Rnordman

One of my favorite things in grade school was that whole "gold star" system. Remember it? You do something well in the classroom and you get a shiny gold star next to your name on a chart of your whole classmates. So, at any given time, you can look around and see how you're stacking up against the rest of the class. 

But once you get out of that grade-school classroom, the gold-star system often goes away. You can't see how you stack up against your competitors and peers because you don't have access to their data. 

That's why benchmark studies, like one recently released by Content Marketing Institute, Marketing Profs, and Brightcove about the current state of content marketing, are just so darn awesome.

Take a look at the latest trends to find out if your company deserves a gold star or not. Trust me -- it'll be just as exciting as the time you got a gold star in the fourth grade.

How does your company stack up? Do any of these trends surprise you?

Image credit: takingthemoney

How can content marketing provide the sales team with the most legitimate leads while sharing specific interests and providing more information throughout the sales cycle?

Keep on reading: Why Content Marketing is Changing the Way Your Sales Team Pursues Leads

Mark Haller Partner, Strategy PricewaterhouseCoopers

Asking Mark Haller if “the customer comes first” is like asking him if you need air to breathe!

And when you’re consistently named one of the “World's Leading IP Strategists” by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) magazine, people listen and take note. 

 Mark asks the question:

Is customer centricity a game changer, or a passing fad? 
Contempating customer centricity is not an easy task. 

3 Questions to Consider:

• Why is customer centricity absolutely necessary?
• What are the attributes/capabilities of the new customer centric organization?
• What new capabilities are essential for pricing to support, engage, or motivate and how

Should pricing operate in the customer centric organization?

To learn about customer centricity, Mark Haller, a sought-after speaker and author of a number of published works, be will sharing his breadth of knowledge on October 24th at the PPS Conference in Atlanta. www.pricingsociety.com/atl2013 

Online sales are still growing in the UK — but sales from desktop computers are not

Rather, tablets and smartphones are responsible for the 15% increase in online sales UK retailers saw in the first half of the year, according to data from Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) and Capgemini (via eMarketer). Tablets — which account for most (85%) of mobile sales — grew 130%, while smartphone sales jumped 210% year-over-year.

According to IMRG and Capgemini's estimates, tablets and smartphones now account for nearly a quarter (23.2%) of total online sales in the UK.

SEE ALSO: Mobile to Account for 25% of U.S. Online Sales by 2017 Read more...

More about Uk, Retail, Ecommerce, Business, and Marketing

B2B marketers' confidence in content marketing continues to grow; content marketing usage rates are up from last year; and, not surprisingly, marketers with a documented content strategy are having the greatest success, according to just-released research. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

"Webinars and white papers sent to our nurture lists draw prospects' interest, and open the door for our Sales reps." -Marketer insight on most effective lead generation tactics You probably know you should have a robust lead nurturing track for prospects below a certain lead score. You also know you should floss every day and eat organic vegetables instead of processed foods. The question is: do you? To encourage you to invest your time and budget in lead nurturing, we'll look at the ROI difference between organizations engaging in this tactic, and those that don't.

Twitter is at a crossroads.

It’s in the process of becoming a public company which will inevitably affect how they monetize, where they monetize, and perhaps even influence the type of content they are willing to allow on the site.  A bastion for free speech, how will Twitter react when Wall Street pushes back on controversial content?

As little Twitter has grown up it is now squarely in the gunsights of Facebook, which can only survive and thrive by increasing its “marketshare” of our personal information. Twitter is experiencing a youth movement, driven in part by the fact that mother (and even grandmother) is on Facebook now, directly threatening a core Facebook audience.

Twitter is also in the middle of placing a bold bet on becoming the go-to “second screen” for television viewing.

Twitter has changed my life so these are vitally interesting topics for me and many in the marketing field … and an awesome topic for our next Marketing Companion podcast.

And if these topics are not reason enough to tune in, you should listen to this episode just to hear Tom Webster state that he no longer has to suck on the teet of social media. It’s a fun and lively debate which also covers:

• Why Twitter may be a better investment than Facebook
• Facebook’s pre-IPO sneak attack
• The critical importance of owning the “second screen”
• Why a Twitter-Nielsen partnership is dynamite
• Twitter as a shelter for cowards and how dimwits define the conversation
• The IPO’s possible impact on Twitter and free speech?
• Why Twitter needs celebrities to fuel the youth movement
• The three unique value propositions of Twitter
• The new monetization models for Twitter — “reach” versus “targeting”

At this point you are probably experiencing a Pavlovian-type response and are reaching for the “play” button. Well, here it is:

Other Ways to Listen to this Podcast:

• Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe in iTunes
• Click here for the show’s RSS feed – for Android listeners.

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

Christopher S. Penn

Venture Capitalist John Frankel of ff Venture Capital

The Book The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time

The post The Future of Twitter appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

You’re coming into the end of the year.

You’re short on where you want to be and you sense you need to do something drastic to make the number.

One way to make it is by offering a few customers a discount to get them to either buy for the first time, buy more, or move a purchase up from next year.  These all sound like options you should explore.  Before you do anything, though, let me share some thoughts.

Offering a discount to bump your year-end sales can create as many problems as it solves.

Customers who sense a discount might be coming are naturally going to put off buying until they feel they have received the best discount possible.  Challenge to this is the well is polluted. This is a major problem if you or your company have used discounts in past years to help close out a year.   This is why I advocate that you NOT do it, as tempting as it might be.

Once you start discounting at year-end, it will become a habit that is incredibly difficult to break.

Using a discount as a way to accelerate a purchase only serves to move volume, but does so at a steep cost.  Cost is, of course, lost profit. More important, the volume that gets pulled out of the next year needs to be replaced.  This means you wind up starting the year in a deficit with regard to volume.

Unless you’re confident you can make up the volume you’ve moved forward, the only thing you’ve done is create another problem that you will need to deal with.

First, if you must offer a discount to make the year-end number, offer the discount to a customer or group of customers in a separate channel from where you normally operate.   Only do this if you are 100% sure the discount will generate volume you would not have had this year.

Second, only do this if you are 100% certain the customers who are being offered the discounted price have zero potential to come back and buy more.

Third, the channel in which you wind up discounting the volume must be one where the volume will be consumed and there is zero risk of it floating back to your regular channel.

This strategy of using a different channel to discount volume is one I recommend cautiously and should only be done as an absolute last resort.

Suffice to say, you can’t take year-end price discounts lightly!  They bring with them challenges you possibly haven’t considered.

Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.

Hey, remember that groundbreaking, cool feature Facebook announced back in January? It was called Graph Search. It supposedly was going to change the way people used the platform ... but it wasn't really available to be used quite yet. Then in July, Facebook announced it was going to roll out to all U.S. users -- again, it was exciting, but Graph Search didn't have great data points that I as a marketer would love to use. All in all, pretty meh-worthy announcements. 

... That is, until today. Facebook will start including status updates, photos, check-ins, and comments in your graph search. Yep, you heard me right -- pretty soon, you'll have access to data that will actually be useful to your life as a marketer. Previously, you only had access to pages, apps, and groups that included search terms. Now, you can search for terms in posts, updates, check-ins, and comments from your friends and people who post publicly. Here's what the different will look like:

What Graph Search Currently Looks Like Featuring Dancing With the Stars

What Graph Search Will Look Like Featuring Dancing With the Stars

Isn't the second much more useful?

This new feature opens up a slew of opportunities for marketers, such as:

• Monitoring Facebook posts about events they're running. 
• Researching product usage. 
• Identifying content opportunities based on the interest of their most enthusiastic Facebook Fans.
• Tracking brand mentions by influencers.
• And lots and lots of other things!

We're kinda bummed because this new feature won't be available to everyone with Graph Search. First, it'll be tested in a small group of people, and then roll out to everyone after that. But, once it's rolled out, marketers have a huge opportunity to make their content even more relevant to their audience with this data -- which is something we all can get pumped about.

Once you have this Graph Search feature, how will you use it in your marketing? Share your ideas with us in the comments.

Image credit: Ksayer1

It's a brand new month, everyone! It's a time for new beginnings. New campaigns, new landing pages, new blog posts, new emails, and new social media posts are all on the horizon. 

But wait ... aren't we forgetting something? With last month's activities all done, we need to pause for a second to examine what worked and what didn't. And you can't do that just by saying last month's activities were "great" ... "great" doesn't pay the bills.

If you can prove that your marketing activities actually made an impact in your business, you'll have many more opportunities at your disposal. More budget to play with. And more potential hires to bring on board. Sounds like every marketer's dream, right?

So how do you go about first, finding the right metrics to use, and second, proving your marketing's ROI to your boss? Why, with a monthly marketing report template, of course. Download our completely revamped PowerPoint and Excel templates by clicking here, and then keep reading to learn how you can use them in real life.

Which Metrics Should You Track?

First things first -- which metrics should you be paying attention to in the first place? Not all metrics were created equal, and if you're going to capture your boss' attention with this PowerPoint deck, you're going to need to tell your story efficiently through data. Click through the SlideShare below to see what's inside our marketing metrics template and get tips on how you can put together your marketing report deck. 

<slideshare>

How to Create Your Own Marketing Metrics Report

So now you know what metrics you need ... but what about customizing the PowerPoint slides to fit your business? Follow these four steps so you'll have engaging, accurate, and concise slides to show to your boss.

1) Download our monthly marketing reporting templates for Excel and PowerPoint.

Seirously, you haven't downloaded it yet? ;)

2) Open up Excel, and fill in the metrics you want to track.

Equations and graphs will automatically populate based on the metrics you add. 

3) Copy the graphs and paste them into PowerPoint.

4) Customize your graphs and charts to fit your company's theme.

After crunching a bunch of numbers, you probably need a little creative break anyway. Click on individual elements in the graph to customize them. If you really want to get fancy with your presentation, check out these five simple PowerPoint tips.

5) Add relevant examples to back up your graphs.

If you truly want to explain your marketing team's success from the past month, don't forget to include a slide here or there that touches on specific examples. For example, if you have a blog post that drove a crazy number of leads in a month, you could include that example slide with a few bullet-point takeaways after the "Leads Generated by Marketing" slide. These specific examples give color to your presentation and justify time spent on future projects.

And that's it! Easy peasy way to track your team's success. After a few months of this, who knows, you may have an even bigger budget or a brand new marketer on board. 

Last week, everyone freaked out about the new changes. For me, I’ve been more curious how the changes will affect me. What I have learned from the previous Google changes are the following:

• Google will continually change its search algorithm | This won’t be the last change.
• If you play by the rules, you will be fine – Don’t get suckered by some overnight sensational search deal.
• Focus on learning more about integrating social media and search into your own marketing strategy and you stay ahead of future changes.

Why am I not worried about the Google changes (Hummingbird) ? (3 Reasons)

Reason 1 – Already work with a secured company website

If you have a company site and you have people access data or upload persona data, you really should have a secured site. As I found out early in my online marketing career, Google did not particularly like secured sites. (Example: https:// instead of http:// )

It was for this reason, I relied on a blog site that was outside the current company site.

Reason 2 – Bing and Yahoo are gaining more traction.

People are starting to get a bit tired of all the changes Google is implementing with respect to search and are turning to Bing and Yahoo. Yahoo is starting to come in strong in some areas and is beginning to make a name for itself. Bing is gaining steam and could be an interesting player down the road.

Reason 3 – Google Plus and more social media

I have been on Google Plus since day one and have tried to have a presence in some way on Google Plus. Google Plus has helped push some of my content toward page one. It will be interesting to see what effect Google Plus will have on search. Google Authorship has been a game-changer and continues to bring search traffic to my sites. If you are not using Google Authorship with your Google Plus ID, you are simply missing the boat.

Summary

Everyone is looking at ways to maximize social media, online search marketing and overall web traffic. This is true for Google as well as marketers. As long as you know the rules and you understand your own environment, you can find ways that work best for your company.

Right now, a lot of ad companies and markers are pushing different cookie-cutter strategies. Please be aware there isn’t a magic approach or strategy. Each company is different and needs to find ways that work for their own products and services.

One last tip, keep abreast of the changes occurring online and always look for ways to improve your current processes. This really is the key to keeping up with changes like this latest one.

photo credit: mark knol via photopin cc

Every couple of months, it’s normal to feel that your marketing is stagnant. Maybe you want to shake it up a bit! Most small businesses these days use a variety of marketing methods and tools in their plan – social media, referral programs, print advertising, e-mail drip campaigns.

As you’re implementing new marketing tools and platforms, think about how you can shake it up a bit.

1. Go back to the old methods: Maybe you tried something 4 years ago and it didn’t work. Try it again. Business landscapes are constantly changing – as are target audiences, campaign executions, delivery styles. Subtle differences or changes can be the difference between a method working and a method failing. Don’t shoot down ideas just because they didn’t work before! Dig into your box of “failed” marketing methods and see what would be fun to pick out and try again.
2. Work as a team: Get all of your most creative people together on the team. Use “we” language and really work together as a team, not as individuals. When creative ideas start flying in a group, be kind to each other and carefully evaluate each one. Drill down and work on the specifics together. Remember the principle: “All of us are smarter than one of us.” This method is a valuable way to get ideas out there.
3. Let loose a bit: Marketing doesn’t have to be a very rigid science, but it does have to continually improve and evolve. Think outside of the box when it comes to ideas. How can you re-design your referral marketing program to entice more referrals? Does your Facebook page need a re-fresh of some brighter graphics? What kind of guerrilla marketing campaign would get your audience’s attention? Can you host an event that will get your client’s buzzing about you?

Marketing is designed to be fun – so don’t be afraid to try something new, go outside of your comfort zone and see the results roll in!

Working in the world of digital marketing, I read a lot of blogs every day. When I login to my email every morning I find my inbox full of new articles. All sorts of blogs are talking about everything and anything to do with digital marketing and beyond.

One thing I know is that Google+ is still a hot topic.

Those of us who advocate this social platform talk about it as the future of social media and content marketing. We discuss the benefits of using it for business, about claiming authorship markup and publisher markup and how it has a great impact on search rankings and click through rates.

Then there are the sceptics who say it’s boring. Some say it’s a bad version of Facebook. Others say it’s not user friendly and it’s just another tool created by Google in its quest to monopolise all things internet related.

What is Google+ about?

Most people in the digital marketing industry agree that Google+ has become an essential part of social media marketing. But it still surprises me when I speak to people (in my industry) who are still not using Google+, still not sure what it’s all about. Many see it as not being a useful marketing tool for their business.

What is eye opening is when I research things in the digital industry I am presented with a Google SERP (search engine result page) in which only a handful of results have a Google+ cover photo next to it! If we’re in the digital industry, and blogging extensively, aren’t we all supposed to be using Google+ and claiming authorship?

Why Google+ authorship is important

Surely, we all know what Authorship Markup is by now? Could it be that many blog authors dismiss it as not important or not relevant? It’s not exactly a lengthy process to claim authorship, but perhaps many bloggers are not active on Google+? There could be numerous reasons why adoption rates appear low, but to me it’s a no brainer. So why aren’t more bloggers claiming ownership of their content?

If you’re doing it right then you should see the following.

• An increase in search rankings
• Improvement in CTR (click through rate)
• More people with access to your other work

So why wouldn’t you adopt this practice?

Judging from what I’ve read, Google is planning to develop this further and elaborate on author rank, where influential authors appear higher in SERPs, even if their post is published on a lower ranking website. All this seems very exciting. So the earlier we start claiming authorship and using Google+ to establish a reputation, the sooner we will reap the benefits.

The war against spam

It’s not just about rankings and CTR, we’re also talking about waging a war against SPAM and plagiarism by claiming our original content as our own. So, unless you’re a spammer or tend to steal content from all over the web, I really don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be claiming authorship.

I had a gut feeling that authorship markup was still not as widely used as it should be.

The research

I knew I wasn’t the first person to ask this question, so I decided to do a little research and see if I was right. I took a list of some keyword phrases popular amongst the digital marketing industry and typed each one up in Google search.

I made sure I wasn’t logged into any Google account and changed my settings to show 100 results per page. And then I counted, out of those 100 results, how many had a Google+ profile attached to it. It sounds simple, and it is, but it serves the purpose of answering the question.

And here’s what I found:

I started by searching for search marketing related queries such as “tips for improving traffic to your site” or “on site optimisation best practice”. I knew full well that most of the results would lead to blog articles written by “industry experts”. You can clearly see that results varied but the ones at the bottom of the scale were definitely surprising.

• Only 10% of results for “online advertising how to” had claimed authorship.
• 32% of results were for blog articles with a clear author.
• On the other end of the scale “Recovering from a Google penalty” resulted in 46% of results with claimed authorship (which seemed amazing to me).
• 86% of the results shown in the SERP were blog articles so, actually the numbers weren’t that great.

Although the numbers were actually much higher than initially expected, I wasn’t blown away. Actually, the further in I delved the more I started to notice a repetition in the profiles that were showing up. I kept seeing the same profile photos again and again.

Do we really only have a handful of “industry experts” in this field?

More research

Let’s try another area of digital.

When searching for “Google+ marketing strategy”, I discovered the following.

• 42% of results had an author profile which sounds great, but 78% of results were for blog articles. My thoughts on that one are; if you’re writing about Google+ for marketing then I expect you to practice what you preach and claim authorship! In this case, the result was disappointing.
• On the lower end of the scale “examples of successful social media campaigns” generated 25% results with authorship but 71% of results were blog articles. This was much lower than expected.

Even more research

We all know and have heard about how great G+ authorship is for content marketing strategies right? I’m sure all bloggers out there writing about content marketing are claiming authorship.The last search query was my last ditch attempt to try to get some high figures.

If you write an article about “how to add authorship markup” and you haven’t done so yourself… there’s a real problem!

So this is what I found.

• 64% of results showed a G+ picture
• 74% of the results led to a blog

Phew!… Not so bad then.

What does this reveal?

So what do these numbers tell us? A few months ago these figures would have been a lot lower, and I’m sure in a few months they’ll be a lot higher… it’s difficult to form an opinion based on just one study. I’m sure if you search these queries today you’ll get different results but to me they all appear quite low.

I found myself looking at the same profile pictures again and again no matter what I searched for, so although the percentage of total results maybe be average, it’s a lot of the same authors- which perhaps gives us an indication of just how important claiming authorship actually is. Would those results have been in the top 100 so often if they hadn’t claimed authorship?

Authorship has been around since 2011 and I’m noticing that it’s still not a ‘huge’ thing across the industry. Could it be that many authors aren’t using Google+? Or they don’t believe in the power of claiming authorship? Or they don’t see it as a long term solution? I certainly find this aspect of digital marketing fascinating,

I’m looking forward to seeing what Google+ will throw at us next, if it minimises SPAM and plagiarism then I’m all for it!

What are your thoughts?

Have you heard of authorship markup? Have you claimed authorship for your blog yet? I find this a really valuable tool but I’m sure many out there disagree, what are your thoughts and experiences?

Want to learn how to make your blog a success, create awesome content and market it with social media ?

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog.

I also reveal the tactics I used to grow my Twitter followers to over 149,000.

We are all aware that buyer personas are integral to creating a focused and successful content marketing strategy. However, what people don’t often tell you about buyer persona development is that collecting the data to create them is a lot of hard work.

Surveys and interviews seem to be the go-to source for learning about your target audience’s needs, interests, and goals, but they are not the only way to accomplish this goal. Below, are some other options for sourcing the data you need to create detailed, multi-faceted personas that provide insights above and beyond what direct questioning techniques can accomplish on their own.

Google consumer surveys

Google Consumer Surveys have several advantages over other crowdsourcing survey tools when it comes to buyer persona development. To begin with, respondents answer questions in exchange for premium access to specific content. This makes it good not only for data sourcing, but also as an opportunity to get potential leads into your funnel.

GCS offers organized and clean data analysis that is easily segmented into useful categories. The Double-Click cookie tool, combined with an IP address, allows it to infer important demographic and geographic information that adds an additional level of depth to your results. Marketers can use GCS as an added component of their persona development process — namely to understand behaviors, motivations, beliefs, and habits of real people who are representative of the customers you are targeting. Augmenting your data sourcing efforts with GCS also offers the ability to gather a larger sample size of data without increasing your workload significantly — and we all know that more data from different sources leads to more informed and statistically significant insights.

For example: King Arthur Flour sells a variety of mixes and multipurpose flours. The company set out to expand its understanding of bakers’ motivations and behaviors beyond the data they would be capable of gathering through its small test kitchen in Vermont.

King Arthur Flour used GCS to survey bakers across the country and gain insights into what motivated their flour purchases. The results surprised them: Prior to their Google Survey experiments, the company had believed customers were highly motivated by discounts, promotions, and loyalty programs. Afterwards, they learned that prospective customers were more situationally motivated — for example, when looking to try out a specific recipe or to bake for a specific event, like a birthday or holiday party, they chose whatever brand was most conveniently available to them at the time. Knowing this helped the company to better understand how to focus its content marketing efforts, but also provided deeper insights on their customers — a benefit for its sales and marketing efforts, on the whole.

Quora

Those of you who are familiar with Quora likely associate this social surveying tool with questions like, “Why do bees sting me?” or “How long do penguins live?” Yet, Quora can also provide interesting ways to gather data for a buyer persona.

The tool aims to be “your best source for knowledge” and works by allowing people to pose and answer questions on over 250,000 topics. Even if you already have clearly developed buyer personas, posing targeted questions on Quora can help you dive more deeply into your audience members’ motivators and interests, and flush out the content topics they are most likely to engage with.

Pretend for a moment that you run a small business that matches tutors with struggling students. You likely already know a lot about who your customers are, but learning additional details about their behaviors can give you a more complete picture of their needs.

Questions to ask on Quora in this scenario might include:

• If you have hired a tutor for your child, how did you find him or her?
• What are the qualities that are most important to you when selecting a tutor?
• What makes you trust a tutor to work with your child?

It’s easy to see how Quora can provide insights on the considerations involved for parents who are looking to hire a tutor for their child — information that would allow your tutoring business to go beyond demographic information and home in on the key decision-making factors that their customers are concerned with.

For example: Stephanie Kapera runs an online content production website out of Raleigh, N.C. She is always looking to creatively source information so she can develop relevant personas of her customers. Stephanie used Quora to research the ways that staffing professionals at large nonprofit organizations find and interact with freelance writers. She asked a series of questions aimed at eliciting the information she was looking for (e.g., “If you use freelance writers who aren’t experts in your industry, what makes you trust them to write well about your specific topic areas?“), and was impressed with the quality and variety of answers she received. In fact, she remarked that using Quora even allowed her to develop an entirely new persona that had not occurred to her to target before (the Small Hospital Marketing Director).

Mechanical Turk

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk works to connect businesses with a large and diverse on-demand workforce that can help them address challenges and accomplish tasks effectively and cost-efficiently. Though the service is often used for outsourcing lower-level tasks, its capabilities (like feedback tools and content creation and monitoring services) can also be applied to helping increase the insight and accuracy of buyer personas. For example, you can access Mechanical Turk to build heat maps or screen shares that give you a clearer understanding of how workers engage in a task, or with content, or use it to venture more deeply into the world of behavior and specific engagement practices.

For example: Marshall Kirpatrick, a Senior Writer at ReadWriteWeb, was organizing a conference and wanted to develop cutting-edge conference content tailored to the specific needs of his registered attendees. He provided a list of attendees’ Twitter handles and a template to Mechanical Turk workers, and asked them to populate the template with specific information about those Twitter users, including gender, job status, and links to their personal blogs or company websites. His crowdsourcing allowed him to conduct this detailed research — for a cost of only $50. Persona developers could easily use MT for similar audience research processes.

NoSQL

Today’s social applications are successful because of the insights that emerge through their use — the suggestion of music or books that you might like based on mutual interests that you have with a friend, for example. Organizations no longer need complex data mining initiatives to learn about the dark matter hidden within their user data; lightweight tools like NoSQL can speed time to market with new content and features by quickly unlocking inferences about customers.

NoSQL is a coding language that is sophisticated enough to work with the growing mound of Big Data that marketers have available to them. This coding tool works with cloud-based technologies and allows marketers to query a huge amount of data in a quick amount of time. Because NoSQL is non-relational, it allows users to source this data in unique ways.

For example: Sears used NoSQL to develop a new social network for fitness enthusiasts. Fit Studio was unique in its development approach because it started with minimal features and allowed users to develop profile data that later informed content development on the site. As the site grew, Sears was able to bring on content marketing specialists to develop specialized content for different fitness segments.

Feedback Army

Where Mechanical Turk is useful across a huge range of topics, Feedback Army is geared more closely to providing you with feedback about specific web content. It is a quick and inexpensive way to test out content topics and experiment with new ideas by querying people about their interests and preferences, like:

• Which aspects of our business confuse you most?
• What services are most appealing to you?
• Which of our services would you be most likely to pay for?

Feedback Army can also help with buyer persona development. The tool is not great at allowing you to define a segmented audience — you’ll have to hack the tool by including questions in your survey that allow you to do segmentation later. (This may be an irritation, but Feedback Army is inexpensive, and in return, you can get high quality answers. It’s a trade-off you’ll have to weigh.) Use it to gather user information that can help you add depth to your persona profiles around issues of user habits and engagement.

For example: When testing a new Firefox add-on, Mozilla used Feedback Army to query consumers on questions like, “What confused you about the installation process?” and “How do you activate the spell and grammar checking?” The results the company received were quite detailed and provided some additional layers of information (e.g., workers volunteering information about their Facebook use or about workarounds they had come up with). While Mozilla wasn’t sourcing for persona data here, it’s clear that Feedback Army has the potential to be used in this capacity, especially if you build in some audience segmentation at the front end.

The takeaway

While many content marketers stand by interviews as the best method of sourcing data for buyer personas, the rise of social media and the development of sophisticated crowdsourcing tools have been game changers. New tools can help provide a more complex and comprehensive view of your customers’ identities, interests, and motivations than was ever possible before. With a well-developed persona that answers more than just the who question, you will be able to identify and target customers with more precision and personalization.

For more insights and ideas on creating better buyer personas, read CMI’s Content Marketing Playbook.

Cover image via Bigstock

Two recent research studies have caused me to rethink my views regarding the role and value of third-party content in the marketing efforts of B2B companies. I have always argued that most of the marketing content resources used by a company should be developed internally or with the assistance of outside professional content developers. Either way, the “authorship” of the content is attributed to the company or to an executive or other internal expert. With third-party content, another person or firm creates the content and is shown as the author.

The ultimate objective of content marketing is to cause potential customers to view your company as a trusted resource for valuable information and insights and as a capable and reliable business partner. To accomplish this objective, most of the content you publish should be “yours.” It must communicate your company’s expertise and capabilities. As a general rule, third-party content just isn’t as effective for those purposes.

While I still say that companies should rely primarily on content they create, I also now believe that many companies can benefit from using third-party content on a selective basis. My reasoning is based on two recent research studies that provide important insights regarding the types of content that B2B buyers trust.

The CMO Council recently published a white paper – Better Lead Yield in the Content Marketing Field - that is based on a survey of more than 400 B2B content consumers. When survey participants were asked what types of content they most value and trust, vendor-created content came in last.

As the table below shows, survey respondents said they value and trust professional association research reports and white papers, research reports and white papers created by industry groups, customer case studies, reports and white papers written by analysts, and independent product reviews more than vendor-created content.

The 2013 B2B Content Preferences Survey by DemandGen Report showed similar results. In this survey, B2B buyers were asked which of four types of content they give more credence to. The table below shows that vendor-branded content doesn’t fare as well as third-party content.

It seems clear that potential buyers are inclined to trust third-party content more than content created by potential vendors, and B2B marketers should take advantage of this inclination. Content authored by a third-party expert and sponsored by your company can be particularly effective for persuading a potential buyer to begin a relationship with your company. This type of sponsored content can include white papers, eBooks, and research/analytical reports. It could also include a webinar sponsored by your company and presented by a third-party expert.

Content that you develop should always play the predominant role in your content marketing efforts. There are several ways to make your content more trustworthy and credible to potential buyers, and I discussed this topic in an earlier post. However, the right third-party content used in the right ways can be a powerful addition to your content marketing program.

We hear this story a lot.

I recently hired a new sales person. During the interview process they seemed like a great hunter. They pursued me during the hiring process and actively closed me during our final interview. Now that the rep is on-board, it seems they won’t pick up the phone to save their life.

Few products sell themselves. Achieving targets takes concerted effort and in most cases, requires contacting prospects and making cold calls.

If you have a rep on your team, perhaps someone you just hired, who doesn’t seem to want to make cold calls, then you have a serious problem, but you are not alone. The book “The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance“, written by psychologists Shannon Goodson and George Dudley, indicates the following research findings:

As many as 80% of all sales people who fail within their first year, do so because of insufficient prospecting activity.

Even experience does not immunize a sales rep from call reluctance.

….during their careers, approximately 40% (of veteran sales people) will experience one or more episodes of call reluctance serious enough to threaten their continuation in sales – despite years of experience, product knowledge, or current income level.

Our experience from recruiting for thousands of sales positions indicates that the minority of people in the sales profession are comfortable with calling on new prospects and would rather handle inbound and warm leads where a need has been identified and the customer has invited a call with a salesperson. Unfortunately, in most companies sales growth comes from opening up new accounts, not growing existing ones.

There are many reasons why people avoid cold calling. Various studies show cultural and age correlate to call reluctance, however in our experience, DNA plays the largest factor. Some people are simply not engineered to put themselves to take risks and face the rejection that typically comes with cold calling.

If you hired a sales rep that appeared to have the right DNA for new business development, but won’t make cold calls, chances are you misdiagnosed the person’s DNA when you interviewed and selected them. Now you are faced with two choices. Cut bait and move on, or work with that person. You will know the right answer to this question, based on the the degree of call avoidance, but assuming your initial strategy is to work with the person, here are some of the methods that worked for me as a sales manager and that you can employ to try and get your rep to make more outbound sales calls:

1. Get Trained – Fear of making cold calls can be mitigated if a rep achieves more success in making cold calls and one way to do this is to develop callings skills.
2. Don’t Take it Personally – Encourage your sales rep to not take the cold calls and rejection personally. A prospect is rejecting the company’s offering, not the sales person.
3. Get Into a Rhythm – The more calls a rep makes, the more comfortable they will be with the routine and by sheer law of averages, the more positive responses they will get, which in turn helps build confidence and reduces fear of cold calling.
4. Make it a Game – If you know that you are going to hear “no” 9 time for every “yes”, then turn it into a game whereby the rep tries to see how quickly he or she can get through the the negative responses to get to the Yes. Like the rule of not taking it personally, making turning it into a sport makes cold calling more abstract and less scary.
5. Get Better at Targeting – Often calling the right person can increase call success rates and reduce fear of cold calling. In a similar way, if a rep improves their ability to qualify a prospect, then they will spend less time with prospects who aren’t going to buy, and more time with those that will, which reduces the negative feeling associated with the prospecting activities.
6. What is the Worst That Can Happen? If the rep asks themselves honestly, what is the worst that can happen as a result of the rejection on sales calls, they will see it is not that bad. They might fear they are going to be unsuccessful and lose their job, but a smart sales manager doesn’t terminate reps who are doing the work. A smart sales manager knows that if you work the plan, the plan will work and rewards reps who commit to the work.
7. Develop an Expectation of Success – If the rep knows the ratio of rejects to closed sales, then they can view the cold calling activity as a pure math exercise and one which leads to success. This develops self confidence, reduces call reluctance and has a snowball effect on sales success.

In the end, the sales rep has to buy in and make these techniques work. If you have tried and your sales rep still won’t make the calls, contact us. We’d be happy to help you find a sales rep with the right sales DNA and no fear of cold calling.

 

This post was coauthored by Logan Chandler.

No great strategy was born without careful thought. That’s why the process of planning a strategy itself is an important vehicle for setting priorities, making investment decisions, and laying out growth plans. But for many companies, the activity has devolved into either an overexplained budget or just bad amateur theater – lots of costumes in the form of analysis, charts, and presentations – but with very little meaningful substance that can be translated into action. As a result, many strategic plans end up as shelf decorations or hard-to-find files in crowded hard drives.

Since this is the season when many companies are engaged in strategic planning, it’s just the right time to break bad habits. Here are four steps that you can take to make better use of the hard work that goes into planning a strategy:

Insist on experiments to test the assumptions you’ve made. Strategic plans necessarily involve hypotheses that certain outcomes (increased revenue, improved margins, higher ROI) will result from a given set of initiatives. But too often those assumptions are supported by secondary research, educated guesses, or assumptions rather than field tests. As a result, managers are uncomfortable actually moving into action or committing resources, preferring to stay with the business they know rather than possibilities that may or may not pan out. To overcome this inertia, ask managers to include specific, short-term experiments, whose results will communicate what works and what does not. In one company, the senior manager called these “scouting missions” and made sure that each of his managers was responsible for at least one every quarter.

Banish fuzzy language. Strategic plans are often filled with empty phrases such as “Leverage our World Class Operating Capabilities” or head-scratching aspirations like “Reshape Our Pricing and Trade Strategy to Effectively Drive Demand While Maintaining Market Access.” Language like this can signal that a team doesn’t have a clear idea of what they need to succeed. To counter this dynamic, the CEO of a large financial services firm banned her organization from using a list of words and phrases such as “leverage” “synergy,” “disintermediation,” and “robust” (to pick a few of the most overused terms).

Escape from template tyranny. Templates are often a standard fixture of strategic planning. Ideally they force teams to consider important topics – competitive analysis, shifts in external markets, performance gaps that need to be closed – and more easily compare data from different divisions. But the rigid use of templates can lead a team to be more focused on corporate requirements than on doing the hard thinking about how they plan to grow their business. And when teams have to complete the same templates each year, the result can be stale ideas, rote responses, and plans that don’t fully capture – or worse, obscure – the key issues and opportunities that a business needs to address. Avoiding this problem may be as simple as eliminating sections of the planning template that no longer make sense; or it may mean more radically changing the requirements. For example, a large food manufacturer reenergized the process by shifting from a 3 year planning template requiring many different and overlapping pieces of information to a shorter, more open-ended format that gave teams greater latitude to develop their growth plans in the form of a narrative.

Ask provocative questions. In theory, strategic planning should foster intense debates and discussions; but when the process is rigidly structured, and the documents are dense with data, the dialogue can be stilted or constrained. To overcome this, it’s important to ask tough questions when the plans are presented – and to do this in a way that can lead to unscripted answers that will enrich the thinking and increase everyone’s level of confidence in moving forward. A few that we’ve heard include: “What are the top 2 or 3 things that must go right for this strategy to work?” “If we pursue this strategy, what are we deciding not to do?” and “What specific capabilities will we need to develop in order for this plan to succeed?”

The strategic planning process is an important part of most organizations’ operating rhythm. The leadership challenge, however, is to make sure that it’s more than just a corporate exercise – or bad theater.

This piece’s coauthor, Logan Chandler, is a partner with Schaffer Consulting and the co-author of the HBR article Off-Sites That Work.

Here are two articles that caught my eye this week… (See the link at the end to join the conversation on LinkedIn.)

The 22 Rules of Storytelling (And Having Great Ideas. And Getting Sh*t Done)

If you need to persuade, encourage, convince or sell, it’s no bad thing to know how to tell a good story. 

If you need to generate options, push the boundaries, step the edge, get out of a rut, it’s not bad thing to know how to generate ideas.

And if you need to “ship”, and get something out the door, then it’s not bad thing to know when enough’s enough. 

And it’s no bad thing to look to Pixar for some top tips on how to do all of that.

Here are 22 of their rules, illustrated by moments from their iconic creations.
Read: Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling

Routine…Is it a Rut? Or a Helpful Habit?

There’s a simple and useful insight in this piece by Chris Guillebeau, author of the Art of Non-Conformity and a great person for shaking up the world.

Routine and habit can play an essential part of your success as a time-crunched manager. Just so long as it’s the right routine and habit.

What routines do you have that serve you well?

Read: Reducing Decisions to Focus Better

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Was this useful? Please feel free to share it… or why not join our LinkedIn Group: Tools for the Time Crunched Manager?

Like traditional advertising, content helps brands increase their profile and attract new customers. But it takes time and commitment to both create that content and also track its impact.

Sales teams, under constant pressure to hit their quotas, often look for shorter-term solutions. Yet, thanks to the rise of social selling — the practice of leveraging social networks to enhance lead generation and boost conversions — sales teams are warming up to the idea that content can help them do their job and close more deals.

Jill Rowley, social selling evangelist at Oracle, put it this way: “Content is the currency of the modern sales organization.” This sentiment is in line with new industry norms, as 91% of business-to-business marketers use content to build awareness and cultivate relationships.

Rowley is currently busy educating the 23,000 salespeople at Oracle on how to prospect and engage leads via social media channels. Leads seek and respond positively to content that addresses their business challenges, she said, and when a sales pro provides this type of content, it’s not seen as pitching. Instead, the sales pro is seen as a trusted advisor.

Oracle’s brand magazine, Profit, is at the heart of the company’s content strategy. To maintain a healthy flow of content, Rowley suggests that salespeople use the 4-1-1 Rule: sharing four pieces of relevant third-party content for every one piece of Oracle-branded content, plus an offering of lighthearted fare like a cat video or motivational quote.

Content is the currency of the modern sales organization.”

Rowley notes that social selling at Oracle isn’t a popularity contest; it’s about gaining a competitive advantage through the smart use of content. “I have to tie social selling to pipeline generation and revenue,” she said. Based on the reactions she’s received from colleagues at Oracle, it appears to be working.

For social selling to work, it helps to determine where a prospect is in the organization’s sales funnel, which determines the best type of content to deploy. At the top of the funnel, the name of the game is awareness, but as the funnel narrows and prospects are more immersed in the decision making process, video content, white papers or blog posts are key tools for closing a deal.

Michael Freeman, senior manager of search and analytics at ShoreTel, which sells products based on voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, agreed that the traditional sales cycle is changing. “For us, we’re in a market that most people don’t know much about, so we want to reach prospects and show them we are trustworthy and friendly. We can provide value via our content, even if the person is not in the market for VoIP at this time,” he said.

ShoreTel also uses the Social Inbox tool from Hubspot to provide real-time notifications to its sales team when people mention the company online or visit the ShoreTel website. Freeman believes in the value of automation, but said it works best when sales pros are empowered to decide for themselves the best course of action. For instance, some sales organizations have default mechanisms in place, such as sending out a white paper in response to an action taken by a prospect. But this isn’t always the best move.

“We’re social people and we’re complex, therefore, you can’t just automate your way to success,” Freeman said.

In line with Freeman’s nuanced approach, it is now commonly accepted that blasting people with a firehouse of “look at me” branded content is a mistake. This applies to social updates, too. Carly Fauth, head of marketing at Money Crashers, an online guide to financial fitness, said sending out endless tweets about your brand makes far less of an impact, for instance, than conducting regularly-scheduled Twitter chats.

Jessica Thorpe, vice president of marketing at EXPO Communications, added that highly-engaged consumers want to help other consumers make smart purchase decisions. “They see themselves as innovators and informants,” Thorpe said.

We’re social people and we’re complex, therefore, you can’t just automate your way to success.”

EXPO syndicates consumer video on behalf of major consumer packaged goods brands, plus massive retailers like Walmart, Sears and Amazon. Thorpe said EXPO’s clients who leverage consumer-generated video (produced by EXPO) on their product pages are now seeing a six-to-thirty six percent lift in conversion rate and an eight percent lift in cart size, on average.

With figures like that, branded content should continue to play a bigger role in the sales process, and salespeople who fail to embrace it will likely be left behind.

The best service professionals around the world show appreciation for their customers and internal team. Those of us in remote, professional selling (also known as Inside Sales) need to be more aware of the massive, incredible power of appreciation. I submit that there is more power in this idea than in most any other aspect of selling, and have written about its power before.

As a seller, the thanks you show for the following two situations can be directly related to the all-around success you will gain in the profession.

Appreciation for a Great Conversation with a Prospect

Let’s say you have a great conversation with a prospective buyer. It is with a C-level decision maker, his or her Executive Assistant, or someone who is willing to be your “internal coach” helping you through the maze known as their company. You get off the phone, smile, and think, “wow – these guys could become a client in the next quarter.”

Then what do you do? Typically most of us make a note in our CRM (hopefully) and set a next date to follow-up.

Instead, be ready and grab a note card and jot two sentences down on it – add your business card, and put it in an envelope. Hand address the person’s name, company, and address – then add a return address sticker or use envelopes already imprinted with your name at your company.

I’m talking about HAND WRITTEN NOTE CARDS, folks. Yep, you know – the ones that you rarely receive? Those. There are some mighty powerful reasons to do this – with the first one being that NOW they will have a visual of your name to put on their desk or drawer. Most people will not immediately throw out a card showing appreciation for a conversation as well as your business card for at least a couple of months. You now have “shelf space” on your prospect’s desk. What social selling tool can do that for you? NONE. Go old school and show them that you had two minutes to say thanks for a great conversation and you look forward to speaking again. You’ll keep an eye out for any new information around the topic you two were talking about. That’s it. Done.

Appreciation to a Helpful Colleague, Mentor, or Manager

They say talk is cheap – and a note is action. Next time someone really helps you out in your job – they help you demo your service, or they mentor you to help “show you the ropes” in your new position, put two sentences down on a note card and drop a $5 coffee card into it. You would be amazed at how far that will take you, because now your teammate or colleague knows you DO appreciate the time they are taking to help you. If the person helping you is your direct manager, take 5 minutes to write a note to his or her boss and let them know about the time or ideas your manager is investing in you.  Your direct manager should be considered one of your top customers. When they need something from you, your success lies in whether you get it done or not. Treat them as such, and appreciate the time and effort from them. I know it is their job, but having been a manager I can only say that it can feel like a real uphill battle some days, and a note from someone on your team might be just what is needed.

Appreciation for Bringing a Deal to Closure

Next time one of the deals in your pipeline comes to closure, find time to thank those around you who helped make it happen. None of us work in a vacuum – we all rely on others around us to take a prospective buyer through their journey to our products and services. Take two minutes and jot a note down and get it right to the person who helped you.

Time is of the Essence

Have a note card kit with you at your desk – with stamps and a pen. You’ll have no excuse. Send it out as soon as you think of it.  With that said, it is almost never too late to thank someone.

Extra Proof on the Power of Gratitude and Appreciation

Expressing gratitude makes you a happier person. If you are down in the dumps for whatever reason, look at this research done on happiness and gratitude - watch the video of it in action. As they say, you’ll thank me later.

Lori Richardson is recognized as one of the “Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2013″ and one of “20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management for 2013″. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside and outbound sellers in technology and services companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips in selling. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.

The post Inside Sales Power Tip 134 – Show Appreciation appeared first on Score More Sales.

Splat. That’s the sound the PC market just made. According to Sterne Agee analyst Vijay Rakesh, back-to-school computer sales were “virtually absent.” Put in other words: The traditional September bump that students provided to PC OEMs as they headed back to classrooms failed to generate a meaningful sales delta.

It’s like missing spring for the larger PC market.

The best way to view this news is that consumers are repudiating traditional PC form factors (desktops and laptops) for other devices at a quicker pace than expected – see the first few quarters of 2013′s stunning decline in unit volume – and that among younger folks (students for example), the trend has accelerated.

What hardware does the Windows-OEM community have in place to combat the market shift? That thundering silence you just felt is music in Cupertino and Mountain View.

You probably had at least guessed at all of that. The kicker is that Microsoft is the only PC OEM that is selling a device that transcends the traditional PC OEM market. The Surface tablet lineup has never fit cleanly into any product category, period.

If consumers – students, especially – are moving away from laptops and desktops at a faster pace than we expected, they still have to produce. Given that, they will need a device that meets that need and satisfies their desire for mobility and touch. The Surface 2 could be that device.

At least in my view, there is no tablet quite like the Surface 2 in terms of its focus, capabilities (Office, Touch Covers, etc.) and price point. The new Touch Covers are too expensive, but the cheaper first generation Touch Covers fill that void somewhat.

Don’t get too excited, though; the Surface line still has a weight around its neck by the name of Windows. Windows 8 was one cause of weak first-generation Surface sales. Windows 8.1 is a material improvement on its predecessor. Whether it can work through the now year-old legacy of Windows 8 isn’t clear.

Summing briefly: Students appear to have forgotten to show up and buy new PCs for the school year. This underscores rapid transformation in their computing desires. Still, everyone has to get work done one way or another, and Microsoft’s Surface line might have backed into a market trend that can be harnessed to its advantage. The Windows 8.1 question remains open, but Microsoft could have built the device with the largest chance to bring back wayward sons and daughters to the Realm of Windows.

The sales will tell the tale. Microsoft has promised to break out Surface revenue each quarter, so we’ll know by the end of the year if Microsoft’s entrance into the OEM wars will grow the pie, or merely fight for a slice as the desert shrinks around it.

–

There is a bit of Come To Jesus for Microsoft’s hardware hopes in the next 12 months. The Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 need to put points on the board to illustrate that project’s first financial year in the market was more growing pains than an indicator of market indifference and failed internal forecasting. The Nokia smartphone division needs to continue growing the Windows Phone market, as its unit volume is roughly 90 percent of the platform’s aggregate total. Microsoft will own that asset in early 2014.

I’d say that by this time next year, we’ll have a good handle on whether the devices side of Microsoft’s business transformation can reach the volume and revenue marks needed to be meaningful to the company’s future profits.

That’s in keeping with the Ballmer Rule: “The ultimate measure has to be what happens with profits. It’s got to be the ultimate measure of any company.”

You’ve started the process of creating content. But how do you turn that content into sales? It can be confusing, and you’re not sure that the time and energy you invest in content will work for your business.

Start by thinking about your business, and your customers. Then think about the goals you have for your business. Next, create some goals for your content marketing as a whole, as well as for each piece of content you create.

Let’s imagine that you own a beauty salon in a small city.

You’re in competition with several other salons. Your overall goal is to build your customer base. You know that on average, a customer will visit your salon eight to 12 times over a year, and will contribute $1,000 per year to your bottom line. You create a content marketing goal to bring you five new customers a month. That’s an extra $60,000 for your bottom line per year, and makes content marketing an excellent investment for your business.

Let’s look at four tips which will help you to turn your content into sales.

1. Attract Your Audience: Be Informative and Entertaining

Currently, you have zero content. What do you want your customers to know? Think about the customers you had yesterday. You spent a lot of time advising them. You can offer advice using content. Not only will your customers be better informed, they may well spend more money with you on each visit because they will know what they want.

Make a list of the types of customers you have. Your beauty salon has very young customers just starting out in their working life. Some of your customers are mothers who need to look good, but don’t have much time. You also have customers who are older. This group has time and money to spend on looking good. Each group has different needs.

Create a persona — a fictional representation of each group. Your goal is to attract customers from each group, with content which is not only informative, but entertaining too.

2. Do More Than Guide Your Audience on Their Path to Conversion

Yes, you want to guide your audience to conversion: you want customers. However, in content marketing, although you focus on creating content for your personas, you can cast a wider net too.

Create content for those people who interact with your customers. This group can include your customers’ friends, families and work colleagues. When you create content for this wider group, you’ll sell more gift cards, and more special-occasion products, like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and birthday gifts.

3. Create Content for Every Stage of the Conversion Process

You’ve created your personas, and you’re creating content for them. Now think about the stages these personas go through on their path to conversion. You can create content for every stage of that path.

Keep an eye on the news, and pay attention to celebrity gossip. Your customers are influenced by the gossip culture. Create content referencing celebrity gossip. You’ll attract more search engine traffic, and you’ll sell more.

4. Build Your Community: Contribute, Learn and Convert

As you build your content inventory, you’re building community. If you have a blog, your customers can add their experiences and stories. User-created content is valuable as social proof, and it develops your brand.

You’ll learn from your customers. As you improve your knowledge of what your customers and wider audience needs, you’ll increase your conversions.

Content can create profits. When you set goals for your content, you can achieve those goals. If you haven’t created a content plan for your business, do it today.

Image credit

In a world where genuine revenue and earnings growth is a tough thing to come by, the company with the iconic “swoosh” did so with flying colors. NIKE, Inc. (NKE) is a business that continues to defy its maturity as a brand.

The company posted 2014 fiscal first-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street consensus, with revenue growth coming in at a solid eight percent with no significant impact from currency translation.

The company was able to increase its gross margin substantially and total earnings grew an impressive 33% to $780 million. Diluted earnings per share grew 37% to $0.86 a share on one percent less in weight average diluted shares outstanding.

NIKE purchased 8.4 million shares of its own common stock in its fiscal first quarter for $526 million, and its cash position soared $2.3 billion (after a debt issuance and the sale of Cole Haan and Umbro) to $5.6 billion.

With such strong numbers and such a solid cash position, I’m actually surprised the company didn’t effect an increase to its quarterly dividends. The company raised its dividend at the end of last year, and management may do so in the next quarter; the business can certainly afford it.

NIKE has been able to get away with price increases without affecting demand, and with strong expense control, the extra margin goes right to the bottom line.

The company had a very successful fiscal 2012 fourth quarter, and its operational momentum continues. The stock is at an all-time record high, with a current dividend yield of just over one percent; but like most successful enterprises, the company’s share price is often trading at new highs.

This business is worthy of consideration when it pulls back on the stock market. The position really hasn’t had a major period of consolidation since back around 2000. The company’s latest quarter was a standout.

In the retail landscape, brand power matters and NIKE continues to execute tremendously well. Excluding changes in currencies, the company said that global orders for its NIKE-branded footwear and apparel for delivery from September 2013 through to January 2014 is up eight percent compared to the same quarter last year. It’s therefore reasonable to expect the company to post another solid quarter of revenues and earnings growth. Earnings outlooks from major Wall Street firms are very likely to improve over the coming weeks. (See “What NIKE’s Earnings [To Be Released This Afternoon] Could Reveal About This Proven Wealth Creator.”)

I always follow NIKE for its financial results. I use it as a benchmark stock on consumer retail spending. While the stock is fully priced, it’s earned the right to be, with such impressive growth in a still slow-growth environment.

The only low point in NIKE’s business currently is China. But this was widely expected, as company management already guided accordingly. NIKE is a solid long-term holding to consider for any equity market portfolio.

I would like to think that I’m a positive guy. It has served me well over the years in the sales game. In fact, I would argue that there is nothing more important than thinking positively… especially for those of us blessed to cold call all day long.

Running an inside sales team over the last few years has meant that I needed to leverage that positive disposition to motivate the team.

While I want to believe in my heart of hearts that positivity overcomes every challenge, it requires a little more finesse than that.  The “Ra Ra” mentality has to be part of any manager’s makeup, but our employees needs a little more than “You can do it, pal!” if they’re at a loss.

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers for my team. My goal is to get an employee to the point where they enjoy strategizing and sharing ideas, all balanced with the necessary sprinkling of positive mojo from my end. As I mentioned in a blog a few weeks ago, from day 1, I let my new hires know that I will set clear expectations for them. By empowering them to achieve those goals, it demonstrates that I have their back. All they owe me in return is a genuine effort every day they walk into the office. When they’re grasping at straws on ways to improve their output, I feel it’s a shared responsibility between the manager and employee to work together to identify the gaps. Coming up with a concrete plan of action to back up the “Ra Ra” approach should be the goal.

It has been difficult for me to manage the balance between being positive while also turning the screws when necessary. This has generally been the case for most of the bosses I’ve worked for over the years. From my perspective, you’ve done your due diligence if you set those expectations from the outset so when it’s time to turn the screws, no one should be surprised.

As Q4 is quickly approaching for most of us, are you preparing for a strong finish to 2013? I assume you’re prepared to give the team the motivational speech, but are you ready to hop in the trenches with them as well? Cheering from a distance helps, but no one likes the boss who is sitting up on their ivory throne. I’ve found getting a bit dirty with your folks will help to drive the real results you’re hoping for.

Selling to busy buyers is a tough job. But not an impossible one. As a sales professional, it’s your job to utilize great tools and keep up with the tide of an ever-changing sales environment.

That’s one thing Jill Konrath has mastered. From sales training to social selling, Jill has 30+ years of experience selling, writing, and teaching the sales community.

Here’s one of the best interviews we’ve done yet:

Today's blog post is by Dawn Deeter, Professor and Director of the National Strategic Selling Institute (NSSI) at Kansas State University and the J.J. Vanier Distinguished Professor of Relational Selling and Marketing. Sales leaders face tremendous challenges when trying to find entry-level reps that will succeed out of the starting gate. In fact, as Professor and Director of the National Strategic Selling Institute (NSSI) at Kansas State University, I receive far more calls from businesses seeking to hire salespeople than I do from students looking for jobs. It’s common to hear stories about what a tough job market college graduates...

As a small business owner, it’s natural to feel the need to use the latest and greatest marketing platform to engage with your clients. We’ve all been there before; you hear about the success a business is having with Pinterest, so you spend time and resources incorporating Pinterest in your marketing strategies. Three weeks later, you wonder why you aren’t seeing the same results.

As a leader or marketing decision maker, you need to understand not just the different marketing platforms available, but you also need to pinpoint where your customers live and engage. Just because another business uses Facebook for lead generation doesn’t necessarily mean that Facebook is the most efficient and effective platform for you to be spending time, resources, and money.

Instead of spreading yourself thin across multiple platforms, invest your resources in the particular platforms that attract your audience. Here are five tips to ensure you’re being efficient with your marketing:

1) Determine Platforms: This first step might seem easy, but oftentimes, businesses aren’t identifying all the viable platforms they can use for marketing to — or communicating with — their customers. Spend time figuring out what platforms exist and what each does most effectively. At our company, Influence & Co., we chose to focus first on platforms that all of us had prior experience with, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. We knew that most of the people in need of our services were entrepreneurs and learners like ourselves — and we’d find them in the places we frequented.

2) Identify Where Your Customers Live: Business owners tend to get easily distracted by larger platforms (Facebook, Twitter) and think that because those platforms have the most users, they must be the right ones to invest in. In reality, that may not be the case at all. Figure out not only which platforms your customers are using, but also what platforms they’re engaging on. As a company, we realized early on that although Facebook is a great option for most businesses, it wasn’t a good fit for our marketing needs. We spend more time on professional networking sites, like LinkedIn and Google+, because that’s where our target market is engaging.

3) Gather Data: You’ve identified a few platforms your target market is visiting regularly and developing real connections through — now it’s time to try them out. You need a large enough sample size on these platforms to determine whether they’re worth your time, money, and resources over the long haul. Spend at least three or four weeks’ time on each platform you think will be most effective and see what data comes back. Not only do we gather a large amount of data on the platforms we test out, but we also look to industry experts or the platforms’ best practices themselves to determine how we can take advantage of these platforms for our specific needs.

4) Spend Resources on What Works: After you’ve spent ample time and resources on researching, identifying, and gathering data, you should take a look at which platforms were most effective. Take your top two or three performers and focus on those. By not spreading yourself too thin, you’ll be investing in the platforms that have (at least initially) shown they can help grow your business.

5) Stay Narrow and Consistent: Whether you achieve success or not with these initial marketing platforms and strategies, focus on the platforms that deliver. Continue to pull data from each of your platforms to identify which ones are doing well — and which are not. Initial success with a platform doesn’t lock you into a lifelong relationship that won’t change or pivot based on your current needs as a business. You’re dating these platforms, not marrying them.

6) Rinse and Repeat: This cycle of identification, research, data analysis, and investment should be continuous. Don’t get caught up in the hype surrounding the latest and greatest platform; always remain aware of what’s going on outside your current marketing strategies and continuously consider whether you’re on the right path or need to make some tweaks.

At the end of the day, you need to be investing your company’s time, resources, and money on marketing. The biggest mistake companies make is overinvesting without a true understanding of what they’re doing and where their target market is actually engaging. Slow down the process, identify where you really need to be, and focus on what works.

Social media continues to change the way we do business. It’s changing how we interact with our customers, partners, suppliers and even our colleagues. It’s changed the way we do business and has changed the way we tell our brands story. It’s what has ultimately developed and inspired the concept of social selling.

For years, we’ve looked at the concept of a business lead through the lens of a transaction. We’ve looked at a lead as a potential sales opportunity. Yet, in the past, we didn’t live in a world that was as connected as it is today. Right now. As you read this text, there are potentially hundreds of conversations about your industry, brand and offering. Some of these conversations will be highly relevant to your business while others will be nothing more than noise. Conversations that are relevant and clear engagement opportunities are what we define as a Social Lead.

Social leads are what LeadSift (the folks behind this infographic) delivers on a daily basis. It sifts through the noise to find the signals that are true business opportunities for brands. Social leads are found in the millions of conversations happening on social media. It’s the act in which a user posts on Twitter that they’re trying to decide between Brand A and Brand B. It’s when someone tweets that they’re unsure whether or not they should switch from one service provider to another. It’s real business opportunities that are being missed daily.

This slideshow will highlight various insights and trends that can help you recognize a social lead when you see one.

Earning the respect and attention of your target audience simply is not as easy as it used to be. Years ago, brands could retain loyal consumers and attract new ones by creating reliable, useful products or services… But that isn’t always enough anymore. Now, brands need to have something we usually associate with sentient beings rather than companies: personality.

Building a brand’s personality isn’t an easy task, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be simple. In fact, there’s one very basic tactic brands can use that’s been relied upon for years and is relevant to the majority of the world’s population – storytelling. This story can link into anything, from the brand’s values or messaging to the lifestyles of its key demographic… To an extent, it doesn’t matter what it is based on. What matters is that the brand is making an effort to put some meat behind its name; to engage its target audience and produce meaningful, engaging stories.

Many brands have already caught onto this golden nugget and have gone one step further in the pursuit of building brand personality, by using social media to a) drive the story forward and b) allow their audience to actually help create the story through user-generated content. Here are some of the best examples…

Tourism Queensland’s ‘The Best Job in the World’

Back in 2009, Tourism Queensland launched a campaign with the aim of finding a person to fill ‘the best job in the world’ – being the caretaker of a remote island based just off the Great Barrier Reef. The successful candidate would live in a multi-million dollar home on the island, enjoy a AUD$150,000 salary and free transportation around the region. Applicants for the job were invited to apply by uploading a video to social media pages or a special website, but some candidates went above and beyond, creating entire Facebook groups or blogs to promote themselves.

The hashtag #GreatBarrierReef was established to support the campaign (which went viral) and some 35,000 people from 200 countries applied in total – a groundbreaking moment for the future of user-generated content. Briton Ben Southall won the job, in the end. All in all, the campaign generated $200 million for Tourism Queensland, earned its advertising agency three awards and had a film made about it. However the benefits reached far beyond the profit.

Tourism Queensland created a story about itself, the island and the overall region without having to lift a finger. Instead, it relied upon the power of social media and Joe Public to create the story, but managed to create international brand awareness and show itself to be a fun, rewarding brand – a legacy that will last far beyond the financial bonus. Plus, given that eight out of 10 people belonging to Gen Y say user-generated content actually influences the brands they trust, the campaign was quite frankly a stroke of genius.

Clinton Yates’ ‘#afternoonTwittertale’

Although he isn’t a company, Washington Post writer Clinton Yates has successfully boosted his own brand after inventing the Afternoon Twitter Tale. Accompanied by the hashtag ‘#afternoonTwittertale’, Yates will often begin a story in the afternoon, told in a tweet-by-tweet narrative. He invites others to do the same, posting under the same hashtag.

This is storytelling in its most literal sense, sure and the way in which social media supports it is quite clear – but it’s definitely worth mentioning, given that it has further established Yates as an insightful writer whose stories are riveting. Demand for his stories is high. He’s a perfect example of someone who has used a story to boost his own story.

Topp Tiles’ ‘Show off your Style’

Earlier this year, Topps Tiles launched a competition to find the best amateur DIY-er Britain has to offer. Fronted by interior designer and TV personality Julia Kendall, the ‘Show off your Style’ campaign was social-centric. Britons were invited to upload photos or videos of their best DIY projects and upload it to Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter, before inviting their friends to vote for their entry. A Facebook app was created too, helping entrants to upload their media, whilst an online community page was created to tie everything together.

Not only did it give the nation a chance to see how Topp Tiles’ products could be used (sneaky!) but the campaign was based solely on user-generated content (1,000 images, to be exact) – content that can be used time and again in the future. It has heightened brand awareness and broadened its audience reach significantly.

Plus, the website had 35,000 visits over the two-month period the competition ran, 21,500 votes were cast and 500 new users registered for the Topps Tiles site. The brand now boasts 186 followers on Pinterest, 2,345 on Twitter and 2,688 Facebook likes. What’s more, Topps Tiles achieve 3,100 social media shares during the competition – all through asking its audience to tell their stories. Simples, huh?!

Thanks to luxique.com, toppstiles.com and vimeo.com/Clinton Yates for the images

Marketing: Past, Present & Future

I just read an article on LinkedIn Today from Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group, and author of What’s the Future of Business. The article, The Future of Marketing is not about Marketing…It’s about YOU!, is about the state of marketing and communications in the past, present and future.

What really caught my attention is Brian’s observation that many are approaching their marketing efforts through the lens of traditional marketing practices of the past.

What Does This Mean?

This means that we aren’t fully utilizing the new tools we’ve been given to their fullest extent. We are using our “interruption marketing” practices of the past, hoping to shock people into attention because we’ve screamed loud enough. Traditional marketing practices called for us to broadcast our messages often, and in the right places, so that when our potential clients were interested in what we had to offer or, even better, ready to buy, we were there.

That’s not necessarily a 100% flawed philosophy. It is just incomplete in its execution. With the tools we have today, we can do so much better.

Revolution and Evolution?

Many discuss the revolution that is upon us. Brian also discusses the evolution that is taking place, implying that we are not close to the end, haven’t completely figured this out, nor have we found the perfect way to communicate.

I agree that Marketing is evolving to the point that we must now involve our intended audiences in the process and the discussion. We can’t ignore them, nor their ability to react to what we say or do, and we certainly must react to what they have to say and do.

This means, as Brian points out, and with which I concur:

“Instead of inventing, re-inventing or leading, we are stuffing promise into familiarity. We’re broadcasting and not connecting, talking and not listening, calendering not investing, justifying and validating not creating value.

“Value is not boundless. Value [is] in the eye of the beholder and it varies based on the context of the relationship and your desired outcomes. It is relationships after all that form the foundation of business. Marketing and communications are merely enablers for conveying value while also investing in and reinforcing relationships.”

How Do We Get There?

Although it can sometimes appear to be a very confusing process, it might help if we look at it in a linear fashion that matches our clients’ paths to us. Some call this the Sales Funnel, but please don’t get hung up on terminology. Disdain for the word “sales” in the profession is no reason to cut this necessary process short of where it needs to be.

Here’s my interpretation of part of what Brian is saying that might help you apply it in your firm, your practice and for your clients.

Let’s Move Forward, Not Backward.

• It’s time to ramp up our awareness of our clients’ and prospects’ needs when we engage in communication.
• Even though this was done in the past in much more manual, written and spoken ways, we need to dissect the buying cycle, or the decision-making process, our clients go through when they engage their service provider. If we don’t understand it, we need to interview clients to find out what it was that brought them to this place.
• We then need to map out the communication that would provide value to them at every step of that process.
• We should engage in conversation with our clients when they are going through those stages. Be there for them in a positive way, and your chances of being remembered when it comes time to buy should increase. That doesn’t mean broadcasting, but interacting and conversing.
• We need to create content that speaks to each one of those steps. We already know the solutions, or the steps we suggest they take. We just need to match what is in our heads, or already sitting in our written files in many cases, with what the client is thinking at each step.
• We then need to appropriately deliver all of this value to them in the right places at the times they need it.

Yes, this Marketing and Communication revolution is definitely also evolutionary.

In Brian’s words, evolutionary marketing…

“…takes a different approach, perspective and a different philosophy otherwise you’re wasting time and opportunity. If you take a moment to think about it, everything is different about what’s taking place now and its direction and future is unwritten. This is your time and consider what a wonderful moment and chance that’s before you.”

A Wonderful Moment, Indeed

As marketers, communicators, business developers and service providers, there has never been a more exciting time in our lives because we now have new ways to really engage and talk to people, and to help provide information and service that is valuable to them during their decision-making process. I also find it exciting because, even though others are developing these new communication platforms, we are the ones who get to help shape the way they are used, to help them evolve, based on needs, practices and results.

What Do You Think?

Do you see marketing and communications as a revolution and evolution? Do you think there is now more opportunity to provide value and make connections with our clients? I’d love to have you join the discussion.

Special thanks to Brian Solis for inspiring this post. I recommend reading his entire post because I only focused on a sliver of it.

Image via Wikipedia Commons