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Email marketing isn’t a field of dreams: you don’t simply add a form to your site and gain 200,000 readers overnight.

To truly build your audience, and your business, you need to take a few extra steps. That includes using power tools that complement your email growth strategy.

On average, AWeber clients who use email integrations have lists 104% larger than those who don’t use such tools.

So to help you boost your own email marketing and start 2015 off right, here’s a roundup of this year’s top 10 apps in the most popular categories.

List Building and Optimization Tools

Build and publish landing pages without an IT team. Unbounce gives you the tools to create your own mobile responsive landing pages with ease.

And when you integrate with AWeber, you not only get email notifications when you get leads, you have access to:

• Drag and Drop Editor: Customize your pages with this simple form creator.
• Form Builder: Create a form without the technical skills or guesswork.
• Social Widgets: Add your social links to your pages.
• Video Hosting: Embed videos directly on your page.
• File Download: Let your leads download files directly from your confirmation page.

High-converting landing pages from $49 a month. Create, split test and optimize your landing pages with Unbounce’s easy-to-use platform.

The LeadPages platform includes powerful tools to optimize your conversion rate and increase sales.

• LeadPages: Create landing pages in minutes with LeadPages’ simple publishing tool. Create, deploy and edit high-converting landing pages with ease. No coding or design experience required.
• LeadBoxes: Convert more customers with popups that appear when visitors take certain actions. You choose what, where and when they see it.

LeadPages has a three-tier pricing model, which helps you choose the right option for your business.

SumoMe is your toolkit for collecting subscribers through lightbox sign up forms on your WordPress site. With their suite of apps, you can grow your website traffic and increase sales.

Here’s a glimpse at the comprehensive features that SumoMe has to offer:

• Scroll Box: A polite way of capturing email addresses – after your visitors read a blog entry or learn about your product.
• Heat Maps: You know they’re visiting your site, but what are they doing once they’re there? With heat mapping, find out where your visitors are clicking so you can improve your calls to action.
• Highlighter: Readers can easily select portions of your content and share as quotes via social.
• List Builder: Convert one-time visitors into repeat customers with this plugin designed to prompt email subscriptions at your time of choice.
• Content Analytics: Find out what your readers are viewing and where they stop. The power to optimize your blog posts is now in your control.

Grow your audience and expand your reach with these free applications.

Capture more leads, convert more clicks and grow your list with Digioh Lightbox. With this enterprise marketing suite, you can maximize customer value without hiring an expensive IT team.

Digioh gives you the tools to reach your audience easily and effectively:

• Drag-and-Drop Editor: Easily customize your lightbox without knowing an inkling of code.
• Segment: Target and personalize your website experience to every unique customer.
• Analytics and Reporting: See which of your campaigns is most effective and which calls-to-action convert the most.
• Google Adwords Integration: Lower your ad costs and find out which keywords generate the most leads.

Digioh offers a three-tier pricing model, starting at $250 per month for the Gold package. This includes unlimited lightboxes, targeting, analytics and more.

Does it take you hours to create even the simplest of opt-in pages? What if there was a way to design a website in just a few clicks?

Well, there is such a solution, and it’s called OptimizePress.

It works with your WordPress site to create high quality themed opt-in pages.

OptimizePress gives you everything you need to build your website. Fully responsive, mobile-friendly pages can be created instantly with the LiveEditor system.

What kinds of pages can you create in OptimizePress?

• Landing Pages: Create high converting landing pages directly onto your WordPress site.
• Sales Pages: Full-scale marketing and sales pages.
• Membership Portals: Create secure, customizable membership portals.
• Authority Blogs: Grow your audience through blogging.

OptimizePress has a three-tier pricing model, $97 for their Core package, $197 for the Publisher package and $297 for Pro. And you only pay a one-time fee – perfect if you’re on a budget.

Easily convert website visitors into subscribers with OptinMonster, a WordPress plugin that lets you create attractive sign up forms for your webpage.

Over 70% of visitors who abandon your site won’t return – so capture them with attractive sign up forms that turn visitors into viable leads and customers.

OptinMonster gives you the tools to create lead-generating forms for your website with their suite of features:

• Professionally-Designed opt-in Forms: Choose from beautiful pre-made templates or customize your own with the easy-to-use template builder. Whatever your skill level, these forms are designed for optimum conversion rates.
• Multiple opt-in Form Types: Lightbox popups, sidebar widgets, floating footers, whatever your fancy, OptinMonster has the most effective form types to maximize your subscriber growth.
• Targeted Campaigns: With Smart User Targeting, you can customize your popup based on pageviews, categories and specific user behaviors. Optimize your conversion rate to capture more leads and sales.
• Exit-intent Technology: Specially designed campaigns to improve user retention.
• A/B Testing: Eliminate the guess work with easy split-testing features.
• Analytics: Sharpen your strategy with insights into impressions and conversion rates, so you can make the smart decisions and grow your list.

OptinMonster’s pricing plans start at $49 for their basic license, which allows you to manage one website with unlimited forms, analytics, A/B testing, page level targeting and more. And if your business grows, you can update your subscription straight from your dashboard for access to more features, more websites and more support.

Video Tool

Engage your audience and generate new leads with professional video hosting. With Wistia, you can do just that!

And the best part? You can capture email addresses within the video player, so your viewers become potential customers.

Here’s what else you can do:

• HD-Capable Video: Stream your videos anywhere on any device.
• Easy Embed & Sharing: Simple sharing on the web or social.
• Thumbnails: Add video thumbnails to your email campaign. Bonus: viewers will be tagged by your email address so you can identify the source of traffic.
• Viewer History Tracking: See which of your prospects is most engaged and the videos they’re interacting with.
• SEO: Make sure your videos rank higher in search to bring traffic to your website.
• Engagement Graphs: Analyze which of your videos performs the best and where people drop off so you can improve retention.

Wistia offers plans for every experience level, so you can create videos that convert no matter what your skillset. From the free pricing tier, with HD-video hosting and basic analytics, to the more robust team plan featuring collaboration and integration services, there’s an option to suit all of your business needs.

Social Media Tool

What better way to engage and boost your subscribers than to host a sweepstakes or contest? When you integrate Heyo with AWeber, you can easily convert Facebook fans into leads. And leads into sales.

Heyo captures emails directly from your page, so you can grow your list without a lot of legwork. How?

• Contests: Get fans to like, share and tweet about your brand. Contests drive traffic to your page.
• Promotions: Collect more leads by running social promotions. Let your fans be your sales team!
• Deals: Add a buy button onto any deal to make selling a breeze.
• Mobile Optimization: Desktop, smartphone, tablet – your forms will look good, no matter the device.
• Drag-and-Drop Template Editor: No coding skills necessary. Heyo lets you create a beautiful campaign in minutes with their user-friendly template editor.

Heyo’s business plan is only $25 per month, which includes all of the features above and more. If you’re looking for something bigger, contact Heyo directly for Agency pricing.

Ecommerce Tool

Take your products and services online with Shopify! Create your own ecommerce website without the hassle.

Having your own online storefront has never been easier:

• Create Customizable Websites: With hundreds of template options, and HTML/CSS editing capabilities, Shopify is perfect for beginners and beyond.
• Secure Shopping Cart: Let your customers know their transactions are safe. Shopify accepts major credit cards such as Visa, American Express and Mastercard along with payment gateways like Bitcoin and PayPal.
• User-Friendly Dashboard: Track your sales, orders and traffic. Or integrate with Google Analytics. Either way, Shopify gives you the tools to analyze your store growth and numbers, so you can make the best decisions for your business.
• Blogging Capabilities: Create a commentary with customers, publish lookbooks, publish articles and more.
• Abandoned Checkout Recovery: Send automated emails to customers who abandon carts and recover lost sales.
• Facebook Shopping: Let fans browse and shop without leaving your Facebook page.

And with the Shopify and AWeber integration, you can easily add customers to a segmented list of your choice. This means that you can target your emails based on their interests – which means they’ll be more likely to buy!

If you’re looking for something simple, the starter pricing package rings in at $14 a month. From there, the basic tier starts at $29 a month and includes 1 GB file storage, unlimited products, 24/7 support and more.

CRM Tool

Wouldn’t it be nice to automate tedious tasks that drain hours from your workweek?

Rather than hire expensive freelance developers to integrate the services you use, you can do it all with Zapier.

Zapier is an online platform that connects the APIs of over 200 different web services to help streamline your workflow. From entrepreneurs and small business owners to marketers, designers and more, Zapier makes work easier.

• Integrate: By connecting the apps you use everyday, you save time and energy moving data from one service to another.
• Automate: Zaps – a trigger and an action- allows you to run processes automatically without any additional effort.

And this means more time to focus on the exciting parts of running your business.

By using the Zapier and AWeber integration, you can easily connect with new customers without having to automatically add them into your CRM database. Simply link your account to any of the 200+ API services, and Zapier will automate your import process.

Zapier’s free plan includes up to 5 zaps and 100 tasks a month. From there, plans range from $20 per month for a basic package to $125 per month for infrastructure level pricing.

What Are Your Favorite Tools?

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to the email game, you can use apps like these to supercharge your digital marketing. We’d love to know which of these tools, or others, you’re using to boost your business. Let us know in the comments!

The Hustler’s Playbook: Hustlers Value Themselves II is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

Hustlers value themselves. And they’re not afraid to capture some of the value that they create.

Hustlers create so much value that people are willing to pay for it. The hustler knows this, and they know that because they create so much value, they are entitled to capture some of that value for themselves.

Hustlers value themselves, and they price themselves accordingly.

The non-hustler doesn’t value themselves enough. They are unsure of their own worth, and they underestimate the value that they create. Because they don’t believe they create much value, they don’t believe they are entitled to capture very much. So they shrink when the subject of money comes up.

The hustler doesn’t care what her competitors charge for what they do. It has no bearing on her pricing because she only bases her price on the outcomes she creates. If she costs more, she knows that it is only because she creates more value. The hustler is confident in her price, no matter how high, because she is confident in her ability to earn every penny. The hustler expects to exceed expectations.

The non-hustler worries about what their competitor charges. They assume that whatever their competitor charges is what they should. Instead of basing their price on the value they create, they assume that they can’t be worth more than what other people charge, even though they may actually be worth far more. The non-hustler lacks confidence. He doesn’t believe in his price. He doesn’t know if he can meet expectations, let alone exceed them.

Hustlers know that because they create value for others, they will always have more opportunities. The hustler isn’t desperate for a deal, and so she can walk away from opportunities where her value isn’t recognized or appreciated. The hustler walks away with no hard feelings, never unhappy avoiding work that wasn’t meant for them.

The non-hustler is opportunity-starved. The non-hustler needs every deal. If the non-hustler’s client doesn’t perceive the value, they lower their price, believing that if the prospect doesn’t perceive the value of what they do, the value doesn’t exist.

You are a value creator. If you create value, you are entitled capture some of that value.

By some accounts, it was the ancient Romans who invented the first taxi meter—a series of linked metal discs that counted off the revolutions of a cart wheel and marked the distance travelled by dropping pebbles into a box. And if that was the case, you can be sure that the first rules governing cabs and their drivers weren’t far behind.

Authorities in Paris and London were certainly regulating horse-drawn hackneys as far back as the early 1600s. In North America, however, it wasn’t until the Great Depression of the 1930s—when desperate would-be chauffeurs began duking it out on urban streets—that most cities started licensing and limiting the motorized versions.

It’s always been a difficult balance to strike. When municipalities have a lot of taxis on the road, wages decline and so does the quality of the drivers and their vehicles. But if you license too few, consumers suffer long waits, especially at peak hours and in poor weather. Eventually, some sort of “gypsy” service sprouts up to try to fill the void.

Uber, headquartered in San Francisco, bills itself as a “peer to peer” ride-sharing company. Its innovative smartphone app uses GPS technology to match customers with nearby taxis, limos, or private cars, then allows them to track the journey in real time from beginning to end, and pay the fare without ever having to reach into their wallets. After only five years in business, it already operates in more than 200 cities—including Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa—has spread over six continents, and is valued at US$18 billion. And it hasn’t demonstrated much interest in playing by the old, established rules.

In late November, the city of Toronto filed for a court injunction against Uber, claiming the firm has been illegally operating as a taxi and limo brokerage since 2012. (The company maintains it is simply a technology provider and, therefore, not required to obtain a permit or conform to licensing standards.) The larger issue, though, is clearly the introduction this past summer of UberX, an option that allows customers to arrange for rides in private, unregulated vehicles. Prices vary—the service can be cheaper, or far more expensive than a cab, depending on demand. But consumers seem to love it as fiercely as the taxi industry loathes it.

“UberX is an absolute cancer,” says Sajid Mughal, a Toronto cabbie and president of iTaxiworkers, an association of more than 900 drivers. “They are killing us.” Current city regulations require cab owners to pay $5,000 a year for a permit, while it costs their drivers more than $600. The going rate for commercial insurance is about $5,000 annually. Yet the drivers UberX signs up—at a clip of 40 per day—bear none of those municipal costs, and pay only their personal insurance, about a fifth of the price. “If this continues, there will be 20,000 private cabs on the road,” predicts Mughal. “Professional drivers won’t be available. It will be worse than a Third World country.”

Kristine Hubbard, operations manager of Beck Taxi, Toronto’s largest brokerage, with 1,850 taxis, accuses Uber of “predatory” practices. After enticing hundreds of cabbies to sign on to the app by providing free-use smartphones, Uber is now “stabbing them in the back,” says Hubbard. “Their master plan is to use the licensed system to build a customer base, and then move them to an unlicensed, unregulated system.” Beck, which became the first Toronto company to introduce its own cab-hailing app back in 2012, hasn’t seen its business tail off. In fact, Hubbard says the firm will book a record 8.2 million trips this year. But she fears for the future. “You can see all these cars running around out there on Friday and Saturday nights.”

Other Canadian municipalities have also come out strongly against the company, especially its ride-sharing service. When UberX debuted in Montreal at the end of October, Mayor Denis Coderre flatly termed it “illegal.” In Ottawa, municipal employees have been staging undercover stings, booking rides, then fining unlicensed drivers $650 apiece. In Vancouver, where the company has run ads seeking drivers, the city’s four cab companies have banded together to seek a pre-emptive court injunction.

Geoff Meggs, the Vancouver city councillor who has been taking the lead on the file, admires Uber’s technology and says the company is welcome to set up shop, but only if it follows the usual rules and regulations. Vancouver is a highly regulated market, he notes, with stringent requirements governing safety, accessibility and environmentally friendly vehicles. “We also think there’s a fairness issue,” says Meggs. “I don’t think elected officials should be enabling change that destroys small business.”

The sticky bit is that consumers—and voters—seem to want Uber to succeed. An online “Vancouver needs Uber” petition, launched by the company in mid-November, has already garnered 20,000 signatures. A recent poll in Toronto, conducted by Forum Research, found that 68 per cent of respondents disagree with the city’s efforts to shut down the service. (Only 12 per cent of those surveyed had actually used Uber, but, of those, almost 80 per cent rated it as superior to standard taxi firms.)

Small wonder, because the reality in North America is that almost all cities are underserved by cabs. Dan Hara, an Ottawa economist who specializes in the industry, says Uber’s technology is impressive, but, ultimately, has little to do with its success. “Their business case is exposing all these cities where there aren’t enough taxi licences,” he says. “Uber just exploits the existing problems.”

Toronto has about 5,000 licensed taxis on the road, which works out to approximately 18 cabs per 10,000 population. Ottawa’s 1,300 taxis translates to just under 15 per 10,000. In Vancouver, where there are fewer than 600 taxis, the ratio falls to 10 cabs per 10,000 people. In comparison, Washington, the best-served American market, boasts a taxi rate per 10,000 people of 116. In New York, it’s 63; New Orleans, 48; Boston, 30. Even those numbers aren’t always sufficient to meet demand.

Of course, that generalized scarcity makes it a much better business for those who do own cabs. In Vancouver, municipal licences can be resold for close to $1 million, while in Toronto, there is an estimated $1.4 billion in total “plate equity” at stake. Brokers and owners in six cities have thus banded together to combat Uber and have launched a website, TaxiTruths.ca, to promote the benefits of regulation. Carolyn Bauer, the group’s spokeswoman and head of the Vancouver Taxi Association, acknowledges that consumers in her city are frustrated, especially on weekends. “They’ll line up for an hour to get into the bars, but when it’s time to go home, they want a cab right away,” she says. Taxi providers would like to make better use of technology, says Bauer, but face their own hurdles, as the stringent rules Canadian banks have enacted for credit card transactions. (Uber, though, seems to have overcome those challenges.)

For its part, Uber says it’s “working collaboratively with officials in cities across the world” to ensure that consumers can access a full array of transportation options. In a statement to Maclean’s, the company lauded the 14 U.S. jurisdictions, including Washington, Chicago and California, that have adjusted their taxi and limo rules to make space for ride-sharing, easing licensing and insurance requirements. It’s the sort of approach that Canada’s Competition Bureau and John Tory, Toronto’s new mayor, have both recently suggested would be more productive than battling it out in the courts. “There have been a lot of instances in recent history where technology has made a lot of changes necessary for people who are in business of one kind or another,” said Tory.

But it’s also one that promises a radically different transportation future. In San Francisco, a chronically underserved market with 19.5 cabs per 10,000 population, the new ride-sharing rules have added a lot more hired cars—for now. Between March 2012 and this past July, the average monthly number of trips by old, licensed taxis plummeted 65 per cent. The taxi war may already have been lost.

The post Hailing the Uber revolution appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Joe Apprendi, CEO of adtech startup Collective, is really enthusiastic about Google's new interest in transparency in the online advertising business. He thinks that the buying and selling of ads online is going to go through a "complete reassessment" in the next couple of years as clients figure out just how much of their money is wasted or taken in online fraud.

And that, he told Business Insider during a break from a visit to Collective's London office, could make a bunch of companies think twice about whether they want to file IPOs or not.

Some of those companies are looking at the experience of Rocket Fuel, an ad network that went public in September 2013 and months later was the subject of class action lawsuits, alleging the company's stock fell after it failed to disclose that a significant portion of its ads were being clicked on by fraudulent botnets.

Earlier this week, Google disclosed that 56% of the ads appearing on its platforms aren't actually seen by anyone. While that seems bad for Google — why would you want to run ads that don't get seen? — Google is probably betting that by alerting its client base to the fact that it cares about non-functioning ads it will gain those clients' trust in the future. Those "unviewable" ads are ads that are served on a page but not seen by the user, perhaps because they were low on the page and the reader didn't scroll down that far. Currently advertisers are paying for those ads even though no one sees them.

"Non-viewable ads will be worthless by this time next year," Apprendi says. "They're already technically worthless."

Apprendi is betting that his company — which offers clients complete transparency about how their money is spent, the cost of the inventory bought and the results they get — is well placed to gain clients that want to know whether consumers can actually see the ads they're buying. Or whether bots are clicking on them.

But the industry's switch from its current Wild West condition —  Group M once offered clients pricing on a controversial "non-disclosed" basis — to one of full disclosure will be wrenching. Dirty laundry will be aired. Rocket Fuel will not likely be the last adtech company facing allegations from shareholders that it served lousy inventory. (And to be fair to Rocket Fuel, everyone is in the same boat here.)

That will have a knock-on effect in terms of the larger adtech companies considering going public. (You can see a list of them here.) "Do I want to be a public company while that happens? No," Apprendi says. "A year ago [headlines about transparency] was not even top of mind. Now it's a consideration." (Another major issue: a bunch of adtech companies that did hold IPOs saw the value of their stocks sink in the months afterward.)

Collective has previously been regarded as an IPO candidate. It has 400 employees and gross revenue of about $200 million.  But Apprendi sounded unenthusiastic about the prospect this week. "Being well-capitalised and private is better than 'open kimono' right now."

Join the conversation about this story »

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Apple’s iBeacons are so last news cycle.

Early next year, Paris-based company Ubudu is launching in the U.S. what it says is the first implementation of mesh beacons, called uBeacon Mesh.

Before seeing how this could change the beacon landscape, let’s look at how standard beacons work.

Imagine that standard beacons — small electronic devices, of which Apple’s iBeacon is the best known implementation — are like beacons of light, shining a signal to let you know where they are. Retailers mount them on ceilings or walls in a store. At intervals, the beacon broadcasts very small packets of data via Bluetooth Low Energy that simply say, “Hi, I’m here,” with basic ID information describing exactly where it is in a specific store.

A customer then walks into that store. Because she’s inside a building, the GPS positioning for her smartphone may not work well. That’s where the “Hi, I’m here” comes in. The phone listens to the beacon’s location data, and then an app on the phone can transmit that data via Wi-Fi or a cellular data network to the app’s server.

The server responds to this trigger by sending back location-relevant information — such as sale info, a welcome message, or a coupon — that is tailored for that precise spot. Usually, it’s just the changeable data — pricing or sales info, for instance — that is transmitted, and the byte-heavier graphics or other relatively large files reside in the smartphone’s app.

But, for this to work, the store needs to have an expensive Wi-Fi network, or the customer needs to be able to access her data network. And the standard beacons can only be controlled and monitored locally in that one store, through Bluetooth (if each beacon is paired with a smartphone) or a physical connection. Pairing sets up a connection between Bluetooth devices, such as when you pair your smartphone with your Bluetooth headphones.

Enter mesh beacons

“Mesh beacons enable a world of new consumer experiences which wouldn’t be otherwise possible with conventional beacons,” Ubudu cofounder and chief marketing officer Thomas Saphir told VentureBeat.

Mesh beacons, which utilize capabilities in version 4.1 of Bluetooth that came out last December, turn the current generation of location-broadcasting beacons into a two-way, Net-connected network.

Unlike standard beacons, Ubudu’s uBeacons — which also support the iBeacon standard — can receive a few kilobits per second of data back from customers’ smartphones without pairing, and they can each talk via Bluetooth to other mesh beacons. If one of the mesh beacons is connected to the Internet, the mesh network can communicate with the cloud.

This means, for instance, that a customer standing in an aisle could send a very brief message via her smartphone app to the store, asking for assistance. Customer phones would need to have Bluetooth 4.0, which is supported by a majority of phones.

In a mesh network, as with standard beacons, the graphics of a coupon and other byte-heavy components of a location-targeted message can live in the app. But uBeacons can receive the dynamic info — pricing, product data, and the like — via the Net through the mesh network, and then send that data to the customer. Wi-Fi or cellular data is not required for the customer, as is the case with standard beacons.

“You’re not going to be transmitting videos,” Saphir said about the relatively slow Bluetooth Low Energy transmission used in mesh, adding that the timely text could be transmitted fast enough to be immediately relevant to a customer.

Additionally, all mesh networks in all locations can be controlled via one browser-based dashboard. A Ubudu SDK is available for iOS and Android, so retailers can create their own app or can use one from a third-party, such as Shopkick. In addition to the beacons themselves, Ubudu also provides server software.

Talking to the cloud

Like cell phones that use mesh technology, mesh beacons are a form of peer-to-peer networking.

“In fact,” Saphir told us, “cell phones become nodes [along with the mesh beacons], as they are able to receive and send data from the mesh network.”

“Conventional beacons,” he said, send “the same [location] message at a regular interval.” By contrast, he said, “our mesh beacons send out [various] messages to other devices, including other mesh beacons and smartphones.”

Saphir said his company’s mesh technology is competing with other companies providing standard beacon hardware and software, such as Gimbal and Estimote in the U.S. Apple supports iBeacon technology, but doesn’t make the devices.

“However, none [of the competitors] provides a solution as accomplished as Ubudu,” he said, citing a white paper on “marketing in-store micro-location” by global digital agency Digitas. The paper, he said, pointed to Ubudu’s implementation as being best in security features and battery management. He added that he expects competitors in the mesh beacon space to emerge.

Currently, Ubudu says about 250 apps have been built for its mesh technology, and it has been installed as beta environments with unnamed retailers in Canada, France, and elsewhere in Europe. Although there is no standard yet for mesh beacons, Saphir said there are some efforts underway to make that happen.

There’s more to content marketing than copy alone.

Infographics engage an audience in microseconds, pairing helpful stats with serious eye-candy to deliver a super-targeted marketing message. Better yet, this type of content is pure viral marketing gold.

These 10 infographics showcase content marketing at its most visual, viral, and valuable; and prove that infographics are one of the most powerful tools in any B2B marketer’s arsenal.

1. Lander’s Split-Testing Infographic

There’s no escaping the fact that infographics have to look great, first and foremost. In this example, Lander uses their serious design-savviness to tackle a complicated concept, creating stunning graphics to illustrate a step-by-step guide to A/B split-testing. Its elegant design solves a complex problem with brevity, and promotes their business proposition in a subtle and unobtrusive way.

2. Email Monks’ Holiday Marketing Infographic

Email Monks’ visual guide to effective festive marketing proves that infographics can take advantage of seasonal trends. Their design pairs valuable end-of-year marketing takeaways with a brand-consistent color scheme and graphics—capitalizing on holiday season virality to drive a ton of targeted traffic back to their site.

3. UNC’s ROI of an MBA Infographic

Pitched at professionals considering an online business course, UNC’s infographic discusses the program’s benefits in terms that its audience will care about: costs, benefits and ROI. It’s an example of an infographic being used to liven up a potentially dull topic—combining persuasive data, industry-relevant language, and beautifully simple graphics.

4. Unbounce’s B2B Lead Gen Infographic

Infographics are dime a dozen, even within the B2B sector. Stand-out content needs more than great advice and great design—it has to have personality. Unbounce illustrates this concept perfectly, with a Soviet-style look at lead generation that packs more originality into its design than any other infographic I’ve seen. Helpful stats and advice are paired with a unique design flair, leaving a lasting impression of both infographic and business.

5. BopDesign’s SMM Showdown Infographic

Awesome infographics are often awesomely simple. Straightforward designs avoid one of content marketing’s biggest pitfalls: trying to tackle too many topics, and solve too many problems. BopDesign demonstrates the principle perfectly, taking an in-depth look at a single problem, and solving it as comprehensively as possible.

6. Neolane’s Age of Apps Infographic

Neolane (now Adobe Campaign) has created a killer case-study in contextual marketing, with their look at the evolution of the mobile app. They take an engaging look at tech-history, using persuasive stats and great graphics to both highlight a need for branded apps and position the company as a potential solution.

7. Lunametrics’ Social Media Cheat Sheet Infographic

This beautifully simple design from Lunametrics doesn’t reinvent the wheel—it just streamlines the day-to-day activities of its audience. It provides an at-a-glance reference of the optimum sizes for all manner of social media images. It’s easy to produce, easy to digest, and a great example of simple infographics used effectively.

8. Monetate’s Ecommerce Infographic

Content marketing finds its value from effective targeting. Infographics are no different; and this example from Monetate tackles a super-specific problem, aimed at a super-specific audience. Whilst this type of content might never receive thousands of shares, you can rest-assured that every share it does get is super-relevant and super-engaged.

9. Yottaa’s Performance Metrics 101 Infographic

Many infographics suffer from a surplus of data, and a lack of real insight. Yottaa not only bucks this trend with their own design, but also provides guidance for other data-hungry marketers in the process. They’ve taken a comprehensive look at crucial website performance metrics, and how to use them—creating a business cheat sheet that’s as actionable as it is attractive.

10. Follygraph’s Perfect Coffee Infographic

No matter how complicated the industry, B2B audiences are still composed of real people. Sometimes, a tongue-in-cheek look at an industry’s unique culture can be incredibly effective. Case in point: where would marketing be without our steadfast ally, the humble coffee?

Thanks to this infographic from marketing designers Follygraph, we need no longer constrain ourselves to boring black coffee. With 38 delicious and obscure drinks to choose from, we can fuel our day (and annoy our barista) with everything from a cortado to a mazagran—proving that valuable infographics don’t always have to think squarely in terms of stats, data and ROI.

Marketing leaders are in continual pursuit to understand customers and buyers. At the same time, they are now being looked at to bring understanding of customers to bear on almost all facets of business operations. According to a recent IBM CEO Study, CMO’s are increasingly gaining the attention of CEO’s. Whereby marketing is seen as a major driver towards creating a customer-centric organization.

Because the forces of change have been so rapid, marketing leaders are put in a position of being a juggler of new types of approaches, services, and technology. Whether they are creating new online capabilities, developing content marketing plans, implementing marketing automation, or reinventing brands, marketing leaders are dealing with seemingly disconnected endeavors. Worse yet, is each of these types of approaches comes with their own data and analytics.

Such disparity presents a major problem for CMOs and marketing leaders who are going to be looked at by CEOs to drive customer-centricity. Which is, how to provide a coherent and cogent customer strategy the organization can absorb as well as act upon.

To kludge together different reports, analytics, and views of customers will no longer cut it.

Putting Customers At The Center Of Strategy

Where marketing leaders can get sidetracked today is by basing customer-centric strategy solely on data and analytics. Whereby tactical performance indicators become the center of discussions in meetings. Hashing over lead scores, content marketing metrics, channel distribution numbers, and user field data from marketing automation can be met with much frustration. Without the glue of cogent customer understanding and strategy, these can all be exercises in futility.

How CMO’s and marketing leaders can lead today is by putting the customer at the center of strategy. The focal point becomes in weaving together a strategic narrative, which helps an organization to do three important things:

1. Understand its’ customers and buyers
2. Tell the story of customers to employees and operations
3. Know how to align and serve its customers and buyers

While CEO’s of high performance companies will look to the CFO for the financial health of the organization, they will look increasingly to the CMO for the customer health of the organization.

Curators Of Customer Health

Marketing leaders can hold the mantle of customer understanding by viewing themselves as the curators of the larger and bigger story of customers. Curating such a story provides an open and transparent look at the customer health of the organization. Sometimes, we can learn and draw inspiration from other fields. Here is an interesting TED video featuring Thomas Campbell, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He has the arduous job of pulling together many objects and artifacts into settings, which weave together stories and narratives. A good listen:

In many ways, marketing leaders are faced with the same arduous tasks of pulling together customer insights and intelligence into a setting, which provides a coherent narrative about customers. The benefit here is such an approach gives employees a humanized understanding of customers. And, it gives the organization a pathway to get on the same journey customers and buyers are taking towards reaching goals or solving problems.

The Aim Of Strategic Customer Narratives

Strategic customer narratives are designed to provide a shared common view and understanding of customers and buyers. At the same time, they become living documents laying out a shared view of how the organization intends to serve customers. Such documented understanding gives marketing leaders the wherewithal and the influence to shape future direction when it comes to customer strategy.

What makes good strategic customer narratives then? What should they consist of? Several key elements are:

• They are driven by qualitative research directly with customers and buyers
• The narratives lose the “business talk” and clearly articulate
• Personas, be they buyer personas and user personas, are used to provide a real-world representation of customers, buyers, and users
• Customer journeys and buyer journeys help map out how decisions are arrived at and the experience of customers
• Consist of end-to-end stories, scenarios, and storyboards of how customers and buyers face challenges and situations
• Offers compelling narratives weaving the past, present, and future together
• Humanizes customers and buyers in the eyes of employees and executive leaders
• Guides the shaping of the brand story to articulate to customers and buyers
• Convey needed context to help shape customer strategy
• Provides insights into the experiences customers want and desire
• Helps in developing a picture of motives and thinking, which influence and drive customers
• Offer clear guidance on how to serve customers and buyers
• Reshapes data and analytics into customer intelligence supporting needed context
• Help to provide a roadmap on delivering content and messaging mapped back to customer understanding

Just as the museum curator must do, marketing leaders must gather and curate the above to create a customer narrative for his or her organization. It is an endeavor well worth taking.

One organization I have been privileged to work with and taking such an endeavor is Thomson and Reuters. Marketing leaders in primarily Tax and Accounting have been weaving strategic customer narratives together to truly understand the story behind their customers’ daily challenges and goal aspirations. The results have been shared customer understanding between marketing, sales, professional services, and support. And, the launching of a very successful content marketing plan embraced by customers because it speaks in their language.

A Clear Voice

Strategic customer narratives give marketing leaders a clear voice in telling the story of customers and buyers. The clear voice needed to articulate not only the past and present, but to also help guide the future direction of the organization when it comes to customer strategy. The exact clear voice many organizations are seeking right now. With CEO’s listening, it is time to speak – clearly.

Recently, while speaking at the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals, I had a chance to chat with Andy Paul, author of the new book, Amp Up Your Sales.

We spent a lot of time talking about what salespeople need to do to succeed with today's busy, savvy buyers. Keep on reading to find out what we talked about. Also, click here to download a preview chapter.

Enjoy the conversation ....

In a recent interview, one of the world’s most compelling management consultant, Tom Peters, responded to a question related to what is missing from today’s discussion about management. In classic as well as vintage Tom Peter fashion, he responded:

“My real bottom-line hypothesis is that nobody has a sweet clue what they’re doing.”

He went on to say we, in business, should be trying things out at an insanely rapid pace as a result. It is fair to say in the world of marketing, what has been taking place is trying things out at a rapid clip. One of those things has been taking a mountain of data and attempting to get predictive with it. The hopeful potential being buyers will leave a trail of data, which leads to non-miss insights on how to convert into a steady revenue stream.

Here is a brief clip of the always thought-provoking as well as entertaining Tom Peters with an emphasis on developing people and talent:

Analytics Overload

Recently, in working with a senior leader in marketing for a high-tech firm, we reviewed a two hundred-page slide deck on analytics pulled from their CRM, Marketing Automation, Sales Automation, Social Media, and Web Analytics Platforms. Basically, for the individual and myself, we ended up saying the same thing Tom Peters did after taking a recent 18 months hiatus to read recent business books:

“I am more confused than when I started.”

It was a case of classic analytics and data overload. My hunch is this scene is being repeated in conference rooms all over the United States and the world. We have had a precipitous rise in data over the past five years. Inundating executives with analytics overload. A case can be made, for some; they have proven to be very helpful in shaping future strategic direction in marketing. While, an equal case can be made such analytics overload has caused even more confusion and paralysis in what to do next.

Too Busy Forecasting Instead Of Strategy Making

The rise in data-driven analytics, especially in marketing, may be causing marketing executives to confuse forecasting with strategy making. Scoring mechanisms for website visits and leads have placed marketing executives in the role of attempting to forecast the next bundle of leads and sales. If CMO’s are not careful, they can find themselves becoming a forecasting magnet akin to playing blackjack in Las Vegas. As we all know having a seat at the blackjack table does not last long. Which could be the same case at the senior management table if forecasting is overemphasized.

What marketing executives should be concerned about is customer strategy making. Helping the organization to develop a more refined and intimate view of its customers. Constructing narratives about existing customers and future buyers, which guide the organization’s strategic direction towards fulfilling customer goals and needs.

Focus In On Strategic Marketing Narratives

In order to effectively plan as well as secure resources to deliver on a plan, marketing executives should focus on developing strategic marketing narratives. Recognizing, as mentioned above, strategy is distinct from forecasting. This perspective does not mean forecasting is unimportant. However, it does mean without strategic narratives, forecasting will lack context and be far from accurate as opposed to within reason.

How can marketing executives focus in on and deliver compelling strategic marketing narratives? Here a few suggestions to consider:

• Make marketing strategy buyer research-based, not entirely data-driven. Executives in marketing today should embrace ethnographic-based buyer research to gain true deep understanding of buyers. Strategic marketing narratives originate from contextual deep insights.
• Create persona-based strategic narratives. Buyer personas are helpful in providing a common view of customers and buyers. Bringing to life real world representations of real people based on qualitative buyer interviews. Persona-based strategic narratives allow marketing executives to have an important seat at the table communicating the world of customers and buyers to the senior operations team.
• Develop current and past scenario narratives. Gaining understanding of the existing as well as past contextual situations customers and buyers faced provides ample opportunity to reevaluate past and current strategies. Identifying where the organization missed the mark in helping buyers to accomplish their goals. It gives leaders in marketing a constructive way for examining past and current plans against customer understanding. For example, one company I helped altered strategic marketing plans to move away from OEM sales to strengthening OEM sales efforts as a result of new understanding of scenarios customers encountered.
• Create envisioning oriented strategic marketing narratives. Marketing leaders can be in a prime position for helping the organization to envision “what if” future interactions with customers. Creating strategic persona-based narratives on potential scenarios, which provide a different view of how the organization and customers can work together to solve problems as well as attain goals. One company doing this well today is GE. GE marketing plans ask both internal teams as well as customers to “reimagining” the future world of how things can work. Here is a quick example of a GE Reimagining Home Appliance Ad:

Evolving Narratives Leads To Better Planning

Marketing executives who adopt sound strategic marketing narratives, which focus on the past, present, and future, can help develop an organization’s ability to shape its future direction. Recently, helping one company in healthcare, persona-based strategic narratives were created, which drastically repositioned their past and current marketing approaches into a new forward-looking strategic approach. Previous efforts in analytics and a multitude of quantitative surveying shed little light on how the organization should move forward in the rapidly changing world of healthcare.

The lesson here is the promise of being able to predict and forecast the future on analytics alone falls far short of expectations. I suspect this maddening search for the silver bullet in analytics is being played out right now in many conference rooms. Frantic executives sifting through a mountain of analytical data in the hopes of coming up with a plan for the future.

While analytics will play a role in predictive marketing and forecasting, marketing leaders will best be served in shaping the evolving strategic marketing narratives, which helps the organization to envision the future. Reimagining a brighter future for them and their customers.

Successful B2B marketers understand that the right technology tools can deliver a significant competitive advantage. Software for email marketing, customer relationship management, and web analytics can improve overall results by reducing manual processes, improving productivity, and providing much-needed insight into what works – and what doesn’t.

But this proliferation of tools also means that marketers are continually dealing with more types of technology. Too many solutions – and a lack of integration – can increase complexity, putting more data into silos and reducing visibility across campaigns. And those issues create negative experiences for customers and prospects, translating into negative results to the bottom line.

According to the results of a recent survey from Software Advice, if you’re using multiple software applications to get through your marketing day, you’re not alone. In its annual B2B Demand Generation Benchmark report, Software Advice surveyed 200 B2B marketing professionals in order to understand which channels, offers, content types, and technologies are driving results for their demand generation programs. Here’s what they found out about the kinds of software marketers are using to develop leads, and why some solutions are more valuable than others.

Turning Up the Volume: These Go to Eleven

So, just how many pieces of software does it take to generate a lead? Software Advice provided a list of 11 types of technology solutions and asked marketers to identify which ones they used to support their demand generation efforts. A significant majority of marketers (79%) reported that they used all 11 of the software solutions listed. Clearly, B2B marketers are keeping busy!

Which ones are used by the most marketers? Nearly all of the respondents (97%) use email marketing software, with customer relationship management (CRM) a very close second, and marketing automation solutions coming in third.

It’s not too surprising that so many marketers depend on email to generate leads. Software Advice found that 66% of those surveyed cited in-house email marketing as having a “somewhat low” or “very low” cost-per-lead. And according to a report from Circle Research, 88% of B2B marketers say that email is their most effective lead generation tactic.

Nor is it surprising to see CRM and marketing automation rounding out the top three. CRM and marketing automation work together to allow marketers to generate sales-ready leads and to give salespeople the kind of data that can help them close more business. The Annuitas Group found that businesses using marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. In turn, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.

Ranking What Matters

What is surprising is what happened when marketers were asked to rate the importance of the software solutions they use. Email marketing came in fourth (after CRM, business intelligence, and web analytics). PPC was ranked next, with marketing automation following after that. In fact, just 17% of marketers described marketing automation software as “extremely important” and 24% said it was “very important.” What gives?

Part of the disconnect could be a result of separating email marketing out in the list of options, since most marketing automation solutions include email functionality as part of an integrated platform.

According to Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing, the results may also indicate that marketing automation technology “in broader adoption markets” is still at an early, immature stage. “Way too many companies are still just doing batch-and-send emails with little intelligence, segmentation, scoring etc.,” he says. The effective implementation of marketing automation software, he adds, could present a huge opportunity for businesses to achieve the same results, yet at a lower cost and with better leverage and scalability.

Spending is on the Rise

One thing is clear: B2B marketers understand that future results demand increased investment. When asked how they planned to adjust spending on demand generation programs next year, 41% said they would increase their spend and 43% said they’d spend the same amount. Just 17% of respondents said they’d cut back on spending.

Marketing automation seems like a natural place for B2B marketers to spend those bigger budgets. When it comes to generating, managing, and nurturing leads, marketing automation makes it easier to turn casual browsers into loyal customers – and do it in a more cost-effective way. The right solution also solves the issue of complexity and lack of visibility by providing an integrated platform with dashboards and reporting that makes it easier to track and manage multiple campaigns.

When it comes to generating demand, the benefits of marketing automation are crystal clear:

• Push and pull: Automation platforms help marketers communicate out to customers through email and social messaging while also pulling prospects in with capabilities such as landing pages, search engine optimization, and integration with pay-per-click systems such as Google AdWords.
• Capture: Marketing automation offers many ways to capture the contact information of prospects who have responded to offers or messages, making it easier to move the contact into the funnel.
• Scoring: Lead scoring allows marketers to qualify leads by assigning pre-determined values to their behaviors and profile characteristics. When a buyer-ready lead score threshold is passed, a notification is triggered, allowing marketers to quickly pass the lead to sales.
• Nurturing: With automation, you can implement and manage nurturing programs that keep new leads in the funnel, and move them along the journey with content and offers that are personalized and customized to the lead’s specific interests.
• Segmentation: Dynamically segment leads in the database as they arrive from social media campaigns, form-fills, email campaigns, or paid campaigns. By segmenting leads based on sources, marketers can use the appropriate medium of communication to send out relevant messages and craft effective campaigns.

Be sure to check out the full results of the Software Advice B2B Demand Generation Benchmark survey report to see additional predictions for demand generation strategy and spending in 2015.

Read The Business Case for Marketing Automation to learn about the benefits of marketing automation when it comes to lead generation, and find out how it can also help with vital marketing processes such as campaign optimization, sales enablement, data analysis, and much more.

Pity the poor small company marketer. Like their counterparts at large companies, they face all the challenges of reaching their target market over ever more competitive channels. At the same time, they have to outshout competitors with bigger bullhorns while armed with smaller budgets. Regardless of the quality of their product, it’s much harder for these companies to get noticed.

As Victoria Grey, Chief Marketing Officer for Gridstore noted, “One of our biggest challenges is getting our name out there for customer consideration. We’ve got a great product, so if we can get in front of a solid prospect, we’ve got a good chance of closing the deal. But we don’t have as large a marketing budget as many of our competitors so it’s a challenge.”

What’s the small company marketer to do?

I talked to a number of marketers at small companies and here are some of their tricks.

1. Start with a unique differentiator

It should go without saying that the most important marketing strategy is having a unique product that solves a real problem. (Although with all the me-too products out there, it’s clear that many companies missed the memo). A product that addresses a new problem in a new way can provide a true differentiation regardless of the size of the company. And these companies earn the right to claim thought leadership.

For example:

• Blucarat is an eCommerce company with a twist. It allows companies that sell over the internet to harvest user-generated content from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and so on and showcase it on eCommerce sites to inspire purchasing. This means companies of any size can take advantage of the same social proof as Amazon.com.
• Gridstore provides backup capabilities specifically for Microsoft’s Hyper-V.
• Druva, established in 2008, was one of the first companies to secure data in the Cloud.

2. Keep costs in line

Smaller companies must be particularly careful to watch their pennies. Luckily, many new technologies give small companies big-company tools tailored to their needs and budgets. Said Kieran Taylor, CMO of Blucarat, “We look at burn rates and maximize every one of our campaigns. Luckily we can do that by relying on lower cost options. For example, we use MailChimp for our email campaigns and Act-On Software, which is a poor man’s marketing automation system.”

3. Produce super-targeted content

With all the new tactics and channels available, many marketers are trying to cover all the bases. They produce content of all types (albeit often through reuse) including white papers, webinars, podcasts, info graphics, and infograms.

Smart small companies take a different approach. They look carefully at their buyer personas and painstakingly match the content produced to their personas.

“To do things cost effectively,” said Taylor of Blucarat, “We need to be extremely targeted in terms of who we send things so we can improve the signal-to-noise ratio.”

Taylor is careful to target not only the right buyer, but also where they are in the buying cycle. “We’re constantly looking at where the prospect is in the nurture cycle and identifying the right offers for that stage,” Taylor explained.

The company also takes care to create just the right content for that audience. For example, one of Blucarat’s personas is the social media manager. This persona acts is an influencer and has a medium age of 27. The company creates more videos for this audience than it does for its personas of older buyers because millennials are less likely to read longer documents.

Druva, in contrast, is a small company that produces data security products for the cloud. Its customers are highly technical, which means that they’re skeptical of marketing of any type. Therefore, the company focuses on creating content for its demand-gen campaigns that’s highly credible. The company works with industry analysts to create research that it can use in thought leadership and reports chock full of new insights. The company also creates content based on conversations with customers in their own words about their challenges, experiences, and successes.

4. Target your social channels

Smaller companies are also more targeted when it comes to spreading the word. Both Blucarat and Druva carefully select the social media they use to get their message across. Blucarat finds Facebook and Twitter to be quite effective in generating traffic and click-throughs because their market of online commerce companies is by nature B2C. Additionally, the CMOs and Vice Presidents of Commerce tend to be fairly social. The company also does geographic targeting to reach the prestige beauty and fashion brands in New York City that are prime targets.

In contrast, Druva focuses on LinkedIn Groups and online developer communities, such as Spiceworks. “It’s less about one-way broadcasting and more about participating in groups and sharing valuable content,” said Jennifer Burnham, Director, Marketing Communications and Content at Druva.

5. Collaborate with partners

Another strategy small companies choose is to multiply their efforts by collaborating with partners. Because Gridstore is designed specifically to complement Microsoft’s Hyper-V solution, the company has the good fortune of being able to ride on the coattails of its partner. Said Grey, “Because we have such a targeted market, we work with Microsoft and go to their events. We’re a big sponsor of Microsoft’s TechEd. We go to the Microsoft worldwide partner conferences. If Microsoft is hosting an event, it’s easy to line up leads. We also do banner ads, advertise in Redmond Magazine and other Microsoft -centric magazines, such as Microsoft SQL Server Pro, Microsoft Windows IT Pro.”

But even when the partner isn’t a behemoth with all that Microsoft has to offer, small companies can still benefit from partner marketing. In addition to partnering with Microsoft, Gridstore also partners with smaller companies.Said Grey, “Our advertising budgets are very limited, so we leverage co-marketing with resellers. We’ll provide marketing content, expert speakers for webinars, content for email blasts, etc. They invite their customers and have the opportunity to earn a margin on the sale.”

6. Make the most of your marketing

Any company, particularly a small company, needs to squeeze the most out of everything they do. For example, when Lisa Snyders, Senior Manager of Marketing, Denodo Technologies, embarks on a marketing program, she makes sure she looks at how she can capitalize on her efforts from every angle.

“When I go to events, I plan rigorously,” Snyders said. “I look at: Which analysts will be there? Who should we brief beforehand? Which speakers will attend? Can these speakers potentially reference our technology? If so, I’ll brief them because sometimes they might include a slide about our technology in their presentation. I’ll get a list of companies who might be there and have inside sales try to make appointments before the event to maximize return. After the event, we follow up on the leads as quickly as possible when it’s fresh on their minds.”

Book Review - Amp Up Your Sales – Andy Paul

Many of you are no doubt familiar with Andy Paul, author of Zero-Time Selling; well Andy is out with yet another great book just in time to kick your sales year off right, Amp Up Your Sales.

Andy looks at a key question in sales: What Buyers Want from Sellers?

It’s the big mystery of sales. How do we get buyers engaged? What can we say or do to make them pick us. What can we do to speed their decision?

Andy looks at how to deliver what your customers want in Amp Up Your Sales. He presents powerful strategies to move customers to make faster and more favorable decisions.

I had a call with Andy about the book, and here are some insights.

TS: Amp Up Your Sales focuses on responsiveness, maximizing value and simplification in your selling efforts. Why did you focus on these topics?

AP: The Amp in the title is really an acronym (AMP). It is a simple mnemonic device I created, that all salespeople can use to ensure that every step of their sales process is focused on the tangible and intangible attributes that make a difference to their customers and their ability to make good decisions quickly.

A=Accelerate Your Responsiveness: Responsiveness in sales has two components: information and speed. To be responsive a seller has to provide complete information to a customer in a timely manner. One way to think of this is that every customer has a certain number of steps in their buying process. And each step has associated with it certain questions that need to be answered before the customer can move on to the next step. Being a responsive means to quickly provide the customer the information they need to move on to the next step.

M=Maximize the Value You Deliver in Each Sales Interaction: A customer gives a seller some of their time. In reality they invest their time in the seller. The seller has to give the customer something of value in return for that investment. That value must be something (information, facts, insights) that moves the customer at least one step forward in their buying process. If the customer gives a seller some of their time and they receive nothing of value in return they will stop giving time to that seller.

P=Practice Simplicity in Your Selling: The difference between winning and losing in sales is a very thin margin. I ask sellers all the time: “What was your margin of victory in your last deal? 10% 50% 75%?” The fact is that no one knows and no seller can predict. They have to assume that their margin of victory, especially in this economy where the actual and perceived differences amongst products is virtually nil, will be only 1%. The question then becomes what can a seller do that will create 1% more value than their competitors? In these cases, winning a deal often comes down to the small things, the simple things that a seller can do to create differentiation. For instance, one simple way to stand out from the crowd of competitors is to be more responsive.

I could go on, but it is a better idea to get a copy and read it immediately. Pay particular attention to Chapter 13: The Power of The First Perception. It will change how you respond to leads forever.

BTW, Andy tells me that if you buy the book today, you get instant access to Andy’s 6-part video series with sales giants and more on concrete strategies you can use right away to amp up your sales, while I may not be on the list, you can still learn more here.

 

Have you documented your 2015 content marketing plan yet? If not, you should.

While only 35% of B2B companies have a documented content strategy, the majority (60%) of those marketers rate themselves highly in terms of content marketing effectiveness, compared to just 32% of those with a verbal strategy.

So, a written plan is key. But it’s not the only important factor.

An integrated marketing strategy requires two things that aren’t guaranteed in that PowerPoint presentation, the one that maps out your yearly plan then sits in a few people’s email inboxes, rarely seen again after it’s presented. It requires:

1. Cross-department communication, and
2. The flexibility to evolve, either in real-time or through consistent check-ins.

Without these elements built into your process, how will you be able to respond to needs as they arise, either from internal stakeholders or your buyers? How will you even know what needs there are to fill? How will you test different tactics, and figure out how your buyers respond?

Here are 3 ways to implement a transparent and agile enterprise marketing strategy.

1. Establish Feedback Loops

Track what content works and what does not by establishing feedback loops between the content team and the marketing groups responsible for content distribution.

“Content teams struggle to prove value, because there’s not a set integrated distribution strategy and they struggle to get analytics back,” says Riley Gibson, VP of Customer Success, who’s worked with hundreds of Kapost customers to get their content operations in place.

Without hard, quantitative feedback, the content team has no insight into how their work is performing.

But it’s not enough to have intra-marketing alignment. Other teams including sales, services, and support, also need to share their content needs, failures, and successes.

“Why even plan if what you’ve planned isn’t directly related to what the folks who use your content actually need?” Gibson suggests establishing lines of communication between departments, and using the insights from across the organization to evolve and iterate the content marketing strategy to ensure widespread value.

2. Actually Use Your Persona And Buying Stage Research

Targeting specific prospects based on persona and buying stage is an oft-preached best practice, but it quickly falls by the wayside when marketers feel under water. Unfortunately, this neglegence leads to irrelevant and valueless content. Instead of saving time, you’re wasting it on a final product that won’t get any traction.

“If you don’t know who you’re talking to, you won’t be able to create good content,” says Todd Cameron, Strategy Director at Kapost.

“Personas are foundational to content strategy.”

Think of ways to get your team excited about using personas, and to ensure everyone creating content understands your target audience and how to speak to them.

“Get your team excited about creating these personas,” suggest Cameron. “Give each persona a name, pull images, create Fatheads, and hang them on the wall. Bring them to life, and they’ll stay top-of-mind.”

3. Evolve Your Personas

Personas, though, are not a one-and-done project. You have to continually refine your understanding of the people you’re trying to reach and how they consume information, particularly as new channels and networks emerge.

“A persona is the amalgamation of current customers or potential customers,” explains Cameron.

Who you’re targeting and how you speak to them must align with the reality of your target audience as they change over time. “Once you have your personas created, check in annually with marketing and sales or a third party resource. Don’t create them in a document that then goes nowhere.”

With these steps, you won’t run the risk of implementing a stale strategy. Instead, you’ll have a living, breathing marketing strategy with input from across the organization and a deeper understanding of your buyers. Make it a more agile, transparent 2015.

With the astronomically fast rise of social media and the increasing number of social media gurus and firms promising to help those who don’t understand these new tools, it’s no wonder that many B2B organizations are still reluctant to consider social selling a viable part of their selling process.

Do these comments sound familiar?

• “It’s too new.”
• “It isn’t proven.”
• “There’s no way to measure it.”

While it’s true that the industry has a ways to go in order to understand all of the sales implications of social selling, we can assume that it’s not a fad and isn’t going away any time soon. Here’s some research that demonstrates the importance of social media in connecting with today’s B2B Buyer:

• Social Media helps sellers exceed quota (Source: Forbes)
• Most corporate decision makers use social media to inform their purchase decisions. (Source: IDC)
• Best-in-class sellers use social media to build stronger pipeline. (Source: Aberdeen)

Why Social Media Is More Than A Buzzword

Creating an account on LinkedIn or Twitter doesn’t mean that the leads will start pouring in and the sales will practically close themselves. That’s falling into the “buzzword trap.” In fact, you can get hundreds of followers, thousands of likes, and even make valuable connections, but if you don’t employ a system of capitalizing on these interactions, you’ll never see the kind of return that drives bottom-line impact.

Sales organizations that use social to demonstrate value and differentiation and align key social activities with their sales process understand that social selling is more than just a fad. It’s an important tool along their customer engagement process.

In a traditional buying process:

• Sales is very clearly aligned with the buyer.
• They’re able to uncover customer needs through an effective discovery process.

That discovery process gives them the opportunity to define required capabilities, positive business outcomes and then lead that buyer to their highly differentiated solution.

When we consider the connected buyer that tightly aligned process goes away. Sirius Decisions reports almost 70% of the B2B buying process is done digitally. That means that buyers are researching vendors and solutions on the web and through social before even engaging a salesperson. When they finally engage a salesperson, they perceive themselves as being much further along in their process.

With the new buying process, sales is entering the conversation much later. The buyer has already done his/her research. They’ve likely defined required capabilities. They researched your competitors and are determining how/where your solution stacks up.

When sales comes into the process, they may have to back track to redefine capabilities, execute an effective discovery process with a prospect who perceives he/she is past that point, and differentiate themselves among other vendors who are already part of the decision criteria.

How are you as a sales organization enabling your salespeople to enter into this buying process earlier?

Social media is an important tool that provides salespeople the ability to engage in the sales process earlier. Consider these stats from IBM who rolled out a 6-month pilot social selling project with just seven reps:

• 7 reps grew their aggregate LinkedIn direct followers from 535 to 3,500 people
• Their reach grew from 54,000 to 1.3 million (followers of followers)

Remember, those results came from just seven reps. Imagine the power of implementing the same tactics with an entire sales team. More importantly, imagine if your competitors launched the initiative and you didn’t.

Sales organizations that use social to demonstrate value and differentiation and align key social activities with their sales process understand that social selling is more than just a fad. It’s an important tool along their customer engagement process.

Have you ever spent hours, days, or even weeks trying to plan that perfect social media campaign? If so, you are by no means alone!

The amount of people marketing directly to consumers on social media has gone up exponentially over the past year, and rightfully so. Over 1.3 billion people log into Facebook alone every month, according to Facebook’s last earnings call. That’s a whopping 14% of the earth’s population – so why not market to them on social?

Below, I have put together a list of the top 10 campaigns launched in 2014 with the help of some designers and other analysts according to specifically picked categories to best benefit you. These categories include:

• Most Visually Appealing
• Starting with Success,
• Impressive Conversion Rates,
• Best Post-Campaign Follow Up
• Best Holiday-Themed Campaigns.

Hopefully these will get your brain churning for some creative ideas to launch successful campaigns for your business to wrap up the year and start 2015 with a bang.

Most visually appealing

Who doesn’t love something pretty to look at?

These two campaigns really caught our attention when we saw them, and their conversion rates showed that they caught other’s attention as well. A great graphic design can really affect the results of a campaign, so it is imperative to make sure you spend time on those before you launch. The most important part is to focus on matching the contest to fit your brand.

INKWELL PRESS

Inkwell Press effectively created an elegant custom contest to fit their needs as a company focused on design. The first aspect of their simple contest included their logo, which aided in brand recognition. The hero image used the same theme as the logo featured on a cell phone case, the planner that they were giving away, as well as text in an attractive font used across their brand that gave information about the prizes they were giving away.

They also took advantage of a text box beneath the main image to elaborate on their contest rules, and give more information about the contest. The information was concise, and highlighted the prize as an incentive to enter.

GOORIN BROTHERS

Goorin Brothers, a specialty hat company based in San Francisco used a custom built contest to ensure that they had complete control over design. The background is the star of this particular contest; the photo is a perfect example of Goorin Brother’s target consumer wearing one of their hats.

The designer used a photo editing software to place text over the picture in an extremely visually appealing location. This technique worked to grab fan’s attention in the red circle that talks about the prize, as well as the text across the top of the image.

Overall, the design is simple and clean, and obviously effective, as Goorin Brothers captured 8,404 emails with it!

Starting with Success

Some small businesses get easily discouraged when getting started on social media and building their brand. This category goes out to some companies that motivated me by their drive to get started and have success with campaigns. If you are just getting started building engagement or your Facebook presence as a whole, do not fear, it can be done with some effort!

KAO JAI COFFEE

Kyle Ducharme began his single-origin coffee business is December 2013, but his first batch was not set to arrive until June of 2014. With this is mind, he decided to run a contest with the launch of his Facebook page for someone to win a “First Taste” of the premiere batch of coffee from Northern Thailand.

He brainstormed every detail of this contest ahead of time, and not only did it look great, but it performed even better! With the effort he put into this contest, he was able to collect more impressions with this contest than the amount of fans he had started with on Facebook. Not only that, but the contest converted at 42%!

ENTICING TABLES

Enticing tables was not completely new to the contest scene, but Valerie McCartney from their team was ready to get some great results from launching a new and energized contest layout! She spent some time creating a contest to give away one of their lovely cupcake tree stands to bring in new emails to help grow the business.

With a contest, she knew not only would it collect emails for her, but it would grab new Facebook fans as well. The immediacy of this was something that really motivated her to run this successful campaign that converted at 43% – performing much better than she imagined. Her hard work paid off and has helped the business grow immensely.

Impressive Conversion Rates

One piece that will help contests convert at a high level is having a well established brand name. This is something you definitely cannot build overnight, but by hustling day in and day out for this passion you have. This category is a prime example at some well known brands that people are beyond loyal to, and it shows based on the extremely high conversion rates. Building a brand is about figuring out what you are and staying true to that and your fans, Facebook or not.

MARY J. BLIGE

Mary J. Blige has a huge following and is known for her musical style and swagger. She launched a contest to show her appreciation towards her fans while driving sales to Mary’s new site, Birthday Girl World. One huge reason this contest was so successful was the prize she choose tied directly into what she does.

With the brand name she has built that her fans trust so much, who wouldn’t want to win this contest she ran? It converted at an astounding 85%! That’s right, of every 10,000 people that viewed this contest, about 8,500 provided their email addresses.

INCREDIBEARD

With a name like that, it is quite obvious who this brand reaches. But not only are they focused on the great beards of the world; they also are raising awareness for the lack of clean drinking water around the world. With the 64% conversion rate they got on this contest, Incredibeard is trying to raise awareness for this cause so closely tied into their brand and what they represent. They have quite the following, and such dedicated loyal fans that this conversion rate did not surprise me one bit.

Best Post-Campaign Follow Up

The biggest reason most people are running these types of contests I’ve shown you so far is to gain more email leads. But once they get those leads, the most important step is actually taking action with them. This category goes out to the best post-contest campaign we saw from an email-marketing standpoint.

SOLO STOVE

Immediately after entering Solo Stove’s Facebook contest, the entrant received an email notification to inform them that they had successfully entered. This email also gave them options to share with friends, as seen below. A few days after the campaign ended, they emailed all entrants to let them know that they had not won, but as a consolation, they offered a discount code for their website.

This drove more sales than the contest cost did to begin with. That is the return everyone wants on any campaign! Lastly, months later when Solo Stove was running another contest, they notified via email that another giveaway was occurring.

Best Holiday-Themed Campaigns

Strategically running a contest at a certain time can really help improve your results. Whether that’s a huge event happening, or a national holiday coming up, getting creative with the prize around this time can boost the results immensely. The three campaigns below are great examples of how you might be able to take advantage of any holiday or event that pertains to where you live. I believe that this “tie-in” with an event is so important that I decided to showcase three in this category to help you realize how valuable this tactic really is.

PRECIOUS MOMENTS

Precious moments is taking advantage of this winter holiday season and giving away a signed ornament. They know that a majority of their customers purchase an ornament every holiday season to place on their Christmas tree, so they decided this was a great time to convert their social media fans into email leads. With great graphics and a great concept, they are sure to have a happy holiday themselves.

BOTTO’S

In the United States, the Fourth of July is celebrated in many different ways. But there are many people that celebrate with grilling and enjoying the company of their friends and family. Botto’s Genuine Italian Sausage took advantage of this and made a perfect giveaway bundle that helped them collect 303 new email leads.

NICOLLET ISLAND INN

This particular contest did an amazing job all around. They knew they would have empty rooms on Valentines night, so they decided to turn it into a contest to increase their email list and engagement on Facebook. The prize was a great fit for a young couple that needed holiday plans, so they ran with it and ended up collecting 715 new emails for their list! What would’ve been an empty room turned into their most successfully converting campaign ever.

Want to learn about the strategies behind the Top 10 Facebook Campaigns of 2014?

Join Nathan Latka, CEO and Founder of Heyo, and Jeff Bullas on the upcoming webinar on December 8. Click here to claim your free spot!

Want to launch your own contest to collect email leads and drive engagement?

Have no coding experience and want to launch a contest like the ones above in just 10 minutes? All of the contests featured above were created at Heyo.com and you can sign up for a free trial today by clicking here!

From the original matching algorithms to show similar products to the sophisticated machine learning technology that now harnesses user behavior insights, the world of recommendations has changed immensely.

Over the years, online shoppers have gotten more and more used to seeing and acting upon product recommendations.

Indeed, according to Metail, 56% of consumers say they would be more inclined to use a retailer if it offered a personalised experience.

While we know product recommendations are a definite driver of ecommerce success, how exactly do they influence buyer behavior? Let’s take a look.

Definite influencer of purchase decisions

An Infosys study on consumer behavior showed that 59% of shoppers who have experienced personalization in their shopping agree that it affects their buying behavior.

In the real world, this impact on buying behavior could range from influencing a future purchase, to prompting an immediate additional purchase or even recommending a product to friends based on exposure to these recommended products on e-commerce sites.

One would think that features like product recommendations on an ecommerce site would only be truly appreciated by loyal, repeat customers who are exposed to the recommendation engine repeatedly.

However, the data above reveals that the impact of product recommendations is not limited to just brand loyal customers (it does work better on them, though).

More than one in six shoppers who were not loyal to a particular ecommerce brand acted on product recommendations and made a purchase.

Trigger impulse purchases

The same Infosys study discovered that 90% of surveyed online shoppers admit to impulse buying every now and then.

Source

The data above is extracted from a study which shows that only about 77% of shoppers indulged in impulse buys in 2008. This growth from 77% to 90% is a reflection of the increasing penetration of product cross sells and consumers’ growing response to the same.

Multiple studies support the fundamental principle of suggesting products to customers based on their preferences and user profile.

Often termed as a tool that ‘reduces the cost of thinking’ for the customer, product recommendations straddle that golden balance between keeping the customer hooked and the retailer profitable.

Incremental sales from product recommendations

Many ecommerce sites avoid offering too many product recommendations to shoppers to avoid losing on the existing sale as the customer gets distracted by the variety of items in front of them.

Popular conversion optimization wisdom says that distracting an engaged online shopper with other items is a trap that leads to abandoned shopping carts.

However, a study by the eTailing Group found that rather than acting as a distraction, product recommendations also result in incremental purchases.

A whopping 77% of online shoppers admit to have made additional purchases based on personalized product recommendations.

Even if they did not buy, over half of them browse through the recommendations offered to them thus increasing brand exposure and the probability of a future purchase.

Consumers display deeper drand loyalty towards sites with recommendations

It’s not just online retailers and brands that are keen on offering product recommendations to their shoppers. Over a third (31%) of respondents from the Infosys study actually wished for more personalized shopping experiences. The flipside is equally true.

At least 74% of online shoppers studied by JanRain apparently get frustrated with sites that show them content that has nothing to do with their preferences or past buying behavior.

Product discovery is an important component of the online shopping experience. Customers warm to a site that offers them personalized and handpicked recommendations over one that doesn’t. Almost all (96%) shoppers interviewed expected online retailers to inform them of exciting, new products.

Source

Product recommendations and millennials

One reason for the ready acceptance of online product recommendations has been the timing of their appearance. Product recommendations started being adopted across e-commerce sites around the same time as the Millennial generation began coming of age.

Research shows that this generation, born between 1979 and 1993, are born 'recommendation machines.'

With their high tendency to speak up on social media and other digital platforms about their brand experiences, 59% of Millennials admit to making product recommendations to others.

They even have a huge influence on purchase decisions beyond their own cliques. Older folk depend on recommendations from Millennials, as 74% of Millennials report frequently recommending new products to their parents.

Millennial Moms are an especially powerful demographic as influencers. Research from Weber Shandwick shows that 55% of Millennial Moms get asked for product recommendations and they tend to ‘like’ products on social media at least 10.4 times per month – a huge step up from older, non-Millennial Moms.

Automating product recommendations

In a scenario like this, product recommendation tools become an asset that not just aid an immediate purchase, they also help building customer loyalty, bringing customers back for repeat purchases.

'Customers who bought this item also bought…' isn’t limited to Amazon now. The ability to capture and interpret big data has made product recommendations more precise and tailored to every customer’s needs.

Recommendation tools now have the ability to auto-optimize delivery by showing the best performing product variations in real time to the appropriate segments.

In closing

Product recommendations come in many shapes and sizes.

From a shop assistant informing you about a great new product that’s hit the shelves in a real store to an online customer care agent offering an add-on product to the one you’re purchasing already, to even the on-site product recommendations that offer meaningful and well-researched upsells and cross-sells to existing customers, the possibilities are endless.

The advent of social media has only spurred this phenomenon of product recommendations and made it into something a lot more accessible to both users and brands.

The good news is we now have the technology for taking insights from website big data, social media and implementing a product recommendation project on your site. The even better news? Only 29% of marketers actually successfully implemented personalized recommendations on their websites.

This means you still have a fighting chance to beat the remaining 71% of websites who are struggling with this critical ecommerce element.

Marketing automation may be changing the way you interact with customers and qualify their interests, but what happens when a prospect watches one of your videos? If they’re pressing play on your product video, and your marketing automation system doesn’t know about that, then you’re missing out – big time.

According to Lee Odden on Toprank, 70% of B2B content marketers are using video in their marketing mix, and using video on your landing pages can increase conversion by up to 80%. Customers are interacting with your videos every day, and with the right video marketing platform you can start using video engagement data to have a big impact on your marketing automation programs. Here’s how:

Segment Your Leads Based On Viewing Behavior

Your marketing team has just produced a highly targeted explainer video showcasing one of the most powerful features your product has to offer. If someone watches this video all the way to the end, they’re now one of your hottest leads. Turn this video data into targeted follow-ups, and segment your leads based on their viewing behavior.

Take everyone who watches more than 50% of your new product video, and follow up with a demo request email. Segment prospects who watched last year’s Christmas video, and send them a friendly holiday greeting. Build a list of every prospect who watched less than ten percent of your pricing video, and have sales reach out with customized pricing options. Knowing who watched your videos and for how long gives you the power to take your content from passive educational resources into active lead qualification tools.

Lead Scoring Has Never Been Better

When someone downloads your latest whitepaper, you probably add a few points to their lead score. Same goes for opening your email newsletter. But what happens when someone watches your pricing or product video? Or watches all 40 minutes of your latest webinar recording? Prospects that watch your videos are giving you their undivided attention, and their lead score should reflect this.

Adding video engagement data to your lead scoring model allows you to better qualify interested prospects, and helps those that are demonstrating higher engagement in your content stand out above the rest. Here’s a sample lead scoring model for video interactions:

With a video marketing platform in place, you’ll know which videos each prospect has watched and for how long, allowing you to score them more effectively and convert them through the funnel faster than ever. If watching your demo video leads to a higher chance of conversion, then program that action to add a big number to a prospect’s lead score, and make sure they rise to the top of your lead list.

Nurture Your Leads With Really Relevant Content

One of the big benefits of marketing automation is the ability to know what content your prospects are interacting with, and follow up automatically with the right message at the right time. If a prospect reads your latest blog post on trends in network security, send them an email with your most recent whitepaper on how your solution locks down the company intranet.

The same principle can be applied to video.

If a lead watches your four-minute demo video, your video marketing platform can feed this data into your marketing automation, allowing you to follow up instantly with more relevant content. Is one of your prospects watching all six of your testimonials? Trigger an email to sales, and turn that viewer into a customer!

Discover What’s Working and Drive Better Results

Now that you’re tracking video viewing data right inside your contact and customer records, you have the ability to attribute real revenue back to your video assets. When your prospect watches a video and fills out a demo form, you can attribute that demo to their interaction with your video. When that prospect turns into a paying customer, your video has now created pipeline, and revenue for your business. That’s powerful information, and knowing which videos are helping you generate leads, pipeline and revenue allows you to focus your video marketing efforts on what’s working, and get more value from your videos.

Video and marketing automation go together like peanut butter and jelly, and if you’re interested in turning your video assets into powerful, trackable marketing tools, Vidyard and Act-On are here to help. Our integration allows you to push real-time video viewing behavior into individual lead profiles, and start scoring, segmenting and nurturing your leads based on how they interact with your most compelling content.

Check out the integration page here or email acton@vidyard.com for more information!

We often think about how happy we are as individuals in a given moment, but rarely look at the bigger picture.

The website MoveHub.com is a resource for people looking to move abroad, and they recently put together a fantastic and eye-opening infographic that measures the happiness levels of every part of the world.

The results are very interesting. The US and Russia rate pretty low on the happiness scale, while a glance at South America paints the exact opposite picture.

It's based on the HPI or "Happy Planet Index," Which MoveHub says puts a focus on living long lives with a "high experience of well-being within the environmental limits of the planet."

A look around this graphic will tell you a lot about how people in different parts of the world view their lives, take a look:

SEE ALSO: The Second Languages Of Every Part Of The World In One Incredible Infographic

Join the conversation about this story »

Building your home toolkit is tough , but if you're looking for a bit of professional advice, Adam Savage and Kevin Kelly break down their essentials on the Tested podcast.

Read more...

As bloggers, it’s all too easy to over focus on our words, opinions, and what we publish. After all, it’s the words that the search engines crawl for rankings and that drive people back again and again.

However, imagery is another incredibly important – and all too often – overlooked element.

For one, images help to assign meaning to your posts and to give context visually. For another, they help to break up the text and make your post more aesthetically pleasing – which helps to retain visitors and secure new visitors’ initial interest. That pleasing aesthetic and visual element is critical to making your posts appealing and “sticky” – and is a must-have for a quality blog post.

However, clip art is almost never a good idea and stock or custom photography can come with a high price tag.

Lucky for all of us bloggers, there are plenty of quality, free image sources out there.

1. Pixabay

This one is my personal favorite due to the flexibility. There are no attribution requirements, meaning that you can do whatever you want with the images you get from this source. Additionally, it’s super simple to use – there’s even a simple search right on the homepage available before you even log in. You’ll get access to photos, vector images, and illustrations and can filter down as needed. Downloading the actual images is incredibly easy and, again, comes with options for image size (pixels and MB) so that the image you have in-hand is clear and quality for whatever your purpose might be (in my case, most likely online for your blog – no huge file size necessary).

Note: I call sites like Pixabay DWYW sites – “Do Whatever You Want” – which is awesome!

Visit site: http://pixabay.com/

2. Unsplash

Unsplash is another one of my favorites that makes securing free images incredibly easy. With a free account, your quantity of downloads is a bit limited – you get 10 photos every 10 days (or an average of one per day)… but unless you’re a mega poster, that will likely suit your needs. The files are hi-res, which makes them crisp, clear, and easily re-sizeable.

As is the case with Pixabay, the files are yours to do with as you please – no limitations. You will need to subscribe – which is really just a matter of providing your email address. Artists are constantly submitting new photos, so the database continues to grow and offer fresh content.

Visit site: http://unsplash.com/

3. Compfight

This photo source is a bit different than the first two in that the images take a slightly more indy approach in many cases. You will search using a simple search, then be able to filter down by license type, whether they include the originals, and other various licensing elements. To stay legally compliant and properly attribute the photos you use, you’ll need to be familiar with Creative Commons, a fairly common requirement in the creative world. You’ll have access to plenty of free photos, but also to images that cost money for use, so be careful as you go through the download process to ensure you know of any potential costs upfront.

Visit site: http://compfight.com/

4. UPICM

With a tagline that reads, “free picks no tricks,” UPICM provides a pretty straightforward and easy to use resource for securing free images for blog use and beyond.

That said, there are subscription services available that do come with a cost, but also offer enhanced content and licensing options. One nice thing is that, if you do have an image budget, UPICM has buyout options – which means that you can buy out the creative license to ensure unique imagery (in contrast, many of the free image sites allow you – and anyone else – to download and use the same image). Of course, those buyouts do come with a price tag; but there’s plenty on the site for free, too.

Visit site: http://www.upicm.com/

5. Public Domain Pictures

As the name implies, this free image source specializes in providing images available through public domain (that’s how it provides them for free). Some of the images do come with release and licensing requirements, so be sure to thoroughly review each image and its attribution and licensing requirements to gain a full understanding (and stay legally sound). That sounds more daunting than it really is… This is actually a really cool site that provides unique imagery, thanks to photographers and creative professionals looking to sell work on an ongoing basis. All artists are vetted before submitting to ensure quality work… which then, becomes available to you! Happy searching.

Visit site: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/

6. Free Photos Bank

As the name implies, this is a site full of free photos. You can search either by a simple search or an advanced search which will allow you to filter down results by categories, keywords, dates, and more. As for the actual downloads, you will have two file options: jpg or a zip file. Zips are optimal for print use, but since we work on the web as bloggers, the jpg version will likely suit your purposes. Again, because these are free images, odds are that you won’t be the only one to use them – as a nice bonus feature, Free Photos Bank denotes photos that have been viewed the most times as “Popular.” It doesn’t tell you how often they’ve been used, but does serve as a handy indication.

Visit site: http://freephotosbank.com/

7. Alegri Photos

This is a fairly straightforward site, friendly for even the most novice of image providers to use. Browse among popular categories with the click of a button or search by keyword. You can also browse the newest images to the site by clicking on “Latest” or view popular images by clicking “Popular” from the top navigation. Images are very easy to share, thanks to the site’s built-in social media and share icons. Alegri Photos is a good resource if you’re short on time and need an easy find.

Visit site: http://www.alegriphotos.com/

8. Dreams Time

Dreams Time provides a nice array of images and image types, especially for a free resource. Browse by category, keyword, or image type. Also, while there is a free images section, this site also does offer paid options, so if you’re looking for free, stick to the “free images” link. If you’re willing to pay, you can expand your options to include everything from stock photography to vectors, web design graphics, and more. There is a promo available to download five or 10 images upfront for free – to take advantage, check out the subscription plans under pricing and plans.

Note: You will need to register an account and fill up your personal details before you can do a free download – which consumes slightly more time than the others above.

Visit site: http://www.dreamstime.com/free-images_pg1

9. Open Clip Art

Clip art is a bit different than your typical photo inclusion, but can come in handy for miniature page graphics or even for design elements within your blog (think arrows to the next page or for creating patterned wallpaper). This site offers access to free clipart, but unlike many of the other free image sources, does not delve into photography or more intricate design elements. That said, it’s easy to use and you never know what you’ll find – definitely worth a peruse.

Visit site: http://openclipart.org/

10. Little Visuals

You know all of those “fun” boxes flying around right now that ship various goodies to your home on a monthly basis (think pet products, makeup samples, snacks, etc.)? Think of Little Visuals like that – but for your email account. This free image resource sends subscribers seven hi-res images via email every seven days. No, you don’t know exactly what you’ll get (nor do you get to choose), but that’s half the fun. You can use the images however you choose – so even if something isn’t quite up your alley right now, save the images to build your own image library… you never know when something will come in handy.

Visit site: http://littlevisuals.co/

11. Death to the Stock Photo

This is another photos of the month collection subscription service. It’s incredibly easy to join – you literally just enter your email address on the join page – and bam! Free photos come to your inbox every month. Again, you don’t get to choose what you receive and you’ll only get them when they send (no searching databases or filtering by keyword), but the photos are different from what you’ll find elsewhere and again are available at your full disposal for pretty much any use under the sun. Of note, there is a premium service available – check the site for full details.

Visit site: http://join.deathtothestockphoto.com/

12. Morgue File

Morgue File actually has a really impressive database of free photos that includes – at the time of this writing – more than 329,000 images. Not shabby for a free image resource! Beyond the free photos, it does pull in images from various other sources, such as iStock, Getty Images, and more – however, conveniently, it keeps those paid images and their sources separated on different tabs so that you have clarity into what will cost you and what won’t. Photos span pretty much every topic and style under the sun – well worth a look.

Visit site: http://morguefile.com/

13. Free Digital Photos

This site offers great transparency and ease of use, paired with up-front licensing information. The free photos are always available for any application you can think of (yes, including your blog) – but, should you need larger image sizes for reproduction purposes than are available through the free portion of the site, you can always upgrade for a fee. One of the nice things about this site is the navigability – it’s easy to search by keyword, or, if you don’t quite know what you want, peruse by clicking on any of the categories on the left side of the page.

Note: Did you notice that the quality of the image above is not as good as the others? This is because the original size of the image is W:400px. FreeDigitalPhotos.net is not the best place to be if you are looking for large free photos.

Visit site: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

14. Creative Commons

You’ll hear about Creative Commons quite often in the image and creative world, particularly since it’s a bit of an industry leader in terms of copyright and licensing standards. This site amalgamates images available through other image sites, pulling them into one easy feed for users – and, importantly, it does so for free. However, because of that amalgamation, you won’t have quite as much control over the results you receive back. For example, a simple search for “cats” returns a smattering of pages – but many of the results are clipart. But, hey – who can argue with free?

Visit site: http://search.creativecommons.org/

15. Photo Pin

This easy-to-use photo site is every bloggers friend, providing an easy way to search, paired with a visually pleasing and non-intimidating interface. A simple keyword or keyphrase search will return loads of photos that you can then filter down based on license type and sort by recency, relevance, or ranked “interestingness.” How does it work? It pulls in photos from Flickr via an API and also searches Creative Commons (sound familiar?). If you are looking for something a bit more predictable, Photo Pin conveniently offers a discount code for iStockphoto.

Visit site: http://photopin.com/

16. Wikimedia Commons

Everyone’s heard of Wikipedia, but have you heard of Wikimedia? This is the jackpot for free, usable media assets. As of the time of this writing, this photo source has more than 23 million media assets available! Note that I said media assets – not photos or images. That’s because, in addition to static images and photography, you’ll also have access to video clips, drawings, animations, and more. Like I said, jackpot. Conveniently (and thankfully), there are some pretty sophisticated filtering tools to help you find the right media for your needs – search by keyword or topic, then filter by media type, source, licensing option, and more.

Visit site: http://commons.wikimedia.org/

17. Stock Photos for Free

As the name would imply, this is a source for free stock photos. Use either the simple search to search by keyword or browse based on pre-populated categories. There are currently more than 100,000 photos available – and importantly, your downloads are unlimited, meaning that you can download as many as you need without restrictions in quantity. All images automatically come with royalty free licenses, which removes any concern about copyright or licensing infringement – I love it when things are easy and clear. To start, you will need to create an account – but again, it’s free, so no worries there.

Visit site: http://www.stockphotosforfree.com/

18. Free Range Stock

To get started on this site, you’ll need to create a free account… assuming you actually want to download, that is. However, in the meantime, get the feel for it with the simple search that will pull in images based on the keyword or key phrase of your choosing. One nice thing about this site is that, beyond the qualification for a photographer to join and submit their work, the site puts some additional work into every image to ensure that it is of peak quality before they offer it for download.

Visit site: http://freerangestock.com/

19. Big Foto

This free image resource isn’t quite as “sexy” as some of the other sites, but if you’re in need of free photos, another resource never hurts. The photos are organized into pages by topic, allowing you to browse and even get ideas based on the pre-allocated topics. Since many amateur photographers submit to the site, you may be able to find something a bit “off the beaten path” – you never know.

Visit site: http://www.bigfoto.com/

20. RGB Stock

Membership to this image source is completely free, as are all of the images on the site. The licensing agreement is pretty straightforward and using the images for your blog shouldn’t provide any complications. That said, one thing that is nice is that, if you have questions about use or would like to use the photos beyond what is allowed per the licensing agreement, the site provides a link for you to contact the photographer – this is also a great way to get in touch should you love a particular artist’s work. In terms of navigation and usability, you can search either with a keyword or key phrase, by browsing pre-populated categories, or by browsing through Popular or even a particular artist’s work. It’s really straightforward, which saves time – an awesome trait in our world.

Visit site: http://www.rgbstock.com/

21. Image Finder

This free image resource is about as straightforward and clear as it gets. Simply type in your search keyword and receive a plethora of results in-line with your needs. Upon receiving you results, you will have the opportunity to filter by license type and to sort based on recency, relevance, or “interestingness.” In my experience, the images are all high quality, making an impressive use of low and highlights and composition. Another nice feature: you can download the size image that you need, ranging from small (180 x 240 approximately) to the original size (which will vary).

Visit site: http://imagefinder.co/

22. Wylio

This site makes use of the Creative Commons photo database, aiming to simplify the search and browse process. As a huge bonus perk, it has built-in editing tools which allow you to resize images with the click of a button. Additionally, it will create code to embed images on your pages as needed, simplifying the upload/download/enter URL process. There are more than 100 million free photos available – get started in just seconds by creating a free account.

Note: You can speed up Wylio signup process by signing in with your Google account

Visit site: http://www.wylio.com/

23. Pexels

All of the images available on Pexels are available under the Creative Commons Zero license, allowing you to access, modify, and distribute the images per your needs and as you see fit.

Visit site: http://www.pexels.com/

24. Designers Pics

Images available through Designers Pics cover every topic under the sun… as an example, in perusing the homepage, today imagery ranges from a windmill to paper people chains, eggs, a marina… you get the idea. And that’s just the homepage. You can either browse the categories or search by your own keyword. All available photos are hi-res, which ensures a quality reprint and an image that will certainly appear nicely on your blog.

Visit site: http://www.designerspics.com/

Wrapping Up

With so many free image resources available – and millions of free photos at your disposal – there’s no reason to avoid using images on your blogs. The visual is a critical element of every post – so get searching!

Beginnings are often hard and launching an online business is no different. From the very start online retailers are bombarded with new terms they need to understand in order to make some important decisions and improve the quality of their services. To help you make your first steps in the world of blogging, or to revive your otherwise lifeless WordPress site, let’s take a look at basic blog facts you will often hear in relation to your business or personal endeavors.

We’ll call it, “Teaching your old blog new tricks” or perhaps just a good ‘ol teaching.

Know That Needs Change Over Time

As your organization continues to grow and evolve, your blogging needs will naturally change over time. This is especially true when it comes to the content curation schedule of 2015, and each year thereafter. There is no hard and fast method I can offer you that specifically dictates “How to Blog”. This is unfortunately a question that does not have an easy (or boilerplate) response.

Although your content will need the necessary unique personal touch, having relevant titles and keywords will always be necessary. Therefore, you should take the following into consideration when planning your content each month to assure proper validity of keywords while paying attention to KWD and other factors which could either help or convolute your content and wage heavy Panda penalties.

Knowin that needs change over time is paramount since the more readable (and updated) your content appears, the stronger your readership will be. At the end of the day, everyone simply wants an excellent blog to read with numerous contributing editors involved.

Content Need Not Be Perfect – Yet

I’m not saying you should write content that looks like absolute garbage, but everything doesn’t need to be fit for an award show, either. If you have an idea of what to write about, write it. If you don’t have an idea to write about, write about anything related to your niche. The point of blogging for your business is to increase exposure for your actual business, so by providing Google with plenty of content, you’ll increase your Page Rank and get more traffic. As your blog grows with Google and traffic increases, then you can write only meaningful content for your users.

My friend Aditya runs an Indian makeup blog (WiseShe), and knows the value of precision in readership.  Aditya will often run through content several dozen times before finalizing it – this is a practice you, too, should follow.

Keep your research and SEO equally aligned

Again, your objective here is to get more business, so if you focus your efforts solely on SEO at first, you’ll give yourself a serious head start, especially if you run a New York used cars business or even an Indian makeup blog. Rather than writing meaningful content at first when nobody will be reading your content anyway, and then focusing on SEO later on, you can do it the other way around and have better results.

Aside from research, there are much deeper intricacies when considering what content will be written, and on what day, all of which should tap into your business’ creativity. Your end results of having engaging readers and content which teaches instead of pushes sales could go awry without actually planning what points should be covered by you, or staff writers. Consider these points when planning your content each month:

• What time of season is this? Would something that hits holidays work for my content?
• Whether you’ll plan regular articles, video assistances or how-to’s
• If your company is anticipating big announcements during a given month
• What your guest bloggers need to cover, if anything
• Which other posts your content should link to (since internal linking is very important)

The inevitable task of planning your content will rely on cooperation with everyone, which means that planning content could be the entire writing teams’ effort, or at least fairly opinionated.

Keep Consistency

Google loves when your content is continuously flowing, but it’ll also help you get into the habit of keeping a steady stream of content going, especially when you’re at a point in time when you would like to write more meaningful content. Whether it’s two or three posts a week or more, keeping the content going is key to increasing traffic for you blog, which then turns into more traffic for your business. What does that result in, then? More profits.

Blogging is a serious task for any motivated individual. If you manage yourself well with your own business and follow these tips, your blog will be just as successful as your business. If you need more tips, check out online classifieds as well.

Cornered by liquidity problems, the Venezuela regime of Nicholas Maduro investment bank Goldman Sachs obligations for more than $4 billion that the Dominican Republic owed to Venezuela for oil supplied through Petrocaribe, receiving only 41 percent the total value of debt, according to sources close to the operation.

The transaction would involve a gain of 59 percent for Goldman Sachs, equivalent to $2.36 billion, on payment of $ 1.75 million grant to Venezuela for the obligations in August this year totaled about $4.090 billion.

The financial crisis facing the regime generated great doubts about the country's ability to continue to support the costs of subsidizing oil economy with Cuba and its other allies.

Zero hedge noted the financial problems for Venezuela

Read more »

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Back in 2001, when Sheryl Sandberg told Google’s then-CEO, Eric Schmidt, she wasn’t sure whether to leave politics for the undefined role she’d been offered at Google, he famously told her this:

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, get on, don’t ask what seat.”

That philosophy is still alive and well in Silicon Valley, and one rather accomplished Stanford student has quantified it. Chris Barber, a computer science major, has created a list of the top tech companies, or rocket ships, to join right now.

A couple of months ago, during Y Combinator’s startups class at Stanford, Facebook and Asana cofounder Dustin Moskovitz told students to look at the difference in the impact they can have at a large but growing company, a smaller one, or one they founded. A bigger slice of a small pie, or a smaller slice of a bigger pie?

“Dustin Moskovitz’s talk really influenced the way I thought about impact,” Barber told me in an email. “He basically says, ‘Think about it. Look at two people: employee No. 100 at Google/Facebook vs. the founder of the average angel-backed startup.'”

So Barber decided to find those promising companies. He’s named his project the Breakout List.

Looking at tech companies, with a bias toward the Bay Area and software, Barber used input from major investors he knows (“companies that they knew should or should not be on the list,” he says), as well as criteria such as valuation growth, investor tier, team quality, and, when available, revenue. Cowboy Ventures’ Eileen Lee’s list of “Unicorns” (U.S.-based software companies with valuations of $1 billion or more) served as inspiration, especially in looking at valuations.

The list includes the usual suspects like Twitter, Airbnb, Dropbox, Snapchat, and Lyft. But it also includes smaller and newer ones like Leeo, Affirm, Doordash, and many others. Facebook is absent.

He admits that the list is subjective and biased. Nevertheless, it’s a good starting point for engineers looking for high-growth opportunities.

Barber said he’d seen similar advice from investors Marc Andreessen and Andy Rachleff, and Sandberg herself. “It makes a ton of sense. So I’d really like to spread that,” he said.

“I believe there is a ton of value created when a talented engineer joins a breakout company. Many engineers know this too, but they have no clue where to start, what companies are growing, or where they would have the most impact,” he said.

Tracking hot companies has been a favorite pastime (and sometimes necessity) for the tech industry for quite some time. Several months ago, we wrote about the White List, a side project looking at startups’ traction in investors’ social media activity, a sort of “buzz-tracking” attempt.

There’s also Mattermark, a company that originated from a couple of lists cofounder Danielle Morrill created about VC firms. Before she knew it, Morrill and team launched Mattermark to analyze and rank as many investors and startups, in as many ways as possible, to create a data-driven understanding of them.

So it’s no surprise that just yesterday, upon Barber’s friend posting the list on tech product leaderboard Product Hunt on his behalf — Barber initially wanted to be anonymous — it caught the community’s attention very quickly. The list also landed on the Y Combinator-run forum Hacker News the day before. Techies clearly have a hunger for these efforts at analysis.

But as with everything else around here, young engineers (and others) should probably not base their major career decisions on someone else’s list. Of all the common reasons for founding, and arguably joining, a startup, “the specific passion should come first, and the startup second,” Y Combinator president Sam Altman warned his class of bright-eyed Stanford students.

Barber seems to know this. Regarding his bigger plans for the list, he stuck to this: “If you’re an engineer, keep an eye out.”

Attending business networking events for me has often been a waste of time.

It feels like speed dating without a happy ending. Too many people with business cards and nothing in common.

The experience?

Frustrating, fake, and futile. Much snake oil and not enough authentic connecting.

The social web has reinvented that desperate business networking.

Weak ties and strong ties

Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, you can connect online with people that have a common interest on the other side of the world or around the corner. You share their tweet, leave a comment, or offer something of value in their Twitter stream or on Facebook page. It’s a small connect, but it is often noticed and valued.

This is the weak tie connection.

Want to take it up a notch and then you can Skype, grab a coffee, or even share a meal. You can see the color of their eyes, sense their passion, and authentic presence. A real relationship can commence.

This is where the strong ties start.

Lurking, loitering, or effective?

LinkedIn is a place where hundreds of millions of professionals from around the world hang out, connect, and network. It is the default business person’s social network. It is more effective than lurking at a a business cocktail party waiting to be pounced on.

Many mistakes are made on LinkedIn from selling without creating a relationship, to not being clear on your profile. But on the other hand it can be used to generate leads faster than your competition if you are willing to learn how to use it effectively.

LinkedIn can also be used as a global CRM platform to target potential clients and grow your business.

LinkedIn facts and statistics

So what are some LinkedIn facts and what was also revealed when they announced their 3rd quarter results in 2014?

1. LinkedIn started on May 5, 2003
2. It went public in May 19, 2011
3. LinkedIn has 332 million members
4. Two new users join every second
5. 42 million unique mobile visitors per month. This stat is up from 29 million a year before (This is a 45% increase in just 12 months )
6. Net revenue for the quarter was $568 million which is a big increase from the Q3 result in 2013 of $393 million
7. 107 million users are in the USA alone
8. LinkedIn’s user goal is three billion registered users
9. Average time a user spends on LinkedIn is 17 minutes per month
10. 25 million LinkedIn profiles are viewed every day
11. One in three professionals on the planet are on LinkedIn
12. You can increase your LinkedIn views by 11 times by including a photo
13. 41% of users visit LinkedIn via mobile
14. The average number of connections on LinkedIn is 930
15. There were 28 billion Linkedin profile views in Q3, 2014
16. 13% of millennials use LinkedIn
17. LinkedIn’s percentage of social sharing is only 4%
18. 39 million students and recent grads are on LinkedIn
19. 56% of members are male
20. 44% of members are female
21. 30,000 long form posts are published on Linkedin every week
22. 41% of millionaires use LinkedIn
23. 13% of LinkedIn users don’t have a Facebook account
24. 59% of Linkedin users don’t visit Twitter
25. LinkedIn users spend 26% of their time on LinkedIn using the mobile app

Infographic source: Wearesocial. Other statistics were sourced from LinkedIn’s quarterly report and Expandedramblings.com

What about you?

What facts surprised you. How are you using LinkedIn?

Look forward to hearing your stories and insights in the comments below.

Ask any career counselor, resume reviewer, employer, employee, or job-seeker this question, and never receive the same answer twice: what’s more important to an employer – a candidate’s level and quality of education, or the amount and quality of relevant job experience that candidate has? In an ideal world, a candidate would be armed with both elements, and would ride into work on a unicorn that would have a reverse environmental impact, but since we live in the real world, candidates usually have to choose between opportunities that give them real world experience or first class education – and employers have to choose between candidates who chose schooling vs work.

A new survey by Glassdoor suggests that while an advanced degree can still be advantageous to job seekers, many employees now feel that their academic credentials are less important to their professional development. While 82% of U.S. college grads in the survey thought their level of education has been an asset in their careers, 72% also believe that specialized training to acquire specific skills is more valuable in their workplace than a degree.

Additionally, three out of four survey participants believed that their employers value work experience and related skills more than education when evaluating potential employees. Clearly, both employers and employees are looking for more opportunities to learn new skills and to add relevant experience to their resumes. The question is: where can they find it?

Interestingly enough, more and more organizations are looking inwards to help develop promising employees. Companies are sending employees back to school for advanced degrees less, and, based upon specific skill sets identified by the organization as crucial to leadership, are developing their own training programs more. Job shadowing, collaborative learning, and formal training programs are helping organizations combine education and experience – without breaking the bank.

So what’s more important to you when looking at a job candidate – their education, or their experience? Would you be willing to take on a fairly inexperienced undergraduate and train them up? Tell us in the comments!

We’re fast-approaching the end of 2014. You know what that means: trend watching posts galore! Here’s my view on how I think 2015 will shape up for B2B marketers.

1. Marketing as education

Buyers, especially B2B buyers, need to have as much information as possible before they can make a purchasing decision. Remember, it’s not just one person making that final decision on whether to go with you as their vendor. There may be 3, 4, 5 people involved, at various management levels. Growing their business is their number 1 priority. They want to understand how your product helps them do that.
Produce marketing content that answers their questions, shows them how to overcome the obstacles they face in growing their business, and solves their problems. It builds credibility with your audience, attracts new readers to your content, and positions you as the thought leader in the market.

2. Simplifying the marketing process

Gone will be the days of isolated departments in any B2B firm, where Marketing ignores Sales, and vice versa. In order to optimize their workflow, Marketing will follow their CMO’s lead and start breaking down all of those information silos. Reaching out across departments, and even geographic locations, teams will start to work together better, integrating their specific insights into the overall marketing message.

We will see a more conscious effort to bring disparate groups to the table to learn how to collaborate across screens, channels, and moments of truth to deliver ONE experience to customers wherever they are in the lifecycle. – Brian Solis

3. The rise of the HUMAN in marketing

DJ Waldow of Marketo told Lee Odden that “…we’ll begin to see more marketers incorporate human-speak into their messaging – videos, pictures, humor, and human!” B2B brands in particular will continue this trend, as they’ve (mostly) realized that they’re still talking to people when they sell to their customers. Just because they sell to an enterprise-sized customer doesn’t mean there aren’t any humans in there reading their content.

4. Learning how to connect better with an audience

On the heels of remembering that’s it’s humans that read their content, B2B marketers will understand how to better connect with their audience. Tim Washer from Cisco Systems says that it’ll be the year of humor in digital marketing. While technology brands still tend to be the domain of the young, they’re finding themselves in more positions of authority and power, and one of the easiest ways to reach them is with a “clever laugh” or the “vulnerability of silliness”. That’s what earns their trust and loyalty, which is what we’re looking for as marketers, right?

5. Really getting to know your audience

Lizetta Staplefoote calls this “micro-targeting”, but I just see it as a getting to know your audience better. Commit to developing better buyer personas and avatars, and really dig in to the needs and motivations of your audience – don’t forget to find out about the needs and motivations of their companies as a whole too! B2B marketing has to hit both the individual and the enterprise as a whole in order to be successful. It’s what makes B2B marketing a little more tricky, as you’ve got to serve more than one audience.

6. Understanding how technology + marketing play together

As a Geek, I love this idea, proposed by Jason Miller from LinkedIn. Sure, it’s important to produce quality content for your marketing campaigns, but understanding how the technology of digital marketing works, and how it can affect it is going to be important too. As Jason said, “The ability to understand how front end web development and coding can affect, enhance, and optimize a content strategy will become a necessity for marketers instead of a nice to have.”

7. Increased focus on security

Technology brands are continually thinking about security and privacy when it comes to their own products. They understand that any slip-up can lead to significant monetary and reputational damage to them and their brand. Forrester’s 2014 Technology Trends found that brands lost a minimum of $10 million for every data breach, and that’s often the starting point. Whether it’s Apple’s iCloud photo hack, or a retailer losing the credit card information of millions of customers, the fact is, any kind of security breach reflects negatively on the brand. As consumers we’re starting to get a bit jaded with these breaches, however even though they’re not as common in the B2B world, the threat is still there. Protecting your customer’s data is now an essential part of the relationship building with your B2B audience.

8. Marketers & brands become publishers

No, I’m not talking about marketers suddenly publishing books, but rather the idea that they’re publishing content, regardless of the type of content it is. Ann Handley thinks we’ll push those boundaries even further, and focus on empathy and customer experience when it comes to marketing. That means creating content that’s useful, helpful, and in tune with your audience.

9. The rise of the Marketing Technologist

The successful brands today are ones that have embraced the idea of being a “marketer in a digital world.” We’re now wedded to our smartphones and mobile devices, and can do so much while on the go. Work and play are now done almost exclusively online, so if you’re not on board with the idea of a digital world, you’re in trouble. The Marketing Technologist will be able to integrate the digital world we live in with the marketing strategies that have worked in the past, and come up with a new marketing outlook that works well today.

These are just a few of the trends that I think will continue on into 2015, and continue to influence the way we do B2B marketing going forward. We’ve all got our own perspectives on how things will play out, so I’m curious to hear what you think will be the trends that we see next year. What ones have you noticed now that you think will hit it big next year? Let me know in the comments.

“The greatest tool of communication given to us by Mother Nature is on the table,” says John Bates, CEO of Executive Speaking Success & Business Coaching. This tool he’s referring to is the power of storytelling!

Image via Flickr

I recently joined John Bates and some fellow Boston professionals in a modern, glass-enclosed room at JLabs in Cambridge to learn how to tell a story like a TED Pro. Once I saw TED in the title I knew the talk had to be good (and I was right). John Bates has an impressive background actively coaching CEO’s and executives at big name companies like Motorola and Johnson & Johnson, training 100’s of TEDx speakers and “is considered one of the best communication trainers working today.”

The Importance of Storytelling in Business

So what does storytelling have to do with your business? Everything! If you can’t properly convey a story then your products are not going to appeal to your audience. Bates reminded us that we love stories so much that we have to be trained to not fall for anecdotal evidence. Why? “Because our brains value stories over anything else,” states Bates.

Stories can be incorporated into all your forms of content: blogs, e-books, whitepapers, and even your “About us” page to captivate your audience. The value of storytelling can also be transferred to other departments to grow your business – for example training your sales reps to tell the story of your company or product or using your story to captivate investors and bring in the big bucks $$$. Once you learn to tell a good story, your audience is always going to be wanting more, which will turn your readers into leads, your leads into customers, and your customers into loyal customers.

6 Key Tips for Business Storytelling

Well, what if you’re an awful storyteller? Then keep reading because I’m about to share some of Bates TED-worthy wisdom.

When Bates was young his dad, a Vietnam War veteran, would tell gory war stories and he would sit there bug-eyed with his jaw on the floor, mesmerized by every word that rolled out of his dad’s mouth. Little Bates asked himself, are all kids bloodthirsty, or is there something wrong with me? But as he grew wiser with age he realized that war stories have it all, which brings me to the first takeaway.

1.       Every story needs the 5 C’s – Circumstance, Curiosity, Characters, Conversations and Conflict: So why was Bates fascinated by his father’s tales of battle? Because they always incorporated these 5 mesmerizing C’s. So when crafting your story lay out the circumstances. Set the scene and give the vital information that will provide context for your reader. Use curiosity to leave the reader wanting more (this trick works in headlines too). If there is nothing to be curious about then why would the reader keep reading? Characters and conversation go hand-in-hand. If you’re telling a story without any people and no dialogue your readers will likely doze off. And last but not least, conflict, which is easily the most important element. As Bates explains, “If there’s not any conflict then there’s not much of a story.”

2.       Stop bragging and start relating to your audience: I can still remember sitting in the 90-degree heat draped in my black cap and gown as sweat dripped down my legs on the day of my college graduation. As I sat their impatiently twiddling my thumbs and trying not to pass out, I attempted to listen to the keynote speaker without throwing my Poland spring bottle at the stage. The speech was awful and resembled a laundry list of his accomplishments.

At the end of the day no one cares that you graduated top of your class from Harvard or cured a rare form of cancer in Africa. These accomplishments are wonderful and noteworthy and I would definitely recommend sharing them on your resume, but when it comes to telling a story, people want to hear about your failures. Why? As human beings we relate to your failures because we are all flawed. “People don’t connect with your successes, they connect with your messes,” states Bates. “Your message is in your mess.” Bates went on to explain that you don’t want to be the Luke Skywalker of your story, but instead be the Yoda: “You’re not the hero of your talk, your audience is.”

3.       Spark the emotional side of your audience’s brain: For those of you that did not cry in HardBall when Baby G was shot or in The Notebook when Noah and Allie die holding hands, I have one question, what’s wrong with you? I’m kidding, but in all seriousness even if you did not cry during these heart-wrenching scenes, your heart strings were pulled and you felt something. Whether you feel sad, happy, scared, or content, feeling something makes us feel more alive, which is why it is critical to make your listeners or readers feel. “None of the facts and figures matter until you have some sort of emotional connection,” said Bates. “Stories are a great way to connect emotionally.” When crafting a story, Bates recommends thinking about what emotion you want to communicate and then provide information to support the emotion.

4.       Get Your Readers Engaged Through the Senses: The smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies rushed into my nose the second I opened the door. The dimly lit Christmas lights gracefully draped across my warm basement apartment, and I could hear the sound of Carolers singing in the cobblestoned neighborhood streets outside. Do you see what I’m doing here? Did your heart just melt into a fuzzy ball? Appealing to the senses through your story immediately engages the reader. Set the scene by describing what it visually looks like. What sounds occurred? What smells filled the air? How did it feel? Appealing to these senses that the majority of your readers have experienced has a way of engrossing them into your story. As Bates stated, “Get the entire brain engaged instead of just a thin slice.” Bates follows the principles of VAKO: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, and Olfactory. With these four elements in your story, you’re likely to draw in and lock down your audience. But make sure not to overdo it, your story needs some meat (cough, cough the 5 C’s) to keep your audience interested.

5.       Start Your Story in the Middle: Far too often storytellers or marketers give way too much detail upfront. They start their story in chronological order, putting the audience to sleep before the exciting stuff occurs. By the time you’ve reached the AH-HA moment, your audience members are synced into their Instagram feeds or in a deep-dream filled REM sleep. Perhaps they just clicked onto a new page, never to return again. If you are anything like me then your attention span is about as long as an inch-worm so snap out of it and get your audience into it. “Life happens in chronological order – that’s boring!” states Bates. “Start in the middle, where things are exciting. It’s much more interesting.”

6.       Give Your Audience What Matters: Do you remember that time when you told a long, detailed story to realize your friends looked about as engaged as they do during their commute to work on a Monday morning? At the end you come head first with a sarcastic “Good story…Tell it again.” Your face turns as red as a strawberry and you immediately cross story-telling off the list of things to do in a social setting. I’m here to tell you that your story didn’t suck! Congratulations! The way you told it did. Why? Well, it might have actually been an awful story, but you likely included waaay too much unnecessary detail. No, we do not care that your alarm went off on-time as usual or that your bus was a few minutes late. We’re much more interested in the fact that your teacher was fired for a rumored relationship with a student or that your bus driver was drunk and knocked over 4 mailboxes before getting handcuffed in front of the principle. Bates said it well, “Give us what matters to us. Pick three points and don’t cram unnecessary information in. Bring just the key things to the top.”

So keep your audience on the edge of their seat with these tips to charm them and leave them wanting more. Before you know it they’ll be avid followers of your content.

These tips are just dusting the surface of what it takes to tell a good story, therefore I’m curious:

What do you believe makes a great story?

How do you incorporate storytelling into your content marketing efforts?

If you work in outsourced B2B lead gen, you know this moment in a conversation all too well:

Sales Partner: Can you tell me what criteria you want us to follow when procuring data?

Client: Well, we want only C-level executives, in companies with over 250 million in annual revenue.  Our sales reps won’t take calls with anyone who has a lower title.  What’s the point if they’re not the ones who will sign off on the budget?  We don’t want to waste our time with managers or directors.

And there you have it.  You’ve just been “C-Bombed.”

To me, there are few things more shortsighted than limiting a calling campaign to just one cluster of very high-level titles. I did some digging in AG’s instance of Salesforce.com and came upon a pretty valuable stat when it comes to passing leads in the C suite:

Of all the leads our SDR’s have passed in 2014 that have gone to a next step in our client’s sales process, less than 10% had titles in the C Level.

I get it.  Clients want qualified oportunities with the guy or gal who controls the purse strings within an organization.  However, you are doing your B2B lead generation teams a disservice by not allowing them to prospect multiple levels of the business.  Here are three reasons why:

1. C-level executives are often not directly experiencing the pains and needs your product or service alleviates.

The first and most relevant reason to prospect other members of an organization is that C-level executives in large organizations are simply not often as acquainted with the pains and needs your product or service ameliorates as those actually managing the day-to-day functions of the job.  So much of what makes our client’s solutions valuable to a prospect is that it can specifically address actual challenges an organization is experiencing.  It’s very difficult to extract that information from someone who just couldn’t tell you what those challenges are (and even if you got them live, would probably just direct you to their director or manager anyway).

2. You’re more likely to have the opportunity to speak with a director or manager rather than a C-level employee.

The second reason is, of course, gatekeepers. They are real, and they will screen your calls or scan your emails. They can either stonewall you or be your champion.  Sure, there are some sales strategies for speaking to gatekeepers and catching C-level prospects when gatekeepers may not be available (i.e., call earlier or later in the day, or when you think they might be on a lunch break). But at the end of the day, you are more likely to get in front of a C-level prospect by producing a referral from their managers, directors, or VP’s in the business.  How?  C-level executive assistants are typically adept at pointing you to the correct person who would actually have the most information about the challenge you’re looking to help solve, if any at all.  Talk to managers, directors, department heads, and VPs, and convince them to bring your solution to the attention of the CEO/CFO/COO. After all, according to Edelman Trust Barometer, 84% of B2B decision makers begin their buying process with a referral.

3. Common sense: C-level executives are just too busy to talk to you.

The third reason is basic timing and logistical issues.  C-level executives are incredibly busy people and are constantly traveling or in meetings, etc.  There needs to be a reasonable level of understanding on the client side that getting these executives to agree to give 30 minutes of their time for a demo/discovery call is simply unlikely.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: I don’t think we should totally discount calling into the C-suite. My intention is to show that the most successful outsourced lead gen campaigns I run are balanced, as sales development reps reach out to many contacts within a prospect company.  At AG, we think that talking to three or four contacts of varying levels within one organization is much better than restricting ourselves to just C-level contacts.  We also have determination about decision-making included in our scripting, so in the event that we do pass over a title that does not start with a “C,” our SDR’s are asking questions like, “Who makes the final decision on something like this?  Would there be any additional evaluators/decision makers you would like to include on an initial discussion?”

Considering that the average sales cycle has increased 22% over the past five years due to more decision makers being involved in the buying process, according to SiriusDecisions, it’s definitely time to start rethinking your call strategy to include influencers.

“Content is king.” – Bill Gates

We agree with Bill Gates. Writing generating content through a business blog is one of the best things you can do for your company. By writing about educational and informative content, not only does it establish your company and its employees as the experts in the field, it also allows you to connect with your customers and assists in improving your search engine rankings. The question is, how do you get started?

Below is the best advice we’ve ever heard when it comes to starting and maintaining a business blog. We hope you find it helpful.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN WRITING

1. Develop an Editorial Calendar

Assuming you already have a platform (such as HubSpot or WordPress) to build your blog, one of the first things you should do is develop a blog editorial calendar. An editorial calendar is basically a to-do list. It hold you accountable to dates and helps you structure the content you’re writing.

2. Optimize Your Blog Titles for Search

When developing the posts for your content, you should do keyword research, using a keyword research tool, such as HubSpot, to see which words you are most likely to rank for in search engines. Once you have a list of these keywords, include them in the blog titles you place in your editorial calendar to help improve your search rankings.

On the topic of titles, be sure to make your title captivating and enticing. It is the first impression of your blog post, so make it a good one.

3. Keep Length and Frequency in Mind

Remember, blogs aren’t essays or novels. The length should be however long it takes for you to get your point across, which can typically be done by writing between 400 and 800 words. By keeping the length shorter, you are also able to post more frequently which helps with search engine optimization. Aim to publish blog posts at least twice per week.

WRITING THE POST

1. Write for Your Personas

This is something that seems simple but that a lot of people struggle with. You must remember that you are writing for your audience, not yourself. Just because you prefer chocolate over vanilla, doesn’t mean they do. Speak to their wants and their needs. Speak in the tone that they speak in. Is it conversational? Professional? The more you know about your audience, the more successful your blog will be. Do your research.

2. Have A Captivating Opening

Did you know that on average, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average site visits; 20% is more likely though. By creating a captivating introduction to your post, the odds of a reader finishing the post go up significantly.

3. Make the Content Educational and Informative

Your blog should not be a place to promote your company. You have the rest of your website for that. It should be a place to establish credibility and build authority within your industry. Your blog content should revolve around your buyer persona’s pain points, questions, interests, etc. By providing them with the answers they are looking for, it will make them more likely to trust you, which in turn, will make them more likely to buy.

4. Add More to Your Blog than Just Copy

In addition to the content, your blog posts should have an engaging format with at least one picture, bold lettering throughout the post, italics, bullet points, you name it. Just don’t stick to the standard paragraph after paragraph. Create a post that allows your reader to breeze through the content easily and understand what they are getting from the start.

5. Optimize the Post for SEO

Once your blog is written, be sure to optimize it for SEO by following the guidelines below:

• Make sure your image has an alt tag
• Include internal links within the post to other pages of your site
• Use H3 tags
• Include a keyword, that will rank well in search, in your title and URL
• Create a meta description with the same keyword included

By doing this, you increase your odds of being found in search engines.

6. Include a CTA

Include a call to action (CTA) in your blog post that will lead the visitor to an offer on your site where you can obtain additional information from them. This will help you turn people from visitors into leads which will get them into the sales and marketing funnel.

THE BLOG POST IS FINISHED…NOW WHAT?

1. Promote post

The blog is live, it’s on your site, so now what do you do? Just wait and hope somebody stumbles upon it? No! You have to promote it. The best way to promote your blog content is via social media. Discover where your audience is on the web, and promote it there.

2. Respond to Comments

Your job doesn’t necessarily stop once the promotion is done. If somebody posts a comment on your blog, be sure to respond to it, even if the comment is negative. This will help facilitate a conversation between you and your audience and it will assist in building your online reputation and credibility.

3. Analyze Your Performance

After a given amount of time (aim for at least monthly), look at your blog analytics and analyze which posts are performing better than others. From there, you can plan future content off of those that are performing the best and increase visits, leads, and customers in the future.

There you have it, the best business blog coaching advice we’ve ever heard. We hope you find it useful. What other pointers would you add to this list? Please leave your comments below.