Your customers are your most valuable asset in more ways than one. Not only do they create revenue by making purchases, but they can also help you with leadership development, marketing and sales. Every customer you connect with has the potential to be a brand ambassador, and ultimately a source of sales revenue. Even better, they do this work without demanding a paycheck or health benefits.

As with any other asset, your goal should be to maximize your returns. Here are five ways to convert customers into a powerful sales force.

Create a Referral Program

One simple way to get customers to promote your products is to provide them with an incentive for doing so. That’s why so many companies have created referral programs. Through these, they provide valued customers with discounts, rewards points, gifts, cash and even special access for referring friends and family members.

In many cases, customers are provided with a personalized link or referral code that they can pass along to others. When a referral visits the company website through that link, or keys in the referral code, credit is given to the referring customer. This shouldn’t be confused with affiliate programs where compensation only comes after the sale is made.

Referral programs are an excellent option because they are simple and straightforward. Customers know how they’ll be rewarded for providing referrals to their friends and family members. This is a great way to get new business from customers with large networks of people who share similar interests.

Use customer testimonials to build trust

It’s a big accomplishment when you draw a potential customer to your website or one of your landing pages. Still, you know your work isn’t done yet. You’ve still got to get them to take the final step of answering your call to action, and make a purchase. This is where you’ve really got to convince them to keep moving forward.

Of course, your primary focus should be on sharing the benefits of your product, but trust is important as well. Remember that when customers make a purchase, you’re asking them to hand over personal and financial data, and to trust you to handle that information with utmost care and discretion. To complete sales, you’ve got to inspire confidence and trust.

Customer testimonials are one way to do that. Now more than ever consumers are more interested in what their peers have to say about products and services than brands. 84% trust people more than brands. By soliciting and posting customer testimonials, you can broadcast that trust to potential buyers.

Identify Influencers and Brand Ambassadors

Customer reviews and testimonials are valuable. When these come from influencers and brand ambassadors, they are absolutely priceless. There’s a reason that YouTube and other channels are full of product review content. Interested customers are inspired to make purchases by the information they receive from the people that are influential to them.

You know those posts you see on Instagram that are tagged #Spon, #Sponsored, #Ad, #Paid, etc.? Those are all examples of influencer posts promoting products and services. These along with the aforementioned YouTube videos are usually the direct result of companies sending influencers and ambassadors free products so that they can talk about them through their own social media channels.

If you connect with the right influencers, this can lead to a real boost in your sales figures. The key is identifying the influencers that can truly connect your brand to networks of interested customers. It’s not enough for them to have extensive networks. In fact, you may get more value from an influencer with a smaller, but very active, audience with a proven interest in your niche.

Get Customers to Share User Generated Content

User-generated content is any brand-relevant content that is created by your followers or customers. Examples of user-generated content include:

• • • Customer reviews
    • Tips and advice generated by ‘power users’
    • Customer stories
    • Pictures and videos of customers using your products and services

User-generated content can be published and shared on your website, social media pages, third party websites and the customers’ owned social media. Wikis, YouTube channels and podcasts can act as other sources of user-generated content.

As a brand, you can use this content to create engagement among your audience members. You can encourage your customers to share content by providing them with a platform for thoughts, stories, and images on your website and social media. You can even find ways to provide customers with incentives for doing just that.

Simplify And Encourage Sharing

Even the most satisfied customer is only going to go so far in advocating for your products and services. It’s your role to encourage them and to make the process as easy as possible. You can do this by taking every opportunity you can to encourage customers to review your products, share your content and otherwise let people know about your products and services.

Take friction out of social sharing, and you’ll see more customers doing your outreach for you. Do this by:

• • • Placing social share buttons in conspicuous places
    • Asking for likes and shares in your social media posts
    • Linking to your social media pages on your website
    • Send order confirmation emails with links to review sites
    • Use tools like Click to Tweet to encourage customers to share your content without much effort at all
    • Solicit customer testimonials from highly satisfied customers
    • Reach out to customers directly on product review sites

You can even create your own comments/reviews section directly on your own site. There, you can collect positive feedback from customers to share.

Final Thoughts

If you keep your customers happy, make it easy for them to share their thoughts about your products, and provide the right incentives, they will happily become your secondary sales force. Try using a combination of the five methods above to get the most out of your ability to get your customers excited about your products and services.

The post 5 Ways to Make Customers Your Best Salespeople appeared first on OpenView Labs.

In the movie Wall Street, there is a scene where Hal Holbrook’s character tells Charlie Sheen’s character, “There comes a time in every man’s life when a man looks in the abyss, there’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.”

I love that quote because I think it is so honest and true. There does come not just a time, but often many times, in a salesperson’s life where there is nothing but the abyss.

You stare into it, looking harder and harder but you see no light, no north star… nothing to guide you. Your deals are stuck. Buyers are throwing objection after objection after objection at you. You can’t seem to get them to move forward. No one is taking your calls to start new deals. And the worst deals you thought you had closed all of a sudden start to fall apart.

You… are… lost.

And based on conversations I’ve had with numerous salespeople that have attended our social sales training programs or webinars, I think a lot of salespeople find themselves feeling a little lost now and again, and work really hard to quickly find their character.

Surviving When You’re Lost

The interesting thing is that if you check out survival skill books, they tell you the first thing you should do when you’re you’re lost is stop. Sit down. Find cover from the elements and wait to be found.

This makes sense. You don’t know where you are. You have no idea how to get back to where you’re supposed to be. And your best hope of being rescued is that someone who knows where you started and where you planned to go, can triangulate where you might be now and find you. But if you keep moving, you make their job harder.

The only thing is, if you’re a salesperson that is lost, that’s pretty much a recipe for disaster. Because in a world where your competitor is just a thumb click away from today’s self-educating buyer, that doesn’t care enough to work to find you, standing still or maintaining the status quo is tantamount to a death sentence.

In fact, truth be told, your competitors would just as well you stay lost. Sure your loyal customers will miss you, maybe even yearn for you, but that too shall pass. They’ll find new lovers… they always do.

Getting Unlost vs Being Found

So what’s a salesperson that is lost to do?

Quite simply – start by getting unlost. There’s a big difference between being found and becoming unlost. Found means you’ve finished your journey. Everything is back to normal and life goes on with everyone sighing a breath of relief.

Getting unlost just means you successfully find your bearings again. You figure out where you are more or less, contrast that with where you want to be, and based on the delta, make a plan to start closing that gap one step at a time.

And that is truly the important point here today — one of the key ideas I share in almost every social selling keynote or workshop I deliver is that so often the pathway to success is to stop, orient, and then just put one foot in front of the other until you successfully make it back home.

So with that, here are my suggestions and steps to help salespeople get unlost:

1. Stop feeling like you don’t have control of the situation. Sure there may be outside forces at work like bosses, colleagues, competitors or the economy. Forces you may or may not be able to effect or control. But as my favorite post-Hurricane Katrina t-shirt said, “Put your big girl panties on and get over it.”
2. Take stock in yourself or your company. Don’t get caught in analysis paralysis, but do make note of the things you can build off of and what you can’t. Then focus on the stuff you can build on and get to work.
3. Move. Have you ever watched the firefight scenes in a war movie? The commanders are always saying the same thing when the bullets start flying… MOVE! Motion is life. Motion is hope. Motion means you are affecting your future. You are changing a variable in the equation and that one change might just save your life or at least your ass.
4. Pick the thing that takes the least effort but will have the maximum effect. Notice I’m not saying the biggest effect. I’m saying pick the thing that requires the least effort yet yields the most effect – play the spread. Why? Because you aren’t trying to fix the whole situation, you’re just trying to fix one part of it. You’re trying to create a win. The human psyche needs wins to continue to exist, to survive and to thrive. So pick a deal, a project, or a prospect you can win or at least move forward. Even if it’s not a new contract, even if it’s just securing a meeting with the right people. Go win something.
5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 until you see something staring back at you.

But once you start to see something there in the abyss, don’t stop what you’re doing. Keep moving. While true that thing you see may be a train hurtling at you, at least you’ll see what’s going to kill you versus getting blindsided. And I’m hoping most of you are agile enough to jump off the track in time.

So there is my two cents. What do you do when you face the abyss? How do you overcome that feeling that you just don’t have the answer? How do you get unlost?

Let me know in the comments.

Let’s play a game of “Who Do You Trust?”

Those paid results at the top of the SERP with the green “Ad” box? Or your sister?

That banner on YouTube? Or your best friend from college?

Okay, this is an easy game. We trust our family, friends, and even strangers more than we trust advertisements and brands. We’re influenced by recommendations, reviews, testimonials, social chatter, and, most importantly, referrals.

Using referral marketing will help you stand out from your industry competition—as long as you do it effectively. Here’s everything you need to know to get started, including referral marketing ideas from companies that have already used this tactic to improve their businesses.

Why referral marketing?

Before we get into how to create your referral marketing strategy, let’s talk about why you need to. How much of a difference do referrals make? Consider this:

• A word-of-mouth impression drives at least 5x more sales than a paid impression.
• Customers acquired through word-of-mouth spend 2x more and make 2x as many referrals themselves.
• Referred leads convert 30% better and have a 16% higher lifetime value than leads acquired via other channels.
• Half of Americans would pick word-of-mouth if they could only select one source for information on potential purchases.

Word-of-mouth and referral marketing are cost-effective, powerful, and trusted. When we have a good experience with a brand, product, or service, we’re happy to—and frequently do—share it with others.

In his bestseller Contagious, marketing professor and author Jonah Berger identified six principles of sharing and word-of-mouth:

1. Social currency: We share what makes us look good.
2. Triggers: We share what’s at the top of our minds.
3. Emotion: We share what we care about.
4. Public: We imitate what we see people around us are doing.
5. Practical value: We share things that have value to others.
6. Stories: We share stories, not information.

 

Image Source

Hit as many of them as possible, and you’ve got an idea, product, or announcement that people will want to talk about and share with others—which will help you stand out from your competition.

Using referral marketing for competitive advantage

The numbers don’t lie: Recommendations and referrals are not only useful but crucial if you want to stand out from the crowd. Consumers actively go looking for them, and they can be the key differentiator between two otherwise similar products or brands.

The digital revolution has made launching and running a business easier than ever before, but that comes with a price: increased and fierce competition.

Referrals turn your satisfied customers into very convincing cheerleaders. They’ve paid good money for your product, and if they’re happy with it and the return-on-investment they’re getting from it, that’s a powerful selling point to others.

Ask for and incentivize referrals with a convenient and largely automatic program, and you’ve got a self-perpetuating lead machine. It’s a spotlight on you and your brand in a sea of sameness.

Working with Raúl Galera of ReferralCandy, I’ve collected a few examples of how to use referral marketing to stand out from your competition.

1. Girlfriend Collective launches into a crowded market

Fashion is a crowded market. Women’s fashion is an especially crowded field. You need to stand out immediately if you want to make it.

Girlfriend Collective is an athleisure wear e-commerce company, and it needed to do something that would make them stand out from the crowd. The company needed to gain traction fast and compete with big names like Lululemon, Adidas, and Nike.

To do so, the company started by creating an awesome product: Their leggings and bodysuits are made entirely from recycled plastic drinking bottles under fair-trade.

Next, Girlfriend Collective needed to get its name out to as many people possible at minimal cost. The company didn’t want to spend money on traditional marketing as their competitors had done. So it decided to spend their marketing budget by giving away their $80-leggings for free.

As co-founder Elle Dinh put it:

“It’s kind of scary to purchase a $100 pair of leggings from a brand you’ve never heard of. We wanted people to trust us, and by giving people the product, we knew they would trust us—that’s how much we believed in what we’re doing.”

Both Ellie and her husband/co-founder Quang Dinh were confident that anyone who tried on their leggings would love them. And for a similar cost of acquiring a customer through traditional means, this strategy removed the barrier of paying for an unknown brand.

From their pre-launch website, customers were educated on Girlfriend’s use of plastic bottles in their leggings and their commitment to fair trade. This told customers that not only were they getting a free pair of leggings, but the leggings were also environmentally-friendly so they were supporting a good cause.

This appeals to Jonah Berger’s emotion principle that we want to share things we feel strongly towards. People who saw this would tell all their friends about the pair of leggings they could get for free that also supported environmental and social causes. This created a win-win situation that ultimately made this story extremely compelling to share.

This offer was only valid for a few months, which added an extra push for customers to get it and share with their friends as fast as possible. People often attach more value to things that are in short supply, which is why scarcity marketing tactics like this work.

In this case, it worked amazingly well. Girlfriend’s word-of-mouth marketing strategy resulted in 10,000 orders within the first day. The sheer traffic even crashed their website, and the sharing feature on Facebook! It also garnered a lot of online coverage from websites like Refinery29, Observer and InStyle.

Today, Girlfriend Collective has a substantial social media following of 187k from Instagram and 66k from Facebook. Thanks to their word-of-mouth referral strategy, the e-commerce company was able to gain a huge customer base and following within such a short period of time. And at an arguably lower price that it would have cost to use an advertising agency.

2. Critical Pass scales with a referral program

The exam preparation industry is a big market. From physical aids like flashcards to online study tools from big names like Kaplan, students are spoilt for choice.

Critical Pass sells flashcards for law school and the multistate bar examination. It’s a battle-tested method to study and learn, a quality product, and provided at an affordable price.

The company needed a way to convince students that their solution was the best one for them. But it had a couple of issues to solve.

First, the product’s effectiveness would not result in any repeat sales. Secondly, due to individual variances in studying capacity, there was no tangible guarantee of how many marks students would obtain from using their study cards.

Initially, the company used a variety of marketing channels to various degrees of success. But eventually, the team realized that the key to encouraging students to try their flashcards lay in their existing satisfied customers.

According to Nathan Kleiner, CEO at Critical Pass, “Our goal is to make sure we only have customers once. They use us. We help them pass. Then they never have to buy from us again. They’re so happy with us that they refer their friends.”

The bar examination is extremely difficult and law students tend to search social media, online forums, and community pages for tools that can help them pass. This creates an organic community based on the practical principle in Jonah Berger’s STEPPS where successful students would share the tools and tricks that had worked for them.

Critical Pass recognized since its happy customers were likely to tell their peers and juniors what tools worked for them, a referral program to reward those who shared could work. This program would incentivize—and, as a result, encourage—the sharing process.

Using a personalized link, customers receive $10 for every referral that ends up purchasing a flashcard set. New customers get a 10% discount. Due to the long preparation duration and stressful nature of the exam, many law students usually get by on a part-time job or student loans. These monetary incentives are helpful for them, so they worked.

The referral program was a huge hit, delivering a 24x return-on-investment, and accounts for over 10% of revenue and orders. Not bad for a system that essentially runs itself.

3. Hawkers recruit every customer as an influencer

The founders of Hawkers an e-commerce company selling sunglasses worldwide started off as distributors of a popular sunglasses brand Knockaround in their home country, Spain.

The founders helped Knockaround achieve success by giving away sunglasses to friends on Facebook who had large amounts of friends on the social media platform in return for featuring the sunglasses in their posts.

But they didn’t feel satisfied being distributors and wanted a brand they could call their own. And so Hawkers Co. was born.

This company used the same micro-influencer social media marketing strategy that had worked so well for a similar product previously. The founders started off with Facebook Ads and micro-influencers, giving free sunglasses to those with a large social media following. They then extended it to Instagram, and it was so effective the social media platform actually featured them as a successful advertising case study.

Besides providing customers with free sunglasses alone, Hawkers eventually created a referral program that benefited the influencers, their followers, and of course, the company itself.

This gave customers another big reason to show off cool photos of themselves wearing Hawkers’ products. Now they could gain social currency as well as give their friends a good deal.

Sharing personalized promo codes, every customer was now an influencer and could receive a commission for every sale, while referees received a discount for their purchase.

The referral program amplified the social sharing phenomenon their word-of-mouth strategy had created, allowing roughly 90% of revenue to come from social media. The company also currently exceeds $70 million USD in sales every year.

Thanks to brands like Hawkers Co., the eyewear industry that used to rely heavily on celebrity endorsements has now been revolutionized. Now anyone can become an influencer for their peers through social media and spread the word through referral marketing.

With the right tools and messaging, referral marketing can be an extremely powerful and cost-effective marketing tool for your business.

Here are some things to take note of before you can make it work:

• Make sure your brand message is easy to understand and repeat.
• Build a community around your brand. It’s more than a product and a logo. It’s what it stands for and represents. If your customers identify with those values, they will share your story with others, with or without an incentivized referral program.
• Your customers are your best salespeople. They can “sell” to their friends and family without sounding salesy. And their friends are more likely to go with a recommendation from a friend than some celebrity on a TV screen.
• Make referrals easy. It should be simple for your customer to share your brand with referral rewards that match their purchasing behavior—do that and you’ll have an army of loyal cheerleaders working on your behalf.

How are you leveraging referral marketing for your story and brand? Share an example by leaving a comment below!

The final interview is complete and your candidate shortlist is ready to go. It’s now time to choose the person you think is the best fit for your open sales position, and it’s not a decision to take lightly.

The stakes are high: Selecting a bad candidate can run between 30% to 150% of their annual salary. With the average annual turnover in sales being 25 to 30%, you need to nail the hiring decision — do so in three steps.

1. Check your job criteria again

With the interview process complete, you should have a list of candidates that made the final cut — a shortlist. Now you need to reduce your list even further.

Poor job fit is the number one cause of negative performance and employee turnover. So it’s important to look objectively at the criteria set in your original sales job description to construct your final list of candidates.

Chart adapted from Bridgespan’s Sample Assessment Grid Skills and Competencies

Then review the notes from your interviews before answering questions about candidates from your interview shortlist:

• How much experience does he/she have doing the work required for the job?
• What relevant advanced skills can he/she bring?
• How much training will he/she need?
• How quickly will he/she be able to work without supervision?
• How fast did he/she progress through previous roles and responsibilities?
• Was he/she able to provide quantitative evidence of past career achievements?
• How recent were those achievements?

Rank each remaining candidate using a selection matrix, an objective method for selecting the final candidate. Rather than your team relying on subjective factors (e.g., “She was nice”), the matrix eliminates emotional bias and focuses solely on job requirements and criteria. Selection criteria are the same across the board.

Include qualitative criteria within your matrix (as shown above). Although quantitative qualities are important (e.g., sales numbers), cultural fit and a positive attitude are also essential. For example, if one candidate has less software selling experience but has demonstrated enthusiasm and motivation to succeed in a previous position, he/she might be a better choice over the candidate who has all of the experience but not a collaborative spirit.

Taking all of these factors into consideration, select the top candidate from the ranking.

2. Perform reference checks

As an extra precaution, discuss the final selection with your hiring team and then contact the references your candidate provided (some candidates may have overstated their qualifications).

Talk with your hiring team:

Before you contact a candidate’s references, you need to find out from your team what questions to ask.

What are their concerns about the candidate? What do they want to know more about the candidate that wasn’t touched on in the interviews? Maybe Mark doesn’t have a lot of leadership experience for your account executive position but obviously has excellent closing skills. This concern should be brought up to references.

Collect the feedback from your team and turn it into a list of organized questions for references.

Contact references via email or phone:

The first step is to let references know why you are contacting them. If the candidate didn’t let the reference know you’d be reaching out, that’s a red flag. Start the conversation or email exchange by asking how the reference knows the candidate. Then verify that the information the candidate gave you (e.g., job responsibilities or achievements) is true.

To fully understand if the candidate’s past experience adequately prepared them for your sales position, ask specific, job-related questions. For example, “We are strongly focused on social selling strategies at ABC Sales. Can you provide an example of when Mark successfully used LinkedIn or a similar platform to generate leads in his last position?” is an excellent question that should prod the reference to give you an actual example of the candidate in action.

Avoid asking broad questions such as “Tell me more about Jenny.” The answers will likely be something like, “Jenny is great, she’s really motivated to succeed.” You want references to provide stories of specific situations, tasks, and actions that the candidate handled.

Other good practices for talking with references include:

• Establish rapport from the beginning of the conversation. Compliment the candidate and let the reference know that you are excited to learn more from them.
• Describe your open sales position. Make reference to specific responsibilities. “Virtual presentations are a major role in this position. Can you tell me about a time when Mary presented at your company?”
• Don’t rush the conversation, but also don’t take up too much of the reference’s time (an organized list of questions should help with staying on track).
• Don’t interrupt — follow the 80/20 conversation rule here. The reference should be doing 80% of the talking and you should be listening the other 20% of the time.
• Ask for instances when the candidate demonstrated soft skills. “How does John interact with other sales reps? How does he reflect empathy?”

3. Communicate with the final candidate

If the references confirmed your hunch that a candidate will be a good fit, it’s time to let them know the good news. You should have set up a hiring schedule at the beginning of your hiring process. Stick to that schedule. If you’ve found an amazing candidate, don’t waste time letting them know that they’re hired.

Discuss the final results with your hiring team. If, for some reason, the process is going to take longer or you need more time to talk, contact the candidate and let them know. Don’t leave them hanging or leave the door open for them to go to a competitor.

Contact your selection with a congratulatory email. Below is a template for a sales hiring email:​

Hi <Candidate Name>, Thanks so much for interviewing with us this week. It was great meeting you, and we appreciate all of your time and effort. We’d love to have you join ABC Sales as an Account Executive. This is a full-time, 40 hour per week position. You’ll be reporting to <Manager Name>. We will have an offer letter sent your way soon. The starting salary is [$X] and [include bonus programs, if applicable.] annually. These are the benefits we currently offer to our team members: [include health and insurance plan, number of vacation days, gym stipend, etc.] If you have any questions about anything in the offer, feel free to ask. Would you be available to start on [date]? Looking forward to your reply! <Hiring Manager>

If, for any reason, the final candidate cannot accept the offer, repeat Steps 2 and 3 and identify the next best candidate to contact based on your candidate selection matrix.

Equip your new hire

[Source]

Sales competencies are always changing. Even after you’ve made the hiring decision and your new salespeople are settled in the company, the process isn’t complete. Provide your hires with the resources they need to succeed such as training, a CRM, a standardized sales cycle, and clear career guidelines. Nurture your sales team as you would your customers to help reduce poor performance and turnover.

Have you noticed the disconnect between how executives talk about Sales Development and how they treat Sales Development leaders? Companies are beginning to understand the vital role SDRs play in building pipeline, but Sales Development leaders rarely have a seat at the proverbial table.

The Reason?

Sales Development can’t measure their outbound prospecting funnel in a meaningful way.

If you have ever attended a Sales Development conference, you’ve heard SDRs talk about email open rates, response rates, call volume, and other metrics that are not parts of their outbound prospecting funnel.

What you probably haven’t heard is real funnel metrics that allow Sales Development leaders to work backwards from their goals to estimate the resources they need to succeed.

Without these bottom-line metrics, those other numbers don’t matter. They’re fluff. They look impressive but don’t tell you the real value of the tasks being done.

Why You Must Have Real Funnel Metrics

You can’t scale a Sales Development program using vanity metrics. Without real funnel metrics, you will eventually hire too many or too few reps. If you hire too few, everyone below Sales Development in the revenue funnel suffers. If you hire too many, you run the risk of overloading your sales team and watching pipeline cost skyrocket.

Now, you may be thinking that there’s no such thing as too much pipeline.

That may be true of inbound interest, but it’s not the same with outbound pipeline. You see, outbound opportunities (or potential opportunities) don’t receive the attention necessary when the volume exceeds the AE team’s ability to develop them further.

So it’s important to have the right sized team –– and the only way to nail that number is to be measuring meaningful metrics.

Keep reading to learn:

• Why measuring your outbound prospecting funnel is vital to your success as a Sales Development or RevOps leader
• The stages of the outbound prospecting funnel
• How to measure and report on those stages

So Why Don’t SDRs Measure Something More Meaningful?

The reason teams focus exclusively on activity metrics is because they’re the only metrics most SDR programs know how to track. These metrics are baked into most outbound automation tools and are easy to track using simple Salesforce reports.

And SDRs get away with such lean reporting for two simple reasons:

1. Few other companies are measuring their outbound funnels
2. Most SDR teams are small

Small teams can sometimes get away with making strategic decisions without data. A qualified manager with a team of three SDRs can listen to every call and understand who is struggling and why.

Even without a clear understanding of her funnel, she can probably estimate the impact of a change in headcount accurately.

But guesses become less accurate as you grow. Determining what additional resources are required to achieve pipeline goals is easy with 3 reps and damn near impossible with 20 if you don’t understand your funnel.

How to Prepare Your SDR Organization to Scale

In order to scale, you must be able to answer one question accurately: If I add 100 Accounts to my outbound prospecting funnel, how much pipeline will I create?

To answer this question, you have to clearly define the stages of your funnel, track outbound prospects as they pass through your funnel, and standardize the amount of your team’s bandwidth is consumed by each prospect account.

Let’s take a dive into these 3 steps.

1. Defining the stages of your funnel
2. Tracking outbound prospects
3. Standardizing bandwidth

3 Steps to Gathering Useful Sales Development Data

To measure outbound sales prospecting, you need to create some internal processes that help you see what’s going on at a high level. Here are the 3 steps you must take. Defining the Stages of Your Funnel

Like sales prospects, pipeline opportunities must pass through a set of stages with the Sales Development team before they’re a true opportunity. Each stage must be clearly defined and measurable.

Unlike with Opportunity stages, which are different for every team, a single set of outbound prospecting stages can be used by just about every Sales Development team.

There are 5 standard Outbound Prospecting stages that work for most outbound SDR programs –– and I’ve laid them out in the infographic below. Remember, though, these stages are associated with the Account record for a company, not Leads or Contacts.

Tracking Outbound Prospects

Now that you have well-defined stages, the next step is to build a mechanism to track prospects’ movement through them. For this we’ll use a combination of formula fields, rollups, and workflow rules in Salesforce.

Note: The version in this post is abridged. A more detailed, complete set of instructions is available from Outreach.io in an ebook: How SDR Managers Can Get Full Funnel Visibility.

We’ll begin by creating a few formula fields on activity records. Each time an activity is created, these fields will automatically check to see if they were created by an outbound prospecting SDR and whether they are outbound or engagement activities (usually based on the Subject line).

The subject lines are a great way to identify prospecting activity because most teams use sales automation software that prepends activity subjects with key information.

For example, Outreach.io adds “[Outreach] [Email] [Out]” to every outbound email and “[Outreach] [Email] [In]” to inbound email (AKA engagements).

Here’s what a formula field looks like for an Email Engagement (an inbound email from an activated company):

And here’s how that formula reads:

IF(
AND(
Owner:User.Role_Name_c = “{{insert your SDR role name here}}”,
CONTAINS(Subject,”[Outreach] [Email] [In]”)

),
1,
0
)

Note: The formula is telling Salesforce to check whether the activity was created by an SDR and to check whether the subject line includes the text: ”[Outreach] [Email] [In]”. If both of these are true, it writes a 1 in the field. If not, it writes a 0.

If you don’t use Outreach.io, then replace ”[Outreach] [Email] [In]” with whatever your outbound email automation tool prepends to outbound emails.

Now that activities are properly marked as outbound (for activation) or inbound (for engagement), we need to push that data to the Account level so we know which companies are activated or engaged.

For this we’ll use Rollup Helper, an app from Passage Technology that is designed to help move information around Salesforce in ways that SFDC can’t do out of the box. We’ll use it to add up the number of outbound activities and put that number in a field on the Account record. We’ll do the same with inbound activities (engagements) and opportunities.

The last step is to build workflow rules that populate an “Activation Date” field on the Account record. This memorializes the date on which the account was activated. We’ll repeat the same thing for Engagement Date and Opportunity Date.

Having these dates makes reporting easy. With them you can answer questions like:

• How many Accounts did we activate this week/month/quarter?
• Of the accounts that we activated last month, how many engaged with us?
• If we activate 100 accounts, how many become opportunities?

Standardizing Bandwidth

Knowing how likely an activated account is to engage with you or become an opportunity is powerful, but it’s not enough. You need to know what happens inside the funnel in order to know what resources are required to create an opportunity.

So how do you understand what’s happening in your funnel when every rep is doing something slightly different?

Hint: You don’t.

This is a common issue for outbound SDR teams. Reps are given quality training and enablement, then left to their own devices when it comes to how they prospect. This lack of consistency means that no two reps expend the same amount of energy to generate a meeting.

Even if we know 20% of companies entering our funnel lead to meetings (because we have defined that now), that’s not enough. If we need 10 meetings, we know we need to add 50 companies to the funnel.

What we don’t know yet is what resources are required to move 50 companies through the funnel.

To solve this problem, you have to make sure every SDR is expending the same amount of energy on each target account. This requires standardizing the activities within your funnel.

Here’s what it sounds like when an outbound SDR leader knows his funnel just like a VP of Sales:

Chief Revenue Officer: “We need $400k more outbound pipeline next quarter than you generated this quarter. What resources do you need to hit that number?”

Outbound SDR Leader: “Our average deal size is $100k, so that means 4 more opportunities. On average, we have to activate 10 accounts to get one pipeline opportunity. So we’ll need to activate 40 more accounts than we did this quarter.”

Chief Revenue Officer: “Can you do that with your current team?”

Outbound SDR Leader: “No I can’t. Activating 40 more accounts means 5,000 more manual activities next quarter. Each rep does around 4,500 manual activities per quarter. If we stretch, I can probably do it with 1 rep, but the math says that we need a bit more than one. I suggest we hire two.”

Gaining a Seat at the Table

Armed with REAL data, Sales Development leaders can accurately predict what resources are required to generate any amount of sales pipeline. This knowledge is what allows you to impact growth and strategic planning…

Which is why it will earn Sales Development a seat at the table with other revenue leadership.

The tide is turning in the Sales Development world. As more companies invest in experienced SDR leadership, the leaders are beginning to ask the right questions.

But it’s only when you answer those questions with measurable, trackable data that you’ll have data that’s truly valuable.

Helping SDR teams define and measure their outbound prospecting funnel has become such a big part of our business at Iceberg RevOps that we’re about to launch an app for that very purpose on the Salesforce Appexchange. More info to come at Icebergops.com.

The post Why Sales Development Doesn’t Have a Seat at the Table (Yet) appeared first on Sales Hacker.

In the world of B2B SaaS where digital marketing takes precedence and automation touches everything we do, in-person events are often an afterthought — but in-person events are a critical component of any successful growth strategy.

In fact, the majority of B2B marketers have ranked in-person events as their top-performing demand generation tactic. The consensus is in: it’s time to put the human element back into SaaS marketing.

The Value of Human-to-Human (H2H) Experiences in B2B Growth

Today, most businesses have the ability to perform all of the marketing, sales and services efforts remotely, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time to set up in-person meetings with your prospects, partners and customers.

Genuine, one-to-one human connection is the one thing that your competitors can’t replicate with technology, digital content or automated outreach. No matter how outstanding your product or service is, nothing quite compares to the value and interest you can generate by looking your prospects in the eye, shaking their hands and solidifying your relationship.

Successful in-person events offer a number of benefits, including:

• • • Better sales conversations: When your salespeople have the ability to meet with your prospects face to face, they can respond more effectively to the nuances in their tone, body language and energy. Plus, interacting with your employees in person gives prospects a taste of what it’s like to work with your team, which could influence their decision to buy.
    • Improved brand-building: In-person events are a great way to build brand equity. Just by making an appearance at important industry events and networking with other leaders, you can get your name out there and establish yourself as a key player in the market.
    • Accelerated demand generation: As I mentioned earlier, in-person events are ranked as one of the top-performing demand generation tactics out there. In-person meetings can improve engagement across the board, from the prospect’s initial awareness of your brand to long after the sale closes.
    • Partner networking: Attending events can help you stay relevant in your industry. For example, if New Breed, a Diamond-Tier HubSpot partner, didn’t attend the annual INBOUND conference, it might make us look out of touch. In-person events are an opportunity to reinforce your connections in the industry.
    • Client success and retention: It’s much more difficult to give up on a product or service when you’ve formed a strong connection with the person or person(s) providing it. In that way, in-person events improve client relationships.

Most of all, in-person events are a great way to drive overall business growth. SaaS companies of any size can benefit from in-person events, but those in the growth/expansion stage will find in-person events to be especially helpful for achieving their marketing and sales goals.

For example, New Breed achieved over a 500 percent ROI from attending HubSpot’s annual INBOUND conference last year — and we still have leads generated at the event in our pipeline. The bottom line is, factoring in-person events into your marketing and sales budget can reap major rewards for your business.

How Can You Use Strategic In-Person Events to Drive Business Growth?

Mind you, in-person events aren’t limited to industry conferences and trade shows. There are a number of different kinds of in-person meetings you can host, attend and/or sponsor to encourage company growth.

Industry Trade Shows and Conferences

The most popular in-person events are, of course, large-scale industry trade shows and conferences. Companies in later growth stages might be in a good spot to sponsor events relevant to their industry, but SaaS companies of all sizes can attend these events to enhance their brand awareness and, ideally, grow their pipeline and customer base in a short period of time.

Popular SaaS trade shows and conferences include:

• • • SaaStr Annual Conference
    • SaaStock
    • SXSW
    • Growth Hacker’s Conference
    • Adobe Summit
    • Content Marketing Conference
    • MozCon

… and much more. Do your research to figure out which industry events are scheduled for the upcoming year and plan a budget, strategy and campaign for each event. Before investing in anything, look at the demographic information of who’s attending to understand whether or not the conference will attract your ideal customers.

If you’re renting a booth for the event, be sure to design an engaging, attractive display. Nothing brings a prospect closer to a sale quite like an in-person product demo, so you need to make sure your product is demo-ready for the show. Take some time to train your staff to leave the best possible impression on prospects who visit your booth.

Remember, industry events are great for lead generation, but they’re also opportunities to learn and grow as a professional. Plan time to attend educational sessions, expand your knowledge and adapt your growth strategy in accordance with the latest innovations and best practices.

Small-Scale Client Meetups

Small-scale meetups can reap as many rewards as large-scale industry trade shows. Sites like EventBrite, LinkedIn and Facebook are great places to find or organize smaller, local events to grow your network.

If you notice one of your clients is planning to attend a local event, send your customer success manager to meet up with them there to build rapport. Likewise, if you notice a company you’d like to partner with is hosting or attending a meetup, you need to be there. That’s a perfect opportunity to start forming a relationship with that company.

Because attending small meetups is much less of an investment than renting a trade show booth, you can be more creative and flexible about the types of meetups you attend. Things like culture, inclusion, business strategy and sales are relevant to professionals across industries, so attending events related to these industry-agnostic topics can show you care.

For example, I recently attended an OpenView panel discussing thought diversity among board members. Although New Breed doesn’t typically create content related to that subject, showing advocacy for and interest in that topic reflects positively back on our company.

Professional Networking Events

Regardless of your company or industry, making an in-person appearance at professional networking events can spark unique and beneficial relationships for your company.

Interacting with other professionals can put a face and personality to your brand, a human element that will serve you well as your business grows. In particular, networking events for industries relevant to your customer base are extremely valuable opportunities for your salespeople to capitalize on.

It’s always a good idea to immerse yourself in your prospects’ culture and industry, even if it’s not directly related to your business model. Use these events to expand your knowledge and bring what you learned back to your company to optimize your processes in the future.

The Takeaway

Whether you’re hosting an international industry conference or merely attending a local networking event, meeting face-to-face with your prospects, clients, partners and other industry leaders adds a valuable and irreplaceable layer of empathy, personality and humanity to your company.

So don’t let digital engagements overshadow the human-to-human connections you can form during in-person events. Hosting, sponsoring or attending in-person events can be a highly effective method for driving SaaS growth.

The post How SaaS Companies Can Accelerate Their Growth With In-Person Events appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Show me an egotistical person, and I will show you a person who isn’t listening. If someone feels like they have all the answers and know it all, then why should they listen to anyone else? Primarily, to an ego driven person, everyone else is purely there to make them look good. That’s it!

Big ego equals poor listener. I can’t say it any simpler than that. This confirms that the person with the big ego will never be a great salesperson nor will they ever be a great leader.

Sales and leadership is about connecting with people, and this means listening to people. The only person an egocentric individual wants to listen to is themselves. The first universal thing of every egotistical person is that they are quick to view everyone else as stupid and not hesitant to say it out loud to whoever is listening. Second, they always loathe doing whatever it takes to ensure that they are the center of everything.

Sadly, I see the results of a big ego play out in sales with a high degree of churn among customers and fewer referrals. The egocentric salesperson will consistently have a lower lifetime value from their customers than the humble salesperson.

In leadership, the ego driven person will always be plagued by high turnover and lower productivity from their salespeople. Ask yourself, would you want to work for a person who doesn’t value others?

Sales leadership is thinking of others more highly than yourself by putting them and their needs first. It’s about ending each conversation with earning the privilege and the honor to meet with that person again.

Check out this 40-second video: What is sales? It is people connecting with people.

https://youtu.be/uaQk8kSz6Q0

Also, be sure to read my blog post from last week where I write about the need to be both authentic and transparent.

Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results

There are plenty of challenges working against your hopes of contributing to the sales pipeline.

Companies that are in-market to buy your products aren’t considering your brand. Content fails to generate sales conversations. Target account lists remain static and ignore lookalike companies that might show intent. Company intent can’t be tracked to specific contacts for sales to engage. The list goes on and on.

Working with a third-party intent data provider might seem like a magic bullet solution to these problems. And while intent data is certainly valuable, your investments will be wasted without a strategy for getting the most out of it.

Improving sales enablement and contributing to your company’s pipeline starts with a set plan for intent signal scoring.

4 Main Categories for Intent Signal Scoring

Much like lead scoring, intent signal scoring adds a concrete value to individual contacts, prospects, and/or accounts that correlates to their stage of the buyer’s journey. However, the marketing qualified leads (MQLs) that come out of traditional lead scoring often fall short of sales expectations.

Sales enablement won’t succeed if the MQLs you deliver aren’t actually on the path to making a purchase decision. That’s where intent signal scoring comes into play. By adding the context of purchase intent, you can help sales engage with buyers more effectively with personalized content and messaging.

But intent data only adds value when you can accurately apply a scoring model to your prospects. Whether you’re creating these scores manually or with a predictive model, there are four main categories your intent signal scoring should focus on in a 100-point scale:

• Awareness Stage (0-30): These are your top of funnel contacts that may have read blog posts or read pages on your own website. But with third-party data, you can gain insight into buyer behavior on competitor and industry websites. Unlike traditional lead scoring, intent signal scoring ensures that your awareness-stage contacts are only those that fit your target profiles as opposed to high-volume, low-relevance contacts.
• Nurturing Stage (31-60): This is the next level of marketing engagement in which accounts may download informational content, subscribe to a newsletter, or show repeated interest in your own web pages. At this stage, third-party intent data providers can provide more granular insight into behavior by analyzing billions of web interactions and using natural language processing to index keywords that map to your product categories.
• Consideration Stage (61-80): With traditional lead scoring, this is where you might hand things off to sales. But this puts a lot of pressure on sales enablement and might take up valuable resources that could otherwise be spent closing deals. In this range, you’ll want to focus on using data to target ads, create personalized research content, and syndicate your messaging to remain top of mind with contacts that are showing greater purchase intent.
• Action Stage (81-100): This is the stage where you want to make the handoff to sales. When accounts are showing this level of intent, they’re ready to make a purchase and should be in contact with your sales team to make the final decision. When you’re able to send qualified leads to your sales team with this level of purchase intent, you’ll be able to overcome many of the typical issues that cause disconnects between your department and theirs.

When you can accurately place prospects in these intent scoring categories, you’ll be able to maximize the efficiency, quality, and win-rate of your pipeline. Those benefits are the direct result of formalizing sales enablement processes and ensuring that all resources are applied directly to companies that are in the market to buy what you sell.

The real challenge is applying all of your intent data effectively to ensure these scores are accurate.

Automating the Intent Signal Scoring Process

The best way to maximize the accuracy of intent signal scoring is to automate the process and take advantage of a predictive model for assessing behavior.

Trying to manually assess intent will lead to the same issues that traditional lead scoring has always presented. But when you work with a third-party intent data provider, you gain access to billions of data points and advanced algorithms that can accurately predict when leads become ready for sales.

The first step to success is knowing that not all intent data is created equal. When you can look beyond the promises of third-party providers and understand what you’re really investing in, you’ll be able to get the highest possible ROI.

The true mark of a working sales enablement strategy is a sales force that constantly maintains meaningful conversations with prospects and customers. It doesn’t matter how many documents the sales enablement team puts out or marketing materials they utilize; the important thing is to provide the sales team with collateral that is relevant and helpful at each stage of the sales process.

What collateral you should create depends on the particular needs of your reps. Given that B2B sales processes are often pretty sophisticated, various forms and types of content will be required.

Regardless of who owns the sales enablement function in an organization, it’s crucial to know that creating these content types and fostering a better relationship between sales and marketing are crucial in optimizing the ability of the sales force to generate revenue.

Sales enablement is vital to all effectiveness and acceleration efforts on the floor. Having a strategy in place is not optional anymore – it’s a necessity for all sales organizations that want to stay competitive.

We have moved way past the days where sales enablement needs to be defended and made the case for. The question now is, what do we need to do?

In this post, we put together the different collateral / content types that sales enablement teams should be able to source, create, and provide to give topnotch support to sales.

White Papers
White papers play an essential role in building brand image, spreading expertise, and prospecting as well as generating leads.

Case Studies
These help companies impress and win the trust of their potential buyers with the work they have already done.

Internal Success Stories
Unlike case studies, internal success stories are quick, punchy videos recorded by your top reps. They explain how they won specific deals so new hires can see what good selling looks like.

Data Sheets
These help a company deal with any questions that might arise from customers regarding the more technical specifications of their products.

Buyer’s Guides
Buyer’s guides are an important part of the sales cycle – they occupy a spot in the middle of the funnel, helping to usher prospective buyers closer to your product, while still providing useful information.

E-Newsletters
These are an essential part of an online marketing strategy. When properly developed, they perform well as a lead generation tool and can improve relationship development with potential customers.

Sales Scripts
Sales scripts are used by sales representatives to increase the efficiency of customer acquisition experiences. Having strategies in place for each step in the sales development cycle helps efficiently move prospective buyers through each stage.

Email Templates and Call Scripts
Emails templates are common tools that help sellers build trust with prospects and can be personalized based on the prospect’s pain points and industry.

Multimedia Files (Videos and Podcasts)
These files can either be external-facing assets for reps to share with prospects, or internal assets meant for sales training. These include webinars, conference session video recordings, and podcasts.

Sales Playbooks
These are generally comprehensive internal-facing guides that show the most effective way for reps to sell, often broken out into separate modules for each sales stage.

Sales Battlecards
These concise, internal-facing documents establish a company’s competitive differentiation. Reps use sales battlecards to handle objections and advance through the negotiation stage of opportunities.

Customer Success Stories
These are external facing documents, helpful for prospective customers looking to see proof of product performance. They allow businesses to present real-world use cases and results – this can solidify product benefits to prospective buyers.

Fact Sheets
A fact sheet provides a 2-3 page overview of one of an Asset Manager’s Investment Strategies. It’s a critical document to convey key overview information about the Strategy to potential investors.

Pitch Books
Pitch Books are used by Sales teams to present an overview of themselves and their firm and stimulate a discussion with a prospect about potential solutions they can offer.

Client Reviews
Client reviews are documents presented quarterly or annually to drive a discussion about the relationship between the firm and their client. These are useful to showcase the mutual successes they’ve experienced and present additional opportunities to partner.

Investment Proposals
In Wealth Management, Financial Advisors often create Investment Proposals in the early stage discussions with a prospect. These proposals serve to highlight the unique and differentiated solutions offered by that Financial Advisor.

In business, in order for me to teach in my blogs, podcasts, masterminds, and all the things I do, I have to continue to learn, which means I have to invest time in learning how to do new things, and look at things from different perspectives. One of the ways I do this is by listening to audiobooks. I’m an auditory learner. I’m not somebody who can read a book and get a lot out of it, but if I listen to an audiobook, I get a ton out of it. That’s the way that I learn. Maybe you’re a reader, but my preferred method of learning is through audio. Hence, why I do a podcast, right? Make sense?

Listen Up…

I was listening to two audiobooks this weekend. Yes, I listened to two books. One of them was called Choose by Ryan Levesque. You may know him. He’s also the author of Ask. I love his one-word titles. The other one was book from a LinkedIn expert on LinkedIn. Now, the difference between these two books is Ryan Levesque is more focused on marketing, while the LinkedIn guy, whose name I’m not going to use, his book was 100% on sales, and that’s what he does. They both lived up to expectations. Today I want to talk about why a marketing mind is better than a sales script.

The marketing book itself, Ryan’s book, gave away concepts. It gave away ideas. It really showed you a kind of a step-by-step process and was really geared towards helping you learn how to do it yourself.

Now, the LinkedIn book really did kind of the same thing. But as I was listening to it, I kept thinking, the target audience for this book is C-level people, CEOs. The concepts that they kept bringing out were that you have to do all of these steps in order to be successful on LinkedIn. You constantly heard him say, “Well, this is what our company does.” What it sounded like was, yes, here’s the formula. It’s really time-consuming. It’s really complicated. But guess what? We make it easy. You can pay us to do it. In the long run, even though I was educational, it really sounded more like a sales pitch for his company than it did for something you could do yourself. Now, you could, if you want to invest the time. But he doesn’t teach you all the other principles about how to do that. It’s really just about the steps necessary to be successful using LinkedIn in his formula.

Marketing vs. Sales

Let’s examine the difference between marketing and sales. Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. In other words, it’s the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers.

Sales, on the other hand, are activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given time period. It’s all about actually creating transactions, where marketing is more about building and maintaining relationships.

Now, both of these books talk about building relationships. But one is much more focused on how to do it from a more organic standpoint, where the other one is about how to use LinkedIn to build relationships to generate sales.

So, what’s the difference? Marketing informs and attracts leads and prospects to your company. Sales, on the other hand, works directly with prospects to reinforce the value that your company’s solution is to them. We have to also define what values are. We’ll talk about that in a second.

Why Is a Marketing Mind Better Than a Sales Script? You have to start thinking more like a marketer, which a long-term relationship building game, versus a salesman, or a saleswoman, or a salesperson. Sales is really about cold calling, prospecting, all that kind of stuff.

The COLD Call

Right before I started this post, I got a call. It was from somebody who said, “Hey. I want to learn more about your marketing techniques.” Okay. I ended up returning the phone call because I didn’t recognize the number. He was like, “Hey. We sell this stuff and you can white label our services.” He wasn’t caring about anything I had to do. He just wanted to pitch me. So, I turned it around. I said, “Hey. Follow me on LinkedIn,” and I sent him a whole bunch of other stuff on LinkedIn that would educate him and market to him, so maybe he might use my services. That’s the difference. He was there to sell me. I was there to educate him.

Ask

When you think more like a marketing person, the first thing you have to say is what value do you add to them? That’s the key. If they find value in what you do, then they will continue to consume what it is that you present. How do you do that? Well, in Ryan Levesque’s other book called Ask, that’s what you do. You ask. You pull people. They vote with their eyes. They vote with their likes, their comments, their shares. They tell you what they’re interested in. It can’t hurt to do a survey or a poll and say, “What keeps you up at night?”

Value

How do you provide value? That’s what the marketing person has to understand. Then you need to provide that value. How do you do that? Give away your best stuff. A lot of people think it’s counterintuitive to give away the baby with the bath water, but you’re not doing that. Why? Because people will consume what you give them, but very few of those people will act upon it and actually do something, and most of them will need your help.

Targeting

The next thing you have to do is make sure you’re targeting your messages to the right audiences. I’ve talked about this in some past blog posts and podcasts, but the bottom line is, you may have to create multiple pieces of information to talk to multiple different audiences. So, do it.

Sequence

The other thing that you want to do is you want to think in sequences. In other words, there’s something called cornerstone content. It’s the big, broad brush. Then you can create other pieces of content that get down into the weeds. Sequence out each one of those steps. Define the steps in the cornerstone content, and then break it down into smaller chunks. That way, people will follow along with the sequence.

THE Goal

The last piece of this is to focus on the end goal. In sales, it’s to make a sale, right? But in marketing, it’s to get their permission to continue the conversations. How do you do that? Get them on your email list. Get them to a webinar. They may refer you to somebody, or they may follow you on social media. The bottom line with all of that is marketing will help you generate conversations on a mutually beneficial level.

Final Thoughts

Let me leave you with some final thoughts. Sales is about identifying prospects and getting them to listen to your pitch. Now, that can be successful, but it takes a lot of people and a lot of pitches to work. Where marketing is about educating your market so they get to know, like, and trust you enough to contact you when they need what you’re selling or maybe want to refer you to other potential prospects. One is faster, but less effective, and one takes longer, but builds better, lasting relationships.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas or questions about showing the concepts presented. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?

"Artificial intelligence": you've heard the term, you know it's a trend, you know you're "supposed" to be using it... But if you were asked to explain in a few short sentences what it means for marketers, could you do it? If not, then you've found the right article. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Building a brand ambassador program or influencer program is an effective way to acquire and retain new customers. After all, people trust recommendations from their network far more than traditional ads. But the terminology of the referral marketing world can be super confusing. What’s the difference between a brand ambassador and an influencer?

Many companies use these terms interchangeably. And influencers and brand ambassadors can fulfill the same basic purposes.

Both share your product with their audience, which helps you grow your customer base. However, several key factors separate brand ambassadors and influencers. Let’s examine the similarities and differences between brand ambassadors and influencers.

Who is a brand ambassador?

Brand ambassadors are real people who love your brand and your products. These individuals actively use your brand’s products, and they want to spread the word about your products because they are passionate about seeing your brand succeed. Think of them as “top-notch cheerleaders”!

Ambassadors are experts in your brand, and experts at promoting your products casually, via word-of-mouth. They aren’t always celebrities, and they don’t always have a gargantuan network of social media followers. But, they are often authorities in their field—and the field your brand serves.

• For example, a dentist makes a credible brand ambassador for mouthwash.
• And a fitness instructor makes a reliable brand ambassador for Lululemon.

These people don’t have to be field authorities, though, as long as they’re committed to spreading the word about your brand—they could be employees, partners, or customers.

This fitness instructor is a Lululemon brand ambassador.

Most brand ambassadors agree to maintain an ongoing relationship with your brand and will continue to repeatedly promote it on social media, at trade shows, events, and through networking. Instead of using a script, they like to talk to others organically and one-on-one, as if they were having a conversation with a friend (although they may have to follow a list of guidelines that you provide). Which is why brand ambassadors are important for your marketing strategy.

They might receive money or free products as an incentive for their services, but not necessarily. Often, brand ambassadors are more than happy to assist you without compensation—seeing you succeed is incentive enough.

As an added bonus… They’re great people to get to test new products and get feedback from, as they’re always excited to help make your brand better.

After seven years of loyalty, Maker’s Mark Ambassadors receive the opportunity to purchase bourbon from a barrel that bears their name.

What’s one of the best parts of brand ambassadors? They’ll usually create content, like social media posts, product images, and blog articles, for you for free. They’ll use their authentic perspective to talk about your brand, so it’s easy for them to connect with their audiences genuinely and with true enthusiasm. Plus, they’ll share the content with their friends, who will likely spread the word to their own friends (free publicity!)

It’s clear to audiences that a brand ambassador isn’t trying to push products or opinions. After all, they aren’t explicitly saying “buy this.” Rather, they are simply telling why they love a product from their own experiences, to inform others about the brand. As a result, brand ambassadors give new and future customers a compelling reason to trust you.

In a nutshell, brand ambassadors are your informal (and extremely cost-effective) spokespeople—the faces and voices of your product!

Who is an influencer?

An influencer is someone with a substantial reputation, and often a substantial social media or blog following, who promotes a product for your brand. Instead of telling others about the brand by word-of-mouth, they influence by example. They authentically show others how they use your product in everyday life, with their own voice, and on their own social media channels.

Those sponsored posts where celebrities and social media personalities show off products they’ve been using lately (marked with #ad or #sponsored)? They’re the most well-known examples of influencer marketing.

Influencer Redrhinestone shows how the mobile game Best Fiends helped her pass time at the airport.

Unlike brand ambassador relationships, your brand’s relationships with influencers will likely be short-term. An influencer will usually promote a product only once or twice. It’s also important to note that influencers might have not necessarily used your product before, either.

Instead, you’ll choose influencers for their ability to easily reach an audience—the market that your brand is also trying to reach. As Influencer Marketing Hub explains, influencers are “people who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a particular topic”.

They’ll either have large amounts of followers in your target market, expertise in the niche your brand is focused on, or both.

• For example, a cosmetics company might ask a makeup YouTuber to share and review their products in a video.
• A plant-based snack company might ask a vegan blogger to sample and write about their newest snack.
• Or, a large company that markets to a Gen Z audience might ask young icon, Maddie Ziegler, to share their product on Instagram, due to her legions of Gen Z followers.

The idea is that, if an influencer loves your product, their status will convince their followers to buy it. People who already admire an individual (such as a celebrity) will easily trust what this individual has to say about your product, especially since they’re showing it with their authentic perspective.

And followers are far more likely to trust influencers’ posts than traditional ads because influencers’ voices seem more genuine. According to Emma Knightley at the Digital Marketing Institute, almost half of consumers “depend on influencer recommendations” to determine which products to purchase. 40% have purchased a product after seeing an influencer use it on social media, and 60% would consider purchasing an influencer-promoted product if they see it in a store. Unfortunately, there’s also a potential downside: if an influencer you’re connected with loses their reputation and trust through questionable actions, it may lead customers to view your product negatively as well.

Although many influencers are celebrities, not all influencers have followers in the hundreds of thousands. Rather, some have only a few thousand followers, like a micro-influencer, but still, have high authority within a niche. The influencers you choose will depend on your brand’s desired reach and the average engagement you’d like an influencer to have with followers.

There are three main types of influencers:

• Celebrities. The celebrity category also includes social media stars with millions of followers. Celebrities have high reach, but usually have low engagement with followers: they don’t reply to comments and questions often.
• Macro-influencers. These personalities have over a hundred thousand social media or blog followers, but less than a million followers. Macro-influencers have medium levels of reach and engagement.
• Micro-influencers. These social media users and bloggers have smaller audiences, in the thousands or tens of thousands, so they have the least reach. However, micro-influencers have advantages over more prominent figures: they have high engagement with their followers, and usually have high authority in a niche (like food, fashion, fitness, or parenting). And they’re able to talk with their followers like a circle of friends. Don’t underestimate the power of micro-influencers!

Men’s fashion micro-influencer, brent_luyckx promotes a watch.

Influencers always receive some sort of incentive to promote a product. It could be money, free products for them and their fans, discounts, or all of the above. Still, though, influencers will only choose to promote the product if they like it and if they think it would be valuable to share it with their audience.

Ready to harness the power of influencers? Check out these tips from experts on how to create a successful influencer marketing campaign.

Differences between brand ambassadors and influencers

There are some big differences between the two. Here’s what they are:

• Brand ambassadors promote your brand by word-of-mouth telling others about your product), influencers promote your brand by example (showing others how they use the product).
• Influencer relationships are typically short-term, but ambassador relationships are long-term. Influencers only promote your brand once or twice, while ambassadors promote your brand repeatedly.
• Influencers always receive some type of payment (money or free products) for promoting your brand, but brand ambassadors will often promote your brand for free.
• Influencers haven’t necessarily used your product before. All ambassadors have already actively used your product.
• Influencers are chosen based on their capacity to reach an audience. Ambassadors, though, are chosen based on existing love for a product.
• Brand ambassadors are committed to promoting your brand—your brand already stands out in their eyes. Some influencers might not choose to promote your product at all if it doesn’t stand out to them, especially if they’re bombarded with promotion requests from multiple brands.
• If you want an influencer to promote your product, you’ll ask first— you’ll send them a message and product samples. In contrast, ambassadors have likely promoted your product already, before you recruited them for your brand ambassador program.

Similarities between brand ambassadors and influencers

Even though there are many differences, the two do have some similarities. Here’s what they are:

• Both brand ambassadors and influencers are chosen for their authority, whether it’s in a field, in the brand, or over an audience.
• Brands recruit brand ambassadors and influencers with the same end goal in mind— they want them to share a product with their own audiences, to generate new customers.
• Both brand ambassadors and influencers enter into agreements with a brand to promote a product.
• Both create and share content related to your brand.
• Both will choose to promote only the products they enjoy.
• Both must be able to promote a product authentically, and with genuine enthusiasm. They must stay true to their own voice, without coming across as too “salesy.”

• Both brand ambassadors and influencers help build trust in your product with new and potential customers.

Consumers trust influencers and brand ambassadors! According to Neil Patel, 9 out of 10 people trust recommendations from their network. Also, potential customers are “71% more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals.”

• Both brand ambassadors and influencers must have confidence in sharing their perspective with an audience, whether large or small.
• An influencer marketing relationship may evolve into an ambassador marketing relationship. If an influencer grows to love a product they promoted, uses it regularly, and starts to share that love repeatedly and without prompting, a brand may reach out to form a long-term relationship with that person. At that point, the person is no longer an influencer, but a brand ambassador.

Closing

Your brand will recruit brand ambassadors and influencers for different reasons.

Brand ambassadors already love your products, and they’re an expert in your brand or the field your brand markets to. They might have already promoted your product without being asked, so they’re prime candidates to continue to promote your brand in the long-term, via word-of-mouth.

In contrast, you’ll choose influencers for their ability to reach a certain audience, even if they haven’t tried your product yet. Influencers will promote a product by example, and you’ll only work with them for a short time.

But brand ambassadors and influencers will fulfill the same main objectives for your brand. Both will share a product with their own audience, from their own perspective. Also, both have some type of authority or expertise. Their recommendations will cause new customers to come rolling in because people trust their opinions!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing at a pace that us non-technologists can’t quite comprehend. To realize the true power of what is possible with AI, check out these five sites for the mind-boggling things it can create.

Through deep learning, machine learning, or AI, these websites show how AI can now create something new out of scratch. This ranges from writing a poem based on your input to creating a selfie of a person that does not exist.

1. Poem Portraits by Google (Web): AI Writes Poems About You

The Google Arts and Culture lab comes up with cool stuff all the time. Poem Portraits is a collaboration with artist Es Devlin and creative technologist Ross Goodwin. In the app, AI will write a unique new poem for you, and turn it into a funky portrait.

Here’s how it works. Poem Portraits first asks you to enter a word. Based on that it will come up with a new two-line poem. The algorithm has been trained over 20 million words of 19th century poetry.

Next, the app asks you to take a selfie with your webcam or your phone. It then shows you the final output of the two-line poem, which is also turned into a painting of your selfie. The words are laid across the shape of your face, with a few filters applied, making this a unique self-portrait of your face and your own poetry.

You can check “Collective Poem” to see all the two-line poems generated so far. In essence, Google’s AI is creating art in collaboration with you, about you. It’s mind-blowing!

2. 9 GANS (Web): AI Creates Nine New Paintings Every Hour

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are the preferred tool of many AI creators these days, especially when it comes to working with graphics. The AI learns a lot based on the images it is fed, and then it can create new images based on the patterns it has learned.

9 GANS uses this technology to create new pieces of artwork. The AI generates nine new digital paintings every hour. After the hour is up, the paintings are deleted forever, adding charm and value to them due to their short life. And the AI starts generating nine completely new paintings, in random order.

The styles might seem familiar sometimes because the GAN is based on famous paintings. But how it mixes and matches learnings from thousands of paintings to create something new is the cool part.

3. This X Does Not Exist (Web): Collection of AI-Based Creators

9 GANs isn’t the only computer-based creator out there. The most famous GAN-based website on the internet today is This Person Does Not Exist (TPDNE), which creates real-looking fake human faces out of nothing.

TPDNE inspired several others to make such AI-based sites. This X Does Not Exist collates all these AI creators in one place. The collection includes AI-generated cats, job resumes, Airbnb listings, startups, and other made-up creations that seem absolutely genuine.

Apart from the general wow factor of seeing something a machine made, these sites can also be useful. For example, TPDNE made it to our list of new free stock image sites worth checking out. The AI-made resumes by CV-maker EnhanCV show what an effective, filled-out resume should look like. But yes, more than anything else, it’s fun.

4. Computoser (Web): AI Creates New Music, Free to Download and Use

Computoser is so cool, so weird, and so fun that you must try it out. Let’s call it an AI-powered musician or band, which is ready to create a new song based on your likes and dislikes.

You can set different parameters like mood (happy or sad), tempo, accompaniment, classical, electronic-like, drums, dissonance, and the instruments and scale. You specifically want a french horn playing in major pentatonic? No problem.

Once you’ve tinkered with the settings, Computser’s algorithm will create a new track with that input. It’s the first time this is being done, so it’s uniquely yours. If you like it, you can even download it as a MIDI or MP3 file to use it in creative works.

There’s a section of free-to-use stock music collections, most liked tracks, and even a small game where you guess the instrument and tempo of a song. There’s a whole lot to like here, but nothing beats creating a new musical piece of your own, aided by your band Computser.

5. How to Generate Almost Anything (Web): MIT’s AI-Human Experiments

AI-generated ideas aren’t perfect yet and need some human assistance. Engineers at MIT wanted to see how far the AI-human collaborative creative process could go in the current avatar. Check out their experiments at this site.

So far, the algorithms and the teams have come together to create new music; new and weird pizza recipes, chocolate truffles, and cocktails; fashion, dresses, and perfumes; graffiti; and even viruses in a lab.

Each project has a full explanation of the process, but the more interesting part is the short video. Here, you can see the engineers actually execute the AI’s creation, and the reactions of both experts in the field as well as regular people. You’ll love it.

Play With Google’s AI Experiments

Poem Portraits is only the latest concoction of the mad scientists at Google. The company has been experimenting with artificial intelligence for years and has come up with other cool projects which you can play with.

From inventing a whole new type of sound to creating songs out of pictures you take on your phone, here are some of the coolest Google AI experiments you should check out.

Read the full article: AI Can Do What? 5 Sites for Mind-Blowing Creations by Artificial Intelligence

Insider Picks writes about products and services to help you navigate when shopping online. Insider Inc. receives a commission from our affiliate partners when you buy through our links, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective.

Whether you're a startup founder seeking advice to guide your journey or an exec who's always challenging herself to become a better leader, you can probably find the proper inspiration in one of the thousands of business books published every year.

To save you the trouble of sifting through each and every one of them, we've previously narrowed down the huge category to the most influential books, the books CEOs recommend reading, and the best books of 2018 so far.  

A group of people who no doubt have some thoughts about the business and leadership books you should read are MBA students, so I asked some MBA alumni about the books that have actually stuck with them long past business school.

After graduating from the top business schools in the country, they've gone on to found successful startups or lead business development, analytics, and product strategy at their respective companies. 

With all the clutter in the world of business publishing, these MBA-recommended books are worth more than one read. They contain insights and lessons that are applicable in real business situations, from strategy and negotiations to team-building and company culture. 

Learn why MBA alumni love the following 17 business and leadership books. 

"Power Up: How Smart Women Win in the New Economy" by Magdalena Yesil

Buy it here >>

Throughout her book, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Magdalena Yesil urges women to take control of their careers and combat the gender wage gap. Magdalena immigrated to the United States in 1976 with only $43 and today is best known as the first investor in the multi-billion dollar company, Salesforce. A definite must-read for anyone looking to get ahead in business. — Heidi Zak, co-founder of ThirdLove, MIT Sloan School of Management 

"The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail" by Clayton M. Christensen

Buy it here >>

This is probably one of the best known books on innovation and business out there, but I think it's for good reason and worth highlighting again. For entrepreneurs and leaders of startups, there are layers and layers of insightful thinking on product market fit, how many large companies eventually "over-engineer" their products and create opportunity for new entrants, and deep thoughts on how to create and capture value in these situations. 

Christensen's book is also the intellectual foundation for a lot of the best business writing out there today (like Stratechery by Ben Thompson, a personal favorite) and is necessary reading for anyone interested in how these ideas have evolved over time. — Josh Hix, co-founder of Plated, Harvard Business School 

"Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose" by Tony Hsieh

Buy it here >>

"Delivering Happiness" provides a real-life blueprint for starting and growing a company. It inspired much of the foundation of Cuyana and I highly recommend it! — Karla Gallardo, co-founder of Cuyana, Stanford Graduate School of Business 

"What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-smart Executive" by Mark McCormack

Buy it here >>

Amazing insights about business, what makes people tick, and how to navigate the soft skills part of business. Mark McCormack, the author, is the father of modern sports as we know it and built an absolute media empire around the monetization of sports that ultimately benefited athletes, sponsors, rightsholders, and leagues. — Ilan Bielas, Columbia Business School 

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"The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm" by Tom Kelley

Buy it here >>

I truly believe that everyone is creative and there are no limits to one's ingenuity. Like many things, there is a process to help bring out the best ideas. These books help one establish a framework to encourage business inspiration. — Shilpa Shah, co-founder of Cuyana, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business 

"The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers" by Ben Horowitz

Buy it here >>

I love learning through successful people's real-life experiences and this book provides an extremely practical and honest experience about running a company, managing people, and handling tough problems. — Noura Sakkijha, co-founder of Mejuri, McMaster University DeGroote School of Business 

"Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success" by Phil Jackson

Buy it here >>

From his human-centric approach to his self-awareness, Phil Jackson paints an incredible picture of what it actually takes to build and manage high-performing teams. The lessons and idioms in the book are field- and industry-agnostic. It's a quick read that will easily get you thinking about your personal leadership style and the real work that it takes to achieve lasting success. — Erika Shumate, co-founder of Pinrose, Stanford Graduate School of Business 

"Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike" by Phil Knight

Buy it here >>

"Shoe Dog" shows how traction and execution can trump planning, how important it is to be able to think on your feet, and how much perseverance is required in the face of uncertainty. This is the best book I’ve ever read and it hit really close to home with our journey at Burrow. — Stephen Kuhl, co-founder of Burrow, The Wharton School

"Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis" by Robert F. Kennedy

Buy it here >>

In the fall of 1962 US spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites in Cuba, just 90 miles from US shores. Thirteen Days is a behind-the-scenes recollection of the days that followed and how the US handled one of the highest stakes negotiations in history (and a much more interesting read than most negotiation and game theory texts). — Rich Kennedy, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management

"Made in America" by Sam Walton

Buy it here >>

Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, never took no for an answer. He continuously challenged the convention and refused to back down against much larger competitors. More importantly, he was never satisfied with where Wal-Mart had reached or how big it had become — he was always focused on making it bigger and better. — Kabeer Chopra, co-founder of Burrow, The Wharton School 

"Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business" by Chet Richards

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There is a cult built around the work of John Boyd, a former fighter pilot whose thoughts on war and strategy helped shape military doctrine across the US military. This book does a great job of explaining not only Boyd's work but how it applies away from the battlefield. — Jeff Armfield, University of Michigan Ross School of Business 

 

 

"The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis

Buy it here >>

It's valuable because it's accessible. You don't have to be an MBA to understand how Wall Street screwed the country (and got away with it). There are lessons on ethics, economics, and the importance of oversight. As a bonus, if you don't feel like reading the book, the movie is just as good. — Cameron Merriman, Clarkson University David D. Reh School of Business 

"Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World" by Adam Grant

Buy it here >>

I’m a big fan of Adam Grant’s work and loved “Originals.” It was published right before we launched Away, in February 2016, so reading it then was especially interesting as we were just starting out and taking something that was an idea and turning it into something that was entirely our own.

“Originals” has also influenced the way I lead my team. Adam emphasizes the notion that great leaders champion new perspectives and ideas, from anyone in the organization, encouraging innovation and cultivating great leaders from within. He talks a lot about how great leaders choose to go against the grain, and I think we’re doing that every single day at Away —consistently challenging the status quo and what we think we know, and using all the context we have to find the “Away way” of doing things. — Steph Korey, co-founder of Away, Columbia Business School 

"Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success" by Adam Grant

Buy it here >>

Adam Grant’s "Give and Take" was an important book for both Andres [Modak] and I as it helped define our approach for building Snowe by building a collaborative environment where our mutual success is defined by how we build teams, create partnerships, and interact with others outside of the company.

Adam Grant was one of my favorite professors at Wharton, not least for his inspiring approach to negotiations. In today’s increasingly conflicted, adversarial political and business environment, it’s been a helpful 'North Star' to us as we think about how we build a brand and organization that we are proud of, one supported by deeply-rooted successful relationships and camaraderie. — Rachel Cohen, co-founder of Snowe, The Wharton School 

"The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Buy it here >>

Written in the pre-Internet era, I argue that it is still relevant now. Yes, it is a dated book but most, if not all, of the principles still apply. — Jeff Armfield, University of Michigan Ross School of Business 

"Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration" by Ed Catmull

Buy it here >>

While there’s so much to take away on empowering teams and fostering creativity, what really struck a chord for me was Pixar’s singular focus on trying to create the right team behaviors (inputs) that will drive to the right outcome (outputs). — Adam Ross, founder of Heyday, The Wharton School 

"Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck-Why Some Thrive Despite Them All" by Jim Collins

Buy it here >>

Jim has several well-known business books. "Great by Choice" examines companies that have become great and focuses on the stories of the intentional decisions they have made that led them to maintain their status as one of the world's largest and most successful stories. What I liked about this book is the use of real-life examples across different industries that ultimately gets brought together through common themes that drove their successes. — Ilan Bielas, Columbia Business School

• A new "Death by Amazon" index released by the investment-research firm CFRA tracks the stocks its analysts believe could be short-seller targets given their vulnerabilities to competition from Amazon.
• The index is full of home goods and electronics retailers like Party City and Bed Bath & Beyond — some of which have seen their entire market value wiped out in recent years.
• Visit Markets Insider's homepage for more stories.

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Investors are familiar with the "Amazon effect" by now.

The e-commerce juggernaut announces it's preparing to enter into an industry — be it medication, brick-and-mortar grocery, entertainment, or others — and the stocks of companies in the new target market fall as jittery investors are struck with the fear that irreversible disruption is coming.

So the investment-research firm CFRA created a new index, called "Death By Amazon," that tracks the stocks its analysts think are particularly vulnerable to Amazon's expansion and offerings.

"The equally-weighted index serves as a retail performance benchmark and short-selling idea generation tool for our clients," CFRA analysts Camilla Yanushevsky and Todd Rosenbluth wrote in a report to clients earlier this month.

To pinpoint the 20 constituents the analysts believe are poorly positioned to compete against Amazon's efforts in various industries, they evaluated the companies' "Share of Voice" data that comes from web-traffic analytics company Alexa Internet (which is owned by Amazon as their other Alexa-named product).

That measure shows the percentage of searches for a keyword across major search engines in the last six months "that sent organic traffic to the respective site."

For example, the analysts compared how much traffic was going to a national jewelry retailer's website when consumers search for the term "jewelry" versus how much traffic was going to Amazon for the same search term.

With this kind of analysis, you get an index full of brick-and-mortar retailers whose products are available on Amazon — and apparently less popular through online searches — from floor tiles to party supplies.

To be fair, it's not the first "Death by Amazon" index. Bespoke Investment Group had already created its "Death by Amazon" index, tracking the same theme.

Here are all the stocks listed, in alphabetical order, with how their "Share of Voice" scores for various products stack up against Amazon:

At Home Group

Ticker: HOME

1-year performance: -40%

% below all-time high: -46%

Share of Voice score for "seasonal decor": 4.2%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "seasonal decor: 19.6%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Barnes & Noble Education

Ticker: BNED

1-year performance: -38%

% below all-time high: -74%

Share of Voice score for "textbook": 1.3%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "textbook": 6.9%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Barnes & Noble

Ticker: BKS

1-year performance: -0.1%

% below all-time high: -84%

Share of Voice score for "books": 23.2%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "books": 12.2%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Bed Bath & Beyond

Ticker: BBBY

1-year performance: -16%

% below all-time high: -80%

Share of Voice score for "cookware": 2.4%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "cookware": 23.3%

"Our negative investment view reflects our belief that BBBY's shares (up 50% year-to-date) have raced far ahead of purported turnaround narrative and a compelling Sell opportunity exists," the analysts wrote.

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Best Buy

Ticker: BBY

1-year performance: -14%

% below all-time high: -19%

Share of Voice score for "electronics": 1%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "electronics": 8.1%

"Our negative investment view reflects headwinds we see as the U.S. smartphone market approaches oversaturation," the analysts wrote.

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Big 5 Sporting Goods

Ticker: BGFV

1-year performance: -71%

% below all-time high: -88%

Share of Voice score for "fitness equipment": 0%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "fitness equipment": 11%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Big Lots

Ticker: BIG

1-year performance: -6.5%

% below all-time high: -41%

Share of Voice score for "cookware": 0%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "cookware": 23.3%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Dick's Sporting Goods

Ticker: DKS

1-year performance: +15%

% below all-time high: -43%

Share of Voice score for "sports deals": 18.7%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "sports deals": 24.5%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

GameStop

Ticker: GME

1-year performance: -31%

% below all-time high: -87%

Share of Voice score for "video games": 7%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "video games": 17.1%

"Our negative investment view reflects Jan-Q's disappointing performance and our uncertainty of GME's future direction," the analysts wrote.

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Kirkland's

Ticker: KIRK

1-year performance: -49%

% below all-time high: -81%

Share of Voice score for "home decor": 5.4%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "home decor": 10.8%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Office Depot

Ticker: ODP

1-year performance: -19%

% below all-time high: -95%

Share of Voice score for "office supplies": 33.1%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "office supplies": 9.8%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Overstock.com

Ticker: OSTK

1-year performance: -67%

% below all-time high: -86%

Share of Voice score for "dresser": 1.3%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "dresser": 9.9%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Party City

Ticker: PRTY

1-year performance: -49%

% below all-time high: -65%

Share of Voice score for "party supplies": 22.5%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "party supplies": 13.2%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

PetMed Express

Ticker: PETS

1-year performance: -40%

% below all-time high: -60%

Share of Voice score for "pet supplies": 5.1%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "pet supplies": 13.7%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Pier 1 Imports

Ticker: PIR

1-year performance: -65%

% below all-time high: -97%

Share of Voice score for "home decor": 8.3%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "home decor": 10.8%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Signet Jewelers

Ticker: SIG

1-year performance: -49%

% below all-time high: -87%

Share of Voice score for "jewelry": 3.8% for kay.com, 2.9% for jared.com, and 0.12% for zales.com

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "jewelry": 10.7%

"Our negative investment view reflects SIG's over-reliance on store closings (150 announced for FY 20 after 262 in FY 19) and increased promotions to clear excess inventory (up 4.7% in Jan-Q), which, we forecast, will result in further brand erosion," the analysts wrote.

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

The Michael's Companies

Ticker: MIK

1-year performance: -43%

% below all-time high: -67%

Share of Voice score for "drawing supplies": 13.1%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "drawing supplies": 24.5%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Tiffany & Co.

Ticker: TIF

1-year performance: -5%

% below all-time high: -31%

Share of Voice score for "jewelry": 6%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "jewelry": 10.7%

"Our Hold rating reflects our wariness on TIF's decision to lower prices in China, forex headwinds in 1H FY 20 (from a stronger U.S. dollar), offset by rich brand heritage and strong partnerships with key influencers," the analysts said.

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Tile Shop Holdings

Ticker: TTS

1-year performance: -36%

% below all-time high: -85%

Share of Voice score for "tile": 2.1%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "tile": 22%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

Williams Sonoma

Ticker: WSM

1-year performance: +7%

% below all-time high: -42%

Share of Voice score for "cookware": 16.7%

Amazon's Share of Voice score for "cookware": 23.3%

Share of Voice source: CFRA analysis

SEE ALSO:

Uber and Lyft drivers reveal the things you should never do while taking a ride

Over the last decade running Bop Design, I’ve worked with hundreds of B2B companies helping to develop their brand and marketing platforms. One thing I find remarkable is marketers tend to overcomplicate things when talking about B2B branding. One way they do this is by introducing new jargon for concepts that have been around since the beginning of commerce. I like to keep things simple and focus on foundational elements.

In this article, I’ll discuss 3 things you absolutely need to develop a successful B2B brand.

Know Your Business

You will never build a successful brand on an identity crisis. Companies that are constantly reinventing themselves don’t have a strong brand. While it’s necessary to evolve, changing direction or a general lack of focus will kill your business and ultimately your brand.

Successful B2B brands know who they are and what they stand for. They draw a line in the sand and aren’t everything to everyone. For example, Bop Designs is a boutique B2B marketing agency that offers web design, branding, and content marketing services. We don’t work with B2C brands, we don’t do ecommerce websites, we don’t do PR, etc.

Knowing who you are, is just as important as knowing what you are not. Turning down business that isn’t in alignment with your brand is critical. It gives you the opportunity to say yes to opportunities where your business can do its best work and thus build up your brand reputation.

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”

— Warren Buffett

Know Your Customer

This is just as critical, if not more critical than the first pillar. Because if you don’t know your customers, then you don’t understand the main value of your business. I often have clients that find it difficult to articulate their ideal customer profile. It can be somewhat challenging to define all the specifics when you are just starting out or making a pivot in the market place, but you still need to have a general sense of the types of companies and roles you are targeting.

Unless you have unlimited money and time, you need to be specific about who your ideal customer is, so you can spend your marketing dollars wisely. Your B2B brand must speak to them – let them know you can solve problems and provide services they need. For example, Bop Design works with mid-size B2B companies across the globe primarily in the following industries – software, technology, engineering, industrial and consulting. We work with marketing leaders within the organization as an extension of their marketing team. If a Fortune 100 B2C company came to us with a $5 million marketing budget, it’s something we couldn’t possibly take on – it’s too much risk for us and it wouldn’t be a good experience for the client. If you don’t know who your customer is, your branding will be watered down and ultimately ineffective.

Be Consistent

Branding is more than just your logo and messaging. Your brand is how you treat your customers, your employees, and your vendors. Your brand values and story are crucial to creating a consistent brand experience. It’s important that everyone in your organization understands and practices these values and upholds the brand story.

There should be no mystery with anyone within your organization on who your company is, what you stand for, and who your ideal customer is. Ultimately all your B2B marketing and branding initiatives, along with everyone across your organization, are speaking the same language and delivering a consistent experience to your customer.

“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.”

― Jim Rohn

Know Your Brand, Know Your Customer, Be Consistent, and Know When to Say No

I said I like to keep things simple and it’s true when it comes to building and maintaining a successful B2B brand. First, know your brand. Second, know your customer and don’t be afraid to alienate prospects that are outside of your market. Third, be consistent both in how you represent your brand, tell your story, relate your values, treat customers, educate employees, etc. A cohesive, successful brand is managed by marketing professionals that ultimately know when to say no and draw a clear line in the sand.

It’s always easier for Monday morning quarterbacks to say what should have been done than to plan for success. However, in the SaaS world there are absolutely some dos and don’ts around building a successful brand and keeping those dreaded churn rates low. Here are some of the most common mistakes SaaS companies make, according to experts.

1. You seem the same as everybody else

Your prospects and customers literally have 6,800 options to wade through in order to find answers to a select few–often industry-specific–problems. If every website they come across is advertising an “Optimized business solution to increase your ROI,” they’re going to get overwhelmed pretty quickly and might even sign up for your product by mistake (more on that later).

2. You’re not onboarding

According to Len Markidan at Groove, there are two “major milestones” in the customer journey: the moment they decide to purchase your product, and the moment they have their first success using your product.

Chances are, you were there for the first. Skipping the second could be a huge mistake. Often, when customers cancel a subscription, it’s because the product didn’t do what they wanted it to do. The onboarding process should be simple, clear and immediately establish your product’s value. Even a friendly greeting can go a long way toward winning over customers. Online test prep company, Magoosh, saw a 17% jump in conversion rates simply by offering a welcoming onboarding message rather than a run-of-the-mill sign up homescreen.

3. You’re not upselling

We all know that keeping a customer is better (and less costly) than acquiring a new one. But failing to upsell those that are already fans of your product is a revenue source that you could be overlooking.

According to Paul Farris, author of Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance, your chances of selling to a new customer hover at a respectable 5-20%. But your chances of selling to an existing customer are much higher–60-70% higher.

4. You’re assuming any customer is a good customer

Of course, customers are the lifeblood of any SaaS company, but attracting the wrong customers could actually hurt business in the long run. Wrong fit customers aren’t simply unhappy customers, according to Lincoln Murphy at Sixteen Ventures. Instead, they’re customers for whom “you cannot deliver immediate value, nor can you–based on where you’re at today, your available resources, etc.–realistically deliver future value in the required timeframe for these customers.”

Training salespeople to spot the right customers and being completely transparent about what your product can and can’t do will not only help your churn rate, but will also save your customer support team a lot of headaches.

5. You have no idea why your customers are churning

Keeping churn rate down is a matter of survival for SaaS companies, and that’s why you’ve got to fight it with “hand-to-hand combat.” But it’s impossible to fight what you don’t understand.

Surveying churned customers about why they left isn’t fun; no one likes to hear the negatives. But if one customer has a problem, chances are, others do too. According to Groove, for every one customer complaint you receive, you’ve actually got 26 angry customers who may have simply walked away. Finding the problems that caused other customers to leave goes a long way toward preventing future churn.

The most important thing to remember is that SaaS customers are real people looking to solve problems with your product. Focusing on customers as people rather than churn rate numbers is the key to ensuring they’re taking full advantage of the benefits your company offers. Remember that, and it should be smooth sailing.

The post 5 All-Too-Common Strategy Mistakes You Might Be Making appeared first on OpenView Labs.

When it comes to ranking high in search results, having high quality links pointed to your website is essential. But as I’ve said many times, not all links are created equal. Bad links can harm your site and destroy your online credibility. In this video, we will talk about what to do if you get hit with a link penalty.

Video Transcript:

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We’re going to be talking about link penalties. I’m calling this Link Penalties 101, and the reason why is I get a lot of questions, being in the world of SEO, and helping companies acquire links the right way. People are always worried about bad links. Maybe they worked with an SEO company in the past. Maybe you’ve done the same thing, where they went out and bought a lot of these really low quality links in order to try to influence rank.

The problem is, those links can hurt your site more than actually help your site. And as webmasters and website owners have become more aware of this, they’ve gotten a little bit nervous about those links in their backlink profile that could be weighing their site down and causing more harm than good.

So, how do we know when a link is hurting us, and how do we know when we need to move forward and not spend all this time trying to clean up a mess? Now, I’m not saying that you should not worry about bad links. There are times when you need to worry about it, but I think there’s also times where site owners and webmasters worry a little bit too much about things that aren’t negatively impacting that at this moment.

Google started attacking links with an update called Penguin, as we’ve got right here. Penguin 1.0 was launched on April 24th, 2012. This is where they were targeting bad sites, article directory sites, these bad low quality directories. Other sites of that nature. Link farms, where people are coming out here and building horrible links, comment spam, things of that nature. Links that you still see people do today. Google rwent after those websites hard with the Penguin update, and they continued to tweak this update over a number of years, every time lasering in on something different. Now, the first one, when it launched, it impacted about 3% of all sites in the US, in searches in the US. Every update didn’t have as major of an impact as the first one did, but they still began to tweak and change things as they went.

One thing to note. Penguin 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, there were some other sub-updates in between there, but we’re going to look at those three. They were a lot different than the way Penguin is addressed today. When you used to get penalized, Google would penalize your whole site. So, let’s say you had one page that had a lot of spammy links, your whole site would get dinged. Another thing that would happen is you would have to do a manual reconsideration request. So, when Google would alert you and say, “Hey, you’ve got some bad links,” or maybe your site got hit and pinged, and knocked down, “You’ve got bad links and you’ve got to let us know that you’ve cleaned your act up.”

Now the problem with that is you also had to wait for the next update to come out before you could recover. So as you can see, you know we have 2012, and we had May, 2013 and then the next one didn’t come out till October, 2014. You could be waiting a whole year in order to recover that traffic because of the bad links that you had pointing to your website. This caused a lot of havoc. It cleaned up a lot of stuff though, which is awesome because everybody who was trying to cheat the system, and go about it the wrong way, and abuse links, and abuse partnerships online, and not doing it the right way, they got hurt and they got pushed back. Now, there were some innocent casualties along the way, sites that may have not understood what was going on with their SEO department, or the SEO company they hired, and they lost a ton of traffic.

But, what Google did was clean up a lot of the poor quality search results that were being influenced by bad link practices. Penguin 4.0 officially launched in September, September 23rd, 2016, so this was three years ago. When Penguin 4.0 came out, it was rolled into the core algorithms. Penguin was updating realtime. As Google was making tweaks and edits to the algorithm, Penguin was now part of that. This changed everything. It changed the way that you should approach these link issues that you might’ve had in the past, and also it should have changed the way that you may have been afraid of what might be on your site, or links pointing to your site.

Typically what happens is a company comes to us and we do a backlink profile. We do an audit, we go really deep and try and understand everything that’s been done on this site to market it. And we’ll come across bad links a lot of the time. Links that are spammy, or they’re bad directory, or some of them are links that these companies never went after. The SEO company probably didn’t put them on there. They’re just bad mites that the people were trying to attach to their website, and there’s reasons to do that, which we’re not going to get into today.

Now, with Penguin 4.0, you don’t have to wait now until a core algorithm update. You don’t have to wait until they push a new update because this stuff starts to happen in real time. If these negative links are coming, or these bad links are coming and then you have good links coming, you’re being updated in real time now. That’s really awesome. Another thing that it fixed was you’re going to get dinged now at the page level. Let’s say you have a lot of spam links on one page, it’s not going to hurt your entire site like it would in the past. One page is going to get dinged. Now, again, if you’re doing those unnatural linking practices over time, I guarantee you’re probably going to have some more issues, but at least your whole site is not being dinged if somebody did one bad thing.

And then, what it took away was this need for a disavow. We work with companies and they see bad links. One of the things they ask is, “Can you put together a disavow file for us?” And inside of Search Console there’s this thing that you can do called disavow, where you can say, “Hey, I’ve tried to contact these sites. I’ve tried to contact these links, where these links are, and they didn’t take them down. Will you please ignore these links Google, because we don’t want to be associated with these websites?” This is a good practice, or it was a much better practice in the past. Here’s kind of my rule of thumb. If you haven’t been given a manual penalty and penalized by Google, I wouldn’t necessarily build a disavow. There’s a lot of reasons for that.

One, let’s say you have tens of thousands of links, Google probably would know by now, but let’s say you do and then you upload a disavow tool. You could also trigger the crawler to say, “Hey, I wonder what else they’re doing that was not a really good practice?” It could negatively impact your site. But what’s more than that? Google has gotten a lot smarter. As Penguin 4.0 has been iterated and changed and updated over the last couple of years, Google knows what a good link is and what a bad link is. They also understand that there are sites that get linked to, not because they went out and got it, or maybe they did it a long time ago, but they cleaned up their practice, so now they ignore most of those bad links.

So, you don’t need to be uploading this disavow. You’re going to maybe see, when you go to an SEO tool, that you’ve got bad links on your profile or low quality links or spam links. There are times where you need to address that, like when most of your links are bad, and with Google saying, “Hey, you’ve got an issue here.” But for the most part, if it’s been done over time, and there’s a lot of those, and maybe you didn’t do that, it’s not your fault, Google ignores those. John Mueller, who works for Google, this is a kind of a broken up quote that he had. Somebody was asking about this specifically on Reddit, and there’s also people on Twitter that have been asking the same question.

When do we upload a disavow? And what John says, “Random links collected over years aren’t necessarily harmful.” Now, it’s important to understand the way Google talks, right? Because there’s also stuff in what they don’t say. He’s saying that it’s not necessarily harmful. What I have gathered from that, if they let you know it’s harmful, you need to address it. If they don’t, they’re going to ignore it because they understand that that happens. If these weren’t your fault, and you didn’t take an action to do this. They say disavow links that you’ve paid for or otherwise unnaturally placed. These are links that aren’t a natural link. These are links that haven’t been built through relationship. These are links that haven’t been built through collaboration or somebody saying, “This is a great piece of content. You should go check it out.”

That’s what he’s talking about here. Those are when you need to have a disavowal. When you’re doing these black hat SEO tactics and you’ve triggered a opinion penalty. So, how do you know that you’ve gotten penalized by Google? Well, this is where having a Search Console account is extremely important because that’s how Google talks to webmasters. This is how they tell you about how your site’s being crawled, and indexed, and how many impressions and clicks that you’re getting, what kind of queries people are using to find your site. They’re also going to tell you when they find stuff wrong with your site.

Maybe they find a lot of 404 errors, or maybe they find that you’ve had malware on your site. They’ll let you know inside of Search Console. They’ll also let you know about penalties. There’s three types of penalties that you need to be aware of if Google does decide to contact you about this. The first is thin content. This is pages that have poor content, where you’re just thrown together. It doesn’t add value. Maybe it’s copy/paste. Maybe it’s not enough content on that page, and Google say, “Hey, this page isn’t going to rank. We’re not even going to crawl this page. This page isn’t worth being on the Internet. It doesn’t have enough value to the end users.” So if you want this page to be indexed, you want this page to rank, you need to do something about your content.

This is an area where you can fix your content if you have that issue. Once you’re done, they’ll usually have a response inside of there, where you can let them know, “Hey, I fixed this.” Or you can submit your site to be re-indexed and re-crawled again, so they can go back and say, “Okay great. Now your content is better, and we’ll index it and start getting it into the realm of search.” The next type of penalty is partial link penalty. This is where maybe you’ve got one page or a few pages who they’re seeing an unnatural linking practice around, and they’ll flag those pages and they’ll let you know. Say, “Hey, we noticed that these pages, or this page, it’s got some suspicious links to it.” It doesn’t make sense. So, what’s a suspicious link? That’s a good thing to define.

Let’s say you own a hotel. You have links to travel blogs, booking sites, restaurants, things to do in the area. That all makes a lot of sense. But, let’s say you also have a lot of links from SEO directories, and companies that have nothing to do with the travel industry. Those are the types of links that trigger Google and say, “Hey, what’s going on here? This is a hotel site. Why are they getting links from technology sites? Why are they getting links from SEO directories? This seems a little spammy.” That’s where you could trigger that on a page level. You can also do it on a site-wide level. So, you can have partial links or you can have site-wide links. This is where your entire domain is being impacted here on the site-wide

This is where Google is going to say, “Hey, all your links, we’re seeing majority of your links have major issues. It doesn’t look like there’s any cohesiveness, there’s no contextuality in it. It just looks like you’re buying links, and using black hat practices to acquire links to your website.” Now, if you don’t care about search, if you don’t care about ranking, you don’t care about having that long-term viability in search, you can ignore this, but if you want to grow and you want to understand how your business can grow using search, you need to pay attention if you get these manual penalties. If you do the right things, if you create great content, if you build great relationships, if you promote your content, if you engage with users, and you build this great content database and great user database where people can interact and learn more about what you do, and you can serve them well, you’re not going to have a problem here.

You’re going to build links naturally. People are going to naturally want to link to that type of content and they’re going to naturally want to be engaged with you, so you shouldn’t have to worry about these too much. If you run a backlink audit and you see some bad links, but you notice like, hey, these were years ago, it doesn’t look like our site’s being negatively impacted, I wouldn’t freak out. Just take a deep breath, monitor your site. If you need to, if you see something that’s suspicious, go back, try to contact that website owner. Say, “Hey, I don’t know how this thing got on here. Please remove it.” You can do those practices to clean it up.

That is something good to do, but I wouldn’t go ahead, when you see bad links, build a disavowal and put it in Google Search Console. You can do a lot of harm by doing that. You could accidentally have a file wrong and wipe out all of your links. There’s a lot of things you could do wrong. So, take the human approach, relax, take a deep breath, understand where those links came from, understand if Google’s maybe ignoring them because they’re old, or whether or not you need to do something about it. If you’ve got any more questions about link penalties, or how to build links the right way and build those relationships, please comment below. We would love to continue this conversation, and until next time, Happy Marketing.

Has this ever happened to you? You have your car keys right inside your pocket and you are searching for them everywhere except your pocket. Same way, we tend to look for answers to most of the hurdles or snags in our email marketing setup everywhere but in the huge chunk of valuable data that we already possess.

According to a study, companies that use data to send smarter campaigns perform 85% better than their competitors when it comes to sales growth.

However, it’s also important to know how exactly this data should be used so that it helps to further strengthen our email campaigns and ultimately generate better ROI. Monks share 6 ways in which you can make the most of the data to send more personalized, relevant and timely emails.

1. Put a preference center in place to value your subscribers’ preferences

You have just got a new subscriber. Hurray! Now, just like you want to know the subscriber better, the subscriber too is interested in knowing more about you before they trust you. To build this trust, you need some demographic ‘data’ about this newbie- what is their age, their gender, birthday, location, and so on. Your preference center is the starting point of data collection. You can always ask more questions like what kind of content they would want to receive from you and how often. By giving the reins in their hands, you are actually nurturing them to ultimately convert. Make sure there is a link to your preference centre in each of your emails.

Check out this preference centre by Kronos. While they begin with a really nice message that they care about the subscriber’s preferences, they go on to ask in detail about what kind of content is the subscriber expecting from Kronos.

2. Segment your subscribers for better engagement

The time spent by the subscriber on an email indicates how relevant your email is to them. More relevant the email more will be the time they spend checking it out. Segmenting your email list based on demographic factors, user behavior (past purchase, browsing history, buying frequency, etc) and their preferences can go a long way in creating relevant emails.

According to a study, segmented campaigns perform far better that non-segmented ones.

3. Personalize because that’s never going out of fashion

It has been said a million times over the years that personalization has worked and will always work for marketers. You can do something as simple as name personalization (yes it still works!) to subject line personalization to content personalization. Here’s what Mailchimp found about name personalization:

Source: Mailchimp

Here is a personalized email from Beardbrand. It is a cart abandonment email sent to a subscriber who added a certain product in their cart but did not proceed to buy. It has name as well as content personalization.

Source: Really Good Emails

So, you would ask, do we need to create two different emails (design and content included) to impress the male and female subscriber segments on your list? Well, not really. When it’s about just changing certain aspects of your email, dynamic content comes across as a savior. For example, through dynamic content you can just change the offers you send to your male and female subscribers, keeping the rest of the design unchanged.

4. Figure out the best time to send emails

Isn’t it difficult to know when your subscriber is ready to or in the mood to open and check your email? But you can find out the ideal time through the data you collect on testing the send time. So, as you begin an email relationship with a new subscriber, you need to send emails on different days and different times of the day to check when they open and engage with your email. It will take a few campaigns to figure out, but it’s worth the time.

Time zone customization is also a vital aspect. If you have a subscriber based in a time zone different from where you are placed, make sure you figure out the preferred time for receiving an email according to their time zone.

5. A/B Test to uncover the best options

Nurturing a lead is an important part of the sales cycle and it takes much more than timing your email correctly. You might be sending relevant content and personalizing, but are the subscribers engaging with your email? What if they are expecting a more formal tone or maybe more images? That is where A/B testing your campaigns can help. Testing one aspect at a time is the best way to go about it. Test your subject lines, content, tone of content, design elements, CTA placement in the email and anything else that can be optimized. We bet you will have more effective campaigns after a few rounds of testing.

6. Leverage the benefit of sending emails on special days

How we all love it when someone wishes us on our birthday or treats us with an ice cream on their birthday! The same can be applied to your business emails. Emails that you send to your subscribers on special day be it their special occasion or yours, help to build a strong bond. You have been smart enough to collect the birth date of your subscribers; now is the time to use the data. Sending personalized wishes along with a small discount for them on their birthday is a great gesture.

Source: Really Good Emails

The two emails above are special occasion emails. The one from Runtastic has been sent to their subscriber wishing them on their birthday, also offering a discount. The second one is from Grammarly. This email celebrates the first anniversary of the subscriber with the platform, making them feel included. Here too, a special reward has been offered.

Wrap up

Email marketing has evolved through the years and is no longer about blasting messages to every contact on your list. Its success depends upon how well you collect and measure data. It’s about collecting as much data as you can (without being creepy) to learn more about your email subscribers and offering them more personalized experiences. It’s all about using the data to tailor the perfect email that works for your business.

In a recent meeting, a founder asked me what I thought of the fundraising environment. My answer was: it’s become incredibly sophisticated along three dimensions: diversity of product offering, pricing sophistication, and efficiency of investment processes.

If you read eBoys or Done Deals or Creative Capital, you’ll get a sense of the early days of the venture industry. It started out with six men at a famous restaurant in San Francisco hearing pitches over lunch. None of them could afford to lead the entire round, so they would syndicate and take turns on the board. That was the “industry.”

Today, we’re a far cry from a Sancerre and oysters lunch. Last year, startups raised the most capital in history, even adjusting for inflation.

Founders have at least five flavors of seed: friends & family, angel, pre-seed, seed, and post-seed. Founders can go it alone or partner with incubators and accelerators for almost every type of business. Founders can raise $7M Series As and $15M Series As. Would you like a series A from a generalist fund or a specialist fund? Founders can raise a $15M Series B or a $200M Series B. Would you like that Series B from an opportunity fund, an SPV funded by direct LP investment or from a third party?

Founders can IPO, ICO or raise a unicorn round in the private markets. Founders can crowdfund. Founders can borrow venture debt or employ revolving lines of credit. Founders can sell secondary at many more stages than ever. For the right business, the number of different financial products available has never been higher.

Startup valuations have become much more quantitative. That’s not to say startups trade exactly like the public market, but the pendulum has swung considerably from art to science.

The pricing mechanisms in the venture market are tied much more to the public markets than at any time I’ve been in venture. Public markets price high growth software companies in terms of enterprise value to forward revenue. So do private market investors. The multiples are similar across stages. My partner Annie who spends time in marketplaces tells me there’s a similar dynamic in consumer: price is a multiple of future GMV. There’s still art and judgement of course, but many times the art is debating a premium or discount on a base multiple.

The pace of the fundraising market has also changed quite a bit. The number of pre-emptive rounds is increasing. I wish I had data on this, but it’s a trend we’ve certainly noticed in our portfolio. For the most exciting businesses especially in later stages, investors catalyze fundraising processes, not founders. These pre-emptive processes require far less time to consummate than the classic process.

For founders who have established product market fit, a panoply of capital choices exist. In my view, the fundraising market in 2019 is the strongest it’s ever been. Founders have more options than ever.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Marketers around the world continuously use psychological triggers to generate sales. Scarcity selling is one of the most popular tactics used in everything from eCommerce storefronts to subscription-based websites.

This method follows the scarcity principle, which states that people are interested in products that have a limited quality. Scarcity can apply to more than just single products; it can cover a range of products in the form of exclusive deals.

We want to show you how to use this psychological trick to generate more leads or sales on your website.

Use Remaining Inventory to Induce FOMO

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a powerful scarcity tool you can use to convert more visitors on your website. A common tactic in this situation is to include the number of each product you have in stock.

When a customer lands on your eCommerce storefront, they will notice that you have a limited supply of certain products. When consumers see that there is a limited supply of a product, they often experience the fear of missing out and make a snap judgment purchase.

We can see this tactic in action on Amazon.

Source

The limited stock is nonverbally saying to customers, “Everyone else is buying this product. You better hurry before you miss your chance!” The American Psychological Association conducted a study that revealed this behavior. They had two identical jars with cookies inside. The only difference is one jar had two cookies, while the other had ten. When they asked consumers which cookie they would prefer, they almost exclusively selected the jar with two cookies.

Why?

The people who took part in the survey perceived the jar with fewer cookies to hold more value because they were scarce.

Hold a Flash Sale

We are all suckers for a good deal. When a consumer sees that something is 50 percent off the regular price, there’s a good chance they’ll make that purchase if they were even mildly interested in your product or service.

You can use a flash sale to invoke feelings of scarcity and boost sales. It’s possible to test out your flash sale over different intervals of time to see if one sale outperforms the other. For example, a flash weekend sale may land you some nice additional sales, but a one day sale on Friday may yield higher returns due to the exclusivity of the sale and the fact that Friday is typically the day people get their paychecks, making them more likely to make an instinctive purchase.

Source

Notice the countdown timer at the top of the image above. The call to action is clear; you have less than one hour to act to get 50 percent off your first purchase. If someone were on the fence about purchasing this product, this would likely sway them and convince them to make a purchase.

Out of Stock

It’s also possible to generate leads and sales by listing an item on your storefront as out of stock. You can use this tactic if you’re waiting for your shipment, or working on the final phases of development.

When you list an item as out of stock, make sure you include a way for the customer to add themselves to your waiting list. Include that they will also get exclusive deals and discounts when they join the waiting list. Once a consumer enters the waiting list with their email address, you’ve successfully added another lead to your email list.

The reason this method invokes scarcity is simple–when a customer sees there is a waiting list, they automatically assume that there must be a ton of people already on the list. Customers also believe that when the product does launch, supplies will dissipate quickly since it’s currently out of stock.

Conclusion

There are plenty of ways to add scarcity to your marketing campaign. It’s critical that you plan out your stock shipments before you run a flash sale or exclusive offer so there will be enough for everyone. The out of stock and fear of missing out tactics go hand in hand, they perceive the value of your products to be worth the investment since so many other people are invested in what you have to offer.

As your business expands, you’ll begin to learn how to implement scarcity tactics based on your product or services. One thing is for sure when customers think that your sock is limited or exclusive, they are far more likely to seal the deal and make a purchase.

There are many things that make me happy and free stuff is one of them. I love free samples at Costco, free Wi-Fi at coffee shops, free cookies at the car dealership, free parking, free customer support, and free upgrades. But out of all the free things, there’s one free thing that I especially love: free software. Yes, SaaS platforms such as Instagram, Zapier, Gmail, and Vidyard are amongst some of my favorite free things, and I use them every day. We all love free stuff, and whether you realize it or not, you probably use a freemium product (and love it as much as I do) multiple times a day.

If you aren’t a tech brand with as much clout or as expansive an audience as Google or Instagram, how can you create a successful marketing strategy for a freemium model? There are several key components, but first, we need to answer this question:

What Is a Freemium Model, Exactly?

Although free is almost always awesome, the effectiveness of a go-to-market freemium model and the marketing strategy needed to make it happen vary. Here are the common models for free SaaS subscriptions:

• Free Forever: This model takes a key functionality of the software and gives it away for free forever. With this model, there are conceptions that no one will buy because there’s no need to, but the key is to grow paid users by unlocking powerful functionality with the paid version or another revenue stream such as advertising. Example: Evernote
• Free Features: While the core product is a paid subscription, key features are given away for free. This tactic is often used when rolling out new expanded features of a product in order to gain demand, but then often transitions into paid features or a higher base cost. Example: HubSpot has done this with several features including their CMS.
• Free Trial: A free trial gives, most commonly, the full feature set away for a limited time. For example, the user will receive a trial of 30 days and then be required to pay. In some instances, the user must provide payment information up front, while in others, the user will add payment information later or be locked out of the product at the end of the trial period. Example: Airtable
• Free by Volume: Similar to free features, free by volume gives away the product but only for a certain threshold of users or their amount of usage. Example: Atlassian Bitbucket
  

Is a Freemium Model Right for Us?

There are obvious reasons why freemium won’t work, such as high onboarding costs, but other factors to consider include:

• Is there a big enough market demand opportunity?
• Can your freemium users be your mass evangelists?
• Do you have a self-service customer support portal?
• Do you have a big enough advantage with the paid model?
• What’s the cost to support customers?

8 Key Components

Infrastructure

If you’re still in the startup phase, you may be operating with limited resources because the reality is that, in today’s fast-paced economy, you can quickly scale from two dudes in a garage to a Fortune 500. But you’ll need to ensure that you have a solid technology infrastructure to support your freemium service users, because even the best marketing strategy can’t compensate for the poor customer experience that can happen from operational and infrastructure hiccups such as a clunky invoicing process, lack of technical development resources, or server issues.

Great Product UX

Throughout their free experience, your prospective customers or influencers need to feel great about their experience. If it’s difficult to navigate your product or understand the value behind it, you’ll quickly lose them. Make ease of use a top priority in the free experience. Some basic tips include:

• Ensure a smooth and consistent experience from your website to your app or portal.
• Have a plan for user testing to identify issues or gaps.
• Keep it simple, even if what you do is complicated.
• Guide users through the experience with guided tours, help boxes, and clear setup steps.

Clearly Mapped Customer Journey

Mapping out the customer journey is one of the first and most critical components of a marketing strategy for a freemium model. You have to know the channels that your customers will find your brand through, the touchpoints you’ll have, and the experience they’ll have throughout their interactions with you. From the moment your customer realizes they have a problem to the moment they fill out a form to become a freemium user, you need to understand what information they want, what they value, and how you’ll interact throughout. When you get to the nitty-gritty of the sign-up process, map the exact touchpoints you’ll be attempting to make with your users as shown in the example below.

Demand Strategy

How will your users find you? Looking at the customer journey helps inform this, but in what channels do you need to optimize and invest your resources in order to drive potential buyers to your website or app? If your potential buyers spend their time on social channels, leveraging paid ads might be in your demand strategy. On the other hand, if your buyers turn to search when looking for a solution like yours, SEO might be part of the strategy. It may even be traditional methods such as trade shows. The right mix for you is dependent on your buyers, but a demand strategy is a key part of success.

Content Marketing Strategy

Whether you’re driving demand at the top of the funnel or educating prospects about your product, a content marketing strategy is a must. Your buyer personas and a full understanding of the customer journey will inform each of the key pieces of content you need to prioritize as part of your strategy.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Throughout various points in the funnel, CRO, the practice of testing for improved performance, will help you drive more demand and sales. One of the most important things to test with a freemium model is the exact model you intend to use. As discussed above, there are multiple ways to give your product away for free. If you’re just getting started, you will want to test the freemium model with a small set of users before investing too much in marketing. Beyond the exact model and positioning you use for your freemium product, testing conversion points all along the funnel is important, especially the conversion from a free user to a paid user.

Remember the scientific method? It’s not just something you needed in your college chemistry class, but it’s an important part of creating effective CRO tests. CRO tools also help create CRO tests that make a big impact, but one of my favorites by far is this calculator that helps determine the duration of time you should run an A/B test in order to make conclusive decisions.

Analytics

In order to complete effective CRO tests, you need to have the right analytics tools in place. Aside from CRO, you also need to understand key pieces of data throughout, including an understanding of which channels are most effective at driving new users, which content is most engaging, how freemium users are navigating the experience, and the overall performance of your campaigns. Some of my favorite reporting and analytics tools for a company using a freemium model include:

• HubSpot
• Google Analytics
• Lucky Orange
• Databox

Customer Marketing Experiences

With a freemium product, customer marketing is equally, if not more, important than any other part of the funnel. Free users, although not technically customers, quickly want to be treated like a customer and need a five-star customer experience in order to stick around. Once they become a paying customer, you have to keep them paying, likely through a subscription that could be cut out of their expenses at any time.

Today, any marketer, especially a SaaS marketer, shouldn’t just be marketing; they should be creating experiences—and the customer’s experience is critical. This experience is made better in many ways, such as creating a customer knowledge base, sharing swag, or hosting an event just for them. When creating experiences, consider what you want your customers to feel when interacting with you and your free product. And build an experience to deliver that.

This is Part 2 of a series of four posts on pricing a solution portfolio.

Part 1 - How Pricing Changes Over Time (this post)

Part 2 - Setting Goals

Part 3 - Looking for Interactions

To come …

Part 4 - An Integrative Solution

Pricing one offer can be a challenge, but the challenge has a lot more dimensions when you need to price a portfolio of solutions. This is the situation that many companies find themselves in as the result of a series of acquisitions, organic expansion in the range of offers, and the move away from products to services and then to solutions. This was one of the key themes at the Technology and Services World conference in San Diego last week. Ibbaka participated as one of the selected solution partners.

Is there a systematic way to do this? What frameworks can help make sense of the cascade of choices that face portfolio managers?

There are a few simple principles we can bring to pricing portfolios.

1. Pricing changes over time.

2. Each offer has its own goals that define the role it will play.

3. The interactions matter.

This is part one of a four part series.

In part two we will look at how goals can differ for each part of a portfolio.

In part three we will look at interactions between different parts of the portfolio.

Finally, in part four, we will provide a framework to pull the pieces together.

How pricing changes over time

We all know this, but we often fail to act on it. Pricing often becomes a frozen accident. Once the pricing model is set early on in a product’s history, it seldom gets changed, with most pricing teams doing little more than playing with price levels in efforts at price optimization or in response to competitive threats. This is not enough. How to price changes across the technology lifecycle. Which means that any portfolio pricing strategy has to include an honest assessment of where a product is in that cycle.

Innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards all require different approaches to pricing. Knowing where your product is will shape your portfolio strategy.

Innovators - Innovators buy technology because they want to be the first to use it. They tend to want to get things for free and you should generally accommodate them. But you want something in return. Sometimes this is product feedback, innovators tend to be articulate and opinionated and you want to listen to them about features and functions. You also want them to introduce you to early adopters. But they can tell you almost nothing about price. Pricing studies, conjoint analysis and other sophisticated data collection with innovators is a complete waste of time. They will just mislead you as to the value and possible price of your offer.

Early adopters - Early adopters buy to get a competitive advantage. They are willing to pay a premium for something that will give them a strategic edge over the competition. These buyers will give you a lot of insight into where your real value lies. You need to interview them and use them to act as your advocates in the market, especially at conferences and with industry analysts. But be careful about how you use their willingness to pay as an input into pricing. They have a high willingness to pay as they are buying strategic advantage. They may even like having a high price tag as it will keep their competitors out. In most industries though, there are not enough early adopters to build a sustainable market and early adopters quickly move on to the next thing that will give then an edge. You can expect your pricing in the early majority market to be lower than your pricing for early adopters. In consumer markets, this is often seen in the skim (charge high prices) then penetrate strategy that companies like Apple have mastered.

Early majority - This is the most important and difficult market to enter. The failure of many products to make from early adopter to early majority is why the gap between them is called the chasm (Geoffrey Moore even called his company The Chasm Group). It is here that a value-based market segmentation is your most important tool. You need to know how the potential market will perceive the emotional and economic value (you have to understand both) and then choose a chasm crossing beachhead that gets extraordinary value. Provide enough value to overcome the normal inertia and fear that any new solution evokes in a market, and the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that incumbents will try to spread.

The critical thing is to identify the value drivers that mean the most to specific segments, to understand the value metrics associated with those value drivers (a value metric is the unit of consumption by which a buyer gets value) and to align pricing metrics (the unit of consumption for which a buyer is charged) with value metrics.

In early majority, the goal is to find the vertical value drives that really align with how narrow market segments perceive value. Price levels in the bowling alley are often lower than for early adopters.

The tornado - Some markets enter the ‘tornado.’ This is the classic high growth software market, where revenues can bloom from tens of millions of dollars to billions of dollars in a few years. Tornado market buyers are buying because everyone is buying. The product now has a stable configuration, people understand what it does and what the value is, and the buying process is well understood. Today, collaboration software like Slack and Microsoft Teams is in the tornado. If you are not using one of the these platforms today you soon will be. Judging from the chatter at the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) in San Diego from May 6 to 8, customer success software like Gainsight may be tipping over into a tornado.

In tornado markets pricing flips. Instead of sharply defined vertical value drivers the focus is on broad horizontal value drivers. The value metrics, and therefore the pricing metrics, need to be as generic as possible. It has to be as easy as possible to price and sell solutions because speed is key. Lose momentum in a tornado market (like Hipchat did in collaboration) and your competitor races by you and it is almost impossible to catch up.

Not all product categories enjoy a tornado market. The majority do not, and transition smoothly from early majority to majority without ever experiencing hypergrowth. The marketing and pricing team need to be alert for the beginnings of a tornado market, and if one develops be prepared to act quickly.

Main Street - Thriving Markets - The solution is now well established and competitive options are emerging. Buyers know what they are getting and expect vendors to provide real and demonstrable value. It is important to offer the whole product solution for well targeted market segments. As the product will often be bundled, pricing has to be composable. It has to be possible to easily combine the solution with other parts of the offer to come up with a total price that makes sense to the buyer. Value drivers and value metrics are generally combined with services, data or some other value enhancers. Pricing has to be able to capture this. In B2B software, DAM (Digital Asset Management), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions are near the end of their thriving market phase or have already entered the mature phase.

Main Street - Maturing Markets - It is at this point that commoditization begins to overwhelm the market. Buying is dominated by procurement. It becomes more and more difficult to maintain meaningful differentiation. Having a portfolio of offers is key at this point. One wants to be able to take these late stage products and create bundles with more differentiated products and services to maintain a high level of value and at least some differentiation. Data is often a good thing to bundle, as by this time there should be many integrations, and a lot of data available for benchmarking. This is the case with most office productivity software. Today we buy our word processors, spreadsheets and presentation software in carefully designed bundles. Microsoft is the master here. Adobe is also doing a good job of this with its Creative Cloud.

Laggards and End of Life - There are some people who will only technology if tricked into it. I have an uncle who is proud that he does not own a computer, but has a car that only runs because of its very sophisticated software and he owns a smart TV. Most technologies never really die. They just get pushed lower and lower into the stack. Few of us buy databases anymore, but almost all of the software we use has a database in it somewhere, often one running on cloud servers from Amazon, Oracle or Microsoft. If you have a technology at the end of its market life, you can often find opportunities to provide it as a service to products higher in the stack.

A good portfolio will have offers across the technology life cycle and pricing will have strategies in place to evolve pricing as a product moves along the inevitable path from innovation and differentiation, to commodification, and eventual obsolescence. If your pricing model and metrics are not changing as you move across the portfolio, that is a good indication that you are doing something wrong.

The first thing to do with your portfolio is to map where each product sits in the technology lifecycle. Then identify what is happening in the market that could tip the product into the next phase.

In part two we will look at how goals can differ for each part of a portfolio. This will depend in part on the phase the product is in.

Please take our survey on Value, Innovation & Pricing Insights from CEOs

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By Tibor Shanto

You hear it said a lot in different fields of endeavour, “their numbers” or “his numbers” suck. Told in the abstract about a ballplayer you can understand what they mean. Given that the subject of the observation usually is not present, it remains more a descriptor with no direct impact on the subject. However, when a manager tells their rep, “your numbers suck,” it has an immediate and lasting detrimental impact. The impact is not only on the reps but your customers.

Numbers Don’t Care

I can understand why someone getting feedback like this, would line up with the “Sales is not a numbers game” camp. Metrics are wonderful, but not as blunt object with which to try and whip up performance. What people get wrong, is there is no such thing as a good number or a bad number. There is just your number; and the only relevant question and action it leads to, “is what are doing about your number?” Not just individually as reps or managers, but collectively as a team, or the whole sales organization.

Most managers and reps intuitively get this. Leading managers to reach into their past or corporate manual, pick out their favourite metric, then double down on it. Numbers being relative, this may not always be the best plan. As a small change in one sales number can lead to significant changes in unanticipated or untracked ways.

Relatively Speaking

As mentioned, if we take the judgement out of the number, we can use for its real function, to measure change. Often the change you need as an individual or manager, will not come from focusing on the obvious numbers, usually superficial and symbolic. We can often foster change by focusing on the relationship between the numbers and leveraging those.

Using our Activity Calculator, we show clients how focusing on the obvious may not lead to the improvements planned. Let’s look at prospecting. When someone has a lull in their pipeline, managers will tell them to prospect more. Sage advice, but not something new to the recipient. Continuous beating of that drum leads to the opposite results from the one desired. We have shown over and over, that if you change the focus of coach to something different, deal size, for example. It is not a question of deal size being easier, but more likely to get buy in from a rep.  A willing rep making gains, allows us to stretch as we go along.

Intended Consequences

Allowing for rounding, if you have an average deal size of $30,000, focusing on increasing that average by a mere 10%, opens possibilities. By targeting differently, and pursuing a slightly broader audience, it is easier for some reps to succeed.  certainly more than repeating the “prospect more” mantra. As they get to $33,000, it reduced the number of prospects they need to get to quota. Giving everyone what they want:

• Quota attainment for the company
• Less prospecting

For some reps, there is less stress in pursuing bigger game than doing more prospecting. As a savvy manager, there needs to be a delicate balance between means and outcome. As part of their annual coaching plan, (you have one right?) they need to understand the best path to quota for the rep in question, not just one path for all.

With the Activity Calculator, managers can lay out a long-term plan. When the rep sees their manager is more than a one-track wonder, they are much more engaged and responsive. As part of a continuous improvement plan, you can focus on the number with the most significant leverage, not the biggest gap. For example, once they have increased deal size, it is better to focus on Discovery To Proposal. Leading to more benefits as this usually aligns with bigger deal size, and further reduces the number of prospects required for quota.

What Do You Really Mean?

Even if you were the best coach, I am not sure it would work to tell someone that the reflection of their effort sucks. Especially when some managers who point out when a rep’s “numbers suck,” has little to offer to get them to unsuck. I often think when a manager tells his/her rep “your numbers suck,” it is more an expression of their frustrations and their inabilities to change them. Start by focusing on the relationship between the numbers and improving those.

Develop an individual coaching plan that helps you balance change, the skills that lead to them, and how to measure it right for each rep. Lead with the change, not the number, and change will follow. Focus purely on the numbers, and they’re bound to continue to suck.

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The post Your Numbers Suck appeared first on TiborShanto.com.

Marketing is an essential pursuit for all companies, creating brand awareness for new customers, generating leads and engaging existing customers to keep them loyal. There are numerous marketing strategies, channels and goals—depending on the needs of the company.

Do you have a new product coming out? Did you just reach a significant milestone? Are you trying to breach a new market? These are all goals that may require different marketing strategies.

Marketing can be divided into short-term and long-term. Let’s discuss both to give you a more comprehensive understanding of which one (or both) is right for your business objectives.

Short-Term Marketing

Short-term marketing, also known as operational or tactical marketing, is a plan for up to one year. This method is typically implemented to promote sales and promotions, new products and services and other events foreseen in the next month to 12 months.

Short-term marketing includes a detailed action plan of the type of marketing (online, print, paid, organic, etc)., who will carry out the strategies, a budget, a sales forecast and expected reach and profit.

Examples of short-term marketing include:

• Price promotions
• Discounts to certain groups (military, teachers)
• Trade shows

Long-Term Marketing

Long-term marketing is a strategy that outlays more general objectives for the next 10 years. Although short-term marketing is easier to conceptualize as it focuses on the now; once you have announced a new merger or heralded a new acquisition, what comes next?

Every company needs to have a long-term marketing plan that keeps the brand fresh and relevant in the eyes of the customers. Long term marketing is beneficial to improve on existing messaging, figure out what works and what doesn’t and optimize leads and conversions.

Examples of long-term marketing include:

• Public Relations (PR)
• Social media
• Paid search engine optimization (SEO)

Best of Both

For the best ROI in marketing strategies, it is advantageous to have a detailed marketing plan. Start by identifying your target audience (who you want your messages to reach), research your competition, create a clear message and establish a budget.

Depending on these factors, outline your goals and decide which can benefit from short-term marketing (announcing a sale or growing your leads) or long-term marketing (promoting loyalty within your established network).

It’s important to keep both visions in mind when designating resources to any marketing goal. If you allocate all your funds to a short-term strategy, you may not have enough to dedicate to future growth. On the other hand, if you only think about the distant future, you may not generate enough profits to sustain your company in the short-term.

Social proof is one of the best ways to increase your conversions, generate more interested leads, and overall gives your website a more dependable and professional appearance. In case you’re new to the concept, social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people tend to make buying decisions based on the opinions of other customers.

There are several ways to enhance your social proof with social media and consumer engagement. However, we would like to take a closer look at how you can improve the way potential customers see your brand once they land on your site.

Enable Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are one of the best ways to build your social proof on-site. Sixty-three percent of consumers said that reviews are the number one factor when purchasing a new product. When a potential lead lands on your page and sees that other customers have bought and enjoyed your products, they are more likely to make a purchase.

There’s no better proof of this concept in action than on Amazon. Let’s look at a sample from a leg brace product.

Source

This image captures many different ways you can entice your audience to make a purchase by showing them testimonials and reviews. First, you’ll notice on the left side of the page there is a review breakdown. It’s safe to say that anyone who was on the fence would quickly decide to purchase if they noticed that out of over 4,200 reviews, 90 percent of the customers gave the product a four or five-star review.

You’ll also notice that there are images posted from the customers showing that they use and enjoy the product. The great thing about unsolicited reviews is it helps steer your marketing in a clear direction, and of course, helps you build your social proof on-site.

Every review system is going to work differently, depending on the different parts of your website. Most importantly, you should always allow the people who purchase products on your site the opportunity to leave their feedback for potentially interested customers.

Add Social Share Count Icons

If you’re interested in getting more social proof on your blog, then social share buttons are the way to go. Many social media WordPress plugins give users the options to add a social share counter to their posts so new viewers can see the popularity of the piece they’re reading.

Here’s an example from a popular business publication.

Source

As you can see here, there’s the number of shares, followed by different ways to share the article on social media or via a link. As the number of people who share the post goes up, so does the share count. As a result, when someone lands on your page and sees that multiple people have shared, liked, or otherwise engaged with your content, they are more likely to do the same thing.

The thought process behind this is simple: “Everyone else is loving this piece of content, so I should too!”

Include Popular Posts

Another way to build up your credibility as a publication is by featuring your top posts on your blog homepage, or any piece of content featured in your blog. The topics in your popular post tab are generally going feature content that encourages engagement among your audience.

A popular posts tab should look something like this:

Source

You can use this method to show your audience the high-traffic content currently featured on your page. The process behind this tactic is similar to that of the social share counter. Readers see that there is popular content being consumed by others, and they want to take part in the discussion or learn about the topic discussed in the post.

Conclusion

There are plenty of great ways to improve your social proof on and off-site. As your business grows and your following expands, you’ll find that it’s much easier to entice a new potential reader/lead that your content is worthwhile.

Social proof is often compared to a snowball. It may start small, but it can grow massive in a short amount of time. If you want to generate more leads and win the attention and admiration of your audience, building your social proof on-site is the best place to start.

Mailchimp, a bootstrapped startup out of Atlanta, Georgia, is known best as a popular tool for organizations to manage their customer-facing email activities — a profitable business that its CEO told TechCrunch has now grown to around 11 million customers and is on track for $700 million in revenue in 2019.

To help hit that number, Mailchimp is taking the wraps off a significant update aimed at catapulting it into the next level of business services. Beginning later this week, Mailchimp will start to offer a full marketing platform aimed at smaller organizations.

Going beyond the email that it has been offering for 20 years, the new platform will feature technology to record and track customer leads, the ability to purchase domains and build sites, ad retargeting on Facebook and Instagram, social media management and business intelligence that leverages a new move in the artificial intelligence to provide recommendations to users on how and when to market to whom.

When the service goes live on Wednesday, Mailchimp also plans a pretty significant shift of its pricing into four tiers of free, $9.99/month, $14.99/month or $299/month (up from the current pricing of free, $10/month, $199/month) — with those fees scaling depending on usage and features.

(Existing paid customers maintain current pricing structure and features for the time being and can move to the new packages at any time, the company said. New customers will sign up to the new pricing starting May 15.)

The expansion is part of a longer-term strategic play to widen Mailchimp’s scope by building more services for the typically-underserved but collectively large small business segment. Even as multinationals like Amazon and other large companies continue to feel like they are eating up the mom-and-pop independent business model, SMBs continue to make up 48 percent of the GDP in the US.

And within that, marketing is one of those areas that small businesses might not have invested in much traditionally but are increasingly turning to as so much transactional activity has moved to digital platforms — be it smartphones, computers, or just the tech that powers the TV you watch or music you listen to.

In March, we reported that Mailchimp quietly acquired a small Shopify competitor called LemonStand to start to build more e-commerce tools for its users. And the new marketing platform is the next step in that strategy.

“We still see a big need for small businesses to have something like this,” Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp’s co-founder and CEO, said in an interview. Enterprises have a range of options when it comes to marketing tools, he added, “but small businesses don’t.” The mantra for many building tech for the SMB sector has traditionally been “dumbed down and cheap,” in his words. “We agreed that cheap was good, but not dumbed down. We want to empower them.”

The new services launch also comes at a time when an increasing number of companies are closing in on the small business opportunity, with e-commerce companies like Square, Shopify and PayPal also widening their portfolio of products. (These days, Square is a Mailchimp partner, Shopify is not.)

Marketing is something that Mailchimp had already been dabbling with over the last two years — indeed, customer-facing email services is essentially a form of marketing, too. Other launches have included a Postcards service, offering companies very simple landing pages online (about 10 percent of Mailchimp’s customers do not have their own web sites, Chestnut said), and a tool for companies to create Google, Facebook and Instagram ads.

Mailchimp itself has a big marketing presence already: it says that daily, more than 1.25 million e-commerce orders are generated through Mailchimp campaigns; over 450 million e-commerce orders were made through Mailchimp campaigns in 2018; and its customers have sold over $250 million in goods through multivariate + A/B campaigns run through Mailchimp.

There are clearly a lot of others vying to be the go-to platform for small businesses to do their business — “Google, Facebook, a lot of the big players see the magic and are moving to the space more and more,” Chestnut said — but Mailchimp’s unique selling point — or so it hopes — is that it’s the platform that has no vested interests in other business areas, and will therefore be as focused as the small businesses themselves are. That includes, for example, no upcharging regardless of the platform where you choose to run a campaign.

“We are Switzerland,” Chestnut said.

If you’ve just started to research a referral channel, you might be asking yourself, “Do I really need to automate a referral program? Our business already has fans that promote it on social media.” And while social media promotion from fans of the business are important to a business’s growth, this isn’t a referral channel. This is brand advocacy.

Now, brand advocacy is a great tool! This is organic, unexpected promotion, and it can be great for bringing in new leads. But it comes with its own set of challenges, and isn’t always the most sustainable way to bring in leads and grow revenue.

And that’s where a referral channel comes in.

Here are some of the key ways that a referral channel differs from brand advocacy, and why businesses should consider including an automated referral program into their lead generation strategy.

A Referral Channel is a Long-term Commitment.

While brand advocacy can encompass a fan who only tweets about your brand once, a referral partner or customer is someone who regularly interacts with your brand to give referrals.

That said, some referral partners are more active than others, and this is okay! Unlike other channel methods, a referral channel can be a great way to nurture your long tail partners and get the most out of their limited interaction.

How do you keep referral partners and customers active? Communication is a big part of it. Involving sales and special promotions are other ways to ensure maximum participation. Also, calculating the right incentives is an important part of keeping those in your referral channel engaged.

All of this can be very time-consuming, which is why automating your referral program is such a good option for so many businesses.

A Referral Channel is Scalable.

While brand advocacy is hard to grow past a small number of customers, a referral channel isn’t.

Referral channels can be scaled based on the needs of your business and referral partners. By keeping an eye on the right metrics, you can make sure that your business is growing at the rate that it needs to.

Scalability is another thing that automated referral channels can help with. By scaling your channel appropriately, you can make sure that your referral channel benefits your business, your partners, and your customers. This level of control simply doesn’t exist in brand advocacy.

A Referral Channel is “Always On.”

When managed right, a referral channel is a consistent source of lead-gen and revenue. This is very different from brand advocacy, which can stop and start. A referral channel is managed by your business, which means you can keep track of how often referral partners and customers are generating leads and act accordingly.

Referral leads are, on average, more likely to convert to deals than other leads. This means that a referral channel can always be generating revenue for you on a consistent, trackable basis.
This is the main reason that businesses turn to a referral channel over other forms of lead generation, such as brand advocacy.