On Jan. 7, Islamist gunmen ran through the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo screaming “The Prophet is avenged!” By coincidence, at the very moment they were killing the journalists, the International Space Station passed silently over Paris.
Consider that for a moment.
As terrorists committed a primitive act of tribal savagery in the name of a prophet who lived 1,400 years ago, right above them, orbiting through space, was the most sophisticated expression of mankind’s ability to transcend ignorance and fear with hope and reason.
Twenty-five nations from around the world have come together to build the space station. They include old enemies who fought each other for centuries over God and gold, Cold War rivals, small countries and large. But none are Islamic nations.
It has become a cliché to point out that science and reason once flourished in the Islamic world. Nonetheless, it is true. While Europe stumbled through the Dark Ages, Islamic scholars made dramatic advances in every field of science including mathematics, optics and experimental physics. Our modern world was built on the scientific breakthroughs of Islam. From the eighth century, mathematicians such as Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, who helped develop algebra, there is a direct line of progress that ends with the space station itself. But we no longer associate Islam with progress. In fact, a Muslim astronaut would surprise us as much as a non-Muslim terrorist (although there are many examples of each).
When the Parisian police siege ended on the blood-smeared floor of a kosher supermarket, the Prophet had not been avenged. He was diminished. This terrorist attack, and the others before it, merely isolated the Islamic world further from the global mainstream. In its aftermath, we and our leaders repeat, again and again, “Not all Muslims”—and yet we collectively treat Muslim nations as a threat that must be contained. Equal members of the global community? No. Partners in the space program? Impossible.
The Islamic world is in relative decline. Or, more precisely, a large number of countries with a Muslim majority are not developing as rapidly as the rest of the world, and in some cases, like Syria, they are even regressing.
This is a golden age for most. In the last 100 years life expectancy has more than doubled. In the last 50 years the poverty rate has fallen by 80 per cent. During that same time, the number of wars fell by a similar figure and the number of nations governed democratically tripled.
But, while the global community leapt forward, Islamic nations (as defined as members of the Organization of Islamic Co-operation) have progressed at a much slower pace. This is the case across a wide variety of metrics.
The Social Progress Index, a comprehensive measurement of a nation’s well-being, which includes everything from access to water to freedom of movement, ranks Islamic countries behind every other region in the world, including non-Muslim African countries. The Muslim world does even worse on Transparency International’s Perceptions of Corruption Index. Life expectancy numbers are among the world’s lowest, more than 15 years fewer than North America. And, not surprisingly, on a per capita basis, Muslim nations publish scientific papers at less than one-tenth the frequency of Europeans.
If we are surprised by these numbers, Najmuddin Shaikh is not. The former foreign secretary of Pakistan recently lamented, “The Islamic world is in disarray and decline and that Muslim communities find themselves under siege-like conditions in the West and elsewhere is perhaps an understatement.”
Why has the Muslim world been unable to keep pace? Why is it besieged? The easiest response is to say they did this to themselves. The evidence of this is so pervasive it is hard to refute. For example, just last week alone, while the world was focused on France, there were dozens of other terrorist attacks where Muslims killed Muslims.
In Yemen, a large group of young men were applying for entry into the police academy. They were queued up along a stone wall, which intensified the blast of a car bomb—33 died.
In Iraq, a wholesale market is held every Saturday morning in Baghdad’s western district of Baiyaa. There a bomb killed five. Later that morning another blast killed three more people in the nearby town of Madian.
In Lebanon, on the same day, a suicide bomber walked up to the crowded Omran Café in Tripoli and triggered his vest. Bloodied survivors were pulling themselves out of the rubble when a second bomber stepped in amongst them. There were nine dead and 37 injured.
In Pakistan, as people gathered to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday by distributing alms at a mosque in Rawalpindi, a bomber pushed his way in. The blast shattered all the nearby windows and killed seven.
In Nigeria, militants wrapped explosives around the midriff of a small 10-year old girl, and told her to walk into the market. When she reached the stalls where the chickens are sold, it went off, killing 19.
This is an incomplete list, from just last week, but it illustrates the broader story well. Internecine conflict in the Islamic world is endemic. The unrelenting Shia and Sunni schism dominates it, but it also includes tribal and ethnic divides. In 2013, there were 12 Western victims of terror attacks compared to 22,000 non-Western fatalities. These do not include those killed by the barrel bombs that Syrian President Assad dropped on his own people, or civilians killed by warfare in Afghanistan or Iraq. From the jungles of Sulawesi to the deserts of Libya, Muslims are killing Muslims at a rate that dwarfs the more highly publicized conflict with the West. In that light, it is hard to subscribe to the theory this is a clash of civilizations. Rather, it is one culture turning on itself.
The self-inflicted wounds are not always violent. The Taliban banned girls from being educated. In Syria, Islamic State closed all schools. In 2013, militants in Mali burned the fabled and ancient libraries of Timbuktu. In a speech just days before the Paris attacks, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pleaded for an end to this self-destruction: “The Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands.”
Focusing just on the violence does not take into account the broader context, the economic and geographic circumstances in which these countries find themselves. The Maghreb (northwest Africa), the Arabian Peninsula, the Central Asia steppes, the Gulf of Guinea, the Indus valley, the Indonesian archipelago: each of these presents different but equally daunting barriers to building modern economies and functioning states. Whether it is drought or monsoons, a lack of harbours or impassible mountain ranges, the Islamic world was not dealt the best geographic hand.
It has faced economic hurdles, too. The international demand for heroin has created a lucrative but destructive poppy trade that the United States and all its allies could not even slow. Similarly, but perhaps less dramatically, the oil reserves of the Middle East and West Africa have been both a blessing and a curse, fuelling building booms, corruption and instability.
There are also the historical circumstances that must be acknowledged. The legacy of disastrous foreign intervention is everywhere. For hundreds of years the Dutch treated Indonesia as a warehouse, merely to be raided for its wealth, forestalling the evolution of local institutions. When independence came, dictators Sukarno and Suharto merely perfected what the Dutch had begun.
Bangladesh faced a similar colonial legacy, but one that was followed by partition and a brutal civil war. The elites who emerged redefined corruption, and it is difficult to judge which has done more damage: the typhoons or the politicians.
Further west, the arbitrarily drawn Durand Line was established in the 19th century to separate Pakistan and Afghanistan by cutting right through the Pashtun homeland. This colonial relic has remained a festering wound that makes both countries virtually ungovernable.
A similar exercise produced a comparable result in the Middle East. The secretly negotiated Sykes-Picot Agreement, creating spheres of influence for the Great Powers during the First World War, produced fractious borders and lit a bonfire of ethnic and sectarian violence that this week burned the Baiyaa market and the Omran Café.
Even recent history has been unkind to the Islamic world. The U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan exploded into regional instability. repeated conflicts with Israel have drained meagre budgets from militaries who spend most of their time blaming Zionist conspiracies for the repressive chaos they themselves create at home.
When one considers the heavy weight of these extenuating circumstances, it is easier to see that the terrorism of the last 20 years is not the reason the Islamic world has been left behind. But it is perhaps the reason it is staying there.
Lockerbie. Embassies in Africa. Sept. 11. Subways in London. A memorial in Ottawa. A café in Sydney. A magazine in Paris. We have witnessed a steady series of attacks against the West. Some of these were large and well-organized conspiracies, others lone-wolf attacks by mentally unstable men with tenuous connections to Islam. But they had the same effect: to provoke a fear in the West that Islam is a threat, and the impression that the Muslim world is not a partner, but a challenge to be managed.
We, and our governments, don’t say this. In fact, we do all we can to make it appear otherwise. We talk about engagement and launch various initiatives to build “constructive dialogue.” These are just euphemisms.
President Barack Obama wanted to use the space program as a tool to engage the Islamic world. He instructed NASA to help Muslim nations “feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.” In Canada, we reached out by, among other things, naming a special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) and by sending its member countries over $12 billion in aid since 2002. During that same period, the United States sent $137 billion.
These efforts were not about expanding mutually beneficial relations with peers to create new opportunities. They were about preventing problems and neutralizing a threat. Most of our energy has gone into isolating, not engaging, the Islamic world. Compare, for example, what has been spent on intelligence, homeland security and military operations. Since 9/11, Canada tripled its spy budget and spent $18 billion sending troops to Afghanistan. The United States spent between $4 trillion and $6 trillion on military campaigns (including Iraq)—over 25 times more than they spent on engaging through aid.
With every act of terror, we push the Muslim world farther way. We launch more drones. We deploy more troops. We fortify more embassies. We watch more mosques. We accept fewer refugees. We issue fewer visas.
A passport from an Islamic nation is less welcome than one from any other region of the world. Citizens of the OIC enjoy visa-free travel to fewer countries than anyone else. This small fact tells a much larger story about the lack of interpersonal contact between Islamic nations and the rest of the world. It illustrates the fear that some of us feel when we see that the man boarding the flight ahead of us is wearing a shalwar kameez. It highlights the difficulty any of us have had bringing Muslim colleagues to international conferences, or transferring money to business partners in the Middle East. It makes us realize we can’t remember the last time someone talked about going to Egypt to see the pyramids. And it explains why last year less than two per cent of the visitors to Canada were from the Islamic world, despite those countries comprising 25 per cent of the world’s population.
Photo by Haim Zach/REX
It is not just the West. Russia, China, India: all the global powers have developed similar postures toward the Islamic world. Occasionally, although less frequently than the West, they talk about engagement. But really, like us, their strategy is primarily focused on containment.
The isolation also exists at the multilateral level. Only 19 per cent of global economies are not members of the World Trade Organization, but that short list is dominated by Islamic nations. The centrally important Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has only one Islamic member: Turkey. Canada belongs to 207 international organizations. The average Islamic nation belongs to about half that, making them less connected and included than are European, Latin American, Caribbean and Asian countries.
Of course, it is not all containment. The international community does engage more constructively with some Islamic countries than with others. For example, while Malaysia is not a member of the International Space Station partnership, it did second an astronaut to Russia, who then sent him to the space station. Turkey is not only a member of the OECD, it is also part of NATO. (But is hard to imagine it being invited to join today, given that just this week the United States cancelled the transfer of two frigates to the Turkish navy, due to growing concerns about its Islamist tendencies.)
The United States and Canada are negotiating with Indonesia so that we can enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. And Western oil companies are deeply entrenched in Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. But these exceptions prove the rule. Unless you are among the most moderate members of the OIC, or drowning in oil, the international community is not interested.
Ironically, this isolation may be what the extremists actually want. Many of the terrorist attacks were meant to drive a wedge between the Muslim world and the West, to eliminate the degenerate influences of the outside. They want to be left behind, or at least left alone.
Can we change this dynamic? Will we continue to pull back from the Muslim world? It is difficult to find signs that this pattern can be broken. Our economies now depend on trillion-dollar industries whose sole purpose is to protect us from the Islamist threat by building better body scanners and faster cruise missiles. Our own governments have restructured themselves as vigilant watchdogs, safeguarding us from terror. Even as the Paris attacks were still unfolding, the Canadian government was announcing even more anti-terror legislation. And our political institutions have been rewired, dramatically shifting the balance between our personal freedom and our collective security. All of this is intended to build blast-proof walls between us and them.
But perhaps, if we realize that with every terrorist attack our collective instincts to contain the Muslim world grows stronger, we can change this. It would take some patience and courage on our part, and a few leaps of faith, to increase the free flow of our peoples and in their wake, perhaps ideas and values. Of course, it would also require an effort on the part of Islamic nations to reach out, too. We can’t drag them into the OECD.
Terrorists like those who captured our attention in France are not responsible for the relative decline of the Islamic world, but they are prolonging its isolation. This attack and all the others before it have compelled the international community to instinctively respond by containing the threat. But this is merely palliative. As the Muslim world is further contained, it becomes further alienated from the global community, and it falls further behind. This trend must change. We must recognize that as mankind moves further into space, some of us are being left behind.
This home in Fort McMurray, Alta., could be yours for $870,000 (Source: Realtor.ca)
On Tuesday, Suncor announced plans to axe 1,000 jobs as it delays expansion plans at one of its oil-sands projects. While the cuts don’t involve any unionized jobs—yet—Ken Smith, president of Unifor Local 707A, which represents 4,000 Suncor employees, summed up the mood: “One thousand jobs, that’s pretty darn significant for any employer,” Smith said from his office in Fort McMurray, Alta. “This is not a good omen for Fort McMurray as a whole. We’re going to have rough times ahead. There’s going to be people in limbo. It puts everything up in the air.”
Or, as another Fort Mac resident, Debbie March, told the Globe and Mail: “It’s like the place has gone dead.”
Since the oil rout began, the question of when the aftershock would rumble through the Alberta housing market has been a hot topic. There are already signs of a slowdown in Calgary, with sales dropping 7.5 per cent in December from a year earlier. (Prices still jumped nearly 10 per cent.) As for Fort Mac, the epicentre of the oil crash, the local market is harder to assess. The most recent statistics date from November. Even so, this chart from the Fort McMurray Real Estate Board shows there was already a widening gulf between sales and listings back then.
But there’s another way of seeing what’s gone on in Fort Mac real estate since then, and that’s by putting the local market in some perspective. I made the following maps using the map-drawing tool at Realtor.ca, which lets you see only those listings within the selected area. I traced the fast-growing Fort Mac subdivision of Timberlea, along with several wards in Toronto.
The results are quite startling. There were nearly as many homes on the market in that one Fort McMurray subdivision as in some of the most densely populated parts of Toronto. The Trinity-Spadina neighbourhood (Ward 20) is littered with condo construction cranes and condominium sales centres, but its listing-to-resident ratio is half that of Timberlea in Fort Mac. Relative to other parts of Toronto, away from the condo towers, the ratio of listings-to-residents is seven times higher in Fort Mac.
Fort McMurray – Timberlea Population in 2012: 33,485 # of MLS listings: 437
1 listing per 76 residents
Toronto – Ward 20 – Trinity Spadina Population in 2011: 76,600 # of MLS listings: 501
1 listing per 153 residents
Toronto – Ward 28 – Toronto Centre-Rosedale Population in 2011: 66,585 # of MLS listings: 248
1 listing per 268 residents
Toronto – Ward 25 Don Valley West Population in 2011: 58,315 # of MLS listings: 119
It’s a big day in collaboration software with fan-favorite Slack unveiling pricing plans while Facebook talked more about Facebook for Work, a not-so-secret foray into the enterprise-software space. With Slack’s new Plus Plan, which will cost $12.50 a month per user, organizations will get a single […]
Once upon a time, when life was simpler, LinkedIn was the social network where you looked for jobs, while Facebook was the one where you wasted time while you were at your job. And it was a good idea not to let your boss know you were hanging out on either one.
Times have changed, as evidenced by new workplace communication tools recently announced by both social networks: Facebook At Work and InMail private communication for coworkers, the first of several tools expected from LinkedIn. Neither come as a surprise, as rumors about both services have been circulating for a while.
The two new products aren't in direct competition with each other, as they do fairly different things. But both Facebook and LinkedIn are firmly staking a claim in workplace collaboration, where companies such as Slack and Yammer reside.
Facebook Goes To Work
Facebook At Work hit iOS and Android app stores on Wednesday, though it's only available in preview to a limited number of companies. Like the updated Facebook Messenger, the app stands alone and distinct from the main Facebook app. But you'll be able to access a desktop version through the Facebook website, TechCrunch reports.
When stacked against its standalone competitors, Facebook For Work offers almost no learning curve for many employees. It operates much like the social site that 185 million U.S. users are already familiar with, some for nearly 10 years.
There is currently, one big difference between the work site and regular Facebook. While Facebook At Work is in limited preview, neither apps or advertisements will operate on the network. Facebook also hasn't announced pricing, although Facebook engineering director Lars Rasmussen told TechCrunch that advertising hasn't been ruled out. It's likely Facebook At Work could feature several pricing options for businesses, including one that's ad-free.
LinkedIn Mails It In
In its continuing effort to expand usability beyond the job hunt, LinkedIn is set to launch private InMail for co-workers, Recode reported on Tuesday. It will function similarly to the InMail currently available to premium LinkedIn members, but will allow users to communicate with co-workers to whom they aren't connected via the social network.
It's just one tool among others planned to encourage worker bees to use LinkedIn as part of their current job, instead of just signing in to look for the next one. In December, LinkedIn launched a content-friendly design update that separated information connected to the job hunt, such as how many people looked at your profile, from updates in your network and news stories you may find relevant.
Future updates will allow companies to communicate to all staffers or just specific departments, Recode reported. Like Facebook, LinkedIn is working on a separate app designed to facilitate networking within companies.
Next up: Convincing corporate managers to embrace tools associated with some of the biggest employee time-wasters around,
If you’re working on getting your business found on the Internet, it’s imperative that you include LinkedIn into your marketing mix. LinkedIn company pages aren’t anything new, but you’d be surprised as to how many business owners still haven’t created their pages or spent time getting acquainted using the platform for marketing. I’m constantly being asked questions about the basics—how to set up a profile, how to connect with others, what types of content should be shared—so I’ve decided to put together a blog series for LinkedIn marketing basics (which I will eventually turn into a downloadable resource, so hang tight for that too)!
Your LinkedIn company page not only allows your colleagues, friends and family to connect with you and follow company updates but also presents many opportunities for increasing brand awareness with your prospects. In addition, you can use this tool to drive traffic to your website, engage with your audience and increase lead generation. There are countless marketing possibilities on LinkedIn (paid and unpaid), and your result will only improve with the amount of effort you put in.
If you’re ready to create your page but aren’t confident that you can go it alone, follow these step-by-step instructions for getting started:
Creating Your LinkedIn Company Page
To start, you must have your own personal LinkedIn account that is tied to your company email address that includes your company’s domain name. For example, I would need to use my email address kelly@grootsmarketing.com to create a LinkedIn company page for Grass Roots Marketing. This is to validate that you’re legitimately a part of the company or organization that you’ll be marketing on LinkedIn. You cannot create a company page with an email address such as contentmarketingrules@gmail.com or inboundisthefuture@gmail.com. If you have set up your account with a personal email address (and not a business email address) you can always add your company email in the “contact” section found while editing your personal profile.
Once you’ve moved past that point, you’ll be able to fill out all description fields for your company page. This is where you’ll be able to really give your audience an overview of who your company is and what you do. You’ll want to be sure to include information about your products, services and information that will easily lead back to your website if your followers want to learn more about your business. Make sure everything is filled out accurately and triple check for typos and grammar issues.
Here are a few things that you should make a point to include in your summary:
A quick overview of the history of your company
A brief list of your products and services
A link to your website
A link to your blog
Links to your other social media accounts
Next, brand your page with a high-quality cover photo and icons. You’ll want to make sure your logo is easily visible in your banner and icons. Be sure to give the viewer a solid idea of what your business does, because the banner is most likely the first thing they will see.
Once you’re comfortable with the content and graphics on your page, publish it. Your company page will now be public for the world to see and you can start using it to market your business!
Building Your Following
Since the purpose of having a LinkedIn company page is to spread brand awareness and stay in front of your prospects with company updates, you’ll want to make sure that you actually have followers that see your social media updates in their own news feeds! Now that your page is set up, encourage your prospects, colleagues, and competitors to follow your page. Here are a few simple ways to do that:
Include a link to your company page in your email signature
Promote your page in your newsletters and marketing materials
Use other social media platforms to promote your page
Add your LinkedIn company page URL to your business card
Become active in relevant LinkedIn groups
There are so many ways to promote your page and taking a proactive approach to continuously building your following will increase your social media engagement, website traffic and leads. With any social media platform, a little bit of effort goes a long way—but it’s important to remember that the more time you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.
Now that you’ve learned how to setup your page and start building your following, you’ll want to dedicate time every week for managing and maintaining your page. Stay tuned for the next part of my Setting up Shop on LinkedIn series to learn best practices for page maintenance!
If you don’t have the time to setup or maintain your LinkedIn account, click below to learn more about our social media management packages. We can take the reins while you focus on your business!
In our first Interesting Infographic of 2015, HelpScout has given us some interesting insight into how to convert customers using psychology. Some of the examples are from a traditional B2C environment but I can see how we can apply it to our B2B lead generation strategies and tactics. Below are the 10 ways:
1. Help customers break through “action paralysis” by setting miminums
Research by Prof. Robert Cialdini shows adding a minimum to a request increased donations for the American Cancer Society by 78%. Remind your customers about how easy it is to get started to help them break through action paralysis.
For example if you offer a software product, perhaps you are offering a free trial or reach out for a conversation.
2. Embrace the power of labels
Researchers found people who they randomly labeled as “politically active” were 15 percent more likely to vote. Despite the fact that they were randomly chosen, the label ended up affecting their actions. HelpScout suggests that if we label our customers as part of a superior group then their actions will reflect those characteristics.
What labels can you use for your prospects to make them feel significant and special?
3. Understand the three types of buyers
Neuroeconomic experts have labeled human spending patters as a process of “spending ’til it hurts.” According to the research, there are three types of buyers: Tightwads, Average buyers, and Spendthrifts.
For example, if you are dealing with Tightwards, focus on bundling products or services and re-framing the product value.
What type of buyers do you normally deal with and how do you respond to them?
4. Highlight strengths by admitting shortcomings
According to data from social psychologist Fiona Lee, customers were more trustworthy of companies who admitted to “strategic failings” over those who blamed external sources for company problems (even if they were true). She concluded that buyers are okay with companies admitting to faults from time to time, as they show the company is actively looking to fix the problem.
It is very difficult to admit to our clients and customers, let alone the public, any of our failings. What type of failings do you think your company can share which would make your prospects look more favorably on you in accordance with this research?
5. Use urgency the smart way
Urgency and scarcity are known to drive up sales, but according to research from Howard Leventhal, people are prone to block out urgent messages if they aren’t given information on how to follow-up.
This research is interesting – how can we provide follow up information to our prospects and clients when we are using urgency and scarcity in the sales process?
6. Make their brain light up “instantly”
Several Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) studies have shown that our frontal cortex is highly active when we think about waiting for something (that’s a no-no for more sales). To better appeal to customers, remind them that your product or service can solve their pain points fast.
In my view, this is something we can all follow and implement. We can do a better job of showing our prospects that our solution or product address their immediate pain points right away to encourage them to take that important first step.
7. Make an enemy
According to some research from social psychologist Henri Tajifel, people can be dived (and more loyal to their in-group) from the menial of distinctions. Companies like Apple leverage this through tactics like their Mac v. PC commercials. Making enemies is less about being harsh to people or competitors and more about labeling your customers. For example, you may say this is “only for athletes.”
8. Stand for something
Of customers who have a strong relationship with a single brand, over 64 percent said it was because they had shared values with the company in question. A great example is Tom’s Shoes, a company that donates a pair of shoes to those in need for every pair of shoes sold.
Do you share similar values with your prospects and customers? If not or you do not know, how can you better communicate this to them?
9. Devil’s advocate
Research shows that when groups of people have their ideas questioned by a “devil’s advocate,” they actually increase their confidence in their original stance. Your business can utilize this information by playing the devil’s advocate yourself, increasing the confidence of already interested customers who are the one’s most likely to buy your products. Address their concerns and dismiss them with well researched information and examples.
10. Keep ‘em on their toes
While customers value consistency, they also like surprises. In a classic study by psychologist Norbert Schwarz, he found that as little as 10 cents was enough to change the outlook of participants who found the money by surprise.
When and how did you surprise your prospects or customers?
The Swiss franc is now up about 14% against the euro, as of 11.40 a.m. GMT (6.40 a.m. ET). The suddenly strong franc is a massive problem for a lot of Swiss exporters. For example, a luxury item sold by a Swiss manufacturer is now 14% more expensive to a German customer.
Watch and jewellery manufacturers, as well as financial firms are getting knocked.
The Swiss Market Index, which monitors the biggest and most liquid stocks listed in the country, is down by 9.5% as of 12.55 p.m. GMT (7.50 a.m. ET), after dropping by as much as 16% earlier. Cie Financiere Richemont, which owns major brands like Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Montblanc, is the biggest loser, down by 15%.
Massive investment bank UBS is feeling the pain too, down more than 12% this morning.
Anyone who sells items produced in Switzerland abroad is likely to suffer from the move: Their buyers now need more of their own local currency (typically euros), and might look elsewhere instead.
When it comes right down to it, marketing is simply about attraction – delivering your best come-hither stare and, fingers crossed, being taken up on the offer. It’s the alchemy of art and science, and is (or should be) in continuous play throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
But attraction has to start somewhere. In most cases, “somewhere” is the top of the funnel with lead generation. (It’s no mistake that most organizations spend the largest chunk of marketing budget on acquisition.) And it’s primarily done with content marketing – the ages-old technique that marketers continue to struggle with.
There are countless ways content marketing is used to generate leads. The good news is this:
The majority of content marketing-fueled campaigns (which, in the digital world, is approximately all of them) – no matter how cool, clever, or covetous – are done using a mere three tactics.
Here they are, including three ways to use each tactic to attract leads and entice them into your funnel.
TACTIC 1: Search Marketing
You’ve probably seen the stat (and there are a few variations depending on the research firm that did the study, but they’re distinctions without a difference): Somewhere between 60% and 90% of people use a search engine to begin researching a product or service.
If staying in business is part of your plan, search marketing is a must, plain and simple.
Search marketing offers a golden opportunity to get in front of prospective buyers at the exact moment they’re looking for information about a product or service you offer. Better yet, search marketing has the net effect of pre-qualifying leads; if a person clicks on your listing, it’s because it matches what they’re looking for right now. More traffic from your target audience means more chances for a sale.
How to use content marketing to generate leads
Whether you focus on organic search, paid search, or a combination, the principles for generating top-of-funnel leads are the same.
1. Write for your audience. One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is writing content (e.g., eBooks, articles, blog posts, press releases, product sheets, etc.) for the search engine, rather than the customer. Gaming the system worked once (very briefly), but it doesn’t anymore. Search engines continue to become more sophisticated in using semantics to deliver results that meet searchers’ queries. So your job is to create content for your ideal customers – their interests, pain points, wants, needs – and do it using natural language.
2. Speak the searcher’s language. This is a continuation of #1 but worthy of its own entry. To be found by your ideal customers, you need to know the terms – the words and phrases – they’re searching on. This allows you to create content that connects to their wants and needs, and select keywords that resonate and align with their research efforts.
3. Optimize your website content. Remember that today’s search engines (Google in particular, but also Bing and many others) are smart enough to understand a rich spectrum of semantically relevant terms and phrases. So use them throughout your webpages. This will help search engines find and deliver your content to the people who are looking for it.
TACTIC 2: Social Media Marketing
Like it or lump it, social media plays an important role in the lead-gen process. Here are three data points to consider:
74% of consumers rely on social networks to guide purchase decisions. (Sprout Social, Sep 2013)
80% of marketers say social media efforts have increased website traffic, and 66% say it’s measurably increased lead generation. (Social Media Examiner, May 2014)
100% of business decision-makers use social media for work purposes. (Forrester Research, Jul 2013)
Social media marketing is the umbrella term for using social networking sites – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Vine, etc. – as marketing tools to gain the interest and engagement of potential buyers. (Make your social life easier: Get the social media cheat sheet here).
Though it doesn’t work the same for all organizations (some types of businesses seem better suited for “social” than others), social media marketing gives brands the opportunity to optimize visibility, create relationships with people who otherwise might never know about them, and become more “real” to consumers.
How to use content marketing to generate leads
Imagine you’re at a cocktail party and casually standing with a handful of folks engaging in interesting conversation. Then imagine a stranger joins your circle and proceeds to pitch you on buying one of the watches he has on the inside of his trench coat. You’d probably think, “What a buffoon!” Your group might disband, move away, or shun him outright and unceremoniously.
Whether in person or online, being social is not about pushing an agenda. To generate leads using social media marketing, you must be viewed as a trusted advisor and expert in your industry, you must contribute value to network participants, and you must do it consistently over time. Because it you’re viewed as a fly-by-night opportunist with an ulterior motive, you’ll get the boot. So …
1. Provide a mix of content. Offer a wide selection of content types and formats to ensure there’s something valuable for everyone (e.g., eBooks, videos, infographics, images, blog posts, checklists). Content variety increases your visibility and also the potential that your content will be shared … which increases your reach.
2. Place calls to action in your content. Tell people what to do and give them a quick and obvious path (usually a link) to get there. Make your calls to action visible and specific to encourage people take the next step; e.g., sharing your content, accessing it, linking to it, or starting a direct conversation with you.
3. Gate your high-value content. Note, do not do this too much because it can sully your followers’ trust if it’s the rule, rather than the exception. But for top-tier content such as templates, training, and tools, experiment by placing a short (short!) lead generation form in front of it. People who fill out the form to get the piece are somewhat pre-qualified, and they might be interested in learning more.
TACTIC 3: Email Marketing
Say what you will about email (and self-proclaimed specialists often have lots to say, much of it a bit snooty), the bloom has never fallen off this rose. Day after day, year after year, B2B or B2C, email flourishes beautifully. It’s easy (particularly with today’s automation technologies), it’s inexpensive, it’s measurable, and it works.
What more could a marketer ask for?
It’s also extremely flexible and adaptable; email is used successfully at all stages of the buyer’s journey, making it unique among marketing tactics.
How to use content marketing to generate leads
Since the top of the funnel is all about generating leads and jump-starting relationships, a common question that arises is this:
How can email be used to generate leads? After all, before I can send an email, I need a list to send email to. If I have this list, doesn’t that mean I already have a list of leads?
No.
Having someone’s contact information is not synonymous with having someone’s interest. Simply because someone says, “Hi, my name is Jane and I live in Omaha,” doesn’t mean Jane has any intention of engaging with your brand.
Email marketing is how you start a conversation with Jane and, over time, entice her along the path to purchase … aka, convert her to a bona fide lead.
There are three ways you can do it:
1. Tap into third-party and co-branded programs. Work with a partner to get your messages, offers, or materials included in their email campaigns. If you choose your partners wisely (e.g., businesses with products and services that are complementary to yours), this can vastly extend your visibility to a new pool of potential customers.
2. Use trigger email. These are messages that are launched (triggered) when a specific action is taken by a prospect. Common uses include “Did you forget something?” messages that are sent to people who abandon their shopping carts, “Thank you” emails when someone fills in a form, and “Write a review” requests after someone makes a purchase. Trigger emails help marketers understand where someone is on the buyers journey, what their level of engagement is, and what they’re interested in.
3. Segment your lists. Going back to that list of names you already have, segmenting them – even when very little information is known about them – lets you target prospects by what you think (or what you know, depending on how much information you have) they might respond to. It’s one of the most powerful tools in the email marketing tool belt. (Read the Grow Your Email List white paper.)
The Gift that Keeps On Giving
Attractiveness and appeal – to prospects, customers, partners, investors, distributors, resellers, etc. – make the customer-brand relationship go round; the “it” factors that move prospects from awareness to interest to conversion to advocacy and, hopefully, keep them coming back for more.
Content marketing is the key that starts the lead gen engine at the top of the funnel and keeps the pipe flowing with new opportunities to make an impression and a connection, and to generate leads. Do that well and consistently and revenues will surely follow.
Learn More about Content Marketing
Interested in a deeper-dive look at how content marketing generates leads? Download the free eBook: Attraction 101: Content Marketing.
“Venus de Milo” image. Source: Wikipedia, open access.
“Perfect rose” image by Liz West, used under Creative Commons license.
“Gift box” image by Michael Schwarzenberger, used under Creative Commons license.
There are two trends unfolding of in sales which to date have accidentally intersected, which should be proactively encouraged and facilitated by B2B sales organizations. The first not so new, but gaining and likely to continue to gain momentum in the coming years, is the migration by many to inside sales teams, especially types of sales that only a few years ago may not have been seen as feasible for a number of reasons. However given the advances in technology, specifically web meeting and collaboration related apps, it is now more economical, and often leads to a more effective exchange between buyer and seller. Beyond the cost factor of time for both, including travel time for the seller, sharing screens can not only allow for a more thorough exploration of issues, but there is also the ability present your product in a more fluid and contextual manner, without coming across like a heavy handed demo.
The second is newer, although given the incessant hype it just seems like it’s been hanging around for ever, is social media and social applications. While many struggle to define social selling, often resorting to contrasting it to “traditional” selling, most applications are not really new, just executed using new tools.
Taking advantage of social tools and a social approach does present an opportunity compensate for some of the differences between selling face to face, and selling remotely, I would go as far as to say you can fill or avoid some potentially risky gaps in inside/remote selling. Specifically the type of social interaction that directly occurs when you interact with people directly. Not so much between the seller and those people directly involved in the steps of the buy/sell, but more importantly the supporting cast. The receptionist, the EA, the tech support person who helps you when you are visiting.
Visiting being an important concept here. It is no surprise that many “old timers”, regularly interchange the word appointment with visit. There is a lot of to be gained via the social interactions that can be gained while “visiting”.
There are whole bunch of conversations that will never take place when selling remotely that are just part of a visit to a prospect or client. These conversation may not always pertain to the product, or the purchase itself. In fact many of these conversation will happen with people who are not part of the process, but are tuned in, and in a number of ways that sellers can find valuable and move the sale forward. Small talk can add up to a lot.
The social fabric of a company, and the social fabric of the sale is an important component. Especially in an economy where products are interchangeable, but where people are not. In an economy where many senior leaders are more likely to choose one product over another primarily due to consensus among “the group”. The buying group, the user group, the implementation group, and others. Often this consensus is driven by things other than specs and features, and more by things that evolve out of “social interactions”; you know, people buying from people. These secondary relationships are often the little things that give you an edge over a competitor, the ability to influence just a bit more.
So what happens when the opportunity for small talk and hallway conversations is gone? You turn to social. There is a host of information one can glean and utilize to make up for not being there. The art then is to leverage it during the sale. And while most sale people are good at doing this face to face, the phone limits their focus. But there is no reason you “have to rush by” the receptionist just because you are on the phone. It is up to us as professionals to “humanize” the remote selling experience for all parties.
Even if you have your “targets” direct number, there is no reason you can’t hit zero and speak with the admin or receptionist, you’d talk to them if you were there, it is up to us to “be there” even when remote, and you can do that by learning more about them from their Facebook page, tweets, Pinterest, and host of other sites that give you a window to the non-business person. LinkedIn can help you connect the dots between the players, I learn more about the person on other platforms. There is no law or reason why you cannot incorporate this into your selling, and make up for the lack of being there, change something potentially impersonal to something more personal, for the people at the prospect company, and for you. In fact you can bet that they are checking you out the same way, and making assumptions and decisions based on these things.
So while social is great for the current lead gen and sale, it has loads more value and application in actually preserving and enhancing the social side of any sale.
If one of your New Year's resolutions was to travel more, you aren't alone: "Taking a trip" is one of the most popular resolutions every year.
As travelers plan for 2015, keeping in mind when to book for the best prices and flight options is important for getting the most adventure for the money.
Travel booking site Expedia analyzed aviation data from the Airlines Reporting Corporation, International Air Transport Association and the Airline Tariff Publishing Company to analyze air travel trends in 2015. The results offer insight into the best times to book flights, the price gap between premium and economy cabin seats and upcoming price changes in the aviation industry. Read more...
Collapsing oil prices and a weakening economy are pushing markets to start pricing in a potential interest rate cut by the Bank of Canada this year.
Those expectations grew Tuesday after Bank of Canada deputy governor Timothy Lane gave a speech in Madison, Wisc., that economists saw as tilting more dovish than usual. Mr. Lane’s speech focused on the economic effects of dropping oil prices, which has become a central concern for policymakers in Canada.
“Lane’s final phrase that ‘however things play out, we have the tools to respond’ highlights that lower rates are an option if conditions weaken sufficiently,” said Benjamin Reitzes, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.
Markets this week have begun pricing in the possibility that the Bank of Canada might cut interest rates in the next 12 months, something not seen since oil prices began their downward trek in July of last year.
The overnight indexed swap market is now pricing in a 4% risk of an interest rate cut sometime in the next year, say Bank of Nova Scotia strategists.
“The shift has been relatively dramatic with the market having been pricing in an 8% probability of a hike just two sessions ago,” said Camilla Sutton, chief FX strategist at Scotiabank. “Weaker than expected employment combined with falling oil prices is taking its toll on BoC expectations and CAD.”
Oil prices have retreated more than 50% in the past six months, which has further hurt what had already been tepid economic growth in Canada during the past year.
Canada’s labour market continued to cool off in December, with data from Statistics Canada showing 4,300 jobs were lost in December after a loss of 10,700 jobs in November. Economists had called for a gain of 15,000 jobs in the final month of the year.
There are also signs that lower oil prices are already hitting Calgary’s housing market, which up until last year was one of Canada’s hottest.
Calgary Real Estate Board data show sales in January are down 34% from a year ago, while listings rose 22%. That follows a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. report last week that showed new housing construction starts fell 10% this month in the Prairie provinces.
A weakening economy and the possibility of a rate cut this year continue to hurt the loonie, which is flirting with six-year lows. The currency was trading at 84.64 cents U.S. Tuesday, its lowest level since may 2009.
Peter Buchanan, senior economist at CIBC World Markets, said Tuesday’s speech by Mr. Lane and changing market expectations mean that the Bank of Canada is likely to tread a dovish line at its policy meeting scheduled for next week.
“While the Bank has previously stressed oil as a near term negative, the statement should reinforce expectations for a dovish message next week, supporting the short end and hurting the loonie,” he said.
The taxi industry may end up disrupting itself before Uber can compete it out of existence. This week, a handful of large cab companies in Broward County, Florida, demanded the right to be free of county fees, limits on picking up airport passengers, metered pricing, and wheel-chair accessibility quotes.
That is, as the Sun-Sentinel smartly observed, “they want to be like Uber,” which doesn’t abide by any of those regulations.
“Clearly, neither Uber nor Lyft have any intention of following the ordinance and complying with the Board’s Cease and Desist Letter,” a group of Taxi companies wrote to the mayor, referring to county orders against the two popular ridesharing companies. “The industry members signing this letter respectfully request relief from the following regulation governing their businesses if the illegal activity is allowed to continue.”
In other areas of the country, taxis have taken a massive hit. Last September, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency estimated that taxis have seen a 65% decline since ride-sharing startups took root.
Ditching meters and lax pickup laws may not be enough to sustain the taxi industry. Uber recently released stats that show changing expectations among its riders. The longer Uber exists in a city, the less tolerance riders have for wait times. In some cities, if users see the nearest Uber is more than even 2-3 minutes away, they are far less likely to request a car,” explains the data team in a company blog post.
Taxis simply cannot compete with that kind of service with their current supply. A major role that taxi laws play is regulating the number of cabs on the street to reduce competition between drivers. But that means there are fewer taxis encircling every potential customer. So they’ll likely have to give up that regulation in order to compete.
Broward taxis are making a smart move in the face of increased competition, but if they have to keep changing to succeed, eventually they may not look like taxis at all anymore. And that’s how Uber could win.
In recent years, cloud computing providers have been slashing prices — a phenomenon we've called the “race to zero.”
Amazon Web Services, for example, has cut its price 44 times in the last six years, while Microsoft and Google have both decreased prices multiple times to keep up with AWS.
On Wednesday, RBC Capital’s Mark Mahaney published a chart that perfectly captures this trend.
According to the chart below, the average monthly cost per gigabyte of RAM, for a set of various workloads, has dropped across the board over the past year.
This is just one way to measure cloud pricing — cloud companies charge in different ways for different services. But it's a good proxy for how fast prices have been dropping for real-world use scenarios.
Based on this metric, AWS dropped prices 8% from Oct. 2013 to Dec. 2014, while both Google and Microsoft cut prices 6% and 5%, respectively, in the same period. Other companies who charge more, like Rackspace and AT&T, dropped prices even more significantly.
The change is less profound when you include customer support costs. But it’s worth noting how high-touch support adds only about 40% to AWS prices, versus about 70% for Microsoft and $110% for Google. (Again, based on this one metric.)
Mahaney also noted that AWS's revenue growth slowed dramatically toward the end of last year — annualized growth was around 60% in 2013, versus less than 40% now — but he thinks growth will stabilize in 2015 as the price wars slow down. (Amazon doesn't break out AWS separately, but RBC believes AWS is a "very substantial component" of the Other segment in North America.)
RBC rates Amazon as "outperform" and has a price target of $420 on the stock.
Serial is one of the most downloaded and popular podcasts these days, and has several significant backers (plus the marketing muscle of the This American Life public radio show to the advertising power of Mailchimp). But even it has had to ask (successfully as it turns out) for listener donations to fund a second season. What does that say about the economics of podcasting for business?
A podcast for your business is different from a podcast that is your business. The first is a marketing tool, and thus an advertising expense. Its value is measured differently than the second, which is something that is actually expected to make a profit. Serial falls somewhere in between, because it is a nonprofit venture, so is only looking to sustain its operations.
Quality Podcasts Cost Money
According to Medium, ad revenues for nine episodes of Serial added up to approximately $405,000. While you can download Serial for free, the podcasters have to pay to distribute the content. The more popular the podcast, the higher the cost of distribution. While it’s not public knowledge what Serial is actually paying, one estimate puts it somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 a month.
Serial has five staff members, including two high-profile public radio personalities that have base salaries in the range of $150,000 annually. Granted, these two individuals aren’t working exclusively for Serial, but whatever time they are devoting to the show is part of the budget. Salaries for the remaining three employees conservatively start at $40,000, but are probably higher.
By a conservative calculation, salaries take up half of the ad revenues. That leaves a couple hundred thousand dollars to cover distribution, use of production facilities, equipment, travel, music and general business expenses. It’s no wonder that Serial has to ask for donations.
Serial is part of a nonprofit enterprise, but nevertheless illustrates the potential expenses of a high-quality, widely distributed podcast. There are several successful for-profit podcasts, including Entrepreneur on Fire, which reported net monthly income during 2014 in the high $100,000 range; in November it reported making $218,621.50, nearly as high as the July net of $241,587.74. So it is possible to make money, largely through advertising and sale of related products.
Given that there are some 115,000 English-language podcasts; however, those that are actually self-sustaining businesses are in the minority.
Podcast Promotion
Podcasts that primarily promote your business, on the other hand, can be a relatively inexpensive way to communicate with customers and stimulate sales. It’s a matter of scale—you’re not looking to be a full-fledged broadcast (with the associated costs), but rather a targeted marketing message. Consequently, both production and distribution costs are significantly lower.
How much lower? For example: the podcast Side Hustle Nation does it on a budget that any business can afford.
Almost all computers these days come in with a built in microphone, but you could upgrade for better sound quality with a microphone in the $50 to $200 range. There’s a variety of free podcast production software, and even the “professional” packages don’t cost more than $30. You probably don’t have a professional voiceover artist, though you could hire one on Voice123 for not more than a couple hundred dollars if you or one of your employees doesn’t have “stage presence.”
Since you’re targeting a narrow audience, you most likely have enough space on your own website to host your podcast. But there are podcast hosting sites that cost as little $5 a month. Bottom line: you could probably do a podcast for as little as $100 a month, which seems to be a more than reasonable budget to advertise your products and services in a format that is growing in popularity.
It’s no secret that once a user finds an app he/she loves, he/she’ll use it over and over again, becoming one of your most engaged, and therefore most valuable, users. That same user needs to see the value of your app immediately in order to keep her coming back for more. This isn’t new information, but what is new is the drastic changes we saw in these behaviors in the last quarter of 2014.
Q4 is marked by a higher than average volume of new devices entering the market with the release of new iPhone and iPad models and an increase in holiday deals.
New devices bring new users, who are discovering and testing many apps to find the ones that bring them the most value. New devices also bring existing users who are upgrading their devices. These users take the opportunity to evaluate which apps are most helpful and then decide which ones to transfer.
This environment is ripe for both engaged users and a high level of churn, and that’s exactly what we saw happen in Q4 of 2014:
The percentage of engaged app users – those who use the same app 10+ times in a month – soared from 25 percent in Q3 to an all-time high of 30 percent in December 2014.
But user retention – the percentage of users returning to an app within a three-month window – declined, ending the year at 12 percent.
Meanwhile the role of apps in people’s day-to-day lives continues to grow – apps are opened more than 10 times per month in Q4. By comparison, the average number of app launches per month recorded in early 2013 was 8.6 and in 2012 was 7.
A note about the data: every quarter we publish two Indexes: one on App Stickiness and one for App Launches. We know that app usage varies greatly by category, by vertical and even from app to app. This data is presented as a means to show the seasonal trends in app usage, as well as represent the overall story of what’s happening in the app ecosystem. Further details on which verticals saw the greatest improvements in their app user engagement and retention can be seen in the most recent version of the Localytics App Stickiness Index.
If you find that your app saw similar results, there are smart steps you can now take to engage your users and turn latent users into repeat ones. Here are some ideas to start:
Identify your most engaged users. Get to know who they are – are there common attributes they have in common? Check out the most common steps in their funnel – what actions do they typically take and, in what order? Collect feedback from an in-app NPS survey campaign – why do they use your app and what do they want more of? Thank them for their time with special offers. Turn all this new insight into marketing campaigns that encourage the same behaviors with other similar audiences who maybe haven’t crossed the 10x/month mark yet.
Identify the users from the new Sept/Oct and Nov/Dec cohorts who haven’t returned to your app recently. Understand who they are and where they came from – do their devices represent new phone/tablet models? Did they download your app as a result of a special holiday offer? Compare their first events with those of your engaged users – are there differences that may explain why they didn’t stick around? Create personalized offers and targeted push campaigns to bring them back to your app. Articulate what’s new and how you can help them. Direct them to the parts of your app that create that “a-ha” moment.
Moving forward, engagement may slow down in Q1 as people return from the holidays and get back to their regular routines (based on what happened in previous years). Take advantage of this short-term slowdown to test out ways you can influence engagement changes from the moment you first meet your app users. The bar has been raised for you to get to know your users from the first moment you met them. Test new marketing campaigns now, and turn the ones that work into long-term engagement strategies for the year.
Mobile store registers are driving a rapid shift in how stores accept card payments and manage their businesses.
Also known as mobile point-of-sale or mPOS, these registers can be challenging to define, especially as so many companies have recently come to market with different innovations. We include a variety of different devices in our definition, including:
Dongles, stands (see the Breadcrumb, right), and sleeves that are attached to existing smartphones and tablets.
Purpose-built mobile devices, most often a tablet that has a custom-built operating system and software for facilitating POS functions and payment acceptance.
In a new report from BI Intelligence, we examine the effects of mPOS on the retail, hospitality, and food-services segments. These industries are the primary target market for mPOS companies. We cut through the mPOS hype by analyzing the needs of the retailers that have adopted the technology, and interviewing merchants to find what has worked and what hasn't.
The mPOS is also part of the switch from analog to digital. Connectivity has moved on from the analog phone lines that once connected store registers to credit card networks. Connecting transaction data to the internet and cloud-based software gives retailers a better ability to easily get software updates, and gives them quick access to transaction information. Retailers increasingly expect to be able to quickly and easily access the best tools for managing inventory, handling payroll, and analyzing transaction data.
Let’s say you and your competitors both sell the same thing to your customers. You both buy the same raw materials to develop your product. You both pay $100 for those raw materials. You sell your product for $150, and your competitor sells theirs for $130. Your higher price is enough to cause some buyers to buy from your competitor. All things being equal, they’re right to pay the lower price.
But all things are not equal. The product that you sell is superior to your competitor’s. You invest more to develop the final product, it is of far superior quality, it lasts longer, and your customers don’t have to buy it as frequently. More still, your sales team is out teaching your customers how to get even more out of the product and saving them money. Your competitor has a lower price, but you have a lower cost. Why? because you create greater value.
But you lose a significant amount of deals to your competitor. Some prospects don’t understand how paying more can cost them less. You are faced with a choice. You can either more effectively sell the value you create, or you can eliminate price as an objection. It’s easier to lower your price than it is to sell better.
You match the $130. Now you have less profit to support your sales model, and you can no longer spend time teaching your clients how to save money. You also have less money to develop the product the way you had been, and so you and your competitor are now equal.
But every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Your competitor was selling lowest price. That was their business strategy. So they lower their price to $120, taking back the price advantage on which they were competing. Your customers still demand the same level of service and support, and you don’t understand how your competitor can deliver anything of value at that price. But now you’ve given up competing on the greater value you create, so you match the $120, imagining there is no way your competitor can lower their price again. But you are wrong. They lower their price to $110.
This is how sales organizations, salespeople, and whole industries are commoditized. If you have chosen low price as your strategy, then you need to compete by eliminating costs and providing the lowest price in all cases. But if you have decided to sell the additional value you create, the value that makes you different, then you need to focus on selling more effectively.
Reducing your price to increase your revenue is one way to go about increased sales. But that choice comes with reduced margins. You may indeed end up increasing your sales and selling more while building a far less profitable, and less valuable business. And you might also build a business that doesn’t make a difference in the end.
What does your address say about you? Quite a lot, as it turns out – especially to marketers trying to reach all of us with relevant messages. Segmentation strategies have long been a powerful way to target certain audiences, and geographic information is a key piece of the puzzle. Let’s take a look at the history of geodemographics and take a tour of the segmenting solutions being used in the marketplace today.
Who, What, Where… and Why
Marketers use a lot of different strategies to gain an in-depth understanding of their customers and prospects. Traditional segmenting strategies generally focus on four traits:
Geographic: Where are they? Features such traits as urban vs. rural address, climate, and market size
Demographic: Who are they? Includes factors such as age, income, gender, ethnic background
Psychographic: What do they want and why do they want it? Segmenting based on personality, motives, and lifestyles
Behavioral: What do they do? Focuses on past purchases, downloads, page visits, and other interactions
Generally, these traits are assembled to create personas of different types of customers. They’re also used to create segments of prospects in order to target them more effectively. Geodemographics – the science of defining population traits by studying the demographics of targeted areas – is a way to deepen the understanding of who they are and what they want by taking a closer look at where they live.
Location, Location, Location
This field of research has been around for a long time. In fact, it has its origins in England at the end of the 19th century. Charles Booth, a social researcher, spent many years studying the causes of poverty in London. During his research documenting working-class life, Booth developed the idea of “classifying neighborhoods” to create a social index based on 1891 census data.
What started out as a way to help alleviate poverty (and indeed, his work eventually influenced the creation of government programs such as free school lunches and pensions for the elderly) soon became a powerful tool for commerce. Geodemographic segmentation is based on two ideas:
People who live in the same neighborhood often have more similar characteristics than two people chosen at random. In addition to comparable earning power (since the cost of renting or buying in most areas is usually similar) there are also likenesses in preferences and backgrounds.
Neighborhoods can be categorized by the people who live there, and neighborhoods that contain similar types of people can be added to the same segment, even though they are widely separated by physical distance.
Once marketers realized that the principle that “birds of a feather flock together” could be applied to geographical areas, geotargeted marketing was on the rise. ZIP Codes, neighborhoods, and addresses were used to pinpoint a customer’s location and to find potential like-minded buyers in the same regions. Before the advent of digital marketing, flyers and direct mail were used to target specific locations. With advances in databases, geographic information system (GIS), and customer relationship management (CRM) software, marketers have gained a powerful strategic advantage when it comes to understanding their customers.
Of course, the sheer mass of data available to marketers can be a challenge as well. Where do you start? Which traits are the most meaningful? How can you figure out which areas and neighborhoods you should try to target? These are complex questions, made more so by the fact that like many other characteristics, geodemographics changes over time.
Sorting Through the (Geo) Data
There are many companies that examine and translate the meaning of this data for you. Maponics is a company that builds and defines geographic borders at the local level, such as neighborhood boundaries, ZIP Codes, and school attendance zones, and provides solutions that “paint a picture of local character.” RDA Research is a firm based in the UK providing web-based marketing tools that combine market research, behavioral, and geospatial data.
One of the biggest geodemographic organizations in the United States is Nielsen PRIZM. Their geographic segments have been developed based on U.S. census data and serve to categorize consumers into 66 distinct types. The descriptions of these segments include the likes, dislikes, and likely purchasing behaviors of local residents.
How does this translate into insight? Visit the free tool, Nielson MyBestSegments, and use the ZIP Code lookup to find out how your neighborhood is categorized. For example, I can quickly find out the following facts about my ZIP Code (97232):
Population: 12,178
Median Age: 38.4
Median Income: $38,000
Consumer Spend: $267 MM
Consumer Spend ($/HH): $41,436
I can also find more information about the average age, household income, race, and ethnicity, as well as how many people live in each household, how many are married, and how many have children. I can also find out the most common segments for my ZIP Code. According Nielsen MyBestSegments, these are:
Big City Blues
Money & Brains
Multi-Culti Mosiac
Urban Achievers
Urban Elders
According to their analysis, the Big City Blues demographic includes a population that’s 50% Latino – the highest concentration of Hispanic Americans in the country. Made up of young singles and single-parent families in urban areas, this segment is faced with the challenges of low incomes, tentative jobs, modest educations, and limited education. The next segment, Money & Brains, has (as you might have guessed) high incomes, advanced degrees, and fashionable homes. Many are married couples with few children. It’s quite a mix, and that’s just the first two segments! I have to admit, this high-level view does a pretty good job at capturing the complex makeup of the rapidly changing population in my Portland, Oregon neighborhood.
Putting Insights Into Action
You can see how this data would be useful to marketers. With the professional version of PRIZM, any file, list, or survey can be coded with this information. Using this data, you can:
Learn about the consumers you’re trying to target and tailor messages, offers, and products specifically to their interests.
Find out where current customers and prospects live and locate more people like them, across the country.
Group similar segments together and target them with similar messaging, ensuring greater efficiency in your campaigns.
Combining this insight with marketing automation and customer relationship management (CRM) makes it possible to connect even more dots with your prospects. Knowing who people are, what they want, and what they’ve done in the past makes it much easier to target them with relevant content in the future.
More Ways to Segment
There are many companies that can provide different kinds of location-based insights, and some of them can integrate with your marketing automation and/or CRM solution. For example, Salesforce Data.com (which integrates with Act-On) provides reverse IP lookup to find the name of the organization that web visitors come from, and uses this to let you find contacts in that organization.
If addresses and ZIP Codes aren’t targeted enough for you, companies like Urban Airship are taking advantage of the rise of mobile to use location-targeting capabilities down to the individual level using beacons and location boundaries. And Twitter recently introduced new ad features that help advertisers target Twitter users through wireless carriers and new devices.
Are you using geodemographics or location-based segmentation to target your audience? Let us know what’s worked for you in the comments. And if you’re just getting started with segmentation, this free Lead Scoring and Segmentation Toolkit can provide best practices to help you identify and target your most likely buyers.
Developers and marketers have had their individual stacks for years. Developers have had the benefit of being able to build their own products, solving problems and filling in the gaps within their workflow. Developers who have mastered the multiple programing languages are now labeled Full Stack Developers.
The Marketing Automation era was a boon for marketers everywhere, once developers realized the Marketing industry was white-hot. This attention made top marketers even more technical, hence the title, Growth Hackers. Now it’s our turn.
Salespeople are finally starting to get the love from developers, and are increasingly becoming more technical every day. Today, there are enough sales tools for salespeople to build their own stack of technology. Embracing these technologies gives us an unfair advantage over our peers who come late to the party.
Understanding Your Sales Process and Pipeline
The first thing you need to do is understand the process from a bird’s-eye view. A sales process is a repeatable and scalable system in which you engage and facilitate potential buyers through the stages of your pipeline. This runs from the top of the funnel (the lead) down to the closed deal and handoff to the Customer Success rep, after they buyer has signed the contract.
When creating a pipeline, you may want to ask yourself: what are the stages of the pipeline that matter most to you? What are the milestones you’d like to hit along the way? Don’t make too many stages as it can get confusing as you scale.
I recommend that each stage have its own checklist. For example, in the “Closed” stage, make sure you ask for referrals.
The main things that matter when managing a pipeline are:
Total number of deals in the pipeline.
Average deal size.
Percent of deals that move from stage to stage until close.
Average time a deal stays in the pipeline.
You’ll want to find baseline numbers to measure each stage of the sales process. Be extremely diligent about staying on top of these numbers as deals move from stage to stage. Using a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool should help you to keep your finger on the pulse of the health of your pipeline.
Let’s take the example pipeline from above and break it down even further.
Contacted
List Building
Contact Info
Lead Research
Segmenting
Email Tracking
etc
Qualified
Pre-call Research
CRM
Note Taking
Dialer
etc
Demo
Demo Software
CRM updating
Content management etc
Proposal
Proposal creation
E-signature
etc
Closed
Contract management
Referral
etc
Now that we’ve figured out what we need to accomplish for each stage, we can find the solutions that will provide us with the help we need. This is how we create our Sales Stack.
Here are some example solutions that fill the needs in each stage.
Contacted
List Building – Datanyze/Import.io
Contact Info – SalesLoft/Toofr
Lead Research – InsideView/GageIn/LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Segmenting – Google Spreadsheets
Email Tracking – ToutApp/Yesware/Outreach/Cadence
Qualified
Pre-call Research – Charlie App
CRM – Salesforce
Note Taking – Evernote
Dialer – InsideSales
Demo
Demo Software – Join.me
CRM updating – Cirrus Insights
Content management – Dropbox/Box
Proposal
Proposal creation – Tinderbox
E-signature – Echosign/PandaDoc
Closed
Contract management – SpringCM
Referral – Influitive
This is a very advanced Sales Stack. For small sales orgs or startups, a Sales Stack can be extremely simple like: Import.io, SalesLoft, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ToutApp, Salesforce, Join.me, Echosign.
The great thing about these new tools is that they connect together in various ways. I use a series of API integrations, manual virtual assistant work, and spreadsheets to piece it together.
We recommend finding the best subset of tools for your business and make sure to be diligent about connecting them properly. You can try out integrations tools like Zapier, IFTTT, or Bedrock Data if you need help.
You can hire Virtual Assistants on oDesk to automate basic and tedious tasks within the process. The less you have to do manually, the more efficient you can become.
Again, we’ve seen the rise of the Full Stack Developer. Then the rise of the Growth Hacker or in some cases, the Full Stack Marketer. As science and product continues to integrate it’s self into sales, we’ll continue to see the he rise of the Sales Hacker.
This article is an excerpt from the upcoming Sales Hacker Guide book in which we take you through the sales process and showcase 100’s of sales tools to give you an unfair advantage. Sign up on the right side of the page for updates on the release.
In a recent TED talk, Susan Colantuono, CEO of Leading Women, proposed a striking theory that, according to her, partially explains the “gender gap” in high-level management positions in the corporate world.
Colantuono attributes the gender disparity at the top to the existence of two qualitatively different mentorship tracks, one for men, another for women. Colantuono cites a quote from an executive of a global company that clearly captures this idea:
“I had two protégés—a man and a woman. I helped the woman build confidence and the man learn the business…I didn’t realize I was treating them any differently!”
While Colantuono says qualities like assertiveness and confidence are pivotal in helping people climb into the ranks of middle management, these are not the traits most likely to help them break through into upper management.
For employees to reach the top of ladder, Colantuono says, they need advisors and mentors to help them develop business and financial acumen—an area she believes many women do not receive enough tutelage in, due in part to some of the gender biases about mentorship reflected in the quote above. Colantuono believes this “missing 33 percent of advice” for women is helping to perpetuate the gender gap at the top.
What does this have to do with your customer conversations?
You could extrapolate from Colantuono’s experience and presentation that if business and financial acumen is the prerequisite for executives, this will be the language your salespeople need to know to speak with them. And, sell to them more effectively.
When it comes to engaging with executive buyers, and articulating the value of your solutions, you have to be able to connect with the emerging industry issues, their strategic initiatives and the business impact your solution will provide in dealing with these considerations.
Research confirms this. According to analyst firm, SiriusDecisions, executive decision makers desire and value sales conversations about business trends, issues and insights up to four times more than they value relationships and product expertise. But unfortunately, only a small fraction of salespeople are proficient in their ability to have these conversations, according to surveyed executives.
To gain this proficiency, salespeople need to master five key competencies for selling a solution’s business value
Buyer’s Perspective – understand the emerging trends and industry issues and how they are impacting your prospect and customers’ business
Customer Insight – know where and how to find the data and documentation concerning your prospect and customers’ key initiatives
Financial Acumen – be able to accurately and convincingly connect your solution to the way money flows throughout their businesses
Return on Investment – know how to tell a great story around business change and what returns – hard, soft, and strategic — you can generate
Executive engagement – develop the confidence to connect with, engage and deliver a memorable and remarkable executive conversation
An effective executive conversations training program will emphasize applying these competencies to actual accounts during the program, as opposed to using more hypothetical, case study-based training models.
Ideally, your salespeople will get a chance to practice having conversations with actual executives who have experience making similar purchase decisions in a safe, risk-free environment.
Additionally, that program should measure adoption, behavior change and overall business impact to ensure the training program is achieving the outcomes your company needs.
As Colantuono says, the key executive skills required for promotion include helping your organization “achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes” and driving decisions that help your companies reach their “strategic financial goals.”
Your salespeople need to be able to come alongside and show executives how you can help them do just that.
Are you overwhelmed with all the elaborate moves in the lead generation buyer-seller dance? Don’t be – here are the three recurring steps to perform.
The waltz is one of the most beautiful and admired of all ballroom dances. To the neophyte dancer, the waltz, like many dances can seem complicated and difficult to perform.
However, the waltz is essentially three steps. Anyone who has ever tried to waltz should be familiar with the “one, two, three – one, two, three” triple time that forms the basis of the waltz.
Generating leads on your website can seem as mysterious as waltzing. But like the waltz, there are three basic steps that, when executed consistently, can make the lead generation process seem as smooth and effortless as a well-performed waltz.
These recurring three steps of lead generation go hand in hand, with one not being able to work without the other two:
Call-to-Action (CTA)
Landing Page
Thank You Page
This three-step process must occur at every step of your buyer’s journey, from awareness, to consideration to decision.
The awareness stage is where a buyer is expressing the symptoms of a problem or an opportunity. The problem doesn’t have a name yet and they aren’t sure what their problem is. They probably need more educational research to get their arms around the problem.
The consideration stage begins Once the buyer has given a name to their problem or opportunity, they then start to consider all the available approaches/methods to solving their problem (or opportunity).
At the decision stage, the buyer has defined their solution strategy, method, or approach. They are starting to compile a list of available vendors and products within their solution strategy.
For each stage of the buyer’s journey, you’ll want to offer helpful, valuable content that addresses each stage of their process. Doing so helps guide the lead to informed purchase decision.
And for each stage (awareness, consideration, decision) you’ll want to continue the three step lead generation waltz.
1. Call-to-Action
A Call to Action (CTA) is a website button, image, text link that encourages a visitor to take an action by typically clicking on the button, visiting a landing page and filling out a form in return for some kind of content. Often, that content is a white paper, eBook, webinar or a newsletter.
Most importantly, however, the CTA should be related to what the visitor has been searching for and reading about on your site. For instance, this post is about lead generation, so the CTA at the bottom is about the same topic for those readers who want to learn more.
Tips for Successful CTAs:
Be Clear – Not clever. You want to describe exactly what the offer is in as few words as possible.
Use Action Verbs – With words like “register” or “download” your visitors will understand what they’ll be doing once they get to the landing page.
Stay Above The Fold – This term is a legacy from the newspaper industry which means the top part of a website before the visitor has to start scrolling down. Testing shows that CTAs placed above the fold perform better than those further down. However, that does not mean CTAs should only be at the top of the page.
Stand Out – The CTA needs to contrast with your website’s color scheme in order to be seen. This may irritate graphic designers, but if your CTA blends in with the rest of your website, you will get fewer leads.
Match the CTA with the Landing Page Headline – When a visitor clicks on a CTA and is taken to a landing page with a different headline, a disconnect occurs which lowers the conversion rate. When the CTA and landing page headline match, the visitor knows they are in the right place.
Have CTAs Mirror The Buying Cycle – Different offers appeal to people who are in different stages of their buying cycle. Informational whitepapers will appeal more to buyers in the early stages of their purchase while they are doing research. Someone closer to making a purchase decision will be more interested in a free trial or consultation. On your home page, include a CTA for all stages of your prospect’s buying cycle.
Think About Context – Match CTAs with relevant website pages. If a website visitor is reading a blog post or website page about a specific product or service, include CTAs related to what the visitor is learning about on that page.
TEST! Follow the above steps, but don’t worry about perfection in order to get started. Once you have set up your CTAs test to see what works best with your visitors. Test colors, placement on the page, headlines, etc. Then, do more of what’s working, and less of what’s not working.
Once a visitor clicks on a call-to-action, they’ll be taken to a landing page.
2. Landing Pages
A landing page is a website page specifically designed to convert visitors to leads. It collects and processes information on website visitors who identify themselves in return for valuable content.
Here’s how landing pages work: When someone visits your site, goes to a landing page and fills in a form, landing page software automatically adds that information to a leads database.
Based on the landing page and the information provided, that lead is then segmented into a group of similar leads. And with landing page software, you can see which pages the lead visits, what they’re searching for and even how they got to your site in the first place.
The highest performing landing pages…
Use headlines that are clear, concise and compelling. The visitor needs to instantly understand the value and importance of the offer, and how they will benefit by downloading it.
Use bullet points – Readers are drawn to bullet points because it makes text more easily digestible.
Use just enough form fields, and not any more. Consider the value of the offer versus the information that people are willing to provide.
Clear the decks! Remove all site navigation and links in order to minimize distractions.
Include a relevant image – The easiest thing to do is to take a shot of the cover of your eBook or whitepaper, or for a webinar, a picture of the presenter.
Include social media share icons – While this does run the risk of distracting the visitors before capturing their contact information, it can help to share your content offers through the visitor’s social networks.
Use video – In some instances video can work better than text at explaining a complex issue.
Use testimonials – If the testimonial is directly related to downloading and benefiting from the content behind the landing page, it can aid in conversion.
Mention/show industry awards and recognition – This is a form of social proof to convey that the content is valuable and/or the company offering it is credible.
Once the visitor completes a form on a landing page, they’ll automatically be taken to a thank you page.
3. Thank You Pages
A thank you page is where the content introduced by the call-to-action and landing page is finally delivered to the visitor who, after submitting a form, is now a lead.
Thank you pages are often an afterthought. They shouldn’t be. They are an ideal place to help guide the lead further along their buyer journey to offer them additional, helpful information that can get them closer to an informed decision.
Here’s what the best thank you pages do:
Deliver the offer. Make sure it’s easy to receive the offer you promised. Whether it’s a pre-recorded webinar or a downloadable e-book, make sure it IS ON THE THANK YOU PAGE. You can email the link to the lead, but do not rely on that method to deliver the good. Some email may not get to the lead because of spam filter or because of email deliverability issues.
Guide them further along the buyer’s journey. Invite leads to the next stage with a new CTA for more information. If they are ready to move toward the consideration phase now and you don’t offer content related to that, you may not have such a good opportunity again.
Include social networking options and help your content get additional reach. However, make sure the social (and email) sharing icons point to the landing page so that whoever recieves the shared message will need to fill out a form on the landing page.
Conclusion
As you go through what can seem like a complicated lead generation dance of offering the right content at the right time, at each stage of the buyers journey remember to include the three basic steps: 1) CTAs, 2) landing pages and 3) thank you pages.
57% of the purchase process is complete before buyers have their first interaction with a seller.1
This is one of the most cited statistics in the sales world these days—as if it's some kind of big news.
Wait...so you mean buyers do research and talk internally before they bring in outsiders? No way, dude! That's, like, revolutionary!
Puh-leez...
In fact, all it says is that thoughtful buyers explore ideas with their internal colleagues. They discuss what they want to do, what they want as an outcome, and what the options are to get them there. They get their ducks in a row to an extent, before consulting with outsiders. Seems logical to me.
Buyers have more information at their fingertips than ever before, yet the same sales techniques which were appropriate for the 1980s are still being used today.
The world has changed, and organizations must avoid making the sales mistakes if they are to thrive.
While event marketer’s goals and objectives change from one to the next, there are a handful of metrics that you all should be examining. Be sure to keep these critical metrics in mind during your planning process.
Expected and Actual Attendance Statistics
During the planning process a good starting point would be expected attendance, either based off of your previous attendance at an event or the estimates provided by the organizers. Planning your event with estimates you can set expectations on attendance, leads collected and ROI by using your own conversion rate benchmarks. Following up an event with statistical data analysis will help your attendance projections for future events and help to justify your event spend.
Cost Per Lead
Cost per Lead is one of the key measurements for any lead generation marketer. It’s important to determine a couple of things first though. First you need to know how your organization defines a lead. A lead can be anything from a single consumer interacting with your event staff to a consumer filling out a survey, providing demographic data and contact information. Secondly you need to determine what the average cost per lead is in your industry. Once you can define a lead it’s easy to take your total investment spent and divide by the number of leads collected. Once you’ve come up with a verifiable CPL you can then benchmark yourself against your industry, quickly determining if your campaign is a success.
Quality Leads Generated
Be careful not to fall into the trap of tracking total leads if the majority of them are unqualified and not relevant to your business. It might be easier to justify your spend if you can claim 200 leads collected but if only 50 of them are legitimate potential clients then that might be the number to work with for your calculations. It looks better to claim the 200 but that will only provide you with an unacceptably low conversion rate. Your best bet is to stick with the leads that are at least plausible potential customers.
Survey Completion/Abandonment Rate
Have you spent a great deal of time and money organizing your event schedule and created a high-friction survey that encourages abandonment? Only way to determine that is to looks closely at the survey completion/abandonment rates. A high abandonment rate can signal confusion and frustration or maybe the survey is just too long.
Conversion Rate
By understanding conversion rate and average sales price you can create ROI models prior to your event, helping you to create event goals. Typically products and services with a higher AVP such as cars, homes or financial services will have a much longer sales cycle so keep that in mind when planning your Conversion Rate and ROI. As an example, the auto industry has a long sales cycle; you can assume that all leads that are going to convert will do so in the following timeline:
25% within 90 days
50% within 180 days
75% within 270 days
100% within 365 days
The overall percentage of leads that end up becoming customers is your conversion rate, and with the timetable above will vary over time.
Social Media Shares, Retweets, Posts and Check-ins
Social media activity is a great way to measure success and promote your brand message to non-attendees. From a measurement perspective you can track hashtag usage, check-ins, photo sharing and tweets to get a better idea of your social reach. These statistics are extremely valuable insights into the expanded reach you’ve created, not just through the sharer, but exponentially through their personal networks and followers. It has also been shown that brand advocacy from social sharing can be considered a leading indicators of future sales.
Net Promoter Score
If your event schedule revolves around things like test drives or similar “hands-on” experiences you would be wise to survey your participants before and after their time with your product. By finding out beforehand how likely they would be to recommend or promote your product to friends and then again afterwards, you will get some useful insights into how effective your events have been. If your average NPS score “pre-test drive” was 4 and after was 8, then obviously your test drives are effectively changing the perception of an average consumer.
Return on Investment
The big one that is on every event marketer’s mind is Return on Investment (ROI). For industries with extremely long sales cycles, B2B event marketing ROI should be calculated based on revenues within 12months to account for the long-tail cycle. This total revenue figure then divided by total event costs and related marketing expenses provide you with an accurate ROI. B2B average for event marketing hovers around the 3.3X ROI mark, how does your organization compare?
Have you noticed that nobody’s throwing around that “email is dead” expression anymore?
The value of a healthy, engaged email list should be obvious by now. Especially when you pair up email with social media. And there are new tools popping up all the time to help you grow those lists — including the three we’re featuring this month.
All three tools are ideal for online sellers and ecommerce site owners. Plus, not only do they plug directly into AWeber — they each offer a special discount code to help you try them out.
Check out our new apps-at-a-glance videos below to learn more, and use the special offers from our partners for faster, easier ways to grow your lists.
1. Justuno
Increase your social audience and email signups with Justuno. If you’re a marketer, publisher or have an ecommerce business, this tool will help you acquire more high-quality leads with promo codes.
Justuno works like social currency, allowing you to exchange promo codes and other incentives for social likes, shares, and email opt-ins. Discount buttons can be placed right on your site or social media pages, so you don’t have to worry about losing customers to abandoned carts.
Justuno features include:
Fully customizable promotional tabs and pop ups
Visitor segmentation and behavioral targeting
Helpful and reliable customer support
If you’re serious about lead generation, Justuno is a must-have in your digital marketing toolkit. The best part? All of your new leads automatically sync into your AWeber list. Sign up now and save 30% with the promo code AWEBER30.
2. MailMunch
To turn more visitors into loyal customers, consider MailMunch, a simple opt-in form generator and testing tool. This easy-to-use service gives you the power to create beautiful opt-in forms without knowing an inkling of code. And you can plug it right into your WordPress site or install the standalone version in about a minute.
Key features of MailMunch include:
Mobile Optimized Forms: Great looking forms on your desktop, mobile or tablet.
Page Level Targeting: Target specific pages with relevant opt-in forms.
A/B Testing: Eliminate the guesswork and adapt your forms to keep improving opt ins.
Entry/Exit Technology: Set specific rules for when the opt-in appears.
AWeber customers can get an exclusive 30% discount on annual subscriptions or for the first billing cycle of a monthly subscription using promo code AWEBER30 when you sign up for MailMunch here.
3. Coupon Pop by StoreYa
Are you using discounts and promo codes in your online marketing? Bet you’d love to dramatically grow your sales and customer lists by making those offers really stand out.
Boost your web store conversion rate, increase your fanbase and grow your list all at once with Coupon Pop. How?
Coupon Pop prompts your customers to enter their email into a pop-up form in exchange for your promo or discount code. Their email addresses are then collected and synced directly into your AWeber list.
Coupon Pop’s features include:
SEO: Get customers to visit more pages, and boost your sales.
Easy Customization: No design or coding skills needed.
With Coupon Pop, all your social activities can be imported directly into Facebook, keeping customers up-to-date on promotions. Sign up for your free trial and start converting leads into sales. AWeber customers get 25% off any plan with promo code Aweber@StoreYa25.
What Do You Think?
Last month, we featured the Top 10 email power tools for list-building. And if this isn’t your first app roundup, you’ll notice that these new videos are designed to give you a quick overview of what these apps do, how they’ll help you grow your business, and how easy it is to connect them to your AWeber account.
We’d love to hear your feedback on these new tools, the apps-at-a-glance videos, the apps you’re currently using or want to try, and other integrations you’d like to see.
Remember “cramming” in school? You tried to compress three months of preparatory work into 24 hours of nightmarish tension, and you were lucky to scrape by with a barely passing grade. Why would you subject yourself to that repeatedly as part of your career -- constant stress to be mediocre at best?
Sales cramming is caused by a sales team habitually closing little to no revenue in the early stages of a reporting period, and slowly starting to bring in more until a steep revenue jump occurs toward the end of the period.
What causes this early-stage slump? I see six explanations. This flat period is caused by sales teams that are:
1) Resting from the busy end of their previous sales period.
When members of a team cram in March to make their numbers by overworking, they are exhausted and coast for the first few weeks of April. Plus, they have come to believe that they can “make magic happen” at the end of the quarter, so why work now?
These people need an energy drink.
2) Processing all the clients from the previous month.
There are so many clients needing products, scheduling, and services that sellers are distracted by servicing them, rather than by their empty pipeline that needs filling.
These people need calm.
3) Prospecting because their funnel is dry.
At the end of the quarter it is common for team members to have nothing left in their sales pipelines because everything has been won or lost or beaten to death. As a result, the first two months of the next quarter are spent finding sales-ready leads to close at the end of the period.
These people need a compass.
4) On vacation!
Because you can’t go away at the end of the period. Vacations are more prominent at the beginning of the quarter and often disallowed at the end of the quarter.
These people need better scheduling.
5) Reorganizing.
Because the start of the period is always a good time to reorganize files, territories, desks, pipelines, sales processes, or compensation plans.
These people need organization.
6) In meetings.
That is, training meetings, account review sessions, quarterly business review, and all other internal business meetings that were put off because it was the end of the month or quarter the previous week.
These people need a break.
As the period lumbers on, revenue trickles in skewing upward as cramming starts.
One year, during a New Year’s Eve dinner party at our house, my best friend was monitoring her email for deals closing until a minute before midnight. Our dinner guests applauded her for being a real trouper. I quietly wondered, “Why weren’t those deals closed two weeks ago?” After all, in another minute she was going to be a “loser” again, far behind her goals on January 1!
Unlike roller coasters, successful sales don’t depend on deep troughs to build momentum to climb the next hill. Don't tolerate boom and bust mentalities. Focus on acheiving perpetual boom -- it is possible, I can assure you.
This post is an excerpt from Colleen Francis' new book Nonstop Sales Boom, and is republished here with permission.
We’re in the midst of the NFL playoffs as teams compete for the Lombardi trophy. So we thought it would be a good time to see if there were lessons to be learned for those of us in the world of sales. Sure enough there was an interesting point about coaching introduced by Tom Pelissero in the USA Today sport section last month.
In a nutshell: At Stanford, Andrew Luck was the quarterback and Pep Hamilton was his coach. When they sought to resolve disagreements, Hamilton often would say – “because I say so.” Now fast-forward to today. Luck is the Indianapolis Colts quarterback and Hamilton is the team’s offensive coordinator. So Luck and Hamilton are still together but their relationship has evolved.
What particularly caught our eye was a key point made by Hamilton: “We both have to feel good about any given play that is called. But it’s more important that he feels good about it than I do.” The relationship between the quarterback and the play caller is one of the most important one in sports – few other relationships have as great an impact on team performance.
Mike McCarthy at Green Bay makes a similar point – “The biggest mistake I ever made was trying to call plays that I liked. There’s nothing worse than sitting in a meeting on Monday after a big lost knowing that I sent in a play that I liked – but knew the quarterback would not be comfortable with.”
Let’s transition all this to sales and sales coaching
As is the case with the NFL, the coaching relationship between a sales rep and their front-line sales manager has a direct and immediate impact on sales success.
It is also true that sales coaching isn’t just a question of doing or not doing what the sales manager calls up. A coaching session which leads to a sales rep going into an account and not being comfortable with what the sales manager suggested will almost always lead to a lack of success.
One of the biggest traps for sales managers is coaching to their favorite plays – that is suggesting what they did in a similar situation. First that was then and this is now – lots of things have changed in the world of sales. Second, we all have our own strengths and weaknesses, so your sales rep may not be able to pull of that play that was so successful for you. This is why in the big leagues, great sales coaching is more about helping people to learn – then telling them what to do.
But why video? For one, it’s the perfect complement to traditional written content. Plus, people are more likely to remember video content, as Quartz shows below.
Video is also measurable. Even if you host your videos on YouTube rather than directly on your site, you’ll still have access to some powerful analytics.
But enough about why. Let’s talk about how.
What Makes Good Video Content
Since video is just one piece of your overarching content strategy, it’s imperative to keep your story consistent. And when I say consistent I mean customer-focused and brand appropriate.
Is your brand bubbly and exciting? Can you do that on camera without cracking the glass? Or perhaps you write with a bit of sarcasm. Can you make those same deadpan jokes without sounding like a jerk? Brand voice can become much trickier when it’s placed on camera.
From a creative perspective, keep it simple at first. Prioritize clarity and make it the presentation as intuitive as possible—just like your written content. This means considering what translates well to video and what doesn’t.
Five minutes of reading doesn’t seem like a huge commitment, but five minutes of boring video can be a disaster. That said, boring is a relative term. Many of those ubiquitous TED Talks are around 18 minutes long. They’re successful in part because the length matches the subject matter and audience.
Check out Seth Godin doing his best Steve Jobs:
Finally, consider the position each video’s target audience occupies in the sales funnel. Longer, more in-depth content is appropriate for mid-to-bottom funnel audiences, while shorter, broader videos will naturally appeal to people just learning about your product or service.
How to Repurpose
The actual content repurposing process involves going back through your existing content and looking for opportunities to make a complementary video.
Start with some of your cornerstone content. This puts you in the best position to succeed. You already know your audience appreciates those subjects, so transferring your best stuff to video gives you another opportunity to publish pieces that resonate.
Once you’ve selected your topics, use these three techniques to formulate your new video content.
Having someone explain an overview of a popular blog post or successful guide on camera can affect how your audience consumes the content. What was once an intimidating whitepaper with myriad statistics is now a casual conversation with a person who has a lot of knowledge about the subject.
For instance, here’s how we turned our 18-page report about wearable health technology into a 2-minute video with the study’s author:
Upcoming events and marketing campaigns make for nice topics of discussion as well. Be careful not to rely just on a human face, though. Add in other relevant visuals to maintain viewer interest.
#2: Explain a Compelling Point Quickly
Instead of providing a general overview for one specific piece of content, you can also address a topic that’s found consistently throughout your content.
Giving your audience a quick yet digestible clip provides educational information while also making the content shareable. Not much commitment is required and the payoff is gratifying.
For example, here’s the definition of content marketing:
These videos should remain brief, because they establish context that makes exploring more in-depth content less intimidating.
While the example above features an actual person on camera, that’s not a requirement for these videos. If you have a strong graphics department, animation can be a great tactic, too.
Just make sure the point you’re covering is consistent across the majority of your content, or effectively piques the interest of your audience.
#3: Overanalyze One Key Topic
While the first two points work well for top-of-the-funnel content, video can also be used to great effect when covering topics in greater detail.
To easily identify topics for greater analysis, examine your content for key points that you could expand upon—whether that’s from your latest listicle, a 50 page eBook, or a podcast with industry experts.
The whiteboard has become a favorite video format for detailed explanations because it substantially increases memory recall, which makes it easier to consumer longer videos. Whiteboards can be very effective, but it’s important to do a lot of planning up front so the narrative of your video remains consistent and concise.
If you’re working with products, then making a demonstration video is another option. Your audience at the top of the funnel will enjoy reading about concepts for a while, but at a certain point they need to see the goods.
Demonstration videos still feature a human element through the narrator’s voice, but also give viewers a personal experience with the product. Software how-to videos are also a variation on this concept.
Here’s one about project management software Basecamp:
You’ll need some screencast software to pull these off, but they can be very useful for your audience. Try to avoid too many hard cuts to keep the visuals and narration smooth.
While these techniques aren’t the only ones around, they do offer broad frameworks that allow for a good deal of creativity without having to start from scratch. Video’s happening, and the ROI can be big. Start thinking of which content translates well, and you could see a nice return.
The Social Progress Index, a comprehensive measurement of a nation’s well-being, which includes everything from access to water to freedom of movement, ranks Islamic countries behind every other region in the world, including non-Muslim African countries. The Muslim world does even worse on Transparency International’s Perceptions of Corruption Index. Life expectancy numbers are among the world’s lowest, more than 15 years fewer than North America. And, not surprisingly, on a per capita basis, Muslim nations publish scientific papers at less than one-tenth the frequency of Europeans.
You’ve probably seen the stat (and there are a few variations depending on the research firm that did the study, but they’re distinctions without a difference): Somewhere between 60% and 90% of people use a search engine to begin researching a product or service.
Like it or lump it, social media plays an important role in the lead-gen process. Here are three data points to consider:
TACTIC 3: Email Marketing
What does your address say about you? Quite a lot, as it turns out – especially to marketers trying to reach all of us with relevant messages. Segmentation strategies have long been a powerful way to target certain audiences, and geographic information is a key piece of the puzzle. Let’s take a look at the history of geodemographics and take a tour of the segmenting solutions being used in the marketplace today.
Once marketers realized that the principle that “birds of a feather flock together” could be applied to geographical areas, geotargeted marketing was on the rise. ZIP Codes, neighborhoods, and addresses were used to pinpoint a customer’s location and to find potential like-minded buyers in the same regions. Before the advent of digital marketing, flyers and direct mail were used to target specific locations. With advances in databases, geographic information system (GIS), and customer relationship management (CRM) software, marketers have gained a powerful strategic advantage when it comes to understanding their customers.
I can also find more information about the average age, household income, race, and ethnicity, as well as how many people live in each household, how many are married, and how many have children. I can also find out the most common segments for my ZIP Code. According Nielsen MyBestSegments, these are:
