6 Underrated Marketing and Sales Assets Your Business Needs

 

Which marketing and sales assets do you use in your business? Probably quite a few! 

I’m talking about things like: targeted landing pages; email sequences, sales call scripts, explainer videos, and so on. We all know them and we all rely on them to keep our businesses growing.

Well, today I’d like to talk about something different. 

Today, I want to discuss assets that can seriously boost your sales and marketing efforts… except you aren’t using them. Maybe you think they’re not cost-effective; maybe you find them too boring or basic; or perhaps you haven’t thought about using them at all. 

This week, let’s show some love to these underrated assets and explore how exactly they can help you grow your business! 

Read on, and you will learn:

  • The #1 way to generate more leads from your content
  • How to instantly improve your outbound sales process
  • A free, highly visible asset you already have but aren’t using
  • A simple way to add a personal touch to your marketing

And more. Let’s dig in!

(If you’d prefer to listen to this week’s article instead of reading it, click here to jump to the audio version.)

Pictured: The Draw Shop's mascot, ROIVid, filling up a shopping cart with assorted goodies: graphs, charts, a picture of a dog, a red balloon and so on.

 

1. Stand out from the competition with custom graphics

 

I know, I know. You want customers to judge your brand by your content and your ideas… but here’s the thing:

Those are not the first things your audience will notice about your business.

The first element that will stand out to them is your aesthetic. Your design, your choice of colors — that sort of thing. If your brand can make an impression on a purely visual level first, you’ll have a much better chance of getting your content noticed, too!

That’s why it makes great business sense to invest in memorable, distinctive custom graphics for your branded content. Blog post images, social media pics, video thumbnails, infographic designs, website graphics… 

…all of these will raise the perceived value of your brand and show it off to potential customers — even before they get to your written content!

Bottom line is, investing in custom graphics is a great way to get your content noticed and improve your audience’s experience. Also, it’s extremely affordable, and can be tailored to fit any visual style, such as:

  • Cartoons and comics
  • Stock photos
  • Data visualizations
  • 3D graphics

And many, many more. If you want to make your branded content stand out more and be more memorable, visuals are the first thing to examine.

 

2. Generate more leads with content upgrades and lead magnets

 

Would you like your content to convert better? Here’s the easiest way to do that: promise your audience additional value in exchange for their contact info.

You can accomplish this by offering your potential customers access to lead magnets and content upgrades. These assets expand on your existing content with additional advice, solutions, and resources. And in order to get them, people need to give away their personal details — name, email address, phone number, etc.

What’s the difference between a lead magnet and a content upgrade? Great question! 

Lead magnets are general-purpose assets that you offer to everyone who visits your website. You can do it through a pop-up, a dedicated landing page, or a persistent opt-in form on your site.

Content upgrades are bonus resources that build on one, specific piece of content. They’re extremely targeted and only accessible to customers who just consumed said content. Normally you offer content upgrades through dedicated calls to action and opt-in forms at the end of articles, videos, infographics, etc.

Content upgrades and lead magnets are incredibly effective at capturing high-quality leads for your business. So if you’re not using them, now’s the time! Check out our past guides on how to create these assets for your business:

 

3. Take advantage of “free real estate” in your email signature

 

Yes, your email signature can be a sales and marketing asset. It’s very prominent, dozens of people see it every week, and it costs you absolutely nothing to use. And yet, all this time you’ve just been putting your name and company role in there!

It’s time to use that “free real estate” for something more creative, don’t you think? Here are a few ideas to start you off…

  • If you have a killer piece of content you’re proud of, this is the place to show it off.
  • You can also direct people to sign up for a freebie from your email signature.
  • Need more respondents for a survey? Link to it with a short call to action.
  • This one’s for the social (media) butterflies: put your socials into your signature.
  • If you did an awesome talk, point people to the video of it, or even just the slides.

Even if you have nothing to show off — for the record, I don’t believe you! — you can always turn your signature into something intriguing, like “Ask me about that time I said no to a $100 million dollar acquisition deal.” Just make sure it’s true, relevant to your brand, and interesting.

Oh, and speaking of email…

 

4. Boost outbound ROI with clever follow-up emails

 

Engaging, memorable, and persuasive follow-up messages can absolutely transform your communication, sales and marketing included.

For example:

If you have an outbound sales process and you want to increase your conversions, start by leveling up your follow-up game. Even catching an extra 10% of prospects who slip through the cracks will seriously boost your bottom line!

And if you need to secure backlinks, pitch a potential affiliate, publish an article off-site, or snag a big-name guest for your podcast… guess what? Solid follow-up will dramatically improve your odds in all these cases.

Follow-up emails are great for more than sales and marketing, though. They will serve you well when locking down delayed payments, reaching out to job seekers, collecting testimonials, scheduling case study interviews… you name it.

Finally, follow-up emails hit the sweet spot between automated marketing and personal, high-touch marketing. Here’s why…

Once you’ve created a follow-up email, or a series of emails, for a specific scenario, that’s it! Going forward, you can just reuse them again and again, only making slight tweaks to personalize the message. And for bonus brownie points, you can automate your follow-up process with a CRM like HubSpot.

Bottom line is, follow-up emails are an awesome asset for any entrepreneur. Craft them, use them, love them!

 

5. Wow new customers with personalized thank-you videos

 

Nothing impresses your customers more than marketing with a personal touch. Real, authentic brand interactions are rare these days, because let’s be honest: they’re a big investment. They take time and attention to implement, and they don’t scale easily.

But there’s one type of bespoke, intimate marketing that I believe can benefit any business, even if your funnel is 100% automated…

Personalized thank-you videos.

Why do I like thank-you videos so much? Because they hit the “sweet spot” between intimacy and scale. Yes, you have to show up on camera and thank your customer by name for their purchase. And even at 30-60 seconds per video, it adds up.

But on the other hand, thank-you videos are much less demanding than a phone call or a face-to-face meeting — but feel just as personal. And unlike either of those, you don’t even have to interact with the customer in real time!

And finally, you can partially automate the process. Imagine this:

A new order comes in. Someone on your team gets assigned a thank-you video and receives all the relevant info about the customer. They record a 30-60 second clip, paste the video link into a custom email template, then feed it into your CRM, hit Send… and done!

And just like that, you took a high-touch strategy that doesn’t scale and enhanced your existing marketing funnel with it. Go you!

 

6. Earn undivided attention with a powerful Elevator Pitch

 

Converting cold leads into paying customers is hard. Before you can earn someone’s money, you have to earn their attention first. And in our fast-paced, easily distractible world, it’s almost more difficult than getting someone to buy from you!

An Elevator Pitch is designed to cut through all the distractions and grab your prospects’ attention as fast as possible. It’s a single, memorable statement about your business that you can deliver in 30 seconds or less. And it has ONE job — getting potential customers excited enough and curious enough to say the 3 all-important words…

“Tell me more.”

I know what you’re thinking, “There’s no way I can hook people on my business in 30 seconds!” I disagree. My team has already helped dozens of businesses formulate an irresistible Elevator Pitch — and we want to create one for you, too.

All you need is to hop on a 30-minute consultation with one of our expert copywriters here at The Draw Shop. They will help you define the problem you solve, how you solve it, and the life-changing results your customers will see from working with you.

Then we’ll transform your input into a unique Elevator Pitch for your brand — a powerful 30-second statement scientifically designed to stand out, delight, persuade… and convert.

And we’ll top it off with a one-page, one-of-a-king infographic that makes your pitch into an engaging visual story! That one is a valuable marketing asset in its own right — you can use it to…

  • Share it with your team
  • Feature it on your website
  • Use it in your email signature
  • Put it on the back of your business card
  • Spread it on social media

And more!

Interested?

Visit this page to book your appointment, and create your Elevator Pitch + infographic!

 

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