The NorthIQ Look Ahead at 2019

The NorthIQ Look Ahead at 2019

by | Feb 18, 2019 | Announcements, Building a Business, Marketing in London, Ontario

Wow, we’re six weeks into 2019 and we still haven’t posted our annual “goals post”.  We started this tradition in 2017, and we doubled down in 2018. We think it’s important to set goals, and to reflect on those goals.

The problem with goals is that they’re not rooted in the reality of the moment, they’re rooted in the perfect future that lies ahead. We’ve done a lot to mitigate this by setting specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound goals, and we check in on them four times a year (every quarter).

These are the goals that will define the next six months (through the end of June 2019) for NorthIQ.

Find more clients

We have figured out three niches that we can help significantly. Home builders, solar companies and technology companies. Through Manage Comics we can also significantly help Comic Stores. We should focus on those companies that we can best help.

Home Builders are being addressed with our Home Builder Demo website, our Solar Companies clients need a Demo Website, as do the Technology companies that we are targeting.  We also have demo websites created for Comic Stores, and we need to link these to the current Manage Comics pages.

  • Link Comics Microsites to Manage Comics by February 22, 2019 – COMPLETE
  • Create Solar Company micro-site by March 8, 2019
  • Create Technology Company micro-site by March 15, 2019

Use our own tools

We’ve been selling Sharpspring for about 6 months now, and we’ve done some great things with it, but we haven’t fully set up our own automation pages. We need to solve that problem quickly.  Our goal right now is to get an Onboarding system in place for Manage Comics stores when they sign up, and put all existing stores through it over the next month.

  • Build demo campaign for Homes contacts by February 22, 2019 – COMPLETE
  • Build onboarding for Manage Comics stores by February 28, 2019
  • Build demo campaign for Solar contacts by March 15, 2019
  • Build demo campaign for Technology contacts by March 22, 2019

Continue content marketing

Content Marketing was the best thing we did in 2017, and we continued with it in 2018. Being seen as “thought leaders” is really important in our space, and showing the smart things that we do helps to explain to others what it is we do, and more importantly HOW we do what we do.

Goals:

  • 26 blog posts in 2019 (2 posts a month) for NorthIQ
  • 26 blog posts in 2019 (2 posts a month) for Manage Comics

Invest in the business

We need to put some money into Manage Comics and help it to really pull ahead of the competition. We’re planning some POS incorporation with Square – which will put us in league with other players, but that will take a significant investment.

  • Have POS specs completed by March 29 2019
  • Have funding in place for POS work by April 19, 2019
  • Begin working on POS project by May 1, 2019

Refine our Tools

We started out with just Basecamp for project management, but we’ve added some Jira tools to the arsenal. We need to refine, and revise what tools we use and how we use them.  Basecamp is incredibly simple, but we may need some extra tools in order to hit our next milestones.

  • Get Help desk running by March 30.
  • Determine triage and routing rules for new requests by March 30.
  • Service Level Agreements for all new work that is incoming. New work should not take priority over already prioritized and planned work by March 30.

 

2018 Goals in Review

2018 Goals in Review

by | Jan 24, 2019 | Announcements, Building a Business, Marketing in London, Ontario, Updates

At the beginning of 2018 we set out The NorthIQ Goals for 2018. Our business has a June year end, which means we technically were in 2019 by July…but for the purposes of the blog we consider January 1 – December 31 2018 to be the calendar year.

We set a number of goals to hit, and for the most part we did quite well, but we didn’t achieve all of our goals…and part of that might have been that we were being too aggressive, while some of it can be due to the fact that as a fairly new business we are still figuring out how to optimally do things. Our philosophy so far has been to build things, refine them, and then figure out how to do them repeatedly. We’re doing a great job at building and refining, we’re now in the phase where we need to repeat them.

Craig and I have both worked for companies that dogmatically stuck to unrealistic, aggressive goals. Sticking to goals despite logic dictating that they no longer make sense demotivated us, and didn’t encourage us to do our best work. In a number of cases we actually did the wrong thing in order to hit an unrealistic target to please “the powers that be”. One of the things we’ve decided with NorthIQ is that we would do the right thing even if it goes against our business goals.

A good example came in the summer when we realized that in order to hit our goal of 52 blog posts in a year, we would have to post things that we weren’t convinced were good. We chose instead to put the blog on hiatus for a month to build up a good backlog of posts, and we finished the year out strong with some of our best posts. (more…)

Our best posts of 2018

Our best posts of 2018

by | Jan 8, 2019 | Building a Business, Content Marketing, Marketing in London, Ontario

We’re reflecting on what we did in 2018, and later this week we’ll be planning out 2019. As part of our reflections, we’re looking at what we did well in 2018.

One of the things we are most proud of is our blog posts, this year we’ve been publishing things that we believe in, and we’ve been building out stories that mean a lot to us.

How losing a promotion was the best thing that happened to me

In the fall of 2015, Craig was looking to get a promotion at work. He had worked hard, he had been in the company for nearly a decade, and he had fundamentally changed the way that marketing was done in the organization. When he was denied a promotion, he realized that he needed to take matters into his own hands. He sat down with Brian for a week and created a product called “The Kickstart Guide to Marketing”. This post outlined that process, and launched a brand new product called How to Create a Free Marketing Automation System.

Measuring Your Website: What You Should be Looking For

In 2018 we launched “Hot Buzz”, and in our first episode we talked about effective ways of measuring your website. For the follow up blog post, we went in depth on what you should be measuring, and how you know that your website is effective.

The NorthIQ 3i Formula

In 2018 we changed the focus of our business. We realized the thing that we do better than anyone else is find new leads and nurture them to sales ready status. To do this, we use a formula that we call the 3i formula, and in this blog post we broke it down in depth.

Five Signs You Need Marketing Automation

As we got more comfortable with our value proposition, we started noticing patterns with our clients. Not everybody needs a marketing automation system, but there are very clear markers when you do. This blog post outlined five signs that will give you some pretty big indicators that you need to invest in some marketing automation.

4 Simple Behaviours That Will Make Your Digital Marketing Better

Want to know a secret? Most marketing doesn’t work, in this post we looked at 4 simple behaviours that will make your digital marketing instantly better.

The 5 Basics of a Successful Digital Content Strategy

Our marketing automation systems work like magic, but they need content. We looked at what we were doing with our real life clients and how the journey maps out. Our biggest insight is that our automation systems are an engine, and content is the fuel to that engine. Making sure that the content fits the buyer’s journey, and continually answers questions makes the entire system better.

Hot Buzz Episode 4 – Adrian Biljan of Sensus Crypto

In 2018 we launched “Hot Buzz”, which is our show about marketing and chicken wings.  Through the four episodes of our first year we talked with a number of different people about a variety of things. Every episode got a little bit better, but we think our fourth one was the best one so far.

Manage Comics Featured in London Inc

My personal favourite post of 2018 was the announcement that we are featured in London Inc. Earlier in the year Craig told me to go “Make a Ruckus”, so I reached out to a number of local news outlets. Now that we have this one piece under our belt, I’m going to continue reaching out to other news outlets to get even more coverage for the cool things that we are doing.

How to Safely Upgrade to WordPress 5.0

How to Safely Upgrade to WordPress 5.0

by | Jan 7, 2019 | Internet Business, Marketing in London, Ontario

WordPress 5.0 is here, code named “Bebo” after Cuban Jazz master Bebo Valdés. WP 5.0 is a major update, with an all new editor named “Gutenberg”, which is a massive revamp of the default editing experience. 5.0 also saw the release of a brand new default theme called Twenty Nineteen which is fully Gutenberg compliant, and has plenty of room for customization.

As a major upgrade, it could be a little bit scary to do the updates, but it’s very important that you keep your WordPress website up to date with the latest versions. We’ve put together a small guide for how to update to WordPress 5.0 safely, and we’ve added some specific instructions for our customers who also use a custom Divi Child Theme from us. (more…)

Manage Comics Featured in London Inc

Manage Comics Featured in London Inc

by | Dec 13, 2018 | Announcements, Marketing in London, Ontario

We were recently interviewed by Sean Meyer for an article in the December / January London Inc. Magazine.  In the article we talked about how our online comics subscription management tool for comic stores, Manage Comics helps stores improve their customer service and their profitability.

Our goal for Manage Comics has always been to help modernize comic shops, and give them a leg up on the other forms of entertainment out there. By making it easier to subscribe to comics, and even removing some of the barriers around the actual purchase of comics, we have proven that Manage Comics can make stores more money.

Removing the barriers of people having to come into your store to experience it, you’re expanding your business – Brian Garside

In the article we also talked about some of the stores of Manage Comics, which currently are all across the United States, Canada, and even in the UK and Australia.

As stores have closed over the last few years, people are travelling further to get their weekly comics fix. By making it easier to subscribe to their comics, be alerted when new things are ready for them, and even be able to pay for their orders online, Manage Comics helps keep stores in business.

To read the entire article, visit “Managing the Books” on the London Inc website.

To learn more about Manage Comics, visit the Manage Comics website.

The secret to sales? Stop selling

The secret to sales? Stop selling

by | Nov 26, 2018 | Building a Business

The definition of LOW KEY is “Not elaborate, showy, or intensive; modest or restrained.”

The definition of SALES is “The exchange of a commodity for money; the action of selling something.”

What happens if you combine the two?

People think selling requires them to be pushy and aggressive. Or that if they give clients enough information about the product or service they are offering, they will break down and make a purchase.

In order to take your sales career to the next level you need to involve some low key selling. It will involve developing the ability to lead people with questions rather than push them with facts.

A successful sales person knows the best way to sell something is not to sell it.

Ask Questions and Listen

They have a problem – you have the solution. Think of it as being a doctor. You listen to your prospect about what they need or want -their pain points and concerns – and then you introduce your product or service as the answer. If you’ve done your job in listening, and the fit is right, you will be able to show how your solution solves their pain points.

Educate and Differentiate

Did you know 75% of business people say they resent a brand if they send too many “marketing” emails? So how can you stay in regular contact, and get your message across, without it coming over as a constant sales pitch?

Offer free information. Offering free information that can add value to a business and is relevant and current is getting your foot in the door.

Educating your audience is a non-threatening way to get your messages across and create a mutually beneficial long-term relationship.

Educate customers about how your product or service can help, and it will differentiate you from your competitors.

You can also provide valuable information for their industry. If you’ve done several interviews of other people over time and have some insights into things that were successful for them, create an email around that topic and send it out.

It’s also essential that you offer differentiated, customized, value-added solutions that meet your clients’ specific needs. The ability to customize solutions differentiates your company from competition and allows you to charge premium prices for your products and services.

Create Passion

We don’t know if Bob at the home store has actually ever slept on that ‘One of a kind, sleeping on a cloud’ mattress. But you better believe he’s going to make us think he owns 5 for each member of his family back home.

Selling is about transferring the passion you have for your product or service into the heart of a prospective customer. Passion changes perspective. Facts inform, but passion moves.

  1. Take pride in your product
  2. Let your passion show
  3. Believe in yourself

Problem Solve

Selling is about solving customers problems. Your prospective customer may be aware of these problems, or you can bring these problems to their attention. No client wants to engage with you unless you can help in some way. Listen to your clients and understand their pain points.

This will allow you to customize a solution that involves your product. Rather than selling, your job is now problem solving.

Talk about benefits, how this will solve a pain point that you discovered by listening. Do not focus on features, what my product will do.

Low key selling is all about making the sale about the person on the other end of the conversation.

Features are all about you, they are you saying “look how smart we were, we already built that cool thing that you might not even need.”

Benefits are all about them, you can address their pain points and say “yes, we can improve your ordering by eliminating errors and showing you exactly how many items you need to order”.

Add Value

Once you have provided all the information, still steer clear of the sales pitch. Instead, direct them to your website to a free download, and offer a phone consultation with no obligation.

Establish yourself as a trusted partner. By offering free information and advice to your potential customer, they will think of you when they need help or when something changes in their current situation.

Do what you love.

What Your Website Says About Your Business

What Your Website Says About Your Business

by | Nov 22, 2018 | Digital Marketing

Over the summer we completely overhauled our Manage Comics website, while doing that we put a lot of thought into what the site says about who we are.

As an internet marketing company, our website is incredibly important. We need to clearly state what we do, how we do it, and why we are unique. As we started thinking about how to make Manage Comics better, we also thought about how we could make the NorthIQ site better, and overall some things we think are important to every website on the internet.

If you think of your website as a virtual window into your business, you need to really consider what it is that you’re showing.  Take the picture for this post as an example. A quick look in that window shows us an interesting space that has customers, a well stocked bar, and intimate, yet inviting lighting. If you’re the type of person who likes those things, it will encourage you to walk through the doors.

Your website is the online version of that exact same window.

(more…)

How Mature is Your Marketing?

How Mature is Your Marketing?

by | Oct 24, 2018 | Digital Marketing, Lead Automation, Marketing, Marketing Automation

Three years ago Craig and I sat down and created a download called “The Kickstart Guide to Marketing using Science, Not Magic”, it was basically my bootcamp into the world of marketing. I had always considered myself a “marketing minded designer/developer”, but the truth was I really only understood the basics.

Before I get too deep into my journey into marketing maturity, I’m not going to bury the lede. We’re launching a Marketing Maturity Assessment, and we need some beta testers before we make it live.

Sign up to beta test our maturity tool and we’ll send you an email next week.

You will get the first crack at our marketing maturity assessment, as well as the the first notification about our brand new massive 80+ page download – The NorthIQ Way.

I knew about branding from years of working at Canada’s major media brands (TSN, CTV, Alliance/Atlantis, Bell, and The Globe and Mail). I knew a lot about attracting and building an audience. I had even learned about conversions from Craig and had applied the things I learned at my day job to run some successful side hustles. (more…)

Five Signs You Need Marketing Automation

Five Signs You Need Marketing Automation

by | Oct 18, 2018 | Content Marketing, Lead Automation, Marketing, Marketing Automation

We recently launched our Free Marketing Automation System, it’s a simplified version of the system that we provide for our clients. One question we got was “Who is this intended for?”, while a couple of other people asked “How do I know I need it?”.

Let’s start with who needs marketing automation. I think the basic answer is “anybody who is looking for leads”.  In its simplest form, a lead is someone who is going to get in touch with you about a product or service that you offer. The thing about leads is that not all leads are created equal.

The “Buyer’s Journey” says that people go through stages when they are making a decision. Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.  First, they need to be aware that they have a problem, and that there are solutions to that problem. Then they look at who can provide the solution. Finally they come to a decision on who will solve their problem.

The buyer’s journey can take minutes, or it can take years depending on the type of purchase they are making. The thing is, you need to be able to contact the buyer at the right point in the journey.

If you introduce yourself after they’ve bought something else, you’re too late. If you make an incredible offer before they’re considering buying, you’re too early.

This is what marketing automation is good at. It pairs up the buyer with the right information at the point of the buyer’s journey they are currently in.

How will you know that you need marketing automation? Here’s five warning signs.

1: You frequently hear “Website Leads Suck” from sales people

Website leads should be the “Glengarry Leads”, and if the sales team isn’t treating website leads as gold, then there is a major problem.

We can learn more about someone who comes to a website than we do on literally any other source. If you’re hearing from your sales people that they are talking to people who aren’t ready to buy, or if your sales people are dealing with far too many leads, this is where automation can really help.

With a good marketing automation program, you can deliver the right information to potential customers at the right time, and help them to make key decisions.

In some cases these people will decide you’re not the right solution for them, that’s actually a really good thing. If we give them the information that helps them they’re not the right fit for your product or service it doesn’t waste any more of their time, and you’re not trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

In other cases, the key information will help them realize that there is a good match there, and they will raise their hand, asking to further the conversation.

Businesses who nurture leads make 50% more sales at a cost 33% less than non-nurtured prospects. (Strategic IC, 2017)

2: You don’t send out regular emails because even when you send them out, it doesn’t seem to change anything

Consider how you interact with people on a daily basis in your real life. Chances are you have different conversations with your co-workers than you do with your partner, your children, your friends, or the barista who made your latte this morning.

If you were to greet everyone with the same message, they would look at you like you’re an alien. Go ahead, try talking to your co-workers as if they were your significant other the next time that you want to spend an afternoon with the lovely folks in HR (say hi to Julie for me).

Your marketing is the same way. You can’t treat everyone the same, and you can’t deliver the same messaging to the person who just met you, as you would to the person who has been doing their research on your company for the last year and are ready to make a decision.

You need to be sending out the right information, at the right time, to the right people. To do this, you need to identify your audience, put them into groups, and deliver them tailored email to exactly where they are in the buying cycle.

This is called segmentation, and it will have a massive impact on your email campaigns.

Recipients are 75% more likely to click on emails from segmented campaigns than non-segmented campaigns. (MailChimp, 2017)

3: Sales growth isn’t as fast as you’d like

There are only so many levers you can pull to increase sales, one of them is investing more in marketing.

We often caution against companies throwing money at ads, the websites we work with regularly convert organic traffic at a rate of 5-7% across the entire site!

We find often that incremental improvements to the way that the website is being crawled by search engines, improving inbound links with media outreach, and building a strong lead generation capabilities show better, faster, and more impressive results than chucking a bunch of money at some ads.

Once you have leads in your system though, what are you doing with them? Are you throwing them directly over the fence to Sales? Is the sales team burning through leads? Do you have insight into what is happening with those leads?

Marketing automation can really help boost sales by engaging prospects and turn them into excited potential buyers with your nurturing programs. It also helps identify the very best leads and enables you to route them very quickly to your sales team. Gone are the days of slogging through cold calls all day long.

Businesses who nurture leads make 50% more sales at a cost 33% less than non-nurtured prospects. (Strategic IC, 2017)

4: You don’t know what’s working and what’s not

You have 20,000 followers on Facebook. Your InstaTweet post from last week got five hundred upvotes. You were recently featured on that hot new YouTube show by that super cool lady who does the thing with the stuff.

Then what happened? Are your 20,000 followers in your target demographic? Does InstaTweet success equal more prospects in your funnel? Do your Facebook followers actually buy your product or service? Are you paying to promote posts or running a contest that is boosting your follower count but actually reducing the number of people who are seeing your messaging?

You need end-to-end insight into the entire marketing funnel and sales pipeline if you’re going to affect any meaningful change. We often find that closely held assumptions end up being false. For many companies, a large follower count has no bearing on the quality of the leads they are generating.  Likewise, many websites have incredible Google page ranks, but they are unable to translate that page rank into leads. Many lead sources you initially thought were great can turn out to be under-performing (and vice versa).

You need a solid digital strategy, and good tools that will help you gain insight into what a good prospect looks like, vs someone who is just a dreamer.

With good analytics tools (like those provided by a good marketing automation tool), you will know where your best leads come from, the behaviors that end up converting them into customers, and how to create a repeatable process to develop more sales ready leads in the future. You need to establish a direct correlation between leads in the door and actual revenue.

48% of consumers start mobile research with a search engine. (Smart Insights, 2016) 

5: You are losing sales to the competition

Here’s the scary, dark secret. Look around your industry at your competitors. If you’re not taking advantage of marketing automation, the chances are that one of your competitors are…and if they’re not right now, they will be in the next 12-18 months as marketing automation is one of the biggest trends in marketing right now.  If you are ahead of the curve, you will beat your competition.

In the next two years, an additional 21% of marketing leaders plan to use a marketing automation platform. (Salesforce, 2017)

Marketing Automation is Not Scary, Not Doing it is Downright Terrifying

Marketing automation doesn’t have to be expensive. The software that will allow you automate your lead nurturing is incredibly affordable, and will make significant changes to your business.

Things that cost more than One Year of Marketing Automation Services

  • Coffee for a 100 person office for 1 year
  • A company Christmas party for 50 people
  • A golf tournament for a company of 40 people
  • Losing one sale for a product with an average sales price of $9,000
  • A 2 month Adwords Campaign that generates 100 leads/month at an average lead cost of $45/lead

We are here to help. Check out our free download – How to Create a Free Marketing Automation System, and discover how you can get something set up today that will start you down the path to better leads, and more sales.

Free Download: How to Create a Free Marketing Automation System

Get the Download
How losing a promotion was the best thing that happened to me

How losing a promotion was the best thing that happened to me

by | Oct 5, 2018 | Marketing, Marketing in London, Ontario

I’m going to give you the secret sauce on how to make a marketing automation system for free. It has all the bells, though none of the whistles of the ridiculously expensive services where you can pay $2500 a month just for the software to run this plan. Most small businesses won’t need the whistles anyhow.

First, let me tell you a quick story.

3 years ago I had the unfortunate experience of getting passed over for a promotion to a marketing director role at the company I worked for. A role that at the time I really believed was what I wanted. It was not a great experience, and was the second time this had happened at this company. Obviously, that particular goal wasn’t ever going to happen.

It was a wake up call.

I didn’t respond how most people do in this circumstance. I did something unusual which looking back on it three years later was a bounce pad for where NorthIQ is at now – a successful and growing business.

I took an entire week off and spent it working with a former colleague (my now-NorthIQ partner Brian Garside) to begin building what is now NorthIQ.

Only we didn’t know it at the time.

That week was exciting because we launched an ebook and sold several copies within the 5 day window we gave ourselves. We hit our goal of building a database of 50, and we also landed a customer who ended up being a significant partner in our growth as an organization.

It was crazy. We barely slept. It was interesting and engaging and unlike anything I did in my 9-5.

If you’re sitting there right now unsure about how a very small change in your life can lead to huge things I will tell you right now it can be astronomical. Life changing. It can be the difference between you hitting your goals and just continuing along where you’re at now.

At the time I’d have loved to be where I am now. It was such an elephant to eat I didn’t really see how it was possible. 

Intermission:

If you just want the How to Create a Free Marketing Automation System go ahead and grab it, but we’d love if you would continue on the story (don’t worry, we’ll remind you about the download below as well).

Back to the story.

We decided let’s just do one small thing at a time. Set the bar so damn low we’d have things to accomplish, over and over.

Brian had already done the brave thing and taken the plunge – he quit his day job to start NorthIQ. He had provided what would be the foundation for what we’d build. I always joke “What took you so long to quit.” but that’s a very brave move to take. We didn’t have the dollars or customers to pay for both our salaries so I went back to work and patiently supported NorthIQ as an evening job.

Another big game changer for us occurred that week, and thinking back on it it’s a funny story.

During day 1 Brian had mentioned to me that he had a prospect who was wanting a new website but also more – a lot of marketing work. At the time it wasn’t his area of expertise but I talked him into providing a proposal. We barely knew how to make proposals of this kind. We weren’t sure how we’d get the work done, since I had a full time job and he was still learning the marketing side.

They accepted. To this day they are a top customer. The impact this company has had on NorthIQ, and the relationships we built from this is vast.

Two seemingly minor things in the space of 2 days that changed our lives.

The simple fact is that just getting out there, doing, executing  is so valuable. You can accomplish anything if you just get in and try.

A lot has happened between now and then. We moved into an office. We have awesome staff. Great customers. During the ride we’ve accomplished so many things that seemed outside my safety zone. I dare say it…we’ve even become (uggghhh) sales people.

No road is too steep for somebody who is determined and patient.

Let’s get back to marketing automation…

I learned marketing automation on Marketo, then Pardot, then Hubspot, then I built my own free version and NorthIQ used that for awhile. Finally, last month we  partnered with Sharpspring and I implemented a full system for us. I have thousands of hours of experience in all the platforms combined.

Automating your marketing is incredibly powerful. Even a simple automated email nurture when somebody fills out your form can prove extremely useful. Add in lead capture forms, lead magnet, lead scoring, lead routing, CRM, sales pipelines, reporting and you get a tool that most companies should really invest in at some point.

When I see the reasons for saying no to using this type of service I am frustrated.

Don’t I need to be a marketer?

The honest truth is that any small or medium business owner needs to wear…not just a lot of hats but every hat. All of the hats need to be worn. Chair falls apart? Fix-it hat. Somebody didn’t get paid? Finance hat. Need more friends (customers)… yeah… marketing hat.

You don’t need to BE a marketer, you just need to act like one long enough.

My company is too small.

Too small to engage and delight future customers so they love you before they even spent a cent?

Isn’t it expensive?

You can build a solid system for free. NorthIQ used it for a couple of years. There are even paid options that fit inside the budgets of small companies. It’s no longer just for big companies. That has ended. The industry has changed and nobody has told the small businesses.

Don’t let the big boys snap up every prospect while you rail against the unfairness of it! You can compete! If anything automation just evens the playing field. It’s enabling David’s everywhere.

We’re already doing good business.

Yeah, that’s awesome. What if you could be doing even better? When you are doing well you likely have more money to invest in ways to make your sales more predictable and take less effort.

It’s complicated! We’ll never be able to take advantage of all the features.

Implement a piece at a time and before you know your system will be humming along.

I don’t have the time.

Of all of the excuses, this one I understand the most. Time is the one resource that none of us seem to have enough of. The thing is, you can start today with a little bit of time, and build it small, piece by piece. Each piece will add incremental improvements, which multiply exponentially. It is amazing how a series of small changes can have major impacts.

The NorthIQ Free Marketing Automation System

I initially figured this out because NorthIQ needed a budget solution for our own business. Then we ran across other companies who also needed a budget system. They were all at a point in growing their business where it would help them grow but the dollars and internal knowledge were not there. They could not afford to pay NorthIQ to implement for them, but we’re really passionate about seeing other companies succeed. That’s why I built this as a free download.

DOWNLOAD THE NORTHIQ FREE MARKETING AUTOMATION SYSTEM

The “How to Build a Free Marketing Automation System” does not give you all the advanced features that a fully paid program gives you but it does give you the most basic ones that a small or medium business will need.

The more important features for a small business:

  • Collect prospect data via forms
  • Automate nurturing emails to those prospects
  • Store prospects in a CRM for optimizing sales funnels

So from very small organizations (I’ve implemented this easily with 1-2 person companies) to medium organizations with limited budget and limited experience this is actually a really good solution. It gives you the basics of a marketing automation platform and is easy to learn.

You’ll get:

  • A free CRM that is actually really good for both sales and marketing
  • An email tool that is as good as the pro tools
  • Automation that is just limited enough to make it easy
  • Forms to collect your leads
  • Simple behavioural based triggers
  • Flexibility in terms of customized properties and values that your
    internal team might require
  • Real time web tracking
  • Reporting for you to understand what’s going on
  • And it’s all free, if you’re smart and careful about the whole thing.

You won’t get:

  • Extremely detailed workflow capabilities
  • Advanced behavioural based triggers
  • A content strategy
  • A large database (if you’re working with more than 2500 leads, this becomes cumbersome)
  • An all-in-one tool
  • Support

Last Paragraph: Let me Put on my Sales Hat

NorthIQ has implemented professional Marketing Automation solutions across many organizations, and works with most of them monthly to generate leads and boost revenue. We’re proud of the work we do and the companies we get to do it with. The companies that we work with have doubled, triple, and even quadruple their revenue in one year of working with us.

If you want to explore having NorthIQ implement this free version for you or a service with more functionality (we offer this at surprisingly reasonable rates) you can book a time to talk to us here. No pressure, no pushy sales promotions, just a chat where we’ll find out a bunch of things about you and tell you if we can help you out.

The NorthIQ Free Marketing Automation System

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