Rnordman

Our weekly Digital Life podcast explores the exciting future of 3D printing in medicine with Dr. Konrad Walus, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC. Walus, co-founder of Aspect Biosystems, has developed a 3D printing process to produce human tissue on demand.

TORONTO – The Canadian dollar was lower Thursday as traders continued to avoid riskier assets and bought into the U.S. dollar.

Traders also took in data showing a steep slide in manufacturing shipments during August.

The loonie was off the lowest levels of the session, but still down 0.16 of a cent to 88.67 cents US after Statistics Canada reported manufacturing sales fell 3.3 per cent to $52.1 billion in August, the first decline of 2014.

The agency said the loss was mainly due to lower sales of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts. Economists had expected a drop of 1.6 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters.

Markets have been volatile and commodity-based currencies such as the loonie have sustained losses amid worries about a faltering global economy.

“Disinflationary pressures warn of more slack in the global economic outlook than expected, complicated by Ebola and geopolitical risks,” observed Camilla Sutton, chief FX strategist and managing director at Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets.

“Soft U.S. data yesterday, including disappointing retail sales… served to fuel fears.”

The flight to safety has been reflected in sharply lower bond yields. The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield was also off its session lows, and at late morning was unchanged from Wednesday at 2.13 per cent.

The commodity-sensitive loonie was also feeling the weight of falling prices for metals and particularly crude oil, which dipped below the US$80-a-barrel level Thursday morning before climbing back about the mark as supplies increase and a faltering global economy dampened demand prospects. The November crude oil contract was down 34 cents at US$81.44 a barrel.

Meanwhile, other commodities were lower Thursday as the December gold bullion contract faded $2.80 to US$1,242 an ounce while the December copper contract lost four cents to US$2.97 a pound.

The post Loonie down amid flight to safety, falling commodities, poor manufacturing data appeared first on Canadian Business.

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AUSTIN, TEXAS — Google Fiber will finally launch its gigabit-speed service to residents of Austin, Texas, in December, the company announced at a special press event today.

The company’s gigabit Internet service is about 100 times faster than what the majority of ISPs offer within the US. And with the greater speed brings tons of opportunities for the city to better itself, perhaps in ways we can’t even predict yet, according Google Fiber head Mark Strama.

Google first announced its intentions to launch Fiber into Austin back in April 2013, and residents have been eager to start using the service ever since. But there are several reason why it’s taken so long.

“Launching a fiber network is really three parts: planning, permitting, and construction,” said technical program manager David Anthony at the event. He explained that Fiber service will begin in south and southeast portions of the city, which requires permits to build the infrastructure. In other words, this isn’t something that happens overnight.

Like Google Fiber’s previous operations in Kansas City, Mo., the service will come to a selection of what Google calls “fiberhoods” — select neighborhoods where people will have the opportunity to sign up for the service.

“Not every part of Austin will get Fiber. But every area of Austin will have an opportunity to get it,” Strama said. By this, Google means that everyone can sign up to get the service within their fiberhood, but service will only be installed once a certain threshold of signups are met.

Also like the company’s Fiber rollout in Kansas, signing up for the service requires a one-time $300 equipment fee, which is waved if you sign a multiyear contract for monthly service. But those who just want the basic service can do so for free once that initial set-up cost is paid. Base pricing for the Google Fiber Internet and TV service were not disclosed.

And while Google Fiber might be taking a bit longer than expected to arrive in Austin, the competition that’s developed as a result of Google’s entrance into the city have been pretty impressive. Local providers AT&T and Time Warner Cable launched comparable high-speed service within the city as a result.

Hopefully the same will be true as Google moves into other markets across the country.

Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major glob... read more »

When you look up the Uber rate in your city, it looks fairly familiar. There is a base rate, a charge per mile and a charge per minute. It looks like the pricing structure you know well from all the miles you have logged in cabs.

But Uber's pricing is actually a little deceiving. Taxis charge riders per mile when moving, and per minute when idling. Uber chargers riders per mile AND minute whether they're moving or idling (except in Philadelphia, where Uber charges per minute only when your speed drops below 11 MPH).

Even so, Uber rates do beat cab fares in most cities. We looked at a sample trip and calculated both costs for a number of different cities. For this analysis, we used fares from UberX, the service where drivers use their own cars. Assume the trip is 5 miles and takes 10 minutes. Also, assume there is no waiting time. The car drives 30MPH the whole way there. Table 1 shows what the fares would look like for a taxi and an Uber car in each city.

The column labeled "Taxi/Uber" shows the taxi fare relative to the Uber fare. If the ratio is over 1, as it is everywhere except New York and Philadelphia, that means that Uber is cheaper than a cab — that is, until surge pricing reaches that level. In L.A., an Uber car is cheaper for this sample trip even with surge pricing up to 1.7x.

It's also important to note that you don’t have to tip your Uber driver. And most people do tip their taxi driver. If you add a tip of 20% to the cab fares, Uber looks like an even better deal and beats out taxis in every city we analyzed. See Table 2.

 

How do the fares change for different kinds of trips? Well, let’s look at the same 5-mile route with no idling and assuming you tip your cab driver 20%. But let’s change the speed of travel. Uber prices drop as speed increases, which makes sense as Uber is charging you for the miles and the driving time. If you are only going 15-20 MPH, then a taxi is cheaper in New York. But as speed increases, Uber becomes a better deal.

Now add some waiting time. This is when cabs start charging you per minute, waiting for lights to change or in stop and go traffic. Assume 5 miles and 20 MPH when you are moving. As idle time increases, the fares of both increase at a similar rate. So idling time doesn’t seem to impact whether you should take a cab or an Uber car. 

VERDICT: Factoring in a tip, if you are in New York City and there is a ton of traffic (meaning you can’t go over 20 MPH), a taxi is best. Otherwise, Uber seems to be cheaper. But watch the surge levels, because 2x is more expensive than a cab in almost any city.

NOW WATCH: We Did The Math — Where Taxis Are The Cheapest

 

 

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? What The 'Dude You're Getting A Dell' Guy Is Doing Now

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When you think of a lemonade stand, you’re probably picturing your own kid, or one from the neighborhood, with a pitcher of Country Time lemonade at $.25 per cup. Maybe more, if they’ve realized the value of money.

When I think of a lemonade stand, I think of negotiation, word of mouth marketing, demand generation and surge pricing. But to be fair, I’m also thinking of my niece and how she, as a 4-year-old, ran her “business” this summer.

She doesn’t understand these principles, of course, but she applied each of them when she saw something she wanted—red cowboy boots.

In the steps below, you’ll see that my niece was able to alter her methods to meet her goals, and found a way that required less output on her end to get there. Isn’t that what we’re looking for in ecommerce: a lesson in how to improve conversion rates and offer more relevance to our customers with less overhead?

Stage 1: Negotiation

My sister was out shopping and my niece saw red cowboy boots. The boots were a few sizes too big, but Izzy thought quickly: “Mommy, I really need new shoes,” she said, “And I can grow into these.” You can’t argue with that logic.

As an incentive to get the boots, though, Izzy had to earn the money to buy them for herself, through chores, listening, and being nice to her sister. Sounds like typical ways a kid earns money, right?

But here’s the thing: my niece is a mini mogul and decided that commerce was better than chores. So, she worked a lemonade stand into the agreement.

Stage 2: Word Of Mouth Marketing

No lemonade stand is complete without a hand-drawn sign to get people’s attention, and Izzy made sure to have that. But she was also different: her sign was conveniently missing the price (we’ll come back to that), and it featured product differentiators of lemonade made with “real lemons” and “air popped” popcorn.

These became the selling attributes her customers could relay back to her “prospects.” And she connected that a customer at the stand meant more money in her pocket and, ultimately, those boots on her feet. So, she asked my sister to get some grown ups to come out and visit her.

Luckily, it’s a tight-knit community, and everyone knows the family, so people were more than willing to stop by. But if they didn’t, Izzy sent her other satisfied customers after them to “tell them about extra-delicious lemonade, with real lemons.”

Stage 3: Demand Generation

Though most customers came in through Izzy’s referral network, her most valuable ones were those she found herself. And it started when she spotted a group of teenagers walking down the road.

Izzy gave them a shout: “Hey big kids, you look like you want some refreshing lemonade and fresh popcorn.” Them being nice kids, half of them walked over.

Again, it sounds simple: Be upfront with a targeted ask. They were, in fact, big kids, it was the middle of summer, and, maybe, could use some refreshment. She used what she knew, and applied it to a large group.

Sounds a lot like a solid demand generation strategy. Not everyone will be a taker on your message, but you have to try. Those who do are likely to convert.

Stage 4: Surge Pricing

The going rate at Izzy’s lemonade stand started at one “money” (dollar) per item. Two items were two monies.

This was a pretty solid strategy by Izzy, I think, because of her straightforward pricing model, little need for change, and good profit margin on lemons and popcorn kernels, which were low-cost goods for her to acquire.

But here’s my favorite part of this whole story: With a half-dozen teenagers on the hook, and those cowboy boots in her sights, the pricing changed to two monies per item. The customers were none the wiser, because Izzy brought them in through her own channels (by asking them), and not through her referral program. It paid off: she walked away with $24 from the teenagers alone.

It might sound like she swindled them, but with referrals and loyalty come benefits for the customer: In this case, a 50% discount on the overall price.

Obviously, not every business can be as simple as a lemonade stand run by a 4-year-old in an area where farm fresh ingredients are a great value proposition. But the tactics are sound and definitely made me think twice about how I could be so bold in my marketing strategies:

• Identify new revenue streams and figure out what you need to achieve it
• Know what matters to your customers, and connect it to your overall value
• Sometimes making a direct ask is the best way to gain a customer, don’t overthink it
• Build a following and reward loyalty

By applying these principles, Izzy earned her boots in a few hours. Not too bad for a 4-year-old. I hope I’m retired by the time she makes her way into the business world, because she will be a force. At this rate, it could be by her 10th birthday.

For CMOs (chief marketing officers), market intelligence about their consumer base is an exceedingly important part of developing positive customer relationships, increasing leads, and creating a life-long customer base. Equally as important as watching your customers, though, is keeping an even closer eye on the actions of your competitors.

What is Market Intelligence?

Market intelligence, as its name implies, is simply the intelligence – or information – about a business’s particular market. For example, the geographic location of a business, the particular demographics of a consumer base, or any other information that’s relevant to a company’s market is market intelligence.

Gathering Competitive Intelligence

Gathering market intelligence about your competitors, or competitive intelligence, is an important part of knowing how your own business fits into the market and how you can better meet customers’ needs. Gathering competitive intelligence includes monitoring your competition’s advertising strategies and the effect of those strategies, how your competition’s products and services are priced, and how their businesses are faring overall.

Tools for Maintaining Effective Market Intelligence

Remember, market intelligence is multifaceted – it includes information about customers, data about room for growth in a market, market share, competitive intelligence, and more. While each type of marketing intelligence is completely different, all are important for managing client happiness and feedback, setting prices, developing content, and designing and implementing business strategies. The following provides a list of tools and resources for gathering and maintaining effective marketing intelligence:

Wiser- Wiser is one of the best services on the market for competitive analysis, and provides CMOs with the ability to view a detailed history of product pricing for your competitors, gauge whether your prices are too high or too low based on the competition’s, set your own pricing strategy, adjust your product prices easily, and more. Wiser’s flagship product is WisePricer, a semi-automatic dynamic pricing engine, and WiseDynamic, a fully automated solution.

BrainJuicer – BrainJuicer describes themselves as an “unconventional agency” that is “reinventing market research.” BrainJuicer conducts marketing intelligence about what motivates people, what drives the decision making process, how behavior economics plays a role in business success, how to facilitate change in businesses, and ultimately how to use human nature to the advantage of your business. Great emotional advertising leads to greater effectiveness & efficiency; most of all, it’s what makes brands famous. Using the BrainJuicer FaceTrace® technology, they can measure what people are feeling, how strongly they’re feeling it, the reasons why & predict likely commercial impact.

SiteAlerts- If you want to find out what your competitors are using when it comes to technology, such as what e-commerce platform or mail provider plugins are being utilized, SiteAlerts can help. What’s cool about SiteAlerts is that not only can you discover competitor technology, but you can also see the traffic that your competitors get, where that traffic comes from, what keywords they rank for, and how their social media strategy is faring.

The Importance of Market Intelligence

Gathering market intelligence is an extremely important aspect of business success. By keeping you more focused; centering your business goals on your consumer; collecting relevant, real information about what works and what doesn’t; providing you with the intelligence to pursue growth opportunities; and reducing your risk, gathering market intelligence may be the most crucial element of your executing effective plans for your business’s prosperity.

Marketers have always preferred influence to drive brand affinity over other forms of paid media. Research findings point to the fact that influencer associations have a significant impact on a brand’s reputation as well as its sales. This brings us to a rise in innovative influencer-led marketing campaigns be it for launching a new product, building brand awareness and brand advocacy in varied sectors like FMCG, banking, food & beverages, beauty and technology.

While celebrities have been the chosen ones to exert their influence on potential consumers of a brand, the digital age has seen the growth of a new type of influencer – he or she could be an expert in a particular domain, or simply have a large number of followers on their social networks, especially Twitter and YouTube.

But brands have the added responsibility of choosing the right fit too, when it comes to influencer marketing in addition to understanding the nature of influence and measuring the social media reach of an influencer.

Here, we try to look at six innovative campaigns designed to leverage the power and reach of influencers in building brand awareness:

1. Philips Air Fryer with Vah chef Sanjay Thumma

When Philips had introduced its innovative kitchen appliance named Air Fryer in 2012, little did the consumer know about its health benefits or its usage. The product allowed one to cook chicken wings, French fries, aloo tikkis and other deep fried foods with 80% less oil, but was faced with a low awareness level among cooking enthusiasts. Also, content on the internet especially YouTube focussed only on international recipes that can be cooked with the Airfryer. The lack of Indian recipes with the Airfryer hindered its growth in India.

The brand with its digital agency Ogilvy One cooked up an influencer led awareness campaign to tackle relevant content, in tandem with paid media. Instead of launching and creating its own YouTube cookery channel from scratch, Philips leveraged and roped in India’s biggest YouTube influencer (in the cookery domain) named Sanjay Thumma. Thumma runs a cookery channel on YouTube titled VahChef with more than 330K subscribers.

Through a six-month long branded show titled “Philips Superchef” on VahChef, Sanjay cooks a variety of Indian dishes on the Airfryer, thus creating a storehouse of useful information for the product.

2. Opera Coast kinetic sand surprise for iOS users

The Opera Coast is one browser that is designed to change the way an iPhone user has been browsing. With no conventional address bar, forward and backward buttons or other features that have defined browsers for more than 20 years now, the Opera Coast enhanced your browsing experience leaving one with more idle time. Taking this as a cue, Opera India teamed up with its digital agency 20:20MSL to launch the browser through a fun, influencer-driven marketing campaign called #OperaCoastSurprise.

Creative folks are well known to have cracked a big idea while wasting time, so Opera Coast would be a great app for them to help them waste time well. The team sent a surprise package to 50 creative professionals in the country with a personal note to each of them. The people included artists, media & ad folks, an illusionist, musicians, entrepreneurs and other inspired individuals who used the iOS. The surprise package contained ‘kinetic sand’ along with a note encouraging them to waste their time.

While the excited receivers played around with their kinetic sand, they also shared about the iOS browser and how they liked the surprise with their social connections.

3. Cadbury Glow launch via online influencers

To capitalize on the festive season, Mondelez International chose to make its debut in India for its premium chocolate gifting brand, Cadbury Glow. The luxurious pralines that come with a chocolatey filling are packed in what looks like a box of jewels and come at a premium pricing of 6 pieces for Rs 400, 24 pieces for Rs 600 and a limited edition box of 54 pieces at Rs 2000.

For a chocolate poised to take on the super premium chocolates in the country, the brand launched a special influencer-driven marketing campaign that highlighted the special feature of the chocolate – the Cadbury Glow can be personalized with special notes, songs, a photo album or a personalised video made from special moments of the sender and the receiver.

Bollywood, fashion and lifestyle blogger, Miss Malini was roped in, along with some Twitter influencers who enjoy a decent following to trigger conversations around the chocolate. A very close friend of Miss Malini made a personalized video for her and uploaded it on the Cadbury Glow website and tweeted to her, which she reshared with her followers.

Look at this video I just spotted in my notifications, so cute! http://t.co/WFskoOgpu9 Thanks @MrCoffeeKhor :) #MaketheMomentGlow #ad

— MissMalini (@MissMalini) October 8, 2014

4. Colgate Charcoal toothbrush #WhatTheBlack

For the launch of its new SlimSoft Charcoal toothbrush with black bristles, Colgate India ran an innovative campaign driven by online influencers and bloggers. Through a 3-day campaign, key opinion leaders were sent a black item every day. On day one, it was a black paper mug and a chocolate within a ‘black egg’. The only indication of the source was the product website. On day two, they received a 12-page ‘WhatTheBlack Times’ in which the first and last page featured fictional stories, while the rest promoted the website. On day three, they finally received the charcoal toothbrush, after striving hard to decipher the clues received earlier.

Parallely, a blogging contest of the same name ‘#WhatTheBlack’ was conducted where bloggers had to write down their wishlist of 5 black things. The brand or the product wasn’t revealed.

Some concluded that it could be for the launch a dark chocolate, while some thought it was a new Blackberry launch, but nonetheless, they tweeted about the black items everyday along with pictures and the campaign hashtag. The pictures, tweets and blogs all contributed towards an interesting social media debut for the charcoal toothbrush.

#WhatTheBlack #Day2 surprise! OH MY GOD! What is this news! *To be continued* :P pic.twitter.com/DkInERwnVL

— Abhyudaya (@CaptainnVyom) July 31, 2014

Beginning with identifying the right online influencers for a product to executing a memorable association for the community, these campaigns have got their influencer marketing right.

David Akin of the University of Maryland has a 53 page presentation that looks at the economics of reusable rockets.

The primary cost drivers are refurbishment and mission operations costs. Refurbishment costs after each launch need to be ideally be kept below 3% of the vehicle cost but definitely at 6% or less for significant cost savings.
The flight rate and production rates have to be high to take advantage of the learning curve.

The 1954 airline industry was moving 5 million tons miles [? not sure if the 1954 number needs to be corrected as the 2003 number did] per year at about $80 per ton [ton mile].
The 2003 airline industry was moving 5 billion ton miles per year at about $20 per ton mile. [Akin number were incorrect]
US air industry statistics.

Right now the space industry is launching about 500-700 tons per year.


$500 billion to scale to 64 launches per day to the level of airlines in 1955

The US spends $60 billion per year on NASA, military and intelligence space programs. This means over $1.8 trillion over 30 years is what would be the expected budget. There is also the commercial space industry and international space efforts. The proposed $500 billion over 30 years would have to be carved out of the existing programs. The International Space station cost over $100 billion. The cumulative budget put into the space shuttle program was over $200 billion.

Strategically investing $500 billion (perhaps in conjunction with China, Europe, Japan and other countries) would provide high frequency reusable launches with demand like the airmail deliveries did for the airlines. It would be an investment in infrastructure like the highway system. The Earth and some orbit infrastructure is discussed but this level of effort would require orbital fuel depots and refueling and orbital and space industrialization.

The Space Review considered a program to fly to low earth orbit 64 times per day, three orders of magnitude higher than current flight rate, and evaluates its impact.
Ronald P. Menich wrote the Space Review article. Ronald worked in the Engineering Economics Group at SpaceWorks Engineering evaluating advanced ETO launch concepts for NASA and Air Force customers. He is Chief Scientist in the Pricing and Revenue Management business unit at JDA Software Group.

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Have you heard the old saying “fail to plan, plan to fail”? It was drilled into me back at uni and it has stuck with me ever since.

Most budget conscious marketing plans consist of building a website, starting a Facebook page, sending some emails, doing some networking and waiting for the sales to roll in. The website sits idle for years, the Facebook gets updated every time there is a sale and the emails are sent if there is a special on. To be fair: small business owners are BUSY. But a common mistake is to not invest a little time to nut out your plan of action, purpose and marketing messages so everything sings the same tune. A small investment in this can save a whole lot of heart ache down the track.

Keep it simple
A marketing strategy does not have to be complicated. Sometimes the biggest brands in the world have a 2 page marketing plan (with 60 page appendices).
To get started on a marketing plan, think about the following:
• Your vision and mission for your business
• What you want to accomplish
• Your ideal client
• Articulate what makes you different
• A road map for achieving your goals
• Prioritise what is important
• Create an action plan for what you need to do and when
• Monitor your progress and amend

Think a professional is expensive? Wait until you hire an amateur.
Having problems nutting out the above? Invest a few dollars to have a professional guide you through the strategy mix.

Having a plan in place will make sure you are accountable (and consistent) in your marketing decisions. Having everything planned in advance means you only spend what is allocated in your marketing budget and has every marketing activity working in perfect harmony: with the same message.

If you put your marketing strategy in the too-hard basket you will always be reacting to the market. This means lost leads and lost revenue. Having a plan puts the control in your hands and will see you proactively engaging with your customers before they even have a chance to look at your competition.

For your content marketing projects to get off the ground, you need to assemble the right team members, teach them the right way to do it, and get them motivated for action. It can be daunting to get buy-in from executive staff and team members who may not be well versed in content marketing. Don’t call everyone into a conference room and force a PowerPoint presentation on content marketing strategy down their throats.

Instead, gamify it.

Introduce them to the concepts and fundamentals, and get them to not only understand them but to be interested and genuinely excited about using them.

My colleague, and 20-year internet marketing veteran, Frank Pipolo and I needed to educate more than a dozen of our marketers and SEO professionals. We realized that the group was composed of highly competitive people (inherent to the marketing world) so we took that knowledge and created a game plan for content marketing. Here’s how we played it, but the process can be scaled from a small team of two to a team of dozens or even hundreds.

Pre-game training

This spirited competition was based on the concepts in Joe Pulizzi’s Epic Content Marketing, which was given to each participant. We created four teams, each composed of four to five people who did not normally work together. We felt this would increase creativity and build more cohesion among departmental subdivisions.

We shared with all that the winning team would receive a prize and a little fanfare (lunch at a nice restaurant and executive management recognition). All plans also would be presented to brand teams and clients for implementation.

As soon as we assigned everybody a team, the smack talk began. Creating a competitive environment was like magic – the interest and enthusiasm were immediate, and the friendly rivalries became instantly palpable.

Team members were asked to read one section a week of Epic Content Marketing. For five weeks we met every Friday and discussed in detail that week’s section. We answered any questions and clarified any issues that related to our specific business situations.

Let the official game begin

Teams were given final instructions and sent to have their own meetings to create their epic content marketing strategies.

Assignment

• Choose a single product and develop a comprehensive content marketing plan for that product. (Teams could choose from one of four products in our brand.)
• Choose a team leader and schedule an initial meeting.
• Follow the 10 steps – include deliverables with each – and explain all steps in a PowerPoint presentation.
• Cohesion and communication are required. Do not let each person in the group be individually responsible for two steps – work collaboratively on each step. All team members must participate equally.

Evaluation: Scoring will be based on creativity and detail, understanding and use of the concepts, potential to meet established goals, and potential for eventual leads/sales.

Step 1: Decide on a single product to market. Choose one that is understood significantly by at least one person on your team.

Step 2: Research and document general audiences, buyer personas, pain points, motivators, etc. Note: No piece of content should ever be developed without a strong understanding of the target audience/persona.

Step 3: Define goals of the content – leads, sales, exposure, list building, etc. Note: When done, audience and goal will be added as categories to our standard content request forms.

Step 4: Detail the buying process (how/when does the target buy) and engagement cycles (top, middle, or bottom of funnel).

Step 5: Define the content niche – what kind of content is the audience looking for and where can it be found? Note: Your content should fit into a niche and it may even carve out a new one over time.

Step 6: Develop a content mission statement. Note: Any content developed in this plan must adhere to the mission statement.

Step 7: This is the most extensive component. Create a comprehensive content marketing plan based on channel, persona, pain points, goal, content type, structure, tone, channel integration, and desired interaction.

Step 8: Build a content calendar to include at least 12 pieces of content. For each one, identify topic, type, persona, pain point, goal, call to action, next/previous steps, and anything else you deem appropriate.

Step 9: Develop a strategy to market each piece of content. Options could include social media, link building, video, offline, etc.

Step 10: Define key performance indicators and how goals will be measured.

The finish line

With your team-created content marketing strategy in hand, give a PowerPoint presentation to the brand’s content team managers/evaluators. The presentation should document the answers for all 10 steps. You can include an Excel spreadsheet for the calendar step. Following all presentations, a winner will be selected.

Post-game notes

The teams had two weeks to come up with a comprehensive content marketing plan with the requisite that it had to absolutely knock our socks off. We really pushed them to collaborate with each other, smack talk the other groups a little, and make it a friendly but serious competition.

From the moment they began, every single team member was completely absorbed in creating his or her team’s plan and making it better than what the other teams might create. As game creators, we simply answered any questions while the groups worked their magic. To our surprise and delight, we actually got the entire department excited and enthusiastic about learning and implementing a formal and tangible content marketing plan – on top of all the work they already had on their plates.

We ended up with four very different plans with various strategies, but all following the same fundamental rules that were laid out in the instructions based on the book. We were blown away by the amount of thought and creativity that everyone put into the game. The presentations were extremely well thought out and comprehensive. We ended up with highly professional content marketing plans that were ultimately approved by our clients and are in effect at this time.

The real winner

The real winner of this competition wasn’t the team who got the free lunch. The winner was our company, which now has content marketing advocates and well-educated players throughout the marketing department – people who know the proper way to implement and manage a content marketing campaign in today’s marketplace.

Want to play the game at your company? Start your pre-game research with Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi.

Cover image by Vait Mcright via Pixabay.com

The post Content Marketing Strategy 101: Make it a Game appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

As a B2B marketer, there is an urge to automate everything—social media, content marketing, lead nurturing, etc. There is an abundance of automation tools available and marketing automation can serve as a time saving tool to build brand awareness and nurture sales leads. I am asking you to control this urge! It is time to implement a more “hands on” marketing approach and stop deterring clients with tired, over-done automated marketing tactics.

Everything Is Automated Now: Why Not Be Different?

As a B2B client myself, I can tell the difference between real person and automated marketing. Clients aren’t dumb and have grown tired of not having an authentic conversation with a company trying to market to them. With email communication, I can tell when a sales rep is really listening and reaching out to me and when it’s a “one size fits all” follow up email.

Small to medium size B2B firms are better off manually nurturing leads. Because most of your competition has gone to automation, you will stand out from the crowd and have an authentic conversation with a prospect. This will be a “breath of fresh air” to a prospect and this manual nurturing of leads will turn into a true competitive advantage.

B2B Marketing: Fewer Leads

Large companies with huge target markets need marketing automation. There are just too many leads to nurture and most of them will never buy. Marketing automation helps sales reps identify the most serious buyers. On the other hand with B2B marketing, a B2B firm is typically targeting a niche clientele. A niche market means less leads coming in with longer sales cycles and more decision makers. With less leads coming in, why not manually nurture leads with custom content rather than generic messaging? With more decision makers, why not customize the messaging to each person in the sphere of influence so that the content addresses their priorities? Manually nurturing leads allows a B2B sales and marketing team to take full advantage of the relatively small number of opportunities that come their way.

Quality Over Quantity

There are many social media management tools that allow a B2B firm to curate content from the web and post on their social media channels. Finding relevant third-party articles and posting to your company social media profiles is an excellent way to show you follow industry trends and remain top of mind with your following. Unfortunately most other companies are utilizing the same tools and social media channels have become content noise with an abundance of content that no one is reading.

B2B social media marketing is better done in a thoughtful manner. As a B2B firm, you don’t need to post four times a day. You don’t need to even post once week! The more important aspect of social media posting is that you are sharing original or third party content that is truly valuable to your audience. As you post less, you will notice that more of your audience is paying attention and engaging with your B2B brand.

Prediction

I am predicting that there will be a backlash to marketing automation over the next few years—especially among small to medium size B2B firms and their clients. Just like many service companies implemented automated phone tellers years ago, most have gone back to real people answering the phone! In fact, service companies who have real people answering the phone advertise it as a competitive advantage. This will be the same with B2B marketing automation. The nature of B2B marketing—higher priced items, longer sales cycle, fewer prospects, etc.—demands manual marketing.

At a recent speaking engagement I was privileged to spend some quality time chatting to a number of small business owners after the event, and one of the biggest questions that they wanted answering is “How do I find the right leads on social, and how do I turn them into customers?”

I sat down and worked with them to find a solution, and with so many free digital marketing tools available all it takes is a little creative imagination to connect the right ones together to build a value driven online sales funnel for your business.

This post is the result of our brainstorming, and offers a strategic blueprint to guide you through building a social media sales funnel from scratch.

Step 1. Find Your Target Market.

Who are the people who would benefit from your products or services? Think about building a profile of your ideal customer. Who are they, if your in a B2B market what job titles would your ideal customer have? If you’re in the B2C market what conversations are your ideal customer having? Think about some of the keywords that your customers might use in their social bio.

Once you’ve put together a customer persona, head over to FollowerWonk. FollowerWonk is a powerful free tool provided by the great guys at Moz, and it allows you to search Twitter bios for any keywords you choose.

Enter some of the keywords that you identified as relating to your ideal customer. If your business is local you can also filter your results down to particular cities to find exactly the person that matches your offering.

Followerwonk will then return you a list of highly matched Twitter accounts that you can follow, and since you’ve already understood that you’re likely to be able to help them with the challenges they face, a high percentage will follow you back.

This is where you build a highly targeted community in your niche. This method distills your community, avoids wastage and is much more time efficient for you and your followers.

Step 2. Prove your value

Start a conversation with your audience as soon as you can. Start a blog at WordPress or if you want to self host a blog on your own website head over to WordPress. It’s simple to do, it’s free and you don’t need to be tech savvy to start writing.

WordPress is a great way to get started with blogging and if you can consistently provide valuable content on your blog that’s focussed around the topics your product or service solve you’ll quickly become a thought leader in your market.

Blogs are a great way of building a “virtual magazine” and every post you publish make sure you share a link to it on Twitter with the highly targeted following you are building up through Step 1. This will position you as an expert in your field and drive targeted traffic from social to your blog, which brings us straight to the next step.

Step 3. Build the list

Start building an email list on your blog by offering a regular newsletter signup form, or a free valuable tip sheet or eBook in exchange for the visitors email. Use Mailchimp or another similar email service to create a simple CRM system to mange your contacts.

You’ve now moved your potential new prospect from a follower, to an engaged reader, to an owned contact. They’re now someone who wants to hear more from you and has given you permission to keep in touch. Connections like this are priceless.

Step 4. Survey Your List

If you’re communicating to your email list on a weekly or monthly basis, don’t forget that in addition to the posts and information you share in your newsletters and communications you can add a survey to ask your list to tell you about their wants and needs.

Surveying is a great way to uncover the exact challenges that your target market are facing and can help you mould your product or service to their wants and needs. Use tools like SurveyMonkey for easy to use free and low cost questionnaires.

Step 5. Make The Offer

By this stage you should have built a high level of trust and connection to your audience. You understand exactly what they need help with, and now you’re ready to offer a solution. Keep up the regular communication in your newsletters, but now your list is full of fans who know your value.

Now you know exactly who you’re trying to help, what they need and how they want their challenges solved. You’ve qualified your list, you’ve listened to what they’ve told you in the survey results, now its time to get busy building or moulding your products and services to solve their challenges.

Because you understand the customer, they’ll understand your solution.

This 5 step strategy to building a sales funnel through social media is based around social listening. It is using social media to build the relationship based on trust, understanding, focus and commitment to serve.

This is incredibly efficient and done with the right spirit and a genuine passion the sales process becomes the foundation for a long term valuable business relationship with your followers that will have them come back time and time again to buy your products and work with you.

[Photo Credit: Rosaura Ochoa]

While companies today might agree that consumer insights are a good thing, there are varying levels of opinions about just what these insights should be and how to use them. Traditionally, the struggle has broken down along departmental functions. Research focuses on the numbers, marketing wants to reach new customers, and sales just wants more leads, with little coordination, sharing or understanding.

For a long time, this segmentation worked, too. Back when there were three television networks, one newspaper in every city, and clearly defined radio stations, it was easy to generalize that your audience was 25-54 and that millions of them would be watching NBC between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. on Thursday evenings. Put out a catchy message or a spiffy new product, and customers would line up outside your doors.

How things have changed in just a decade or two. Now there are hundreds of television and cable channels, let alone Netflix and DVRs. Local radio is fading as satellite networks take command of listeners. Even the once mightiest of newspapers are struggling to survive. That doesn’t even begin to take into consideration the myriad online marketing and social media marketing opportunities that must now be brought into the fold.

Since simple demographics no longer suffice in this complicated and complex marketing environment, consumer insights have begun to take hold in the corporate mindset. Researchers, or those who casually profess to provide consumer background, are now being forced to provide more than just numbers, but real useful information that can be acted on by all parts of the organization that are involved in doing business with prospects and customers.

When compiled properly, consumer insights can make it almost feel like a “typical” consumer has been invited into the boardroom and conference rooms where decisions are being made. While traditional marketing research involved gathering mounds of facts, figures and statistics to look for generalities or trends, that was really just skimming the surface. Consumer insights research gets under the skin and inside the consumer’s head to find the “why” of a purchase, to understand what happened, and to project what could occur in the future.

Consumer insights don’t necessarily come from one focus group or customer survey. They are usually gathered through a combination of information-gathering activities and combined with an analysis that provides texture and meaning. Often in today’s business environment, an anthropologist or ethnographer may even be brought in to help provide a deeper cultural understanding of why an individual or a group chooses to take a specific action.

From Mass Marketing to Personalized Marketing

Today’s businesses must gather consumer insights in order to strategize and implement effective consumer marketing strategies. This applies not only to how to present products and services to the buying public, but even to the development of the products and services themselves.

Traditionally, a company might develop a product and then spend millions of dollars on mass marketing to push it out to consumers. In a way consumers were almost being treated as children – here’s what you need to make your house look great, to smell better, to attract someone. This arrangement worked rather well for some time, too. But try achieving the same results today when corporations are called to task in the social media universe for any perceived slight or condescending attitude.

Consumer insights provide understanding that leads to marketing on a more direct and personal level. Not only does a beverage company need to know which parts of the country call it soda and which say “pop,” they may even find it helpful to understand whether cultural differences play a role in beverage selection. Do people from a certain ethnic background prefer one type of drink over another?

Consumer insights can help try to find a problem that the company can solve. How long did it take auto manufacturers to finally realize that some people had problems opening the tailgates on their SUVs, and that the ability to simply wave your foot under a sensor to open it might actually help sell vehicles?

Anthropologists and ethnographers can also uncover group dynamics that can aid in launching products, building sales or establishing a brand identify. This understanding will definitely be necessary as corporations delve into the veritable gold mine of marketing that is social media. The ability to identify group influencers and advocates, and predict how information will be shared among the group members, can lead to a more effective consumer relationship in an online world.

This learning can be applied to business and marketing decisions that provide a corporation with a competitive edge. Once you know why your customers do things a certain way, it will be much easier to establish and build long-term relationships with them.

With the New Year fast approaching and Google ever-tweaking their algorithms, it’s always a good idea to check in on what’s in and what’s out with the tools available in the market.  While some toolsets have been around forever and continue to make the grade, there are certainly some new kids on the block that have stood up and demanded our attention. Whether it’s their superior analytic options, precise segmenting skills or amazing ability to provide data that directly impacts your conversions, all of the tools listed below deserve to be tried out for one reason or another.

Mondovo

Mondovo is the new kid on the block and they are turning some pretty important heads.  Mondovo specializes in giving you the ability to move forward with your digital marketing in a modern take. In other words, this isn’t your grandfather’s SEO tool.  Research, track, analyze and improve everything on your site with Mondovo’s comprehensive digital marketing toolset (it provides brand and content marketing tools and social media tools in addition to the SEO tools). This is great for people who are running the entire show or companies that need to keep their fingers on the overall pulse of their marketing funnels, but the SEO tools are powerful enough to use even if all you’re looking for is SEO.

Some killer features from Mondovo are:

• A focus on insights that matter, such as the ones causing shifts in your performance (instead of vanity metrics that older SEO tools like Analytics focus on)
• Audit tools that tell you exactly what is wrong with your website such as missing meta tags, dupe content, no alt text, etc. and how to fix them.  There is an “all website” tool and an “on page” tool so you can go through the whole site at once, or hone in on it page by page
• Two powerful keyword research tools that some have said is missing in most major SEO toolboxes.  You can generate enormous lists of long-tail KWDs with just a few short seed KWDs plus the ability to rake through your competition’s sites to see which keywords they are ranking for
• A social competition analyzer toolset that allows you to compare your performance vis-à-vis your competitors on Facebook & Twitter.
• A ranking tool that lets you monitor your website’s location on the SERPs for local and global performance, either in real time or over extended lengths of time.  This will show you if you’re moving in the right direction and allow you to pivot (think growth-hacking)
• A stunning link research tool that lets you check in on the progress of your own backlinking goals as well as see where your competitor’s sites are linking to and being linked from.  Also gives you a simple way to identify and kill bad and broken links.
• Mondovo links in with Google Analytics to get even more data about your visitors so be sure you use both

ClickTale

What makes ClickTale so functional is that it was created by marketers. Working much differently from other analytics tools, ClickTale essentially does exactly what its name says: it tells the tale of your clicks.  In other words, for every click, keystroke, scroll or motion your viewers make on your website with their touch pads or mouse, ClickTale captures it and creates a report for your analysis.

This allows you to track where your customers are looking and adjust your website accordingly, making it a powerful optimization tool.  After the data is recorded, it is sent to the servers over at ClickTale where it is then smashed up with the actions of the visitor, giving you a near-complete play by play of what your customers are doing during an average browsing sessions. This is a behavioral data that you just can’t pass up on which is why over 100,000 businesses utilize ClickTale as a core analytics tool, including Walmart, the New York Times, CBS and Abercrombie and Fitch.

Here are some of the features that have made ClickTale a “can’t pass up” analytics toolset:

• A playback for the web session that lets you see exactly what your visitors are doing when they come to your website.
• Track the movements made by the mouse, touch pad, keyboard or any type of scroll at all.
• Get the best insights into how your site is being used, pointing out which parts of your site are failing and which are working.
• Catch errors and optimize the user experience to boost your conversion rates.
• Get higher ROIs and revenue through optimization of your site.
• Use the data-rich heat map suite to aggregate the reports into a comprehensive visual display of what parts of your site are “hot” and which are “cold.”
• Conversion Analytics break down the successes and failures of your conversion funnel with amazing tools such as Advanced Filtering and Conversion Funnels, both of which optimize your site to get more conversions.  See where your leads are dropping out of the sales funnel and fix it.
• Page Console lets you see all of your important error data in one place, giving you a simple way to fix errors based on urgency as well as monitor bounce rates and scrolls to better optimize your website.

Moz Pro

Moz has been around for a long time and you would have probably already heard of it but it’s worth mentioning if you haven’t already tried it. With Moz,you get great tools such as Moz Analytics, Open Site Explorer, Follwerwonk and more, for a total of over a dozen SEO& Analytics tools.  Moz Pro is focused on building SEO scores, link building, branding and content marketing.

Here are some of the features that have Moz subscribers dishing out $99 a month:

• Moz Analytics Dashboard gives you a quick overview of everything that is going on with your inbound marketing efforts, making it perfect for those who don’t have a lot of time to spend underneath the hood
• You can measure you traffic and growth through a Traffic function, an Attention Function (shows all of the shares and mentions your content is getting), an Authority Function (rates your site in terms of how much it is viewed as an authoritative voice in your niche) and a Data Snapshot Function (shows all traffic coming into your site and provides valuable insight into how all channels are working out for you)
• The Moz Pro Analytics Search tool gives you in-depth insights into your organic search volume, keyword rankings, keyword opportunities, on-page optimization recommendations and comprehensive crawl diagnostics
• Analyze all of your links with Moz Links Analytics, directly comparing all of your links against your competitions and creating a portfolio to manage your established links proactively
• To keep an eye on your brand and image (as well as that of your competition’s and the industry’s as a whole, use Moz Analytics Mentions to get your ears and eyes everywhere on the internet.  Find out when they mention you, when they mention them and when the industry is being discussed.  Then, get in there!

Piwik

A very popular choice with those who prefer open analytics platforms is Piwik. Piwik is a worthy alternative platform the almighty Google Analytics and is worth considering if you want to have more control over your analytics. Piwik provides insights that keep your finger on the true pulse of your site, linking you into the growth and success.  While not everyone uses Piwik, some notable companies that do are Forbes, Sharp and T-Mobile.

Some great Piwik features are:

• Providing powerful analytics for your website, Piwik lets you track all the important KPIs e.g. conversion rates, keywords, visits, etc.
• Piwik is great for ecommerce websites because they provide a unique tool for analyzing your revenue, average value of orders, conversion rates and other ecommerce-related data.  You can extract all of this data historically and in real-time with Piwik’s simple to use ecommerce logs.
• This real-time feature lets you see exactly where your visitors are entering and where they’re going next
• You can fully customize your dashboard to run one website, or hook all of your websites into one convenient to use dashboard, giving you the all-seeing eye over every site you run
• Piwik has a goal conversion tracking tool that is slightly better than Google Analytics, making it simple for you to stay on track and motivated.  You can also track your events by monitoring the interaction on your websites and mobile apps

If you have an internal search engine on your website, Piwik allows you to track all searches performed, giving you even more insight into your qualified leads

Editor’s Note: William “Skip” Miller is President of M3 Learning, a company whose sales training tools are changing the way sales professionals get work done. Skip has spent more than 25 years in various sales, marketing, and operational management roles, including with McDonnell Douglas and Dataquest. He’s the author of five best-selling books, including “ProActive Sales Management,” which ranked number one on Amazon for five consecutive years. Janelle Johnson is Act-On’s Director of Demand Generation.

This blog post is an edited transcript of the Act-On Conversation Skip and Janelle had about the new sales landscape and how lead-qualification processes must change to align with today’s reality. You can listen to the podcast of the Conversation on the podcast player below, or download it on iTunes.

JANELLE: At Act-On, we focus a lot on generating leads and nurturing them, getting them to the point where they’re ready to be passed to a sales rep for qualifying. Once the lead is created, what should a sales rep be focusing on?

SKIP: Janelle, people used to have to dial for dollars and cold call to try and get leads. But now with marketing automation tools, you’re getting hundreds – even thousands – of inbound leads that are already somewhat qualified. So you’ve got to start thinking differently about what you’re going do with these leads, because we’ve got to qualify them up front a little bit differently … we’ve got to test them for energy. Act-On’s a perfect example of that. You guys have grown like crazy by using your own tools to generate more leads. And your sales teams have had to do things differently.

JANELLE: Yes, that’s absolutely true.

Salespeople have to do things differently now

SKIP: What many companies need to do is retrain their sales force. Sales has to change their game, learn some new things. And this applies to companies with three or four sales people, all the way up to companies that have 1,000 or 1,500 sales people. If the sales organization can focus on a few things, early and upfront, with these leads, they’re not going get overwhelmed. What often happens with new inbound leads is that we’re so anxious to talk to somebody who wants to talk to us, we end up doing a whole bunch of stuff to please them, like give them a presentation, give them a demonstration, give them all this stuff. Then we wonder why they’re not turning, why they’ve gone dark, they’ve gone ghost, they’ve gone quiet. What did we do wrong? Well … you did nothing wrong at stage four. It’s back in stage one that we’ve got to do some different things.

We’ve broken it down to three things, three barrels: Causes, Problems, and Homework. If we focus on these three things, I think sales teams get a little smarter, they up their game, and they do a better job of qualification early in the funnel.

What is causing the prospect to consider change?

JANELLE: Sounds great. So let’s start with Causes. What does that refer to?

SKIP: The concept is, what’s causing these people to take your call? What’s causing them to actually say, “Yes, I might be interested in talking to somebody?”

Sales people – especially if they take an inbound call – all of a sudden start focusing on the company, not on the prospect’s needs. They have a mental dialogue: “Why are they calling my company? Why do they want my product or my service?” Well if you take a step back, sometimes the reality is that the prospect doesn’t want your product or service. They may like how they’re doing things. If it’s not broke, why fix it, right?

Often, these prospects are being told by management to investigate something new, because all of a sudden the company’s got to do something different … something’s caused them to say, ”What we’re doing now is not good enough.” For example, “We’re moving our office space this week. What caused us to move is that we’re a growing company. We’re running out of space. We’re adding people.” There’s a cause. And typically it’s the cause that creates change.

Sales teams should start asking questions like, “What’s causing you to look at a tool like ours?” “What’s caused you guys to say, ‘What we’re doing now is not good enough.’?” “What’s happening in your organization that’s caused you to put energy into looking at my service or my product?”

If sales can do that, they’ll find a ton of energy behind the answers. And they’ll be able to disqualify the people who are just kicking tires. So: if sales teams can master the word cause, they’ll find out if somebody is worth putting into the funnel (or not).

JANELLE: That’s a great point. As you were talking I was thinking about the fact that if there’s no cause, it’s likely they’re not going to move forward because it’s hard to change. The status quo is a lot easier for individuals and for companies. And so without that cause, they may be gathering information to find out what’s out there, but there’s no real reason driving them to change. And that, I assume, would impact and hamper the sales process.

SKIP: Here’s an example: I bought a big TV a couple months ago. I got home and I said to myself, “What’s causing me to buy this thing? The one I’ve got is fine.” I actually called the company the next day and canceled the order. There was no cause for me to get a new TV. There was nothing wrong with the one I had. It’s amazing how without that cause for change, there’s not enough energy to move forward. We think of sales processes, especially early, like a roller coaster: If you don’t have enough energy early in the process, you won’t make it to the top, and the deal is going to stall … or even go backwards.

So ask the great “cause” questions: “Hi, Mr. Smith. Thanks for calling today. I understand you hit our website. I understand you downloaded XYZ white paper. What’s causing you guys to look at something new? What’s causing you to say that what you’re doing today is not good enough? What’s going on?”

Rather than, “Hi Mr. Smith, thanks for downloading XYZ white paper. How can I help? What can I do for you? What can I send you?” All of a sudden now you’re in “giving” mode, you’re not in control of the process. [LAUGHTER] And that deal won’t have any thermometer – no energy. So asking cause is important.

JANELLE: I would assume that buyers oftentimes may not be aware of the cause … it isn’t something they’re actively thinking about. In that case, how can a sales rep dive down and try to understand the cause and help the buyer put it into words and into a framework?

No problem? No deal.

SKIP: The motivation goes to our second point, which is Problems. If there’s no problem, there’s no deal. So what problem is the company facing right now that’s causing them to change what they’re doing? By the way, problem is not a good word. So I wouldn’t recommend you go after a customer and say, “What’s your problem?” [LAUGHTER] So position it more like, “What are your challenges? Your initiatives and goals? What’s holding you back?”

Most companies have two, three, four goals for the year. They could be revenue goals, product goals, market share goals. The ones that are doing well probably aren’t on anybody’s desk right now. What’s on people’s desks are the goals, the initiatives that aren’t doing well. There’s a problem with them. There’s a challenge. There’s a pothole. There’s something going on that is causing them to say, “I’ve got to spend more time and attention.”

So if cause creates energy, finding out the problem is like energy squared.

“Hi, Mr. Smith. What’s causing you to look at us? What things are going left instead of right? What things aren’t going the way you planned?”

People pay attention to problems. They want to get them fixed so they can deal with other problems that happen. Causes and problems go hand-in-hand. It’s a combo we call “trains.” The company executives are the train station masters, and they’ve got three or four trains they’re working on.

So ask which trains are in the train station. Ask about goals and initiatives, the executive and/or the people who are working on them, why they’re working on them, and what the challenge is. Causes and problems. Those two things combined are going to produce a lot of energy and deliver a lot of qualification milestones up front so that sales teams don’t fill their funnel with a bunch of smoke.

Because if a train was all set, it wouldn’t be in the train station, right?

JANELLE: That’s great. And I would imagine that as you have multiple people, maybe different levels or different departments in a buying cycle, they may have a different viewpoint or a different problem that they’re trying to solve.

SKIP: Oh yeah. And time and time again we get companies who have been generating inbound leads or using marketing automation, and now they’re generating 5, 10, 20x what the company is normally used to. These leads are so important that they jam them through the sales funnel, giving them all these proposals. They don’t want to get rid of any of them. So nobody’s done a good job of qualifying or disqualifying them.

Well you’ve got to filter some of those out. Some are tire kickers. Some should be looked at heavily three months from now as opposed to right now. By asking cause and asking problems, you’ll be able to determine how hot or how cold each lead is.

JANELLE: To your point, oftentimes you need to have a conversation to understand that. We definitely look at somebody’s digital body language, but sometimes digital is digital. And nothing can replace a quick conversation to find out what’s causing them to look and what their problems are. That helps us understand if this is something for right now or for three or six months from now. Once we know that, we can then put them in the right nurture track.

SKIP: Yeah. A nurture track is very important. Because if I’m a sales person – call me Bob – and I’m used to manual prospecting and writing emails and maybe getting two, three, four good leads in a month, I’m going to treat them like diamonds. When I start using marketing automation, all the sudden I’m getting 30, 50, 100 leads a month. I still want to treat them all like diamonds but I can’t, because, one, there aren’t enough hours in a day, and two, they’re not all the same … they’re not all qualified.

That sales rep has to change up their game. They’ve got to do some things differently. As you mentioned, putting together nurture tracks is important. But to do that you’ve got to qualify them, gauge the temperature – the energy level of the deal. And if sales organizations ask about cause and find out the problems – the trains they’re working on and what’s keeping the train in the station – they’ll find some energy. It all ties into changing up the sales game and doing things differently.

JANELLE: Great. So what are some questions or talk tracks around really trying to find the root problem?

Time: the third factor

SKIP: If you think about it, problems exist because a company is doing something wrong or execs see something coming down the track that’s going to affect them, either near term or farther out. We call that time-traveling. Asking time-related questions is a great way to uncover problems.

“Hi, Mary. What’s happened over the last couple of months that’s caused you to say, ‘We’ve got to do something different?’” Or, “Mary, what’s happened in the last two quarters to make you say, ‘Enough is enough. We’ve got to change what we’re doing.’?”

Or going into future time: “Mary, as you look at the next six months or as you turn the corner for 2015, what are some of the things you will be doing that will require you to do something different?” Or, “Mary, as you look between now and the end of the year, what’s causing you to say, ‘If we want to accomplish our goals we’ve got to turn left instead of right.’?”

So time-traveling is a lot better than, “Hi, Mr. Smith. What’s your problem?” To which he’ll reply, “My only problem is getting you off the phone!” [LAUGHTER]

Time-traveling is really important for uncovering root cause and problems, and making sure the energy is there to move the lead forward.

Test the prospect’s commitment: Homework

JANELLE: I feel some homework coming on.

SKIP: Yes! So we’ve talked about causes and finding causes and making sure we ask about challenges, exceptions to the rule, initiatives that aren’t going well, things they’re trying to fix. In order to really gauge a prospect’s temperature – their energy temperature – give them homework.

Give them a homework assignment to do … it could be simple as, “John, here’s what we reviewed today. Could you circle the two or three things on this list and send me the email back, so I can make sure our next step is very focused on what you want to accomplish?”

It could be going through a slide presentation and asking them to add a slide or two. It could be having them refer you to someone else in the company, to give you a different viewpoint.

Sales people have this belief that they’ve got to please. They think, “Hey, if I do what the customer tells me to do and I do it well, I’ll get the order.” With marketing automation tools, you’re going to get a lot of prospects knocking on your door, so you want them to put a little sweat equity into it. You want them to earn it. And only the ones who are really serious will do this little 15-, 30-second, 1-minute homework assignment.

So at the end of the first call you may something like, “Bob, this has been a great call. I think a good next step is an in-depth presentation to find out what your company is really looking for, and also present what we do. At that point we can figure out if there’s a fit. Is tomorrow, 10 a.m. good? I’m going to send you an agenda with five or six points we typically cover. If you could circle the top two or three items, or add what you really want to accomplish, that’ll help make the meeting more worthwhile to us both. I’m going to send that to you. If you can get that back to me in the next hour or two, or even get additional input from other people who will be in the meeting tomorrow, that’d be really helpful. All right, thanks.”

Something like that. So tomorrow at 10 a.m. when they haven’t sent it back to you, what are they telling you? [LAUGHTER] They’re not interested. Or 15 minutes before the meeting, “Hi Bob. I haven’t gotten that thing back from you and I really want to tailor this presentation. Can you send it to me?” Those little homework things let you judge whether this is a qualified or disqualified opportunity. So homework is a big deal and should be used, because you want to gauge how hot these leads are as soon as possible in the sales cycle.

JANELLE: That’s also interesting because it makes the buyer more involved in the process … now they’re helping to drive, rather than being passive, they’re actively engaged in deciding what needs to be covered, and are active participants in the sales demonstration, or the discussion.

SKIP: It’s funny, buyers do want to be involved, but many sales people don’t want to give up that control. Their attitude is, “I’ll do everything for the buyer, just watch.” And that’s not a good thing. Think about it: if the buyer’s actually doing the sweat equity with you, they’re probably not doing it with your competition. So you’re getting more of a transfer-of-ownership type of a thing up front.

JANELLE: Yeah, they’re then working with you as a team, as partners, versus somebody shoving something at them.

SKIP: Exactly. You know, we hear buyers all the time say, “Both product A and product B, company A and company B, are really similar. But company A really understands what I’m trying to do.” Well by having buyers put in some sweat equity, having them do homework assignments, they feel involved, they feel engaged. Therefore they feel like they’ve been heard. And that’s a good thing.

JANELLE: I have to tell you, when we first talked about the homework I cringed a little, probably from memories of when I was in school, and now as a parent. There’s a certain amount of stress and negativity attached to the word homework, but homework plays an important role. It shows that you understand and are engaged with the process.

SKIP: Quite frankly most companies that we talk to, their product or service can do a lot of things, but most buyers only are interested that it does A, B and C. I bought a car a year or so ago, and the guy actually popped the hood to show me an engine. Now I’m sure there are buyers who really care about the engine. [LAUGHTER] It was pretty. What am I supposed to say? It’s an engine.

The point is, people look at different things. It’s great to show buyers some other things your products and services can do, but it’s essential to focus on the three or four things the buyer is really interested in. And that can only be uncovered with a homework assignment. By having them put some sweat equity into the presentation before it’s launched, everybody views what’s going on here. It’s a good thing from both the customer and the sales person’s standpoint. I don’t know why more salespeople don’t do it.

JANELLE: I can see how Homework ties the Causes and Problems and Time Travel together. It helps ensure that you’re going to know and cover the cause and problem they’re trying to solve.

SKIP: Yes. Sales organizations want to treat each lead like a diamond. They’re used to leads being scarce, so they try to treat them really well, impress them with demonstrations and presentations. And that just can’t happen when you’re getting 30, 40, 100 leads a month. You’ve got to do something pre-stage one to really make sure that the actual diamonds are the ones that get filtered through.

If sales organizations focus on causes, energy, find trains and problems, and have the customer do some homework up front, they’re going do a better job of qualification and disqualification early, which will make them less overwhelmed and much more successful.

JANELLE: Thank you, Skip, for coming today and sharing this critical information.

Ready to learn more about lead qualification?

Marketing automation can help you score and qualify your leads, and close more deals faster. Download the free toolkit to get started.

Everyone has a to-do list, and it gets bigger everyday but when was the last time you asked yourself, “Why?”

• Why are you in business?
• Why are you doing what’s on your to-do list for the day?
• Why did the opportunity to work on this project arrive on YOUR team’s desk?

For many, the question of “why” something is happening is uncomfortable. It’s easier to bury your head in the sand and look only at the tasks assigned to you. After all, you are productive when you are marking tasks done and what harm could come from trying to get more done? Isn’t that why you’re in business? To get stuff done?

Yes and no. Let’s dig in.

Your Backlog IS Your Priority

Software developers refer to all of the programming “stuff” left on the to-do list that must be completed before launch as “backlog.”

Backlog is determined based on morning musters, ongoing feedback from various departments and team members, and investors who know a thing or two about what it takes to build something profitable. Using this information, the backlog is decided upon by upper management.

At first glance, backlog appears to be a list of tasks for each programmer to work on. In fact, it’s much bigger than that.

Backlog signifies what tasks take priority. It requires teams to choose to resolve one issue before the other. When they do, they place a higher priority on one task above another.

“The values of your company reside in how you structure your backlog. It’s much bigger than the list itself. It signifies WHY your business is alive, WHY you’re working on the task at hand, and WHY your team was assigned the opportunity to complete the mission.

Your backlog IS your priority both from a scheduling perspective and from the greater business system.” – Jascha Kaykas-Wolff

Sales And Marketing Need Great Communications

Successful Agile processes ultimately build a great feedback loop. The tools incorporate ongoing communication with qualitative and quantitative feedback to develop trust between the product and the customer.

What processes exist in your business to create a successful sales and marketing relationship? We all know that these two organizations MUST be on the same page yet we often fall back to ad hoc meetings, and quarterly reviews for our feedback loop (if you can even call them that).

There is a dramatic misalignment between these two essential departments that is fundamentally built into the lack of a consistent communication processes.

• Marketing doesn’t get the communication from sales to know what the market needs. They don’t understand the process well enough to deliver an effective end-solution that leads and prospects can’t say no to.
• For that reason, sales doesn’t really trust marketing. They don’t trust the leads that come through from the marketing department, so they don’t give them the attention that they deserve.
• Sales doesn’t give consistent feedback to Marketing. It comes in the form of, most often, critiques: “that campaign is garbage, the website sucks, this whitepaper is horrible.”
• For that reason, marketing doesn’t trust sales. They don’t trust the feedback is aligned to their priorities and sometimes to the business.

It’s a bit hyperbolic, but even a minor lack of alignment can become a toxic combination. Both departments are working against each other when they should be working side-by-side.

Communication is at the core of it all. The fundamental problem that fuels this misalignment is the lack of communication between both teams; not that either team is failing in their respective tasks.

Setting Up The Priority List For Success

Both sales and marketing have the same priorities. Both teams want to bring in more business to the company. Both teams want to bring in quality customers for the business. Both teams want GROWTH.

The problem lies in the fact that the sales team and the marketing team are not on the same page when it comes to which tasks take priority to reach those business goals at any point in time.

Implementing agile marketing changes that.

Sound Interesting? Here’s How To Get Started.

By bringing the sales and marketing teams together as one, big unit, both teams can decide on the end goals and develop the backlog together. Then, during any defined period of time, your team’s can collectively decide the top priorities in your backlog that need to happen to achieve the ultimate company goal.

With the backlog in place, your both sales and marketing connect the end goals with the priority processes needed to achieve the company objectives.

Just List The Priorities And We Are Done?

It’s more than a basic to-do list. It goes way beyond sending each team member back to his or her desk with a checklist. By using the backlog to stay agile in your business, you give each team an easy-to-understand approach to communicating what is the current priority and what is being worked on. Improving communications via a backlog provides a clear path to ensure that sales and marketing are working as one large unit toward the same big goal.

It looks deceptively easy and straightforward, but the constant fluidity of the list is based on a much bigger mission and strategy. And that is where the magic happens.

Conclusion

Misalignment does not stem from a lack of capability within each of your teams. It stems from a lack of communication and common effort toward the same end goal.

By implementing agile marketing and through a prioritized backlog, you put your teams on the same track working toward the same goal within the strategy.

Your company thrives because both sales and marketing work cohesively. Your business booms because your priorities are in line with the end goal. And what you work on together is a far more powerful tool for both marketing and sales to use to generate stronger, better, more lucrative leads.

And isn’t that what marketing and sales are all about?

In this digital era, the buyer’s journey has changed. Most CMOs are aware of this and are taking steps to adjust their strategies accordingly. But last week, EVP and CMO of CDW, Neal Campbell, sat on a panel with BMA Chicago and asserted that the task CMOs are faced with is more than a little tweaking here and there. In the age of anti-advertising—an age where 90% of consumers don’t trust advertising while 70% do trust what their peers have to say about a service or product—CMOs must undergo a major transformation, and if they want their businesses to succeed, there are six CMO imperatives they must meet head-on.

Mad Men Must Become Math Men

This is not to say ditch creativity. But your Mad Men and Women who you’ve relied upon to bring the creative juices must also dig into Big Data—and dig in deep. To successfully market to any audience today, you must have the right data to make the right decisions. Knowing who your customers are matters more than ever before. When you can create campaigns based around exactly who your audience is, down to the letter, you will have an easier time getting around consumer distrust of advertising. When the message is for them­—specifically them—and not for an ocean of generic leads, you’ll go far.

Maximize Investment in Brand Campaigns

When your audience doesn’t trust ads, where is a marketer to turn? For as long as we can remember—indeed, since the days of Mad Men—marketers have been tasked with creating ads and ad campaigns that reach their audience and convert them into customers. Now, statistics show that audiences are increasingly tuning out, finding ways to avoid “the pitch” almost all marketers spend vast amounts of time and money crafting, and instead find their own path to products and services. In this age, Campbell declared, all marketers must maximize investment in brand campaigns. With social platforms like Yelp, Facebook, and Twitter, consumers are relying on word-of-mouth to make purchasing decisions; they are looking for stories about businesses that will influence their buying journey. With that in mind, it is absolutely imperative that CMOs lead the way in their company to creating campaigns that focus around brand: not what your business sells, but who you are.

Find New Ways to Deliver Brand Story

IBM’s recent CMO study revealed that it’s still only a disappointing number of CMOs that have really invested in social media—many brands still put it off on their wish list, even with all the signs showing that social media is here to stay. Customers are online. If you want to succeed in the digital age, you must find new ways to deliver your brand story, and that means finding new places to deliver it too. Some of your customers have been on Twitter for years—when are you going to meet them there?

Equip Sales to Effectively Compete in the Evolving Digital Landscape

This means tapping into all the technology available that gets your sales force in contact with the people you want as customers. For example, mobile is exploding. More than exploding: it’s gone nuclear. Look at these stats. If you haven’t started implementing click-to-calls in your online ads, or at the very least begun putting phone numbers in your ads, you are not doing everything you can to 1) create better alignment between marketing and sales, and 2) give sales what they need to do their jobs better.

Get Human

Campbell emphasized this one strenuously. In a marketing era where customers are thirsty for stories and rely heavily on each other for influence on purchasing decisions, it is more important than ever to give your company a human face. Campbell started off his talk by saying CDW is composed of “3,600 live humans with digital fabric woven in.” The worst thing a CMO can do is forget that, even in the digital age, her audience is still human. This means getting social. Engaging. Getting on the phone. Doing face-to-face business. Don’t lose your humanity in digital marketing.

Follow the Customer

No matter what age we’re in as marketers, digital or otherwise, the ever-present CMO imperative is this: follow the customer. If he’s online, you get online. If she’s on her smartphone, you go mobile. Even when we don’t like it. Even when it’s hard. Even when it means unlearning everything we’ve ever known about our business. Because times change, and that means we must, too.

Are you wondering if your B2B blog is on the right track for successful lead generation? Focus on these five areas to know.

All aboard! Your train is pulling away from the station and you’re on it.

Your company has embarked on a blogging journey to increase the right kind of traffic to your site and to convert visitors to leads. Those leads can then be nurtured toward a sale and become raving fans of your company.

Your blog posts are helpful and educational, and focused on your buyer persona’s interests and challenges.

Even better, your company’s management and sales teams are on board, having bought in to the importance of blogging and how the sales team can use blog content during the sales process.

What helped get everyone on board the blogging train? Here are a few reasons:

• B2B companies that blog only 1-2x/month generate 70% more leads than those who don’t blog. Click to tweet!
• Companies that increase blogging from 3-5x/month to 6-8x/month almost double their leads. Click to tweet!
• An average company will see a 45% growth in traffic when increasing total blog articles from 11-20 to 21-50. Click to tweet!  Source: HubSpot

And while blogging can generate long-term marketing success, you also know that blogging doesn’t usually generate overnight success.

In fact, that period after a blog has launched can be a scary and precarious time for a blog’s success and longevity. It’s a time when there seems to be more effort going in than results coming out. Management might start to wonder if all the content creation efforts are worth the investment.

To help get you through that long first leg of your blogging journey when you hope you’re headed in the right direction, here are five things to measure to know if your B2B blog is on the right track:

1. Article Views

After you have begun publishing blog articles you’ll be able to see which ones are getting the most and least views. The results might surprise you, but that’s OK because blogging is an iterative practice where what you’re doing becomes informed by data and analytics. That in turn enables you to do more of what’s working and less of what’s not working.

What is it about the more popular posts? Is it one particular author whose posts are getting more views? Is it a particular subject? A post format (e.g. how to, list post, controversial topic)?

2. Engagement

Many people who visit your blog may ultimately buy what you sell. They just aren’t going to buy immediately. Or from you.

On average, 80% of a blog’s readers are first time visitors. That means that most readers don’t return.

That’s why it’s important to capture visitors’ email addresses so that you can keep in touch with them and nurture them toward a deeper relationship with your company over time. The best way to do that is with an email newsletter. If you can get visitors back to your blog you’re on the right track.

Measuring the net growth of your blog’s subscribers is also important because the average email list deteriorates 25% per year due to unsubscribes, people changing jobs, etc.

Similarly, the number of subscribers to your blog via RSS reader is also a good number to track for an indication of a growing audience.

3. Inbound Links

Inbound links are one of the most important indications that your blog has remarkable content. It is like a vote of confidence from other websites.

Inbound links are also one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s search algorithms. If other sites are linking to your content, your search rankings are most likely on the way up.

4. Call-to-Action Performance

A Call to Action (CTA) is a website button, image or text link that encourages a visitor to take an action by typically clicking on the button, visiting a landing page and filling out a form in return for some kind of content. Often, that content is a white paper, eBook, webinar or a newsletter.

Every blog post should include CTAs, ideally offering more indepth content about the blog topic. For instance, at the bottom of this post there is a large CTA for an ebook about business blogging (click here to download). ☜ That is also a CTA, by the way.

Look to see which CTAs are getting the better conversion rates (views to clicks). Some posts will have a better click rate perhaps, because of a more relevant CTA.

One of the primary purposes of your blog is lead generation. Analyzing the CTA performance is a strong indicator of how well your blog is serving as a means to that end.

5. Sales

For many B2B companies with long sales cycles involving several buying decision makers, this will be a challenge. But with closed-loop marketing analytics, you can determine which blog posts are not only generating the most leads, but also which of those leads are converting into customers.

Linking specific blog posts all the way to a sale can be illuminating. Sometimes you will find that while some posts generate more leads, other articles generate a lower number of leads but a higher percentage of sales.

Bon voyage!

photo credit: 96tommy via photopin cc

Keep your head above water while dealing with all the tactical things that cry out for an entrepreneur's attention every day.

OTTAWA – The federal government will have to weigh the potential risks of sliding oil prices before it starts doling out large tax cuts in advance of next year’s election, economists warn.

Finance Minister Joe Oliver has promised the government would live up to its tax-cutting pledges despite a sharp fall in oil prices — thanks to a projected surplus in next year’s budget.

But some economists say Oliver will be forced to pay close attention to the drop, which could well affect the bottom line in a country as dependent on oil production as Canada.

“The federal government revenues are extremely sensitive to what oil prices are doing,” said Scott Clark, a former senior Finance Department bureaucrat and professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.

“If you listen to Mr. Oliver, he’s very optimistic — in fact, almost unbelievably optimistic — about the surplus going forward. He seems to be downplaying the impact of the oil prices, or that lower oil prices will continue.”

Oliver expressed his confidence once again this week after emerging from a meeting with private-sector economists, an annual consultation to discuss the country’s economic outlook before the release of the fall economic update. The fiscal update is expected in the coming weeks.

While he acknowledged thelow price of oil could stunt Canada’s economic growth, Oliver reiterated his vow to bring tax relief to Canadians and table a balanced budget in the 2015 election year.

Oil has hit a two-and-a-half year low, the result of a drop that has already prompted the country’s policy-makers to examine the potential pitfalls of lower prices.

Oliver has credited Canada’s resource sector for financing Canada’s social programs, but what happens when commodity prices continue to tumble — and don’t immediately recover?

Meanwhile, economies around the world, like Europe and China, continue to struggle amid other risks like the expanding Middle Eastern conflict and the Ebola crisis.

Amid all the global uncertainty, Clark instead recommends an approach that would directly benefit the economy, rather than decreasing taxes.

“It’s unclear to me why this is really a great time to be doing (tax cuts) — putting aside the politics, obviously.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently announced last year’s deficit came in at $5.2 billion, much lower than the $16.6-billion shortfall projected in the budget. The government has predicted a $6.5-billion surplus for 2015-16.

The Conservatives made tax-cutting pledges in the last election contingent on a balanced budget, including income splitting for couples with children under 18 and a doubling of the annual limits for tax-free savings accounts.

TD Economics recently projected the government’s 2011 election commitments would cost nearly $20 billion through the 2019-20 fiscal year, or about one-third of the projected total surplus over that period.

The bank’s Randall Bartlett said the promised tax-relief measures should still leave room in the surplus.

But he added that an extended period of low energy prices could shrink federal tax revenue and have a negative effect on the labour market.

“So, no doubt it will give them pause when they’re making their decisions going forward,” Bartlett said about the Conservative promises.

“But whether or not that impact is going to be so significant that it will cause them to change their views on the policies they would like to introduce, I don’t know if that’s the case.”

In the short term, he said Canadian motorists will likely get to enjoy cheaper rates at the pumps, even though the economy performs better as a whole when energy prices are high.

Bartlett said the Canadian dollar, which has also fallen recently, could offset some of the losses by helping to encourage exports.

The Bank of Canada has announced plans to measure the impact of cheaper oil in its upcoming monetary policy report, scheduled for release next Wednesday.

Last week, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz called the effect of oil prices difficult to assess, particularly when trying to determine whether the drop is a permanent decline or a short-term blip.

Follow @AndyBlatchford on Twitter

The post Tax cuts? Ottawa must first consider falling oil prices, economists say appeared first on Canadian Business.

National Boss Day, which is celebrated in the US on October 16 each year, is a day for employees to show appreciation for their managers. But if you have a nightmare of a boss, you probably have little to thank them for this year. 

And as it turns out, a terrible boss doesn't just impact the way you work in the office. It affects your entire life.

Merideth Ferguson, assistant professor of management at Utah State University and coauthor of a study conducted by Baylor University, calls this the "spillover effect," meaning your work life also affects your marriage and other intimate relationships.

According to another survey commissioned by Lynn Taylor Consulting, a whopping 19.2 hours are wasted each week worrying about what a boss says or does — 13 of which occur during workweek, and 6.2 over the weekend.

But, fortunately, you can take measures to mitigate the stress and take greater control, says Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and the author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job."

"A bad boss will likely jeopardize your career growth and impact your personal life," she explains. "A good manager will help you thrive and bring out the best in you. While it's rarely top of mind, you can empower yourself with a terrible boss, especially if you watch for red flags."

It's important to identify these signs early on, before you get too involved, especially if you spot them during the job interview. This way, you can decide if it's something you actually want to deal with (or you can figure out if you'll need to start looking for a new job).

Using the book "Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots" by Vicky Oliver and an interview with Lynn Taylor, we've compiled 18 signs your boss will eventually crush all happiness you're clinging to — and steps you can take along the way.

This is an update of an article written by Vivian Giang.

Your boss is never, ever wrong.

Learning to admit that you're wrong is one of the best things you can do for your colleagues. If your boss refuses to admit that they're wrong, this means they're not willing to go out of their comfort zone for you.

A national independent study by Lynn Taylor Consulting found that 91% of employees said that owning up to one's mistakes as a manager was an important factor in employee job satisfaction.

"Admitting to mistakes sends a message to your employees that it's a safe environment to take smart risks — and without that, you're sapping innovation," Taylor says.

Your boss over promises.

An over-promising boss is an untrustworthy boss. "You might have been promised a series of promotions, increased responsibility, or a raise, but all you get is silence," says Taylor. "It's often helpful to get to the truth through emails, if one-on-one discussions are getting you nowhere. If the responses aren't coming via email, or at all, be wary." 

Your boss expects you to be just like them.

Most people like others who are similar to them. But good bosses know that different types of personalities can improve their team. If your boss is constantly trying to cast their image onto everything you do, try following one or two of their suggestions and thank them for the rest. Stay true to your colors, but also show that you value your boss' suggestions.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Facebook has over 800 million daily users.

As an entrepreneur, you have a fantastic opportunity to leverage it by sharing your story, building business, and having fun keeping up with friends and family – all in one place!

You visit Facebook before you go to meet, hire, or date someone, so it is pretty safe to assume they are doing the same. Your personal brand is represented in each and every post you make. So how do you put your best authentic self out there for the world to get to know you? How do you engage on the worlds biggest social network to attract ideal clients and build your business?

Here are 11 tips to increase your Facebook engagement,

1. Fill out your “about me” section

I have lost count of how many times I’ve gone to Facebook to find an email or phone number of a “friend” and had to do a web search. Ugh. (Yes, you can send a private message on Facebook, but many people never check that inbox!) SO FILL IT OUT.

Pretend you are a potential customer visiting your profile to find out more about you. Is your contact info filled out? Do you have your current business listed and connected to that business page?

2. Create lists… and USE THEM!

Stop the madness of wading through the epic news feed every time you visit Facebook and laser focus on the people you really want to engage with. Creating lists allows you to filter the Facebook stream. This tip alone will save you HOURS of time every month.

Some suggested list names:

1. Key Champions
2. Personal Friends
3. Family
4. Clients
5. Prospects
6. Colleagues
7. Competition
8. Influencers* (details in #7)

Here is the direct resource to create lists: facebook.com/bookmarks/lists

3. Pay attention to your tone

Just make sure you are not a Pollyanna or Eeyore.

Review your last 11 posts. What is the tone? Do they represent you? Are you only posting about unicorns and rainbows, or complaining about your hard knock life? Too much of either isn’t ideal. Ask yourself – would I want to work with the person represented here? Adjust, as needed.

4. Don’t just preach… be visual.

People want to be inspired to work with you. The most efficient way to do that is to share your personal brand and story VISUALLY.

There are 3 elements to consider:

Sharing Core Values

If adventure is a core value, be sure to post photos of your travels or weekend hikes. If family is, post pics of the soccer game, ballet recitals, game night, etc.

Share Your Passions

Posting photos of things you love to do will definitely attract ideal clients. You’ll become a magnet for those who share your passions and you can infuse them into your business process! Passionate about wine? Your closing gifts become wine you blend during the annual client soiree you host at the local winery your clients own. Get the idea?

Share Your Purpose

If your purpose is to inspire greatness in others, share uplifting quotes. If it’s teaching, share posts to educate others. Love connecting people? Post photos of you connecting friends in real life, or post introductions on their timeline where others can see them.

5. Engage with purpose

Engaging with purpose and being memorable involves connecting and igniting emotion in others. Leave a little “hello” on a friend’s timeline or post an article or quote that reminds you of him/her. Make it a habit to connect, like this, with 3+ people a day. Start doing this for people on your Key Champions list (#2) and then branch out!

6. Check your “OTHER” messages

If someone isn’t friends with you, they may want (or be forced) to send you a direct message. The problem is, these usually end up in your OTHER inbox. Add a reminder to your calendar to check it periodically.

You will find interesting personal notes in there too. On those days you need a good chuckle, or boost, popping in here is always a good option.

7. Follow influencers

Do you have someone you admire, but are not close enough to be “friends”? These could be local leaders, business owners, authors, etc. You can follow their public status’, like their business page, and add them to your “influencer” list. This allows you to keep up to date and engaged, without being directly connected.

8. Create a Facebook group

This is an incredible way to build community and business for yourself and others. My business focuses on women entrepreneurs and brands that serve them, so I created a group for “power women”. There are hundreds in this community who engage. They are encouraged to share their own blog posts, things that inspire, or topics that get them fired up. To get a group rolling, here are some great activities to infuse:

1. Ask Questions: Not sure what they want to talk about – ask them!
2. Host and Post Events: whether you are hosting a virtual webinar, Google Hangout, or an in person happy hour – you can use the group to rally attendance.
3. Encourage Introductions: ask everyone to share who they are, what they are passionate about, their biz, etc. You can spark conversations/connections by sharing details of each member when they join.

9. Progressive power of Facebook engagement

Tap into the progressive power.

Think about how it feels when YOU post an update and wait for the first LIKE. When it happens you feel good. That is amplified when someone makes a COMMENT and it brings joy when someone SHARES your post. So, do that for someone else – every single day.

10. Make your mark

Always add a little extra to delight your world, make people feel special, and leave a mark they won’t easily forget!

Sharing a quote? Take time and make a visual with “your style”. Use an app like Instaquote to create something on the go, or use Canva.com to create your own Facebook quote template. In other words, don’t be boring. If you are going to post something that represents #4, make it memorable.

11. Review. Refine. Repeat.

Now that are posting with purpose, make sure you have a goal in mind. These are the three main post types and the effect of each:

1. Status Updates = Comments
2. Links = Click Through (use a service like bit.ly or ow.ly to create a track-able URL)
3. Photo/Video = Likes & Shares

Now, not every update you post on Facebook needs to be tracked. However, paying attention to engagement on posts related to sharing your values, passions, purpose, and blog will help make your time more impactful. Review what type of posts sparks the most engagement; then do more of those!

In a nutshell

A bit of focus, planning, and sharing your story will fire up your Facebook engagement to another level and help you achieve your goals… all while being authentically you!

Do you have something you do on Facebook to elevate your engagement or accelerate your entrepreneurial goals?

Few people in the US are more successful than Bill Gates. But that doesn't mean the 58-year-old billionaire knows everything.

There are still important business lessons to be learned by America's richest man — and who better to learn them from than Gates' friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett?

In 2013, Gates traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, for Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholders meeting. "It’s always a lot of fun, and not just because of the ping-pong matches and the newspaper-throwing contest I have with Warren Buffett," Gates writes in a LinkedIn post. "It’s also fun because I get to learn from Warren and gain insight into how he thinks."

Gates outlined the three most important lessons he learned from Buffett. Here are the highlights:

Look At The Big Picture

When Gates first met Buffett, his immediate instinct was to focus on the surface of his success: picking and investing in stocks. But Gates quickly learned that key to Buffett's success ran much deeper — it's about the big picture of a business. "He has a whole framework for business thinking that is very powerful," Gates writes. 

Instead of focusing on the day-to-day details of the market, Buffett looks at overall growth. "He talks about looking for a company's moat — its competitive advantage — and whether the moat is shrinking or growing," Gates says. "He says a shareholder has to act as if he owns the entire business, looking at the future profit stream and deciding what it's worth."

Be Honest With Shareholders

Buffett famously takes time every year to send a letter to his shareholders, a practice that inspired Gates to start doing the same. While Buffett's letters offer business and investing insights, Gates believes Buffett's candor is what makes them stand out. "He's been willing to speak frankly and criticize things like stock options and financial derivatives," Gates says. "He's not afraid to take positions, like his stand on raising taxes on the rich, that run counter to his self-interest." Gates' key takeaway: transparency is highly appreciated.

Value Your Time

"No matter how much money you have, you can't buy more time," Gates reminds us, noting that Buffett understands this better than anyone. Buffett makes an effort to be available to his close advisers and always finds time to personally answer phone calls from them. "He's very generous with his time for the people he trusts," Gates says.

However, Buffett knows how valuable his time is, and doesn't waste it in useless meetings, Gates says. Buffett prioritizes his time and spends it in ways that matter most to him.

Click here to read the full LinkedIn post.

Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to tipoftheday@businessinsider.com. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.

NOW WATCH: 5 Things The Most Productive People Do Every Day

 

SEE ALSO: 9 Books Bill Gates Thinks Everyone Should Read

Join the conversation about this story »

Today is the inaugural post in my new series: Analytics in Action. Look for posts on Analytics in Action every Friday. I also invite others to share case studies, new analytics tools, and specific examples of how they’re using analytics to drive business. Please note purple elements. The purple text indicates examples of analytics in action. Purple boxes contain assignments from analytics in action to use. Purple elements will help optimize your revenue. You’ll find these elements in all future Analytics in Action posts. (Yes, I know I could have used gray-scale to make elements standout, but I figured on Friday we need a little color.)

Thanks to Moz for motivating this particular post. In their post, they outlined an analytic process looking like this:

Goal setting

I’ve talked on these blog many times about the importance of setting goals.

To ensure the long-term success of your firm, you need to set a variety of goals:

1. End goals — like sales, AOV (average order value), customer retention (loyalty), ROI (return on investment) …
2. Process goals — such as satisfaction, word of mouth, social media engagement …

Without both types of goals, you run the risk of maximizing end goals at the expense of meeting process goals. For instance, you might maximize revenue by having a sale that packs in buyers, but causes a lot of dissatisfaction because your staff can’t handle the customers effectively.

Think Black Friday — is it really worth it to have people waiting in long lines to buy your deep discounts? Does it eliminate buyers willing to pay full price for items that aren’t discounted? Does it create a poor image or reduce satisfaction for your brand that reduces your future sales?

If you’ve ever been part of a sports team, you have a great example showing how important process goals are for your success. As a basketball player, you didn’t just learn to make shots go in the basket. You practices passing, dribbling, and other aspects of the game. You also worked with weights to increase your distance, ran to increase your speed and stamina, and used other types of training off the court. Football players sometimes even take ballet class to learn those great moves allowing them to evade tackles.

Where would a sports team be if they only focused on scoring?

 

Analytics in action

Sit down with your team to list all the activities leading to success.

Now, what customer actions lead to those activities?

KPIs

Most firms have no problem developing KPIs for end goals – things like sales revenue, ROI, and AOV are obvious and easily measured. Process goals don’t get measured as often and are harder to map to end goals, so some firms have trouble developing KPIs for process goals. Instead, these firms focus on what’s easy to measure, even if these metrics don’t map to firm success. That’s why you see firms measuring #Fans/ Followers on social networks. Not because they matter much, just because they’re easy to measure.

Don’t fall for that trick.

Instead develop KPIs for your process goals. Using you list of process goals makes developing a list of KPIs is much easier.

Since we know satisfied customers not only buy more from us, but recommend our brand more frequently, your KPIs should include satisfaction. To help think of more, I have a list of KPIs on Listly and you’re welcome to add to my list.

Analytics in action

Look at my list of KPIs and determine which ones map to your list of process goals.

Can you think of additional KPIs that map to your process goals?

Tactics

With your KPIs firmly established, now you’re ready to develop tactics that improve your KPI metrics.

Analytics in action

For instance, one of your KPIs is likely share of voice — a really important KPI in social media because it reflects how much your brand shows up in organic search versus your competition. You want to increase your share of voice. One tactic to do that is choosing better keywords and increasing your SERPs. With Google’s new algorithm, content marketing is the fastest way to increase SERPs or you can choose another tactic representing high-impact factors from Google’s search algorithm, like getting more social shares (which may also rely on content marketing to an extent.

Metrics

You’ve probably heard the saying: “What gets managed, gets improved“.

But, if you don’t have a system of metrics reflecting what really matters, you’ll be easily overwhelmed with data and not have the tools to improve anything. Or, you’ll simply throw up your hands and ignore everything, since you can’t make sense of any of it.

With all the work you’ve already done, developing metrics is much easier and those metrics truly reflect numbers showing how successful you are.

Instead of literally thousands of pieces of data available, most of it meaningless, you now pay attention to a fraction of data that maps directly or indirectly to your success.

Now, monitoring these metrics suggests actions to improve performance — and that’s the name of the game, isn’t it?

Analytics in action

Map your KPIs to individual metrics. So, share of voice metrics include your position in organic search. You can get this metric from your webmaster tools and they might look something like this table. Or use a tool like Webposition to rank your site, as well as competitor sites on each keyword.

You’ll also need CTR (click through rate), which you’ll also find in webmaster tools.

Export everything to a spreadsheet, then calculate your share of voice using results from both your websites and those of competitors. For detailed instructions, check this out.

Don’t forget to add metrics reflecting how well your tactics are working. So, if your tactic was to increase the social engagement your content, then add elements of social engagement (likes, shares, comments) that amplify your content, along with the CTR from each social platform — from Google Analytics.

Reports

Gathering a bunch of metrics, even if they’re the right metrics, doesn’t really improve your market performance. So, the last step in the analytics process is to generate reports that not only contain metrics, but make suggestions for improvement based on these metrics. So, if your social referrals is too low, research whether your social engagement is too low or the CTR from each social platform is too low.

Analytics in Action

Reports are your chance to analyze metrics to determine the most appropriate course of action — one that will improve your market performance the most.

In the example above, if the CTR is too low, look at characteristics of post with the highest CTR. What did they have in common? Can you create future posts sharing this characteristic?

I have a client whose CTR from Facebook promoted posts varies widely. Posts with the highest CRT, aren’t usually the ones with the highest number of likes. Posts that generate a higher CTR seem to share the characteristic that they don’t contain an image. Now, all the gurus (see Social Media Examiner, for instance) will tell you posts with images perform better (by a large amount) than posts without them, but for this particular clients, that’s not the case.

Don’t skimp on the reporting end of the analytics process. That’s like doing all the word to get your basketball team to the state tournament, then deciding to skip the game because the bus trip was too long.

What’s the difference between a musician and a rock star? Sure, rock stars have flashier clothes and maybe a few (hundred) extra groupies. But it’s really about audience, isn’t it? Rock stars have a huge and enthusiastic fan base anxiously awaiting the release of their next album. Musicians? Not so much.

When it comes to Twitter, is your company more musician or rock star? If you’re like most B2B marketers, chances are you don’t have a meaningful audience yet. And even if you’re good at what you do (like most musicians), you still need lots of the right folks listening in before you can start rocking.

So how do you build a rock star audience on Twitter?

Yes, it starts with creating engaging content to tweet about. But these days, pushing out awesome content is not enough. There’s just too much noise playing for everyone’s attention.

The good news is you don’t need millions of Twitter followers to move the dial. Instead, thousands will get you started (B2B remember?). But keep in mind, the higher the quality of your audience the easier it’ll be to get them to take the actions you care about.

Build a high-quality audience by following the right people

With that said, there’s no reason to wait around to be discovered on Twitter. Instead, it’s all about targeting the folks you want in your audience and following them first. Why? Many of those you follow will follow back because they find your company’s profile interesting, like what you tweet about, or want to keep you as a follower too. Make sense?

Here are seven ways to build the audience you want on Twitter

1.  Follow and engage your top prospects. Who are the top 50 companies your sales team can’t wait to do business with? And how many decision makers at these organizations is your company following on Twitter? Now imagine if even 10% of them followed back. Not bad, right?

2.  Don’t forget your customers. Just like your top prospects, you should be following your customers. Remember, they’re prospects for future business, plus you want to stay top of mind for them as your competitors are probably targeting them on Twitter, too.

3.  Who are the industry influencers? Your industry has bloggers, analysts, and thought-leaders that reach your target audience. You should be following them. Why? Some of the people they reach will notice and follow you; plus engaging influencers can generate lots of new followers when they share your content.

4.  Which hashtags does your audience use? Searching Twitter based on relevant hashtags is a great way to find people looking for what you’re tweeting about. And using these hashtags in your tweets will make it easier for them to discover and follow you, too.

5.  Who’s sharing your content? Whether it’s your latest blog post, media pickup, or press release, many prospective buyers will share content about your business because it strikes a chord or since they’re already fans. Many of these same people will follow you.

6.  Who’s sharing relevant content? Every day there’s industry news and articles that grab your attention. Chances are they’re also being read and shared by your target audience. So who’s sharing the content you’re reading? Follow them.

7.  Promote your Twitter Handle. Turn up the volume on promoting your social handles on your web site and in your content marketing. For example, add “follow us on Twitter” as a call to action on your “thank you for downloading” pages, and email signature employees use.

Of course, these tactics won’t make you a rock star on Twitter overnight. On the other hand, they pretty much guarantee you’ll build exactly the audience you want to keep from being a one-hit wonder!

Want to discover how digital marketers are engaging on Twitter? Check out the social insights report: How Digital Marketers Engage on Twitter.

(Note: This article was first published on the Oracle Modern Marketing Blog)

What is lead management? Do I need to know what it is to run a successful business? Why are these stats important enough to ‘swear by’?

To answer the first question, lead management is the process of tracking and managing prospective customers, or leads. The details of the lead management process may vary based on the type and size of your business, but the basic steps are the same. In an effort to turn leads into delighted customers of your business, lead management takes you through the process of understanding, qualifying and nurturing your leads down the sales funnel.

Your customers are the core of your business, and many customers will start out as leads. With that said, the success of your business largely depends on how you manage your leads. According to HubSpot, companies with mature lead generation and management practices have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate.

The following 7 stats play a vital role in understanding lead management. Knowing statistics about leads, and what kind of lead nurturing and managing works best to convert and delight those leads, will help your lead management process feel almost effortless. And wouldn’t you love if something made running your business a little easier?

It doesn’t matter if you’re a sales person, a marketer, or neither. All of us need to follow up, whether it is with a family member, a coworker, or friend. Following up is a critical part of the sales process. Not everyone is ready to buy, therefore perfecting your follow up skills is key.

I am not going to go on a rant about how you should be writing hand written thank you notes (even though I am still a fan), but I will tell you what I have learned about the follow up, both in my personal and professional life.

Don’t blindside

My phone is ringing, I look down to see an unknown number from a random city in a random state. Out of curiosity, I answer the call only to hear a salesman on the other end asking if this is a good time. When is it ever a good time? Well, the reason why this doesn’t work is because blindsiding a person with a follow up completely catches the person off guard, unprepared, and unwilling to engage with you. Consequently, they are off-put and have entered into the conversation on a negative note.

How to fix it:

Whether it is your first, second, or third call, always remember to schedule a time to speak in the future. That way the person on the other end is expecting to speak with you and will therefore be more open to speak. Also, it holds both parties accountable, which increases efficiency on both ends.

Make a cocktail

Yes, you read that correctly. But, no I am not referring to an alcoholic cocktail (unless of course you are following up in person for happy hour)! What I really mean is that you should be following up in a variety of ways including, email, phone, in person, or messages. You should ask how a person prefers to be contacted, as you want to accommodate each person more as it will improve responsiveness and hopefully engagement.

Don’t be a salesman

This is true…even if you are, in fact a salesman. When you follow up with someone, the conversation should be about them, not you, your product or service. Rather, this is a good time to learn how your lead is feeling, what they are thinking, and where they are in their decision process.

How to fix it:

When you’re following up, stop thinking about your end goal for a second (if that end goal is to convert a lead). Stop being a salesman and talk to the person as a human. By this I mean, ask them about them – be genuinely interested in what they have to say.

I asked the GreenRope Director of Sales, Bjorn, some key follow up best practices. “I like to be more personable and offer advice, tips see what they thought of other demos and ask if they need assistance with anything,” Bjorn says.  “Then I guide the call based on their mood, and how warm they are. If I get buying signals I push towards that.”

Use a CRM as your second brain

This point piggybacks off my last. You should focus on building a long-term relationship rather than making a sale. The reality of today’s business is that it is centered on authenticity and relationships. However, remembering every person, their specific needs, and when to follow up is unrealistic. That is where your CRM comes in handy.

The CRM acts as your second brain, calendar, and note taker. Put every conversation, engagement, and follow up in the CRM so that you do not miss a beat with your lead. CRMs, like GreenRope, also have the ability to notify you when it is time to follow up with a lead so that you always stick to the schedule.

So, now that you know how to tactfully follow up with your leads and clients, make sure to keep these tips in mind when actually doing it! So many of us fall back into the same habits, but if you make these efforts then I can assure you, you will see better attitudes toward not only you, but also your brand.

How are you currently following up with your leads? Are you only using one form of communication? Are you always thinking about the pitch? Or, are you being too passive? Some questions to think about before your next follow up!

Content is still king but how often you produce it correlates directly with the success of your business. Back in the day, companies only created content, such as press releases, to announce when a new product, service or promotion was launched.

But in today’s marketing world, that’s not enough. Now you need to constantly create new content that gets you found, speaks directly to your target audience and influences them to do business with you.

Get Your Content Found

There are two primary ways your content gets found online:

1. Search Engines
2. Social Media

So, whether it’s a blog post, video or ebook that your potential customer stumbled upon in Google, or a webinar or social media status update they saw on Facebook or Twitter, people are discovering your content as they research and learn more about the goods and services they want.

When your content is written, optimized, designed and promoted in an engaging way, it helps improve your search engine rankings, drives more traffic to your website and helps turn your prospects into leads by moving them through the sales funnel.

Content That Makes Your Audience Clamor to Do Business With You

Everyone has an opinion on what counts as successful content. In my book, content that gets the attention of your target audience, keeps them engaged, and makes them want to do business with you is the real proof of great content!

But before you begin creating new content you must have a deeper understanding of what drives your target audience so you can speak directly to them. Let’s start with building buyer personas.

Building Buyer Personas

When a company wants to know what content they need to create to write effectively for their target audience, it’s helpful to understand who they are writer to. There are many things that they will need to find out about their buyers including:

• What triggers their buyer to begin researching solutions to a problem?
• What are they the most concerned about?
• What are the steps their buyer will take to reach a decision?

Once you understand exactly who your buyer is and write to their needs, then you can use analytics to review the actions they take on your website, landing pages and social media accounts.

For instance, as an Inbound Content Marketing agency we might discover that a prospect needs help with:

• A new content marketing program to generate more traffic to their website
• Content offers that can boost and nurture leads
• A website redesign to generate a higher conversion rate

And, when your analytics and online marketing is consolidated into an automated marketing platform, you can easily see the search terms that brought prospects to your website, identify the content that caught their eye (and how long they stayed on that content), along with the forms they completed to get more information.

This kind of lead intelligence information is not only priceless but it will help to refine your buyer personas over time.

Developing Your Buyer Profiles

After you’ve segmented your buyers and learned more about their needs, you also need to understand how they shop for the things you sell. Asking these questions can help you discover more about them:

• What is their online behavior?
• How are they finding your information online?
• What kinds of content do they like as they conduct their research? (blog articles, ebooks, webinars, videos, infographics, etc.)
• Which of your products or services do they want to know more about?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you understand what drives your prospects. And the more you understand their needs, desires and behaviors, the more you can develop custom content that speaks directly to them.

After you’ve got your buyer personas and buyer profiles nailed down, the next step is to conduct a content audit. We’ll talk more about that in the next article.

Content marketing is one of the eight steps in our Digital Marketing plan. To learn about the other steps and how you can put the Digital Marketing plan to work for your business, download the free whitepaper “8 Critical Ingredients of a Digital Marketing Plan.”