Are your sales and marketing teams aligned? Or are they working in silos, with only a vague understanding of what the other team is doing?
If your sales and marketing teams aren’t working well together, you’re not alone.
According to LinkedIn, 93 percent of sales and marketing professionals say their company has issues with alignment, such as antagonism between teams, excluding others from planning, and challenges communicating.
Sales and marketing misalignment can result in lower sales, lost leads, and annoyed customers. Are you ready to improve the relationship between sales and marketing?
Why is Sales and Marketing Alignment So Important?
When the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, you lose revenue, deliver a poor customer experience, and miss opportunities.
A lack of sales and marketing coordination costs businesses an estimated$1 trillion a year in the US alone.
For example, say marketing creates a campaign to drive what they think are qualified leads to a new landing page.
Unfortunately, sales redefined how they qualify leads a few weeks ago–but no one told marketing.
Now, that landing page is flooded with leads that sales will never follow up on. Marketing says “Look at all that traffic! Why isn’t anyone following up on all those leads?”
While sales sees low-quality traffic that will waste their time, so they focus on leads from a paid campaign instead.
Everyone’s frustrated, and no one wins–least of all your customers.
So how do you get everyone on the same page? By using strategies that bring sales and marketing together, increase communication, and play to everyone’s strengths.
What strategies should you use? That’s what we’ll cover in our next webinar, created in partnership with Pipedrive.
Who Should Attend Our Sales + Marketing Alignment Webinar
If you have a marketing and sales team of two or more people, you’ll want to attend this webinar.
Here’s why: setting up sales and marketing alignment from the beginning is the best way to prevent misalignment.
If you have a larger team and struggle to get everyone on the same page, this webinar will be crucial. We’ll cover a range of strategies, from automation to removing silos, to help both teams share data and strategies.
Remember, everyone is on the same team–and we’re all looking to drive growth. Making it easy (thank you, automation!) to share data and insights will improve everyone’s metrics–especially your bottom line.
What Types of Businesses Is This Webinar For?
Any business with a sales and marketing team (even if it’s only one person each!) will benefit from this webinar.
That includes organizations in industries like:
B2B businesses looking to improve their sales and marketing metrics
SaaS companies looking to increase sign-ups
E-commerce businesses looking to scale.
Brick and mortar companies struggling to grow online and in-person sales.
What You’ll Learn in Our May 24th Webinar
In our upcoming webinar, you’ll learn seven strategies to help your sales and marketing teams work together to drive leads, traffic, and revenue.
Neil will share strategies like using automation and integrations to eliminate data silos, aligning communciation cadences, and integrating call data so both teams can leverage it to improve customer experience.
For each strategy, we’ll share data points on why it matters, results in the form of case studies, and provide step-by-step instructions on how to implement our strategies for your business.
The webinar will wrap up with a Q+A session where you can ask questions and get advice on implementing these strategies in your own organization.
Want to join us? Sign up today and join us on May 24th. We look forward to seeing you.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been all over television, which is pretty remarkable for a guy hiding from Russian assassins, pleading on behalf of his increasingly desperate country.
If your blog gets over 10,000 monthly unique visitors, then yes – you can monetize your blog and create a nice revenue stream with it.
The real challenge is making money from a blog that generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day.
Just as in life, there are different stages to a blog’s life cycle. You can’t compare your new blog to one that’s been around for years.
The truth is: it takes time to build an income from blogging.
No matter what you’ve read, blogging success doesn’t happen overnight — but it is possible.
Identify the stage you’re in, and work from there. There’s no shortcut to getting blog traffic. Yes, I can show you how to drive traffic to your blog, but you have to be patient and consistent, and you have to work really hard.
This in-depth article will guide you on monetizing your new blog. There are still opportunities to make money with your blog, even if it’s not as popular as this blog.
Without further ado, here are eight proven ways to monetize a blog that generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day:
1. Offer Coaching Service to Motivated Clients
If you’re looking for a way to start making money within the shortest period of time, become a coach. Giving prospects and customers direct access to expertise is where it’s at.
Data from Disc Insights found that “as a whole, the life coaching industry takes in a yearly revenue of $2 billion.”
Jenni Elliot, the founder of TheBlogMaven.com, makes $397 on a one-to-one blogging intensive coaching session.
It doesn’t matter when you started blogging or how much experience you’ve gained in that time — offering a coaching service to motivated clients can bring in money.
Inevitably, your readers will face challenges in life. A coach’s responsibility is to help people manage their challenges, and react in a positive way instead of getting frustrated and giving up.
A lot of bloggers I know started out as online coaches. Initially, they struggled to attract regular clients, but they overcame the challenge by reaching out through social media.
The major reason why becoming a coach in your industry can help you earn extra income is because people want to learn new skills, or improve in certain areas.
Coaching services are in demand because of the dramatic results the process can bring.
As an example, after working with Walk of Life Consulting, 98 percent of clients reported that they thought their CV was more compelling using achievement statements, and 87 percent said their LinkedIn profile became 5X more effective. Here’s the rest of the statistics:
Life coaching is just one area to consider, and it’s increasingly popular these days. As a coach, you’ll help people deal with challenges in their personal or professional lives.
For example, if someone is a web developer, they may need a business or personal coach to help adjust to changes in the web development industry, increase their rates, and retain clients who will, in turn, refer others through word of mouth.
Why coaching? Well, the benefits are enormous. Take a look:
How can you use your blog to promote your coaching services business?
For example, if you offer coaching services to freelance writers you might cover topics like:
attracting new clients
nurturing prospects
generating and capturing leads
retaining existing clients
setting and raising rates
weeding out difficult or “problem” clients
branding
content creation and copywriting case studies
When offering coaching services, you need a strong value proposition, because the market is already saturated. Having a strong reason “why” people should prefer you instead of your competitors will give you a necessary edge.
Tim Brownson, the founder of ADaringAdventure.com, positioned himself as “the life coach who gets people unstuck.” With his 10 years of life coaching experience, clients trust him for his ingenuity and knowledge.
If you’re driven to succeed as a coach, you don’t need to follow dozens and dozens of other coaches in an effort to “learn.”
Instead, pay more attention to your blog and create high-value content.
After all, you’re the coach. The only way to prove your expertise is through the content you create on a regular basis. Use blogging to increase your prospects’ success, preferably by including case studies wherever possible.
Blogging is most useful when you strive to help [your prospects] believe what they want (what you sell) can actually happen for them on time, on budget and without pain. It removes the fear from buying.
When you become a life, personal, or business coach, you have three key jobs:
Teach prospects how to set and attain goals, overcome challenges, or avoid risks in ways they can put to work instantly;
Improve the prospect’s perception about their business and create confidence in them to trust your recommendations and reach their goals; and
Lead customers to constructive, proven processes, encouraging them to ask questions and increase their drive to succeed.
No matter what industry you’re in or cater to, offering a coaching service to motivated clients can help them reach their goals and make you money.
Peter James Sinclair benefitted from Yaro Starak’s coaching program, and he’s more organized and effective now.
Before you rush in and start offering coaching services to motivated clients, you have to understand that a coach is an entrepreneur. You’ve got to have that mindset because that’s what you need to thrive.
Mediocre coaches give up in the face of unfavorable circumstances, but coaches who’ve focused on improving their entrepreneurial skills thrive. When you think like the entrepreneur you truly are, you’ll command higher rates.
2. Become an In-Demand Freelance Blogger
If you’re a blogger, then you already have the skills to become an in-demand freelance blogger.
Brands are desperately looking for bloggers with relevant skillsets, and becoming a freelance blogger can transform your financial life.
According to a study by Upwork, 36 percent of the total US workforce freelances. Those freelancers earn a combined annual income of $1.2 trillion.
A freelance writer is a professional who writes articles on different topics for sites, emails, landing pages, etc.
Skilled freelance bloggers are increasingly needed as B2B and B2C companies recognize content is the ultimate tool for attracting leads and nurturing a loyal audience.
Data from Content Marketing Institute found that 21 percent of B2C brands spend more than $100,00 a year on content in 2020, and many are increasing their spending.
Yes, I know what you’re probably thinking, “But there are so many writers out there already!”
That’s true. But professional freelance bloggers who have WordPress, SEO, social media, and persuasive skills are much harder to find. So if you can add these skills to your writing, you’ll become an in-demand freelance blogger.
Initially, you’ll have to market your freelance blogging services through guest blogging on high-traffic blogs, consistent in-house blogging, social media marketing, and even Facebook ads. But eventually, your happy clients will refer more clients to you.
3. Create and Sell Online Courses
Another profitable way to monetize a blog that generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day is to create and sell online courses. You don’t need many leads or customers to make money with your first online course.
Here’s the secret: start where you are and scale from there.
If your blog receives at least 50 visitors per day, find out exactly what those visitors want and create a course from there. The truth is that your first course may not be that “awesome” — but that’s okay.
You can always improve. It’s time to avoid the excuses and get started.
Online courses are focused on a specific subject or topic. They’re organized and ready to be put into action.
Online courses have a higher perceived value than blog posts alone. That’s because your target audience can tell how much time you spent creating it. Consequently, they conclude that it must offer some form of value to them.
So don’t be afraid to create an online course – even on a topic that’s been thoroughly covered online. Bryan Harris launched his second online course to 22,000 email subscribers and generated $511,466 in invoiced sales.
Creating an online course is a great way to upgrade your blogging career. Instead of writing for everyone, you create a platform that delivers your best content exclusively to customers.
Keep in mind that the online course market is evolving on a daily basis. Sites like Udemy, Teachable, and Course Merchant have become popular with marketers and technical instructors. And more platforms are coming.
As a blogger, you can create an online course on any topic that people are struggling with. It doesn’t have to be a complex topic like A/B testing – it could be as simple as “how to use Google Docs.”
Are you surprised? Well, here’s proof that this works: Joseph Michael Nicoletti created an online course that helps novelists write their novel with Scrivener and he makes between $20,000 – $30,000 per month.
You want your course to be engaging, useful, and unique. Follow these four tips for creating an engaging online course:
So how do you choose a course topic? Start with your best blog posts. If I were to create an online course on SEO, I’d probably start with my Guide To SEO – because people like it and will be happy to get an updated version. A few tweaks would make that guide another home run as an online course.
4. Write and Make Money from Kindle Books
Want to make money writing short ebooks?
Well, people are doing just that with Amazon Kindle publishing.
U.S. ebook sales revenue has experienced an impressive upward growth trend. There’s no doubt that the growth will continue. When it comes to reading ebooks, there are many mobile devices you can use, but Amazon Kindle is the most popular one in the US.
The good thing about writing and making money from Kindle books is that there are already millions of buyers who are ready to buy from Amazon.
You already know that Amazon is a trusted online shopping site – and you don’t have to work that hard to convince people to buy your Kindle book. People believe Amazon passes its credibility to your product, in a sense.
At the age of 21, Stefan Pylarinos started his Kindle publishing career. As a blogger, the bulk of his income comes from his Kindle books and an online course on how to create and make money with Kindle books.
Stefan makes a decent income from his KMoney Mastery 2.0 course, which teaches people how to profit with Kindle publishing.
However, in order to make a living from Kindle books, you need to work extra hard and publish books regularly. The more quality books you have, the more money you’ll make. Stefan Pylarinos has over 20 Kindle books and still counting.
You’ll need to offer several short Kindle books because individually, they’re priced pretty cheaply – usually from $0.99 to $4.00. Probably doesn’t sound too encouraging, right?
However, if you price your Kindle book at $1.99 and sell 200 copies per month, your total income will be $398. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and many authors make more.
Chris Guthrie estimated the earnings of one Kindle book in one year at $377.87 per month, which adds up to $4,534.41 per year at a price of $2.99
You can use your blog to promote your Kindle books, give discounts, and give away free copies of your book in order to generate honest reviews (which are essential for boosting your Kindle book rankings & sales).
You don’t have to spend money to promote your Kindle books. With your blog, you’ve got the influence, authority, audience, and platform to make it work. Through blogging, you can launch and make your first $1,000 from Kindle books.
There are even some smart marketers out there who make a decent income from Kindle Books without writing. They simply outsource the content creation, then use their blogs to drive sales.
One of those smart marketers is Arman Assadi. According to him, his first ebook cost him $375 – $350 to get the book written, and $25 for a professional cover design.
First, don’t use the product word-for-word. Tweak it and make it at least 65 percent unique.
Once you understand your PLR usage rights, you can repackage and make money from it.
Before Panda struck in February 2011, PLR products were popular, and many marketers and bloggers used them to generate content for their sites.
In other words, PLR products are pre-written content that you can claim as your own without incurring any legal action.
In the past, you could start a new site, download a few PLR articles and publish them for your audience. But the game has changed.
Duplicate content is a serious violation of Google’s terms, and could get your site penalized.
However, you can still make money from private label rights as a blogger. If you’re a new/beginner blogger, you can leverage other people’s products.
Creating an information product (e.g., ebooks) from scratch is difficult. If you’re new to blogging you may not have the experience required. Worse, imagine after all the hard work creating the product, no one buys it.
Here are some reasons why product creation from scratch is tiring:
With a PLR product, you don’t need all of that.
Even if you’re not particularly knowledgeable about a certain topic, you can become an author in that field. For example, you can use PLR articles to write a Kindle book related to “plastic surgery” even if you didn’t study that in school.
You can also generate content for your blog using PLR content. When evaluating PLR products, look for these three factors:
recently developed
written by a reputable author
published in limited circulation
Most bloggers and internet marketers struggle to make money with PLR products because they’re lazy. They use the content word-for-word on their blogs. Even when they create ebooks, most people don’t change anything.
If you find a valuable PLR product, you need to rewrite it and make it at least 65 percent unique. You can get quality PLR ebooks, articles, videos, and audio content from sites such as InDigitalWorks
Aside from rewriting the PLR articles or ebooks, you can do so much more with a PLR product. Typically, PLR content is based on profitable niche keywords and information that the target audience is looking for.
You can use the insights of PLR products as research sources, and then create your own high-value ebook based on the information they provide.
Note: To retain your credibility, I don’t recommend you use PLR articles on your own blog.
Yes, you can learn from the author’s wealth of knowledge about a particular subject/topic, but do your best to always write your own content from scratch.
You can also use PLR products indirectly. For example, you could rewrite a PLR ebook and give it away to build an email list. Then you can make money from your list.
6. Create a High-Converting Funnel and Recommend Products
When people join your email list, what happens next?
Do you feel excited that you have email subscribers and then ignore them?
Follow-up and relationship building is vital.
According to Marketing Donut, “44 percent of salespeople give up after one follow-up, and the average salesperson only makes 2 attempts to reach a prospect.”
Following up on prospects to convert them into buyers is where the majority of sales will come from. Through follow-up emails, you connect with motivated buyers and sell at the backend.
A relationship is the easiest way to establish trust with blog readers and sell a product. It sounds so simple, but a lot of people aren’t doing it.
A relationship begins when you create awareness about your primary business. You then lead your prospects through a funnel, while delivering immense value with your content in every phase.
First, understand this: there’s nothing wrong with selling to your readers as long as the product is useful and valuable.
However, forget about the product and build a relationship with them. That’s where the funnel comes in.
The purpose of a marketing funnelis to attract strangers, convert them into leads, close the deal by turning them into customers and delight them after they have purchased your product.
The moment you drive potential customers to your funnel, they opt in to your list and they’re added into your follow-up autoresponder. Then you can start building the relationship.
You nurture them through your blog posts, videos, infographics, ebooks, and so on. Ideally, you ask them exactly what they’re struggling with, then use the questions to create relevant and high-value content for them.
Along the way, recommend affiliate programs and products, your own ebooks, or software.
Any product that will help them after you have established a level of trust with them should be shared with them.
After creating their first product, Gael Breton & Mark Webster gave away a part of it to collect leads. Altogether, they collected 301 emails, nurtured the leads, recommended their own quality product, and generated $2,684 in 30 days.
7. Partner with Influencers in Product Creation/Launch
The biggest problem we’ve encountered is lack of preparation: Companies are so focused on designing and manufacturing new products that they postpone the hard work of getting ready to market them until too late in the game.
If you think that making money online boils down to driving traffic to your blog and generating email leads, you’re making a mistake.
Leads are only the beginning.
One recent study found that 79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance.
You need to generate the right leads. The truth is that you may not have this type of lead right now, but you can leverage influencers’ audiences.
Do you have an idea for a product? Most people struggle to launch their products because they go about it all by themselves. It’s reported that 70 percent of all new product launches fail in the first year. The question is, why do some succeed when others fail?
There are several aspects of a successful product launch that you may not be able to handle alone. If you try to go it alone, you’re bound to waste more time, and there’s no guarantee you’ll succeed.
You have to understand that your efforts can only lead you far.
To make a real impact in the lives of people, you need to build relationships with influencers and leverage their influence to create and launch your product.
Of course, generating leads is important when launching your product. Even before you release the product (e.g., ebook, software, plugin) for sale, you should start pre-selling and communicate with prospects.
Ideally, you should build a landing page to collect emails prior to launching your product.
According to MarketingSherpa, “61 percent of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27 percent of those leads will be qualified.”
Leveraging influencers could turn out to be the most powerful marketing tool in your arsenal.
As an example, Sujan Patel connected and built relationships with influencers and expert growth hackers before launching an ebook, 100 Days of Growth.
And in six months, Patel and his partner Rob Wormley sold 10,000 copies of the book, which costs $27 per copy.
Here are a few resources to get started leveraging influencers:
No matter where you’re as a blogger, you can monetize your blog by launching virtual summits, which are growing in popularity these days.
Many bloggers use summits to connect and build relationships with influencers. Influencers can bring you credibility, reach, and engagement.
Virtual summits or conferences are powerful. According to Kristen Matthews of Convince and Convert,
Virtual conferences are the most underrated marketing tactic at our fingertips.
Many success stories keep pouring in from bloggers building their lists and income through virtual summits. For one, Aj Amyx earned $16,000 (and 2,300+ subscribers) with a virtual summit.
There are bloggers and digital marketers making a six-figure income from virtual summits. You may be wondering whether a virtual summit is the same thing as podcasting. Well, here’s a clear description from Entrepreneur:
When Jan Koch launched his first virtual summit, he grew his email list by 600 percent, got featured on major industry websites, and become the go-to expert in his field.
To truly succeed at a virtual summit launch, you need to make it a win/win for the experts who will share their knowledge.
Choose a topic that will inspire people to action, and make sure you have a product to sell at the backend.
How to Montetize a Blog: Frequently Asked Questions
What are some ways to earn blog revenue?
Offer coaching services, on-demand products, and use the blog to build relationships and networking.
How can I convert users better?
Easier navigation, simple-to-navigate design, and clear copy that creates compelling results.
If I don't want to offer products and coaching, how else can I earn money?
Advertising and sponsored posts are always a good way to earn money if you are popular in your niche.
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How to Monetize a Blog Conclusion
At the heart of blogging is a deep-seated desire to build and nurture an audience.
Most beginning bloggers struggle to make a living from their blogging efforts, because they believed that blogging alone was enough to make them money.
The majority of successful bloggers make the bulk of their money by selling and promoting other products or services.
For example, Darren Rowse makes more money from his Digital Photography School, and Ryan Deiss generates over six-figure income annually from SurvivalLife. There are countless success stories in this regard.
In a nutshell, if you can’t compete with other players in your industry, you may want to switch to other industries where you can become an expert, then get to work building links, get organic traffic, and promoting products and services to your blog readers.
That said, you have to be consistent. Success doesn’t happen overnight.
Which of these methods do you think is the best way to make money as a blogger when your blog generates fewer than 1,000 visitors per day?
What comes to mind when you think of negotiation tactics?
People in suits closing business deals?
Bargaining with a seller in a market?
Convincing your landlord to lower the rent?
How about all of these?
Negotiation Tactics Play a Key Role in Life
It’s tempting to think of negotiation only in terms of price, but the term represents many possibilities beyond money.
For example, if you’re struggling to negotiate your desired salary, you can negotiate the job benefits, the scope of work required, hours, or remote-work options.
In other areas of life, you can negotiate a better package with your regular service providers, you can negotiate better deals when shopping and you can even improve your relationships and expectations through effective negotiation.
What about business? Can negotiation tactics help you grow your business?
Research over the past few years says yes.
Whether you are an established CEO conducting high-profile meetings or a small independent seller collaborating with other business owners in your community, negotiation can significantly impact the rate of your growth.
Why Are Negotiation Tactics Important in Business?
Most business decisions can be improved by learning powerful negotiation tactics. Here’s a few reasons why learning to negotiate is important for growing your business.
Improve Operations: Negotiation can help you find the right compensation package for your employees, get discounts from your manufacturers, have a successful fundraising round, and help you scale your business faster.
Succession/Exit Plan: If you plan on selling your company eventually, negotiation can also help you find the right buyer at a great price.
Improve Revenue: Done right, negotiation can help reduce business costs and increase profits. For example, negotiating better deals with suppliers or lower costs for rent.
Business Relations: Negotiation can help you strike mutually beneficial deals that are not only profitable but also build positive long-term relationships.
Life Satisfaction: You can also use negotiation in other areas of life like building healthy relationships or getting good deals on products and services. This will promote life satisfaction, creating an optimal mindset for success in your working life.
8 Negotiation Tactics to Become a Better Negotiator
Negotiation can offer great benefits, but it can also be challenging to enter a negotiation without effective negotiation tactics.
This practice of being present in a conversation and listening carefully is called active listening. It helps people feel heard and understood. This can help build a good rapport, which can turn into a good deal.
Here’s a helpful graphic that dives deeper into how you can practice active listening.
2. Use the Framing Method
Perception can have an interesting effect on how we see the world. Take, for example, the following image. It is often used to highlight how perceptions differ.
Do you see an old woman? Or a young one?
We interpret information differently depending on how it is presented to us. It’s a cognitive bias called the framing effect. You can use this knowledge to improve your negotiations.
You can see that “80% fat-free” sounds more appealing than “contains 20% fat,” even though it’s the same quantity.
This principle can easily be used as a negotiation tactic. To do this, frame your negotiations as a win-win opportunity.
For example, let’s say you want to make a deal for $30,000 but your client is set on $25,000. Now, instead of going back and forth over the price, try reframing what you have to offer.
Can you highlight the potential savings your client can enjoy by using your product? Can you address the risk of not using your services?
Ask yourself “How can I frame this solution so we both win?”
Keep in mind that you are not necessarily changing the end result. You are simply changing the way you frame the conversation.
3. Prepare for Compromise
Sometimes you can have the best negotiation tactics in your toolkit and still have to compromise. Many times, you will have to give something up to reach a mutual agreement.
This isn’t always a bad thing.
All relationships require some level of compromise.
You can’t entirely prevent it but you can prepare for it.
To plan for what you can and can’t compromise, ask yourself, “What am I willing to give up for this opportunity/deal/product/relationship?”
Focus on what really matters, and don’t let minor details derail an otherwise good deal.
4. Rank Your Priorities
Another important part of planning your negotiation tactics is ranking your priorities.
There are things you absolutely need to have in order to enter a profitable agreement. Then, some things may be “good-to-have,” but aren’t a necessity.
Rank these so your priorities are clear to you.
If you must compromise on something, you need to decide what you can give up. This is where priority lists can help.
For example, building a good relationship with a client may be more important for you right now than making a big sale. In this situation, you can compromise on the price and earn the trust and goodwill of the other party.
5. Make the First Offer
You might have heard the adage “never show your cards.”
Many people believe you shouldn’t make the first offer and let the person in front “reveal” their number first.
This doesn’t work so well in real-life negotiations.
In fact, I’ve found, when it comes to negotiations, you should always be the first to say a number.
Why?
Remember, the starting number sets the tone for the rest of the negotiation. Being the first to state a number puts you in control of the negotiation process.
Even if your number is extremely high or extremely low, now you can steer the negotiation conversation in the direction of your choice.
If your first number is very high, you have biased the negotiations to skew higher.
In most cases, this absurdly high number will be disregarded, but you are already angling for a higher price than if you came in much lower at a “reasonable” price.
In some negotiations, the problem and the solution might be obvious. For example, when you negotiate a salary, both parties know you’re asking for more money in exchange for continuing to offer your services to the company.
Sometimes the real issues aren’t as obvious.
Let’s say you’ve lost interest in your current job, and need some free time to invest in a side hustle. You go to your boss and try negotiating more PTO or similar benefits.
You haven’t communicated your true needs, so your boss may not understand what you’re looking for. Maybe they’ll offer you a raise. They think they’re doing the right thing, but both of you are stuck in an awkward situation because you couldn’t communicate your actual issue.
This often happens in negotiations. People negotiate for money when they really want more time, freedom, consistency, flexibility, or even another employee for support with the expected workload.
If the goal of a good negotiation process is to solve the problem, then communicating the real problem becomes a key aspect of negotiation tactics.
To succeed at negotiating, you need to understand what solution or outcome you’re seeking. This means you need to communicate the real problem—not just the most apparent one.
The Five Whys is a simple technique that will ensure you are addressing the root cause.
This graphic from Olivier Serrat will help you understand how to use it:
7. Offer a Win-Win Situation
As we discussed earlier, framing your negotiation as a win-win situation can help you become a powerful negotiator.
Here’s why a win-win situation matters.
It helps both parties feel comfortable about the deal.
It focuses on problem-solving, getting to the heart of the problem.
It eliminates the winner-loser power dynamic.
It opens up the possibility for working together again.
When we frame negotiations as a win-or-lose proposition, we automatically start with the assumption that someone has to lose.
(Hint: No one likes to lose.)
When you enter negotiations with a win-or-lose mindset, your goal is to convince the other party to accept defeat.
Instead, a powerful negotiator frames the negotiations as a win-win opportunity, so everyone is satisfied with the deal.
8. Be Willing to Walk Away
If you’ve framed the negotiation as a win-win opportunity, tried your best to compromise, discussed the underlying problems, and still failed to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, it may be time to walk away.
Many people are scared of having to walk away from a negotiation. This makes them more likely to take a bad deal rather than have no deal at all.
This is a counterproductive approach.
Being prepared to walk away will give you an advantage. It may not be what you hoped for when you entered the negotiation, but sometimes it’s better to say no than sign a bad contract.
If you’re comfortable walking away from the deal, you can use it as leverage. By having other options, you’re already in a stronger position—and now you’ve got a new level of experience to bring to your next round of negotiations with someone else.
Frequently Asked Questions About Negotiation Tactics
What should you not say in a negotiation?
Don’t say things like “let’s make this quick,” or “what about my profit?” This can make the person in front feel like you care more about your personal gains than the relationship you share.
What’s the most important negotiation skill?
Active listening can be an important negotiation skill as it helps you truly understand what the other person has to say. This helps you make better, more empathetic offers that are more likely to be accepted.
Is negotiation manipulative?
Many people believe negotiation tactics are manipulative and unethical, but that’s not true. As long as you’re respectful of the other person’s needs and committed to offering a fair deal, negotiation is perfectly ethical.
Can I negotiate as a beginner?
Negotiation is a skill anyone can practice. Even if you’ve never negotiated in your life, working with a simple negotiation technique can help you increase your confidence and improve your ability over time.
Negotiation Tactics Conclusion
Negotiation tactics sound intimidating. Like they’re reserved for high-profile business people in suits.
That’s not true.
Anyone can negotiate almost any area of their life for better outcomes. From yearly raises to monthly rent, there’s scope for using these negotiation strategies everywhere.
Each of the negotiating tactics we discussed today is powerful alone, but together, their impact can be incredibly effective.
Since Instagram’s creation, it has grown into the ultimate platform for sharing photos. Over 1.16 billion monthly users are active on the site. Daily users spend about 8 minutes on the app and 500 million use Stories daily. There’s also a large number of influencers on the site with a massive amount of followers. And …
Since Instagram’s creation, it has grown into the ultimate platform for sharing photos.
Over 1.16 billion monthly users are active on the site. Daily users spend about 8 minutes on the app and 500 million use Stories daily.
There’s also a large number of influencers on the site with a massive amount of followers. And with the right plan, you can become an influential brand, too.
You need to post the right kind of content to stay relevant to current followers while also bringing in new ones.
But it can be hard to know which kinds of posts work best for growing your audience.
Here are ten powerful Instagram marketing tips (that actually work) that you can use to milk the popular platform for all that it’s worth.
1. Switch to a Business Profile ASAP
Before you start thinking about your Instagram marketing plan, be sure that you have an Instagram Business Account.
Just head to your settings and click on “Switch to Business Profile” to get started.
There are some clear benefits to having a business profile.
For example, followers can click on your contact button to get in touch with you right from your Instagram page just like they would from your website.
A business profile allows you to create and publish Instagram ads without needing to use Facebook’s advertising tools.
You can also access Instagram analytics tools, called Insights, that provide stats about the impressions and reach of your posts.
Once you’ve unlocked the free perks that come along with a business profile, you need to start using them to track metrics and understand your audience.
2. Use Free Instagram Tools
Business profiles on Instagram aren’t all that different from Facebook business profiles.
Through Insights, you can view statistics like impressions, engagement data, and more.
Insights aren’t just generalized, either. You can get specific insights on posts for the week that show you how many impressions you earned for that time period and what your top posts were.
These free tools are priceless because you can use them to understand exactly how users are interacting with your content.
The more that you know about how users are interacting with your posts, the better you can adjust your content to boost engagement.
One category of posts that is almost always attention-grabbing is product teasers.
3. Post Product Teasers That Will (Gently) Urge People to Buy
What if you could sell more products just by posting product teasers on Instagram?
Well, you can.
Instagram is a great place to advertise your products. And if you play your cards right, you won’t annoy users or scare them off with advertisements, either.
If you’re too pushy, followers will drop like flies. But product teaser posts are a simple way to talk about your product and increase excitement without looking like you’re trying too hard.
Here are two posts from Gilt Man’s Instagram page that don’t directly try to sell a product, but offer a free app where users can shop all of the brand’s inventory.
The brand offers a 70% off discount while showing you photos of some of the items that are available to purchase.
And the posts received thousands of likes each, which is huge in the advertising world.
The ads work because they aren’t pushy. They’re laid back. They tease users with the discount and product image to download the app and shop around.
This works for almost any industry. Starbucks teases its audience by announcing seasonal drinks with sharp imagery and without trying to force people to buy them.
When you tease people about products they are interested in, and you don’t push them into buying anything, they’ll be more likely to pull the trigger and actually buy something.
If not, they’ll at least engage with your post by liking it, commenting on it, or sharing it with a friend.
So don’t be afraid to show off the goods by posting product photos. Just do it gently.
This gives brands the ability to target their audience in a whole new way. Before sponsored posts, only users following your account could see your updates and photos.
For sponsored ads, use content that is engaging while also appealing to the target demographic you want to put the ad in front of.
You can turn existing posts into sponsored ads, too, so keep an eye on your top posts.
You can push these high-performing posts out later to potential customers in the form of sponsored ads.
Run multiple posts to different audiences simultaneously for even more engagement. Keep in mind that there are many different forms of sponsored ads that you can post, such as:
Photo
Video
Carousel/Dynamic Ads
Stories
Stories Canvas
Instagram Stories, sponsored or not, are another great way to connect with followers.
Once a user clicks on your photo at the top, a window will pop up where they can view your Story.
The benefits of Instagram Stories for brands are truly endless. For starters, Stories are displayed at the top of follower timelines where users already look daily.
Brands can use stories to capture behind-the-scenes insider posts that may not be as “high-quality” as regular posts.
And you don’t have to worry as much about posting content that aligns with the “aesthetic” of your brand or your Instagram page when it comes to Stories.
Instagram also makes it easy to experiment with different types of content in the Stories feature, like photos, short video, rewind video, live video, or Boomerangs. You can use tools like Canva and InVideo to create amazing images and videos for your stories.
If you haven’t partnered with influencers who are already making a killing on Instagram, find a few that you want to work with and reach out to them.
6. Partner With Influencers For a Wider Reach
If you want to reach potential customers on Instagram, the fastest way to do that is through influencers who have already built an audience with a large following.
More and more people are buying services or products based on what they see in their feed from the influential people they follow. They trust them.
The first step is to try and identify a few influencers that have an audience that is relevant to your product or service.
Here’s an example of how Gravity Blankets used influencer Jessi Smiles to promote their product on her Instagram page.
The post has thousands of likes.
The brand sells weighted blankets for sleep and stress. Their Instagram page has over 77k followers.
But Jessi’s page has over 400,000 followers that will likely trust her recommendations.
That means that the brand just exposed itself to thousands of potential customers (and new followers) through one post.
If you throw aside the short-term gains and direct sales that you can make from an influencer campaign, there are even more long term-benefits.
If you build a relationship with each influencer, you’ll build lasting brand awareness with a new audience.
And if you play your cards right, you could even work with a top influencer in the future to gain millions of likes, like Coca-Cola did with this post from Selena Gomez.
Your existing customers might not be influencers, but you can still use their posts to influence people to buy your products by collecting user-submitted photos.
7. Collect user-submitted photos
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to create great content for your Instagram page without doing any of the hard work?
Through user-submitted photos, there is.
You already have an engaged audience. Whether it’s hundreds of people or thousands, you can leverage your audience to generate useful content for you.
And your followers will probably enjoy user-generated content even more than they enjoy yours because it’s authentic and unpredictable.
Cosmetics brand MAC uses tons of user-generated content that they promote on their Instagram page to show off products.
Here’s a photo one of their users posted that they then added to their Instagram page. Notice how they used the hashtag #regram and tagged the user in the image.
You might be wondering exactly how you can get your users to create engaging content without being pushy.
It’s actually fairly simple. Your audience probably wants to grow their own following, just like you do.
Just let them know that you’ll tag them in your post if you choose their photo to regram, then they’ll have an incentive to post user-generated content on a consistent basis.
Choose images that successfully mimic your brand’s tone, like this one.
That being said, try not to be too biased about the content you want to post. Mix it up and watch your follower count and engagement grow.
It also helps to come up with some kind of branded hashtag that encourages Instagram users to be more interactive with your company.
8. Come Up With an Interactive Branded Hashtag
If you’re looking to create instant engagement, interactive hashtags are a great way to get it.
Red Bull has racked up over 299,612 posts featuring their tag, #itgivesyouwings.
Customers can then use the tag to post user-generated content. This allows users to search through all posts relating to your brand.
It also lets you easily search through images that you might want to consider re-posting on your own page.
Creating a hashtag that your company (and other users) can search for is essentially free advertising.
Every time someone posts a photo using the tag, they’re exposing your company to their followers.
If you already have a popular brand slogan or phrase, consider making that your branded hashtag. Coca-Cola successfully accomplished this with their hashtag, #ShareACoke.
But no matter what you’re posting, you need to post at the right times and refrain from over-posting.
9. Post at The Right Times (and Don’t Over-Post)
Over-posting on Instagram is a surefire way to turn off your existing followers.
If all they see is your brand on their news feed, they’re probably going to unfollow you as fast as possible.
But you want to post on a consistent basis so that you stay in their news feed regularly.
One of the best ways to do this is to only post during peak days and hours when your followers are online.
According to SimplyMeasured, the worst days to post on Instagram are Wednesdays and Sundays, while Mondays and Thursdays are the best days to post.
And according to research from CoSchedule, the best times of day to post are between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM, as well as 2:00 AM.
The hour between of 8:00 and 9:00 AM correlates with the time of day when people are getting ready for work or commuting to their jobs (and checking social media for the day).
And 2:00 AM is the time of day when most folks are up scrolling through Instagram when they should be sleeping, so this makes sense as a second most popular time to post.
That way, you won’t overwhelm your followers’ feeds.
After you’ve made these changes, track your metrics to keep an eye on areas where you can improve.
10. Make Sure You Track The Right Metrics
You can’t improve your Instagram performance and optimize it unless you know how well your page and posts are performing (or underperforming).
When you have measurable results, you’ll know exactly what works and what doesn’t.
Begin by tracking your follower growth rate.
The total amount of followers you have is commonly seen as a vanity metric. And it is.
But your follower growth rate isn’t.
When you keep an eye on what the growth rate of your followers looks like, you can see how the kind of content your posting (or your posting frequency) is affecting things.
Next, measure engagement rates. This includes likes and comments.
You want to find out the average engagement percentage of your total followers as well as the average engagement rate of each post to get a clear picture of how your page is performing.
The more effective your Instagram marketing techniques on your audience, the higher your CTR will be. If it’s low, work on improving your approach.
A tool like Sprout Social will measure just how many clicks that your link is getting in comparison to impressions and engagements.
Conclusion
Instagram has dominated the social media world. It’s the go-to place for image sharing, with over 800 million monthly users.
Billions of likes are handed out each day, so you need to do your part to scoop some of them up.
First, switch your profile to an Instagram Business Profile if you haven’t already. This will give you tons of free tools and insights.
Next, start taking advantage of those free tools. Check out your audience’s demographics, like their age or top locations.
Post product teasers to urge people to buy your products or services without being overly pushy. They’ll be more likely to buy if they don’t feel pressured.
Turn your posts into sponsored ads to reach target audiences that may not be following you yet. One post might just have them hooked.
Use Instagram Stories to post behind-the-scenes photos or videos. Followers will appreciate the insider posts, which builds your relationship with customers.
Partner with influencers that have a wide reach in your industry. Their followers trust their recommendations.
Be sure to leverage the power of user-generated content by reposting images that your customers share. You can turn this into a contest with an interactive branded hashtag.
Choose a photo to share every week or every month that aligns with your brand’s message.
Post at the right times and avoid overposting. Post one to two times every day and check out when your followers are most active. Schedule posts to go live during those days and times.
Finally, be sure that you track the right metrics to see how your Instagram marketing efforts are paying off.
Keep an eye on follower growth rate, engagement rate, and your URL click-through rate.
What Instagram marketing techniques work best for you and your brand?
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