Rnordman

Webinars are what we call in the marketing world: turkeys. Similar to a turkey after Thanksgiving, webinars are usually sliced up and served in different forms. They are content gold mines that are used to feed the creation of other types of content. Think about it. How many pieces of content do you repurpose from a single webinar?

Like cooking a turkey on Thanksgiving, creating a webinar is a ton of work–there is planning, promoting, and creating of assets. Experts say preparing for a one-hour webinar takes about 20 hours. So how can you make sure your 20 hours of hard work is time well spent? You repurpose the webinar to the bone!

First, we will share the ordinary approaches to repurposing a webinar–things you should already be doing. Then we will share a few extraordinary approaches to maximizing your webinar ROI.

Ordinary Ways to Repurpose a Webinar

Slideshare

This is one of the easiest tasks you can accomplish the moment a webinar is finished. Instead of sending the presentation slides to registrants after the webinar, share the Slideshare link so registrants can view and download the presentation. Why? Slideshare offers deeper analytics and will enhance your company’s SEO.

Infographics, Images, & Process Visualizations

It is no secret that response rates are higher for visual assets. Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. Infographics are ideal for visually representing a set of data points that tell a story. Despite our best intentions, sometimes we cannot commission a full-blown study to provide statistics in an upcoming webinar. Don’t have the resources to sponsor a full-blown survey? No worries–there are plenty of alternatives for those lacking in statistics. For instance, try creating a piece that visually conveys a key process explained in the webinar or a visually appealing succinct laundry list of best practices found in the presentation.

Podcasts

We know what you are thinking–podcasts are so 20th century. Despite the rise of video consumption, the use of podcasts is still on the rise. With such a low entry price, go ahead and repurpose that webinar into a podcast. Creating a podcast from a pre-recorded audio file is easy–there is no excuse why your listeners cannot tune into your channel on their morning train ride.

Q&A Blogs

Many webinars generate a whole new set of questions that provide insight into your audience’s mind. Using this insight, branch out from their interests to create a blog or follow-up webinar.

On-Demand Recordings

If you aren’t already doing this, start doing it now. It isn’t unusual for more than half of the registrants to bail out on the webinar. Industry experts say attendance rate generally hovers around 36%. People just get busy. They appreciate being able to view the recording on their own time. Turning the recording into a full length, on-demand replay will allow you to extend the life of your webinar and capture leads forever!

Extraordinary Ways to Maximize a Webinar

Elicit Responses from Webinar Tools to Create Statistics

Did we mention how much we love webinars? Webinars are unique in that you have the (nearly) undivided real-time attention of your target audience. With potential buyers in your hand, you have the opportunity to do some serious market research. Use tools such as in-webinar polls and post-webinar surveys to capture detailed data about individual attendees that you can later repurpose into statistic-heavy content such as an infographic.

Create a Video Series on YouTube

Note we aren’t suggesting you just repost your webinar on YouTube. Nor are we suggesting cropping the webinar into five 10-minute segments and throwing online. Create an engaging video series using the audio and slide deck from the webinar recording as a foundation. Add video overlays, a cartoon with thought bubbles, and links to relevant topics to make the content more compelling. You’ll notice a common theme in the extraordinary half of this blog post is about adding value.

Build a Lead Nurture for Attendees

Create a custom nurture campaign for your attendees that go beyond saying “thank you for attending today’s webinar; here are the slides.” Send continual touches that include answers to Q&A questions, links to relevant topics, or a link to a product demo if applicable.

Build a Lead Nurture for Non-Attendees

This is a little different from the nurture campaign for the attendees as it will be a longer cycle. Include information from the webinar in the form of a drip campaign. By delivering the message in shorter formats, you can better measure what part of the webinar is engaging. Include the video series in the emails if possible!

Post-webinar tweetchat

You can have a tweetchat during the webinar, but is that really the best use of attendee focus? Do you really want to add another channel to drive away their attention? Sure, provide a hashtag for promotion and monitoring purposes but host a tweetchat after the webinar to continue the conversation. Use the Q&A from the webinar as a basis and incorporate snapshots from the presentation as visuals.

*Editors Note: Danielle Morrill is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mattermark. Mattermark provides deal intelligence and powerful analytics for investing, partnering, selling & marketing as well as viewing company info, team members, fundraising and more. These tips were originally tweeted and are being republished with permission.*

The job of a first time SaaS CEO is not easy, but it has been aided recently by the generous sharing of some of the most knowledgable and vocal champions that have went through, or are currently going through the journey. Resources like SaaStr, For Entrepreneurs, Both Sides of the Table, and Tomasz Tunguz‘s blog are some of our favorites. That’s why today, and in case you missed it, we wanted to bring you Danielle Morrill’s insightful chain of tweets about what she’s learned about sales as a SaaS CEO.

From Danielle,

1) you have to use a CRM, not a spreadsheet, or you are so fucked. We use @relateiq because of it’s awesome Gmail integration

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

2) there are a lot of great books and blogs on SaaS sales, no need to reinvent the wheel – Saastr blog plus “Predictable Revenue” book — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

3) don’t assume your investors are experts on SaaS metrics, this is still a relatively new business model

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

4) don’t be embarrassed to look up the definition of COGS, MRR, CAGR, LTV etc. you can no longer just mid like you get it — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

5) cold emailing is actually not very effective. But lukewarm emailing works great for staying top of mind

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

6) be ruthless about trying/disposing of email tools based on metric/campaign results. I’ve stuck with @LeadGenius @PersistIQ @send_with_us — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

7) hire sales reps at least in pairs, so have someway to compare performance

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

8) learn how to fire people, because you will and if you want to be the nice guy CEO maybe this is not the right business model for you — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

9) do 40-50 cold calls a day or 8-10 scheduled demos for awhile. Learn what it feels like to struggle with selling, hit every objection

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

10) “sales enablement” at first is writing down everything you learned in a wiki for future reps. We just use Google Sites — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

11) support and bug tracking tools and processes have a huge impact on sales, that’s why @bryantsao has weekly meetings with sales leaders

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

12) one account manager per $1M ARR is a good rule of thumb for the first $5M (assuming LTV in the thousands) — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

13) don’t discount willy nilly, set pricing and stick to it. We have only one discount, 20% off when you pay for the full year up front

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

14) make a playlist of songs to get pumped up, stand up while you do calls, speak loud and proud, no one does calls in a conference room — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

15) practice asking for 6 figures

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

16) practice asking for 7 figures

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

17) have great comp plans post break even. We do 20% for month-to-month, 25% for annual – NO CAP

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

18) screen for people with excellent organization skills, inbox zero and updating status in the CRM are table stakes — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

19) account management is more this glorified support. It should have expansion revenue quota

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

20) don’t worry about micro-managing, without clear process be hands on and manage activities like # calls, days since last contact etc — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

21) ask for the close. Can I have your business? Let’s get your payment info so you can get started today.

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

22) don’t assume no means no the first time. Try again, be more creative and focus on benefits not features or pricing — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) November 9, 2014

The post 22 Sales Tips From a First Time SaaS CEO appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Guest author Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneurs Council.

Some people may think it’s ludicrous to try to break into an industry where you have no specific expertise. But lack of experience doesn’t necessarily mean failure, as long as you work smart and align with the right resources—and people.

Curious about how other founders think, I asked 12 entrepreneurs from the YEC to weigh in on the debate: How important is it that your co-founder or first few hires have a lot of experience in an industry where you don’t? Their best advice is below.

Hire Up

You need to hire someone in the space that you're entering in the beginning. They should be able to tell you what's going on in the industry, what events you should be going to and have a lot of contacts to be able to push your business to the next level. Pay attention to the leaders in the space on LinkedIn, see if they have recently left their job or reach out to them to see if they are interested in leaving their current job.

—John Rampton, Host

Learn From Scratch

Neither of us knew anything about the hair business when we got into it, and unlike many other industries, our company is probably better for it. We learned all we could by talking to those who ran successful multi-unit enterprises and even dove deep into what a franchisee would need to know and do to open a chain outlet.

But coming from different backgrounds (marketing and finance), we wanted to put our own spin on the business, and we did it mostly by questioning the assumptions many associate with hair salons. Why close Mondays? Why all the mystery pricing? Why does drama have to come with the territory?

Since we empower our employees to manage the quality part of the haircut experience, we use our time to put butts in chairs. We work much more on our business than we do in it.

—Michael Portman, Birds Barbershop

Look For Domain Expertise

Domain expertise is a must for any co-founder or startup. Starting a company is easy, it is the middle and end parts that are hard.

As a startup, time is one of your most valuable assets. Every company faces unforeseen challenges and events—how you and your company respond to these events will make the difference between success or failure. If you don’t have mastery over your industry, you will find yourself spending undue time and energy (which you don’t have) getting up to speed trying to learn the industry.

If you want to learn about an industry, don’t waste your investors' money and time trying to start a company in an industry you know nothing about, just go back to school. It will be cheaper and much less painful.

—Joseph DiTomaso, AllTheRooms

Experience Isn't Always Necessary, But It's A Plus

If you happen to have a co-founder who has experience in that industry, great—if you don't, nothing to fret over. Make sure you make connections with people from that industry that you can gain guidance from, try to establish mentor-like relationships (without forcing it) and get as much advice as you can. You don't want to waste years on the wrong path because you were misguided or spitballing for whatever worked.

Also, in hiring people outside of your niche, it's best to find a connector between yourself and that new hire—someone who can vouch for that person. Find someone you know in that industry and ask, "Do you know anyone who's looking for a new position? Anyone good?," and try to go from there.

—Rob Fulton, Exponential Black

Look for Employees With Complementary Skills

Depending on the industry, there’s a minimum amount of subject matter competence one might need (tech, for example). But in general, I’d put my money on the entrepreneur who has the passion and smarts over the experience any day. That said, a smart entrepreneur in this situation should look to recruit others who bring a diverse array of skills to help the company sustain and succeed.

—Chris Cancialosi, Gotham Culture

Having Industry Expertise Is Critical

I'm a co-founder or board member in nine different companies. I don't invest in companies, I invest in co-founders. My background is online advertising. I was intrigued by the idea of a personal media brand and knew I needed to consistently build mine. I met Clint Evans, whose writing experience and background with media made him a great co-founder to help me reach my goals.

You must be a true connector to recruit outside your space. You can't fake it here. Join local or even virtual groups of lateral thinkers. Mastermind groups are also a fantastic resource. You're exposed to divergent thinking and ideas you’d never have thought of. Synergies occur and even if none of the group members have the expertise you seek, many times somebody in the group can refer you to the expert you need.

—Joshua Lee, StandOut Authority

Intellectual Curiosity Is Key

At some point in your career, you were a novice in your respective industry. Over time, you came to learn all there is to know and you can certainly do that again. While it is advantageous to recruit a co-founder who has domain expertise, it isn't necessary.

The most important thing is having enough intellectual curiosity to quickly understand most of the ins-and-outs of the industry, so you can at least navigate your way through and develop initial traction. Otherwise, you may be paralyzed and unable to get anything done. Moving forward, as you grow your business and begin recruiting talent, your best bet is to search online communities dedicated to this niche and submit postings to job boards catering to applicant pools filled with candidates that have the skills you are looking for.

—Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep

Hire Someone Eager To Learn

It could certainly be an advantage, because knowledge is key when entering new products or markets, but I think it’s even more important to hire or partner with people who are open to learning. The knowledge you need is out there, but if you surround yourself with efficient people committed and willing to learn, you can do wonders. If they don’t have the knowledge, they’ll find a way to get it.

—Alfredo Atanacio, Uassist.ME

You Need Someone With Domain Expertise

It’s very important because success is often about diving deep into that industry—this can often be an advisor as well, but make sure there is someone. For hiring, have an outside consultant (hired or friend) who is an expert in the space help you with the interview process. We had a wonderful acquaintance who helped us interview developers to make sure they had the right experience, for example.

—Basha Rubin, Priori Legal

Experts Really Help For Raising Capital

If you're starting a business outside of your domain expertise, you absolutely have to surround yourself with people who have experience in that area. Investors typically want to see domain expertise, so that's important for raising capital.

Even more important, as you build a business, you need to have a story behind the company that every partner, employee, investor, media contact, etc. will want to know. Why this? Why you? It’s incredibly important that the story and answers to those questions are compelling. Otherwise, you're starting at a disadvantage.

—Carlo Cisco, SELECT

Be A Facilitator

If you don't know much about the space, the only thing you can be is the facilitator: the person that knows how to build the right team. At a minimum, you have to have a vision for what the product has to be and know who you need to bring on board in order to make that happen. Otherwise, you're just a poser.

It's very important that you find some co-founders that know the space, but you have to at least understand the space and the product you're trying to complete at a high level. It takes a lot of intuition. However, if you'd like to bring in people from outside your realm of expertise, you should invest a lot of time in understanding their world, going to their events, figuring out what makes them tick. You have to understand anybody's position and beliefs before you can earn their respect.

—Andy Karuza, SpotSurvey

Build A Team Smarter Than You

It is essential to hire employees that are extremely experienced in your business’ industry. My theory has always been that you should build a team that is smarter than you and can be independent of you. It is equally as important, as entrepreneurs, to recognize our own weaknesses and fill those lacking areas with staff who can compensate.

—Sean Marszalek, SDC Nutrition

Image courtesy of Shutterstock 

As the end of 2014 draws near, both managers and field reps are under more stress than usual. There’s more pressure to draw meetings with prospective retailers and close deals before the new year arrives. Here are a few tips for managers and reps to ease the anxiety of closing end of year deals.

1. Upsell Add-ons

When your business is seeking growth revenue through upselling additional products, whether it be online, during a sales pitch, or during an in-store promo, reps have to be careful. Using the wrong sales strategy or pushy customer service can cost your business a prospective sale. But to truly get the most out of your end of year deals, and boost your revenue in 2015, upselling additional products can be a powerful tool.

There are two main ways upselling can be beneficial, if done correctly. First, by selling more product in one instance, you are raising your transaction size. This can be done in a number of ways. For example, online shoppers can be enticed to buy additional products similar to what is in their cart. If a retailer is buying a case of soda, suggest an in-cart upsell of a case of juice. Additionally, a follow-up strategy to upselling can lead to an overall growth of sales. Sending effective follow-up emails to customers with reminders can help your numbers.

2.  Check-up On Valuable Clients

Healthy communication between businesses and their clients results in loyalty. In fact, businesses who were able to reduce customer turnover by just 5% were able to raise profits by 25%. Remember that your most “valuable” clients are not always the ones who spend the most money. Though they are important, remember that low-spending clients with the power to spread the word about your company are also crucial to success.

To help your year end deals close faster and learn about how to be more successful in the new year, reach out to your high value clients. With your big spenders, it is important to discuss current product lines and projections for the future. Since they’re the ones who provide the cash flow, their thoughts on your products’ quality will guide you in serving them in the future. Other clients may have more qualitative values, like the power to refer. For example, a large retailer may only stock one or two of your products, but the volume of customers they have in the store means more people will see your product. Stay engaged with these clients by offering them promo deals or new products they may be interested in.

3. Suggest Referrals

A business can never have too many people vying for its products. Aside from providing timely and accurate service, reps should be reminding your clients that you welcome referrals. Not only do referrals expand your client pool, studies have shown that clients brought in by referrals tend to be more loyal and profitable. If your reps provide excellent customer service, clients are usually happy to refer the business.

There are a few ways to successfully request referrals from your clients. You want to avoid asking too soon. Reps need to establish solid and positive client relationships before the referral topic is brought up. One way to entice the client into a referral is by offering them some sort of reward for doing so. This could be anything from discounts on their next order to free samples of new product. In many cases the value of referred clients far outweighs the cost of the the reward you offered your current client.

Come On Feel The Noise…

How many emails do you get per day, per week, per year? My guess is too many. I get 100 per day and that’s down from 250 per day. I worked really hard to remove myself from email lists that I never subscribed to and others that have become irrelevant as of today!

Email is just one of the distractions we all deal with every day. Think about the messages you get via text, phone, and social media? Even though they may be distractions, some are legit client or supplier issues, while other are software updates and things you want to hear or see. Many others are just trying to get your attention, like Facebook ads, Google ads, and random email ads that are trying to move you from getting things done, to enticing you to go down their rabbit hole.

Now, let me turn the tables. What makes the emails you are sending any different than all that noise? Are your graphics better, offers more urgent, or are you just so important to your audience that they CAN’T ignore, delete or unsubscribe?

Balance And The De-noiser

I have been doing a podcast recently, and it brought me back to my roots when I owned a recording studio. We had tons of equipment and invested thousands of dollars to deal with noise. We had to balance the low end bass reflections, treble bouncing and standing waves with reverb to create as natural a sound as possible. Then, we had compressors, expanders, de-noisers, and other equipment and digital plug-ins that we paid lots of money and attention to to remove noise.

In the email world, these are called firewalls, spam blockers, junk folders, and delete buttons.

Who Wants To Read Your Emails?

That’s easy…people who care about you, your products, and your services.

How Do You Get People To WANT To Read Your Emails?

That’s simple…you care about your clients and their needs!

How Do You FIND People Who WANT To Read Your Emails?

That’s the hard part…they don’t need or want what you have until they need or want what you sell. You have to provide value with every communication, or at least link them to value, while waiting until the time comes that they need you. Here is what you have to do to keep them in the loop…

1. Define And Segment Audience - Too many of us try to lump people into a general audience, and then try to communicate to all of them at the same time. Don’t be afraid to have dozens of lists within your email program, and only communicate messages that resonate with specific audiences. Some have clients of consistent needs, while other have clients of situational needs. You have to match your messages to your recipients.
2. Make Your Messages THEM Focused - Most of us are so focused on what we have to sell that we forget whom we are selling to. Is your email talking with, or at, the audience? Are we focusing on solving their problems or needs or focusing on ours first? Do they feel emotionally attached or detached to our information? Make sure you read the message you are about to send from your audience’s eyes. If you were to get this from someone else, would you act on it, delete it or unsubscribe?
3. Value Relationships First - Talk to people as if they are your friends and valued customers. Make them feel wanted, and show them that you are caring for them, their needs and their business first. Be personal with each email and treat each person as if they matter. Tell them a story of how you or your product, service or offer will benefit them. Finally, make sure they feel recognized, valued and don’t over stay your welcome. Not every email is going to be equally accepted by each person, but let them know that you value their time and appreciate their attention!

I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to sending out emails. Sometimes, I am so excited about what I have to say and offer that I neglect to think about the end user receiving the email. Then, I go to my inbox and ask myself, “Do I really sound like this?” I mean that two ways, “Am I as sincere as this email about someone else’s business?” or “Am I selling as hard as this company?”

If you want people to keep receiving your emails, then give them a reason to remain subscribed. Give them something of value with each email and auto-responder to keep them interested. Then, when they do need what you have to offer, they call you, email you, or click and purchase. If they are so inclined to complete the purchase, make it easy to contact you before, during or after the sale, so they feel valued as a trusted member of your business (and not just another sale)!

I would love to hear your thoughts, feelings, and feedback on this post – comment away!

How often do you and your salespeople use email throughout your sales process? Learn how to avoid hiring salespeople with the writing acumen of a five-year-old.

The day starts like any other day. You open your inbox to check your emails. Maybe it’s from your boss or from the CEO of the company. Maybe it’s from a peer, direct report, customer or a vender. It could also be an email from customer service or a friend. Or, maybe it’s from someone you respect, even admire.

After reading the email, you think to yourself, “A five-year-old can write a more articulate email than this. Look at all of these punctuation errors and misspellings, let alone the grammatical mistakes. And for the last twenty years, this person has been the VP of Sales for a multi-billion dollar company!”

How does this happen? Why do some of the smartest, most successful people find it so difficult to put an intelligent, well-crafted email together? As a wordsmith myself, I’m sensitive to this question and realize there’s a bucket full of reasons as to why people struggle with any form of writing, whether it is writing creatively, drafting or responding to an email, writing a proposal, crafting presentations or marketing materials, or any type of writing that is part of their typical work day.

This aside, one constant still remains. When you work for a company and rely heavily on email or any form of written communication as a way to communicate, connect, collaborate and engage with people, then what you write is a reflection of you and your entire organization.

Studies show that employees, especially salespeople, can spend 50% or more of their time reading, writing and responding to email.

A Hidden Opportunity

However, most of the time, companies step over the opportunity to evaluate this critical communication skill, make an offer to the candidate they have been interviewing, and don’t realize that the person they just hired is virtually illiterate.

When looking at your hiring and interviewing process, most of the managers who are part of the process would admit that assessing people’s written skills is a missed opportunity and something they need to do more consistently. Unfortunately, most managers don’t have a process to successfully assess someone’s writing aptitude. To compound this challenge, what if the person who is doing the hiring also struggles with written communication? Who in your company is able to objectively and effectively evaluate a candidate’s writing acumen?

Here’s a make or break exercise you can add as another step in your interviewing process to ensure you are hiring someone who is an all-around engaging, collaborative and effective communicator.

First, take a look at your email archives or sent emails folder. You are looking for three unique scenarios. Find a few emails that contain the entire written conversation thread to provide background and context that you feel would be most relevant for the position you’re looking to fill. Make sure they are three distinct situations from three different people.

Remove the names of the people from the original email and conversation thread or any other sensitive information you need to omit in order to protect privacy, intellectual property or if you have any HR/internal compliance guidelines to follow.

Once done, schedule a meeting with the candidate (phone or in-person) and forward these three emails to them. Each candidate will then be asked to craft a response to each email, which they will then send to you to be evaluated. Make sure you explain the intention and objective of this simulation. Here’s one simple way to do so.

“Let’s imagine for a moment that you have been hired for this position and are now the acting Director of Business Development. You have just received these three emails from three different people. You can gather the details of each scenario in the email thread. As the acting Director of Business Development, how would you respond to each email?”

Keep it Real

Provide them with enough time to craft an intelligent response. Within the next hour or so, you will receive three email responses written by these candidates, making this simulation as real, relevant and as timely as possible. Most important, you have just assessed whether or not you would feel comfortable with how this person communicates in writing and how they represent your company.

Keep in mind, the emails don’t all have to be from customers. Depending upon the role you’re hiring for, the email could be from a prospect, a peer, boss, customer support, your help desk, or if you’re looking to hire a manager, it could be from their hypothetical direct report. Any relevant scenario could work. Here are some examples.

1. Service issue
2. Creating a value proposition
3. Upselling issue
4. Irate customer
5. Competitive situation
6. Renewal
7. Getting to the decision maker
8. A sale may be lost to a competitor
9. Several pricing objections from the prospect
10. Discount issue
11. Internal employee issue
12. Help desk issue
13. Sales needs to communicate with support
14. Relationship issue
15. Working on a project with a cross functional team
16. Performance issue

Can they cheat? Sure. That’s why I suggest scheduling this exercise with them on the telephone or in person, and have them complete it during that allocated time.

And what about your current employees? It’s never too late! You can do this as a team or individual coaching exercise to uncover opportunities to strengthen their written communication skills and ultimately, their personal brand.

A Real World Success Story

Here’s how one manager leveraged this exercise to make the right hiring decision. Brian, a client of mine, was the VP of Sales for a pharmaceutical company who was looking to hire a new Regional Sales Manager. He narrowed it down to two candidates. He felt both were a perfect fit and that he couldn’t really make a bad decision. But Brian couldn’t decide. I suggested this exercise, which he did. After reviewing the emails each candidate had written, Brian reported back that it was this exercise that secured his decision.

Throughout the interviewing process, Brian said that both candidates were very articulate, polished and experienced. On the telephone and face to face, each person presented and communicated very well. They also had successful track records and stellar references.

However, when comparing their writing acumen; their expertise, style, professionalism, clarity and brevity of message, spelling, grammar, etiquette, closing statement and vocabulary, one candidate clearly rose above the other.

When you effectively evaluate all of the competencies every person needs in order to be successful in their role, you’ll shift your focus from hiring fast to hiring right.

What strategies have served you best in hiring sales champions?

Photo Credit: Death to the Stock Photo

When searching, being specific really helps. When searching for a piece of content or a product via Google, you probably experiment with a variety of search terms until you find a specific phrase that brings up the results you want.

This process gives us some valuable clues about search. It suggests that people don’t just tap a couple of words into Google and hope for the best. They build longer, more complex search queries that give them a better chance of finding the specific product or service they’re after.

That’s the value of the long tail keyword. And if you’re not already using long tail keywords in your web content and articles, you should probably start right away.

What Is a Long Tail Keyword?

Keywords are the backbone of content production and optimisation. If you know anything at all about SEO, you’ll know that keyword research is the foundation of everything else that comes afterwards. Without keywords, there’s nothing to optimise for.

Some SEO professionals concentrate on optimising content for short keyword phrases. The aim of this optimisation is to capture the maximum number of searches for a particular topic. So while a keyword like ‘shoes’ is too broad to be useful, ‘men’s shoes’ or ‘running shoes London’ might be worth optimising for, according to your SEO consultant.

But is it really?

Wouldn’t it be better if we optimised our web content for the things people are actually searching for, even if they’re a bit more obscure? And wouldn’t it be nice to ditch those horrible malformed keywords that look totally unnatural in web content?

Why Optimise For Less Common Keywords?

When creating content, you might assume that optimising for long phrases is pointless. After all, capturing the maximum amount of traffic means being fairly general.

Well – yes and no.

There are a few really big advantages to long tail keywords, and they’re all worth knowing about:

• Long tail keywords are natural. Keyword stuffed content looks robotic and weird. Long tail keywords are the keywords normal people come up with using their human brain. If we want to target humans, we need to write content for humans, and therefore use keywords humans use.
• Long tail phrases are much, much easier to incorporate into good content. You can weave long tail keywords into copy almost invisibly; they’re unobtrusive most of the time. Longtail is much closer to the way humans naturally speak, think and write.
• These keywords are extremely focused on a niche. When we write long tail keywords into web content, we’re creating a piece of content for a very specific audience. We know that, if our audience finds that content, they are very likely to be interested in it. They’re more valuable to us than a casual searcher; volume of traffic isn’t any guarantee of a sale. (For Red Robot Media, ‘web content writers’ is okay as a keyword, but ‘technical web content writers in the UK’ is much better. Both are valid keywords for our site, but the second tells us much more about the searcher’s intentions.)
• Long tail phrases correlate nicely with the kinds of searches people perform using voice recognition software. Think about the value of Google Now and the new Touchless Control feature on the Moto X. We may as well start optimising for voice now, because it’s on the horizon.

To summarise: as a content writer, I’m a big fan of any technique that makes content easier to read, more informative and less mechanical. Long tail keywords tick all of the boxes. And according to Moz, long tail keywords make up 70 percent of searches. If you can tap into your niche, your web content and articles will attract a lot of highly relevant traffic.

How To Research Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are real keywords generated by real people. As such, they’re surprisingly easy to formulate. The more you can pin down your customer’s needs, the more likely you are to lead to a conversion, even if you don’t attract thousands of extra hits.

Assuming you already have a website, and it’s gathering data via some kind of analytics tool (we like Statcounter), some of your longtail keyword research will have been done for you already. Check your referral data; look for keywords relevant to your business. The longer and more specific, the better.

If you don’t have enough data in your analytics package yet, you can still use long tail keywords. You’ll just need to do a little extra leg work. Many of the long tail keyword research tools we’ve found are not free, and I’d hesitate to recommend any that I haven’t used myself. However, there are some free longtail keyword research sites that are worth looking up.

• Ubersuggest compiles data from Google’s autosuggestions and gives you lots of extra inspiration. Don’t rely on it as a source of high volume searches: that’s not what we’re trying to achieve.
• Soovle is a rather strange long tail keyword generator. It’s a little messy to use, but it’s speedy and fun.
• Ask your web content writer to help you brainstorm some long tail keywords. An experienced content writer should always help you to come up with long tail ideas based on their own preferred tools and experience.

Long Tail Love

Have you been using long tail keywords? Is your content attracting more relevant hits? Let us know in the comments.

Tradition definition: ‘A way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by people in a particular group, family, society etc. for a long time.’ In many societies tradition as an expression of identity and a way of passing down beliefs to next generation. Traditions can be part of and re-enforces society’s beliefs and values. Traditions are often be conservative and not flexible to adapt to changes in a belief system.

Take marketing for example. Traditional marketing methods focus on a push system where a brand amplifies its message on their customers without being able to measure feedback. The relationship between brand and consumer is a one way system. Therefore people’s relationship with a brand is platonic and valueless to both brand and customer. The traditional push marketing system is still trying to adapt to the changing environment and create new ways to build devoted relationship with the customer.

Social media marketing offers businesses and brands an opportunity to create a community of consumers where a new form of relationship is strong, loyal, and adds value to both parties. Creating engagement and conversations provides an environment whereby the brand can adapt to changing consumer demands. Social media marketing also creates a situation where we can measure campaigns in real time and provide vital qualitative data that can be enacted to ensure a brands survival and development.

From a traditional marketing perspective, the same scenario does not arise. It’s hard to measure the effectiveness of campaigns and also have a strong two way relationship between brand and consumer. In addition the qualitative data from traditional marketing research is usually skewed and inaccurate because consumers don’t have that same level of devotion and empowerment they get as part of a social media community.

Social media is a great marketing platform to empower and engage with your brand community. Relating to them on a human level and empowering them creates a situation where a brand can attain information which can lead to robust and successful marketing in the future.

Crowdsourcing is the new market research and allows a level of co-operation between brand and consumer that derives significant value. Crowdsouring is defined as a ‘process of needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from large sums of people and especially online communities.’

Using crowdsourcing as part of your social media marketing allows your community to contribute new ideas, test new products, how to improve existing services/products, etc. In addition it acts as a mechanism to build a bond between customer and brand.

Examples of companies using Crowdsourcing on social media successfully

• Nissan Project 370Z
  Nissan leveraged its strong brand community and heritage by getting people involved in the design process. Time framed within an eight week period, Nissan gave their community a choice of car to restore, parts to use, colors to paint etc. Nissan videotaped the progress of the projects and displayed it to their fans. Throughout the process they encouraged engagement, votes and feedback. The winner was selected from the community and drive the new car at the annual Z convention in Tennessee. The project helped to build Nissan’s social media reach and their community.
• Lego Ideas
  Lego ideas is an online crowdsourcing platform. Groups or communities can go online to contribute new ideas and designs. They utilize social media by encouraging their fans communities to offer support and vote on winning designs. The design that receives 10,000 votes wins the design contest. The winning design becomes part of the new product development process and the winner receives 1% of net sales.

Why Use Crowdsourcing?

• Generate New Ideas
  Ask your social media community to help and be part of a project to generate new product ideas or help in creating a marketing campaign. Offer incentives.
• Brand Personalization
  The brand is no longer an entity that relies on push marketing tactics. From a social media perspective relate to your community on a human level and ensure that they are driving brand awareness and future direction.
• Market Research
  Utilizing effective crowdsourcing can provide strong qualitative and quantitative results to give products that existing and new customers want. The closer people are to the brand the more compelled they feel to give quality feedback which can increase the probability of a new products success.
• Test New Products
  Before launching a new product, crowdsourcing can prove an effective method of testing a new product. The insights from crowdsourcing can help with tweaking a products attributes and increase the new products chances of success after launching.
• Improving Existing Products And Service
  Most products and services stagnate over a lifecycle and over time will lose market share to competitors. Crowdsourcing offers a brand/business an opportunity to improve upon its existing products and services, creating a competitive advantage.

If you want to build a strong and successful brand in the future its fundamental that you involve your social media community as part of that process. If you want to create or test new products ask your community for their opinions on how to improve or what ideas they want to generate. Empowering your social media community helps to build reach and most importantly, brand awareness. The strengthening of the bonds between customer and brand through a crowdsourcing process, ensures the survival, adaptability, and growth of a brand for years to come. Break with tradition and give the power to the people!

Your resume is often the first impression that an employer gets of you. As such, job seekers strive to make it attractive and eye-catching. This means having the right key words to generate positive attention and make it through a resume scanner and into the hands of a person. Before you try to integrate a lot of words that you think sound great and make you look more impressive, consider the meaning behind them. Here are five words that may not be helping your resume as much as you think they are:

1. Responsible for

This short phrase tends to segue into a list. And lists are often boring. Rather than stating what your responsibilities were, show what you accomplished. Maybe you were responsible for managing the budget, but what does that mean? What was the value? How did you track and delegate funds? Did you do anything to generate cost savings or use funds more effectively? Give each statement more purpose and meaning. Consider why it matters and is worth mentioning.

2. Experienced

This is a rather generic term as it can mean something different to everyone. Does it mean that it is something you have been doing for a week, a year, or 10 years? Be more specific. Highlight advanced training and show that you have these skills. Instead of saying that you’re experienced in launching new products, say that you launched four new software products in six months generating more than $1 million in revenue. This puts value on what you have done and helps to put it in context.

3. Team Player

This is another generic term. Just because you think you work well with others, would someone else agree? Expand upon your leadership and collaboration skills. Show what you have accomplished and the effectiveness of the teams that you have built. What was your role in these team-oriented projects?

4. Innovative

Trends are always changing. How are you showing that you’ve kept up with current techniques and progressive ideas? What exactly have you done to prove that you are innovative? Elaborative on forward-thinking concepts or projects that you have worked. Demonstrate how you were able to overcome challenging problems through strategic thinking.

5. Motivated

Motivation is something that is hard to quantify. If you are driven to achieve results, make sure your resume clearly shows the impact you have made. You could show your motivation to excel in your career by including professional development and training courses you have taken to stay abreast of best practices and advanced skills within your profession. Let an employer come to the conclusion that you are motivated based on what they read.

The problem with many buzzwords is that they are too vague and difficult to quantify. Focus on using strong verbs and adjectives that demonstrate your abilities and emphasize results. Don’t get caught up in using the latest lingo simply to make yourself appear more impressive and up-to-date.

Resolution or Transformation is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

So, you’ve changed have you? This year you kept your promises, and the changes you’ve made are visible, huh?

Would the person closest to you in your life recognize the personal changes that you’ve made this year? Would they call those changes a “transformation?” Or would they say that you “did a little better?” Which were you playing for when you promised yourself?

Would someone you’ve known for a long time immediately recognize that you have changed? If they spent a couple hours with you, would it become clear to them all the ways that you have transformed yourself over the last year? Or would they say you’re the same person they’ve always known and loved?

If you report to someone, would that person be able to quickly rattle off one or two of the major ways that you have improved yourself this year? Or would they simply point to the one or two visible projects that you were involved in? Would they even know what you worked on?

How about your clients? Would your clients rave about how the transformation you made this year had a massive impact on their results? Would they recount all the ways that your relationship has grown stronger because of the improvements that you have made? Would they even have noticed?

Every year at this time we start thinking about what we need to improve in the coming year. Resolutions are quickly made, and those resolutions are just as quickly forgotten. As you take an accounting of this year, ask yourself whether you are going to be happy dabbling around the edges in hopes of improvement or whether you are going to transform yourself in some area of your life.

Your company’s valuation is probably the single most important number in your whole fundraising story.

Sure, you need to have some early traction, you need to have a product out there and a convincing enough team; but those are prerequisites. Don’t even go into a fundraising conversation if you don’t have them, and much has been written about what people look for nowadays.

But valuation? That’s where you make or break the conversation. If yours is too high, potential investors will prioritize other opportunities over yours; if it’s too low, they will ask themselves what’s wrong.

If the valuation you’re asking for is completely off the chart, that’s a huge red flag and it signals that you have little or no idea what you’re talking about (and leaves investors wondering what other things you don’t have an idea about). Plus, if you look for answers online, the average one you’ll get is: “it depends.” Yeah, thanks.

So let me break down what valuation you should target based on the stage you’re in, which is, incidentally, also what the average investor expects to hear based on the valuation of the company you give them:

1. Up to $1 million valuation: This is probably what you should be aiming for if it’s the first external money and/or your first company and/or you’re taking money from friends and family, and/or you barely have a prototype (or a landing page and/or a few thousands in users/revenue). This is also what you’ll get if you’re selected for an accelerator program (or a little less in some cases, a little more in others). Also consider that U.S. people will be ok buying at around $1M while the rest of the world will be a bit more comfortable buying at around $500K.
2. $1-3 million valuation: This is a price you should use to incentivize and reward the early movers so you can build momentum on the fundraising. This might mean the first $100,000-250,000 of angel investors not directly related to your friends and family network, or the network of angels surrounding the accelerator (if you joined one). To justify this valuation, you don’t really need anything more than the requirements of the previous stage, just the fact that somebody else — besides you, your cofounders, and your dog — believes in what you’re doing enough to throw some money at you. It’s called “social proof.”
3. $3–6 million valuation: At this price you are expected to not only have a product out there but also to have 5-20 percent month-over-month growth rate for at least 3-6 months. Use this rule of thumb: Add $1million to the valuation for every 5 percent of traction month-over-month you’re gaining. If you have a previous success under your belt, you’ll be able to raise at this valuation with less validation, but do remember that this is pretty much the range at which every startup in the world tries to raise the first $500,000-750,000.
4. $6–9 million valuation: If you’re a Y Combinator company nowadays, you can pretty much raise at this price with the same validation and metrics as in the previous category, or less. But if you’re not, this is where you can go with around 6 to 12 months of operational data plus 10 to 25 percent of month-over-month growth. At this point, traction is not enough though; absolute numbers become important. Investors will expect you to have $30,000-50,000 per month in revenue or more, and will usually be fine in buying at a valuation 100X your monthly revenue or 8X-9X your yearly revenue. Your target raise should be $1–2 million.
5. $9-12 million valuation: Now things start to become interesting. For this price, you’re not expected to be the scrappy startup anymore; you’re expected to be an actual company. You’ll need an established product out there, 12-18 months of operational data, and some interesting absolute numbers paired with a consistent month-over-month growth rate (the bigger the growth is, the smaller the absolute numbers need to be). But, more importantly, people will want to take a look at the cost structure, how you managed it, and how close you are to profitability. Your target raise should be $2–3 million.
6. $12–15 million valuation: To raise money at this point, the main question for which you need a very good answer is: “How do you intend to grow to 10 to 20 times the valuation investors are paying for right now?” So, besides the already-mentioned elements, what becomes really important is the go-to-market strategy you’re already executing to gain market share, and to go from initial traction to initial scale. “What are the customer lifetime value (LTV) and customer acquisition cost (CAC) calculations?” is another typical question. Know the answer. Your target raise should be $3–5 million.

The overall issue is that the average founder is as lousy at pricing his own company as he is at pricing his own product. The two kinds of valuations aren’t that different. They’re both sales — one is a specific product and the other is a whole company. In the same way the price of a product is a proxy for its perceived value (you expect something more expensive to be more valuable, after all), the price of your company is a proxy for the expected underlying value (ergo the metrics it’s generating). Be very aware of that and deviate from the framework at your own risk.

Of course, caveats apply:

A) You can optimize for speed or valuation; it’s very hard, if not impossible, to do both.

B) The spread between investors from the U.S. and from the rest of the world is real, so take into consideration where your target investor is from.

C) Different investors will want different things; the earlier ones will be more valuation-sensitive, while the later ones will be more ownership-sensitive.

D) Valuation really is a promise; to go the next stage, you have to materialize the current one. Unless you’re an outlier. If that’s the case, just feel free to ignore every single word I’ve said so far.

Armando Biondi is cofounder and COO of AdEspresso, a Saas Solution for Facebook Ads Optimization. He previously cofounded five other tech and non-tech companies. He’s also an angel investor in Mattermark and 14 more companies. He’s also part of the 500 Startups network, and is an occasional mentor.

You probably don’t need me to tell you that mobile usage in China is rather massive.

But just how big is the opportunity and how are Chinese marketers approaching the challenge?

A new report from Econsultancy and the Mobile Marketing Aassociation answers these questions and more.

The State of Mobile Marketing in Asia Pacific Report takes a close look at how APAC organisations and agencies are responding to the ever-expanding reach and importance of mobile. 

The findings, also available as a 60+ slide presentation, are presented for Asia Pacific overall, with key charts broken down for Asia, Australia, China, India and Singapore.

To give you a taster of what the report contains I’ve picked out some of the stats that relate specifically to the Chinese market.

They are detailed below along with data pulled from other sources which adds further insight into the Chinese mobile market.

Chinese investment in mobile marketing

• Our research shows that, on average, mobile accounts for over a third (39%) of Chinese companies’ web traffic and over a quarter (27%) of ecommerce revenue is transacted directly on mobile devices.
• Chinese companies spend nearly a third (28%) of their overall marketing budgets on mobile – the largest spend across Asia Pacific. 
• Two in five (41%) companies surveyed spend over a quarter of their overall marketing budget on mobile.
• Additionally, nearly two-thirds (63%) of Chinese companies plan to increase their mobile spend during the next 12 months (compared to 75% in India). More than three-quarters (77%) plan to increase their mobile budgets by up to 30%.
• Seven in ten (72%) Chinese organisations claim that mobile will become a fundamental part of their marketing and commerce strategy during the next 12 months. This is slightly above the APAC average (67%).

Mobile will become a fundamental part of our marketing and commerce strategy during the next 12 months

Market size

• By the end of August 2014 the total number of mobile subscribers in China reached 1.27bn.
• 480m of these are 3G users and 30m are 4G users according to MIIT (Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology).
• This means that by August the number of 4G users had more than doubled from 13.97m in June 2014.
• Separate data from iResearch showed that almost three-quarters (73%) of mobiles sold in China are smartphones, up from just 23% in 2011, so the market size is likely to continue its strong growth.
• By 2016 it’s forecast that mobile phone penetration will reach 86.9%.

Mobile commerce

• In Q3 2014 Chinese people spent RMB230.96bn ($37.59bn) through mobile commerce, according to iResearch.

• This represents an increase of 250.9% year-on-year.
• Mobile now accounts for a third (33%) of all online sales, up from 14.3% in Q3 2013.

Local mobile advertising

• Investment in local mobile advertising is expected to exceed RMB10.142bn ($1.65 billion) in 2014, a year-on-year increase of 93.6%, according to EnfoDesk.

Mobile gaming

• Mobile gaming is hugely popular around the world, and China is obviously no exception. This presents a big opportunity for marketers to place in-app adverts and other forms of marketing.
• As of June 2014 almost half of Chinese mobile users (47.8%) played games on their device.
• Total transaction value of China mobile gaming market is expected to be over RMB20bn ($3.27bn) in 2014. 
• Furthermore, it is estimated that the number of total value will exceed RMB40-50bn in 2015.

Examples showing the value of social proof in boosting email subscriptions

If you’ve ever watched sitcoms, you probably have a good idea what ‘canned laughter’ is – it’s a track of ‘people laughing played in the background’ every time there is something funny on the screen. This way TV producers can alter our perception of a particular scene as its perceived to be funnier. It’s not a secret trick psychologists have been silent about, but one of behavioural patterns we all follow intuitively. It’s called social proof, and it can throw a whole new light on your email marketing operations.

Social proof is a phenomenon occurring when people undergo a process of decision-making. Our brains are programmed to automatically follow other people’s behaviour.

Once we notice a large group of individuals have made certain decisions, it is very likely that we will perceive it to be a good one and be persuaded to do the same. It’s a way of people copying the behaviour of others!. So this valuable information is key as it can be useful for growing your subscriber list, promoting a product or generating more conversions.

Social Proof in subscriber list growth

Large numbers have the power of attracting people’s attention. So, if there are a lot of people who already signed up to your subscriber list, don’t keep it a secret.

Revealing the actual number of subscribers opting in to receive your messages is a clear signal that your content is interesting and relevant for many people. Additionally, it triggers subconscious desire to follow the crowd’s behaviour

Many brands use this technique to be more efficient in acquiring email addresses of website visitors. Here is how Brain Pages and Do The Yoga highlight their number of subscribers:

Source: Brainpages

Source: Doyouyoga.com

Social Proof in product promotion

Sometimes we make bad choices, but our brain processes even the most irrational decisions in order to find a good reason to support them. Usually, it’s backed up by the opinion of a brand influencer or observation of other people’s behaviour. That’s why we are flooded with testimonials and reviews of products made by well-recognized professionals with considerable authority.

As being a subject to authority is determined by different behavioural patterns, there are still social proof elements in this technique. They’re hidden in the number of positive opinions about the product and faces of people sharing this opinion.

Posting many positive comments about a product is a way of telling people that a large group of people is happy about it. Better yet if there are influencers in this group. Here is how LinkedIn encourages to join their network:

Source: LinkedIn

Blizzard Entertainment also decided to use this method and invites to join a group of over 100 million World of Warcraft players:

Source: World of Warcraft

Unless we are not loyal to a certain brand, presented with two alternative products that are priced similarly, we tend to choose the one of a better quality. But is there a proven way to measure quality? One good indicator of quality are awards won by the product. Such accolade is a great vehicle for driving further positive opinions and recommendations.

How to increase conversions

Regardless of what conversion in your business means, social proof can also make a difference here. Just brag about the number of clients who followed your call to action and are happy about the result. If the figure is a considerable, , chances are that the rest will follow without giving it a second thought. In product promotion, the authority of influencers is key, but then it’s better to enhance social proof’s effect by allowing your prospects to identify with the group of existing clients. This method has been used by Alchemy Worx – a well-known email marketing agency. In their newsletter sent to thousands of marketers they emphasized that a new tool they were promoting at that time had already been in use by over 800 other marketers.

Source: AlchemyWorx

Negative effects of social proof

Applying the social proof technique shouldn’t be an option in some cases. If you don’t want social proof to have an opposite effect, don’t reveal the number of evangelists in the following cases:

• Your subscriber list size is not impressive
• There haven’t been multiple positive comments on your product
• Few clients tried your product so far.

Also, mind the tone used for communicating your success. It’s important to keep it positive. By writing:

‘Many others missed the opportunity to…’

we’re actually making a prospect think that since many people didn’t take that chance, it must have been a good decision, after all. It’s a subconscious thought that appears in people’s mind when encountering a negative message. In order to make sure prospects make the right choices (for you), a marketer needs to choose their words intelligently.

In 1972, American researchers, Mary Smyth and Raymond Fuller, described ‘canned laughter’ as an efficient tool for altering perception of received information. It took place when the first email ever had been sent a year earlier over the ARPANET network and marketing, as we know it, was in its infancy. Nevertheless, thanks to researchers, now we are consciously making use of behavior patterns. Just keep these 3 simple rules in mind and you will maximize your email marketing effects:

• Rule 1. Show how many subscribers are there in your list
• Rule 2. Share positive opinions about your product
• Rule 3. Let everyone see who is your client

Image/Copyright: Istockphoto

Although psychology has been an integral part of marketing for many years, in recent years we have seen it become an even bigger component as more and more consumers turn to the Internet for information. In its most basic definition, psychology is the science of behavior and the mind.  As online marketing develops and grows out of consumer demand, so does psychology and an understanding of how consumers think and behave as they use the Internet for purchasing decisions.

How does psychology work in the process of lead conversion? First, let’s gain a better understanding of lead conversion in online marketing, specifically inbound marketing.  As you may know, call-to-actions (CTAs) and landing pages are an integral part of lead conversion and inbound marketing.

Here are some psychological explanations as to how they work:

1. Persuasion: Persuasion has long been studied in psychology.  After much research, the conclusion is that there literally is an “art of persuasion.”  Context, timing and relevance are extremely important in persuading a person to do what you want.  On your website and in online marketing campaigns, CTAs must effectively persuade a visitor to click. How do they do that?  It starts by ensuring that the content offer is relevant to your buyer persona, the CTA and landing page align and clearly explain the value of the offer and that they are presented at the right time (Smart CTAs help deliver the right message at the right time on your website. Learn more about them here.)
2. Motivating with Emotion (A.K.A. Cognitive Dissonance): As marketers, we already know that it is important to appeal to the pain points of your buyer.  What you may not know is why this is so important and powerful. According to cognitive dissonance theory, people are motivated by emotions or attitudes, specifically those that cause discord or disrupt harmony within the mind, because they simply want to have cognitive consistency or in simple terms, peace of mind.  This is why it is extremely important to present pain points in CTAs and landing pages and explain to the reader how your offer can help them avoid cognitive dissonance.
3. Rule of Reciprocity: You know the saying, “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.”  The truth is people inherently feel compelled to give back when someone does something nice for them. When you present a really valuable offer on a landing page like an e-book, the visitor will give you a bit of their contact information because of the rule of reciprocity. However, it is important to keep in mind that research on this rule shows that people typically give back something of equal value.  Thus, your landing page forms with 10 questions may deter visitors from submitting because they don’t feel they owe you that much.

Using Psychology to Improve CTAs & Landing Pages

Many of the principles of psychology can help to explain why CTAs and landing pages work, but they can also help you to increase lead conversions.. Below are some principles of psychology that will help optimize your conversion paths and grow leads.

Sense of Urgency

One way you can convince prospects to act on your ad is to create a sense of urgency in CTAs and landing pages. In other words, convince them as to why they should do something now rather than later.  You can do this by simply adding urgent words like “download now” or “act fast.”  In addition, you can also create a sense of urgency by using limited time offers or offering limited quantities (this is actual known as the principle of scarcity, but people tend to act with a sense of urgency when quantities are limited).

Authority

In 1963, Stanley Milgram conducted a study that not only was groundbreaking in psychology research but was also shocking to all mankind. The study asked participants to administer an electrical shock to another participant in the study each time he or she answered a question incorrectly. With each wrong answer, the voltage of the shock would increase. Of course, it is not legal nor safe to administer an actual electrical shock, so the participant receiving the shock is acting and merely faking a reaction. Meanwhile, the participant administering the shock is encouraged by a researcher to continue administering voltages despite the screams and agony they are hearing. The kicker here, though, is that in this study and in many follow up studies the participants keep administering the shocks because the researcher tells them to keep going. Despite knowing that they are torchering another person, they keep going because they are being obedient to an authority figure.

What does this have to do with CTAs and landing pages? Authority is powerful, which is why it is important for prospects to see that you are an authority of the subject matter.  If you ask Joe to download your e-book, he is much more likely to do it when he knows you are an authority figure.

Reward or Reinforcement

You’ve likely heard of Pavlov’s dogs, Skinner’s box or Thorndike’s cats. These are all classical studies of behaviorism, which lead psychologists to gain a better understanding of operant conditioner.  Basically, operant conditioning is the use of reinforcement presented after a desired response, which will ultimately help to shape a behavior.  There are several discoveries that have been found which make operant conditioning more effective. With landing pages, the most relevant is timing.

After a lead submits a form on your website, how long does it take for them to receive the offer?  It should be immediately. With the use of thank you page that delivers the offer immediately, you can increase future conversions through operant conditioning and also try to move the lead further down the funnel by presenting a secondary offer.

Mere Exposure Effect

The mere exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon where people tend to favor something simply because they have familiarity with it.  Interestingly, the mere exposure effect even works when people aren’t consciously aware of the exposure. For example, if a person is shown several images of a dog in a row with quick 1 second flashes of a soda(nothing fast enough to register consciously), they will favor that particular kind of soda when asked for preferences among other brands.

For lead conversion, the mere exposure effect is something you can use to your advantage in lead nurturing.  After leads convert, you should have lead nurturing in place to move the lead down the funnel and provide them with mere exposure.  If your lead nurturing follows best practices, leads will become more familiar with you and be more likely to choose you when it comes time to buy.

Social Proof

The Internet is swarming with ads and offers so people often get overwhelmed by the decisions they must make. When this happens, people rely on social influence from others they trust.  Thus, it is important to use this psychological principle in a couple different ways on landing pages:

1. Show visitors who else already converted: On your landing page copy, you can include information on how many other people downloaded the offer or show endorsements from a few people who’ve already found it valuable.
2. Social media sharing buttons: On your landing page and thank you page, include social media buttons that allow the lead to share with friends.

There are many more ways that psychology can help improve CTAs and landing pages. Share your knowledge and tips in the comments!

In a recent webinar with B2B cold email writer Heather Morgan, 79 percent of attendees shared that their biggest challenge is getting prospects to open and respond to their emails. “I believe that’s a common problem,” shared Heather, “if you don’t understand your audience, and know what matters to them, they won’t open it.”

So how do you craft a great cold email that actually gets a response? Heather has a few tricks to make that happen.

Know your audience

“A VP of Sales is different than a CTO or a VP of Marketing or a CEO,” shares Heather. Therefore, you need to make sure that your email list is very focused on each type of persona. Then, you craft your messages specifically to each of those personas.

Know the pain points

Heather asked, “What matters to your audience? What do they struggling with?” Once you answer these questions, you can address the problems and this is what gets those high open and response rates.

Establish social proof

According to Heather, “You need to add credibility to your emails because you’re a stranger. You’re someone that they don’t know, and they don’t trust, so rather than just saying that you’re valuable, demonstrate your value.” For example, include real stats and data points, such as: “We’ve helped Fortune 500 companies such as Box and Google improve their outbound email or outbound sales by developing a more efficient scraping process.”

By calling out other reputable companies, such as Box and Google, you’re establishing credibility.

Have a strong call to action

Include a strong call to action at the end of every cold email, and if possible, Heather recommends that you include an incentive. Heather’s calls to action typically include a question, such as:

• When can I share this idea with you?
• I have a piece of advice that will help you double your sales revenue. When can we talk?

Be strong yet non confrontational.

What other ways do you increase your open and response rates? Share them in the comments below.

(Google)

Here is what the “Internet of Things” looks like in abstract: a $7.1-trillion industry where watches, phones, fridges, cars, oil rigs, factories, streetlights, garage doors and coffee makers are all connected digitally, allowing seamless interactions and propelling society into a sci-fi future.

Here is what the Internet of Things, or the IoT, looks like in practice: me, cursing on a Sunday night, wondering if my fancy new thermostat broke the furnace.

I am not usually an early adopter, but this thermostat held so much appeal. Google had paid US$3.2 billion for its manufacturer, Nest Labs. The device promised to learn my family’s habits and trim energy use over time, while also allowing us to adjust the temperature via our smartphones.

Jetsons-like dreams were dashed by Simpsons-level frustrations. The thermostat was easy to install and connected with our wireless network. All was well—until later that day we realized the heat had been running continuously for hours. Our relatively modern gas furnace lacked a crucial wire to supply the thermostat with power. In its absence, the Nest kept the furnace running to generate the necessary juice. (Research reveals this to be a common frustration with almost all smart thermostats.) We’ve become accustomed to wrestling with the connectivity issues and error messages that accompany technological progress. But, in this first encounter with the IoT, it wasn’t the Internet that failed. It was the Things.

We had a similar battle with our Wi-Fi–enabled front door. When you’ve paid $25 for a lock that sticks, it’s inconvenient; when you’ve paid $250, it’s maddening.

My microcosmic frustrations speak to the larger challenges faced by tech companies and manufacturers as they promote so-called “machine-to-machine” technology. The business opportunities are undeniable: The number of connected devices is expected to grow 17.5% each year for the next seven years, according to research-agency IDC. Meanwhile, the Acquity Group found two-thirds of consumers intend to buy connected technology for their home in the next five years, with thermostats, security systems and autonomous vacuums looking like popular purchases. Perhaps most surprisingly, one-in-five respondents expect to own a smart fridge by 2019.

While there’s enthusiasm for these products, there’s also wariness. Among consumers who are aware of the IoT, 36% questioned its value; while 23% have concerns about price, according to the Acquity report. Neither of these barriers is insurmountable, particularly when consumers see clear advantages. (More than eight-in-10 would pay more for a smart smoke detector.) But manufacturers will have a tough time overcoming these reservations if their products don’t behave well in the existing household or show poor fit and finish.

The IoT is often presented as an opportunity for wireless and cloud technology businesses, but that’s only half the story. What’s also needed are companies that can build cars and fridges and coffee makers that work well enough to justify the “smart” moniker. What we need is for Cuisinart to add computing to its ample expertise—not for Google to start selling blenders. As Nate Williams, the CMO of Greenwave Systems, recently told The Wire Report: “It’s time to stop selling the promise of IoT and focus on the product.” The future may be bright, but it will also be cold if we can’t make the furnace work when we get there.

RELATED:

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• The next generation of Keurig single-serve brewers will DRM-lock your coffee
• On the Internet of Things, your body is the next thing to be networked
• Rise of the smart city: how urban life is about to change, big time

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The winter holiday season means really, really big business.

December consumer shopping will exceed $469 billion dollars this year. In fact, the average American spends nearly $800 just on gifts for Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa. It’s safe to say that positioning your brand to capture some of this holiday spend is definitely wise. And one of the very best ways to accomplish that is through an amazing Christmas newsletter.

Commercial email volume is at an annual high in November and in December. However, studies show that consumers are more likely to open and click-through during the holiday season. This isn’t just an amazing opportunity for B2C or eCommmerce brands, either. Here are some ways to get the most mileage possible out of your company’s Christmas newsletter:

1. Gift Guides

The best kind of Christmas newsletter provides value to the recipient. What’s more helpful than a beautifully-curated list of recommendations for shopping?

2. Templates or Tools

Almost everyone can benefit from templates for tracking gift shopping, planning holiday parties, or budgeting. I bet your buyer personas would love it, too.

3. Compile Holiday Hacks

The data-driven marketers at Outbrain report that using convenience themed words in email subject lines, like “quick” and “trick” will increase open rates.

4. Customer Loyalty

Offer an exclusive deal for some serious savings to your best customers. They’ll appreciate the recognition.

5. Free Gifts

Sometimes, the best Christmas newsletters aren’t overtly self-motivated. Offer your contacts an exclusive or seasonally-themed eBook, template or tip list.

6. Serve Up Custom Video

Film a video of your team or customers. Researchers have found that including video content in Christmas newsletters can increase open rates by 27%!

7. Don’t Just Stick to One!

Marketer Liga Bizune recommends sending a series of emails, perhaps themed around Advent, the 12 days of Christmas, or Hanukkah. Revealing a new gift or deal each day can build excitement and engagement.

8. Be Funny

It’s no secret that the holidays are incredibly stressful, and psychologists agree. Create a comic, a sarcastic gift list, or just take a humorous bent to your communications.

9. Offer Last-Minute Deals

It’s no secret that plenty of people procrastinate on their holiday shopping. Last-minute sales perform 27% better than average the week before Christmas.

10. Don’t Be Too Obvious

Even though consumers are more engaged with marketing emails during the holidays, being too generic won’t do you any favors. Using terms like “Cyber Monday” will significantly decrease your results.

11. Offer a Preview Sale

Why not give your email contacts a sneak-peek at an upcoming sale before anyone else gets a chance? Exclusivity is a powerful marketing tactic.

12. Send Cocktail Recipes

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Emails about cocktails have an 85% click-through rate on average during the last 2 weeks of December.

13. Give Free Shipping

For eCommerce brands, free shipping can be a huge motivator for potential customers that find themselves worried about overspending.

14. Provide an End-of-Year Update

Why not let your customers know what your company was up to in the prior year? Share your accomplishments, and be sure to ask for an update in return!

15. Go Mobile

It’s never a good idea to send emails that aren’t mobile optimized, but this really matters during the holiday season. Mobile open rates increase and computer opens decrease as people become busier during November and December.

16. Offer a Gift with Purchase

Provide a little extra value to your clients by offering a free gift with purchase as an incentive for holiday shoppers.

17. Send a Staff Video or Image

Put a human face to your brand by showcasing a holiday-themed picture or video of your staff. Bonus points for taking an Ugly Sweater photo!

18. Provide Price-Sensitive Suggestions

If your customers tend to be budget-conscious, make their decisions a little easier by offering a gift guide or shopping list that’s segmented according to price range.

19. Showcase Your Size

Your small or mid-sized company definitely provides better customer service and quality than most big box stores! Vertical Response recommends highlighting your differences from mega-brands, and why they benefit the customer.

20. Respond to Your Competitors

Keep a close eye on your competitors’ marketing, and tailor your Christmas newsletter accordingly. Overt attacks are never a good idea, but responding and offering better deals definitely is.

21. Offer Tiered Rewards

Offer a series of rewards to your customers for purchases and referrals; and be sure the prizes get more and more enticing with each step.

22. Be Very Inclusive

While a Christmas newsletter is an absolute must, be sure that you’re not excluding any customers by spreading your communications throughout the month.

23. Facilitate “Self-Gifting”

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Did you know that 59% of consumers will spend more than $100 on gifts for themselves? Make sure your contacts know they deserve to give themselves something, and offer some clever suggestions.

24. Sponsor a Contest

Your customers are busy, but not too busy for a little healthy competition. Clothing brand Topshop sponsored a holiday Pinterest contest last year.

25. Shipping Suggestions

Even if most of your business takes place offline, providing tips on when your customers should order for items to be shipped in time is very helpful.

26. Share Your Resolutions

Letting your staff share their resolutions can be another fun way to highlight your human side.

27. Help Those in Need

Share your company’s volunteer and charitable activities; and invite your customers to contribute, too.

28. Bundle Products/Services

Could a discount on bundled services or products make life easier for your customers this season?

29. Menu Ideas

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Everyone’s focused on food around the holidays. Curating some recipes for parties can be a fun and engaging Christmas newsletter.

30. Offer Samples

Give the gift of a low-commitment sample of your product and services. Sugaree’s Bakery communicates their annual sample sale via Christmas newsletter.

31. Tell a Tale

Everyone loves a good holiday story. Pen brand storytelling for your Christmas newsletter that’s worth repeating and sharing.

32. Offer Encouragement

Have you taken the time to tell your customers and contacts just how well they’re managing their holiday stress?

33. Be Nice

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Don’t be hesitant to occasionally brag a bit. Send a “nice” themed email that shares your brand’s social responsibility and values.

34. Be Naughty

Serving up some juicy confessions from your staff members could be a welcome respite from all of the commerce-themed emails in your customer’s inbox.

35. Flashback Photos

Who on your team has the dorkiest Santa photos from childhood? Better yet, sponsor a contest and let your customers vote on who’s pictures are the worst.

36. Showcase Silly Holidays

Did you know December hosts national ice cream day, national oatmeal muffin day, and national maple syrup day? I bet your customers didn’t, either!

37. Share Traditions

What unusual or fun family traditions does your team celebrate? You could be surprised at how engaging sharing these can be!

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38. High-Value Content

Take a sharp turn, and dedicate an email to exclusively offering some of the best content marketing you’ve ever created, such as an in-depth article or interview.

39. Focus on the Kids

If your customers have children, how can you add value? Providing a coloring sheet or thank you letter template for your youngest customers is radically different and creative.

40. Gamification

Why not send a riddle, online scavenger hunt, or puzzle as a surprising and fun Christmas newsletter?

41. Host an Event

Brick-and-mortar brands should consider throwing an exclusive holiday party for email subscribers.

42. Share Pinterest Boards

Do you work with any power-pinners? Have them curate a holiday themed board, and share.

43. Run a Sweepstakes

Build a robust campaign with a sweet prize, and offer plenty of socially-integrated opportunities for your contacts to enter.

44. Reward Everyone

Why not offer something great, like a 25% discount, to every customer who participates in any contest or campaign you run?

45. Announce a Hashtag Campaign

Which of your customers can use your branded hashtag the most often?

46. Host a Webinar

Your competitors may be too focused on their personal holiday vacations to consider hosting a webinar.

47. Double Your Referral Program

Could you afford to offer double-rewards for referrals during December? Boost your rewards and results.

48. Emphasize Your Social Service

Use your Christmas newsletter as a reminder to your customers that your customer service will be monitoring social media throughout the holidays.

49. Spotlight Your Customers

Profiling your customers can add a new angle to your Christmas newsletter, and reward your best clients.

50. Reward Night Owls

No one sleeps during December. Shoutlet recommends expanding the hours during which you email.

51. Integrate

Connecting a Christmas campaign to your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter can boost your social.

52. Be Grinchy

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Everyone struggles with holiday spirit from time-to-time. Why not consider a Christmas newsletter that’s definitively not holiday-themed?

53. Be Direct

Everyone is overwhelmed with options during December! Make your Christmas newsletter simple, and you’ll stand out.

54. Sponsor a Q&A

Provide the gift of expertise by announcing and hosting a free questions-and-answers session via Google hangouts.

55. Create a Quiz

Developing a fun and interactive quiz can engage and stimulate your customers. Bonus points if it’s web-based!

What are some of the most creative Christmas newsletter ideas you’ve encountered? Share your favorites in the comments!

People constantly use the term “branding,” and it is often misunderstood or confused with advertising. Here are 5 myths about branding that are not true.

1. “A brand is a company’s name and logo.”

A logo and name mean nothing by itself. The logo and name are just representations of the brand as a whole. The entire brand experience, a collection of touch points and experiences, is what makes a brand. Effective brand management requires paying attention to every interaction a brand has with its stakeholders.

2. “Branding is only for big companies who sell consumer goods.”

Brands are important for any company that wants to create unmatched differentiation and give consumers a reason to buy other than price or features. IBM, Intel, Oracle, and Cisco are all B2B brands ranked in the world’s top 20 most valuable brands, according to Interbrand’s 2013 study. These brands have intangible assets of “goodwill” that drive billions of dollars in value and market capitalization. None of them have miraculously differentiated products – it’s the brand that drives the value.

3. “People don’t care about B2B brands.”

Regardless of whether you are marketing B2B or B2C, you are marketing B2P, business to people. The decision-makers for B2B products may be in a different context with different needs and values, but they are still people, and people want to make the easy, safe, and right choice. Brands help rise above the clutter and provide a clearer choice.

4. “We are in control of our brand.”

The truth of the matter is that no matter what you do to control your brand, consumers still largely shape your brand. Take for example, Nutella. They had nothing to do with the creation of World Nutella Day, a holiday started by a zealous fan. This is an example of consumers positively contributing to your brand, but consumers can just as easily be a negative influence.

5. “Branding is too expensive.”

Branding isn’t a matter of multi-million dollar campaigns. It’s a matter of controlling the brand experience and being mindful of how your brand is portrayed at every touch point. It’s everything from the way your employees feel about your brand, to the way your customer service hotline treats customers, to the way that sales reps talk about your brand. Improving your brand could just be a matter of doing the same things you’re already doing a little bit better.

I woke up this morning thinking about how the world is changing for working women and technology. One year is coming to a close, and another is beginning.

The holidays are such a great time to feel more unified. We get together with friends, and focus more on community, and look ahead to where our families want to go in the new year, as well as where our country wants to go. We do the post mortem of mistakes we’ve all made, we learn from them, let them go, and make a better plan for next year.

Although, holiday cards and making hot cups of cocoa with my kids on a snowy days take precedence over the business initiatives at hand, there is a change in the air of what’s to come in 2015.

Having a career in recruiting and being blessed by working with smart CEOs that understood the value of utilizing working women, I’ve been able to have an amazing career, while working from home, around my  kids schedule. It’s been a dream come true, and my goal in recent years has been to help more women find the cool companies that will allow them to do this. In fact, I pride myself on only aligning and working with the CEOs and investors that feel this same way.

According to a recent Forbes article, there’s

“A strong focus on the ever-elusive work-life balance — a job quality that is especially important for working moms. A 2013 survey by LinkedIn and Citi found that 90 percent of women (and 71 percent of men) say that the ability to work from home is a key driver to career satisfaction.”

Life is too short to try and juggle a job, where you have to get ready to go to an office, that ends up making you less efficient and effective than if you were at your quiet workspace at home.  This isn’t for everyone, but for most of us, we have too much going on to make pitstops in offices to have meetings about future meetings.

Technology enables today’s workforce to connect with others and accomplish goals and tasks without in-person discussions. It can be all virtual.

When looking at the tech industry overall, according to a recent LA Times article, women make up only 15% of people working in technical roles in the tech industry. The article states that it has been dropping since 1989. This is troubling because women are highly skilled and hard working.

Just give us the tasks, leave us alone, and we’ll get it done. There is no 9-5. There is no need to clock the hours defining work versus life, or having to feel guilty about an unexpected sick child. Anchoring working women down to an archaic system of management should be dead. Today’s working women can take on projects at home, get paid well for the job at hand, create a culture that respects and values their life, and watch their companies grow.

Having a “Build it and They Will Come” mentality does not work anymore. Remember the famous line in the movie Field of Dreams?

Many people associate this technique with their website, but a case could be made for the app you just created or the social media platforms you are just getting on. In addition, many people use this mentality when looking at content marketing. The more content written, the more people will see it and respond.

Today it is all about availability, consistency and exposure.

Availability – Today, people want 24×7 access to your site, for information, access to your products and services. Email is not going away soon. People will try and get a hold of you when it is convenient for them. Setting specific hours like 9-5.00 p.m. used to be the norm, but with the Internet, people want to be able to solve an issue they have at the time they are accessing their laptops, smartphones, or tablets.

Consistency – Companies need to strive for consistency. This is very hard. Processes need to be looked at continually to insure quality and prompt service. Client service staff need to know what is happening on the floor to effectively communicate with clients. Deliveries of goods and services need to be delivered and sold on time with the highest quality.

Exposure – Building a website is one step in the process. Maintaining it, updating it, and sharing information about it are much more important today. Search engines are changing, people’s search habits and attention spans are changing. Information is being produced all the time. How can you create awareness for your brand and its products and services?

Your Job As A Marketer

Build it, Share it, and Promote it – These ideas must be a part of your marketing plan going into 2015. Each area requires time and resources. If you can find a way to perform these three tasks with the ideas mentioned above, you will get people talking and you will see results.

Does This Approach Really Work?

The answer is emphatically, “YES” – Marketing is about the whole experience. We create our own news story. It is not a wait and see approach. Everyday, we need to listen to our clients and be available to them. We need to look at marketing as a huge set of opportunities to listen, serve, and show our clients the value they can receive from us.

If you are still wondering if this approach works, here is how it has helped my company. If you empower your client service staff to answer questions during normal business hours and outside of normal hours you will see results. If you work at building your reputation online by incorporating content marketing, social media, and traditional marketing, you will see results like similar to this:

• New Accounts: Average of 9-10 per day
• Increased Inquiries Online: 10- 15 per day, 500-700 calls per week
• More sales from current clients

Remember to build out some new ideas by not only building, but also sharing and sharing some more. Building is “old school.” Sharing and creating on a daily basis is where the action and results are.

[Photo Credit: leyla.a via photopin cc]

Rejection hurts. Salespeople don’t like to hear the word no, but the sound reverberates in their ears a lot more than most of them would care to admit. Instead of putting your head in the sand and admitting defeat, buck up! True selling doesn’t even start until you hear the word no.

Most salespeople learn early on how to constructively handle rejection: Keep emotions in check and don’t take it personally. But great salespeople know how to turn rejection into an opportunity. Below are three ways you can turn a no into a yes (or at least a maybe):

1. Find out what they don’t like: Oftentimes, prospects say no because it’s the easiest and fastest way to get rid of you and get back to what they were doing, not because there’s no interest. When a prospective buyer says no, find out why and have him or her clarify what exactly is undesirable about your offering. It could just be that the intended target needs more information about the product or service, or they have a minor concern.
2. Get rid of the “I”: Most salespeople make the mistake of approaching prospects with a slew of “I” statements—“I provide X, Y and Z,” “I can help you …”—which turns buyers off. Prospects care most about their own needs, challenges and concerns. If you focus the conversation on them, they’re more likely to engage with you. Replacing the “I” with a “you” can make a world of difference.
3. Don’t take no for an answer: People—especially C-suite decision makers—often say no as a first reaction. Don’t let them. Instead, show your willingness to work with them and prove that you’re truly interested in helping them better their businesses. Do your homework beforehand and have talking points ready for every possible objection they may throw at you. Remember that polite persistence usually pays off.

While there are a variety of tips sales agents can keep in mind when dealing with rejection, adhering to these three bits of advice will help them inch closer to closing deals.

Like many people, I’m addicted to Serial, the new podcast by Sarah Koenig, which tells one story throughout an entire season. This season, its first, examines the case of Adnan Syed, who was convicted as a teenager of murdering his ex-girlfriend.

(I’m so addicted I’ve now started to narrate my own life using Koenig’s tone, style, and voice: “The master bedroom was much colder than the rest of the house. Had it always been that way? Why didn’t this bother the original owners enough to fix it? This seemed weird.”)

Serial has broken Apple iTunes records for most subscribers and most listens. (Indeed, I “binge-listened” nine episodes over the Thanksgiving week.) It has generated discussion and debate. There’s an entire subreddit dedicated to “who-really-dun-it.”

What makes Serial so good is not the controversy over the case, or the question of whether Adnan or Jay is to blame – or someone else entirely. It’s the storytelling technique, which Koenig has mastered in her role as producer and reporter at This American Life, the WBEZ radio show hosted by Ira Glass.

You might be wondering now how this might be applicable to digital marketing. I promise you, it is.

Stay with me.

If we all agree that modern marketing is less about the sound bite and more about the story, then digital marketers should pay attention to Koenig’s storytelling method.

If we want buyers to stick with us, we need to be experts at crafting stories that do more than “engage” our audience. Our stories must entice our customers to become emotionally and intellectually invested in the story. Serial has been superb at doing this, so let me tease out a few of the methods the team has used.

Idea

The big idea of the story is a question: Is Adnan guilty? This controversy has captivated the attention of millions, generating a considerable force of armchair detectives keen on answering it. The mystery and suspense make compelling reasons to keep listening week after week.

Structure

Much has been made of Serial’s storytelling structure. Its narrative is told in serial (hence, of course, the name) format, each episode illuminating all of the previous. It’s not linear. It’s more like a maze that we’re wandering through, all the while wondering if we’ll find our way out of it. The story twists and turns upon itself as new information is revealed, testing our assumptions about Adnan, Jay, and the defense attorney, as well as several minor characters.

This detailed inspection of a topic served over many weeks is one of the reasons so many listeners are hooked. It’s the suspense. What information will be revealed next? Are my assumptions correct? It’s incredibly thought-provoking and not easily forgettable. It’s no wonder people were vocally upset about the decision not to release a podcast on Thanksgiving. Everyone needed their Serial fix.

Character

What does it mean to develop a character? This is perhaps the hallmark of a great story: to create characters so real, so tangible, and so just like us they might very well be our neighbors and our friends. The kind of people you’d hang out with.

There are several characters who play a significant role in the Serial narrative, and Koenig goes to great lengths not only to help us understand who they are and the role they play in the story, but also to help us relate.

Here’s how she describes Hae Ming Lee, the young girl whose murder is the catalyst of the story.

“Almost 15 years ago, on January 13, 1999, a girl named Hae Min Lee disappeared. She was a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County in Maryland. She was Korean. She was smart, and beautiful, and cheerful, and a great athlete. She played field hockey and lacrosse. And she was responsible.

Right after school she was supposed to pick up her little cousin from kindergarten and drop her home. But she didn’t show. That’s when Hae Lee’s family knew something was up, when the cousin’s school called.”

With Adnan, she first lets others define him, as she does here in Rabia Chaudry’s own voice:

“He was like the community golden child. He was an honor roll student, volunteer EMT. He was on the football team. He was a star runner on the track team. He was the homecoming king. He led prayers at the mosque. Everybody knew Adnan to be somebody who was going to do something really big.”

But she also tempers this image with her own, providing a counterpoint to Rabia and giving Adnan more dimension:

“When I first met Adnan in person, I was struck by two things. He was way bigger than I expected– barrel chested and tall. In the photos I’d seen, he was still a lanky teenager with struggling facial hair and sagging jeans. By now, he was 32. He’d spent nearly half his life in prison, becoming larger and properly bearded.

And the second thing, which you can’t miss about Adnan, is that he has giant brown eyes like a dairy cow. That’s what prompts my most idiotic lines of inquiry. Could someone who looks like that really strangle his girlfriend? Idiotic, I know.”

Is it possible for digital marketers to apply these lessons to their own storytelling efforts? I think so. Here’s how.

Start with your idea or theme.

For most businesses, your idea or theme will stem from your brand. What kind of company are you? What does your brand stand for? What’s your mission?

For example, the December issue of Runner’s World features ten people who’ve overcome health issues and adversity through running. The story is the result of a contest held by the magazine, but it’s not much of a leap to see how this idea could fit into Nike’s “Just Do It” brand story.

Determine the right structure.

Who’s to say a brand can’t follow the Serial structure? With a couple of good brand journalists, there’s no reason you can’t tell your story using the same method. But be prepared to devote months and even years to it. Investigative reporting is hard, time-consuming work. What’s more, objectivity is essential. Koenig succeeds because she strives hard to present all sides of the story in balance.

A simpler, less intensive structure could work. I’m a huge fan of Entrepreneur on Fire, John Lee Dumas’s podcast about entrepreneurship. Each episode features an entrepreneur telling his or her story, using a very uncomplicated structure. The guest describes a failure, an ah-ha moment, and then answers five questions designed to elicit advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. It’s effective, yet not at all difficult. According to Dumas, he has netted $1.7 million as of October 2014 by using this structure to tell a story and sell related products to budding entrepreneurs.

Make your characters relatable

I think Serial would have been successful simply based on the true-crime narrative, always a popular formula. But what makes it wildly successful is the way Koenig creates empathy for the characters. She doesn’t only describe them; she helps us relate to them. Hae Min is the effervescent teenager we all knew in high school. Likewise, Adnan is the popular guy that everyone liked. Even Jay, the amiable bad guy outside the regular school circle, is someone we were wary of but also wanted in our corner.

The best brand storytellers are the ones who put their customers at the center of their stories. It works because they’re relatable. When prospective buyers see themselves in your customer’s stories, they can see themselves with your products and services.

Good storytelling hinges on these elements, but digital marketers who can master them might just experience Serial-sized success.

Sleazy, ugly, and gross are all words that come to mind when the word “sales” comes up. The question is, why do we shy away from a process that is at the center of everything we do?

Sales, quite literally, is the economy—more sales equals a bigger economy. Increased sales means more jobs and booming businesses in return.

The Shift In Knowledge Holders

However, the sales playbook has been completely rewritten over the past two decades. Before the Internet, where did you go to learn about products? How would you know which vacuum to buy or which refrigerator was best for your apartment? The knowledge holders were salespeople. Consumer information was clenched tightly and revolved around cold calls, qualified leads, demos, mass emails, television broadcasts, and radio ads. Stockbrokers were calling homes telling people a stock was exploding – people answering those calls had no easy access to the NASDAQ index or Google Finance to check whether that information was true. It began to feel predatory and all those other words, too: sleazy, ugly, gross.

The Shift To Consumer Control

In the age of information technology this dynamic has flipped entirely. Salespeople no longer hold the keys to information anymore; the consumer does. Awareness, engagement, social networks, and direct marketing drive consumer loyalty. That is why people feel that crowdfunding is empowering and sexy. At its very core, crowdfunding targets these areas by giving creators direct access and allowing contributors to make informed decisions about products they are inspired to support.

Yet while crowdfunding is the new thing, the projects that are successful are the ones that use the basic sales tactics that successful salesmen have used all along. Because with crowdfunding, you are still trying to sell something—contributors still need to be interested in order to donate money to your project. You’re just not knocking that contributor’s front door.

Some Traditions Continue

I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. Both parents owned their own business and now I run a sales company. I did things “the old fashion way”—cold calling, in person meetings, etc. Even though the Internet changed everything, the fundamentals are unchanged. We will always need to be salespeople if we are looking to capitalize our businesses. It’s the only way businesses will survive.

How was your business this past year? Did your marketing help you increase visibility, generate more leads or find new lucrative clients? Whether you feel your marketing was successful or not, it is the perfect time to conduct a marketing review prior to putting your marketing plan in place for the new year. A marketing review will help you determine what marketing activities stay, what goes and what needs a bit of tweaking.

1. You didn’t achieve one or more of your goals.

Okay we’ve all been there – had a great year but lost sight of some of our marketing goals. Maybe you had too many goals or didn’t make them S.M.A.R.T. enough. Most likely the goals that weren’t accomplished were not aligned with the vision you have for your business.

Review your goals and determine which ones get you closer to your vision. Those that don’t should just go away. Setting goals that help you get to your destination will make them much more important to you and therefore, more likely to be accomplished.

2. Your target market has changed.

Have you noticed a difference in the type of clients you now attract? As your business grows and matures, your ideal client will naturally evolve. As you get a clearer perspective on your business, you begin to attract an audience that values what you have to offer, enjoys working with you and possibly are willing to pay more for your expertise. Not only do you thrive working with this client, these clients truly benefit from working with you.

Maybe it’s time to adjust your target market, catering more to this new, more lucrative market. These changes will require you to adjust your messages, content, service offerings and marketing activities.

3. Your messages miss your intended target.

Getting noticed in a crowded market is difficult. How do you create a message that cuts through the media clutter and captures the attention of your target audience so when they get to your website, they think “this person really understands what I need”?

Customers want solutions to their problems. Your core message needs to demonstrate how you solve their biggest challenge and why they should trust you and choose your business over the competition. Talk about the experiences your ideal customers will have because of your products and services and how they will benefit from working with you.

4. Your products and services are not relevant to your target market.

Correctly pricing and packaging your products and services for your target audience is one of the more powerful marketing activities that you can do. Are your products and services:

• Created to help your ideal client overcome some critical need?
• Packaged such that they highlight your unique skills aimed at your ideal client?
• Priced to fit their budget while maximizing your revenue?

Value packaging your services to align with their needs reduces their perceived risk of working with you and makes their purchase decision much easier.

5. Your brand is inconsistent across all your web properties.

Your brand is everything you do and say, not just the visual image your business projects.

• Do you project the same image and message across all web properties?
• Does your website accurately reflect who you work with and what you offer?
• Is what you say on your social profiles consistent with what is on your website?

If your marketing tools are inconsistent, you confuse your prospects which reflects poorly on your brand. It is important that your brand be consistent every place your business has a profile so that no matter where someone finds your business, they are left with a compelling, lasting impression.

6. Your website needs a facelift.

In addition to an inconsistent brand, is your website fresh and does it properly project your expertise? If not, it’s time for a website makeover. Without a well developed, quality website, your visibility is compromised.

Creating a compelling website and investing in search engine optimization helps you establish a strong web presence. As the hub of your web presence and the central focal point of your inbound marketing strategy, your website is where you can regularly develop and promote relevant, brand-related content that can drive more inbound leads and increase your revenue.

7. Your marketing activities aren’t driving inbound leads and sales.

Tracking your results helps you understand how each marketing activity is contributing to your success so you can make informed decisions about whether to continue with what you are doing or try something else. For each marketing activity, answer the following questions:

• Does the activity help your business achieve its marketing goals?
• Has the activity resulted in new leads, brand visibility or sales?
• How much did the campaign cost in terms of dollars or resources?
• Was the return on your investment worth the effort?

If a marketing activity isn’t helping your business achieve its goals, generate new leads, awareness and sales and contributed at least two times the investment in revenue, then you should discontinue that effort and move your resources onto something else that does contribute to the bottom line.

Now create your marketing plan

Your marketing review has given you the valuable information you need to adjust your marketing plan. Keep doing what has worked and reassign resources (money or time) to new activities that may produce better results. Reallocation of resources may allow you to:

• Trim your marketing budget without hurting your revenue
• Spend some more time blogging and building relationships on social networks
• Invest in search engine marketing or Facebook advertising to drive more visitors to your website

What types of marketing are you going to invest in for your business?

Proactively building relationships with influencers and industry experts is a powerful way to generate leads and positive word of mouth (WOM). Most of us know this as influencer marketing, aka influence development.

Influence development is a practice of building relationships with key individuals who have influence over your buyers’ decisions. There are multiple opportunities with influencer development, which include:

• Getting more opportunities with people and companies you may have not otherwise engaged with
• Increasing your close rate and reducing sales cycle time by earning an influencer’s “seal of approval,” thus leveraging their credibility
• Increasing your influence via the “halo effect” by helping thought leaders build their platform, which will also help build your influence
• Testing and refining your messaging and value proposition. Influencers feel the pulse in the marketplace, and you can learn how you’re perceived and what messaging works in the market by talking to people who live and breathe within each space.

Here are four steps to engage and develop leads via influencers:

Step 1: Target — Map out the key players, experts and opinion molders in your industry

Look at speakers at industry events, authors, bylines of contributed articles in trade journals and blogs authors. Also be sure to interview your sales team and your potential buyers. This will give  you a pretty good map of the people you need to know.

Step 2: Focus — Research them, their companies and their clients or customers

Do they work with companies that fit your ideal customer profile? To determine whether or not your customer bases are similar, you can search for relevant keywords. You can also use tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Alerts.

Create your short list, and prioritize who you think will make the biggest impact. Remember, less is more. Build personas for your influencers. Clarify your value proposition from an influencer point of view by answering the following:

• Why should I pay attention?
• What’s in it for me?
• What’s in it for the people I influence? (i.e. my customers, audience)

Step 3: Execute — Engage them and be relevant

The following chart shows how influencer engagement might look. The point is to see it as building a relationship and a conversation over time.

Also, Kevin Cain’s post on Convince&Convert has some great suggestions on how to engage influencers and what to say:

Step 4: Measure your results and make adjustments

Developing an influencer program takes time, but as you measure you can make adjustments.

Here are some questions to ask as your measure:

• Can we see the impact our influencer program is having on targets?
• What testing can we do to determine if we’re targeting the right influencers?
• What can we do to improve?

Bonus material on influencer development:

Many influencers and experts will give you permission to post their articles and resources on your website or newsletter. The “about the author” section will give them more exposure as well as position you as an expert because their credibility rubs off on you. This means you benefit positively from the halo effect.

As you build your lead generation program, your experts may be interested in codeveloping white papers, special research reports, articles and even events with you.

Experts and influencers pride themselves on their professional integrity, so they will likely refer business to you and a competitor (assuming you have them) at the same time. You will still have an edge by investing in the relationship. They are more likely to favor someone who has shown an interest in them and given them value.

Why does this work? You begin by being genuinely interested in their business. Secondly, experts stay experts by continually updating their knowledge of industry trends, information, key players, tools and ideas.

Experts need to be “in the know.” Consider this as you engage them. They will continually seek out other relevant resources that could possibly help their clients. If you can be a good resource for their clients, they need you.

Finally, when experts are doing their consulting, writing and speaking, they are not completely focused on new business development. The result of this is many experts and influencers go through phases of feast and famine. You and your company could be sales lead referral source for them as well.

You may also like

Influence the Influencers: 5 Tactics to Generate Demand [MarketingSherpa how-to article]

Amplify Your Content Strategy with Influencer Marketing [Via Convince and Convert]

Lead Generation: It’s all about building relationships [More from the blogs]

Proactively building relationships with influencers and industry experts is a powerful way to generate leads and positive word of mouth (WOM). Most of us know this as influencer marketing, aka influence development.

Influence development is a practice of building relationships with key individuals who have influence over your buyers’ decisions. There are multiple opportunities with influencer development, which include:

• Getting more opportunities with people and companies you may have not otherwise engaged with
• Increasing your close rate and reducing sales cycle time by earning an influencer’s “seal of approval,” thus leveraging their credibility
• Increasing your influence via the “halo effect” by helping thought leaders build their platform, which will also help build your influence
• Testing and refining your messaging and value proposition. Influencers feel the pulse in the marketplace, and you can learn how you’re perceived and what messaging works in the market by talking to people who live and breathe within each space.

Here are four steps to engage and develop leads via influencers:

Step 1: Target — Map out the key players, experts and opinion molders in your industry

Look at speakers at industry events, authors, bylines of contributed articles in trade journals and blogs authors. Also be sure to interview your sales team and your potential buyers. This will give  you a pretty good map of the people you need to know.

Step 2: Focus — Research them, their companies and their clients or customers

Do they work with companies that fit your ideal customer profile? To determine whether or not your customer bases are similar, you can search for relevant keywords. You can also use tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Alerts.

Create your short list, and prioritize who you think will make the biggest impact. Remember, less is more. Build personas for your influencers. Clarify your value proposition from an influencer point of view by answering the following:

• Why should I pay attention?
• What’s in it for me?
• What’s in it for the people I influence? (i.e. my customers, audience)

Step 3: Execute — Engage them and be relevant

The following chart shows how influencer engagement might look. The point is to see it as building a relationship and a conversation over time.

Also, Kevin Cain’s post on Convince&Convert has some great suggestions on how to engage influencers and what to say:

Step 4: Measure your results and make adjustments

Developing an influencer program takes time, but as you measure you can make adjustments.

Here are some questions to ask as your measure:

• Can we see the impact our influencer program is having on targets?
• What testing can we do to determine if we’re targeting the right influencers?
• What can we do to improve?

Bonus material on influencer development:

Many influencers and experts will give you permission to post their articles and resources on your website or newsletter. The “about the author” section will give them more exposure as well as position you as an expert because their credibility rubs off on you. This means you benefit positively from the halo effect.

As you build your lead generation program, your experts may be interested in codeveloping white papers, special research reports, articles and even events with you.

Experts and influencers pride themselves on their professional integrity, so they will likely refer business to you and a competitor (assuming you have them) at the same time. You will still have an edge by investing in the relationship. They are more likely to favor someone who has shown an interest in them and given them value.

Why does this work? You begin by being genuinely interested in their business. Secondly, experts stay experts by continually updating their knowledge of industry trends, information, key players, tools and ideas.

Experts need to be “in the know.” Consider this as you engage them. They will continually seek out other relevant resources that could possibly help their clients. If you can be a good resource for their clients, they need you.

Finally, when experts are doing their consulting, writing and speaking, they are not completely focused on new business development. The result of this is many experts and influencers go through phases of feast and famine. You and your company could be sales lead referral source for them as well.

You may also like

Influence the Influencers: 5 Tactics to Generate Demand [MarketingSherpa how-to article]

Amplify Your Content Strategy with Influencer Marketing [Via Convince and Convert]

Lead Generation: It’s all about building relationships [More from the blogs]

The folks at Madison Logic just released an updated infographic that breaks down the cost of a lead across various industries. I published their research from last year as well because I think this information is really helpful for brands to benchmark themselves in their demand generation efforts.

Lead generation is consistently one of the top priorities of any B2B organization, but there is a big difference between generating leads and generating leads that actually convert to customers and revenue.

There is enormous disparity among B2B companies when it comes to lead generation practices. Many businesses waste money on unqualified leads or fail to nurture the qualified ones. And a shockingly large number have not even identified their sales funnel.

We’re deep into 2015 budget planning now, so when it’s time to finalize the Demand Generation line item on your marketing budget, do you know what content syndication should cost? Do you know the average CPL in your industry or vertical for benchmarking purposes? Do you know how to make the most of that budget to generate leads that translate to real revenue?

What Is The Cost Of A Lead?

To get leads from us in Marketing, brands will have to pay $32 (down from $35 last year).

Healthcare leads cost almost twice that at $60 (down from $65 last year).

The Technology industry has experienced the biggest declines with a cost per lead of $31 down from $43 per a year ago.

And Human Resource leads are $38, down from $45 last year.

Madison Logic used their own database to compile the average cost per lead across several verticals, and the impact that lead filters can have on price. Not surprising to learn that the more questions we ask, the higher the cost of the lead. But those additional filters may not necessarily bring in better quality leads.

Refresher Course On BANT?

If you don’t know what BANT is, BANT is a common lead scoring technique of seeking to determine if a prospect has the Budget, Authority, Need and a specific Timeframe for making a decision to buy a solution. Some add an ‘S’ for whether there is a real project with a defined next Step. Lead scores will then be calculated based on a weighting for each of these factors.

So a really “hot lead” would be one where there is a budget to solve a defined need in a relatively short period of time and where the prospect has some authority in the decision process. This is a standard part of many mature organizations marketing demand generation process.

And in less mature organizations, serves as the main line of questions for sales discovery. So if you want to help sales out, answer these questions for them. And deliver them leads that are truly “ready to buy.”

Check out the full infographic below and let me know what you think in the comments below.

If you’re looking to boost conversions and revenue, don’t increase your lead generation budget, increase your knowledge of efficient, effective B2B lead generation and nurturing practices that optimize your budget and minimize waste. Here’s a handy infographic from Madison Logic to get you started.

When companies first consider a serious approach to online B2B marketing, they often wrestle with the decision to hire an outsourced marketing firm or hire a full-time, in-house marketing specialist.

While every company needs to make decisions based on what is best for their long-term goals, I can say with certainty that hiring an in-house marketing professional— even a very high quality one— to do online marketing isn’t the best investment. In some cases, though, it completely makes sense.

Here are four questions you need to ask while you’re making that decision:

1. Do I have time and expertise to train a new employee?

Hiring a new employee costs a significant amount of time and money— and that’s just to get that employee up to speed. It’s estimated that an employee isn’t fully effective until they’ve had 12 months on the job or more.

If you don’t have the expertise to train someone on-the-job, you’ll likely need to hire someone who already has a proven track record in a similar job, which can cost you significantly more.

On the flip side, in-house marketing people are only answering to you. They are dedicated resources, and if you’ve got the budget, you can send them to good training programs.

An established B2B marketing firm, on the other hand, is experienced and can become familiar with your business and its goals in just a few weeks. It can quickly and efficiently assess your marketing goals and align your budget with the marketing tactics that will bring the best return on investment.

2. Do I know how I will measure success?

In-house staff need accountability metrics so they know where to focus their efforts.

When you hire a marketing specialist, you need to have your game plan ready so that you can provide the new employee with her some expectations of success. In-house staff need accountability metrics so they know where to focus their efforts.

“Generate more leads” or “get the phone to ring, or “get more sales” are not acceptable success metrics. If you want more information about planning success metrics, download our free SMART goal planning worksheet here.

Once hired, it will take time to identify the best methods to achieve those metrics, let alone deliver and interpret those reports.

B2B marketing firms already have the experience— they know from the start which metrics are important track and which will provide the most insight and results for your business. You’re paying someone who can start working toward results from day one.

3. Do I like the way “Things have always been done”?

In-house marketing professionals are incredibly susceptible to the dangerous “That’s how it’s always been done” line of thinking.

Many new hires will be able to bring a fresh perspective to your marketing, but will they really have the autonomy to try new things? If not, they may sour on the job and you risk losing them.

When you work with marketing consultants, you’re working with professionals who live and breathe marketing and deliver every piece of value possible to their clients. There’s no falling back on “That’s how it’s always been done” because they constantly educate themselves on the newest and latest (and most effective) methods to market your business. They are paid to bring new ideas to the table, and you should expect that.

4. Have I found one candidate that can do it all?

Humans have limits, and the workplace is no different. You have to factor in the fact that your new marketing specialist likely can’t do it all. Will you be able to find someone who’s “done it all” for your salary range? Will you find someone in your area who is an established expert in the field of every piece of your online marketing campaign, from video to content to social media to email newsletters?

When you work with a B2B marketing firm, you’re getting a partner who has sought out leaders in each marketing discipline and trained and studied each to an art. Every dollar you spend is going towards professionals at the top of their game— not to training an employee in his own field.

There are a lot of great reasons to hire someone in-house, but you need to weigh each option and see which is best for your company. Investing the same amount of money in a consultant and an in-house B2B marketing team can yield dramatically different results depending on your needs. Make sure you’re aware of the full return on investment of each opportunity before you make that decision.