What are your pointers for an import/export agency wanting to use HubSpot for lead generation and authority building?

Someone else creates the design and physical products, correct? In that case, your main challenges are (A) identifying customers (B) convincing them to give you a chance (C) keeping them happy with good customer service When it comes to (A), you should probably be knocking on a lot of doors. You'll experience plenty of rejection, but some people will say Yes. Do a good job, and they may remain ongoing customers or refer you to others. This doesn't require any formal study of marketing. It just takes practice and long hours. There's another way to handle (A). And you should probably be doing both in tandem. This involves studying the behavior of people you want as customers. Many people are searching online every day to find companies who provide exactly those products and services you offer. You can ensure they see you by running a pay-per-click advertising campaign in Google and other search engines. SEM professionals can help manage your expenses and ad placements. You'll also want to evaluate the written content on your website and think about SEO. The better your websites perform online "organically", the higher they rank for all the relevant online searches, the less you'll need to pay to advertise. I can't help you with customer service (C). But maybe I can help you think about (A) – finding customers online. And I can certainly help with (B) convincing the people you approach (or who find you on their own) that they ought to hire you. Practicing your sales pitch is important, since you'll be delivering it to a lot of different people. But much of your sales pitch is embedded within your website and brand name. So you ought to pay very close attention to the visual and verbal quality of all your promotional material, ranging from on-site text to graphic design, verbiage in brochures and ads, and (perhaps most crucially) the domain name you've chosen to be known by. That name / domain is everyone's first impression of you. Even before they click, they've judged you. When they arrive on the website, they see the visual layout and the written content. So even before they've tried your actual services, they've judged you again. Clearly, it's worthwhile to perfect these early stages in your sales funnel so that prospects make it all the way to the finish line – i.e. asking questions and hiring you. If you'd like help with naming, domain procurement, branded copy writing, or SEM strategy, perhaps I can assist.

Many of the large established maunfactures attend trade shows, such as the Canton Import and Export Fair. The key is to look for manufactures that already supplies to established brands. Once the manufacture meets the QA standards of the large brands, their quality remains consistent regardless of the company they produce for. Most of the time the minimum order quantity they request are up for negotiation. Same for the sampling cost. Most manufactures are willing to wave the sampling cost if a production order is placed at a later time. Sourcing at the end of the day requires a lot of ground work. It takes time and effort to locate the right suppliers, visit and audit their facilities, and prices negotiate. However, this really saves money in the long term because you will have solid supply chains you can count on and trust. One way to approach this is to consolidate. Consolidate the number of suppliers, and make each sourcing trip count by finding multiple suppliers at once. Best of luck in finding the right suppliers for your products!

How to sell to retailers? As a former Retail Buyer from Target, here's my suggestion. You need to first ready your sales communication and materials to explain how 1) You will drive sales at their stores (best told through sales traction and history in comparable or slightly smaller retailers than the one you are targeting 2) Demonstrate how you will support sales with a marketing plan. Marketing mitigates sales risk and that's a retailer's #1 concern and 3) Prove you will deliver flawless vendor execution. There are many hiccups that happen along the supply chain and it takes an experienced company to flawlessly deliver inventory to the right stores/DC's in the right quantity on the right day. The best way to prove this is by showing that you are currently working with retailers of the same magnitude. So in short, you have to scale up slowly - from small retailers to larger retailers - in order to manage risk, build sales traction, build brand awareness, and manage cash flow. How to contact them and sell to them? Use Linked In to find retail buyers. I have a short video on how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwbfUMRHiq0 Trade shows are also effective; you can get the mailing address of retail buyers in attendance plus meet them face to face if they come to your booth. Also, network within your industry. You'll find your peers are wiling to trade buyer lists with you. But in short, don't bother reaching out to a retail buyer until you have talking points that address those 3 things I mentioned above all. I'm happy to do a clarity call if you have follow up questions.

Quora to show subject matter expertise and 'nurture' your relationship with cold leads to generate more educated and eager signups. We did an episode on Quora marketing: (https://anchor.fm/marketing-automation/episodes/A-Quick-Intro-To-Quora-Marketing---General-Strategy-e1vlpr/a-a4noru) https://youtu.be/X9Akg7Z-KPI?rel=0 In fact, Quora is getting pretty busy due to the fact people like me have gotten very good at marketing on Quora. The ‘white hat’ version of this is below. I consult with founders and marketers to help them execute on this very strategy to help grow their personal brands which inevitably grows their business. The name of the game for marketing on Quora is showing THOUGHT LEADERSHIP (https://right2revenue.com/managed-thought-leader-creation-program/). This will result in: 1. More credibility to whatever you promote anywhere. 2. Recognition of your brand (it shows up next to your name if you edit your tagline correctly). 3. Targeted and educated traffic to your landing pages. Here are the steps in this thought leadership strategy: **Step 1 = Choose a topic** * Strategy: I start with the focus keyword for your product/service. For an example, I am about to focus my attention on the keyword “thought leadership” because I want to find those most-interested in building their personal brand recognition and credibility in a field (i.e. a Quora topic). For a founder of a SaaS tool, this would probably be the pain point your tool solves - the search term that you want to get traffic from. **Step 2 = Create a sheet with question links, total answers, views of the top answer, average views per answer (if you have time), and followers.** * Strategy: You need a formatted database of the potential for your content on quora so you can prioritize your time. * How data-miner, but I employ a team of data specialists trained in grabbing the right content from the right places on Quora (https://right2revenue.com/product-category/data-enrichment/), and then going about enriching that data to grab linkedin profiles and email addresses. **Step 3 = Answer them in a google doc** * Strategy: This is so you can make copies of the content and turn it into multiple types - i.e. a linkedin article, an article for your blog, a number of tweets… Also, if you have collaborators (editors), you can simply give them access to this doc. * How: Simply create the doc and share it. One doc per question. **Step 4 = Edit and publish related answers as an article on your blog** * Strategy: You want to have it on your blog and indexed first so you have attribution and the chance to outrank the quora question with the same headline, or at least be close to it. * How: Add the version of your answer to your blog. **Step 5 = Submit that article URL to google to be indexed using your webmaster tools (search console)** * Strategy: As mentioned, you want google to crawl/index your answer on your site before they index the same text on quora. * How: Head to your webmaster tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/) **Step 6 = Bring your friends and colleagues into a Quora ‘Pod’** * Strategy: You need initial engagement to ensure exposure of your answers. The first 24 hours are key, so find a group of people who also publish on Quora and create your own pod. * How: Reach out to colleagues, ask if they answer questions on Quora. If so, start a WhatsApp or Telegram group and invite them. Post links and share there. **Step 7 = Publish the answers to Quora** * Strategy: Now that the answer is on your blog, go ahead and format it for Quora. A video is ideal, but at least add some images. * How: Head to http://Quora.com (http://quora.com/) **Step 8 = Share the links to the answers with your friends and colleagues.** * Strategy: This is where you post to your pod or email/message friends to engage immediately after posting. * How: Any way you prefer. Or... hire me to do it all for you :) ~~<>~~

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