Your body is not a machine, and you shouldn't treat it like one even if you think you can "tough it out." You need to put as much care and consideration on your recovery as you do your workouts. Here are some common running mistakes that can compound the stress you're placing on your body.
Are your ecommerce promotions performing as well as you had planned? It’s possible that even if you feel you’re doing well, your numbers may indicate otherwise. A little ecommerce education, even if you’re a savvy business owner, can help to make sure you’re working smarter, not harder, to grow your business.
We’re finding through many client interviews, blog comments, social media chats and even marketing consultations, that many online store owners are not fully aware of how much time and money they’re spending on promotions. Most online store owners either do not evaluate the return on investment or misunderstand the full impact a promotion has on their bottom line.
That said, there is much to leverage when you’re able to facilitate successful promotions to your online store. If done right, you can tap into your existing client base in a smart and meaningful manner and attract new, high-converting shoppers to your business at the same time.
“The key now is how do you drive loyalty on a year-round basis, not just around price, but around value,” Tom Caporaso, CEO of Clarus Marketing Group, told Inc.com. “The race is how do you get those consumers engaged and ultimately staying with your site.”
For many online stores, the struggle to generating traffic and encouraging loyalty is due to a lack of a formula that works well across all industries and customer personas. In my nearly two years consulting and educating clients on everything ecommerce, I’ve come to find that running a successful online promotional campaign is a place where most clients discover they’re wasting money or misunderstanding what is truly effective.
Taryn McCracken, owner of online store Picture it Creations, came to realize that she had trained her customers to look for and engage with her next promotion, rather than with her site – a potential downfall of running promotions too frequently. Since then, she has pivoted her focus to bringing her loyal customer-base back to her site with the emphasis on natural engagement vs. constant promotions.
In all, it’s a game of trial and error, which can prove both frustrating and challenging. Sure, a promotions strategy can be a pricey tactic – but it doesn’t have to be. Here, these expert online store owners, some of which contribute more than 30% of their profits to promotions, walk you through their successful promotion strategies that both built up their existing customer base while still maintaining a high level of customer loyalty.
First things first, an ecommerce promotional campaign is not just about sprinkling in some social posts or simply tossing an email or two to a list you’ve collected. A successful promotional campaign requires a well thought-out strategy that targets every potential customer touchpoint, from top of funnel through to delivery of the product.
Figuring out the right strategy for your business size and needs can be tough, but these 10 proven steps for planning promotions that drive sales is a great start to getting your thoughts in order. In this video you’ll find tactics to help you determine your promotional goals, prepare the front and back end of your website and effectively spread the word to get the most from your efforts.
By segmenting and properly targeting your clients or prospects from the start, you can boost your revenue, increase brand awareness and create life-long customer advocates.
According to online store owner Melissa of Mel Jens Designs, running a successful promotion is all about finding that delicate balance between audience segmentation, great timing and setting the perfect price or placing the perfect offer. It makes no sense to promote a campaign to people who are not in the least bit interested.
The following video focuses on email marketing specifically, but will provide you with a plethora of ideas to help you segment and target specific offers to the right people at the right time for the best results.
This is the vital step which both online store owners Melanie of Poppy Sports and Jennifer from The Eczema Company stress, and the one most often missed by online store owners (myself included). After all, a successful promotional campaign is a balancing act of audience segmentation, timing and pricing. If you get one of these elements incorrect, all of your hard work could be wasted. Understanding how to evaluate your promotional campaigns based on items including shopper behavior, your profit margin or even desired customer engagement can make a huge impact. Watch and learn how to spot an issue with your campaigns and figure out how to best remedy it.
Let us know your thoughts and tips on this topic in the comments section below.
Customer experience is more than a full-time job. It’s more than a project. It’s more than a department. The best organizations spend plenty of time considering how to deliver exceptional experiences. The very best organizations then act upon those ideas quickly and with vigor.
As we face the new year, I thought it would be fun to give you 15 ideas that might help you rock 2015 in a rapid fire way.
While others track analytics and send out surveys, this list is for anyone to who wants to make things happen quickly.
1. Create or revise your customer experience mission statement.
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2. Deputize someone in each department as the customer advocate. It’s their job to truly represent the customer in every meeting.
3. Include customer tasks in YOUR to-do list every day or week. Call the call center, try to order something online, or just talk to front-line staff.
4. Develop a way to for your C-level executives to hear the most telling examples of what experience is like for your customers. If the CEO hears about a problem, it’s more likely to get fixed!
5. Invite a customer into your board meetings. Ask them to share what their experience has been like.
6. Map the customer journey
7. Find some part of the journey to examine more closely each month. Create a task force each month to look into it.
8. Micromap a customer task and outcome. Do this each time you find something that’s not quite working for customers. Work to uncover all the “what if’s” that customers might face.
9. Find one verbatim answer from the latest surveys every day. Share the best with the employees who made it a great experience! Make a big deal out of great feedback!
10. Keep track of microinteractions! Take note of those you see that are boring, tired or just unhelpful. Develop ways to create meaningful microinteractions and change them to be inspiring, fun and memorable.
11. Review your invoices. Does the tone and messaging match your customer experience mission? Do they say thank you in more than a boilerplate way!? Make sure they do.
12. Re-write your company’s job postings. Do they to reflect a customer-centric culture? Consider your hiring methods and make sure they align with your customer experience mission.
13. Keep thank you cards at the ready. Encourage everyone to send hand-written cards to whomever they’d like – customers, prospects, employees, vendors, etc. whenever they’d like!
14. Tackle those trickiest touchpoints in 2015. There are places in the customer journey you know aren’t working. Make 2015 the year to fix them.
15. Keep learning! Bookmark this blog and subscribe to the Crack The Customer Code podcast!
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind us, but as the holiday shopping season comes to a close, retailers are more anxious than ever to end the year on a high note. Already, there are several lessons retailers can learn from the trends that have played out so far this season. Whether holiday sales are top-notch or lackluster, it’s critical for all brands to cater their 2015 strategies towards the preferences shoppers have voiced. While this is no small feat, if retail brands keep the following priorities top of mind they will be ready to meet customer demands in the coming year.
One thing that has become clear is that consumers now expect a consistent customer experience regardless of how they shop. In fact, a recent a survey of 3,000 global, multi-generational consumers found that 90 percent of consumers expect consistency with online and in-store shopping experiences. Delivering this is a bigger challenge than ever for brands as the number of channels shoppers use continues to climb. It’s also important to know where customers are doing their research and making their purchases. Many are researching in stores and buying online, and doing the same in reverse. In fact, a recent report from BI Intelligence found that “webrooming” is becoming just as popular as its reverse showrooming, where consumers research products in-store and then buy online. Forrester recently reported that this phenomenon is here to stay and that retailers will need to incorporate mobile into their in-store marketing strategies to succeed. SDL found this to be true as well. While almost half of holiday shoppers said that they planned to use their mobile devices to research possible gifts before purchasing them in-store, the device of choice varies by generation – Generation X prefers tablets, while millennials choose to use their smartphones. The lesson for brands once again is that a consistent customer experience across all devices is critical to the success of any retail strategy.
To do this successfully, one tactic retailers must embrace is marketing their products the same both online and in stores, with consistent pricing and availability. This is becoming increasingly important, as top two reasons shoppers reported in SDL’s survey for why they are loyal to their favorite brands are consistent, predictable customer service and consistent experiences across all devices they use to interact with the brand. Even more, the same survey showed that 47 percent of holiday shoppers have been frustrated with discrepancies with in-store from online impressions and 40 percent noticed a disconnect between the information available online versus in stores.
Ultimately, technology is changing the way people shop, but positive, personalized and consistent experiences remain critical for building brand loyalty. Further validating this, two-thirds of respondents told SDL that they would even pay more for products from brands that offer a better customer experience this holiday season. The brands that can most effectively adopt these lessons from the 2014 holiday shopping season and focus on relevant omnichannel experiences will be best positioned to meet customer demands and grow brand loyalty in the New Year.
FA Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for financial advisors.
The Rapid Plunge In Oil Prices Suggests That A Global Recession Is Taking Place (Advisor Perspectives)
While the drop in oil prices is great news for average American consumers, it could be bad news for the overall economy. The problem is not so much that prices dropped, but rather how quickly they dropped, according to Gary Halbert.
"The rapid fall in crude prices is a telling sign to some Wall Street analysts and economists that there may be a global recession taking hold and the slowing growth is pushing oil lower. Remember, at the height of the financial crisis, crude got down into the high $30s a barrel at the end of 2008 as the US and Europe went into a recession," writes Halbert.
"This explains why the plunge in oil prices spilled over into the equity markets last week and so far this week," he adds.
Merril Lynch Was Fined $1.9 Million Because They Didn't Have An Adequate Supervisory System (The Wall Street Journal)
"Merrill Lynch violated fair-pricing guidelines nearly 720 times in retail customer transactions over two years, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which find the bank $1.9 million," reports Angela Chen.
Reportedly, Merrill Lynch's trading desk purchases notes from retail customers at 5.3% to 61.5% below the market price, and then sold them to other brokers at market price.
"Even after factoring in the nature of the market for these types of instruments, the markdowns charged were simply unacceptable," said Thomas Gira, Finra's head of market regulation.
Baby Boombers Don't Have Enough Savings (Financial Advisor Magazine)
A huge amount of baby boomers haven't saved enough for retirement, according to a new study released by Bankers Life Center for Secure Retirement.
Middle-income boomers believe that $500,000 in investible assets is the amount needed for retirement, but only 13% have that much. More than half (54%) only have $100,000 and one-third (34%) have less than $25,000.
As a result, only 35% of baby boomers are expecting to retire at or before the age of 65.
An Alternative Fund Manager Was Arrested For Diverting $12.6 Million (Investment News)
Daniel Thibeault, the chief executive of asset manager GL Capital Partner was arrested on securities fraud charges last week after the FBI accused him of diverting approximately $12.6 million from a fund, reports Mason Braswell.
Thibeault took out fake loans to gain access to money in a closed-end interval mutual fund. Approximately $36.6 million worth were issued through the fund, and $12.6 million were taken out through an intermediary. The money from those loans never made it to individuals, however, reports Braswell.
He was released on a $700,000 bail secured by the equity in his house.
UBS Reps Are Going To See Bigger Bonuses (Think Advisor)
Along with its competitors Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, UBS will also be changing up its payout plans for 2015, reports Janet Levaux.
"The firm says its wealth-management award has been 'signifcantly enhanced' to encourage advisors to grow their practice. Wealth-management production will include fees tied to advisory services, insurance, lending and planning in 2015, with bonuses of up to 6% of production," reports Levaux.
When you for start as a link builder or content marketer and don’t know any better and are under a lot of pressure, it was just all about getting that mention and link from industry related blogs for the client’s content. Client expectations were more about the quantity of links, not as much about the quality, so a link from an authority site was great, but they wanted dozens more of them which can be very tough to do depending on the content.
A lot has changed in the years that SEO has been around. What we tend to forget is that marketing has been around forever and we should follow their strategies and techniques more closely when doing SEO today.
In the old days of SEO, the number of links you had could help you to rank higher. Today, it’s more about the quality and organic links that you get that can help to bring you traffic, gain brand awareness, and ultimately help to increase your rankings.
Source: QuickSprout
It used to be about creating something good and then finding the people that would share it for you on their site or through social platforms. With influencers and industry experts flooded with these requests every day, it will take quite a lot more than just the amazing content that you believe your team created.
Everything is a lot harder now and content can’t just be good, or even great…it has to be amazing to stand out. It’s more natural and how marketers have been doing it for years and the SEO industry is finally just coming up to speed.
Sure, there is B2B and B2c, but when it comes down to it, it’s H2H now, or human to human.
It’s all about building relationships these days as it should be and forever will be. Find those in your or your client’s industry that are making some noise online on a daily basis. Follow them, engage with them and their content, and share, share, and share some more. If you do this (without being a crazy stalker person) and they take notice, then chances are when you have a great piece of content that needs a little push that they will help.
Be genuine about it, and not obvious. Actually read their content and add value or question their ideas.
Nobody likes a suck-up (for the most part), or someone that is only in it for getting a brand mention. It’s all about creating value in your industry and helping others so that when the time comes, they will be glad to return the favor.
So in a blogger outreach strategy you have to ditch the template outreach (or use it just a baseline for your message) and create a personalized and custom approach to each blogger. Do a little bit of research and keep notes on them by using tools like
Do a little bit of research and keep notes on them by using tools like Buzzstream. That way you reach out you may have found a common interest between you, so your message won’t be the standard intro of who you are, what you have, and what you want them to do. Your first e-mail correspondence with them may just be an introduction and talking about that common interest, or maybe you’re both from the same area and have a talking point there.
Just get recognized by them so they know you aren’t just a leech and that you will do something for them before you ask them to do something for you. This can be sometimes difficult as this can lengthen your outreach strategy which can become quite expensive and time consuming, but it is well worth it in the long run to establish relationships with influential bloggers.
By creating great content and practicing these techniques, you may begin to outrank your competitors with your website, which is what we all want right?
To a group of energetic salespeople during the Sales Blazer event in New York City, Debbie Madden, CEO of Stride, shared key steps to growing a business with lead generation. Here are the highlights.
Knowing your target means understanding their biggest challenges. According to Debbie, “Consider your target as a group of people who share specific needs and reference each other.” Your audience shares their problems with each other, they attend the same events, and they’re in the same LinkedIn Groups.
To identify your market, consider their key locations, industries, titles, company size, etc. “When it comes to marketing and sales, you have to be realistic, “ shares Debbie.
Uncover the personas of the individuals you want as clients. This enables you to define your real client. “Think of existing and past clients,” shares Debbie, “Think of the ones you love and the ones you wish you didn’t have.” Personas include understanding your audience’s values, beliefs, hobbies, interests, dislikes, deal breakers, etc.
It’s very hard to sell something just because you want to sell it. It’s much easier to solve a problem. Therefore, understand the urgent need you’re solving for your client.
It’s important to build trust over time by continuously offering value. You cannot push too hard, but instead, offer helpful information and content to assist your prospect in making a decision. “In the world of starting sales outreach, there’s marriage and there’s dating. Your goal is to date,” said Debbie. 90% of your target market isn’t ready to buy right now and that’s OK. Don’t ask for marriage on the first date. Your audience is in an early research phase, so understanding this concept and providing valuable content will help them make a decision.
“Understand where your target market looks for you,” says Debbie, “For example, are they online or offline? What do they read?” Don’t worry about getting it 100% right, instead, brainstorm and develop a list.
Debbie recommends choosing three core strategies to start. These can range from networking, to direct outreach to marketing campaigns, or anything else. “Do things that you’re psyched about doing and you’ll have better results, “shares Debbie.
Debbie closed by saying that if you do a little bit every week, you’ll see results.
Sales Enablement tools are Hot! Developing and offering sales enablement tools is a multibillion dollar industry. It seems every week I get at least one email of a tool that is intended to help improve the effectiveness of sales people, managers, or anyone involved in sales. Some are quite broad in scope, some are very focused–helping us do one thing much better.
The developers of the tools offer great case studies and research about how the tools help sales people. Most of the companies I talk to are investing millions in buying sales enablement tools. I haven’t seen the latest data, but a couple of years ago, the investments in these tools were moving from $5K to $10K to $15K per year per sales person.
Some of my favorite blogs on these tools are Nancy Nardin’s and Miles Austin’s. I never miss Matt Heinz’ weekly post on his “tool of the week.”
I’m very excited by much of what I see with these tools. There are a few I think are quite outstanding, but when I talk about them I have to do a full disclosure that I sit on the advisory boards of those companies.
With all that as preamble, I never written a post about my favorite sales enablement tools. So as 2014 is coming to an end, I thought I’d write about my 2 favorite sales enablement tools–at least for this year. We’ve been using them in our company for quite some time, to be honest, without them, we’d virtually be out of business.
These tools also seem to be very popular with some of the highest performing sales people and managers I’ve met. Seeing this has reconfirmed, at least for me, the investment our company has made in these tools.
These tools, like any sales enablement tool require constant use. The people we’ve noticed having the greatest difficulty in using these tools use them only sporadically. Sometimes, they get frustrated, and they abandon them. The power users, those getting the greatest benefit use them everyday. They integrate them into their work flow and into their daily routines. Like many of the tools, the more you use them, the more powerful they seem to become.
We’ve benchmarked the difference between the results the power users get from these tools and those the the sporadic users get–it’s profound. Those who use these tools consistently out perform those who don’t. But the same can be said of virtually every sales enablement tool. They require focus, dedication, constant use. So if you or your organizations aren’t committed to learning and using them, it’s probably not worth the investment.
When we evaluate sales enablement tools, we look at a number of criteria. My two favorite tools are stellar in every area–I guess that’s why we like them so much. But some of the areas in which they really shine are:
Scalability and Deployment: A lot of the tools we evaluate are great for very large organizations. Because they may have fairly complex implementations, conversions, or deployment issues, they serve large organizations very well, but it’s difficult for smaller organizations to implement and get value. Likewise some tools are difficult to scale up or down. My favorites get five stars in all areas. We’ve seen them easily deployed in organizations having just one sales person—and they can be easily ramped to support teams of thousands of sales people. They don’t require lots of support from IT, or other organizations.
User Interface/GUI: This is one of the biggest problems with many of these tools. It seems many of the large, older CRM systems and the other classic sales enablement tools hire Marquis de Sade as their User Interface designer. A bad user interface drive low utilization and compliance. People just won’t use the sales enablement tool if its too difficult to use. Again, my favorites shine, getting 5 stars here. The UI’s are elegant in their simplicity and design. At one point I did some research to see if Steve Jobs or Jonathan Ive were involved in the design. They weren’t, but the UI’s for these tools are that elegant.
Conversion/Data Migration: Most sales people don’t have to worry about this much, but it’s something we need to be concerned about. How easy is it to take all our data from previous systems and migrate it into these tools. Do we lose critical things, are we able to easily take everything we’ve had in the past into the system. Again, the designers of these tools have thought a lot about these issues and made all of that pretty transparent.
Miscellaneous: There are always a number of little things, but they can be annoyances. Things like battery life for devices, what if you don’t have access to WiFi or the cloud. In global organizations, multi-language support is critical. There are all sorts of other thins, as well. Again, these tools generally are 5 stars in the categories we’ve been concerned about.
Cost/Investment: This is a big issue with any sales enablement tool. What’s the return on the investment? What’s the ongoing investments we have to make to continue to get value out of these tools? Like any of the sales enablement tools, you do have to invest in these. You have to continually train, learn and develop to get the maximum value out of these tools. But, at least in our experience, these tools are indispensable to us. The power users and highest performing sales professionals seem to indicate the same thing. Interviewing one, his comment was, “You can take away everything else–CRM, Analytics, Research, Social Media, all of them, but you’d have to wrench these tools from my cold dead body. I would never give these up! They are what set me apart from everyone else!”
So, with that as background to why I’ve selected these as my favorite Sales Enablement tools for 2014–actually for all time, here they are:
Our Brain/Minds: This is really one of the coolest tools I’ve ever seen. Again, it’s only useful if you constant use it, I think that’s the challenge many sales people have, they don’t use it as often as they should. They don’t train it, they don’t constantly learn or develop their skills of critical thinking. We find it’s the thing that sets us apart from everyone else, it’s our differentiator and the ultimate Value Creation tool. I’m actually surprised more people don’t write about it as a sales enablement tool. I guess, possibly because it’s one of those old school tools, and their are much flashier shiny toys to talk about.
Pencil/Paper: We find this is a perfect complement to our brains. Our brains have some weaknesses. Though they allow us to analyze, evaluate, think, create in very powerful ways, sometimes we have so much going on, finding or remembering that critical task or to do just slips our minds. Pencil/Paper is our backup/complementary or auxilary storage system. Power consumption is low, we’ve never had a problem with battery life–though every once in a while we do have to buy new notebooks and pencils. We have discovered if we write down a lot of the strategies our brains enable us to develop, we no longer have to remember them, we can put our brains to use doing other things, but the pencil and paper are the perfect complement. (Some people prefer the pen/paper options–we’re actually quite indifferent–choose the implementation that best suits you.)
So anyway, those are our favorite Sales Enablement tools. I haven’t seen many other people evaluate them, I hope you find this useful. I kind of suspect these two tools will top my list next year, as well.
I have been to many conferences and read many marketing articles about having marketing get a seat at the table. Of course this is in reference to CMOs being a part of the executive conversations that occur in the boardroom with the other members of the C-Suite…something that is not always accepted nor expected.
I do believe that many CMOs are making great strides in advancing their leadership positions within their organizations. However, I believe there is still some work to do to ensure they are seen as leaders in their organizations and will then obtain that seemingly elusive leadership seat at the table.
In working with many clients and speaking with marketing decision makers, here are some of the most important areas I believe CMOs need to show stronger leadership in:
I have written many times about the need for change management in marketing organizations in order to adapt to the rapid shifts that are occurring with B2B buyers. Yet, in many organizations there is a lack of leadership regarding the need for change. In speaking with one CMO of an enterprise company the response was “I see the value in taking a new approach and believe it is needed, but it seems like a formidable challenge, so we will just keep going with things as they are.” At the same time, the marketing team underneath him was pushing for the needed transformation and growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of movement which was a result in poor leadership.
There has been a lot written about the need for marketing and sales alignment and while many organizations are making strides in collaboration between the two groups, CMOs need to show better leadership in aligning with the rest of the organization. Recent studies show that the CMOs alignment with CEOs, CFOs and CIOs is still an issue:
The need for CMOs to demonstrate leadership across the various areas of the organization in order to provide value to their buyers and customers is now more vital than ever. However, there continues to be issues that will take strong leadership to fix.
In the Enterprise B2B Demand Generation Study that was published ANNUITAS, more than 55% of B2B Marketers stated there was a skills gap and that they did not have the necessary skills to do their jobs. Forrester released a report this year that showed that 96% of CMOs either agree or strongly agree that “the breadth of skills needed to succeed in marketing has increased dramatically”. However, CMOs are not making the necessary investments in their people to help close this skills gap.
A study conducted by Focus and the Marketing Automation Institute uncovered that over 70% of marketers receive no training or are self-taught and more than 60% of organizations spend less than $1,000 annually on training their personnel.
If CMOs do not have the right staff, with the right skills that can execute and perform in a growing complex and sophisticated environment, how do they expect to provide greater value to the organization? CMOs need to lead their teams and ensure they are appropriating the right amount of budget to skills development and education. Building a strong team and investing in people is one of the trademarks of a good leader.
According to the most recent Content Marketing Institute Benchmark Study, 55% of those surveyed said they would increase spending on content in the coming year. However, the same study shows that only 35% of organizations have a defined content marketing strategy and only 8% say they are very effective with their content marketing.
Investing more money into 8% effectiveness and into an area that has no strategy is not just a lack of leadership, it is foolish! CMOs need to be better stewards of their budgets and begin to make wise investments that have a high return to the organization. In doing so, they will effectively demonstrate their own business value to their peers.
The need for leadership from the CMO role is more crucial than ever and still many are not fulfilling this obligation. These four areas, while not the only areas, are a good place to start and will go a long way to bringing much needed transformation to marketing organizations.
Blogging can be fun when you write about your passions. But blogging for business is more about generating leads from your content and turning them into sales. It’s the serious tip of the the art of blogging.
Business blogging needs robust processes, tools and frameworks
In the previous part of the series “The Essential How To Guide on Generating Leads with Business Blogging ”, we outlined how to create a framework for lead generating blogging.
Besides setting up goals and visualizing them in a funnel, you need to complete the circle with more insightful information about the target audience. Once you start writing on your company’s blog according to the keyword research and the editorial calendar, you’ll want to start using surveys to validate your hypotheses and optimize the efforts.
Since Google Analytics (or other web analytics software that you’re using) is just showing you through quantitative data what is happening on the website, you may want to figure out the cause of the results. “Why is this happening on my website?” is the question that needs an answer in the early stages of lead generation.
In order to avoid leakages in your content marketing campaigns, you need to know as much as possible about the users that interact with the website. The ultimate goal of using surveys is making sure that you optimize any future campaign. It requires:
Converting more from the website’s traffic
Allocating resources efficiently: time, money and energy
Optimization is a growth factor that involves targeted efforts. The focus should go only on the suitable users for the business, the good traffic as I’ve explained in the previous parts of this guide. You need to know which segments of traffic generate the greatest revenue for your business.
Going back to the initial scheme, you can see that one of the intermediate goals is transforming visitors into subscribers.
At the moment, you may find yourself in one of the two following positions:
You have created a free offer using the evergreen content (i.e.: evergreen content is the content that remains up to date and can be used in another form)
You have not created yet a free offer, but it’s in your plan
In any case, you have to use surveys to know what to do next to achieve your objectives. The four essential outcomes from surveys are:
The users’ intent and their specific problems or opportunities
The biggest thing they’re struggling with right now
The level of satisfaction with the company’s offer
The barriers that stop them from converting into customers/ subscribers/ leads
There are no exact rules or questions that you need to use in your surveys to find the answers to these questions. Once you started creating 2-3 surveys on both the website and blog, you’ll observe certain patterns. Use these patterns to get as much information as possible from the users.
To cut a few corners, here are a few suggestions to start using surveys to generate leads based on the four outcomes mentioned above:
There are two alternatives to get actionable insights for lead generation campaigns using information about the user’s intent:
I suggest you to use the on-site surveys instead of the email. Usually, the users who didn’t convert on the website are frustrated or confused and are not willing to answer to your question. On the other hand, the on-site survey catches them in action. This answer will be fresh and accurate.
Setting up a survey to figure the user’s intent takes 3-5 minutes. With the right software, you just have to choose a template, type the questions, select the pages and traffic segments included in the survey and schedule it.
A few technical details and recommendations:
Segments of traffic: New visitors who viewed three pages
Pages: Homepage, features
When to trigger the survey: At load (when the page is loading)
Keep it simple and focus on your goal: A one-question survey is enough.
Finding out the user’s intent also helps with validating the quality of the website’s traffic. It may not be your offer that is not suitable for the visitors, but the visitors who don’t fit within your target market segment.
If you want to create that free offer to start growing the email list, you want to write it for the users’ needs. Therefore, you need to know what they need in order to avoid writing an ebook for a problem that doesn’t affect none or too few of the users in your target audience.
You could use the email survey or the on-site survey.
Send a plain text email to the subscriber asking a simple question: “What’s the biggest thing you’re struggling with regarding [your topic]?”. Insert a Call To Action and send traffic to a dedicated page where people can answer.
Send a follow up email to thank them for answering to your question
Let them know that you’re working on a product to help them solve their problem
Be sure that you have enough traffic to collect answers on-site. Otherwise, it won’t be relevant.
Write an introductive copy for the survey, like we did in this example:
This type of information is provided by customers, (the ones who have converted). They are the only ones that could provide with information about what they liked, what mattered to them, what comparisons and research they did before deciding to convert.
The information regarding the customers’ satisfaction helps with observing patterns and behavior and starting to replicate success.
Technical details and recommendations:
Use exit intent technology to trigger the survey at exit.
Keep it simple(again): one question is enough
Use it with confidence on all the important landing pages
Prioritize the website’s pages based on potential, importance and ease
Use the survey’s answers to optimize the landing pages and improve the offers
If, for instance, you have created a landing page where people can download a free offer, you need to use two methods:
A/B testing to test the copy and design (quantitative data)
Exit survey to see what is missing on the page. The aim is convincing people to leave their email address for the offer
These being said, I hope that you have gathered useful knowledge from this article. I would be happy to answer any questions regarding the uses of surveys to prepare and optimize your future lead generation campaigns.
Note: All of the examples above are created with Marketizator, conversion rate optimization tool for marketers who don’t want to mess with the code. If you want to see the various uses of surveys to achieve your marketing goals, check out this post from Marketizator’s Blog.
Your marketing data is a goldmine – these 5 tips will show you how to gain additional insight that is proven to boost profits.
Your marketing database is a veritable treasure trove of actionable insights – if you are willing to work hard with your data. Mining for gold is a filthy business, but the returns can be massive. Here we look at five reasons why your business should be investing time and effort in mining your marketing database.
Deep analysis of your data allows you to identify new opportunities using the information you already have. Customers who have previously bought product A, may well be interested in product B, which provides additional functionality. Your existing customers are also your most valuable, so it makes good business sense to prioritise them with value-added offers to generate additional revenue.
“75% of consumers say they have spent more with a company because of a history of positive customer service experiences.” Global Customer Service Barometer Report – American Express 2012.
Not all marketing data has to be stored in your system for instance. Proactive monitoring of open social channels will identify potential leads who have reached out to your competitors. You can use this information to create specially targeted offers, such as personalised discount vouchers, as a way of enticing buyers to consider your brand.
“Nearly 15% of organisations don’t know what percentage of requests originate in the social sphere as they aren’t programmatically monitoring or engaging in support conversations on social.” – Social Media and Customer Service: From Listening to Engagement – Aberdeen Group.
Even in the digital age, word-of-mouth referrals are both powerful and effective. Cross-referencing market data with social sources will help you identify customers who have expressed positive sentiments towards your brand. This information can then be used to build a loyalty club, provide early product access opportunities or other experiences that encourage further engagement with your brand.
“Marketing-induced consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates more than 2X the sales of paid advertising.” – McKinsey Research.
“Customers referred by other customers have a 37% higher retention rate.” – Deloitte.
The people who use your products and services are also those most likely to identify shortcomings or potential enhancements. Whether you use your contact data to follow customers up with surveys, or you simply monitor online sentiment, there will always be new input available that can be fed back to your product development team. At the very least, you should be able to carry out the earliest stages of market research using this information. Admittedly this isn’t a direct sales technique, but developing new products that have been crafted to specific customer needs is a powerful USP.
Using what you know about your customers to provide exceptional support and services is an excellent way to create brand loyalty. Again, this is not necessarily a sales tactic, but it has been shown to boost revenue.
“55% of consumers would pay more for a better customer experience.” – Defaqto Research.
Knowing what your customers want and delivering it is a sure fire route to success.
Takeaways:
So is it worth investing in further data analysis? Absolutely! You can:
To find out more about how managing your data can increase its value, read: Modern marketing essentials guide: data management.
Find out why marketing methods used by mobile apps can teach serious marketers a thing or two.
Vine. WhatsApp. Tinder. Very different apps, doing very different things – most of them social. Surely nothing there is of interest to a professional marketer dealing with B2B Big Data every day? Surprisingly, there is. While these little phone apps look simple, what they do is actually the essence of Big Data marketing – distilling a mass of hard-to-quantify inputs into easy-to-understand outputs. (With clearly measurable results.) So what’s the secret of their success? Here are three thoughts for marketers…. all applicable to database-driven marketing at all levels.
Take Tinder. It’s an app that lets people meet interesting strangers nearby, such as in the same gym or bar. (All the app does is scroll through photos of consenting users and invite a “swipe” left or right to indicate approval – or not). Mutual approval frees them to exchange messages and meet up. Compare that to the long questionnaires found on many dating websites… or sadly, on many marketing signup forms. By attempting to squeeze every morsel of pre-qualifying data out of the prospect, signup forms scare away almost all of them and conversion rates nosedive. Hence our first learning: trade precision for appeal by making it easy for prospects to express interest. The size of the potential sale should not be proportional to the number of fields on a newsletter signup. (As the classic Lightspeed study confirms.) For cold suspects, your goal is to get a friendly touch in… not a stern winnowing.
Many professionals don’t “get” short messaging app, WhatsApp. It seems to offer little more than SMS messaging – with the added hassle of a download. WhatsApps’s mostly young users see it differently. Their contacts run into the thousands; they manage such lists through social media – not a list of phone numbers. Predictive text to them isn’t a useful extra, it’s a fundamental human right. WhatsApp messaging uses a Web connection, with no impact on the user’s SMS monthly allowance. For anyone on a student budget or studying abroad, that’s a big benefit. These tiny savings of cash and effort, multiplied by many millions of users, add up to a lot of brand value for WhatsApp. So to our second learning: what tiny extra can you offer that customers might find disproportionately loveable? Perhaps a Call-me-now button on your marketing emails, instead of a phone number? Or an alternative to Captchas as they work but everybody hates them? Look for that bit of effort that may result in an abandonment and remove it.
Six second videos? What’s the point of that? It’s what Vine does: let users upload and share (very) short videos they’ve made. Vine’s real USP, however, is murkier: it’s a game. Videos on Vine must “loop” – end their six-second run with roughly the same image they started. It’s hypnotic, gives rise to clever creativity and leads to videos being watched millions of times. Vine’s success lies in the way it specifies a narrow rule with a big reward. That’s a principle of gamification, making people work harder by making aspects of their jobs game-like. Any gamer who’s spent an entire weekend searching for that unusual laser gun in an apocalyptic wasteland knows what effort he’ll put in if the weapon’s rare enough. At six seconds, a Vine isn’t asking for much investment of your time. (Especially compared with the minutes the average marketing presentation movie takes to get started.) Hence our last and broadest learning: make engagement rewarding. There are numerous ways to do this. Instead of your Security Question being the usual Mother’s Maiden Name, ask for their favourite colour. Then use that colour as the backing on the thankyou page. Or add “Do you know your name’s an anagram of XXXXX?” to your acknowledgement email and ask them to enter it at your website for a special offer. (Back in the 1970s, Epson asked for prospects’ favorite singer on its magazine ads – and briefed telesales on greatest hits before the prospecting call. A creative use of customer data.) Such little twists do what Vine does: keeps prospects in the loop. (And gives your sales executives some free icebreaking facts to use in that first meeting.) Three little apps – with three Big Ideas. B2B marketers can use the same principles.
Ready to do it yourself? Watch the webcast with Vidyard, “Using Data to Make Your Video Marketing More Strategic”
Before you make a business investment, you want to be reasonably sure it’s going to pay off, right? For many businesses, the money spent on marketing is one of the single largest ongoing expenses. So, why should business owners be expected to approve the budget with no way of knowing how to track and improve results?
They shouldn’t. Yet, with traditional marketing, it is very difficult to report on ROI reliably. Unless you are using call tracking (which, by the way, can hurt your SEO) or asking every customer personally, you just can’t do it. Even if you use these tactics, it is still not an effective way to track your true ROI.
On the other hand, inbound marketing gives you a much clearer idea of your ROI, and clear pathways towards improving it – month by month.
In this article, we will take a look at the fundamentals of inbound marketing reporting and what you should expect from your team.
Sounds too basic? Well, it is basic, but most company goals focus on the bottom line despite the fact that those end-of-the-line goals are not always the best way to judge marketing effectiveness, especially not at first.
Think a little more broadly when establishing goals. Do you want to increase sales? Are you just trying to increase traffic? Do you want to build brand awareness? Do you want to improve customer loyalty or retention? Is improving customer service important to you? Do you just want to nurture current customers for up-sales?
You can only measure ROI against established goals. Make certain everyone knows what they are!
Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the vital signs of your goals. Just think of it as an actionable scorecard that keeps your strategy on track. The KPIs you choose should have a direct correlation to your goals.
Depending on your goals and business, your KPIs will be different. I wish I could just list out the complete list of KPIs for your business, but I’d have to learn more about you first (which, by the way, I would love!). But below I have listed a couple different KPIs that may be valuable to your business:
All of these KPIs listed above can be helpful in reporting, but you probably don’t need to look at all of them all the time. It can be overwhelming! Your marketing team or agency will help you focus on just the KPIs that are influencing your goals.
In order to effectively report on ROI, your marketing team must first implement closed loop marketing. Closed loop marketing happens when your sales team reports back to your marketing team with the results from the leads they generated.
This is not only important to help clarify ROI for the marketing team and for you the business owner, but more importantly it will help improve the marketing strategies and thus improve your return. Without receiving any feedback from the sales department, your marketing team will never truly know which marketing strategies are giving you the best bang for the buck.
By looking at your KPIs, you should be able to formulate actionable items to improve your ROI. This is another reason why implementing and maintaining closed-loop marketing is so important. By following up with your sales team, you can see what marketing actions are the most beneficial vs. the ones that are just wasting your money. Trace your closed sales back to the source and analyze everything!
By analyzing your marketing strategies, you can see the true return on your investment. Find out which sources have brought in your highest return and start investing more money in these areas. With traditional marketing, you don’t know whether you billboard or TV commercial attracted that customer, so you will blindly keep throwing money at both. But with inbound marketing, you can easily compare your different strategies (blog, social media, PPC, etc) to see which ones have the greatest ROI and thus help you budget your marketing more effectively.
As firms are finalizing marketing plans and looking ahead to 2015, it’s important that they are laser focused on doing what matters. Unfortunately, there are many common B2B marketing myths that can negatively impact a firm’s marketing efforts.
Just as many great minds once thought the world was flat, there are plenty of B2B marketing misconceptions that are widely held and need to be abandoned in 2015. Here are six to consider:
One of the most popular marketing trends of the last decade, content marketing is a victim of numerous mischaracterizations. Perhaps the most rampant is that content marketing is simply “the new SEO,” the latest way to increase search rankings. While Google’s latest algorithms do place an enormous emphasis on rewarding publishers of high quality and relevant content, that doesn’t mean that content marketing is purely an SEO exercise. Content marketing done right absolutely can and will increase search rankings and drive web traffic. But SEO is an ancillary benefit of content marketing—a subset of your program—it’s not the primary goal or purpose, nor should it be your sole motivation for creating content.
Many B2B services firms believe that their website exists as nothing more than an online brochure. It’s simply a placeholder for company and contact information. After all, clients don’t just add engineering services to a shopping cart and pull out their credit card. But while the actual purchase or contract doesn’t take place on the website, the idea that sales aren’t made (or lost) on the website is misleading.
Today’s B2B buyers are research-savvy and self-directed, researching online—often extensively—to find and vet potential vendors before making a purchasing decision. Studies from the Corporate Executive Board Company have found that today’s B2B buyers go through nearly 60% of the purchasing process before ever talking to sales. So what is your website doing to engage these buyers before they engage you? Needless to say, your website plays a significant role in this process, as prospects research, evaluate and compare your qualifications to those of your competitors.
Marketing automation software is an incredible tool for online marketing, providing marketers with the tools and analytics needed for effective lead generation and lead nurturing. For those who use it well, it’s been proven to demonstrate massive ROI, which is one of the many reasons marketing automation software continues to see enormous growth (the latest analysis from Frost & Sullivan predicts global software revenue will reach $1.9 billion by 2020). But the software alone isn’t a magic wand. As with CRM software, without the right strategy, implementation and processes in place, the software will fall flat and ultimately fail to do what it was expected to do. With marketing automation, purchasing the software is the easy part. And the inclusion of the word “automation” is a bit misleading, as everything that is automated rests on extensive strategy, planning, content, programming and ongoing time and attention.
Social media marketing strategies (or lack thereof) are fascinating in the B2B space. On one hand, there is a common belief that as social platforms continue to expand, forward-thinking firms need to be jump on board and be anywhere and everywhere. On the other hand, there are still a fair amount of B2B firms (especially those in more traditional industries) that are resistant to social media marketing altogether.
But the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Social media marketing for B2B firms is not a question of ROI, it’s a question of relevancy. The fact is that B2B audiences are using social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter for business purposes. So if you’re not there, you’re missing out on an opportunity to engage your audience and are also at risk for being viewed as irrelevant. But being on every platform under the sun isn’t a smart strategy either. The key is to find where your audience is and build a social presence there.
For many B2B companies, email marketing equates to little more than sending out the occasional eNewsetter or “blast” to their entire list of contacts. The problem with this approach is that it’s very unlikely that the eNewsletter is relevant to the entire list. And if your emails are consistently irrelevant to your contacts, they’re likely to grow accustomed to ignoring your emails altogether, leading to a high rate of unsubscribes. Outside of a handful of industries (e.g. technology), many B2B companies have not fully realized the power and potential of “real” email marketing.
Email marketing done right remains a powerful way to connect and engage with prospects and customers alike. But companies have to stop blasting and start segmenting, creating specific email messages and campaigns that target certain groups of your lists. This ensures that the emails you send contacts will contain relevant information they’re actually interested in reading. List segmentation will make your messages much more personal and relevant, which will boost your open rate and click-throughs—ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.
Another myth that seems to permeate B2B is that marketing’s job is over once a lead converts to a client. For many firms—especially services firms—marketing’s usefulness is seen as support for sales and business development efforts, with a particular eye on the buying cycle. And while marketing’s focus on attracting and nurturing new business leads is paramount, failing to address the entire client lifecycle is missing half of marketing’s purpose.
For many firms, existing clients represent a substantial portion of their overall revenue AND future pipeline. So the end goal of your marketing should not be just to turn prospects into clients; the end goal should be to turn prospects and clients alike into evangelists. In order to do that, your marketing strategy should specifically address the messaging, content and tactics needed to both nurture and engage.
There are many other myths that exist in B2B marketing, but these are some of the top ones that make our list. What did we miss? Feel free to add to the conversation in the comments below.
All customers are not created equal. Sure, you might like some more than others, but that doesn't mean they're your best clients. Sales comes down to revenue and ROI -- so how can sales leaders objectively determine which customers are most valuable?
Through a customer lifetime value (CLV) analysis. It's true that calculating CLV isn't a cake walk -- inaccurate data, confusing metrics, and inadequate technology can block the path. But those organizations that can figure out a customer's net costs and revenues over their engagement see the benefit: Three-quarters of senior executives in North America categorize CLV as a highly or extremely valuable indicator.
This infographic from Aria provides a CLV primer, explaining the concept, covering how retention and satisfaction play into customer value, and suggesting ways to bump up your average client's CLV. You'll find that playing favorites based on net revenue vs. rapport is a lot more profitable.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve
said it a thousand times: your business newsletter content must solve problems for your readers or help them meet a need. So, if your newsletter topic is something that you can’t cover in an e-newsletter, don’t be the Newsletter Grinch: give it the attention it deserves and cover it properly on a blog page. Your audience will appreciate your attention to detail, as long as you provide value.
In my previous blog post, I shared tips to get your business newsletter read, specifically, how to grab attention with a compelling subject line and headline. But once you get your readers to open your email newsletter, make sure they keep reading by offering compelling, relevant information.
For example, I create and distribute a newsletter called Biz Book Nuggets (if you haven’t subscribed, you can sign up in the upper right corner of this page.) This newsletter includes insights gathered from all the leadership business books I read. Since I’m taking notes while I read, I share them to:
This last point is key. I often read 2-3 books at a time. Some experts and books say the same things using different terms. When we can synthesize key concepts coming from different sources, we gain a greater understanding.
Often times I have taken several pages of notes, and including all of them in the newsletter would be overwhelming. So instead, I post the lengthier book notes on a blog page, and include a link in the newsletter. Here’s an example. This way I can keep my newsletter to a manageable length that I can format for easy scanning, and still include enough valuable information that solves a problem.
What do you think? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you.
Think of the last time you went shopping.
By the time you decided to buy a product, you knew both what you were buying and how much it cost. But was your decision affected by whether you saw the price or the product first? That's the question at the heart of new experimental research that uses neuroscience tools to shed light on how our brains make purchasing decisions.
"We were interested in whether considering the price first changed how people thought about the decision process, and whether it changed the way the brain coded the value of a product," says Uma R. Karmarkar, a neuroscientist and assistant professor in the Marketing unit at Harvard Business School, who conducted the research with Baba Shiv, a marketing professor and neuroeconomics expert at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and Brian Knutson, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford. "Because we had neuroscience tools at our disposal, we had the benefit of exploring both those questions," Karmarkar says.
The researchers found that price primacy (viewing the price first) makes consumers more likely to focus on whether a product is worth its price, and consequently can help induce the purchase of specific kinds of bargain-priced items. Their study, Cost Conscious? The Neural and Behavioral Impact of Price Primacy on Decision-Making, will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Marketing Research.
The research could help retailers and marketers decide when it's best to lead with price, which products work best with that strategy, and how to frame sales messages to consumers. (HBS related research on how consumers view pricing can be found in the article Deconstructing the Price Tag.)
In a series of experiments, participants went shopping—while lying on their backs inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The fMRI uses a giant electro-magnet, often 3 teslas strong, to track the blood flow throughout the brain as test subjects respond to sensory cues. In this case, participants were responding to pictures of products and their prices.
A new neuroscience study looks at how our brains make purchasing decisions. ©iStock.com/julos
In the first experiment, conducted at an imaging center on the Stanford University campus, each participant was given $40 of shopping money before viewing a series of 80 products and their prices on a screen inside the fMRI machine. "This made the shopping experience more real," Karmarkar says.
To encourage purchasing, the products were offered at sub-retail prices. Sometimes participants saw the price first, and sometimes they saw the product first. But in every case, they eventually saw an image of both the product and the price presented together. At that point, they chose whether to purchase the product, indicating yes or no with the push of a button. After exiting the machine, participants filled out a survey to rate how much they had liked each product, on a scale of 1 to 7.
The researchers focused on brain activity at the moment participants saw the product and price presented together. They were most interested in the medial prefrontal cortex (the area in the brain that deals with estimating decision value) and the nucleus accumbens (an area that's been called the pleasure center, and whose activity is correlated with whether a product is viscerally desirable). "What we cared about was whether the neural patterns in these areas looked different at the point when the information on the screen was eventually the same," Karmarkar says.
The results showed that the brain activity varied according to whether the participant had seen the price or product first. "The pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex suggested to us that sequence matters: At the very simplest, the neural signals looked different when the price came first versus when the product came first," Karmarkar says. "When the product came first, the decision question seemed to be one of 'Do I like it?' and when the price came first, the question seemed to be 'Is it worth it?' "
That said, price primacy didn't have much of an effect on actual purchasing behavior. Participants bought about the same number of items and reported similar "liking" ratings regardless of whether they had seen a product or price first. The researchers suspected that even if participants were more critical of a product's value in the price primacy condition, the products were equally attractive under both conditions.
Most of the participants were in their 20s, and most of the products appealed to their demographic—movies, clothing, noise-canceling headphones, and so on. "If you really love something, and you can afford it, you're going to buy it," Karmarkar says. "For those kinds of 'easy' decisions, it doesn't matter much whether the product or the price comes first."
And while the results of this initial experiment had been significant to neuroscience, Karmarkar's team also wanted to show that their research could have real-world implications for retailers—a direct effect on whether a consumer decided to buy a product. They hypothesized that price primacy might actually increase the likelihood of buying products, but only if the decision was related more to the product's usefulness than to pure emotional desire.
To that end, the researchers designed a follow-up study in which 83 participants sat at their computers, evaluating arguably boring but utilitarian products: a water filtration pitcher, a pack of AA batteries, a USB drive, and a flashlight. Similar to the fMRI study, the products were offered at a discount.
For all four products, participants viewed only a price or only a picture of the product for eight seconds, followed by a decision screen displaying both price and product. They then indicated the extent to which they wanted to buy the items on a scale from 0 to 100, with anything above a 50 categorized as intent to purchase the product.
This time, price primacy had a direct effect on purchasing decision. Participants were significantly more likely to purchase a product if they saw the price first than if they saw the product first. For retailers this indicates that it makes sense to lead with the price, at least when advertising utilitarian items. At the same time, in cases where they advertise prices first, retailers may want to go out of their way to highlight a product's functionality over its form.
"The question isn't whether the price makes a product seem better, it's whether a product is worth its price," Karmarkar says. "Putting the price first just tightens the link between the benefit you get from the price and the benefit you get from the product itself."
But the research also revealed a notable caveat: After participants indicated whether they wanted to buy a product, they reported exactly how much they'd personally be willing to pay for the item, typing a dollar amount into an online form. Surprisingly, the average willingness-to-pay amount was slightly lower in cases where they had viewed the price first. This indicates that if retailers want to take advantage of price primacy, they need to advertise true bargains. So, for insance, a gigantic neon sign advertising $5 off a $20,000 car? That's going to turn customers away.
"If it's an insignificant discount, then you're actually putting yourself at a disadvantage by highlighting the price first, because people are now cognitively scrutinizing the price and making sure it's worth it," Karmarkar says. "You can't just try to fool people into thinking it's a great price." 
Carmen Nobel is senior editor of Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.
Struggling to find a stock image for your next blog post?
You browse Flickr for ages. You settle on a picture that’s okay. You’d love to hire a professional illustrator, but you don’t have the budget. Not yet.
Sometimes you wonder if a better source of images exists.
What if you could create your own images to clarify your ideas? What if your custom images could make readers smile and draw them closer to you? Images that make you stand out online?
Sound far-fetched?
Read on and we’ll show you how anyone — even you — can draw images. No art school required. No fancy tools necessary.
First, let’s take a quick look at the benefits of simple images.
Photoshopped images make your site look slick.
That’s true.
But do they connect with your readers? Clichéd images make you look like millions of other blogs on the web.
Have you ever arrived at a blog for the first time and wondered if you’d been there before? Generic images trick you into thinking you’ve already been to the website because you’ve seen them before.
Hand-drawn images add a personal touch to your website. They’re unique — crafted to match your content.
Just as your writing voice is one of a kind, your imagery can be unique, too. Just as your voice adds a dash of personality, your images can add an authentic touch.
But drawing your own images produces more value than just personality and branding. These drawings aren’t simply decorations. These images explain the essence of your ideas.
They communicate your message. They captivate your audience. They make your message more memorable.
Research has suggested that:
Research also suggests people read only 28 percent of words on an average web page. And they decide within 10 seconds whether or not to linger around.
Could simple images draw people into reading your content?
Simple images are quick to draw, and you don’t have to buy them. You might even find that readers engage more with hand-drawn images because they are more personal.
As bestselling author, Dan Roam, suggests, the roughness of these simple images makes them more inviting and less intimidating.
Worried you lack talent?
Everyone can draw. Everyone is an artist.
Didn’t you think you were an artist when you were four years old? Didn’t you enjoy drawing as a kid?
So long as you can draw a stick figure, you’re well on your way to being able to create simple stories that explain your ideas better than any well-crafted words could. ~ Kevin Cheng
Here’s a simple exercise to get you started.
Step 1. Draw a square, a circle, a line, and a triangle:
That’s easy, right?
Step 2. Notice how almost any object can be drawn using squares, circles, triangles, and lines. Try drawing a few objects with this method:
Step 3. Images don’t require any words to transmit ideas. Review these examples:
You see?
You don’t need to draw a masterpiece to communicate your message.
Communicating your ideas with stick figures isn’t about whether or not you have drawing talent. It’s about distilling your idea into a simple drawing. It’s about making abstract statements concrete, so you can communicate your ideas with clarity.
Want to know how?
In his book, The Back of the Napkin, Dan Roam suggests a four-step process for visual thinking.
Let’s see how visual thinking works in practice by looking at Henneke’s Copyblogger guest post about 37 email marketing tips.
How could you create a simple drawing by hand to accompany the post? Follow these three steps:
Let’s look at another example. Here’s how we brainstormed the featured illustration at the top of this post:
Here’s a drawing of the process:
Distilling the essence of your post into simple drawings forces you to focus on your big idea. What do you really want to communicate?
The process makes your content clearer and more persuasive.
Once you’ve written a post and hand-drawn a few images, what’s the quickest way to upload them to your site? And how do you get your images shared on social media?
Follow these six simple tips:
Visual content encourages social shares. Buffer found, for instance, that tweets with images receive 150 percent more retweets.
You don’t need to be the next Picasso to draw an image to communicate your ideas.
A clean sheet of paper. A pencil or a pen. And a scanner or your smartphone camera. That’s all you need for simple drawings that clarify your ideas and captivate your audience.
You’ll be amazed by your readers’ reactions. They’ll “get” your ideas at a glance. Even days later, your latest drawing keeps popping up in their minds, reminding them about your blog post, your idea, or your advice.
Readers will feel closer to you because your drawings humanize you and display a sense of fun.
Sound good?
Start scribbling. Let your inner child play. Have fun.
And let us know over on LinkedIn ways you’ll be able to clarify your ideas with simple, captivating drawings.
About the Author: Mike Davenport helps people become the superhero they have been waiting for through simple images and sport coaching. See more of his drawings here.
Henneke Duistermaat is an irreverent marketer and writing coach on a mission to stamp out gobbledygook. Get her free snackable writing course for busy people and learn how to write more seductive content.
The post How to Create Simple Drawings to Clarify Your Ideas and Captivate Your Audience appeared first on Copyblogger.
Wouldn’t life be great if we could press an “easy” button and bypass all the things we don’t like?
We wouldn’t need to idle in traffic, clean the house or sit through another boring PowerPoint presentation. We also would never wonder what to blog about next. We could just press the button and – boom – have an amazing blog post.
Unfortunately, there’s no “easy” button for a well-planned content strategy. However, there are ways you can save time while producing high-quality content that engages your customers.
Here are five content marketing hacks that will help you get the most bang from your 2015 content:
Working within a monthly or quarterly theme makes it easier for you to come up with content ideas and fill your editorial calendar. The themes can align with your customers’ top challenges, product launches, industry trends or key events.
Themes are also useful if you work with advertisers or allow guests to contribute to your blog. Advertisers will want to know your themes so they can align their ads with your content. Guest bloggers can also write posts that support your themes.
Great ideas usually come when you’re least expecting them – like when you’re running on the treadmill. Using an app, such as Evernote, allows you to capture all your ideas anytime and anyplace. You may end up with enough ideas to fill your editorial calendar for the entire year. Just be sure to pause the treadmill before jotting down your latest idea.
A HubSpot study found that the more landing pages you have, the more leads you will get. According to HubSpot, companies see a 55% boost in leads if they increase their number of landing pages from 10 to 15.
Image source: HubSpot’s “Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000 Businesses” report
Add more landing pages to your website by turning your blog posts into opt-in opportunities. Create custom resources that directly relate to your blog posts and include an opt-in form at the end of each post.
For example, if you write a blog post about disaster recovery, ask readers to download a disaster recovery checklist. Since your readers are interested in this topic, they will likely opt in for more information.
It takes a lot of time and resources to produce a major piece of content – such as an ebook or white paper. However, many B2B marketers don’t get the most value from their investments. They often bury content on their websites and hope customers will find it.
Repurposing content will help you reach a wider audience and attract more leads. Plus, you often don’t need to put much time or effort into repurposing content for different channels. For more ideas, read “How to Get 3 Months of 2015 Content from a Single Resource” and “21 Places to Share Your B2B Case Studies”.
Your best source of content inspiration is your customers. Every tweet, email and conversation has the potential to be turned into content. What questions are customers asking you? What are their biggest concerns? What are they complaining about? Address all these topics in your upcoming blog posts, ebooks, videos and webinars. You can even go to other departments and find out what conversations your co-workers are having with customers.
Another great source of content is the news. Your editorial calendar should be flexible so you can address relevant topics as they happen in the news. Subscribe to Google Alerts to receive notifications whenever something newsworthy happens. You can also use a service such as Alltop to follow your industry’s top blogs.
Producing great content can help you attract high-quality leads and turn them into customers. Using these tips will make it easier for you to produce the type of content that gets results.
We all know the stereotype of the Apple fanboy (or girl). It almost doesn’t matter what problems arise with Apple products — or if the competition’s technology is better — Apple fans remain loyal. And, more importantly, they remain rabid defenders and promoters for their favorite brand.
Your company may not be the next Apple, but that’s not to say you can’t cultivate the same kind of loyalty. In fact, it’s crucial that you do, especially during the holidays.
This holiday season, an estimated 66 percent of consumers will shop at their favorite retailers as opposed to branching out to try new stores. Forty-four percent will purchase gifts from brands they’re loyal to, and 42 percent will go even further and use loyalty points to make purchases. With those kinds of numbers, it’s obvious why building brand loyalty is important.
Luckily, it’s not too late — even this far into the holiday season.
How to Build Brand Loyalty Right Now
It may be halfway through December, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on building brand loyalty this season. While tons of people shop at their favorite stores during the holidays, plenty are looking for unique gifts they may not consider buying at other times throughout the year. This is the perfect time to motivate your current customers to start promoting your brand to their friends and family.
Loyal customers can be your holiday brand advocates. In fact, they’re the people who might be the most successful at encouraging others to spend their holiday budgets on your products. So it only makes sense to target these people by adding some influencer marketing strategies to your holiday marketing campaign. By starting the relationships now, you’re encouraging these customers to stay loyal throughout the new year.
Here’s how you can maximize your influencers this holiday season:
1. Know your influencers. Just like you need to know your target customer, you must know your target influencers. Look at the people who are already talking about you on social media or blogs. Who are they? What else do they like, and what influences them? Then, determine what kind of influencers you hope to recruit for your campaign.
Figure out their personalities so you can better understand what would motivate them to advocate for you. One way to achieve this is to monitor their sentiments and personality through persona segmentation, which breaks down influencer characteristics, similar to the sample analysis below. For example, one influencer might value green living, while another is daring and nonconformist. You can then segment your influencer messages based on those unique characteristics.
2. Develop a theme. The holidays are a great time to create fun and exciting themes to help spread your promotions. For example, a common holiday-themed hashtag is #stockingstuffers. If you’re a brand that sells a product that would be a great stocking stuffer, you might consider making this your campaign theme and targeting influencers who use the hashtag regularly.
The everyday influencer below is a good example: a stay-at-home mom with a large social following who loves social media and consistently promotes #stockingstuffers. Companies that sell small, unique gadgets or holiday goodies might look for similar micro influencers to help promote their products as stocking stuffers through the holidays.
Photo credit: Mattr
Last year, Topshop created a “personalized gift guide” theme during its “Dear Topshop” campaign. Users pinned Topshop products on Pinterest as a way to help others find the perfect holiday gift or party outfit while earning a chance to win a great prize. The retailer’s products ended up all over Pinterest, garnering more followers and regular customers.
3. Think outside your vertical. Anyone can be an influencer. With that in mind, why not reach outside your core vertical and target people you may not normally consider?
For example, if you’re in the food industry, you might target influencers in wine, cooking, recipes, or restaurants. Once again, you might discover some really influential people with loyal audiences who would be more than willing to mention your brand.
4. Make it worthwhile. While some brands already have loyal followers who will buy and promote products without much incentive, this isn’t the time to assume that you fall under that category. Like Topshop did in 2013, you should make the act of promoting your brand fun and intuitive. Women were already pinning beautiful clothes to Pinterest, but Topshop made it valuable to pin their clothes over competitors’ by hosting a fun contest that rewarded the influencers.
When you reward those who promote your brand — through the use of both tangible and intangible rewards — your influencers will provide you more value in return.
5. Create a tracking system for your influencers. Data should drive every decision you make this holiday season. The more you know about your campaigns, the more accurately you can judge your ROI. So figure out who your favorite influencers are or who can offer the most value to your brand based on your objectives, then consistently nurture those relationships and measure your results.
The holidays are one of the most beneficial times to build brand loyalty — whether that’s through a unique shopping experience, good customer service, or loyalty programs. But the best way to differentiate your brand and build a loyal year-round following is through influencer marketing. Believe me, it’s never too late.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
More than 100 years ago, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that 20% of the population in Italy owned 80% of the land, and that 20% of the pea pods held 80% of the peas in his garden.
Today, business owners everywhere rely on the Pareto principle to determine where to focus efforts and allocate funds.
For example, knowing that roughly 80% of sales come from 20% of their customers, astute business owners and sales managers will determine which clients and prospects should receive focused attention from sales reps.
Applying this principle to key processes, businesses can dramatically increase profitability by focusing on core areas and outsourcing the remaining ones. But on which functions, tasks, processes, etc., should you release your grasp—or loosen your stranglehold, as the case may be? What if you end up focusing on one to the expense of another, less vital, but still important activity that should not be overlooked?
It’s easy for the small business owner to let such concerns trap them into the counterproductive habit of trying to handle everything themselves. A recent survey by The UPS Store® revealed that while small business owners do see the value of working with other businesses (nearly 75% said it’s important to have a resource in the form of another small business that understands their needs), only 52% have connected with such a resource. And although 46% of small business owners would appreciate having a local resource that they can rely on for help, a paltry one quarter of respondents actually have a business partner that provides such support.
You can confidently delegate those logistical functions that do not add significant value to your business to an outsourced provider. Their trained staff can provide the expertise to efficiently handle even the most complex and daunting of tasks.
But you don’t have to stop there. Create even greater business efficiency by taking the Pareto principle one step further. You see, of the 80% of business functions that you turn over to an outsourced provider, most do not require the attention of a fully staffed service provider. Many processes can be executed—quite efficiently, in fact—using cloud-based software.
With the advent of software as a service SaaS solutions, small businesses have the ability to “run” these logistical functions much more simply—and without giving up control to an outsourced service provider. It’s the equivalent of using the self-service kiosk to check your own groceries instead of waiting in line for one of the supermarket checkers to do it for you.
For example, you can apply the 80/20 rule to incorporate key SaaS solutions to do things like run digital phone systems, and take care of time-consuming payroll, HR and recruiting tasks.
So focus on your strengths—and let either a qualified service provider or a cloud-based software solution assist you with everything else. By finding a reliable provider or SaaS solution for as many of your non-core business functions as possible, you’ll get better results, have fewer headaches and see greater revenue.
Remember, you don’t have to do it all alone. Take full advantage of the many and varied resources that exist to help small businesses grow and thrive.
This post originally appeared on the InsideUp blog.
Earlier in the year, the Grammar Chic team blogged about six elements that need to be removed from your resume right now. Today, we’re going to take the opposite approach, and list a few things that you should never, ever, under any circumstance take off your resume.
Let’s be clear: Your resume should be a fluid thing. You should revise it routinely, and you should amend it to reflect the specifics of whatever job you’re currently applying for. Even as your resume goes through changes, though, certain parts of it should remain consistent—including each of the following:
The mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) first shook the payments industry with Square's simple mobile card reader, which attached to smartphones and tablets.
Since then, the industry has exploded with mPOS solutions, but they don't all live up to the hype and many of the businesses that provide them have struggled to figure out how to effectively monetize the merchants they acquire.
In a new report from BI Intelligence, we cut through the mPOS hype by analyzing the needs of the retailers that have adopted the technology, and interviewing merchants to find what works and what doesn't.
Access the Full Report By Signing Up For A Trial Membership Today >>
Here are some of the key takeaways:
mPOS is a blanket term for a variety of hardware and software. On the hardware side mPOS devices often pair with a smartphone or tablet, though stand-alone smart registers like Poynt are becoming more prevalent. mPOS software is usually fully or partially cloud-based and runs on mobile operating systems.
In full, the report:
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Why Bethany Mota Has A Legion Of 10 Million Fans Waiting For Her Next YouTube Video
To meet year-end goals and crush your quota, start setting a foundation today, according to inside sales expert Lori Harmon and author of the best-seller “42 Rules for Building a High-Velocity Inside Sales Team.”
What are the biggest tips to crush your quota over and over again?
Contracts for every meeting
Establish a mini-contract each time you engage with a prospect. Confirm how much time they have and define goals. Set up next steps between you and the buyer and put it in writing. This not only makes the agreement more powerful but also gives you – the salesperson – an excuse to re-engage the buyer on his agreement.
Recognizing buying signals
All of the above help determine whether a buyer is really qualified and planning to move forward in the buying process – or not. Remember …
Getting to a NO quickly is just as important as getting to a YES so you can focus on the right prospects!
Understanding the buying process
You don’t want any surprises that can derail a deal or delay the close past your quarter or year-end deadline – such as a new decision maker coming in at the last minute. Find out all the stakeholders upfront and understand their involvement in the deal and also what their individual specific criteria. Ask questions. What’s their purchase order process? Who is involved in the process? How long does it take to get a contract done? Use your UFC to capture some of this information up front.
Sales engagement tools can give sales deep and comprehensive insight into the buying process:
Social selling
Social selling lets you close more deals! According to Aberdeen Group, 46% of social sellers hit quota versus 38% of sales reps that don’t. Buyers are flocking to online professional networks, and LinkedIn is at the top of the list for decision makers. Being active in social media allows you to be where the buying decisions are being made today.
On average, the B2B buyer who uses social media is: more senior, has a bigger budget and makes more frequent purchases.
Want to get more social?
Holding yourself accountable
Write down your goals, make a plan to achieve them, and check it regularly! Maintain a positive attitude. Positive thoughts result in positive attitudes. Take control of getting to your destination.
To learn more, feel free to download and listen to this on-demand webinar: http://livehive.com/5-tips-on-how-to-crush-your-year-end-quota/
This blog originally appeared here.
In 2015, you have an opportunity to take some risks, change how you market and sell, as well as define your niche in your market. Here are my predictions for ideas and trends that will shape sales and business development for top performing companies in 2015.
Savvy customers don’t value old-school, pressure-based, manipulative sales methods. In fact, many executives say they’ll decide to not select a vendor because of a negative sales experience. Customers value subject matter experts (as I highlighted for 2014 Trends).
As customers increasingly value subject-matter experts, salespeople need refined consultative skills. Top companies will invest prudently in teaching those individuals how to identify and cultivate opportunities that are a great fit for your business – not old-school selling tactics. They’ll discover how customers make buying decisions and what you can do to add the most value for your customers. This will lead to better alignment between buyers and sellers and will put both parties on the same side of the table.
According to The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing research by CEB and Google, the average customer is more than half-way through the purchase process (70% on the high end) before speaking with a vendor. This means that content marketing and sales strategy must be tightly integrated.
According to SiriusDecisions, B2B organizations with tightly aligned marketing and sales achieved 24% faster revenue growth and 27% faster profit growth over a three-year period. Here’s an interesting read on it.
In the past, companies would have an expert show up and hope for results. That type of one-and-done training (sales or otherwise) does not provide a lasting result. In 2015, the top performing companies know that weekly practice reinforces concepts and allows your team to execute under pressure, in the moment. In 2015, look for tools to facilitate reinforcement economically while monitoring results for management.
There are two competing initiatives in the market for 2015. The first one is increased pricing pressure for anything that appears to be a commodity. I’m probably not the only person who has scanned a bar code in a big box store to have Google show me if there is a better price elsewhere. For those selling a perceived commodity, you’ll see more and more pricing pressure eat into your margins. This means you have to do one of two things: 1) Figure out a way to deliver a commodity more efficiently than others in your market; or 2) Develop a strategy to ensure that what you sell is not seen as a commodity. Nearly every business can differentiate itself. The shame is how many unique businesses make mistakes to turn their unique offering into a commodity. Top companies in 2015 will know if they compete on value or price, and avoid the opportunities that are not a fit.
For years, buyer’s worked to convince sellers that price was all that mattered. After years of disappointment from the low bidder, savvy buyers realize that results matter. Let’s face it, if you paid half price but didn’t get what you needed, it probably wasn’t a good deal. In 2015, top performing sellers will develop skills to demonstrate value and earn higher margins. Be thorough – top performing buyers will ensure they are getting superior value per invested dollar in a solution… not just lip service.
Customers expect each person in your organization to know their business. Sales and marketing organizations historically added so much to CRM systems that reps spent more time entering data than using it. Top performing companies will strive for a balance between data collection and ease of use. When it comes to CRM, you are better having a simple and easy platform that masterfully supports mobile devices than to have a complex system that nobody uses. Numerous products have emerged to allow for complex back-end systems with simplified front-end interfaces for reps and for mobile use.
Increased mobile adoption improves data quality as highlighted in this study published by CRM technology comparison website Software Advice.
Precise strategies will prevail compared to shotgun approaches. In 2015, with improved alignment between sales and marketing, top performing companies will no longer waste time and resources trying to drive “views” or “clicks.” Instead, in 2015 the top companies will develop plans to attract the best customers. The elite companies will define what Marcus Sheridan calls “anti-personas” to know which customers will likely waste your time. Look for companies to define who is NOT a fit for them, not just who IS a fit. Management will start asking “Why are we speaking with them” more than “Why don’t we speak with them?”
Savvy companies will realize that people matter. Driving them into the ground is not a good long-term strategy. Companies will develop innovative ways to improve employee well-being leading to better retention and happier customers, too.
As Shelly Dutton mentioned in her article “Employees are tired of sacrificing so much of their lives for their employers. They want a better way to balance work, family, and a sense of personal purpose. In fact, 70% of workers in the U.S. – and 87% of workers worldwide – are not fully engaged and personally invested in their work.
Take a look at LT Business Dynamics, a regional accounting firm. How do they attract and retain the best of the best? “Employees often give up the ability to enrich their personal lives due to work,” said Tim Hawkins, founder of LT Business Dynamics. “We setup our sabbatical program to engage their minds. Traveling is an important part of that. We give them the time and money to make a difference in the world and their lives. They become better people. You hired great people, it makes sense to invest in them to retain them.” In addition to a great environment, they offer a paid three-week sabbatical after every three years of employment.
According to the latest research from Content Marketing Institute, the majority of B2B firms plan to increase both their content marketing budgets and content volume in 2015. This means that you not only need to create content, but your content has to deliver greater value than others in your space. You need to be comfortable giving away your best stuff. Top performing companies will include links to content in virtually every sales interaction. This only works if you have valuable content in the eyes of your customer.
Though I do not agree with Marcus Sheridan when he says salespeople are going away, I do think the role of salespeople will evolve. The best companies will recognize that the entire organization can contribute to valuable content, and each team member plays a role in selling. Look for companies to invest in interdisciplinary workshops that bring the entire company together to gain perspective on sales, marketing, and customer experience. No longer can you thrive with silos. The top performing companies are already doing this, whether you know it or not.
Which Trend Did I Leave Out?
Please share your prediction for a 2015 trend in the comments. I’m also curious to hear if you agree or disagree with my trends.
Linkedin is a great tool for online business networking, and connecting with other professionals. I recommend using it, and know that many sales executives at venues and DMOs are already using Linkedin to connect with meeting planners.
I’m not going to steer you away from Linkedin, but I do have another, even better, idea to add to your repertoire for generating leads. Inbound Marketing.
Inbound is an entirely new philosophy about marketing that focuses on how buying decisions are made today; and appreciates that the majority of B2B buyers start their purchase research online.
You’ve now been introduced to a meeting planner interested in possibly hosting their event at your venue or in your city. This is why the Inbound approach is better than more traditional ways of cold-contacting prospects.
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“Venues: Why Inbound Marketing is Better Than Linkedin for Lead Gen” was originally published on the Booked Up Venues Marketing Advice Blog, reprinted with permission.
You know it could all be thanks to the internet that the world is more informed about the crazy things that are happening in the world. Recently, LeBron James made news for taking part in the recent “I can’t breathe.” protests. Meanwhile everyone from terrorists in Mosul to Russian commentators are swarming with laughable incredulity at the fracas.
But rest assured, that’s as political as this post is going to get. It’s just when you take a step back, you have to realize that this isn’t SNL. This is reality, the reality that anything being published can rapidly gain traction and notoriety as it jumps along whatever’s causing the latest global alarm.
This is same alarm can be of a great boon to appointment setters or it can be the worst mistake they’ve ever made.
Take a look back at LeBron. Why do you think he and his teammates wore those shirts? Is it because they wanted more publicity? Send a sincere message against racism?
For all you know, it could be both. And for all anyone knows, that’s not a bad thing. What’s bad is that you don’t understand how it can work so well.
It expresses non-business values.
By non-business, it means ideas that are not directly tied to your products or your services. Racism, for example, may not really have anything to do with playing basketball. That doesn’t deny the reality that the NBA prominently features African-American players. That doesn’t make race issues unavoidable. It’s the same in any other business. There will come a time when a bigger reality will force your marketers and appointment setters to address something that’s more on the subjects of ethics, morality, politics, and even religion. Staying strictly business can only carry you so far.
Impact should never be underestimated
There really is no underestimating the impact of a corporate scandal. When you’re trying to ride on a wave that’s rocking the digital and traditional airwaves, prepare to be rocked back. People will react and not all in ways that will results in more sales leads or stronger customer retention.
That’s why you should always plan ahead for multiple outcomes. Don’t leave out what your customers have to say before thinking about having a say on a particular issue.
Publicity is only a bonus point
There’s always the risk that people think you’re only concerned with publicity. It certainly can be the case for LeBron and his teammates. However, what if such assumptions are wrong? What if he and the other Cavaliers actually share in the outrage over Eric Garner?
In such cases, publicity is really just a bonus point. It’s bonus for actually caring about something whether or not who disagrees. It’s the reason why integrity is not more separated from marketing as it is from other business processes.
All this alarm has its downside. Sometimes your target market may not actually care enough. Other times, you could be making a big deal out of nothing. There are times though when that will cease to be the case and your appointment setters might have to stand shoulder to shoulder with those sounding the alarm.
What is the number one way to succeed in business? It is to understand what people want. What motivates people to do certain things and avoid other things? For all businesses, employee motivation is a primary concern. Without employees, the potential of any business is limited to what a single person can accomplish. Employee motivation is important, but if your business is concerned with sales, consumer motivation is perhaps even more crucial. Understanding what consumers want and responding to their desires is a near certain path to increased sales. If understanding humans is the goal, anthropology is the answer.
What is Anthropology?
Anthropology is, plainly and simply, the study of humans. Anthropologists may focus on people who lived in the past, but it is actually much easier to study people who are alive right now. Human beings are complex creatures, with physical, mental, emotional and spiritual attributes. No single area of study can get a complete picture of human beings. Anthropology unites such diverse disciplines as biology, psychology, humanities, archeology, and linguistics in the quest to understand human beings better. It may take all of these disciplines to build a complete picture, but in the sales environment, psychology is the central concern.
Psychology 101
All of psychology is built on these two basic ideas:
1. People take actions.
2. For every action a human takes, there is a motivation.
The entire aim of psychology is to understand the motivation behind human behavior. Over the years, psychologists have developed many theories, hoping to explain human motivation. One of the more popular theories is the Hierarchy of Needs.
Abraham Maslow proposed the Hierarchy of Needs framework in 1943. He hypothesized that humans would seek to meet advanced needs like self-confidence, personal achievement, creativity, and morality only after they had fulfilled basic needs such as food and water, shelter and safety. Conversely, humans are willing to do undesirable things such as violate moral codes and risk injury to achieve the necessities of life. For example, a normally scrupulous person may resort to stealing food if they are hungry and desperate enough.
Maslow’s Theory in Action
If Maslow’s theory is correct, it has implications for sales.
Low-income consumers are primarily concerned with getting the things they need to survive. Shelter, food, and basic clothing are their priorities, leaving little, if any money available for nonessential items and luxuries. Because these items are essential and there are no ready substitutes for them, price is not an enormous issue; no matter what the cost, consumers must have these items.
Middle and upper income consumers are comfortably able to meet their basic needs. For commodity items, these consumers may be willing to pay more to purchase what they perceive to be better choices. For example, instead of paying the minimum price for white rice, they may be willing to pay more for brown rice. Instead of paying less to buy chicken pieces, they may opt for the perceived convenience and health benefits of boneless, skinless chicken breast.
Do these predictions match reality? In some cases, they do, but there are many exceptions and outlying cases. If you walk down the street in a city, you may see homeless people using iPhones costing $100-$200 upfront and $40-$50 per month. Conversely, many people who are, comparatively speaking, quite wealthy may choose to drive older vehicles or live in a smaller home then they could afford.
A New Theory
If Maslow’s theory cannot make accurate predictions, how can we determine what a person’s motivations are? Each individual has his or her own motivations behind his or her actions, but there is no theory that can accurately predict what those motivations may be. The only way to determine a person’s motivation is by communicating with, listening to, and observing that person. If you can discern the proper motivation, you can consistently get people to purchase the products and services you provide. Therefore, the process of determining motivations should be a primary task for anyone concerned with selling goods to consumers.
Putting It into Practice
What does it look like when businesses attempt to put this theory into practice in the real world? Businesses that attempt to understand and respond to consumer motivations will exhibit a few key attributes:
Customization
Most consumers prefer products they feel are tailored directly to them. These days, it does not need to cost much more to offer customized products that come in the exact color, style and size consumers are searching for.
Options
Most consumers want to make choices, rather than feeling forced to buy a certain product. By doing something as simple as offering a product under a variety of brand names, you give consumers the impression that they have options; in reality, they are just choosing among your products. A great example of this tactic is pet food, where a single manufacturer may offer 3-4 brands.
Perception of Value
All other things being equal, consumers are likely to choose the products that seem to offer to best value. This can be as easy as offering your products in a larger “economy” size. Even though the price per unit may be the same, the multi-pack gives some consumers the idea that they are getting better value.
Perception of Quality
For certain items, quality is a concern. One way to give consumers a sense of quality is to actually design and build high quality products. Unfortunately, this method also leads to higher prices, and limits your market. Apple, for instance has been highly successful with this tactic. Another option is to use key phrases like “New and Improved” to inform consumers of incremental product developments. Finally periodically changing the attributes you highlight on your products can convey the impression that you are constantly improving and upgrading your products.
The field of anthropology is extremely wide and deep. For those who are willing to dedicate themselves to use of anthropology in the world of sales, there is potential for greatness. All great salespersons use the tools available to them to maximum effectiveness. Business anthropology is a valuable tool; do not forget to use it effectively.
Image via Shutterstock
In evaluating your Inbound Marketing performance, the first step is to understand that there’s a huge difference between website analytics and marketing analytics. People that are only measuring the website metrics are only looking at one piece of the inbound marketing puzzle. The channels that feed into your website are what need to be measured accurately to see where your marketing plan truly stands. When you do that, the puzzle starts to have fewer gaps.
As we’ve discussed before, your marketing return on investment (ROI) is always hard to measure. It takes patience and experimentation. But measurements not only let you know which channels are working; measurements let you know which ones aren’t. While finding out a channel is lagging sounds like receiving bad news, it should be music to your ears. Now you can address that channel, rather than letting it continue to be ineffective.
To accurately measure performance, you have to gauge ROI on a channel-by-channel basis. By evaluating each inbound channel—social media, email, website, etc.—you are actually gauging people instead of page views. Since in marketing revenue is king, you need to know when people are becoming prospects, turning into leads, and ultimately converting into customers. Identifying which channels are most effective at which conversion stage is the only way to evaluate your current marketing performance.
The right marketing software will place this valuable data at your fingertips. And once you’re armed with this data, you can decide which marketing lever to pull. Going back to the difference between website analytics and marketing analytics, it’s the difference between knowing that a visitor arrived at your site from Facebook and whether or not that visitor turned into a valuable sales lead. Once you can stand back and start to look at that kind of data, you’ll know how your integrated strategy is working, and how to improve it channel by channel.
For example, looking at a landing page’s visitor count only tells a chapter of the story. How did the visitor arrive there? From an e-mail or a blog post? What happened when the visitor landed on the page? Did they bounce away, or did they click on a call-to-action?
While numbers belie behaviors, uncovering your customer conversion path means isolating events to see how customers are interacting with the channels that lead to your site, and how they’re engaging with the content you’ve put in place to generate a lead, such as your premium offers.
For example, maybe your site has a landing page that is popular, but its close rate for generating a lead is 5%. However, maybe another offer, one with fewer page views, has a 40% close rate. What that tells you is the call-to-action or content offer for the page with the higher close rate is far more effective. Now you can adjust that underperforming landing page accordingly. This illustrates why looking at page views in a vacuum can be dangerous. Digging deeper lets you read the whole story, and not just that one chapter.
The final touch comes with integrating a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. The right CRM will let you see leads closed by channel. Much like this article, you should view everything in marketing as a part of your revenue funnel. We’ve discussed looking at channels delivering traffic, and which pages and content are creating leads. The end of the line is seeing which ones become customers, and what is specifically driving sales.
This is the only way to defend a marketing initiative or channel. It’s also the only way to improve one. A CRM will provide lead intelligence. That’s the type of intelligence you need to evaluate marketing performance. Without it, you’re really guessing.
By including marketing analytical tools, you’ll create transparency within your marketing efforts. But transparency will get you nowhere without action. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. Having it typically means coming to the realization that there’s a good bit of work to be done. With your marketing performance now evaluated, improving that performance is another endeavor entirely.
How are you currently measuring your marketing performance? Are you using any particular analytical tools?
I recently gave two presentations to MBA and BBA students at the Schulich School of Business in Toronto on the topics of Sales and Entrepreneurship. I shared with them the sales process that I find most effective when converting prospects into paying customers, and the feedback I received was tremendous. After the presentations, students came up to me one by one asking if I could elaborate on each milestone of the process.
Here’s the link to the slide show presentation on SlideShare going into details about each step: The 10-Step Sales Process
Organizations spend a ton of money on driving qualified traffic to their websites and on converting them into inbound leads. It’s methodical to the point that almost every pixel on their website, and every keyword they advertise, plays a specific role in generating more and more quality leads. The same attention to detail is often times missing when it comes to the follow up process once a lead is sent to a sales person. This is often done ad hoc, without planning, and it’s time to take the same methodical approach on the sales side of things and start generating more revenue for your business.
So today I’m going to share with you the 10-Step Sales Process that I learned and follow in which the completion of each step brings you closer to closing the deal. These 10 steps will be broken down into more detail in my upcoming book that I am co-writing with Earl Robertson that combines over 40 years of sales leadership, training, and hands-on selling experience.
1. Prospecting Stage: Determine who your target demographic is, how to target them, and what are the buying centers you need to reach out to.
2. Qualifying Stage: Confirm ability to make decisions, determine budget constraints, explore the need and understand their timeline.
3. Initial Meeting & Needs Discovery Stage: Build trust, outline your agenda, share valuable industry insights, bring value to the customer, and tailor the presentation to your customer’s needs.
4. Needs Analysis: Discuss the company’s background and current situation, explore challenges, discuss negative implications of not overcoming challenges, discover positive outcomes of solving challenges today.
5. Presentation/Product or Service Demo: Demonstrate the features, explain the benefits relating to the customer, and discuss the improvements that could occur to their overall business and career if they use your solution to address their challenges.
6. Proposal/Quotation Presentation: Double-check all spelling, grammar and calculations. Include all promises made and review with your prospect before sending to the final version.
7. Influencer Approves: Get feedback from your prospect and work through any issues, objections, or stalls that may arise. Determine the timeline for procurement and suggest that you present to the final decision maker or committee if their approval is still required.
8. Key Decision Maker or Committee Approves: Understand the key elements decisions are based on, how to approach committees and decision makers and how to handle objections.
Don’t celebrate yet; it may not be a done deal. Learn what can go wrong and how to address it.
9. Purchasing Approves: Purchasing might still have final vito power. If purchasing gets in the way, try to set up a meeting with them to take them through an expedited sales process to get them on the same page as your influencer or key decision maker/committee.
10. Product/Service Delivered & Payment Received: First payment is collected, and the work begins. The sales is considered closed at this time and your job now is to ensure a smooth on boarding takes place and the follow up process is setup and ready to deliver outstanding service and results and grow the relationship with your new customer.
By following this process, you are ensuring that either you and your customer are on the same page throughout their buying cycle otherwise you are better equipped to catch any mistakes that you’ve made and course correct. This process is better geared for business-to-business sales and needs to be altered to adapt to business-to-consumer sales.