It takes a lot to truly shake up the watch world.

Apple is attempting to do it with the Apple Watch, due out next year. 

But before the Apple Watch was announced, another well-known brand captured the attention of the horological universe in dramatic fashion.

It was Swatch. 

Yes, Swatch — maker of all those witty plastic timepieces that everyone wore in the 1980s, and that still have a following in both low and high places today.

Swatch is actually the Swatch Group, which includes names such as Omega, Breguet, and Rado. It's a huge force in Swiss watchmaking and, with the creation of the Swatch brand several decades ago, is often credited with saving that country's watch industry in the face of an onslaught of inexpensive quartz timepieces from Asia.

CREATING A SENSATION

The watch is the Sistem51 — an innovative and radically new automatic timepiece that's purely Swiss and purely Swatch.

The Sistem51 only costs $150 and went on sale in the US late this year. It created a sensation at the big annual watch show in Basel in 2013.

"Jaws dropped," said Carlo Giordanetti, Swatch's Creative Director. "No one thought it would be possible."

So what exactly did Swatch manage to achieve with Sistem51?

It reduced the number of parts in the movement to 51, about half of what a typical automatic watch requires.

An automatic movement is powered by the movement of the wearer. The finest watches in the world are automatics, costing tens and even hundreds of thousands. Their movements — complicated miniature machines — are a source of fascination to watch collectors and enthusiasts.

There are plenty of cheap automatics out there. You can pick up a perfectly good one for less than $100. It won't be anything to write home about, but it won't need a new battery every few years, either.

And it won't be as innovative as Sistem51. 

"51 became a target," said Giordanetti, who has been with Swatch since 1987. " It was a challenge for our engineers to get the same number of components in an automatic as in a quartz."

ELIMINATING COMPLICATION

The overriding goal was to eliminate complexity. For the record, complications are what the traditional Swiss watch industry thrives on. More complications can make for a far more valuable and desirable watch. Quartz watches, by contrast, are fairly simple: they use a quartz crystal and electric oscillation to generate very precise timekeeping. 

Automatic watches use mechanical action to wind a mainspring, which powers the timekeeping function.

There's no fastidious watchmaker laboring over a bench with tiny tools and a sure, practiced hand producing the Sistem51. Instead, there are robots. The entire assembly process is automated. The movement is constructed around a single, central screw.

No shortage of traditional watchmaker know-how went into creating the watch, according to Giordanetti. It was, however, updated, forward-thinking know-how.

"There were 25 to 35 young people involved, all from watchmaking families," he said. "No other brand could have done this."

The traditional Swiss watch industry is doing quite well these days, supported by global demand for luxury timepieces from Rolex, Patek Philippe, and other big names. It's all about automatics, so Swatch saw an opportunity to use its heft to introduce something radically new into this market — all while keeping intact the brand's affection for whimsy and irreverence.

IT'S NOT ABOUT SHOWING OFF

"It was an innocent provocation," Giordanetti said of the roll-out of Sistem51 in Basel in 2013.

But it was more than that. "It was emotional," the Swatch veteran added.

Apart from watchmaking innovation, Sistem51 also represents another core Swatch value: cheerful unpretentiousness. 

"It's not about showing off," Giordanetti explained. "It's all about lightness. A Swatch collector wants to look at his or her watch and smile two or three times a day."

The current lineup of Sistem51 watches — there are four — has a face design vaguely evocative of astronomy, emulating the arrangement of the movement. The movement itself can been seen in action through a clear caseback (it's hermetically sealed and doesn't require servicing). 

I tried all four and decided that I liked the "Sistem Blue" version with a soft, silicon strap best ("Sistem Black," with a simple black leather strap, is the most conservative, while "Sistem White" and its festive aesthetic is the least serious; "Sistem Red" is Sistem Blue in a hotter color). I sported a Swatch for several years back in the 1990s and was immediately reminded by Sistem Blue of how light and easy these watches are to wear. 

"You can hide it," Giordanetti said, and he's right. This isn't a watch that will live on display below your shirt cuff. It's the farthest thing from a chunky, stainless-steel dive watch you can get. It's the anti-Rolex Submariner. But like the Rolex, it's still a completely Swiss watch.

And at $150, it's also the most affordable all-new, super-innovative all-Swiss movement you can lay your hands on.

It's obviously not for everybody — the translucent plastic case is very Swatch and will compel some to compare the Sistem51 to a toy. But there will be more examples to choose from in 2015, according to Giordanetti. Slightly less witty face designs are on the horizon. You could wear these Swatches with business suits.

Sistem51 is a piece of watchmaking history, as important as the arrival of Swatch quartzes were in the 1980s. The Apple Watch will be a big deal. But Apple isn't the only innovator in watches these days!

SEE ALSO: I Didn't Drive The Corvette Stingray, I Drove Its Engine

Join the conversation about this story »

You’ve heard it before—your website is your online showroom. It’s just as important for potential customers to browse your inventory selection online as it is on the lot. But there is another medium to consider, one that is becoming more influential as a selling tool—your mobile site.

Over 50% of shoppers use mobile devices to research and purchase, and your dealership isn’t the exception. Just a few quick facts can convince you it’s time to dedicate resources for your mobile strategy:

• 51% of car buyers who research using a mobile device ultimately buy a car
• 49% of mobile auto searchers even end up making a purchase the same day of their research
• 44% said they use mobile devices to find the location of a car dealership
• 36% used their mobile device to look up a dealer’s phone number
• 67% of car buyers search for local business using mobile devices

We know that having a mobile site is essential. You most likely have one built in to your existing platform. But just having a mobile site is not enough—not for the consumer, and not for the search engines. If you’re looking to revamp your digital strategy for 2015, you have a few mobile options to choose from.

Responsive Vs. Separate Mobile Site

More numbers to consider: 67% of users claim they are more likely to purchase from a mobile-friendly website. The argument between responsive design and a separate site is your next step. Both selections have their pros and cons, but the choice that will benefit your business depends on numerous factors–the purpose of the website, your intended target audience, and your SEO strategy.

Whichever option you choose, your design should be tailored to mobile users. Responsive web design means having one website that immediately fits the device screen, no matter what device is being used. The content, navigation, and overall design is modified to provide the same experience across all devices that you’d have with the desktop site. A responsive site should allow for screen size, touch screens, and speed. Content should be fast-loading and easy to read, no matter what the size.

Mobile sites can serve as a second branding initiative for dealers to promote specific content, models, or marketing. However, it’s difficult to create a separate mobile site that carries a fluid design across all sizes and devices. This is a significant feature to keep in mind–it is difficult to predict every device your customers will use to view your site.

Responsive For SEO And User Experience

Though the pros and cons are worth considering for both options, using responsive design is beneficial for both your online consumers and your SEO strategy.

Google proclaimed that responsive design is recommended for the best mobile experience and overall best practice across all industries. Because of their single URL and identical HTML, Google can crawl and index the site easier and faster. Having content in one place, on one site, will also benefit its capability to be shared and spread across multiple platforms.

If you’re keeping your SEO strategy in mind, responsive design should be on the top of your list. Having separate desktop and mobile sites means strategizing and implementing two separate SEO campaigns, with content, keyword targeting, and conversion optimization. We know you don’t have a lot of time on your hands as is—having a responsive site is an advantage to the perpetually busy dealership.

I know your main concern is your customer base—and they will thank you for getting on the responsive design train. Great user experience starts with design and ends with usability and ease– across all devices and screen sizes. Someone shopping on your desktop showroom may stumble across a model that they call up later on their mobile. If they can access your inventory and research pages quickly because the design and layout is identical, your reputation will benefit and their trust in the buying process will skyrocket.

Clearly the argument for usability goes beyond responsive vs. mobile site, but if you’re beginning to look ahead for next year’s marketing strategy, it should be the first item on your list.

To learn more about how responsive design can benefit your SEO strategy and improve the mobile car shopping experience for your customers, download your copy of this complimentary eBook, The Business Owner’s Guide To Responsive Website Design.

The amount of time, effort and research that can go into building marketing strategies for your ecommerce business may seem intimidating. Before you get too bogged down in the details of which social platforms produce the highest conversions for your store or which product photo editing technique produces the most likes and shares, make sure you’re capitalizing on the marketing tactics that are low-hanging fruit. Not all brand awareness or conversion optimization efforts cost money, require obsessive amounts of creativity or take a ton of time.

Twitter is quickly becoming a more valuable social media platform for retailers, thanks to the introduction of the “Buy” button. Plus, the platform is a great, easy way to stay up-to-date on trending topics, offer advice, get feedback from customers and build an overall engaged online audience. And, all you need is your expert online store chops to do so.

Expertise Makes for Followable Tweets

Twitter is a curation platform, allowing users to follow people and brands they know and like in order to create a home feed that is relevant to them. For those looking to grow a large Twitter following, staying relevant and on-topic is key. Expertise in a particular area makes for a large following.

Tweeting regularly about topics on which you are most knowledgeable will gain you followers. You can use free platforms like Buffer, Hootsuite and TweetDeck to plan out tweets throughout the day, as well as use the Twitter mobile app to send real-time updates to your followers throughout the day.

Of course, you can’t tweet in a vacuum. You need to talk to others on Twitter in order to get them to talk to or follow you, and Twitter chats are perfectly suited to help you do this.

What is a Twitter Chat?

Twitter chats, also known as Tweet chats, are a great tool for any small business looking to connect with their target audience or with those that influence their target audience. Twitter chats are focused on a topic that is decided in advance and use a specific hashtag to help users follow along. Typically, the chats are hosted once a week. The hosting brand will ask a question (designated with Q1, Q2, etc.) and allow users to answer (with A1, A2, etc.).

Twitter chats are good at bringing together niche audiences: people who are already decidedly interested in the topic at hand, active on social media and looking to find new people to follow. In other words, without any time or effort on your part, a Twitter chat has segmented your audience, told you what is relevant to them, and is giving you a chance to influence them.

How to Find a Twitter Chat

Finding a Twitter chat is pretty easy. You can use one of the following sites to search for topics relevant to your audience and expertise. Plus, there is a weekly #StyleChat on Tuesdays that often makes Twitter’s most trending topics, perfect for online stores selling anything from apparel to accessories and more, as well as a #SmallBizChat that occurs every Wednesday evening, perfect for online stores of all sizes and categories.

You can use these resources to search for and participate in relevant Twitter chats to your business strategy:

• Chat Salad is a great place to find chats currently happening or taking place soon
• Tweet Reports has a listing of Twitter chats
• Twubs has an easy-to-read and thorough listing of chats
• And then there is this huge Google doc spreadsheet with hundreds of Twitter chats

How to Make a Twitter Chat Worth Your Time

Once you find a few Twitter chats of interest, here are 10 best practices to join the conversation and make sure you get the best engagement rate for your time spent.

1. Prepare your answers in advance. If the Twitter chat has pre-decided upon questions, come up with your answers beforehand, making them as short and sweet as possible. This will help save you time and stress on having to come up with answers once the question is asked on Twitter. To see if the chat releases its questions beforehand, simply follow the host on Twitter and look for links to their website that will explain the form and function of the particular Twitter chat. Do a little homework beforehand to get your best answers out as quickly as possible for maximum engagement.
2. Be the first to answer when possible. This usually leads to higher engagement.
3. Actively monitor both the hashtag and your mentions. If you aren’t using any Twitter monitoring platforms like TweetDeck, Twubs or Tchat, open your Twitter account dashboard in two different web tabs on your desktop. Type in the hashtag in the search bar on one tab and click “All” to see all tweets. In the second tab, monitor your mentions. This will help you see which tweets are getting the most traction.
4. Be polite, be quick, be short, but most of all, be helpful. Numbers and statistics share well on Twitter. Use quotes and photos, as well as very specific insider advice. If you know that your Kansas City store sells DVF-like wrap dresses for half the price, one that looks oddly similar to Kate Middleton’s from last week, don’t hold back on that information. And be sure to include a link.
5. Be honest, be humble. This is where your customer service will shine.
6. Respond to those who tweet back at you. Even if all you say is “Thank you” — people appreciate it.
7. Avoid selling your product unless it is especially relevant or helpful. The goal here is to position your brand as a thought leader and expert, not to immediately convert users. That will happen as they come to trust your input, week over week.
8. Engage with other chat participants. Like all chats, a Twitter chat is a give and take. Retweet, favorite and engage with other participants.
9. Following a Twitter chat, keep up your regular Twitter presence. Tweet at least once a day, if not more regularly, about topics similar to what the Twitter chat covered.
10. Look for Twitter chats outside the retail genre. Entrepreneur chats, local chats and tech chats also work great for a retail audience, and will expose you to reporters and brands often looking for local, socially active small businesses.

Overall, experiment and have fun with Twitter chats. Most occur during the lunch hour, enable you to pre-plan your content, and ultimately help to build your audience based on your own expertise – all without spending a dime.

Photo: Flickr, Andreas Eldh

A New Yorker explainer on why the airlines want to make you suffer has been making the social media rounds. It’s an excellent case study in how the airlines have created a miserable experience for passengers so they can build a profitable business based on charging […]

Want to see broadband’s future? Check out the airline industry originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2014.

Continue reading…

The deep thinkers at the Consumer Electronics Association have released a report forecasting the hot technology trends for 2015. But before we take a look, let’s reflect on the words of the CEA president, who writes: “Ideas are the juice that powers our economy.”

This raises some questions: What is the process by which ideas are liquefied? How many brainstorms does it take to make a cup of idea juice? Is it like oranges? Do you need, like, 30 of them?? Because, come on, that’s more trouble than any economy is worth.

Most important of all, let’s hope the existence of magical brain nectar doesn’t catch on with politicians. Otherwise, the 2015 federal campaign will be nothing but a parade of leaders proclaiming: Our party will invest in innovation so we can lead the world in mind milk and thought smoothies!

Now to the trends to watch for in 2015 . . .

The market for 3D printers will grow. Count me among those who are aware of the existence of the 3D printer—but don’t really get it. So you can “print” a pistol, or a sandwich, or maybe one day a new pancreas? That’s pretty amazing/terrifying. But there’s got to be a catch, right? I mean, I just spent $80 to replace the ink in my regular printer. I can’t imagine what I’m going to have to fork out for enough hair to print a full set of Kardashians.

The Internet of Things will take root in homes. According to the CEA, “The Internet of Things is arguably the hottest topic in technology, even if universal consensus has not been reached in defining exactly what ‘it’ is.” Got that, everyone? It’s time to get super-psyched about a nebulous concept of undetermined utility! WHO’S VAGUELY WITH ME TO SOME EXTENT??

Put simply, the so-called “I of T” envisions a world in which it is possible to connect anything and everything to the Internet. Bottom line: This is terrific news for people who have always yearned to update Facebook using a waffle maker. Moreover, wireless access to the computing capacity of the cloud will empower even the most mundane objects. Soon we will live in a world in which a simple toaster will have the ability to watch YouTube videos instead of doing its job.

According to appliance makers, the impetus behind this technology is “efficiency and productivity.” That sounds better than saying the impetus is “charging $3,500 for a fridge.” If nothing else, this trend will ensure that no one ever again answers a phone call from his or her parents. I spent three hours over there last year figuring out why the printer wasn’t working. I am NOT hooking up their can opener to the WiFi.

The market for wearable technology will explode. The forthcoming Apple Watch is just one of many wearable devices designed to track our physical activity and health. Ladies and gentlemen, we are, at most, six months away from 85 per cent of cocktail-party chitchat being about pulse rates and sleep cycles.

It’s an exciting time. Not long ago, I bought one of those wrist-worn fitness trackers and can tell you from first-hand experience: It totally changed my life. For instance, before wearing the tracker, I had no idea I could feel so lousy about myself for so many reasons. I hadn’t even considered the possibility I was terrible at walking. “Try to increase your step count,” it kept telling me. Sure, it got a little annoying—but that’s all in the past now. These days, the tracker would be more likely to say, “Hey, why is it so dark in this drawer where I’ve been for the past three months?”

Privacy will be further reduced as Big Data advances. We are swiftly moving toward a time when computer power and Internet bandwidth allow for real-time analysis of video and images. Even now, Google is teaching an algorithm to recognize human faces within live video feeds. According to reports, early results “are promising, as the algorithm has achieved a 17 percent success rate in identifying human faces—while also distinguishing them from the faces of cats.”

So, to sum up: The most advanced technology company in the world now possesses an artificial intelligence capable of occasionally telling the difference between a human and a kitten. Hmm, perhaps the dawn of the robot uprising will come a little later than we originally figured.

The post Scott Feschuk’s hottest, most inexplicable tech trends of 2015 appeared first on Macleans.ca.

The offices of RL Solutions, a health-care software company in Toronto, are fairly unorthodox. There’s the Ping-Pong table and the golf simulator, but what really sets it apart is the fully functional Irish pub on the first floor. The kegs slosh with Sleeman and Mill Street, while the fridges are stocked with even more varieties of drink, not all of them alcoholic. Employees drift in and out at all hours of the workday, taking a seat at one of the 15 stools at the bar. It’s not uncommon for a staffer to grab a beer at lunch or have a job-related conversation over drinks in the afternoon. “It’s a place for staff to go and release a little bit of stress, continue the work conversation and build camaraderie,” says CEO Sanjay Malaviya, taking a sip of his first beer of the day at 4:30 on a recent afternoon.

Most people would agree booze and the workplace no longer coexist. The free-pouring Mad Men days are long over. The fabled liquid lunch was already dying out by the mid-1970s, when then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter accused big corporations of writing off “the $50 martini lunch” at the expense of the working class. Order a glass of wine over lunch with a colleague or crack open a beer in the cafeteria today and get ready for a few puzzled stares.

There are obvious consequences to drinking on the clock: A study from the Journal of Consumer Psychology found that prospective hires who ordered a glass of wine during an interview were seen as less intelligent than those who abstained—even when the interviewer was indulging in a drink. But an alcoholic beverage consumed responsibly in the course of doing business can be beneficial, creating stronger social ties among co-workers. Moreover, the martini lunch is an opportunity for managers and clients to form personal bonds and talk about issues candidly and openly at a leisurely pace, free from the tyranny of meeting agendas and daily schedules.

Some business cultures elsewhere in the world still uphold this ideal. “With Kobo, we did a lot of business in Europe,” says Michael Serbinis, the founder of the e-reader company, who’s now working on his next venture, a health and wellness firm called League. “It was all about relationships, and those relationships couldn’t have been formed without dinners together and a glass of wine.” The head of one Italian company was a particularly gregarious and social fellow. “It was like a rite of passage, and whether he would decide to do business was dependent on how the dinner would go and whether I appreciated the wine and the conversation.”

At RL Solutions, Malaviya didn’t build the bar to provide access to alcohol; rather, he says it’s an extension of the laid-back, easygoing work culture that already existed. But the bar, which locks up at 6 p.m. (there’s also a breathalyzer on site), offers work-related benefits. “Everyday problems become easier to solve, and they get discussed more often,” he says. A few days prior to our interview, two programmers were having a heated debate about an arcane software issue. They came to the bar and settled the argument over a shot of vodka.

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There’s a reason such conversations can be productive. A study in Consciousness and Cognition published in 2012 found that test subjects (all men) who reached a blood alcohol concentration of 0.075—at least three drinks for a 160-pound guy—were better at creative problem-solving than their sober peers. That’s not to say we should all come in to work liquored up, but it does suggest that having a drink during the day can be for the greater good of the company.

As for Serbinis, he’s a little uncertain about how wine will factor into the health and wellness industry he’s working in now: “Maybe we’ll be doing green juices together.”

The post Bring back the two-martini lunch appeared first on Canadian Business.

With 2015 right around the corner, most businesses are by now aware of the upcoming UPS and FedEx dimensional weight pricing. This price change – which will impact all Ground shipments – will go into effect on December 29, 2014 for UPS and January 1, 2015 for FedEx.

To help clarify the impact of dimensional weight pricing, Endicia recently created a visual comparing shipping carriers’ rates once the new pricing goes into effect. Our blog post accompanying the visual provides a breakdown of what dimensional weight pricing is, how to calculate it, and other carrier options to consider. Here’s what you need to know –

When dimensional weight pricing goes into effect, shipping costs for UPS and FedEx will be charged based on the volume of a package in relation to its weight. This means that the cost for shipping large, lightweight products – like a purse or a backpack – will be significantly higher in 2015 than it is today.

If you are using FedEx or UPS Ground for shipping, it’s pivotal to determine now whether you will be impacted by dimensional weight pricing. To find out, follow these steps:

• Multiply the length, width and height of your package and divide it by 166 (the standard dimensional factor used by FedEx and UPS for domestic Ground shipments).
• Round this number up — this is your dimensional weight.
• Compare the dimensional weight to the actual weight of the package.
• Whichever of the two “weights” is higher is used to determine the shipping cost for the package.

If you discover that your ecommerce business will be impacted – it’s not too late. You still have time to consider other shipping options, such as USPS Priority Mail.

The Postal Service recently introduced lower rates for Priority Mail in September, making it an affordable shipping option for packages weighing between 1 and 40 pounds, and an excellent alternative to FedEx and UPS Ground services. In addition, USPS Priority Mail is faster than FedEx and UPS Ground, taking on average two days to deliver a package coast-to-coast, instead of five to six days. Since the USPS is not planning any price increase in January, you can enjoy these new Priority Mail rates well into the New Year.

Take a look at how USPS shipping rates compare to FedEx and UPS dimensional weight pricing in the chart below.

The year 2014 ushered in a new wave of what is often wrongly thought of as the “sharing economy.” It’s more accurately termed the Rental Economy—a collection of changes that have empowered anyone to loan out goods and labor at the touch of a screen.

This year saw a rise of focused yet decentralized startups making it possible for ordinary people to supplant the roles traditionally played by, for instance, taxi fleets and hotel chains.

Airbnb changed the game of hospitality by empowering the average person to rent out their homes or rooms to travelers at a cheaper price than hotels. Uber revolutionized taxi service by giving people the option of chauffeuring folks locally using their own cars. 

The beauty of these Rental Economy startups is that they should benefit both parties. Theoretically, occupants get to earn income using resources they already own while renters benefit from a cheaper and more convenient option compared to centralized businesses.

Both Airbnb and Uber have experienced terrific growth this year. In particular, Uber raised funds at a valuation of over $40 billion, making it among the largest startups in market-capitalization terms of all time.

Here’s how the Rental Economy infiltrated our daily lives in 2014.

Hitching a Ride

Ride-renting apps, like Uber, are offering affordable options for getting around conveniently without owning a car or using public transportation.

Because they don't pay to acquire and maintain a centralized fleet of cars, these taxi-like firms can afford to charge less than the average taxi, except during high-demand hours (aka surge pricing). Surge pricing incentivizes more Uber drivers to meet the demand during busy hours, the company says, although it also irritates lots of consumers. (It's even trying to patent the practice.)

The rise in popularity of affordable ride-renting apps has definitively disrupted the taxi markets in major cities. The price of big-city taxi medallions, required for drivers to operate a taxi, have fallen by 17% to 20% percent from their peak under pressure from Uber and rivals Lyft and Sidecar.

In addition to several protests, taxi drivers have retaliated with a competing on-demand, taxi-hailing app called Flywheel. Similar to Uber, Flywheel lets passengers call a cab from a centralized dispatch and even process payments.

Still, there seems to be no stopping ride-renting apps. In 2014, Breeze (formerly ZephyrCar), launched a new car-rental service for folks who want to earn money from Uber, Lyft or Sidecar but don’t actually own a car.

Breeze vets ride-renting driver applicants and then matches them with one of their vehicles to rent for weeks at a time. Breeze was conceived by a few Uber alumni as a solution to the rapid growth of the startup and its subsequent car-owner supply problem.

Renting a Car

New peer-to-peer car-renting startups are aiming to disrupt the car rental industry as well. A crowdsourced business model allows Relay Rides to offer competitive prices without membership fees. Its original competitor was Zipcar, an hourly ride-renting service with a centralized business model.

Mid-year, however, Relay Rides decided to compete directly with traditional car rental companies by switching from hourly to minimum one-day rentals.

Relay Rides even allows travelers to rent out their cars when they’re left idle at the airport.

In the future, the competitive pricing and convenient technology of these ride and car-renting apps could significantly chisel away demand for owning new and used cars.

A Place to Crash

By giving travelers a cheaper and more homey alternative to hotels, Airbnb is reshaping tourism in over 34,000 cities globally. The service allows ordinary people to rent out spare bedrooms to nomads, while allowing them the flexibility of choosing the dates and tenants.

One research paper by Boston University found, for instance, that in Texas, “a one percent increase in the site’s listing in a given market would result in a 0.05 percent decrease in quarterly hotel revenues, an estimate compounded by Airbnb’s growth.” The paper highlights that low-cost hotels take the biggest hit from Airbnb.

But why stop at homes? New startups are using Airbnb’s model for connecting renters and owners of other types of property as well.

ParkingPanda, for instance, lets anyone—from large parking garages to individuals who own their own space—rent out parking spots via its service. (It's not to be confused with startups like Sweetch that tried to entice people to "share" public parking spaces they didn't own to begin with.) LiquidSpace lets you rent out office space to freelancers or startup founders.

See also: A New Parking App Wants You To Share Something You Don't Own

Even your dog can get away for a weekend using DogVacay, a service that grew substantially in 2014 and which is now considering international expansion outside of the U.S. and Canada.

Getting the Goods

In addition to ride, car and space rental, startups are helping people rent out their goods on a focused marketplace.

One of the most groundbreaking examples of this is MuniRent, a marketplace that brings the Rental Economy to the government. It allows local municipalities and other government bodies to rent out equipment to neighboring governments, other agencies or even internally.

Until now, government agencies have spent large sums of money on heavy duty equipment (like excavators, street sweepers, forklifts, etc.), that spend a great deal of time left idle and depreciating in value.

There’s also no shortage of consumer-facing rental companies for turning ordinary things into a source of cash. Liquid (formerly Spinlister) lets you rent out your things, like bikes or snowboards, to others when they would be collecting dust in your garage.

On-Demand Delivery

Traditional on-demand delivery options have been limited to local pizza and Chinese takeout. A handful of tech companies have leveraged the Rental Economy to expand delivery of, well, just about anything. They typically employ a network of drivers in a given community to pick up and deliver goods to local customers within a certain time frame.

Postmates, an on-demand delivery startup, has garnered a community of over 6,000 freelance couriers on bikes, cars, or even foot, in over 18 U.S. cities. The company plans to let third parties build services or products on top of its on-demand technology.

And it’s not the only B2B delivery service. DeliveryCircle is a similar delivery startup that aims to use commuters who are already on the road to deliver packages given unused trunk space.

This year showed us that there is no shortage of viable ideas for peer-to-peer services, but this boom isn’t without limitations.

Barrier #1: Limited Supply

Depending on ordinary people to supply the goods or labor for a business can be a risky game when the business model requires tracking down a variety of skillsets. When the required skills are too varied, it can be harder to source the most relevant expertise. That’s why, the most successful Renting Economy companies aim to dominate one specific service, like Uber dominates taxi driving.

There's a big difference between dominating a market and trying to do something a lot more general.

TaskRabbit, for instance, requires outsourcing skilled tasks to other people. But the term “task” can mean anything, from tutoring to building IKEA furniture. This summer, the company’s all-things-to-all-people model ran into headwinds.

Originally, the company gave customers the freedom to choose their “taskers” as needed, while the taskers had the freedom to choose the jobs they wanted. Handyman types, for instance, could earn easy money helping folks who wrestle with IKEA furniture pieces for hours.

This summer, TaskRabbit decided to change its open-bidding business model to a less flexible one. Its outsourcers are now limited to a four-hour time window. They must choose a job category, enter a description and then employers can either pick from a generated list of taskers or let the TaskRabbit algorithm spit out a match.

The lack of flexibility and freedom resulted in a rush of negative feedback. The new system is likely easier to manage and expand than the peer-to-peer model TaskRabbit previously employed. But it's also significantly less, well, of a Rental Economy exemplar.

"I think [TaskRabbit is] making a bet that there are a lot of people that want to earn some extra money, and they don’t care how they do it,” Andrey Fradkin of the National Bureau of Economics Research told Caleb Garlin on Medium.

Barrier #2: Backlash from Those Disrupted

City regulators, often at the behest of big-industry incumbents, are still resisting the Rental Economy in many places.

Opponents of decentralized rental companies, including New York City and San Francisco, are afraid that Airbnb hosts could turn their homes into full-time hotels. Meanwhile, cities opposing Uber, like Portland and Las Vegas, insist that there should be more regulations and licensing for motor companies.

Most recently, Portland placed a ban on Uber for three months while City Hall leaders create a new policy for innovative technology network companies. Late this year, Nevada lawmakers temporarily suspended Uber’s unlicensed operations throughout the state.

Uber might face other rules. Lawmakers might  require it to implement stricter driver background checks in the wake of charges brought against a few Uber drivers for reckless driving and sexual assault.

On a more positive note, the end of 2014 marked one step forward for the Rental Economy when San Francisco finally made Airbnb legal in it city, after months of dispute. The new Airbnb Law, effective February 1, allows people to rent homes through space-renting apps if they reside in the property at least nine months out of the year.

New city rules, like those posed by San Francisco, could help shape the market for rental companies across the board. For now, it remains to be seen what Portland will cook up for Uber in 2015.

Do you see  other limitations of the Rental Economy going into 2015? Let us know in comments

Photos by Diane Greene Lent, Monika Hoinkis, Miguel Tejada Flores and Hakan Dahlstorm

The Sales Acceleration and Automation space is really just starting to heat up, and 2015 is set to be the year it really explodes. Just take a high level look at Marketing Automation for  a second. Two multi-billion dollar acquisitions in ExactTarget and Eloqua, two big IPOs in Marketo and HubSpot, and a nice acquisition of a bootstrapped company in Pardot. I see Sales Automation following in similar footsteps and we’re just now starting to scratch the surface.

As we near the end of 2014, what better timing than now for a Sales Hacker Bold Prediction article. We’ve spent the past year following Sales Automation and Acceleration trends and wanted to share our top 10 B2B Sales Trends We Think Will Hit Big in 2015.

#1 – The Year of The SDR

For a long time, the Sales Development Representative, also known as the SDR has been a role in which people care about vanity metrics and is almost solely activity driven. Managers caring only about things like the number of butts in seats, number of dials, talk time, etc. Training for an SDR has been minimal, and is dated in most cases. Sales has changed so much in the past few years, it can be hard to keep up. Traditional software hasn’t made their lives any easier, until now that is. More and more people are starting to put higher value on good SDRs. Companies are figuring out how to keep them motivated and focused on their career paths. Software is being built for the SDR. Events cater to the SDR, like our conferences and series events and our friends over at Salesloft are throwing a User Conf/SDR Conf in Q1 called Rainmaker.

The SDR role is the beginning of a career path in sales. Time to start getting these new salespeople set to succeed from the get go. This makes 2015, The Year of the SDR.

#2 – The Great Bundling of 2015

Ok, this one is pretty bold, but I do believe it will happen towards the end of 2015, if not, definitely in 2016. There are way too many small tools out there and not enough full platform plays. Tools that schedule emails, make appointments, send reminders. Some of the bigger sales software companies are building them into their more robust products, yet I still find myself using the alternatives. A lot of these companies are ripe to be acquired and bundled. Do we need this many outbound emailing or prospecting tools? At what point do they get swallowed up and integrated into something bigger. I recall having this convo with numerous sales execs in 2014 and we’ve all agreed it was due. Question remains, how and when? I believe we’ll find out sooner than later. Check out our Ultimate Sales Tool Guide from earlier this year.

#3 – The Big VCs Will Place Big Bets in the Sales Automation Game

When you hear about the top tier VCs like Sequioa, Andresen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, etc you usually think about the hot new mobile, social, or Bitcoin startups like Snapchat, Whatsapp, or Coinbase. However, this soon may change. Sales Automation is going to follow in the footsteps of Marketing Automation, which had multiple big exits, as mentioned above. The companies that have really changed the space over the past 2-3 years are set up to raise B rounds now, which finally brings the big players. Sales is a half-a-trillion dollar market employing over 5 million people and growing wildly.

#4 – Smarter Inboxes

At some point, we’ll hit a breaking point with the way sales automation is running right now. There are way too many canned and thoughtless messages going out from sales people and soon, people will want a smarter inbox that filters the good from the bad. The relevant from the irrelevant. It’s only a matter of time. This is why it’s always so important to segment lists and find unique info about your accounts before you send out emails.

#5 – Browser Extensions Galore

This trend actually makes a lot of sense. It’s really cheap and easy to build a browser extension and I can stay in the window and use the Internet normally. I’m actually not sure why companies haven’t incorporated this into the product sooner. In 2015, I think we’ll see more sales acceleration, enablement, and automation companies taking advantage of the browser extension. As it is, a few of my favorites are already utilizing it (Salesloft, Datanyze, Connectifier, and Discoverly). We can’t wait until more companies take advantage of this. Looking at you Toofr :-).

Most software companies try to force the user to live in the environment that suits them (CRM, their own app, your Gmail/Outlook account). Browser extensions let us use the product where we see naturally fit, and within our workflow.

#6 – Outsourcing

Automation is making our jobs a lot more efficient, but there are still parts of the individual’s sales process that are tedious and mindless. Yet, companies are still hiring people to do it in-house and are paying up to $60K in base salary alone for these roles. We’ve been taking advantage of outsourcing in our sales processes for a while now and it’s starting to go mainstream. There’s so much you can do with Virtual Assistants that work for $3.50 an hour.

Companies will finally start to take advantage of outsourcing and even more specifically, outsourced lead gen. Either that, or sales offices will move fully to Phoenix or another cheaper city with talent. Many companies (Yelp, Zenefits, Paypal, Entelo, etc) are already taking advantage of those fantastic ASU grads! Of course, no article is complete without a little shameless alumni promotion.

A Sales Hacker favorite on Outsourcing from 2014 by Matt Ellsworth, Using Scraping and Virtual Assistants to Create a Massive Lead Pipeline.

#7 – Training

Training has always been focused on the F500 or top companies that have money to spend. I think now you’ll start to see more training geared towards the earlier stage startups that have no clue what they’re doing. They never had the access these big companies had. Now you’ll start to see VC firms invest in this training for their portfolio companies. Consultants are focusing on this area now too. What they can’t take in cash, they can take in equity, which is a more long term play.

A Sales Hacker favorite from 2014 by top sales trainer Jeff Hoffman, Getting Around Gatekeepers.

#8 – Science of Sales, Metrics, and Repeatability

Sales reporting has been around for a long time, but reporting is only as good as what you do with the information. With the new enhancements made in email campaign software, call script software, pre-meeting research, and all things that help you in the actual deal, you’re now provided metrics we had never seen before. With them you can create new solutions to existing problems. There are a lot of new metrics to play with in the sales process that are now being reported with much higher accuracy, and anything you can measure, you can improve.

In 2015, sales execs begin to uncover how these new tools provide deeper insights than ever before, and find the best ways to take action.

A Sales Hacker favorite for Sales Metrics from 2014, 5 Metrics for Growing a Team Effectively.

#9 – Hiring

Hired.com just raised a massive round and announced their arrival in the sales hiring marketplace. Betts Recruiting is growing rapidly to new cities adding Austin, Boston, and Dublin in Q3/Q4 of 2014. SaaStr Jobs is almost ready and looks to change how SaaS startups hire their executive teams. More and more companies like GoGoHire and Emjoyment are popping up to make this process easier.

We should start to see a smarter way to recruit and hire talent. But I don’t mean just through software. We need to look deeper into the candidates and make sure they’re right for our sales orgs.

For inexperienced reps, we need to get them the training they need to succeed. For the ones that already have jobs, they need a way to reach the startups that need their help. We’ve seen numerous successful reps at large companies go on to run sales successfully at early stage startups. I think we’ll start to see that happen more, but we need a way to provide them with access.

A Sales Hacker Favorite on Hiring from 2014, How Guidespark does Fast-paced, Hiring, Onboarding, and Coaching.

Extra Bold: Oracle will buy Salesforce, make Benioff CEO.

Just kidding! I’m not sure how it didn’t happen in the past though. With Ellison knowing he was going to step down, Benioff would’ve been the top replacement. I believe Salesforce will surpass Oracle 10 years from now, but Oracle could’ve made this move a while ago and it might’ve cemented their future. However, Salesforce is still heavily reliant on Oracle databases, so they could be paying them billions per year regardless.

 

Well that’s it for 2014. Sign up for updates – we’ll have some exciting stuff to share shortly (like the upcoming Sales Hacker e-book).

We wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday. Surround yourself with good people, good food, plenty to drink, and take some time to reflect and plan ahead. We don’t get a chance to do it very often. Hope to see you in 2015!

One Last Thing

If you’re an engineer or team of engineers working on solving problems for salespeople, we want to hear from you and potentially help however we can. There are still so many product opportunities in this exciting and white hot space. Shoot me an email at max@saleshacker.com

 

The post 10 B2B Sales Trends We Think Will Hit Big in 2015 appeared first on Sales Hacker.

We recently posted a list of handy math tricks, and among them is a quick way to estimate how long it will take to double an investment with a given rate of return.

That trick is the rule of 72: Take your interest rate, and divide it into 72.

For example: If you expect a 6% average annual return, the doubling time will be 72/6 = 12 years.

That's much easier than trying to reverse engineer some complicated compound interest formula.

Why It Works

The reason this works comes from the basic formula for the future value of an investment receiving compound interest continuously.

If you have an initial investment principal of P, and an annual interest rate r, then after t years your investment will have a value of Pe^rt, where e is Euler's number, an irrational number that shows up all over the place in mathematics.

We're interested in figuring out how long it will take for an investment to double with a given interest rate, so we want to know how long it will take for our investment to grow from P to 2P. In other words, we want to solve the equation 2P = Pe^rt for the time t.

First, assuming our principal P is not zero, we can cancel out the Ps on both sides of the equation, giving us 2 = e^rt.

Now, we have to get rid of the exponential function on the right hand side. Fortunately, the natural logarithm function, usually written as "ln," can do this for us by definition: Logarithms are the inverses of exponential functions, and the natural logarithm "undoes" an exponential function with a base of e. This gives us ln(2) = ln(e^rt) = rt.

Because we're solving for time, we can divide both sides of the equation by our interest rate r, which gives us our result of t = ln(2)/r.

ln(2) is an irrational number, but if we plug this into a calculator, we get ln(2) = 0.693147... which we can round off and say that ln(2) is about 0.69.

Because interest is usually given as a percent rate, multiplying 0.69 by 100 gives us 69, and so for a percent interest rate r, our doubling time should be about 69/r.

Sixty-nine, however, is not a particularly convenient number. The only numbers that evenly divide into 69 are 1, 3, and 23, so if we have an interest rate other than 1%, 3%, or 23%, that division gets awkward.

Instead, because we're just coming up with a quick mental estimate, we can use either 70 or 72, and we can evenly divide any whole number rate up to 10% into one or the other of those and get a pretty close estimate of our doubling time.

NOW WATCH: Forget Setting Goals — Focus On This Instead

SEE ALSO: 7 Math Tricks That'll Make Your Life Easier

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With the widespread adoption of cloud computing, IT departments are undergoing rapid change. Some of these changes cause confusion, conflict, and job insecurity. Many IT directors are unsure of how to position themselves going forward. Similarly, business owners are uncertain of what to expect from their IT department. This ambiguity and role confusion can create insecurity and mistrust in and of itself.

Traditionally, a good IT manager could manage internal support, maintain a break-fix presence internally, ensure the stability and security of their system, deliver some applications, and call it a day.

We’ll call this the inside-out approach. In this model, the IT manager is aligned with the company, reducing risk to external threats, primarily concerned with security and stability, often adopting a command and control mindset.

With this approach, many an IT director sees the rise of cloud computing itself as a threat, and takes steps to prevent the transition to the cloud for as long as possible, even as the company leaders are inundated with cloud marketing messages.

In the meantime, most of us have become used to running applications and accessing data across several devices, working on mobile or in BYOD environments. This ever-increasing device sprawl along with the widespread availability of cloud-based applications at the consumer level usually has both employees and owners expecting a level of access that is extremely difficult to maintain with the old command and control mindset.

The increasing availability, cost effectiveness, and competitive advantage of cloud computing makes the change even more difficult to forestall. Increasingly, IT managers will have to change their mindset regarding their internal role at the organization to an outside-in approach. No longer are they primarily gatekeepers with a dash of support; rather, they are now aggregators, facilitators, and business services providers. Going forward, it will be most helpful for IT directors to position themselves as IT consultants, with their company as the client.

This shift allows IT directors to increase their organizational value by harnessing and coordinating externally sourced services, rather than fighting to keep control in-house. This change to a collaborative approach can help expand the IT director’s thinking about what services and solutions are possible in moving toward IT Maturity.

Naturally, this means a different set of skills will need to be brought to the table, and I will be examining changes in both IT roles and services in the cloud era later posts, but for now, it is extremely important to be mindful of this sweeping change toward increased outsourcing of services, and to be seen as much more than an impediment to company progress.

"The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public." —George Jessel

In the 15 minutes before you're about to give a big, important presentation, it's too late to change the content of your speech, says Darlene Price, president, of Well Said, Inc. and author of "Well Said! Presentations and Conversations That Get Results." 

Building blocks such as analyzing the audience, creating well-designed slides, and rehearsing aloud should have already been laid, says Price. "Now, the big moment has arrived, and an eager audience awaits your message."

Whether you're stepping to the front of the room to speak to just a few people, or making a grand entrance in a ballroom to address thousands, you can effectively use the time immediately before you go up to prepare your body and mind for peak performance, Price says.

Here are 12 things you can do in the 15 minutes before a big presentation to optimize your speaking success:

1. Use the restroom. "First thing's first," Price says. "Needing the toilet when you wouldn't normally 'have to go' is a common reaction to anxiety and pre-speech jitters. Why take chances? Plan ahead and use the restroom in the moments prior to going on stage."

2. Check out the meeting room and audiovisual set-up. As the speaker, be sure you know the environment, including the seating arrangement, presentation electronics, microphone, and lighting. Get to the room early and ensure you're comfortable with the set-up. "This step shows the audience you're prepared and helps ensure your presentation runs smoothly," she says. 

3. Meet and greet the audience before you speak. Shake hands and talk with as many people as possible ahead of time. "This shows the audience you're approachable and personable," Price explains. "You may even learn a few names, issues, and stories to weave into your presentation. Plus, having conversations with your listeners ahead of time transforms scary 'public' speaking into natural relaxed 'personal' speaking."

4. Listen to the speakers who go on before you. If you're not the first or only person presenting, it can be helpful to pay attention to what the people who go before you have to say. This way, you can get a sense of what ground has already been covered and what the audience's mood is like.

"If the energy in the room is low, you may need to incorporate elements to pick it up," public speaking expert Andrew Dlugan writes on his website, Six Minutes.

5. Take several deep belly breaths. Since anxiety tightens the muscles in the chest and throat, it's important to diminish that restricting effect with deep inhalations. Don't underestimate the power of a long slow deep breath. It maximizes the amount of oxygen that flows to the lungs and brain; interrupts the adrenalin-pumping "fight or flight" response; and triggers the body's normal relaxation response. In the moments leading up to your presentation, breathe deeply and deliberately.

6. Boost your confidence with a power pose. Harvard professor Amy Cuddy has done research showing that holding a posture meant to convey confidence for even two minutes will increase your testosterone levels (the "dominance" hormone) and decrease your cortisol levels (the "stress" hormone). This will make you more relaxed and allow you to feel more comfortable taking risks. 

7. Practice the first minute in your mind. Whatever you're planning to say as the captivating opener — a witty quotation, personal story, or startling statistic — rehearse the first few sentences several times, Price suggests. Knowing exactly how you're going to start gives you confidence, enables you to look directly into the eyes of audience members as you begin (not at notes or a slide), and creates a powerful first impression.

8. Focus on positive thoughts and images. "Harnessing the power of the mind-body connection means that you can learn to use your thoughts to positively influence your body's physical responses," Price says. As a result, you can decrease stress and increase a sense of wellbeing and control, just by holding positive thoughts and images in your mind. For example, replace the thought, "I'm so nervous and unprepared I'm going to bomb," with a positive statement such as, "I'm an expert on my topic," "I'm enthusiastic and engaging," or, "I'm credible and confident."

9. Smile. Maintain a positive, pleasant expression on your face in the moments before you speak. "Smiling actually relaxes the body. Physiologically, smiling emits endorphins in the brain that calms the nerves, creates a pleasant attitude, and promotes a sense of wellbeing," she says. Plus, a smile conveys confidence and self-assurance. It shows your audience that you're happy to see them and enthusiastic about your message.

10. Sip water that is either warm or room temperature, with lemon if possible. "This helps with dry-mouth, cuts through mucus buildup in the mouth, and clears the throat," Price says. Avoid cold food and drinks, dairy products, and carbonated beverages — and ensure a glass or bottle of water is within arm's reach during your speech.

11. Exercise lightly. In a private setting beforehand, do some light stretching, a few knee-bends, or take a brisk walk down the hall and back. "This rids the body of excess energy and sends oxygen to the brain," she says.

12. Assume a standing position in the five minutes prior to speaking. If you're the host or only speaker, you'll be standing anyway. However, if you're one of several speakers on the agenda, and your turn is coming up in five minutes, simply step to the back of the room and stand, or stand up if you're backstage. "The sitting position is motionless, passive, and inactive. By standing, you summon energy ahead of time, give your body a chance to warm up, and place yourself in a posture ready for action."

Most speakers, beginners and veterans, readily admit to feeling nervous in the moments leading up to a speech or presentation. It may feel uncomfortable, but it's completely natural and even necessary, Price explains. "In fact, many professional speakers don't want to lose the butterflies; they aim to leverage them. They actually value this adrenalin surge because it fuels the body with the energy and enthusiasm necessary for a great performance."

"Don't squander those precious few minutes prior to your presentation," she says. "Use every moment to prepare mentally and physically for a dynamic performance."

SEE ALSO: 5 Things Successful Public Speakers Never Say

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The Internet of Things is not just the latest buzzword. The IoT — which refers to the practice of connecting objects, appliances, buildings, and equipment to the web — is already a significant factor for major industries, particularly manufacturing. 

Consider:

• Industrial companies are early IoT adopters, using it to create new internet-assisted manufacturing systems: 18% of industrial machinery companies are already using IoT devices, according to a recent survey from SAS.While this doesn't measure the extent that the IoT has been implemented by these manufacturers, it's notable that almost one-fifth of major manufacturing companies are already using the IoT to increase production and reduce costs. For example, plastics manufacturer Petrobas Zarate of Argentina added sensors to the factory to monitor the temperature so it could ensure the plastic was created under optimal conditions.
• It's already big in the massive global auto industry: Nearly as many automotive companies, 17%, are using IoT devices in the production of their vehicles. Volkswagen added an SAP system that keeps track of all of their parts' supply pipeline to help them track where items are located at all times. 

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 some of the key findings from the BI Intelligence report: 

• It's not just manufacturing. The transportation and warehousing, and information sectors will also be top investors the in IoT systems and devices in the next five years. But 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.
• In all, 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 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 risk-free trial membership. 

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Legendary investor Warren Buffett is known for advising others to hold a conservative portfolio.

"My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund," he wrote to shareholders of his company Berkshire Hathaway earlier this year.

Data from investment adviser SigFig leads to a similar conclusion.

After analyzing portfolios held by 325,000 users, the robo-adviser found something interesting: The most successful investors in the group were also the least active.

Take a look at this image from SigFig's year-end report, which shows that the top 1% of users, "who have synced assets of $5 million or more," performed better in their investments than the rest:

Why?

SigFig finds that investors who trade frequently — defined as "investors who have a turnover amount equal to or greater than their portfolio value in a year" — actually see lower returns than their peers who are more hands-off.

And that same 1% of users seems to have mastered the hands-off strategy:

Granted, if your existing portfolio isn't properly allocated for your needs, you might not find the "leaving it alone" strategy as effective as someone whose investments are appropriately diversified.

It's worth noting, though, that these numbers lend weight to a core principle of robo-advice companies (and Buffett followers): That broad, relatively conservative investments like index funds and ETFs, if left largely alone, can be lucrative.

SEE ALSO: Young People Are Risky Investors — And It Isn't Paying Off

Join the conversation about this story »

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FEATURE:

Oracle‘s announcement last week of an agreement to buy Datalogix, a company that collects information from retailers and shares it with big advertising partners, is the latest in Oracle’s effort to assert itself as the leading vendor for marketers.

Oracle did not announce terms of the deal, but industry analyst Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research estimated it was in the high “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The deal, announced during the slow days of the holiday season, was bound to miss the radars of a lot of marketers, and is worth looking at more closely. It’s one heck of a Christmas gift to Oracle’s sales force.

That’s because Oracle needed some urgent ammunition in its arsenal to go up against Adobe and Salesforce, which have gotten kudos lately from analysts for leading the way in marketing software technology. Adobe, specifically, has emerged as the leading “marketing cloud” vendor, or seller of cloud software tools that let companies market to other companies.

In October, Forrester said Adobe was the leading marketing cloud vendor, Salesforce was a close second, and Oracle was trailing with a bigger pack of other players, including IBM, SAS Institute, and Teradata. Forrester said Oracle trailed the leaders on metrics such as marketing technology offerings and overall strategy.

And on Tuesday, the day after the Oracle-Datalogix announcement, Gartner, another leading research firm, released its first report on the marketing cloud industry leaders, a copy of which VentureBeat obtained. That report also concludes that Adobe is the leader. Adobe outranks Oracle in its completeness of vision, Gartner said (see chart).

That said, Oracle’s marketing automation solution, Eloqua, ranked well in our recent VB Insight marketing automation report.

“While expensive and not the most user-friendly tool available, Eloqua ranked very high in our user surveys for maturity of solution and product reliability,” VB Insight analyst John Koetsier says. “The challenge for Oracle is that Adobe and others have moved beyond marketing automation to marketing clouds, encompassing all of what an enterprise needs for digital marketing … and Oracle has not been as clear about its vision or as aggressive in its execution.”

A race to own “attribution” of online advertising effectiveness

Datalogix is a significant player within this vendor competition because of its growing importance in confirming the success of online advertising, a segment that is exploding and was estimated at $147 billion this year.

Oracle is adding Datalogix to Bluekai, another data property it bought last year, to form what it is calling the “Oracle Data Cloud,” an initiative that hasn’t been talked about much but will get a lot of attention going forward. Privacy advocates may be concerned about the concentration of power at Oracle.

Adobe doesn’t have this sort of depth on the data side.

Large social networking companies, including Facebook and Twitter, use Datalogix data to better determine when consumers have purchased goods in the offline world after seeing the ads online — matching that is otherwise very difficult to do. This attribution is key in order for Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks to assert that advertising on their sites works well — especially when some credible critics say it doesn’t.

And owning such attribution data is even more important for a platform player like Oracle, now that social networks are emerging as leading sources of online content and advertising.

Here’s the big problem: People spend about 44 percent of their media-consuming time online, and so digital marketing spend continues to rise as marketers try to reach them. Yet, 93 percent of consumer shopping is done offline.

Datalogix provides masses of personal data

Here’s how Datalogix works, according to an in-depth account by the non-profit digital rights group, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Datalogix specifically relies on loyalty card data — cards anyone can get by filling out at a form at participating grocery stores. Datalogix then passes this data on to partners like Facebook, giving them information about specific individuals but making this data anonymous by “hashing” personally identifiable information. This includes hashed email addresses, hashed phone numbers, and Datalogix ID numbers. Facebook compares this data against its own dataset of users until it has a list of the Datalogix ID numbers associated with Facebook users. Then, Facebook can determine which group of its users, say, buy Ocean Spray cranberry juice after seeing an ad served on Facebook, by checking which Datalogix users bought the juice offline.

Datalogix provides data on over $2 trillion in consumer spending from 1,500 data partners across 110 million households, according to Oracle’s statement on the deal. More than 650 customers, including 82 of the top 100 U.S. advertisers such as Ford and Kraft, as well as 7 of the top 8 digital media publishers such as Facebook and Twitter, use Datalogix to enhance their media, Oracle said.

Oracle said that the combination “will provide comprehensive consumer profiles that will power personalization across digital, mobile, offline and TV. With Datalogix, Oracle Data Cloud will deliver the richest understanding of consumers across both digital and traditional channels based on what they do, what they say, and what they buy, enabling leading brands to personalize and measure every customer interaction and maximize the value of their digital marketing.”

The Datalogix deal, Oracle continued, “represents a further extension of Oracle’s Public Cloud strategy to combine IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and Data as a Service on a common cloud and to transform SaaS business applications and processes by integrating data within these applications,” Oracle said.

Oracle was slow to move, but badly wants to catch up

Oracle, the large database and software company that historically has enjoyed much larger market share for its products among big enterprise companies than either Adobe or Salesforce, is scrambling to embrace the cloud to fend off those competitors. All three companies have broken into a sprint to serve the new, emerging class of business leaders — centered around the chief marketing officer — who increasingly make technology buying decisions. Within a few years, CMOs are likely to overtake chief information officers in their purchasing power, Gartner has said.

Adobe made an early move into the marketing cloud, by acquiring leading web analytics company Omniture in 2009, and Salesforce started acquiring companies too. Oracle has now joined the mix in a frenzy of deals. Last year, it bought Bluekai, which helps marketers measure how ad campaigns reach certain types of people. That deal was pegged at $400 million, according to industry reports.

(Two years ago, Bluekai had already partnered with Datalogix, to match audience data from Bluekai’s exchange to data relating to customer purchases from Datalogix.)

In December 2012, Oracle bought Eloqua, a marketing-automation software provider focused on the business-to-business market, for $871 million. A year later, Oracle ponied up $1.5 billion to buy digital-marketing software company Responsys, which targets consumers.

While these buys may seem impressive, Cory Munchbach, Forrester’s analyst on marketing technology, questioned Oracle’s commitment to the marketing agenda, noting that the company invited only CIOs — and no CMOs — to its opening keynote at Oracle OpenWorld this year.

That said, Munchbach did say Oracle appears bent on bringing data management platforms to the B2B world, where Oracle retains a larger market share than its competitors and therefore can differentiate itself from players like Adobe and Salesforce.

Munchbach, who wrote the Forrester report in October, told VentureBeat on Sunday that the Datalogix acquisition may help Oracle but will take time:

It can be really compelling for Oracle with the potential to create sort of a customer super ID based on the data assets from Datalogix, BlueKai, etc. It’s a massive task for them to do this, however, so we expect it to take some time and not have any immediate consequences. Marketers want more data to inform decisions and create competitive advantage, so in that way, this is a practical addition by Oracle.

But the downside from the marketers’ standpoint is that this removes another independent data provider from the market, so marketers are left with few “neutral” players in the data space. This is yet another example of an acquisition that allows Oracle to talk extensively about what they will be able to do and all of these hypothetical scenarios that this will enable, but as I’ve said before and will likely say again, we’ll believe it when we see it.

With fewer neutral players in the data space, what does this mean for digital ad leader Facebook?

One big question is how the deal will affect Datalogix’ partnerships with players like Facebook. Oracle was quick to address this issue, saying in its announcement that it is committed to “keeping Datalogix an open data platform, with deep integrations and partnerships across the entire digital publisher and adtech landscape.”

To be sure, Datalogix has several significant competitors, including Acxiom, a publicly traded company, and Epsilon, which is owned by Alliance Data. Facebook partners with both of these companies.

The fate of Datalogix is arguably the most important to Facebook. The company has been trying hard to change the perception that advertising needs to lead to click-throughs in order to be effective. Facebook argues that if an advertiser can inject itself into a Facebook user’s reading stream, this can foster brand affiliation, which can lead to a purchase down the road, including an offline purchase, especially if the product is targeted and relevant.

Datalogix is the partner Facebook most often cites in its efforts. Indeed, a Datalogix study performed internally for Facebook two years ago found that, on average, 99 percent of people who saw Facebook ads and then bought a product in a store never clicked on an ad at all. Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg cited the study to bolster the point that Facebook’s ads aren’t supposed to lead to clicks. However, it’s unclear how reliable the study’s methodology was, because Datalogix clearly had its own interests at stake.

Datalogix, which is based in Westminster, Colo., had been preparing for an IPO later this year, having raised $86 million in three rounds of capital, including $45 million of that earlier this year led by Wellington Management company. Jim Breyer, a large early backer of Facebook, who until last year was on Facebook’s board, is also an investor in Datalogix.

How Datalogix helps Facebook advertisers get even more information

Here’s how Facebook’s targeting program, called “Custom Audience,” works. First, advertisers can upload their own limited information about their customers from their CRM database, such as email and phone numbers, and Facebook lets them match this data with Facebook user profiles containing the same information. This is a good step, as far as it goes, because advertisers can target ads to their past customers by reaching them on Facebook.

However, what if advertisers don’t happen to have enough robust customer data of their own? That’s where Datalogix comes in: Facebook can call upon its partnership with Datalogix, or with other providers of data such as Epsilon, or Acxiom, to provide data about millions of others customers, including what they have shopped for and where they have shopped in the past, so that advertising partners can retarget them too. If customers end up buying from the advertiser, attribution players like Datalogix can share in the credit for giving the advertiser the lead.

In one documented case, written up by the New York Times, Facebook used Datalogix data to show how a three-month ad campaign on Facebook for MegaRed krill oil prompted more people to buy the health supplement.

A slap at Salesforce too

Finally, the Datalogix purchase will make Salesforce sit up and take note. Salesforce had partnered with Datalogix earlier this year and made it part of its Marketing Cloud. Two months ago, Salesforce had launched Wave, its own data and analytics cloud, to much fanfare — another initiative that must have annoyed Oracle’s sales team.

With so much complexity in the market place, it’s difficult for customers to make sense of the landscape without relying on expert independent analysts like Gartner and Forrester. But those firms take 12 to 18 months to update their “marketing cloud” reports. In that sense, Oracle’s acquisition of Datalogix can be seen as perfect timing. Oracle’s sales people can now point to any report that shows Oracle trailing behind Adobe and Salesforce and call it outdated because it didn’t foresee Oracle’s special initiative around advertising data.

[Full disclosure: VentureBeat recently has launched its own initiative, called VentureBeat Insight, to complement Gartner and Forrester data by taking more rapid snapshots of the marketplace and by surveying hundreds of real customers of marketing technology.]

 

Knowing and Doing is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

Dan Pink is one of my favorite writers. To Sell Is Human should be required reading, especially for non-salespeople who have to sell. His book Drive should be required reading for leaders and managers.

I love Malcolm Gladwell, too. Like Pink, he is a tremendous writer and storyteller. The Tipping Point should be required reading for entrepreneurs and marketers. Blink should be required reading for salespeople. And Outliers should be read by all success-minded people.

Both Pink and Gladwell are intellectuals. They both intellectualize the topics about which they write. You can learn a lot by reading them. But you can’t learn what you need to learn to be successful by reading intellectualized accounts of any subject.

I have never played tennis, nor have I ever been on skis. I have never hit a tennis ball over a net, and I have never once made my way down the side of a mountain or a hill on two slick pieces of plastic. I could right now read a dozen books on tennis or skiing and still be completely unable to play tennis or ski better than I could by taking a couple of lessons. But having taken some lessons and spending some time on a tennis court or a hill, reading could help me understand my experience and how to improve it.

You produce the best results in areas you are working to improve by coupling your experiential learning with your intellectual learning.

If you read any good book on investing, that book will surely tell you that you must not be emotional about the investments you make. When you start losing in a position, you sell that position and protect yourself from losses. But you won’t know what it feels like to sell a stock that is down 10% when it is being hyped on television and when other people are building their position.

You can read a good book on selling, and you will almost invariably find something about closing, or asking for commitments. You can read the words, you can understand the script, but until you ask a prospective client sitting across from you to sign an agreement, you won’t have any idea what that experience feels like (especially when they refuse to sign).

You can read books about success and personal development, all of which have valuable messages and even more valuable guides to the actions you must take in order to succeed. But reading about personal development and success won’t make you successful. Only taking action will. (But if you take in enough success-oriented content, I promise you will start to take action.)

There is a difference between an intellectual understanding of a subject and actually knowing the subject matter. Knowing something alone doesn’t produce any measurable results. Knowing something, having some chops, only works if you couple it with action (and if it’s something important to you, massive action). You will learn much of what you need to be successful by doing.

You know enough already. But are you taking enough action?

In 2015, companies will be buying. But their caution about change, fear of risk, and extra care about costs are going to affect the buying process. Sales cycles will get longer or buyers will lose interest and disappear. What specifically can sales professionals expect? A few sales experts share their predictions in this article.

Over the past year we have seen an increase in the adoption rate of marketers who use content marketing (93 percent, up 2 percent since 2012) and a major shift in the industry as more CMOs believe that custom content is the future of marketing. But with only 42% of B2B marketers saying they are effective at it, there seems to be a growing need to build and implement successful, measurable content strategies.

In the past I have discussed the various factors that play a role in Content Marketing and even some insights from industry experts, but as the New Year approaches there is a wide range of possibilities available to content marketers. Video content, hyper personalization, and emerging content channels are just a few of the trends to look out for in the upcoming year. Let’s take a look at what some of the industry experts predict for Content Marketing in 2015.

The Future of Content Marketing: How Will It Impact Businesses?

1. Peter Foster, VP of Solutions Development at Yahoo 

In 2015, data will play a larger role in content marketing; beyond just producing great content, brands need to reach and engage the right audience. The best content marketers will use data to personalize content according to who the consumer is, rather than the device they’re on, and tell a rich and seamless story that carries across screens. We’ll also see more focus on measurement as brands seek to rise above the noise.

2. Brad Hines, Digital Marketing & Social Media Strategist – @BradHines

Content marketing always starts “with the eyeballs” and then ends with monetezation. That said, 2015 will be the year of figuring out how to monetize where the eyeballs were in 2014 – ephemeral social media, think Secret, Whisper, YikYak, Snapchat, and all the other anonymous social media sites. These sites are a very different flavor than your Facebooks, Linkedins, etc. When people can say what they want, and no one knows who they are, the commentary is a lot more, shall we say, stemming from the id.

As a results, these sites have become infused with VC cash overnight, and I predict that the sites will soon figure out how to take ad revenue as well.

3. Jerome Cleary, CEO of Publicity and Marketing – @JeromeCleary

With more awareness that great content drives true organic SEO many businesses will be spending a lot more time hiring and working on their content to reflect their true voice. Content is king has become the catch phrase in the past few years and now businesses and business owners are finally getting behind the curve. When you have great thought out content with catchy article titles that is what makes for even greater content on the internet. Thus, it raises the bar for everyone to consciously spend time putting together edgy, sexy content that is definitely worth reading. Where business owners were hiring more Social Media experts for their companies in the past few years so now they will spend more time and money on great writers to create one of a kind content to compete with their competitors. The growth and change will be significant and continue to grow ten fold.

4. Naresh Vissa, Founder & CEO of Krish Media & Marketing, Inc. – @xnareshx

Content marketers are on the edge of an inflection point in podcasting. By the end of the year, there will be over half a billion people with the Podcasts app on their iOS device. This number will grow to be close to one billion people by the end of 2015. Podcasting is now entering into its true golden age of mass adoption.

5. Tim Kolenut, CMO of Buddytruk, Inc. – @itstimmyk

With Youtube’s popularity showing no signs of slowing down and Instagram changing the ability to upload pre-made videos earlier this year, I believe we’ll see a lot more video content from marketers. More specifically, short behind-the-scenes style that give audiences a glimpse at the people who are behind the product / company. Transparency will play a large factor in marketing this coming year!

6. Rob Manning, Content Marketing Manager at Offerpop – @offerpop

UGC usage is already widespread, and it’s about to get even bigger in 2015. 76% of marketers are likely to increase their usage of social content in the coming year based on data collected by Offerpop. We’ll see brands sharing this valuable content in a variety of ways, from sharing fan photos on Facebook to creating curated galleries on their homepages to posting user photos on individual product pages on their ecommerce sites. Marketers will experiment with creative and varied tactics in order to win over those consumer dollars through the power of brand advocates.

7. Rachel Peters, Content Marketing Manager at Big Leap – @rmbpeters

In 2015, I think we can expect to see content marketing become a more valuable asset to the SEO and UX industries. Great content can bump a company’s search rankings, convert potential customers, and make websites more usable. Ideally, we’ll see much greater cohesion between the three industries in the coming year.

Additionally, as content marketing reaches a state of market saturation, companies will likely become more willing to invest in understanding and developing their online brand audience.

8. Ian St. Clair, SEO Specialist at Clicks and Clients – @IanStClair

Quality. Quality. Quality. It doesn’t matter what the content is for, the quality better be good. That will, in turn, improve the user experience. The days of creating content just to create content will hopefully end (AKA spam). Hopefully the days of snakeoil salesmen will end as well.

9. Xavier Major, CEO of Popular Media Consulting, LLC – @xavier_major

Content marketing will continue to be king in 2015 with a larger focus on video content. As YouTube still stands as the # 2 search engine and platforms like vine and snapchat emerge video will be huge in 2015 as it drives engagement. Also I think with the continued success of platforms like Medium micro-content will start to play a factor as long form content fades with readers attention span.

10. Cliff Pollan, CEO and Founder of Postwire – @cliffpollan

In 2014, we’ve seen a change emerging where marketing and sales are starting to focus on adopting buyers’ perspectives with regards to selling. This “customer-based selling” is not selling in the traditional sense but more about helping customers to buy – a subtle but distinctive shift in mindset – and content is absolutely key to the success of this. Moving into 2015, we’ll see content play an even more critical role in the customer-based selling process, as marketing and salespeople look to share insights and engage customers based on what they need to make it easier for them to buy.

11. Kathy Heasley,Founder & President of Heasley & Partners – @KathyHeasley

I’ve been doing this work for thirty years, have had my own firm for twenty. I’ve seen so many marketing trends in that period. Desktop publishing, the Internet, video in business. It all trends the same way. It starts out with the technical folks, moves to where everyone thinks they can do it. Only to find that they don’t have the time or talent. Then it moves back into the realm of the professionals. So with content, we are emerging from the stage where everyone thinks they can do it. They are now realizing that just because the tools exist to generate content that doesn’t mean that they can write content that people want to read. So in 2015 content development will move further back into the hands of the professional writers. Content, which is here to stay because brand building is storytelling and marketing is teaching, will continue to improve in quality instead of just quantity.

12. Juan Velasquez, Marketing Specialist at Do It Wiser – @doitwiser

Publication is only the small first step: Most businesses have gotten the message that content creation and publication are the cornerstones of a content marketing strategy. However, where many are still lagging significantly is in the distribution of that content. Strategic distribution of content is what will set businesses apart in this hyper-competitive landscape. Optimizing for search and mobile, building relationships with branded publications, and reaching out to influencers in your field are just a few ways to make sure your content reaches your target market. Content marketing will become inextricably linked with social media marketing: Perhaps the most important way businesses are distributing their content is through social media sharing. As businesses realize that social media is an amplifier for content, they’ll embrace social media to aid in its distribution. While the vast majority of marketers already know the importance of social media in their marketing, in 2015 we’ll see businesses more fully realize its role as the capstone of any distribution model.

13. Andrew Fingerman, CEO of PhotoShelter – @awfingerman

Quality visual content is critical for brands to reach and broaden their communities. Companies that figure out how to efficiently curate, store and access image assets for social media use will realize increased opportunities to capture and engage larger audiences and attract new customers. As we see an uptick in copyright lawsuits for image misuse, smart companies will build in-house content selections of approved visual media for use in marketing and social channels.

14. Alex Chaidaroglou, Founder of Beyond Backlinks – @BeyondBacklinks

I expect a bigger investment from businesses towards infographics and more consistent publication of them, since they are currently a big untapped opportunity in most industries. We have seen that a great infographic with a solid promotion can drive huge amounts of traffic.

Also, we should be expecting bigger budgets towards content marketing, more solid strategies and more B2B businesses engaging in effective content marketing.

15. Jason Abrahams, VP of Marketing at Root3 Growth Marketing – @jabraha7

The future of content marketing is personalization. Marketers need to be focusing their efforts on creating content that is highly personalized, relevant, entertaining and informative based on where the customer is during their purchase journey. Content should build on itself. And by aligning it with your sales funnel, you see a natural progression that teaches at the beginning and then involves the customer as they move through their journey.

16. Lauren Fairbanks, CEO of Stunt & Gimmick’s – @laurenfairbanks

A lot of companies have been focusing on content creation, but 2015 will be the year when they’ll start building out a more robust content distribution strategy. They’ll start taking a page from online publications and building out stronger distribution networks.

17. Tom Treanor, Director of Content Marketing at Wrike – @RtMixMktg

Separation of the Content Haves vs. Have-nots

There will be a separation of the content “haves” and “have-nots”. Those companies that have a dedicated team of content creators and a content marketing strategy will separate from the pack of those who don’t in terms of search, social media visibility and ultimately, revenues.

Growth and Change

Content marketing will continue to grow in importance and the proliferation of content management tools, content agencies and content strategists will increase. New content platforms will be introduced to help brands distribute their content to audiences with specific interests and to grow reach. Subtle native content options will proliferate as media sites and content platforms look to monetize their user base without looking too advertising-heavy.

18. Kari Rippetoe, Director of Content and Marketing Services at Marketing Mojo – @karirippetoe

I think there has been an unbalanced focus on content creation over the last couple of years. While that’s a big challenge many marketers have to overcome, I think the bigger challenge that needs addressing is how content marketing will be measured. I believe the traditional ways of measuring ROI won’t always work here. So, I think we’ll see an explosion of analytics tools designed to take the guesswork out of measuring content marketing ROI.

19. Jean Spencer, Content Marketing Manager at Kapost – @JeanWrites

LinkedIn will continue to dominate industry and marketing news. And will be the dominant social channel for content distribution. — In 2014, LinkedIn emerged as the #1 platform for professional content sharing. In 2015, this will not only still be true, but amplified. LinkedIn is making powerful strategic moves suggesting that it wants to be a noteworthy player in the marketing technology space: it bought Bizo, it launched “posts,” and it now has featured news.

20. Cara Day, CEO of Daychild – @DaychildUSA

• There will be a marked shift of content targeting mobile device users versus desktop computer users.
• 2015 will see a shift from longer, consumable content like YouTube videos to shorter, snackable content like Instagram 15-second videos and Vine 6-second videos.

21. Michael Juba, Content Marketing Strategist at EZSolution – @MichaelJuba

The use of visuals that are mobile ready is going to continue to take over content marketing. Visuals that are interactive that allow the reader to participate will also continue to grow. We will see a comeback for a different kind of infographics. Those that use animations, gifs, embedded media, and interactive data will help to bring back infographics in a good light.

22. Liz O’Neill Dennison, Content Marketing Manager at Kapost – @LizKONeill

Marketing technology will become more integrated than ever, allowing marketers to create seamless, consumer-focused experiences across all digital channels and devices.

23. Mark Shipley, Co-founder and Strategy Director of Smith & Jones – @markdshipley

One trend we see in content marketing is the importance of creativity. With so many organizations publishing content, it’s difficult to stand out. Your organization must present information in a different, compelling way. The goal is to make customers feel something, to inspire them. Keywords may get people to click, but creativity will get them to remember and share.

24. Bob Egner, VP of Product Management at EPiServer – @bobegner

Companies need cohesive digital customer experiences, but marketing and e-commerce groups
​often operate in silos with differing objectives, leading to a poorly integrated digital presence that confuses the customer and leaves revenue on the table. Combining content and commerce in 2015 will provide marketers with new, innovative ways to deliver content to their highly connected, always-on consumer helping to create a more informed decision that reduces the risk of being overlooked and increases purchase confidence.

25. Jonathan Cronstedt, CEO of Empower Network – @thejcron

I foresee that 2015 will be the rise of sharing content over multiple platforms as people share previously posted content and consumers connect to social media channels through mobile devices. Good content marketing offers customers non-interruptive content without pitching or selling a product or service. Companies using content marketing correctly will earn customers’ business and loyalty. Consumers will become part of the conversation through their comments, sharing and engagement levels as opposed to simply an audience. The lines will continue to blur between citizen journalism and professional journalism. The expectation of higher-quality crowd sharing and sourcing of information will also rise.

26. Andrew J. Coate, Senior Community and Content Manager at Kapost – @AndrewJCoate

B2B will finally have enough examples of creative content to stop hiding behind the “I work in a boring industry” wall. Thoughtful and interesting content will begin to push aside traditionally dull marketing in certain industries.

27. Abdul Muhammad, VP of Digital Development at RBB Public Relations – @abdulmuhammad

Custom is king: Brands will become content creators, delivering higher quality, customized and focused programs that will be supported by paid advertising.

Who’s responsible: Advertising, public relations, marketing and digital teams will all play a role in the development of a smart content marketing campaign. Brands will likely tap into budgets across sectors to support the creation and execution.

What kind of growth and change can we expect to see in 2015?

Moving to mobile: Content will be created with a heavier focus on mobile devices and tablets, with laptops and desktops becoming secondary priorities.

Smarter targeting: Supporting customization, brands will adapt content to fit different platforms and different audiences. Cross platform AND cross device targeting is increasing conversion rates like never before. Look for growth and and innovation by brands in this area. A brand may choose to use Instagram and Snapchat to get one message out to younger audiences, while targeting older consumers through Facebook and YouTube with a different message.

28. Rion Martin, Marketing Director at Infegy – @RionMartin

The upcoming year will be marked with several major shifts in content marketing, including the end of organic reach on Facebook, significant increases in native advertising, and a deeper focus on microtargeting. Every one of these shifts will require content marketers to alter the way they place and promote content, as well as the type of content they create and the specific audiences they create it for. Ultimately, 2015 will be about native campaigns tailored to very specific audiences.

29. Jim Hitch, Product Manager at Emma, Inc. – @jimhitch

Soon we’ll see the concept of behavioral data expand to include a person’s physical actions in the real world. Techie tools like Apple’s iBeacon and Samsung’s Placedge will allow marketers to target content based on how consumers move around the physical world, not just how they move around the web. An example would work like this: A restaurant wants to remind folks to leave a review on Yelp. It could target folks who have been to the restaurant within the last 30 days, but not those who were there the night service was slow because half the wait staff called in sick. It’s a new kind of behavioral data that will power smarter segments and push notifications.

30. Adrian Cordiner, Founder of Digital Rhinos – @DigitalRhinos

• Increase in customer and employee involvement in content creation
• Increase in rich media such as video, audio, slideshows, and visuals such as 3D infographics and parallax
• Big brands will focus on content governance
• Content exchanges will rise in importance
• Journalists will become heavily in demand outside media companies
• Focus on content strategy and ROI
• Budgets to double once again, both in-house and outsourced

31. Vishal Srivastava, Co-founder and Director at Trainedge – @trainedge

We expect more content will be produced targeting mobile devices / phones. There will be more focus on producing short, visually appealing content that can be easily consumed on mobile devices. We expect infographics to give way to videographics – animated and interactive graphics that go beyond showing static charts and images.

32 . Shalom Issenberg, Owner of Buzzalot – @Buzzalot

In a self-fulfilling prophecy of content overload, the internet is full of articles about content overload! The average internet user has to sift through never-ending streams of articles and feeds, and businesses have to adopt tools to manage it all. 2015 will be about how to leverage content that is *already *created without pumping *more* content into the current content deluge.

33. Anne Murphy, Senior Managing Editor at Kapost – @AMurphias

Marketing groups are going to take a hard look at the way they’re structured—and we’ll see a move away from organization around product lines and channels (like email and social media). Whether companies bring in consultants or undertake the shift themselves, marketing departments will move toward a buyer-centric structure. With this, research into specific personas and the personalization of brand experiences will become more important, and more expected by consumers.

34. Lisa Chu, CEO of Black N Bianco – @BlackNBianco

I think for 2015 the content marking will change dramatically. Generic topics that can be answered with a few sentences will be controlled by Google and their new ask a question algorithm. Content marking will start to get a lot more personal on what the user is looking for. I do not see content marking being as effective as it was in the past.

35. Joseph O’Neill, Marketing Communications Manager at The Expert Institute – @TheExpertInst

I think that the biggest trend in content marketing is going to be an increased investment in high-quality, useful content. After Panda 4.1, it has become clear that Google has begun to crack down on content strategies that do not bring any inherent value to customers – with thin content, automatically generated content, and duplicate content being penalized. Going forward it will become more and more important for content marketers to spend more on good writing and deliverables rather than SEO consulting or other optimization strategies.

What are your predictions on the future of Content Marketing? Share them in the comment section below.

Click here for more 2015 predictions.

In sales, you cannot assume that other reps and teammates know exactly what to do and say at every moment to grow revenues.

Did you ever learn about compound interest? It is the concept that interest paid on principal and interest vs. simple interest which is only paid on the principal amount. It is one of the biggest concepts in finance since it can make such a difference long term with your money.  I believe that if you work to learn something – just one thing, every day – it will compound your learning much like compound interest grows savings.

Sales reps – whether they are your team or your teammates – need ongoing work on the messaging that happens with buyers. There is messaging when you leave a compelling voice mail, and messaging you craft in an e-mail.  If you can work on that messaging every day – and help your teammates (or your team, if you are a sales leader) improve just 1% today – this ongoing learning will compound and soon you’ll be identifying opportunities better and qualifying potential deals easier. Sooner than later you’ll close more business.

I talk about making a 1% improvement every day on a video I made with Brighttalk recently. (2 minutes) . If you like it, please rate it – and thanks in advance.

Assuming the wording of your messaging is compelling (and that is not the case with most sales reps), then you focus on listening skills, and powerful questions to ask that will support your messaging.

Within the messaging you create, how you say something is critically important – your tone, your energy, and genuine curiousness.

What you say needs to be buyer-focused. Instead of touting your product or service, you are leading with learning about them, sharing what you know about the contact or his / her company or the industry they work in. You focus on them first, then you can tie in how it might make sense for you to speak with them.

Next we’ll talk about tying in or connecting better with them.

Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips in selling. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.

email lori@scoremoresales.com | My LinkedIn Profile | twitter | Visit us on google+

The post 1% Improvement Every Day Grows Sales appeared first on Score More Sales.

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GUEST:

Before I became obsessed with entrepreneurship and developing businesses (whether my own or someone else’s), there was a time when I spent the majority of my days performing risk management and insuring businesses as an insurance agent. At one point in my career, I insured nearly 300 businesses including contractors, restaurateurs, manufacturers and other business professionals. While it may sound boring to some, I absolutely loved it — and still love the insurance business to this day.

At the end of each year in the insurance world, agency phones start ringing with clients calling about new equipment and new vehicle purchases. When I first started out in the industry, I didn’t realize what was happening. (Truth be told, I think I was probably just more excited that new equipment purchases meant a few more dollars in my pocket from higher insurance premiums.)  I quickly figured out what was going on after noticing a year-to-year trend of new equipment purchases at each year’s end. It became obvious that business owners were making equipment purchases to avoid paying taxes on their profits and cutting a check to Uncle Sam.

In addition to avoiding big tax payments, business owners also purchase new equipment for another reason: They want to invest in their business. Buying new equipment means the ability to increase output and perform better and more efficiently than before.

My experiences with insuring businesses taught me a lot about general business practices over the years and when it comes to end-of-year investing, one lesson I learned was clear: Business owners, especially at the end of the year, want to find ways to save money on taxes as well as invest in things that help them grow. In that light, I’ve got another write-off that business owners and CMOs need to strongly consider: marketing. It’s not just a good end-of-year write-off. It’s a brilliant end-of-year write-off.

Marketing: A Brilliant Write-Off

Each year, without fail, the slowest weeks at Lift Division are from mid-November through December. Business owners constantly insist on pushing meetings back into the new year. Perhaps CMOs and business owners alike are affected by some sort of holiday siesta syndrome in this sense? Whatever the reason, this makes little financial sense to me.

Just like in the case of my insurance clients who were purchasing equipment, the end of the year couldn’t be a better time to invest in marketing for two main reasons. First, with few exceptions, marketing and advertising investments are 100% tax deductible, unlike some equipment purchases that aren’t eligible for 100% deductions (and instead have depreciation schedules). Literally every dollar invested in marketing can be effectively written off. So from that perspective, investing in marketing as a write-off certainly makes tax sense, right?

The second reason it’s wise to consider a marketing investment at the end of the year is that inbound marketing and brand development campaigns take time to see the ROI. Even if the leadership team at a company is interested in investing in a modern, mobile responsive website, it will likely take 60+ days for it to go live. Or, if the company already has a fantastic website and web presence, investing in an off-page SEO or content marketing campaign can offer an incredible return on investment — but guess what? It will take at least 3-4 months to begin getting traction and bringing in new clients. Every business owner wants to start out the new year with a bang, right? The point is, why wouldn’t you pay for the investment at the end of the year, take the write-off and be ready to rock and roll by the first of the year?

Write-Off Ideas

To help wrap your brain around some of ways you could invest, here are a few ideas:

• A brand update that includes an updated logo, business cards, and sales collateral to help recharge your brand and offer an exceptional experience the moment someone first interacts with it.
• A new website, and instead of paying in two or three payments, pay in full to maximize full write-off benefits. What many may not understand is that a new, well optimized website can literally double conversions on your site (i.e. double your leads).
• To improve your position in search engines and have Google or Bing literally refer you business, invest in 3-, 6-, or 12-month packages of off-page SEO.
• If developing thought leadership and authority in your industry is a goal, investing in 3, 6, or 12 months of a content marketing campaign could help naturally draw prospects in to your business.

While there are many other marketing options and each business marketing strategy may be very different, the point is that investing now means you can reap the rewards from both tax savings this year and lead generation the next year.

I encourage each business owner or CMO interested in saving some tax dollars to talk to an experienced digital marketing firm about inbound marketing. You don’t want to make a considerable investment at the end of the year without choosing a digital marketing team with multiple employees who have differentiated areas of expertise. Choose correctly and not only will the write-off help you pay less in taxes, it will also help you build a bigger business — generating new sales and developing a more authoritative brand the next year and beyond.

Rusty Brett is the owner and Chief Executive Officer at Lift Division as well as an investor in a handful of other startups. With several years of entrepreneurship, business ownership and marketing experience, Rusty has a passion for not only launching businesses but also helping other businesses grow their sales and client base.

 

Here are three trends I see in the sales world, paired with predictions on where those trends will take us. I welcome any feedback in the comments.

TREND #1: Content Fatigue / Focus

We’ve learned our lesson that so-called snackable content does not create any value, and all those empty content calories are killing the platforms that previously served as places to identify compelling new ideas. Twitter used to be rich with rewarding content, but now I have to scroll for several minutes before I find anything worth dipping into. And LinkedIn blogging went from sharp and provocative to “look at me” noisy in less than a year.

B2B sales and marketing leaders will need to decide whether they’re going to invest in content creation as a way to make noise or as a way to add value for customers.

In terms of the social activity of sales reps, it’s worth noting that being good and thoughtful curators of content allows individual reps to help advance their organization’s content marketing goals.

TREND #2: Tool Explosion / Integration

Sales folks can’t keep up with all of today’s promising new tools. This has happened for good reasons — we’ve had a cycle of innovation that created a wonderful divergence of sales enablement and sales acceleration products.

At the same time, the rapid growth of B2B inside sales has given reps a reason to adopt tools for increasingly surgical use cases, as we try to replicate the fine-grained sophistication of real human interaction in order to connect with and move our remote buyers.

So the availability of all these new tools is a good thing — except that teams have a limited capacity to test and adopt them. We’ll see this reconciled in three ways. Software vendors will find ways to improve the UX specifically for validation and testing. Also, they’ll increase their emphasis on integrating their products with the products sales teams are already using. Finally, the market will help to solve this problem; we’ll see a lot of mergers and acquisitions this year that bring together adjacent technologies, like lightweight screensharing and synchronous, in-browser video chat.

TREND #3: Inbound Lead Conversion / Complementarity

According to The Content Marketing Institute, 86% of B2B companies invest in content marketing. At Vsnap, we estimate that those marketers create some three and a half million inbound leads a week. But when you talk with sales leaders, they tell you they’re living with miniscule conversion rates — often as low as 2%.

This situation can’t sustain. Why? Because in an already noisy world, Marketing can’t expect to keep capturing more high-quality leads just by turning up the volume. The path to growth has to become about converting more Marketing Qualified Leads.

But how will that happen? Through complementarity.

That’s Peter Thiel’s word, not mine. He talks about it in his recent book Zero To One:

“As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements…. Complementarity between computers and humans isn’t just a macro-scale fact. It’s also the path to building a great business.”

Complementarity is the key to turning more leads into live conversations so that you can get them to close. On their own, marketing automation tools will only ever capture the lowest hanging fruit. We get maximum leverage in our customer acquisition process when we use technology for what it’s good for, then pair that with humans doing emotion-based jobs, like interacting with qualified leads.

We can see complementarity in tools such as 1-to-1 video, where the technology allows a seller to come across as authentically human — to convey tone and establish trust with a remote buyer, and we measure the impact in how that increases close rates as compared to email. Another example is the next generation of CRMs, — like RelateIQ, Pipeliner CRM, and the new HubSpot CRM — that proactively surface data in ways that enhance reps’ understanding of specific prospects.

What trends have you noticed this year, and how will those affect the future of sales? Please share in the comments!

The holiday season is always a time of reflection for what we have and what we have accomplished over the past year.

However, it is also a time to reflect on all we have learned that can help us improve the blank slate that is 2015.

Read on to find out what B2B Lead Roundtable Blog posts were shared the most as well as the three topics B2B marketers valued most in 2014. You can utilize this information to better inform your 2015 strategy.

 

Topic #1 — Lead generation is king

Lead generation was a huge topic for 2014 and for good reason. Every lead nurturing campaign, every lead conversion, every sale depends on first generating a lead.

But what’s the best way to optimize your lead gen efforts?

 

Develop a strategic lead generation portfolio

The best marketers don’t rely on one specific tactic to generate leads. Instead, they utilize a diversified portfolio of channels.

The best way to build this concept is to approach your marketing strategy in the same way a portfolio manager would approach a mutual fund. Namely, this means diversifying your leads, establishing a schedule of when you’ll address said leads and testing every element in this process.

This post offers ideas on how to expand your lead generation portfolio, and features a free downloadable copy of a mind map for lead gen from Brian Carroll’s Lead Generation for the Complex Sale.

 

Improve the alignment between Marketing and Sales

Not having your marketing and sales teams aligned can be a costly mistake. Luckily, this is also an avoidable mistake.

By simply implementing a few key strategies, such as scheduling frequent meetings between these two teams, you can easily re-align interests and strengthen your overall lead efforts.

Learn 31 tips on how to align Marketing and Sales when it comes to lead generation.

 

Put you customer first

When you’re in the trenches, it’s easy to get caught up in marketing acronyms, data and analytics. What you need to remember is that, ultimately, lead generation comes down to connecting with people.

This personal connection comes down to one idea — empathy.

Learn about the importance of putting the empathy back into customer interactions, and then read some simple strategies for achieving empathetic marketing.

 

Topic #2 — It’s all about nurturing. Lead nurturing, that is

More than anything else, lead nurturing can help turn a lead from marketing qualified to sales qualified and hopefully into a sale.

Here are a few tips we learned this year to help you optimize this process.

 

Stop with the cold calls

In the Internet age of uber-informed and advertising-adverse consumers, cold calling just doesn’t work like it once did.

Instead, in order to score leads, and ultimately drive conversions, marketers need to make themselves a valuable resource to their prospects. This requires a customer-centric approach that involves staying relevant and informed on what the customer wants to learn and then being helpful and building trust through effective nurturing content.

Read on to learn how to modernize your lead strategy.

 

Learn what qualifies as lead nurturing

What is and isn’t lead nurturing?

A silly question, I know, yet it is one that several marketers continue to answer incorrectly. This seemingly simple concept is one that is actually more nuanced than it seems. Lead nurturing involves providing prospects with relevant and valuable information and helping them on their buying journey, regardless if they ever buy from you. This specialized treatment is much more likely to result in a conversion than sending out generic promotional emails.

Learn the exact definition of lead nurturing, and read some examples about what does and doesn’t make the mark.

 

Don’t forget about emails

Email is an indispensable tool for today’s marketers, but sometimes the relevancy gets lost between the subject line and send button.

Not keeping your customers first in your email sends can lead to something worse than an ignored email — it can lead to an unsubscribe.

Read about the benefit of adding lead nurturing to your emailing strategy, and discover six ideas for how to keep relevancy at the front and center of your emails.

 

Topic #3 — Words, words, words: The almighty power of content

It’s the easiest aspect to overlook, but it’s often one of the most important components in your marketing strategy — your content. Whether it’s the copy in a brochure or a case study about what you’ve accomplished, what you say to your customers and prospects, and how you say it, matters.

Here’s what we’ve learned in 2014 to make content marketing the best it can be.

 

Build a customer-centric content strategy

How do you create content that your customers will read?

Simple — listen to what they want. Content marketing is an excellent way to introduce customers to your brand as well as to establish yourself as a professional in your industry, but in order to create the best content, you have to first listen to your customers.

Watch Ninan Chacko, CEO, PR Newswire, as he explains the five steps to effective content marketing in this Lead Gen Summit 2013 replay.

 

Utilize storytelling in your call scripts

When it comes to teleprospecting, it turns out “what” you ask your prospects is just as important as “when” you ask them.

In a 2014 MarketingExperiements Web clinic, testing the time of the “ask” in a call script led to a 31% response increase. The difference? The treatment structured the call script as a story.

Learn more about why transforming the call script into a story resulted in this dramatic increase.

 

You may also like

The Most Important B2B Marketing Metrics for CEOs [More from the blogs]

10 Ways to Optimize Your Lead Conversion Rate [More from the blogs]

3 Factors that Connect Value Prop to Prospects [More from the blogs]

B2B Marketing: A recap of content and customer-centric marketing in 2014 [MaketingSherpa case study]

B2B Email Marketing: Ferguson Rewards trade show optimization achieves over $10 million [MarketingSherpa case study]

There is definitely an issue in smaller and midsized companies which you don’t always see but is there in nearly every organization. The issue – dirty data.

Dirty data is old data. It is wrong data – double entered and triple entered. It is bad data. Here is an example:

ACME Corporation (record 1 – which is the only correct listing of the name)

ACME Inc (record 2  – should be Corporation, not Inc.)

A.C.M.E. (record 3 – someone just botched it as an acronym)

ACMG Corporation (record 4 – correct other than the typo)

How do you cleanse the data?

So in addition to having multiple records for the same companies (both prospects and clients), there is another big area of bad data – as follows:

Contact person is no longer with the company

Contact person got promoted

Contact person has a completely different role

Contact out on extended leave, hiatus, sabbatical, or dead (yes, it happens)

Finally there are companies in the CRM system who:

Have been acquired and now have another name

Have divided and now have more than one company name

Have closed and are out of business

Start the new year right with some guidelines or policies around how CRM records are filled out, or how spreadsheets are tracked. I’m only mentioning spreadsheets because of the rampant use of them still in mid-sized companies. That is another discussion for another day.

Sample Data Policy:

A new record must have the prospect’s first and last name, company, and e-mail address at a minimum. Add the phone number if available. Tag (categorize) the record appropriately as a pre-prospect, prospect, qualified, proposed, or client. [Use the steps and your own terminology within your sales process to help your SDRs and BDRs enter clean, verified data.]

Every time a new prospect is contacted, there needs to be a next action set. This is not so much a clean data issue but is so critical in moving your sales opportunities forward that it needs to be mentioned.

If you can reward your reps for clean, updated territory lists, that can go a long way. Knowing the integrity of your data is important.  One client factors data updating in how they bonus front line reps and account managers.

There are companies that provide data updating services such as email verification, address verification, and “match and merge” services.

Bad leads slow down your sales force. You must find a way to regularly update your data, merge records, and delete bad records.

Take a look at Getting Your Data House in Order by Jake Dolezal for ideas about data governance and organization.

What can you put in place in 2015 to help sales reps be more effective in starting with the best data possible?

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.

email lori@scoremoresales.com | View My LinkedIn Profile | twitter |Visit us on google+

The post Data Cleanse For A Sales Boost appeared first on Score More Sales.

If you’re not making friends, you’re doing it wrong #contentmarketing #CMWorld

Andy Crestodina @crestodina

This sentiment from Andy Crestodina aptly describes our feelings about our #CMWorld Twitter chat community, which is hundreds of content marketers strong.

Today, we share a smattering of the 42,000-plus tweets shared on our #CMWorld Twitter chats from 2014. These are some of the most retweeted and thought-provoking tweets organized by category. If you like sound-bite nuggets of wisdom, you’ll love learning from our community.

We offer sincere thanks to all who have joined us for a chat this year. And, if you have been thinking about joining us, please do so. The community is very welcoming and fun – and we learn A LOT each week. The #CMWorld Twitter chats are at noon (U.S. Eastern time) every Tuesday (upcoming schedule).

Content marketing strategy

I’m hopeful brands move away from awareness as #1 goal to 1) customer retention and 2) demand generation. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

I like to explain CM as being a way to transform customers from a static audience into a source of research, innovation & sales. #CMWorld
Jake Parent @JakeDParent

@PatrickHayslett Content strategy by buying cycle is 1 of the biggest differences between leaders and laggards in #contentmarketing. #CMWorld
Michael Brenner @BrennerMichael

Inspiring content sends you on a quest. Useful content helps me choose. Entertaining content drives loyalty. #CMWorld
Andrew Davis @TPLDrew

There are still too many brands running content marketing with a campaign mentality – short-term results vs. bldg audience. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

My top frustration – people confusing content itself with the desired outcome of content marketing. #CMWorld http://t.co/1yO47pWAQf
Simon Kemp @eskimon

@RtMixMktg If looking at strategy, here are some tips of what should be “sticky”, what to revisit when: http://t.co/3zbK9IXvPu. #CMWorld
Michele Linn @michelelinn

Look at your strategy, see what other people are doing … if something isn’t working, change it! #CMWorld
Brandie McCallum @lttlewys

RELATED: The Essentials of a Documented Content Marketing Strategy: 36 Questions to Answer

Content strategy

In content strategy, content is viewed as an asset. The strategy is to help manage and use that asset correctly. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

Creating an agile strategy that focuses on real-time while listening to the community to find right-time! #CMWorld http://t.co/PCWBxgWOn8
Brian Fanzo @iSocialFanz

Content strategy looks at content as an asset for the entire organization. Content mktg uses it to attract/retain customers. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

It’s important to remember #ContentStrategy helps you PLAN for #ContentMarketing; they are not interchangeable terms. #CMWorld
Heather Meza @HeatherMeza

Consider how to “re-imagine” your content before you create it. This reduces content creation time. #CMWorld
HeidiCohen @heidicohen

Do a content audit and gap analysis 1st. Look at metrics to see where you need to go next. #CMWorld
Amy Higgins @amywhiggins

From a business perspective, content reuse across different channels = efficiency + less resources. #CMWorld
Melissa Breker @melissabreker

Matching messaging to the customer journey enables a frictionless buying experience. #CMWorld
Jenny Magic @JennyLMagic

A big trend for 2015 will be using content as a real asset. What @Carlos_Abler would say “unanticipated reuses” of content. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

“UpCycle” content … test, tweak and reuse it across networks, in different formats & w/different goals! #CMWorld http://t.co/i1na5fnuPI
Brian Fanzo @iSocialFanz

RELATED: Join us at Intelligent Content Conference to learn more about content strategy

Operations, teams, and processes

Find the gaps in marketing talent, technology and strategy that present growth opps, and fill them. #CMWorld
Paul Roetzer @paulroetzer

Create opportunities for collaboration. If you enable people, and give them a space, they will jump in. #CMWorld
Stéphanie Montreuil @Steph_Montreuil

Marketing folks blame executives a lot for not “buying in.” But it’s their job to be skeptical. Yours is to convince them. #CMWorld
Jake Parent @JakeDParent

Too much process turns content marketing into a sausage factory. I’m a bacon guy. #CMWorld
Doug Kessler @dougkessler

For brainstorming: get the team out of the office and into the pub (or park or pizza place). It’s ALWAYS better. #CMWorld
Doug Kessler @dougkessler

Earlier collaboration between writers and designers leads to better work every time. Not always possible, but always desirable. #CMWorld
Doug Kessler @dougkessler

Marketing needs to stop focusing on the “hand-off” to sales and commit to supporting the entire customer journey. #CMWorld
Shelly Lucas @pisarose

Get sales involved with content topics/focus – find out what they/customers NEED, not what we think they need #CMWorld
Danalynne Wheeler @dwheeler11

Think of sales people as customers. Create personas of them to understand how they engage with your content. #CMWorld
Carla Johnson @CarlaJohnson

There will be a resurgence in the value of a journalist/storyteller … we will see this in new roles and higher pay. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

It’s important to note that workflows aren’t static. Different content types require different workflows. #CMWorld
Jesse Noyes @noyesjesse

Focus on creating great content with repeatable processes … Communicate & Collaborate as a team! #CMWorld
Brian Fanzo @iSocialFanz

I’m honestly not sure how repurposing gets done without workflows. At least not in a sustained way. #CMWorld
Jesse Noyes @noyesjesse

It doesn’t matter who produces your content. As long as it’s focused on triggering the right journey. #CMWorld
Andrew Davis @TPLDrew

Absolutely. Content and social should share unified strategy. Your customers don’t care about your org chart. #CMWorld
Jay Baer @jaybaer

Content marketing stops being one department’s job – and starts to become infused in the entire direction of the enterprise. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

It’s exciting how many new opportunities there are for marketers, writers, journalists and IT folk in #contentmarketing. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

A ‘reasonable’ schedule should be defined by the convergence of your audience and your medium. What do they want/expect, when? #CMWorld
Mike Myers @mikemyers61

Planning is important, but at some point we have to start publishing. Over-planning can kill any good strategy. #contentmarketing #CMWorld
Christoph Trappe @CTrappe

RELATED: Learn how to make your processes more scalable and efficient at Intelligent Content Conference

Building your audience

Being ultra-focused means you can connect with potential customers quicker and laser-focus into the content they want. #CMWorld
Susyn Elise Duris @SusynEliseDuris

A landing page with no strategy might as well be a trampoline … Visitors will just bounce! #CMWorld
Brian Fanzo @iSocial_Fanz

A landing page must deliver on whatever promise was made to get someone to visit it. #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421

@Brewbom #CMWorld Right – as long as a lot of important traffic goes there – it’s a landing page – whether you control it or not.
Tim Ash @tim_ash

Get out of your bubble and get to know your audience. Know their problems, not just the ones you solve. #CMWorld
Eric Wittlake @wittlake

@CMIContent – #leadgeneration is more focused on “top of funnel” contact acquisition and does not focus on a holistic approach. #CMWorld
Carlos Hidalgo @cahidalgo

BIG issue I find in most companies use of marketing automation is they don’t create a persona for influencers who are not customers. #CMWorld
Andy Newbom @Brewbom

Nurturing takes time – and it’s not your timeline – we tend to forget this. #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421

My take: Nurturing helps the lead warm themselves! Not intrusive, not pushy. Educates. Informs. Even inspires. #CMWorld
Deana Goldasich @goldasich

Nurture Mistake: Too much frequency – fatiguing your prospects – what other emails do they get from your co? #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421

If you want to inspire people to go on a journey, you’re going to have to get to know what motivates them. #CMWorld
Andrew Davis @TPLDrew

We get tired of something waaayy faster than external audiences do, but it’s hard to remember that sometimes. #CMWorld
Mike Myers @mikemyers614

Companies with high conversion rates never assume their assumptions, they test them! #CMWorld http://t.co/o7pZtzByfh
Ian Cleary @IanCleary

Use email marketing as a tried and tested route to building your sales funnel. #CMWorld http://t.co/Jb6O3ZhLW7
Ian Cleary @IanCleary

With the right content, people will convert themselves to the channel that suits them & their needs – Twitter, FB, Email etc. #CMWorld
Nick Kellet @NickKellet

Conversion is your destination and optimization is improving how you get there. #CMWorld http://t.co/BAsY569UKr
Ian Cleary @IanCleary

Don’t chase acceptance. Be good. Be who you are. Let your audience select and prefer you. #CMWorld
Rick Short @RickShort21

Knowing your audience should be your biggest challenge even if you don’t see it that way. #CMWorld
Victor Garcia @EducationNews1

RELATED:  More articles on how to build your audience

Content creation

“Leave out the parts that readers tend to skip” – Elmore Leonard #CMWorld
Phaedra Hise @HiPhaedra

You sound a hell of a lot smarter when you create content specifically for a certain group of people … can be meatier. #CMWorld
Traci Browne @tracibrowne

Not having original content is like being @ the prom & three girls are wearing your dress. You blend in rather than stand out. #CMWorld
Deborah Ng @debng

Best Q I heard on what to get from prospects – @rapleaf CEO “What’s 1 piece of data on your customers that would change your biz?” #CMWorld
Andy Newbom @Brewbom

Original content isn’t as much of a point as relevant content – context is important #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421

It is time to change #mobile from a noun to a verb. Be mobile, not do mobile. h/t @bradmays #CMWorld
Tim Hayden @TheTimHayden

Mobile has made us all mobile speed. All of your content should be digestible and chunked #CMWorld
Andy Newbom @Brewbom

Think #mobile behavior BEFORE #mobile technology. #CMWorld
Tim Hayden @TheTimHayden

Brands need to pay attention to their writing as a differentiator re: personality, too. Good writing is often undervalued in content. #CMWorld
Ann Handley @annhandley

I think your personality or voice is consistent. But your tone changes depending on the platform/customer mindset. @CMIContent #CMWorld
Ann Handley @annhandley

Write how you speak instead of how you *think* you should write. #CMWorld
Linda Dessau @lindadessau

Many 1st-time authors are surprised to learn that readers LIKE insight into their personality. #CMWorld
Rick Short @RickShort21

I encourage new authors to take time to find their voice & style. It’s a process. #CMWorld
Rick Short @RickShort21

I like to write the “evil twin” of a post. Write the best practices … then write the common mistakes. Make it a guest post. #CMWorld
Andy Crestodina @crestodina

I’ve never consulted for a company that didn’t have great stories – most times they just were not in “story” form. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

RELATED: CMI’s most popular articles on content creation

Podcasting

Podcasting is a perfect fit for mobile & more companies are getting that. #CMWorld
Pamela Muldoon @pamelamuldoon

A podcast is not like Field of Dreams. If you build it … they will not come. Promotion, community & ease of sharing are critical. #CMWorld
Pamela Muldoon @pamelamuldoon

Podcasts have become an important way to reach an increasingly busy public. #CMWorld
Mike Myers @mikemyers614

Podcasting is the most intimate form of content we have as marketers. It is a perfect platform for storytelling. #CMWorld
Pamela Muldoon @pamelamuldoon

Every person & brand has a story. Even if it’s a short story, it’s worth sharing with your community/audience. #CMWorld
Crowd Content @CrowdContent

RELATED: Check out CMI’s Podcast Network with shows from Joe Pulizzi, Robert Rose, Pamela Muldoon, Todd Wheatland, and Andrew Davis

Visual content

Print is tangible. Even though we read a lot of online content, it sometimes feels less so. #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421

Best thing about print? You have audience’s COMPLETE attention. How many distractions are popping up on your screen right now? #CMWorld
Luke Sackandy @LukeNPC

@lttlewys I never realized it, but having a print magazine became a competitive advantage for us. Go figure. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

Think VISUAL content where possible. It doesn’t need translation. 2014 is the year of visual content. #CMWorld
HeidiCohen @heidicohen

Not just writing, imagery is a huge area to consider too – pictures and video must also be sensitive to cultural mores #CMWorld
Natalie Howells @NHowellsFW

Quite often video is treated as a standalone. How does it fit in with your content strategy and storyline? #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421

To me a video should ENHANCE and amplify great copy and photos NOT always replace it. #CMWorld
Andy Newbom @Brewbom

Be in control and you’re doing things intentionally. Arbitrarily selecting art will cheapen the experience. #CMWorld
Buddy Scalera @MarketingBuddy

Be descriptive even with visuals. Limit your text where feasible. Make the message be as direct as possible. #CMWorld
Carmella Lanni @vegecomgirl

Seems simple, but always always ask “what story does this visual fit into”. #CMWorld
Joe Cardillo @joecardillo

Use it to LEARN. @SlideShare is my first stop every morning while I drink my coffee. I’ve learned so much there! #CMWorld
Jonathon Colman @jcolman

Placing original design between templated pieces. The mixture of the 2 promotes creativity & consistency at the same time. #CMWorld
Joseph Kalinowski @ringo66

“Design by committee” can bring the whole project to a grinding halt. #CMWorld #ugh
Joseph Kalinowski @ringo66

RELATED: CMI’s most popular articles on visual content and design

Getting the most from in-person events

The internet has raised the bar for events. You have to be providing content attendees can’t get online. #CMWorld
Traci Browne @tracibrowne

Everyone you meet is a source of content – @crestodina’s yearbook proved that at last year’s #CMWorld.
Nick Kellet @NickKellet

Cover the #event like a #journalist. What would your audience want to know/ask if they were there? #CMWorld
Mike Myers @mikemyers614

Organize notes and prioritize based on need and length of time needed. Make a goal to implement “quick ideas” within 30 days. #CMWorld
Cathy McPhillips @cmcphillips

I always try to find 1-2 ah-ha ideas at any event; find that nugget that sings to YOU & take immediate action (Pronto!); Take risks #CMWorld
Peter Loibl @PeterLoibl

Content marketing allows brands to provide value in new ways and track customers thru conversion. #CMWorld
Scott Lum @ScottLum

Introverts often have better networking experiences. We don’t walk away w/a pocket full of cards, just a few solid connections.#CMWorld
Traci Browne @tracibrowne

The 2 tricks to making connections at a conference: 1) Research before the show. 2) Follow up after! #CMWorld
Andy Crestodina @crestodina

The best content marketers are constantly networking. The very best use the phone, in-person meetings and live events … #CMWorld
Andy Crestodina @crestodina

Good speakers also pre-schedule a tweet with a link to their slides, right after they finish speaking. Classic. #CMWorld
Shannon Doubleday @shhh

Life cycle of a speaking engagement: blog posts & tweets pre-event and post-event, spanning 6-10 weeks depending on engagement. #CMWorld
Leslie Brand @LLBrand

RELATED: Join us at the world’s largest content marketing event: Content Marketing World

Influencer marketing

The secret about influencers is that often they themselves may not think they are influential. #CMWorld
Andy Newbom @Brewbom

#CMWorld Help your influencers look good in front of their audiences. They love social currency.
Marc Lawn @businessgp

Influencers are not like Pokemon – you shouldn’t try to collect them all! #CMWorld
Erika Heald @SFerika

“Co-create with someone famous & they’re your friend for a day. Help someone become famous & they’re friends for life.” #CMWorld
Lee Odden @leeodden

Co-created content invests participants in the end product, incentivizing them to share & make it a success. #CMWorld
Lee Odden @leeodden

Start growing a network NOW, not when you need them. I had to start somewhere Find ways to create value, then level up. #CMWorld
Lee Odden @leeodden

RELATED: The Complete Guide to Influencer Marketing: Strategies, Templates & Tools

Content distribution and promotion

“Blasting our content on every channel in the same form” is not a channel plan or at least a good one. #CMWorld
Cathy McPhillips @cmcphillips

Please remember – advertising is not the only way to amplify content. Don’t forget PUBLIC RELATIONS & MEDIA RELATIONS! #CMWorld
Kris Huson @Vruno

I used to think paid social was an oxymoron but now it’s a necessity. #CMWorld
Scott Lum @ScottLum

RELATED: More ideas on how to distribute and promote your content

Social media

I don’t look at social marketing and content marketing as two different things anymore – they feed each other. #CMWorld
Scott Lum @ScottLum

The contacts feature is one of most underutilized / known features on @LinkedIn. #CMWorld
Bernie Borges @bernieborges

Pulse and #LI Influencers have created a content hub too rich too ignore. #CMWorld
Bernie Borges @bernieborges

Social strategy is required even if you do ZERO content, because consumers are using social like a telephone. #CMWorld
Jay Baer @jaybaer

Remember that social (and content) success is about the wizard, not the wand. The tool is a means to an end you determine. #CMWorld
Jay Baer @jaybaer

Remember that once you leave a social channel, it’s not easy to return. So you better be SURE you’re out forever. #CMWorld
Jay Baer @jaybaer

RELATED: How to Build Social Media into Your Content Marketing Processes

Measurement and ROI

Numbers matter, but so do anecdotes and stories. Don’t discount storytelling in your measurement. #CMWorld
Eric Wittlake @wittlake

Industry benchmarks are not that helpful. Benchmark yourself and work against that. #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421

It’s also important to think about what you’ll do with the metrics – what do they inform? #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421

Dig into @GoogleAnalytics. Look at trends. Look beyond page views and into conversions, better yet conversions by topic. #CMWorld
Cathy McPhillips @cmcphillips

RELATED: More articles on measurement and ROI

Technology

Marketing is now a technology-powered discipline. Every marketer should become comfortable with that #CMWorld
Scott Brinker @chiefmartec

With marketing and tech changing so fast we need to test and fail fast – learn faster. #CMWorld
Scott Lum @ScottLum

Tools that operationalize your content strategy are the way to go – not tech then strategy. #CMWorld
Ardath Albee @ardath421

Ask yourself this question – which apps are duplicating efforts? Which can drop? Save yourself time to make what you have work. #CMWorld
Nick Kellet @NickKellet

Marketing automation tools simply automate your process. They don’t automate creating the process. #CMWorld
Andy Newbom @Brewbom

This diagram shows them as facilitators between 4 constituents: CMO, IT, non-tech marketers, and vendors. #CMWorld http://t.co/wYhGC7xYOw
Scott Brinker @chiefmartec

I love file sharing programs such as Dropbox. Having a hub for all files between artists & editors is clutch. #CMWorld
Joseph Kalinowski @ringo66

#Tools? I love: @buffer @SumAll @Canva @GetSwayy @treble_io @followspruce @Nuzzel @warblealerts @listly #CMWorld
Christin Kardos @ChristinKardos

RELATED: 12 Questions to Ask When Making a Technology Decision

Miscellaneous wisdom

Big brands can learn from small brands by acting smaller and more local. By letting people in. Being more open. #CMWorld
Nick Kellet @NickKellet

Mass markets are really a collection of niches that overlap across general needs. #CMWorld
HeidiCohen @heidicohen

#mindmaps help me see things I wouldn’t otherwise see. #CMWorld
Kip Meacham @kiporama

I think there is often an opportunity to “connect the dots” for people – contextualize and make sense of info. #CMWorld
Michele Linn @michelelinn

I’m starting to feel, maybe for the first time, that content marketing is becoming a credible discipline of marketing. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

Content is evolving from communications to experiences, new tech for the 4th wave of content marketing. #CMWorld
Carla Johnson @CarlaJohnson

Other Startup Content Creator Hall of Famers include: @Wistia @priceintel @Buffer @intercom @helpscout @uberflip #CMWorld
Jay Acunzo @Jay_zo

Oreo probably did more to harm the real-time movement than help, because everyone thought it was so easy. It’s not. #CMWorld
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi

The biggest misconceptions of #contentmarketing: content marketing is a mindset, not a tool set #CMWorld
Michael Brenner @BrennerMichael

Content is every company’s best product! #CMWorld
Michael Brenner @BrennerMichael

Want to get the “best of” CMI over the holidays and new advice in the coming year? Subscribe to our daily or weekly email.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 125+ Most Thought-Provoking Tweets from the 2014 #CMWorld Twitter Chats appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Much has been said about the need to bring insights to your customers. In today’s world of more informed buyers, it is clear that you need to do more than just communicate the capabilities of your product. However, not much has been written about how to do this well or consistently. Sellers are struggling to know where to start, and some sales and marketing organizations flounder when trying to build an ‘insight machine’ that scales. How can you ensure that your insight machine (a) delivers insights that customers appreciate and (b) guides them to your solutions?

According to Forrester Research, 64% of senior executives believe that the sales person does not know enough about their buyer’s business to bring any value to a meeting. In fact only 25% of them are prepared to take a second meeting. Think about this for a minute; three out of every four sales meetings are a waste of time and money – both for the seller and for the buyer.

A seller who adopts the buyer’s perspective in his approach to a customer meeting will engage a buyer more effectively. This is because he sees things as the buyer does. He inhabits their world, and speaks to their pains, challenges, and fears. Using insights as a core part of the sales engagement strategy forces this perspective and results in more successful sales calls. Recent research from SiriusDecisions indicates that providing industry and business expertise is four times more valuable than having product knowledge and developing good relationships. That’s the value of a well-designed insight.

Sometimes we can forget that being a customer is not necessarily easier than being a sales person. All the customer’s got to do is pick a supplier, right? But when the customer makes that buying decision, the risk shifts from the supplier to the customer. For a customer to be comfortable, she must be really sure that the supplier actually understands her needs. Demonstrating knowledge of your own products or solutions doesn’t help. You need to help the customer learn something (worthwhile) that she doesn’t already know. That’s how you build credibility.

Insights are different from traditional marketing messages.

Insights help your customers discover problems (or opportunities) that they didn’t know they had. Traditional marketing approaches sell to a buyer’s identified need. But, as Daniel Pink said in his book To Sell is Human, ‘your products and services?are far more valuable when your prospect is mistaken, confused, or completely clueless about their true problem’.

The purpose of an insight is not to confuse, but to illuminate. Unlike traditional marketing materials, the insights themselves provide something of intrinsic value to the customer. Insights teach the customer something that you want them to learn, but have inherent worth such that, in the extreme case, a customer should be not be adverse to paying for the insight itself. Traditional marketing messages tend to address just the need that the buyer has identified. Remember, that is what all of your competitors are doing as well, so it is hard to differentiate.

The Recipe for a Great Insight – 5 Ingredients

The core ingredients for a great sales insight exist in every company. When your engineers, product managers or product designers first built the product you are selling, they usually started with a customer problem that they were looking to solve. The solution they developed was designed to fix something that is broken in the customer’s organization, or provide a capability that doesn’t exist but is needed. Assuming that the product concept was well informed, the essence of those product design decisions should be the foundation on which you build your insights.

Unfortunately, in many cases, some of the ingredients for that great sales insight are lost on the journey from product designer to sales person. Good insights lead a customer to the unique value that you can provide with your solution. This is important. If your sales team is bringing insights to your customer that are not leading to your unique value, then your sales efforts become an expensive educational exercise, and you may end up educating the customer right into the arms of your competitor.

Insights are tremendously powerful when well crafted and used in the right context. However, this is one of those cases where if you can’t do it exceptionally well, you should not do it at all. You can fall on your face really easily.

1. Start with the ‘typical’ customer problem scenario: All customers are different, but few have truly unique problems – just problems that are not sufficiently well understood at a detail level in the context of that customer. Companies of a similar size, at the same stage of company maturity, in the same region, and serving the same markets tend to have similar business challenges. There are other attributes that apply, and while the issues vary by role and their ability to meet those challenges might diverge, the context generally remains the same (or at least similar). This is just how business works.

We all have Goals (or Key Business Requirements) and Business Pressures to which we have to respond. This is why we undertake Initiatives (or projects); to relieve those pressures so that we can achieve the goals. In essence, these Initiatives fix things that are broken or add things that don’t exist but are necessary for a successful initiative. I refer to these as Obstacles. Remember, the reason the product was built in the first place was to help fix something that was broken, or fill a gap in the market.

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2. Consider the Buying Personas: Companies don’t buy – people do. In a typical B2B scenario there will be multiple personas involved in the buying decision. Each of these will have different concerns and issues that they care about. If, for example, you are selling a Cloud-based CRM system, the VP Sales in the buyer’s organization may care about how the CRM will help with sales productivity, while the CIO is more likely to be concerned about the deployment effort and data security concerns. Insights must be designed with the buying persona in mind. In this example, it may be valuable to provide the CIO with insights around the relative cost-of-ownership of SaaS versus on-premise software. The VP Sales might care about that but probably not too much. He is much more likely to be interested in the ease of use for his sales team and access over mobile devices, and might see value in a whitepaper that discuss trends in mobility.

3. Make it interesting – add intrigue: While it is important to address the buyer’s stated needs, and demonstrate your understanding of how the buyer might deploy your solution to meet those needs, it is a lot more valuable if you can create that ‘Aha’ moment when the buyer says “That’s interesting, I never thought about it that way before – I can see how we might benefit from that approach”. You want to teach the customer something that you want them to learn. You have to bring something new to the table and make it interesting.

4. Lead to your solution: You can create an insight that leads to your solution if you have a deep understanding as to why the product was developed in the first place. This is where sales enablement and product marketing / management can deliver dramatic value to the sales team by synthesizing those specific capabilities that your product uniquely delivers that the customer should value, based on your understanding of their business. You want to use the insight to lead to your product’s capabilities mapped to the customer’s known or unknown needs, rather than use traditional marketing approaches to lead with the product.

5. Do Not (overtly) Self-Promote: As I said above, the insight you provide should have intrinsic value. Here are 12 Steps to Building a Great Sales Playbook; Check out your Sales Velocity Equation; 64% of sales calls are ineffective, are all examples of Insights (from The TAS Group) that all have intrinsic value – independently of whether the customer chooses to do business with the insight provider. They each cause the buyer to think in a potentially different way about the challenges or opportunities in front of them. Good examples of insights are things like 3rd party studies, survey results, or industry analysis. Anything that is overtly self-promotional, and presented as an insight does more harm than good. Datasheets, customer testimonials, or demo videos are not insights. Insights should really be vendor agnostic. Bear in mind that you are asking the buyer to spend their time consuming whatever you provide. Does the insight add value to their job? You should be using the insight to build credibility.

Making it Scale

What we are doing here with insights is designing for a crucial component of the buyer / seller interaction; the point at which credibility grows or dies. It is not reasonable (or responsible) to ask all of your salespeople to figure this out themselves. They just don’t have the time and are not as close to the problem as your product people were when they were building the product, or where your sales enablement people or product management / marketing should be. In many cases you will end up with marketing collateral masquerading as insights; or insights that are only lightly-informed and can’t flex when faced with any level of analysis; or, at worst, insights that have not been thought through well enough and in fact lead to a capability that you cannot provide.

There are too few sales and marketing organizations that package insights in a manner that can be consumed easily by an individual sales person and then shared with the customer. Even fewer have put the infrastructure in place to scale such a solution consistently across a sales team. This is where things typically fall down. I’ve seen marketing portals brimming with collateral, sales portals littered with data sheets and case studies, and CRM systems grinding to a halt under the weighty burden of content, content and more content. There is lots of content, but very little customer context. We need less content and more context.

Winning sales teams are gathering all of the raw information available from product experts, from marketing and customers, to deconstruct, process and repackage it with smart software so that everyone – sales, marketing and all customer facing personnel in your company – can apply it to facilitate good business conversations with customers that lead to the right solutions. Smart technology can help to connect your solutions to the customers’ business problem and deliver the right insights at the right time to the right persona.