How to Navigate & Attract New Leads in The Dark Funnel

The dark funnel

95% of B2B buyers are not ready to buy your product right now. They’re having conversations with colleagues, researching on social media, and listening to podcasts about the product or industry and learning where your brand fits in.

Demand generation helps you influence buyers where they’re having those conversations and in those unattributable spaces. It’s an inbound model that develops your authority and brand affinity over time—it can be a long game to get results, but it helps you stay in play.

Those places where your buyers are being actively influenced by the marketing activities you cannot track are called: the dark funnel.

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Careful attention to CTA (call to action) copywriting is the difference between brands that drive conversions and those that only drive traffic.

Brands that slap a “Buy Now” button on a page and call it a day wonder why their campaigns fail to convert. Companies that engage in strategic CTA testing continue to drive success metrics like CTR (click-through rate) up and to the right.

CTA testing is paramount because it’s not always obvious what needs to happen for your business. Landing page platform Unbounce boosted conversion rates by 90% by changing their CTA copy from “Start your 30-day trial” to “Start my free 30-day trial.” 

In this article, we’ll explore seven powerful CTA examples from high-performing companies. You’ll learn what makes them so convincing so that you can apply these lessons in your own CTA writing.

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Marketing playbooks help you consistently produce campaigns and content in the face of continuous disruption. No matter which players are in the game (copywriters, designers, etc.), your playbook will help produce a consistent outcome.

The trouble is, most successful businesses like to keep their marketing playbooks close to their chests (for obvious reasons). This makes it difficult for new businesses, or those experimenting with new strategies, to learn best practices.

CXL likes to play by an entirely different set of rules, so they’ve created a marketing playbook community where experts can weigh in and share their experiences. 

In short, CXL put winning marketing playbooks on the table for everyone to see.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create an impactful marketing playbook to show up consistently and grow your business.

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When researching a new product, buyers use 10 or more channels to interact with companies. Each channel presents a chance to make a good impression. 

Optimize each channel, and you’ll win new customers, enjoy higher order rates, and retain customers. Get them wrong, and you risk damaging brand perception and trust. 

In this post, we’ll explore lessons from brands that use omnichannel marketing to deliver a seamless customer experience.

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Semrush Signup form

Growing your mailing list and generating leads should be a focus of your marketing. If HubSpot didn’t have 215,000 blog subscribers, they wouldn’t have a business.

Too many businesses don’t give sign-up forms enough attention. They just throw something together—then complain that online lead generation “doesn’t work.”

This post shows you 14 keys to building sign-up forms that convert.

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Halo effect

“What is beautiful is good,” the saying goes.

This saying stems from a belief that attractiveness correlates to other good qualities. In a phrase, attractiveness is a Halo Effect.

Of course you can see that on the surface, the logic in that saying is flawed. What’s beautiful has nothing to do with what is good. But we still associate perception and individual traits, making our judgement often inaccurate.

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Unique selling proposition examples

Your unique selling proposition (USP) separates you from the competition. It’s a statement that communicates your strengths and benefits over your competition’s. A good one makes your product or brand stand out amongst the noise. 

Similar to a unique value proposition (UVP), for customers, it’s a reason to trust and choose you ahead of someone else. For you, it’s the linchpin that powers your sales and marketing efforts. 

USP and UVP are occasionally used interchangeably; but they shouldn’t be. The two are similar, but have different purposes. A unique selling proposition focuses on what separates you from the competition. In comparison, a unique value proposition focuses solely on the benefit that you provide to the customer.

But what does a USP look like?   

In this article, we’ll demonstrate what makes an effective USP by sharing some of the best examples from the worlds of B2B marketing, e-commerce, and DTC. 

You’ll learn why and how these brands get it right so you can follow their lead to unearth your own competitive advantage.

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Consistency is the cornerstone of good marketing. You only have to look at top brands to see this in action: Apple’s sleekness, Coca-Cola’s playfulness, Disney’s magic.

Consistency is equally critical for startups. Stacked Marketer turned a free newsletter into a six-figure revenue generator by staying actionable, convenient, and entertaining. 

Being consistent earns trust and cements brand status—qualities that add 10–20% to your overall growth, according to LucidPress research. On the flip side, inconsistency confuses consumers, limiting your chance to generate leads.

A marketing playbook, whether B2B or B2C-focused, helps you achieve brand consistency across channels and campaigns.

In this article, we’ll explain how to create a marketing playbook to align your teams and boost your sales opportunities.

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AI agents for B2B marketing

Automate content, SEO, and ads. Add buyer strategy, content funnels, apps, and AI readiness.

This program is designed to keep you up-to-date with B2B marketing and AI.

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