Rnordman

Did you know words can dance? It’s true.

A carefully chosen word will mambo around your mind and, in the right context, foxtrot into your heart.

In fact, some words are capable of dancing off the page and will inspire you to act immediately.

The Internet is full of people that write content every day, yet many of them don’t understand that they are unintentionally killing their content.

By not following a few very simple strategies that will inspire rhythm in their message and keep their words dancing, they risk losing their dance partners and audience.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to create compelling content that elicits an action or response each and every time, just like music does for dancers?

I am here to tell you that you are only a few small changes away from accomplishing that goal. With the use of carefully chosen words and compelling content, you can dance your way into the heart and mind of your audience through your content.

Be a Better Performer.

Every writer has challenges they face from time to time.

Musical and dance performers are no different.

It is the manner in which creative people address obstacles and draw inspiration from their experience, which defines their message.

Whether channeling that communication through words or music, the content must inspire action.

Never stop making your content great.

This is what makes you a better performer to your audience and induce that action you want from your readers.

Step Out By Yourself

In order to make yourself great at what you do, you must catapult yourself into the unknown, and be a pioneer in a territory that other people need help with.

Sometimes putting on a good show with your content simply means that you understand where your audience needs to go, but perhaps they don’t understand how to get there.

Pioneering places and ideas, like these, you pave the way for others to be successful in that area.

Read

Another great way to ensure that your content is creating an astounding performance for your readers is to always be reading. A great writer will read and research the topic that they are about to write.

When you can comprehend the topic at hand, it makes it easier for you to take drafty old words and light a fire under them with knowledge and research.

Mirror Other Great Performances.

Another tip that has really helped me a lot is imitating other accomplished writers that I deeply respect.

Coming out of the coal mines of Virginia, I had no immediate experience with writing, and it was something that I struggled with.

Mimicking the style of others helped me to discover the voice that I wanted to write with.

A new blogger will want to imitate others for this very reason. An experienced blogger may want to copy the style of a great writer because they are trying to solidify their writing even more, or to brush up on the small things they need to work on.

Either way, imitation is the best form of flattery.

Learn New Steps and Routines

A big step toward becoming a better writer is to acknowledge that your writing style/topics will not work for your audience all the time.

Just as there are different dance steps in performing the mambo, cha-cha and foxtrot, you may have to learn different steps to approach your content writing and inspiring your audience.

Just as dancers practice routines and do dress rehearsals to get meaningful feedback from others on their performance, ask someone to proofread your writing before hitting the “publish” button.

Having someone critique your work means that you want to improve your delivery and you are committed to becoming a better performer.

Be Inspired and Inspiring

A good composer and/or performer uses their environment and even their peers for creative inspiration. That is a big reason why dancing with a partner or in front of an audience is so much more enjoyable.

A great blogger understands the problems that other bloggers face, because they’ve probably faced them as well.

If you haven’t faced them yet, then there’s a surprise twist around the 13th month.

You need to be aware of what your audience is talking about, and what they need. You also have to understand the environment around you so that you can be inspired in order to inspire others.

When you can understand a problem within your target community, all that’s left is to create a solution in an article that both captivates and compels readers to take action.

Writing great content that compels your readers to take action shouldn’t be hard to find, but sometimes it is. There are many strengths that you have as a writer, use these to find that content that inspires others.

When you do find that needle in the haystack, look next to it; you’ll find the secret formula for delivering a performance that appeals to every audience.

Even though that needle may seem impossible to find, eventually people learn that it was never a needle they were looking for, they just needed to get the hay out of the way. It is important to never give up searching for the writing rhythm that makes your words dance.

Preach to a choir of one.

If you write it correctly, that person will listen.

Because compelling copy jumps off the page, it lures and attracts the reader, it brings inspiration to someone who feels like their cart is stuck in the mud.

Always create content that is moving inside of the mind of your reader, because dead content is just wasted time. And you never want to waste your readers time.

Do you have a content writing tip that has been really effective for you? Let us know in the comments below, we would love to hear about it!

       

Take a look at the diagram below courtesy of Ryan Jones (thanks for the point Marc Abraham). It shows how Apple spans its offerings over a surprisingly wide range of price points.

By introducing new lines, retaining older lines at degraded prices and through the use of provider subsidies, Apple delivers an impressive range of ‘step-in’ opportunities for customers to join its ecosystem.

I’m intrigued by this because, from a brand point of view, these arrangements provide a powerful alternative to traditional “up-sell” approaches and to the discounting that brands so often use to make high-end products more available.

Apple’s approach enables the brand to retain its all-important brand equity while providing consumers with the means to address any price barrier in the way they feel most comfortable with. They can enter the Apple world uncommitted or very committed in terms of contracts, with a spec’d up or spec’d down product (which they will then be encouraged to upgrade/add to). Until I saw Ryan’s analysis, I hadn’t realized the sophistication and range of this strategy.

Key Learnings:

Choice is not the same as access. In Ryan’s graph, Apple has used product, price, capacity and configuration to turn 3 lines into 25 different ways to buy. The choices shown here are simple: iPhone; iPod; and/or iPad. The technical features offer scope to pay more or less for each product without cannibalizing the opportunity to invest in the other members of the family (where more choices are available). There’s always a way to buy what consumers want – and there’s always more to buy.

Consumers are buying the brand, but they are deciding on the user experience they want by how they buy. Apple and its service providers have carefully calibrated the user experience (in terms of things like speed) so that, day to day, consumers either pay for what they get or get what they pay for. Regardless, they do so without any compromise to the Apple brand integrity.

Price isn’t about price. It’s about quantifying commitment. Most brands ask for the sale. Apple, it seems to me, goes one step further, and uses price options to actually ask for the commitment on two levels. First of all, they ask consumers to commit to the product without any obligations and pay upfront for that freedom, or commit over time with obligations and defer the cost of doing so. Secondly, and more importantly, they want consumers to commit to more and more of Apple. The Apple ecosystem exists to make this happen. So they’re not just pricing each range so that it is versatile and defendable, they are using their full ecosystem (including all the products not mentioned here such as laptops and desktops) to actively enable one point or multi-point commitment.

People commit to what they enjoy – and the more enjoyment they get, the more likely they are to continue to commit. With apologies to Hotel California, people can step in any way they like, because Apple’s intention is to then make sure they never leave.

Sponsored By: Resonate. Reach audiences based on why they choose brands.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop, the Brand Storytelling Workshop Series and Brand Strategy and Customer Co-Creation Workshops

We tend to think of innovation in terms of new products and services. But the need for innovation applies to a far broader range of business activities. You can innovate with your methods, processes, route to market, supply chain, marketing, partnerships and indeed with your fundamental business model. One neglected area for innovation is pricing. How can you be innovative with the monetisation of your value added? In what new ways can you get paid? Most companies set a price list for their products and services and then offer deals, discounts and negotiations. Maybe they are missing a trick. Let’s consider some alternative approaches:

1. Turn your Product into a Service

Rolls Royce sold engines for aircraft and made money from selling spares and maintenance. They changed their business model to a service package called Total Care which covers predictive maintenance and overhaul activities. By charging customers on a $/engine flying hour basis, Total Care transfers the downtime cost risks for airlines and makes reliability and flying time a driver for profit for both the customer and Rolls-Royce.

2. Demand Driven Pricing

The price of fish in the fish market goes up and down in line with demand. So does the price of an airplane ticket or a hotel room. Bierborse is a bar in Berlin Market where the price of beer rises or falls depending on demand. The canny beer drinker can win by choosing one of the less popular ales at a quiet time of day.

3. Auction pricing

An extension of demand driven pricing is an auction. Google does not sell its advertising with a fixed price schedule. Advertisers effectively bid against each other to achieve the highest ranking on Google adwords.

4. Razor and Blades

Gillette famously used this marketing ploy a long time ago – it sold its razors at a small loss so as to make money from selling the blades. The inkjet printer on your desk was inexpensive but over the year you spend a small fortune on ink cartridges. The Nespresso coffee company makes most of its money not from the machines but from ongoing sales of coffee cartridges.

5. Bundle or Unbundle

Consider bundling more add-ons and services or separating them. Cruise liners sell an all-inclusive bundled holiday which includes food, drink accommodation and entertainment. The low cost airlines have unbundled their services to give a cheap flight but you pay extra for more luggage or early boarding.

6. Pay what you Can

What if customers were asked to pay what they think is a fair price for the value they had received? This method can be deployed as a promotional programme or for regular business. It is used by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The One World Café in Salt Lake City has no price list. People pay what they can. No one is turned away. If people cannot afford to pay then they can work in the kitchens or in the garden where much of the food is grown. A more commercial version of this technique is used by Priceline where you can state what you are prepared to pay for say a hotel or flight and suppliers might respond if it suits them.

7. Get someone Else to Pay.

If your client cannot pay the full amount for using your product then maybe there is someone else who can contribute. The free newspapers that we regularly see in large cities are consumed by commuters but paid for by advertisers who are keen to reach this audience. Lifestraw is a brilliant innovation by Swiss company Vestergaard. It saves lives in the developing world by purifying water. But the people who need it most cannot afford it. However, because it replaces the boiling of water it qualifies for carbon offset credits and this is what funds the business.

8. Vouchers and Discount Codes

Vouchers have been around for a long time but we keep seeing them pop up in new ways. They allow you to target a discount to a select group. Restaurant chains regularly offer discount vouchers by email to prior customers. This can boost business in the slacker periods of the week. Loyalty cards and social media discount codes are other ways to grant discounts to segmented groups while keeping your regular price list intact.

9. Change the Value Proposition

Clockface Café in Moscow charges customer 2 Roubles per minute for the time they spend in the café. They can have free cups of coffee and biscuits but pay for their time while they surf the internet, work on their homework or chat to friends. 99% of cafes charge for each cup of coffee but the value in the café might not be the coffee – for many people it is a friendly place to meet or use Wi-Fi. Blockbuster’s revenue model was based on video rental fees and late return charges. Netflix used a different pricing scheme based on a monthly subscription with valuable recommendations.

In an article on this topic in Harvard Business Review October 2014 Stefan Michel argues that there are two kinds of innovation—one in value creation, the other in value capture. ‘But most companies focus only on the first,’ he says. The ways to innovate with pricing and monetisation are legion. Fresh approaches can differentiate you and attract new customers. What price innovation?

Email marketing best practice –  4 Smart techniques to resend to your non-openers for your email campaigns

If at first you don’t succeed – try and try again. It’s a message that’s been drilled into us since childhood, but how well does it stack up against improving your email marketing?

For a long time it has been argued that resending emails to recipients that didn’t open the first time around could do more harm than good, but there is also a lot of evidence to suggest it can be an effective way to re-engage with your subscribers so long as you proceed with caution. Here are 4 simple, practical techniques that we have found effective.

• 1. Only resend the most important email campaigns
  Suppose that every time a subscriber left one of your emails unopened, you resent it. Imagine how annoyed your subscriber would get. It probably wouldn’t be too long until they unsubscribed from all of your email marketing messages.

So pick your most important email campaigns and limit your resending to just those ones.

• 2. Change your subject line
  The subject line plays an important part in capturing your reader’s attention and enticing them to open the email. If it didn’t work the first time, what makes you think it’ll work the second time?

Tweaking the subject line also has the added bonus of letting readers know this email was not resent by mistake.

• 3. Change your timing
  There is an option to change the timing of your resend, make sure you give people enough time to open to your original email – we usually recommend waiting at least 3 days.

It’s also helpful to resend your email at a different time of day to your original send. Someone might not have had time to read your email when you sent it at 9am but they might have time at midday.

• 4. Measure the impact
  The entire goal of resending your email is to encourage a few more opens and clicks in hope of driving additional conversions. But this can come at a cost. Some people may respond negatively to the additional email in their inbox and unsubscribe.

So, be sure to measure the unsubscribe rate of your email resend and weigh this up against the additional conversions that it creates. If too many people are dropping off your list because of the resend, it’s probably not worth it/

Philip Kotler, recognized Marketing Guru and Professor, said, “…most of the impact of marketing is felt before the product is produced, not after.” And yet almost everything we read about today is tactics for improving what Marketing does after the product is produced. My friends at the ANA did a study with McKinsey on the need for disruption in Marketing. Their findings were interesting, and yet none of them had anything to do with what Kotler claims provides the most impact, “before the product is produced.”

I wondered why that was. Could it be that Kotler knows less than McKinsey? I wasn’t ready to concede that point. A bit of investigation showed that the team from McKinsey that conducted the study consisted of their Digital Marketing consultants. That explains a lot.

If you bound the definition of Marketing disruption to those functions which occur after the product is produced and you only interview Marketers who have responsibility after the product is produced, which is what they seem to have done, then it should not be surprising that the focus for disruption will be after the product is produced.

No wonder Marketing continues to get less respect than it should. It seems to be self-focused (at least those who claim to represent it) on post-product release issues. No wonder some CMOs don’t want to be associated with the Marketing Communications-focused CMO and therefore want a new title. (I have posted on this more than once, but here is a good one.)

Shouldn’t the CMO assure the company is leveraging Marketing on the front end? Sure, many CMOs do not have these people working for them, but that should not mitigate their purview to assure it is done well. The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) has noted often that the majority of new products introduced fail (and in some categories it is the vast majority). They also note that an incremental investment in the front end of Marketing provides a better return than more money in R&D.

Apple spends relatively little as a percentage of revenue on the back-end of Marketing compared to other companies in its category. Yet its products sell very well. One might say, sure, they’re Apple. But Apple has almost never spent a lot on the back-end side compared to others and their first decade products (after the Apple II) were busts (Apple III, Lisa I, Lisa II, Newton, etc.) Getting the product right is more important than promotion and promotion is easier when you get the product right.

Chrysler could sell out the PT Cruiser in its day, while needing to resort to pricing promotions such as “Friends and Family” type pricing to move its other cars. The Oakland A’s baseball team, no matter the amount of promotion, could not regularly sell out its games … until they got a good baseball team.

Want to know where the disruption in Marketing needs to be: Leveraging before the product is produced not discussing the latest content strategy. This requires insights that can be transformed into new products, services, or business models. Marketing’s blind spot is in failing to recognize the insights need to come before the product is produced so it can result in profitable innovation.

It has been said that strategy and innovation have a cross-roads at insights. Given that effective strategies, executed well, driven by innovation can create sustainable competitive advantage, then for Marketing to be more relevant simply suggests they must drive insights.

Mitch

This blog post is a set of behavioral rules for B2B technology buyers to follow,  so as to maximize the value and the time of the hard working, honest and ethical salesperson sitting across the desk or on the phone.

It will also serve to minimize the inconvenience and continuing lost profits the buyer’s company is making without your solutions.

The Rules

1. When a salesperson calls you on the phone, you will stop what you are doing, pick up the phone and smile when you say, “Hello, this is (Your Name), how are you?”
2. You will be amused with the variety blurting-out, fumbling, 90-second introductions without breathing, awkward silences and obvious lack of preparation, professionalism and nervousness of the salesperson.
3. After they have finished their intro, you will ask, “how can I help you”?
4. You will refrain from hanging up, giving excuses about being in a meeting, or chastising your administrator, who let this call slip through.
5. If the salesperson is planning a trip to your location in the near future, you will consider it a stroke-of-luck and make space on your calendar to accommodate an in-person call.
6. You will hear the salesperson out and never ask them to send more information in an email or to call back at a more convenient time for them, because what they have to say could save you and your company serious money…. even get you promoted!
7. You will answer all questions the salesperson asks to the best of your ability, regardless of their nature, how many they ask or the irrelevance to your role and business.
8. You will disclose any pain or discomfort in your physical condition, even a minor back-ache, because salespeople ar looking for pain and may have something in their bag that can help.
9. You will inquire about the features of their products and be curious about who else is using them and the benefits they are getting and welcome any opportunity to see the product in action in a live demo.
10. You will smile knowingly as the sales rep plugs in the Lap-top, fumbles with the LCD technology, or these days, more coolly passes you the iPad and brings up the PowerPoint presentation or video clip.
11. Most importantly, during the presentation you will refrain from playing with your smart-phone and stay focused on the bullets and message, because there is infinite wisdom, somewhere in the presentation.
12. You will wait until the salesperson has emptied your bucket of potential objections and enjoy the festival of the salesperson digging holes for themselves while trying to counter them.
13. You will never promise to get back to the salesperson unless you truly mean it.
14. You will nod and promise not to smirk when the salesperson asks any question beginning with “If we could show you a way….”
15. You will be grateful when the salesperson interrupts you before you have finished your sentence (while you are discussing the issues that are important to you) and then tells you what you need to do (use their product), because the sooner you find out, the better.
16. You promise to engage any salesperson with an earnest and professorial look on their face; possibly wearing a chalk-dusted sports coat with leather elbow-pads, carrying a pipe, wearing a sword on their hip or carrying a lance, or even wearing a measuring tape and carrying a pair of scissors. They are Challengers and are going to challenge your assumptions and to teach you about the hidden jewels in your business, that only they can help you discover.
17. This is the biggie – never lie to a salesperson- we can tell!

If you are a sales professional or manager and find this slightly amusing and would like to up-level the conversations you or your sales team is having with buyers, we can help.

Content to Support Sales Conversations

We can help sales, marketing and sales enablement leaders with content deployment, content strategy and to create the conversational content that your team needs to avoid the above, including:

• Ideal customer profiles, including persona’s, problems and causes,
• Relevant capabilities and competitive positioning,
• Call preparation guides,
• Why Change and Point of View conversations,
• Inventories of emails and customer stories,
• Key questions to ask and key objections and counters,
• Facts, data, analyst reports, insights,
• Visual support, video, webinars and ebooks,
• Curated 3rd party content to nurture opportunities.

If you believe that content is an important enabler of sales success, you are invited to find out more.

If you found this amusing or have committed any of the sins above, or know someone who needs to read the rules, please pass it on.

If you’ve ever sold a house, your real estate agent probably talked with you about the importance of curb appeal, and he or she may have suggested that you do some things (prune the landscaping, paint the trim, etc.) to improve your home’s curb appeal.

Curb appeal is the visual attractiveness of a house as seen from the street, and it is what creates that all-important first impression of a house in the minds of potential buyers. Real estate professionals know that curb appeal plays a huge role in determining how quickly a house will sell and what price it will bring.

First impressions are also critical in B2B marketing. And today, most of your potential customers will base their first impression of your company on the content you publish and distribute. We now know that business buyers are performing research on their own, and many are delaying conversations with sales reps until later in the buying process. Because potential buyers usually interact with your content before they interact in any other way with your company or your product or service, they form an impression of your company based on the content they consume.

If your content fails to create a good first impression, a potential buyer will quickly look elsewhere, and you may not get another chance to create engagement with that buyer. On the other hand, when your content creates a good first impression – when it has good curb appeal – a potential buyer will likely “come back for more” and be willing to continue his or her engagement with your company. Just as important, when one of your content resources creates a good first impression, a potential buyer is much more inclined to view the rest of your content – and your company – favorably.

That’s because of a powerful cognitive bias known as the halo effect. The halo effect can be defined as the transfer of positive (or negative) feelings about one thing to another, without having a rational basis for the transfer. The halo effect can be found in a wide range of human judgments. For example:

• If I meet a person who is well-spoken and likable, I am likely to believe that the person is also intelligent, generous, and ethical.
• If I have a good experience with a Honda automobile, I will be inclined to believe that I’ll also be happy with a Honda lawnmower.
• If I read a white paper produced by your company and find the paper to be useful and valuable, I’ll be inclined to believe that other content resources produced by your company will also be useful and valuable. Just as important, I’ll also be inclined to believe that your company is good at what it does.

In part one, I laid out a brief strategy and justification for delving into paid promotions for your content marketing plans.

A few years ago, you could cost effectively rely on key influencers to help your content get some attention online. Today, it has become more cost effective to use paid promotion. Below I cover various platforms for you to consider using in order to get your content the visibility you were hoping for when you created it.

Platforms for Promotion

As ad networks have become more sophisticated, audience targeting has improved dramatically. The ability to granularly target your exact audience is critical to ensure your content’s promotional budget is not spent targeting the wrong people. The key is knowing your audience, understanding their behavior, and promoting your content where they are, not where you hope they will be.

Though we will explore Google remarketing, Google display, and Facebook in more detail as they tend to work well for the majority of advertisers, some of the most popular networks for promoting content are:

Google

• Remarketing
• Display Ads
• +Post Ads

Social Networks

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Native Advertising

• Taboola
• Outbrain
• nRelate

Google Remarketing

The conversion rate for most sites typically falls somewhere between one percent and 10 percent, meaning that a whopping 90-99 percent of your website visitors don’t convert.

Some of your site visitors intentionally chose not to convert, but most likely just weren’t far enough down the buying process to pull the trigger. This audience is your “lowest hanging fruit” as they have already expressed interest and are already familiar with your brand.

Remarketing is a display network targeting option that allows you to re-engage users who have previously visited your site. Instead of worrying about finding new visitors, focus on those who have already shown interest in your brand. It’s cheaper and you’ll find that they are your best prospects.

Google’s display network is the world’s largest and reaches 94 percent of US internet users. Google display ads are available on 65 percent of comScore’s top 200 websites, giving you the ability to show your ads alongside the web’s best content.

Who it’s right for

Most B2B and B2C content marketers

Targeting Options

Setting up a remarketing campaign in Adwords is simple and just requires a small snippet of javascript code on your website. Targeting strategies can be as simple as “All Visitors” or as complex as you’d like. It’s generally best to target audiences of no less than a few thousand users for data collection purposes.

Your remarketing campaign’s targeting can be aligned to a fine detail using the on-site browsing habits of the audience your content is designed to help.

Results

While CPC can vary quite a bit, $.50 is a fair estimate for most advertisers. Remarketing is almost always a very cost-effective lead generator due its granular targeting options and pre-qualified audience.

Quick Tip

You can also target remarketing ads to users that have already converted into a lead. These users are your highest value prospects, and re-engaging them through a channel other than email may help push them to become a customer. Consider these additional targeting options:

Targeting visitors who did convert AND

• Placed an order of more than $100
• Completed the Free Trial but not yet the paid subscription
• Converted more than 30 days ago
• Bought a television but not surround sound

Content designed to help convert prospects into customers or turn first-time buyers into lifelong customers can add tremendous revenue to your business and efficiency to your sales cycle. By allowing content to tell a story and educate consumers, your sales team can spend more time closing sales and less time with unqualified leads.

Google Display

Who it’s right for

Most B2B and B2C content marketers

Targeting Options

Google’s display network provides a great opportunity to get your content in front of a targeted audience that isn’t searching Google for information related to your business, but is reading about it elsewhere on the web.

Ads can be targeted on the Google display network by any combination of the following targeting options, which can be found under the ‘Display Network’ tab in Adwords:

• Keywords – target websites across Google’s publisher network based on keywords and content found on their site
• Placements – explicitly target sites, subdomains, or even exact URLs that are extremely relevant to your audience
• Topics – target many sites across the web that contain similar topics and themes
• Gender – target users by gender
• Age – target users by age
• Parental Status – target users who have kids or do not have kids

Results

CPC can vary dramatically depending on your industry and competitive landscape. Expect CPCs between $.25 and $3.00, though it is not uncommon to reach outside of that range. The Google display network provides a great opportunity to expand your reach and capture prospects that otherwise wouldn’t necessarily be searching for your product/service, though they may be interested.

If budget is limited, starting with Remarketing is a good idea, though there is substantially more opportunity on the greater display network.

Quick Tip

Be very mindful of mobile performance, especially on the display network. If budget is limited and your site does not convert mobile traffic particularly well, opting to target only users searching on computers is a best bet.

Facebook

Who it’s Right For

Just about all B2B and B2C content marketers. Facebook performs especially well for those whose audience is highly targeted by demographic.

Targeting Options

Most marketers know that you can target by Facebook’s basic targeting option, such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Relationship status

But, you might not have known it’s possible to target audiences on Facebook based on:

• Remarketing
• An email list
• Household income
• Job title
• Charitable donations (and to what causes)
• Whether they are a recent homebuyer
• The car they drive and when they purchased it
• If they hold travel credit cards or high-end department store credit cards

This doesn’t even begin to crack the surface of the advanced targeting options available on Facebook but should provide some insight into what is possible with advanced behavioral targeting.

Quick Tip

On Facebook, a high click-through-rate is vital to keep traffic volume high and cost-per-click low. Because of “ad fatigue,” or a gradually reducing click-through-rate caused by the same users seeing the same ad over-and-over, updating ad copy regularly is critical.

As a general rule of thumb, anytime ad frequency gets near or above 5 in a given 7 day period it’s likely time to update your ad copy.

Ideally, frequency is in the 1-2 range, to keep ads fresh and users from getting “ad blindness.”

Results

With well-crafted targeting and copy, a cost-per-click below $.10 is very attainable. Considering that content creation may have cost you thousands, $.10 to reach your audience is a great investment.

By leveraging content promotion, you don’t have to get stuck alongside your competition following the “if you build it, they will come” mantra. Five years ago, yes, your audience likely would have come. In today’s competitive landscape, it takes a little something extra to be heard among the noise.

With great content comes great opportunity. With great content and content promotion comes great content marketing.

Case studies are one of the most powerful B2B sales and marketing tools.

Today’s B2B buyers want social proof before they purchase a product or service. Customer testimonials and case studies can give them this proof. According to hawkeye, 71% of B2B buyers in the awareness stage and 77% in the evaluation stage cited testimonials and case studies as the most influential types of content.

However, not everyone is going to find your success stories on your website. Here are 21 ways to get your case studies in front of a wider audience:

1. Host a Twitter chat and invite your customer to be the featured guest. Tell your customer’s story and discuss a key problem that both your customer and others on the chat are facing.
2. Tweet about it. You can even schedule a series of tweets that tells the story in its entirety. For example, start the series with a tweet that describes the problem your customer faced. Follow it with a tweet about how they tried to solve the problem on their own but couldn’t. Then, tweet about why they selected you and how they implemented your product. Finish with a few tweets highlighting their best results. Each tweet should link to the full case study and contain relevant hashtags. You can also number these tweets, so people will know they’re part of a series.
3. Upload the case study on LinkedIn Publisher. Using LinkedIn Publisher is a great way to expand your reach on the top B2B social network. Just be sure to re-word your story before you publish it, so Google doesn’t think you’re posting duplicate content.
4. Share the case study on LinkedIn. In addition to sharing it on your company page, ask some of your employees to share it in their personal status updates.
5. Mention it in LinkedIn groups that your target audience participates in. It’s even better if the customer that you profiled is active in these groups and can respond to comments and questions.
6. Tell the story on Quora if it will answer someone’s question. Just watch that you’re not too promotional, or your answer will get voted down.
7. Share the story with your Facebook community. Ask your friends to comment on it.
8. Turn your case study into a SlideShare presentation. Insert a lead generation form in the presentation, so you can collect leads directly from SlideShare.
9. Post the case study in industry-specific forums and social networks. Getting active in industry-specific social networks is a great way to engage with your target audience.
10. Feature your customer in a webinar. You can tell the story and take questions from the audience.
11. Ask if your customer will speak at an event. Conference organizers are always looking for relevant success stories.
12. Empower your sales team. Give sales reps your latest case studies. They can work these stories into their conversations to get prospects interested in your products and services.
13. Make your voicemails memorable. Sales reps can cite a result from a case study when they leave voicemails with prospects. This can help them get more return calls.
14. Hand them out at meetings. Design a 2-page, front-and-back version of your case studies. This makes it easy for sales reps to hand them out at meetings.
15. Email case studies to prospects. A new case study gives sales reps a reason to reach out to a prospect.
16. Email case studies to your marketing lists. Success stories are a great addition to your e-newsletters and other email communications.
17. Post case studies on your blog. Turn your case study into a “how-to” article, where your customer shares tips on how to overcome a challenge.
18. Promote your case studies on your website. Create ads that link to your case studies and place them throughout your site. You can also highlight a case study on your home page.
19. Quote your customers. Insert customer quotes throughout your site to enhance your credibility.
20. Add credibility to your mailers. Include highlights from a case study or a quote from a customer in your next direct mail campaign.
21. Beef up your proposals. Include a few case studies in your next proposal to increase your odds of winning the project.

These are just a few of the places where you can share your success stories. Try experimenting with how you format and share your case studies, so you can reach a wider audience and turn more leads into customers.

3 Ways To Leverage This For Your Business:

1. Read “3 Keys to More Compelling Case Studies” to find out how to create case studies that excite and influence your potential customers.

2. Download Content Marketing Quick Fixes to learn 10 things you can do improve your B2B content.

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.

In today’s B2B marketing landscape, your strategy must be targeted in order to reach your growth goals. Whether it’s digital marketing, inbound marketing, direct marketing or the actual sales conversation, buyers expect a personalized approach. To get to the point of (successful) personalization, your organization must understand buyer needs. Truly understanding them is a bottleneck in the Sales Enablement environment.

This problem occurs when there is too much of an emphasis on product features, rather than the buyer themselves. Focus too much on your product and you risk losing your customer. Successful companies manage to link product value with buyer need. In order to execute this optimely within your salesforce, you need to develop cohesive messaging. Both marketing and sales are responsible for this. In order to give you a better understanding of these two stakeholders, we’ll dig deeper into both stories:

Marketing’s Side of the Story

Most B2B companies think that marketing has the biggest responsibility over identifying buyer needs. Looking at the traditional sales funnel, marketing is responsible for entry, and is thus the first stakeholder to understand and address buyer needs. If marketing doesn’t do this well, they can’t attract leads, and sales can’t close them. Ultimately, your business won’t grow.

The key factor for success is being hyper relevant to the audience. In other words, marketing is responsible for making sure that the messaging about the product and value perfectly matches with the buyer needs. In marketing campaigns, but even more when delivering the message to the sales team.

This issue is often a bottleneck for many companies. Many struggle with delivering a consistent buyer focused message. This can ultimately result in an ineffective, and mostly, blind sales team. Not exactly what sales enablement is all about.

Sales’ Side of the Story

It would not be fair to point the finger for poor communication solely on marketing. In fact, marketing has little control over how sales handles buyer needs. There might be content available that’s perfectly fit for the buyer’s needs, yet if sales doesn’t feel like using it, they won’t. To make sure that this doesn’t result into a typical blame game between sales and marketing, having a sales driven marketing culture is the way to go.

A good salesperson should be able to react to the buyer’s needs during the sales conversation without a problem, and if marketing did their job right, there should be content ready to educate the buyer. Content that salespeople like to use, and buyers love to consume.

That’s not everything, if there is misalignment between sales and marketing on buyer needs, it should be sales that takes the first step to inform marketing. Only then can you talk about a sales driven marketing culture. Only then will you be able to convert happy customers and scale your business. It’s a two-way communication process that drives a business to be more buyer-centric. That’s why a sales enablement role is important. This person is in the middle of sales and marketing, making marketing more efficient and sales more effective.

Truth be told, if you don’t have a person who’s dedicated to sales enablement, you’re going to have inefficiencies.

Who’s responsible?

A marketer? Maybe. A salesperson? Potentially. The best option is to go for someone who understands both worlds. Someone who know’s how a marketing team works and how things are run from a sales perspective. Only then can you break down these two silos, resulting in a powerful sales machine that’s hyper relevant to the buyer.

Key Takeaways

• Marketing is responsible for delivering buyer need insights
• Sales is responsible for delivering feedback and additional insights
• Without a good communications strategy, you’re blind to buyer needs
• Without someone responsible for sales enablement, you aren’t going to hit the sweet spot of sales growth.

Back to You

Do you have someone who’s responsible for sales enablement? Is that person actively communicating buyer insights between sales and marketing? Are they breaking down these two silos?

This article originally appeared on the Showpad blog.

Image source: www.gratisography.com

“Disrupt with honor. Pivot with style.” – Lisa Pool

Disruptive technology and disruptive innovation are two of the most used buzzwords. However, before I go any further, a quick definition: A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market or a new value in the network. In time, this disruption will displace an earlier technology.

Disruptive Innovation

Not all innovation is disruptive; some innovation is transformative. When automobiles first came on the market, it didn’t disrupt the horse-drawn vehicle market due to the price difference. Automobiles were out of reach of the average consumer. However, the Model T did disrupt the market by presenting a solution that was affordable to the masses, changing transportation as we knew it. Goodbye horse-drawn carriages and carts.

Sustaining Innovation

Not all innovation creates a new market. Some innovations are an evolution of an existing market that through improvement leads to transformation. It can be disruptive in that it changes how we do things. Thank you salesforce.com and Pardot.

For example, sales training has traditionally been done in a classroom setting. It takes sales people out of the field, dumps a lot of great knowledge on them (hopefully), does a few role plays (most people in sales will tell you these role playing exercises rarely match the reality of their day-to-day world), do a bit (sometimes hours) of homework, rinse repeat for two or three days, then sends them back into the field with a hope and a prayer sales will increase. Typically sales will see an increase for a limited time, but then those numbers will gradually decline over the next sixty days until things are back to normal.

The number one reason I stopped doing what I was doing to join AXIOM Sales Force Development, was because not only were they seeking to transform sales organizations, they were preparing to disrupt the entire sales training industry. This excited me! I HATED 90% of all the sales training events I had ever attended. They were TORTURE. And no offense to the new home sales trainers, I know your hearts are in a good place, but seriously, I know how to greet people, and all the other steps of the sales process. I got that down. What I can’t stand is creating urgency through flimsy-masked efforts to create demand. It doesn’t work. I reeks of hubris. How can I expect a buyer to accept me as a trusted advisor when I can’t be transparent in my dealings? How can I expect them to think I have their best interest above my own when I am adding up commissions in my head?

Off rant/soapbox

Changing seller behavior was going to take more, and how were we going to do that? Back to the drawing board. After a lot of brain-storming, planning, execution, testing, soft launches, more testing, more execution, more improvements, more client discussions and input, just before Dreamforce 2013, AXIOM pivoted from a sales training company to an enterprise ‘software as a service’ provider in the push of a button.

Pivoting with Style

In the year since, we have practiced our pivot. Some days it feels a little more like a hokey pokey, and other days it feels more like a really fun samba. A beautiful pivot requires innovating while keeping one foot in your vision, culture, history, values so that you can better serve your clients in new innovative ways. Pivoting gracefully requires practice, skill, and believe it or not, coaching.

A good pivot also requires an organization to ask a lot of hard questions there may not always be immediate answers. My favorite question is, “What has to happen for this to occur?” When we ask ourselves this question, it requires us to dig deeper. Just like when forecasting sales where you can’t simply say, “I feel good about this deal,” you have to be able to answer why. What has to happen before this sale can close [occur]? What has to happen for those things to happen? Keep taking this question backwards until you have as many variables in place in order to have a realistic view of all the steps to a successful pivot.

Remember two things:

1. Disrupt with Honor
2. Pivot with Style

Would you like your social media strategy to help increase website traffic, leads and sales? These five things can help make that happen.

Despite social media’s ubiquity and adoption by people, there are a lot of B2B companies that have not done much to leverage its power. Most of those companies want to do more, but haven’t had the time or are uncertain of how best to get started to use social media to increase traffic, convert leads, nurture those leads toward a sale and delight their customers.

Avoiding “Ready, Fire, Aim”

That hesitation is not a bad thing, actually. A lot of companies want to avoid the “ready, fire, aim” approach to social media. What’s worse, actually, is companies who take the “ready, fire, aim” approach, get lousy results (if any) and then sour on social media and its potential to help grow their business.

So what’s the best way to avoid a “spray and pray” approach to social media that irritates people, makes your company appear clueless and unprofessional and, worst of all, doesn’t generate results?

You Do Have Content, Right?

First things first. Before building a social media strategy, you need to have great content on your website. Content that is helpful and of interest to your ideal customers just when they want it during their increasingly non-linear buyer’s journey. Content examples include a blog, videos, ebooks, webinars, etc.

Without your own content as the foundation of your social media strategy, you’ll being throwing bait to the fish without it being connected to your fishing line. The fish will appreciate it, but there won’t be much return for your company.

With content, however, your social media strategy will be much more likely to succeed. Social media can vastly extend the reach of your site’s content, get it shared and draw more traffic back to your site. As marketing expert and author Jay Baer famously says, “Content is fire. Social media is gasoline.”

So before firing away with a social media effort, here are the five “must-do’s” to ensure you’ll have proper aim and profitable results:

1. Research Your Buyer Persona

In Adele Revella’s “The Buyer Persona Manifesto,” she offers this definition of a buyer persona:

“It’s an archetype, a composite picture of the real people who buy, or might buy, products like the ones you sell.”

Think about your ideal customers who don’t know your company. What information would they find helpful that you can provide? Keep in mind that they are much more interested in themselves and their problems or aspirations than your company and its products.

Which social media platforms do they tend to use? Think about fishing. Don’t chase the fish; fish where the fish are. Gain a presence on those social media networks where your ideal customers already gather.

Does your buyer persona use one of the big social media networks or perhaps a niche site targeted at people in the same industry or with a similar interest? You may not need to be on as many social media platforms as you think.

Why do they use the social media platforms that they do use – business or pleasure? What sort of content do they tend to consume and share?

2. Optimize Your Profiles

Each social media site that you use is a brand embassy, and should represent your home country (i.e. website) to the fullest extent available. Include your company’s logo and get all the related graphics and dimensions correct for each platform.

Just like with your main website, use keywords to get your social media profile found via search. Search engines crawl most social media networks. And always include a link back to your site to make it easier for visitors to find out more about you.

3. Build Reach

“Reach is a measure of potential audience size,” according to Kissmetrics. So, it’s not just how many follower you have, but how many followers your followers have.

That’s why you’ll want to start following and connecting with prospects, customers and thought leaders. Keep in mind, however, that your social media presence is only as good as your engagement and your content.

Let’s talk about “engagement.” Have you ever been to a cocktail party and met a guy who only talked about himself and never showed any interest in you? Don’t be that guy on social media.

Instead, follow the 80/20 rule: share helpful, interesting content at least 80% of the time. Post pictures, videos, ebooks, blog posts, contests, and questions. The other 20% of your social media posts can direct people to offers and other more promotional content.

4. Customize Your Content For Each Social Media Platform

No matter how great your content is, when it’s distributed on social media it’s only meaningful within the context of where it appears.

Have you ever seen a Twitter post with hashtags that has been posted to LinkedIn? Or perhaps a tweet that was cut off because it was autoposted from Facebook? It demonstrates laziness, a deaf ear for social media (and customers?) and resembles a foreign movie with really bad voiceover dubbing.

For each social media platform, present your message in the context of the platform on which you’re communicating. Here are examples of the types of customization you should do for some of the major social media networks.

Twitter – Think of Twitter as a living, breathing conversation. Keep your tweets short, engaging and easily shareable. While you get 140 characters, your posts should be less than 115-120 characters. Use hashtags to connect with an audience or tap in to relevant trends. Also, don’t start a tweet with an @ symbol because it will only be seen by mutual followers of the sender and receiver, thus diminishing your reach. And as with so much of social media, make it visual. Tweets with pictures have 50% higher click through rates.

Facebook – This is where you can show more personality than just about any other social media network. From a frame of mind, visitors to Facebook generally want to have fun and be entertained. This is not the place for serious content. And while there’s no limit on the number of characters, keep your posts under 250 characters. Use as many visuals as possible (but make sure they are properly sized for Facebook).

LinkedIn – Looking to find and share serious content? Here’s your network. If you think about the body language of someone on Facebook, envision someone leaning back in their chair. For LinkedIn, they are leaning forward, searching and ready to learn. It’s OK to provide more in-depth content here. You can post content to your company page and to relevant LinkedIn groups. But when posting to groups, it’s best to listen first to the questions and conversations before offering up your content. Again, keep the context (and the cocktail party rule) in mind.

Google+ – Google plus is great for posting images, video and educational content. And while it may not have the engagement levels of other networks, it can help with getting your content found through search engines like no other social media platform. The +1 buttons showing up next to results can improve your click through rates on Google searches.

5. Anayze To Refine

That which can be measured can be improved! That’s how you will know if your content and social media strategy is on the right track in support of your business goals.

Some basic metrics to monitor include:

• How many visits are you getting from social media?
• How many leads are you generating from social media?
• Which of those leads became customers?

More important than the number of social media followers you are gaining is their level of engagement:

• How shareable is your content? Think of shares as votes.
• Which posts are getting the most clicks?
• Which posts are generating the most interactions? Look particularly at shares and comments.

The leads are weak? You’re weak!

If you have never seen the movie/play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” do yourself a favor and watch it. Alec Baldwin rips into the late Jack Lemmon for commenting, “the leads are weak,” with a classic Baldwin-esque tongue-lashing: “The leads are weak? The <expletive> are weak! You’re weak!”

For B2B companies, content marketing is still on the rise. In Content Marketing Institute’s most recent benchmark report for the US, they noted that the number of marketers using a content marketing strategy has risen yet again last year – up to 93% of all B2B marketers.

If you’re one of these marketers who’s already doing all the right things – blog posts, premium content, calls to action, etc. – why is your strategy not working?

eMarketer delved into a few reasons reasons that your B2B content strategy may not be working, and it isn’t always because you’re creating the wrong content. Your content strategy could be working in your favor, and you may just be looking for success in the wrong places.

Leads aren’t everything

Many marketers measure content strategy success based solely on number of leads or revenue driven from their strategy. Number of leads, cost per lead, and traffic to lead ratio are great ways to measure conversion, but they don’t give you an entire picture of the effectiveness of your content marketing campaign.

Intangible KPIs like brand awareness are essential for seeing the full scope of your content strategy’s results.

eMarketer explains that content marketers are focusing all too much on only tangible KPIs (key performance indicators) like revenue results. Intangible KPIs like brand awareness and brand perception are just as essential for seeing the full scope of your content strategy’s results.

When putting together reporting on your content strategy, try to look past the revenue metrics. Intangible metrics are difficult (and sometime impossible) to quantify, but are important to help you identify the places your content strategy is working.

Contently produced a report of the intangible metrics that marketers wish they could report on. Here are the top metrics that marketers wish they could see more easily –

1. 60% wish they could see how people’s opinions of their brand are changing due to content.
2. 55% of marketers would like to see how likely a reader is to purchase their product (use their service) due to their content.
3. 50% wish they could see how much real attention people are paying to the content they created.
4. 48% think it would be useful to see how much brand awareness their content is driving.
5. 42% would like to know which conversions have previously engaged with their content.

All 5 of these metrics would be great to see, but some are difficult to measure. Because of this, many businesses put a majority of their confidence in metrics like revenue, leads, or ROI. Especially in the first months, revenue may not be there, which leads marketers into thinking their content strategy isn’t working.

Look past revenue

If you’re getting discouraged due to lack of revenue during the first year of your B2B content marketing campaign, take a step back and look at the intangible metrics that may be working in your favor. Exposure and brand awareness are hugely important factors that can have a great effect on your business.

Try finding little wins, like a keyword where you’ve improved your ranking or how many downloads you’ve seen from a piece of content.

Intangible metrics are essential because your readers are all in different places in the buyer’s journey. While one person reading your blog post may be ready to download your white paper or request more information, another person may just be doing high level searches for an answer to their question.

By reading your content, both of these people are exposed to your brand. The person who isn’t ready to contact your sales team is still seeing your company as an authority on the topic. They may not be ready to fill out your form and become a lead now, but they have a better chance of remembering you as a thought leader on the topic in the future.

Combine metrics

If you have trouble putting faith in intangible metrics, try coupling them with metrics like organic traffic and keyword ranking. Both of those metrics give you a good picture of how your content is working to drive people to your site, even if they’re not converting quite yet.

To get a full picture of how your content strategy is working, be sure to report on your website KPIs each month. Take note of all the traditional metrics, but take a stab at trying to quantify some intangible metrics by finding little wins, like a keyword where you’ve improved your ranking or how many downloads you’ve seen from a piece of content.

Even if it’s impossible for you to really know how much attention a reader is paying to your content, combining that intangible metric with a more tangible metric like time on site can give you a better picture of your content’s impact.

Hope your coffee is hot, this should take you about 5 minutes and 30 seconds to read. (According to Forbes, the average adult reads 300 words per minute.)

I was on a call with a client the other day and he was wondering how he can convert more of the leads we’re generating for him into conversations.

This is a common question I get asked. During my strategy sessions with agents from around the country, I have discovered something — a lot of agents are decent at generating leads, typically via Facebook. The problem is — converting those leads into conversations which then lead to commission checks.

Conversions pay the bills.

Most focus on more traffic, but that is the wrong approach. If you’re website is not converting that traffic into conversations, you’re wasting money on ore traffic. Get your conversions dialed it and then send more traffic.

In this blog post, I am going to share with 4 strategies to help you convert more leads into commission checks. These strategies will help you close more deals and become a leader in your marketplace.

How To Convert More Leads Into Commission Checks

Be YOUnique

A solid, clear Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is something not many agents have. This is something that needs to be established before you start marketing. Once you establish a clear USP, put that on all your marketing material – websites, business cards, post cards, letter head, social media profiles, etc. Basically, wherever your name is, your USP should be. You want it everywhere.

A strong USP can literally double or triple your business. It is that important, especially in the real estate industry with all the competition.

Sidenote

I am currently consulting with an agent from San Diego. This is one of the first exercises we do. A few weeks back she shared with me some great ideas she came up with. I shared an idea with her she really liked. I asked why not offer to pay for a moving truck for her clients? She loved the idea. She is now incorporating that into all of her marketing.

From what we can tell, she is the only realtor in San Diego that helps her clients by paying the bill for a moving truck. That is powerful as she can now say something like,

There are 3,400+ Realtors in San Diego County and I am the ONLY one that pays for your moving truck when you move. I understand the stress and costs of moving and I want to do what I can to help.

Tell Your Story

A lot of agents use CRM tools that offer email marketing. A lot brokerages offer something similar and I always ask a couple questions;

Are these email templates?

Are the same emails being sent out by all the agents in your office?

Sadly, the agents answer “yes” to both of these questions.

They are the same boilerplate (boring) emails that everyone in their office sends out. And they wonder why they are not effective? A lot of agents claim Facebook “doesn’t work” or home value tools don’t work.

Facebook works.

The home value tools work.

The follow up sequence is the most important part of an online sales funnel. Assuming you are targeting properly, which is a whole other blog post.

I understand it’s easier to use the templates given, but it’s not going to turn you into a top producer in your marketplace. I assume you’d like to become a top producer, right? Spend the (extra) time to personalize your emails, if you want to close more deals.

You have to put in the work. You have to do something different. Do something no other agent in your marketplace is doing. Truth be told, it’s not that difficult to do.

These leads want to know who you are, why you do what you do, how you are different from the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of agents in your city. They want to know what you are going to do for them.They want to know why they should trust you, why they should hire you.

You have to educate them on all this. Not all at once, of course, but a great place to do this is in your email follow up sequence. Weave these important points into your emails, your blog posts, your videos. Tell your story.

Bolierplate templates are not going to work. I don’t care who provides them.

Be different.

Be bold.

Be YOU!

Welcome Video

This is probably my favorite one as it is so easy and makes a HUGE impact. A great place to use video is on your thank you page (after someone downloads a lead magnet from you, this is the page they are re-directed to).

A quick, 20-30 second welcome/intro video here puts a face to the email messages they are about to receive. It immediately sets you apart from everyone else (most agents are scared to get on camera).

You introduce yourself, let them know how long you’ve been in the industry, how/why you want to help and you’re there if they need anything. This is not a time to sell, but a time to introduce who you are. And how you can help them.

EXAMPLE SCRIPT:

Hi! Thank you for your interest in (what ever they signed up for)! My name is Adam Dukes and I have lived in Las Vegas for 8 years. I have been in the real estate business for 6 years and have some great connections here in town. If you need anything, please reply to any of these emails or call me at xxx-xxxx. I am here to help you buy/sell a home.

This is very simple to do. You shoot the video once (can be done from your phone) and it is always working for you. Film the video once, and every new lead will see it after they download something from you.

You can also go to www.YouTube.com/upload and use your desktop camera, if you have one. This is what I do and it takes 5 minutes as you can instantly upload it to YouTube right form there. It might take a few takes, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Here is a screenshot of a video that I use. After an agent downloads an ebook of mine, they are re-directed to a thank you page, of a video of me, offering my book, for free.

This does a couple things….

1. It puts a face to the emails they are about to receive, a quick introduction to who I am and how I can help.
2. It shows I have a physical book, that costs money, that I am offering for free. (Sidenote: if you have a physical book, this is a great place to offer it and establish yourself as an authority in your marketplace)

You want to differentiate yourself from the the competition? Publish a book. Nowadays, it is not that difficult to do with places like Amazon’s CreateSpace.

Honestly — How many of your competitors have a physical book? My guess would be less than 3%.

Share Helpful Content

If you’ve read this blog or have spoke to me on the phone, you know that I am a HUGE fan of blogging. Every agent should be using a blog to put out helpful content. Helpful content works for you 24/7/365.

According to a recent study by Google/NAR, the average homebuyer spends three weeks researching online before even calling an agent.

You think it would be a good idea to put out content since your prospects are searching online BEFORE contacting an agent?

All those questions you get asked (probably some multiple times), are great pieces for blog post topics. You can also use these blog posts in your automated email sequences (I do). Let’s say you have a sellers funnel, these people would probably enjoy reading how to sell a home faster or for more money or how important curb appeal is for selling their home for top dollar. Why not help them with this valuable information?

You can even send content that is not yours. Dave Ramsey (who I am a BIG fan of) provides some excellent content for home buyers/sellers. He also shares great content about money management, life lessons, family, etc. All content your prospects would enjoy reading.

Here is an example of a recent post on his site: 3 Ways to Keep Your Home Inspection From Killing Your Home Sale

The NAR has some great content that you can share as well. I recommend sharing your content, but if you do not have a blog (please start soon), then you can curate content from Dave, the NAR or agents from other cities. You want to be looked at as a trusted resource. If you do have a blog, it is good to mix in your content and to curate some content as well.

Conclusion

These are just some of the ways that you can become a top producer in your marketplace. These are all great ways to differentiate yourself as well. The real estate industry is so competitive and you need an edge, hence why I listed having a USP first.

As you can see, all these tips are about getting personal with people. It’s about helping people. I don’t talk objection handling or sales skills because the market has changed.

People want to deal with people.

As Jay Baer says,

The difference between “selling” and “helping” is only two letters.

GIF Credit: Giphy

Holy @#**^&#! You wouldn’t believe what some people say on LinkedIn.

A search for some of the leading profane or vulgar terms reveals they have been used by a surprisingly large number of people on LinkedIn on their professional profiles. Holy s**t! (Used by more than 8,000 people.) Really?

Yes, really. Over 31,000 people have used words on LinkedIn that one doesn’t normally associate with the label “business professional.” If you – heaven forbid – are one of them, this would be a good time to stop and think about the impression this makes of your professional outlook, your brand and your potential value. With more than 300 million business professionals on LinkedIn, that’s a huge potential audience you could be alienating.

Or perhaps you don’t give a f**k? (Over 3,000 people.)

Dig a bit deeper, and you’ll discover some other things that are equally astonishing. For example, the top five industries guilty of LinkedIn potty-mouth are:

1. Entertainment
2. Marketing and advertising
3. Music
4. Information technology
5. Writing and editing (!)

C**p! (Over 3,000 users.)

Incredible, isn’t it? So is this: the top five (globally) obscene organisations on LinkedIn include:

1. Microsoft
2. US Army
3. McDonald’s
4. IBM
5. Google

(By the way, the top five offending countries are the US, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia.)

What does this tell us? That over 31,000 people don’t care what they look and sound like on LinkedIn? Or that these 31,000-plus people just aren’t thinking? Either way, imagine the impact, risk and outright possibilities for brand damage this poses for the organisations they work for!

Professional? Not with that mouth.

Blogging is hard work. It takes time, effort and creativity.

But there are lots of ways to jump-start your blogging efforts – tools that make you more efficient, productive and creative, while driving distribution.

Here are some of the most interesting tools that I have come across recently:

1. Atomic Reach: a free plug-in that uses an algorithm to analyze and score the spelling, grammar and quality of your writing. For some people, particularly writers, Atomic Reach can be challenging because it changes how you write. In time, however, you begin to understand how to use Atomic Reach, and, in the process, it will make you a better writer.

2. Buffer: After writing a blog post, it needs to be distributed. Buffer is a free and paid service that make it easy to publish updates on multiple social media platforms. It recently introduced a new feature that makes a snap to schedule posts to appear at particular times (e.g. now, tomorrow, next week), which is a great way to leverage distribution over time.

3. Title Experiments: It goes without saying that a good, interesting or eye-catching blog title is an effective way to get people to take a look. Title Experiments is a free plugin that lets you create different versions of the headline, and then promotes the one attracting the most clicks. It’s a great way to test your creativity and get a better feel for the headlines that work.

4. Flare: Along with Digg Digg, Flare is one of the most popular plugins to let people share your posts via share media. Flare can be configured to display particular social media networks, as well as placement in different places on the blog post.

5. PhotoPin: There are many places to discover royalty-free photos, but PhotoPin is one of the most user-friendly and content-rich. You can search by use (commercial vs. non-commercial) and by type (recent, relevant, interestingness).

6. Optimizilla: After discovering the right photo or image for a post, there’s a lot of value in making it the ideal size to save on load times and resources. Optimizilla is a user-friendly and free service to quickly reduce the size of photos and images without losing much in the way of quality.

7. WordPress SEO: Google keeps changes the rules of engagement for search but WordPress SEO (a free plugin) provides a solid SEO foundation for a blog. It’s easy to configure your post’s keyword, meta-description and title.

The post Seven Tools to Put Your Blog on Steroids appeared first on Sysomos Blog.

A recent statistic shows that 77% of businesses have a blog – that’s great!  Sadly, 85% of those have less than five blog posts – that’s less than great.  Essentially, companies slap up a blog because they feel they “should have one” but never do anything to keep it growing and really providing a benefit to their company.  If you think about it, blogs are like plants – the more you nurture, water, talk to and pay attention to them, the healthier and more vibrant they will be, giving “oxygen” to your business (ok, so maybe we took the plant metaphor too far, but you get the idea).

It is our belief that every company should have a blog.  BUT (and that’s in blaring all capitals,) a company should only have a blog if they have a sound strategy behind it and are committed to being consistent in their blogging.  Having a well planned, well written and on-going blog can help your company to build your brand, establish your company as a leader in your field, increase your customer base and improve your sales.

But before we move on to the great things a blog can do for your business, let’s step back and take a look at why so many blogs fail.  The reasons are actually pretty basic.  70% of small businesses say that they are “unable” to keep their blog updated.  This is usually just basic bandwidth issues, and makes so much sense for a small business.  Writing can be hard, and if you don’t have a really good reason to do it, there’s always a lot of other work to be done.  So the main reasons for business blog failure are:

• No business strategy that includes a blog
• No prioritization of time
• No writers on staff
• Lack of topic ideas

Actually, the last three points should be indented under the first because if you have a sound strategy that includes your blog, you’ll be able to have the other three.  

WHY HAVE A BLOG?  REASON 1: BUILD YOUR BRAND

Your blog is in your voice.  And that’s the voice of the company.  Start with a clearly defined identity of yourself and what your brand values and brand promise are.  From there, build out your business messaging.  What are the key pain points for your customers?  What are your strengths and areas of knowledge?  How can you best (and most uniquely,) address your customers’ needs?  

One of the keys in your blog is to not make it too salesy.  Think of it as a conversation with your customers.  Share your knowledge and information, maybe a little humor.  Whatever it is that best reflects who you are and what you stand for and that will give your customers a true vision of your company.  So relax, and enjoy the conversation.

WHY HAVE A BLOG?  REASON 2: ESTABLISH YOUR COMPANY AS A LEADER

With your voice established, and keeping sales messaging out of the mix, you can use your blog to become a true educator in your field.  Help your customers to learn something new about your field.  Or learn new things about their own industries.  Be a resource that they want to keep coming back to because they know they can find interesting, quality information from you.  The more time a customer spends with you (and your blog is an extension of you/your company,) the greater the likelihood that they will conduct business with you.  And when you can provide added value beyond the services that you offer/sell then they will be wanting to spend more time with you.

WHY HAVE A BLOG?  REASON 3: INCREASE YOUR CUSTOMER BASE

Your blog can be the ultimate free promotional piece for your business.  As you build your viewership, your readers will be increasingly more likely to share the content that they find of value with their peers and co-workers.  This could include email shares, retweets, shares on FB and LinkedIn and others.  In a sense, “if you build it, they will come”.  When blog content is valuable and useful, it will build upon itself and make its way to new customers.

WHY HAVE A BLOG?  REASON 4: IMPROVE YOUR SALES

Yes, we said “don’t be too salesy”.  So given that direction, how does your blog improve your sales?  Research shows, 61% of US consumers claim that they have made a purchase based on a blog post.  Additionally, business buyers are significantly more likely to purchase or conduct business with companies that they have an established relationship with or connection to.  By creating your blog as a resource for your customers, by educating them and making your company invaluable, you are creating that connection.  But not only are businesses more likely to purchase from connections, they are also more likely to purchase more and remain customers for longer.  So having a well established blog (and strategy behind it,) can help you in both the near and distant future to  keep your business booming.

Let us know how you’re using your blog.  Or if you don’t have a blog yet, let us know why.  You can reach us at @KCMPRBUZZ.  We look forward to chatting with you soon.

Rurik Bradbury is CMO at Trustev, en e-commerce fraud protection company. We are republishing this post with his permission.

Apple pulled off a very impressive move by launching an ultra-simple phone-powered wallet, while letting consumers keep their existing payment cards, at the same time as bringing onboard card networks and the banks that issue cards. The press is all over it, and tech-lovers have been very impressed with early results.

In contrast, the retailer-driven CurrentC mobile wallet has been a fiasco. Starting with a PR disaster, when it had member companies Rite Aid and CVS pull support for Apple Pay, followed by scathing reviews in the press, such as Josh Constine's in TechCrunch, which called it a "clunky attempt." As an encore today, MCX, the consortium behind CurrentC, kicked off a second PR disaster by announcing it had been hacked. Ouch.

BUT ... before we write it off, there are some reasons to think again. Here are the main ones.

1) CurrentC can offer monetary rewards for using it, Apple can't

This is a big one. By playing nice with everyone in the existing payments "stack," like Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and the card-issuing banks like Chase and Citi, Apple is saddled with their same cost structure. Around 2% of any transaction gets split among those companies, with Apple getting a tiny slice as well. So with CurrentC that 2% is "in play" and merchants could rebate it back to customers as an incentive to adopt.

2) Retailers are angry

For years the retailers have hated Visa, MasterCard, and American Express for what they see as a tax on their revenues. When the former CEO of Walmart (an MCX member) was asked why it would succeed, he said, "I don’t know that it will, and I don’t care. As long as Visa suffers." For years, big retailers fought the card networks on multiple fronts to reduce fees, which they felt were extortion.

They notched a big victory in 2012, with a $6+ billion settlement, when they won their antitrust case against Visa and MasterCard for price-fixing. In the settlement, the retailers also got one of their most-hated stipulations removed from the card network/merchant agreements: that they couldn't charge customers extra for using a credit card instead of another payment method (that means that merchants had to eat the card fees themselves, or lose the right to accept credit cards altogether. It was a very punitive clause).

With this new agreement in place, retailers could now charge extra for using credit cards and Apple Pay, but less for CurrentC.

3) Retailers are afraid

Apple is not the upstart any more, it's the huge gorilla, and with its vision and muscle, it has defined the way that multiple modern industries work. Retailers don't want their payment systems to be Apple-owned, thank you very much. For consumers, Apple Pay has a number of privacy and security benefits: tokenized transactions; impossible to scrape or spoof; and anonymity for purchasers.

But this is terrible news for merchants, who want — and highly value — any data they can get about their customers. They feel that Apple is locking them out of their own home. What might they pay for this valuable data? It depends on the industry, but many rewards schemes rebate 2% or 3% to customers in points or vouchers in exchange for engagement and data. So now the retailers have 4% or 5% of revenues to play with, as a sweetener to use CurrentC and not Apple Pay. That's a lot.

4) Retailers committed to MCX are big

The number and dollar value of transactions going through MCX member companies is huge. Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Target, CVS, and 45 others, making up a sizeable chunk of US retail spending. It's not just a few holdouts resisting the Apple army.

5) Apple Pay is not such a hit as some believe

Tim Cook was hyping up Apple Pay at the WSJD Live event this week, boasting that over 1 million cards were added in the first three days. "Showing promise" says the more sober-minded Mike Isaac of the New York Times. More skeptical is Owen Thomas at ReadWrite, who calls out "breathless hype around Apple Pay" and points out how small that 1 million figure is, compared to the 600 million cards Apple has on file, and the 20 million Apple Pay-compatible devices sold to date. And those aren't unique users, they're unique cards (each user can add multiple cards if they like).

6) Payments are simply not a painful problem for consumers

For years, geeks have dreamed of ditching their ancient magnetic strip cards and paying with their phones. Google Wallet failed, and Apple Pay is off to a slow start — even with its massive leap in usability versus older systems. Could it be that regular consumers don't care that much? That swiping a card is not very difficult or inconvenient? And, sure, Apple Pay is more secure and private, but consumers generally aren't on the hook for credit card fraud, so they don't care so much about that, either.

It Comes Down To Money

While techies are making fun of the ugliness of the CurrentC experience (QR codes! Are you kidding me?), most people care about money and savings more than slight inconveniences. Several days per week I get a salad from Sweetgreen (a delicious salad place, FYI), which I order online and pay for with their app, which uses ... a QR code. It's less convenient than Apple Pay (which I have also used from day one, by the way, lest you think I'm a hater) but it also serves as a loyalty card and gives me free salads every so often. Exactly like CurrentC.

Now imagine an app like Sweetgreen's that works in most places you shop, and gets you rebates of 4% or 5%. Apple Pay still look quite so appealing?

SEE ALSO: There Are 48 Billion Reasons Why Retailers Are Going To War With Apple

Join the conversation about this story »

You see it all over the place. People are writing longer articles, more content and information.

Some people are giving up their websites and are writing all their information on social media sites. Then, they quickly discover that no one cares about their material because they create so much content. It’s time that people get the message that we have

WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION!

PEOPLE DON’T HAVE TIME TO READ YOUR CONTENT!

As I thought about this topic over the past week, I came to the conclusion that in a world of mass data overload, big data, news data, media data and so on, “the simple message should be our goal”

Social Media started out with 140 characters on Twitter and short posts on Facebook, Linkedin and Google+. Instagram uses images and very few words. YouTube uses a description to introduce its video.

So what does this mean for marketers:

Simple Social Media

• Keep your message short, simple and to the point. If people are interested, you can provide them more information with a link.
• Twitter – Keep your message very short. This way others have a chance to add their comments and retweet your message. Consider adding images to your message to bring out your message more.
• Linkedin – Provide an update and keep in touch with your contacts. Read someone’s update and post a short reaction to their article or post.
• Google+, Facebook – Don’t just like or plus something, add a simple comment and stand out from the rest of the pack.

Simple Content Marketing

• Pick a specific topic and write about your experience with respect to the topic. Generalist information is old news.
• Use bullets, colored fonts and different size fonts to communicate your message. Too many words could turn people away.

Simple Brochures

• Create a brochure that also opens into a form
• Create a brochure with a maximium of 3 points – People remember 3 points better than 15
• Get to the point and make sure you list contact information: email, website, phone number

Simple Website

• Make it easy for people to do business with you
• Provide company address and phone information
• Make sure people can find a person’s name on your website

Simple Mobile Application

• 3 Click maximum for return client action
• Give people something of value that is simple and easy to read on the go
• Make the app intuitive so no instructions are needed.

Summary

Get to the point and work on creating title tags that people can relate to. Consider improving and work toward simpler processes. In addition, continue to make information simple and easy to access. Simplicity should be a part of your marketing initiaitives.

photo credit: 0xFCAF via photopin cc

In many ways, working in the B2B industrial space for the last few years has been a bit like working in a time capsule. While many of my marketing peers are talking about hashtags, the newest social media platform, and “Return on Relationships,” most of our clients are still talking about business in much the same way they always have. Building relationships often means that our clients know every key contact person at every key competitive company and many prospects. It means phonecalls, emails, and even in-person visits.

Regardless of the industry, one of the keys to building relationships the old-fashioned way is showing that you have successfully done the kind of work you are pitching. Testimonials are a great way to accomplish this, especially if you can get a testimonial from a name that is well-known and well-respected. Content Marketing evangelists are also all about the testimonial. It’s a great story, after all, and prevailing logic is that companies need to focus more on telling stories and less on actually selling.

Whether or not that last bit is really true, the fact is that even though most of the companies we work with completely understand the value of a testimonial (or a case study), they are almost always very difficult to put together. We’ve gotten all kinds of push-back over the years, ranging from “Nobody would think our products are that interesting” to “We don’t have time to work on this with you.” However, the most common response we get is, “We can’t let the competition know who our customers are.”

Have a little faith

This kind of philosophy makes sense, especially when the B2B industrial world revolves so much around proprietary processes and equipment. There is a new reality, however, which is that companies must face the fact that whether you like it or not, information cannot be controlled the way it used to be. Whether or not your company uses social media, if you do you may be giving away information about your customer without even meaning to. Your competitors may know what a trip to XYZ city means in your industry. Someone at a competitive company may see a picture on Instagram from someone at your company and recognize the location just from looking at it. You might get a LinkedIn endorsement that competitors can see.

The point is, if someone wants to find out who your customers are these days, they probably can do it in much easier ways than reading through your testimonials. Even more to the point, they probably already know that you’ve done work for the company from whom you’re getting a testimonial. Finally, of course, there’s the little tidbit of hope that a company willing to pen a testimonial in your favor may not stray at the first sign of another suitor.

You don’t have to give away the store

Finally, we want to point out that a testimonial does not have to be granular in the detail it offers. You don’t have to explain exactly how you met your objective. You don’t have to reveal exactly why you chose the methodologies you did. Indeed, you don’t even need to reveal the exact customer, although the more you can reveal about that the more credible the piece becomes. What people want to see is how you successfully fixed a problem that they might be experiencing now. Should they call you like that other company did? Why?

Testimonials can be tricky, but they are utterly necessary in the B2B industrial world. They are the foundation upon which many new relationships can be built, and they can solidify existing relationships with customers who are obviously happy with you. Don’t let fear paralyze you. Go out and grab those stories. Make hay while the sun shines!

Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/davedugdale/9688948756/ via Creative Commons

The best evergreen content on your website deserves to be shared more than once. The bigger that back-catalogue of older content gets, though, the more work it takes to keep linking back to it.

So what do you do?

• Keep writing new status updates that go to the same places?
• Save your old updates in some kind of spreadsheet that you keep copying and pasting into a scheduling tool?

Edgar is a social media automation app that allows you to share and re-share links to your best content automatically.

In this post, I’ll give you a closer look at what Edgar does, and how you can use it as either your only social scheduling tool or as a complement to another.

What Does Edgar Do?

Like other social media tools, including HootSuite and Buffer, Edgar allows you to upload your updates so that they can be automatically posted at a later date and time. Edgar sorts your updates into a queue, which shows you what will be posted and when. So far, this should all seem pretty familiar.

There are a number of things that Edgar does differently, however, including one of its most useful features: keeping track of your updates after they’ve been shared, and posting them again at a later date.

Here’s how Edgar works:

When you first sign in to Edgar, you’ll be asked to create certain categories for the different social media updates you share. (You can create as many as you want, as well as change or delete them later.) For example, if you have a large backlog of evergreen content like blog posts, you could break it up into several different categories, like Tool Reviews, Social Media Advice, Case Studies, and so on.

Then, for each social network, you create a schedule, essentially programming Edgar to share updates from certain categories at certain times.

The only thing you have left to do is add social media updates into Edgar. Every time you input an update, you select which networks/accounts you want it to publish on, and what category it belongs to. As of right now, Edgar supports

• Facebook profiles
• Facebook pages
• Facebook groups
• LinkedIn profiles
• LinkedIn company pages
• Twitter accounts

Edgar also gives you the option of scheduling your updates for specific dates and times, as well as adding images.

So far, this isn’t drastically different from what some other social media scheduling tools do. (Though the category-based scheduling does allow you to use analytics to determine what types of updates should be posted at certain times.) The biggest difference comes after Edgar publishes an update.

Tools like Buffer, for example, dump a social media update after it’s posted, leaving you with a finite queue. No matter how full it gets, eventually, it’s going to run out of updates, forcing you to add more manually. (Even if you just copy and paste them from somewhere else.)

Edgar, however, keeps all of your updates cycling in a never-ending rotation. Once an update in any given category is shared, Edgar posts every other update in that category before sharing it again. The app also favors new content over repeats, so you can add updates on a rolling basis. (Edgar comes with a default “Use Once” category where you can save any updates you want to share only once.)

The updates are stored in what Edgar calls the Library, where you can edit and/or delete them at any time. The queue automatically refills itself, so you can always see what’s going to be posted and where for the next two weeks, and you can edit, delete, or shuffle your updates from within the queue, as well.

As a relatively new tool (rollout only began in June 2014), Edgar frequently updates with additional features like its recently-released Chrome plugin. That in mind, can Edgar replace whatever scheduling tool you may be using already?

Most likely, yes. Its simple interface makes it easy to navigate regardless of expertise, and its continually growing number of features show promise. Even if you continue to use another program, though, Edgar’s unique functions make it a valuable complement.

Balancing Different Social Media Tools

I’ve found that Edgar’s ability to repeat content on a rolling basis makes it useful either as your only social media scheduling tool or as an addition to your existing roster of apps. For example, while I use Edgar to continually share links to my best evergreen content, I still rely on HubSpot Social Inbox for my everyday, up-to-the-minute posting.

Social Inbox is equipped with tools that simplify the scheduling process for one-time posts, so you can easily schedule and share timely posts with the added benefit of detailed monitoring.

HubSpot’s deep analytics options allow you to track and review interactions, maintain different conversation threads, and generally keep a better-organized eye on the performance of your posts.

Because it shares data with your other HubSpot tools, it also allows you to review your individual fans and followers in the context of their other interactions with your content. For example, on one single page, you can see a follower’s interactions with your brand on Twitter, their email open rates, their number of visits to your website, and other data, so you can develop a more nuanced understanding of their wants and needs.

These features make Social Inbox and Edgar ideal complements. While Edgar’s ability to save and repeatedly share your updates ensures that you’re always promoting your best content, Social Inbox offers monitoring options that make it easy to track your performance and provide consistent live engagement.

Recap

Continually posting links to your evergreen content is a valuable way of using the work you’ve already completed to drive more new traffic to your site. This type of content doesn’t lose value for your readers, but constantly writing and scheduling new updates to that content eats into your schedule more and more as time goes on.

By using Edgar to automate social media posts linking to your evergreen blog posts, you can continue to share your best content on a rolling basis without making time to repeatedly write and manually schedule updates.

Whether you use it as your sole social media scheduling tool or as a complement to a robust program like HubSpot’s Social Inbox, it affords you more time to use social media the way it was intended: sharing meaningful content and engaging live with your audience.

What do you think? Have you tried Edgar, or HubSpot Social Inbox? Do you have another system in place for linking back to your evergreen content? Let us know in the comments below.

How many times have you or your team created an awesome content piece, posted it to your site, and sat back in complete confidence, only to see a few weeks later that only a handful of visitors even saw your content?

You may have asked yourself,

• Why did nobody share it?
• Did we target the right keywords?
• Was the content good enough?
• Are we producing the right kind of content?

If you are one of the 86 percent of marketers who use content marketing today, there is a 93 percent chance that you do not consider your content marketing efforts “very effective”. There are many ways to fail at content marketing, but one of the most common ways is by starting and ending with content creation.

Doing that is the equivalent of producing the greatest TV commercial of all time and then only airing it for one day, between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., to the local news station in a town of 10,000. You, and the rest of your team who had a hand in creating the commercial, may stay up and watch it live but you can be pretty certain that almost nobody else in the world will ever see it.

So how do you skyrocket your content to reach more of your audience so you can actually create those relationships that turn prospects into loyal customers? How can you show your boss that content marketing is really worth it?

Enter: Paid Content Promotion

Like any holistic content marketing effort, strategy is critical to driving a successful paid content promotion campaign, especially one focused on providing measureable results. A good content promotion plan can be simplified into four major sections:

1. Setting goals
2. Understanding your audience
3. Producing the right content
4. Targeting and optimizing ads

Setting Goals

Setting goals is a critical first step and should be openly discussed and understood by all parties involved prior to kicking off work. Setting and communicating goals helps align expectations, focus efforts, and drive optimization.

Goals should be:

1. Clear
2. Measureable
3. ROI-driven

ROI-driven does not mean that direct sales need to be measured from day one, though this would be a long-term goal. Because content marketing often times reaches prospects in the very early stages of their decision making process, capturing email addresses or other contact information is a common goal.

Determining the value of an email subscriber can be a bit more difficult, depending on what email provider you use and how well you are tracking your current email campaigns. Keep in mind that someone who completes your “Contact Us” form likely has a very different value than someone who opts-in to your newsletter, and should be treated differently.

How to calculate (roughly) the value of an email subscriber:

1. Calculate number of active subscribers
2. Calculate revenue attributed to email over X months
   • Timeline will likely be different depending on sales cycle. If email subscribers typically purchase within one week, a shorter time period will be needed than if email subscribers typically purchase after three months
3. Divide Revenue/Subscribers

If it is determined that an email subscriber is valued at $15, you will need to determine what your ROI goal is and ultimately your cost-per-email subscriber.

Understanding Your Audience

In this context, understanding your audience means more than just demographics and purchase behavior. Those are important and will be helpful later, but at this point what you really want to know is:

What are your audience’s pain points?

More specifically, what are your audience’s pain points that are so painful that they would be willing to provide you with their email address (or whatever info you’re looking for) in exchange for the answer?

Common audience pain points are:

• Confusing product/service
• Too many options
• Limited knowledge

This deep understanding of customers will help you not only determine what content makes the most sense to promote, but also what language and tone should be used on the landing page in order to maximize conversion rate.

Producing the Right Content

Depending on your goals, not all content makes sense to promote. Especially with increasing web security concerns, users are placing higher and higher value on their email addresses. Along with higher value comes higher expectations.

If you want to turn prospects into customers, it’s critical to surprise and delight with your initial content and never underwhelm. A 600-word PDF that doesn’t provide much unique value probably shouldn’t be gated behind an email form.

If you want to capture an email address the following must be true:

Perceived Content Value > Value of NOT Joining Your Email List

Your audience is smart and knows very well that an email sign-up means joining a marketing list. Although the content may be free, the barrier of email privacy must be overcome with content that is so tempting it cannot be turned down. When this correctly executed and perceived content value is greater than the value of NOT joining your email list, conversion rates can exceed 20 percent.

Every situation is unique, but some of the content types that we have seen the best results with are (and are my personal favorites):

• Case Studies
• Whitepapers
• Checklists
• Buying Guides
• “How-To” Videos
• Webinars

Adding value through an initial content piece and then building upon that relationship with a well-thought-out lead nurturing process is what will ultimately lead to content marketing success.

In part two tomorrow morning, I will discuss the specific platforms you can use to promote your content online. We usually move to this step when we see that a piece of content starts to gain some traction from either an organic or a pilot promotion program – or both.

Here’s one of the most significant tenets of content marketing: People like to do business with other people. They don’t like to do business with faceless, anonymous, inhuman brands or big corporations.

Here’s what this means for your small business: You should be doing content marketing to engage and to inform, yes—but also to humanize your brand. To give it some character. To put a face to it, and to make it relatable.

You never know: Being relatable could be just the thing that causes a consumer to pick your friendly, inviting company over the more blasé company down the road. If nothing else, a personable social media presence will go a long way toward making your company memorable.

The question is, how can you make your business come across as more human through your content marketing? Try these five simple tips:

1. Go behind the scenes. Snap a few photos of your team in action—whether at the office or out, at a holiday party or company social event. Get some candid shots of your team members doing what they do. Try to capture an image of what your office is really like. Go behind the scenes, taking pictures in parts of your office that most customers never see. Share some of these photos on social media—not a barrage of them, but maybe one a week or so, just to put faces with names and showcase that yes, your company is made up of flesh-and-blood humans, not robots!
2. Do some team blogging. Do you have multiple team members who are skilled at writing? Then enlist them all to help you blog! Allow each team member to bring his or her unique voice to your company blog.
3. Be funny. We don’t actually recommend turning your Twitter feed into a joke machine, or your Facebook page into a constant meme generator. Your main focus should be delivering value to your customers. However, a little humor from time to time never hurt anyone, especially not if you can somehow relate it to your vertical.
4. Highlight your philanthropy. Has your company participated in a charity walk, helped build a house, sponsored a fundraiser, or otherwise raised money or awareness for a worthy cause? Mention it online. You don’t have to brag; just note that it’s a cause you believe in, and include a link to somewhere people can get more information or make donations of their own.
5. Ask questions. If all else fails, just try to strike up a conversation. Take to social media and start picking some brains—asking what your social media followers might like you to blog about, inquiring what they like best about your products, or whatever else comes to mind.

LinkedIn and I have worked on several research projects together over the years ranging from the future of Native Advertising (private) to the state of Relationship Economics.  Now, we banded together once again to explore the art and science of thought leadership. Although this time, I was on the contributing side of the research project and Jason Miller, LinkedIn’s senior manager of content marketing, was the lead.

Thought leadership is one of those things that’s easier to talk about than it is to achieve. I see it as a state, something earned, and not necessarily something you simply do. Smart thinking or communication or publishing does not necessarily equate to thought leadership. It’s own people value it on the other side of your work that sets the stage for something great.

According to Miller, “Thought leadership is an essential part of any successful content marketing strategy. Both B2C and B2B companies can benefit from the many advantages of thought leadership to build a more competitive reputation and ultimately drive more revenue.”

Miller along with his team at LinkedIn interviewed several experts to assemble a gorgeous and useful ebook to help brand marketers learn how to optimize thought leadership strategies. Experts include Joe Chernov, Ekaterina Walter, Shannon Stubo, among others.  You can download it here.

To celebrate the launch of the new ebook, LinkedIn gave me the go ahead to share my part with you here.

Hope it helps!

How important is thought leadership for gaining a competitive advantage?

If you define thought leadership as thinking about people and how to provide these people with value, how to help them solve problems, and how to help them achieve aspirations and goals, it’s absolutely critical. If you define thought leadership as personal branding, the opposite is true. People often confuse thought leadership with personal branding. There’s a difference.

For those looking to create thought leadership content for the first time, what are the best opportunities to get started?

I was once asked how to be a thought leader. The answer is: You have to be one. That takes understanding of the market and the people you are trying to reach and engage. You have to understand the state of the world, and also have ideas on how it should evolve. But it starts by being human. This is a part even successful thought leaders miss, and it’s mostly driven by ego: “I’m better than the voices that are out there, so I’m going to add mine.”

True thought leadership starts with empathy. Can you tell me the top ten problems your audience has at any given time? How about the top ten aspirations? Are you thinking through where your audience wants to be, compared with where the market is going? That’s what inspires me. Someone who is honestly trying to better understand the people they are trying to help. And if understanding and helping is the goal, I don’t believe true thought leaders would call themselves thought leaders.

Can you think of a brand that is nailing thought leadership? What are they doing right? What are they gaining from it?

For a while American Express Open Forum was one of the best examples because they didn’t just try to put their own voice out there. They made it a point to bring in relevant outside voices. Their model became the benchmark, as did Mayo Clinic’s when they offered thought leadership by helping people answer common questions about health conditions. Same with H & R Block and their selfless approach to answering questions. When you are selfless as a brand, when you are providing value, the natural response is reciprocity. Reciprocity can lead to ROI.

Intel (client) has catered to the B2B audience as well as B2C which is pretty stellar for a semi-conductor company. They continue to break ground, using new and existing channels in leading ways, and demonstrating to the rest of the world what is possible.

What LinkedIn marketing tactics can brands use to implement thought leadership campaigns?

Recently, Altimeter Group (where I am a principal analyst) and LinkedIn partnered on a research project that ultimately showed how genuine communication and engagement in social media helps businesses improve relationships with both customers and employees. The key to ‘relationship economics’ on social media is no different from real-world relationships: the more you invest in terms of time, openness, value, listening, and engagement, the more likely it is that relationships will flourish.

It starts at the top. We found that executives at companies that reap the rewards of social media engagement are much more active on social media than executives at companies that are not socially active. They also play a bigger role in driving a socially engaged culture. Yes, there are specific tactics companies can use on
LinkedIn, but the most effective social media strategies are derived from a culture of relationship building where the executives lead by example.

You’ve mentioned before that engagement is really about A.R.T. (Actions, Reactions and Transactions). When crafting a thought leadership strategy, do you recommend starting with the story you want to tell or the A.R.T. you want to achieve?

A.R..T. is less about following the trend of trying to be a storyteller, and more about just trying to be engaging. I believe the story comes naturally when you are inspired by the empathy of being human, and what humans find compelling, useful, and meaningful. Most brands think about one audience, one campaign, and one emotion, but there are so many types of emotional elements to consider. The culture of each social network is different. Each channel features different people, with different needs and motivations, in a different context. The actual story is the bigger purpose or aspiration. And it unfolds in so many different ways, like the movie Crash. More companies need to think like that.

A.R.T. is really about what happens next. Everyone should design for what happens next. Attention is precious. Once you have earned attention, it’s what you do with that attention that counts. Too many companies emphasize attention. They come up with amazing headlines, clever GIFs, and great infographics, but there is rarely a defined strategy to do something with attention once it is captured.

In your mind, what is the biggest differentiator between those who try to become thought leaders and those who ultimately succeed at it?

Philosophically I wonder if anyone really knows if they are successful. How do you define success? The people who want to be helpful, do they have to justify ROI? It comes down to campaign vs continuum. One turns off and the other is part of life. The A.R.T. of engagement was always about assessing the value in real-time, adding to what you’re doing, and measuring. You should know more as you go, so that you can effectively refine as you go.

There are too many content marketers who suffer from mediumism and there are too few strategists who can turn attention into a human moment. It’s about designing for the embrace, not the channel, and then for the journey.

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In Part 1 of this series we discussed the question: Do salespeople rely too much on the organization to get things right at the expense of strategic thinking? This was a panel topic a few weeks ago in Atlanta, at the Sales Force Productivity Conference, organized by the Sales Management Association. Today, let’s consider another question the panel discussed:

Has sales enablement led to an inability to communicate value messages?

Thought provoking, indeed! Our research at the MHI Research Institute shows that the inability to communicate value messaging is year over year the biggest inhibitor to sales success. On the other hand, one of sales enablement’s main goals is exactly that: Equipping salespeople to have more valuable conversations with prospects and clients along their entire customer’s journey – to increase sales growth and performance. Something seems to be wrong. Let’s take a deeper look.

Value messaging is dynamic and modular – but not scripted

Value messages express the business value of a product, solution or service, mapped to the customers’ specific challenges and their desired results and wins. Furthermore, value messages have to be tailored to the different phases of the customer’s journey as well as to each buyer role.

There is no “one size fits all” value message or value proposition. To be effective, value messages have to be focused on what a product, solution or service means for the customer’s specific situation and their desired results and wins, rather than what a product is and what it does. As the customer’s focal points change along the customer’s journey, the value messages must also change. Additionally, they have to be tailored to different buyer roles and often per industry. That requires a dynamic messaging approach that helps salespeople to quickly access and customize value messages for specific selling situations.

But dynamic value messages – just as any other piece of sales content – can never be used without the salesperson’s strategic and critical thinking (see Part 1 of this series).

Creating value messages has to be changed first

We design value messages by working backwards from the customers’ journey and their specific challenges.  This may feel counterintuitive for product and marketing people who have done it the other way around for decades. Often, different product (marketing) teams compete against each other to get salespeople’s attention for what may be product-centered sales content. That’s simply not how buyers buy. Buyers buy the value of products and services to achieve their desired results and wins.

Changing the design point in content creation and value messaging from a product to a customer core approach is a serious change process that shouldn’t be underestimated. Such a transformation should be orchestrated by a strategic sales enablement function that understands both the customer and salespeople.

Applying value messages effectively is an ongoing training and development issue

It’s not enough to get the creation process right and to provide value messages on an enablement platform. To be effective, salespeople have to be trained to deliver the value messages effectively. This is a challenge that’s often overlooked. Messaging training has to cover two dimensions in parallel: knowledge transfer and behavioral change because value messaging is different from pushing products.

Sales enablement per se doesn’t lead to salespeople’s inability to communicate value messages. Only the inability to change does.

Sales enablement can create real value if the messaging creation process is changed and if salespeople are trained to deliver those value messages in different situations.
Often overlooked, but key to success: The front line sales managers’ coaching approach has to support exactly this transformation to reinforce continuous improvement – training, practicing, coaching, adjusting, practicing -> learning.

Finally, salespeople are always responsible for the messages they use in front of customers. Only they can decide, based on synthesizing the customer’s context, the different stakeholders’ concepts and their specific decision dynamic, what kind of messages will create value and support their perspectives.

Related blog posts:

The Inability To Communicate Value Messages – Biggest Inhibitor To Communicate To Sales Success 2014

Sales Enablement: Customer Core Framework to Provide Perspectives

“The Expert” – Why Understanding Your Customer Is Key To Provide Perspective

Providing Perspective – A Customer Core Principle

Buyers – businesses, consumers and governments — are changing their behaviors, driven by changes in the communications channels and technologies they use to research purchases and share information with peers, bringing new opportunities and challenges for public relations to the fore.

Earned media mentions hold particular sway with potential buyers, which means PR can deliver measurable top line business impact. To capitalize on this trend, however, PR professionals must improve and rethink the way they create and distribute their messages, designing them to support the purchase decision and aligning them with the buyers’ journey.

Buyer 2.0: Informed and In Charge

Buyers are influenced more by their own research than they are by traditional sales pitches. By the time a buyer contacts a company, the buyer has already made many decisions, including the elimination of potential vendors. In fact, much of the buying cycle has already taken place.

Additionally, buyers seek advice from their friends and peers, whose opinions they trust more than advertisements, according to an article in “Harvard Business Review.” (1) They also look to traditional and online media for information — consumers consult more than 10 sources before making a purchase, and nearly 9 out of 10 reach what Google calls a “zero moment of truth” before making a final buying decision.

3 Challenges for PR

There are many touch points along the decision path the brand at which the brand can inform and influence the decision, presenting public relations pros with three primary challenges:

1. Produce content buyers want to consume and share. Brand storytelling — wrapping a compelling narrative around your product or service — delivers the message buyers want and produces the results that companies need if the message reaches a brand’s audience.
2. Produce valuable content frequently. Consider all outbound messages – press releases, blog posts, social updates, articles, press kits – a part of the external dialogue and fine tune messaging to align with buyer interests.
3. Distribute content across channels that achieve visibility for their brand. Producing brilliant content is one thing. Getting it viewed by a company’s target audience is another hurdle altogether.

Right Message, Right Channel, Right Result

Today’s consumers are savvy and discerning. They don’t want to be tricked or misled, but they do want to be informed and entertained. They trust themselves to make smart decisions and respect companies — and the public relations specialists — who make it easy to access the information they seek.

Public relations professionals face a new challenge in the age of the Buyer 2.0. But the way to meet the challenge is clear:

Deliver the right message on the right channel and you will get the right results. For an expanded discussion of how PR can benefit from supporting the buyers journey with outbound messaging, read the free article: Rethinking Your Marketing Communications and PR Strategy: Understanding How Buyer 2.0 Impacts Your Approaches to Demand Generation; Closing Gaps in Your Content Marketing Approach.

It’s not always easy to pinpoint the exact moment or situations that caused your inbound marketing plan to fail. But don’t sulk and and sink into a netflix binge watching, ben and jerry’s ice cream eating rut. There are some common mistakes that many businesses make when launching an inbound marketing plan, and by knowing those, you can avoid them.

Marketing Company Mayhem

Who created your program?

Sometimes hiring the wrong type of marketing agent or company for your business can scuttle an inbound marketing strategy before it ever gets off the ground. There are many companies that have had great programs in the past for retail, b2b, or wholesale businesses, but for one reason or another they aren’t up-to-date with the current advances in marketing technology. It’s like when you meet someone with interests that don’t necessarily match up with yours. You have fun learning their hobbies for awhile but eventually you may find that the lack of any common interests leaves you with little to talk about.

Did that person or company systematically remove existing techniques that weren’t working?

With any business overhaul, assessments must be made and any ineffective techniques removed and replaced to initiate. Sometimes we can have a few small misunderstandings add up to one big blow-up. Handling these issues immediately can help resolve the situation before it even gets to that point.

How much expertise and training were given?

Did the company take the time to demonstrate the programs and expected results to your sales staff members? Did they inspire enthusiasm and confidence that their new would produce promising leads that could be converted? If you’ve experienced minimum conversions rates, then you understand how important motivating your sales force is in converting a lead to a client. But regrettably, often the in-house personnel get overlooked as the exciting new technology enraptures everyone and your business suffers from a lack of proper training with your staff.

Is there misappropriated reporting?

Certain reporting procedures are critical for inbound marketing success. But if your information concerning site visits, lead conversions, and sales is accidentally misappropriated or improperly credited, the resulting errors can cause confusion and blunders about what type of programs are working for your business. It would be like your significant other receiving flowers and gifts that weren’t from you but you took credit for it. Down the road, they’re going to expect that treatment and when they don’t receive it be very confused about the type of person you really are.

Are you blogging and pumping out educational content?

Along the same lines as taking credit for someone else’s gift, if you give your significant other flowers every week at the beginning of the relationship and then 2 months in stop all romantic gestures all together they’re going to be confused and hurt. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that blogging consistently doesn’t matter, or they include blog content that is barely related to the actual service or business. But blogging is an essential practice in any marketing strategy and your level of educational content—the information about your services—is vitally important in modern marketing.

Applications: Making Inbound Marketing Work

Renewing your passion for your inbound marketing plan involves two important steps. Positive actions on your part and professional expertise can make all the difference in whether or not your marketing strategy actually does what you expect and propels your business forward, or if it stagnates.

Positive Actions

Since reporting is such a vital aspect of determining if a marketing technique is working, first make sure you’re focusing on the reports that matter. Second, make absolutely certain that your analytics are attributed correctly, and then use that information to take action.

Consider which items are working and reinforce and increase those activities, but also identify which ones are not and remove them and replace them with ones that do. You may have heard another old saying, ‘when you find yourself in a ditch…stop digging.’ Because no two techniques will work with the exact same level of success for two different companies, that cliché is imminently practical when you’re determining which methods to keep and which to ditch.

Professional Expertise

Sometimes finding love can be as difficult as finding results from your inbound marketing agency. There’s nothing wrong with using an outside resource to help with either problem! Whether it’s a matchmaker or a marketing agency, both can help you get the results you want.

Outsourcing your marketing strategy to an agency that can establish real results by introducing new ideas consistently is the way to ensure success. If your business faces a serious legal dilemma you would naturally employ an expert to protect your company interests, and this same philosophy can be applied to inbound marketing.

An agency can develop a customized strategy for your marketing plan, offer the technical advancements that provide critical measurements, and maintain fresh ideas with a consistency that is almost impossible to achieve in-house.

Professional attention helps manage and create:

• Blogs
• Press releases
• Videos, podcasts, and webinars
• Informative whitepapers, e-books, and articles
• E-letter subscriptions and RSS feeds

All of these inbound tools can be utilized, but a professional agency can assist with their orchestration and development so that you know that the information you’re offering your targeted clientele has been specifically designed to increase sales.

Conclusion

When your inbound marketing plan has let you down, and you begin to wonder why you even waste your time and money on ineffective activities, discovering the source of that disenchantment can be tricky. But don’t give up too soon!

The next relationship you have will be better if you look at the past problems and figure out how to improve yourself for next time. If you don’t, the same problems will arise.

By understanding the common problems that haunt inbound failure, you can prevent it. And when you apply the proven business principles that got your company where it is today to your inbound strategy, you’ll also recognize the inherent advantage of seeking professional assistance in the set-up, execution, and monitoring of your marketing techniques because—let’s face it—in today’s global, technological marketplace, getting your business information to the customers you need requires a steady plan that is tailored to your needs.

You can find out more about agency inbound marketing strategies by contacting a qualified inbound marketer today.

‘Be at the Top of Your Game’ for sports fans or for people involved in sports, this immortal phrase is often roared in dressing rooms across the globe.

For most sportspeople to be at the top of their game involves a monumental feat in preparing both mentally and physically. To achieve success in sport regardless of your talent, requires in-depth planning, preparation and training. More importantly they will require guidance, structure and a direction.

Managers of individual sports athletes or teams will employ a strategy or tactic to counteract an opponent to gain a victory. Sports managers will often gather in-depth information and knowledge of their opponents as they realise that not every team or player is the same.

Preparation and employing a strategy at this level will ensure a team or an athlete will have the confidence to compete at the highest level.

As the famous American Football coach Tom Landry once said

I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on the field and be prepared to play a good game.

When examining your Social Media Marketing the same principles as in the above sports analogy applies. No business or brand is successful without having a plan or strategy. Before your market your brand on Social Media, create a strategy that will give you a direction. In addition deliver a tactic to achieve success in building brand awareness.

It crucial to remember no two Social Media Marketing strategies are the same. As a brand you have got to ask yourself ‘What is unique about my proposition’ and establish your brand position. Then look for the gaps in the market where you can tailor your Social Media Marketing strategy to exploit those gaps and build brand exposure.

Here is 6 steps in creating a successful Social Media Marketing Strategy

1. Demographics – Research who your audience is, where they are, age profile, when they are most active, their interests, their preferences and who you are trying to target.
2. Identify Social Media Channels – It important to investigate what Social Media channels best suit your marketing objectives. For example if you’re a B2B brand, Twitter and LinkedIn is the preferred channel to find and engage with potential customers. For B2C brands Facebook and Twitter is a popular way to engage with customers and build brand awareness. If you are a fashion or an online retailer, using visual content on Pinterest is a great way to drive traffic to your website and convert into sales.
3. Create goals and objectives – For any business or brand its vital to set out from the start what you want to achieve and how you will achieve it. Setting goals is great mechanism to motivate and focus your efforts to achieve success on Social Media. Set realistic and achievable goals e.g. new followers/fans, brand reach, level of engagement, new product introduction, number of click-throughs etc.
4. Content – Central to building brand awareness on Social Media is creating content that engages your audience. Social Media is the only marketing platform that enables brands to engage with customers on a human level. Ensure that your Content reflects your brand and engage on human level with your audience.
5. Content Planner – Preparation is key to success whether it is sport or business. Whether you’re are running a brand campaign or taking part in an event, planning your Social Media Marketing activities in advance provides structure and focus. This helps to increase the chances of succeeding in your marketing goals. Planning your content in advance helps to save time and enables you to create high quality content that your Social Media audience will engage with.
6. Measure KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) – To measure the progress of your marketing goals, you need to clarify what KPI’s you are going to employ. In terms of Social Media Marketing KPI’s can include level of engagement, new likes/followers, shares, click-throughs, new leads, reach, brand impressions etc. Once you have identified and analysed your KPI’s use the results to improve your marketing efforts.

A successful Social Media Marketing strategy isn’t achieved instantaneously. Examine what tactics work and what doesn’t. Remember prepare, plan and implement to be at the top of your game!

With over 1,000 companies trying to sell some type of marketing technology in over 40 categories, it’s not surprising that the most common word that marketers use to describe themselves is “overwhelmed.” Indeed, according to my research into 351 mid-market B2B companies, except for companies in software, the adoption rate of marketing technology is very low: companies in other industries are using a median of just 2 out of 9 major marketing technology programs that I identified.

This is a wasted opportunity. Many marketers have reported rapid and significant ROI from adopting these tools; but first, they had to convince higher-ups to make the up-front investment. So, in the interest of helping clear that path, I am suggesting a Marketing Technology Starter Kit: the seven programs that every company’s marketing team should have access to, at a minimum, to grow leads, opportunities, and revenue.

These programs are essentially an online form of direct marketing. Traditionally the two most important factors in the success of direct marketing campaigns have been the list — getting the materials in front of the right audience — and the offer – offering them something that they will value and act on. And direct marketers have been measuring and optimizing to improve results for decades, in a way that even David Ogilvy admired. In my Starter Kit you’ll see repeatedly how marketing technologies help you get in front of the right audience at the right time with the right offer.

Here’s my list of seven technologies that are table stakes for today’s marketer:

Analytics: Marketing is at an inflection point where the performance of channels, technologies, ads, offers – everything — are trackable like never before. Over a century ago retail and advertising pioneer John Wanamaker said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Today smart marketers do know which half isn’t working. But to do that you need to have web analytics programs set up, and have people on the marketing team who know how to use data.

Leading tools:

Far and away the most popular website analytics tool is the free Google Analytics, which is used on over 80% of small and mid-market websites. It’s definitely the place to start; at some point you may find a need for the paid version or other enterprise analytics tools such as Adobe Analytics. Note that the tools below also have their own analytics platforms.

Conversion Optimization: Conversion optimization is the practice of getting people who come to your website (or wherever you are engaging with them) to do what you want them to do as much as possible, and usually that involves filling out a form so that at the very least you have their email address. Typically only about 3% of people coming from an online ad will fill out a website form; with conversion optimization that can be doubled to roughly 6%. With outstanding offers or marketing apps some companies have created conversion rates several times higher than that; I have a form on my website with a 33% conversion rate. If you’re going to go to the effort and expense of getting people to your website, you need to get as many of them as possible to convert.

Leading tools:

• Wordstream’s free Landing Page Grader
• Optimzely lets you run A/B tests on landing pages and other website elements
• With Unbounce you can create and A/B test landing pages
• ion interactive provides tools for non-programmers to create marketing apps, which may provide higher levels of engagement and conversion than a form or content download

Email: Email marketing is the 800-pound gorilla of digital marketing. And I’m not talking about spamming people by buying lists that are being sold to your competitors, too. I’m talking about getting people to give you permission to email them additional information, and then sending only valuable content tailored to the person’s interests. It takes more than one touch to close a sale; email marketing is so powerful because you’re staying in front of customers and prospects who have said that they want to hear from you.

Leading Tools:

• MailChimp
• Constant Contact
• Marketing automation programs (see below) usually have robust email marketing capabilities built in

Search Engine Marketing: Search Engine Marketing includes both paid search ads, like Google AdWords, and search engine optimization (SEO) to try to get high organic search listings for your website content. Since most people, even B2B buyers of big ticket items, use search as part of their work, you need to be there when these people are searching for what you’re selling. With search ads you can test and optimize on keywords, ad copy, offers, the website forms you take them to, and more, and track the people downstream if you integrate your Google AdWords data with your Google Analytics data and CRM so that you know not just which ads are clicked on the most but which ads lead to the most opportunities and revenue. These insights can be applied to all of your online and traditional marketing. SEO involves not just technical enhancements to the site but, most importantly, regularly creating high quality content, which is what Google really values and ranks highly.

Leading Tools:

• Google AdWords
• Bing and Yahoo
• WordStream
• Wordtracker
• BrightEdge

Remarketing: You’ve experienced remarketing: it’s when you go to a website and then, when you leave that site, their ads appear on other sites that you visit. It’s really easy to set up and incredibly cost effective because you’re only advertising to people who have already expressed enough interest in you to come to your site. It can even be customized to show ads for the particular products or services they looked at. And since you usually pay on a CPM basis, you get tons of free impressions. Over 50% of software companies use remarketing, but less than 10% of other companies do; follow the lead of those software companies.

Leading Tools:

• Google AdWords remarketing
• AdRoll
• Perfect Audience (from Marin Software)

Mobile: Half of emails are now opened on smartphones, and soon half of search will be done on smartphones, so all websites need to be mobile friendly. But today, less than a third of them are. Simply put, you need to have a site that is easy to read and use on a phone. If you don’t, Google penalizes you with lower mobile search rankings. So that mobile-friendly site is step one; after setting up a mobile-friendly website you can go on to mobile search advertising and other forms of mobile marketing. But this is, after all, just a starter kit.

Leading Tools:

The most common technique for making a mobile-ready website is to use responsive design, which automatically resizes the website to fit the device on which it’s being viewed. You can usually tell that a site is responsive by resizing your desktop browser from a horizontal to a smaller, vertical (smartphone-like) size and seeing if the site automatically reconfigures itself, as the mayoclinic.org site does. The other major approach is to create and maintain a separate mobile site such as the New York Times does at mobile.nytimes.com; smartphones are automatically directed to that site.

Marketing Automation: Marketing automation brings it all together. It is a terrific technology that includes analytics, online forms, tracking what people do when they come to your website, personalizing website content, managing email campaigns, facilitating the alignment of sales and marketing through lead scoring and automated alerts to sales people, informing these activities with data from your CRM and third party sources, and more. There isn’t enough room to go into more detail here; just get it.

Leading marketing automation programs for small businesses and mid-market companies:

• HubSpot
• Act-On
• InfusionSoft

Leading programs for mid-market and enterprise:

• Marketo
• Adobe Campaign
• Oracle Eloqua
• Pardot and ExactTarget (Salesforce)
• Silverpop (IBM)

You may have noticed that I mentioned “content” several times while describing the implementation of these programs. Content is the currency of modern marketers, including in B2B when it is ideally tailored to the different members of the buying team and stages of the buying cycle. Content can take many forms including blog posts, webinars, infographics, marketing apps, and videos as well as traditional forms such as events. And the quality of content is key; as MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer Ann Handley asks, “Would your customer thank you for that content?” So high quality, creative content is critical, but it’s not a technology.

And, no, I didn’t forget social media. Social media is important for engagement, for promoting content, and for other purposes, but I don’t put it in my top seven when it comes to lead generation.

While I have described these seven separately, they are in fact synergistic. Search ads by themselves don’t do nearly as much as search ads with great website conversion forms, remarketing, automated email follow up, and all tracked in a marketing automation system and integrated with your CRM. So it can be complicated. Like sales and product development and supply chain management and finance and any other important part of the company, it ultimately comes down to not just what you do but how well you do it. There are no silver bullets, and it’s a poor marketer who blames their tools. If you’re new to digital marketing, you’ll need to work with people who have a holistic view of marketing technology and don’t just want to steer you toward the one or two that they support.