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With economic growth slipping close to zero, Russia is reeling from sanctions by the U.S. and the European Union over its land grab in Ukraine

Report says issues surrounding liquefied natural gas export projects planned for the B.C. coast need to be figured out quickly if Canadian gas is to find its way to lucrative global markets.

It was witnessing a friend step on a land mine while trying to escape a barrage of gunfire that convinced Mazlum Kobane, a 60-year-old Istanbul resident, that he had to take up arms in Syria. “We were coming back to Turkey from Kobani,” he tells Maclean’s, seated stiffly in a wheelchair at the outdoor café of the Baltalimani bone hospital in Istanbul, his two broken legs propped up on the back of a chair. “We were on a humanitarian mission to help our fellow Kurds. We were on our way back when Turkish soldiers guarding the border opened fire on us. They were only warning shots but some of the members of my group panicked. They scattered and accidentally ran into a minefield.”

His friend suffered serious injuries and remains in critical condition. “If she lives, she will never walk again,” he says, lighting another in a steady stream of cigarettes. “She went to Kobani to save lives and, in the process, nearly sacrificed her own.” After the shooting, Mazlum (a nom de guerre he adopted in Syria) made his way back into Kobani, crawling through a no-man’s land in the dead of night. He walked up to Kurdish fighters aligned with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the group controlling the Kurdish areas in northern Syria, and told them he wanted to volunteer. “They took me without question,” he says. “They were so desperate for fighters that they even took a skinny old man like me.”

Thus began Mazlum’s eight days of hell. For weeks, Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish town on Syria’s northern border with Turkey, has been under siege by the group calling itself Islamic State. Its plight has become emblematic of the difficulties the international community faces in beating back the militant advance. Bombing raids carried out by the U.S. and its allies, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have had little impact. Moreover, the battle for the town has exposed the strategic differences that plague the coalition.

Turkey has refused to offer support, despite finally agreeing to join the U.S.-led coalition on Oct. 2. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan argues that, in the absence of an overall strategy to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey will not engage Islamic State and accuses the PYD of being allied with Assad and his regime. The U.S. administration counters that Kobani is not strategically important in the overall fight against the jihadists and should be dealt with by Turkey, which has a clear stake in ensuring the town remains in the hands of anti-Islamic State groups.

The net result is inertia. Hundreds of Turkish soldiers sit atop their tanks and armoured vehicles, watching as advancing Islamic State fighters slowly swallow up Kobani. Access to the war zone has been sealed, preventing the flow of weapons and supplies, as well as blocking thousands of Turkey’s Kurds willing to join the fight from crossing the border—and prompting the UN’s special envoy to Syria to issue an extraordinary call on Oct. 10 for Turkish authorities to open the border. “We would like to appeal to the Turkish authorities in order to allow the flow of volunteers, at least, and their equipment, to be able to enter the city to contribute to a self-defence operation,” Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva.

Turkey’s inaction has angered many in the international community and ignited violent demonstrations at home, mostly in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, as well as in Istanbul. More than 30 protesters have died while dozens have been arrested. The clashes have pitted pro-Kurdish leftists against Islamists—including supporters of the Islamic State—awakening fears of a return to the kind of violence Turkey witnessed in the 1990s. At that time, the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) battled against the Turkish Hezbollah (no relation to the Lebanese group), a Sunni-Islamist organization opposed to the PKK’s brand of Marxist-Leninist socialism.

Over the past three years, while much of northern Syria has burned, areas under PYD control, including Kobani, have remained relatively peaceful, prompting some to accuse the group of hatching a deal with the Assad regime, giving it the freedom to set up its own vision of society. The PYD’s politics, meanwhile, have energized many leftist Kurds in Turkey while simultaneously unnerving Turkish authorities, who fear any PKK-inspired social revolution on its borders.

“The equality [PYD] promises—the central role of women in society—it is an alternative to the current totalitarian regimes in the Middle East and, like any other Middle Eastern country, Turkey sees it as a threat,” says Emrullah Bingul, the co-chairman of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party in Istanbul.

For many Kurds, this is the main reason the Turks are refusing to help the Kurds in Kobani. Over the past decade, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has worked hard to reverse the cultural decimation Kurds have suffered under previous governments. It has granted language rights, including allowing a few television stations to broadcast in the Kurdish language, and recognized Kurds as a distinct ethnic group within the broader Turkish mosaic. Nevertheless, the AKP worries that the PYD’s brand of revolutionary ideology will spill over into Turkey. “The Turkish state would like to see Kurds return to their pre-1990s condition: quiet and docile,” says Bingul.

According to Bingul, letting radical Muslims destroy the PYD’s socialist project in Syria is in the AKP’s interests. And the strategy appears to be working. Inside Kobani, Mazlum describes a desperate situation. “Everything is in short supply,” he says. “Too few fighters, too few weapons, too little food and water, too little sleep. I witnessed hundreds of Islamic State fighters killed and hundreds more captured, but their numbers continue to grow.”

While the U.S. and its coalition allies drop bombs on Islamic State positions, the militants continue to push closer to the town’s centre. Hundreds more fighters are reported to be pouring in from the Syrian countryside to provide reinforcements, quickly replacing those killed. The battle, Mazlum says, has now evolved into a street fight. Kurdish fighters armed with assault rifles and grenades control the town’s centre, surrounded by Islamic State fighters and subjected to a constant barrage of tank and artillery rounds from a much better armed enemy.

Yet, despite the odds, the Kurds have managed to hold their own, proving observers, who had predicted in early October that the town would fall in a matter of days, wrong. “The Kurdish fighters are determined,” Mazlum says. “Everyone left there is willing to die. I’ve seen so much brutality committed by those Islamic State monsters—headless bodies, women raped and stabbed to death —but still I want to go back.”

His prime motivation? The PYD’s socialist project. “This was what made the difference for me,” says Mazlum. “When I saw the actions of the Turkish soldiers at the border . . . I realized they were trying to kill the revolution the PYD had started in Kobani. All my life, I’ve dreamed of fighting for this kind of socialist cause. That is what drove me to go. Of course, I was horrified by the deaths of fellow Kurds, but this came second for me.”

It’s a cause Mazlum was willing to give his life to protect. “I almost died in Kobani,” he says. “On my last day there, my post was hit by Islamic State rockets. It collapsed the building I was in and both of my legs were crushed. I had to hide all night with my legs broken and fighting all around me. But I promised myself I would not be taken prisoner and beheaded.” Instead, Mazlum dragged himself into an abandoned home and held his Kalashnikov under his chin, finger on the trigger, ready to take his own life. He remained in that position for hours until the fighting subsided and he was found by a group of PYD fighters, who transported him to a hospital in Turkey.

Recovering now in Istanbul, Mazlum still holds out hope that Kobani will not fall. “When I was on the front line, I called my daughter in Istanbul,” he says. “I told her, ‘If I die, I die a revolutionary. If I survive, I will bring back soil from the revolution.’ I survived and I kept my promise.”

The post Why Turkey has left the Kurds to fight alone against Islamic State appeared first on Macleans.ca.

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In addition to Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google today also announced the first devices running the new version of its mobile operating system: the Nexus 6 and the Nexus 9. The former is a phablet built by Motorola, and the latter is a tablet built by HTC.

The Nexus 6 is going up for pre-order on October 29, starting at $649. The Nexus 9 meanwhile is going up for pre-order this Friday (October 17), and you’ll also be able to get it in stores on November 3.

Nexus 6

As can be expected for any Nexus device, Motorola says it worked closely with Google’s Android team to build the Nexus 6. The company is promising “More screen. More speed. More power.”

More specifically, here are the features the company wants to underline: a 5.96-inch 1440×2560 Quad HD display (493 ppi), a 3220 mAh battery (and the Motorola Turbo Charger that takes 15 minutes to give you up to an additional six hours of battery life), a 13-megapixel front camera with optical image stabilization with HDR+, and dual front-facing stereo speakers. Specs aside, there are two colors to choose from (Midnight Blue or Cloud White), as well as two storage options (32GB and 64GB).

Carriers will be announcing more specific pricing and availability information over the coming days. Motorola expects the Nexus 6 to arrive in 28 countries across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America “later this year and as we head into Q1.”

Nexus 9

As for the tablet, Google chose to partner with HTC. Yet it’s more than that: The two companies also designed a keyboard folio that magnetically attaches to the Nexus 9, can fold into two different angles, and rest securely on your lap like a laptop.

Here are the official specifications:

• Display: 8.9″ IPS LCD.
• Battery: 6700 mAh.
• Camera: 8MP rear, 1.6MP front.
• Processor: 64-bit NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor 2.3 GHz, Kepler DX1.
• Memory: 16 GB & 32 GB.

The device has brushed metal sides and appears to be aiming for a balanced tablet size. Google describes it as “small enough to easily carry around in one hand” but “big enough to work on.”

The first Lollipops

These new devices will play a big role in pushing Android 5.0 out the door, though if previous Nexus devices are any indication, they won’t grab much market share. The bigger question will be waiting to see how quickly both existing and new devices get Lollipop.

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 really want something, it's natural for it to become your focus. You zero in on it and determine the best way to get it or make it happen. You're goal-oriented and driven—nothing wrong with that.

It is generally accepted that efficiency represents the optimal, aspirational state for any market. Efficient markets, which feature many buyers and sellers and perfect information flowing between them, determine the “right price” and hence allocate society’s resources optimally.

Those are indeed positive features. But every good thing is like a face caressed by the sun. The rays that light and warm the face automatically cast a dark shadow behind it. The shadow of an efficient market is increased price volatility — quite the opposite of what we expect from efficient markets.

Think about how markets evolve. We’ll take the market for corn as an example. Farmers used to grow corn, take it to the local market, and sell it to families who use it to bake and cook. Primitive markets like this have two classic features. First, buyers and sellers have to be near to each other so it is a narrow and shallow market, restricted to relatively few people. Second, the value in the exchange is determined by immediate use. The buyer plans to consume the corn relatively promptly, not hold it as an investment or resell it.

As markets such as these evolve and the density of buyers and sellers increases, another actor inevitably arrives: the market maker who facilitates trading between sellers and buyers. They are useful. They help sellers find buyers and vice versa. With their participation, the market in question becomes more efficient. Suppliers can better find the buyers who want their good or service most and buyers can find all the suppliers of the item that they want. These are all good things.

But there is an unintended consequence. Actors in the system typically start to speculate. A market grows for those who imagine what consumers might find the good to be worth in the future. In due course, that corn gets traded not in the local market but on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). In the very earliest days, real users of commodities were important players at the CBOT. They made contracts with sellers using the CBOT and actually took delivery of the corn they bought.

But that all changed over time. In the modern era, only a minuscule proportion of CBOT trades are intended for delivery. The vast majority are trades made on expectations of future value, not current use. Buyers don’t want to take delivery on the corn, soybeans, or pork bellies. They are simply trading based on their beliefs about the future value to hypothetical future users of the product in question.

In the natural evolution of markets, as markets become more efficient, they turn from being use-driven to expectations-driven — like equities, real estate, or derivatives based on both.

For this reason, the unintended consequence of efficiency is price volatility. In a use-driven market, the value of a good or service rarely changes dramatically in a short period of time. The value of a peck of corn to a family who needs to eat won’t change much from week to week — because the use is immediate and human habits don’t change quickly. Indeed, if the weather in the growing season starts to deteriorate, then prices will migrate higher over the growing season as buyers and sellers both see that supply will be tight following the poor growing season.

To be sure, dramatic events can cause use to swing very quickly. When a hurricane approaches the Florida coast, the price of plywood can spike because everybody suddenly knows they need to board up their windows. After the hurricane, prices drop back to normal. But this is the exception, not the rule, in use-dominated markets.

Efficient, expectations-driven markets shift quickly for two reasons. First, expectations, unlike uses, have no bounds. They are the product of human imagination, which is ruled alternatively by fear and euphoria. There is simply no limit to how far and how fast expectations can shift. Every bubble and crash reinforces this. Dot-com companies weren’t worth anything close to what their expectations suggested in 1999-2000, nor probably as little as their adjusted expectations implied after the bust. The same held for packages of securitized mortgages in the summer of 2008 and for Dow Jones 30 stocks in March 2009.

Second, expectations extend deep into the imagined future. Rising rents for a piece of real estate may be expected to rise forever. Profit growth of a company may be expected to continue ad infinitum, or losses until bankruptcy. Thus when expectations change, the change is implicitly projected far into the future and discounted back to the present, resulting in a much amplified change in value. One bad quarter can trigger a run on your stock and one good quarter can prompt a feeding frenzy.

So efficiency doesn’t inherently produce smoothness and stability in prices; it produces spikiness, the dark side of efficiency and expectations.

That dark side has not gone unnoticed. It has spurred the growth of an entire industry that exists only to exploit volatility: the hedge fund business. Thanks to the fact that their compensation is dominated by their carried-interest (the 20% in the famous 2&20 formula), their returns are driven by volatility — the more the better. And if more is better, why simply wait for volatility to happen? Why not band together to purposely exacerbate and profit from volatility?

Meanwhile, there are all sorts of good folks operating in use-driven markets, producing goods and services that we use on a daily basis. Most are organized as public companies with stock prices that are jerked around by the volatility aficionados. So while they are working on something that we all want — more and better products and services — they have to deal with the a huge group of influential wielders of capital who exist only to exploit whatever level of volatility they can create.

This is the dark side of efficient markets: systematically high volatility and an entire industry that exists to exploit and exacerbate it.

 

This post is part of a series leading up to the annual Global Drucker Forum, taking place November 13-14 2014 in Vienna, Austria. Read the rest of the series here.

A number of recent headline-grabbing announcements of divestments and split-ups by companies such as HP (spinning off its PC and printer businesses), GE (the sale of its appliances business to Electrolux), Bayer (the flotation of its MaterialScience chemicals business), and Royal Philips (its separation into two autonomous companies, Lighting and HealthTech) are putting the spotlight again on the phenomenon of “core shifting”: how a company, through a sustained process of acquiring and divesting assets, changes the mix of its business portfolio and thus purposefully shifts the core of its activities.

PPG (originally “Pittsburgh Plate Glass”) is a splendid example of such a transformation. The US-based company used to be a diversified industrial group, with activities in all types of glass, chemicals, paints, optical materials, and biomedical systems. Through a raft of acquisitions and divestments since the early 1990s, it has transformed into a focused world-leading coatings manufacturer with $15 billion in sales. Since 1995, when glass and coatings each accounted for about 40% of sales, the split has evolved to 93% coatings and 7% glass today.

What makes such a transformation successful? From our analysis of a number of core shifts and conversations with the CEOs who have undertaken them, we have drawn five keys to success:

1. Allow time and persevere. Pulling off a core shift takes many years, if not a decade, as PPG and other companies have shown. For example, it took Umicore, a global materials technology group, five years (2002–2007) to lay the basis for its transformation from a commodity supplier of base metals into a premium provider of emission control catalysts, rechargeable battery materials and other value-added solutions. It initially lost about half of its revenues by divesting its copper and zinc smelting business, but by 2010 it had quadrupled its revenues to €2 billion through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth.

A core shift takes time for several reasons. First, such transformations consume resources, both financial and human. A company needs the financial firepower to make the required acquisitions on top of the capital investments in its ongoing business. Even more important, it takes management time to align all teams, including those of the acquired businesses, to the transformation initiative. Second, finding value-creating acquisition and divestment opportunities requires patience. Third, some stakeholder groups may want to see confirmation of the positive impact of a given move before consenting to continue on the chosen path.

2. Be clear about the destination, yet flexible about the path. To keep all stakeholders aligned over the course of the transformation, the company’s executive team should be clear and unrelenting about the vision of its future and the rationale thereof. Consider Eaton, which used to be a manufacturer of vehicle components such as axles and transmissions. During the past two decades it has transformed into a provider of electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical power management solutions. Throughout this period it has been communicating regularly about its leitmotif of becoming a diversified company with more consistent earnings. Accordingly, it has systematically published figures about the evolution of its business portfolio in terms of sales by segment (e.g., vehicles decreasing from 40% of total in 2000 to 17% in 2013), by destination (e.g., the U.S. from 80% in 2000 to 50% in 2013), and by exposure to the economic cycle.

While the overall desired direction of the transformation should be clear, the actual path to get there is unpredictable. The executive team should not commit to specific moves, as factors outside of their control might require a change of plan. For example, the company may have identified the perfect acquisition target, but be outbid by a rival. Or the economic cycle may suddenly turn and thus make it impossible to divest an activity as planned at a fair price. What is important is to create options and exercise them as the right opportunities arise.

3. Go for the occasional mega-acquisition. Acquisitions are part and parcel of a transformation. While the number may vary from one year to the next, companies such as PPG and Eaton have been acquiring on average one company every quarter for the last two decades. Having said that, what really gives traction to a core shift is the occasional mega-acquisition that is emblematic of the vision and that catapults the company forward. For example, Umicore’s 2003 acquisition of PMG increased its revenues by 50%. Eaton’s acquisitions of Westinghouse’s distribution & control business (1994), Aeroquip-Vickers (1999), and Cooper (2012), increased revenues by roughly one-third with each addition.

Of course, it takes time to digest such acquisitions and restore the company’s financial firepower, which often results in a transformation pattern in which a period of consolidation follows a period of acceleration.

4. Communicate consistently and transparently. Clearly communicating about the vision and its rationale is crucial to keeping everyone committed, whether they’re employees or external analysts. Particularly important are the managers and staff of businesses that have been earmarked for divestment. Clear, open, and up-front communication about the company’s intention and the rationale thereof is essential to keep them motivated and prevent value destruction. Their business should not be labeled a “cash cow” or a “problem,” and their staff must not feel second-class. The message is that the divestment should be beneficial to the business concerned, as its future owner normally will see greater opportunities to create value than its current owner does. The best way to demonstrate the veracity of that message is to continue to do business as if the divestment decision had not been taken, i.e., continue to recruit, invest, and even acquire smaller entities that strengthen the value of the business to prospective buyers.

5. Safeguard the short-term performance of the ongoing business. While M&A transactions absorb much of senior management’s attention and attract great interest from financial analysts and the business press, the company’s operational performance will ultimately make or break the transformation. If short-term performance slips, pressure will mount and stakeholders will question, rightly or wrongly, the pertinence and/or viability of the long-term transformation.

The experience of Chiquita Brands International provides a case in point. Some 10 years ago, the company embarked on a transformation that was meant to reduce the exposure to the volatility and asset intensity of the legacy banana business by shedding ships and farms on one hand, and by acquiring and developing branded healthy snacks on the other hand. However, a significant decrease in profitability and free cash flow over time led the company to change course in 2012 and return to the former core of branded commodity produce, under the leadership of a new CEO.

As is always the case with tips, use them wisely, as fits best. They may not all be applicable in the same way and to the same extent at every company. But when it comes to shifting your business’s core, it usually pays to be tenacious, visionary, bold, transparent, and results-oriented.

Testing is essential for optimizing your email campaigns; you want to find the combination of design and content that does the best job of enticing your audience and spurring them to action. After all, connecting with customers requires both art and a science, and finding the right way to reach them can be a challenge. Brilliant concepts and executions are obviously important, but they’re only the beginning when it comes to developing successful marketing campaigns.

You can’t count on what worked in the past; market conditions change, and so do your buyers. Automated email testing lets you take some of the risk out of trying new things. It gives you the data you need for decision-making, so you can develop and evolve your campaigns with more confidence.

Find a Winner

When you run an A/B test, you’re trying to find out whether version A, the control version, does better or worse (according to your metrics) than version B. By testing each version with a small sampling of your target audience, you can quickly determine which design and copy combination will likely get the most conversions before launching your larger campaign.

For example, you can discover whether a call-to-action like “Buy Now” or “Shop for Deals” resonates better with your target segment. The better the response, the higher your return on investment.

Using A/B testing, you can experiment with any aspect of an email that might have an impact on conversion, such as:

1. Subject line: This is probably the most common A/B test. Remember to look not only at open rates, but also at clickthroughs and conversions. Sometimes the email that gets the most conversions isn’t the open that gets the most opens.
2. From address: You can test whether sending from a named individual (such as the CEO) consistently boosts opens and clickthroughs vs. a generic From address like “Newsletter.”
3. Preheader: Test to see whether an email performs better when there’s a preheader. How much better? You can determine if a link in the preheader drives more responses, as well.Too often preheaders are used only for “View this email in a browser.”Test using this real estate instead as a continuation of the subject line. It may optimize response, particularly for recipients who have images turned off and/or use preview panes.

This email header provides an incentive to click as well as a link, while also offering a mobile and online viewing experience.

4. Format: Does a bolded call-to-action get results? What if it’s underlined as well? Should you make the font a different color? Testing can tell you.
5. Buttons: Color, size, label, positioning, or even something as arcane as whether or not a button has a drop shadow can all make a big difference in clickthrough rate.
6. Link text: Try out different configurations of your link text, like “Download the email best practices eBook” vs. “Get better results on every email campaign.”
7. Content: Test any other copy elements such as headings, benefit statements, customer testimonials, or product descriptions.
8. Images: Does a photo of happy people on a sailboat outperform the photo of a beautiful beach? There’s only one way to find out.
9. Prices: Discover if your audience responds better to certain price points, and test discount strategies like “Get 25% off” vs. “Save $200.”

Have a clear goal for each test

One key benefit of A/B testing is that it delivers unambiguous results – a single variable (subject line, let’s say) is tested via two possibilities, A and B. The results are quick, clear, and effective. You are comparing how your email recipients respond to one version against how they respond to a single variation. The results show in a concrete, measurable way which of the two alternatives delivers the better results.

People do sometimes create A and B version that have multiple differences; this will tell you which email performs better, but not necessarily why. Try to limit the variables if you want to answer a specific question. For example, if you want to know whether phrasing a subject line as a question works with a particular segment, you might keep it as similar as possible to the control:

Get Tips for a Healthy Heart

vs.

How Healthy is Your Heart?

Notice we’re not testing the control against something very different like, “Are You at Risk of a Heart Attack?” or “Is Your Heart Beating Too Fast?” That’s because our stated mission was to determine whether or not a question format gets more people to respond. If we wanted to test whether a positive message works as compared to a fear-based message, then we could use one of the scary subject lines. It’s important to have a clear goal in mind when creating an A/B test. Otherwise, you’ll just be throwing out ideas to see what sticks. (Of course, that’s still better than not testing at all.)

A/B Testing Tips

Here are some additional tips to help you get the most out of your A/B testing strategy.

• Synch up your tests. If version A goes out this week and version B runs next week, it’s not a true A/B test. Version A might have performed better, but only because version B was sent during a holiday weekend. It might still give you some insight into trends, and it’s better than nothing, but ideally, the tests should run at the same time for exactly the same amount of time. Marketing automation makes it easy.
• Listen to the data. Don’t let your personal preference be your guide – trust the test outcomes. The winners are often surprising. If the call to action button that you personally think is ugly gets the most results, then don’t be afraid to use it. If you’re sure people love pictures of puppies, and yet the results show kittens win every time, go with the facts.
• Take the right amount of time. Let your test run long enough (and to a big enough audience) to get statistically meaningful results. But don’t run it for too long – the poor performer could be costing you conversions. If you want to maintain higher conversion rate during a test, you might want to something (like Act-On’s Optimize for Conversions feature), that makes it possible to direct more traffic to the best-performing execution, rather than an even distribution.
• Keep it simple. It’s a best practice to test one element at a time. If you try out a new button color and you also change the headline, you won’t know which one caused the uptick in conversions. If you are pressed for time, you can certainly test version A against version B and go with the winner. (Your insights won’t be as granular but at least you’ll improve results.) You might also want to test how a plain-looking email (an HTML email with basic text and no graphics) performs against a polished, designed message. Sometimes simple really is better.
• Make it an ongoing thing. You’ll want to keep testing on a regular basis, since the effectiveness of any element in your email (or landing page) can change over time.

How can you be sure which test won? Get an in-depth look at determining the confidence level for email A/B testing, and find out how to interpret the results of your tests.

Email optimization is a continual quest of discovery and refinement. A/B testing is a tried-and-true method for uncovering what works … and what doesn’t. It doesn’t always have to be complicated, but it should be an integral part of your development processes.

Just getting started with email marketing?

Get the jump on it with this free toolkit:

Unfortunately, most salesmen and women believe that a successful career in sales culminates in sales management, and yet there are of course far less management positions up for grabs than sales positions.

As a consequence, salespeople with this attitude concentrate on making sales rather than investing in themselves in order to become Top 5 % players and eventually most become disillusioned, resulting in a significant dip in achievements levels.

The knock-on effect of this is that most salespeople who move into management, take with them an underdeveloped view of selling – a “traditional” orientation and as consequence they help to create or maintain an unrealistic and short sighted vision of what will be needed to develop their teams.

Because they lack Top 5% experience themselves, and an insight into the skills needed to make it at the highest level, the environment that they help to create fails to recognise the need for outstanding performers, and this is particularly noticeable in the compensation structures they build, which neither supports nor encourages their teams to break through that final glass ceiling.

As I have said often enough, both here, and on numerous other occasions, the single most common mistake that organizations make is promoting their number one salesperson into the role of sales manager, thereby depriving themselves in a single stroke of their best producer and hamstringing their sales force with an ineffective manager.

The skills required for managing, mentoring and developing a sales team are totally different from those required for selling. As a result, it’s not uncommon to find newly promoted sales managers who regret having taken a management position and may even leave to get back into sales – that is if they are not pushed first!

The majority of sales managers – new and experienced alike – say they do not have sufficient time to train and develop their sales teams. They are so focused on sales results – and so accustomed to achieving success through their personal pursuit of those results – that they overlook their greatest potential source of power, the power to increase sales performance by developing their people.

“The sales manager’s role is transforming from evaluator to developer, from expert to resource, from teller to questioner. This change is no mere tweaking adjustment, it is a 180° shift from how most sales managers manage and how they are managed. Most organizations profess to want coaching, but they don’t really do anything about it. Just as students are lucky to have one or two special teachers in a lifetime, most sales professionals are lucky if they get one real coach. Organizations don’t have role models for coaching, they don’t train for it, and they don’t hold people accountable for it.”  Sales Coaching by Linda Richardson

In “Tougher at the Top” which Linda and I will be publishing next year, you can be certain that these are just some of the issues we will be addressing.

You see, today, the role of sales manager is pivotal. It is the vital link, and ineffective sales leadership is the main reason why so many sales teams are failing.

All the current excitement surrounds lead generation – it seems that everything I read everywhere, is totally focused on finding, qualifying, and weighting leads. But what is the point of continually creating new opportunities and passing them to sales managers who are unable to cope?

Depending on which sets of statistics you believe, sales performance is spiralling downwards, and yet compensation packages are increasing? But that topic is for another day.

At the end of the day, the sales leader needs to be a “model of excellence” – only then will the pack faithfully follow.

Sirius Decisions recently published some very interesting research into the subject of when marketing-generated “leads” are regarded as being “sales ready”. The results surprised me, and I suspect that they might surprise you, as well.

There is, of course, no one right answer that covers all extremes from a simple transactional sell to a considered purchase that spans an extended period of time, involves multiple stakeholders and may still result in a decision to do nothing.

Sirius identified 5 increasingly rigorous levels of qualification, and measured the percentage of leads that were regarded as qualified at each stage. Given that most organisations seem to act in a somewhat consistent manner, the best way of interpreting the percentages is “what percentage of organisations typically regard a lead as sales-ready at each stage?”

To be clear, I am defining “sales-ready” to mean that the lead is ready to be passed to the sales person that will ultimately be responsible for pursuing the opportunity and closing the sale. I’m not including intermediate inside sales resources in this category.

Here are the 5 levels, and the associated percentages:

1: any contact is a lead

The problem, of course, is that “leads” with this minimal level of information are completely unqualified, other than they appear to have the marketing equivalent of a pulse (but even that is often open to debate).

Here’s the scary thing: according to the research, a worrying 28% of leads are simply handed over to sales at this stage without any attempt at even the most basic level of qualification. I’m struggling to think of any scenarios where this is a good use of everybody’s time.

2: the contact is an appropriate person in an appropriate organisation

Now we’re getting somewhere! To get to this stage, we need to at least know the contact’s title or role and what organisation they are part of. Even if they haven’t shared all of this with us, a little LinkedIn research can usually reveal this.

25% leads are handed over at this point. Of course, making the judgement requires that sales and marketing have already agreed and documented what an ideal prospect looks like – here’s how to go about this.

3: as above, plus a need has been acknowledged

At this point, we’ve not only assessed that the contact is at the right level in the right organisation, but they have also acknowledged a need that we know that we are in a good position to solve.

It’s sometimes possible to infer this on the basis of information the contact has shared via a web form, but on most cases this will have required some form of interactive conversation with the prospect. 25% of leads fall into this middle tier.

4: as above, plus requirements have been defined

By this stage, a prospect is probably deep into their buying journey. If the requirements have already been pre-defined without our involvement (for example in the form of an incoming and unanticipated RFP), chances are someone else has influenced the requirements.

Unless we can persuade them to rethink their requirements, our chances of winning are pretty low. And yet despite this, 10% of leads are held back from sales until the prospect’s requirements are already clear.

5: as above, plus the opportunity is fully BANT qualified

BANT, in case you’ve been on another planet, stands for Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe. Some organisations used to regard it as the gold standard for lead qualification. But for all sorts of reasons, holding leads back from sales until all these boxes have been ticked is a truly bad idea.

And yet the last 10% of leads are only passed to sales once they are fully BANT qualified. You can learn about my views on this approach here. Suffice it to say that this strategy has so many flaws that you could write a book about it (and I may well do).

Lead management best practice for complex sales

I’ve acknowledged that the stage at which a lead can be regarded as “sales ready” will vary from one environment to the next, but I believe that a number of observations can be made about a typical high-value complex sale:

First, defining leads as “sales ready” at level one strikes me as being wasteful at best and perverse at worst. There’s no excuse for not at least asking a handful of qualifying questions or doing some basic LinkedIn research. If you’re employing highly-paid, field-based sales people this probably isn’t the best use of their time, and it’s why so many organisations have successfully invested in telephone-based lead qualification resources.

Depending on the value of the opportunity, and the complexity of the factors involved in qualification, it may start to become productive to define leads as “sales ready” when they reach level 2 or 3.

Waiting until requirements have been defined (level 4) is often too late, but may be effective if your intermediate sales resource is skilled, competent and confident enough to pro-actively shape the prospect’s requirements rather than just documenting them.

Finally, and at the risk of repeating myself, waiting for evidence of full BANT qualification before handing a lead over to sales might work if all you need to do is close – but if that’s the case, you’re probably better getting your advice from Alec Baldwin.

Organising to win

Which leaves, of course, the question of how sales and marketing teams should organise to maximise their changes of attracting, engaging, qualifying and converting more of the right sort of customers.

In high value complex B2B sales, unless you’ve got an absolutely tiny sales organisation (and have no ambition to grow it), it’s hard to argue against implementing some form of intermediate phone-based qualification resources – and in fact there’s a strong case for further specialising into inbound and outbound focused resources.

In addition to qualifying inbound enquiries and proactively reaching our to people that match your ideal prospect profile, you can often benefit from using their spare cycle time to improve the quality of your prospecting database.

In conclusion

Have you clearly defined the stage at which marketing-generated leads are passed to the ultimate sales person – and clarified the intermediate handoffs? And have you clearly defined what activity and feedback you expect from sales as a result? If you haven’t established a clear contract between marketing and sales to cover this, I strongly suggest that you start today.

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In his last company, Scott Vaughan generated in excess of 85,000 leads per month. At Integrate, his goal is to automate the last mile of high-end lead generation.

All $30 billion of it.

“The top of the funnel — search, display, programmatic advertising — that’s been automated,” Integrate CMO Vaughan told me recently. “At the bottom of the funnel, you have Oracle, Salesforce, your website, CRM, marketing automation, and content management. But in the middle, between your automated marketing and your marketing cloud … is a very, very manual and fragmented set of processes to drive demand generation and performance.”

Hence, I suppose, the company name.

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Answer our survey, and we’ll share the data with you.

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Integrate is a four-year-old company that has built a network, of sorts, connecting sales-and-marketing dependent businesses with upwards of 3,500 media partners. The businesses need leads, the media partners need ad revenue, and Integrate connects them in a structured way. If you’re a business looking for leads, you set up a campaign, define your criteria, and input your instructions.

Integrate tells you which media partners would work best. You can invite your own preferred media partners onto the platform if you wish, or you can simply pick from the publishers in the marketplace.

Once your campaign is initiated, your chosen media partners upload normalized data — leads, prospects, clicks, and more — into Integrate, which then verifies all contact information. Anything that does not validate gets passed back to the partner for replacement or fixing. The result, Vaughan says, is clean, formatted data, tagged with subIDs for source, time, and other information, that can be ingested straight into Salesforce, another CRM system, or a marketing automation system.

Clean, formatted data compares well to the old way of doing things: Manual imports from various Excel spreadsheets, with varying degrees of data completeness, accuracy, and normalization.

Businesses currently spend millions with third-party media partners to drive prospects, Integrate says. Then they get that data from each partner in often incompatible spreadsheets, and have to review each line item for correctness themselves before sending the data into marketing operations.

“We do acquisition, automation, integration, and measurement,” Vaughan says. “Lead velocity is expedited, you get clean data going in, you get what you paid for. No company that we have found yet is doing all those pieces.”

I’ll confess, I haven’t found another company doing this either.

Something the company is doing must be working — Integrate works with clients like Dell, HP, and DocuSign and is growing new customers at 20 percent per month right now, Vaughan told me.

The platform works best for B2B tech companies, B2C brands, and B2B media companies, where Integrate focuses. These companies need a big pipeline of leads for big-ticket items such as SaaS services for enterprise, PCs for consumers, and more.

“This is a big market,” Vaughan says. “Businesses currently spend $30 billion per year on demand gen. Even if we just focused on Eloqua, Pardot, and Marketo customers, that’s about 6,000 customers today.”

Integrate isn’t the only one attempting to simply marketing for B2B and B2C enterprises. Most of the big players are in various stages of building and acquiring technologies to assemble in marketing clouds in the hopes that one vendor can satisfy all or nearly all of your marketing needs.

According to Integrate’s Vaughan, high-end lead-gen is one area where they have not quite succeeded.

Integrate is a closed-loop marketing software and media services provider serving more than 2,500 brand and agency customers. Integrate's SaaS-based platform allows marketing and media professionals to plan and execute their entire... read more »

According to a study from the University of California, Berkeley, being in a position of power influences your perception of time—namely that you have more of it. The study included a series of five experiments that involved 557 participants.

The researchers asked a group of participants to complete an online questionnaire that were designed to measure their sense of power and their perspective on time. They were asked to rank themselves at that moment in time on statements like: “I feel like most of my life lies ahead of me,” “My future seems infinite to me,” “Time is slipping away,” and “I have a lot of time in which to get things done.”

MORE: 4 Tested Time-Management Secrets »

In one of the experiments, the researchers primed some of the participants for feelings of either power or powerlessness by assigning them to roles as bosses or employees in a face-to-face mock task of solving brain-teasers. Candidates who were in positions of power were seated in chairs that were cushioned and adjusted so that they were physically higher than powerless participants’ chairs. The bosses were instructed that they would be making decisions about which puzzles to solve and how to divide a seven-piece candy prize at the end of the exercise. Once participants were primed, they were asked to fill out surveys that revealed their perceptions of time availability.

The study’s authors concluded that the less power a participant had, the more likely he or she was to report feelings of insecurity about time. The study, which was published in the September issue of Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, also indicated that one’s perception of available time led powerful people to be, in general, less stressed.

Why do powerful people believe they have more hours in the day? Perhaps the control one has in other areas of life spills over to one’s sense of time. Moreover, if time really is money, it’s another way your boss is richer than you.

The post Managers, adjust your deadline expectations: powerful people perceive time differently appeared first on Canadian Business.

Google is expanding its delivery service to Boston, Washington DC, and Chicago. 

The service, which is already in some California cities and New York, costs $10 per month, or $95 a year, according to The Wall Street Journal. The fee gets you unlimited same-day or overnight delivery on orders over $15.

Google Express has partners including Costco, Walgreen, PetSmart, and Vitamin Shoppe, making it a big competitor to Amazon Prime. 

A membership with Google has several advantages over Amazon Prime.

Here are a few ways its better.

1. Faster delivery.

Amazon Prime offers 2-day delivery, while Google Express guarantees your purchases on the same day or overnight. While Amazon Prime offers same or next-day delivery in select cities, there's a $5.99 charge per delivery. Google's is included in the membership.

Non-members pay $4.99 per delivery — about half what Amazon currently charges for the same service.

2. Bulk shopping is easier. 

Thanks to a partnership with Google, Costco members can get their bulk shopping done without trekking to the warehouse. This is especially key for people who live in big cities and don't own cars. 

Amazon Prime offers bulk items, but Costco's Google site is more organized with a better selection. The items are also delivered together, while Amazon might use different suppliers and ship items separately. 

3. Specialty items from local partners. 

Google Express in New York City has partnerships with local retailers Fairway Market and Paragon Sports. Offering delivery from beloved businesses in the area could help Google land loyal customers.

This detail could also make Google Express feel more approachable than Amazon's vast marketplace. 

There are still advantages to Amazon Prime, which offers a nearly limitless selection. Amazon also focuses on giving Prime members access to streaming music, tv shows, and other content.

But from a shopping standpoint, Google's new service is a formidable competitor. 

SEE ALSO: Buffalo Wild Wings' New Pricing Strategy Could Backfire

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In July, I decided to sign up for Google Shopping Express at 1 p.m. on a Thursday.

By 1:15 p.m., I finished placing my order and quickly realized that my life from that moment onward would be different. 

And later that same day, at 7:20 p.m., when my items showed up at the door, I decided that I'm never shopping at a brick-and-mortar store for sundries ever again.

There are quite a few entries in the same-day delivery field. There's AmazonFresh and Instacart. There's Safeway and Wal-Mart. 

Google announced on Monday a new pricing scheme (and a new name) for its shopping service. It's now called Shopping Express, and it costs $95 per year or a flat fee of $4.99 per order (or $7.99 per order if it's under $15). 

You also get three months free, and orders above $15 can be delivered in the same day. 

That's a paltry sum for the amount of time and energy I'm saving. 

The Interface

Shopping Express has an iOS app, an Android app, obviously, and it's available on the web. It's pretty straightforward to use, and the interface looks just like any shopping site.

Setup is easy. You link it with your Google account and a credit card that's stored in Google Wallet. And then you get to do the fun part: Shop. And you can share your account for free with one other person who lives in your house.

I live just south of San Francisco, on what's called the Peninsula (and just a little north of Google's campus in Mountain View). Google Shopping Express is available in San Francisco, the Peninsula and San Jose, West Los Angeles, Manhattan, Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C.

Stores range from Costco to REI and Whole Foods. Which stores are available to peruse varies by location. 

So essentially, I could order paper towels from Costco and a ukulele from Guitar Center, all in the same order. 

You can also order alcohol if you live in the Bay Area, but someone with a valid ID needs to be at home when the order is delivered. And you can enter store reward and membership card numbers. 

You then pick when you want the order delivered, choosing among 3- or 4-hour blocks throughout the day. You also can leave delivery instructions, and you can let them know whether you'll accept a substitution if the store is out of your first choice. 

The Competition

There are a few things that Shopping Express lacks that others have. AmazonFresh offers 1-hour time slots. It also allows you to order fresh groceries, such as meat and eggs, and milk. And you can order frozen foods. 

AmazonFresh offers a free 30-day trial, and then you will be charged $299, which includes all the benefits of Prime. You then get free same-day delivery on orders over $35.

Instacart also offers a membership, called Instacart Express, as well as fresh groceries. For $99 per year, you get free shipping on orders $35 and over. There's a free 14-day trial so new customers can determine if it's right for them.

You don't have to sign up for a membership if you don't want to and can pay a la carte. Your first order is free, and then you pay different prices depending on how quickly you want your items. For example, if you need something in the next hour, you pay $5.99 per order that's $35 or more, but if you can wait a couple hours, it drops to $3.99. And orders less than $35 cost more.

But that three-month free trial period that Google offers is hard to beat. 

It's Not Perfect

Because someone else is shopping for you, there are a couple things that could go wrong. For example, I ordered Justin's Honey Peanut Butter from Whole Foods, and instead they delivered Vanilla Almond Butter.

But getting that remedied was easy enough. There's a "report a problem" link on the order page. 

Within an hour, I got an email back.

"How frustrating, though — so sorry you ordered Justin's Peanut Butter, Honey but received Vanilla Almond Butter instead," the email said.

Frustrating, indeed! 

If a mistake happens, there's no need to return the item. You can keep it or donate it. If the correct item is available, you choose a new delivery time and they will deliver in the time block you specify.

If the correct item isn't available, you get a full refund. And you get to keep the vanilla almond butter! Not bad.

Never Leaving My House

Google has made a $500 million investment in Shopping Express, according to Re/code. And Sameer Samat, Google's vice president of shopping, told The Wall Street Journal that adding the new fees and making more deliveries per trip will make Google Express profitable over the long term, despite the costs of hiring a fast-moving delivery fleet.

Because its service isn't competing directly with grocery stores — on the contrary, it's sourcing all of its groceries from stores near you — it's only a matter of time before other stores partner up with Google to offer an even larger breadth of products. With the announcement on Monday, Google says that its added 16 more merchants just within the last few months.  

And the service itself is great: Glass jars are wrapped nicely in paper. Things that could potentially leak all over your stuff are sealed in a plastic bag. 

If I coupled Shopping Express with one of the other sites that delivers fresh groceries, I could see myself never leaving the house for groceries again. 

I've reached peak laziness. And I'm definitely OK with that. 

 

SEE ALSO: Google Expands Its Express Delivery Service, Further Challenging Amazon

Join the conversation about this story »

SALES QUESTION:

"I see a lot of opening script ideas and templates pitching a specific solution addressing a specific need. But my company offers solutions which hit on very different pain points. Am I best off opening with something targeted or trying to quickly relay all of our capabilities and hope something hits home?"

SalesBuzz Answer:

"Data Dumping" (relaying all of your capabilities and hope something hits home) on your prospect has a very low % rate of working.

To come up with the right opener, you have to start with the lead source. Where did the lead come from? Was it a trade show? A webinar? Are you prospecting in an industry that you've already done business in?

When you have a range of products / services, you can always get a clue from what the lead source is, as to what "opener" you could use in order to be effective.

Example:

Let's say the lead source is a vertical (meaning, you've sold to other companies in that same line of work... like a school district, a hospital, etc)

Your opener could be something like:

Salesperson:

Hi (prospects name) this is (your name) with (your company) Reason for my call is we recently helped (hospital name 1, hospital name 2 & hospital name 3) avoid/cut/reduce/gain [PAIN POINT / HOT BUTTON] and wanted to see if we may be able to help you do the same...

If it's a webinar lead, you want to focus on what the subject matter of the webinar would do / solve for the prospect, and not the actual webinar.

Bad Example:

Salesperson:

Hi (prospects name) this is (your name) with (your company) You attended our webinar on (subject) and I just wanted to follow up, introduce myself and see if you had any questions.

Prospect:

Nope, I'm good. Thanks.

Salesperson:

Um... Ok.

Better Example:

Prospect:

Hi (prospects name) this is (your name) with (your company) Reason for my call is I understand you're curious about how to avoid/cut/reduce/limit/gain/attract/grow [PAIN POINT / HOT BUTTON] and I wanted to see if we might be able to help you with that...

These are just a couple of examples on how to approach using a better opening value statement for when you offer multiple services or products.

With 1.4 million customers and an annual revenue of 4 million dollars, social media service Buffer has grown by introducing useful products and exemplary customer service. But its real power and growth comes from something more fundamental — its commitment to being generative.

Buffer builds tools to help businesses manage and analyze their social media activity. One of Buffer’s practices is to default to transparency — it is relentlessly forthcoming about its operations, its learning, and its performance. By actively sharing information that most companies keep private, Buffer inspires others to shift how they do business.

As serial entrepreneur Kirsten Lambertsen, CEO of Kuratur, explains:

“Buffer’s transparency is simply the kind of sharing that entrepreneurs crave. … When other businesses share their truth, it helps you put your own business’s progress in perspective. That can be reassuring, eye-opening, and inspiring… I’ve gotten great ideas from Buffer that have helped me fix specific issues and that have encouraged me to stay bold with my own business.”

Generative companies like Buffer, Etsy, and Community Sourced Capital, among many others, are designing their business practices, their relationships, and their business models so that the work they do to grow their own businesses helps their stakeholders grow too.

Generative businesses have three key features:

1. They design their work processes to power their own growth while sharing what they know, creating opportunities for other businesses to learn, experiment, or challenge themselves.
2. They build an ecosystem of mutually supportive relationships with and between their stakeholders, so the group as a whole can benefit from interactions across the network.
3. They create financial value as well as social value, which includes non-financial positive outcomes such as purpose, meaning, community, expression, and learning.

Let’s look at each of these in a bit more depth in turn.

1. Share what you know

Generative businesses deliberately design their work processes to create opportunities for others while they grow their own business. Buffer openly shares its salary and equity distribution formulas, as well as its real-time performance data. Buffer sharing its revenue, performance metrics, and analysis on a public dashboard makes it easy for other companies to benchmark their own progress, evaluate the usefulness of different metrics, and apply Buffer’s learning to their own business.

Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods, uses similarly generative practices in its day-to-day engineering  work. Etsy analyzes technical challenges on its public engineering blog, opens its professional development workshops to the local coder community, publishes success stories on its Slideshare channel, and gives away code on its GitHub repositories, all to help other software-centric firms accelerate their own learning and growth.

2. Build a mutually rewarding ecosystem

Generative businesses align their stakeholder relationships to be mutually supportive, creating value across the network. Etsy offers its 1,000,000+ merchants a range of opportunities — such as online classes, in-person workshops, and video tutorials — to help them improve how they brand their stores, market their products, and even manage their inventories. Instead of encouraging merchants to compete with each other, Etsy helps them work together in teams that collectively support each other’s businesses. To offer even more to their community of merchants, Etsy has partnered with nearly 200 other businesses to build an ecosystem of third-party service providers around the Etsy platform. Last year, these practices led to 1.3 billion dollars in sales (a 50% increase over 2012) in the Etsy marketplace alone.

Etsy helps its merchants sell more product in the Etsy marketplace, which increases Etsy’s revenue. And Etsy also helps its merchants expand their businesses at craft fairs, in local retail stores, or on their own websites. Etsy has even teamed with national brick-and-mortar retailers like Nordstrom and West Elm to open new sales channels to merchants. Without trying to capture additional revenue from each and every effort, Etsy actively coordinates its stakeholders’ efforts to help each other so that their whole ecosystem grows. Everyone wins.

At this point it might be sounding like a generative business is just another term for “platform.” That’s not the case. Consider the contrasting example of Angie’s List, a platform that has designed its stakeholder systems so that they profit from direct interactions with their customers, while also pitting stakeholders against one another. The crowdsourced customer review site lists client businesses by location and type of service provided, but reserves the top few spots for businesses willing to pay an additional fee. Those who don’t pay are penalized — even if their product or service brings more value to their and Angie’s List’s mutual customers.

This “pay for placement” strategy generates revenue for Angie’s List, but limits the potential growth of the larger network.

3. Create social and financial value

Generative businesses design their business models to create financial value as well as social value.

Small business lender Community Sourced Capital (CSC) creates financial value by aggregating smaller sums from many investors to fund businesses that can’t access traditional commercial loans. CSC also structures its investor–borrower relationships to build community engagement. To investors, CSC offers the chance to “fund the world you want to live in.” To borrowers, CSC offers a direct connection to the customers and neighbors who believe in them. The local economy gets stronger while entrepreneurs and innovative business ideas get a boost. The social value created within and around CSC’s financial transactions attracts new supporters and opportunities, increasing each business’s ability to have a larger impact. Focus on creating value in the community has helped CSC expand from Seattle into five additional national markets, growing 350% in just one year.

NewWorkCity, a Manhattan coworking space, also designed its business model to generate both financial and social value. NewWorkCity earns recurring revenue by renting desks, Wi-Fi, and meeting rooms to small businesses. But these businesses get more than just a downtown workspace that they can afford. Because of how NewWorkCity crafts its physical layout, social norms, and events, members also get a community where they can share and learn informally, where they can test ideas and offer encouragement, and where unexpected encounters can trigger serendipity and collaboration.

NewWorkCity and CSC remind us that generative practices don’t depend on digital platforms or online products. Even the analog activities of renting physical space and lending money can be designed to go beyond a basic financial transaction and create social value that nurtures other businesses’ growth.

Generative business practices should be at the core of movements like corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, and shared value strategies. Generative practices invite businesses to take a “pay it forward” posture and become generous citizens of their networks — not as an extra initiative but as a fundamental reorientation.

Generative businesses like Buffer, Etsy, CSC, and NewWorkCity reduce conflict, foster learning, and expand the breadth of value they create with their stakeholders. Generative practices can help a business grow the whole entire pie as well as its own slice.

As product designers we are reliant on innovation and new ideas. Many are bound to say we are simply biased in this direction, but to us innovation is a critical factor to business success, which cannot and must not be ignored.

In any industry, you simply cannot sit by and watch your ‘successful’ product (or business!) become obsolete, as the innovators in business are the ones that continually strive to reach new heights.

Some of the world’s top businesses prioritises new ventures, new developments in their products, and innovation in their business as the pivotal key to their success. Driving forward with product plans, launches and remaining at the forefront of technology and ingenuity means your customers will remain excited and focussed on you. Also, cmpetitors will always feel one step behind – always in your shadow!

It is important to develop the idea, looking at materials, manufacturing methods, functionality and aesthetic form prior to applying for protection. The process will help to resolve principle technical issues and is a core part of the development of the project. As such, the design work will help the product to gain credibility and inspire confidence in investors, licensees, or manufacturers.

Turning your idea and innovations into reality is easier than you think.

First of all it is important to patent the idea.

It is important to develop the idea, looking at materials, manufacturing methods, functionality, and aesthetic form prior to applying for protection. The process will help to resolve principle technical issues and is a core part of the development of the project. As such, the design work will help the product to gain credibility and inspire confidence in investors, licensees, or manufacturers.

Prototyping involves realising the design in a physical form and this allows the designs to be further refined. It is often essential to prove that the product works, which can be done through prototyping. The prototype demonstrates and provides evidence of the product’s performance whilst also allowing for a more visual, presentable method.

A patent protects the idea behind a product: such as HOW it works, WHAT it does and WHY it has certain features. Patents can be extremely valuable assets. In order to be deemed worth the protection of a granted patent an invention must be:

• novel
• inventive
• a new idea
• an improvement upon an existing idea
• a new combination of existing ideas

Patent applications can take up to 4½ years to be granted. However, as soon as you have filed your patent application, you have a date you can use to show you had idea first (see ‘Patent Pending’ below!).

Granted Patents give protection against others for up to 20 years from filing the application, provided you maintain the renewal fees which keep the granted patent in force (in the U.K. paid annually from 4 years). Granted Patents stop others using your idea in the country where your patent is granted and in force. There is no such thing as a worldwide patent but there are ways of making a single application (such as the PCT application) that can be used in multiple countries.

Registered Designs

A registered design protects the external shape and design of a product and this can be extended to include: lines, contours, colours, shape, texture, materials, and the ornamentation. Registered designs can also be applied for to protect patterns. Registered designs in Europe cover 28 countries and need to have ‘novelty’ and ‘individual character.’ The application is not examined and is generally considered as of lower value than a patent.

Prototyping

Prototyping involves realizing the design in a physical form and this allows the designs to be further refined. It is often essential to prove that the product works, which can be done through prototyping. The prototype demonstrates and provides evidence of the product’s performance whilst also allowing for a more visual, presentable method.

It goes without saying that it’s important to stay ahead of the competition, especially for small business owners faced with the pressure of making every sale count.

However, rather than simply defining who your key competitors are, use social media to listen in on your rivals’ online conversations.

Social media listening is big business, especially given statistics that have revealed 80% of US social network users prefer to connect to brands through Facebook (State of Inbound Marketing) and social media usage in the US has increased by 356% in six years (HubSpot).

Thanks to the very public nature of social media, online conversations can be found far and wide by analysing profiles on platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The key is to know what to look for and how to tune in and use it to your advantage.

Other ways of ‘listening’ can provide even greater valuable insight. Here are just two simple tricks you can use to get started:

1.     Groups – examine your competitors’ profiles on social media sites and track down the groups they belong to. By joining these groups you will be able to monitor your competitors’ conversations within these forums.

2.     Followers, friends and connections – look at your competitors’ Twitter and Facebook profiles, see who they are following/connected to and who is following/connected to them. Follow/connect to these people too to find out the type of content and discussion being shared.

Twitter

By looking at a competitor’s Twitter account you can quickly gauge the strategy they are using. By viewing their latest tweets, you can see if their strategy includes promoting lots of discounts, direct replies to their followers or sharing articles and content. You can easily judge the success of their tactics by looking at their follower count.

Facebook

With Facebook, you can find out if your rivals are using their accounts as a lead generation tool by conducting activity, such as gathering email addresses or feeding other social media accounts or blog posts through their page. The main strategy you want to check out is how they are using their account to interact. Do they communicate their latest offers, videos, blog posts, news or other items? This is extremely valuable as it not only provides you with a window on their activity, but how they are fairing with their customers.

LinkedIn

The real value on LinkedIn comes from monitoring discussions in groups. Groups are an excellent way to build relationships with prospective customers. And people often have business-related discussions that would otherwise happen one-to-one. For example, you can see how competitors are answering specific questions. You can also see who your competitors’ employees are connected to, and gather information about prospective customers by analysing their networks.

To find out how you can use social media to enhance your customer service, click here to read our blog. 

It was really difficult to come up with a title for this post.  Mainly due to the fact that my message relates to any organization or group outside your organization that form part of the Customer Experience – so not just the traditional supply chain – but every single organization that has some responsibility along your customer journey.

What am I talking about?  I’m talking about the importance of the supplier, partner, or provider as a key audience within the customer journey cycle.

Often I am faced with a perception that becoming customer centric is all about understanding the customer in order to increase the value of their experience and your engagement with them.   Without question, this is a key part of becoming customer centric but understanding and collaborating with the supplier/partner ecosystem involved in creating the most relevant and meaningful customer experiences requires equal thought and attention.

The digital age has brought with it an unlimited supply of possibility in terms of technology; from apps, to open source through to predictive analytics and social business elements beyond just social media…and the list goes on and on…

As digital opportunities increase, the reliance on suppliers and partners to provide specialist tools and services also increases.  Many organizations even look towards outsourcing as many areas as possible as a strategic business objective.

All this against a backdrop of the Internet of Things only points to a move towards multiple and complex working relationships with people and organizations, which are outside the traditional four walls of business.

Yet, given all this, businesses often look to supplier and partner relationships in a traditional way that limits both the value and innovation which could be afforded with a more collaborative and integrated approach.

So how should you build valuable and effective relationships with service providers and partners outside the traditional controls of the internal business?

Mindset, Visibility, Adaptability, And Resilience. 

It is most important that just as the people you work with within the business need to have a team fit and personality fit, so too should your partners and suppliers.  In an ever-complex world where the customer journey is a series of touchpoints that are controlled by different organizations, a mindset fit is vital.  Though the ultimate customer responsibility might fall to you, those suppliers and partners that deliver service, product, and experience to your customers must be like-minded enough to support that seamless customer journey.  Furthermore, with the customer landscape becoming more fragmented the need to maintain visibility of all your customers across all touchpoints at all times becomes a science in itself.

The advance of data and analytics have possibly been one of the most important breakthroughs to enable a single customer view, the ability to analyse, engage, understand, and better serve the customer throughout their journey from discovery through to loyalty and advocacy.  But when the customer travels through the different touchpoints that are owned, created or part responsibility of a third party, it’s vitally important you don’t lose full visibility of data – we have to find ways to ensure that no gaps exist across all those customer touchpoints.

This is not always easy and should be something which forms part of the contractual negotiation right at the very start of the business relationship – and even cited within any contract agreements.  Data is the key to unlocking optimal value and insight in the search to create the best customer experiences and achieve business goals.  Don’t throw that vital element away just because of the lack of attention at the first hurdle.  Having full data visibility within the boundaries of compliance and security is a must with all partners and suppliers.

When you put mindset and visibility together you have the component parts for a solid collaborative working environment.  And as the concept of design and innovation becomes less about a siloed R&D department in the darker levels of a business and more about the open, integrated collaborative environment where suppliers and partners become an intrinsic part of product and service development – we need to ensure that we either choose or consciously build this environment with all our suppliers and partners.  To ensure both mindset and visibility are focus points for your supplier partner relationships is hugely important to deliver innovative and effective end to end customer experiences.

Adaptability.  Customer demands are in constant flux, a new app or social platform can take off in what feels like a matter of hours, in particular with the younger digital generations.  And as new features and functions are added to more established digital platforms and products, the consumption habits of the audience changes as a result.  What this means is that the whole supply chain needs to be able and willing to adapt to changes when relevant and meaningful to the customer experience.  Equally, your partners and suppliers should have a good enough focus on the advancement of technology within their specialist area to continually provide the most valuable contribution to the customer life cycle.  Adaptability is going to be an increasingly important part of supplier partner relationships when it comes to the full customer life cycle in a digital age.

Resilience – this word is often more likely to be used within the manufacturing context or the more traditional supply chain area of logistics etc.  However, in the digital age having a sense of resilience between all partners and suppliers is really important.  Why?  Well, the concept of test and learn, the idea of experimentation takes resilience to achieve.  There will be tension across the whole customer life cycle when experimental and concept elements are put in play, but the reward is, as we are increasingly finding, far greater than the risk.

With changing technologies, with increased connectedness, the increasing demands and expectations of customers all point towards a need to test and experiment more in the name of innovation and ultimate delivery of relevant and meaningful customer engagements and experiences.

For some time now we have helped our clients understand that beyond the customer there is an audience landscape that requires focus in order to achieve real customer centricity and that’s what we all want right?  The employee, the supply chain, and the stakeholder all should have a seat at the table.  So do start to think about your suppliers and partners with our four guiding elements to help you stay in control and better able to provide the best possible products and services to your customers in the most relevant, meaningful and timely way to achieve your business goals.

But before I sign off, it would be remiss of me not to mention one other audience which is fast becoming a valuable strategic asset to many an organization – that of the crowd.  Cost efficiencies, User Testing, Collaboration, Co-design, Build and development, even funding; just some of the areas where tapping into the crowd can massively help the business achieve their goals…but that’s a story for next time.

Show of hands – who got Pigeon’d?

Not sure what I mean? Then consider this scenario for your company’s SEO rankings:

One day your website is performing really well. Your important keywords are ranking high; backlinks are sending you sweet link juice; people are converting on your site. Life is good in SEO land.

Then, overnight, it all changes. The next day’s analytics report shows a sharp turn in SERP rankings. You went from steady page 1 positions to page 10?! After cursing the internet and regretting your decision to get into digital marketing in the first place, you calm down and realize it’s not your fault – it’s Google’s.

Google’s SEO celebrity, Matt Cutts and his web spam team sometimes hint at upcoming algorithm changes (reminder to all of us – pay attention to what Matt Cutts says), but they’re never announced until after they’ve gone into effect – when it’s too late for you. As a result, you have to scramble to modify your SEO strategies and hope they satisfy the new guidelines.

(Pigeon, of course, was the name of the recent update that changed location-based rankings out of the blue.)

While we can’t completely predict the future of SEO, we can take a look at the dropped hints and recent trends to try and keep up. Here are a few methods to keep in mind as we finish out the year and head into 2015.

Flexibility

When it comes to SEO strategies, no other tactic is as timeless as flexibility. Given the unpredictable nature of algorithm updates and tweaks, it’s important to not put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. Backlinks may be really helpful today, but who knows what kind of power they’ll hold in six months? Google rocked the SEO world when they implemented the Panda update in 2011, which dramatically changed the way sites were ranked. In fact, it penalized anyone who obviously (and lazily) tried to game its algorithm. Some businesses are still trying to redeem themselves and their rankings.

The lesson here was two-fold: 1.) don’t use shady black hat tactics, and 2.) be dynamic. If Google suddenly de-values one area of your game plan, make sure your other procedures can sustain you. It helps to employ a grand strategy that uses a mix of things that work well, such as on-site optimization, and off-site links. While the algorithmic landscape is always changing, the tried and true tactics don’t seem to be losing value any time soon.

Choosing a smart domain name, writing short title and meta descriptions with keywords, and creating fresh content with internal links can help search engine spiders accurately evaluate your site. Likewise, a backlink from a high-authority website will always help improve your rank (provided it’s a legit site, and not spam-y).

Smart Content

One of the most recent, sweeping updates has to do with authorship. Over the past year, Google has sent some mixed signals about how it values the authority of someone’s online power. At the end of last year, the search engine giant announced that it was going to start giving more preferential treatment to people with a strong reputation (which was more or less determined by the person’s authority ranking throughout social media and beyond). However, it later surprised everyone by saying it was removing most authors’ photos from search results in an attempt to provide a cleaner user experience, especially on mobile.

Once again, it can be hard to keep up with Google’s seemingly fickle methodologies, but that doesn’t mean you should disregard authorship. Authorship, which is a statistic mostly derived by engagement on Google+, still plays a big role in helping your rank. In order to improve your own authorship, your best bet is to try to establish yourself as an industry leader.

What does that mean? Start writing, making videos, and generally networking online. The better your content is – and the more you network – the more it’ll help you. This isn’t a new concept per se, but it’s one that seems to be only gaining in power.

But when it comes to refining your content, authorship isn’t the only factor that will help you in the future. The old rule of thumb was to use keywords as a way to drive traffic. This hasn’t changed yet, but last year’s Hummingbird update suggests that Google is considering de-emphasizing them when evaluating your presence online. The solution isn’t to abandon your keyword strategies altogether, but to start thinking of ways to more smartly target your content. In an ideal world, this will help businesses refine their audience, and speak to them more directly through their blogs, and other content strategies.

Use Social Media Wisely

If you haven’t figured it out by now, this is Google’s world; we’re all just living in it. Its critics call it the dictator of the internet, since we’re more or less powerless to defend ourselves against its rules. Whatever your stance is, you can’t get around its regulations, so you might as well play its game. In short, get on Google+ if you haven’t already.

Few people go to G+ to see what their friends are up to, but businesses have only seen increased SEO value by actively using it. This isn’t predicted to change any time soon. From authorship to local listings, Google has come up with more and more ways for companies to use its social media platform and – no surprise – it puts greater emphasis on businesses and industry leaders who thrive on it than, say, Facebook.

That’s not to say it doesn’t value other social sites. True, a random link to your site shared via Twitter that disappears into the Internet ether isn’t going to carry much SEO weight. But if the link gets noticed by other people, that all changes. Driving engagement online through organic shares, comments, and likes will help your authorship. It’s more important than ever to smartly spread good content on social media.

To that end, it’s equally important now to avoid shady SEO tactics. Increasingly, Google has gone after fake likes, views, shares, etc. While it’s tempting to score quick SEO points by hiring a company to create false social media profiles, and in turn engage with your content, this will most likely backfire. Over time, Google’s become savvier about the authenticity of fans’ engagement. Even if you outsource the activity just to jumpstart the conversation online about your new product, or to help a video go viral, it monitors the trajectory of activity. In other words, if there’s a flurry of engagement followed by silence, it’ll figure out what you’re up to and penalize you for it. Future algorithm changes will only continue to reward those who play the long game of SEO.

When you’re preparing to launch a new product it’s natural to think about new branding to reflect your investment in development and aspirations for success.

The key is to develop branding that will give you the sales you want.

The right product branding can help you punch above your weight when entering new market segments. However, there are several considerations to take into account when branding new products or services.

Product branding strategy – Questions to ask yourself

• What brand equity do you have in your existing product branding?

If your current product or service ranges enjoy substantial brand equity, you potentially risk losing positive association and recognition if you deviate too far from them.

Think carefully about your target customers, looking at cross- and up-sell opportunities related to your existing range. If there are strong links with other products or services you offer, radically different branding risks cannibalising your customer base and negatively impacting sales across your portfolio.

• How competitive is your market?

You need to balance your existing brand equity against the level of saturation and competition in the market segment you’re entering.

In a competitive market, the right branding can deliver the cut-through you need to win business. It helps you position your product or service as a new breed, delivering a more appealing proposition to your customers.

Product branding execution – Practical considerations

Once you’ve considered strategic elements around existing equity and market competition, there are several practical elements to consider.

• Start by being clear on your brand promise

A brand is not just a logo. The logo is just a visual cue that supports the wider brand, which encompasses the promise you make to your customers about the experience you offer.

To give you a basic example, easyJet, with its typeface and orange and white colour palette, offers a promise of cheap flights. Sir Stelios has expanded into other markets, such as gyms, property rental and hotels. All use the same design scheme. Because of the equity around the easyJet brand, you know at a glance that easyHotel and easyGym offer that same low-cost, no-frills promise. If easyGroup companies stop being cheaper, all the orange in the world isn’t going to help them retain and acquire customers.

You therefore need to start with clear idea of what promise your product or service is making, and then develop the design and marketing materials to communicate that idea.

• Emphasise benefits over features

People don’t buy what your product does, they buy how it helps them. How do you save money? How do you make their lives easier?

For example, a new software solution might use an innovative, proprietary code to aggregate data from multiple sources. That’s the feature. The benefit is that the user can see exactly what’s going on in his business at a glance. At a basic level, the software saves time while facilitating growth.

Your brand promise therefore needs to go beyond specific product features to cut to the heart of why people should care about it.

• Select a design you can use across multiple platforms

Between marketing collateral, point-of-sale materials, exhibition stands, website, advertising, media articles and email templates you will have to use the brand design in many different contexts.

Make sure the design you choose will work well (and cost-effectively) in all these different media.

For example, an icon of a water droplet can look brilliant in print. You can divide elements of the image so some are gloss varnished, meaning the droplet will have a nice sheen on brochures and business cards. However, translate that image to a website and it will look bland and flat. The print cost associated with that gloss varnish will also be higher than basic print, which may be impractical for general materials like product sheets.

• Create a trademark where possible

Your product brand will have value in terms of intellectual property. Getting the legal protection of a trademark will help protect that value, and the market position you’re cultivating.

Are there other branding considerations that you’ve found to be crucial for your business based on past experience launching new products or services?

To discover the impact that colour has on your brand, click here to read our blog. 

The Internet of Things is on track to be an absolutely huge market. 

BI Intelligence predicts that by 2019:

• IoT device shipments will reach 6.7 billion.
• Revenues from devices, services, and software will reach $600 billion.
• A massive $1.7 trillion of value will be added to the economy in the form of revenues and efficiency cost savings.

A new report from BI Intelligence finds that there are four key elements that are driving the explosion in the IoT. The report also provides downloadable charts, forecasts, and analysis on how the IoT market will develop over three main sectors — home, government/infrastructure, and enterprise.

Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial>>

Here are the four important factors propelling the IoT forward: 

• The cost of internet-connected sensors is coming down: Many IoT devices rely on multiple sensors to monitor the environment around them. The cost of these sensors declined 50% in the past decade, according to Goldman Sachs. We expect prices to continue dropping at a steady rate, leading to an even more cost-effective sensor.
• A lot more money is being poured into the IoT: Large companies like Dell have begun to aggressively open IoT divisions and innovation labs. There have also been a range of IoT acquisitions including Google acquiring Nest and Intel acquiring Basis. In addition, innovative IoT startups, such as IoT cloud-platform provider Electric Imp and smart plug maker Zuli, have received a combined $70 million in funding just this summer.
• Expanded internet connectivity: The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that currently 40% of the global population is connected to the internet and by 2019, roughly 57% will be connected. This increase in connectivity will lead to a larger base of individuals interested in purchasing IoT devices.
• High adoption of "remotes," especially smartphones, phablets and tablets: The IoT is heavily reliant on "remotes," primarily smartphones and tablets that can manage the IoT. Today, smartphones account for 69% of mobile phones sold globally, and their share is still rising as developing nations introduce better wireless infrastructure. 

In full, the report:

• Defines what devices we include in the IoT and how the devices will be controlled
• Forecasts the potential size of the IoT by 2019 in terms of revenue, number of devices, and value-added to the economy 
• Examines why factors including the drop in sensor prices, increases in internet penetration, and current sales of smartphones and tablets are the drivers of rapid IoT growth
• Looks at how the home, government, and enterprise sectors use the IoT differently, and lists possible future uses
• Identifies the major consortia of IoT companies and examines what they are doing to help drive IoT growth
• Compares our device estimates to those of other research firms 

For full access to all BI Intelligence reports, briefs, and downloadable charts on the Internet of Things and mobile computing markets, sign up for a free trial. 

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The Harvard Business Review has come out with a list of the 100 most effective CEOs on the planet. 

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos stands at the top. 

According to HBR, Amazon has seen its value increase by $140 billion with Bezos at the helm and has delivered a whopping 15,189% on industry-adjusted shareholder returns.

As we've noted before, Bezos has taken the long view in building his empire. 

"Amazon often reports quarterly losses, even as sales continue to rise," writes HBR editor Adi Ignatius. "And though the company is subject, like many firms, to dramatic share-price swings, Amazon and Bezos have a long-term track record of delivering shareholder value that is second to none." 

To come up with the list, HBR number crunchers sorted through 832 current CEOs from the S&P Global 1200. They then calculated daily company returns for each CEO from the first day that he or she took office through April 30, 2014. 

Some fascinating trends emerged. MBAs are still a badge of honor — 29 of the top 100 have the increasingly controversial degree. Engineers make good bosses, as shown by the fact that 24 have an undergrad or grad degree in engineering. But diversity remains a problem: Only two of the top 100 are women. 

Here are the top 25 most effective CEOs, according to HBR: 

1. Jeff Bezos of Amazon
2. John Martin of Gilead Sciences
3. John Chambers of Cisco Systems
4. David Pyott of Allergan
5. David Simon of Simon Property Group
6. Lars Rebien Sørensen of Novo Nordisk
7. Hugh Grant of Monsanto
8. J. Michael Pearson of Valeant Pharmaceuticals
9. Mark Donegan of Precision Castparts
10. William Doyle of PotashCorp
11. Tadashi Yanai of Fast Retailing
12. David Novak of Yum Brands
13. Michael Wolf of Swedbank
14. Pablo Isla Álvarez de Tejera of Inditex
15. Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com
16. Oscar Gonzalez Rocha of Southern Copper
17. Stephen Wynn of Wynn Resorts
18. James Taiclet Jr of American Tower
19. Elmar Degenhart of Continental
20. George Paz of Express Scripts
21. Tsai Ming-Kai of MediaTek (tie)
21. Paolo Rocca of Tenaris (tie)
23. Reed Hastings of Netflix
24. Ronald Havner Jr. of Public Storage
25. Michael Balmuth of Ross Stores

For the full list, head to HBR.  

SEE ALSO: 11 Books By CEOs That Will Teach You How To Run The World

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Amazon hasn’t forgotten about the importance of cheap devices even as it struggles to be taken seriously as a high-end smartphone maker.

Amazon’s first Fire tablet was one of the first $200 Android tablets. It wasn’t all that fast or attractive, but it proved that Amazon could move beyond e-readers and do something interesting with tablets — and all for a price much lower than the competition.

Now, Amazon has released its cheapest tablets yet: A $100 6-inch Fire slate and a 7-inch model for $140. They’re not particularly pretty. And they resemble bricks more than something like the svelte iPad Mini (see comparison pics below). But for the price, these are surprisingly functional gadgets.

It’s what’s underneath that counts

Near-countless cheap tablets are on the market, but I wouldn’t recommend most of them. They’re often too slow to be all that usable, and they tend to feel cheap. Amazon’s new Fire HD models distinguish themselves by being neither.

Sure, they could use some slimming down (they have a laughably huge amount of bezel around the screens), but for devices in this price range, their plastic cases feel solid. They both also run on quad-core processors that keep things moving along smoothly. I expected a frustratingly slow experience when I first got my hands on these tablets, but they feel comparable to most sub-$200 tablets — and in some cases, they feel faster than more expensive slates.

The Fire HD 6, in particular, is a marvel for its size, price, and speed. We haven’t seen too many tablets with screens around 6 inches — that’s something that’s more commonly seen among huge “phablet” smartphones — but I can see such a small tablet tempting so many potential buyers. It’s unmistakably a tablet when you’re holding it in your hand, and since it doesn’t have any cellular connectivity, you won’t be confusing it with a phablet any time soon.

But while the Fire HD 6 has a lot going for it, I prefer tablets with screens around 7 inches to 8 inches. They give you far more screen real estate than even the biggest phones, but they’re typically much smaller and lighter than big tablets over 10 inches.

This is where the Fire HD 7 comes in. It’s competing with other inexpensive small tablets like the $230 Nexus 7, but it’s also significantly cheaper. (Amazon’s $180 Fire HDX tablet is an even better Nexus 7 competitor, with a significantly faster processor and higher-resolution screen.)

The new Fire HD tablets’ 1,280-by-800 resolution screens are adequate for reading and watching videos, though it’s nowhere near as sharp as the 1080p display on the Fire HDX and other small tablets.

Both tablets get around 8 hours of battery life, according to Amazon. They both ended up lasting me more than a day with casual usage, which mainly consisted of browsing Twitter, reading e-books and a few websites, and viewing a bit of video.

Amazon also offers a kid-proof version of the Fire HD tablets for $150 and $190 with a drop-resistant case (which includes a very useful two-year no-questions-asked warranty).

The cost of cheap

While the prices of both new Fire HD tablets are impressive, they also include Amazon’s “special offers,” ads that appear on your tablet’s lock screen. You’ll have to shell out an additional $15 if you want to turn those off.

Both tablets only include a meager 8GB of storage, which should be fine for ebooks, but will quickly fill up if you want to download music, movies, and apps. Add another $20 to the price of both tablets if you want to bump them up to 16GB of storage.

In other words, you’ll need to pay $134 (for the 6-inch tablet) or $174 (for the 7-inch) for a 16GB tablet with no advertising, if you want something comparable to what competitors offer.

Amazon isn’t technically lying about its gadget pricing, but over the years, it’s become more comfortable with obfuscating a device’s true cost. When Amazon first started offering the Kindle and Fire tablets with Special Offers, it advertised the more expensive price, with the ads as a sort of discount. Now it’s doing the reverse.

The lock screen ads (which likely earn Amazon quite a bit more than just $15 per customer) are easily avoidable, but they’re just one of many advantages Amazon has over its competition. Amazon doesn’t have to worry too much about marketing since it has one of the most visited storefronts online. And it can also make ultra-cheap devices more profitable since it has a more direct relationship with customers (although Kindle devices are also sold in many electronics retail stores).

It’s also worth mentioning that these new Fire HD tablets are surprisingly heavy when compared to their competitors. The Fire HD 6 is far chunkier than any phablet, and the Fire HD 7 quickly started to strain my wrist if I was holding it with one hand. At this price, Amazon had to make a few concessions — a hefty design was chief among them.

I realize it’s a tad unfair to compare the entry-level Fire HDs with Apple’s high-end iPad Mini, but I think the pictures also show just how little the two tablets differ. I’m sure many people would rather save a couple hundred bucks and live with a tablet that’s a fraction of an inch thicker.

Verdict: A warm welcome to cheap tablets

Amazon’s pricing for the new Fire HD tablets may feel a tad suspect, but it’s hard to deny the power of a $100 tablet. What’s more surprising is that the Fire HD tablets are more than just cheap slates.

If you need more power, you can always upgrade to one of Amazon’s more powerful HDX slates, or take a look at the pricier competition.

But for most consumers the Fire HD tablets are more than enough — and that’s a sign of things to come.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where cu... read more »

Can your company move into new vertical business markets through a focused content marketing effort?

Content marketing is being used more often by companies to establish presence, stake a position and drive leads and conversions. Gary Vaynerchuk recommends for pre-launch companies to do “Content Content Content!” when trying to rally support for their launch. Why wouldn’t a similar approach work for companies looking to spread into different vertical markets?

IT Expert Karl Walinskas offers 4 key ways to evaluate new vertical markets:

1. Come up with and write down 3-5 industries that you think are worth targeting.
2. Ask for each: is that industry flush with cash? This is why health care, financial services, government services, and higher education tend to be major market segment choices.
3. Now ask for each: is the industry undergoing massive change? The change can be internally or externally driven, such as massive new legislation (Obamacare, Sarbanes-Oxley) or world events.
4. Any of your trial verticals where you answered a Yes to questions 2 and 3 stands to be a vertical market worthy of your investigation.

Creating content marketing expertise in vertical markets can help buyers in those markets get to know you, thus growing an understanding of and trust for your company. It’s about doing content marketing not only across channels (websites, social media, videos, events, etc.) but more proactively within new vertical markets. Creating great videos, blog posts, infographics, and curated content toward a specific vertical or two can:

1. Help open up new markets for your company’s product or services
2. Prime the audience for more products later on
3. Position you as an upstart in an established vertical market

Those in content marketing circles know the story of how fiberglass pool company owner Marcus Sheridan used his blog and content marketing to grow his swimming pool business to heights previously unknown. Today, Marcus himself has moved into a new vertical – Content, Inbound, and Social Media Consulting and Speaking Services. Using great content to establish trust, authority, and build an audience has elevated his status in this market and created a completely new business for himself.

Understanding Vertical Markets

It’s important to understand the vertical market you’re seeking to enter. A key way to do this is to learn as much as you can about the industry, using its jargon, acronym and forecasts. Then tailor your content marketing efforts using these terms specifically to capture new audiences within the vertical market. Just as a dedicated NFL fan can spot a weekend poser by the terminology used about the game’s fundamentals, so too can your content betray your industry understanding.

To be good at content, your content should be top quality, first and foremost. Get to know your industry topics well, and become the relevant expert in a certain category. Becoming knowledgeable in a vertical makes you much more valuable than becoming familiar across a range of horizontal topics.

A big benefit to content specialization in particular verticals is less competition for your content. You’ll find more focused readers and less widespread noise if you are targeting an audience that’s seeking answers on niche subjects like security practices in government buildings or organically produced children’s clothing, for example. That reason alone is compelling enough to position yourself as the expert in a new vertical…through content.

Graphic via Curata.com

Behind the scenes planning with your sales team can also bring your company to a point where content marketing can target potential new clients. Work alongside your sales and product teams and increase your understanding and entry points of the new vertical market. This will result in better content marketing penetration, leading to increased awareness and a more focused launch.

Let’s look at key areas to shore up your company’s content marketing practices to help drive a move into a new vertical market.

Utilize the Skills Set Within

If members of your content marketing team have deep experience in your new vertical market in prior roles, be sure to capitalize on that. Learn about your team’s business expertise and how it can apply to your current client base.

For example, one of our team members at Vertical Measures recently has undergone a switch to solar power at his home in Arizona. His customer experience has helped inform the VM content team for our work for a solar installation company. From him, we learned about home preparation of solar electricity to the state rebates for solar energy. Knowing our client’s business from the inside out has helped immeasurably in creating customer-centric vertical content.

You never know what knowledge and experiences your team has until you ask. Mine your talent and utilize your internal resources.

Gain Industry Depth and Knowledge

The answer to this successful entry into a new vertical market is depth of knowledge and purpose. Your strong industry knowledge must be the foundation on which to communicate. Don’t try to just throw a new content marketer into the role of data security expert for the data and security vertical you’re entering. Allow that person some transition time and then seek appropriate feedback for creating content plans. Alternatively, find someone who knows the industry inside and out and who can jump on board without skipping a beat. Sometimes it pays to find the right people.

Inform your Vertical Team Members

Keep your team informed with a deep dive into the chosen vertical. In every business vertical, there are a great number of case studies, white papers and reports. Get the team familiar with industry blogs, news outlets, and social media leaders and influencers in that particular vertical space. Look for nuggets of information every day that will yield content topics that are useful for industry content calendars, daily blog posts, social media promotion and more. Whether the vertical is aerospace, residential construction, online education or luxury goods, your team’s deep knowledge of the chosen vertical will help them to become quality content creators.

Get into the Community

Moving into a new community (online and offline) forces you to get out and introduce yourself to those around you. Integrating well into a new vertical community involves a lot of listening and learning, and much less talking and doing. Get your team members to visit the right industry outlets online, and get to know the important analysts in the new vertical market. Here are few more things to do:

• Join relevant LinkedIn groups for your vertical
• Follow specific industry Twitter hashtags
• Attend industry specific conferences for face time with these online counterparts.

By diving in deep, your content team will build up the acquired knowledge that helps you build your business.

Graphic via Content Marketing Institute

Be the Buyer

Ask your content team to put themselves in the mind of a typical buyer in the vertical. Imagine that person’s questions and challenges as they move through the buying process. Then figure out what questions can be best answered in certain types of content – case studies, reference guides blogs, infographics, etc.

Create a Compelling Call-to-Action

As the new player in an established vertical, it’s up to your company to take a stab at creating a compelling call-to-action. Be bold. Offer an informed point of view or bold opinion. Try to teach your readers something new, or offer an alternate way to consider an industry topic. Readers will appreciate your forthright nature.

Achieving the right team strength and depth of knowledge needed to pursue new verticals will take some time and some growing pains. Learning about new industry leaders, who their customers are, and where new prospects may be are all new challenges. But with a concentrated content marketing strategy for new vertical markets, you can quickly gauge the pulse of the market, gain new followers and hopefully establish your company as a new leader soon.

Has your company used great content marketing tactics to move into new verticals? If so, please share your story below!

When you want to increase your company’s leads online there are several lead generation methods that you can attempt. There are several different ways to create a buzz for your company and generate leads, but it isn’t easy to predict what is going to work and what isn’t — especially since what works well for one company might not produce the same type of results for the next. Many companies become content when they discover one method that creates leads and they don’t venture off to find other avenues for generating leads. It is a good idea to spread your lead sources, as you never want to put all of your eggs in one basket.

While it can be difficult to predict what methods are going to produce quality leads and what ones are going to tank, we have put together a list of five lead generation tips that have a high probability of producing results for your company.

1. Utilize Email Marketing

Email marketing is still a very effective way to generate leads and also trigger older contacts to again turn into a hot new lead. You should be building multiple email lists for your business. It is important to attract new leads by offering something of value for free as well as building a list of actual customers and continuing to stay on their radar via email.

There are several email marketing tools that can help you build and segment your lists, as well as track the performance. Remember to make sure that your emails are formatted for mobile devices because the majority of your recipients are going to be opening and viewing your emails on their mobile devices.

2. Guest Blog on Authority Websites

Publishing content on industry related websites is a great way to get in front of an entirely new audience. Not every lead that your website is going to originate from the individual discovering your website first. Referral traffic will generally convert at a high rate because you have sparked the individuals interest enough to cause them to visit your website.

If they like what they read in your guest blog and click over to your website there is a good chance they will opt in to your offer, creating a new lead for your business. Make sure to only approach websites that publish only high quality content and attract the type of audience that you are targeting.

3. Attract Leads From Your Social Media Following

While social media marketing is great for building brand awareness, it is also a great tool for lead generation. If you have an active social following get them to engage with your brand by asking them questions and directing them to specific landing pages on your website. You can create lead generation forms for any subject — keep them unique and ask for as little information as possible.

If you only need a name and email address then ask for that, instead of a bunch of fields that are likely to push the individual away. You can also create exclusive offers for your social following such as giving away a free eBook or free trials. Announce the exclusive offers across your social channels and direct them to landing pages in an effort to turn them into a fresh new lead.

4. Keep Your Company Blog Updated

Your company’s blog can be an extremely effective lead generation tool when you utilize it the correct way. Your blog is a platform for you to share information, educate your readers, and position your brand as an expert. Address common questions and problems that your target audience is likely to have.

Give them information that will help them for free and watch them subscribe to your offers because they want more insight and information from you. You aren’t going to generate quality leads by simply throwing up a lead generation form on your website. You need to provide quality information for free, and your blog is a great platform to deliver it.

5. Create Optimized Landing Pages

Every business has a landing page, or even multiple landing pages. Everyone wants to generate leads for their business, but not everyone does it the correct way. It is important that you create optimized landing pages if you want to achieve a high conversion rate. When your traffic lands on a lead generation page you want them to do one thing and one thing only — complete your form! Remove your navigation menu so they aren’t temped to get distracted and visit other pages of your website.

Keep your offer crystal clear so they know exactly what you are offering and have an “in your face” call-to-action so your visitors know what they need to do to get the offer. Also, keep your form short — you can always ask for additional information after you make the first initial contact.

While these tips can all help your increase your company’s leads, a lot of the success is related to what you are offering. It takes a great product/service/offer combined with the correct audience to create interest, giving someone reason to act (and convert into a lead). If you have an excellent offer and you are targeting the correct audience then using the tips above can help you increase your leads, which will translate into more sales and revenue for your company.

The 2015 planning season is upon us. Like many marketers out there, you’re probably trying to figure out how to allocate your marketing budget for the upcoming year. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t be reading this blog post if you didn’t have some sort of interest in inbound marketing, so whether you just want to learn more about the industry or convince your boss to allocate additional funds to inbound next year, below are XX marketing statistics that will blow your mind about inbound marketing.

Why You Should Get on the Inbound Marketing Train

I can talk to you all day long about how great inbound marketing is for your company (trust me, I get excited and could really go all day), but let’s leave it to the facts below to speak for themselves:

1. The number of marketers who state they are practicing inbound rose from 60% last year to 85% this year, while the percentage of marketers who concede they don’t run inbound was nearly halved to 13% (HubSpot).

2. 80% of business decision makers prefer to get information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. (Exact Target).

3. Inbound marketers double the average site conversion rate, from 6% to 12% total (HubSpot).

4. 50% of consumer time online is spent engaging with custom content. (HubSpot)

5. Websites with 51 to 100 pages generate 48% more traffic than websites with 1 to 50 pages (HubSpot).

6. 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content and are also more likely to buy from that company. (Custom Content Council).

7. Nearly 60% of marketers have already adopted inbound strategies (HubSpot).

8. Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound practices. (HubSpot).

9. Inbound marketing costs 62 percent less per lead than traditional outbound marketing (Mashable).

Why Blogging Should be a Key Focus in your Marketing Efforts

No, blogging isn’t just for mommies and foodies. In fact, blogging can be one of the greatest assets to your marketing efforts. Here are many reasons why:

10. Companies that blog generate 126% more leads than those that don’t (HubSpot).

11. 95% of small businesses view blogging as an effective marketing technology tool–second only to email marketing. 15% say blogging is most effective at engaging existing customers; 11% value it more for attracting new customers; and 69% say blogging is equally effective for both objectives. (e-Strategy Trends).

12. 43% of marketers generate customers from their blog (HubSpot).

13. 82% of marketers who blog daily acquire customers from their blog (HubSpot).

14. Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI (HubSpot).

15. 57% of marketers who were committed to blogging monthly could trace customers back to their blogs (HubSpot).

16. 82% of marketers that blog daily generated customers from their blogs (HubSpot).

17. Blogs give websites on average 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links. (Inbound Writer).

18. B2B companies with blogs generate 67% more leads per month on average than non-blogging firms. (Social Media B2B).

19. Brands that create 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month. (HubSpot).

20. B2B companies that blog only 1-2x/month generate 70% more leads than those who don’t blog. (HubSpot).

21. Companies that increase blogging from 3-5x/month to 6-8x/month almost double their leads. (HubSpot).

22. An average company will see a 45% growth in traffic when increasing total blog articles from 11-20 to 21-50 (HubSpot).

Why it’s Important to Convert Site Visitors into Leads…And Then Some

If you talk to an inbound marketer, chance are the importance of landing pages and gating your content will come up near the beginning of the conversation. Why? It’s an easy way to gain more leads while establishing authority in your field. You benefit because you’ll obtain a visitor’s contact information and they benefit from reading your amazing content. It’s a win-win situation. Once you get those leads, make sure you take good care of them so that you can eventually turn them into customers. Here are a few stats that demonstrate why lead conversion and lead nurturing are important:

23. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (The Annuitas Group).

24. Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages got 7 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages (HubSpot).

25. Those with over 40 landing pages got 12 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages. (HubSpot).

26. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Forrester Research).

Why You Should Care about SEO

Sick of inbound marketers obsessing over keyword research and SEO best practices? Trust us, there is a method to our madness, and here’s why:

27. SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate whereas outbound leads have a 1.7% close rate (HubSpot)

28. 87% of people today use a search engine and 78% use it to do searches for products and services (HubSpot).

29. SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate as compared to outbound leads at 1.7% (HubSpot).

30. 68% of all organic clicks go to the top three search results. (eConsultancy)

31. 75% of search engine users never scroll past the first page of search results (HubSpot).

32. Mobile Googling alone will exceed over 27 billion search queries by 2016 globally (Infographic Design Team).

33. 70% of the links search users click on are organic—not paid (HubSpot).

Time to Get Social

A while back I heard a person say social media is dead…nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, it’s harder to get people to view your content on Facebook organically now, but there are SO many other things you can be doing on social that will help your business. Let’s take a look some of the stats:

34. 78% of small businesses attract new customers through social media. (Relevanza)

35. 93% of marketers use social media for business. (WordPress Hosting SEO)

36. Three-fourths of marketers planned to increase strategic efforts on social media and social networking sites this year, with 68% also focusing more on SEO and 63% on blogs. (eMarketer)

37. 82% of buyers say they trust a company more when its CEO and senior leadership team are active in social media.  (War of Words: Myth-Busting Social Media, SEO & Content Marketing).

38. 77% of buyers are more likely to buy from a company if its CEO uses social media (War of Words: Myth-Busting Social Media, SEO & Content Marketing).

39. Companies with 51-100 Twitter followers generate 106% more traffic than those with 25 or fewer (HubSpot).

40. Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing (HubSpot).

The Importance of Email

The number of email addresses continues to grow substantially year over year. You need to make sure you are hitting the inboxes of your buyer personas and delivering the content they want so that you stand apart from all the other emails that fill their inboxes daily. Below are some startling facts that show just how huge email is and why you need to take advantage of it.

41. 122,500,453,020 emails are sent every hour (MarketingProfs).

42. Email is almost 40 times better at acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter (McKinsey & Company).

43. 81% of US digital shoppers surveyed said they were at least somewhat likely to make additional purchases, either online or in a store, as a result of targeted emails (Harris Interactive).

Mind blown? These numbers just skip the surface at how impactful inbound marketing can be. What other statistics would you add to this list?

Lead generation is a key objective for marketers. But it is also a difficult and time-consuming task. Surprisingly, only 10% of marketers feel that their lead generation campaigns are effective.

Here are our top 10 tips on how to make the most of online channels to boost your lead generation and build a strong business pipeline.

1. Use the correct data so you can target the right person at the right time

Having the correct data is the key to your customer’s heart – the more you know about them the more you can personalise. It is crucial to know your customer and communicate with them in the right tone and at the right time, in order to ensure that they pay you attention.

2. Have the tools in place to track your leads

Ensure that you are able to track return on investment and allocate budgets by using measureable and traceable channels to entice your leads whether you’re using your website, social media or email or direct marketing to draw them in.

For example, Google Analytics will help you determine which pages are generating the most traffic to your website. Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) software will help you keep tabs on the relationship you’re building with prospects. And HubSpot, marketing automation software, will track a prospect’s activity on your website and deliver marketing content tailored to their interests.

3. Focus on quality over quantity

This sounds obvious but is often forgotten. It is always best to focus on quality rather than quantity, so that your sales force doesn’t waste time on unqualified leads. Do your research to ensure that you target businesses that have a high chance of being able to buy your product or service.

Does the company actually fit the profile of your ideal client, or are they just using you to get some free information? Are you actually speaking with the decision-maker at that business? If the answer to either of these questions is ‘no’ the lead isn’t worth your time.

4. Have a grading structure and criteria for prospects

You can stream your activity into short-term, mid-term and long-term to create a rolling pipeline. This will allow you to focus on a prospect at the right time.

You can also have a set of criteria to define what qualifies as a prospect and what must happen to move that prospect from one level to the next.

Don’t forget to nurture your leads, educating your potential customers with relevant information to move them further down the sales funnel.

5. Monitor your competition

Have your competitors launched a new product, service or website? You need to know. Find out what your competitors are doing, and use the information throughout your business to help you beat the competition.

6. Don’t be afraid to start new relationships with big purchasers or discount prospects

Aim high. Keep a look out for prospects that have experienced a change in circumstances, such as a restructure or a merger, and target them.

Make sure you have a list of organisations that you would like to work with.

And don’t be afraid to discount a prospect if you don’t think the relationship will go anywhere.

7. Consider structuring your commission scheme

If you have a commission scheme you can consider structuring it to reflect the skills and effort required to secure new business as well as managing existing accounts.

8. Use social media to warm up leads

Social media is not only useful in terms of boosting brand awareness and interacting with customers, but also for bolstering your sales pipeline.

• Share content – publishing content to direct traffic to your website is the most effective way to generate leads through social media. Post links, share blog posts and offer discounts to get people clicking onto your site
• Build a loyal following – get to know your audience online, and share information to demonstrate your expertise. Get involved in LinkedIn groups relevant to your business. Once you have a relationship, a connection is more likely to trust you as a supplier
• Engage in dialogue – don’t focus your posts solely on your company, but interact with others and be helpful. When a prospect is ready to buy they’re then more likely to come to you

9. Capture information on your website

To generate leads from your website you need traffic. There are a huge number of techniques you can use to get people to click on a website, but a few basics can make a big difference.

• Use forms to capture your leads’ data – in particular, smart forms help your build your database
• Make your calls-to-action as effective as possible – place them above the fold and be clear about what you want people to do. Make them stand out visually and tailor them to the interests of prospective buyers of the specific product or service. You’re then more likely to get people to click the button and submit their details

10. Use opt-in email marketing to nurture prospects

When used correctly, emails can be an effective, and cost-effective, way to generate new business. Focus on an opt-in strategy to ensure you have happy subscribers who enjoy receiving your emails, and don’t forget to include a link to unsubscribe.

• Send valuable offers – offers need to feel exclusive and provide useful information
• Include a clear call-to-action – make sure the prospect knows what you want them to do
• Link to a landing page – where the prospect has to provide their details
• Follow the form with a thank you page – ensure that additional content is available, and don’t forget to include social media sharing buttons to encourage leads to share and generate more leads.

To discover 20 tried and tested ways to help you generate more leads, click here to read our useful eguide. 

Marketing is a means of driving revenue and growth. So how do you ensure your marketing investment achieves these things?

This checklist gives you a firm foundation for a successful marketing strategy. We use this process for all of our clients, and the results speak for themselves.

1. Set clear, measureable goals

You need to know what success looks like, with clear expectations of what you want to achieve for your budget. Goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. How many leads do you need to meet your annual revenue target? How much revenue do you want to earn from existing customers this year?

If you establish all this at the outset, everyone involved can be accountable for progress – and you have the evidence to demonstrate a return on your investment.

2. Be specific about your target customer

One of the biggest mistakes companies make with their marketing is to try selling to everyone. This doesn’t work – when you try to be all things to all people you end up with a weak, diluted message. You need to know exactly what your target customers are seeking so you can speak their language and meet their needs. What are their job titles? What are their goals? What challenges do they face?

When you know the answers to these questions you can articulate how your company helps achieve those goals and overcome those challenges. In other words, you can create targeted marketing that works.

3. Make sure you’re realistic, consistent and proactive

You can have the most beautiful, function-filled website in your industry. However, if it isn’t doing more to help your customers with their purchasing decisions then the bells and whistles aren’t value for money.

Look at where and how prospects and customers interact with you. Are they on LinkedIn? Do they attend exhibitions? Do they read trade magazines? How do they make initial enquiries? What information are they looking for, and when?

You need to plan how you are going to interact each of these touch points so it’s easy for prospects to deal with you – whether it’s the first contact, ordering a product or contacting an account manager. Simplicity, ease and consistency are key to nurturing cold prospects into paying customers in a cost-effective way.

4. Measure, review and refine your tactics

No campaign should ever be set in stone. You must constantly test, review and refine tactics in order to achieve the best possible results. For example, does a sales letter generate more enquiries if it’s in a coloured envelope? Do certain search terms drive more traffic to your website? Do you get a better response rate if your email subject lines are personalised? These little things can make a big difference to conversion rates, but you won’t know the impact until you test.

If you enjoyed this article, click here to find out if you are maximising your ROI on your sales marketing.  

At this point, you’re probably tired of hearing about inbound strategies. However, there’s a reason inbound marketing, sales, and customer communication has changed the way people do business. There’s a reason they’re so popular.

Quite simply, they work.

We’re guessing the majority of information you hear about inbound strategies has to do with attracting customers and making the sale. Today, we’re taking a bit of a different spin on things and discussing an inbound strategy for after the sale.

Before we get too far into it, let’s back up for a minute.

What Exactly is an Inbound Strategy and Why is it so Popular?

Rather than disrupting prospective customers with advertisements and cold calls, inbound operates on the principle of helping, not selling. You attract customers with information and useful content that builds trust and promotes competency.

With an inbound strategy, you’re able to build lasting relationships with your people in your market and then lead them to become customers when they are looking for solutions to the problems that your products or services solve.

Content creation like blog posts, ebooks, videos, infographics, and slideshares gives you a platform on which you can be remarkable, get found by prospective customers, and spread your ideas. An inbound strategy is one of the most efficient ways your company can stand out from the competition and convert people into qualified opportunities by being uniquely human and helpful to your target audience.

Beyond how well it works, there’s another reason inbound strategies are so well liked by both executives and people in the tranches: they’re data driven. Take inbound marketing and sales, for instance. Data plays a significant role from the beginning to the end.

Marketers collect data about their target audiences’ behavior to determine what the right messages are for the right people at the right time. Throughout the process of generating leads and nurturing those leads toward a sale, data tells marketers and salespeople what’s working and what’s not, allowing them to adjust and optimize.

But what about what comes after the sale?

What Are Your Options for Post-sale Customer Management?

There are a few common choices companies usually choose for post-sale customer management. Typically, there is an account management team that reaches out to existing customers to promote new products, services, and training offers, with a goal of increasing customer satisfaction and encouraging a future sale.

This is usually done through emails and phone calls. Outreach by account managers is usually somewhat targeted based on known customer information housed in CRM systems.

In addition to account management, after the sale, product issues that customer are experiencing are usually handled through customer support tickets and call centers.

Lastly, when it comes to collecting product feedback and gathering data from your market, product managers often have to recreate the wheel to select the customers to survey and interview and then contact them to get them participate.

While all of these options, when used together or separately, can lead to effective post-sale customer management, none of them delight customers and deliver efficiency of “inbound.”

However, there’s one tactic we left off the list: online customer communities.

How Online Customer Communities Embody an Inbound Approach

Going back to our original assessment of inbound strategies, let’s see how online customer communities match up.

Online Customer Communities Work to Attract Customers

After the sale, there are certain things you’re going to want your customers to do. Common examples include:

• Simply learning and using your product
• Purchasing again or upgrading
• Helping other customers
• Provide product feedback
• Becoming an advocate for your company in the market

Regardless of your business’s priorities, products, and customer base, you’re going to want to find a way to keep them informed and engaged so that you have an easier time converting customers to take the actions that you want them to take.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to get customers’ attention after the initial purchase.  Creating an online community stocked with original, insightful, and helpful content gives your customers access to an ongoing support system. They can connect with industry experts, find partners to help them solve their problems faster, share ideas and suggestions, and help other customers with the issues with which they are wrestling.

You can’t force customers to consume and respond to your messages. By providing a platform where customers can access content, have conversations with other customers, and get advice from to experts, your online customer community acts as a magnet for customers looking for get more out of your products and services. When customers are engaged, your company has fewer barriers to getting customers to respond to your calls-to-action.

Online Customer Communities Are About Helping, Not Selling

Just as “ABH – Always Be Helping,” is a core value of inbound marketing and selling, this is a pillar of creating a successful online community. If customers think they’re being sold to through your community, they won’t bother to stick around or invest in the process.

From the start, you want your online customer community to become a central online destination where customers, partners, and employees help your customers, share their ideas, and answer each other’s questions.

In order to make your community worth your customers’ time, helping your customers find more success with your products and services needs to be at the very heart of everything you do.

Online Customer Communities Create Advocates

There will be different engagement levels throughout your community but, ultimately, you want to transition customers from new community members, to regular members, to contributing members, and then to senior members.

Eventually, the goal is to build advocates within your community and beyond. Customer advocates are more willing to spread your company’s vision and educate people on your solutions in the general market. Online communities help build customer advocacy and reference programs by maintaining relationship with your biggest fans, supports, and power users through the various engagement opportunities in your online community.

Smart businesses leverage their online customer community to make their customer advocates feel special, like they’re more of a partner than a customer, as well as keep them up-to-date on company news and product direction.

Active Online Customer Communities Are Inherently Remarkable

No two customer communities are the same, even within the same market or for companies with similar products. While a portion of this uniqueness is due to the many different combinations of features available in your customer community software, the real remarkability comes from the people involved.

Active participants in your online customer community can change the way you do business. Their unique insight and experiences can change the way other customers view your company. Their discussions and the content that they produce for the community helps position your online customer community as a differentiator in your market that other organizations cannot emulate. How the people in your community engage with each other and with your content helps to set your community apart.

Online Customer Communities Are Data-Driven

The key to a successful, thriving online community is how online community managers leverage the social activity data to steer the community.

Your company has access to everything that goes on in your online customer community. This allows you to identify and track common questions from your customers and analyze data from specific customer groups to make better business decisions.

Just like inbound marketing strategies leverage data about which resources prospective customers viewed on your website to get people to convert on marketing offers, when you know more about your customers, you can get them to do what you want them to do.

Whether it’s registering for a conference, attending a training session, renewing a subscription, upselling or upgrading, the social behavior data of your online community can help you provide the right message, to the right people, at the right time.

Post-Sale Inbound Customer Management Takeaway

Inbound strategies are popular because, quite simply, they work.

Just as marketers apply inbound principles to how they attract customers and convert leads to sales, your company can handle their post-sale customer communication with an inbound approach.

Among all the other post-sale customer management strategies, creating an online customer community is the only option that fully embraces inbound principles. They attract and help customers, create advocates, allow your company to be remarkable, and rely on data for optimized processes and post-sales conversion rates.