While you’re working from home, set up Calendly to allow your prospects to schedule an online call with you at any time. This easy step will supercharge your marketing.
An appointment scheduler allows prospects to schedule a call with you at any time. Instead of having to go back and forth with you via email to set something up, they can instantly look at your availability and choose a time slot that works for them.
There are dozens of appointment schedulers out there, but our personal favorite is Calendly. It’s free, easy to use, and looks professional. Plus, Calendly syncs to your calendar, so it automatically knows if you have a dentist appointment, a meeting, or any other scheduling conflicts.
Watch the following video to learn how to set up your Calendly account and configure it for your website.
Or, follow these steps:
- Go to the Calendly website, enter your email address, and click Sign Up.
- Log in with Google and follow the prompts to finish creating your account.
- Create a URL that has your name or your firm’s name in it.
- Now it’s time to configure your Calendly account. You can customize one of the default event types or you can create your own. To create a new event type, click the Event Types tab at the top of the page.
- Click + New Event Type, go to the One-on-One section, and click Create.
- Give your event a name (such as Get Started Now), and click Next.
- Customize your event by changing your time zone, your availability, the duration (I usually go with 15-minute introductory meetings), and how far in advance someone can schedule an appointment (I usually do 24 hours).
- By default, Calendly requires each person to enter their full name and email address when they schedule an appointment. But you also need to know their phone number. To add a required line for phone number, go to the Invitee Questions section.
- Click the + Add A New Question button, and enter Phone Number into the Question field.
- Check the Required box, and click Apply.
- Next, you’ll want to personalize your notifications. To do this, click on the Invitee Notifications section and turn on Email Reminders.
- Click the View live page button to make sure everything looks good.
That’s all you need to do to set up Calendly. If you want to customize your account even further (which I recommend doing), I have some favorite tips and tricks. Go ahead and click on the Advanced tab under the When can people book this event? section. Then follow these steps:
- Don’t want to have back-to-back calls? Go to the Availability Increments section and use the drop-down menu to choose how often you want your availability to show.
For example, if your prospects are scheduling 15-minute meetings, you could change your availability increment to 30 minutes. That way someone can only schedule a call with you every half hour (and you have a 15-minute buffer in case a phone call runs over).
- Next up is the Event Max Per Day section. This lets you limit the number of calls that can be scheduled in a day. So, if you only want to have a maximum of four introductory calls a day, you could set that limit in this section. Then, once four calls are booked, that day becomes unavailable on your calendar.
- The last tip can be found in the Minimum Scheduling Notice section. As it sounds, this section lets you limit how soon someone can schedule a call with you. By default, this is set to 4 hours, which means someone could potentially schedule a call the same day. I always change this to 24 hours so I don’t have an appointment sneak up on me. But you can adjust it depending on your needs.
Once your advanced settings are how you like, don’t forget to hit Save & Close.
If you’re stuck at home due to COVID-19, it’s the perfect time to invest in your marketing so you come out of this crisis poised for more success than ever. Take this step today and let us know if you get stuck, we’re happy to help.
Stay tuned for our next post where we’ll discuss another step to supercharge your marketing from home!
(If you missed our previous tip, read “How To Create A Professional Email Signature Using HubSpot’s Free Generator” here.)
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