Rnordman

Whenever you’re in a position to charge someone — as a freelancer or small business owner, for instance — you want to get the most profit possible while still offering a reasonable rate. 

This simple trick, coined by the Freelancers Union, may allow you to up your price without turning off customers.

It’s easy: simply cut out extra zeros. Instead of charging an even $2,000, try asking for $2,108. 

"Pricing psychology shows that no matter how hard you’ve worked at arriving at your carefully calculated project rate, the first thing a client sees is the number of zeroes,” reports Meredith Lepore in a Skillcrush article on the topic. 

Restaurants, retail stores, and grocery stores all employ similar logic to get us to spend more. If something is priced at $19.99 instead of $20, we may be more inclined to buy because it feels like a better deal. There's no sticker shock from seeing a line of zeros, even if the product is only a few cents cheaper. 

Using a more specific number also makes it look like you put in extra time to calculate costs down to every minute detail, which shows clients that the charge isn’t just an arbitrary number, explains Lindsay Van Thoen of Freelancers Union. 

"If you’re pricing your services right — based on true value — you will not be lying to your clients,” Von Thoen writes. “This is not about misrepresenting yourself. It’s about making the proposal and bid process smoother.”

In the end, everyone wins: You maximize your time and profits, and your client feels confident about what they pay. 

SEE ALSO: 5 Ways To Make Extra Money Without Leaving Your House

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted

This disturbing data was reported in a recent ITSMA study. The sample size was relatively small and limited to the services marketing sector, but I’m seeing indicators that this is a widespread issue.

The problem seems to have little to do with the skills needed to leverage buyer personas. Instead, marketers appear to have latched onto a cookie-cutter format for presenting buyer personas, while missing the fact that building them requires unique research. Too many people are simply recycling existing data or pushing out surveys, which virtually ensures that their buyer personas won’t tell them anything they didn’t already know.

Simply put, these buyer personas lack the breadth and depth of insight that is needed to establish the persona as an authority on the decisions marketers need to make. So nothing changes.

An insight, by definition, reveals new information. It’s something you don’t already know. When I see people recommending that marketers build their buyer personas with readily available or insider data, my hackles rise.

Sure, surveys are a quick and easy way to do research, but it’s impossible to get new information from their multiple choice, question and answer format. They’re better suited for validating and quantifying existing knowledge, assumptions or trends.

Other people believe they can build buyer personas from information provided by their marketing automation solutions. These systems contain a lot of useful data about what actions buyers took (among other things), but they don’t reveal why, for example, the buyer responded to a particular marketing piece or sales offer, or what other information would lead that buyer to eliminate a competitor from consideration.

It’s only through a real-time dialogue, through listening to each buyer’s story and posing questions based on their answers, that you can ferret out new insights: What triggers the buyer’s engagement, his barriers to purchase, or which criteria the buyer uses to evaluate competing solutions – to name just a few of the insights that actionable buyer personas reveal.

Buyer personas based on surveys or existing data are built in an echo chamber where the same theses are endlessly repeated.

To make it easy to share buyer persona best practices with other marketers, we’ve created a new infographic. I’m hoping that people who see it will begin to understand the value of listening to buyers. We want marketers to realize that buyer personas are incomplete when they end with a profile of a person, and that deep buying insights require interviews with the real people they want to influence.

Once these insights are communicated through buyer personas, marketers will have no trouble putting them to work for effective content marketing, messaging, and sales enablement, to name just a few.

"Buyers may have a great experience during the self-directed portion of the buyer’s journey.  But once the sales team engages, the experience degrades substantially.  The result is frustrated buyers who take their business to a competitor who can meet their needs.”

-SBI’s 8^th Annual Research Report

Why do some company’s struggle developing effective content and others seem to hit it out of the park every time? What does it take to have a “home run piece” as Doug Kessler calls it? It could be a few reasons, but most of all, it has to do with relevance of the content. According to the Content Marketing Institute 2014 B2B Content Marketing Benchmark Study, 93% of marketers say they use content marketing, up from 91% last year. But how can marketers ensure their content is consumed? Relevance.

If your Buyer wants and needs the information that you are delivering, they are likely to Engage with it and ask for more (opt-in or provide additional contact information). It doesn’t have to be a fabulously designed or a high-priced content offering, it could be a simple blog post that gives you pointers on how to develop great content, or a short two minute interview with a thought-leader from a trade show floor. What matters is the relevance of the content to the buyer above all else.

Marketers need to take into consideration many factors when developing a Content Marketing Strategy including buyer personas, buyer insights, buyer’s journey, buyers content consumption format, and the list goes on. Buyer-centricity is hugely important of course, but where does the relevance come into play? In a post dated July 14, 2011 (ages ago) in Social Media Explorer by Michael Brito from Edleman Digital, Brito talks about the importance of relevant content. According to Brito, “As long as the messaging on a company’s owned media channels is relevant, not inundated with sales propaganda, and delivers valuable information, they will essentially position themselves as a trusted advisor of content related to their own products and/or industry related information.”

This statement was true in 2011 and is even more important in 2014 – as the noise in the market is intense. We all compete for an audience and ultimately, a sale, no matter what you sell and who you sell it to. However, producing more content is not the answer-it just adds to the noise and confuses your Buyer.

The only way to gain new customers is by Engaging and Nurturing them with relevant content that helps them solve their problem. By delivering quality, buyer-centric, relevant content to your Buyer, you gain their trust, earn credibility, become that trusted advisor and gain permission to continue the conversation. Keep up the relevant content and you might just get yourself a new client as well. Focus on relevance when creating content – it is what really matters.

We simply can’t help ourselves—we want a new BIG idea, we want to make a BIG difference, we want to target a BIG market and capture a BIG share. There’s really nothing wrong in wanting BIG, except one small problem—having to wait for it and sometimes, waiting too long.

One of the key reasons for this waiting and often, failing to garner the desired results is a mire of legacy issues. A problem I have frequently pointed out in my writing. Large organizations governed by “brand marketing policies” (a.k.a. restrictions and limitations) are particularly plagued by this issue of not being able to break the shackles and explore new opportunities.

Let’s discuss how to make SMALL changes and gain some QUICK wins for your B2B lead generation efforts.

5 Easy Ways to Reward Your B2B Lead Generation with Quick Wins

1. Optimize Your Landing Page. B2B companies are steadily moving share of budget from offline to online marketing and lead generation. That’s the good news. The bad news is, most of these companies are still thinking and running their online lead generation campaigns like in the old days, where a strategy was agreed upon and then played out exactly as per the plan. B2B buyers are dealing with an online landscape that changes very fast. Having the flexibility and agility to suitably adapt your B2B marketing is critical.

The beauty of the online world is that you can tweak and adjust your landing page design, test different calls-to-action and revise content as often as you need to. You have to be on top of things, however, to recognize the need to make changes and then make them as quickly and efficiently as possible. An optimized landing page will deliver valuable, measurable results for your B2B lead generation, but you have to monitor, experiment, test and adjust continuously. Remember that every page of your website, including the Home page can and should function like a landing page. Each page needs a strong and persuasive call-to-action. The cumulative effect of all these landing pages working optimally will pack the right punch and deliver the momentum you want to see in your sales funnel.

Case Study: With all the knowledge they had about landing page optimization best practices, SAP was still losing money on a PPC campaign that just wasn’t performing well. Kudos to the senior marketing executive who took the company’s branding guidelines, identified the problem areas with their current landing page and got the required buy-in to make changes that optimized the page for greater conversions. Read the case study here.

2. Pay for Targeted Eyeballs. Organic search traffic is very valuable and you definitely want to build volume. However, it takes sustained effort and time before you start to see the fruits of your online content marketing and SEO activities. In the meantime, paid advertising is a good medium to explore and it now extends far beyond pay-per-click campaigns. All the major social and digital collaboration channels from Facebook to LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Skype, SlideShare, and more are offering targeted advertising as well as retargeting as a means to boost lead generation. B2B marketers have mostly been a shy lot so far while B2C has really taken online ads to the next level. Getting executive buy-in is still quite the challenge for many of these B2B organizations, but it only takes a financial quarter or two of consistent ROI to prove the merit of these techniques. Try it!

3. Choose the Right Automation Tools. And make sure they work for your business. Far too many B2B companies are draining their resources and time purchasing marketing automation tools and CRM software programs that are not designed specifically for their business. Then they have to hire high-paid consultants to try and adapt these tools and systems to their existing ones. Staff training on the new tools is another huge investment in terms of time and money. Where’s the ROI after all this? You can’t kill a mosquito with a cannon. You can’t boil the ocean. And you definitely don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water. BUT the baby has to grow, and adapt to changes, and wear new clothes, and get the right nutrition.

4. Evaluate Wisely. Run appropriate tests to determine what’s working, what’s not. Here is a nice collection of tests. The only way to know where the holes are is to experiment, test, deploy, measure, test again, and so on. We live in fear of testing and failing but failing is a necessary part of learning and improving. Like one wise guy said, “I’ve learnt so much from my mistakes, I think I’ll make a few more!”

5. Cast Away the Legacy Issues and Look Ahead. We fear losing our jobs. We fear losing revenue and being held responsible. We fear being outdone by the competition. We fear trying what we have not tried before. We fear standing out as different. We fear being reprimanded for bold actions. This fear is the legacy, the bane of our times. How can anyone expect the big box companies to move on a dime when their internal structure is still based on the old command and control structure? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the customer has changed, markets have changed, lead generation techniques have changed, so CHANGE BEFORE YOU HAVE TO. Don’t hang on to those “we have always done it like this” mindset when new opportunities are flying past you every day. If you are the CMO of a B2B company, you need to make sure that this message of change and speed is translated into action and not merely chanted as the new mantra.

What actually happens after you press send? Marketers tend to only care about the journey of an email, when things go wrong. While emails seem to appear instantaneously, the reality is that they have long journeys many filtering systems, before they get to your Inbox. So where do they go, and how can you ensure them a pleasant journey?

Where does email go?

First, it is important to understand what happens when everything goes right.

• Creation – Your awesome email, complete with a great subject line and superb body content is ready to fly. You have carefully chosen which recipients will get your message and you click ‘send’.
• The email heads to the ‘gateway’ – this quite literally the entrance from your network, or your email service provider’s (ESP) network, to the rest of the Internet.
• Your ESP directs your email to your various recipients’ servers
• Vetting – your email now has to pass through several tests. These look at the senders’ reputation, the email’s header and its content, to give the message a ranking.
• The Spam Filter stage – if your email passes vetting, it gets sent onto your mailbox, where it faces one final test – your email server’s spam filter.
• Your email will either be sent to your inbox, filtered straight into either junk email or be completely bounced altogether

The journey of an email (click to enlarge)

Email explained via Louisa

Ok, that all sounds very complicated but in reality it is quite simple. Imagine you have ordered a package from Amazon and had it delivered to your office. If your office is like ours, you have a Louisa.

Here at dotmailer, Louisa works on reception and accepts all delivered packages. When the courier comes into the office they tell Louisa that they have a package for a particular person. If the person does not work for us, Louisa will reject the package – the offline version of a hard bounce. Assuming that person works for us, Louisa accepts and signs for the package. From the couriers perspective, the package has been delivered; they are not particularly fussed if the person who ordered ever gets it or not.

Meet Louisa, our awesome HR Assistant

At this point, Louisa can do a number of things with the package:

• As a director of the business, Louisa tends to bring my packages directly to my desk – Inbox placement;
• Maybe the package doesn’t look like I ordered it but rather looks like a piece of marketing so Louisa will hold it and then ask me if I want it – ‘quarantine’ placement;
• Perhaps Louisa is quite busy or the package isn’t properly labelled and Louisa holds on to it until I come ask for it – spam folder
• The package comes from a source that I have told her that I do not want so she bins it – silent delete

The Vetting Process

Emails undergo a three-stage vetting process, set forth by ISPs – as illustrated above – this process is continually being changed and optimised by the ISPs for two reasons:

• They don’t want to waste resources managing traffic that their customers don’t want in the first place
• All ISPs deliver essentially the same email applications so filtering unwanted email is a key differentiator

As the criteria for getting through are often set by ISPs themselves, marketers often wonder why their emails don’t even reach the recipient’s server, let alone the inbox. One way to circumvent this however, is by subscribing to ‘Accreditation’ services such as Return Path, where emails can leapfrog certain stages, such as content filtering and reputation checking.

Filtering

Spam filters are found at many other points on an email’s journey. There are hundreds of signals that decide an email’s fate at the filter and the importance of each signal is ever-changing, determined on complex algorithms. This often means that it isn’t just down to one factor that results in a campaign being marked as spam.

These days, the traditional filters of ‘word-scoring’ – checking an email for terms associated with spam, such as pornography or ‘get rich quick’ schemes – are the least of a modern marketer’s concerns. Modern filters put more weighting on things such as the reputation of the sender, and the quality of the content, looking at factors such as:

• If users have marked email from the sender as spam
• If the email comes from a Blacklisted domain
• If the email comes from an unknown sender or ‘cold IP’
• If the email contains any malicious links, i.e. ‘spear-phishing’
• If there is a language difference between the sender and recipient
• If the domain is authenticated with SPF, DMARC and DKIM (records used to validate email senders)

 

How can marketers ensure deliverability?

Clean data

The importance of ensuring that your customer data is clean cannot be overstated. Hard bounces and spam traps will impact your sender reputation heavily, especially if your domain gets blacklisted as a result. Prevention is better than a cure.

A feature that many ESPs have (albeit by different names) that isn’t often seen but works behind the scenes with clients to get the best possible deliverability, is the Global Suppression List (GSL) – an amalgamation of email addresses that have failed delivery for any reason, including hard bounces, or campaigns that have been marked as junk.

As well as helping with the email ecosystem, it’s used when validating data list imports through an email watchdog to ensure they contain good data. Every time dotmailer, for example, detects an address as invalid we add it to our GSL to help better assess future data imports. This ensures that both yours and your ESP’s sender reputation remains in check.

Content is King, Context is Queen

While most mainstream ESPs offer a decent level of deliverability, time and time again we’ve seen that a brand’s deliverability is affected to a large degree by the content it sends and the context in which it is received.

If users like your emails, a spam filter won’t stop it from getting to the inbox. Marketers should instead focus on why their content might have marked as spam, rather than look to game a filter. As we have said before, email is a channel for personal communication. Marketers should look to connect on a personal level to audiences with their content. Positive engagement such as opens, reopens, replies, forwards and clicks are of course the biggest weighting factors in measuring this.

Takeaway: Compose and design campaigns that you actually want to receive. Take advantage of A/B testing, understand what your subscribers want.

Don’t blame your ESP

An email platform provides the technology and the education, however, it is the senders who are responsible for its overall deliverability. It’s the customers’ sending reputation that drive those deliverability rates, and an ESP is reliant on users complying with best practice and legislation to ensure.

What you can ensure, however, is that an ESP is providing you with warm IP addresses and good authentication. While the deliverability section of a proposal might read like a mulch of technical jargon, it’s important that you know what you’re buying into. Check out Econsultancy’s 2013 Email Marketing Service Buyer’s Guide for a great overview on what to look out for.

Takeaway: Be a good sender; ensure you’re with a good provider.

Ever since Al Gore blessed us with his advent of the ever-powerful Internet, we’ve seen shift after shift in how things are done, from catching up with friends and listening to music to maintaining health records and making appointments.

Regardless of what industry you’re in, keeping up with all of the changing technology can be incredibly challenging (Google algorithms, anyone?), but the last thing you should do is throw your hands up.

Why? Because, even if you choose to ignore the shift towards digital, consumers are embracing it. And with this shift, comes a shift in power, from the salesman to the buyer.

The Shift Towards All-Things-Digital Is Significantly Changing Our Buying Patterns

According to a study conducted by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), almost 60% of the consumer’s purchasing process is done before they even come into contact with the supplier. That’s right, more than half of the purchasing decision is made through online research, typically starting with a search engine inquiry.

When considering solutions to their problems and selecting products to meet their needs, consumers are no longer listening to salesmen; they’re researching on their own and listening to online reviews and the social proof of their friends and family.

What Is Social Proof?

No matter what social media platform you’re using, the products, companies and even content that you support or “like” is transparent to all of your followers. And whether you’re privy to it or not, your followers will immediately place some level of trust in those products and companies or that content, based on their trust in you.

But as a supplier, that means that, no matter how convincing you are or how great your product is, you may not even get a chance to say it or prove it if you don’t have a strong online presence, a strong social media presence and a well-developed digital marketing strategy.

Does this mean that as a company, we have to change the way we market? YES.

But We’ve Always Done It This Way!

There is merit to tradition, but as a business, if you’re not open to evolving with your target market or buyer personas, you can ride your tradition all the way to the poor house. You can fight the change all you want, but the truth is, the consumer now holds the power.

OK, I Get It, But How Do I Convince My Top-Level Execs To Buy-In To Our Digital Marketing Strategy?

Trends are showing more and more that executive buy-in significantly influences the success or failure of a digital marketing strategy.

But getting Top-Level Executives to support your digital marketing strategy can be difficult for a variety of reasons. C-suite execs tend to be a bit wary of digital marketing because traditional marketing methods have always worked in the past, and it can be difficult to quantify the ROI of a digital approach.

So, how do you express the importance and value of a strong digital marketing strategy to the C-suite and get them on-board?

Patterns & Behavior

Well, you want to start by using real data to show the shift in purchasing patterns and the real results of quality digital marketing.

With the Internet, consumers have access to an exorbitant amount of knowledge and can compare products, prices and services without ever leaving the house or talking to a salesperson.

Understanding this is crucial to understanding why your method of marketing must change. Once your Top-Level Execs see real numbers and patterns, they’ll be much more open to letting go of traditional methods of marketing and investing in the digital world.

You will also want to use data from your marketing intelligence software, which will show page performance, traffic and click-through-rates (CTR) and will essentially give you a snapshot of your potential customer’s experience with your website. This allows you to make some educated decisions regarding what’s working, what’s not working and where to invest additional resources.

Cost

It’s no secret that the C-suite has money on the mind. One of the best ways to get them on-board with your digital marketing strategy is to explain how creating a quality digital marketing strategy can cut down on marketing costs.

Here are just a couple of fun facts you may want to include in your presentation:

• Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)

• Inbound leads cost 61% less than outbound leads. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)

You can download this free report, which includes a wealth of statistics on digital marketing and the inbound methodology here.

Increased Reach

One of the ways that digital marketing can cut down on marketing costs is by increasing reach, without reaching deeper into your pockets. How?

Remember when we talked about social proof? Well, with Facebook shares, retweets, email forwards, inbound links and other methods of digital sharing, your existing customers and fans can do the job of promoting you and your company for you. That means you’ll reach new potential customers, simply by pleasing your existing customers and building their trust.

That’s free(ish) advertisement!

Competition

Ok, this one is big. One of the most important things to emphasize to your Top-Level Executives is that no matter what you decide to do as a company, whether you stick to traditional methods of marketing or get onboard with digital, your competition is in the game. And if your competition is giving your potential customers a wonderful and engaging digital experience and you’re nowhere to be found, guess who’s going to close those leads when it comes to decision time?

Tweakability

Now that you’ve adequately frightened your execs into throwing money at your digital marketing strategy, it’s time to comfort them. Explain that you and your team will continuously analyze and review, tweaking your marketing strategy using real-time metrics and data.

And of course, you’ll be as transparent as possible, creating a to share all visible data to all of the involved departments, including sales and C-suite. Schedule to meet as frequently as they’d prefer to discuss how your digital marketing strategy is helping your company achieve its goals.

Be Patient

No matter what you end up including in your appeal to the C-suite in your company, be sure to be respectful and empathetic. Remember, they’re heavily invested in the company and change to that investment can always be a bit frightening. It may take a little patience and time to get them comfortable with the changes, and—just like your digital marketing strategy—you may not see results overnight. But keep analyzing and tweaking and you’ll get the results you’re looking for.

What successes have you had in engaging your executives in your digital marketing strategy? Tell us in the comments below.

As I pointed out in Part One, social media marketing is still figuring itself out, so finding the right person to be your social media manager is no easy task. Simply charging the youngest person in the company to handle such an increasingly vital and visual role just does not make sense. Just consider how today I walked into my local Verizon store to ask some questions for my elderly parents.

“Hi. Do you have phones designed specifically for senior citizens?,” I asked the young Verizon employee.

“Is this for you?,” she replied.

I paused for a few moments until the Frankenstein veins on the side of my head stopped throbbing, then replied: “What’s your cancellation policy?”

What we’ve all learned very quickly is that social media is akin to preparing blow fish, or the Japanese sushi known as “fugu”. Prepared correctly and you’ll be treated to one of the most delicious meals you have ever had. Prepared incorrectly, and it could very well kill you. With social media, say the right things and you’ll increase awareness, trust, leads, sales, and loyalty.  Say the wrong things and you’ll get the opposite results.

To prevent these kinds of public relations catastrophes, and compensate for the ever growing knowledge base necessary to perform effectively, more and more organizations are splitting the social media workload into newly created specialized positions like social media strategist, social media content creator, community manager, and the list continues to grow. They are creating singularly-focused cookie-cutter positions with sole focus sometimes on one site: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on.

This kind of social media segmentation may work for some multinationals, but I see this trend as a danger for mid-sized and smaller companies that require most of their employees to wear many hats. They are seeking out prospects whose sole purpose and focus has been social media. Some forgo even getting a Director of Marketing in lieu of a social media manager, an e-mail manager, and SEO manager, etc. But social media is just a part of a marketing plan, and understanding how it fits in to the larger scheme is more important than knowing how to get more Facebook fans. Your new social media manager might be great at growing your Twitter following, but if they have little to no experience in branding, those twitter followers might be useless.

Therefore, your social media manager must have in-depth knowledge of social media as well as search engine optimization, search engine marketing, landing page creation, blogging and most of all public relations. It’s impact is immediate therefore a social media manager needs to know how it all fits in with the overall marketing strategy. These candidates do exist but they are harder to find and understandably come at a higher salary.

But when push comes to shove, if you have to choose, hire a marketing pro who’s learning social media rather then a social media guru who knows little about marketing. So rather then choose a social media manager based solely on their age or their social media experience, find one that knows and understands that social media may be a superstar, but it’s also part of a larger team of marketing and advertising efforts.

Social Media Marketing is great fun right? The trouble is too many of us get engrossed in the making connections/sharing great content side but fall down when it comes to creating tangible leads and closing a sale. What can you do to find real leads and how do you turn those leads into customers? I have trawled the websites of some of our favorite marketing and sales apps and made a list of the most frequently asked questions. Let’s find out some of the answers to the most important questions YOU are asking.

How can I maintain consistency across all my social networks?

Use a platform for your marketing, sales and customer relationships all rolled into one. Which social networks do you use for business? Use a marketing automation tool which delivers consistent, branded content across all your platforms at once. Not all platforms cover all networks so find one that can post to your most frequently used social media outlets and use and abuse it! Also stop flogging a dead horse! If a social network isn’t doing anything for you then don’t bother with it.

I have thousands of fans and followers but I’m not making any money, what am I doing wrong?

Of course building your networks is important, it is no use if you are talking only to yourself is it? The problem is that too many get obsessed with gaining fans and followers they forget the aim of social media marketing: to make sales! Listening to your competition is just as important as getting your stuff out there. What are they up to? Are they doing it better than you? Measuring your marketing efforts and engagement rates is crucial, don’t keep making the same mistakes.

How can I know what content my customers will like and where I can share it?

Listening technology used in marketing automation tools, will allow you to discover the kind of content your customers are interested in. Using social media analytics will help you to learn which posts create the most engagement, website visits, sales etc. Follow the numbers and use this information to your advantage. Check out what everyone else is doing, look at posts which create tons of engagement across different networks and try to emulate what they do.

How can I cut down on the marketing tools that I use?

We partly covered this answer in question one. Finding one tool that covers all of your social networks is half the battle. Depending on what YOU need or YOUR business needs, you also have to look at tools that include a CRM, email marketing service, lead generation, business analytics, content scheduling capabilities, plus many other options. Look around to find the service that covers your requirements.

How can I communicate effectively with my team?

Communication is key and if you have two employees or 100 you need to get it right. Using a platform to communicate with your team is the way to go. Using team collaboration apps can make your life a million times easier. Give each team member a role, assign tasks, monitor their performance, it’s all so much easier with great software to manage it all for you. If you don’t already use it, is it time to start?

How can I leverage social listening to understand my customer’s needs?

There is no shortage of opinions being shared on social media. From good to bad, listen to what your customers are saying and take advantage of those opinions. Did someone just trash your competition? Jump right in and say how you could do it better! Is someone asking questions about your niche that you can answer? Start talking and let them know you are an expert in your field. Clever tools can search for keywords used in social media and alert you when these words are being used.

How can I boost revenue and sales through social media?

This is what it all comes down to, the crux of the matter, the raison d’etre. You could be the worlds best social networker but if you don’t make those sales then it’s all a bit of a waste of time. A combination of all of the above will help you to boost your revenue. Listen to what your customers are saying, tailor your online behavior to match their needs. Offer advice in the form of a tweet, an article, a video, whatever. Stand out from your competition and be known as an expert in your field. Be there for people in real-time, they will be impressed by your tenacity. Use analytics to measure your success and failure. There is no one answer to this question, it is a magic recipe and the ingredients are exclusive to you.

So what are the best tools for the job?

You need to find the platform that works for you and has everything you need. If you look around you will find the ONE that’s right for you, that will do everything you need and make your life easier. Here are some great suggestions for you:

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Oracle Social Cloud

Oracle Social Cloud combines social media management, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more, with a great customer relationship manager and marketing department. With social listening and real-time analytics it allows you to be on top of your game where your customers are concerned. Their post automation and scheduling is a real time-saver.

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Oktopost

Oktopost is a socially driven content marketing platform, specifically for B2B marketing. They focus on social sharing in LinkedIn groups as well as the usual social networks. A unified social inbox allows you to engage with potential leads and they also have a post scheduling service.

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Pardot

Pardot has a great lead nurturing feature, real-time sales alerts and fabulous email marketing tools. Their reporting and analytics tools are top notch and they have a unique prospect tracking system. Pardot allows you to manage your campaigns all in one handy platform. You can measure your successes and keep up to date with your social networks.

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Finding the right fit for you and your business is down to you I’m afraid. I am sure you will have so much fun trying out all these great tools. If you can’t decide you can make comparisons between two apps, it may become clearer when you see them side-by-side. We have a huge choice of marketing software for you to browse though so go nuts!

Are you finding limited success with traditional methods for generating leads? Do you find it difficult to attract attention not just from customers, but from the right types of customers? Starting a business blog may be just the method you are after.

Starting a Business Blog: The Basics

Before you can understand how beneficial a business blog can be to your inbound marketing efforts, you must first understand what one is. A business blog is a site that includes content that is refreshed and frequently updated with topics that are relevant to the business you run.

The two most important elements to pay attention to involve

1. Frequently updated content
2. Content that is relevant to your readers.

Frequently updated content will allow your business blog to rank higher in search engines for the specific keywords that you target.

If your site is ranks high in search engines for keywords that are relevant to your business, more customers will be driven there when they perform general Internet searches.

Understanding the Role of Keywords

You must understand the synergies between what search engines are looking for and what readers are looking for.

Search engines like Google will “crawl” a blog in an attempt to identify certain keywords. Then, based on a variety of different factors like the quality of the content and the update frequency, Google’s algorithm will determine how high your site ranks in the search for those particular keywords.

It’s not always about getting visitors to your site, but about getting the right kind of visitors. The usefulness of this intelligence cannot be overstated – with keyword research you can predict shifts in demand, respond to changing market conditions, and produce the products, services, and content that web searchers are already actively seeking. – Rand Fishkin, Moz.com

Potential customers read your business blog in much the same way – they are looking for information about certain keywords and hope that highly ranking sites in search engines provide answers.

The Key Benefits of Starting a Business Blog

The key benefits of starting a business blog can be broken down into two distinct categories:

1. Trust
2. Traffic

Growing your brands presence online in an organic way is important and involves establishing a high quality, trust-filled relationship with your potential customers.

If potential customers come to your website and find helpful content that is directly related to the original items that they were searching for, they are not only more likely to return but they are also more likely to complete the sale process. In addition, people who see that your content is trustworthy and of high quality are also more likely to share links to that content with their friends, family members and associates.

As potential customers pass your link around, it will help drive more traffic to your business blog which ultimately translates to increased traffic to your website.

Another way that starting a business blog drives traffic to your website has to do with the frequency at which you update your blog. Blogs, on average, are updated much more frequently than a traditional website, so they tend to rank higher in Google search results. Every time you publish a new piece of content on your blog, you are giving Google another opportunity to “crawl” your website and list another one of your pages in their search engine.

The more pieces of content that you publish using your blog, the more opportunities you are giving potential customers to find your site. If you update your blog several times a week, then over time your site with see exponential increases in search traffic.

Blogging as a Lead Source

When starting a business blog, it is important to understand that every person who comes to your website through any way represents a potential new lead. Converting visitors into leads, however, will require you to use a combination of inbound marketing methods.

Say a visitor is searching for a helpful article on a topic related to your business. If you’ve frequently updated your business blog with helpful and trustworthy content, they may land on your blog during a Google search.

After reading the article, you offer a call to action, which involves getting a user to give you their contact information in exchange for a special offer or piece of premium content. Suddenly, a person who was only looking for a single piece of content has become a viable new lead that you can use in the future to generate sales.

Perhaps the most important benefit of starting a business blog, however, is that the Internet is permanent by its very nature. If you create a high-quality business blog, it represents a potentially endless source of new leads and sales moving forward.

Hey, thanks for the info. Now what?

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You’ve spent time and money building a comprehensive marketing plan and buying fancy marketing tools and implementing them. You even bought the sales tools that go with your marketing automation platform – so now what? You just turn on the tools and run, right? Not quite.

Unless you have fewer than five sales people and they are all very, very deeply involved in your marketing organization, there’s a good chance they have no idea what you’ve just invested in or why it isn’t just another shiny object for them. They don’t have a clue how these tools will truly benefit them.

So how do you get sales to buy in and adopt these new tools?

Sure, you can go to the Marketo or Eloqua websites and pull screenshots galore and gather PDF documents that extoll the virtues of the various tools you now own. But try convincing Joe Salesguy why he should be interested in reading all of those.

Let’s be realistic and put on our marketing hats. You wouldn’t send emails to your marketing universe that were less than relevant, so why do you think you can pass out generic stuff to your sales team and hope they will read it and find value? Yes, it might sound like a lot of work to build a marketing plan to engage sales and then execute it, but isn’t it worthwhile? After all, you bought into the Sales Insight or Discover toolset because they are supposed to empower sales, so let’s go one step farther and really enable them.

Here’s how:

1. Build a buzz. Prior to launch, pick a small subset of your sales users for a pilot. You will want to get some of your more engaged, “willing to experiment” sales folks. With this group, you are doing two things. First, you are making sure these tools work for your sales team. Second, and most important, you are creating an internal case study. *Note: If you’ve already launched, then go fishing for some case studies. We all know how powerful they can be in a sales cycle, so think of this as your own internal sale!
2. Set up in-person training time. At launch time, plan to have a few in-person workshops at different times and locations (if need be), so that you can connect personally with the sales users. Here is your chance to explain the tools, gauge their reactions, and then assist them in setting up and using the tools. Be ready to have some sample contacts/leads for them to test sending out emails. Use this test to demonstrate how to follow and watch the buying signals in the tools you’ve built.
3. Don’t set it and forget it. Build internal resources to support continued adoption of the tools. Everything from an internal email nurture program to a webpage with resources, FAQ docs, and samples will go a long way towards helping your users after training. These documents are definitely not one time use only. Get the team who trains your new sales users involved in creation of these resources, because if they have a stake in it, chances are good that sales will continue to leverage these assets going forward.
4. Reach out in multiple formats. You don’t send one-dimensional campaigns to your prospects, so don’t do it here, either! Engage your users with video, blog posts, emails, and any other format you think might help them.
5. Track use. After you’ve gone through all of this and gotten sales engagement, you need to track usage of the tools. Listen for case studies where sales is successfully using the tools and socialize those case studies – not just with sales, but throughout the company! Make sure the tools continue to be utilized so that you’re able to show some return on the investment.

As you roll out new software for your teams, start out by asking these crucial questions and you’ll be much more successful:

How are you socializing your sales tools with the sales teams?

How do you measure user engagement and define what is “success” for your company?

Balance is key in deciding the proper compensation for your team.

If you own a small business page on Facebook, you need to be aware of changes that Facebook is making to how your content is shared amongst your followers.

Beginning a couple of months ago, some companies’ managed business pages began to see a noticeable fall-off in activity. Their posts were reaching a much smaller number of fans than usual. After several weeks of tracking this trend, several companies asked Facebook if this was something on their end or had Facebook changed its algorithm. Facebook did not answer clearly for quite some time.

The drop-off in organic reach per fan, the rate that content is seen by a follower as a natural part of their daily newsfeed, continued to drop for even more pages. Usually, around 16-20 percent was considered to be a large number. That meant that almost a fifth of all your followers saw the content you posted. This number has since dwindled down to 4-6 percent.

This phenomenon was met with outrage and frustration from everyone involved. Ever increasing calls for why this has been happening was finally met with a confirmation from Facebook that they had changed their algorithm and organic reach had dropped considerably for every page. Their suggested fix for this was to pay them to post ads more frequently. Understandably, this solution was not met with too much optimism.

The majority of small businesses and fan groups out there made accusations ranging from mild frustration to outrageous accusations of illegitimate business practices. The larger issue was that these groups have spent a lot of time accumulating the followers and likes that they have. Facebook made the guarantee that followers and likes would translate into long-term success on Facebook’s business page options. These businesses and groups became frustrated when it was said that all this work they did was now secondary.

There is a legitimate method to this madness. The algorithm that Facebook uses to determine which posts make it to the newsfeed was changed to value greater quality posts. Things like interest in the quality of the post, who posted the content, how recently it was posted and other factors were the focus of this new algorithm.

 Facebook’s Defense: The Challenges of being the world’s largest Social Media platform

Facebook admitted that organic reach rates had dropped, but it was not because they are being vindictive or seek greater profits. The head of Facebook’s ad product marketing, Brian Boland, stepped forward to answer questions that Facebook had been receiving for some time.

This change was not a bid to increase profits. Boland assured business owners that Facebook has always had its customers and businesses at heart throughout the changes that they have made. The choice to decrease organic reach rates was motivated to allow more people to be exposed on the newsfeed rather than having it dominated by a handful of super-massive groups. The paid-ads option was also meant to appease groups that had the budget to increase this minimal ad space. The two messages seem contradictory, but at its core, Facebook was trying to give the little guy a chance at making it on a newsfeed.

Part of the decrease was natural, an argument that has sound roots. The number of likes made per day has grown by 50 percent in the past few years. This is an incredible amount of people and information being posted on boards. Decrease in organic reach to a given managed business page was the result of too much content on too small of a venue. There are only so many hours people spend on Facebook and the newsfeed is only large enough to hold so much. This was a crisis of supply and demand. To resolve it, Facebook decided to cut everyone’s average reach in a bid to bring less popular pages to light.

When Boland spoke, he mentioned Google as a peer company that had a similar problem. Bigger companies with larger followings were posting low-quality blogs and content that were overshadowing the high-quality content that smaller businesses and bloggers were posting because they had so many more likes. Google then updated its algorithm to favour websites that posted good content more often, rather than spam websites. Facebook has merely tried to create a similar algorithm to better promote smaller businesses and fan pages.

Many of Boland’s answers and messages point to one larger assumption businesses must be making towards Facebook: it is changing. Advertising on Facebook is now a far different experience than it was even a few years ago. Where once success was determined by likes and follows, it is now far more similar to advertising on Google.

If you want a successful business page on Facebook, you must have great content, the interest to draw Facebook’s attention and the cash to supplement a reliable ad campaign.

Adapting your managed business page to the new Facebook

Now that you know what has occurred and what it means for you, how can you start adapting to the situation? Luckily, the grand majority of changes you have to make are relatively small. What they will require is more work on your part and dedication to the platform.

Post more often with fresh content. Now that the newsfeed’s content is far more limited, you will need more content to increase your chances of being posted for your followers to see. This means posting more often at all times of the day. Posting once or twice a day will only work if those posts receive a massive amount of activity. If a healthy discussion keeps your post in the newsfeed for hours, great! However, this is likely not the case.

You will want three to four posts a day, at various times of day. How recent a post was made is a large factor for Facebook, so older posts have an increasingly low chance of being put up on the newsfeed. Having a quasi-fresh post at all times of the day will help.

Facebook’s Insights Feature lets you know when to post. Posting all the time is best, but you also want to make sure that all of your work pays off. This means finding out when your demographic is the most active. Under ‘posts,’ Facebook has an option for your managed business page called “Insights.” This option allows you to see the activity on your page, how large it was and when it occurred. Use this information to decide when to be active on your business page.

Link back to your regular business website and any other social media accounts you may have. This is great for Facebook’s algorithm, but also for Google’s algorithm. The more connected your pages are, the more likely it will be noticed by search algorithms in general. It also allows your Facebook followers to jump back and forth between their comfortable Facebook feed and your website.

How businesses interact with Facebook has irreparably changed. It is harder, as a small company, to break into fame through the Facebook newsfeed and the odds are stacked higher than ever against you. The best way to grow your managed business page is to use the new Facebook to your advantage and spread your message through every avenue possible.

Facebook just opened a brand new office in New York City, prompting Quartz to interview their site director about Facebook’s management principles.

Now, the sales floor isn’t a coding floor, not by a long shot. But people management is the same all over, especially when considering similar age groups. Millennials, the fastest-growing age bracket in sales, are a major component (if not the driving force) of virtually any tech company, including Facebook.

Here are my favorite takeaways from the interview:

1. Bring the FUN, but keep it relevant. “We don’t have a slide; we don’t have things that I think might have been interesting but not functional,” says Serkan Piantino, FB New York’s site manager. I’m all on board for the calls for more fun in the office. Millennials are definitely attracted by a fun, social work culture that emphasizes collaboration and downplays strict hierarchy. Facebook thought about what people in their unique urban area would want and what their employees would most appreciate (like a library for research and quiet, and a coffee bar because their people tended to like coffee) and worked with that.
2. Shoot for the best in on-boarding. New hires will love it, sales superheros will flock to your company, you’ll get more productivity faster . . . the benefits are enormous. Facebook’s “bootcamp” has been called one of the best training programs in existence by VC leader Ben Horowitz. It’s designed to really get at a new-hire’s strengths, motivators, and desires, and set them up with the skills and knowledge to succeed right off the bat. Yet, in sales, so many organizations have bare-bones on-boarding programs, or programs bogged down by initial-hire administrative tasks and complex product training. The results: in a recent study of over 700 active B2B salespeople, about a quarter of all sales reps felt unprepared to demonstrate financial justification, to negotiate a deal, and to have executive conversations.
3. Beware of premature promotions. Facebook wants to avoid a common corporate trap — talented, experienced professionals clamoring to leave productive roles to develop their career and “grow” into management, whether they’re natural leaders or not. Piantino explains that, at Facebook, they take care to offer plenty of career stepping stones and development outside of management, in order to keep well-trained, productive people doing what they do best for a longer time.
4. Allow for collaboration and peer learning. Piantino reflects that, at Facebook, their coders often came up with the best ideas by being allowed to work on side projects and bounce them off coworkers until they have something convincing to show their bosses. It’s a lesson seen in Google and some other major tech companies, too. In sales, side projects might not make much sense. But encouraging reps to bounce ideas off of each other and learn from their coworkers is not only a great way to foster community and collaboration (remember those Millennials’ preferences?), but independence and confidence, too. Plus, natural leaders may very well emerge from the sales floor and be prime candidates for sales management.

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For more on inside sales strategies and trends, subscribe to the RSS Feed for this blog and sign up for our Email Newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn, and join the conversation on Inside Sales 2.0 Trends Talk LinkedIn Group. If you want epic inside sales training for teams and managers, contact TeleSmart.

photo credit: Facebook/Kira McCroden

The post 4 Things Inside Sales Managers Can Learn from Facebook’s Management Philosophy appeared first on TeleSmart Communications.

Harnessing the power of Twitter to spread the word about your brand is good for earned media. In fact, a retweet or mention from another person is considered earned by some. That is, you created a message so relevant to the reader that they decide it’s important to share it.

While we could expound on how to write tweets that get shared, Twitter offers best practices, and Gerry Moran teaches us how to write the perfect tweet. But what folks aren’t talking about is leading-edge research from the Ministry of Science in Spain and Pew Research Center’s study of Twitter groups.

There’s more to Twitter than the occasional retweet or mention about the latest Kardashian drama. The social network has 271 million active users. Nearly a half billion tweets are sent daily, and over two thirds of those are coming from mobile devices.

Understanding the dynamics of groups in Twitter will help you create tweets that communicate your message better and increase their chances of being retweeted.

Six Kinds of Social Groups in Twitter

People on Twitter, surprisingly, communicate in much the same fashion as they do in face-to-face interactions. In real life, we form communities and groups to discuss and share information about topics that are top of mind. The Pew Research Center with the Social Media Research Foundation recently discovered that people do the same on Twitter. The study reports that we congregate into six different types of groups:

Political groups, as you expect, polarize and share information among each other and rarely communicate with other political groups. In this case, the old adage about birds of the same feather is true; political groups do, in fact, flock together.

Tight crowds share common interests and have strong connections. You’ll notice this type of group forms around conferences, professional topics, and hobby enthusiasts. These people come together in the name of mutual support.

Brand groups form around products, services or the pop-culture topic d’jour, but typically tweet about these things not to these things, and rarely tweet to one another. These groups of people are fragmented and become more so as their numbers increase. In other words, they focus on the topic and are not as concerned with connecting to each other.

Community groups are smaller than tight crowds, which form around a few hubs with their own audience, influential members and information sources. Think of these groups as exotic bazaars with their own conversations.

Typically, global news stories attract coverage from many news outlets, each with its own following, otherwise called a community group. The World Cup is a good example, as different groups of people tweeted about the progress of their favorite team.

These environments create medium-sized groups and a fair number of isolated people tweeting, but not connecting with other groups.

Support groups form around businesses and other organizations where complaints and other information directed toward that company are resolved. In this group, the organization communicates directly with customers while customers connect with and communicate to the organization, but rarely mention or follow others in the group.

Broadcast networks form around breaking news as a distinct hub and spoke group in which many people repeat what prominent news and media organizations tweet. People in these networks are usually only connected to the news outlet and not each other. Sometimes within the larger network subject groupies emerge, which could be the tipping point of a broadcast network into a more robust community group.

If you are a business of any size, it’s important to understand these types of groups and communities exist in Twitter. Even more, you should know how to build, join and influence each one of them, because the strategy will be different for each.

In this article we will examine the inter-workings of broadcast networks, but first let’s learn about what makes up a group before we dive into strategy.

A Brief Anatomy of Groups

Groups and networks are ever-changing. Understanding how they form, how people share information and how they create ties with each other will help you create better engagement strategies. It’s these ties that matter most when the time comes for your company to engage those people. Groups have four very distinct traits:

• Groups have a regular pattern of communication.

• Groups are continuously redefined by people moving into and out of them.

• Among its members conversations continually ebb and flow.

• People within these groups can become increasingly reliant on each other.

With this insight into group and network formation in Twitter, let’s move to learning how people in Twitter share information.

Communication in Groups Using Twitter

As we mentioned earlier, groups on Twitter share close ties within their own group, but what connects one group to another are weaker links called bridges. Those people – the bridges between extraneous collections of people – are important for sharing information from one group to another. Keep that in mind, as we turn to the three types of communication most frequent in the social network.

Typically, weaker links have more time to share information because they are less inclined to engage in conversations with other people, according to research funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science. Their purpose is to share information. On the other hand, people embedded in groups have stronger ties, communicate more vigorously with each other and, therefore, have less time to share information between outside groups.

What also matters is how the information is carried through Twitter. There are three main ways people share information in the social network in and between groups: mentions, retweets and tweets.

People inside groups use mentions to identify a person with whom they want to communicate. As these increase over time, so does the strength of those ties. Conversely, people who retweet a link to a content source create links, but they’re weaker than mentions because the information is not directed to someone. Rather, it is perceived as a general all-points bulletin. Researchers at Pew found bridges retweeted more between groups, while mentions occurred more frequently inside groups in Twitter.

Why Broadcast Networks Are Important to Your Company

As businesses increasingly seek out ways to earn media for their brands, it’s important to influence news as it breaks. Companies like Wordstream pulled this off with their report comparing the Facebook advertising and Google Adwords platforms on the heels of Facebook’s IPO announcement. Ideally, you want to be the center of attention, as Häagen-Dazs did with honeybees.

Mini Case Study: Häagen-Dazs Loves Honeybees

The “Häagen-Dazs Loves Honeybees” campaign is an early example of digital earned media. Writing for

Other outcomes of the ice cream company’s campaign put the brand at the center of a broadcast network that reached far beyond Twitter:

• Sales increased by 5.2 percent that year.
• The number of media impressions that resulted was worth about $1.5 million in advertising.
• The brand was strongly associated with support of the bee population by the public.
• More than 1,200,000 bee friendly seeds were distributed (and potentially planted).
• Helpthehoneybees.com received 469,798 unique visitors.
• Häagen-Dazs experienced a 13 percent increase in its brand advocacy rating, exceeding its competitors.

In addition to these results, Häagen-Dazs used Twitter to create its own broadcast network by influencing other, like-minded environmental groups. Writing for AdAge, Karen Egolf reported that the company worked with ExperienceProject.com and “drew more than 56,000 unique users and added almost 12,000 new supporters.”

“To help expand the effort, Häagen-Dazs added Experience Project’s TwitCause, the largest social cause portal on Twitter, to encourage people to spread the campaign message while raising money through Tweets,” wrote Egolf.

Lessons Learned from Wordstream & Häagen-Dazs

In the first example with Wordstream, Kim influenced the media on the heels of breaking news and infused his company’s study into the broadcast network that was buzzing with the Facebook IPO announcement. Remember that people tend to retweet breaking news, so when Kim’s news broke, and it was related to the social network’s announcement, it too became a new and different news angle. He used the news of Facebook to attract attention to his company. This approach is known as news-jacking, a term David Meerman Scott coined.

Häagen-Dazs took a different approach by creating its own broadcast network and attracting media attention to a larger environmental issue. This is the second way to build a broadcast network, albeit more challenging and time consuming. However, I believe this is the natural trajectory of content marketing.

In media, movements get attention. Such opportunities to create and unify groups across social networks aren’t common and require ground breaking research, grassroots mobilization, and news backed by top-tier media to be successful. Movements are rare, but when they encompass a large social issue that’s relevant to the brand, companies should be quick to get involved

Empower Weak Ties to Spread Your Message

Earlier, we looked at research that indicates retweets are the product of weak links among Twitter groups and networks. Research from Dan Zarrella, gives us some empirical evidence about the power of retweeting. There are several actionable points we can take away from this study to improve our engagement in broadcast networks:

• Using the second person “you” in tweets increases the probability your message will be retweeted.
• Including the call to action “please retweet” improves your chances of being retweeted.
• Adding “New Blog Post” to the suffix of a message makes your message more retweetable.
• Messages written with a reading level of grade 6.5 on the Flesch-Kincaid scale tend to be retweeted more.
• Weaving novelty into your message could get your tweet shared more often.
• Creating your tweet as a provocative headline will improve its chances of people retweeting it.
• Tying your message to an emotion strengthens its chances of being shared.
• Using concrete words instead of abstract words gives your message a retweet boost.
• Messages of positivity are retweeted more than negative messages.

Earning clout inside broadcast networks requires brands to publish content that is – first and foremost – newsworthy. Your information should be timely and speak to a larger issue in the industry you serve. Is there news occurring that your company can build from, such as Wordstream did? Alternatively, are there larger issues that could impact more than just your industry? Häagen-Dazs capitalized on a public issue that affected the entire planet’s food supply. They raised the public’s awareness of the honeybee colony collapse and turned the issue into a movement.

Understanding the group dynamics of Twitter makes it easier to hone in on the types of users a brand needs to amplify their message. Broadcast networks are the typically the most effective, as these groups form around breaking news and insights and are apt to repeat what prominent news and media organizations communicate. Whether you’re news-jacking what the media is already talking about or leading the movement at the center of the discussion, leveraging your weakest Twitter links – those bridges between extraneous collections of people – is one of the best ways to disseminate your message across a variety of groups.

Your business will not grow unless you are constantly generating new business, and PPC lead generation is a great way to help fuel that desired growth. An existing customer base is great, but your business will not experience growth unless you are bringing new lead prospects through your sales funnel that will eventually convert into sales and revenue for your business.

Every business can benefit from pay per click advertising, whether the focus is to drive online sales or leads. We are going to focus on tips to help generate more leads for your business. Without constantly adding new prospects to your sales funnel it will eventually dry up and the cycle will stop, and PPC advertising is a great way to keep that funnel full of potential sales.

Not every person that lands on your website is going to be ready to purchase right away. The purpose of lead generation is to gather prospects that have shown an interest in your product or service, and begin to provide them with information that shows them why they need to buy what you are selling. Some businesses will enter new leads into their system and then their sales team will reach out and attempt to close the deal once the prospect hits a certain spot in the sales funnel. The trick is loading that sales funnel up with prospects, and PPC is a great platform to accomplish this.

Why PPC Lead Generations Performs Well

A successful online marketing campaign to generate leads needs to include several platforms. Blogging, email marketing, search engine optimization, and social media marketing can all very effective forms of lead generation, but they take time. With PPC you can put your brand directly in front of people searching for the product or service that you are selling almost instantly.

We often hear many business owners say that they avoid pay per click advertising because they have to pay for each click received, but name one form of online advertising that is free. There aren’t any, because when it comes down to it there is a cost associated with all marketing. Blog content doesn’t get created for free, email marketing software and the time to run the campaigns are not free, search engine optimization certainly isn’t free, and social media marketing requires employees to manage it, which also isn’t free.

There is no ramp up and no waiting. With pay per click advertising you can begin to generate leads right away.

Why Your Business Should Consider PPC Lead Generation

• Instantly attract website visitors that are actively seeking the product or service you offer

• Instantly dominate the top of the search results without having to wait for organic SEO results

• You can use your PPC data to see what search terms are resulting in the highest conversion rate and adjust your other marketing campaigns accordingly to target the same keywords

• PPC is extremely measureable and it allows you to see where every penny is spent and what the precise ROI is for the campaign

How to Maximize Your Leads With PPC

You need a great offer. You need to offer your visitor something that he or she cannot pass up in exchange for their name and email address, at the very least. Each business will have a different criteria for the data needed to collect in order to create a lead. Some will only need a name and email while some will require more detailed information. Your offer needs to present them with something of value that they desire enough that is results in them submitting their information.

Monitor you acquisition cost. PPC allows you to see all of your data and precisely know how much it is costing you to acquire each lead. Before you even start a PPC campaign you need to have a target cost-per-lead determined. By monitoring and optimizing you can keep the CPL on target. If you end up spending too much per lead the ROI will be nonexistent or even negative.

Make sure your landing pages are relevant. Not only will relevant landing pages help you obtain higher quality scores and a lower cost-per-click, but they will also help you generate more leads. If your landing page copy isn’t highly related to the ad copy the prospect clicked on it is very unlikely they will convert. Your landing pages will require constant adjustment and optimization, just like you PPC ads.

Use a solid CMS. If you are spending all of this time and money to generate leads wouldn’t it be wise to make sure that your sales team is following up properly at each stage of the sales funnel? Using a client management system (CMS) allows you to see the leads progress through your entire funnel and when and how they were each contacted. This data allows you to see at which stage your leads are converting and at which stage they drop off the map.

This week, I heard from a sales leader in Atlanta, Mary Ford. She wrote to me:

“I've been developing an opinion that the concept of "sales operations" needs a re-invention - the function has grown in scope and complexity and would benefit from a rebranding.”

Mary's skill set is wide ranging.  As is the case with most Sales Ops leaders. It stands to reason that the role would grow and become more complex.  As the role adapts, the expectations and measurement become misaligned.  This is causing pain for the Sales Ops team.

We know customers want to us to engage them differently. There’s all sorts of research that says customers want to self educate. Other research showing that customers are engaging sales people later in the process–largely after they have determined the problem, determines their needs and requirements, and in fact narrowed their solution alternatives to a few choices (of which they are indifferent).

Likewise, sales and marketing are facing pressures. Recognizing the desire of customers to self educate or to avoid seeing sales people, they are providing more content. Using marketing automation tools, they are able to “move” the customer through their cycle–appealing to their desire to self educate and defer sales engagement.

Sales loves this, like everyone else, sales has too much on their plates. So taking a lot of the upfront work off their shoulders is helpful. Getting to the customer when they are truly qualified and saying, “This is what we want, how much will you charge us to buy if from you,” focuses the selling activities immensely.

• It works when it works–but is it really working? Are we really engaging the customer in the way that is most helpful to them–rather than what they want?
• Are we designing and implementing our customer engagement processes in ways that create the greatest value for them, while positioning us most favorably?
• Are we integrating and sequencing marketing and sales activities in a way that optimizes the customer buying experience?

To me, it seems like we really haven’t designed the engagement processes that enable us to achieve the things above.

Largely, marketing and sales are still separate and sequential processes. In the old days, marketing created demand, then passed off a lead to sales. In the new “marketing/sales integration,” marketing still creates demand—it may nurture and develop it further–ultimately passing a lead off to sales. It may be a much higher quality lead, it is certainly much later in the process.

So all we’ve done is changed the point at which leads pass from marketing to sales, but have we really improved the buying experience, are we really helping customer create the best outcomes they can possibly achieve. Furthermore, we’ve really not integrated and changed the marketing/sales process–they are still sequential, they are still largely independent of each other.

Before I go on, things are better. High quality, targeted, relevant content contributes greatly to educating the customers, focusing them on critical issues and improving our own sales/marketing capabilities. Marketing automation tools help us (and the customer) get the most relevant content to the right person at the right time. Intelligence from the marketing tools can enable the sales person to improve the quality in which they engage their customers.

So things are better–but not necessarily right.

Much of this is based on the assumption the customer knows what they are doing. They recognize there are things they can do better, there are opportunities to improve and grow. It assumes they perfectly know their situation, and can perfectly define the issues they should be addressing, what they should be assessing, how they should be educating themselves and evaluating alternatives.

It assumes customers are constantly scanning the horizon, looking for new things to do, continuously learning, improving, investigating–even though there may be no obvious need to change.

Further, this assumes the customer knows how to organize themselves to define new opportunities (which they had been unaware of), to address divergent agendas, priorities, and interests in the team, and to even know they should enter a buying process.

The problem is, too often the customer is clueless–not because they are dumb, but because the don’t necessarily know what they don’t know. They are so consumed in their jobs, they may not have the time to learn and understand new ways of doing things.

They may be prisoners of their own experience, so they don’t know the right questions to ask. However, well intended, they may just be off in the wrong direction, through no fault of their own.

To want to consume content, they have to know there is something they should be doing. They have to search to find other views, they have to know how to find the right information, they have to navigate and filter the overwhelming amount of confusing and different views on the web.

Helping the customer get it right is too important to leave them alone in the early stages of their buying process. Helping them get it right may even be about kicking them into a buying process.

So too much of our current approach to the marketing and sales process may be in response to what customers want, but not what is right and what they need. It assumes they know what they should know, not what they do know. It assumes they know the right questions to be asked.

Overlay this with our own drives to improve marketing and sales productivity–getting more from each dollar invested in each.

Taken together we create a perfect (or imperfect–depending on your point of view) that keeps us from serving the customers as effectively as we should, from creating the value they expect and deserve.

We need to reassess the engagement process. I suspect it’s not a set of sequential processes, but interleaved processes. The sales person may be the very first person to engage the customer. Helping them understand the opportunity to change, perhaps getting them hot and lathered to do something new. Then it may be marketing’s role to educate. Then the sales person might be involved in helping the customer manage their own internal buying process, then marketing might provide more focused content, then sales might solve the “last mile” problem–focusing specifically on “what is means to me”—the customer.

Most marketing/sales integration efforts has improved the quality of information, has increased collaboration and shared metrics, but largely isn’t much different than the old days.

To really help our customers, particularly in areas where they don’t realize they need help, we can no longer look at marketing and sales integration as sequential processes, but look at the issues customers face in deciding to buy and buying. We have to get the resources, sales and marketing, engaged with the right customer, doing the right things, at the right time.

What are you doing to redesign your marketing and sales processes to optimize the outcomes customers get from their buying experience?

How confident are you with your cold email skills? Are you getting 15 responses for every 100 B2B cold email you send? Or do you only get one or two people responding? Why didn’t all the other people you emailed respond?

You and your company are amazing, so what’s happening? Why aren’t the other 98% of people you’re emailing interested in hearing what you have to say?

If you’re hearing back from less than 10% of the people you’re cold emailing, you’re probably committing one of the 7 Sins of B2B Cold Emails.

1. You’re sending B2B cold emails with crappy subject lines

Do you know your open rates? If less than 20% of people are reading your emails, your subject line sucks.

How are you ever going to get a higher response rate if 80% of your audience never even reads your email beyond the subject line? You can spend all day improving your email’s body text, but it won’t matter if you have a low open rate.

If you aren’t sure what your open rates are, but you wish you had some kind of crystal ball that would show you, get Yesware. Yesware lets you track your email open rates, helps you save and test your email templates, schedule emails and set reminders.

2. Your B2B cold emails feel impersonal like a robot

Do you have a docking station that you charge at, or are you solar powered?

If you’re human, then write like a human, not a robot. People want to communicate with people, not machines.

Your readers are much more likely to respond to you if your emails are personalized to them. Including more specific details about the person, company, or industry will increase your success. Use custom inserts in your email with “[ ]” or “>” depending on which script or tool you are using for the mail merge to include personalized details beyond just “” and “.”

Going as far as to include a “” by using a column in your spreadsheet for one custom sentence about that company takes time, but is highly effective. Using multiple custom inserts in one sentence like “We recently helped improve their sales by 23% on the ” also works well.

3. Your B2B cold emails are longer than the Great Wall of China

Your emails shouldn’t be longer than an episode of Game of Thrones.

Keep things short. Aim for about three or four sentences. No more than five sentences!

Remove any jargon, redundancies or other non-necessary details. Synthesize all your points to the bare minimum, leaving only the gold nuggets.

D O N ‘ T    F O R G E T    T  O   S  P A C E    O U T    Y O U R   W R I T I N G  !

No one wants to read an email that looks like a book, so don’t jam it all into one paragraph. You want it to be easily read, even from a smartphone.

4. Your value is missing or muddled in a sea of junk

Why should your reader open, read or respond to your email? Where’s the value for them?

Don’t mistake your features as benefits.

“Matching new leads against pipeline and customers” is a feature. Benefits are things like “saving seven hours a week with Salesforce” or “Getting five more customers for every 10 emails you send.”

Your readers don’t care about your features, even if they’re really cool, unless they are beneficial to them.

5. Selling too hard: Don’t take your pants off on the first date!

Never try to sell someone in a cold email.

All you’re trying to do is get someone’s permission to start talking. If you try too hard to sell them it will backfire and they will either (A) recoil and mark you as spam or (B) laugh and share your terrible spammy cold email around with their friends and coworkers.

You wouldn’t take your pants off at dinner on the first date, so don’t talk about “sales, discounts, or a big opportunity.”

Resist the temptation to write like a marketing/sales email, even if that is your end goal!

6. Dropping the ball with the Call-To-Action

Your call to action is the second most important thing for your B2B cold email after the subject line for getting your desired response.

What exactly do you want the recipient to do?

If all you want is a 15 minute call with them, be clear about it. Just saying, “I’d love your feedback” isn’t enough. You should say something like, “When’s a good time this week for a 15 minute phone call to discuss…?”

7. Thinking you’re done after you send one B2B cold email

Just sending someone a cold email once is not enough for B2B, or anything else.

It’s great to have people respond on your first email, but you can’t stop trying there or you’ll be missing out on many more qualified leads.

EXAMPLE:

• I had 100 prospects I was cold emailing. I got 18 responses from the first email.
• I removed the warm leads from the list and sent the email again with a different template and tactic. Result: 12 more responses.
• I sent to the same list again with another template and got five more responses.
• On the fourth email, I got two more responses. On the fifth, I got one more response. On the sixth I got no responses, but I sent one more email just to be sure no one would respond.

FINAL RESULT: Seven emails and 38 responses from 100 prospects. That’s 20 more responses than if I had quit after the first email.

You need to be relentless with your emails if you want to grow your business. Keep emailing your list until you hear a yes or “F*#& off, I’m not interested!”

And if you don’t get responses from those contacts, try to reach other contacts at their company instead.

Keep Iterating on Your B2B Cold Emails!

No one is perfect.

You don’t have to be a saint to get 10% response rates, but avoiding the seven deadly sins of B2B cold emails will go a long way.

The more you practice sending cold emails regularly and test your templates to iterate them, the better they will get. And your response rates will definitely follow.

I read an article recently that discussed how content can “help push your prospects through the sales funnel.” While I am quite aware of B2B’s fascination and obsession with funnels and waterfalls, the truth is buyers couldn’t care less and certainly will not be pushed through anything.

Perhaps this is the problem with so many organizations and their inability to be effective with Demand Generation and Content – according to a study we conducted here at ANNUITAS of enterprise B2B organizations, only 2.8% of organizations claimed they are effective at achieving their goals. Pretty anemic! However, if organizations are taking the very insular view of “pushing their buyer through the sales funnel” it would explain quite a bit about the lack of effectiveness.

Let’s take a look at today’s sophisticated buyer according to the Demand Gen Report 2014 B2B Buyer Survey:

• 41% of B2B buyers state they are waiting longer to initiate contact with vendors than in years past
• 68% stated the number of sources used to research their purchase has increased
• 34% of B2B buyers have seen an increase in the number of team members involved in the purchase process.

According to Corporate Executive Board (CEB):

• The average B2B buyer is 57% of the way through their purchase decision before engaging a supplier sales rep
• Suppliers have 12% of the buyers total mindshare across the entire purchase path.

So not only are B2B buyers taking longer, researching more and having more people involved in the purchase process, but they are also giving very little mindshare to the vendors throughout the entire purchase cycle.

Given these insights into the ways B2B buyer’s purchase, how is it plausible for an organization to think, “we will push our buyers through the sales funnel?”

While I believe the concept of the funnel or waterfall is legitimate for tracking conversion metrics between marketing and sales. However, it is not at all feasible for an organization to map content to it or expect that a B2B buyer will simply follow the very linear, step by step process simply because that is what the vendors prefer.

This entire concept of buyer centricity is not something new, however it seems that B2B marketing and sales professionals have been very reluctant to embrace this understanding and adapt their behaviors. Even worse, recent studies show that organizations are inexplicably duping themselves into believing they are maturing, when statistics show otherwise. The 2.8% of effectiveness mentioned above notwithstanding, Forrester also highlights the alternate reality in their July 2014 Study Compare Your B2B Content Marketing Maturity that shows 51% of those surveyed rated their Content Marketing Practice as mature, yet an overwhelming 85% say it is only somewhat effective.

The sophisticated buying process that exists in today’s B2B environment is not a trend, it is now our way of life. Organizations that continue to look through the lens of a “sales funnel” or “pushing their customers” are still stuck in the old fashioned Mad Men era of marketing and as Forrester states, “risk losing to more empowered competitors.”

While professional advertising and personal selling will always have their place in your marketing mix, there’s a new major contender in the ring of marketing solutions. When it comes to your software sales process, it’s an element you can’t ignore: the social proof of user-generated content.

While we covered more general social proof for software sales in an earlier blog, the specific power of user-generated content to drive lead generation and help close sales is too great to ignore. Here are just a few points to keep in mind when it comes to harnessing user-generated content for your software sales process:

The Most Trusted Form Of Media

Because user-generated content isn’t produced by an advertising agency or marketing company, consumers are more likely to trust the message behind the media. User-generated content comes across more like a peer-to-peer conversation than an advertisement, so a consumer’s mental defenses are lowered when considering the benefits of your software product or service.

Consider the example of GoPro cameras: By harnessing the content generated by users of their video cameras, they’ve created the ultimate form of social proof. In this case, GoPro spent minimal time and budget on advertising and instead let the user-generated content from their cameras – the videos – spread the word for them.

When it comes to software sales, brainstorm how your company might do the same with user reviews, integrated social media functions, user-built templates or user-generated demos.

Peers Before Professionals

User-generated content also thrives because most consumers (including B2B consumers) would rather hear about a new product or service from a peer or colleague than from a distant, unrelated professional.

This is why your sales team should always ask your customers for business referrals after you’ve closed a deal and implemented your new software. Referred prospects close at a much higher rate than prospects generated from a completely cold call, because a business referral is a brief form of user-generated content. Referrals and reviews of your company work as social proof that your business is trustworthy and dependable.

Social Proof And Social Media

User-generated content without the means or methods to appropriately share it is useless. That’s why your software sales team needs to harness the power of social media to deliver user-generated content to the right prospects and at the right time.

In addition, not only does social media give your team the means to get user-generated content in front of your leads and prospects, but social media platforms also allow those same prospects and customers to share it with their own networks that are completely beyond your initial reach.

The Proof Is In The Conversions

User-generated content isn’t just about buzz or getting your name “out there”; rather, this form of social proof also generates results. According to a study by BazaarVoice, consumers are twice as likely to purchase a product or service after they’ve read at least one positive review.

This is why you should utilize user-generated content throughout the software sales process: from initial lead generation via social media to closing a sale with a critical user-generated demo or case study. Not only do you help relieve the fears and pains of your prospects, but you also help close the deal.

While every form of social proof is important to use in the software sales process, your sales team should no longer ignore the power of user-generated content. With the right approach and strategy, your user-generated content could be selling your business software for you.

Business leaders understand how their business is performing by monitoring different metrics. Metrics are essentially a summary all the data (yes, even Big Data) into a score. Metrics include new customer growth rate, number of sales and employee satisfaction, to name a few. Your hope is that these scores tell you something useful.

There are a few ways to calculate a metric. Using the examples above, we see that we can use percentages, a simple count and descriptive statistics (e.g., mean) to calculate a metric. In the world of customer feedback, there are a few ways to calculate metrics from structured data. Take, for example, a company that has 10,000 responses to a recent customer survey in which they used a 0-10 point rating scale (e.g., 0 = extremely dissatisfied; 10 = extremely satisfied). They have a few options for calculating a summary metric:

1. Mean Score: This is the arithmetic average of the set of responses. The mean is calculated by summing all responses and dividing by the number of responses. Possible mean scores can range from 0 to 10.
2. Top Box Score: The top box score represents the percentage of respondents who gave the best responses (either a 9 and 10 on a 0-10 scale). Possible percentage scores can range from 0 to 100.
3. Bottom Box Score: The bottom box score represents the percentage of respondents who gave the worst responses (0 through 6 on a 0-10 scale). Possible percentage scores can range from 0 to 100.
4. Net Score: The net score represents the difference between the Top Box Score and the Bottom Box Score. Net scores can range from -100 to 100. While the net score was made popular by the Net Promoter Score camp, others have used a net score to calculate a metric (please see Net Value Score.) While the details might be different, net scores take the same general approach in their calculations (percent of good responses – percent of bad responses). For the remainder, I will focus on the Net Promoter Score methodology.

Different Summary Metrics Tell You the Same Thing

When I compared these summary metrics to each other, I found that they tell you pretty much the same thing about the data set. Across 48 different companies, these four common summary metrics are highly correlated with each other (See Table 1). Companies who receive high mean scores also receive a high NPS and top box scores. Likewise, companies who receive low mean scores will get low NPS and top box scores.

If each of these metrics are mathematically equivalent, does it matter which one we use?

How Are Metrics Interpreted by Users?

Even though different summary metrics are essentially the same, some metrics might be more beneficial to users due to their ease of interpretation. Are there differences between Mean Scores and Net Promoter Scores at helping users understand the data? Even though a mean of 7.0 is comparable to an NPS of 0.0, are there advantages of using one over the other?

One way of answering that question is to determine how well customer experience (CX) professionals can describe the underlying distribution of ratings on which the Mean Score or Net Promoter Score is calculated.

Study

Study participants were invited to the study via a blog post about the study; the post included a hyperlink to the Web-based data collection instrument. The post was shared through social media connections, professional online communities and the author’s email list.

For the current study, each CX professional ran through a series of exercises in which they estimated the size of different customer segments based on their knowledge of either a Mean Score or the Net Promoter Score. To ensure Mean Scores and Net Promoter Scores were comparable to each other, I created the study protocol using the data from the study above. Table 2 includes a list of six summary metrics with their corresponding values. NPS values range from -100 to 100 in increments of 10. The values of other metrics are based on the regression formulas that predicted a specific summary metric from different values of the NPS. An NPS of 0.0 corresponds to a Mean Score of 7.1.

First, each study participant was given five NPS values (-100, -50, 0, 50 and 100). For each NPS value, they were asked to provide their best guess of the size of four specific customer segments from which that NPS was calculated: 1) percent of respondents with ratings of 6 or greater (Satisfied); 2) percent of respondents who have ratings of 9 or 10 (Promoters); 3) percent of respondents with ratings between 0 and 6, inclusive (Detractors) and 4) percent of respondents with ratings of 7 or 8 (Passives).

Next, these same CX professionals were given five comparable (to the NPS values above) mean values (4.0, 5.5, 7.0, 8.5 and 10.0). For each mean score, they were asked to provide their best guess of the percent of respondents in each of the same categories above (i.e., Satisfied, Promoters, Detractors and Passives).

Results

A total of 41 CX professionals participated in the study. Most CX professionals were from B2B companies (55%) or B2B/B2C companies (42%). Three quarters of them had formal CX roles, and most (77%) considered themselves either proficient or experts in their company’s CX program. See Table 3.

Figures 1 through 4 contain the results. Each figure contains three pieces of information that illustrate the accuracy of CX professionals’ estimate. The red dots represent the actual size of the specific customer segment for each value of the NPS. The green bars represent the CX professionals’ estimates of the size of the customer segment as well as their corresponding 95% confidence interval)

Figure 1 focuses on the estimation of the number of Promoters. Results show that CX professionals underestimate the Top Box percentage (i.e., Promoters) when the Mean Score is high. For example, CX professionals estimated that a Mean Score of 8.5 was equivalent to 45% Top Box Score when the actual Top Box Score would really be 64%. We saw a smaller effect using the NPS. In general, CX professionals could more accurately guess the Top Box Scores when using Net Promoter Scores, except for the highest NPS value of 100 (Actual Top Box Score = 100; CX professional’s estimate = 89).

In Figure 2, I looked at how well study participants could guess the size of the Bottom Box Scores (i.e., Detractors). Results show that CX professionals could accurately predict the percent of Detractors throughout the range of NPS values. On the other hand, CX professionals greatly underestimated the Bottom Box Scores when the Mean Score was extremely low (Mean = 4.0; Corresponding Bottom Box Score = 89; CX professionals’ estimate of Bottom Box Score= 64).

In Figure 3, I looked at how well study participants could guess the size of the Passives segment. Again, CX professionals were able to accurately estimate the percent of Passives across all values of the NPS. When using Mean Scores, however, study participants tended to overestimate the size of the Passives segment across all levels of the Mean Score.

In Figure 4, I looked at how well CX professionals could estimate the size of the Satisfied segment (rating of 6 or greater). Unlike the other findings using the NPS, we see that study partcipants underestimated the size of this segment across all levels of the NPS. The effect was less pronounced and slightly different when CX professionals relied on the Mean Score. Under this condition, CX professionals underestimated the size of the Satisfied segment when Mean ratings were 5.5 or above but overestimated the size of the Satisfied segments when Mean ratings was 4.0.

Summary and Conclusions

The results of this study show that customer metrics possess inherent bias. People tend to make consistent errors when interpreting customer metrics, especially for extreme values.

When the Mean Score was used, estimations of segment sizes suffered on the extreme ends of the scale. When things are really good (high Mean Score), CX professionals underestimated the number of Promoters they really have. When things are really bad (Mean score of 4.0), they underestimated the number of Detractors they really have.

The use of the NPS leads to more accurate estimations about underlying customer segments that are a part of the NPS lexicon (i.e., Promoters, Detractors and Passives). Net scores force the user to think about their data in specific segments. When CX professionals were estimating the size of a segment unrelated to the NPS (i.e., estimating percent of 6 – 10 ratings), they greatly underestimated the size of the segment across the entire spectrum of the NPS.

Generally speaking, better decisions will be made when the interpretation of results matches reality. We saw that a mean of 8.5 really indicates that 64% of the customers are very satisfied (% of 9 and 10 ratings); yet, the CX professionals think that only 45% of the customers are very satisfied, painting a vastly different picture of how they interpret the data. Any misinterpretation of a performance metric could lead to sub-optimal decisions that are driven more by biases than by what the data really tell us, leading to unnecessary investments in areas where leaders are doing better than they think they are.

My advice is to consider using a few metrics to describe what’s happening with your data. First, Mean Scores and Net Scores are equivalent. So, for trending purposes, pick either and use it consistently. Second, report the size of specific customer segments (e.g., % Top Box) to ensure people understand the true meaning of the underlying data.

With the shortage of data scientists to help fill analytic roles in business, companies are looking for ways to train existing employees on how to analyze and interpret data. In addition to training the next analytics leaders, businesses need to focus on educating the consumers (e.g., executives, managers and individual contributors) about data and the use of analytics. The current sample used professionals who have a high degree of proficiency in the use of metrics as well as in the application of those metrics in a formal company program. Yet, these savvy users still misinterpreted metrics. For data novices, we would likely see greater bias. If you are a metric-rich company (and who isn’t?), consider offering a class on basic statistics to all employees.

Some Big Data vendors hope to build solutions to help bring data science to the masses. These solutions help users gain insight through easy analysis and visualization of results. For example, Statwing and Tableau provide good examples of solutions that allow you to present data in different ways (e.g., means, frequency distributions), helping you communicate what is really going on in the data.

Remember that metrics don’t exist in a vacuum. They are interpreted by people. We saw that people are biased in their understanding of the meaning of two commonly used customer metrics, the Mean Score and Net Score. Carefully consider how you communicate your results as well as your audiences’ potential biases.

The Hidden Bias in Customer Metrics from Business Over Broadway

Ever played one of those Facebook-ish games where they let you know who among their friends also play them? This is actually a pretty useful feature that you can implement in your lead generation campaign. You might also recognize this tactic among the many forms of referral marketing.

Most of the time though, this kind of marketing is seen from the business end. That’s not to say it’s wrong but it’s also good to see this from the customer perspective. That way, you might discover a few more reasons to help customers find friends.

So imagine yourself logging in to, say, a cloud based application. It’s your first time using it. Suddenly, somewhere on the screen a notification pops up and says some people you have already been using it. How would you have reacted if this didn’t happen?

• You’d feel a little lost – You don’t know anybody who uses the same system as you. There’s a tendency to feel a little lost. The only source of information you had about this new software is through more typical marketing messages like an email or perhaps just a banner ad plus website. The sales rep who brought you on board to the solution seemed to be the only closest thing you have to an experienced user.

• Nobody to show you the ropes – A tutorial only teaches you the basic of the basics. That’s good for getting on your feet. But what if you really wanted to be a pro at this? After all, you paid good money for this tech so you might as well right? But without any friends, you’ve got absolutely no pool of contacts to show you how to really use this thing.

• Guides can be rather meh – If people are more inclined to trust the people they know over what strangers put out, can’t this also apply to user guides? To know that your friends use the same products as you is to know that you have people you trust more when you want to know how to best use these products.

When you think about it, it’s like the first day of school. You’ve probably seen a dozen movies where the new kid is lonely because he’s got no friends in the neighborhood. Likewise, your lead generation campaign shouldn’t ignore the possibility of new users feeling the same way. If you’ve got referrals as part of your marketing strategy, encourage the ones making them to also teach them in ways tutorials and user guides may not.

In the early 1990’s it was assumed that saleswomen would not be successful in a sales career. Realizing this, any woman who wanted to succeed was able to take that demeaning thought and turn it into their advantage.

Smart women would take the top male producer out to lunch and include alcohol to soften the communication between them (as in eliminate the antagonism). The savvy saleswoman would then proceed to boost the salesman’s ego about how their success was admired. This would then be followed by the question, “What are your secrets to success?” The answers came fast and notes were taken.

1. Never assume anything.

In the case of the salesman, instead of letting ego take over, he should have wondered why he was being treated as royalty. And not for a second should he ever assume that the sweet woman across the table from him wouldn’t use the answers to her advantage.

While on appointments, should a client use vocabulary you do not understand, own up to it. Politely ask if the word or sentence could be further clarified so that you have a better understanding. This promotes trust in you.

2. Quick hit selling turns into “Outs”.

Most sales professionals try to make a quick hit sale in order to make their steep quota in time. They begin selling from the moment they step across the threshold. This rarely produces a good outcome.

Instead, focus on building relationships first. Find out why you are there, what the need and desires are, and the client’s perspective on potential solutions. Although it is a slower process, it is sure, steady, builds relationships, and a willingness on the prospective client’s part to move forward.

3. Absence of punctuality.

Many businesspeople believe that if they have a set appointment then the other party won’t mind waiting when a delay occurs. Wrong. Time management is essential for everyone to be successful. Lateness increases irritation and most likely, when you do show, you will be booted out. Upon recognizing ahead of time, that you will be a few minutes late, call or text ahead of time. Ask if it’s still okay to meet at the new time. Thank the person for their patience when you do meet.

4. Totem Pole Syndrome.

The traditional totem pole reflects stature. Many businesspeople speak down to those employees not in executive positions. However, everyone at a company should be considered the CEO of their own job, or as equals. In this manner you insult no one. More importantly you distinguish yourself from everyone else. Your personal brand speaks loud and clear. This distinguishing mark is where the receptionist and anyone else you meet will report back to the CEO about you, and how nicely they were treated. This goes miles for making the sale.

5. Questionable budget.

Fear of money conversations get in the way of a serious conversation. You need to know your prospective client’s budget in order to know which of your services will be a possible fit. By not asking, you waste everyone’s time. The easiest way to ask is upfront after the small talk. Present a general outline of everything you have to offer, ask if it’s of interest. Upon hearing Yes, ask where their interest lies and what is their budget. It’s their turn to supply the answer.

Adhering to these five principles will lead you to the Smooth Sale!

  Are you wasting time on the internet? You must contain the time you spend on the internet.  Otherwise, it will suck up too much time that you should be spending on phone calls. Don’t allow the internet to control your day.   You can use it, but there is a right way to use […]

There are few distinct viewpoints in business that are as polarized as those of marketing and sales professionals. Marketing is glamorous, sales less so. Sales are measurable, marketing less so. The uneasy relationship between sales and marketing is widespread and infects almost all types of businesses.

The truth, of course, is that mutual respect and understanding, and a shared perspective, between the sales and marketing teams is essential if you want to be sure you have the right products to sell, the right marketing messages, and ability to call on their support when you need it. When that happens, uncommon sales velocity occurs, and more deals are won faster—and that’s a good thing.

So, from a salesperson’s perspective—here’s a list to consider.

1. Selling is hard. Harder than you may ever realize. So if I seem stressed, cut me some slack.
2. Selling is personal. When I make a promise I have to keep it. If you force me to break that promise (by changing processes, features or a rollout schedule) I will never forgive you.
3. I’m trying to change people’s minds, one person at a time. So unless you give me a smart sales process to follow, I can’t tell you when the sale will close. (You need to follow the process as well—so then we will both know what works and what doesn’t.)
4. I love selling. I particularly love selling great stuff, well marketed. Don’t let me down. Don’t ask me to sell lousy stuff, poorly packaged.
5. I’m extremely focused on the reward half of the equation. Salespeople love to keep score, and that’s how I keep score. So don’t change the rules in the middle, please.
6. There is no comparison, none, between an inbound call (one that you created with marketing) and a cold call (one that you instructed me to create with a phone book.) Your job is to make it so I never need to make a cold call.
7. I need you to fill the top of the funnel—you know that. But your deal doesn’t stop there. I need marketing support to help move deals through the funnel.
8. I know my job is to work my network and keep my customers happy so that I can find opportunities on my own as well.
9. Sometimes customers lie when they turn me down. They make up reasons. But every once in awhile I actually learn something in the field. Ask!
10. I know that sometimes you’d like to get rid of me and just take orders on the web. But that’s always going to be the low-hanging fruit. The game-changing sales, at least for now, come from real people interacting with real people. Here’s a short book about that.
11. Selling is hard and unpredictable. But I also know that you’ve got to be prepared to measure and predict and plan. That means that I can’t keep what I’m doing a secret. I need to provide feedback to you.
12. I also know that the two worst pieces of feedback I can give you—because neither is really actionable or especially effective—are a) lower the price, and b) make our products just like our competitors.
13. When you work hard and deliver real opportunities to me, my job is to follow up promptly. Sometimes I don’t do that—sorry.

As Customer Success Management emerges as it’s own field, the leaders and members of those organizations are charting new paths to success in their organization. According to the consensus definition from Wikipedia, they are orienteers – “navigating from point to point, in a diverse, unfamiliar terrain, normally moving at speed.”*

In this uncharted territory, one of the first questions a Customer Success Orienteer asks of themselves, as they establish a team and a practice, is “How do I/we deliver continuous value?” This is the key ingredient of any successful Customer Journey, and while some companies may call it “value creation or value delivery” in their marketing, it’s important that value is understood in the context of the customer journey. Without realizing tangible value, a customer journey simply becomes a series of checkboxes.

The customer journey starts with the first engagement with a customer i.e., while they are still a prospect, and tracks the customer through each touch point with you and your product all the way through renewal and, possibly, upsell. This process is incredibly important to codify in order to track, measure, and monitor customers throughout their journey, which is impossible without codification. Through this codification, our product measures your customers health, and allows you to intercept them before they stray too far from success, providing a course-correct and ensuring the delivery of business value.

As you look to chart your customer’s journey consider that an ideal journey starts with these four milestones:

Milestone #1: Kickoff

With the formality of contract signing out of the way, the first key milestone is to have a formal kickoff. A kickoff, usually understated in its purpose, serves the key function of transferring the customer and commitments from the sales process to the customer success team. Both teams get on the same page, setting the schedule, milestones, expectations, stakeholders, and protocols. This is the opportunity for the vendor to demonstrate their thought leadership around best practices.

Milestone #2: Successful On-boarding

It is often said, that the first 90 days decide the fate of most implementations. If the customer feels let down during this process, then the journey ahead could be precarious. So, invest in the elements needed to ensure a smooth start of your customers journey. Those elements include: investing in a Customer Success team that understands the business nuances nuances and engages with the customers, structuring engagement models that are more high-touch during on-boarding so customers adapt quickly to the product and offering training to ensure successful onboarding.

Milestone #3: First Value

It’s critical that customers realize their first value within a reasonable time (a product specific period usually from 2- 30 days). While the customer success journey is a marathon, realizing and demonstrating value quickly should be the goal. To that end, it’s important to identify quick wins, low-hanging fruit, while working on the long term strategic objectives.

Milestone #4: Ongoing Value

This is the point where the customer gets close-to-full value, on an ongoing basis. Ideally, at this stage, your product and the value it delivers would be integral to the customer’s success.

Ongoing Milestones should be based on establishing goals around churn, growth and then creating nurture campaigns to hit those goals.

While those milestones are critical to the customer journey, there are additional actions you should take along the way to make sure their journey is successful (and scalable on your end):

• Create cohorts and apply best practices
• Create automated and semi-automated engagement plays
• Maintain a manageable CSM-to-Customer ratio
• Create heat maps of customer engagement with your product
• Provide 360 visibility to sales, marketing, support and other customer-facing functions.

Manually tracking each customer journey is like drawing a map by hand and expecting it to be accurate and to scale. Implementing technology to help you codify, map, and track your customer’s journey allows you to drill-down into each milestone and verify, through data, that you are delivering value.

Facebook's custom load balancing controller, dubbed Autoscale, helps distribute network traffic to the servers in a manner that can save 10 to 15 percent in energy on an average day.

How Facebook orchestrates its network traffic to save energy originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2014.

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In light of the escalating conflict in Iraq and the U.S.'s airstrikes against ISIS targets in the country, the FAA has ordered U.S.-based air carriers to avoid the country's airspace altogether.

Though not as congested as the skies over Ukraine, Iraqi airspace is important for many of the Gulf region and the greater Middle East's major carriers. 

The U.S.'s bombing of ISIS targets outside of the Kurdish capital of Erbil comes in addition to earlier reported bombings by Russian-built Sukhoi Su-25 "Frogfoot" jets in northeastern Iraqi.

With an increased risk for surface-to-air missile strikes, many carriers like KLM, Lufthansa, Emirates, Air France, Delta, and Virgin Atlantic have rerouted their aircraft around the war-torn region.

The traditional route through Iraq takes airliners down a corridor that runs along the eastern border of the country. Now, most airlines have chosen to take a northern route through southern Iran — instead of the southern course across Syria, which is embroiled in its own civil conflict. 

There are a few major exceptions to this. Iraqi Airways is of course utilizing the country's airspace — but so is Etihad, the mega-carrier from the Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi. Garuda Indonesia, and even British Airways flew through Iraq on August 8th. 

Interestingly, even though Emirates announced it would reroute its flights, Emirates flight 952 took off from the city of Erbil, where some of the heaviest fight have occurred, on evening of August 8th.

SEE ALSO: US CONDUCTS AIR STRIKE IN IRAQ

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No matter what you’ve heard, good or bad, about Google Plus, I am here to definitively say that this platform needs to be part of your company’s social media marketing strategy. Whether you operate in the world of B2B or your focus is more B2C, there are opportunities available for you to benefit from a strong presence on Google’s contender for social media supremacy.

300 million people stop by Google Plus each month. While that number doesn’t even come close to the more than 1 billion that Facebook boasts, it beats Twitter and a number of other popular challengers. That number isn’t enough to impress you? Check out the stats in this article. They are sure to pique your interest at least a little. Go ahead. Check it out. I’ll wait.

See what I mean? There’s significant potential to reach a large audience here. Did you notice the stat showing that 42 percent of users are active on Google Plus for the purpose of interacting with brands? I’ll let you do the math there. The best part, perhaps, is that many of your competitors have yet to solidify their place on this platform, so you can benefit by setting up a fully developed Google Plus profile for your company and potentially getting a head start on the competition. To get you headed in the right direction, here are three tips for boosting your brand with Google Plus.

Find Your Niche

Google Plus Communities are a great way to engage a specific audience seeking the types of content you are looking to share. Notice I used the word “share” rather than “promote?” That was, of course, on purpose. Don’t join communities and push a bunch of ads. The key here is to join communities related to your line of business and offer posts that provide value to community members, help solve a problem, entertain or otherwise enrich their lives. Posting strictly promotional material is a sure way to get your content ignored.

If you can’t find the right community for you, go ahead and create one. Once you start a community, you can invite other Google Plus users to join. As you grow your community, you can lead the conversation and help position your brand as the leading authority within that community. The downside is that creating and being administrator of a group can be quite time-consuming. Make sure that you have the time and resources to dedicate to this effort. Otherwise, you risk the group becoming a ghost town, filled with spammers or being taken over by users that steal the spotlight with frequent posts that go unmonitored.

Be Social

In order to grow your audience, you’ll have to stay active and be social. Google Plus is going to require you to commit some serious time, but it’ll be worth it in the end. Dedicate some of that time to finding users of this platform that might be interested in your product or service. Add them to your circles. Adding someone to your circles is basically like connecting with them on LinkedIn or following them on Twitter. They will receive notification that you circled up with them, which could potentially lead to them adding you to their circles. This is ultimately what you want.

You don’t want to add just anyone to your circles. The niche communities that you join are a great place to start targeting individuals that fit the description of the audience you are seeking. Go to their profile and click the follow button. Once you follow them, engage with them. Comment on their posts, share their content and encourage them to do them same for yours. As you improve your Google Plus networking skills, you’ll find that engagement on your own posts increases. So keep practicing, because we all know practice makes perfect. Sorry about the cliché!

Connect with Influencers

Once you have the social part down, it’s time to start rubbing elbows with the elite. Google Plus is a place where the leading minds in a variety of industries gather. We call these people “influencers” because they influence the conversation that surrounds their particular industries, start new trends, break news and even entertain. By connecting with these individuals, you effectively associate your brand with the leading authorities in your industry.

These relationships typically develop slowly, but they are worth the time and effort. Start by adding targeted influencers to your circles. Then keep up with the content that they post. When they post something that you can add value to, leave a comment. You can also simply +1 the post. This is similar to liking a post on Facebook. However you choose to engage with the post, the influencer will be notified that you did so. The more you engage, the more likely it is that they will begin to engage back. Once these types of people start engaging with your brand, your credibility has the potential to rise significantly.

Make sure you are adding value and not just spamming them. That can have the opposite effect. Ask questions and offer added insight about the topics they’re talking about. And make sure you mention them in your comments, as well as relevant posts on your page. Add a + symbol in front of their name when you create the post and they will receive notice that they’ve been mentioned.

The First Steps

So now that you are armed with a few tips for boosting your brand by using Google Plus, it’s time to get started. Before you put these tips to work, you’ll need to get your profile all set up and optimized. Check out these tips for sprucing up your profile to help you find direction.

In my experience, we have found that referrals to our website from Google Plus consume 3 times as much content as referrals from any other social media site. They also tend to stick around on our site for around 7 minutes longer. These are the types of visitors that you want to send to your site, and Google Plus is a great resource for locating them and putting content in front of them that links to you site.

I’d love to hear any comments and feedback or answer any questions that you have about using Google Plus for boosting your brand. Please leave your insights in the comments below.