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How to Get Your Custom Alexa Skill Without Writing a Single Line of Code

With Alexa Blueprints, you can build Alexa skills without writing a single line of code. Whether you are a publisher, blogger, coach or ecommerce store, these skills can get you better engagement with your content, aid in customer service, and drive revenues and sales

Listen:

I don’t need to be a marketing oracle to tell you that you are not getting enough engagement, traffic, and clicks on your content.

Email CTRs are dipping, traffic to your blog isn’t making your heart sing, and even the numbers of likes and comments on your Instagram are not what they used to be.

You hear gurus and thought leaders tell you about writing MORE blog posts, sending more emails, posting videos everyday.

You nod, but the noise on these channels gives you pause, especially when you see a tweet like this:

[Read more…]

Get Cheaper Leads From Facebook With This Free Lead Gen Chatbot [Tutorial]

By Bhaskar Sarma 2 Comments

Lately there has been a lot of chatter about Facebook Messenger bots.

That hype is backed by a solid number too: there are an estimated 1.2 billion Facebook Messenger users as of Q1 2017, and the platform is adding thousands of new users every day.

Regardless of what you are selling, you can bet that your ideal customers, clients or users are on Messenger.

With more and more people using mobile devices over desktops and laptops to go online, it’s critical that your lead gen systems keep up with changing behavior patterns.

This is why you should pay attention to messaging apps, because it’s much more natural to text something in a chat than fill out a form on a small smartphone, like those forms on landing pages that Facebook ads send traffic to. [Read more…] about Get Cheaper Leads From Facebook With This Free Lead Gen Chatbot [Tutorial]

What is the formula to calculate ‘cost per acquisition’ for SAAS product with subscription revenue?

By Bhaskar Sarma Leave a Comment

Since you have mentioned one time set up fee I am assuming that you have an enterprise SaaS product.

I am also assuming that you will have a high touch sales model, in that there’s someone who will follow up with the lead during or after the trial period over email/Skype and answer questions related to set up.

Now, on a broad level, CAC= (Sum of all marketing and sales expenses)/ (Number of new customers)

Let’s look at the activities you will typically perform to get customers (in terms of both sales and marketing)

Content Marketing
SEO
Social Media
Webcopy and design
Conversion Rate Optimization
Onboarding
Funnel optimization
Setup
Custom modifications
Hosting
Affiliate fees
Credit card fees
Costs of apps and other services.

Tally up all the costs involved with all these activities for a fixed time period, and divide them by the number of new customers you have acquired in that same amount of time.

That will be your customer acquisition cost (that’s the easy way).

If you want to go more granular, track the costs associated with each marketing channel, with every affiliate partner, every sales associate etc.

For instance, you might discover in your website analytics that a well designed infographic which cost $500 sent you 10,327 visits to your home page. 10.3% signed up for a free trial, and out of that, 4% became paying customers.

The second approach involves setting up analytics, measurement and testing, all of which falls under conversion rate optimization but is worth it to get more insights and make corrections.

The thing with CAC, though is that the absolute number is meaningless.

You want to look at two numbers related to CAC (LTV is your life time value)

To know more about how to calculate these numbers and ratios I highly recommend these excellent articles by David Skok :

18+ Tips & Hacks To Transform Disinterested Prospects To Repeat Customers Using High Converting Webinars

By Bhaskar Sarma Leave a Comment

If you are a startup with a complex product, one of the best ways to acquire, onboard and retain customers is through webinars.

You can sell to 5 people or to 1000 people using the same content at the same time. You can interact with your audience in real time, answer questions and show people the benefits of your product.

This is the reason why well run webinars regularly see conversion rates in the high double digits: see this case study where two webinars and a list under 100 people generated $17k in sales. [Read more…] about 18+ Tips & Hacks To Transform Disinterested Prospects To Repeat Customers Using High Converting Webinars

Can you ace this SaaS growth metrics quiz?

By Bhaskar Sarma Leave a Comment

CAC…LTV…MRR…Negative churn…Burn Rate…COGS…CCA…

If there is one thing many SaaS folks struggle with it’s the metrics.

Unlike S.I units in hard sciences, there are new metrics invented all the time, with varying definitions.

Many of these metrics sound important but they are actually vanity metrics, like likes or shares.

They are good for the ego but they tell you absolutely nothing about the health of your SaaS startup.

To find out how well you know the critical SaaS metrics so that you can measure them and adjust your growth plan take this quiz.

It’s a tough one, unlike those “Which Harry Potter character are you?” quizzes.

But you will get to know whether you are the Yoda, John McClane, Frodo or Nemo of SaaS growth metrics.

It’ll be fun, I promise.

This quiz has a number of unfamiliar metrics. If you want to know more about them, or why a particular option was correct, download the key. It has case studies of how companies like Hubspot measure critical growth metrics, formulas for calculating many metrics, and links to authoritative resources on SaaS

[qzzr quiz=”133426″ width=”100%” height=”auto” redirect=”true” offset=”0″]

So you want to onboard enterprise SaaS users without losing your sanity? Do this

By Bhaskar Sarma 1 Comment

If you are a SaaS company already selling to individual customers and SMBs how different would it be if you had to sell to enterprises?

Will you be able to fit into the enterprise IT stack, deliver the same results that you have demonstrated for your smaller users with the same basic featureset?

Or is it a fool’s errand?

Let’s find out.

To understand how different small businesses are from enterprises think about a NASCAR and an F1 race.

According to Top Gear,

F1 cars are made in labs by white coated mad scientists. NASCARs are knocked up in medieval foundries by men with mallets…NASCAR has hammers and spanners, an F1 driver can tune his car on the go…When an F1 driver brakes…his body is tormented by a force of 5g. Brake discs are made by firing carbon atoms at a cobweb of rayon…Over in NASCAR they make do with slabs of cast iron….if NASCAR is the Big Bang F1 is particle physics.

At its most fundamental level selling a SaaS product is the same whether to an individual or to an enterprise. You have to identify your ideal customer, demonstrate that you product has value, remove risk, and make it easy to use.

But when you get down to brass tacks the differences are akin to a NASCAR vs.F1 race.

Here’s what I see the difference is between them (H/t to Steli Efti for his insightful Quora answer) [Read more…] about So you want to onboard enterprise SaaS users without losing your sanity? Do this

How Mandela and a poem can help you gain the trust of your website visitors

By Bhaskar Sarma Leave a Comment

webconversion means trust — Nelson Mandela with Francois Pienaar

It’s frustrating, isn’t it?

You have a website up and running. You see traffic but no one clicks on the buy button or fills up the contact form. They land on a page, have a quick look around and then bounce, never to return.

And it’s doubly frustrating when you know you have a good product that is a proven problem solver.

Do you throw up your hands and become bitter, withdrawn and resentful?

No, you don’t. You get inspired by Nelson Mandela.

How to heal a bitterly divided country

In 1994 Mandela became the first black president of a country bitterly divided along racial lines . He knew that South Africa would be torn apart if reconciliation between the privileged white minority and the oppressed black majority didn’t happen.

As he transformed himself from a rebel to a statesman he decided, in the face of all opposition, to throw his weight behind the Springboks, the national rugby team that most blacks saw as the symbol of apartheid.

He promoted the rugby team as a South African team instead of an Afrikaner or a white team and enlisted the help of the captain Francois Pienaar, a big, blonde son of apartheid.

And against all odds, in the 1995 Rugby World Cup organized in South Africa, the Springboks won. The entire country erupted in celebrations and the slow process of reconciliation began.

White South Africans who had reviled Mandela as a terrorist now accepted him as their president and began to trust that he would give them a fair deal. [Read more…] about How Mandela and a poem can help you gain the trust of your website visitors