Ultimate Guide To Marketing Calculators

This Guide Will Cover: Why Calculators Work

 Is A Calculator Right For My Business?

 Types of Calculators

 How To Put A Calculator To Work For Your Business

 Getting More Out Of Your Calculator With An Ad Campaign

Why Calculators Work

Calculators

Empoweryoursalesteamtomovebeyondastandardizedpitchtopresen5ngactualsolu5onsforyourcustomer’sspecific

setofneeds.

Helpyourcustomersbe;erunderstandtheirneeds,sotheycanbe;erunderstandwhyyoursolu5onis

thebestsolu5onforthem.

Calculators Create Content Your

Customers Value: Hard Data In A Simple

Format

You Can Use This Content To Lure In Visitors And Entice Them To Share Their Contact Info

Pair That Contact Info With The Data Collected By The

Calculator To Create A Warm Lead For Your

Sales Team

Your Sales Team Can Now Pursue Your Potential Customer

With A Customized Plan Instead Of A One-Size-

Fits-All Sales Pitch

Let’s Look At An Example

Loan Repayment CalculatorThe Customer’s Challenges While it might seem obvious that a 1M loan will take longer to pay back than a 100K loan many customers don’t have a concrete idea of:  What the payback period looks like for either loan

 What the difference in minimum monthly fees will be

Figuring out information about loans can be frustrating and confusing for customers. And confused, frustrated customers rarely become new business.

The Bank’s Challenges They can’t tell from a customer’s email address alone whether that person is a good candidate for a loan. The marketing team can keep the sales team from wasting time – and money – chasing down bad leads by providing them with more information about the customer.

Industry: Banking Product: Loans

The Solution: A loan Repayment CalculatorThe Customer’s Benefits -  Self-educate on the terms of their potential loan -  Identify if a loan is right for them, in a pressure-

free space without being sold to by a sales rep -  Requires minimal time investment The Bank’s Benefits   Can present business website as a useful

resource for the customer   Can gather data about their customers’ needs   Can identify if the lead is a potential customer:

  Worth pursuing for a loan   Is better suited for a different solution by

the bank   Should be disregarded

A simple loan repayment calculator on a bank’s website can make numbers and jargon less intimidating for the customer and provide more substantial leads for the sales team. Web-based marketing calculators are right for bank loans, but are they right for your business’ product?

Is a Calculator Right for My Business?

To generate valuable information for your customer, calculators create a simple formula using your customer’s data and info about your service or product:

You can think of the customer’s data as the variable because it will vary by customer.

How canyou find out if your product or service is constant? By answering 2 questions:

  Is it measurable?   Can it be standardized?

Variable                Customer’s Data +

=

Constant                Your Service or Product

Result                Customer

Benefit

.

Let’s Look At 2 Examples

Business: Website DevelopmentInteractive Tool: ROI Calculator

No, a calculator would not be an effective interactive marketing tool for your business.

Business: Payment Processing Software Interactive Tool: ROI Calculator

Yes, a web-based calculator would be a simple, effective, interactive marketing tool that can help grow your business.

Is your business standardized?

Is it measurable?

No

No

Yes

Yes

Your services vary drastically by customer. Because processing payments is a standardized, transactions-based business.

The success or failure of your customer’s business may have very little to do with their website.

When the answers to these questions are “no,” you end up with a formula with too many

variables and not enough constants:

You can easily measure: •  How much time your software will save your

customer vs. your competitor

•  How much money your software will save your customer vs. your competitor

•  How much revenue your business can gain from your customer

Variable                Customer’s

website needs

+

Variable                service you will need to provide

& cost = /

Result               

Customer’s ROI

Variable                Time to process

payments for customer

Constant                cost of your

software

Result                Customer’s

savings +

=

Types of Calculators

There Are 4 Main Types Of Calculators

ROI Calculator Savings

CalculatorRevenue-Gained

Calculator

FinancialCalculator

Example #1: Hubspot ROI Calculator

HubSpot ROI CalculatorImagine you’re a potential HubSpot customer. How powerful would this data be for you? It’d be easy for you to see what you stand to gain financially. Hubspot has given you this valuable information and, at the same time, collected valuable information about your business for their sales team. Everyone wins.

Example #2: Cost-Savings Calculator

Failed financial transactions might feel like a small loss to a customer. The Recurly Recovered Revenue Calculator reveals the true magnitude of the loss and offers a solution that more than pays for itself. The Recurly interactive calculator provides value by:   Showing their customer how much revenue they’re losing   Showing their customer how much revenue Recurly can recover   Showing their customer how Recurly can pay for itself

Recurly Recovered Revenue Calculator

Example #3: Google Solar Panel ROI Calculator

Google Project Sunroof Calculator1.  Google asks users for their address. In return,

Google estimates how many hours of usable sunlight their roof is exposed to annually and about how many solar panels can fit on their roof.   Google also offers up a button users can click to get in touch with a solar panel provider in their area.

2.  Google asks users for their average electricity bill. In exchange for this info, Google gives them an idea of what size solar installation they need and walks them through how to finance their solar panels.

The calculator also breaks down what an end user’s loan might look like and the type of ROI they can expect.

The call to action at the bottom of the page asks for the user’s contact info, so solar panel providers can connect with them.

At no point in the process is Google’s visitor left to wonder why they’re being asked to turn over their information. Any good calculator – or strong interactive marketing tool for that matter – makes its value immediately apparent to the end user.

Example #4: SalesForce ROI Calculator

Salesforce

3-Step ROI Calculator

2

1

3

Now that the customer is likely interested in learning more,

Salesforce offers to send the customer a more detailed report.

And it is at this point, the customer is asked for their contact

information.

Withholding content in exchange for information is called “gating.”

>Learn more about gating.

How to Put A Calculator To Work For Your Business

After you choose the right web-based calculator to meet your business needs and your customer’s needs, you’ll need to design your calculator by deciding:

What contact information do you want to collect from the customer?

What types of questions do you need to ask to provide your customer with quality content?

What should your calculator look like?

To complete your calculator, you’ll also need a basic understanding of inputs, outputs, and Excel sheets

1 2 3 4

Next, choose a partner like ContentTools to create your interactive calculator. You can either embed your calculator directly on a page of your website as widget or your calculator can be setup as a microsite.

How To Embed A Calculator On Your Website

The Scoop.it Content

Marketing Grader is an example of a calculator that has

been embedded on a website.

The calculator lives on the page the same way an image or a picture lives on a webpage. The only difference is that the calculator is interactive content. This is made possible by a simple JavaScript embed code. You might even be familiar with this type of code:

Javascript embed codes are popular because they make it easy to drop changes into the code of your website without having to be fluent in coding. You can add your calculator to your homepage and any of your landing pages.

Microsites For Calculators

Calculators that span multiple pages of a business’ website are called microsites.

Often, a microsite will have a somewhat different look and feel than the rest of the

pages on your website. Check out the difference in design between Exxon

Mobile’s homepage and their energy quiz.

This style of calculator requires more than

an embed code, ContentTools can walk you through the details during

your consultation.

Integrate Your Leads And Prospect Data Into Your CRMContentTools can integrate user responses with your CRM. All the info users put into your calculator will feed into your CRM seamlessly. The same way it would if you’d created this tool internally.

A few of the popular CRMs supported by ContentTools are: • Marketo • Hubspot • Pardot

Getting More Out of Your Calculator With

An Ad Campaign

Don’t Forget About Distribution!Interactive content can only work if your users know about it. A calculator without an ad campaign to drive traffic to it won’t bring in very many leads. You can launch your new calculator with an internal-supported ad campaign or our parent company, PowerUp Labs, can create an ad campaign for you.

Let’s Get Started!

Get started with interactive content today. Schedule your consultation  with ContentTools.

https://contenttools.co/