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On the verge of the new year, scientists from the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans issued the first systematic report of measurements on the spread of radioactive seawater from Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor to the coast of British Columbia. The bad news, if you want to call it that, is that Japanese-originated radioactivity has in fact reached detectable levels on Canada’s continental shelf. The menace from the Land of the Rising Sun is officially here—and is, for now, growing.

The good news is that, as responsible scientists almost universally predicted, the amount of radioactivity involved is infinitesimal and completely harmless. You can go ahead and eat the fish.

Accurate measurements of the Fukushima plume are possible because humans wisely stopped testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere in 1980. There is still a “fallout background” of radiation lingering in the world’s oceans from these nuclear tests—and, of course, from those two nuclear explosions that did not quite have the character of tests. But every kind of radioactive isotope has a different rate of decay, usually expressed as a “half-life,” and the short-lived ones from nuclear testing are all gone.

This means that the 2011 Fukushima disaster left a distinctive “fingerprint” of fast-decaying radioactives that cannot be attributed to any other source. So that’s what the scientists measuring the plume look for—fanning out between Vancouver Island and Japan on Canadian Coast Guard oceanographic vessels, gathering up seawater from various depths, and pumping it through ion exchangers to extract the telltale radioactive cesium that spewed out of the damaged reactor.

In 2011, the measurements along the B.C.-Japan line looked just like usual. But the levels of cesium-134, which can only have come from Fukushima, suddenly increased about 1,500 km off the continental shelf when samples were taken in 2012. In 2013 the “fingerprint” of Fukushima seems to have reached the shelf itself.

Cesium-134 degrades fast. What physicists and doctors have been concerned about is the equal amount of cesium-137 spilled at Fukushima: that isotope has a half-life of 30 years, so most of whatever reaches B.C. now will be around for a while. The radiation emitted by the fallout background—the cesium-137 presently left in the ocean by past nuclear testing—works out to about one becquerel per cubic metre of seawater. That figure has now doubled. The total peak level of ocean radioactivity off Canada’s Pacific Coast is expected to reach somewhere between three to five becquerels per cubic metre before beginning to drop back down.

Sounds fairly alarming, doesn’t it? The sea is going to become maybe five times as radioactive! But a becquerel is such a small amount of radiation—literally just one atomic nucleus splitting apart per second—that the naturally occurring isotopes of potassium and other elements in your body are generating kilo­becquerels of radiation right now. As the paper by federal oceanographers notes, drinking water in Canada is allowed by law to emit up to 10,000 Bq/m³ of radioactivity.

The “fallout background” itself was greater not so long ago, as you’ve already figured out if you caught that the half-life of cesium-137 is 30 years. (The implication: 30 years ago, there was twice as much.) Overall, the authors of the paper expect the Fukushima plume to make B.C. ocean water as radioactive as it was in the 1980s—a pretty modest rewind of the planet’s radiological history. And if you really are worried about the fish, they’re known to accumulate only about as much radioactive cesium as the seawater they swim in has. That’s a fraction of what they, like us humans, would otherwise emit just from the natural radioisotopes in their bodies. In turn, you get only a fraction of that excess radiation from eating them.

This is, broadly speaking, the story that experts expected to hear about the Fukushima plume. Really all you needed was some physics literacy. In 2011, people lacking that produced plenty of scary colourful maps of Fukushima death juice creeping across the Pacific. And of course David Suzuki could not resist weighing in a year ago with a bizarre Fukushima scare scenario, one which physicists promptly denounced as “insane” and “ridiculous.”

The consequences to Japan of the Fukushima accident are still being added up, and the sum is not altogether final until decades of decommissioning work is completed. But so far, when it comes to human mortality, the nuclear energy industry still has a lot less to apologize for than dams, coal or even oil.

The post The real fallout from Fukushima appeared first on Macleans.ca.

“I want someone with an entrepreneurial mind-set in this position,” a client recently stated.  I’ve heard this comment many times before, and it triggers my cautionary response, “Are you sure?”

Too often we believe we want attributes like self-starting, proactive, and organized in a person. In other words, we are looking for someone who fits the “entrepreneurial” mold without really defining the desired behavior exhibited by a person who could have these attributes. 

In the absence of documenting the behavior, we often default to using terms generically in our job ads and interviews.  People, being generally intuitive, say, “Yes,” when you ask the question, “Are you an organized person?"

As an example of how to define the behavior or belief you want exhibited, I am often asked to recruit salespeople who will sell in a very competitive industry where margins are thin and value is tough to differentiate.  Naturally, you would want a salesperson that is, in their very essence, competitive.  But I can’t ask if they are competitive if I expect a genuine answer or an accurate evaluation of the fact.  So I ask, “Pick the one the best describes you: Do you hate to lose or like to win?”  There is no wrong answer; just one that is better if you are trying to find the person for the sales environment I described, and that is: hate to lose.

Back to the entrepreneurial quality so many sales organizations seek in a person: What is it, and how does it get manifested in the behavior of the person?

To understand someone with an entrepreneurial mindset, you first have to look at what defines an entrepreneur.  At its most simple core, being an entrepreneur means someone who can make something from nothing, e.g., turn an idea into a product or service.

To help define the manifested behavior and belief differences of an employee who has an entrepreneurial mindset versus one who does not, I turned to Keith Cameron Smith’s book titled The Top 10 Distinctions Between Entrepreneurs and Employees. 

Here are some of Smith’s key differences:

• Entrepreneurs are solution finders. Employees are problem solvers.
• Entrepreneurs know a little about a lot.  Employees know a lot about a little.
• Entrepreneurs give and receive praise and corrections.  Employee don’t praise and try to avoid corrections.
• Entrepreneurs say, “The buck stops here.”  Employees say, “It’s not my fault.”
• Entrepreneurs take risks because of faith.  Employees play it safe because of fear.
• Entrepreneurs educate themselves more than they entertain themselves.  Employees entertain themselves more than they educate themselves.

Not a bad list.  I would add to it:

• Entrepreneurs see failure as lessons learned.  Employees see failure as bad.
• Entrepreneurs have a vision (not necessarily a plan) for what their future looks like.  Employees follow someone else’s vision.
• Entrepreneurs keep score.  Employees depend on the company to generate reports that tell them the score.

This is not to say that the person who has these attributes is better than the person who does not.  It is not a value judgment of the person.  They only become valuable within the context of their requisite roles.

So, if you believe you need a person who has an entrepreneurial mindset, the question you should ask yourself after looking over this list is, “What behavior does the role require from the person who is in it?”

If you have unsuccessfully hired salespeople in the past, it could be that you have identified the wrong attributes needed for successful achievement in your sales position.

If you want to learn more how Performance Group can help you identify the right candidates for your sales force, then click here.

If you’re interested in online marketing and you want to easily close marketing packages with clients, there are three words that can help:

• Optimization
• A/B testing
• CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization

We won’t just promote you via organic search. We’ll set up Google AdWords and A/B split test your landing pages to optimize them and improve conversion rates.

Whoa! I am totally sold. Where do I sign up?

But let’s get serious. Every now and then new buzz words pop up and become popular for a while. That is until everyone is using them, at which point a new buzz word starts to circulate. Once upon a time it was promotion on Google, then it moved to advertising on Facebook, as well as a bit on YouTube and social media. My favorite buzz word is Engagement. A bit of a bizarre word, isn’t it? Over the last two years it seems the whole subject of optimization has gained a lot of momentum. If you really wanted to, you could even call 2014 “The Year of Optimization.”

So why all the hype, and why is optimization one of the most important things in online marketing today?

The answer’s quite simple really. Let’s say you have a Google Adwords advertising campaign that brings you 100,000 visitors a month.

• Your average cost per click is 25 cents
• Total monthly expenses: $25,000

Any online purchase made via your site gives you a gross profit of 75 dollars. If we calculate the profit for a 0.5%, 1%, or 2% conversion rate it would be:

• 0.5% = 500 purchases = $37,500
• 1% = 1,000 purchases = $75,000
• 2% = 2,000 purchases = $150,000

As I mentioned above, the cost of the campaign is 25,000 dollars. In addition you have fixed costs of 15,000 dollars for the construction of the landing page, campaign management fees, design, software, and more. Total net profit for the conversion % would be:

• 0.5% = (-$2,500)
• 1% = $35,000
• 2% = $110,000

This is how it looks in a table:

Parameter 0.5% Conversion 1% Conversion 2% Conversion Total Visitors to Page 100,000 100,000 100,000 Cost Per Click 0.25¢ 0.25¢ 0.25¢ Total Cost of Advertising on Google $25,000 $25,000 $25,000 Average Conversion Rate 0.5% conversion 1% conversion 2% conversion Number of Conversions 500 1,000 2,000 Gross Profit Per Conversion $75 $75 $75 Total Gross Profit $37,500 $75,000 $150,000 Campaign Cost $25,000 $25,000 $25,000 Other Fixed Costs $15,000 $15,000 $15,000 Net Profit (-$2,500) $35,000 $110,000

You can now see that a campaign of 25,000 per month is not that high. A conversion improvement of 0.5% and even 1% (if there was no optimization work on this site in the past) is entirely possible. So isn’t it worth investing $10,000 or $20,000 in optimization of your landing page, if by doing so you can earn an extra $50,000?

Of course it is.

That’s why more and more people are realizing that great potential exists when we stop, think, analyze and improve.

Small changes to a landing page can double, triple or even quadruple the results.

Optimization Methodology

Now let’s talk about processes. Many businesses jump into the optimization process without prior planning and real consideration. A red or green button that says Sign Up or Register Now. A long or short landing page, and a random image are common experiments that look convincing. This is especially true when the results show an increase of 88.6% after one small change. But could that small change really make that much difference? Does the fact that it worked for one business mean it will work for another? Does this mean that color X has more conversions than color Y?

Nope.

That’s why you need to do two things before you construct the optimization process:

1. Define the parts of the pathway in the conversion funnel that need changing.
2. Construct a process to optimize those parts.

Seven Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make When Optimizing Your Website

Mistake #1: The Micro Test

It’s great fun examining the effect of a button’s color. It’s easy, requires little effort and very little thinking.

“I read a blog post on X, showing that a red button has negative associations and therefore it has a lower response rate than green. So can you please change all the red buttons to green.”

Absolute rubbish. When you plan an optimization program, think broad. Look at the big picture. Map out the entire pathway in the funnel and think of any friction that could prevent users from taking action.

After you’ve done that, you can drill down to examine smaller changes, but even then don’t jump straight for the button’s color. Consider checking larger components that may affect behavior first. When I go through an optimization process for a client, first I make sure the message that appears on the landing page exactly matches the message that appeared in the ad. I’ll also ensure both meet the need the user expressed in their original keyword search.

Make sure the message on the landing page exactly matches the message that appeared in the ad.

I came across this ‘Home Insurance’ landing page, which looks like an advertisement for a bed company, because of a hero image of a sleeping couple.

What were they thinking? Where does it show me what it promised in the ad? What does a picture of someone sleeping serenely have to do with home insurance? (I know, you’re saying it conveys a sense of security, but to understand that can take ages. You only have 5-8 seconds to convince the visitor that they’ve arrived at the right place.)

I was looking for home insurance because that’s what I want to buy. Not a down pillow.

Mistake #2: Putting High Hopes On the Optimization Process

Optimization is an awesome thing. It can improve results by hundreds of percent, but often the problem lies in the product itself or in its target audience, and not in the color or text on a button. If you can’t sell your product to a customer face-to-face, it’s likely the product is not suited to your target audience, or you’re reaching out to the wrong audience.

Sean Ellis, Founder of Qualaroo, once defined that a product is suitable for your target audience if 40% of your users will be disappointed if you take the product away.

In short, make sure conversions are happening first. Only after you’ve done that, should you examine how to improve them.

Only after getting some conversions, should you examine how to improve them.

Mistake #3: Drawing Conclusions Too Fast

You’ve seen it before: a client asks you to examine the effect of a certain change. Two days later and after a 54% increase in conversions from one of the variations, they ask you to end the experiment and announce a winner.

Hold your horses.

Never stop testing before seven days have passed (assuming you had enough traffic on those days), and before reaching 95% confirmation that the data you received is statistically meaningful.

I often wait until there have been 100 conversions (on every variation) in addition to the above two criteria. The reason for this is you can never know if the factor you’ve examined via A/B testing is the one which led to a change in conversions.

Often you’ll notice alarming differences between days of the week, weekdays versus weekends and between different hours of the day. For a large number of my clients, conversions between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. are higher by dozens of percent!

Another mistake that’s important to note is experimenting repeatedly “just to check”: It’s best you don’t do this.

After you’ve waited long enough to get statistically meaningful data, analyze the information gathered in the previous experiment, see what its implications are and only then start planning the next experiment.

For example, if an experiment reveals that emotive headlines have a stronger impact on your users, don’t go for an experiment that examines the color of a button. Instead examine which emotion works better: would positive emotion work better than negative? Does the presentation of the negative work better than the presentation of the positive?

But what happens if you haven’t found significant statistics after 200 leads or more? Try to run various segments such as the time of day, day of the week, type of device, country/city, and source of traffic. See if you manage to find a significant statistic for one of them. If not, perhaps your research hypothesis was incorrect and you should raise another hypothesis and examine it from scratch.

Here’s a great post by a guy named Alex, who openly shares the processes he’s working on with his startup company to create a turnover of $100,000 per month. His last post talks exactly about this point, that often A/B testing will not bring you significant results, and that’s OK.

In short, on the one hand be thorough and don’t jump to conclusions. On the other hand don’t be discouraged that you were unable to reach a conclusion. Just keep trying. I highly recommend using this tool that allows you to enter visit and conversion data of various landing pages. You can then test their statistical significance.

Mistake #4: Do What Someone Else Did

This is my absolute favorite. There’s nothing more amusing than reading a post showing the importance of an orange button (“because that’s what Amazon does and it works for them”) and then running and changing all the buttons on your site to orange.

It’s possible that doing this will improve your conversion rates, but you won’t know for sure until you do real scientific testing.

Mistake #5: Running Multiple Simultaneous Changes

I’m not sure if I need to tell you this, but because I’ve come across it before I think it needs some emphasis.

Never perform several tests on a number of elements at the same time.

If you’re checking the color of an “Add to cart” button, test it all on its own and wait a few days before testing the “Checkout” button. Don’t even consider testing the “Subscribe” button yet. The same goes for other elements throughout your conversion funnel.

Do one thing at a time, test, analyze, and then move on.

Mistake #6: Ignoring Minor Improvements

This mistake is common in large organizations. They tend to ignore results that haven’t reached double-digits.

Think about it: an improvement of 3% per month can bring you tens of percent improvement per year. This is without taking into account the fact that if you have TONS of traffic. An increase by even a tenth of a percent could add another few million to your bank account.

Mistake #7: Just Test

Often your client/CEO will hear a lecture about the importance of A/B testing. They’ll then hunt you down the following day insisting you to start doing it ASAP.

This is when you explain to them that, just like any academic research – without accurate formulation of a research question and hypothesis – it will be a waste of time. The optimization process should start after you have done market research and identified a number of points that could affect/hinder conversions by your users. Only after you’ve filtered down the answers, reached a few almost identical conclusions, and seen which one has the highest effect – only then is it time to start A/B testing.

Example: Not long ago, I sat and thought with a client who is a big cheese in the academic world about how to improve the percentage of leads on their landing page. He went on about how we should phrase our headlines to convince users to leave their details in the space provided.

After much discussion we hadn’t reached a conclusion, or at least none we were willing to sign on. So we decided to do a short market survey and ask our customers, the prospective students, what they thought.

After thorough research, we discovered that at the stage where we’d been trying to sell them our product, the product wasn’t even on their minds! They hadn’t noticed the message we’d tried to convey. Only half a year later would they begin to debate where to study, at which time they would open their eyes and notice the marketing messages designed to get them to register.

As a result, we completely revamped the language of the landing page to conform to customers at the early stages of the funnel. It was then much easier to see which headline worked better.

In a nutshell:

Long before you think of A/B testing, get to know your target audience and their needs.

Finally, Some Important Points

1. Conversions Are Great, But Aim To Increase A Customer’s Lifetime Value – LTV.

A 200% conversion won’t help if your product doesn’t provide value to the people purchasing it. It’s possible your customers’ expectations of a product are greater than what it can realistically deliver. Essentially you’ve made the product sound life-changing, when in reality it won’t change your customer’s life. This causes customer disappointment. You’re not delivering what you promised thus they’re unhappy with their purchase.

Disappointment may also stem from customers not knowing how to use the product properly.

It’s important to provide that knowledge with the purchase instead of looking only at the short-term.

It reminds me of all the people who say that “Advertising on Google AdWords is rubbish”, because they tried to go it alone and had no success. So it could be that optimization sent your conversion rates rocketing, but ultimately if your customer wasn’t able to enjoy the product as expected, you’ll take a serious hit somewhere down the line.

2. Never Perform An Experiment Without A Question And Hypothesis

In real studies, there is no such thing as research without a research question and hypothesis.

Every serious study opens with a question like:

In this study we would like to examine whether advertising on Google’s content network works better than Facebook.

This research question is exactly what the study aims to examine.

A research hypothesis (one or more) is a claim that the research will either prove or disprove, and is based on certain rules and relationships between variables. For example, a study that examines the effectiveness of Google vs. Facebook, the hypothesis could be that:

There is no difference between the Google Display Network and Facebook. This is because both involve a passive user search, as opposed to Google Search in which the user is active.

The study examines whether there is a relationship between the level of involvement and the conversion potential of a user. After this we can start to run campaigns to see if the hypothesis is correct.

The reason this is important is because a change in the color of a button or the location of a form can be interesting. However if there is no logic behind the experiment, the chances of it actually leading you to meaningful conclusions are incredibly slim.

For example:

A possible research question might be:

Should text on a button in a landing page that takes leads to Google advertising appeal to a user’s emotion or intellect?

The hypothesis would be:

People hate to be suckers when it comes to services like Google advertising, so appealing to emotion (“I’m sick of paying Google so much money. Tell me how to save 40%!”) would be more effective than appealing to intellect (“Register now and find out how to save 40% of your Google costs”).

Here is an example of a landing page for GrooveHQ, with one variation stating simply, “Sign up Free” (this is, after all, the phraseology users are familiar with when registering for a web service):

For the second variation, they used a phrase that appeals to a user’s “self,” and gets the user on board by making them want to come of their own initiative, without selling it to them:

Here’s another fine example of a case study performed by SONY, to see if what motivates their customers is customized computers, or the computer’s price. This example is a good one because it has everything you need in the construction of the optimization process:

• The current and problematic situation (insufficient response to banners)
• The research hypothesis (consumers get confused from two different messages in one banner)
• The definition of the variables in the experiment (the two messages)
• The performance of the actual experiment

Summary

This post focused on the most common mistakes of the optimization processes (mainly A/B testing). In future posts I want to talk about some slightly heavier things on the macro level, such as the design of goals, panels, segmentation, brief writing, persona characterization and more.

Now, it’s your turn:

Have you had the opportunity to give optimization a go? What do you think is the correct work model? Do you have interesting insights that are worth learning from?

The recent oil price crash coincided with a rally in the US dollar.

However, the dollar has varying relationships with varying commodities.

A blog post by Jodie Gunzberg, global head of commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, analyzes how different commodities are affected by a strong dollar. Gunzberg starts by noting:

"A strong US dollar is generally bad news for commodities since historically as the U.S dollar strengthens, goods priced in dollars become more expensive for other currencies."

Gunzberg's post includes a chart showing the correlations between different commodity prices and the dollar over ten years. The year in which each individual commodity index was introduced is shown in parentheses:

The correlation between two sets of values is a number between -1 and 1 that describes how strongly related the sets are to each other. Negative correlations mean that the values move in opposite directions: if one value goes up, the other goes down. The closer to 1 or -1 the correlation is, the stronger the relationship between the quantities; the closer to 0, the weaker the relationship.

The five commodities with the strongest negative relationship to the dollar are all oil-based, with the two crude oil benchmarks coming in at the top. A rise in the dollar generally tends to correspond to a fall in these commodities. Meanwhile, livestock and sugar have much weaker relationships with the dollar.

SEE ALSO: Here's Where You'll Find Gasoline For Under $2 A Gallon

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Good morning. Here's your daily round-up of the most important advertising news.

1. Here is everything we know about all the Super Bowl ads so far. We'll be constantly updating this post with all the latest ads, news, and controversies.

2. Super Bowl broadcaster NBC has confirmed that 95% of its ad slots during the big game are sold out. But, last time around, FOX had sold out of Super Bowl space by December.

3. British retailer Marks & Spencer is failing to convince shoppers its clothes aren't just for grannies. Try as it may to appear fashionable through major ad campaigns, the store has just posted another decline in womenswear sales.

4. Rumors are swirling again that The Church of Scientology is gearing up to buy a big Super Bowl ad. Like previous years, this is probably not true and it is more likely to be buying up cheaper, regional ad slots.

5. Google DoubleClick announced a host of video advertising updates in a blog post. It has brought on a host of partners for its premium video marketplace, it is to introduce viewability reporting for video ads and soon it plans to give marketers a report on the audibility of video ads — whether an ad was actually heard.

6. Cadillac will unveil a fresh brand positioning, new tagline and ad campaign next month, Forbes reports. TV spots are planned during the Oscars on February 22.

7. The number of M&A transactions in the online ad industry increase 32% last year, The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today reports. Data from investment banking services firm Coady Diemar Partners found those transactions represented $7.5 billion in value, more than triple the $2.3 billion in deals signed in 2013.

8. Beer brand Newcastle is once again running a Super Bowl spoof campaign. This time around, Newcastle is taking aim at Doritos' user generated "Crash the Super Bowl" ad competition. AdAge has the details.

9. Yelp has been cleared by American regulators of allegations that it had been manipulating its reviews in favor of advertisers, The Drum reports. The Federal Trade Commission has opted to close its investigation into the business.

10. A UK taxi firm has apologized over an ad after it sparked complaints alleging it was "sexist" and led to a university's feminist society calling on people to boycott the firm, according to The Telegraph. The ad in question featured a large middle-aged woman and text saying "If I look sexy, book a taxi." 

Join the conversation about this story »

I am about to share an incredible story about how a small furniture company’s in-house publication in the 1920s became a national magazine that is still recognized to this day. And within this story, you will discover five content creation lessons that can help you to dominate your industry.

How a small furniture publication became a national magazine

The Shaw-Walker Furniture Co. of Chicago created System magazine for its employees. Now, most in-house publications aren’t that great. In fact, most employees don’t even take the time to read them. But there was something special about System. Employees liked it so much that they shared it with people outside of the company who loved what they read.

Arch Wilkinson Shaw saw System as a new source of revenue. The magazine evolved to become System, The Magazine of Business with a broader appeal, and Shaw founded a publishing business, A.W. Shaw Company.

His idea worked. People subscribed to his new magazine and his circulation continued growing. But Shaw believed he could reach more people if he focused on unique groups of readers, so he broke his magazine into two monthly titles. System focused on office management-related information. The Magazine of Business focused on big business. Shaw did so well that his publishing company attracted the attention of McGraw-Hill, which purchased A.W. Shaw Company in 1928.

Two months before Black Friday in 1929, The Magazine of Business was relaunched as a weekly magazine called The Business Week (later known simply as BusinessWeek). BusinessWeek’s unique brand of journalism would eventually alter the way in which the subjects of business and economics were written about.

BusinessWeek continued to grow, thrive, and pivot its strategy, allowing it to thrive for 80 years over a time during which many other business publications came and went. Bloomberg LP acquired the publication in 2009 and renamed it Bloomberg Businessweek, which continues today to be a popular source for news about business and the economy.

It’s incredible to think that it all started as a small publication for a furniture company. But its growth and dominance didn’t happen by accident or luck. Shaw implemented important strategies in the beginning and McGraw-Hill added some important ones, which all resulted in this lasting success.

Lessons to dominate your industry and beyond

1. Produce top quality content

If A.W. Shaw had just put out another “so-so” in-house publication, BusinessWeek would never have existed. Instead, he focused on creating excellent content that was so great he was able to create a new revenue stream.

As I have said over and over, content is a commodity these days. People can find pages and pages on just about any topic from search engines. That’s why you can’t be satisfied with creating generic, “me-too” content. If you do, it will be ignored and will never produce the ROI you want. Instead, set a standard to create content so great that you could literally sell it.

2. Think like a publisher

You have probably heard this advice, but have you actually implemented it? If A.W. Shaw only thought like a furniture store owner, he never would have been able to develop his magazine into something that was valuable not only to his audience, but ultimately to McGraw-Hill.

If you want your content to dominate in your industry, then it can’t be an afterthought. You must be deliberate about it, knowing the needs of your audience, the type of competing content, etc.

3. Focus on niches

One of the most important ways to think like a publisher is to obsess about your audience. You must always know the answer to these questions:

• What specific group within your industry will read your content? How would you describe them and their needs?
• How can you tweak your content to specifically appeal to and help this group?
• What new audiences are emerging that you can and should reach?

Shaw focused on niches when he first broke System into two magazines, one for office management and one for big business. In the 1970s, McGraw-Hill did the same thing when it expanded the magazine’s strategy to focus on business managers and consumers outside of the business world. The result? Since 1975, BusinessWeek has carried more annual advertising pages than any other magazine in the United States. By focusing on the right niche, its content gained traction and value.

4. Develop your own style

Not only did McGraw-Hill focus on specific audiences, but it also focused on developing its own style. It didn’t try to copy other contemporary publications such as Forbes. And this focus paid off. The unique way that BusinessWeek created its content redefined what it meant to be a business journalist.

I am sure there are publications you enjoy and appreciate. That’s great. Learn their underlying principles in creating content, but never directly copy their style. Why? You won’t stand out. Your best bet always is to create content in your (or your publication’s) own voice and style. You can evolve that voice and style, but your own style always wins over copycat content.

5. Have a clear point of view and an opinion

McGraw-Hill President Malcolm Muir, who helped create BusinessWeek, described the magazine this way, “BusinessWeek always has a point of view, and usually a strong opinion, both of which it does not hesitate to express.” He also explained, “BusinessWeek will never be content to be a mere chronicle of events. It aims always to interpret their significance.”

This might be the most important lesson for you to learn and it might be the most frightening lesson to implement. Why? We’ve been taught to not make waves and to keep our opinion to ourselves.

But that doesn’t work when it comes to content creation. Think about it. The people who succeed have stand-out personalities. Here are some examples of content creators who stand out:

• Oprah – Magazine publisher, television network owner
• Rush Limbaugh – Radio talk show host and writer (recently expanding his work to author of children’s books)
• Jon Stewart – TV show host, writer, political satirist, producer
• Glenn Beck – TV and radio host, commentator, author, filmmaker
• Martha Stewart – TV show host, writer, founder of media company
• Donald Trump – Real estate developer, television personality, author, founder of entertainment company, president of global business

You might not like all of these people. That’s not my point. They are successful because they have a unique perspective and aren’t afraid to let their personalities show. None of these people sat around thinking, “How can I stifle my opinion and blend in?” They all decided early on to clearly express their point of view. They boldly state their opinion. And that’s what has made them stand out.

Don’t just think that this only worked because they are individual brands. Their approach can be applied to any company. In fact, having a clear point of view and opinion is the bedrock of what a powerful brand is. It’s impossible to have a strong brand if your business doesn’t have a “personality.” In fact, a business without a unique personality probably doesn’t even have a brand at all.

Now you obviously don’t want to offend your target audience. Sure, some of these content creators offend people, but they make sure not to offend their core audience. They make sure that their opinions and points of view match their audience. You should do the same to create content that stands out for your audience.

Domination doesn’t happen instantly

If you want to create content that dominates in your industry it won’t be an easy thing to accomplish. If it was, then everyone would do it. And it definitely won’t happen overnight. But it’s not an impossible task. It just takes consistency, creativity, and the ability to implement these five lessons from A.W. Shaw and BusinessWeek magazine.

Want more expert advice on addressing content marketing’s biggest challenges? Check out all the fantastic CMW sessions that are available through our Video on Demand portal and register for CMW 2015 today.

Cover image by Liam Andrew Cura via pixabay

The post 5 Content Domination Lessons From a Furniture Maker Turned Publisher appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Content is one of the most talked-about tactics in marketing these days. In fact, more than 70 percent of both business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers plan to produce more content in 2015 than they did in 2014, with six out of 10 expecting to increase their content marketing budgets, according to e-Strategy Trends.

That’s all well and good, but the content must fit into an overall marketing strategy in order to be effective. For many brands, this tactic means incorporating both social media and content marketing to increase qualified traffic, build the audience and raise brand awareness and lead generation. In short, social media should support your content efforts.

Makino, a global manufacturer of machine tools, is one example of a brand doing content marketing well. This company has long understood the value of compelling and informative content to serve its engineering audiences. For years, it has successfully produced long-form customer stories that demonstrate its technical expertise, and it showcases these case studies in the company’s custom publications. But Makino also makes a practice of repurposing those stories into more visual, snackable content and has found leveraging them through social media to be effective.

It recently produced a case study about Eagle Manufacturing that was repurposed in various formats and distributed through the company website and social channels. While all of these methods shared the same story, by delivering it in several versions at different times, Makino was able to appeal to audiences from the factory floor to the C-suite. For example, an infographic was shared on Facebook, photos were shared via a Facebook photo album, a testimonial video was uploaded on Facebook and YouTube and a white paper, magazine article, and mini case study were promoted via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. The results? Social impressions drove 22 percent of all traffic to the story-driven microsite, and over 50 percent of all white paper registrations resulted from users visiting the microsite through other content and social marketing properties.

If your company is interested in using social media to enhance its content efforts, here are nine tips to consider:

1. Know your audience – Know what social media channels your audience is using and tailor your content, visuals and message to that platform.

2. Understand your options – Understand how to use social content on each unique channel in order to maximize results. Realize that you can embed a link back to your site or to additional images. Know the appropriate sizes for images across social media channels. Remember that you can achieve better responses on Facebook if you put your video directly on the Facebook video player rather than linking from YouTube to Facebook.

3. Test and learn – Decide which social channel you want to try first and then get started by repurposing content you already have. From there, expand your ideas based on these successes and don’t be afraid to continue to try new things.

4. Repeat – Sharing your content more than once can increase traffic. This means sharing at different times of the day to account for varying time zones and even reposting several months later. Experiment with frequency of posts to find that sweet spot.

5. Reframe your content – You can post once as a link, once visually as an image or use different wording in the post itself.

6. Add social media “follow” buttons to your content, website or blog – Put these at the top or bottom of the story.

7. Get found – Use keywords that represent audience interest or that are relevant to your business or industry, as this helps people find your content. Include links in descriptions of all visual content and embed links back to your site whenever possible. Always elicit a call to action.

8. Interact – Don’t forget to interact with customers when sharing content on social media. Ask questions, answer their questions, or share other people’s content.

9. Be visual – Make your posts visually appealing with photos and infographics.

Eight-four percent of B-to-B marketers use social media in some form, according to Aberdeen Group. With the variety of social channels out there and the multitude of tools at your disposal, it is easier than ever to get that story from your mind to your audience in an interesting and humanly relevant manner.

What’s helpful and what’s just hype can often be hard to discern, especially for marketing trends. After all, as marketers, you’re constantly looking for the next big thing so you can then, potentially, influence what becomes the next, next big thing. It’s all part of your job. I understand this, and I both sympathize and empathize with anyone in your position, so even though what I’m about to say may seem harsh, I’m only saying it because I care… NOT EVERY MARKETING TACTIC IS A NEW, INNOVATIVE, GAME-CHANGING REVELATION!

Of course, with all due respect, I only mean that some marketing tactics are already well-established, some are just common sense, and some should probably be pure muscle-memory by now. Surgeons suggesting that 2015 will be all about sterilized instruments, for example, would seem silly as it’s such a standard part of their job, and yet in marketing, similarly commonplace practices still seem to get an uncommon amount of hype. I’m sorry, I’m not sorry, but if any of the tactics below seem new to you, you may need to sit down, enjoy your “Hollaback Girl” ring tone for a second, and then answer your flip phone, because 2005 is calling, and it wants its marketing trends back…

Personalization:

Personalizing communications has always been a best practice for as long as people have been able to communicate. There was never a time, for example, when referring to your spouse by the wrong name ever panned out well. But until technology started enabling scalable data capture and accurate contact management, running personalized marketing campaigns and maintaining personalized customer interactions weren’t realistic capabilities for organizations. As soon technology did allow for personalized marketing communications, however, it became a best practice – not by its novelty, but by necessity. When organizations can personalize their communications, they must. To this point, findings from Aberdeen’s September 2014 Customer Analytics: Making Big Data Work for the Marketer study shows that marketers that deliver tailored messages to their target audiences enjoy 28% greater annual increases in return on marketing investments (ROMI), compared to those that don’t personalize.

Omni-Channel:

Omni-channel customer experience management (CEM) initiatives have been a best practice for a while now. The term itself has been rather popular since 2009. With a 91% higher average year-over-year increase in customer retention rates alone, research shows that omni-channel CEM users distinctly outperform their non-omni-channel peers. Sure, the number of channels available to organizations has increased over the years, but the basic principle of omni-channel – being where your customers want you to be, and staying consistent in your messaging across those channels – is simply a part of a well-run business. From brick-and-mortar stores adapting to accept phone orders, to customer service reps addressing complaints on Twitter, the effort to deliver omni-channel interactions is not new for many firms. Therefore it’d be rather inappropriate to consider omni-channel as a marketing trend of 2015; it’s something that should be known and perfected as companies rapidly expand the number of touch-points they use to interact with buyers.

Digital:

We all know the world is round – even well before space travel gave us photographic evidence; thanks Galileo and Ibn Hazm. We also know that people actively engage across digital channels – it’s become just another fact of modern life. Yet why is “digital marketing,” such a commonly discussed topic, while “round earth living,” is just kind of nonsensical? Sure, digital has become a kind of macro-marketing channel, with plenty of other marketing channels within it, but by now, it’s really just a standard component of any effective marketing strategy. What’s more, for customers, especially those who prefer not having to meet face to face or talk on the phone, digital is a standard means of communication and interaction. Sure, just as you could benefit from improved round earth living, learning about and improving digital marketing can be useful, but I’m not sure it deserves all the hype…

Rather, I recommend focusing on integrating your digital and offline interactions to deliver consistent and personalized interactions. This doesn’t mean that you should completely ignore your customers’ evolving digital behavior; you should certainly keep an eye out and reflect their changing preferences within your marketing activities. However, you will maximize your results when you successfully integrate your offline (in-store or in-branch) conversations with digital interactions. Indeed, Aberdeen’s March 2014 State of the CEM Market 2014: It’s All About Better Use of Customer Data study, shows that companies with this capability enjoy an 88% greater year-over-year increase in annual revenue, compared to those without it. While the benefits of this activity are significant, it’s important to note that establishing such integration is no easy endeavor. There will likely be multiple stakeholders involved (hello IT!), and you’ll need to work with all of them collaboratively to ensure that you achieve the desired results.

Instead of just calling out outdated marketing trends, though, I think it’s best to also propose a few new marketing trends which are relevant and important. These include:

Contextual Content:

Content is king; it long has been. The role and importance of content marketing have been discussed widely the past few years. As a result, marketers are increasingly expected to curate, acquire and use more and more content to fuel their multi-channel and multi-touch marketing programs. As the volume of content has increased the past few years the quality didn’t keep up with it. Every week I come across several marketing communications that either use untargeted or badly written content. This means that despite marketers’ best intentions to deliver the right content to the right audiences, there is still a missing piece. This piece is context; the general circumstances (e.g. previous buyer interactions, customer touch-points, etc.) that apply to each marketing message. Top performing marketers in Aberdeen’s Customer Analytics study utilize contextual content by identifying the needs and wants of each target audience (with the help of analytics) and curating content that speaks to their unique needs and is aimed to elicit a specific behavior. In doing so, they enjoy a 12.6% annual increase in customer satisfaction. They also successfully monetize interactions with these happy buyers — validated by 46% greater year-over-year increase in customer lifetime value, compared to marketers not delivering contextual content.

Aligning Marketing And Customer Service:

Let’s face it, the days where marketing used to be the primary stakeholder managing the company brand are long over. As customers grow their adoption and use of social media portals and mobile devices, each service interaction is now easily shared with the masses via social media – anyone remember the Domino’s, Comcast examples that are not yet in our distant memory? For savvy businesses (both B2B and B2C), customer service activities represent an opportunity to gain and keep loyal clients who will help raise brand awareness and loyalty for the firm. For marketers that are not closely working with customer service, customer empowerment spells disaster in the making. You might be delivering successful marketing campaigns, driving new revenue and raising brand awareness for your company, but what if your customer service team delivers a poor interaction and you don’t handle the subsequent social media conversations about this experience in a timely and effective fashion? Your brand will ultimately suffer, and the positive results of your marketing efforts will likely be wiped away within several hours. To succeed in today’s customer-driven world, you must ensure that your marketing and customer service activities are tightly aligned.

Customer Effort Management:

Earlier, we noted that many buyers today use multiple channels to interact with your business. This is because they first want to educate themselves on the products / services that best meet their needs through using the information available through the web, social media portals and online communities. Only after they determine their interest in your business are buyers likely to interact with you directly. This work done by the customers, however, shouldn’t be considered as an indicator that buyers today want to have a more cumbersome and complex process before they make a purchase decision. Rather, this means that they only want to be provided with the necessary knowledge they need to help them understand how your company would help them meet their needs. The ultimate benefit of this is reducing the buyer effort to understand the benefits of your products / services. While personalizing the marketing messages to deliver this information is a key activity to meet this need, it’s important that marketers take a broader look at the customer journey. In other words, determine the channels customers use to interact with your business, and utilize data captured through these touch-points to offer related content reflective of buyer preferences identified via previous interactions. This will help your business improve customer satisfaction, increase conversion rates, and as a result, boost the financial impact of your marketing activities.

Do you have any over-hyped marketing trends you’d like to call out, or any under-the-radar or up-and-coming opportunities to share? Please add your insights to the conversation in the comments below.

New York (AFP) - Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, Bugatti. The prestigious names embody performance and luxury across the automotive world.

But with the advent of soulless self-driving cars, are they fated to be locked away in the stables like the horses they replaced a century ago?

Not so fast, responds Ferrari. The Italian race car legend, its iconic prancing horse logo idolized by drivers everywhere, is still putting out high-performance cars that need real people at the wheel.

It just introduced its newest supercar, the Sergio, and is working on a car more powerful than any it ever produced, the FXX K. An electric motor will help boost the 860 horsepower of the V12 engine to an astounding 1,050 horses.

Maserati, like Ferrari part of the Fiat Chrysler stable, is promising a new Alfieri coupe in 2016, and the next version of the GranTurismo will be unveiled at the end of 2017.

But will the Italian thoroughbreds and their German counterparts be able to resist the looming turn of the industry toward cars that don't need drivers at all?

- 'Change inevitable' -

Karl Brauer, an industry analyst at Kelley Blue Book, says the industry march away from humans controlling cars and toward more technology will not stop.

"It is inevitable," he told AFP.

That will leave performance sports cars and supercars the province of a small group of wealthy motor speed fans and hobbyists dedicated to having their own hands in control, he said.

Increasingly, they will be confined to driving on tracks and private roads as autonomous vehicles take off with the broader public.

Some of those who buy performance sports cars for social status -- the majority of buyers -- could even turn away from them for other ostentatious signs of success, said Martin Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Michigan and a former economist at Ford.

But there will always be fans who value traditionally driven sports cars, Zimmerman said.

"I suspect that there will be always a demand for sitting in a nice looking sports car and being able to control it yourself."

Eventually, the sports car could become confined to a small niche of passionate fans, revving their engines and testing their speed on dedicated circuits.

It is up to the top automakers around the world together with tech leaders to produce autonomous, driverless cars for public use, and the day they enter general use is coming soon.

Self-driving cars could make highways safer by eliminating the main cause of road accidents, driver error.

The first driverless cars could hit the market in 2018, according to manufacturers, though the legal and ethical questions are many -- for instance, who is to blame if there is an accident?

Road tests of self-driving cars are already well advanced -- especially of the Google Car, the pioneer in the market. It has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles on California roads without accident, Google says.

The war on speeding in developed countries; changes in consumer interests, with a new generation more focused on electronic gadgets; and more eco-friendly thinking also pose obstacles for performance sports car fans.

- Seeking a balance -

One course for the future, according to analysts, will be to achieve a balance between technologies that make the vehicles safer and the sensations of high speed and high performance on the road that fans crave.

"There will be a demand for sports cars that allow individuals to control and drive the vehicle, but the technology that's being developed around these autonomous vehicles will actually make it more fun and safer for individuals to drive these vehicles," said Joe Vitale, an industry specialist at consultant Deloitte.

Makers of top-end cars in the sports and luxury segments have to keep coming up with new things, and adopt the most advanced technologies, to keep attracting buyers, said Alan Baum, head of the consultant Baum and Associates.

"When that product starts to age, then the consumer starts to go to the next new thing," he said.

Join the conversation about this story »

Everybody has heard the expression: “If you want different results, you have to start doing things differently.”  This is why all our New Year’s resolutions include doing different things: Not eating that donut in the morning; going to the gym after work instead of out to dinner; helping out more around the house, instead of relaxing with our feet up after dinner, etc.  Remember, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

When it comes to closing more sales, what are you planning on doing differently?  Are you going to come in earlier?  Make more cold calls?  Follow up with more customers?  Ask for the upsell more often?  While all these things will help, I’d like to give you two simple questions to begin asking during your qualifying and closing calls that can – and will – make a huge difference in closing more sales.

As many of you who have read my blog before know, the close is set up and, to a large part, determined by how good a job you’ve done during your qualifying call.  Know the answers to the “five-qualifiers,” and you can be assured you’re dealing with a qualified lead.  Anything less, and you run the risk of pitching unqualified leads – and that frequently means you’re just spinning your wheels.  (click here to review what these five-qualifiers are) 

Assuming, however, that you are dealing with a qualified lead, here are two questions you can insert in your calls that will have a dramatic effect on how much more business you close in 2015:

During the end of your prospecting call, simply ask this question: “(Prospect’s name) thanks for sharing all this information with me.  So I can best prepare for our presentation next week, let me ask you this: What is the one thing you’ll be looking to learn more about that will determine whether or not you choose to put us to work for you next week?” 

Then hit your MUTE button and LISTEN.  If they don’t answer fully, simply un-mute and say, “OH?” and MUTE again. 

Feel free to change this question to something suits you or your product or service better (like: “(Prospect’s name) if you were to lock onto one factor that will weigh most heavily on who you choose to go with for this, what would you say it is?”).  Regardless of what question you feel comfortable with, get into the habit of asking it at the end of each and every qualifying call.

Next is what to say during the close.  So many recordings of actual closes I listen to as part of my coaching and training consulting end in the same way: with the common stall of: “Let me run this by my V.P./owner/manager/boss, etc.”  How many of YOUR presentations end in this way?  More importantly, how do you respond? 

Here’s the second question you should be using in these situations:

You: “(Prospect’s Name), I’m glad you brought that up and let me ask you: How long have you been working with (the V.P./owner, etc.)?”

Prospect: “Oh, about 3 years.”

You: “Great.  So you’ve probably got a good idea of what he’s said in the past when you’ve run something like this by him.  Let me ask you: given what you know about his priorities and where he’s leaning towards something like this, what do you anticipate he’ll say (or do)?”

Now, hit your MUTE button and listen for how this close is likely to go down.  Once again, if you get a vague answer, simply un-mute yourself and say, “OH?” and MUTE once again.  Next, depending on the answer, your next goal is to use layering questions and appropriate responses to isolate the real objection and move closer to the sale. 

Like any and all techniques I recommend, don’t just take my word for it.  Instead, use and practice these in your day to day calling and see for yourself how effective they are.  Remember, though, the key is to use your mute button to let your prospect get everything out…

Closing more sales in 2015 is not only possible, but it’s going to happen to many sales reps and companies this year.  But it will only happen if you keep to your New Year’s resolutions to do some things differently.  I hope these are two new techniques you’ll begin using this week.

90% of consumers do not want to be sold to – they want to find the vendors when they need them.

Almost all B2B and B2C purchasing decisions (with the possible exception of groceries) are begun online. In fact, Social Media Today reports that the average B2B buyer checks around 10 online resources before making a purchase or even talking to a sales person.

If your buyers are considering the purchase of something you are selling, what are the chances that they are finding information you have published?  And think about it. Who are they likely to call when they have completed their online research?

Some of our best leads have come from people who have found us online.  Many find us by doing a keyword search.  Depending on their search terms, they may find our website, but most often they find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Google+.   We regularly post blogs and publish articles; we always add links to them to our social sites. Search engines often lead our viewers to these sites first.  However, based on the information we have published, many click our website link and those who believe we have something to offer them contact us.

The trick is to write interesting articles, curate valuable content, and then add this content to the right social sites. Google has tools that favor websites with fresh content and every blog and social post you publish become stand-alone pieces of content, giving you an ever enlarging “digital footprint.” The bottom line is that the more you post, the more likely you are to be found by your dream customer.

Forrester’s latest research indicates that 100% of business decision makers use Social Media for business.  But not all of these people use the same social sites. The formula for success:  Write interesting copy, write often, publish to the right sites at the right time and respond when someone engages with you on any of your social sites or website.

Disagreements in operational definitions are one of the biggest contributing factors to sales and marketing misalignment.

And getting these two teams on the same page is not something you want to mess up.

Organizations with tightly-aligned sales and marketing have 36 percent higher customer retention rates and achieve 38% higher sales win rates.

Moreover, aligned organizations have reported an average of 32 percent annual revenue growth while less aligned companies report an average 7 percent decline in revenue.

Here are a few simple things you, as a marketer, can do to tighten the grip between sales and marketing. They aren’t revolutionary, but following these three parts of definition agreement can:

• Increase your lead-to-sale conversion rates.
• Improve your relationship with customers and brand sentiment.
• Boost your revenue a few percentage points.

How Do You Start The Definition Conversation?

First: Agree On What Your Funnel Looks Like.

There should be one funnel, not two. Your funnel should clearly dictate where marketing has domain, where sales comes in, and where key conversions take place. Realistically, marketing plays in all parts of the funnel, giving sales collateral support until the moment a deal closes, and often into customer support after the deal has closed.

• But where do customers start their journey?
• What actions or behaviors define the top, middle, and bottom of your funnel?

Here are a few funnels that might work for your business:

Next: Define Your Sales Stages.

Each key conversion point in the buyer’s journey must be defined and agreed upon by both marketing and sales. This is fundamental to facilitating goal alignment, and fluid collaboration within the buyer’s journey.

Examples of sales stages include:

1. Qualified Lead
2. Sales Accepted Lead
3. Marketing Qualified Lead
4. Opportunity (the difference between sales and marketing generated opportunities may apply)

Finally: Define Other Key Variables.

Not all prospects will be perfect. Inevitably, sales will throw out certain leads due to qualitative criteria like a prospect’s budget, interest, or “fit.”

These things, too, need to be agreed upon by both marketing and sales:

1. Marketing’s pipeline responsibility
2. Sales’ pipeline responsibility
3. Red flags
4. The maximum time for a sales rep to follow up on a qualified lead

The tactical goal here is to agree on terms so spot-on that sales can never say, “marketing leads suck” and marketers never shake their head in disappointment when sales asks for the umpteeth time, “do we have any content on _______?”

The overarching goal is to position your sales and marketing departments in a way that supports bigger business initiatives: better communication with prospects, shortened deal cycles, more efficiency with a given number of resources, and—of course—revenue.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – BlackBerry Ltd. (TSX:BB) is getting behind the technology that will eventually link your smartphone and tablet to all the other devices in your home through the Internet.

The Waterloo, Ont.-based company unveiled the foundation of its Internet of Things platform at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

It marks one of the first steps towards selling the technology to firms such as automakers and shipping companies.

The Internet of Things describes the cloud-based technology that connects objects to wireless networks.

It’s considered by many as the next stage in allowing consumers and businesses to communicate with the various other electronic devices in their lives.

BlackBerry says it will use technology developed by the its QNX Software Systems division, which already makes interactive infotainment systems built into vehicle dashboards.

The post BlackBerry unveils first steps in Internet of Things cloud management platform appeared first on Canadian Business.

British researchers have concluded that most of Canada’s oilsands will have to be left in the ground if the world gets serious about climate change.

The report, published in the journal Nature, says three-quarters of all Canada’s oil reserves and 85 per cent of its oilsands can’t be burned if the world wants to limit global warming. The report also concludes that no country’s Arctic energy resources can be developed if global temperature increases are to be kept manageable.

It adds that about one-quarter of Canada’s natural gas reserves and four-fifths of its coal would also have to be left in the ground.

Report author Christophe McGlade of University College London says the research was undertaken in response to agreement from politicians around the world that global warming should be limited to within 2 C of historic averages. At the same time, said McGlade, most are enthusiastic boosters of their own country’s fossil fuels.

“Nearly all politicians across the world would like to develop all domestic sources of oil and gas and coal that they have and also search for new resources,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

“What this analysis shows is that those two positions are inconsistent. Every country can’t exploit all of their domestic reserves and keep to two degrees.”

McGlade and co-author Peter Ekins used a mathematical model that accounted for all the world’s oil, natural gas and coal and analyzed demand for each type. They then looked at future demand to 2050, using a model to calculate how much of each resource would be used given constraints such as production costs and distribution.

They used the two-degree figure to provide a global cap on the amount of carbon that could be emitted into the atmosphere. The point at which their estimates of future demand intersected with the cap gave them the amount of how much each fossil fuel reserve could be developed.

“Our results suggest that, globally, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80 per cent of current coal reserves should remain unused,” the report says.

Natural Resources Canada declined to provide an expert to discuss the report. The department, noting world energy demand is expected to increase, provided an emailed statement:

“The majority (of that energy) will come from fossil fuels, even under its most stringent greenhouse gas reduction forecast. The choice is whether to use energy from a secure, environmentally responsible, transparent country like Canada, or to seek energy from less stable countries without responsible environmental policies,” the email said.

The study is the latest in a growing body of research into the implications of what is being called a “global carbon budget” — the total amount of carbon emissions that can be released and still stay below a two-degree temperature increase.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has placed that budget at 1,100 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide.

About two-thirds of that has already been used. Carbon dioxide locked in current fossil fuel reserves totals about three times that budget.

Other studies have looked into financial and political impacts of the carbon budget. Some have warned that energy companies risk stranding billions of dollars in assets if carbon is increasingly restricted or subject to financial penalty.

McGlade said he hopes his research will be used by world leaders when they meet next December in Paris to try again to hammer out an agreement on climate change. It could form the basis for talks on how countries could be compensated for resources left in the ground, he suggested.

“It’s further evidence for the policy-makers to use. Hopefully, this will help inform some of the negotiations.”

The post Most of Canada’s oilsands must stay in ground if world moves on climate: report appeared first on Canadian Business.

(c)iStock.com/AndreyPopov

The cloud ecosystem has ushered in an exciting era of open access to world-class computing power, resources, storage, development framework and software applications. With this has come an explosion of innovation. While cloud service providers (CSPs) have enabled innovation and cost reduction for their customers, they have likewise been challenged to leverage the power of the cloud to innovate around monetisation and billing. This has resulted in business risks, such as:

• Becoming a commodity provider due to high CSP customer churn resulting from lack of differentiation
• Inability to exceed client satisfaction due to poor usage and billing details
• Missed revenue and maximisation opportunities due to value-added resellers covering this growing need
• Slow time-to-market of new services because there is no dynamic promotion mechanism built into the charging model
• Credit risk exposure, as enterprises with low credit ratings can end up using more than what they can pay

In short, effective monetisation of services remains a challenge to overcome for CSPs to deliver the ultimate cloud offering.

The challenge

Cloud computing monetisation models today remind us of the billing models of the past, with a bias towards flat rate billing. There were few monetisation models that were low latency usage or activity-based, reflecting consumption behaviour. However, with the onset of the mobile data tsunami, bundled packages to enterprise and retail clients and overall market saturation, monetisation models had to be changed to meet customer needs. Providers saw an opportunity to design billing plans to deliver the best offer at the most competitive prices and increase average revenue per user.

Recently, some have positioned subscription billing as the answer to CSPs’ billing challenges. While subscription billing has its place, it is inadequate for the needs of providers who need flexibility with their pricing plans, require hierarchy-based usages and billing break down, and stronger revenue recognition capabilities.

Market realities are rapidly pushing CSPs to become more robust in how they rate, charge and bill for their services.  Following are five essential challenges CSPs monetisation models must meet to be successful:

1. Billing and charging models must be value driven and more reflective of consumption behaviour
2. Transparency and granularity of usage details must be available by accounts and sub-accounts
3. Effective policy control and enforcement must be in place to deliver appropriate quality of service and SLA according to the purchased offer
4. Implementing a low latency credit control policy is necessary so clients don’t experience the “bill shock” effect
5. Delivering reliable and scalable billing and revenue management will be paramount to building trusted client relationships

The market potential                                                                      

Value maximisation potential in the cloud computing era is limitless for all “as a service” models. Effective revenue management and billing can help power the delivery of the ultimate cloud offering by enabling multi-dimensional pricing models.

The flexibility represented in Figure 1 can also be leveraged to deliver benefits, including:

1. Bundle: by bundling different services and packaging them as one
2. Incent: by leveraging metered information of usage and consumption behaviour
3. Reward: by giving limited period bonus services once criterion are met and usage levels have been crossed
4. Inform: by sending near real-time notifications of key account activity or critical usage to a client’s preferred channel
5. Satisfy: by delivering rated unbilled usage information to CSR or enforce credit limit checks to avoid bill shocks

Another benefit of using multi-dimensional revenue management attributes is that billing transaction data records can be used to obtain the end-customer’s usage and consumption behaviour, adding the creativity and innovation needed to achieve differentiation.

Monetising the potential

CSPs have an unprecedented opportunity to be innovative and successful in deploying monetisation models.

Figure 2 illustrates the most time-tested rating and charging keys that have been applied across industries to monetise services. Combining these monetisation strategies can significantly boost the value that IaaS, PaaS and SaaS deliver to CSPs’ clients.

Conclusion

Delivering the ultimate cloud offering calls for ultimate flexibility with on-demand access. The challenge is offering flexible, scalable and reliable monetisation, billing and revenue management for cloud services. The CSPs that can effectively monetise and bill for their services will thrive by meeting the evolving needs of this dynamic market. By learning from the past and understanding the future, CSPs will triumph with higher client satisfaction and a more successful business.

Innovation drives economic growth.

This logic has risen to dominate the discourse in development circles, with government leaders, policy influencers, and development-minded business leaders fully embracing innovation as a panacea for unemployment and economic underperformance. Looking back on 2014, it is not difficult to see this globalization of the innovation mindset at work. India’s Narendra Modi recently called for a revival in Indian manufacturing and greater innovation to stimulate growth. Nigerian businessman Tony Elumelu recently launched a $100M Pan-African entrepreneurship grant program to unlock Africa’s economic potential. Start-up accelerators are almost as likely to be found in emerging nations as in Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, NGOs are increasingly emphasizing the role of innovation in their work.

But does greater innovation equal sustained macroeconomic growth and prosperity, all the time or even most of the time?

This question requires urgent clarification and may well be the difference between the developing nations that replicate the blistering success of China and the East Asian tigers, and those that crumble under the weight of their demographic booms.

There is reason to believe that while innovation can be pivotal to macroeconomic prosperity, not all kinds of innovation are created equal. But correlating innovation in itself with macroeconomic growth is misleading, as my co-authors and I discuss at length in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs. To understand how innovation truly interacts with prosperity, we should first distinguish between different kinds of investments in innovation. In simple terms, there are three types: sustaining, efficiency, and market-creating investments (see more in the HBR article “The Capitalist’s Dilemma”).

Of these, sustaining innovations (which replace old products with new and better ones) and efficiency innovations (which allow companies to make and sell established products for less) help companies serve their existing customers better, but do not address the needs of the majority of the population.

Market-creating innovations, conversely, are primarily focused at making products and services accessible to non-consumers or those who are under-served. For example, India’s Narayana Health and Kenya’s M-PESA transformed how healthcare and financial services were made accessible to non-consumers. Both introduced new business models that provided a “good-enough” solution for non-consumers, instead of going after customers that were already well-served. As they scaled their new business models, new value networks were created with net new jobs and economic uplift.

Market-creating innovations offer rapid growth and job creation, and by definition impact a larger swath of the population. Not only do they build new domestic value networks from scratch, but, when executed successfully, some market-creating innovations can be disruptive in foreign markets. The defensible cost models they develop and their knack for going after non-consumption often blindsides global competitors. This allows tiny economies to punch above their weight and build globally relevant companies.

Because companies and entrepreneurs are the vehicles for innovation, leaders in developing nations are right in reviewing how policy and other factors drive innovation. However, our research calls for a more intelligent approach towards the promotion of innovation. Rather than seeking innovation for its own sake, there needs to be a clear priority for the right kind of innovation.

Market-creating innovations are almost always harder to execute – in pursuing non-consumers, they are more often bound to the myriad infrastructural and social challenges that most developing nations face. They do not come together automatically; executing them consistently and successfully requires unparalleled collaboration between policymakers, investors, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders – but the rewards are more than worth it.

The U.S. trade show industry is BIG. In 2012, there were 10,900 trade shows that drew 27 million attendees. While the overall industry has grown 2-3% in 2014, not all shows have seen this increase. Many are not growing and/or seeing a decrease in their margin/profit. Part of the challenge today for trade show marketers is to cost effectively attract attendees.

Traditional marketing approaches such as direct mail and email are becoming less effective due to both clutter and poor targeting. This is evident by declining response and sign-up rates when sending communications to last year’s attendees list. Little, if any, in-depth data analysis of campaign effectiveness is done even though the show organizer has the data in their registration system. Unfortunately, these systems are nothing more than repositories of registration data, and do not provide the capability to perform analytics on the campaign results of cross channel and multiple communications.

Therefore, trade show marketers are missing the boat to analyze what has not worked, and most of all what has produced the most cost effective results. To meet attendance goals, satisfy exhibitors, and increase profits; trade show marketers frequently just “send more” to make up for the decrease in registration rates. In essence, they are using last year’s registration as just a list, and not transforming it into a marketing database that allows analytics to improve their marketing campaigns. Here are 5 of the most common marketing mistakes from looking at last year’s trade show campaigns with input from Steve Juedes, President of Direct Hit Marketing in Longmont CO, a trade show marketing and analytics firm that services over 35 shows.

1. Not creating a marketing database

The data in the registration file is only a response list. If, in the registration process, a few other questions are asked, then they are only a few, as attendees do not want to fill out long registration forms. The value of this data is its recency and accuracy, which is usually a problem with B2B data and lists. That’s a good thing, and by enhancing this accurate list with other demographic data, the opportunity for profiling and segmentation is dramatically enhanced. This leads to better targeting and future outside list selection which will undoubtedly increase registration rates.

2. Looking only at cost per impression and not cost per registration

This is the classic activity vs. result trap. Many marketers choose to judge and select their marketing communication tactic based on cost per impression or CPM. This does not take into account the multiple contacts and media trade show marketers launch before the show. As an example, this last October I attended the DMA Annual Conference in San Diego. I received 5 brochures and multiple emails, all sent to generate one registration. I’m sure the DMA knows how much each communication cost, but do they measure how much in total was spent on me to generate one registration? Probably not! It is now incumbent for trade show marketers to measure across all communication channels to determine both the combination that worked, but also the total cost per registration.

3. Not segmenting the registration list creatively

Segmentation comes from two sources – existing knowledge of the market segments or data analysis that identifies new ways to segment. Don’t get me wrong, trade show marketers do know the general segments their show attracts, as frequently the show is organized around industry groupings. An example is the largest US trade show – ConExpo-Con/Agg convention, also referred to as the equipment show, is held in Las Vegas every two years. Logically, their campaigns are focused on potential attendees by past attendance and industry definitions. While that’s fine, it could go much further by using some creativity based on the existing registration list and data. Here are other segmentation approaches that they could consider:

• Registration type by date and discount for early registration
• How many attendees are from same company and/or location
• Conference behavior such as educational seminars attended
• Analysis by titles
• Other demographic data from an enhanced registration list
• Combinations of the above

A direct marketing truth – the more relevant the message the higher the response rate.

4. Not analyzing the results of cross channel communications

As mentioned in number 2 above, most trade shows calculate cost per impression of the outbound communications as the primary criteria for media selection. Therefore, we see a continual shift to lower cost digital and e-mail communications. Unfortunately, this misses the real issue, as unless a cross-channel attribution model is built, the actual cost per registration is not tracked or known. Two significant results from 30 trade shows held in 2014 that Direct Hit Marketing has analyzed found:

• Multi-channel and multi-touch communication produced a most cost effective registration vs. only e-mail.
• Direct mail outperformed e-mail by a 3 to 1 in verified registrations and related revenue. Direct mail, as a single direct channel, has been more effective than an e-mail only approach.

In other words, cost per impression is the wrong criteria for media selection.

5. Not up-selling educational events to increase value per registration

Many shows offer educational seminars for an extra fee, and can produce very significant incremental revenue. While there is a focus on the educational content in the initial communications and brochures, marketers are often missing the opportunity to dynamically up-sell upon an individual’s registration. Two recommendations are:

• Quickly follow up in the confirmation a special offer for the seminars – discount, two for one, etc.
• Determine if more than one person per company is attending, and offer a company discount to the most senior title, communicated by a capable telemarketer.

In essence, don’t stop selling when the individual registers!

While there are more than 5 mistakes, start with these and pocket the profit!

The debate is officially over: YouTube is mainstream. With the allure of video and over a billion monthly users, the platform is where culture is born today. In 2014, YouTube officially became the second-largest search engine, with over 300 hours of content uploaded every minute, and those billion unique visitors watch more than six billion hours of video every month.

With the new year upon us, now is the time to reflect on personal and professional achievements. If you’re a marketer that has not yet embraced YouTube — it’s not too late. With a billion people watching, the necessity of a YouTube strategy for brands is clear. You can no longer afford (literally) to carry over yesterday’s media thinking into yet another new year. What are you waiting for?

Here are three resolutions to unlock the potential for your brand on YouTube in 2015:

1. Become familiar with the “new celebrities.”

There are a variety of ways to react to the fact that today’s average 18 year old considers PewDiePie a bigger star than today’s Hollywood A-listers. YouTube personalities are the new celebrities. They have personal relationships with their audiences on a scale the world has never seen, and are more open to aligning with your brand in both tried-and-true and never-been-done-before ways.

In 2015, get to know and partner with this new generation of celebrities. They are entrepreneurial, collaborative and they reach your audiences at the speed of culture.

2. Reimagine your digital content (it’s not just repurposing TV).

Now is the time to think about creating content made for YouTube first. Television is amazing, but it’s a shotgun approach to connecting with your audiences. Repurposing TV spots and putting them on YouTube is a start, but it leaves tremendous value on the table that your brand should be claiming.

ZEFR data shows that custom content produced exclusively for the platform results in more than double the daily views and channel subscriptions compared to repurposed content. More than double — there’s some inspiration.

3. Make YouTube a priority spend, not an afterthought.

Hope is not a strategy. YouTube drives brand performance, but like all media platforms, the key is to take it on its own terms and plan early — not afterwards.

Recognized media innovator Bonin Bough, vice president of Mondelez, said it best on a panel discussion at AdWeek with me last year. During the discussion of “Video Today: Where Culture for Brands is Born,” Bonin argued for fully engaged commitment to the platform, even comparing it to the historic transition from radio to television.

“If I came in [your office] in the ‘50s and asked you to advertise on TV, you’d be like, ‘Get out of my office because radio is really amazing,’” he said.

For most brands, Bonin would be right.

However, the brands and innovators that saw the power of TV first grabbed a huge competitive advantage, and some of those early movers are reaping the benefits of those decisions to this day. As marketers in a connected, global, social world, we are faced with an opportunity of the same scale.

It’s 2015, so the question is, who will seize it?

Running a SEO business, it is the first thing to try do-it-yourself solutions. Mostly, it is hard to build up a well-customized solution from the jump to meet some requirements of your business. In many cases, all these attempts can be a reason for failure.

Today a business uses a White Label software that gives an option to use its own brand, rather than the name and the logo of the White Label software you use. For SEO veterans and internet marketers, this white label software can provide a wide range of SEO work and save your time. These solutions play a great role for marketers that help to find the best solution according to their SEO needs.

So, if you work in the market and look for the White Label SEO software, here is the following scan of the best solutions for today:

1. SE Ranking

SE Ranking’s white label SEO software provides a great round up of SEO tools: rank tracker, website auditor, online marketing plan, advanced keyword analysis, snippet checking, competitor’s monitoring and branded reports. This solution will give the ability to research, organize and track your SEO work with ease.

2. Bright Local

Bright Local is a 100% white label SEO tool that enables their customers to create profiles, add logos, brand names and customize their SEO reports. The clients can make the most of a suite of local tools, including the Google +Local Wizard tool, local SEO check-up and stay tuned into the SEO needs of clients with ReviewBiz and ReviewFlow features.

3. 6Qube

It is a SEO white label innovation from 6Qube that are specially designed for entrepreneurs, sales managers and SEO experts. It perfectly fits companies that use WordPress, Drupal, Joomla platforms to provide their marketing services. 6Qube come with call tracking white label capabilities, call recording, seo lead tracking, search engine rankings, explicit analytics reporting and total lead management.

4. AgencyPlatform

This tool offers white label SEO tools that are well-designed for small and local businesses, larger agencies and enterprises to get high rankings in competitive niches. AgencyPlatform contains a bunch of great options: SEO and PPC audits, local search optimization, website content management, status monitoring, social media administration and branded PDF’s reports.

5. MarketBandit

MarketBandit contains lots of white label online marketing tools and services that allow you to manage all SEO things in a proper way. It helps to promote your brand, forward all your word and send branded reports to your clients. The tool offers a suite of useful tools: website audit, project management, link reporting, ranking tools.

White Labeling is the future of e-commerce. It is going to get popularity and even a good alternative to affiliate marketing for companies that value branding and trust.

White Label solutions are a perfect option for you due to these points:

• Increase your branding and identity in competitive industries;
• Easy to work with clients that make them happier;
• Save time and money to speed up their investing in an existing solution;
• Concentrate on your business’s core activities.

Choosing these solutions you can easily focus on building up your brand and promote your services that can simplify your conversion path for your clients.

This post was contributed by Kelly Wilson of the BloggingTips.com writing team.

The post Top 5 Useful White Label SEO Tools You Should Definitely Try Out appeared first on Blogging Tips.

Marketers have been using email for many years, and for good reason. Email marketing provides a dependable way to deliver a wide variety of cost-effective marketing messages. Plus, unlike annoying pop-up ads that are impossible to close, or intrusive ads on their Facebook feeds, people actually appreciate timely, targeted email messages.

In fact, according to a recent study from Forrester Research, consumer attitudes about email keep getting better and better: “Consumers like promotional emails, delete fewer brand emails, and forward email offers and promotions to friends and family.”

Email also provides instant gratification for marketers, because you can quickly understand what’s working with your audience and what’s not. Every time your recipients open, click, forward to a friend, or otherwise interact with your email, they’re giving you real-time insight into all of the things that are important to them. They’re literally telling you what they want (and what they don’t want) every time they interact with your emails.

Why Email Continues to be Awesome

Email marketers also continue to see significant returns on investment (ROI). Of course, it helps that those investments don’t need to be very big in order to have an impact. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing has an ROI of 4,300%. MarketingSherpa found that companies sending over 100,000 emails per month see a 94% return on investment. That’s pretty good, right? But check this out: They also found that companies sending under 100,000 emails per month see a 139% return. So whether your organization is big or small, email is a great way to ensure strong ROI.

Email is also an efficient way to create leads. In fact, 42% of businesses say email is one of their most effective lead generation channels. And for B2B marketers, 88% cite email as the most effective lead generation tactic, as reported by Circle Research.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that every tried-and-true email program will continue to drive results. In order to remain relevant and engaging, email campaigns need to keep up with the times. These days that means delivering more personalization, taking advantage of the benefits (and dealing with the challenges) of an increasingly mobile-device-using population, and integrating email with social media. And it definitely means finding the right timing and cadence to send your emails.

Creating Amazingly Effective Email Campaigns

Doing all of that – and doing it well – can be a time-consuming process when you’re doing it all by hand. But it doesn’t have to be. Marketing automation can help reduce the manual labor of creating effective emails that work on mobile, tie with social, and hit the inbox at the perfect moment.

In this new eBook from Act-On, you’ll find five tips for more successful – and more profitable – email campaigns. If you’re a marketer who already understands the essentials of email marketing and you’re ready to optimize the results of your campaigns, this eBook will help you raise your game.

Here’s a preview of the tips you’ll find inside.

1. Make it Awesome on Mobile: Since half of all email opens are happening on mobile devices, it’s important to keep mobile-friendliness in mind when you design your templates.
2. Get Personal with Your Audience: Using personalization in your email campaigns is a great way to jump-start long-term relationships with your customers.
3. Connect Through Social Media: Email and social media can be a powerful combination, but in order to get the most value out of both, it’s important to look at them as complementary and make sure they work together.
4. Develop Your Nurturing Side: Nurture marketing campaigns are a type of drip marketing program that takes undecided prospects along an educational path. Both nurture and drip campaigns can help keep your audience engaged – and get them ready to convert.
5. Pull the Trigger to Gain Attention: Trigger messages go out automatically when a user takes a specific action (or doesn’t take it), or when a calendar date is reached. They’re a great way to send the right message at the right time.

So download the Amazingly Effective Email Guide now to learn new techniques to optimize your results.You’ll also get fresh ideas for putting these tips into action, and a few pointers on what not to do when creating your next campaign. So dive in and see if you can’t start to achieve your own record-setting returns on investment.

One thing that is true in life and in business is that perception is reality. If a perception has been created, whether it is actually true at the core, it is perceived as true and; therefore, everyone believes it to be what they perceive.

Sensation and Perception

Sensation is the immediate response of our sensory receptors (e.g., eyes, ears, nose, mouth, ringers) to such basic stimuli as light, color, and sound. Perception is the process by which these stimuli are selected, organized, and interpreted. Like a computer, we process raw data (sensation). However, the study of perception focuses on what we add to or take away from these sensations as we assign meaning to them.

The subjective nature of perception is demonstrated by a controversial advertisement developed for Benetton by a French agency. The ad features a black man and a white man handcuffed together. This ad was the target of many complaints about racism after it appeared in magazines and on billboards around the United States, even though the company has a reputation for promoting racial tolerance. People interpreted it to depict a black man who had been arrested by a white man.’ Even though both men are dressed the same, people’s prior assumptions distorted the ad’s meaning.

Such interpretations or assumptions stem from the schemas, or organized collections of beliefs and feelings, that a person has. That is, we tend to group in our memories the objects we see as having similar characteristics, and the schema to which an object is assigned is a crucial determinant of how we choose to evaluate this object at a later time.

The Perceptual process can be broken down into the following stages:

1. Primitive categorization, in which the basic characteristics of a stimulus are isolated.
2. Cue check, in which the characteristics are analyzed in preparation for the selection of a schema.
3. Confirmation check, in which the schema is selected.
4. Confirmation completion, in which a decision is made as to what the stimulus is.

Sensory Systems

External stimuli, or sensory inputs, can be received on a number of channels. We may see a billboard, hear a jingle, feel the softness of a cashmere sweater, taste a new flavor of ice cream, or smell a leather jacket.

The inputs picked up by our five senses constitute the raw data that generates many types of responses. For example, sensory data emanating from the external environment (e.g., hearing a song on the radio) can generate internal sensory experiences when the song on the radio triggers a young man’s memory of his first dance and brings to mind the smell of his date’s perfume or the feel of her hair on his cheek.

Sensory inputs evoke historic imagery, in which events that actually occurred are recalled. Fantasy imagery is the result when an entirely new, imaginary experience is the response to sensory data. These responses are an important part of hedonic consumption - the multisensory, fantasy, and emotional aspects of consumers’ interactions with products.’ The data that we receive from our sensory systems determine how we respond to products.

Colors

Colors are rich in symbolic value and have powerful cultural meanings.

The powerful cultural meanings attached to colors make them a central aspect of many marketing strategies. Color choices are made carefully with regard to packaging, advertising, and even store decor.

The expectations created by colors can actually affect consumers’ experience of products. Consumers ascribe a sweeter taste to orange drinks as the orange shade of the bottle is darkened.

Package Design

The choice of color is frequently a key issue in package design.

Some color combinations come to be so strongly associated with corporations that these companies are granted exclusive use of these colors through a legal device known as trade dress or livery. As a rule, however, trade dress protection is granted only when consumers might be confused about what they are buying because of similar coloration of a competitor’s packages.

Since the number of competing brands has proliferated for many types of products, the color of a package can be a crucial spur to sales.

Marketers know that consumers tend to associate certain qualities with colors. The makers of Microsoft software revamped the old forest green package to red and royal blue after it found that consumers associated green with frozen vegetables and chewing gum but not software. The color black connotes quality and elegance, and is used by Johnnie Walker Scotch to convey a sophisticated image.

Theories about Color

Despite the almost mystical effects that colors seem to have on people, little is known about the degree to which these effects are due to the colors themselves or to the cultural meanings that become attached to them. While it is premature to draw any firm conclusions, some evidence indicates that colors can actually affect us regardless of their cultural connotations.

In one experiment, for example, a phone company painted some of its phone booths yellow and found that people making calls from these booths on the average finished their conversations faster.” Exposure to “warm” hues such as red, orange, and yellow appears to raise blood pressure, heart rate, and perspiration, while blue exerts an opposite, caring effect. Researchers have also claimed that rooms painted all pink appear to calm down delinquents and prison inmates, and a Canadian dental clinic used a blue room to relax anxious patients. Some fast-food chains rely on the color orange to stimulate customers’ hunger.

Personality and Individual Preferences

Some people believe that people’s preferences for colors are somehow indicative of their personalities. While there is little evidence to support this claim, there are clear differences among consumers in terms of their color preferences. Some of these preferences vary by sex, region, social class, or culture. For example, 25 percent of college women say that their favorite color is purple, but less than 10 percent of college men state this preference.

Some product designers believe that lower-income consumers prefer simple colors-those that can be described in two words, such as “grass green” or “sky blue”-and that these people find complex colors dirty or dull. In contrast, higher-income people are thought to like complex colors such as “grey-green with a hint of blue.” Simple colors are said to “declassify” or extend a product’s appeal, while others “classify” a product by elevating its perceived status.

Sound

Music is an important part of many people’s lives. In one survey, respondents were asked what experiences gave them thrills. Musical passages were cited by 96 percent of the respondents, as compared to 70 percent who cited sexual activity and 26 percent who named parades (respondents could list more than one item).

Music and sound are also important to marketers. Consumers buy millions of dollars worth of sound recordings each year, advertising jingles maintain brand awareness, and background music creates desired moods.”

Many aspects of sound may affect people’s feelings and behaviors. Two areas of research that have widespread applications in consumer contexts are the effects of background music on mood and the influence of speaking rate on attitude change and message comprehension.

Time Compression and Sound Perception

Time compression is a technique used by broadcasters to manipulate perceptions of sound. It is a way to pack more information into a limited time by speeding up an announcer’s voice in commercials. The speaking rate is typically accelerated to about 120 percent to 130 percent of normal. This effect is not detectable by most people; in fact, some tests indicate that consumers prefer a rate of transmission that is slightly faster than the normal speaking rate.

The evidence for the effectiveness of time compression is mixed. It has been shown to increase persuasion in some situations and to reduce it in others. One explanation for a positive effect is that the listener uses a person’s speaking rate to infer whether the speaker is confident; people seem to think that fast talkers must know what they are talking about.”

Another, more plausible, explanation is that the listener is given less time to elaborate in his or her mind on the assertions made in the commercial. This acceleration disrupts normal cognitive responses to the ad and changes the cues used to form judgments about its content. As change can either binder or facilitate attitude change, depending on other conditions.”

Touch

Although relatively little research has been done on the effects of tactile stimulation on consumer behavior, common observation tells us that this sensory channel is important. Moods are stimulated or relaxed on the basis of sensations of the skin, whether from a luxurious massage or the bite of a winter wind. Tactile sensations also influence our behavior via the physical messages that products send us. We use tactile sensations to evaluate cars in terms of how they “feel” on the road, and detergents brag about how “baby soft” they will get our clothes.

Tactile Clues

People associate the textures of fabrics with underlying product qualities. The perceived richness or quality of the material in clothing, bedding, or upholstery is linked to its “feel,” whether it is rough or smooth, flexible or inflexible. Silk is equated with luxury, while denim is considered practical and durable.

Fabrics that are composed of scarce materials or that require a high degree of processing to achieve their smoothness or fineness tend to be more expensive, and thus are seen as being higher-class. Similarly, lighter, more delicate textures are assumed to be feminine: Roughness is often positively valued for men, while smoothness is sought by women. When was the last nine you saw a commercial in which a man was fretting about “dish pan hands?”

Taste

Our taste receptors obviously contribute to our experience of many products. Specialized companies called “flavor houses” keep busy trying to develop new tastes to please the changing palates of consumers. Their work has been especially important as consumers continue to demand good-tasting foods that are also low in calories and fat.

Taste testing

Food companies go to great lengths to ensure that their products taste as they should.

Blind Taste Tests

Are blind taste tests worth their salt? While taste tests often provide valuable information, their results can be misleading when it is forgotten that objective taste is only one component of product evaluation.

Conclusion

The concept of perception is just as important in business as it is in life. In both cases, relationships are at the core of your success. When it comes to perception in marketing, you create an idea and other people react emotionally to that idea and you begin to build your connection with those people until you get to the point where they trust you enough to buy what you are selling.

There are big mistakes that can instantly ruin your reputation at work or even get you fired. But more commonly, it's the gradual accumulation of smaller offenses that keeps employees from getting ahead in their careers.

Bad habits, such as giving curt responses to emails or keeping to yourself all day, could be hurting your reputation — whether you realize it or not.

Here are 15 bad behaviors that will slowly erode your credibility and cost you in the end.

1. You don't adapt to the company culture. 

Every workplace operates under its own set of social customs. Not making an effort to assimilate into this culture can make you seem disapproving or judgmental. This holier-than-thou attitude is alienating to coworkers and makes it seem like you don't care about forming positive relationships in the office.

2. You make excuses.

Not taking responsibility for your mistakes and failures will catch up with you. Waiting until the day a project is due to explain why you're behind, for example, tells your boss that you can't manage your time well.

3. You do the bare minimum.

Even if you always meet deadlines and consistently turn in quality work, doing only the bare minimum makes you seem complacent. On the other hand, looking for opportunities instead of waiting for them to fall into your lap shows your boss that you're driven and care about your future at the company. 

4. You don't follow through.

When you fail to do what you say you're going to do, from restocking the printer to copy editing your neighbor's report, you garner a reputation for being unreliable. Keeping your word shows that you're accountable and can be trusted with more responsibilities when it comes time to be considered for a promotion.  

5. You dress like a slob.

Once you're settled into a position, it can be easy to let your appearance fall by the wayside. However, failing to look put-together undermines your credibility and authority and may make you seem like you don't care. Remember the age-old saying: Dress for the job you want. 

6. You're a pessimist.

If you're habitually sporting a bad attitude, you become a nuisance to your boss and can drag down your team. Constantly whining and complaining won't make you pleasant to be around, and certainly won't entice your boss to keep you around for long. 

7. You ignore coworkers.

Forming friendships with your colleagues is just as important as cultivating relationships with higher-ups. Strive to be known and well-liked, so that coworkers want to share valuable information with you and help you when you need it.

8. You're defensive.

Your boss doesn't expect you to be perfect, but getting defensive when receiving negative feedback makes you look unprofessional. If you're unwilling to listen to constructive criticism, it tells your boss that you're unlikely to push yourself to improve. 

9. You procrastinate.

Putting off projects until the last minute not only puts stress on you, it hinders the progress of every other person relying on your portion of the work. If something goes wrong, you'll likely be the first one blamed. 

10. You write brusque emails.

No matter how friendly you are in person, terse language can easily be misconstrued in an email. Even if it's unintentional, rude emails immediately sour your reputation around the office and keep others from wanting to interact with you. 

11. You don't make meaningful contributions.

Saying something in a meeting just for the sake of speaking doesn't add anything productive. Instead, prepare ahead of time, and remember quality over quantity when sharing ideas.  

12. You're always late.

Frequent tardiness signifies to coworkers that something else is more important to you and that you don't value their time. It paints you as disrespectful and uncaring, making people wary of trusting you. No matter what it takes, always find a way to be punctual. 

13. You never stop talking.

Yes, it's great to get to know your coworkers, but if you're constantly socializing, it prevents everyone around you from getting their work done. Keep the chatter to your lunch hour and breaks to avoid annoying others and becoming the person no one wants to work with.  

14. You ignore emails.

Failing to answer emails in a reasonable timeframe not only frustrates those who need responses from you, it signifies to colleagues that they aren't worth your time, can cause you to miss deadlines, and generally paints you as unprofessional. Although answering each one as soon as it's received is impractical, making a conscious effort to stay on top of your inbox goes a long way. 

15. You're rude.

Doing good work doesn't matter if no one wants to work with you. Not only does rudeness alienate coworkers, but most managers won't tolerate abrasive and inconsiderate employees. Remember, being polite is a key to winning people over. 

SEE ALSO: Recruiters Reveal The 5 Most Common Career Mistakes

Join the conversation about this story »

The principle of temporal depreciation applies to many things in life, like the value of money and biological aging. And it also applies to one of the most discussed topic of the decade – data. Simply put, your data today holds more value than your data tomorrow. Along with the obstacles with Big Data, data decay makes data analytics even more so challenging.

Within data decay, deteriorating client database has been a common challenge for businesses. In a 2001 survey, more than 70% of business employees said they had at least one change to their personal contact information, whether it was a phone number, email, or address. And a more recent study by Hubspot found that the natural degradation of marketing databases can cause a business to lose 1 in every 5 contacts.

The financial losses to data decay are huge. UK businesses reportedly spend $346 million a year sending out promotional mail to incorrect addresses.

There is a number of inevitable reasons to data decay – business contacts change emails for every time they move companies and people change names, commonly due to changes in marital status.

There is no magical solution to eliminate stale data. But there are a few preventative measures businesses can take to extend its value.

Leverage Cloud And Mobile Technology

Manual data entry is archaic. Unfortunately, there are many businesses that still rely on it. The task is arduous and the process is not safe from human error: data is gathered in paper or digital forms and depending on operations, passed to another point of contact who inputs them into spreadsheets, then only to be shared with others. From the time it takes from collection to analysis, analysis to execution, the data has already decayed. Hence, the cloud. Leveraging cloud and mobile technology is crucial in buying you time. It essentially extends the life of your data from beginning to end.

Trim The Data

Another way to stave off decay is to reevaluate what data you are actually gathering. For example, if your business only sends advertising materials through email, you may not need all your clients’ physical addresses. Having smaller amounts of data at the onset will help you declutter when the time comes to clean up your existing data.

Check The Health Of Your Data

Although the causes of data decay are nearly impossible to eliminate, you can be proactive about ensuring the quality of your data. Some software tools enable employees to fill out customized forms with clients. By periodically checking up on your clients’ information when you see them, you can delete your old list and export a new one into Excel or another organizational tool. All data will decay, but by performing a refresher every few weeks or months, you will make future evalautions easier.

Small and medium businesses face a number of inevitable challenges. Because data decay is a perpetual problem with inevitable causes, businesses need to take a proactive role in ensuring their data quality is up to par. By automating entry where possible, limiting data gathering, and performing periodical checkups, your business will gain the competitive edge that healthy data quality provides.

With the rapid growth of wearables, and with more devices entering the online space every day, the “Internet of Things” (IoT) is a hot topic consuming business and tech conventions like wildfire. Though wearable gadgets like Google Glass have largely been brushed aside as superfluous devices, according to Pew Research, nearly 83% of tech experts believe that the use of embedded and wearable devices will be more widespread and will prove to be beneficial by 2025. One of the expected trends of 2015 is the expansion of Internet of Things as companies seek better ways to manage all the data those devices provide.

You may ask, “Does it really matter for my business?” The answer is: yes, it does. But, how? What is the real reason that Internet of Things exists and does your business need to consider it while planning for growth and tech for the future? Absolutely. There should be some planning around it, but the direct impact is going to have more to do with evolution than it does with the mere idea of IoT. Let’s see how IoT may positively influence your business.

Business intelligence will improve. Managing Big Data and extracting meaningful information out of it has been one of the biggest challenges for businesses. IoT could make it easier for you to collect more relevant information from the depths of the Internet. With IoT in action, you’ll have data rushing in from all corners – homes, offices, hospitals, shopping centers, gas stations, and every other imaginable space. All of that sensor data will present a terrific opportunity for businesses. Business will be able to track the analytics they would need to improve their business strategy, and customer experience. They could get real-time feedback, monitor customer behavior, review product performance, track loyalty, etc. But, the sooner businesses get started with a data-driven infrastructure, the better they’ll be at capturing data that makes sense for them. Incidentally, a few months ago, I came across this amazing infographic that shows what the future of data collection will look like with IoT playing its part.

There will be more opportunities to create better customer experiences. With intelligent devices being able to “talk” to each other, we are gradually moving towards an era of hyper-connectedness – an era where customers will be even more empowered, connected, and well-informed than they are already. Today’s consumers have pretty high expectations from businesses in terms of response and reaction times. As such, the most obvious benefits of IoT with regard to customer experience would be the elimination of long wait times, faster troubleshooting, and immediate access to customer data, to name a few. Your business’ customer engagement is rooted in your understanding of their needs. Your understanding will be enhanced by IoT.

New revenue streams will be created. As IoT brings changes to the business landscape, there will be a growing demand for new products and services that are compatible with the changes. Businesses will have new opportunities to develop these products and services, thus creating revenue streams that were previously non-existent. No doubt, many businesses will emerge and many others will diversify as a result.

Productivity will receive a boost. We are a tech-driven culture. The idea of being monitored by smart technology in exchange for free products, services, or some kind of value addition is no longer a foreign concept. Not to mention, as humans, we inherently seek rewards. That desire fuels the concept of gamification, which is essentially the application of game elements in real life situations. Using gamification strategies in business can be a great way to improve employee engagement. Engaged employees are more productive and efficient. IoT will also enhance collaboration. (This statement can be verified by the Evolving Workforce survey findings.)

With IoT there is a new pool of information and data, as everything we do is connected and measurable. While this new force can be directed in many positive ways, Businesses that want to reap substantial benefits should ideally start planning now for a super-connected workplace powered by the IoT.

Have you noticed the Internet of Things beginning to impact your business? In what ways do you think it will continue to grow? We would love to hear from you.

[Photo Credit: Creative Commons]

The enterprise Internet of Things will be the largest of the three main IoT sectors  — enterprise, home, government — as defined by BI Intelligence, Business Insider's research service.

That's because businesses have the capital and reach to purchase IoT devices and services on a large scale. They will see benefits from the IoT accrue fast enough to spur further adoption and investment. 

IoT devices range from robot-like units to tiny chips that hook into industrial or office machines allowing the user to fully control the device, or merely collect specific data from it.

• The enterprise will be the largest IoT device market: There will be a total of 23.3 billion IoT devices connected by 2019 across all sectors, we estimate. Of those 23.3 billion devices, the enterprise market will account for around 40% of the total or 9.1 billion devices, making it the largest of the three IoT sectors.
• The enterprise IoT will be massive on its own, larger than the mobile market strictly defined. That also means that in 2019 the enterprise IoT alone will be larger the entire smartphone and tablet markets combined, which BI Intelligence forecasts will include around 6 billion devices by 2019. 

In a new IoT report from BI Intelligence, we size the enterprise IoT market, noting the breakdown between hardware versus software spending, and determine which industries will upgrade to the IoT first. We examine how businesses are already using IoT systems and what barriers might still stand in the way of IoT enterprise upgrades.

Access The Full Report By Signing Up For Risk-Free Trial Today>>

Here are more of the key findings from the BI Intelligence report: 

• The enterprise sector will account for 39% of the roughly 23 billion active IoT devices we expect by the year 2019. We believe it will be the largest of the three main IoT markets including enterprise, home, and government. 
• Spending on enterprise IoT products and services will reach $255 billion globally by 2019, up from $46.2 billion this year, according to our estimates. This represents a 5-year CAGR of 40%. 
• Enterprise IoT software providers will earn far more than those who provide IoT hardware. Enterprise-focused IoT software and services sales will reach $43.9 billion by year-end, while hardware will account for about $2.3 billion in revenue, according to our estimates.
• The manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and information sectors will invest the most in IoT systems and devices in the next five years, we estimate. Manufacturers are currently the leading industry to use IoT devices and we estimate there total IoT investment will reach $140 billion over the next 5 years. 
• The primary barriers to installing the IoT within businesses include the high costs for installation and increasing vulnerability to a cyber attack.

The full report: 

• Examines how many IoT devices the enterprise will use and what those devices will look like
• Forecasts the value that businesses will see from implementing IoT solutions and the amount that will be spent upgrading
• Analyzes executives sentiment towards the IoT and how they are already putting the IoT to work
• Examines which industries are at the forefront of implementing the IoT and how they use the data the IoT generates
• Provides specific case studies of how businesses are using IoT systems in their workplace

For full access to all BI Intelligence reports, briefs, and downloadable charts on the Internet of Things and mobile computing markets, sign up for a trial membership. 

Join the conversation about this story »

Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

As the collapse in oil prices picked up speed in recent months, it set off a debate about the overall impact—positive or negative—that lower oil will have on Canada.

You can put David Wolf, a former Bank of Canada adviser and now portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments Canada, firmly in the “it’s going to suck” camp. He spelled out his concerns in an investment commentary on Wednesday entitled “Canada’s oil slick,” and one of the biggest threats he sees is to house prices.

Rising resource prices over the last decade set in motion several “virtuous circles,” he writes. Pricier oil boosted incomes of businesses, governments and consumers across the country, even for those with no direct ties to the energy sector. The oil boom drove the value of the loonie to record highs, which helped to keep inflation in check, despite an economy firing on all cylinders. That, in turn, meant the Bank of Canada could keep interest rates down. The result, Wolf observes:

has been mutually reinforcing increases in Canadian confidence, spending, borrowing and asset prices, resulting, most notoriously, in record levels of Canadian household debt taken on against overvalued residential property across much of the country. These linkages are all difficult to quantify, which is why they’re under-appreciated. But we know they’ve all been working in the same direction—up.

And now they’ll all work in the same direction—down.

Those virtuous circles are set to turn “vicious,” he warns—declining incomes, plunging confidence, falling asset prices (both real estate and equities).

Yet now, unlike during the 2008-09 oil collapse, if house prices begin to tank, the Bank of Canada has very little room to stimulate the economy, what with its benchmark rate already at just one per cent, where it’s been for more than three years. Besides, if it slashed rates (can you even use that verb with such tiny wiggle room? Perhaps snipped is more appropriate), it would only worsen household debt imbalances the Bank has warned are the biggest domestic threat to the economy.

Wolf’s recommendation to investors: Steer clear of Canadian stocks, which are likely to underperform U.S. equities for some time to come. (See here for more on that.)

As for everyone else, what can we say? Hold on, things are about to get bumpy.

The post Why the oil crash is bad for Canadian house prices appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Making sure your leads cross the conversion gap

In 1897, a London newspaperman accidentally confused Mark Twain for the author’s seriously ill cousin, giving rise to false speculation that Twain had one foot in the grave.

In fact, he would live another 13 years.

“The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Twain famously said, after getting wind of the misinformation.

In B2B demand generation you can apply Twain’s witticism to the poor salesperson—whose demise has also been “greatly exaggerated.”

Although buyers purport to make much of their decision before seeing a sales rep, it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily ready to make a change when they actually engage.

It’s a good reminder for demand generation programs leaders that salespeople still matter. The onus is still on your field representation to create a qualified opportunity and convert that interest into real business.

Faulty assumptions lead to wrong content

If you’ve assumed buyers are mostly done with their journey by the time they meet with a rep, you might be giving your salespeople the wrong content for the wrong conversation.

In this webcast, learn how you can create a better hand-off between your self-service demand gen conversations and your follow-up sales-guided opportunity creation conversations.

If you don’t do this, you risk losing leads to the conversion gap, the abyss between demand generation and sales enablement and training where conversion rates suffer and good leads go to die.

The webcast also features a case study with ADP, a provider of cloud-based human resources solutions, describing how they overcame the conversion gap.

Tim Riesterer, our chief strategy and marketing officer, Patrick Flanigan, VP sales enablement, ADP, discuss how to tell a consistent and visually compelling story that turns high-quality leads into real business opportunities.

If you want to learn more about how ADP developed a culture of great coordination across their marketing, sales enablement and sales training departments, check out this video from the 2014 Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference in Chicago.

Debate rages between sales experts that advocate cold calling is “dead” or “dying”, and those who see it as  “rising from the dead”, “not dead”, or only “semantically dead.” The truth is, sales tactics traditionally referred to as cold calling are still very much alive and is an important strategy utilized by sales management in high-growth companies (Profit Guide, June 2013). (In fact, within a day of downloading one of the studies mentioned below we received a call from a sales rep!)

To help you keep up to date, we’ve hand-picked the most recent, credible and key statistics about cold calling, buyers, salespeople and the buying process. Understanding these modern factors and harnessing the new technologies available is critical to you and your sales team’s cold calling success in 2015 and beyond.

Statistics About The Buyer’s Changing Journey

1) By 2018, 20% of B2B sales teams will go “virtual,” resulting in improved pipeline conversion rates. Buyers won’t talk to sales until late in the game…Enter the “virtual” sales rep. (IDC, December 2014)

2) 67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally. (SiriusDecisions, July 2013)

3) In a typical firm with 100-500 employees, an average of 7 people are involved in most buying decisions. (Gartner Group)

4) Many buying teams will include people that “own” and need to be convinced of different things, including the business buyer, financial buyer, technical buyer, risk buyer, and user buyer. (Gartner Group, September 2014)

5) Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (The Annuitas Group)

Statistics About The Influence Of Social Media

6) Business buyers reported the greatest benefit of social media as gaining greater confidence and comfort in their decisions. (IDC, February 2014)

7) 75% of the B2B buyers studied and 84% of C-level/vice president executives use information from social media and interaction on social networks to make purchase decisions. (IDC, September 2014)

8) 72.6% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quota 23% more often. (Aberdeen Group)

9) You are 70 percent more likely to get an appointment with someone on an “unexpected sales call” if you are in a common LinkedIn group than if you aren’t. (Vorsight)

10) 71% of the 100 companies surveyed using sales gamification reported an 11%-50% increase in measured sales performance. (Salesforce, August 2013)

Statistics About Sales Performance

11) 75% of the more than 1,000 senior executives surveyed by DiscoverOrg said they have taken an appointment or attended an event that came from a cold call or email. (DiscoverOrg)

12) 42% of sales reps feel they do not have the right information before making a sales call. (Lattice Engines, March 2013)

13) 58% of buyers report that sales reps are unable to answer their questions effectively. (Forbes Insight)

14) Teleprospectors make between 100 and 500 calls for every lead they qualify. (SiriusDecisions, June 2014)

15) In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts. (Telenet and Ovation Sales Group)

16) The average salesperson only makes 2 attempts to reach a prospect. (SiriusDecisions)

17) 87% of employees are not actively engaged in their jobs. (Gallup, March 2014)

It’s clear the telephone is still an essential tool in the sales dialogue, and the preceding findings can help you formulate an effective outreach strategy going forward.

*Photo creative commons via Pixabay

The post 17 Statistics To Improve Cold Calling In 2015 appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting | Sales Recruiter.

Marketing certainly has changed through the years! From carrier pigeon to pony express to letters, land lines, mobile phones, and social media, the tools, and the ways in which clients prefer to do business, has evolved. These transformations have allowed small business owners to go toe-to-toe with the Goliath of their industry.

Inbound marketing, in particular, levels the playing field and allows potential clients to connect with you in a way that better suits them. In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of your prospects would rather learn about your business through an article or a blog than an ad.

In July of 2014, Harvard Business Reviewreported that Nine out of ten organizations are now marketing with content – that is, going beyond the traditional sales pitches and instead enhancing brands by publishing (or passing along) relevant information, ideas, and entertainment that customers will value.

It was 2009 when I first heard about content marketing and its ability to attract clients. In Get Content Get Customers: Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett shared this revolutionary approach to lead generation. It was right-for-the-times!

Your small business blog is at the center of the content marketing revolution.

Think Outside the Blog

With all the exciting marketing adaptions, there is still one thing that hasn’t changed –  the time small business entrepreneurs have for marketing.

The best way to beat the buzzer before your marketing time runs out is to repurpose your blog content. Here are a few of our favorite ideas to stretch time and grow your business:

#1 Show off your expertise

You’re smart, right? What’s sad is most people don’t know how brilliant you are because they have yet to meet you. One of the best ways to display your chops is by sharing your know-how and expertise through your blog.

#2 Republish content on other blogs or websites

Many industry-related sites, where potential clients hang out, are on the lookout for solid, well-written, informative content for their readers. Contact them about syndicating your blog or publishing an article for their newsletter.

#3 Educate new and current clients

Undoubtedly, your business is a treasure-trove of good information. Why not use blog articles to inform new and current clients how to obtain the best value from your services.

Everett Andrew Marketing does a bang-up job of creating blog content that reminds clients they made the right choice when Everett Andrew Marketing was engaged for their online ad campaigns.

#4 Share on social media

Social media is here to stay, despite the naysayers. Fans of social media are continually snacking on information. Why not use content from your blog to satisfy their appetite?

#5 Turn blog posts into e-books

Whether used as a revenue generator or a lead generator, according to the largest distributor of e-books, Smashwords “we’re still in the early stages of the e-book self-publishing revolution.”

#6 Create checklists, infographics, online charts, slideshare, etc.

Tied into the idea of cerebral snacking, blog articles can easily be turned into checklists, infographics, or other platforms for easier and faster consumption.

#7 Convert blog content into video

Consumers have spoken and they want more video. In fact, “brand video is becoming a preferred way to learn about products and services,” according to Parade Media Group.

#8 Fashion several blogs into a newsletter

Email newsletters remain a preferred way for some clients to acquire information. Rather than create an entirely new piece of content for your newsletter, save time and pull several blogs together around a theme for your next newsletter.

#9 Transform blog content into a webinar, seminar, or workshop

Don’t let content just sit on your blog. Turn your nuggets of wisdom into a webinar or workshop that generates leads or revenue – or both!

#10 Add your latest blog to your email signature

Why not share your expertise with each email sent? See how Wisestamp syndicates your latest blog article in every email you send. Now that’s what I call “using time wisely.”

Marketing has changed. Marketing tools have changed. Clients and prospects have changed. Have you?

What other ways have you repurposed blog content to grow your small business?

The Art and Science of Building Contact Lists Using Your Website

Your website is your business’ virtual storefront, and can be a wonderful place for people to learn about your products or services, read about your company history or maybe even make a purchase. But beyond this, your website also can serve many other purposes. One of the best functions for a company site is to draw in—and then capture—leads. And no one needs to tell you that the leads of today are tomorrow’s loyal customers.

Here’s a look at three ways you can successfully (and non-intrusively) generate the leads that visit your website:

1. Look the Part

When it comes to your online presence, aesthetics are important. After all, your prospects are going to see the images and copy you present online and make immediate judgments about your brand. In order to entice website visitors to divulge personal contact information in some way on your site, play to the visual. The images you use on your home page especially, but also other Web pages, can make or break the likelihood someone will stay on your page longer. And the more time spent on your site equates to a better chance they’ll convert into a customer.

You don’t need an expensive photographer, either. You can use a photo service like Shutterstock to get quality images that move your visitors where you want them to go. You can also use Skillfeed, a site that provides helpful tutorial videos, to keep your technical and creative skills in tip-top shape when it comes to photo editing, graphic design, video and more.

Be sure you’re using the right graphics and images to move prospects down your page, or direct them to a contact information form. Let’s say you’re a bakery. Maybe one of your pages includes recipes that visitors can try. Instead of simply posting the text of the recipes, include pictures that depict a pre-baking setup and a finished result. At the end, next to the finished dessert, you can include a webform. If a prospect gives you an email address, you offer to send them that recipe. By using images, you’ve made this visitor spend a little more time on that page and become a little more intrigued by—and invested in—what your company does.

2. Keep Some Content Under Lock and Key

As the content your business produces becomes a more significant factor in drawing individuals to your website in the first place, you should consider guarding some of it. Blog posts and less intensive forms of content can be free, but think about putting your longer content behind a wall. For instance, if you have an in-depth whitepaper you think prospects can benefit from reading, think about employing a popup. Some businesses have seen conversion rates increase almost 15 percent on average by going the popup route, according to Omnicore.

One way to do this is to have a popup appear on your home page when a visitor clicks on something that would signal interest in the whitepaper’s topic. For example, if you have a whitepaper written about how to train employees in a SaaS business, the popup could appear when an individual clicks on a blog post about maintaining confidentiality when employees must know tech secrets. By asking for an email address and name in exchange for viewing the whitepaper, your prospect gets information and more exposure to your company. And the best part—you have another name and email address to add to your vault of future customers.

3. Offer Something of Value

In addition to giving valuable content to visitors in exchange for some contact information, another great way to capture leads is by presenting deals to those who visit your site. It’s been found that over 70 percent of consumers say that sales or price discounts aid in their decision to buy from certain businesses, according to a recent NRF survey.

Consider a sidebar on your site that offers first time customers a price break if they join your mailing list. If you’re a handmade sweater shop, for example, you could give a little more than just a discount. Product-based businesses, as opposed to those in service industries, have a little more to play with as incentives. A way to use this to your advantage is by promising a free sweater to any new prospects that invite a friend to opt in to your email list. The point is to entice new visitors to freely give you ways to follow up with them (and others in their networks), while making them feel like they walked away with value themselves.

There are many ways to capture leads on your website, and you can get carried away in devising creative methods to do so. Sometimes, though, the most direct and proven methods work most optimally. Be sure to use compelling images that help your visitors navigate your site the way you want them to, guard some of your longer form content and offer discounts or promotions in exchange for contact information. You’ll not only have a more robust list of prospects, but those prospects will also view your company more favorably since they’ve also received something beneficial in return.