Rnordman

The tagline from the latest CPC ad is “We’re better off with Harper.” This phrase has a long history, going back at least to Ronald Reagan’s “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” in the 1980 U.S. presidential election. The CPC seems to think that that if asked, most people would say that they were better off than they were before Stephen Harper took power.

I hate, hate, hate these sorts of talking points. The proper question to ask is, “Are we better off than what we would have been if the CPC government had adopted a different set of policies?” In order to answer this question, you’d have to specify what the alternative policy strategy would have been, and work through what we would have seen under this counterfactual. (For more on this point, see here.) No opposition party has ever specified what they would have done differently over the past eight or nine years, so this kind of exercise is not possible.

But to the extent that the CPC will claim that the economy has improved under Harper and that the opposition parties will claim that it has gotten worse, here are some of the relevant data. Keep in mind that the changes are the result of a combination of what the Conservative government could control, and what it couldn’t. If you’re going to blame the CPC for the ravages of the recession, you have to give them credit for the boom years of 2006-07.

The point of comparison is between the latest available data and the last data point before the Conservatives took office in February 2006: January 2006 for monthly data, 2005 Q4 for quarterly data, and 2005 for annual data. All dollar figures are corrected for inflation.

[Updated to include federal debt numbers]

Let the cherry-picking begin.

 

 

The post Are we better off with Harper? appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Following the company’s gigantic iPhone and Watch announcement in Cupertino, California, Apple announced new iCloud pricing on its website. 

The news, which we first spotted on MacRumors, comes right before Apple’s cloud service gets a major boost in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite; iOS 8 will launch to the public on Sept. 17, and OS X Yosemite will arrive sometime this fall.

As they did before, iCloud customers will still get 5GB of storage for free, but now, they can purchase an extra 20GB of space for $0.99 per month. For 1TB of storage, users will pay $20 a month.

The pricing plan is certainly improved over the former deal, considering many users don’t use all that storage. But Apple’s iCloud mainly handles documents, photos, apps, and music — specifically within Apple’s ecosystem devices and services. 

Professionals and businesspeople who rely on full cloud services across a wider range of devices for things like videos, large photos, and back-end services, might want to consider Google Drive or Dropbox, which gives users the same terabyte of storage for half of Apple’s price ($9.99 a month, each). Amazon also charges $0.03 per GB per month for its S3 cloud service, which is a favorite among developers (Dropbox included). 

That said, Apple users will likely start using iCloud a bit more once iOS 8 releases to the public, since that new mobile operating system includes many improvements to iCloud. Syncing is highly improved, iCloud Photo Library will keep all of your photos in iCloud forever (instead of the current 30-day period), and it will soon support and open all document types on any Mac or iOS device. Apple will make several other improvements to iCloud as well, which will become effective starting Sept. 17.

SEE ALSO: 6 Ways Apple Will Fix iCloud In iOS 8

Join the conversation about this story »

Have you heard? The Apple Watch is finally here

CEO Tim Cook announced the arrival of the company's first smartwatch on Tuesday (he also introduced the new iPhone 6 and Apple Pay). While the crowd collectively cooed, he and other Apple members explained the myriad features of the new gadget, which is slated for an early 2015 release

Pricing starts at $349, and there's indication it'll be worth the steep cost. The tiny wearable is ultra customizable, coming in two different sizes with 11 different watch faces, as well as a variety of bands and surface options.

Packed with seemingly endless features, we browsed through the Apple Watch's functionality and picked out the important things you need to know Read more...

More about Iphone, Apple, Features, Tim Cook, and Iphone 6

Some of the best universities in the country are also the most affordable, according to U.S. News & World Report's new list of the best value schools.

Harvard University again topped the magazine's best value schools ranking, which factors in both a school's quality and the average net price for a student receiving financial aid — basically, how much they're actually paying after grants. As U.S. News puts it, "The higher the quality of the program and the lower the cost, the better the deal."

Only schools in the first half of U.S. News' best national universities list were considered for inclusion on their best values ranking.

As Business Insider noted in a post last week, there is often a misunderstood difference between a college's sticker price — the full cost of tuition and fees often most visible on a website — and the net price — what families actually pay after financial aid and grants.

The Ivy League schools offer particularly generous need-based financial aid packages to students, thanks to their large endowments. On average, around half of students at those eight colleges receive financial aid, with an estimated average aid package of $40,000 for the 2012-2013 academic year.

At Harvard, which was the top-ranked school for value, the average annual cost for a student who received grants was just $15,169.

Of the 10 best value schools, nine were also among the 10 best universities on this year's U.S News & World Report list.

Here are the 10 best value universities and the average cost for a student receiving grants:

1. Harvard University — $15,169 (58% of students receive need-based grants)

2. Princeton University — $17,994 (58.8 % of students receive need-based grants)

3. Yale University — $17,352 (52.2% of students receive need-based grants)

4. Stanford University — $19,361 (47.9% of students receive need-based grants)

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology — $21,363 (57.3% of students receive need-based grants)

6. Columbia University — $21,906 (47.6% of students receive need-based grants)

7. Dartmouth College — $22,503 (48.5% of students receive need-based grants)

8. California Institute of Technology — $23,281 (51.2% of students receive need-based grants)

9. Rice University — $19,976 (40.6% of students receive need-based grants)

10. University of Pennsylvania — $23,542 (46.5% of students receive need-based grants)

SEE ALSO: An Ivy League Education Can Be Surprisingly Cheap

FOLLOW US! Check Out BI Colleges On Facebook

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The best inbound lead generation strategies aren’t the ones that leave you cozily waiting for the next prospect to read up on you and eager to learn more.

They’re the ones that have you constantly working on thought leadership, increasing your industry knowledge, and being your software firm’s own PR representative in your own right. You rely on prospects to know the obvious answer: You.

Although, sometimes a prospect can’t even bother themselves to read up. Don’t presume they’re lazy. It could also be because you’re relying on the obvious far too much.

It’s like when you eat a really spicy sandwich and get desperate for a drink. In fact, you get so desperate, you don’t realize you just chugged a whole bottle of scotch.

What’s pretty funny is that doesn’t just happen in cartoons. It can happen to people who are getting far too desperate for a solution. No amount of informative content is going to fix this when they can’t even get themselves together. Why wait until then when you can already do something about it?

• Remember, letting them see the obvious is just a tactic – It’s just like social media. By itself, it’s just a tactic. It’s not an overall strategy when it comes to reaching a potential customer. When trying to communicate your value, it’s important to prioritize the ends just a little bit more than the means. Sometimes you have to present that value in a way that’s glaringly obvious, but other times you might as well have tossed it into their face.
• They’re being distracted by the problem – Yes, problems can be distracting. How? When a prospect is more focused on what won’t work instead of what will, you’re dealing with a tough customer. Sometimes, the only way to draw away that kind of negative focus is with a bit of extra force.
• It adds to your thought leadership image – Being more direct in pointing something out doesn’t have to undermine your thought leadership goals. Being passive doesn’t always have to go hand-in-hand with knowing a lot of answers. In fact, it’s a whole lot more obvious to share your knowledge, share what you represent, with those who are seeking but can’t see what they’re looking for.

The answer isn’t always obvious to everyone. You could stand to gain a few extra software leads from actively searching out prospects and presenting yourself when they’re looking for solutions.

There are four pillars to the inbound marketing methodology: attract, convert, close and delight. When thinking about growing your business, it’s easy to focus on the first three. Who doesn’t want more business? But, did you know it actually costs 6-7x MORE to acquire a new customer than it does to keep a current customer?

Think about the growth potential of your business if you could shift some of your marketing energies to delighting your current customer base rather than constantly trying to find new ones.

That’s why I wanted to dig a little deeper to find out ways in which small business owners can focus on keeping who they have, rather than constantly chasing after new business.

Here are a few of my customer retention tips.

The first mind blowing tip: Build Trust

That’s right, trust. Building trust is the core to creating a deeper relationship and therefore delighting your customers. Building trust is hard work and takes time, but is entirely doable if your entire team is on board. When customers trust a brand, they are more likely to recommend it to someone else (83%), and use it frequently (82%).

So, how can you build trust? Here are a few ideas:

• Impeccable customer service. If you have not implemented a company-wide customer service policy, you need to do that ASAP. Customer services does not stop at the front desk. Each person in your company is a responsible for how that company is received with current and potential customers.
• Consistency. This trickles from the top down. If the president is consistent, employees understand their expectation and that trickles into customer service, which builds trust.
• Totally forth-coming. Let’s face it, consumers are smarter now than ever with information always being right at their fingertips. If you are not being transparent, customers are going to call you out on it. If you messed up an order, admit it. Take responsibility for your actions and your customers will admire you for being truthful.

The next mind blowing tip: Be Helpful

Being helpful is an easy way to show customers you care about them (you DO care, right?) Offering your customers a solution to the problem they face is why they’ve come to you in the first place – so don’t leave them hanging! Be helpful by offering solutions to their problems, needs and preferences. This is yet another tactic to further strengthen their brand enthusiasm toward you.

Ways you can be helpful:

• Offer a alternative solution to their problem, so they have choices.
• Show, don’t say.
• Refrain from saying, “May I help you?,” instead say, “My name is Susan, I will be here if there is something I can help you with.”
• Be honest about whether a product/service is a good fit for THEM.

The last mind blowing tip: Educate

Educate, educate, educate. I can’t get this one out there enough. You are likely the most passionate human being in the world on your particular topic. Why not share your knowledge? I know, I know, some folks say this is tricky being that you could expose trade secrets and all, but strategically sharing what you know automatically positions you as a thought leader in your field and therefore you must be the best, right? Right.

Here are a few ways you can educate your customers:

• Offering informative content such as blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers and videos.
• Inviting your customers to tour behind-the-scenes areas of your company.
• Arranging guest speakers to come and present on a topic that is relevant to your customers.

Freebie Tip! Under Promise and Over Deliver

This is one of my most favorite delighting your customer tips of all time. It’s not unique, but it is the effective: under promise and over deliver.

Think about it this way … if you go out to dinner to your favorite restaurant tonight and the hostess says the wait is going to be 45 minutes, you may not be too happy about that wait, but stay because it IS your favorite restaurant, afterall. What if they ended up seating you in 20 minutes? Wouldn’t you be both you’d be surprised AND delighted? However, if they sat you in an hour, you may get pretty frustrated.

The point is that it’s in the hostesses hands as to what she can “promise” to deliver. If she would have said the wait was actually an hour, you can then choose (or not) to stay there, but at least you were told up front.

Under promise. Over deliver.

But, wait! There’s even more!

• Send handwritten thank you notes to new customers (this goes a long way in this day and age of technology).
• Give a freebie! Have you read the fascinating study about how waiters who leave two mints get 21% better tip? Small gesture, hugely effective.
• Check in with your customers. Ask them how it’s going, be personal about it, let them know you value their opinion and feedback.
• Examine your process.
  • Call the front desk as a customer and see how your receptionist reacts to challenging questions.
  • Go online and checkout as a guest to make sure it’s simple and easy to use.
  • Look at all aspects of contact from a customers perspective and tweak it to perfection.
• Use technology to enhance the experience. I recently read an article about how JetBlue uses Twitter to connect and respond to customer tweets (both good and bad). I tweeted about how awesome it was that they do this, and JetBlue responded to ME in less than 15 minutes. I was shocked! And, delighted. If they can give that attention to detail to a tweet, then they MUST go above and beyond to actual customers.

As a small business owner, it may seem daunting to add yet another layer to your process, but if you can make a few small, personalized tweaks, you can keep your customers happy, delighted and coming back for more. Think Apple can be the only brand people can be enthusiastic about? Think again!

Do You Know How You Won? is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

How did you win your last deal? Why did you win that deal?

Was it because you had the lowest price? If that is your company’s strategy that is a good and proper reason. But it isn’t likely that this is how you won (even if you believe that price is what causes you to lose).

Was it that your solution was so much better than any of your competitor’s that you were the obvious choice. Let’s assume it was. Let’s presume that your solution was the greatest value. How did you create that differentiation? What made it worth paying more to obtain?

Was this prospect a dream client? Did you pursue them because you knew you had the ability to produce that value?

What did you do to help your dream client work their way through their buying process? How did you create value in helping them to understand their needs? Is what you did there different than what you believe your competitors did? What did you do to help your client with their needs?

What did you do during the presentation and proposal stage that drove up the value of your solution? What did you do in all of the later stages that drew a line between you and your competitors? Did you win in the boardroom or was it something you did earlier?

How much of your win was due to the relationship you created? How much trust do you believe you generated and what impact did that have on your winning the opportunity? How did you create that trust? What did you do that helped to you build consensus, to gain the support of their team?

How much of the decision to choose you and your solution did you control? What did you do to make that happen? Why did your client want to work with you? Specifically?

Even though insight is what buyers need, it may not be what they initially want. By the time buyers engage with a salesperson, they may already have an idea of their needs, the solution they believe they want, and what they are willing to pay. So how does the seller use insight to challenge the customer’s thinking without challenging the customer?

Why buyers push-back

When it comes to resistant problems, verbal persuasion rarely works. It can come across as an attack, and make the buyer feel badgered or manipulated. When the seller illuminates a challenge with insight, the buyer does not merely believe the seller is wrong; the buyer needs for the seller to be wrong to protect the status quo. The last thing an overwhelmed buyer needs is to invest time into a problem they do not fully understand, and then buy a complex solution that is not only expensive but could also end up getting them fired.

Stories trump verbal persuasion

But the instant the seller stops trying to impose their agenda on the buyer, the seller eliminates the fight for control, and the seller’s insights are more likely to reach past the customer’s defensive wall. For example, instead of trying to win a debate with a customer, insights are more likely to make it past the buyer’s defensive wall if they are hidden inside an insight scenario (insight based customer story) that functions like a Trojan horse. Because insight scenarios transport the buyer out of the role of a critic, and into the role of a participant, they trump verbal persuasion. Insight scenarios do not merely trump verbal persuasion by disproving counterarguments; they keep the buyer from offering counter arguments in the first place.

Sell more?

If your salespeople shared just one insight scenario per meeting, and did everything else the same, would customers relate more to what your salespeople are selling? Would you sell more?

Executive Buyers agree

According to a recent Gartner survey of executive buyers, 68% feel that salespeople can’t articulate value because they are too busy talking about their product. Without providing context, salespeople are leaving it up to the buyer to figure out why they should buy or even worse care. The solution is that 70% of these buyers felt the best way for salespeople to provide differentiation that they trust is by delivering customer stories.

Next steps

So now’s the time to show your customer facing employees how to create and deliver insight scenarios so that they are able to better articulate value (click for template/guide).

Study after study has confirmed that email remains one of the most direct, efficient and cost-effective tools to engage with customers and drive conversions. But the enormous popularity of email marketing also has a significant downside: consumers’ inboxes are now overflowing with pitches every day. (I just read research that claims the average subscriber receives 416 commercial email messages each month. Based on the looks of my inbox, I’d say the total is even higher than that!)

For digital marketers, it’s a tricky situation to navigate. How can we cut through all the noise and leverage email’s massive – and proven – potential? What can we do to improve our email campaigns to enhance the overall customer experience, increase engagement and ultimately, boost revenue?

One of my top suggestions is to use segmentation, so you can break down your target audience into specific but different groups and deliver relevant, customized offers. But you probably already know that. In the Direct Marketing Association’s National Client Email Report for 2013, more than three quarters of email marketers said they are using segmentation.

Even so, “using segmentation” and “using segmentation well” can be two very different things. DMA also reported that only 37 percent of email marketers were segmenting their lists into more than six different audiences. That’s surprisingly low, considering how crucial segmentation is to creating the kind of personalized messaging that today’s customers truly value – and act on.

If you’re in the majority of email marketers who are using minimal segmentation (or worse, none at all), here are five steps to help you create a more effective strategy:

1. Set clear objectives. Your vision is to become customer-centric, but you need to break that long-term goal into smaller “chunks” you can achieve along the way. Be thoughtful in your approach – especially because success will require a deep dive into your customer data. Ask yourself: What do we want to achieve? How can we demonstrate results? Then, make your list of objectives meaningful and measurable. Consider short-term goals such as improving response rates and/or identifying patterns and behaviors that can help you serve the most relevant content to your customers.
2. Find the right data. How well do your data collection and analysis strategies align with your objectives? Evaluate your current customer database and email response rates, and then chart a course to fill in gaps and make improvements. (Perhaps you need to amp up your welcome email strategy?) Don’t bother collecting and analyzing information you don’t need or can’t use for segmentation – it’s more important to stay focused and keep from feeling overwhelmed.
3. Segment based on profile. Basic demographic segmentation is an easy and effective starting point. Analyze your customer information and create groups based on by age, gender and location – data that you can easily collect at the initial information capture stage.
4. Segment based on behavior. Your customers’ actions tell you what they like and what they don’t. Take a look at purchase frequency and email response activity first, then deepen behavioral segmentation as you nurture engagement with loyal buyers. For example, if information on “product lines purchased” is available, you may want to develop a targeted campaign aimed at high openers and purchasers of those products. (Targeted campaigns can be used to re-engage lapsed customers, too!)
5. Utilize segmentation to drive creatives. This is perhaps contrary to the way we’ve always done things, but it’s worthy of consideration. Instead of finding a segment to fit your campaign, let the most obvious data segments drive the creative process. Then, try testing subject lines, generating user-specific content, etc. By balancing reach and relevance you’ll have the makings of a very successful campaign.

Are you making the most of your data segments? Remember, segmentation doesn’t have to be daunting if you break it down step-by-step. Start with the basic concepts I outlined above, and download our white paper, Segmentation: The Most Overlooked Email Marketing Strategy, for additional insights and ideas to take your segmentation strategy to the next level.

Single product line

Companies that sell just one type of product or product line. the positioning and the solution is clear:
- Less marketing efforts needed to explain the product-line
- More chances to get on the short list as your company stands for this type of product
- Sales people have hardly any efforts for explaining
- Short interesting sales pitch
- Niche market that is entirely understood by management
- Focus by management, marketing, sales, production, development
- Potential buyers know what the brand stands for
- Less training required for both employees, distributors and resellers
- Little chance of cannibalization between products
- Disadvantage when lack of interest or new technology makes product line obsolete.

Multiple product line:

Companies that provide multiple product-lines have serious issues:
- Require a lot of marketing efforts to explain and differentiate the different product lines and models
- Less evident to get on short lists for the not best known products
- High sales efforts to explain all the features, differentiators and benefits of all of the products.
- Sales has longer pitches which decrease the attention
- Large number of product lines for a wide range of markets are too much to be fully understood by management.
- Lack of focus
- Potential buyers can be confused what products the brand has
- More training required for employees, distributors and resellers which they hopefully remember entirely
- Chance of cannibalization between products
- Benefit of jumping to other product lines when lack of interest for a certain product line or new technology that makes a product line obsolete.

What’s your opinion on have single or multiple product lines ?

When it comes to product launches, nobody does it better than Apple. Case in point: people have been waiting in line since September 3^rd for a product that hasn’t even been revealed yet and likely won’t be available until September 19^th.

Whether the iPhone 6 and perhaps the iWatch live up to expectations or not, the amount of buzz they’ve generated is a massive win for Apple from a PR perspective. If you’ve been reading just about any business, consumer or tech publication over the past couple of months, you’ll have likely come across an article or two mentioning the upcoming announcement.

Are you looking to generate a similar buzz for your brand’s next product launch? Here are four ways that you can be more like Apple:

1. Create Intrigue

Far in advance of its events, Apple starts sowing the seeds of intrigue by sending creative invites to influencers. The latest teaser, a close-up image of an Apple product with the text reading only “Wish I could say more,” is a great example of the simple, elegant way they create mystery around their products. All of this works because Apple is notoriously secretive about their products, with a number of sophisticated security measures that ensure each of their announcements is truly a surprise for influencers and the general public.

Do you need Fort Knox-level security surrounding your products? Probably not. But you can start teasing new products with images shared on social media channels or by hinting at upcoming features in briefings with influencers months in advance. You can also strategically give individual, trusted influencers sneak previews with briefings prior to the launch, so they can spread word of mouth for your products to their networks. You want to give away just enough to interest your target audience, but not enough to spoil the surprise of your launch.

2. Go Big

Going home is never even an option for Apple. For its event today, Apple built a mysterious and massive multi-story structure that is almost as large as the venue itself. There have been a number of educated guesses about what’s inside, but regardless of what’s actually in there, its main purpose is to draw attention and encourage speculation. Otherwise, Apple wouldn’t have covered the entire building in a white veil. The structure itself serves as one big piece of marketing collateral for the company.

Your product launch might not be able to support a massive, multimillion dollar event like Apple’s just yet, but you should push your boundaries, wherever they may lie. Consider creating as many supporting marketing materials as possible in advance of your launch, including pieces of content like a press release, e-book, supporting videos and more.

Then, get your PR, marketing and sales engines working together to ensure your big launch reaches as much of your target audience as possible. Have your salespeople email all of your customers and leads, have your PR agency inform influencers and share your supporting content to make the resulting pieces of coverage more interesting, have your marketing team create a stream of posts on social channels about it, and have your CEO send a package to investors about it – you get the idea. Devote all of the resources you can into making your launch a success.

3. Exceed Expectations

Apple consistently surprises influencers with features that were never hinted at or even on their radar. The launch of the first iPhone is a good case study. People knew to expect a phone. But flash back to ye olde days of the mid-aughts, when BlackBerrys and its physical keyboard was the leading smartphone (or PDA, as they were called then), and the combination of new features it introduced was truly unexpected and revolutionary.

Steve Jobs said it best as he stepped on stage, “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along… Today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls…a revolutionary mobile phone…a breakthrough internet communications device….the iPhone. Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” The crowd went wild.

Once you’ve generated some buzz, if you want to have a successful product launch, you have to deliver on everything you’ve promised and more. Consider not mentioning some of the very best new features in briefings with influencers, or perhaps stay mum about other interesting related facts, such as use cases or major customers attached to the announcement. Then, on the day of your launch, reveal additional details to surprise and delight your target audience.

4. Think Different

Apple has succeeded largely because they do product launches differently from their competitors. They’re mysterious, bigger and surprising in a way that other companies’ launches aren’t. As Jobs once said, “innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” If you want to be a leading company in your space, in a way that is more than just a statement in your company descriptor, you have to do something breathtaking.

If your competitors are just sending out press releases, create a series of animated videos to show how your product will change consumers’ lives or the business landscape. If your competitors have press conferences, hijack an industry event by throwing the party of the century to reveal your product. If your competitors send out email blasts, snail mail some cool-looking posters. Whatever you do, be bold.

So here’s to the crazy ones – daring companies pushing the envelope, unafraid to explore new ways to launch products, to get people talking, to change the world. May your next launch be talked about one day.

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Want to learn more? Check out our free eBook!

In The Ultimate Guide to a Successful Product Launch, you’ll learn:

- How to plan before a big event or product launch
- The strategy behind promoting and publishing collateral
- How to approach social media and influencers before, during and after a launch
- What and how to measure to keep a campaign going

Download

One of the biggest advantages of repurposing your e-book content is getting a second chance to engage with your buyer personas. There are many common ways to repurpose all of the resources and time you put into your e-book such as blogging, sending promotional emails, and posting announcements on social media. With that, there are still numerous sharing channels that your business can take advantage of, you just may not know it yet.

Here are 6 creative ways to repurpose your e-book content that will educate leads, direct leads into the sales funnel, and show thought leadership:

1. Start a podcast

Podcasting is more personal than blogging and it’s a great way to enable people to get to know you and your brand. According to Converse Digital, podcasting has increased 105% and podcast listeners have grown 163% since 2006.* Your new podcasting career is one audio file away. Simply start off by breaking down your e-book chapters into episodes.

2. Design an infographic

Infographics are great for visual learners who like quick snippets of information. These graphics are easily shared on social media and may appeal to higher level professionals who don’t necessarily have the time to read an e-book front to back.

3. Lead a webinar

Collect major themes of your e-book for a webinar or webinar series. As stated by the Content Marketing Institute, 61% of B2B marketers rate webinars as the most effective content marketing tactic.** Plus, webinar slides are a great way to add to your SEO strategy, especially  when you upload them to a website like SlideShare.

4. Submit a News Release

Be proud of your e-book accomplishment and create some buzz in your business community. You can customize your news release titles to be dynamic and eye catching while still maintaining optimization of keywords.

5. Pin away on Pinterest

Don’t rule out Pinterest on your social media channels because e-book content still applies. You can post your e-book announcement, e-book chapters, and blog posts about your e-book on this popular, highly-visual social channel. Put one of the ladies on your team in charge and she’ll know what to do.

6. Personalize your e-book signature

Encourage your co-workers to personalizing their email signatures highlighting your company’s latest e-book release with a direct link to download. This will increase e-book views and downloads by people you communicate with on a regular basis.

Remember, there’s no need to recreate the wheel every time you develop a piece of content. By repurposing e-book content in creative ways, you are getting the most value out of your e-book investment.

If you’re looking for even more ideas, make sure to check out our e-book, How to Turn a Single E-Book Into a 101 Piece Content Marketing Machine, which features pro-tips by SmartBug Media’s content marketers.

“Click”

Did you hear that? That’s the sound of a switch turning on as PR professionals realize they can make revenue gravy. What’s PR revenue gravy? Here’s my perspective.

First, understand PR is an integral part of marketing, not an offshoot. As a C-level executive with 30 years of marketing and sales experience, I can tell you unequivocally, everything revolves around Revenue Marketing™ i.e., marketing’s ability to drive revenue. The transformation of marketing from cost center to revenue center is happening because of technologies like marketing automation that track automatic responses to a prospect’s online behavior. Tracking behaviors creates a closed-loop reporting system between marketing and sales. The power to measure digital behavior enables PR to track lead sources back to specific campaigns, just like all other marketing programs.

Inherent in this approach is the ongoing digital dialog marketing orchestrates resulting in a “prospect conversion” – completing a form and becoming a name in the database for future marketing, completing a form and asking for more information, a piece of content or a call. Every digital communication channel leveraged by PR (web, email, social, mobile, etc.) and all content (press releases, publicity placements, web copy, landing pages, emails, blogs, white papers, case studies, etc.) must be optimized for this activity. By optimizing, I mean inserting a unique tracking link within the content that identifies from where the lead originated. This identification empowers PR to create and executive campaigns that make revenue gravy.

Case Study Vignette #1: The Traditional Approach

The switch must be turned on at both the PR agency and customer site. Consider this example using two recent discussions – one with a digital PR agency where the switch had not clicked on, another with a customer making PR gravy. Many PR agencies have successfully made the transition from print to digital PR from a traditional definition of PR. Recently I met such a company at a conference in Atlanta, GA, and began chatting about the future of digital PR. As I was listening to what this agency was doing, it dawned on me they had the same traditional PR focus (outward communication and building awareness), but were just applying it in a different channel – digital. This company was uneducated about how to make PR revenue gravy and consequently, was missing an incredible opportunity to create leads for clients as part of their PR efforts. Why? Because, like most PR people they were not wired to think about direct revenue results. They live in a world characterized by press releases, articles and media relations that are pushed through various digital and print channels designed to bring awareness, influence and engage key constituents in a market. They also have not kept up with technology – especially marketing automation – and don’t understand the possibilities they might create for clients. For example, in 2012 as I was working with a global software company who underwent a major rebranding and as they re-launched the brand, had no links for name capture or further communication or interest in any of the programs around the re-launch. What a waste.

Case Study Vignette #2: PR with Revenue Marketing

Compare this to a recent conversation with a savvy PR professional working in a global software and services organization. For him, PR was all the traditional elements plus a lead conversion channel. He worked closely with his company’s demand generation team to treat PR as another channel for leads. Every piece of content that the PR department proactively pushed out to the public, i.e. press releases, bylined articles, web copy, etc. was optimized for lead conversion. The result? This PR professional tracks all leads created as a result of PR programs and tracks them as a “PR lead source” from inception to close. He is making PR gravy.

In addition, this brilliant PR professional used demand generation to push his own publishing agenda. By using the technology backbone of his demand generation team, he created a series of small case studies that he placed in the market through email/social, which gained media attention. Rather than reacting, i.e. waiting for media to call him and ask for something based on their publishing agenda, he proactively used demand generation programs to entice media to use his publishing agenda. And, this program was optimized for making PR gravy.

Conclusion

I’m not saying PR should change its focus – we need the communication, awareness, and brand building PR brings. I am saying both PR agencies and PR professionals within companies should consider the big picture with all these moving parts and learn how to optimize PR for lead conversion. The push for all parts of marketing to show tangible ROI is here to stay. PR professionals have a huge opportunity to produce thick PR revenue gravy and demonstrate marketing ROI.

Does PR represent a “lead source” in your company? If so, I’d love to hear about it!

This is a guest post by Craig Elias the creator of Trigger Event Selling and the author of the award-winning sales book SHiFT! Harness the Trigger Events that TURN PROSPECTS INTO CUSTOMERS.

Following executive changes could generate more high value leads than almost every other lead generation method combined.

For every decision maker that changes jobs there are at least four high-value opportunities generated:

1. Where did the decision maker go?
2. Find out where the person they replaced went and call them, too.
3. Contact the person who replaced your prospect at their previous position.
4. Find out where the person who took your prospect’s job came from because that company now has a vacancy. Whomever fills that position will be new in their role and is now up to 10X more likely to become your customer.

When someone gets a new job, there are a few things you need to understand:

• They now have more money, more authority to spend that money, and more influence during their “honeymoon phase” at their new company.
• They want to make a great first impression so they are up to 10X more likely to change vendors.
• They have little patience for the status quo, which means they will make changes happen fast.

A recent survey of IT executives showed that 80% of the newly hired or promoted IT Leaders who would spend $1,000,000 or more on new initiatives did so within 90 days of starting their new job.

Let me show you how.

• Let’s assume that the US census data about 3% of people changing jobs every month is relevant to your market/territory.
• Let’s assume that it takes 30 days for a company to find a replacement for a decision maker who just left their job.
• Let’s assume that you have 1,000 prospects you are watching.
• Let’s assume you start tracking and following up in January.

In January you’ll have 30 people who change jobs plus the people they replaced – that’s 60 prospects.

In February you’ll have 30 more people who just changed, the people they replaced, PLUS the 30 who filled the vacancy created when your prospect left their position last month — that’s now 90 people.

In March you’ll have 30 more people who just changed jobs, the 30 people they replaced, the 30 more who filled last month’s vacancy, PLUS the 30 more who filled the vacancy left by the person who filled the vacancy in month two — now that’s 150 prospects. By March you’ll have 150 people who have changed jobs and now are up to 10X more likely to become your customer.

If you continue this for 6 months you’ll have 210 new opportunities in the month of June alone.

If you continue this for 12 months you‘ll have 390 new opportunities in the month of December.

If you total all those numbers for the entire year you would have 2,700 people who changed jobs and are up to 10X more likely to become your customer.

Do this for two years and for every 1,000 contacts you track, you would have 9,720 high-value leads. Now what would happen if you also added the list of contacts of your existing customers and you followed the same sequence when they changed jobs? What would happen if your marketing team also added a prospect nurturing list of 10,000 people and they told sales every time a prospect being nurtured, changed jobs?

Now all you need to do is use SalesLoft to give you the email addresses of all those who are new in their jobs.

To learn more about the lead generation strategy outlined above, click here to watch a 15 minute webinar with Craig Elias.

The foundation of lead generation is technology, and your success in acquiring new customers greatly depends on how efficient your lead generation solutions are. Developing and implementing lead gen solutions can be a very time-consuming process, and you may not be familiar with all the specifics of lead gen technology. Many companies are not sure whether to outsource lead generation, or to do it themselves. Whether you outsource or DIY in the end depends on your own strategy. If you really want to be an expert in lead generation, and have full control over the process, you should do it yourself. If you want to focus on your energy on other things, or if you don’t have good technical or design teams, you should consider outsourcing.

To make the decision process easier, we are going to look at some aspects of lead generation and discuss DIY vs outsourcing.

Lead Gen Forms

 

Designing a good lead gen form is the bread and butter of lead generation. But it’s also a highly technical undertaking. There are many things to look our for when designing a lead gen form, e.g., integrating real-time verification, enable them on mobile, and other things. Moreover, forms need to be designed well, and catch the customer’s eye in order to grab their attention.

• Should You do it Yourself?

Yes, if you have good development and design teams who are experienced enough to implement campaigns, split-test, and create mobile campaigns.

• Should You Outsource?

Many lead generation companies offer whitelabel campaigns which can capture high-quality leads. If this is taking up too many resources and man-hours, you’re better off outsourcing this.

Lead Verification

Lead verification can be tricky business. There are simple things that companies can docan be done in-house, such as checking if there is obvious fraud or examining whether IP addresses and ZIP codes match. You can also measure how much time users spend on filling in forms. But there are many companies that offer external cross-referencing services to verify leads with database lookup in order to prevent fraud.

• Should You Do it Yourself?

In order to do this in-house, you need to be precise ad be able to verify in real-time.

• Should You Outsource?

If you want to prevent fraud from entering your ecosystem, it’s much easier to outsource this to experienced companies and integrate their technology into your lead generation system

Lead Tracking

Tracking leads is important in order to determine appropriate follow-up actions. When you’re a small company without a big marketing budget, you might want to choose to do this with spreadsheets. Nevertheless, the easiest way to track leads is to find a good CRM (customer relationship management) tool. Especially when you generate a lot of leads, it may be easier to implement a system that allows different departments to follow-up on leads in a structured and organized way. The only issue you may have in implementing this type of tool is that you may have to train your staff to use this type of tool. That’s why you should choose a tool that matches your company’s technical knowledge.

• Should You Do it Yourself?

If you can afford it, it’s better to outsource this.

• Should You Outsource?

Find a good CRM tool that is easy to use and help you move leads along the sales funnel. Developing sophisticated CRM tools is an art of its own, excel files won’t do.

Lead Scoring

The prerequisite for successful lead scoring is that you have access to a lot of data so you can establish correlations between data points and sales conversions. This allows you to develop data models which can help you to implement real-time lead scoring to predict lead quality. In order to do this, you have to be good at collecting and analyzing data.

• Should You DIY?

If you know have skills in data analysis and data modeling, this is something you can develop yourself since no one else has a better idea of what “high lead quality” means to you.

• Should You Outsource?

Data analysis is a very highly complex and technical undertaking that needs continuous revision in order to work well. If you don’t have experience in data modelling, or enough data to establish correlations, it’s better to outsource.

To conclude, there are many things that companies can do in-house to be successful at lead generation. Some small businesses may not have the resources to outsource everything, and there are certainly some things you can well without being an expert. However, if you realize you are wasting resources and the ROI is missing, it is better to out-source to companies that are specialized. ReviMedia, for example, offers full-service lead generation covering the technical backend from lead gen forms, verification, and lead scoring.

For some folks, September’s the end of summer and back to the old routine. But for others, they could be feeling a lot of pinches in their wallet even though your marketing spend currently looks stable.

Why does it feel like you’re already counting your bills before you’re getting sales leads?

Here’s a possible explanation: You might actually be looking forward. Try as you might, you can’t feel completely satisfied with what you’ve done to prepare for the upcoming quarter. After all, this year alone saw that 8 out of 10 CMOs increased spending on marketing content. What makes you think some other expense won’t pop up?

It’s like you’re a billionaire dad with a little girl going “Daddy, I want a Perez Hilton doll for Christmas! And a golden teddy bear. And a Disney castle!” As the holidays get closer, the prospect of spending so much on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s looks mighty different to the ones footing the bills.

For B2B marketers, it feels the same with market strains coming in just around the same time. Counting how much you’ll end up spending (again) is almost a knee-jerk reaction. This might be a good time to apply a bit of financial know-how to your marketing but here’s the real good news.

You can still make marketing cheaper by counting your sales leads.

More specifically, if you’ve already gauged how many sales leads you’ve produced up till now, you’ll have a better idea on where you can go the next time you put money into marketing. For instance:

• Do what you did last year, only better – What did you do last year that required a few extra marketing dollars? What can you do to avoid that this time? If you spent so much trying to connect with a high-value prospect, wouldn’t it be cheaper to just talk on the phone now that they’re your customer?

• Identify what you never really needed – Following that, sometimes certain tactics were never necessary to begin with. Why keep spending? If you’ve found out that “soft” factors were more significant than “hard” facts, why spend so much finding out those facts?

• Learn when to say, no – There are still several more cost-saving methods you can try to manage your marketing budget in the coming quarter. But if you can’t learn to say no, you’d be incapable of executing any of them. Daddy’s little girl might be better off earning that golden teddy bear on her own instead of counting on you to dote more money on her.

When you count how much your sales leads are worth, you have an easier time understanding the process that gave them that worth. And when that process is understood, you can have a better idea on what made it expensive and how you can avoid incurring any more additional costs. Don’t fret and start counting your bills. Count how much you managed to earn so that you can pay them!

Today’s guest post is from Cosmo Mariano from GetLift. Cosmo is a demand-gen, content marketing strategist and almost as importantly, Cosmo and Jason Miller from LinkedIn will be speaking on an amazing Funnelholic webinar on content marketing: 3 Steps to Creating Content that Converts Like Crazy. — Join us on September 24, 2014 10AM Pacific Standard Time.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on a flight from Toronto to Austin. The flight was about to take off just as I was trying to wrap up a conference call when the stewardess walked by and politely asked me to put my phone away. I nodded and lowered the phone from my ear. But I didn’t hang up as the call was at a critical point and the plane wasn’t moving yet. About 20 seconds later, I was asked to confirm an action item on the call. Just as I emitted my whisper of acknowledgment, the stewardess paused beside me and gave me a disappointed look and sternly said in a voice much more audible than my whisper “C’mon Sir. You’re better than this”. Sufficiently embarrassed, I hung up, fumbled an apology and slumped shamefully in my seat.

C’mon Marketing. You’re better than this.

Marketers face various degrees of shame and disappointment on a regular basis. Every time our carefully crafted content isn’t shared or liked. Every time our leads are soundly rejected by sales. Every time we execute an integrated campaign that wildly misses our targets.

What are some of the reasons for marketing failure? Well, it’s no secret that Marketers are constantly trying to do too much in too little time. According to a Content Marketing Institute study in 2014, the best-in-class B2B marketer is using 15 tactics and 7 social media platforms.

Remove the guesswork from your campaigns.

One of the by-products of constantly being in execution mode is that it’s very difficult to take time to validate the inputs of our campaigns. Specifically, I’m talking about inputs such as buyer personas, the buying cycle mapping and all the unique customer insights. For many best-in-class marketing departments, these foundational elements drive decisions around messaging and themes as well as campaign strategy and tactics.

A shared view of the customer journey.

These marketers have removed the guesswork from many of their decisions by using a company-wide agreed-upon view of the customer’s buyer journey. Investing the effort to develop their buyer personas and map the buying cycle allows them to know what content matters, where this content should be found, what triggers a buying journey, what milestones much be achieved to progress along the journey and who’s involved in the journey.

So the next time you’re faced with trying to explain a campaign that misses targets, go back to the beginning and look at the assumptions, facts and data that you used and make sure that they are not undermining your success.

If you are a marketer who want’s to convert content like crazy, join us for : 3 Steps to Creating Content that Converts Like Crazy — September 24, 2014 10AM Pacific Standard Time.

Cosmo is a demand-gen visionary, best-practice marketing performance Yoda and key strategist. Certified in SiriusDecisions best practices and Eloqua marketing automation, Cosmo assists client executive teams in overcoming roadblocks so they can become customer-centric, drive engagement and grow sales pipeline contribution. Armed with his visionary approach and belief in customer centricity, Cosmo has been instrumental in bridging the gap between product marketing and lead generation for corporations across North America.

Image provided by Richard Masoner

Many businesses drive traffic to their websites in an effort to grow their newsletter subscribers, as email marketing will tend to convert at a much higher rate than paid search marketing and other traditional marketing. Your email list is filled with prospects that are genuinely interested in what your business offers. So, soft selling them through a newsletter tends to produce excellent results.

When you begin to build up your newsletter subscribers it allows you to keep pushing traffic back to your website, which will eventually start to produce more actions, whether that is leads or sales for your business. When you create an email newsletter that produces results it can have a tremendous impact on your sales.

Here are ten simple tips to help you increase the number of newsletter subscribers your website generates.

1. Enticing Free Offer

You need to offer something of value in order to get your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. Access to case studies, coupon codes, or an eBook is just some of the many options available that perform well. You are asking them to submit their contact information, so provide them something of value that they simply cannot turn down.

2. Visible Opt-In Form

Make it as simple as possible for your visitors to find your offer. This means including a clearly visible opt-in form above the fold. They should be able to notice it immediately after landing on your website. Don’t hide it out of view and don’t make the user scroll down to discover it. Not all of your visitors will explore all areas of your website, so put it in plain view. This will greatly increase your opt-in rate.

3. Multiple Opt-In Forms

While you do need one in plain sight, you also need to have them in multiple places on your website. We have two opt-in forms on our sidebar that is displayed on every single page of our site and we also have one at the very bottom in the footer of every page. This ensures that every visitor is presented with the offer.

4. Clear Call-to-Action

Your visitors should be able to quickly identify what your offer is within seconds of seeing it. Make sure you use a clear call-to-action that leaves nothing to question. Our free eBook offer has a very simple offer with a “Download Now!” button and our newsletter opt-in has a very clear message along with a “Join Now!” button. Our visitors know immediately what the offer is even if they just slightly glance at it.

5. Minimal Required Fields

It is important that you don’t have any unnecessary opt-in fields on your forms. The less information you ask for, the better your subscribe rate will be. For example, we only ask for a name and email address to download our eBook offer or join our free weekly newsletter. The less information the visitor is required to complete, the better. Many forms will ask for phone numbers, addresses, etc. That will turn people away from your offer.

6. Opt-In Forms on Your Blog Posts (ex: Exit Intent)

Your business should be blogging, so make sure to include an opt-in form at the end of each blog post or at least make sure one is visible while the reader is engaging with your content. You can also use a popup that presents an offer when the visitor is leaving your blog. There are several non-intrusive popup options available that utilize exit-intent technology, only presenting the offer when it detects that your visitor is about to leave your website.

7. Clear Confirmation Page

After your visitor submits to join your offer make sure that you send them to a confirmation page that explains the next steps. If they must confirm their email address tell them to check their email. If you are offering a downloadable product let them know how to access it. Provide clear simple instructions and make it easy for your subscribers to join.

8. Double Opt-In Process

The goal is to build a very responsive and targeted list, so not only will requiring a double opt-in keep your list CAN-SPAM compliant, but it will also ensure that it is a very high quality list. A subscriber will have to double opt-in to join, and this signals that they are very interested in what you are offering. Would you rather a list of 10,000 subscribers that are not really interested or a list of 500 that will open every newsletter you send out and return to your website?

9. Split Test

Test multiple opt0in forms and offers to determine what your audience responds the best to. There is no way to just guess. You have to try multiple options and narrow down based on conversion rate. Make small adjustments and see what the results are. Sometimes the slightest change can make a huge difference if your conversion numbers. Also, split test several different newsletter styles to see what ones your subscribers respond the best to. There are many things to eliminate from your email newsletter that can really help you push your subscribers back to your website.

10. Promote Your Newsletter Across Social Media

Make sure to let your social media audience know how they can subscribe to your list. This is a great way to touch those that left your website without doing it. Also, it can help spread the world if people re-tweet and share your social posts. You should be engaging with your social media audience anyway, so make sure you mention your newsletter to them.

There has been a shift in the UK and the US sales sector in recent years as it slowly evolves into a genuine profession. This has been achieved through research, by providing internal and academic training and development programs to employees, and by hiring new graduates in sales positions. 

Some of the factors, which have led to this transition include:

• Rise of Globalization in the business world leading to intense competition;
• Increased knowledge of products by buyers due to easily accessible information which in turn means that these customers prefer interacting with specific salespeople more appropriate to their needs;
• Increased scrutiny from legislators due to a history of consumer product miss-selling mishaps across a variety of industries.

An article was published in the Sunday Times recently, which stated that the shift in the sales world meant that salespeople are, “more interested in helping their customers than in getting the contract signed.” Although it’s slightly more complex than just that, it’s a good indication of how swiftly things are changing. Another step in that direction is companies who are starting to understand that great communication and customer service skills will inevitably lead to a solid sales performance.

Rather than looking for a temporary easy fix, it is important that a sustained approach is taken by companies in order to have positive development for both the sales professionals and organisations.

Ford is great example of how a company has embraced the new shift in sales, by putting their focus on hiring employees with client-centric competencies and natural talents as opposed to past experiences. This gamble has paid off as the company has seen an improvement across multiple areas including sales, profitability and customer feedback.

In order to help you go about ‘professionalising your sales organisation’ Turnstone released a White Paper describing 6 key principles, which will help you transform your sales team as well as shape the talent pipeline. They are follows:

1. Recognize the context of today’s business.

In order to survive in today’s value-focused environment, come up with a strategic plan and have the proper balance of talent, business knowledge and skills, which will ensure that your organisation is maximising the effectiveness of its sales team.

You can also look at your sales operation and if possible outsource certain activities to specialists, which might boost your performance in the short and long term.

2. Eradicate and avoid employing “dead wood”:

Get in the habit of reviewing your sales team’s performances and getting rid of any deadwood as they are a drain on your team and will hinder their continued success. Keep improving your sales by hiring as needed, using criteria like quality, talent, skills and potential for the future instead of focusing on past experiences.

3. Understand the modern sales context.

Hire according to creativity, agility and professionalism. Look at successful recruiters, consider trainings provide by an accredited professional body. Turnstone’s Nick Christian advises companies to, “Look for training that is founded on solid principles that have evolved to suit the modern business world.”

It’s not enough for an employee to simply go through a training, it needs to be used and remembered as well. The way to ensure that is to teach and provide development through knowledge, role-play and practice. This way, they will be ready to tackle issues in their practical day-to-day work life.

4. Maintain the business-development momentum.

Enrich and boost the pipeline with quality people. This translates to new talent with the right attitude and outlook, which is reinforced by high-quality trainings. They can help generate meetings and by pairing them with seasoned salespeople for client visits and meetings you are helping them to learn and fine-tune their new skills and experiences. It creates a win-win situation where there will be an increased commitment and desire to develop the pipeline.

5. Recognise the need for wide-ranging business know-how at higher levels.

This is especially true for complicated ‘megadeals’. The ability to interact with the C-Suite is facilitated by a strong grasp of advanced business principles along with a clear understanding of the customer’s business. Deep insight, creativity and agile thinking founded on the ability to create and offer something new to the customer is crucial at this level.

6. Use new business channels to your advantage.

It is imperative that sales people learn to use and adapt to social media tools like Twitter or LinkedIn. Not only can these tools help to generate leads but they also facilitate communication and discussion with customers. The world of Social Media is very different from what many older salespeople are used to and therefore they may feel shy or strange about using them. However, excellent communication skills such as confidence, being able to articulate and form your words clearly continue to remain key to the success of salespeople whether it’s via social media, over the phone or in person.

For the complete version of the White Paper, click here

Americans often get a bad rap for having little knowledge of the world outside the 50 states, but some countries are so obscure that many people haven't heard of them.

In the United Nations, though, where every all 193 member states get a vote, even the smallest countries have a voice. And even small countries can be remarkable in their own way. Here are six obscure countries you should get to know.

Lesotho

More than once, my friend from the tiny nation of Lesotho has had customs and immigration officers stare quizzically at her passport before Googling to see if the country was real. 

Lesotho is both in south Africa and, quite literally, in South Africa. The country, about 100 miles wide, is entirely surrounded by the larger nation of South Africa.

Lesotho's economy and security is almost entirely dependent on South Africa, and the United Nations says more than 40% of the population is "ultra-poor."

Although Lesotha is tiny, the country has spectacular canyons and mountains. It is one of the very few African nations that regularly sees snow.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

No, it's not a hipster cover band; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is actually an archipelago of Islands in the Caribbean. 

St. Vincent refers to the country's main island, and the Grenadines refers to the top two-thirds of a chain of islands to the south.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is amazingly beautiful. In fact, you've almost definitely already admired its sparkling seas, rugged jungles, and sandy shores. St. Vincent was the location used for Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.  

Benin

According to the BBC, Benin is one of Africa's most stable democracies.

Located in West Africa, Benin was once part of the Slave Coast, where imprisoned Africans were shipped across the Atlantic to slave-drivers.

Despite recent economic growth, Benin is one of the world's poorest countries. Cotton is one of its primary exports, and Benin continues to press Western countries to cut their subsidies to enable it to compete more fairly. 

Although you may not have heard of Benin, you have definitely heard of one of its major religions: Voodoo. 

Voodooism is said to have originated in Benin, and while it was banned for a time, it is now celebrated at an annual Voodoo Day (below). Far from being a mysterious and dark cult, Voodoo actually describes a range of indigenous beliefs and traditional rituals. 

Nauru

Nauru is minuscule. At its widest point, the pacific island only measures 3.5 miles across. 

With fewer than 9,400 residents, it is also the second smallest country by population, beaten only by the Vatican City.

Despite its small size and remote location, Nauru is no stranger to conflict. In 1878, a disagreement at a wedding escalated into a decade-long civil war that killed 500 people — roughly a third of the population.

The country was taken over by the Germans before the World War I, liberated by Australia during the war, taken over by the Japanese in World War II, and then liberated again at the end of the war.

Nauru's historical chief export has given it a not-so-flattering nickname, "Bird S--- Island." Thousands of years of bird droppings meant that until recently, the country could rely on its phosphate reserves to keep the economy going.  

However, corruption, poor planning, falling prices, and depleted reserves mean that Nauru increasingly depends on foreign aid. Countries like Australia, Russia, and China all compete to buy its diplomatic support internationally.

Suriname

Unless you're Dutch or from South America, there's a decent chance you've never heard of Suriname. 

The country lies in northern South America and only achieved independence in 1975. Unlike its neighbors who speak Spanish, Portuguese, or French, the Surinamese speak Dutch. 

A former colony of the Netherlands, Suriname is notable because of its banana republic politics. The current President of Suriname, dictator Dési Bouterse (below), is a military colonel who has controlled the country from behind the scenes for years, taking center stage as president in 2010. 

President Bouterse, leader of the deeply ironic National Democratic Party, has been convicted of drug smuggling and accused of murder.  

Last month his son, Dino Bouterse, admitted to a federal court in New York that he was involved in drug trafficking, illegal firearms, and a strange plan to allow Hezbollah operatives to attack the U.S. from a base in Suriname in return for a $2 million. The operatives were actually undercover U.S. agents.

Mauritania

Mauritania, which lies in the Sahara desert, is a depressing place with a horrific human rights record.  

Its government has been accused of torture. Female genital mutilation is widespread. Although owning slaves was made illegal in 2007, 10-20% of the country is still enslaved. 

Mauritania was the last country to make slavery illegal in 1981, but it took another 26 years before owning slaves was actually made a crime. Despite increasing protests against slavery, The New York Times reports the government — which administers fundamentalist Islamic law — shows little commitment to actually do anything about the practice.  

As well as forced labor, masters frequently rape slaves with authorities almost invariably turning a blind eye.

SEE ALSO: This Footage Of A Gunman's Mall Siege In Australia Shows Cops' Amazing Restraint

Join the conversation about this story »

On every football team you have the team of starters and you have a practice squad, their job is to represent what the competitions offense or defense game plan or playbook might look like. Each week the starters practice against these players to gain a better perspective of what the real competitor will do during the game with the objective improving their odds of winning. As a sales leader it is your job to ensure your team is prepared not only for each sales call but for unexpected situations that might arise at any time during the sales process. You are a critical success factor and to improve the professionalism of your team you must build a practice squad mentality.

I have often stated that I don’t see enough role playing during sales training meetings, role playing must be a cornerstone during your monthly training programs. One of the best ways to teach: skill building, strategy development and presentation skills is the use of a Case Study.

The case study allows multiple salespeople to work together on a project basis and compete against other members of your team. We recently completed a large project for a major technology company where we built a sales framework that changes the approach of the salesperson and alters their traditional relationship with their clients. One of methodologies we employed to ensure we could validate the understanding of the framework and use of the sales tools was a Case Study exercise. I want to review the process simply to encourage you to build this kind of learning experience into your training programs.

The following were the components of that case study:

• A detailed description of the firm and its go to market strategy
• A description of 7 potential players, titles, years employed
• A limited description of the existing technology
• An overview of the Industry this company competed in
• Limited financial objectives
• Miscellaneous information, some distracting, some valid

The salesperson or team could make two sales calls, the first with one person, and then a second call with two other members of the company. Each call was between 10-15 minutes, this could vary based upon the number of salespeople in your organization. There were Pre-Call Planning tools and a set of Sales Discovery Guides and worksheets designed to summarize their findings.

HINT: The individuals who played the roles of the customer had their own case study with additional facts, inside political issues, defined personality styles and hidden agendas.

Once the salespeople finished their second call, and discussed their findings they had the opportunity to ask two additional questions of any person within the company.

The deliverable included a formal presentation by the sales team of: 1) what they uncovered during discovery, 2) perceptions of the firm and 3) formal product/services recommendation including a sales presentation as to why buy from us!

Using this kind of training will allow the sales leadership team to view their salespeople in action, observe their skills and test their creativity. Even if you don’t go to the effort to create this formal of a process, building more role playing into your sales training programs will improve your team-put them in pressure situations in the office and they will perform as professionals in the field.

It's your last day of work. Since giving  your two weeks' notice, you've sent HR your formal letter of resignation, cleaned out your desk, tied up loose ends, and said your goodbyes.

Your departure seems to be going smoothly, and you're happy to be ending your tenure on a high note.

But then, just hours before you walk out the office doors for the last time, you say the wrong thing.

"Exiting employees have said the dumbest things on their way out the door," says Dana Manciagli, a career expert and author of "Cut the Crap, Get a Job!" "Some do it because they feel entitled to say whatever stupid things are on their mind, while others, like those who lost their jobs, are just bitter. Some just do it because they're emotional or have held grudges for too long." 

No matter what the reason, it's a bad move. You always want to leave your company on the best terms possible, without burning any bridges, she says.

Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and the author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job," says: "You want to be remembered for making a positive contribution to the company — not for something worthy of a YouTube clip or rivaling Tom Cruise's famed departure in 'Jerry Maguire.'" 

Leaving on good terms translates into good references and trust, and no level of expertise can replace those coveted attributes, she says. So don't let your hair down after you put in your two weeks' notice, and don't let the stress of changing jobs or any pent-up anger drive you to say something you'll later regret.

"Just treat this day like any other workday," Taylor says. "It's not the time to gossip or have a pity-party. You're here to wrap up loose ends and mitigate the amount of follow-up necessary after you leave. Professionalism should be top of mind."

Here are 12 things you should never say on your last day of work:

"This place is a sinking ship."

"Why do people feel compelled to make remaining employees feel badly just because you are moving on? I don't get it. But stop it," says Manciagli.

Instead, you could say: "I wish you all the best of luck, and I enjoyed my time here."

"I'll be unreachable for a couple weeks."

In most cases, there are a few loose ends to tie up after you leave a company, even if administrative. "Most employers appreciate the idea that you are available to help if something comes up," Taylor says. "Of course if this is abused by a new employee, you can draw boundaries later, but it's an appropriate offer to make before you leave."

"Let's stay in touch."

"The reason why this one is dumb is because it's a phony proposition," Manciagli says. "It's up there with, 'let's do lunch,' yet nobody is accountable for making that happen." It's fine to say this to those who you're close with — but don't say it to colleagues who you barely spoke to during the five years you worked together.

Try something like this, instead: "I will make sure we're connected on LinkedIn so we can stay in touch."

"I'm super excited about my new job!"

If you're resigning, your boss may make conversation and ask when you start your new job. This is a good time to tone it down and avoid gloating, Taylor suggests. "And, you never know if you're leaving the frying pan for the fire. Keep your bridges intact."

"You don't know how to manage people." 

Direct insults to your manager are likely to be the biggest regret of your departure. "When a future company does their due-diligence, who do you think they will call? Or if, later, you decide to return to the company, who will your future manager call for a reference? Oh, yeah, the person you just insulted," says Manciagli.

The only solution is to say nothing negative at all to your manager. Take the high road. 

"You should look for another job."/"Are you really going to stay and work for him/her?"

Many people feel, on their last day, that they should send out the warning signal to others. "Why? To validate their own departure; to give them self-confidence that leaving is the right move," Manciagli explains. "Unfortunately, it's just rude and disrespectful. The remaining workers may enjoy their role and will be picking up the workload from the downsizing. Leave them alone!"

Taylor agrees. "You may have the temptation to be vindicated about your departure by checking in with others, or worse, trying to feed into any dissatisfaction — but that's a high-risk endeavor. The workplace can be cutthroat and not all your colleagues may be trustworthy confidantes. Some may want to ensure that you won't be back to compete with their trajectory up the food chain. You're better off venting with friends or family outside the office."

"No, thanks. I don't need any help."

Whether you're leaving to pursue another job or you've just been fired, your colleagues or bosses may offer to help with you transition or job search. Don't turn down their offers!

"You don't know who they know at other companies. You don't know if they are someone you want to review your resume or cover letter," Manciagli says. "Say, 'Yes, I greatly appreciate that offer. May I connect with you on LinkedIn, and then contact you for help in my career move?'"

"I never really liked working with you."

For the same reasons you should never offend your boss, you don't want to insult your colleagues or subordinates. You never know — maybe one day they'll be on the hiring committee for your dream job.

"How are you handling this position in the future?"

"Most managers are still figuring that out unless your termination was in the works for a while, and even if they have a plan, there's no particular reason for them to divulge it," Taylor explains. "Your curiosity may loom large, but the question will be viewed as brazen and inappropriate. Simply stated, if it doesn't project you as being a polite, helpful, and professional employee, don't do it or say it on your last day."

"I wasn't the problem."

"You may be tempted to drop a few bombs if you're suddenly being terminated, and list all the problems and people you feel have created the nightmare of a job you had," Taylor says. "But this won't win points with your boss, and may get back to your colleagues. Keep in mind that some employers ask for references from peers, and you want to maintain positive relationships with them, too."

"I'd never, ever work here again"

"If it was so miserable for you while you were earning a paycheck and benefits, then why did you stay?" Manciagli asks. "Every employee has choices to make. I don't see bars on the windows and doors or your feet chained to the floor. Yet now, because you are on your way out, you disclose it was that bad. A little dramatic for my taste and makes you look totally unaccountable for your own career."

Also, never say "never." 

"Your last day is rarely the last affiliation with your employer," Taylor says. "You may well run into your boss or colleagues at functions, through social media, or even at future jobs. Your industry is a tightly woven fabric of people, and you want your brand to be consistently professional now and in the future for optimal career success."

SEE ALSO: 17 Things Successful People Never Say

Join the conversation about this story »

• These advertisements are "shockvertising" at its finest — or worst, depending on the consumer.
• Most of the organizations trying to shock the audience aren't pushing a product. Some ads come from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), PETA, or UN Women.
• However, ads that promote a product often shock consumers unintentionally.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

They call it "shockvertising" — ads made to shock their way into your memory by way of gruesome violence, over-the-top sexuality, or other taboo-shredding imagery. 

Ad agencies around the world have adopted the audacious method, with the marketing pros behind activist organizations like PETA specializing in scandalous imagery.

Italian clothing retailer Benetton pioneered the style in the 1980s. Its now-iconic campaigns have received mixed reviews, like an award-winning AIDS awareness ad from 1991 that showed a father holding the lifeless body of his son in a hospital bed.

The style is powerful, but it can backfire: the World Wildlife Fund drew ire for comparing the 2004 Tsunami disaster to the World Trade Center attack.

We took images from the past few decades to give you a look into the global shockvertising scene. It's up to you to decide if they're brilliant, offensive, or both.

Here are 33 of the most shocking ads in print history.

Kim Bhasin contributed research to a previous version of this article.

SEE ALSO: Facebook's new cryptocurrency, Libra, has a 'completely generic' logo, a designer who's worked with Burger King and Dunkin' says

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America suggests an imbalance in American legislation. "Little Red Riding Hood." (USA, 2013)

UN Women uses actual Google auto-completes to show how widespread misogyny is. "Women Need To Be Seen As Equal." (International, 2013)

The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism made an illustration of systemic racism. "Your skin color shouldn’t dictate your future." (France, 2013)

Crisis Relief Singapore won the Cannes Lion advertising award for its commentary of social media slacktivism. "Liking isn't helping." (Singapore, 2013)

Ekburg.ru makes a comment on distracted driving. "Think of Both Sides." (Russia, 2013)

PETA turned a circus's tagline on its head. "Welcome to the saddest show on earth." (USA, 2011)

Thai Health boldly illustrates the connection between sleepiness and accidents. "Don't Drive Sleepy." (Thailand, 2010)

Deutscher Tierschutz Bund e.V shows that animals suffer like people do. "Pig," and "Mink." (Germany, 2010)

Prachachat Newspaper makes a strong point about the role of the press in transparency. "School." (Thailand, 2010)

Droit des Non Fumeurs drew lots of anger for its anti-smoking campaign. "Smoking is being a slave to tobacco." (France, 2010)

Mettiamocilatesta.it used a decapitated Santa to ask people to keep spending money on advertising. "Don't Cut a Dream." (Italy, 2009)

Casa Do Menor makes the consequences of child abuse horrifyingly clear. "Hands." (Spain, 2009)

Reporters Without Borders frames the death of a journalist during conflict reporting as a terrible injustice. "Ink." (France, 2009)

Good Parent Poland makes the effects of child abuse vivid. "You can lose more than your patience." (Poland, 2009)

Caribu Bitter makes chocolate look deliciously evil. "Canari." (Peru, 2009)

Superette turned an idiom on its head. "Be Caught Dead In It." (New Zealand, 2009)

WWF Brazil triggered global anger (and issued a formal apology) after this image used 9/11 to illustrate the number of people killed in the 2004 Asian tsunami. "Tsunami." (Brazil, 2009)

Masterlock wants you to think that its product can't be broken. "Hippies." (South Africa, 2008)

Concordia Children's Services looks after abandoned babies in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. "Piglets." (Philippines, 2008)

Corporate Chhattisgarh sponsored an ad that asks a fundamental question about terrorism. "Martyr." (India, 2008)

Serve made a heavily sexualized ad confronting statutory rape. "You Need Help," and "It's Wrong." (USA, 2008)

Family Network Foundation cleverly speaks out against neglecting older parents. "Don't make your parents jealous of your other loved ones." (Thailand, 2008)

Hanes used caricatures of slurs to sell undergarments. "Because the World Gives You Enough Labels." (India, 2008)

Dolce and Gabbana was widely criticized for this ad that arguably glamorizes gang rape. Unnamed. (International, 2007)

Humans for Animals makes a shocking image in regard to animal cruelty. "Seal." (France, 2005)

IP Press Men's Magazine tried to make a point about gender-specific targeting. "Kennedy Assassination." (Belgium, 2007)

German Olympic Sport Federation made a link between activity and appearance. "David." (Germany, 2007)

Pony made a comment about the role of sport (and race) in its footwear ad."Black Jesus." (US, 2004)

Benetton used an image of the death of AIDS activist David Kirby as part of its inclusive — and divisive — ad campaign. "United Colors." (International, 1980s-90s)

CARA Welfare Philippines raises awareness for animal adoption with pictures of animals before and after being adopted, with the slogan: "Same dog, different owner." "Rescue Pets." (Philippines, 2014)

The Father Bob Maguire Foundation made a simple yet effective ad when they likened garbage to a fine meal. "For the homeless, every day is a struggle." (Australia, 2008)

Dunkin' Donuts put a model in "blackface" in a Thai ad to promote the Charcoal Donut. The model in question? A Dunkin' Donuts Thai executive's daughter. "Charcoal Donut." (Thailand, 2013)

The New York City Human Resources Administration's ads to lower teen pregnancy rates were met with controversy. Untitled. (USA, 2013)

This may sound crazy, but here it goes…

Building your email list isn’t as hard as you think.

Really.

In fact, when you know what to do and how to do it, list building is pretty darn simple.

How do I know?

I struggled with my blog’s conversion rate (1.4%) for over a year.

That is, until I discovered the 5 secrets that I’m going to reveal to you in this post.

After implementing these 5 simple techniques, my blog’s conversion rate skyrocketed by 134.85%.

And today I’m going to show you exactly how you can do the same thing on your blog.

But first, let me show you what already worked

OK, so a 1.4% conversion rate may not be anything to brag about. But I know quite a few bloggers that would trade their left kidney for a 1.4% conversion rate.

And I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t tell you what helped me get to this:

Before showing you the 5 strategies that led to this:

1. I turned my about page into a squeeze page

When someone visits your About Page, it means two very important things:

1. They enjoyed what they’ve read on your blog
2. They want to learn more about you

In other words, they’re already primed to subscribe.

So why wouldn’t you pitch your email list directly on your about page?

In fact, I have two opt-in forms embedded inside of my About Page.

#1

#2

And those two forms convert like gangbusters.

In fact, before implementing the 5 strategies I’m going to reveal to you in a bit, my About Page converted 4x better than any blog post on my site.

2. I used this box to turn my homepage into an email-sucking vacuum

A feature box is a giant box that sits on top of your blog’s homepage.

Its job?

To collect emails like a boss.

Here’s mine:

The feature box works because it puts your opt-in offer where people will actually see it.

As you know, most op-tin forms (like in your blog’s sidebar) are VERY easy to ignore.

On the other hand, a feature box is right in your visitor’s face (without being obtrusive).

In fact, this very blog has a nifty feature box:

Here are the elements you want to include in your feature box to maximize conversions:

• Placed above the fold on your blog’s homepage
• Strong, benefit-driven headline
• Concrete reasons why people should sign up
• Social proof in the form of subscriber numbers or a testimonial

Thanks to my FeatureBox, my homepage was one of the best converting pages on my blog:

3. I created a squeeze page that converts at 21.7%

If you’re serious about building your email list, you NEED at least one page on your blog that exists solely to collect emails.

Also known as squeeze page.

The only problem is:

Traditional squeeze pages don’t covert like they used to.

When today’s visitors see an overhyped squeeze page like this, they hit their back button faster than you can say “spam”:

The fact is:

If you want people to subscribe to your list, you need to offer value on that page.

How can you do that?

Something I like to call the Social Squeeze Page.

It’s a page that offers a valuable video…and several opportunities to sign up to your list.

Here’s an example from Backlinko:

As you can see, that page looks NOTHING like your average squeeze page.

And in many ways it isn’t. Unlike traditional squeeze pages, the #1 priority of a Social Squeeze Page is to provide value.

Value is nice and all, but you’re probably wondering “how does it convert?”

Does 21.7% do anything for you?

Not to mention the fact that over 1400 people to date have signed up to my list via my Social Squeeze Page:

Here’s how to set up your own Social Squeeze Page:

Step #1: Choose a Hot Topic

Your topic needs to be something that people struggle to find anywhere else.

Because SEO case studies are so rare, I decided to make my Social Squeeze Page about a real life SEO case study.

Step #2: Create Your Video and Page

There’s no shortcut: your video has to really bring it.

The upside is that an awesome video will maximize the number of subscribers you get from your Social Squeeze Page.

In fact, my video provides so much value that it’s been shared on social media over 250 times.

Try getting shares like that from your traditional “gimme your email!”-style squeeze pages.

Once you have your video ready to rock, add at least one opt-in form right below the video:

Step #3: Promote Your Page

You need to treat your Social Squeeze Page like a blog post.

That means promoting it just like you would any other awesome piece of content on your site.

For example, I shared my Social Squeeze page on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc.

I also sent it out to my email list.

And that promotion has helped the page generate over 6000 unique visitors over the last year.

Here’s where I struggled…

Those average conversion rate of the 3 pages I described above was an impressive 10.64%.

As long as someone landed on my homepage, my about page or my Social Squeeze Page, I was good as gold.

Only problem was:

90% of my site’s visitors landed on a blog post.

And my average blog post conversion rate was less than 1%.

Not good.

That’s when I decided to focus on turning blog post readers into subscribers.

The result?

My conversion rate skyrocketed by 134.85% in two short months.

Here are the 5 strategies that did the job.

1. Wow visitors with the content upgrade

Raise your hand if you’re PUMPED when you get access a free ebook.

Don’t feel bad: I didn’t raise my hand either.

The fact is, ebooks and free reports ain’t what they used to be.

The fact is,if you want people to subscribe in 2014, you need to offer something laser targeted.

I’m talking about a giveaway so insanely targeted that it’s on the EXACT topic that they’re reading about.

Let me give you an example…

The most popular post on my blog is “Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List”.

It’s a post that attempts to outline a list of 200 potential signals that Google uses to rank pages:

Even though that post has brought in over 100,000 unique visitors to my site, VERY few of them have converted into subscribers.

In fact, that post was converting at a paltry 0.57%.

The reason?

I didn’t have ANYTHING compelling on that page that would get someone to sign up.

Sure, I had your run-of-the-mill sidebar opt-in form:

And another one at the bottom of the post:

But those two forms weren’t enough to move the needle (as the .57% conversion rate proves).

That’s when I decided to try something a little bit crazy:

Offer a giveaway unique to that post.

I quickly whipped up a checklist that outlined the 10 most important ranking factors on the list.

Here’s what the checklist looks like:

Then I added two pitches for the checklist within the blog post itself.

One pitch at the top of the post…

And I added another at the bottom (with a nice download image):

What happened?

The conversion rate on that post jumped by 785%.

I call this list building superpower The Content Upgrade.

That’s when I realized:

The Content Upgrade works so well, I should apply this to every popular post on my site.

And that’s what I did.

To date I’ve added the Content Upgrade to 14 additional posts. And the conversion rate on those posts have also bumped up considerably.

I’m not the only one that’s seen stellar results from The Content Upgrade.

Bryan Harris at VideoFruit.com routinely uses this strategy on every single one of his blog posts.

Bryan reports that many of his blog posts convert at 20-30% (!) thanks to The Content Upgrade.

Ready to try it?

Here’s the step-by-step formula:

Step #1: Find a popular blog post on your blog

I’m not going to lie to you:

The Content Upgrade takes some work to set up (mostly from creating the upgrade itself).

To get the most bang for your buck, start The Content Upgrade on a post that generates the most traffic.

Not sure which posts are driving the most visitors? Google Analytics will hook you up.

Step #2: Create a resource that will make your blog post even better

Next, create a bonus that would add value to your existing post.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• PDF checklist (my personal favorite)
• List of “additional resources”
• A tutorial (video or PDF)
• An excel spreadsheet
• Infographic or diagram

The possibilities are endless.

Don’t get too bogged down choosing the type of resource. As long as it fits the blog post’s topic like a glove, you’re set.

Step #3: Offer the bonus within your blog post

This is key.

If you want your readers to see your Content Upgrade offer, you need to pitch it inside of your blog post.

As I mentioned earlier, adding opt-in form offers at the top and bottom of my blog posts worked best for me.

That way, readers can’t possibly miss your pitch to sign up.

Key takeaway: Creating post-specific bonuses (“The Content Upgrade”) can quickly skyrocket your blog’s conversions. If I could only give you one piece of advice, I’d say: “try the Content Upgrade”.

#2: Have Fun With Your Copy

The fact is, signing up for an email list is a stressful moment:

“What if they spam me?”

“What if they sell my email address?”

“What if that ebook ends up being useless?”

I used to write copy that made those fears even worse.

I’d say stuff like:

“Register for my email list”

“Sign up for my newsletter”

Needless to say, scaring the hell out of people doesn’t encourage people to sign up.

Instead, I’ve found that fun, upbeat copy makes skittish subscribers more likely to pull the trigger.

For example, I make sure my opt-in button copy is upbeat and positive.

Instead of “submit” and “register”, I use phrases like “Let’s do this!” or “Get proven SEO tips”.

In my experience, copy like this converts MUCH better than “register” or “submit”.

I also like what they do here at the Buffer blog.

That little joke makes the sign-up process A LOT less stressful.

Key Takeaway: Ditch terms like “Sign up” and “Register”. Replace them with fun and positive copy like “I’m in”, “Get free tips”, “Let’s do this!” and “Send me my ebook!”.

#3: Gently Nudge Visitors With a Popup

For some reason people get super emotional when they talk about using popups.

“I WOULD NEVER USE A POPUP. I HATE POPUPS SO MUCH!!!!”

The truth is this:

When done right, popups get results.

HUGE results.

Results like this:

(Those stats are from a tool I’ll talk in a bit)

And contrary to popular belief, your readers don’t mind popups as much as you may think.

In fact, my site’s popups have been seen by over 15,000 people. And I’ve received a grand total of one complaint.

If you’re ready to give popups a try on your blog, I recommend the free and highly-customizable SumoMe.

Of all the popups I’ve tested, it’s the easiest to set up. And when I first added it to my site a few months ago, my conversion rate more than doubled overnight.

So you may be wondering: how well do popups actually convert?

My popup conversion rate is 3.5%.

(As I’ll show you later, I’ve found a way to easily double this conversion rate)

Here are some things I did to make my popup work so well (and not annoy the crap out of my visitors).

Exit-intent

There’s nothing worse than digging into an awesome article…

…only to be interrupted by an annoying popup.

As Full House’s Stephanie Tanner would say: “How rude!”.

Fortunately, you can set your popup so that it only appears for people that are about to leave your site anyway.

I’ve found that exit intent popups annoy visitors less than popups that appear after a certain time frame.

That’s a win-win if I ever heard of it.

Give Your Visitors a Breather

As I said, most visitors don’t mind closing the occasional popup.

But if you bug them every time they stop by your site, you WILL annoy people.

That’s why I set my popups to not show again until 90 days after someone closes it out.

Craft a Valuable Pitch

If you’re going to bug someone with a popup, you want to make it count.

Don’t waste the opportunity by pitching something lame like “free updates”.

Use something ultra-specific instead:

As you can see, my popup pitches a crystal clear benefit (“more traffic”).

Conversion experts agree:

Crystal clear benefits (“lose 10 pounds this month”) outperform vague promises (“get healthier”).

Every. Single. Time.

Key Takeaway: I recommend at least TRYING a popup if you haven’t already.

#4: Content Upgrade Popups

OK so you’ve tried your first popup and are pleased with the results.

Nice work.

Yu probably want to know: “How can I make my popup convert even better?”.

The answer: combine the laser targeted Content Upgrade with the attention-grabbing popup.

In other words, a Content Upgrade Popup.

Here’s what I mean:

A few months ago every single visitor on my blog would see the same exact popup.

It didn’t matter if they were reading about list building or keyword research. That popup is what floated in front of their eyes.

Although that popup converted nicely, I realized something:

It wasn’t targeted to what my visitor was reading…AT ALL.

So I applied what I learned from The Content Upgrade (laser targeted>generic pitch), and created a popup specific for each page.

(I used a popup software called OptinMonster to create page-specific popups)

Here’s an example from my Keyword Research Guide:

It probably won’t surprise you to find that my laser targeted Content Upgrade Popup converts at over 6%.

That’s 50% better than the generic popup.

Before you think “that’s too much work”, hear me out: You don’t necessarily have to create a unique popup for every single page.

You simply need to create a popup for each TYPE of post on your site.

For example, if you ran a health and fitness blog, you’d create different popups about:

• Losing weight
• Nutrition
• Building muscle
• Stress relief and meditation

Then you’d use each of those popups on the corresponding page.

So:

You’d use your “losing weight” popup in articles like “10 foods for fighting fat” and “The no-nonsense guide to interval training”.

And you’d have your popup about building muscle appear on articles like “5 moves for bigger biceps” and “Use this little-known trick to squat 50% more weight”.
That way each popup would resonate with the person reading that specific article.

Key Takeaway: Laser-targeted pitches within popups can dramatically increase their effectiveness

#5: I Pitched Subscribers Within Blog Posts

Here’s the truth about building an email list in today’s world:

Traditional list building like sidebar optin forms and ebook giveaways are becoming less and less effective.

“Banner blindness” has crept into the strategies you and I use to build our email lists.

So what can you do to keep people’s eyeballs fixated on you opt-in forms?

It’s simple, really:

Pitch your email list inside of your content.

How?

It’s simple: pitch your newsletter, an ebook or a free report inside of your blog posts.

For example:

I recently tested this strategy with one of my latest posts.

In that post I casually mentioned an ebook that I give away to my newsletter subscribers.

Then I thought of something:

If I’m going to talk about the ebook, why not give people an opportunity to subscribe right then and there?

So I included a brief pitch for the ebook inside of the post:

That single-sentence offer has turned into 81 new subscribers.

Here’s another example:

A few weeks back I published a post in kind of a rush. So much of a rush that I didn’t have time to create a Content Upgrade for the post.

Instead of a Content Upgrade, I created a little teaser for the next post coming up.

That teaser added 330 new subscribers to my list.

This is something I plan on experimenting more with in the future.

Key takeaway: Give readers an opportunity to join your email list from within your blog posts.

Ready to get started? Here are a few bonuses to help you out.

It’s important to me that you use the strategies that I shared with you today.

To help you do just that I’ve set up a special bonus section just for you.

The free bonuses include:

1. Two awesome list building techniques that I didn’t have room to include in today’s post.

2. Step-by-step PDF checklists that will help you quickly implement The Content Upgrade and the Social Squeeze Page (two of the most powerful list building strategies from this post).

3. My personal “swipe file” of conversion rate optimization tutorials and case studies

You can enter the bonus area by signing up here.

The Internet of Things has the potential to be the catalyst for a new era of growth in consumer electronics. 

Billions of once-inert everyday and enterprise devices are already connected to the internet — including smart appliances and home devices like refrigerators and alarm clocks — and the number is exploding. By 2020 that number of internet-connected devices will top 50 billion, according to estimates from Morgan Stanley and Cisco. 

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

Examples Of Consumer IoT Devices And Applications: 

• Consumer electronics products spanning alarm clocks, digital video cameras, home audio systems, and speakers.
• Kitchen and home appliances such as refrigerators. washers and dryers, and coffee makers.
• Lighting and heating products, including bulbs, thermostats, and air conditioners.
• Safety and security monitoring devices such as baby and assisted living monitoring systems, smoke detectors, fire hydrants, cameras, sensor-equipped drawers and safes, and home alarm systems. Machina and the GSM Association believe that there will be $270 billion in savings by 2020 thanks to sensors and devices that enable the elderly to live independently as opposed to care homes.
• Musical instruments.
• Robots.
• Toys ranging from desk-friendly remote-controlled mini-cars to hovering quadricopters.
• Health and fitness products that measure exercise, steps, sleep, weight, blood pressure, and other statistics.

As uptake among consumers and businesses ticks up, BI Intelligence finds that the IoT means a new set of challenges and opportunities, particularly for the consumer electronics market. 

Many products and services have already crossed over into the IoT, and there are already clear signs that the biggest tech companies — and even smaller players — are trying to get out front of the race to dominate the IoT. Google has acquired Nest. Apple has unveiled its HomeKit platform. Even Staples and Honeywell — not typically companies thought of as tech leaders — are putting out new IoT —related products. 

In the world of business-to-business and government, IoT use cases begin to proliferate even more.

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Website design is daunting, to say the very least. Even with a DIY program, you still must customize your company’s site enough to stand apart from other. Help from a web developer is always beneficial, but even they can’t provide all the assistance you need. What could possibly be missing from a website crafted by a professional developer? Your brand.

Branding your website is probably the hardest aspect of design, because the other hard things, someone else can do for you. When it comes to your brand, no one knows better than you do. So, how can you make sure your brand is evident throughout the pages on your site? Here are some undeniable truths about branding your website:

1. You must first develop your brand standards.

Designing your website before you’ve determined how you’ll be received is like walking backwards and blindfolded. Unless you’re sure of your vision, your mission, and your target audience, your website will only serve to confuse potential buyers.

Even without elegant design, you can get these standards across to your buyers. Consumers will forgive stock photos and annoying fonts if they can see your company’s purpose and value immediately.

2. Your logo does not equal website design.

Yes, your logo is the face of your company, but it should never be the sole identifying factor. Paul Rand said, “It is foolhardy to believe that a logo will do its job immediately, before an audience has been properly conditioned.” Your audience should be conditioned to understand your brand the moment they arrive on your home page, from the colors used to the content you share. Will they know what you sell, how you sell it, and, more importantly, why you sell it?

Unless you know your brand strategy inside and out, plan your website design around that brand strategy, your only identifying mark will be that logo. And that’s just not enough.

3. Your website is not static.

You’re not designing a brochure here. Your website must grow and change with your company, yes, but also with your buyers. To make sure your site is dynamic, you must continue to create great content that tells your brand story. Your content comes in the form of frequent blog posts, landing pages for lead generation, and even videos and images that share your products and company culture.

In addition to keeping fresh content to interest your buyers and solidify your brand message, dynamic content also helps you with search engine rankings. Google loves fresh content and gives priority to sites that have updated recently. If you think you can create a site and then leave it alone, think again.

4. You only get one chance for a first impression.

In many cases, your website is how potential customers will determine their first impressions. Taking your website live before you’ve worked through your brand standards and made sure they’re consistent across every aspect of your website could lead to disaster. Believe it or not, 64% of consumers say they’ll leave your website and never return if they have a bad first experience.

Now, if you’re not sure of your brand standards, we can help. You can’t share your company with the world if you’re not yet sure what you do. Let’s have a discussion about your mission and values. Let’s talk about the face you want the world to see. Take website design and development slowly and be meticulous. You want every word of your brand story to be heard.

Image source

You’ve decided to take the plunge into content marketing. You have your strategy in place, you have your resources lined up, and you have that burning drive to get started.

Now what? To keep yourself and your content producers on track, and upper management in the loop, you’ll want to develop a content calendar. This document can actually be quite complex, but it’s an extremely effective blueprint.

Whether you call it a blog schedule, an editorial calendar, or a content production timeline — a major goal is to establish a cadence to your content marketing publishing efforts. That’s important, because without producing consistent, sustained content over many months, you’re unlikely to see results.

An editorial calendar will also help you set clear expectations with everyone in your organization who is embarking on this content journey with you. Help them see the path you’re creating — by month, by quarter, or even by a full year.

By planning ahead and providing a structure, you’re demonstrat
ing commitment, and you’re beginning to craft a clearer long-term vision. This will help bring consensus, and that internal buy-in from multiple departments will help you set a high bar for quality content.

The DNA: Your Calendar’s Blueprint

To give life to your content calendar, you’ll need building blocks in the form of a template. No need to worry about creating this kind of blueprint from scratch. There are many examples out there, including this free editorial calendar template from Vertical Measures. Be sure to look at all of the tabs within the two worksheets.

Depending on how many content creators will be working with you (remember they can come from any department in your organization), you may want to actively share your calendar through a cloud-based tool, of which there are also many. We use a combination of Basecamp and Google Drive, which has excellent live collaboration features. Google Calendar or an Excel spreadsheet may be simpler for you and better suit your needs.

You might also consider sharing the calendar with data analysts, marketers, designers, or your manager, so they can visualize and understand how they fit into the process.

The Skeleton: Your Calendar’s Features

With your blueprint in place, now let’s put together a structure and framework for your calendar. It might not have 206 bones like the human body, but an extremely effective content calendar will have a lot of moving pieces, and could include the following:

• Topics or headlines
• Brief summaries
• Contributors: Authors, Editors, Designers
• Due dates, associated milestones, and approval process
• Formats of pieces (article, blog post, free guide, white paper, case study, infographic, video, quiz, interview, FAQ, etc.)
• Publication dates
• Live URLs
• Distribution channels (blog, e-mail newsletter, other industry website, etc.)
• Social media efforts and budget
• Promotion efforts and budget
• Moderation of comments
• Metrics/KPIs
• Content ideas and brainstorming results

Does the above seem daunting? As with almost any project, it’s OK to start small and then iterate. You can use your content calendar for a wide variety of purposes, but I’d encourage you to think bigger than merely using it as a checklist of headlines and dates. Why? Because content doesn’t stop when you publish it to your website. Consider how — and when — you will promote and distribute the content. How — and when — will you measure it?

The Heart: Your Calendar’s Content

A thoughtful content calendar will reflect the heart of your organization. You should see personality, warmth, creativity, leadership — whatever it is that you want to share with the world. You can use your content calendar to continually remind, motivate, and inspire others around you.

To populate your calendar with these kinds of ideas, consider implementing monthly or seasonal themes, or types of content that recur on certain days of the week (i.e. “Friday’s Featured Employee”). Pieces that collectively form a content series allow your team to explore certain topics in-depth and establish authority and trust with your niche audience.

Right Brain: Creativity and Vision

You know that you need to “think like a publisher.” As you adopt this mindset, you’ll see that you are constantly thinking ahead about your content.

As you establish that cadence to the content you’re producing week in and week out, you’ll also want to schedule consistent times to brainstorm future content, so you can set your vision.

Keep in mind that many factors — changing company priorities, new product lines, or customer feedback — will likely cause you to shift gears as you plan out your calendar.

Being flexible is part of the content game, and if you’re really listening to your customers and paying attention to insights, that can actually lead to some of your most timely and effective pieces of content.

According to Pawan Deshpande, CEO of Curata, “[about] 25% of your content marketing output should be produced in a more sporadic fashion with less strategic direction.” This also offers greater opportunity for experimentation, he says.

So don’t be afraid to deviate from the plan and introduce topics at the last minute. Your content calendar isn’t set in stone — it’s a living, breathing document.

Image source: UCMAS Mental Math Schools

Left Brain: Analysis and Measurement

Note that your calendar should not merely be forward-looking. Take time to reflect by using the calendar as a measuring and reporting tool, in conjunction with your other analytics programs. When you or your team are ready to take this holistic approach to your content calendar, you can use the template and features discussed above to guide you.

Make a concerted effort to record ongoing results in your content calendar, such as:

• Page views
• Traffic trends
• Time on page
• Downloads
• Conversions
• Social media engagement

You’ll want to measure these key data points at ongoing intervals, so that you give content pieces ample time to perform. You don’t want to suffer from paralysis by analysis, but measuring content over time can help you paint a picture of what’s working, what’s not, and how long it takes for your pieces to accomplish the business objectives you have set.

Consistent measurement will allow you to recognize patterns. Are certain themes performing better? Does your content drive more social shares on Wednesdays instead of Fridays? Does your audience engage more with longer pieces or shorter pieces, videos or infographics? Which writers or content producers tend to perform better?

All Body Parts Working Together

A content calendar is your opportunity to drive forward your content marketing efforts. Essentially, you can unify all of your content, social media, promotion, and distribution efforts in a single dashboard. Remember, without a structure and cohesive vision that’s continually enforced by content marketing evangelists in your organization, your content efforts will likely fall short. Even if you start small, you can set yourself and your organization up for success by starting a content calendar today.

Insight Selling – How to Move Beyond an Inward Focus and a Product-based Message

The Problem – Ultra Informed Buyers

Today’s buyers are savvier than ever, which makes selling to them a greater challenge for sales reps and teams. Whether they’re interested in a one-off transaction for a particular product or service, or a long-term strategic partnership, customers from companies of any size and industry can research just about anything they desire online, which puts them in a position of strength over sellers.

If your salespeople are selling the same old products the same old way, then you could very well be deep in a rut. Have you backed yourself into a corner as a commoditized order fulfillment broker rather than someone who can truly add value?

As an example of what’s going on in the Financial Services sector, all buyers from individuals and wealthy families to investment committees, chief investment officers, and corporate treasurers are shielding themselves from sales pitches – using RFPs, consultants, procurement officers, and other gatekeepers. They are instead looking for insights and solutions relevant to their goals and challenges. This most obviously changes the game for the new business development officer who is finding it increasingly difficult to break through the clutter and get an appointment. However, this impacts every member of a client-retention or new-business pitch team, including senior leaders and subject matter experts, and their ability to communicate with clients in a way that causes them to engage rather than withdraw.

Who can blame them? “Why should I buy (let alone listen to) what you’re selling? If I’m interested, I’ll research it myself and will contact you if I think you can help me.” We’ve been so conditioned to Google everything and to keep those purse strings tight for so long that it’s now Pavlovian. (I’d also add that Caller ID has also further conditioned us to avoid picking up calls from unknown senders, which further confounds sellers, but that’s another topic.)

With these barriers, how can sales reps regain some control and influence in the selling process?

The Solution – Engaging and Selling with Value-Based Insights

Many sales teams are anchored by experienced client-facing professionals who over time have developed a set way of talking about industry issues, your organization’s capabilities, and their own qualifications and experience. Even if they’re credible and brilliant, too often these ideas sound generic and frequently fall short of compelling clients, prospects, referral sources, and colleagues to act. It is easy to become complacent and inwardly focused. Unless you’re in a fast-changing business and have a lock on what the market needs, your salespeople need to find a way to move away from an inward, product-based focus and find a more enticing scenario to sell.

Developing and delivering insights and solutions that resonate with clients, prospects, gatekeepers, and centers of influence is a remedy to overcome the same old approach. But as with many dialogue skills, execution is a trickier matter. Effective insights and solutions require preparation, deep and current industry and client knowledge, and a communication framework and skills that connect an issue that is relevant to your client with your organization’s ability to help. This should include examples of how this work has impacted others. Finally, value-based insights and solutions require practice to ensure that your people are at their most confident in delivery and, with the help of feedback, that the language they choose is easy to follow and relevant.

Properly prepared and practiced value-based insights have wide application in building your business, enabling:

• Business developers to gain initial meetings;
• relationship managers to expand perceptions about your organization’s capabilities in a new area;
• you and other senior managers to differentiate your organization in a client or sales meeting; and
• subject matter experts to distinguish their ideas as being not just smart, but relevant to the client.

Winning leaders engage their teams in this area by modeling and coaching on the preparation and delivery of relevant insights and solutions.

Instead of allowing your sales team to go out and sell more widgets or widget-based services, teach them how to sell the value and need of those widgets through insights. “Here’s what’s happening in your industry. Maybe this is a surprise to you, or perhaps you knew about it, but didn’t realize the scope of the issue. We’ve helped other clients to overcome this problem (or take advantage of this unique opportunity), and here was the impact. We believe can help you, too. Would you be interested in learning more?”

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Help your Sales Team Sell More Effectively by Selling with Insights 

Click the following to learn more about Richardson’s Selling With Insights sales training program.

 

 

The post Insight Selling – How to Move Beyond an Inward Focus and a Product-based Message appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Dilbert, the well-known comic strip by cartoonist Scott Adams about the office everyman and his crew of incompetent colleagues, was the first syndicated comic that focused primarily on the workplace when it launched in 1989. Five years later, it had become so successful that Adams quit his corporate career to work on it full-time.  

It wasn't a straight line to success. Early versions of the comic were rejected by several publications, including The New Yorker and Playboy. It wasn't until an editor at United Media saw it and recognized her own husband in the character that it finally got its start, says Adams in his upcoming book “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.” 

Ever since, the comic has explored topics like the inefficiency of meetings, the uselessness of management, and the absurdity of office politics. 

Exclusively for Business Insider, Adams looked through the archives and shared his 10 favorite Dilbert comics. Below, he explains why he chose each and counts them down to his absolute favorite of all-time.

10) Oct. 10, 2009: “Dream job” 

"This comic causes the reader to imagine a funny future in which Wally will only pretend to do the assignment. Humor sometimes works best when one suggests what is coming without showing it. People laugh harder when they need to use their imaginations to complete the joke. 

"I also like comics in which characters are unusually happy about something trivial, evil, or selfish. That juxtaposition is always funny to me.

"Another technique I often use involves characters saying things that should only be thought. That creates the inappropriateness that gives it an edge."

 

9) Sept. 24, 2009: “Opportunities”

"Management-by-slogan usually comes across to employees as ridiculous and condescending. That, in part, is what makes the staff in this comic so uncaring about the boss’s house burning down. The ordinary evil of regular people is always funny to me. It’s easy to relate to it."

  

8) Nov. 12, 2009: “Roll a donut in front of the cave”

"A common humor technique involves juxtaposing something of immense importance with something trivial. The pairing of things that don’t belong together makes your brain “sneeze” in the form of a laugh. In this comic, Wally is comparing his digestive system to Jesus rising from the dead. A dash of spiritual inappropriateness gives it some seasoning."

 

7) Dec. 3, 2009: “Reusable presentation”

"As I mentioned, I enjoy humor that highlights the selfish nature of people. We all relate to it. If you have a job, you probably spend some part of each day trying to disguise your selfish motives as win-win scenarios. And your attempts are probably as transparent as Wally’s. 

"I also like jokes that involve inappropriate solutions to problems. This one has both. When you can layer two humor triggers in the same comic it almost always works."

 

6) Dec. 9, 2009: “Catching up to competition”

"This one works because you never see the pointy-haired boss’s reaction, but you can imagine it vividly. 

"Keeping true to the major theme of Dilbert, this comic highlights the uselessness of management. If you’ve ever had a boss, this one probably hits home for you."

 

5) Jan. 7, 2010: “Synchronizing excuses”

"I very much enjoy mocking common sayings. Often those little nuggets of wisdom make no sense whatsoever, but we’ve heard them so often they feel as if they do. Good things might come to those who wait, but so does starvation.

"This comic is also an example of what I call an 'engineered solution.' Wally has cleverly synchronized his excuses to the thunderstorm. I find cleverness to be funny when it is in the service of selfishness."

 

4) April 13, 2010: “Asok’s snout”

"Here I’m juxtaposing an ordinary workplace lunch with the ridiculousness of Asok having a dog snout. Dilbert and Wally take it in stride. That’s the first humor level, but it wouldn’t be enough to make it work. 

"The second level is that we all know people who value form over function while being oblivious to how others view them. When you shine a light on irrational human behavior it usually triggers a laugh reflex."

 

3) Sept. 27, 2010: “Brain golfing”

"If you attend meetings, you probably spend a lot of time thinking your own thoughts while your coworkers drone on. This comic is funny to me because the boss is revealing his selfish thoughts, and also because 'brain golfing' is a funny combination of words. I figured most golfers could relate. I doubt I’m the only person who brain golfs."

 

2) Dec. 2, 2010: “Old Johannsen”

"Wally is the worst employee of all time, but he’s likeable in his own way, so we enjoy seeing him get a win at the expense of the pointy-haired boss. And I think everyone who has a boss also dreams of becoming indispensable. It’s easy to relate to Wally’s glee in the third panel."

 

1) Nov. 9, 1993: “Unix programmers” 

"This might be my all-time favorite Dilbert comic. When I was on the speaking circuit I always used it to end my talks to thunderous laughter. It’s naughty, clever, and it has a point of view. And it makes the reader imagine what happened before that moment shown in the comic and what might happen after. It’s rare to pack so many elements in one comic."

SEE ALSO: ‘Passion Is BS’ And Other Life Advice From Dilbert Creator Scott Adams

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