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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos thinks books prices overall are too high and that this is part of the reason authors aren’t making as much money as they used to — but he’s only half correct when he says authors can make more money by charging less per book.

“Book prices in my view are too expensive. … $30 for a book is too much,” Bezos told Business Insider’s Henry Blodget on stage at an event in New York City today. He explained that the traditional logic for booksellers has been that books are only ever competing with similarly priced ($20 to $30) books for consumers’ hard-earned money, but what’s actually happening is that books are also competing with other kinds of digital media like games, TV episodes, and songs.

“If you realize that what [books] are really competing with is Candy Crush, then you’d start to say, ‘Gosh, maybe we should work on reducing friction on long-form reading,” Bezos said. “If you want to do more of something, make the friction less. If you want less of something, make the friction more. If there’s a particular snack food that you like a lot and it’s making you fat, put it on the top shelf where it’s harder to get to, and you’ll eat less of it.”

The “friction” he is referring to includes the high price of books, which if lowered would lead to more people buying them. In turn, those producing books would make more money — including authors. So, for example, you might buy one new hardcover per month at the average price of around $30, but if the average price were lowered to $10, you might end up buying four to five books over the same period, thus increasing the total amount spent.

“Making reading more affordable is not going to make authors less money. … It’s going to make authors more money,” he said.

But Bezos is only half correct. Regular book publishers probably could sell more books and make more money if they lowered prices. Alternately, authors could ditch their regular publisher in favor of Amazon’s publishing arm, which offers a greater cut on book sales and more control over pricing. But neither of these scenarios are likely to increase the total amount of money going to authors.

Why? Well first of all, regular book publishers do have a vested interest in helping authors make more money, but their first priority will always be to ensure their own profits remain healthy. If lowering book prices will increase the publisher’s profits, then it will do so, but not to the extent that it’ll lose money so authors can make more.

Secondly, authors could start publishing through Amazon’s publishing arm for the bigger cut on each book sold, but the total number of books sold will likely be lower. This is because books under Amazon Publishing sell only through Amazon’s online stores (not competitors), and won’t get the kind of marketing and promotion offered by regular book publishers. In other words, it’ll be a lot harder for authors to produce a bestseller. And that means regular publishers might actually offer a more lucrative deal.

Authors know this, and that’s why they weren’t so quick to side with Amazon during Amazon’s recently resolved fight with major book publisher Hachette, which had to do with the online retailer wanting a more generous set of terms that would allow it to sell Hachette book titles at a lower, more competitive rate while still turning a reasonable profit. It caused a fight between the two parties that led to Amazon removing Hachette book titles from its product recommendations, eliminating all discounts on those titles, and otherwise discouraging consumers from buying them. The compromise was to allow Hachette to set retail prices on all titles sold through the online retailer. Hachette obviously has a vested interest in helping the authors of its published books make more money, but I highly doubt this will be prioritized over ensuring its own profit margins remain high. That means authors probably won’t be cashing larger checks, sadly.

It is worth noting that Amazon is working to “reduce” friction in other ways when it comes to books and long-form reading, such as keeping prices low on its branded tablet and e-reader devices and attempting to sell books by the chapter (aka Kindle Singles). Those moves aren’t going to help full-time authors in the short-term, but it’s definitely a good start. And Amazon is certainly doing a heck of a lot more than the major book publishers.

With the rise of self-publishing services like Blurb and Amazon-owned CreateSpace, this lose-lose scenario for authors may begin to change, but it’ll be a while before they are making the kind of money they deserve from a bestselling title.

Consumers can now buy any type of fashion without hitting the high street, but online stores still have one glaring problem — there's no true digital equivalent of the fitting room on the web. Ideas such as UPcload — the platform that uses a webcam to take shoppers' measurements at home — have offered a decent attempt in the past, but now Israel's LikeAGlove uses wearable technology to accurately calculate body shape, automatically showing users which size to buy online.

First, customers get an elasticated smart garment in the form of a top or dress which is embedded with sensors. When they wear it, the garment uploads a 3D rendering of their exact body size and shape, along with their measurements. The shirts are even able to analyze how the material hangs or pinches as the wearer moves about. From this data, LikeAGlove can show users the right sizes they need to buy for particular brands. Eventually, the startup wants to create a search engine so users can easily shop through third party stores without having to worry about purchasing the wrong size and dealing with the returns process.

Watch the video below to learn more about the service:

LikeAGlove aims to launch in early 2015, although no pricing structure has been announced yet. Could this type of smart, at-home measuring be the future of tailored online goods?

Website: www.likeaglove.co.il
Contact: info@likeaglove.co.il

Want to sell your business, but know it's not worth what you need to move onto the next thing? Try these simple strategies.

What do gamification and storytelling have in common? Well, they’re both trending new ways to reshape your current lead generation setup. Whether it’s the blog says gamification is shaping up modern marketing or the content marketer explaining the value of storytelling, there’s no questioning the popularity of these two topics.

What happens though when you put them together?

As a writer, I’ve come to conclude that story-telling isn’t just limited to sitting down with a book and just reciting off it in the hopes of drawing in the listeners. There’s also interactive storytelling which is not as new an idea as you might think.

Video games may have sparked the craze but even the games themselves hearken back to the days when children would pretend to be in different worlds and being different people. Believe it or not, this too is a form of storytelling. It’s the kind that allows participants to shape the story themselves, not just let an author hold absolute sway over the chain of events. This accomplishes several things:

• A sense of accomplishment – Participants are rewarded by proceeding to the next chapter of the story.
• A sense of independence – Again, they are made aware that they have a strong say over what happens next and express what direction they’d like to take.
• A sense of responsibility – Given the previous two, this is to be expected. Your prospects understand that they’re obliged the play their part.

Coincidentally, these are the same values that B2B marketers are told to instill when applying gamification. They want to incentivize purchases and customer engagement from the customer’s end. So as you can see, it’s not just possible to merge these two increasingly popular concepts for your lead generation strategy.

It could very well be the thing it needs and here’s how to get started:

• Create an environment – Consider the equivalent of world building. You want your prospects, your ‘players,’ to be in an environment where they can act out and decide what kind of story will take place.
• Offer several roles – Like in a lot of popular fantasy RPGs, participants are offered a variety of roles that match their personality. Isn’t it the same when it comes to a sales approach?
• Use roles to determine prospect’s needs – As you take into account the kind of role your prospect likes to play, use the information to determine what it is they want to accomplish.
• Align results with prospect’s initiative – Not only should you create different results for your prospect’s different choices, you need to make sure that these are the results they want.

You don’t necessarily have to be either a game developer or an award-winning author to apply these very basic ideas. Storytelling helps you create powerful, relevant content while gamification lets you give prospects the independence they need to tell you what they’re looking for.

Today’s world is a world of content. Consumers want content – content that entertains, that amuses and that educates and adds value to them. For this reason, content marketing is edging forward to stand among the giants of marketing.

But with myriad choices for consumers to choose, marketers and businesses are finding difficulty in carving a niche for themselves. In fact a 2014 study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs showed that only 42% of marketers find that they are effective at content marketing. Indeed there are numerous reasons abound to explain feeble content marketing efforts.

Now this is where direct-response copywriting comes into the picture. From 1980s, during the heyday of copywriting, to now, direct-response copywriting aims to capture attention, persuade and prompt consumers into a buying action. How can you apply it to content marketing?

1. Crafting the perfect headlines

 Direct-response copywriters obsess over  headlines, spending half the time on a copy  thinking about and crafting the headline.  Headlines make the first impression on  browsers, and they are all browsers could base  on to make a split-second decision to read or to  ignore.

For example, take a look at what direct-response copywriter, Bob Bly, wrote in The Copywriter’s Handbook to convince busy consumers your copy deserves attention – the 4 U’s formula for headlines. Apply your obsessive behaviour to and perfect your headline on it.

Convey a sense of urgency. Be ultra-specific. Make the headline unique by saying something differently or previously unheard of. Provide usefulness by promising a benefit. Combining them, and you appeal to consumers’ self-interest and beliefs, and entice them with an emotional hook – which is what draws people in to read the body.

Let said you wrote a free e-book as part of your content marketing effort, and you want readers and subscribers. First you need to spread the words through various channels, especially online ones. A headline made with the wisdoms of the 4 U’s formula will bait more people to click the link.

2. Putting consumers first

Sales copies receive undue amount of hate, not so much for the way they are written but because they are intrusive. So if you exclude direct-response copywriters because you think their skill-set is incompatible with your intention to craft customer-centric content, think again.

Consider Joshua Bell’s social experiment in which the Grammy-winning violist disguised as a street performer and played for the city’s people; only 27 stopped to listen to him.

No one listened to Joshua Bell’s breath-taking performance because doing so, in the passers-by’s minds, would be disruptive to that day’s schedule. Imagine Joshua Bell stopping passers-by and playing his most beautiful piece; the reactions garnered would mostly be ones of apathy and annoyance.

Indeed it is not the content…just that people dislike intrusion.

Sales copies are written with consumers in mind. Risk-free guarantees; toll-free enquiries; and touted benefits for consumers, are some examples. After all, if they don’t do that, consumers won’t be convinced of taking the plunge.  But they are usually intrusive, appearing in places where people do not welcome them.

Otherwise, the copywriting best practice of putting consumers first translates well into content marketing. Every word you said and information you included into your content must better the readers’ lives and educe positive emotions from them – a good rule of the thumb to consider.

In fact, a few direct-action techniques could go a long way in content marketing, namely, eliciting positive visualisation and appealing to timeless human desires, such as acquiring material comfort and improving physical health.  But unlike sales copies and other marketing collaterals written by direct-response copywriters to lead readers into action, you do not sell in content marketing. Keep that in mind and you are good to go.

3. Being clear, concise and simple

Hard-to-understand words like big adjectives and SAT words will alienate readers. Unsurprisingly, sales copies avoid that as they want to be understood by the masses, by everyone who meets the minimum standard of literacy. Buying decisions come only after understanding the product’s benefits. Content you produced should do the same. When you educate and entertain people, use simple English and be straight to the point.

With technology, consumers’ attention spans are shortening, and they can quickly tune-out if your content is verbose. This applies most to online content. Certain types of content, such as magazines’, can be lengthier and more descriptive for the reason readers who have them are prepared to read; it really depends on the topic and target audience.

But in copywriting best practice, you make sure to avoid waffle. Copywriters shun it like a plague. By waffle, I mean content that doesn’t amount to anything and provide no true educational and entertainment values. Now that’s a gold standard for content marketers and businesses to adhere to. Every word in the content must serve a purpose.

4. Carrying out extensive research

Acclaimed direct-response copywriters such as Bob Bly espouse carrying extensive research before writing a copy. Spending days to weeks on a copy and conducting both primary and secondary research were a hallmark of a good copywriter. While content marketers and businesses no longer have the luxury of time, they should not compromise on creating well-substantiated content.

With speed being of the essence, some of your content can fall short of the high standard you set for them, but you can compensate by producing amazing content every once in a while, acting as a surprise gift to your loyal readers and a lure to attract new eyeballs. This content should be extensively researched and almost painful for you to share with others.

5. Making content personable

Direct-response copywriters know touting about a product’s or service’s benefits can only go that far. They pepper copies with third-party testimonials to enhance its credibility, but one sure way to make copies more sincere is to establish a direct communication between the business founder and his or her customer. In other words, they make the copies personable.

Humans are emotional and social beings, and that applies to our buying decision. We buy from people whom we like. Copies that make the founder down-to-earth and friendly make consumers feel good about him or her, forging an emotional and social connection.

Similarly, content we create should be accompanied with our brand voice and crafted in the founder’s style.

6. Being creative

 Copywriters are a creative lot. They do not  let rules get in the way nor do they restrict  themselves to doing it certain ways. They  pay heed to copywriting best practices but  sometimes they let their instincts and  experiences lead them to the better  decision.

Sure they may fail, but that beats bland,  tasteless copy. And amidst such failures,  they may land one that stays a legend for  years to come. For this reason, the best copywriters are those who venture out of their comfort zones and be creative and adventurous.

As a content marketer, you should put this close to your heart. Understand that you should never let rules stifle your creativity. Copywriters endanger their jobs when their copies fail to sell, yet many dare to wager. Content marketers face not as great a risk, so why not dare to try? All the best.

*Editors Note: Recap post of the Deck presented at Sales Hacker Series in New York City on November 20th, 2014 by Dave Govan, CRO at Dynamic Yield.

When we get into negotiations there are different modes that we get into, but often we’re concerned with the relationship, the substance, the price, the terms, etc.

A lot of people think that they want to end up somewhere in the middle, or what is called Positional Negotiation. It takes very little effort, very little energy, and sometimes we may want to do that, but the best type of negotiation is the Collaborative Negotiation. Collaborative Negotiation is where you are creatively problem solving so both parties win.

Plan Your Negotiation Strategy

BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement)

The person with a better BATNA has the most leverage in a negotiation.

For example, if you’re a young company and you have no major brands and you’re calling on a major brand, who do you think has a better BATNA? Well, not the young company because their best BATNA with that major brand, is that you have no major brand. This is a case where the young company might make concessions that they normally wouldn’t.

Contract Negotiation Tips

• Establish Trust Upfront & Gain Trust Throughout
• Manage Gains & Losses
  • Plan to Provide more Concessions / Rewards than deliver losses.
  • Do Communicate Concessions in Stages
  • Communicate Losses in One Big Chunk.
• Don’t Accept Counterpart’s offer quickly, delay.
• Don’t Rejoice in your Gains and Alienate your Counterpart

Observe Verbal & Physical Cues

When you’re in a negotiation observe physical and verbal cues! Now, if you’re selling over the phone it eliminates the visual aspect but there is still a ton of things you can take away from strictly audio.

Overcoming Objections

Price

Whether is costs a $1 or $1M it doesn’t matter. What matters is the value that it delivers to your business. Identify use cases and ROI and collaborate with your prospects. Don’t be afraid to use the word Draft with people. It helps collaboration and makes the prospect feel involved and valued in the process.

Legal Terms

• Use Principle Based Negotiation
• Leverage Industry Standard Terms

Seek Win / Wins & Always Think Positive!

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Questions? Comments? Tweet them at @SalesHackerConf or leave them in the comments below!

The post How to Create Win/Wins in Contract Negotiations appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Maps are an essential tool for any traveler – and boy, have they evolved over the years. From folded paper guides that littered our cars’ glove compartments and seat pockets to fully automated navigational devices, maps have helped direct us where to go and what to do. In the B2B sales world, it’s easy to get lost while trying to navigate to the right people in the buying cycle. At the same time, it’s critical for sales reps to access the stakeholders and decision makers that will lead them to their final destination: a closed deal. Thankfully, there are maps for sellers that can help guide them through today’s complex sales environment. They, too, have evolved over time (as most sales tools do) from laminated paper documents to highly visual, automated maps that point reps in the right direction. There are three maps in particular that every modern B2B seller should be utilizing:

Relationship Map

Sounds like an organizational chart, right? Not so fast. An org chart is certainly a helpful list of contacts, but it does little to help sales reps identify the key players and stakeholders in a deal. John Doe CFO may seem like he has the final say over the purchase of a product or service because of his title, but in reality there could be multiple people involved…and he’s not even one of them!

Relationship maps take the org chart to the next level by creating a visual outline of the key players in a deal, helping reps gain the right access at the right level needed to close it – A visual who’s who in the zoo, if you will. By using a relationship map, reps can piece together the puzzle to get the big picture of an account including decision makers, strength of preference and internal politics involved.

Whether done on paper or by using an automated tool that pulls contacts from your CRM solution, relationship mapping will point your reps in the direction of the right people.

White Space Map

How much has your product penetrated an account? How deeply entrenched are your competitors? A White Space Map can help your reps answer those question and more. In the example here, the black boxes indicate full penetration of a product and the white boxes indicate zero penetration. A more complex map can show the solutions and business units where there are new, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, as well as important contract renewal dates. By identifying the white spaces, reps gain deeper insight into the footprint of their solution, and a better idea of where they should direct their focus.

Value/Strategy Map

How well do your reps communicate the value of your solution? Most reps can’t get a second meeting because they lack this important skill. It helps for them to have a clear understanding of your customers’ business strategies and challenges. There’s a map for that, too! A Value/Strategy Map can help your reps visually identify your customers’ strategies, goals, pain points and initiatives so that they can effectively communicate how your solution will deliver strategic value. These maps also help reps drive collaboration with your customers, which will build credibility and open doors to higher levels of access within the organization.

Are your reps visualizing the the road to success?

E-commerce is growing exponentially every year and likewise, purchases from mobile phones are also growing at a swift pace. By now, 63 percent of mobile users access the Internet on their devices.

Around 77 percent of business executives also use mobile devices to research new products or services. Hence, it’s imperative for retailers to understand and strategize differently for this growing number of mobile customers.

Mobile Commerce Vs. Desktop/Laptop Commerce: The Major Differences

• Mobile shoppers convert at a lower percentage than desktop users. The reasons for this are the smaller screen size, location of the shopper and even the performance of the mobile device itself. The rate of conversions from smartphones varied from 63 percent to just 1.37 percent.
• Industry matters. Mobile conversion is a mere 1.17 percent in the automotive industry, whereas the food industry climbs up to 2.51 percent, suggesting that people prefer to make small-budget purchases from their mobile phone.
• Multiple devices is the norm. Users love switching between devices while checking out products. Most start their product research on their smartphones but end up completing the purchase on their desktop or laptop.

How Mobile And The Desktop Websites Should Differ For Optimal Results

Given the stark differences in the buying patterns on smartphones and desktops, how should businesses design their mobile and desktop sites for optimum results? Should content, features and the functionality of mobile sites be scaled down, or is there a better approach?

• Consistency in Content: Eighty-four percent of store visitors use their mobile devices before or during a shopping trip, so it is understandable that mobile devices are used for research purposes. Hence, scaling down on content on the mobile site is a strict no-no. The content should be consistent on both sites to avoid bad shopping experiences, shopping cart abandonment and misunderstanding about products.
• Different Features: Depending on the retailer, the desktop and the mobile sites may have different features. Mobile phones have shorter screen sizes than desktops, so it is important to design the site so that that the screen looks neat and inviting, instead of being clogged with redundant elements. Too many features and functionalities on smartphones can also lead to stress, resulting in the user abandoning the purchase.
• Bigger Images: Mobile screens are small, so it would be prudent to have bigger images – especially in the landscape mode of a mobile phone – so that users can see all the important details.
• Location Detection: The mobile version of a website may also have a location detection feature via GPS, which can add personalized value to the mobile shopping experience for the user.

Since content is at the heart of any website, it should be fully accessible from any kind of device. For mobile sites, scale down features and functionality, but scale up the size and resolution of images. Finally, when applicable, take advantage of GPS location detection to improve the shopping experience of mobile users with personalized offers.

Global smartphone statistics have put marketers in a frenzy to devise strategies for this growing demographic. There is still a lot to unravel about the psychology of smartphone customers, but understanding how user behavior differs between devices is a great place to start.

Maybe you’ve already heard of beacons, but if you haven’t we’re here to get you up to speed and help navigate this new technology. Since it is estimated that the demand for beacons is going to drive a 60 million-unit market by 2019, their potential for the future of location-based marketing warrants some attention from marketers.

In a very literal sense, beacons have historically served to help guide people to their destination or convey a signal meant to attract attention. The technology has evolved over time: if we want to go way back, people used well-positioned fires as signals to one another. And as we’ve made advancements, we’ve been able to develop more sophisticated ways of conveying our locations (think lighthouses, radio waves, radar, sonar, etc.). The proliferation of mobile devices is the most recent technological advancement that has impacted the way we use beacons.

Wait, So We’re Not Talking About A Lighthouse Beacon?

No, we’re talking about a new kind of beacon. It’s the next development in location-based technology designed to detect users when they come within range of a “beacon.”

Beacons are small devices that use low-energy Bluetooth signals to communicate with an app on your smartphone when you are nearby. The signal then sets off some form of action from the app, or can even allow users to interact with the beacon themselves.

The opportunity beacons present marketers lies in the ability to engage our customers in the right place and at the right time while offering utility and value. Some requirements do exist, however, in order for beacon technology to work to our advantage. First and foremost, a smartphone user must have specific apps downloaded on their smartphone. These apps must be associated with a business that has either placed beacons themselves or worked with a beacon provider. Second, the smartphone user must also have Bluetooth enabled in order for the beacon to be able to detect their device and send an action.

Mobile engagement is a driving force in the potential for beacons: smartphone users are expected to reach 220 million U.S. adults by 2018 and mobile apps now account for 52% of total time spent with digital media. As the technology grows, and users don’t find it invasive, we’ll see more opt-ins of Bluetooth and beacon-enabled apps.

Are Beacons Currently Being Used? How?

Right now we’re largely seeing beacons used as a means to push messages to nearby mobile shoppers – retail and grocery stores have used them to trigger special offers or coupons to customers while they are in-store and near the point of sale. There have also been more innovative tests and uses, such as:

• Retailers in the UK have trialed using beacons on their mannequins, with the goal of converting window shoppers into online clicks.
• Estimote has used their beacons to help brick-and-mortars track a visitor’s path through stores, collecting data that can be used to analyze store layout.
• Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art gives visitors of its “David Bowie Is” exhibit a mobile device and headset, and sensors placed throughout the exhibit trigger an audio experience in addition to the visual one.

It will be important for marketers to keep in mind what we mentioned above – that our use of this technology must provide people with utility and drive value for them – otherwise there is the possibility we push them away from our brand.

But What About My Privacy?

As with any new technology that uses data, especially location-based data, there is always a question of how individual privacy is handled. Critics of beacon technology have resisted its use, citing specific instances that have not kept the consumer in mind (for example, New York City’s test implementation of beacons in phone booths – though city-approved – was too sudden and under-promoted, causing backlash over privacy concerns).

People are going to require trust, control, and transparency as more businesses begin to use beacon technology. Being straightforward when apps are downloaded, and making it convenient for customers to select their settings, will be integral in gaining this trust. And ultimately it circles back to using the beacons in a way that provides true utility to the customer and makes them want to receive your message.

And What Does The Future Hold?

Future use cases of beacon technology are widespread. While current uses will remain relevant (by making sure value to the user is intact), we will also begin to see implementations with increasing levels of creativity. Imagine citywide scavenger hunts that deliver clues by beacons; parking meters with beacons that enable people to automatically pay for parking; and creating much richer, more interactive venue experiences (such as what the MLB has begun to implement in ball parks and what the Royal Botanical Gardens is working on to provide an interactive exploration of their gardens).

And in the future, as beacon usage becomes more about the experience than driving in-store purchases, the call-to-action may shift outside the user’s physical location and into the digital space. Especially as its engagement relies on mobile devices, and with the growing number of smartphones, users are one step closer to the “click-to-call” functionality that drives more calls to your business.

I have two questions that I’d like to ask you. But, before you respond I want you to know that you can be totally honest, there’s no one here but us.

Meaningless Meetings Questions:

1. Have you ever had to attend a “meaningless meeting?”
2. Have you ever had to attend “meaningless meetings” on a regular basis?

If you have answered “yes” to at least one of these questions, then this article is totally for you!

My answers you ask? Is yes…to both questions.

I was in the Military and I also had a corporate job for nine years. In addition to attending the “meaningless meeting,” I had the pleasure of attending the “meeting before the meeting,” and the “meeting after the meeting.” I did that for 15 years. And believe it or not, I don’t drink alcohol or self-medicate.

Earlier this year HubSpot conducted a meeting analysis and discovered that people will waste 31 hours in a month going to meetings.

I know, that’s just crazy!

Knowing my own dark, sordid past with “meaningless meetings,” I was floored when I read a Harvard Business Review Article, “Weekly Meetings.” It is based on one large company that spent 300,000 hours in one year on meetings. By the way…those hours did not include meeting prep time. I just have two words…“Hot Mess!”

The truth is, when you have a motivated and engaged work force, there is no need to keep “meeting” or what I like to call “checking-in.” In fact, I believe that meetings have just become part of the process and no one really has stopped to ask the question:

I am going to say it for the good of the order, “meaningless meetings” are a waste of time, resources, and money!”

So, what’s the point?

Why do organizations hold “meaningless meetings?” Is it intentional or are they really trying to gather information to use for the development and growth of the organization?

I say it’s a combination of both.

1. There are times when meetings have every intention of being purposeful yet, somehow they take a trip down meaningless avenue.
2. And then there are times when meetings actually are value added.

As Tactical Strategists we develop systems that eliminate the need for “meaningless meetings.” In fact, we say, the only time that a meeting is necessary is when, there is actually something value added to meet about.

Meetings are necessary when they involve the “3 P’s”:

1. People
2. Processes
3. Profits

Otherwise consider the alternatives below:

1. Send a short, email that can be read in less than 2 minutes. (Think Twitter, not Facebook.)
2. Do a quick call. (Think text, not catching up with an old friend.)
3. If you are in the same location stop by their office or work area and chat about it. (Think oil change, not doctor’s visit.)

When you do decide to have a meeting based on the 3 P’s here are some suggestions for holding a “meaningful meeting”:

1. Be very selective about who needs to attend.
2. Prepare, Prepare, Prepare.
3. Send out any documents that need to be reviewed ahead of time.
4. Have an agenda that includes timelines and stick to them no matter what.
5. Have 1-4 items to cover in any given meeting.
6. During the last 3 minutes of the meeting take a verbal assessment and rate the effectiveness of the meeting. If it does not fare well, hold two additional meetings and if it still does not have value…It’s outta there!

Added bonus regarding meetings in general:

1. Try to keep meetings 30 minutes or less.
2. Use tip #6 above to reduce the amount of meetings you hold by at least 50%.

If we really think about it, the real work happens outside of the meeting. So stop interrupting the work, to have a meeting to check on the status of the work. Having meetings for “meeting” sake needs to be a thing of the past. To keep having them for no good reason is the definition of insanity.

Meet Less, Work More

White papers—or written, research-driven educational resources—are some of the most commonly utilized marketing assets for B2B lead generation. By helping prospects solve their most pressing problems, white papers have consistently proven that consumers are willing to give away highly-guarded contact information in exchange for a valuable offer.

But creating a valuable offer is only half the battle. The other half? Promotion. If concerted efforts are not made to place that offer in front of the right audience’s eyes at the right times, it will never achieve its full lead generation potential. Unsatisfactory results often cause marketers to believe their content is ineffective—perhaps due to the wrong subject matter or poor quality—but more often than not, content is underperforming due to under-promotion.

Promotion is Crucial

It’s more difficult now than ever before to get your content seen and heard. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 70 percent of B2B marketers are producing more content this year than last year. Consumers are simply inundated with content everywhere they look—and if they’re not looking at yours, they’re probably looking at your competitor’s.

When it comes to promoting gated offers like white papers, promotion can be a tough nut to crack. PPC is typically not cost-effective for landing pages with forms, display and social ads probably won’t drive the quantity of leads you desire and amplification tools may leave you yearning for better qualified leads. Referral traffic from earned coverage is certainly nice to have, but unfortunately difficult to come by. So what white paper promotion options can B2B marketers count on for driving qualified leads consistently?

Leverage Existing Audiences

The answer lies in leveraging existing audiences that are primed for consuming your content. Your top priority should be accessing the people for which your content has an appealing value proposition—or in other words, is a good fit. There are two sure-fire ways to do this: publications and content distribution platforms.

Publications

To promote your white paper, you can go directly to the publishers that have the trust and viewership of the audiences you want to reach. Many B2B industry publications now offer white paper lead generation options for sponsors.

How it Works

Promotion contracts often take multi-channel approaches that incorporate sponsored articles, email, social media, display ads, or some combination of the above. Costs are typically determined on either a cost-per-lead (CPL) basis or by a standard monthly charge. In most CPL cases, publishers will allow you to filter out leads that aren’t a good fit, and consequently pay for only the leads you approve. Once the contract’s lead limit is reached or the monthly period is over, the publisher will send an invoice for payment.

A Word of Caution

Leveraging publications for promoting white papers can be a sure-fire way to get qualified, targeted eyes on your content. Rigid cost structures also make this tactic relatively easy to budget for—and easy to compare against others. However, lack of ownership in the lead generation process, especially after a contract is signed, can tend to take away control and flexibility from marketers. If this is the case for you, it may be worthwhile to look into sponsored articles, which would allow you to promote an offer via a link within a native article, assuming that article meets the publication’s editorial standards. The Media Buyer’s Guide to Sponsored Content outlines a simple six-step process for targeting, buying, and measuring the value of sponsored articles.

Marketers should be aware that white paper hubs and sponsored content typically take back seat roles on publications when compared to true native content. It can be startlingly difficult to come across sponsored white papers on many publications that host them—even if you’re looking for them—so make sure you do some research beforehand.

Some digital marketing publications that offer white paper promotion contracts include Content Marketing Institute, ClickZ, Search Engine Watch, Business2Community, Search Engine Land, and Marketing Land.

Content distribution platforms

A second way to leverage existing audiences primed for content consumption is by working with an established content distribution platform, such as NetLine. With more than 20 years of experience, the platform is one of the industry’s most reputable content distribution options. It provides marketers with all-in-one access to a huge network of publications and saves time by allowing them to cast a wider net.

How it Works

Economies of scale presented by a platform that processes more than 300,000 leads per month also allows for a significantly lower cost per lead, even after filters are applied. A multi-channel approach provides touch points through more than just publications; newsletters, social media groups, mobile apps, and RSS feeds are all built in to the platform, too. A centralized portal even allows marketers to manage content promotion campaigns all in one place with an added degree of control: the ability to start and stop campaigns at will. Finally, NetLine’s proprietary software automatically optimizes campaigns through three levels of sophisticated targeting: context, attribute, and conversion.

A Word of Caution

Altogether, content distribution platforms like NetLine allow content marketers to take a much more “hands-on” approach to large-scale, multi-channel promotion. Yet, some minor disadvantages remain: the need to protect its own competitive advantage causes a lack of transparency as to exactly where the leads are coming from (e.g. what publication, social network, or newsletter), and certain channels like email and sponsored articles are not available because the platform does not own the audiences it promotes to.

Truly effective content promotion calls for a mixed, multi-channel approach. But when it comes to your white papers, a little extra care (and investment) may be necessary. Social promotion and amplification tools likely won’t be enough to drive the quality and quantity of leads you desire, so it’s critical to begin considering some less conservative methods. This is where publications and content distribution platforms come into play.

To learn more about holistic B2B content promotion strategies, check out Chad Pollitt’s new Content Promotion Manifesto.

Do you ever feel like you’ve written a blog about literally every topic relevant to your audience? Sometimes coming up with an idea for your next blog seems like an impossible feat. Frequently finding new ideas can be challenging whether you’re new to the world of inbound or a seasoned pro.

The first step is to know your audience. Yes, the ever-important buyer persona. But, you’re not worried about your reader; you can create buyer personas in your sleep! No, the real question is what topic should you focus on that your buyer would care about and find value in? Here are 5 tips to help you brainstorm an blog topics your readers will love.

Look for trending topics

Find out what trends or topics are hot right now in your industry. Check out industry leaders’ websites and blogs to see what topics they’re covering. Is there new research related to your industry that could affect your business and/or customers either positively or negatively? Not only can you build a solid topic off of these facts, but they will also add value and credibility to your post.

You can use Twitter to track trending topics through hashtags. What popular hashtags are others in your industry using? Figuring out what has people in your industry talking and building a blog based on that is a great way to create awesome content that people will want to read and share.

Explain a new industry product or technology

Is there new software, a product, or technology gaining traction in your industry? Why not research that new item and teach your readers how to use it, highlight its benefits or drawbacks. More than likely people are interested in learning about this item, but they don’t want to or don’t have time to do the research themselves. Why not do the legwork for them and provide a condensed version that’s easy for them to digest. People want to read a blog not an instruction manual.

Check out your organization’s most popular blogs

What’s worked for your organization in the past can be updated and reused. Look for fresh content to update the original post or write from a different point of view. You can also repurpose content from popular blogs to create infographics, white papers, and eBooks. Past blogs can be used to identify popular keywords you can use in your new post.

Use topic generators and analytics

The HubSpot Blog Topic Generator is a great tool that will give you several blog titles you can run with. All you have to do is insert three nouns related to what you want to write about and relevant blog titles will be generated. I think it’s always easier to start writing when you have a working title and HubSpot’s generator is a great way to get started. Even if you don’t use one of their topics it’ll at least get your brainwaves flowing.

If you aren’t already utilizing Google Analytics you should start. Google Analytics allows you to see your site metrics including SEO reports. You can see what keywords people are using to find your site and what pages they are viewing the most. Once you identify these keywords and/or popular pages you can build blog topics based off that information.

Find out what your customers are saying

If you’re struggling to find a topic that will resonate with your readers go straight to the source for inspiration, your customers. Check with whoever regularly speaks with customers to find out commonly asked questions or problems. This is an easy way to find out what your buyers want to know and then deliver that information.

When writing any blog it’s critical to focus on what your audience wants or needs. Brainstorming new topics can be challenging, but there are a few things you can do to find out what currently interests your potential buyers. Pay attention to trending topics and industry news. Recycle your popular content and if you don’t typically interact with customers talk to those on staff that do to find out popular questions and concerns. Be proactive in your search for blog topics and awesome content will follow!

The post How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Copyblogger.

Sometimes you get stuck and just need a dose of inspiration. That’s why we went back to the Score More Sales blog vault and put together our top tips from the popular “Inside Sales Tips” series we ran this past year. You can download the free ebook here http://scoremoresales.hs-sites.com/download-free-ebook-inside-sales-powertips-ebook

We’d love for you to check it out, get inspired, and make one extra call today.

Get a valuable conversation going with a decision maker.

Have a discussion with a gatekeeper that makes him or her interested to forward you on.

Get a commitment to talk again before the year is up.

Help a potential buyer better understand how your company is a good fit to serve them.

Revisit that stalled sales opportunity and BRING IT TO CLOSURE!

Because often it just takes a fresh perspective or a revisit to a “stuck” situation to move it forward OR to shut it down.

Yes, sometimes the best thing you can do is see that an opportunity you’ve put a lot of time into is not qualified and you move on. Free up all that time you’ve been spending on it and re-focus to find better fit potential buyers.

You see where I’m going here? Get some inspiration and grow your pipeline. Now is the time, and this e-book is our share for you. If a light bulb in your brain goes off with one of the tips, drop us a note (or comment) and let us know what you did differently that worked. We’ll give YOU a coffee card for your effort. It’s the least we can do to help share tips and ideas that get business growing.

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

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

The post Treasure Trove of Inside Sales Tips appeared first on Score More Sales.

We now know how Beats cofounder Jimmy Iovine convinced Apple to buy the luxury headphones and music streaming company, thanks to a recent interview with GQ.

Apple bought Beats in October for $3 billion. 

Iovine said he started pitching Apple about buying Beats in 2012.

"I said, 'I don't want to work for anybody else. I want to do this at Apple. I know I can achieve this at Apple,'" said Iovine.

The Beats cofounder told Apple he wasn't interested in shopping the company around for potential buyers when he knew exactly who he wanted to work with.

"I wanna come here, to Steve's company," he told Apple, referring to the company's cofounder.

But Iovine ultimately sold Apple by convincing the company he could provide something they didn't have — a music streaming service.

"I know what you're capable of; I know you get popular culture," he said. "I know you have a hole in music right now; let me plug it."

All signs show Apple is working to catch up on music streaming. It plans to rebrand Beats Music and roll it into iTunes next year.

SEE ALSO: Here's What It's Like To Work With Tim Cook

Join the conversation about this story »

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.

>> Create your account with Unbounce
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with Unbounce

 

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.

>> Create your account with LeadPages
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with LeadPages

 

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.

>> Create your account with SumoMe
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with SumoMe

 

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.

>> Create your account with Digioh
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with Digioh

 

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.

>> Create your account with OptimizePress
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with OptimizePress

 

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.

>> Create your account with OptinMonster
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with OptinMonster

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.

>> Create your account with Wistia
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with Wistia

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.

>> Create your account with Heyo
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with Heyo

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.

>> Create your account with Shopify
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with Shopify

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.

>> Create your account with Zapier
>> Get step-by-step help integrating AWeber with Zapier

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!

As we come close to wrapping up this year, much has been said and done (again) about the importance and usefulness of content marketing. “Content is King”, “Content is Queen”, “Content is the Oxygen for Digital Marketing”, and so on. So here is a fairly obvious statistic from the B2B 2015 Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs: 70% of B2B marketers are producing more content this year than last year. What’s interesting is that only 21% say they are successfully tracking the ROI of their content marketing campaigns.

Whether you have a documented strategy to follow or a verbal one that evolves as you go along, it is critical to track content ROI; that is fundamental to any form of marketing practice. I find it baffling then, that so many B2B marketers continue to invest precious time, effort and money into running content campaigns that are randomly crafted, loosely implemented and then viciously accused of draining resources!

There are, however, savvy marketers that not only focus on ROI but place a high demand on their content marketing campaigns to generate maximum, high quality, qualified leads for their business. Let’s look at one example of this. A software company called IntelliResponse came up with a content strategy that delivered 100% lead generation through their site. Now that’s ROI! MarketingSherpa offers a detailed case study but here’s a snapshot of the results—since embracing a content marketing strategy in 2010, the company has seen:

• 400% increase in site traffic in the past two years
• 100% increase in leads generated through the site in the past year
• Top 10 strategic keywords ranked organically on the first page of Google search results
• 1,000% increase in social media followers
• 35% of monthly leads generated from paid ads promoting infographic and white paper content — up from 5% two years ago

Make Your B2B Content Marketing Drive Greater Lead Generation and ROI—10 Things to Keep in Mind

Based on key takeaways derived from the IntelliResponse case study, here are 10 tips to remember when planning your B2B content marketing campaigns:

1. Content must be valuable and relevant for all parts of the sales cycle. Instead of simply recognizing the trend that buyers traverse 70% of the sales cycle researching on their own, the marketing team at IntelliResponse chose to stay ahead of the trend. They did this by making sure that their content has inherent adaptive capabilities serving buyers as they progress through various stages of the sales cycle.

2. Right time, right place, right person. Many of us forget this tried and tested rule of traditional marketing because digital media allows for instant broadcast communications. In this case study, we see how the company ensures their content is reaching the right people at times that carry the highest engagement and conversion potential. From early stage content for prospects that don’t even know they need a solution to late stage content where buyers need to get comfortable with the features and benefits of their newly acquired / soon to be acquired solution, the campaign addresses all stages suitably.

3. Content should be served in bite-sized chunks that is shared easily. Instead of using only case studies and whitepapers to deliver in-depth, analytical content, the company effectively uses Infographics. While these graphical content pieces are a quick read, they are certainly not lacking in depth of content. On the contrary, because the information is presented in a visually appealing and compelling manner, the facts are more easily understood, retained, and best of all, shared. Here is a quick refresher on how to build a sustainable social content strategy and accelerate lead generation.

4. Open the gates. Gone are the days when ‘hard-to-get’ was synonymous with ‘valuable’. Today, it’s all about simplicity, accessibility and shareability. IntelliResponse keeps it simple for buyers to access and view their content. Infographics are posted on their site, linked on their blog and distributed through social media channels. There are no “gates” in the early stages such as forms to fill out and conditions to accept in exchange for these content bites.

5. Simple videos work wonders. Along with text-based content and Infographics, video has a powerful role to play in your content marketing campaigns. We are not advocating big budget, high-end, movie theatre quality videos; you don’t need those. Think short, simple, uncomplicated videos that are customized to various industries and personas that your target audience represents. That’s exactly what IntelliResponse offers on their site.

6. Remarketing is intelligent, intuitive advertising. Based on what type of information and which industries buyers are researching on the company’s website, video remarketing ads on YouTube are used by IntelliResponse to drive those buyers back to the site. This is an excellent example of a campaign where every tool employed is complementing other tools to ensure the overall effectiveness of an integrated content marketing strategy.

7. Late-stage content must have stronger nurturing power. Once you have caught your audience’s attention and engaged them to some extent, you need to step up the nurturing activities to move them ahead towards conversion. This is where bigger content pieces such as whitepapers are useful. By this late stage of the content campaign, your buyers are more open to giving up information about themselves in order to get access to your bigger, juicier content. Remember though, that your online forms need to be short, quick and easy to fill out. Narrow the form fields down to only the most critical information your sales team needs in order to call/meet with the client. Anything else can be gathered on direct contact rather than filled out in a form.

8. Know where your audience is and repurpose effectively. Blog posts, email pieces, LinkedIn updates and ads, paid search ads, etc. are all used in tandem to drive organic and paid traffic to the company’s site, blog and social properties. We all know the dangers of trying to do everything, everywhere, all the time. So rather than waste time creating new and separate content for each channel, IntelliResponse very cleverly engages in content repurposing to reach a wider audience. Remember, all content does not have to be created in-house. Refer to my earlier three-part series on Content Curation.

9. Sales and Marketing must hold hands. Still the toughest challenge for many B2B organizations! IntelliResponse realized that alignment of these two functions was crucial to the success of their lead generation activities. Working closely, the departments study feedback and data to determine what content is working, what’s not. This allows the company to nurture qualified leads with the most powerful content rather than fritter away resources producing large volumes of content that is not likely to deliver the right results.

10. Show buyers how to make the right decision. For buyers, the downside of doing so much research independently is that it becomes more difficult to make the purchasing decision. For B2B buyers, this decision is even more difficult than it is in the case of B2C because the purchase affects not any one individual but an entire organization. Your content needs to help buyers make a decision that is right for their company. Of course, you want them to buy your product or service, but only if you are 100% sure it will serve their goals and deliver ROI. If you are not sure of this, then you need to prepare to face an unhappy customer who will soon spread the word—so beware!

One of the most important requirements for an effective B2B demand generation system is a clear understanding of who constitutes a sales-ready lead. Describing what makes a lead sales-ready is the essential starting point for defining the roles and responsibilities of marketing and sales. In an optimized demand generation system, marketing is primarily responsible for acquiring new leads and for nurturing leads until they are sales ready. Once a lead is sales ready, sales assumes the primary responsible for managing that relationship.

The term sales-ready lead is used frequently by marketing thought leaders and practitioners, but it’s difficult to find a useful or widely-accepted definition of the concept. Some marketing pundits avoid the need to define sales-ready lead by saying that the term means whatever marketing and sales agree that it means.

In practice, companies vary greatly in terms of when they pass leads from marketing to sales. In a recent blog post, Bob Apollo described research by SiriusDecisions regarding when companies treat leads as being sales ready. According to this research, 28% of companies treat all contacts or inquiries as sales-ready leads and pass them to sales without any qualification. At the other extreme, 10% of companies only pass leads to sales after they are fully BANT-qualified. In between, 25% of companies will pass a lead to sales when the lead has an “appropriate” job title and is affiliated with an “appropriate” type of company.

We need to do better. If we want to optimize the performance of our demand generation system, we need a rational, reasonable, and substantive definition of who constitutes a sales-ready lead. I’ll offer one momentarily, but first it’s important to understand who is not a sales-ready lead.

To start with, a raw inquiry does not constitute a sales-ready lead. A raw inquiry is someone who has identified himself or herself, but otherwise has shown only a minimal level of interest in what you offer. He or she may have filled out a registration form and downloaded one of your content resources, but that’s it.

Sales ready is also not equivalent to ready to buy. As noted earlier, some companies only pass leads to sales when the leads are fully qualified using the traditional BANT criteria. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the problem with BANT is that some of the criteria won’t be met until near the end of the buying process, and in addition, it’s increasingly unlikely that any one person can ever satisfy all of the BANT requirements.

A sales-ready lead, therefore, falls somewhere between a raw inquiry and a BANT-qualified lead. Here’s my proposed definition:

A sales-ready lead is an individual who (a) is affiliated with a qualified prospect, (b) can make or influence the decision to purchase your product or service, and (c) is sufficiently interested in exploring solutions to engage in a meaningful dialog with a salesperson. In this definition, the term qualified prospect means an organization that has a need your company can address and falls within your defined target market.

This definition provides a good starting point, but I also think it’s important to have specific criteria for identifying sales-ready leads. The table below includes eleven criteria that I suggest are appropriate for most companies. The first four criteria apply to the prospect organization, and the remaining criteria apply to the individual lead.

That’s what I say makes a lead really sales-ready. How about you?

Robert sits in an office near Provo, Utah at what looks like the console of an air traffic controller. But instead of directing jets through the airspace, he's using Twitter to guide a software company's buyer through her decision-journey. Part marketer, part sales, part tech service, Robert is one of an emerging breed of "virtual" sales reps. Could this be the dream team that B2B has been waiting for?

The B2B "Genius Bar"® as a Role Model

The "virtual" sales rep role in its ideal form provides the personalized, anticipatory, service of a five-star hotel. Think of it as the B2B version of an Apple Genius Bar – using virtual tools. The Apple executive team modeled the Genius Bar after Ritz-Carlton's customer service. Hallmarks of this exemplary concierge service include a personal touch; a warm, friendly, attitude; and attention to satisfying customer needs at every step. Sales expert Anneke Seley says the "virtual" sales rep culture is a far-cry from the historical "me and my quota" rep.

Sales teams are finally coming to grips with digital age facts. The culture shift recognizes that engagement must be sensitive to the appropriate stage of the buyer's decision-journey. "Buyers aren't ready to buy until they are ready to buy". Marketers all know by now that buyers prefer self-sufficiency and they avoid talking to sales people until the decision-journey is substantially complete.  IDC research shows that for tech products averages this distance averages about 50%. Now sales is also starting to appreciate that buyers are alienated when by placed prematurely into the arena. At the same time sales leaders don't want to waste an expensive sales resource on someone who isn't ready to buy.

Digital May Not be Enough

Content marketing is what companies must do to fill the gap when buyers won't talk to traditional sales people.  Content marketing is a hugely important communication strategy and companies will not be successful without mastering it.

Yet, for B2B companies, a completely digital engagement solution may not ever be the right answer. For one thing, content marketing capabilities in most companies is still ramping. Even when content marketing becomes excellent, digital may never be personal enough. Some B2B solutions are so complex, customized, or require so much trust that a human must intervene for the buyer to be truly served.  It may also be in the vendor's best interest to involve a good sales person early. One tech CMO told me that although the company could offer eCommerce, a human touch tripled the size of the deal.

The End of One-to-One

Sales must abandon the image of the lone hero acting alone. A distinguishing feature between traditional sales and marketing has been that sales covered one-to-one interactions and marketing covered the one-to-many. The evolving "virtual" sales model is somewhere in-between. Maybe we can call it some-to-one.

Because the Apple's Genius Bar is not just a person. It's a chain of orchestrated interactions constructed not only with people but also with data, technology, knowledge, content, training, and culture. It takes a village to offer five-star concierge service.

This shift means new responsibilities for marketing. To engage in a buyer-sensitive way, marketing must provision "virtual" sales reps, train them, and merge them into new types of campaigns. These new reps will be power users of CRM and marketing automation. They will be adept at social selling. They will depend on behavioral data and pitch-perfect content. Depending on the company business model they may generate leads, qualify them, develop business, close sales, or offer technical buying assistance.

IDC believes that the challenge of aligning with sales and instituting sales enablement will seem like baby steps compared to the full-on role integration of this new function. CMO's should jump on this trend now.

Genius Bar is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc.

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GUEST:

As storage has become cheaper, those who generate data have grown used to hanging onto it, even if they (and their IT teams) don’t know what, if anything, they’ll be able to do with it later. Sales notes? Store them. Customer information? Store it. Multiple versions of last quarter’s marketing presentation? Financial spreadsheets? Audio files? Store it, store it, store it.

The ability to house virtually all the data employees create has sparked a growing problem most frequently known as “dark data.” With massive data stores they can’t effectively analyze, enterprises are opening themselves up to all kinds of risk, as well as losing out on opportunities to use that data to advance their businesses.

What is dark data?

Dark data refers mostly to unstructured information, which includes text documents, multimedia files, PowerPoint decks, spreadsheets, and more, and makes up about 80 percent of the data most companies create. When data is “dark,” it’s often because the organizations that own it lack the tools, infrastructure, or skills to effectively leverage it.

When data is dark, neither IT teams nor business users can, for example, analyze myriad sales and customer call notes to assess customer responses to a marketing campaign. And because that analysis isn’t possible, the marketing department can’t make informed adjustments to improve the results of its next campaign, the sales team gets fewer qualified leads and the business sees the negative effect on its bottom line.

Dark data represents missed opportunities for companies to learn more about their employees, customers, and businesses to decrease costs and increase productivity and profits. More concerning, however, might be the potential liabilities lurking in that dark data.

What are the risks of leaving data in the dark?

Whether or not an enterprise has the means to analyze or use its dark data is irrelevant when it comes to risk. If, for example, a company exposes personally identifiable customer information it didn’t realize was stored in its systems, “we didn’t know we had it” is an excuse that won’t mitigate legal responsibility (and will only exacerbate reputation damage). Legal and regulatory risks, however, are not the only issues organizations need to be concerned about when their data is in the dark.

Shrouded proprietary or intellectual data can cause problems when it is inadvertently disclosed, so enterprises need to know which files hold such information, who is accessing those files, and how often. The capability to access that information is not just about risk aversion; it’s also a matter of opportunity cost. Imagine what line-of-business users in human resources, finance, marketing, sales, and virtually every other department could achieve if they had the means to shed light on dark data.

How can companies illuminate dark data?

Alleviating the dark data challenge begins with ensuring that newly created data doesn’t go dark in the first place. Anytime an employee stores data, she (or the IT team charged with supporting her) should ask three questions:

• Is it accessible?
• Is it searchable?
• Is it usable?

IT can help ensure “yes” answers to those questions by putting enough structure in place to analyze data as it is created, so users can surface actionable insights and spot issues before they become problems.

Bringing dark data into the light is a critical issue for businesses. When companies don’t know what they have, who created it, who accesses it, what they used it for or when, they can’t protect against risk, and they can’t identify potentially valuable opportunities.

In an age when information is advantageous in every industry, it makes little sense for organizations to settle for doing business in the dark.

John Joseph is the president and a cofounder of DataGravity. Previously, he was vice president of marketing for storage solutions at Dell following its acquisition of EqualLogic, which he had joined in 2003.

It’s not easy to add connections on LinkedIn anymore. Everyone wants to protect their network – and with good reason. Many of us have been spammed by companies and sales professionals with a hard-sell approach. Decision makers and influencers realize that most of the people trying to connect with them are also looking to get something from them.

According to social selling expert Jill Rowley, “Your network is your net worth.” I believe that she is 100% correct. That’s why my LinkedIn network has grown over 30% in the last three months. What’s with the big increase? It’s simple. Three months ago, I made a decision to try to add three new connections every day… a number which has now turned up to ten.

Through trial and error, I’ve found some effective ways to get connected, and I’ve uncovered some best practices for what not to do. Let me share them with you so you can learn from my experiences and grow your own professional networks. Remember, it’s crucial to be super respectful and genuine in how you connect with people. It’s also extremely important to time exactly when you connect with them. (Don’t be the hard-sell spamming connector! Especially now, since I’m inviting you all to connect with me on LinkedIn.)

Okay, now let’s take a look at seven ways to connect with people and build your LinkedIn network. In the following examples, I’ve used my colleagues here at Act-On to protect the identities of external members of my network. (Don’t worry, I got their permission first.) Notice a common thread throughout these invitations: I’m always looking for a commonality between us. That’s because you should always make all your invites personal. Don’t have the time? Then don’t waste your time – and their time – sending generic invitations.

1. When You Set an Appointment

As soon as you set an appointment, have a conversation trying to set an appointment, or get into any scenario that involves the word “appointment,” let the person know you are sending an invitation to connect. This is LinkedIn Connecting 101, but I know many sales professionals who don’t this. Here’s an example of how I send the appointment.

2. When Someone Views Your Profile

I’m a social media addict. I probably never go more than two minutes without checking LinkedIn (pathetic, I know). You might not be the same, but it’s always good to see who’s looking at your profile periodically. I don’t add every Dick and Sally who looks at me, but if they add value to my network, I send an invite like this.

3. When Someone Adds You on Twitter

This is only for my Twitter peeps, but I just started doing this recently, and I’ve made some of my best connections with influencers. Once I see a connection made on Twitter and we have a little engagement, I go to LinkedIn and get connected. I’ve found that influencers are more likely to connect on Twitter than LinkedIn. Get the connection into their network while you are top of mind.

4. After Reading a LinkedIn Publish

This is my absolute favorite. It’s a great opportunity to start connecting with decision makers and actually get them to accept. For example, if I see a CMO post an article about email marketing, I immediately like the post and then engage with it, tagging their name. Next, I go to their profile and connect with a message like this.

5. You Get a Follower from Your Publish

This is the old “read and run” scenario. Once I publish an article, I will get some decision makers who hit the follow button but don’t add me on LinkedIn. Nope! You can’t just read and run on me, because LinkedIn lets me know you were there. I don’t do this a lot, but if I see the right people following me when that alert hits, I’m connecting like this.

6. Referrals

The bread and butter of my success is referrals. (Of course, I would hope that all sales professionals work off referrals, but that’s for another blog post another time.) As soon as I get permission from my referral partner, I go straight to LinkedIn and make the connection. I’m doing this before I even send the email or make the call. No need to share an example for this one. You all know how it’s done, but we all just need to make a habit of doing it.

7. Any Event, Tradeshow, or Networking Activity

I was lucky enough to attend Dreamforce this year, and I can tell you that I made 132 LinkedIn connections in 48 hours. Get rid of those stupid business cards and pull out your smartphone. I was sipping on a cocktail at Ruby Skye for the DocuSign party, adding people left and right into my LinkedIn network. Let’s just say that with a business card, I tended to forget who anyone was. (And I think I lost the few cards I did collect.) The best part about connecting on LinkedIn is that after a few cocktails, it does all the remembering for you!

Whenever possible, it’s always a good idea to make it personal, memorable, and especially if it’s appropriate, have a little fun with it.

Now it’s Your Turn

Okay, it’s time to start connecting and growing that LinkedIn network! I hope these tips have helped. Be sure to leave some feedback in the comments, since I’m a big believer that #SharingIsCaring! (Oh, and give me a little Twitter love if you can find it in your heart: @JackKosakowski1).

Just getting started with social media? The resources in this toolkit will give you a clear methodology for building a social marketing program, distributing social content, and generating social media leads.

Quick Tips to Better Align Sales and Marketing

Obvious fact: If you align sales and marketing teams, you will drive better leads, close more business, and reduce internal conflicts that may stand in the way of meeting objectives.

Survey Reveals Breakdown: The annual CSO Insights survey reports that major issues still exist between these two essential teams. Findings include the following:

• 63% cited the need for improvement in marketing-generated lead quality and quantity
• Only 43% said they had a formal process for qualifying a lead
• 45% said supporting materials needed improvement

What can be done to improve these numbers and better align sales and marketing?

Create a Mutual Service Level Agreement (SLA) — With an effective SLA, both teams agree on priorities and accountabilities for deliverables. They commit to collaborating on programs and to discuss challenges openly.

• Quick Tip: SLAs should include joint goal creation, meeting cadence, sales responsibilities, and marketing responsibilities.

KPI Alignment — Key performance indicators for both teams must be in sync, with marketing supporting sales and vice versa.

Lead Criteria — Sales and marketing need to agree on the definition of a good lead vs. a bad lead.

• Quick Tip: Define the elements of a qualified lead, allow marketing to do the initial follow-up and qualification if it is a marketing-generated lead, sales must close out wins and losses with relevant information, and make sure contacts are added and updated in the CRM.

Leverage Content Effectively — Sales and marketing both play a critical role in content-based marketing, using and sharing the insights and content created within the organization.

• Quick Tip: Embrace and share social selling tools, including mentions and links of company articles on LinkedIn, tweeting or re-tweeting ideas or company tweets, creating circles and sharing information on Google+, and reaching out to prospects and clients to share relevant articles with an “I thought you might find this interesting” note.

Sales Enablement — Marketing needs a clear view into how they can support sales at each stage of the sales cycle so that they can deliver the appropriate tools and materials to drive prospects through the pipeline.

• Quick Tip: This generic sales process can offer a starting point for what marketing can help support. It also may help to define triggers that signal when to really move a lead into the sales cycle.
  • Qualification: E-mail templates, product playbooks, brochures, case studies, fact sheets
  • Discovery: Industry information, white papers, validation letters
  • Proposal: Updated proposal templates, RFP resources, solution outlines
  • Presentation: PowerPoint template, demos
  • Close: Contracts, master service agreements, implementation plans

Now more than ever, sales and marketing teams must work together to achieve a common goal. No longer can either succeed in a silo. True alignment will take time, commitment, and strong leadership to ensure that changes occur. When they do, and both teams are aligned and working toward the same goals, the whole organization will benefit.

Do you have more tips? What have been some of your challenges with aligning marketing and sales? Let us know!

———————————–

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I use Facebook every day to catch up with my friends, RSVP for social events, and post photos of my cat.

However, I don’t use it for business.

Although my clients are likely on Facebook, I’ve determined that this social network isn’t the best place for me to interact with them. For business, I prefer LinkedIn, Twitter, and industry-specific social networks.

There’s always been a debate about whether Facebook is a good platform for B2B marketers. According to the 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America report, 84% of B2B marketers use Facebook. However, only 32% think it’s effective.

Now, a Forrester study suggests that brands are wasting their time and money on Facebook and Twitter. I’ll save Twitter for a different discussion, but the study found that only 0.07% of a brand’s Facebook fans interact with each of its posts. Plus, Facebook is ending its organic social marketing in January. This means that if you want engagement, you’ll need to pay for it.

So, if Facebook and Twitter don’t work, where should you focus your B2B marketing efforts in 2015?

According to Forrester, one area to focus on is email.

“Your emails get delivered more than 90% of the time, while your Facebook posts get delivered 2% of the time,” says Nate Elliott, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. Plus, customers who want to stay in touch with your brand are almost twice as likely to sign up for your emails as they are to interact with you on Facebook.

Since email can deliver better results than the top social networks, I wanted to share tips on how you can improve your email marketing in 2015. Here are three resources to help you:

1. 2-Minute Tech Marketing Take: Email Subject Lines

This Spiceworks video shows you how to craft subject lines that get IT buyers to open your emails. The advice will also work if you’re selling to other B2B buyers.

2. The Best Time to Send Email Campaigns

This Pinpointe article compiled some of the best research on when to send emails. The post is broken down by day of the week, so you can see how your preferred days stack up.

3. 5 Tips for Crafting Provocative E-mails That Work!

Did you know that your prospects receive 32% more marketing campaigns and emails than they did two years ago? This Alinean article highlights some of the biggest mistakes B2B marketers make with their emails. It also offers tips on how to get leads to open your emails.

With all the pro-email data, you may want to ramp up your email efforts in 2015. Also review your social efforts to see whether networks such as Facebook and Twitter are working for you.

3 Ways to Apply This Information Now

1. Download the editorial calendar template to plan your 2015 emails and other content.
2. Read “What You Can Learn from the World’s Worst Sales Email” for more ways to improve your email marketing.
3. Click to share this article on LinkedIn. Sharing quality content increases your visibility and credibility with your existing contacts, creating conversations, and potentially new business.

Get ready for the holidays with the 12 days of B2B lead generation. Give yourself the gift of qualified leads and more sales.

On the First Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

A Database of Suspects

Start the season with a database of suspects, people who meet your basic criteria to become clients, but are not yet qualified. Clean it up—eliminate duplicate names and update and append the data.

 

On the Second Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Two B2B Segments

Look at your historical activities and decide how to group suspects so you can approach them with a set of tailored marketing tactics. Segment by industry, geography, company size, role, department or any other easily defined criterion…whatever is most likely to yield results.

 

The Third Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Three Engaging Pieces

Provide content that engages and educates your suspects who are doing a lot of research before talking with your sales people. Whether it’s a blog post, e-book, video, webinar or infographic, the content needs to answer the questions that suspects ask as they move through the buying cycle.

The Fourth Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Four Convincing Studies

As your suspects move through the buying cycle they become prospects and want to understand how your product or service has worked for other clients. Case studies are compelling because your prospects can relate to other clients’ problems and how you helped to solve them.

The Fifth Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Five Days of Calling

Once you have a clean, segmented list and content to answer questions, it’s time to get on the phone. Ask questions one-to-one that help you understand each prospect better so you can customize their journey from awareness to decision making. It’s all about personalizing your marketing and adding a human touch.

The Sixth Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Six-Pages of Prospects

The prospects are those who fit your qualifications as a potential customer and have shown interest. Through tele-prospecting, you can determine who is interested in receiving more information…perhaps one of those engaging pieces.

The Seventh Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Seven Nurturing Emails

You need to nurture prospects to help transform them into Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and getting them ready to send on to your sales team. To nurture, send emails that answer prospects’ questions and provide insight. Also, add some tele-nurturing into the sequence to warm up leads even faster.

Research shows that to generate a response in the B2B world, you need an average of nine touches in order to gain a response.

The Eighth Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Eight Scoring Rules

Obviously, you can’t contact everyone at once. So, you need lead-scoring rules. These rules will help you to prioritize the prospects and determine which are more likely to become MQLs, and eventually sales qualified leads (SQLs).

Base lead scoring on demographics (company, industry, revenues, etc.), their level of engagement with your company as well as what you learn from conversations with them. The key is to keep lead scoring simple.

The Ninth Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Nine MQLs

As you nurture the inquiries, some will respond. They will click on links in emails, visit your website, ask for more information and take actions that show they may be interested. When they reach a certain pre-determined score, they cross the threshold and become MQLs.

The Tenth Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Ten More MQLs

Once you have the process down, the leads will continue to flow. After all, you have to feed your sales team continuously.

On the Eleventh Day of Lead Gen

Marketing Made for Sales

Eleven SQLs

Now business developers talk with the MQLs on the phone to determine if they are sales qualified leads (SQLs). The initial lead scoring can help you to estimate interest based on the level of a person’s engagement. It cannot, however, determine why they are taking action. The only way to answer this is to have a human-to-human conversation that uncovers the intent that led to their activity.

On the Twelfth Day of Lead Gen

Sales Made from Marketing

Twelve Closed Sales

In the end, if you follow a well-defined lead management process, the results will convert to sales. Although it may start slowly, it will snowball over time. And that’s the biggest gift of all.

If you work in marketing, it’s likely that either you or someone in your team has a KPI relating to engagement. Indeed, Brandwatch’s own forays into OKRs have included some aims to increase social media engagement.

There have been countless articles on determining how to measure engagement, so I will do you the courteous service of ignoring that point for now.

Instead, I’d like to try and show why engagement is actually worthwhile from a business perspective, and how a social media campaign can actually prove valuable to the wider company objectives.

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Liking more likes

Attracting more people to your Pinterest page and boosting your Twitter follower count sounds fantastic to social media managers, but proving that it has much benefit to the executive team can be much more difficult.

However, there has been a library of research published to suggest that social media engagement does actually help increase the average customer spend.

This research from Bain has fast become a modern classic in the world of social marketing. The following chart shows that simply engaging with customers on social media can vastly increase the amount of money they spend on your products.

Even those that are neutral or normally detract from the brand will spend more money if sufficiently engaged on social with that brand.

eBay, the global ecommerce platform, also found that those customers it managed to engage with spent 54% more on the site than those that were not engaged with the eBay community, further testament to the value to brands of building social relationships with consumers.

This is supported by research from Wet Seal, a clothing retailer, which reports that social shoppers have a 2.5 times greater conversion rate than the average customer.

Engagement can even be advantageous to sales in a customer service capacity. This data from Nielsen shows how simply engaging with customer queries on social media can provide a huge boost in the effectiveness of word-of-mouth.

By engaging promptly with customers in this way, brands can over triple the likeliness that customers will recommend that business to peers than if they do not engage at all.

Yet more evidence that social engagement can lead to better sales performance is revealed by looking closely at statistics about the image network, Pinterest. Our recent report on Pinterest details some of the ways brands can find value in using the site, and begin to measure the performance of their activity.

The following bullet points should help establish just how powerful an impact that social activity can have upon purchasing behaviour.

• The average pin generates 78 cents in sales and drives two visits to company websites. (Piqora)
• 69% of online consumers who visit Pinterest have found an item they’ve purchased or wanted to purchase. (RJMetrics)
• 21% of Pinterest users bought an item in a store after pinning, re-pinning, or liking the item on the site. (Harvard Business Review)

Searching for similar data for sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter yields equally compelling results.

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Ready to engage

Synchronising social data, such as earned mentions, shares and other engagement metrics with traditional marketing KPIs, such as newsletter signups, leads or even sales is perfectly possible in most businesses – though the specifics will vary greatly for each case.

Tracking consumer activity in this way (web traffic, online discussion volumes) in relation to social campaigns can help shed light on the success of a brand’s showing on social media.

Creating engaging campaigns creates engaged customers, which as I have hopefully now begun to demonstrate, creates real business value.

As outlined in our recent food & beverage sector report, the most engaging, and successful, campaigns are those that are well researched. By listening to the preferences and nuances in behaviour of potential customers online, brands can formulate a strategy to best engage with them.

Understanding which sites customers speak on, during which months, on which days and at what times – as well as what they’re saying of course – can be the key to undertaking interesting and engaging activity.

By taking advantage of these kinds of insights, UK drinks brand Robinsons (well known for producing cordials) were able to launch a new product called Squash’d on social media.

With help from agency Iris Worldwide, the brand were able to identify a topic that would resonate with potential customers online: Wimbledon, the tennis tournament. Or, more specifically, discussion around an iconic location at the venue, which has been dubbed either Henman Hill or Murray Mound – a distinction fuelling plenty of discussion online each July.

Robinsons seized upon this opportunity for potential engagement by creating a campaign geared explicitly around that debate, using video and social media activity to provoke engagement around not just the hill/mound, but also with the brand.

By identifying a strong underlying passion for tennis, creatively aligning their brand with Wimbledon and timing their campaign alongside an annual spike in chatter, Robinsons Squash’d more than doubled their mentions for that week.

And we all know what increasing engagement can achieve, right?

Content—if it’s going to be successful—can’t be created in vacuum. Alienated from sales, services, distribution and analysis teams, content creators have little insight into the needs of the organization or broader business objectives. Unfortunately, this disconnected model is how many enterprise organizations approach a content marketing strategy.

Within this flawed and isolated setup, scaling content in the enterprise is nearly impossible. And before a content operation has a chance to gain traction and prove value, it gets dissolved into another marketing group or disappears altogether.

“The content team doesn’t know what to create that will be valuable,” explains Riley Gibson, VP of Customer Success at Kapost. “It ends up being off the mark, or they’ll create it and no one will know and it goes unused.”

“There’s a disconnect. The content team is on an island.” @rileygibson

Get The Organization Involved

The only way to establish a functioning, integrated content marketing operation is through cross-departmental buy-in, bolstered by executive support.

By bringing members of the company—beyond marketing—into the content ideation and decision-making process, key stakeholders can see firsthand the value buyer-centric content brings to their roles and the organization as a whole.

Here are 4 ways to get cross-departmental buy-in for content.

1. Find An Executive Sponsor

This person will be your content advocate, particularly at the beginning when you don’t have the hard data to show results.

A good sponsor should have insight into the company’s overarching business goals and the strategy for achieving them. Find someone who can relay content success up the ladder to their boss, while also establishing credibility and authority to the tactical executors.

2. Establish A Content Board

A “content board” is a gathering of key internal stakeholders within the organization who have insight into the goals and needs of the company as well as your buyers. And to provide value, a board must pull people outside of marketing.

An established content board kills two birds with one stone:

1. You gain additional insight into the themes and content that will resonate with buyers.
2. Your internal stakeholders have the floor, feel listened to, and get to see their impact on the content plan.

Together, these two points buoy buy-in, and provide excellent fodder for content ideas and campaigns.

3. Treat Ideation Like A Brainstorm, Then Cluster Ideas Into Themes

Marketers sourcing input from across the organization often make the mistake of asking for one-off ideas. For example, a saleswoman may request a blog post on a narrow topic, or ask for a video showcasing product features.

“Building a connected content operation starts with the ideation process.” @rileygibson

These specific asks are generally made to assist in a particular situation, but content needs to support the larger picture.

Have a place for stakeholders—particularly buyer-facing teams such as sales, support, and services—to suggest ideas for content that they hear from buyers or will help them do their jobs.

But don’t try to tackle these requests one by one. If you do, you’ll fall into the trap of creating random acts of content. Instead, group ideas into themes that can be approached strategically.

4. Market And Share Your Content Internally

Once you’ve listened to your internal stakeholders and created content around the themes they’ve contributed, share the finished content product within the organization.

Setting up a cadence for internal communications gets the organization (particularly those who contributed ideas or participated in the content board) excited about the content produced by marketing.

But even more importantly, it ensures your content supports the broader organization and the people who need it to do their jobs. Creating a process for sharing content breaks down detrimental silos, making it easy to repurpose relevant, quality content.

A Strong Foundation

Company-wide content alignment helps the buyer, your marketing team, and the company at large.

Getting your team involved and excited about content not only promotes collaboration within your organization, but it also creates a solid foundation for content that your company actually needs. It provides insight and access into marketing initiatives, ultimately resulting in a better buyer-experience.

After all, if your sales or services teams don’t know about a new asset they can’t use it. And if they can’t use it, they might try to create it themselves, which leads to inconsistent messaging and buyer experiences.

Your current customers are the best prospects for future sales.

Yet, very few startups act that way. Whenever I talk with founders, I observe that their thoughts about existing customers are mostly focused on these 3 points:

• How can we retain them?
• How can we support them?
• How can we get referrals from them? (this is a distant third)

If your company isn’t generating a steadily increasing percentage of revenue through upsells to your existing customer base, you owe it to yourself and your business to set 10 minutes aside for this post.

Before we dive into the how and why of upselling, let me address one thing first:

Upselling isn’t evil (although some companies make it so)

Think upselling is a sleazy business tactic? I'm not surprised, because the most memorable experiences we have as consumers with upselling, are often obnoxious and annoying:

• Wanting to register a domain, but having to click your way through three pages of overprized hosting, email forwarding upsells, website backup plans and ridiculous certificates.
• Calling your mobile phone provider to ask one simple question, and having to withstand a barrage of “special promotion offers” and “suggestions how you could get more value out of being a customer of Bigcorpmobile”, instead of a straightforward answer.
• Going into a Chinese restaurant for some fried rice and dimsum, but being having to battle psychic kung fu from the waiter who wants you to feast on $80 abalone.

I want you to set aside any moral judgments for a moment - you’ll see in a minute why upselling, when done right, is not just not nefarious, but indeed the right thing to do for both you AND your customers.

Does your product or service provide real value? Is your offering making your customers more successful? Does it help them achieve their desired outcome? For every $1 they invest in you, do they get $1+x in value in return?

If the answer is yes, then you should look for opportunities to support them even further in their quest for success. 

Upselling to a customer is easy

If they’ve already bought something from you, you’ve already gained their trust.

If you’d invest even half as much effort into upselling your current customers as you invest into new sales leads, you’d probably make a lot more money with a lot less effort. 

But why isn’t upselling common practice then? Why aren’t you focusing more of your sales efforts on upselling to your customers?

Upsellophobia

That’s not a real word, but if there’s Sesquipedalophobia (being afraid of long words…), Upsellophobia should be a real condition.

There are basically two thing sales people fear when it comes to selling to their current customers:

1) Not wanting to harm customer relations 

If you’re under the misconception that selling is selfish or annoying, then you obviously don’t want to do it to your existing customers. You want don’t want to risk upsetting people who are paying you money.

If that's what's holding you back... just get over yourself.

2) Worried about unhappy customers

If you’re harboring suspicions that your current customers aren’t satisfied with your product, reaching out to them can seem risky. Maybe they’re currently not really satisfied, but as long as you don’t rattle the cage, they’ll keep paying you money. If you re-approach them to sell them more… it might just be the straw that breaks the camels’ back and prompts them to cancel.

If that’s your line of thinking, consider this: by giving them the chance to voice their discontent, you get a clearer understanding of the problem, and are better equipped to solve it. It’s an opportunity to improve your product, your service, your sales process, your training or onboarding.

If you’re the kind of company that doesn’t just avoid problems, but proactively seeks to solve them, it can strengthen the relationships you have with your customers and turn them into evangelists for your brand.

How to upsell

Here five simple upselling ideas you can put to use right away.

Qualify for upsells from the beginning

Even when they’re still just an opportunity in your sales pipeline, already start qualifying them for future upsells. 

Ask them:

• How are you intending to grow the business?
• How are you intending to grow the usage of our service?
• What's kind of your vision for the next twelve months?
• If everything went right, would you use the service or our product at the current capacity, or would it grow? And to what degree?

By doing this, you create a goal to work towards as partners with mutual interests.

Announce the upsell

When you’re closing the initial deal, already let them know you’ll upsell them in the future.

Ask them:

• If we deliver on all our promises, I will come back to sell you more, so that we get more revenue from you, and you get more value from us.
• If we deliver all this value to you, is it fair that I approach you in 3 / 6 / 9 months once you’ve accomplished x, y and z to take our relationship to the next level?

It’s a simple thing to set the tone for the relationship they’re engaging in and primes them for what’s ahead.

Determine future opportunity value

Try to figure out what the value of this opportunity could be in the future. You want to focus on opportunities that will grow with you over the next 12 months and more, and prioritize your sales efforts on opportunities with strong expansion potential.

With our sales CRM for example, we love it when fast-growing sales teams sign up for our service, because they’ll buy more seats as they expand.

Quarterly check-inns

Reach out to your customers at least every quarter and have a real conversation to gauge how satisfied they are, how effective they’re using your product and try to identify ways how you can deliver more value.

Don’t just do this when you’ve got a promotion going on or when you need to make quota - do this more with the mindset of a partnership. Sometimes this can even mean things like introducing them to a potential customer, sharing valuable insights with them, or helping to make them successful in any way you can think of. 

Every interaction with your customer should be an extension of the value they get from your product or service.

The ultimate upselling tip: JFDI

I often get asked about examples of upselling techniques, how to upsell over the phone and best practices.

The best advice I can share is: stop overthinking and start doing.

Here’s a simple 3-step-plan for you right now:

1. Take a piece of paper and a pen, or open a text editor.
2. Write down 10 names of current customers you think are happy.
3. Send them an email or call them today and ask them if there are ways how you could serve them better. Ask them to get on a quick 15 minute call and have a conversation about this.

It really boils down to this: upselling today in a makeshift way is a lot better than upselling next year with a sophisticated, clever plan.

Once you've had a few of these conversations with existing customers, watch the upselling web live chat I recently did with Lincoln Murphy from Gainsight or send me an email with any further questions you have.