird at first, but it goes a long way to give you confidence in your own skills. If you have a buddy who is in sales practice with him. He’s probably heard it all. How will you answer questions like:

  • How can I help you?
  • Why are you calling?
  • Who are you?
  • We don’t need any.

Try this one the next time an unsuspecting prospect picks up the phone. “Ugh, looks like you weren’t expecting my call.” You have to really sell the ugh, you might even get a few to laugh.

Personalized Efficiency Helps

The Hubspot Sales tools go a long ways in helping you identify and connect with potential customers, quickly and easily. I’ve built out a series of prospecting sequences I send out to all my targets. But you need to take the time to personalize each email to the needs of your prospect. If you don’t, you’re no better than a spammer. Remember you are always helping.

You owe it to your employees

This goes back to my first point finding your motivations. As a small business owner I need to be driving the sales of the company. I’ve made too many excuses in the past which was cheating our team. Knowing that the team is relying on me motivates me to get off my ass and start calling.

What will motivate you?


Three Simple Fixes To Improve Your Wilderness Therapy Website

Building a website can be surprisingly easy these days. Sites like Wix and Weebly provide free templates so you can create a site without hiring someone else. Building a user-friendly website is a different story. While free website templates are great tools for people just starting their wilderness therapy business, the bigger you grow, the more problems can arise. Here are three simple fixes to improve your wilderness therapy website you can tackle yourself.

Why Does My Website Need To Be User-Friendly?

Have you ever walked into a grocery store and saw eggs in the candy aisle or cleaning supplies next to the meat department? If you had, you probably wouldn’t go back to that store. When you walk into the grocery store you want to be able to find everything you need as quickly as possible. This is advantageous for the grocery store because you’ll keep coming back.

This is exactly why websites need to be user-friendly. If wilderness therapy clients can’t find what kind of programs you offer, how to apply, or even what you’re trying to sell, they’ll Google a different site. Development, design, and content all play a role in a user-friendly website.

Your website might not need a full overhaul but it is worth checking to see if your site is working optimally. No need to pick up the phone and call us just yet though. These three simple fixes are something you can do on your own.

If potential wilderness therapy clients can’t find what kind of programs you offer, how to apply, or even what you’re promoting, they’ll Google a competitor.

1) Can Potential Clients Easily Find The Application?

So you’ve spent hours and thousands of dollars creating a beautiful website. The images and content chosen for each page have meaning and tell a story. However, once a user decides they want to apply, it takes them 15 minutes to find the application. This is assuming they took the time to find it. Making the application process simple begins with making it easy to find.

The Fix: Add a button on your menu bar that says, “Admissions.” Include a dropdown with options to, “Apply Now” and “Admission Details.” Another option is to include a button on your homepage, “Apply Now!” And don’t just place it anywhere on your homepage. Make sure it’s easily viewable to users so pin it on a header image or right below it.

2) Is The Content Easily Readable?

Before I started, Sage Lion Media, I dreaded the process of job hunting. I’d find a job posting for a company but when I went to their website, they used so many corporate buzzwords and marketing jargon I had no idea who they were or what they did. Creating fancy copy for websites, newsletters, and emails is great. But to quote Mark Twain, “Don’t use a $5 word when a 50 cent word will do.”

Outdoor therapy clients can get lost in embellished copy but also too much text. It is important for wilderness therapy companies to provide detailed information about their services, clinical experience, and philosophy but it needs to be scannable for users on your website.

The Fix: The content on your website should be understandable and scannable for all users. Send your website to friends and family and ask them if it makes sense. Do they understand your mission and purpose? Then, ask them if they needed to find out where your clinical therapists got their undergrad from, how quickly they can find it.

If it takes them a while to sift through their bios, break up the paragraphs. Include headers and subheaders. Bold or italicize keywords in the text. Apply this to other pages on the site so users can quickly find the information they need.

3) Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly

Building a website that can be viewed on a computer and phone is incredibly important. If potential clients can’t browse your website waiting in line at the bank or over their lunch break, they’ll find another wilderness therapy company. Not only do you want people to be able to look at your website while on the go, according to Similar Web, mobile devices drive 56% traffic to websites. This means that even when people aren’t waiting in line or running errands, they are using their phones to surf the web instead of their desktop.

The easiest way to check if your wilderness therapy site is mobile-friendly is to enter the website URL on your phone and see. If you have to pinch the screen to make the whole page viewable, the site is not mobile-friendly. You can also use Google’s free tool to check.

The Fix: Ok this one can be easy if you’re set up properly. WordPress offers several themes that are mobile-friendly/responsive. Just select one of the themes and voila! Your website is now mobile-friendly.  To add custom themes and tailor it to your company’s vision, takes a little more work. Our outdoor web design philosophy has helped convert hundreds of websites to a mobile-friendly site.

Creating The Perfect Website

Using the resources to improve your wilderness therapy website is a worthwhile investment. It takes time. And it takes trial and error. Your inbound wilderness therapy marketing plan should constantly be evolving based on data as well as usual growing pains. The content on your website today should not be the same content on your website in five years. The calls to actions (CTA) on the site should be updated to your company’s needs. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to a wilderness therapy website but reviewing these three simple fixes is a good start.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with a growth-driven design website, download our Ebook.

Growth-Driven Design Ebook, Sage Lion Media


Why Segmenting Emails Is Important And How The Heck To Do It Before #GivingTuesday

In 2016, 40,000 nonprofits participated in #GivingTuesday with more planning to join the movement this year. Email marketing has the highest ROI for nonprofits so it’s important your nonprofit is heard over everyone else. Taking the time to segment your #givingtuesday email list can drastically improve the results of your campaign. Segmenting your audience will not only get people to open the email but also click on the link and donate! Don’t believe us? Check out these stats:

Now, do you believe us? Ok, great! Another thing we know is most nonprofits have little time, a small staff, and microscopic budgets. Even though the statistics show how beneficial segmenting your email list can be, it can seem like a daunting task. Before you get overwhelmed, take a look at our five easy steps for segmenting your email audience so you can increase your donations on #GivingTuesday.

1. What’s Working?

Even though your list isn’t segmented yet, you’re probably having some success with your email campaigns. Analyze your email marketing statistics and see where you’ve had success. Are there more opens on Tuesday’s at 7PM than Friday’s at 9AM? Was there a particular email that had amazing results because your team put a lot of effort into the message of the email? Are your emails falling into the dreaded spam filter? Whatever it is, make notes of where there have been successes.

2. Remove Inactive Participants

There is nothing more annoying than receiving a piece of junk mail in the mailbox. Unfortunately, marketers who send direct mailers can’t see who kept the piece of mail and who didn’t. Luckily, marketers using email have the ability to see who is opening their email and who is deleting it right away. Instead of continuously emailing these people in hopes that this email will be the one they open, remove them from the list. Receiving junk mail can leave a bad taste in donors mouths which can hurt their chances of donating in the future.

3. Define Your Purpose

Defining what will make a successful campaign and what data will help is important to figure out before segmentation. Do parents tend to donate more than people without kids? Are students in college volunteering more than they donate? Figuring out different metrics and understanding how they affect your overall goal can help with segmentation. At this point, you can use the data you have on hand but moving forward, start thinking about other metrics that will help and start asking for them when collecting information.

4. Segment Your List

Now that you’ve made note of successful email campaigns, cleaned up your list, and defined your metrics, it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty. No matter the size of the list, each recipient has a different reason for being included. Some are past donors who made a one-time donation a year ago. Others are active volunteers. A good majority could be people who have never donated but have shown interest in the cause. Whatever their reason for being on the list, breaking them into smaller groups and sending a more personalized email addressing their needs can increase your open rate by 14.32%! Some ideas for segmenting are:

  1. Donor vs. Non-Donor
  2. Donation Frequency
  3. Corporate Sponsor vs. Individual Donor
  4. Email Engagement History
  5. Organizational Interest
  6. Age
  7. Gender
  8. Location

5. Create Your Content

Constant Contact found that 56% of people unsubscribe when the content isn’t relevant so segmenting and creating highly targeted and personalized content will help avoid this problem. If one list includes people who have never donated before, does it make sense to send an email immediately asking for a donation? Probably not. Instead, ease them in by telling them about your nonprofit and how it’s benefiting their community. Share a story of a dog who was rescued from a tough situation and now they’re in a happy, fur-ever home. Take a look at our post on effective storytelling for nonprofits for more ideas on creating relevant and powerful content.

Segmenting emails will:

  • Increase open rates
  • Provide relevant content to subscribers
  • Decrease unsubscribe rates
  • Increase donor leads
  • Increase donations
  • Decrease mail going to spam

Taking the time to segment email lists can seem daunting at first but it is important for nonprofits to do to increase the overall success #GivingTuesday. Using these simple steps will get you started to a bigger, better, and more impactful#GivingTuesday.

Has your nonprofit seen success with email segmentation? Share your experience with us!

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective email marketing strategy, contact us today.

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Four Common Reasons Your Emails Are Being Marked As Spam On #GivingTuesday

Nonprofits are rushed to create an email campaign which takes time and money that most of them don’t have. Once the email is created, a few test sends are fired off to a personal email and a few work email addresses and if all goes well, the email is then automated to send to donors. While you might look at this as a success, the reality is 1 out of 5 emails sent are marked as spam. This means 20% of the emails your nonprofit sends never reaches donors meaning less brand awareness and fewer donations. $15,000 is lost in donations every year due to spam filters so it’s important to take a look at reasons your emails are being marked as spam on #givingtuesday.

What Are Spam Filters?

Spam filters operate similarly to how Google pushes popular articles to the top and illegitimate articles to the bottom of searches. It’s based on algorithms only people with no lives will figure out and is ever-changing. As spammers become more creative, spam filters need to stay ahead and keep shutting them down. Spam filters are great as people do not like receiving junk mail but can hurt nonprofits who haven’t taken the time to make sure their emails aren’t marked as spam, especially when you’re rushing to execute campaign a last-minute #givingtuesday campaign.

Below we’ll take a look at what you can do to avoid being marked as spam and free software available to help!

1. Sending Irrelevant Content

A lot of email is marked as spam for the simple reason that people are being sent emails that have no relevance to them. While nonprofits want to believe subscribers will just click, “unsubscribe,” instead, people will mark it as spam to make sure they never receive an email from this organization again. Spam filters can take it a step further and if emails are never being opened and sent straight to the trash, email providers like GMail and Outlook will start marking them as spam before the recipients even have a chance. Segmenting your email list can make sure relatable and useful content is being sent to the proper people.

2. Sending Emails To People Without Permission

When creating an email list from scratch, nonprofits can instantly feel defeated with the lack of subscribers they have. Instead of building a list organically, they might purchase a list. Purchasing a list can put you in direct violation with the CAN-SPAM Act and instantly put you on the spam list for future email sends.

Instead of purchasing lists, take the time to build your list organically. Not only will you receive fewer spam complaints but it will also increase your open rates by 5X!

3. Not Including An Unsubscribe Link

Nobody wants to see people unsubscribe from their emails so marketers will not include a link thinking this will increase open rates. Wrong! This actually frustrates recipients and so they mark the email as spam. Email providers have caught on so they’ll mark these emails as spam before they even reach their inbox. Make sure to have an option on all emails to unsubscribe from the list. When they click this button, send them to a landing page asking for a reason they chose to unsubscribe and use this data to improve your email marketing.

4. Using Too Many Spam Words

Spam filters go a step further by reviewing the content in emails and if there are too many spam words like, “FREE MONEY!”, “Act Now!”, they’ll immediately mark it as spam. They’ll review both the body of the email and the subject so to make sure your email isn’t too “spammy”, avoid using common spam words. Sometimes these words are unavoidable but do your best to limit how many times you mention them.

Software Options

There is no guarantee that email providers won’t mark an email spam even when avoiding common mistakes. To help improve the chances of your email hitting the inbox of your recipients, try out these free services.

MailPoet: MailPoet is a free service that will test your spam score while editing your newsletter.

GlockApps: GlockApps will not only test your spam score before you send an email but it will provide tips on how to improve the email and increase deliverability and open rates all for free.

SendForensics: Compare your deliverability results to other nonprofits in your area with SendForensics. They provide free spam checks as well as email data from similar organizations to make sure you’re results are better than the rest.

SpamOwl: SpamOwl reviews your email to make sure it’s not full of “spam words.”

Making sure your #GivingTuesday email lands in people’s inboxes is important for the success of your nonprofit. Reviewing these common mistakes email marketers make and applying them to your campaign can help increase open rates, click throughs, and donations.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective inbound marketing strategy, contact us today.


What Makes An Effective Nonprofit Story?

A powerful story can help your donors cross from casual reader to impassioned donor. An effective nonprofit story pulls on the emotions of the viewer. It cuts to the heart of the viewer, engages their emotions and demands they take action. It’s one thing to tell your story in a way that inspires. It’s another to motivate your supporters to share your story with their friends and family. But an exceptional nonprofit story inspires, motivates, and excites friends and family to share with their friends and family creating a domino effect of brand recognition and increased donations.

But an exceptional nonprofit story, inspires, motivates, and excites friends and family to share with their friends and family creating a domino effect of brand recognition and increased donations.

By including the five story elements listed below, you can bring like-minded individuals together to rally around the change you’re making in the world especially if you’re working towards an effective #GivingTuesday campaign.

1. Beginning, middle, and end.

Every story has a structure similar to what you see here:

Figure 1

It’s typically called the story arc or a chronological sequence of events.

The three-part model mentioned above carries this progression:

  • Beginning: Problem. Explain the problem that you set out to solve.
  • Middle: Solution. Describe how the character solved their problem with your help.
  • End: Success. Get people excited about the results.

Directors, authors, and marketers use this model to help share their stories. Any good story has these three elements but the story arc is just the beginning. The structure of events along the story arc weave together the events and the characters of the story. The great, Kurt Vonnegut, hypothesized there were 6 emotional arcs in story:

In fact, a group of students in the Computational Story Lab at the University of Vermont in Burlington has finally proven, without a doubt, that Vonnegut and his thesis were correct. It’s a fascinating read.

2. A Relatable Character

All stories are driven forward by characters. A good goal is creating characters your audience can relate to on a personal level. A good starting point is working with your buyer personas or fictional recreations of your most important donors.

3. Emotion

In a 2009 study published in The Annals of the New York Academy of Science, Professor Paul Zak asked his subjects to watch two videos. One tells the emotional story of a father whose son is dying of cancer and who is struggling to find a way to connect with the boy. The other is a more static, storyless video of the father and son taking a walk in the zoo. Professor Zak determined that those that felt empathetic after watching the video had a 47% more of the neurochemical oxytocin in their bloodstream. Our body responds to the power of emotion by releasing chemicals that elicit action.

Zak’s team ran a second experiment where they gave money to the subjects that they could spend as they pleased. Zak’s team found the subjects who produced the highest levels of cortisol and oxytocin were “more likely to donate money generously.”

4. Resolution

All stories need some kind of resolution. It’s why your viewers sat through your video for the last 5 minutes. It’s exciting, it’s suspenseful, and it’s satisfying. It’s here you want to show the users how your relatable characters overcome their problem by using your organization.

Connect the protagonist to the services of your organization to educate your audience on the scope of the problem and inspire them to be part of that solution.

5. Call To Action

The final piece of the puzzle is to ask your protagonist to take some kind of action. Hopefully, your audience is feeling inspired but they may not know the best way to act on that feeling. Enter the “Call to Action.”

Your CTA will depend on your organization’s goal, but should always be action-oriented. Some common call to actions include:

  • Donate – Giving money to your organization
  • Volunteer – Giving time to your organization
  • Advocate – Publicly supporting or recommending an organization, policy, or person
  • Fundraise – Raise funds through an event or fundraising site
  • Subscribe – Signing up to receive publications such as an email newsletter

Everything you do to market your nonprofit is another chapter in the story people hear from you. An effective nonprofit story versus a good story can make the difference between keeping your donors and volunteers connected or losing them to the next admirable cause.


Vertical Video Works for Marketing

Smartphones never leave the hands of their consumers and rarely do you see people scrolling through their social media horizontally. When video ads first appeared on apps like YouTube, viewers could only watch them if they flipped their phone. When Snapchat tested out vertical video, advertisers saw “up to nine times more engagement!”

Take Advantage of Instagram’s Creative Shop for Video ideas

With over 250 million daily users, Instagram understands the importance of engagement when it comes to social media marketing. With help from their Creative Shop, Instagram shows marketers how to create vertical videos that engage users and consumers.


Answer Questions Using Google Maps

Google Maps is now allowing you to interact with your consumers when they search for your address. Their new program allows you to answer questions using google maps from mobile users who are using the app.

Outdoor marketers can respond to questions about their business location or other FAQ’s before customers even walk through the door.

How does it work:

1. Search a location on Google Maps
2. scroll down to the “questions and answers” section
3. ask a question or answer one

Do you usually get calls about how to find your business? Google allows business owners to add to the questions and answers to help out your customers. You can even move a frequently asked question toward the top of the thread by clicking the thumbs up icon.

Learn more about Google Maps update here!


Facebook Helps Marketers Amplify Influencers Posts

Facebook is making things easier for marketers by adding the ability to amplify their influencer’s post. Now when influencers promote your brand on their page or blog, marketers are able to boost that exact post. Marketers can then customize their audience with Facebook’s precise targeting so you can reach your ideal customer for maximum results!

Here’s how it works:

  • A marketing influencer creates a post about a product
  • The creator will check a box allowing the business partner to boost the post
  • Once boosted, the target audience will see that the post originated from the creator, even though the marketer boosted it

Take control of word-of-mouth marketing with brand ambassadors and influencer marketing and let Facebook provide the tools!


The Marketing Undercurrent: Relevant Digital News for Outdoor Marketers

We’re super excited to launch the Marketing Undercurrent here on the blog.

Our goal is to keep you quickly informed through short videos on new tools and techniques to boost your business and drive leads to your website.

We want to make things simple and Marketing Undercurrent is here to keep you in the know with what’s happening online.

You can read our blog posts at Sage Lion Media or you can check our YouTube channel.


Googles New Feature Will Jumpstart Your Journey of Visual Discovery

Google image search is a bit of a mess. You’re not really sure where an image will take you when browsing on your phone. Google recently updated their search algorithm to address this problem. Google is now adding badges to some images in their mobile app to help users find exactly what they want.

These badges will help you uncover images where next steps or more in-depth information is available,”

NOW IN THE BOTTOM LEFTHAND CORNER OF THE IMAGE. YOU’LL SEE A BADGE THAT CATEGROIZES THE IMAGE YOU’RE VIEWING, AS WELL AS TEXT TO HELP CLARIFY THE ACTION YOU CAN TAKE.

So what does this mean for an outdoor marketer?

If you have images on your site, you can help mobile users identify the type of content associated with the image by using appropriate structured data on your pages. According to Google, this helps users find relevant content quickly and sends better-targeted traffic to your site.

For Example:

Click on the badge in the lower left corner of the image to be taken directly to your website where you can learn more about the rod, its features, and most importantly buy it.

How to get started

If you’re publishing products, add Product markup, and for videos, add Video markup. Google’s algorithms will automatically badge GIFs, without the need of any markup. While they can’t guarantee that badges will always be shown, adding the recommended structured data fields in addition to the required fields may increase the chance of adding a badge to your image search results.


Share Your Next Outdoor Video in One Dedicated Space: YouTube

This mobile-only feature works like a text message thread or email. The plus side, once the video is shared with a contact, you can message directly without leaving the YouTube app. And who doesn’t want to share a video without receiving one? When responding to a video thread the user can press the reel icon and send a video in return.

The feature will be built into YouTube’s share button and lets you select from your phones contact list. You can also get a direct link to share and add new friends to discuss the video with.

The cool thing about this new feature is that instead of copying and pasting links to YouTube videos via text message of Facebook Messanger it does all the sharing in one App.

Check it out yourself at:

And while you’re there check out our YouTube Channel: Sage Lion Media.


Start Talking To Customers With Facebook Messenger

With more than 1.2 billion people using Messenger every day, the social media powerhouse has decided to take their messenger ads out of beta and launch to the mainstream.

According to Facebook:  “People will see Messenger ads in the home tab of their Messenger mobile app. When they tap on an ad, they will be sent to the destination chosen during ads creation. This can be your website or a Messenger conversation.”

So why is this ad placement useful to outdoor marketers?

Facebook sees this as a way for users to find relevant businesses that are active in the app. At this time, businesses can not directly message users but they can continue a conversation if the user clicks on the ad.

Start a conversation, don’t serve an ad.

To really see the benefits of this new service think about creative ways to start conversations not serve ads. For example, engage your target audience by understanding what they would be curious enough to start a discussion. Draw your audience in by showing a photo of the fish you caught on a trip and ask your audience. Want to know how we caught this fish, shoot us a message.
facebook messenger ad example

Getting started with Messenger Ads:

For more details about creative options and availability, visit the Advertiser Help Center.


How To Identify And Organize Your IFTD Trade Show Attendees Before The Show Starts

It doesn’t matter how good your product is if no one knows it exists. IFTD/ICAST are massive trade shows with lots of shiny doodads begging for attention and lots of qualified trade show attendees. Your success is heavily dependent on pre-event marketing. The more planning and work you do ahead of the show the more attention your product is going to get at the show.

Before we do any major marketing efforts we need to know who is going to be there. Here are some tips for identifying who will be at the show this year:

1) Use a CRM to organize your leads into personas

Prior to any touch points, we need a way to organize our contacts into a CRM. Hopefully, you’ve got a good CRM in place already. If not, we use and love the HubSpot sales CRM. Whichever CRM you use it should do the following:

Segment your audience into personas or segments.

The segments you’d probably want to target for IFTD are:

  • Flyshops
  • Manufacturers
  • Buyers
  • Blog/Media
  • Ambassadors

The big reason we need to segment our audience is so that we can send different content to different audiences. Stat after stat shows the power of personalization on email opens and click-throughs. For example, the tone and content of an email to an Instagram ambassador are going to be different than an email to a buyer from a fly shop.

Track your interactions automatically.


When sending emails or making calls during your pre-marketing phase, you need to keep a record of who you’ve talked to and when. Any good CRM should do this for you automatically.

2) Utilize your existing network

The simplest list to put together is your existing list of clients and contacts. You’re looking for present clients, prospects, and ambassadors. If your sales team has it’s own list of contact consolidate them into one central location.

Don’t start spraying emails to the attendee list. You need to cut it down and plug it into your persona list

3) Trade show attendee registration list

Your second audience is the trade show pre-show registration list. If you’ve never received this information from the show organizers, contact them about receiving or purchasing it. The registration list is an essential source of information for your pre-show marketing efforts.

It’s important not to blast out an email to all these registrations. You need to cut it down and plug it into your persona list above. This way you can deliver specific content to those that match your personas.

So far we’ve relied on existing resources to gather emails. The following two options require a little more legwork to identify attendees.

4) Use Social Media

Another creative way to identify trade show attendees is to monitor social media.

  • Search for hashtags on social networks. Popular tags in the past are #IFTD2016, #ICAST2016 etc.
  • Join groups on LinkedIn (Angling Trade posts a lot of good info on the show)

5) Web Tracking tools

Use tools to monitor mentions on the web like the Moz Fresh Web Explorer. This tool will search the web over the last 4 weeks and look for mentions of the search terms like IFTD.

Once you’ve found a potential contact you will need to try and gather their email. If you can avoid sending an email to info@company.com or something similar. Also, contact forms are often black holes. If you need to find a real person, tools like Hunter.io are perfect for reaching out to small sites and one-person blogs.

Simply enter a site into the tool…

And you’ll get some of the emails associated with the domain. It’s not always perfect, but it’s a good starting point.

Putting the time and effort into your pre-marketing is essential in any trade show marketing plan. Hopefully, these tools and ideas can help you find success at this year’s IFTD show.


What’s So Smart About SMART Goals?

When we are in the Discover phase of a website build or a Growth Driven Design project one of the first things we do is try to discover a few smart goals. SMART goals are critical for long-term marketing success.

A SMART goal stands for:

  • Specific – Your goal should be unambiguous and communicate what is expected, why it is important, who’s involved, where it is going to happen and which constraints are in place
  • Measurable – Your goal should have concrete criteria for measuring progress and reaching the goal
  • Attainable – Your goal should be realistic and possible for your team to reach
  • Relevant – Your goal should matter to your business and address a core initiative
  • Timely – You should have an expected date that you will reach the goal

Example of NOT a Smart goal

A good set of SMART Goals helps us stay focused on specific tasks we need to complete to reach project milestones.

We looked at a bad SMART Goal above, here are a few good examples from recent projects we worked on:

  • Increase total number of online donors by 15 percent in six months 1,652 in 18 months
  • Double our user session duration from 1:07 (average of combined domains) to 2:14 in three months
  • Increase new and returning web visitors to site by 45 percent in five months- Target by end of May- 26,000 per month

Typically, marketers might have goals for Visits, Contacts, and Customers for the year, quarter, or month and the numbers are closely related to each other. We’ve found that focusing on one of these specific segments gives the clearest vision of success.

  • Visits – You should focus on visits if you are just getting started with your website, or if you already have good conversion rates for visits to leads and leads to customer, but need additional traffic to add some fuel to the fire
  • Contacts – You’ll want to focus on Contacts if you are satisfied with the amount of traffic to your content, but you are not getting enough leads for sales. This is the segment that most HubSpot users focus on
  • Customers – Focus on this If you are getting a healthy amount of traffic to your content, visitors are converting on forms, but the leads just aren’t ready to close into customers

Goals are an essential part of a marketer’s success. Marketing goals are like personal goals you set for yourself. Meeting them makes you feel on top of the world. Effective. Inspired. However, missing your goal by a few customers, contacts or visits can incite just the opposite.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective inbound marketing strategy, contact us today.

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5 Photography Trends for 2017

We are well into 2017 and trends for the rest of the year are starting to manifest in unique ways. We have seen trends appear and disappear on Instagram, the same is true with photography.

Color is back

With the rise in Instagram’s popularity over the years, it’s easy to see how filters have become equally popular. Filters that have a vintage look and feel leave a lot to be desired in the realm of color and depth.  Customers are searching for the term color surge specifically looking for images high in color and dynamic range. With this rise in interest in color schemes, color is no longer a component of a picture; it becomes the star.

No Filter

Speaking of Instagram’s readymade filters, Another trend we are likely to see in 2017 is the No Filter trend.  Brands are now taking aspects of photojournalism to utilize in their marketing to relate to a younger audience. The goal of these images is to portray products or a lifestyle in such a way that the audience connects with the brand. This transparent approach to visual marketing allows consumers to connect with brands that best reflect their lifestyle and ideals.

Film is making a comeback

As someone who owns 12 film cameras, I am excited about this trend. Earlier this year, Kodak announced that they would bring a favorite slide film that consumers loved, Ektachrome. The creative process that comes with using film forces the user to understand the fundamentals of their shot from all aspects. When you shoot with film, you don’t have the instant gratification of reviewing your shot and making adjustments.

Virtuality

While new technologies are becoming more and more readily available, it’s easy to see how users will adapt this technology to create new visual trends. A popular trend quickly on the rise are fully immersive photos with 360-degree capabilities. Stitching panoramas together, users can now use their headsets to view these images as if they were right in the environment with the shooter. This trend allows the shooter creative freedom to utilize everything around them, instead of only what the camera lens could see.

There’s still room for new photographers

With visual content consumption always on the rise, there is a need for new photographers. Photography equipment is becoming more and more user-friendly which allows consumers an opportunity to capture the moments in their life that are important to them. With travel also becoming more affordable, photographers can venture out and see more of the world while focusing on their photography skills. If you haven’t already done so, check out our technical guide on shooting resort photos.


5 Hospitality Photography Tips

Photography can make or break a customer’s decision to purchase anything from your business. The same holds true to those in the business of hospitality. So what can you do in order to take the best possible photos for your marketing campaigns? Here are 5 tips to take outstanding photos of your lodge:

1) Stage Your Property

To make your property looks its best, people often times, will have their property professionally staged. If this is something that you can not have done, here are some guidelines as to what to do to make your property as photogenic as possible:

  • Blinds should me lowered all the way to the bottom of the window with slats at a 45-degree angle upwards. This will brighten the ceiling which then will reflect the light down into the room giving the room nice even lighting.
  • Turn on all lights and gas fireplaces.
  • Turn lampshade seam away from the camera.
  • Watch for your reflection in windows, TVs, mirrors and other reflective surfaces.
  • Shower curtains should be partially open to show off tile work and fixtures.
  • Make sure bedding, chairs, pillows, and other furniture are arranged neatly.
  • Remove anything from your photo that can detract from capturing aesthetically pleasing photos. This includes: cleaning products, trashcans, bath mats, remote controls, clothing, etc.

2) HDR Imaging

High Dynamic Range photos are one of the best ways to showcase your property. HDR allows you to expose all aspects of your shot. While you are able to take a well enough single shot of your lodge, bracketing your shots for HDR will open new opportunities to showcase specific features that otherwise might be difficult to capture. For instance, let’s say you have a room with a spectacular view that you want to show from inside the room. Digital cameras can’t expose for bright outside light while correctly exposing for interior light. We overcome this challenge by taking several different exposures of the same shot and combining them into one HDR image. The end result will show the beautiful outside view from the room while still correctly exposing the rest of the room.

3) Camera Settings

Assuming that you are shooting with a DSLR, here are some basic camera settings that will help you capture stunning photos:

  • Mode: Aperture Priority
  • Bracketing set at 5 exposures
  • Aperture at F8 or higher
  • ISO: 800 or lower
  • White Balance set to Auto

Using these settings will help you ensure that everything is in focus and you images have little to no noise visible.

4) Rule of Thirds

While knowing the right camera settings will greatly improve your photos, composition is ultimately what will make your shots more appealing to your audience. The rule of thirds helps us determining how to set up your shots. Imagine that your image has 2 verticle lines and 2 horizontal lines that cut your image into 9 pieces. These are your thirds. When taking shots of landscapes, determine what is more interesting, the sky or the land. Let’s say that your sky is more interesting in this shot, you will want to place the horizon on the bottom of those two lines to compose your shot for your landscape. From there, take your main subject (Trees, people, lodge, etc.) and place it on the left or right vertical line. As a guideline, if your subject is facing left, place your subject on the right line or the opposite if your subject is facing right.

5) Golden hour is the best time for photos

Photographers know that sunrise and sunset are the best times to take photos, but let’s take a look at why. When the sun is low in the horizon, it casts very soft light that adds dimension to your shot. The low sun causes objects in your photo to cast long shadows which help the subjects to “pop” out of your photos. This technique helps photographers separate their subject from what would otherwise be a busy and distracting background. The soft light also helps when you are photographing people. With the sun at a low angle, your subjects can be well front lit without causing them to squint or look away from the light.


3 Marketing Story Types To Help Sell Your Product

Story has been one of the most efficient ways for humans to communicate for centuries. Everything we do online is telling a story. It’s the story people hear from you that tells them what your product is and what it’s like to use your product. A great story means a great experience for your customer. And they are more likely to:

  • Share that experience with their peers.
  • Remember that experience.
  • Have a desire to repeat that experience.

We are going to look at 3 marketing story types that can help you sell your product.

In its simplest form a story has 7 main parts, Exposition, Problem, Rising Action, Crisis, Climax, Falling Action, End.

Concept Stories

Concept stories help people get excited about your product. It highlights how customers think about your product. A great concept story tries to answer the following questions:

  1. Who is the product for?
  2. What is the product?
  3. What does this product need to do?
  4. What is the straightforward solution to the problem?

Let’s imagine we have an amazing product called “MAKE IT FLOAT”. Breaking down a concept story into our seven parts (Exposition, Problem, Rising Action, Crisis, Climax, Falling Action, End)  might look like this

marketing story types concept story

Origin Stories

Origin stories are a little different. This type of story is not about the product directly but more about how a customer first became a believer in your product. On the surface concept and origin stories look very similar.  A concept story is big picture and origin stories start to get into the finer detail of why and how a customer first uses a product.

A MAKE IT FLOAT origin story might look something like this:

marketing story types origin story

Usage Stories

Usage stories are based around using your product step by step. They are even more tactical than origin stories. Often these are created by staff showing the product in the field.

In our MAKE IT FLOAT example our usage story looks like this:

marketing story types use story

Marketing story types as storytelling

Everything you do to market your business is another paragraph, page, or chapter in the story people hear from you. And the story people hear is the one they act (or don’t act) on, and repeat (or don’t repeat) to others. Using storytelling in marketing can be an extremely effective way to deliver messaging about your products to your customers.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective content marketing strategy, contact us today or click the button below to learn more.

LEARN ABOUT CONTENT MARKETING

3 Twitter Video Ideas Outdoor Marketers Should Be Creating

The explosive growth of online video continues to dominate social media. We are starting to see interesting statistics on the effectiveness of video as a marketing platform.

  • 100 million hours of video are watched every day on Facebook. (Source: HubSpot)
  • Videos on Facebook are shared 7 times more frequently than links.
  • YouTube has over a billion users, almost one-third of all people on the Internet. (Source: HubSpot)
  • 43% of people want to see more video content from marketers.  (Source: HubSpot)

The numbers are staggering. So what can we do to take advantage of these stats?

Twitter Video Ideas people actually want.

Adweek created a compelling infographic that highlights how impactful video can be on Twitter. The infographic is packed full of great statistics to help outdoor marketers become power users on the Twitter app. While all of these numbers should be studied carefully, the one that stuck out to me was the type of content users wanted from a video.

twitter video ideas

Based on these stats we put together a video that highlights 3 video ideas for twitter.


Unboxing: Our Latest Backcountry Drone, The Mavic Pro

We’ve been eagerly anticipating the arrival of our new Mavic Pro and it finally arrived early in 2017. While we’ve been busy flying this thing around take a look at some of our initial impressions during our unboxing video.

 



Engage New Customers With These 4 Email Types

Being able to engage new customers with remarkable content is an excellent way to welcome them into your tribe. Once we understand where your new customer came from and who they are, we can begin nurturing them. The first purchase by a customer is an important time in your developing relationship because loyal customers can become valuable customers. Up to 15% of a business’s most loyal customers account for 55-70% of the company’s total sales. It’s imperative that you get off to a strong start. Let’s look at 4 email types to welcome new customers.

1. Follow Up Surveys

engage new customers through thank you email

The usefulness of ‘Survey’ emails is two-fold. First, like the triggered ‘Thank You’ email, it allows for additional website discovery upon completion of the survey. Second, it affords an opportunity for future email marketing materials showcasing your company’s aptitude at listening to customer concerns and acting to alleviate those concerns.

Furthermore, linked surveys such as this example can segment satisfied and unsatisfied customer data for future email marketing materials. Segmented email contact lists and personalized email campaign messaging are the most effective tactics for 51% and 50% of marketing influencers, respectively (Acsend2, 2016).

2. Cross Sell Emails

engage customers through cross-sell emails

‘Cross Sell’ emails target new customers per customer browsing history thanks to the use of website cookies. Website cookies can then be data mined for targeted email engagement. Targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue from returning customers (The Direct Marketing Association, 2015) and are an effective way of maintaining customer engagement throughout 2017.

In the example above, a customer has previously made a purchase. Per the historical browsing history data of that individual customer as well as the browsing history data of other previous customers also purchasing that product provided by your website’s cookies, the products showcased in this ‘Cross Sell’ example have been targeted specifically for that customer.

3. Special Events Based On Purchases

Another type of email

One of the best ways to increase customer engagement is to meet them face to face. Holding an event that is catered just for them is an excellent opportunity to tell your story directly to a new customer.

Ideally, if you had the opportunity to combine the purchase history of your clients to the event you could really set yourself up for success.

A few quick examples:

  • If you sold several rods of the same model, have a casting demo.
  • If you sold a bunch of tying gear, host a trying night.
  • Did you sell trips, host a demo night for that specific trip.

Just make sure you deliver the right message to the right people through segmentation.

4. Thank you and welcome emails

engage new customers through welcome emails

‘Thank You’ emails are effective tools for gauging customer loyalty. In fact, emails with ‘thank you’ in the title observe 53% above-average engagement levels (Adestra, 2015). An automated ‘Thank You’ email also provides additional opportunities for new customers to visit the website via embedded links. New customers are 152% more likely to open an automated ‘Thank You’ email than other types of email communication (Adestra, 2014).

After an initial sign-up, popular clothier Banana Republic utilizes an automated ‘Thank You’ email that is simple, yet gives the new customer a sense of belonging. The naturalistic desire to belong drives the motivation of many customers, both new and returning.

Engage new customers can be a long term solution

Building trust with new customers can take time. But reaching out to them in the first few months with a personalized message can go a long way to welcoming them to your brand.

See how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective lead nurture strategy in our latest blog post.


Engaging New Holiday Customers Starts By Understanding Who They Are

Google Analytics is one of the best tools you can use to begin engaging new holiday customers. Before we start reaching out, we need to segment our audience based on these new users so that we can begin to analyze the data and look for patterns and trends.

We also want to make sure we are only looking at new customers for the period beginning around the same time your black Friday campaigns kicked off.

Begin engaging new holiday customers by filtering your Google Analytics

engaging new holiday customers using google analytics

Step 1

Click on the All Users from the sessions filter.

Step 2

Scroll until you find New Users.

Step 3

Select the dates you started marketing for the holidays and click Apply.


Understanding the demographics of the new users

discover the demographics of your new holiday customers

Our first stop is the demographics section. We love this page because it breaks down your sales based on important age groups. This gives us a clear understanding of which groups from the new users are most important. You want to compare these numbers with your personas to make sure the new customers you are collecting are still aligning with your core audience. If it’s not, it might be time to rethink your personas.

Step 1

From the Audience Section select the Demographics > Age.

Step 2

Analyze the Revenue per Age range. Does this jive with what your research says is your core audience.


What did they buy?

new customers what did they buy

It’s a good idea to get a sense of what they bought. This report will help you understand what your customers were interested in this past holiday season. This will be valuable information when following up with specific product recommendations. For example, if you sold 15 fly reels, you’ll probably want to follow up with an email about adding a new fly line. Or if your customers bought new fly vises a follow-up email on new fly patterns would be a good idea.

Step 1

Select the conversions section.

Step 2

From the drop-down pick the eCommerce and Product Performance.


Where did they come from?

new holiday customers referral source

Next, we want to figure out where these new customers came from. This is a great opportunity to check in on the efficiency of your holiday marketing campaigns.

You can drill down into each section and reveal more details on each specific referral source if you need to.

Step 1

Select the Acquisitions from the sidebar.

Step 2

Click on All Traffic > Channels


new holiday customers geography

Where do they live

Next, we want to figure out where these new customers came from. This is a great opportunity to check in on the efficiency of your holiday marketing campaigns.

You can drill down into each section and reveal more details on each specific referral source if you need to.

Step 1

Select the Audience filter from the sidebar.

Step 2

Select the Geo > Location Dropdown.


How To Survive A Denver Trade Show At The Merchandise Mart

We’ve been going to the Fly Fishing Show for years. In that time we’ve learned a thing or two about how to make sure the time there is fun and productive. We shared our knowledge with our clients through this infographic.

As the outdoor industry continues to face threats from land sales and public auctions, events like these become more and more important for our industry. They are opportunities to open up new collaborations and stay engaged with others in the industry.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective inbound marketing strategy, contact us today.

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2017 Fly Fishing Trade Show Impressions From Denver

We’ve been going to the Denver Fly fishing trade show for many years now. It’s one of the highlights of the new year. On a side note it’s pretty much guaranteed to snow or be really freaking cold that day here in Denver. This year was no exception. But while it may have been cold outside the large crowds and good vibes inside kept the cold at bay.

2017 feels different

There was something very different in the air at this show. Everyone I talked to seemed really excited about the coming year. There was a ton of new product on display and overall the manufacturers were pumped to get it in front of consumers. Booths seemed fuller, reps seemed more engaged, and the feeling of 2017 is going to be great seemed to be everywhere.

Rubbing elbows with leaders in the industry

After the holidays have beat us all down it’s nice to beat back the cold of winter by surrounding yourself with fly fishing. One of the things I love about these trade shows is the opportunity to meet the owners and big players in the industry. In almost all cases you can shake hands with a major player for a significant brand right here in Denver. I love that about the show. It takes the culture of a fly shop and extends it through to the manufacturer’s. How often do you get to share fishing stories with the people who designed the rod and reel you caught the fish of a lifetime on?

A full fly fishing trade show

As usual Saturday was packed. Big crowds and tough parking are the name of the game on Saturday. Luckily (for the out of towners) the Broncos didn’t make the playoffs this year. That meant big crowds on Sunday too.

Great Catching Up With Old Friends

We’ve been in the industry long enough to have developed some great friendships with several of the manufacturers in the business. It’s always great to share a beer with your clients and look ahead to 2017. If the Fly Fishing show is any sign of things to come this year is going to be different.

 


An Active Role For Helping The Outdoor Industry

I don’t think there’s anything about the new year that isn’t exciting. I love being able to reassess, relaunch and redesign. 2017 isn’t any different. We’re moving full speed ahead on a lot of new initiatives that should be a huge asset to our friends in the outdoor industry.

New Outdoor Industry Focused Website

Late last year we begin rebuilding our own website using the foundation of growth driven design. It was way past time to expand beyond our one pager we had for years. The first things we added was an outdoor marketing blog.

Our content is going to be focused on helping outdoor businesses and non-profits achieve their goals using data in 2017. We will be focusing on the tools we are using to help our clients excel in the online marketing world.

Sage Lion Media Homepage

We also finally added a portfolio that shows off some of the work we’ve done over the last few years. We’ve been fortunate to work with some of the biggest players in the outdoor industry and we’re excited to show off some of our work!

Hubspot Agency

At the end of 2016 we made a big investment in ourselves and started our journey to a hubspot agency partner. It’s been an amazing transition full of ups and downs, really hard insights into what we at Sage Lion Media were failing at, and lots of incremental wins.

There’s no doubt that inbound marketing can move your needle and we can’t wait to show off the ideas we’ve been learning and executing on.

Newsletter

We’re also stoked to launch our first newsletter at the end of January. This monthly outdoor focused newsletter will feature a new video every month, current hot topics in the industry, and resources for downloadable content.

Tips, Tricks and in-depth content

As we get further in the year we will continue producing quality ebooks that are meant to help you get ahead. We just launched our latest ebook, A Post Holiday New Customer Engagement Plan. This resource will help you identify your new customers, classify them, and deliver curated content around their interests.


Delivering A Client Thank You This Holiday Season

It’s been a rollercoaster of a year here at Sage Lion Media. But what year isn’t full of highs and lows when you’re running a small business. One thing that has remained steady is our collection of amazing clients. I’ve been racking my brains for a way to tell a client thank you.

The usual Holiday card is always a nice touch and probably something will still do this year. But I thought of an even easier way for thanking your clients this holiday season. I’m going to leave a LinkedIn referral or thank you on as many of my client’s profiles as I can.

Here are three places to give a client thank you today

Facebook

client thank you facebook

Leaving a review on a Facebook page is very easy. More importantly, rating stars help the company’s EdgeRank (think Google Page Rank but for Facebook). The more stars a company has, the better ranking, it will receive on Facebook.

Google Maps

client thank you google

Another great spot to leave a review is on Google Maps. A solid review here will help your clients business look respectable. Just head to Google Maps, search for the company, and find the review box on the lower left.

LinkedIn

client thank you linkedin

It’s easy to think of my clients as part of a larger organization. They work for X company so shouldn’t I leave a review for the business? Yes, you can do that if you leave an authentic review. But it’s the people who make up the company that really make it great. These people are your clients and you can leave them a recommendation in their LinkedIn Profile. This recommendation adds a personal touch to show your respect for a customer as a person. A well crafted statement helps give them credibility when working with others in their industry and can have an impact on their career. If I woke up tomorrow with 5 new LinkedIn recommendations I’d be ecstatic.

If you don’t feel like leaving a full review in LinkedIn Endorse the skills of a client. It’s super easy, but really not as awesome as writing a full recommendation.

Be Truthful

The key to leaving a review or recommendation is to make sure it’s authentic. The old adage, if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything applies here. Don’t make up stuff just to leave a review. It ultimately makes you look bad and diminishes the actual reviews for your client.


5 Emerging Marketing Trends For 2017

It’s never too early to start looking ahead to the upcoming year. When it comes to marketing trends, they’re always changing. A good marketer needs to absorb what’s changing around them and prepare to act on what’s important to the business or risk being left behind by competitors.

As you push to end 2016 on a strong note now is not the time to relax:  2017 will be here before you want it to and a lot is happening in the marketing world. To help marketers stay current and keep track of emerging technologies we’ve put together a list of 5 emerging marketing trends for 2017. Check it out.

Data Will Drive Design

People often think of design as an arbitrary thing based on your personal preference. Great design feels magical; you can’t always explain it, and it’s often difficult to replicate. While some parts of design are dependent on the artist, taking a design and making it work on the internet is not. That’s where having the ability to track what users are doing becomes invaluable.

growth driven design hot jar heat map

The design industry is in the middle of a shake-up, and 2017 will bring it to a head. Data will finally begin to dominate the online design industry. We’ve been using heatmaps, visitor recordings, A/B testing, and user segmentation to increase our conversion rates across all our marketing touch points. We use the results gained from these tools to drive our design decisions and relay our findings back to the client and the sales team. This data becomes a critical part of a growth driven design campaign and ensures we’re making sound decisions based on what we observe, not what we “think” is right.

If you’re only focused on data you can extract from Google Analytics, 2017 is the perfect time to take advantage of more advanced analytics software you have at your disposal. 

Live Social Media Streaming

Facebook Live ExampleVideo continues to dominate the internet. One trend worth watching this year is live video streaming. With live streaming marketers can speak directly to their audience. Chances are, if you’ve been on Facebook in the past six months, you’ve seen Facebook Live in action.

The move to live video streaming makes sense — social media works best when we’re in the moment. Think how quickly you refresh your Twitter feeds, consume disappearing Snapchat snaps, and look at trending topics. We want to know what’s happening right now.

Nothing is more right now than Live Video.

Oh, and did we mention the potential live video has for Facebook engagement? Initial data from Facebook revealed that people comment 10X more on Facebook Live videos than on regular videos.

Live social media streaming is going to be huge in 2017. You need to develop a strategy for working live broadcasts into your marketing channels. 

The Platform-Agnostic Experience

We saw a significant push by the big players (Facebook, Google, Apple) in 2016 to keep users in their ecosystems. We continue to see these brands take steps to reduce the friction between mobile apps, websites, mobile devices and computers.  The goal is to provide users with an increasingly seamless experience across platforms and keep users from leaving.

How can you compete against these goliaths of the industry? The key is to continue to create content your users crave. We already know content is so important to an effective inbound campaign. But do you have a solid understanding of your audience? That’s how you can differentiate yourself from the big players. Only you know your audience, and it’s your job to know them better than anyone else.

2017 is the perfect time for a deep dive to understand your customers. Then use that data to develop customized content that for your audience, specifically which part of the buyer’s journey they are on. 

Big Push For Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO is the process of increasing the number of visitors to your site to customers. There are a variety of ways to increase conversions including, A/B testing, heat mapping, visitor recordings and more. I came across a pretty amazing stat this week. For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them. (Econsultancy, 2016) (Source: HubSpot)

For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them.

One of the problems we consistently see is a client launching a campaign, spending a ton of money on the launch, with little thought on how to improve the campaign after it goes live. Luckily there is a better way. One of the biggest benefits of Growth Driven Design is the ability to build dynamic campaigns that are flexible enough to adapt to the demands of the users. Growth Driven Design allows the campaign to maximize ROI through the life of the campaign.

Establish a Growth Driven Design plan for 2017 that can react to the needs of your visitors. Let them tell you what they want, not the other way around.

Video Will Eat The Internet

As the cost of entry to create compelling video continues to slide, and the video viewerships continue to rise, 2017 will be the year video consumes most of the internet. We’ve already talked about the increased value in Facebook’s push to live streaming. Even Mark Zuckerberg is convinced videos is the future:

“We’re particularly pleased with our progress in video as we move towards a world where video is at the heart of all our services,” Zuckerberg said in a statement on Wednesday night, as the company reported better-than-expected earnings.

There is little doubt that video can be a powerful marketing tool. We’ve used video in our campaigns time and time again. But it needs to be more than just a beautiful picture. Using a video hosting service like Wistia gives you a slough of marketing tools that can help you increase your conversions over services like Vimeo or YouTube.

In 2017 take advantage of the technology out there and identify services that make converting customers a priority and start using them consistently.

Hopefully, these 5 emerging marketing trends for 2017 will help you prepare for 2017.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective inbound marketing strategy, contact us today.

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Upcoming Video Trends

How are you utilizing 2016’s upcoming video trends for your business?

Trends for online video have changed drastically in 2016. Facebook now has Live video streams, Wistia now offers in video calls to action, and Instagram has incorporated Stories. Here we will take a look at all of the upcoming video trends and how they will affect your marketing strategy for 2017.

Facebook Live Video is here and it’s not going away anytime soon

Earlier this year, Facebook launched its Live Video feature. After endorsing celebrity ambassadors with a bankroll of $50 million, the new feature has caught like wild fire. Facebook Live is a great way for users to interact with their audience by inviting them real-time into the activities of their daily lives. In our recent post about Facebook Live, we give you insight on how to leverage this powerful tool for your business but creating personalized video campaigns for your audience.

Wistia embeds calls to action inside videos

While most video players give you specific stats on user engagement, search queries, play counts and visits, Wistia is one of the only services that allows for your video to ask for conversions directly in the video. Have you ever wanted to ask your user to do something before or after a video? Well, now you can. With Wistia you can build your email list by collecting a user’s email before they start the video. If your nonprofit organization survives on donations, be sure to incorporate a button for people to donate immediately to ensure you don’t lose them while they look for the proper avenue to donate through.  Wistia is a powerful tool to make your videos work for you. Check out this Video we produced for Niece equipment that uses Wistia to drive traffic to their ecommerce store.

Instagram incorporates stories

Let’s start by heading off the question as to what a “story” is. Stories are a way for users to share highlights of their day in chronological order. Since a Story only lasts for 24 hours, you don’t have the same algorithm penalties when you over post. With normal posts, you can be penalized for over sharing by posting too much throughout a day. If you have the urge to share your day to day business operations with your audience, Stories is a great way to engage with your audience and let them follow your story on their own accord. Instagram stories can be a great way of offering flash sales to your Instagram audience by introducing specials through your short videos. After the 24 hours passes thats it, sales over.

Facebook now has over 8 billion video views per day.

With a lot of these video features just coming out in the last half of 2016, next year’s upcoming video trends will be heavily influenced by how well these features are perceived by end users. Adding these new video features will only prove to help your business’s online marketing strategy and prepare you for any future technologies that will come out. Ultimately, video plays an important role in media consumption in today’s social media presence. Are you doing everything you could be to make sure you stay on top of these upcoming video trends?


3 Benefits of Growth Driven Design

Has this ever happened to you? You design and build a beautiful website, launch and watch the success roll in, for a month or two.  When month three and four roll around, you notice site performance is starting to collapse. Soon your site analytics are back to the same levels as before you started. What in the world is happening here? Your new site is failing and failing hard. Don’t feel bad, we see it happen all the time.

The traditional web design process has been broken for awhile now. We realized there was a problem years ago. As we watched cent sites suffer. While the process was good for Sage Lion Media we wanted to provide more value for our customers. Slowly we began shifting to more of a partner with our clients and our Growth Driven Design (GDD) process was defined. Over the years we started to notice 3 benefits of Growth Driven Design.

3 benefits of growth driven design

Minimize the risk of launching a new website

A typical small business can expect to spend $15,000 to $50,000 on a new website. In traditional web design, this money is often paid before any measurements are taken on the effectiveness of the site. That’s just bad business.

A common misconception of traditional web design is that your site needs to have it all—and have it all perfect—as soon as you launch. But that kind of thinking is far from the truth.

The big boys (Facebook, Google, etc) know this. When they launch a new product, it’s hardly perfect, but they need you to use the new app or widget to understand what needs fine tuning. They don’t launch in a vacuum, and neither should you. We’ve pioneered a systematic approach that allows us to shorten the timeline for launching your site, so we can start to see the real-time impacts of our design at work. This means that our time to live is shorter. Why does this matter? Because once we’re live we can start collecting data on your users. What are they clicking on? Where are they leaving? Why aren’t they converting?

Once we know what’s working and what’s not working we can start the process of making it better.

Continuously improving is better than spending all your budget in one redesign

Time is money, too, especially in a small business environment. Launching a new website often requires a substantial time commitment from staff and management over the course of up to six months. With everything on your plate right now, can you imagine taking all that on?

3 benefits of growth driven design

Getting to launch quickly so we can begin tracking also spreads the cost of a design over a few months. This allows you to see results while still under contract.

Web designers really don’t know for certain what is going to be effective for your product or service needs. Design decisions are typically based on hypothesis and experience, not data. And, traditionally, web designers are not around to follow up on the effectiveness of what they just built for you.

The truth is that without dedicated monthly effort, your site will suffer, or even fail completely, and the design process will eventually need to begin all over again.

Makes your business stronger

Growth-Driven Design is tightly integrated with marketing and sales. What you already know about your customers helps inform the improvements we make to your site, and as we learn about your site visitors, we share this information to help you improve upon your marketing and sales tactics.

If you’d like to learn how Sage Lion Media can help you get started with an effective lead nurture strategy, contact us today.

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Selling Products on Facebook Live For Your Outdoor Business

With the introduction of Facebook Live streams, all sorts of marketing opportunities have become available to businesses to get in front of our audiences. With that said, there are several ways we can utilize this feature to begin selling products on Facebook live. Whether you’re a local Fly shop selling products to anglers or a travel destination selling experiences, Facebook Live can be a great way to create personal connections with your clients and potential clients. Moving into 2017, let’s review some of the current trends for 2016.

Facebook live exampleFacebook Users Spend 3x More Time Watching A Video

Since users are spending more time watching these live videos, live videos have gotten a boost in Facebook’s algorithm. Ultimately that means if you want to reach more users with a quick important or personalized message, then utilizing Facebook Live might be the way to go. Using this feature, informing your audience of which products are on sale and giving them a quick video demonstration will reach more of your audience than a simple unboosted post. This increases your audience outreach without incurring any additional cost to you. Facebook videos have a 135% greater organic reach than any other type of posted content.

In 2015, Facebook Video Posts Have Increased By 94%

Although 2016 isn’t over yet, we can expect similar stats, if not greater, with the launch of Facebook Live Video. With an average of 8 billion video views a day, video is a great opportunity to reach new audiences outside of your local reach. If you run an online E-commerce store, then consider giving product demonstrations over Facebook Live to help convert potential customers into happy customers.

85% of Facebook Videos Are Being Viewed Without Sound

When creating a meaningful marketing campaign, understanding how your audience will interact with your assets is an integral part of creating an effective strategy. Facebook has found that by simply adding captions to your video, increases consumer retention time by 12%. So before you sit down and hit the live button, think about what happens to your video when you’re done with your live broadcast. When completing your live video, Facebook uploads the feed to your wall and videos section so consumers can still watch them later.

What If You’re Not Selling Products on Facebook Live?

Thats ok! Let’s say you own a local Fly Shop and this weekend you have a celebrity fly tyer coming in. On the day of the event, you could provide value to your clients by possible recording a snippet of the presentation on Facebook Live. While it might not have any immediate benefits. Another possible use of Facebook Live is to share Guide Trip experiences with your audience. This would be a great way to really illustrate what kind of experience people will be getting when they chose to book a guided trip through your shop.

 


Creating a Micro Brand (or Site) Around Your Holiday Campaign

With all things in life, do things deliberately and with a purpose. This includes your Black Friday campaign. Creating a Micro Brand around your holiday specials could be your ticket to standing out from your competition.

Develop a Micro Brand Around Your Specials

Brand awareness is very important to creating a solid marketing strategy for your business, so why not create a micro brand for your holiday specials? 80% of consumers will evaluate a product or service based on social media accounts they follow. Your social media account is a great place to start to evaluate what you want your holiday message to be. REI Created a campaign last year that caught like wildfire. The #optoutside campaign encouraged people to forego the hustle and bustle of shopping on Black Friday and spend it with loved ones outside doing the things you love together. Sure, it didn’t exactly inspire people to save big by purchasing today, but what it did instead was much more valuable. It built a level of Brand Awareness that resonates through its audiences today by reinforcing the trust that the company has worked so hard to establish. A people-first, shopping-second approach.

By selling to people’s emotions rather than their wallet, your marketing will be far more effective than other buzz words like, Sale, Free, Bonus.

Create Your Story With Emotion

While its true that people like being sold to, in some aspects, I’m not saying take the approach of a used car salesman. If a customer is in a fly shop, then the chances are they know exactly why they are there and what products they, in fact, do need. With this in mind, the buying process is an emotional one and it’s your job to speak to that emotion. Ever wonder why most ad campaigns use words like: consequence, lose, reward, valuable, competition, best in class, image, respect, mistake or avoid? Depending on the tone of the ad campaign, these keywords appeal to our emotions. By selling to people’s emotions rather than their wallet, your marketing will be far more effective than other buzzwords like Sale, Free, Bonus.

Costa Micro BrandDevelop a Color Scheme For Your Holiday Story.

Yes, this one might sound like a such a simple concept but it is an opportunity that is often overlooked. Nearly 80% of your brand recognition comes from a consistent color palette. This is important for two different reasons. Black Friday in itself is often branded black by other companies and has become the status quo for the gift buying season. While this in itself is beneficial because it creates a unanimous brand that everyone readily recognizes. Even with this benefit, do you really want to follow what others are doing? Creating a campaign that is different from the herd might just be the key to separating you from your competition. Costa does a great job of resounding their story through the use of blues and greens in their Instagram palette that is identifiable with their target audience


3 Reasons For Creating a Black Friday Content Calendar

You’ve just booked an epic float trip, down a beautiful piece of water that’s been on your bucket list for years.

You could go totally on instinct and hope the conditions, the fish, the hatches, and your selection of flies perfectly align without any pre-planning on your end- but it’s probably better to have a plan an understand what might happen while on the water. The same is true when considering your black Friday marketing calendar.

The Basics

The holidays are going to be crazy. I know it you know it. When things get crazy no one has time for a social media post.

A successful holiday season requires consistent publishing, even when bandwidth is thin. If you’re not buying the need for a Black Friday content calendar let me shore it up for you:

  1. Social media calendars improve efficiency. During the holidays speed is critical to getting your message out. According to Content Marketing Institute, 60% of social media marketers with a documented strategy rated themselves as highly effective.
  2. Calendars help avoid scrambling at the last minute to get content up. Planning your Black Friday content weeks in advance will free you up to strategize more deals during the holidays. It will also allow you critical time to spend with your customers during the shopping season.
  3. Plan your content around major shipping days. Looking beyond Black Friday your content calendar can help you stay on top of important shipping days heading into the end of the year.

Now that we have a good understanding of why we need a Content Calendar let’s look at our two favorite tools to stay organized this Black Friday.

3 Helpful Tools to Use For Your Content Calendar

Google Calendar

One of our favorite ways to organize our content is within the Google Calendar.

Here’s an example of how we lay out a plan for a client using Google calendar. Within each event description is a link to a Google Drive document that includes the content to go out that day. This helps us stay organized from one central location. We also color coordinate the posts, red-it needs content, yellow-it needs review from the client, green-it’s ready to go out.

content calendar

Oldschool Paper Calendar

If we’re just brainstorming ideas, I like to use paper and pencil to map out initial concepts. It’s easy for me to see the flow from month to month and make changes on the fly.

Paper calendar

HubSpot Publishing Calendar

A new tool set, and one of our new favorites, is the Hubspot publishing calendar. This thing is so easy to use compared to our old way of publishing. One simple glance gives us all the info needed to see what’s going out day in and day out.

HubSpot publishing calendar

Ready to create a plan for Black Friday?

Hopefully we’ve given you a few solid reasons to start planning this Black Friday. If you haven’t already check out our Guide for Developing a Plan for Black Friday. It will help you develop a solid game plan heading into this critical shopping season for any outdoor business.

 black friday marketing strategy


Putting Your Best Photos Forward for Black Friday

Moving into this Black Friday, traffic to your site will increase over the next few months exponentially. People have become conditioned to start their search for good deals on products they want, gifts for loved ones, and new product launches around this time of year.

First impressions

Good website imagery can make or break your e-commerce sales no matter how well written your story is. Often the quickest way to help the user’s experience on your site is through the use of high quality images. So how exactly do you increase your online sales while using high quality images?

Placement

On the Homepage, large image sliders are a great way to capture the attention of your visitors who are visiting your site from an indirect traffic source. I.e. an organic Google Search. These sliders are often used to direct traffic to specific landing pages or products. This key area is often your sites most prominent visual element so the best of the best photos should go here.

Example of a slider with a call to action Example of a slider with a call to action

Utilizing Featured Images

Another area that is frequently overlooked is the featured image. Most content management systems have this functionality built directly into the site so the lack of use is inexcusable. Featured images set the tone for your story. 34% of marketers selected visual assets as their most important content, behind blogging (45%) and before videos (19%). If you are selling guided trips, do you want to show your potential clients the above average brown that was snapped with the guides phone (this is okay for social media posts) or a high definition image that captures the emotion of your client catching the area’s “Lodge Monster”. Use your blogs to sell experiences over things.

What are Look-books and why you should be using them

An upcoming trend in the online industry is creating look-books for products. A look-book is a series of images compiled to showcase a product and the lifestyle it fits. Not every angler fishes the same and utilizing a look-book can really speak to these individual audiences.  An angler from Colorado who enjoys their weekends going on backpacking adventures fishing for Cutthroat Trout out of high country lakes is more likely to react to imagery that speaks to this lifestyle over exotic trips to the Bahamas for bonefish. Visual content is 40x more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content, so make sure you are speaking to the right audiences.

Patagonia’s fly fishing section has effectively combined a quality look-book with a converting landing page. Check it out here.

When deciding which audiences to speak to, your ad campaigns will practically write themselves. But they won’t dress themselves. Researchers found that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80%. Once you’ve determined which audience you want to target for the holiday season, the imagry for your upcoming ad campaigns will determine how well your audience will receive your social ads.

Adverts must always follow the 3 Bs. Big, Bold, and Beautiful.

The holiday season is the most competitive for ad space on the bigger social sites like Facebook. Knowing your audience and planning ahead to acquire assets in time for your advertisements will put you ahead of your competitors who treated their marketing like an afterthought. Your advertisements should appeal to emotion. Appealing to the human senses is an important factor in the buying decision. People who are engaged in the pleasure and excitement of purchasing a new product are more likely to follow through with the checkout process than the people who are shopping for the dutiful acquisition of life’s necessities.

The TL;DR (Too Long Didn’t Read)

While there might be several areas on your site that need your immediate attention, your websites visual elements shouldn’t take a back seat to everything else. The use of good imagery is key to your brand’s creditability and recognition. When shoppers are on your site, they will be more inclined to make buying decisions if they emotionally resonate with your product’s story. We have provided a quick guide to help you get through this Black Friday ahead of the game and ahead of your competition. Click the image below to download your copy today.

 black friday marketing strategy


Selling Experience As Gifts This Holiday Season

As we speed towards Black Friday and the holiday gift giving season, the stress of the holidays is already bearing down on me. In my family life I have kids, a wife, in-laws, parents, siblings, coworkers, etc all in line to get gifts. Then I have to make a list for myself so that everyone can reciprocate the gift giving back. Typically my default gift is anything fly fishing related. But as I look back on the year, it’s not the toys that make the fishing great, it’s the experiences on the water that I truly crave. So this year I’ve asked my wife to forgo buying me gifts and look for ways to get me more experiences on the water. And it turns out I’m not alone.  While doing research for our Black Friday strategy e-book we discovered there is a huge opportunity for selling experience as gifts, especially in the outdoor community.

Twenty-two percent of consumers planned to give an experience-type gift in 2015, and 36.5% said they’d like to receive one. Those numbers jump significantly for Millennials: 36.1% of 18 to 24-year-olds and 35.4% of 25 to 34-year- olds planned to give a gift of experience. (NRF)

Selling Experience As Gifts

I think we can all agree that getting new gear is pretty awesome. But studies have shown more stuff doesn’t all mean more happiness. In fact a recent study in the Journal of Psychological Science show that people actually enjoy waiting for an experience more than receiving more stuff. Think about it. When I’ve got a big trip coming up I spend weeks fussing over every detail, making sure I’m ready for every contingency. By the time the trip gets here, I’m so excited I can barely sleep at night.

Do I get the same level of excitement for a birthday or even Christmas morning? Probably not.

We can use this data to our advantage by selling experience as gifts in our upcoming holiday selection.

Outdoor Experience Gift Ideas

Trips

This is a no brainer and the one I’m hoping to find shoved in my stocking this year. Just be sure that the buyer and your staff understand that after the purchase the gift receiver will need to set up the specifics (dates, times, etc) You could go the extra mile and create a unique graphic for download the buyer could print out at home.

Gear demo days with purchase.

Prepare a special day where customers who receive this gift can come in and get hands on training with their gift. Really focus on the one to one interaction with your new customer. Maybe there is an opportunity to partner with a manufacturer for this one of a kind experience.

Training Classes

In the fly fishing world you could offer unique experiences based on tying or building a rod.

Selling Experiences: The Bottom Line

With a little creative though I think you’ll easily find several new and creative ways to provide experiences to your customers. The time in the outdoors is really what’s important here, not just the gear you are using.

 black friday marketing strategy


The New Mavic Looks Like The Ultimate Backcountry Drone

It’s the season of new drones. This years crop looks amazing with a huge focus on creating smaller, more portable drones that can easily move from spot to spot. At first glance this new Mavic drone looks like it could be the ultimate backcountry drone.

I don’t even know where to begin to describe this drone, it looks so incredible. The Mavic starts with a much smaller form factor. That’s huge for getting it up into the backcountry. I love the idea of being able to have it on you, similar to your DSLR. If you think something would make a cool shot, whip out the drone and launch it. The goal is to create amazing aerial shots wherever you go.

The other jaw dropping feature of this drone is how many features still come out of the box. With such a small form factor, you’d expect there to be massive cuts in the performance of this smaller drone. But after watching the video, I couldn’t find anything. It looks like DJI loaded this drone up.

It is capable of reaching an absolute max flight time of 27 minutes and a maximum distance of 8mi (13km) due to its powerful, high efficiency motors.

Those motors also propel the drone forward at over 40mph. It feels like a combo aerial videography platform and racer built into one.

Enough of me rambling, you need to watch this video.

If I have one concern it’s that weird glass over the camera lens. I’m not sure what purpose that serves? Is it to protect the camera on landing? Either way it looks like it will require care to make sure it’s clean prior to launch. Which is just one more thing. As with all my DJI purchases over the years I’ll probably give it a few months out in the wild and then read the reports on performance and durability.

Overall this drone looks incredibly exciting and I can’t wait to fly it.

Tech Specs:

  • 4K Ultra HD Video at 30fps
  • 12MP Still Camera on 3-Axis Gimbal
  • Sensor: 1/2.3” (CMOS), Effective pixels:12.35 M (Total pixels:12.71M)
  • Lens: FOV 78.8° 28 mm (35 mm format equivalent) f/2.2 Distortion < 1.5% Focus from 0.5 m to ∞
  • Image Max Size: 4000×3000
  • 4.3 mile range, up to 27 minutes of flight
  • Remote control operating frequency: 2.4 GHz to 2.483 GHz

Key Features:

  • 24 high-performance computing cores
  • Dual-satellite connectivity
  • Small Size & Portability
  • Obstacle Sensing System
  • Vision Positioning
  • Autonomous Subject Tracking
  • Gesture Control