Rnordman

Digital Marketing is often misunderstood. Some people see it as an extension of IT support (“you’re a computer guy, can you try and work out why my PC isn’t showing on this screen?”), some see it you as a member of the Matrix (“when you close your eyes, is there just a series of numbers falling on a black background?”) and some see you as a master of the dark arts (“this whole digital thing is beyond me, I just don’t get it”).

However, digital marketing doesn’t need to be as complicated as this. Digital marketing is just a channel within the marketing mix – it is just a different means of engaging with your audience rather than billboards, newspapers, TV or direct mail. So, in the spirit of simplicity, here are five super simple things that you can do to your digital marketing to make it better.

Your Website: This is the cornerstone of your digital marketing offering. You should already be well aware of what you would like people to do when they are on your website (buy a product; make an enquiry; find your contact details; etc.). Now, does your website help or hinder people in completing that task? How about creating a small ‘user journey’ which starts with your most popular landing page, allowing the person to complete the task. E.g.

• Your home page with a link to your most popular product
• Page explaining the product you are selling and its benefits with a link to a ‘buy now’ button
• Check out process – pricing, quantity, postage, fulfillment

Map this out, and you have just made your potential customer’s day easier.

Social Media: This is the part of digital marketing where you can show a bit of your personality, and interact with your audience in a way that you cannot on your website. My simple tip here is to complete your profile – add a photo, add your contact details, email address, web address, etc. You would be amazed at the number of business pages that I see without this basic info on it.

Search Engine Optimisation: Of all of the elements of digital marketing, search engine optimisation is one that can get really technical! However, doing the basics is pretty easy. If you complete the meta data for all of your web pages, this will put you in a good position. Meta data is used by search engines to understand what a web page is all about, so make this as specific as you can. You should complete the meta title (this will appear in the tab of the browser which is displaying your page) and the meta description, which appears under your URL when your page appears on a search engine.

Email Marketing: One of the great things about email marketing is that you can very quickly work out whether your email campaign has worked – you can check your number of delivered emails, number of opened emails, number of clicks and so on. So, simply try sending your email campaigns at different times of the day, and different days of the week – over time, this will tell you the best time to send an email to your audience.

Images: For some products, people use search engine images to search for the right product – for example, a friend of mine is moving house and looking for new lighting, so they are typing what they want to see and using Google Images to find the right light and store! Images are ranked by their relevancy to the search query in the same way that web pages are. So, you need to tell the search engines what the image contains, and this is done through the image’s title and alternative text or ‘alt text’ – simply describe the image and that’s all you need to do.

These are deliberately very simple tips – if you are advanced in digital marketing, then all of these will be done, and you will be delving into the technicalities of digital. But implementing all of these simple tasks will (frighteningly!) put you ahead of thousands of digital propositions.

Image via goldminemedia.co.uk

This is latest instalment in our ongoing effort to frankly consider how we might respond to the spectre of climate change. Previously, we attempted to look frankly at the questions surrounding the regulation of Canada’s oil and gas sector and the politics of pricing carbon. Now, what to make of a new report from the International Monetary Fund?

Why, you might ask yourself, does the International Monetary Fund want to kill jobs?

A new report from the IMF recommends that countries tax energy production commensurate with the expense of dealing with the environmental and public health costs that that production creates. That increase in energy taxes would be matched by a corresponding decrease in income taxes:

Energy prices in many countries are wrong, because they are set at levels that do not reflect environmental damage, notably, climate change, air pollution and various side effects of motor vehicle use, such as traffic accidents and congestion. Whether on energy or any other product, prices should provide consumers with an accurate assessment of the actual costs associated with the product . . .

The report stresses that energy tax reform need not be about raising new revenues. Rather, reform could focus on restructuring the tax system away from taxes that are likely to be most harmful for efficiency and growth, such as income taxes, and toward carefully designed taxes on energy—smarter taxes rather than higher taxes. According to the report, getting energy prices right involves extending motor fuel taxes, which are already well established and easily administered in many countries, to other fossil fuel products, such as coal and natural gas, or their emissions, and aligning the rates of these taxes with environmental damage.

That might remind you of what Stephane Dion proposed in 2008—a new carbon tax on emissions coupled with reductions in income and business taxes (Dion muddied the waters somewhat by also planning to use carbon tax revenues to address poverty).

But you might remember that at the time, a prominent individual with a degree in economics said Dion’s proposal would, to use a technical phrase, “screw everybody” and “recklessly harm the economy and the economic position of every Canadian family.”

The IMF’s Ian Perry tells the Canadian Press that addressing such concerns is important:

In an interview, co-author Ian Parry agreed that such proposals have caused a voter backlash whenever suggested, but adds that the trick is to make clear to voters that other taxes, particularly those on income, will be cut by identical amounts. “We are not talking about increasing the overall tax burden; we are talking about a smarter, more efficient way to use taxation to meet a country’s fiscal objectives,” he said.

British Columbia’s carbon tax is also supposed to be revenue-neutral, though this analysis points out that the province has cut other taxes beyond what the carbon tax has raised in revenue.

Regardless, calculating the cost of pollution, carbon emissions and climate change seems like an entirely useful exercise—former U.S. treasury secretary Robert Rubin argued in the Washington Post this week that it must be a priority. On that note, the White House recently released a report that attempts to project the cost of not acting to address climate change, while Harvard professor Robert Stavins reviews the Environmental Protection Agency’s projections for the benefits of new coal regulations in the United States. (Spoiler: He argues there is a net benefit, but that the EPA overstates it.)

Even if the Canadian government under Stephen Harper has opposed a per-tonne tax on carbon emissions, it still calculates a per-tonne cost of carbon emissions for the purposes of determining whether regulations result in a net benefit; this is called the social cost of carbon (SCC). As of 2012, it was “$28.44/tonne of CO2 in 2012, increasing at a given percentage each year associated with the expected growth in damages.” (In 2013, the United States increased its estimated SCC to $36 per tonne.)

For the sake of comparison, Dion would have started with a tax of $10 per tonne, increasing to $40 per tonne over four years.

As Rubin argues, a simple argument about the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions fails to consider the reason we would want to reduce those greenhouse gas emissions:

Many people argue that moving away from fossil fuels and reducing carbon emissions will impede economic growth, hurt business and hamper job creation.

But, from an economic perspective, that’s precisely the wrong way to look at it. The real question should be: What is the cost of inaction? In my view—and in the view of a growing group of businesspeople, economists and other financial and market experts—the cost of inaction over the long term is far greater than the cost of action.

Therein might be the real argument.

But maybe a tax swap isn’t an attractive enough option for dealing with this situation. In that case, maybe the government should just give people money.

Writing in the New York Times, James K. Boyce, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, points with some hope to new legislation tabled by Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat congressman from Maryland. Van Hollen has introduced the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act, which would cap emissions and auction permits to “the first sellers of oil, coal and natural gas into the U.S. market.” But Van Hollen would then equally distribute 100 per cent of the proceeds to the public as quarterly dividends.

This is generally known as cap and dividend (Van Hollen previously tabled a proposal for this in 2009). But NDP-turned-Independent-turned-Green MP Bruce Hyer is, in my memory, the only federal MP who has actively advocated for cap and dividend.

Why isn’t such a policy more popular? I posed that question on Twitter, and David McLaughlin, former president of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, offered one theory:

2 reasons: still too close to a carbon tax for the right; & not enough social redistribution of revenue for the left.

Conversely, Boyce argues that cap and dividend should be welcomed by Republicans, because it moves money from the government to the public (though I suppose it actually moves money from industry to the public) and because the policy actually works to redistribute wealth, since the more affluent tend to produce more emissions.

But what if you reject the IMF, British Columbia and Van Hollen models? Australia’s new government has, famously, dumped the country’s carbon tax—see last week’s post. Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s counter-proposal involves paying companies to reduce their emissions through a reverse auction (the proposal with the lowest cost per reduction wins the money).

The Abbott government’s plan has the benefit of not being an explicit tax, but it still has a public cost, insofar as the billions committed to the Emissions Reduction Fund are public funds. There are also questions about how well the “direct action” approach will reduce emissions.

The post Frank talk on climate change: Does the IMF want to kill jobs? appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Apple's iPad sales are terrible. They sunk 9% to 13.3 million units last quarter, and performed even worse than analysts expected. Apple has lost a ton of market share to other, cheaper manufacturers, too, according to IDC. Apple invented — or at least substantially reinvented — the tablet category and yet it now sells only 27% of all tabs. All of Apple's other products (except for the iPod) saw rising sales recently.

Why, of all Apple's products, has the iPad turned into such a sales stinker?

The counterintuitive answer may be that the iPad is losing sales because it is too good.

People use their iPads for a long time, and don't replace them as quickly as competing tablets, according to Benedict Evans, an analyst at Andreessen Horowitz. Using numbers published by Google about its Android tablet user base, and comparing them to Apple's published numbers, Evans concluded that an iPad's useful life is twice as long as an Android tablet's is. iPads are actively used by an average consumer for more than two years, Evans says, whereas Android tablets are often abandoned on average after less than a year:

... Android tablets have an average active life of a little under a year. Or, that they have a life of more like two years (say) but half of them are inactive.

Conversely, it's pretty clear that the active life of an iPad is if anything too long, from Apple's point of view - at least two years and probably longer. Apple has sold 143m iPads in the last two years and 196m in the last three.

That, in turn, implies that each iPad unit sale is worth 2x more active devices over time than an Android tablet sale - before looking at actual usage.

Evans admits his numbers have holes in them — Google doesn't publish unit sales or Android activation numbers on a regular basis. So it's an estimation. But it dovetails with what we've heard anecdotally — that once people get an iPad, they keep it, and don't feel the need for a new one for a long, long time.

SEE ALSO: LEAKED: A Gold iPhone 6 Is Coming With A New Apple Logo Design On The Back

SEE ALSO: Apple's iPhone 6 Faces A Big Pricing Problem Around The World

Join the conversation about this story »

What do Apple, Coke, HP, Oreo, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, P&G, Starbucks, and Nike having common? They’re all iconic brands. These great brands stand out from competitors and are household words across much of the planet.

What do you need to build a great brand strategy?

But, how did they become great brands?

Will they always be great brands?

Building a great brand strategy

Building a great brand strategy has little or nothing to do with logo design, despite the contentions of thousands of “branding” agencies whose main product is logo design — or brand names. Great brands take careful and consistent marketing strategy, with logo design comprising only 1 small part of that strategy. Relying on your logo to propel your brand is very expensive.

David Aaker has this to say about iconic brands:

Brands are an accepted part of our daily lives. But some brands seem to transcend their product or service categories to become part of the popular culture. What distinguishes these iconic brands from the rest of the pack, and what can marketers learn from them?

How does a company go about building a great brand strategy to be like these iconic ones?

Great brand strategies all share 3 things:

1. High quality

It goes without saying that all great brands provide great quality, not just from the perspective of performance, but in terms of solving consumer problems. While simply providing high quality isn’t enough to make a great brand, no company creates a great brand without providing consistent high quality products (or services). In marketing, we call is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for being a great brand. Deliver high quality as part of your brand strategy.

2. Unique product offering

Brand strategy requires careful consideration and follow-through on delivering a unique product offering.

You don’t have to think very hard about the iconic brands listed above to detect their unique product offering (in marketing we often call this the brand’s unique selling proposition – USP or value proposition – VP). Sometimes, the USP has little or nothing to do with the brand’s core product.

Starbucks is a great example of a company offering a USP having little to do with its core product — coffee. Instead, Starbucks’ USP is its cozy store environment and corporate culture that provide a welcoming “third place” — home, work, Starbucks — for folks to linger over a cup of coffee, work or meet friends, of simply waste a few minutes between appointments. They have comfy chairs, clean bathrooms that are never locked, a table to work on, a roaring fire in the winter, and friendly employees. Starbucks also offers affordable luxury — selling overpriced coffee which allows us to feel like elite celebrities.

Forbes attributes the prominence of iconic brands like Apple and Nike with their USP designed to celebrate the user, not the brand.

The importance of creating a USP is highlighted in a Huffington Post article predicting the demise of once-iconic brands including Red Lobster, Blackberry, and Zynga. In each case, the brand’s fall from grace followed a prolonged period when either competitors matched or exceeded the USP provided by the brand or consumers’ taste changed, devaluing their USP. These brands developed a brand strategy, then ignored it as the world changed around them.

Thus, great brand strategy not only create a USP, it constantly checks the pulse of competitors and consumers to ensure the USP evolves to exceed in consumer solutions.

3. Myth or storytelling

Douglas Holt, now CEO of Cultural Branding and former professor at Harvard Business School and Oxford, argues it is myth-making and storytelling, not USP or product quality, that propel a brand to the rarefied heights of iconic brands. He contends this occurs because brand strategy focused on developing these myths:

People have always needed myths. Simple stories with compelling characters and resonant plots, myths help us make sense of the world. They provide ideals to live by, and they work to resolve life’s most vexing questions. Icons are encapsulated myths. They are powerful because they deliver myths to us in a tangible form, thereby making them more accessible.

The best cultural myths not only resonate with consumers because they’re embedded in deeply shared cultural awareness, but position the consumer, herself, as the hero of the myth.

The Marlboro Man is a great example of such cultural myth that resolves tensions in our every-day lives. As part of their brand strategy, Philip Morris created the myth of The Marlboro Man, portrayed as a ruggedly handsome cowboy, represents independence, strength, power, and control over his environment that feeds into tensions consumers feel in modern living where they lack these desirable qualities. The cowboy myth, indeed a myth spread through hundreds of western movies featuring the likes of “Big” John Wayne, belies the reality that most cowboys were mainly illiterate, mostly minorities (a full 1/4 were black) who followed large herds of cattle as they made their arduous journey to markets.

It’s particularly appropriate to discuss this particular myth in an article about branding, since it’s the early open range that necessitated brands to distinguish 1 owner’s cattle from another’s. Of course, Holt goes on to write:

When a brand creates a myth, most often through advertisements, consumers come to perceive the myth as embodied in the product. So they buy the product to consume the myth and to forge a relationship with the author: the brand. Anthropologists call this “ritual action.” When Nike’s core customers laced up their Air Jordans in the early 1990s, they tapped into Nike’s myth of individual achievement through perseverance. As Apple’s customers typed away on their keyboards in the late 1990s, they communed with the company’s myth of rebellious, creative, libertarian values at work in a new economy.

Apple’s myth likely traces back to the “1984″ commercial inspired by George Orwell’s novel featuring a dystopic future where thoughts, ideas, and even history were controlled — as an aside, the commercial only aired publicly once — during the Super Bowl, before George Orwell’s estate successfully enjoined further broadcasts. Despite this, the commercial was hugely successful in aligning Apple with this myth ethos resulting in a huge sales bump for the then fledgling Mac. According to Forbes, the Apple 1984 commercial became the standard against which all future commercials were measured.

Recent commercials depicting Apple as the young, stylish actor while PC is the slightly portly and less appealing actor successfully continued building the brand and supporting the existing myth to modern audiences.

Building the myth is only part of the job. The myth must resonate with consumers by empowering them to overcome tension in their world. This means the myth must reflect a consistent image that belies reality — like The Marlboro Man depicts the cowboy myth — where the consumer is the hero of the story.

To an extent, using celebrities as a spokesperson for your brand serves a similar role — it identifies the brand with the brand of the actor. Of course, that danger with this alignment is when the celebrity commits acts not consistent with the brand, most recently Tiger Woods and his numerous affairs.

The other day I was asked: “How do I motivate a potential joint venture partner to bite? When you have a great idea and you’ve located the perfect partner, how do you motivate them to do business with you?”

I talked on many occasions about the power of a USP and how to define one. Being unique, or having an interesting twist or hook, will definitely up your chances of getting noticed.

But regardless of how you approach your prospective partner, before you do it is important to craft the offer in a manner that shows the benefits to your joint-venture partner.

Here are a few extra tricks to motivate a potential partner.

More often than not, showing how their clients or prospects will benefit from your offering is a big step forward. Look at all the potential benefits your partnership provides. Don’t stick with the obvious. Dig deep, and list all the advantages they get from doing this venture.

At the very least, and aside from the extra money they earn, if you can show your partner how your offering will benefit their prospects and make your partner look good, you have a headstart.

But don’t stop there.

Think about it: if your partnership will make your partner look good, what will that translate into? More money? Sure. But it can also translate into:

• More sales of their own products.
• More publicity and visibility in the marketplace.
• More word-of-mouth advertising.
• More brand equity and trust from their people.
• New distribution channels to exploit.
• New markets to enter.
• New or increased opt-in lists.
• Different testing possibilities.
• And so on.

Personally, I hate it when a potential joint-venture partner approaches me only to offer me a portion of the sales. This is typical of most commission-based affiliate sales, and is by no means a joint-venture partnership at all.

A joint venture is a joint venture.

(It particularly irks me when a potential partner asks me to contribute content or share my resources when they have nothing to share with me. Why would I give up a percentage of my own sales? So don’t do that.)

Again, there must be something different. Something extra. Something else that makes this a truly viable and worthwhile investment of your partner’s time, marketing, and intellectual property.

Bundling products or offers is an effective strategy. If the JV’s product is a non-competing one, complements your product, and fits your market too, then it can be bundled with yours to create an entirely new and separate offering.

If you have a list that can benefit your partner and if your partner has a list you can promote to, or if you can build a new one together that you both can share ownership, that’s another added benefit.

But let’s say there isn’t anything else.

Let’s say you have created a truly exceptional product that would greatly benefit your partner’s people. And let’s assume you’re looking to leverage profits from your product off of a joint-venture partner’s opt-in list.

First off, you need to have sales materials ready and tested to prove that:

1. Your product is in demand.
2. Your product is already selling.
3. Your product is selling well.

In this case, you can offer 50% of the sales, and include a sample of your product and your proven, high-converting sales letter, if possible.

Again, point out the benefits. Their list will appreciate the valuable product they’re offering, and they will appreciate your partner for thinking of them, too.

But do your homework first!

Do you know and understand their market? Is your product a perfect fit? Is your market a perfect fit for their product(s), too? How many people do they actually have on their lists or how big is their market?

If you can discover how many people are on that person’s list, you can provide them with a little math ahead of time.

For example, let’s say you know that their list consists of 5,000 people. Based on a sales letter with tested conversion rate of 3% and an average open-rate of 40%, you can speculate that your partner will gross about $3,000 in profits on your $50 product by doing just one mailout. So mention this in your initial approach.

But don’t stop there. Alone, this is a typical, commission-based affiliate offer. You’re not recruiting affiliates. You want partners. So amplify the offer to increase your likelihood of receiving a “yes.”

Make it a little higher than normal, if you can. Or throw in details of your list and how they can share in the total list built from this promotion. Make whatever extra you bring to the table stand out.

Do you have additional resources that this potential partner does not have, resources they might benefit from? Do you have a pre-designed website, pre-tested ads and sales copy, additional distribution channels, cheaper suppliers, an existing support helpdesk, etc?

Whatever extra you do have to offer, or whatever value-add you think might benefit them, don’t leave those details out. Tell them. In other words, give them the goods right away.

Doing so makes you look special and doesn’t drown your offer in a bunch of historical platitudes (“about me and my business,” etc), or patronizing, hype-filled buzzwords (“market leader,” “top quality,” “synergy,” or “bleeding edge,” etc) that’s only going to result in a few yawns.

But don’t stop there, either.

Point out, in no uncertain terms, that you’re making this offer to them and them only. And point out that you’re making this offer available only through this special partnership.

Yes, I highly recommend you do offer something extra-special or exclusive. (Remember, you’re looking for a joint-venture partner, not just an affiliate.)

If not, tell them you’re making this offer only to a very select group of people. But also, make sure to list all the facts and reasons why their promotions won’t get drowned in a sea of competing, promotional messages.

Nevertheless, say something like:

“Since I’m confident your people will love this product (and they will love you more for offering this to them), I want to reward you specifically by paying you 50% [rather than my standard 25% commission rate for affiliates]…”

Here’s an extra tip.

(This single tip is one of the most effective ways we use to gain partners.)

If you want your JV offer to stand out a bit more, then offer a bit more, too — such as 51% or 55% rather than the typical 50%.

Why? Because 50% is such a round, arbitrary number, where odd numbers like 51% or 55% sound “special.” (We’ve tested this by offering 53% in JV deals, and they did better than 50%.)

It gives your offer a sense of specialness and exclusivity. By giving them an extra percent or two, it makes the JV prospect feel as if they’re getting the better end of the deal. They are making more money than you are.

It’s all about lifetime customer value. If you’re doing this precisely to leverage their lists in order to build a bigger one for yourself from which you can profit more in the future, then who cares if they get paid more?

Finally, I would also add that you can go even a step above by offering a bundled offer after the initial promotion, where you and your JV bundle your products together at a higher price, and split the profits.

(Again, a true joint venture goes beyond a typical affiliate-based arrangement. It doesn’t have to be just more commissions. Otherwise, they are just glorified affiliates or “super-affiliates.”)

You can promote this bundled package to both your lists. If they’ve offered your product in the past to their lists, then a bundled offer can get the remaining non-buyers to buy. It might just be the extra nudge they need!

Say your conversion is 3% on average. Your JV partner promotes it as a standalone offer to their existing lists of people with whom they have an established relationship. Their conversion is therefore higher. Say, 5%.

By bundling products, you both can scratch up an extra 5% or even more in additional sales (I’ve seen as much as 11-12%). These non-buyers might be more inclined to buy the bigger, more valued-added package.

If you can, offer it at a special price too, which is less than the two products sold separately. This helps you to abstain from offering any discounts, which can cheapen your product. It’s a special offer, not a discount.

(Perception here is powerful. The bundle and its price are separate and distinct from each individual product, so any special pricing doesn’t affect the value perception of each standalone product.)

Look at it this way: you wouldn’t have generated these additional sales if you or your partner simply stopped after the initial offer.

In fact, this bundle might be just the perfect nudge to get your JV’s prospects to finally buy that JV’s own product! (Now, that’s a benefit you should definitely include in your request, if you choose this route.)

Or at the very least, ask your JV partner if you can become their affiliate and promote their product to your list, too. Again, it’s a win-win solution and beyond a typical affiliate arrangement.

Sometimes motivating a potential joint-venture partner takes a little massaging. Don’t be afraid to do your homework and show the numbers, presenting them in a light that most favors your partner, and listing all the benefits and possibilities they may not have considered.

Above all, don’t just talk about the money. While it is the most common reason behind joint-venture partnerships, list all the additional benefits your partner (and their prospects) will receive, too.

A good list-leveraging partnership is worth a little extra effort.

Photo Source: Flickr

The post Give Your Joint-Venture Offer An Extra Punch appeared first on Michel Fortin.

Inversion is all the rage – and it’s sparking rage, too. Companies are employing or considering the complex and controversial tax maneuver to relocate their headquarters to countries more tax-friendly than the U.S. and save bundles. Pfizer is perhaps the largest corporation to attempt inversion. (The deal fell through.) Walgreen’s and as many as 30 other deals reportedly are in the pipeline.

From a cost-reduction standpoint, inversion is perfectly logical: Change your address and your tax bill goes down. And isn’t lowering costs exactly what managers focused on shareholder value are supposed to be doing? But railing against the practice are critics of all kinds, from President Obama on down. They say that anyone opting for inversion lacks patriotism – and is ripping off taxpayers.

We find the debate interesting because it offers a great example of reputation risk – and more specifically, of why such risk has to be assessed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Over the decades, risk management has become a deeply quantitative endeavor. But as damage to institutional reputations becomes a more potent threat, that overwhelmingly quantitative bias won’t serve organizations well.

Certainly, business leaders worry about reputation risk. In a recent series of studies by accounting firm EisnerAmper, it emerged as a top concern of board members. They know it is linked to risks of other kinds. Consider the reputation damage caused by product failure at GM, or unpopular workplace practices at Walmart, or the multibillion dollar fines for fraud levied against Bank of America – which, not incidentally, came in dead last in a recent Harris Interactive reputation ranking. But they also know that reputations can damaged by more than the operational risks that can be managed with functional redundancies, or the financial risks that can be countered by hedging, investing in futures markets, and global currency diversification.

Understanding how to manage reputation risk starts with understanding the elements of reputation. So let’s look at that research by the Harris Interactive team. For each of the past 15 years, they have calculated the RQ (reputation quotient) of 60 highly visible companies in the eyes of the American public by measuring perceptions of those companies in six major areas:

• Social responsibility
• Emotional appeal
• Products and services
• Vision and leadership
• Financial performance
• Workplace environment

The top 10 in the most recent Harris ranking are for the most part brands that consumers do business with directly, such as Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Whole Foods. (This finding mirrors the results of Edelman’s annual Global Trust Barometer.) By contrast, the bottom 10 includes several companies – Goldman Sachs, AIG, Halliburton, Monsanto, and BP — which most consumers know only by reputation. When everything in the news about a firm is bad, and the average person has no personal experience running counter to what they hear, reputation scores plunge.

Looking at the Harris study at a more granular level, it’s possible to see which of the particular elements it measures are the strongest drivers of RQ. Companies with strong reputation scores tend to post high marks for vision and leadership, employee satisfaction, social responsibility, and customer service; the bottom feeders score low on these. Similarly, the Edelman Trust Barometer is able to determine which components of its index carry most weight in people’s overall impressions of companies’ trustworthiness. Over the years, those trust drivers have shifted:

• From “micro” impressions of firms in isolation to more “macro” impressions of firms and their networks of suppliers and contractors
• From satisfaction with positive transactions to perceptions of shared values with the firm
• From respect for firms that play by the rules (strictly comply with legal and regulatory requirements) to respect for firms with principles (who show leadership in responding to heightened societal expectations).

Think about these key drivers of reputation and trust and it starts to become clear why the quantitative methods that you probably rely on to address risk in other areas will never be sufficient. Reputation will always be too impressionistic, and too long-term in its impact, to be left to your Quants. Indeed, if you do leave it to the Quants, it will most likely be neglected, along with other risks that involve intangibles. In a recent survey of risk executives by the American Institute of CPAs, more than a third of respondents admitted they conduct no formal assessment of strategic, market, and industry risks.

We’d like to propose a solution. In your boardroom and senior management strategy sessions, make an explicit effort to listen to your “Qualts.”

What – or who – is a Qualt? He or she does not lack for rigor, but insists that managing reputational risk requires qualitative as well as quantitative experience and instincts. Your Qualts have internalized the values and larger purpose of the organization, and grasp how powerful these are in maintaining healthy connections between the company, its customers, employees, and other stakeholders. In a world with expanding transparency, heightened customer expectations, fragmented authority structures, social media that “negotiate” truth, and potent NGOs, they are the leaders who appreciate the interdependencies of these elements and the potential consequences of running afoul of society’s expectations.

Qualts tend to come to the fore in moments of crisis because, if the rankings of BP, AIG, and Goldman are any indicator, failing to lead well through a crisis carries a price that endures. At such moments, risk, and particularly reputational risk, gets elevated to a senior-leadership concern – and those executives ensure that its importance percolates throughout the organization. It should be no surprise that most “best practice” crisis-recovery examples (e.g., P&G, Exxon, J&J) show organizations shifting to fully integrated risk-management platforms, which build reputational considerations into the full “supply chain” of risk-based decision making.

But a crisis is a tough time to start managing in an unaccustomed way. Qualts understand that reputations and long-term value accrue through consistent commitments over time. They see rigorous quantitative approaches to risk as necessary but not sufficient, since any purely numbers-driven risk analysis of deeply subjective components such as “emotional appeal” or ”vision and leadership” is only suggestive of the truth, at best. In fact, the equations can overlook or mask fragility.

Of course, risk-taking is central to business success. But Qualts appreciate more than anyone else how succumbing to immediate financial temptations can mortgage a reputation, creating reputational debt. They maintain and evolve decision-making models that guide those decisions with clear reputational standards that remain inviolate up, down, and across the extended enterprise.

Our intention here is not to denigrate the Quants who are doing so much to illuminate risks across the enterprise, and finding ever more sophisticated ways to track reputational changes over time. Our warning is that reputation risk management is a special case. Its foundational elements – values and emotions – are frankly qualitative and managing wisely will always require a Qualt.

A marketing manager, Susan, was doing a stellar job with her online and offline marketing campaigns, generating leads by the bucketful. As soon as she received them, she passed them over to the sales manager to distribute among the sales force, expecting to receive praise and thanks for her outstanding efforts.

But she heard nothing. Complete silence.

Eventually, she stormed into the sales manager’s office and asked, “What’s going on? Aren’t the sales people happy with the leads? Why aren’t they out there closing the deals?”

The sales manager looked across his desk and explained regretfully that the salesforce didn’t want “leads,” they wanted “qualified leads.” Susan responded that there had to be some qualified leads in the piles of leads she had sent. “Yes,” said the sales manager. “I’m sure there were, but the sales force doesn’t sort through leads to find the golden nuggets. If a few are not qualified, they’re considered unqualified just by association.”

It was then that Susan realized she needed a call center, filled with associates who love to ferret out good from bad leads, nurture those that wanted to buy but weren’t ready yet, and set appointments. She knew these associates could also make cold calls to reach people who weren’t opening her direct mail or finding the company online. They could recruit channel partners, profile accounts and generally fill in the gaps in her marketing program.

But how should she go about it? Here are the steps Susan (and you) can take to create a world-class call center.

1. Define Your Destination

You want to start with your mission, vision and goals. Perhaps, you’re interested in inside sales. Maybe you want to focus on business development. Or, it’s possible you need both these functions.

Also, it’s important to lay out how leads will flow through the organization, from marketing to the call center and then on to sales.

Knowing upfront your end goals and how you plan to manage leads is important because it will affect how you design the organization and employee responsibilities.

1. Hire RightIt takes someone with unique background and skills to survive and thrive in a B2B call center.

   If you’re doing it right, your agents aren’t reading word for word from a script. They are asking questions and responding intelligently to high-level decision makers. So, they have to be educated, intelligent and good listeners. In addition, they need to be persistent and able to bounce back from the rejection that comes with the job. And to keep up with the daily workload, they need to be organized and detail-oriented.

   To bring the right people onboard, who can make or break your success, you’ll need to survey the competition and offer a competitive compensation plan and a pleasant working environment.

2. Bring Out the Best in PeopleEven if you’ve hired the best, a sink or swim environment isn’t going to work. Everyone can improve their skills with regular feedback on their listening and presentation skills, their voice intonation, and how their personal metrics compare with others in the department. And if you’ve hired the right people, they’ll be happy for the feedback — they’ll accept any advice that could lead them to greater success.
3. Processes and Systems

To get the best results, you need to support excellent agents with world-class processes and systems that make your call center run like clockwork. You need to integrate your marketing automation with your CRM system. Optimize your CRM system for the tasks at hand — prospecting, tele-nurturing, lead qualification and more. Ensure you have the reporting in place to measure results. Provide the agents with resources they can use to look up companies and contact information. Finally, put in place a good phone system that provides you with the reporting and functionality needed for a world-class call center.

Above: The cost of advertising apps is rising.

Image Credit: iMedia Connection

User acquisition is a sexy topic. I know because I moderated a panel discussion on the topic at the Casual Connect conference last week in San Francisco. We had a standing room-only crowd listening to the experts that we rounded up to talk about the problem of acquiring mobile users for apps and games among a million competing choices in the app stores.

Competition is getting so fierce that in many cases, the cost of acquiring a user is exceeding the value you can get from that player. Smart companies are hiring user-acquisition experts to help design better strategies. Our panel included a few of these: James Peng, who handles user acquisition and monetization at mobile game developer Storm8; Andrew Birnbryer, the director of business development for North America at mobile marketing platform AppLift; and Matt Bruch, sales manager at sweepstakes company Liquid Wireless. In this session, I got the conversation rolling and then handed it over to the audience take over with the questions. The result was a useful conversation that went deep into the problems and solutions.

Here’s an edited transcript of our panel session.

Above: James Peng of Storm8, Andrew Birnbryer of AppLift, and Matt Bruch of Liquid Wireless.

GamesBeat: Everyone knows this is not a science. It’s voodoo or black magic. That complexity is going to be deciphered by our expert panel here, starting with James Peng, who handles user acquisition and monetization at Storm8. Next to him is Andrew Birnbryer, the director of business development for North America at AppLift; and Matt Bruch, the sales manager at Liquid Wireless.

We did a story this morning on AdColony and a survey they did of 4,000 developers. It said that app installs were everyone’s priority two years ago, but now they all say that high-quality downloads are what they want. At VentureBeat, we did our own user acquisition survey, covering 230 developers, and they voted on what solutions for user acquisition they liked. The rankings that came out, in order, were Google, Facebook, ChartBoost, AdColony, Flurry, Tapjoy, YouTube, Twitter, NativeX, and Playhaven.

For now, could you introduce yourselves a little bit more, and then we can talk about that list?

James Peng: I lead user acquisition and monetization at Storm8, a mobile developer. We have more than 40 titles on iOS and Android across multiple genres. We have 50 million unique users that play our games each month, and we were a top-12 mobile publisher in 2013.

Andrew Birnbryer: AppLift is a mobile games-focused marketing platform. We work with 90 of the top 100 game pubs around the world. We have 178 active game publishers around the world. We focus on ROI-positive spending. We have very high-level LTV optimization and an advertiser dashboard that allows you to optimize your campaigns. In turn, we work with more than 3,000 media partners across a variety of different channels, everything from apps to mobile web to OEMs to strategic partners. We’re doing TV now. We have retargeting. We have social. We have some very cool tech on our backend. We connect supply with demand and make sure we drive you high-quality users.

Matt Bruch: Liquid Wireless is Publisher’s Clearing House’s rich media ad network. PCH, each year, spends $36 million on advertising for direct response, TV, and a whole slew of other ad campaigns. When users come to our site, we monetize them with app downloads, direct response advertisers, and a variety of other methods.

Above: Storm8’s Candy Blast Mania mobile game.

Image Credit: Storm8

GamesBeat: You guys heard that list. What does it tell you about the state of user acquisition today?

Peng: Obviously, it’s a lot of different types of vendors there. It shows you that there’s a lot of different needs in the marketplace. Each vendor is showing up there for a reason. “Best” is very subjective. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re trying to compile a leaderboard based on different objectives, whether it’s quality, volume, price, you’re going to have a completely different board.

Based on the combination of all these elements — looking at volume, quality, targeting, and price — Facebook is rightly in the position it is right now. But I’d say the arena is changing quite a bit. Especially this year, competition has increased. A lot of targeting options are becoming available. Things like Twitter and Google are starting to emerge. I feel like this chart will continue to evolve and shift over the next year.

Birnbryer: Everyone does things slightly different. It’s about focus and how you’re going to deliver. Facebook does a great job. Facebook does a great job because you give them every bit of data about yourself and tell them exactly how to market to you. If you tell me everything about yourself, I’m pretty sure I can sell you something. It makes sense that they drive high value and high quality because it’s all about targeting.

230 app developers with 9,000 apps and 397 million MAU
told us what works best in mobile user acquisition.

It’s also about focus. AppLift, we’re 100 percent games. We know games. We know how to find users for your games. If that was a list for who are the top mobile ad networks for games, I think we’d be number one. But what we can say is that everyone on that list does things very well. NativeX is a very cool platform that’s head and shoulders above what a lot of people are doing. Twitter, in and of itself, is going to be a big platform for the future. Being able to utilize that reach for individuals to push. I think we all expect, based on the quality of Facebook, that Twitter is the next step in social.

Overall, these lists are still subjective. It’s based on small sample sizes. It’s based on individual experiences. The more people you reach out to and talk to, you’re going to find that they have pros and cons for each option on that list. Some people will love some of them and some won’t appreciate them. But I can say that each of them delivers a product that has high value.

Bruch: If you think about Storm8, a major app developer in the space, they use AppLift as their main method for acquiring downloads, outside of some of these big guys. I give them a lot of credit. But to use our company as an example, this time last year we did not have much of a presence in the app space. We were doing less than 10,000 installs a month. Over the last year we’ve scaled that to more than 300,000 installs per month. A lot partners, especially in the social gaming and social casino space, consider us to be one of their top partners in terms of quality.

If you think about that, we didn’t exist much at this time last year. AppLift has obviously grown a lot. A lot of players are coming into the space and growing and showing that they can draw a lot of value. Those top lists will continue to shake up, more and more.

Above: Fiksu Index user survey results June 2014.

Image Credit: Fiksu

GamesBeat: Fiksu is about to report its June results for the surveys they do on the cost of a loyal user [and it has as of press time] — someone who opens an app three times or so. The numbers right now are at four-year highs. What have you guys observed about costs right now?

Birnbryer: If I said you’d have to spend $1.50 to make $2, would you spend the $1.50? Yeah. If I told you to spend $10 to make $15, would you spend the $10? It’s all about ROI positive spending. I can’t stress that enough. What we can do, and what pretty much every provider on that list is trying to do, is deliver that ROI positive spending. If you spend $1, let’s find you a user equal to $1.50. If it’s all the way up the board, we’ll find you a commensurate user. You should only be paying for what’s going to provide you an ROI positive return.

Yes, prices are going up. That’s a fact of supply and demand. More and more publishers are saying, “We want to get more users. We realize that driving them to our game is the only way to get on the charts and start making money.” But ultimately it’s about finding high quality users. If you partner with someone who can deliver a user that’s worth more than you spend, the price has no impact. No matter what, if you’re making money, it’s a win.

Peng: We definitely feel the effect of price increases. As prices go up, there is a theoretical maximum to what you can squeeze out of every single user. The margin does get squeezed. As costs go up, we have to get smarter.

Even though the cost of valuable and engaged users is going up, what I’ve seen is that the price of a less valuable user is decreasing. Advertisers are getting smarter about what they want and what they don’t want.

What we’re trying to do is counter these costs by making our spend more impactful for every impression that we show out there. We do that by understanding who our users are, what they want, and how to most effectively communicate that to them. That’s another way of saying, understand the source, understand the destination, and understand the medium through which you’re going to communicate.

Bruch: In order for a campaign to work, both sides need to be winning. Just being ROI positive is huge, but you want to make it so the publisher is in a place where they’re backing out to an effective CPI that works for them. They can go out and increase the spend that they’re doing and bring in more users. You need to strike a balance so that both sides are winning in that way. For us, that can help us deliver more volume.

To move into the app space, we had to find a way for it to compete with direct response advertisers – the insurance companies that have been working on our platform for a while. Some of those increased costs helped us transition into the space.

AppLift is a mobile games marketing platform. The company was founded in August 2012 by Kaya Taner, Tim Koschella and Hitfox Group. AppLift’s platform helps mobile game advertisers acquire loyal and paying gamers at scale on a per... read more »

Founded in 2009, Storm8, Inc. is the leading mobile gaming network, developer and publisher of social games for iOS and Android. With more than 50 million monthly active users and 600 million total downloads to date, Storm8 is also hom... read more »

Liquid Wireless is a mobile customer acquisition company that creates data and voice leads using mobile marketing techniques and analytical optimization. Over 165 million Americans surf the mobile web from devices like iPhone and An... read more »

Have you been considering using pop-ups on your website or landing page?

Are you concerned that the risk outweighs the reward?

I feel you; you’re not the only one who’s worried.

The thing is, pop-ups work. And they work better when you use them well and implement the best practices.

This article will discuss the five types of pop-ups you can use on your site, outlining the pros and cons of each. I’ll make sure you’re fully informed so you can make your decision with all the information you need.

Let’s get rolling!

Why Use Pop-Ups at All?

You want to maximize the potential of your online presence, yeah?

You want to succeed, utilizing every new strategy available to your business, and outperform your competitors?

Then you need to go with what’s been proven to work.

The case-studies are flooding in, with many businesses seeing up to a 40% drop in bounce rate on their website. We’re seeing lead conversion rates of 6.39% and 2000 leads captured in only three months.

You may not like them, but they work. They generate leads, sales, and real-world dollars for you company.

So let’s take a look at five ways you can use them well.

How to Use Click Pop-Ups

Click-Pop-Ups work by activating when a visitor to your website or landing page clicks on a designated link, image, or word.

They’re the only pop-up that occurs because of an action. Because of this, they’re the least intrusive of all pop-ups.

Here’s how we use Click Pop-Ups (and how you should too):

• Place a banner at the bottom of blog articles, promoting a comprehensive ebook about the same subject as the article.
• Make the banner eye-catching and the content title clear and obvious.
• Include a short blurb (sentence) illustrating the value of the ebook.
• Connect the click pop-up code to the banner image, so the pop-up will appear when the image is clicked on.

Why is this better than sending traffic to a lead generation landing page?

Well, you’ll have to try it for yourself, but our A/B tests are currently showing that we have a higher conversion rate on an ebook pop-up than we do on our ebook landing pages. Incorporating the click pop-up skips the step of opening another tab (and then loading it). This means our blog traffic gets access to the content they want faster. Speeding up the process also encourages our traffic to make a decision.

Think about it. Most blog readers who click on a banner offering a comprehensive guide want that comprehensive guide. The reasons not all of them convert on the corresponding landing page are innumerable (page loaded too slowly, something occurred around them in the real world, something distracted them on another tab, etc, etc). If we speed up the process a bit we have a smaller chance of possible leads deciding to bounce.

Make sense?

How to Use Timed Pop-Ups

Timed Pop-Ups work by appearing on a landing page or website after a visitor has remained there for a designated amount of time. Some providers allow you set it only at a few increments (10 seconds, 30 and 60, for instance). Others allow you to test the time that works best for you, enabling you to see if 26 seconds works best, or 47, or 183.

Timed Pop-Ups are, personally, not my favorite (I’ll tell you why below). If you do want to use them, I recommend you test your pop-up timing very carefully. Initially avoid going below 30 seconds on your blog pages, and don’t go above 60 on your product pages.

The timing is a big deal, as you don’t want to shock your traffic with a pop-up too soon, but neither do you want to set your pop-up to show only after that traffic has left. Check your Google Analytics to see the average time your traffic is spending on the page you want to put a Timed Pop-Up, and set it for 10-20 seconds before that average.

How to Use Scroll Pop-Ups

Scroll Pop-Ups are why I don’t use Timed Pop-Ups (though test them for yourself before taking my word for it!)

The reason for this is that I implement pop-ups primarily on blog articles. I need to know that my traffic is actually invested in my content before promoting a lead-generation strategy.

And that’s where Scroll Pop-Ups work perfectly. They appear when a reader (or landing page visitor) has scrolled down a certain percentage of your page or article (and not before).

This means that, when I set a Scroll Pop-Up to appear after 70% of a page has been scrolled (the amount I’ve found most success with), I can be reasonably sure that my visitor is actually interested in what they’re looking at.

If I set a timed pop-up I may underestimate or overestimate a reader’s speed or visitor’s interest.

Here’s how I recommend you set it up:

You’ll notice that I’ve set this Scroll Pop-Up to appear on a page of my blog. I’ll flesh out the pop-up with an ebook promotion (to drive email subscribers) and place it only on pages relevant to that ebook’s content.

I’ve set it to appear at 70% of the way down my blog’s page, meaning the reader is well into the article, but not quite finished. This means that if they aren’t into the ebook I’m promoting they’ll likely remain on the page to finish the content.

I’ve also set it to appear 3 times per week per unique visitor, an amount I’ve tested heavily in the past and found works best for our readers. I recommend you do the same before going ahead.

How to Use Entry Pop-Ups

Entry pop-ups are one of the most underrated (perhaps because they’re one of the most dangerous) pop-ups available to online marketers like us.

They appear as soon as a landing page or website has loaded, essentially blocking a visitor from seeing the page they wanted to see until they’ve engaged with it.

This means that entry pop-ups appear before anybody has seen your page’s image, read its USP, or had the value of engagement communicated with them in any way.

Sounds sketchy, doesn’t it?

The thing is, entry pop-ups are actually awesome, if you use them right.

Here’s what I recommend;

• Run an online-exclusive contest or promotion (50% off the first month’s subscription to your tool, for instance).
• Keep this exclusive contest close to your chest, promoting it less than you have in the past.
• When website traffic comes to your main page and travels through your tools, direct them towards your pricing page (as you would normally).
• Instead of allowing your website visitors to see your regular pricing page, implement an Entry Pop-Up that appears as soon as they arrive on the page.
• Have your Entry Pop-Up read something like “Limited time only! Get 50% off your first month’s subscription to [your tool]. Promotion ends midnight tonight!” with a “Click here to get your discount” button clear and bright on the bottom.

Now I get that this sounds sales-y, and those of you more sedate, conscientious business owners and managers may be a bit skeptical of this tactic.

I get it, I was in the same boat as you only a couple weeks ago. But (as I said above), pop-ups work, and once you get over that squeamishness and the leads and sales start rolling in you’ll be fine.

How to Use Exit Pop-Ups

The most common type of pop-up, exit pop-ups use “exit tracking” software to calculate when a visitor to your landing page or blog is planning on bouncing.

Exit Pop-Ups utilize mouse-tracking (yes we’re getting a bit advanced here, friends) to measure cursor directionality and velocity, measuring (with impressive accuracy) when your traffic is about to close the tab, open another one or hit the “back” button on their browser.

And it interrupts them.

An Exit Pop-Up appears just as your visitor is about to bounce, encouraging them to convert on (perhaps) a CTA button they missed or an offer they didn’t know about.

Consider that when your blog readers are absorbing your valuable content they’re focused solely on that task. They’re not, for instance, looking around the rest of your page, checking for links to your ebooks, other articles, or a product demo. They’re reading, not buying.

That doesn’t mean they don’t want to convert or aren’t interested in subscribing to your top tips, tricks, and exclusive offers. It simply means they were focused on something else when you were giving them the option.

Exit Pop-Ups ensure they’re paying attention.

Here’s what I recommend:

• Place your Exit Pop-Up on your product landing pages and lead-generation pages, as well as blog.
• Have different pop-ups for each page: offer a free demo for your product pages, an “Are you sure? pop-up for your lead generation pages and an ebook promotional pop-up for your blog site.
• Ensure you’re not spamming your readers or visitors with an exit pop-up every time they visit your site. Test your pop-ups appearing a maximum of three times per week.
• Ensure you’re not spamming existing leads or clients with your pop-ups, as nothing causes an unsubscribe faster.

The crux of this entire exercise is that you need to test your pop-ups. Few pop-up providers allow you to A/B test your business’ pop-ups right off the bat, so shop around for the one that suits you best.

Conclusion

Hopefully that’s given you a solid understanding of the five primary types of pop-ups: how they work, why they work, and how you can use them for yourself.

Yes they can be an annoying part of online marketing, and if they didn’t work so damn well we never would have invested so much time and energy creating a tool that makes them easy for you to integrate into your marketing strategy.

But they do work well, so there ya’ go.

The idea of overkill is usually seen in one or two ways. The first is pulling out all the stops, regardless of victory already being achieved. The second is becoming excessive than necessary in order to accomplish a particular goal.

When generating sales leads, success can actually come in the form of one or the other. There are times when you end up outdoing yourself despite reaching, say, your monthly quota. How do you tell though if this is the sort of positive or negative sort of overkill?

Overkill and Overhead

For anyone in the finance industry, a good start would be to understand the concept of overkill alongside that of overhead cost. The latter is a good representation of spotting the bad sort of overkill because the bad sort is essentially inefficient. It uses too much of your marketing resources than it actually needs (which is something that you’d easily discover with the usual overhead value analysis).

On other hand though, what are some of the ways that B2B marketers can use to generate a positive sort of overkill?

• Bonus benefits – Positive overkill isn’t so much an excessive use of force but exceeding expectation. Take the example of Hollywood and Comic-Con. The movie industry may not need it as a crucial marketing tool but it still makes for a nice cherry on top of the whole strategy.

• Maintaining your edge – Likewise, this can keep your marketing strategies from slipping into mediocrity. Focusing on just getting the sales leads might actually risk diminishing their value as well as the business relationship that could follow. Extra effort for extra results gives you incentives to maintain your edge.

• Encourage innovations – Finally, efficiency and innovation go hand in hand. It’s hard to think of better, bigger ways to increase your sales leads when you’re not pushing the current limit. What’s the point of saving up on resources if they’re not being used to at least grow your marketing arm?

Again, it’s not about excessive, wasteful use but exceeding the current expectations of your marketing strategy. It’s how you determine the next step because keeping up the usual score may not serve you well in the long-term.

Social media is now the main source of communication for brands between their customers and leads. People today are turning to networks to leave feedback, search for information, purchase services and products, and share what they had found.

Twitter is at the top of the social engagement list, and there are several strategies you can use to create trust and provide a meaningful conversation.

You can quickly build your brand on Twitter in as little as five minutes a day. This involves using common sense, great planning, and time management. Here are several steps to help you get started:

1. Get focused with search. Not sure where to find the right people to follow or information to share? Perhaps this could be that your search is too broad. Try using quotes or keywords with hashtags for more narrow results.

2. Research who others are following. Want to get in on the same action as your competition? All it takes is some time and effort to create what is known as a Twitter List where you can add top users, follow other lists, and learn who to make connections with.

3. Become a helpful contributor. People are looking for trusted answers from brands. Why not become that source of information for them? Through helpful content, answering and asking questions, and even free offers you can learn how to best meet the needs of your audience and create a larger following.

4. Build and encourage engagement. Try using retweets, offer positive feedback to your network, ask questions, and be quick to respond to notification and Direct Messages. The more helpful and accessible your brand becomes, the better response you will have to your content.

The world is watching your personal brand. By engaging on Twitter with a focused and people-centered approach you will create a network of trust which can continue integrating with your other social networks and your website. This strategy is sure to result in more leads and sales while building your unique brand.

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” Warren Buffett’s words speckle the notebooks of investment moguls and inspire the minds of business enthusiasts far and wide – and for good reason. He simply makes sense. When it comes to sales preparation, it all comes down to the good, old-fashioned sense to use what you’ve got and the guile to get what you need.

Our last few posts have discussed the science of sales enablement for sales reps, outlining and introducing the main variables involved: planning, preparing and engaging. So far, we’ve broken out the three elements of that initial sales planning stage: visibility, analysis and prioritization.

Now we’re onto preparation, and we’ll start with its foundational element: sales resources … because that only makes sense, right?

Sales preparation: RESOURCES, collaboration and guidance.

• Reps with fast, easy access to all sales resources have a clear competitive advantage.
• They must react quickly to buyers, from anywhere, at any time – whether airplane or train, office or home terrain.
• They must respond with accuracy, affability and distinguishing personalization – showing that they’re really there and actually care.
• They must be on alert and in tune, anticipating opportunities before they arise.
• They must be primed and on point, taking action as leads materialize.

Creating a central location for all critical resources is fundamental because it gives sales reps ONE accessible portal for all sales materials, marketing content, coaching tips, subject-matter expertise and intra-team communication/collaboration tools.

Without this unified, streamlined hub of resources, sales reps simply can’t prepare from a place of strategy – no matter how crafty they are or unruffled they seem – or respond with the deliberate authenticity that today’s buyers demand.

• “As much as 40% of a sales rep’s time is spent creating presentations, customizing messaging and preparing for pitches.” This is precious time taken from those 1:1 points in the sales process.
  Arming Your Reps With A Differentiated Sales Message via CEB Sales Leadership Council
  
• A genuine 1:1 sales strategy matters to today’s social buyers. “Sales reps who spent 35% or less of their time selling by phone or face-to-face achieved quota only 55% of the time. When they upped the 1:1 ante to more than 45%, the chances of them making quota hit 62%.”
  Sales Optimization Survey via CSO Insights
  
• “Sales studies consistently show that anywhere from 35-50% of all sales go to the agent who makes first contact.” Remember: Quick is good, but quick and customized is best.
  Chaotic Flow Blog via Joel York
  
• “84% of participants in a sales enablement study indicate high sales effectiveness when there is availability of, and access to, relevant content for reps to use with prospects.”
  Aberdeen
  
• “While sales and marketing squabble, the customer becomes increasingly unhappy with their sales interactions, which they claim are ‘unproductive’ 97% of the time.”
  Sales And Marketing Alignment Begins With The Customer via Forbes’ Christine Crandell

Sure, a wily rep may “get by” and “do just fine” without strategic resources to guide preparation, but that insight void eventually rattles their game. And sales preparation for sustainable success is about the long run, not the split-second sprint.

When preparing the sales strategy, resources matter.

Here’s how a Sales Enablement Platform unlocks the resource portal for strategic preparation and long-term thinking:

See it all, and do it all, in one place.

• Open up the Resource Library for everything the sales team needs in one place – accessible from anywhere, at any time, on any device.
• Grab and send personalized follow-up materials right after a meeting to really wow those prospects.
• Build custom materials, all-inclusive kits and exceptional, interactive sales presentations for buyers.

Just say no to resource digging.

• Have constant awareness of all resources available.
• Get instant recommendations on which ones are right for each sales opportunity.

We mean it: No. More. Digging.

• Refine search filters for that super-specific buyer persona who needs hyper-personalized sales materials.
• Click-and-tap recommendations into exactly what you need for that goldmine of intricate and sensitive buying situations.
• Lock down and mark up resources for your savvy buyers, and for your own sales betterment: from documents, pages, slides and media files to subject-matter experts (SMEs), training tips and coaching videos.

Get sales plays going – right here, right now.

• Use Sales Plays to bundle all of the resources you need into one action plan.
• Combine appropriate materials and conversation guides with appropriate SMEs and management coaches.
• Execute quick-and-easy mini plans that keep deals in motion.

Follow the playbook brick road.

• Sales Playbooks guide you through your sales process with user-friendly agility.
• Deliver everything you want, when your buyers need it most.
• Clear away confusion and chaos with one-click insight that keeps things on track.

Interact with resources, and make them better.

• See which materials sales reps rate most useful to guide your own resource strategy.
• Read others’ comments to understand why certain sales materials and marketing content perform better.
• Help improve the resource database based on ratings, comments and feedback.
• Add your own ratings, comments and feedback.

The software sales process can be perilous – even lead generation for your business software is risky if you don’t know what you’re doing. We’re not talking about risk to yourself, but to your business and to your bottom line.

In a market where one missed sales opportunity might turn into a social media meltdown and a string of bad press, you need to ensure your software sales process avoids critical mistakes that alienate your prospects. Even for sales conversations that don’t ultimately close, you should still leave a positive, lasting impression on the prospect.

Here are the seven most deadly mistakes or “sins” that many sales teams make throughout the software sales cycle – from initial lead generation to final close:

Deadly Sin #1: Product Dumping

Product dumping is the practice of proposing too many things for a prospect to buy or droning on too long about a product that a prospect might not be interested in. The product dump is the most overused and overrated sales tactic that exists – and its consequences are deadly to your sale. After all, would you like to hear someone go on extensively about a product or service you don’t even need?

Avoid this mistake by asking questions about the prospect’s needs and wants, their customers and their company as a whole. By listening more than speaking, an experienced salesperson influences a potential buyer’s behavior in more indirect, subtle ways.

Deadly Sin #2: Deriding The Current Solution

Even when a prospect is voluntarily coming to your company for a new business software solution, your salespeople should never bad-mouth that prospect’s current solution. Remember: someone within the company chose that current solution, and that same person might be the one you’re trying to convince to sign your final agreement – in fact, that person might even be the one who’s on the other end of the phone.

Rather than deriding a prospect’s current solution or vendor, your salespeople should focus on building long-term relationships with prospects and customers that look beyond the initial close.

Deadly Sin #3: Ignoring Prospect Follow-Up

Just because an initial cold call didn’t end with an appointment or because the first in-depth conversation didn’t end with a close doesn’t mean your salespeople should ignore a prospect after that event. In fact, the lack of a follow-up may turn a prospect away from making a final decision on your software solution altogether.

Instead of just hoping a prospect returns to you, implement a robust lead nurturing campaign that ensures you never forget to follow up with every single contact in your lead database.

Deadly Sin #4: Not Communicating Internally

Especially if your software sales process is split between appointment setters and closers, you should never let a communication rift develop between the two sides of your sales team. Your lead generation and closing efforts are both hamstrung if your two specialists don’t communicate with each other about each prospect that they handle.

On the other hand, if you use software sales tools like customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation software, you ensure your team’s communication is fluid and the experience for the prospect is seamless.

Deadly Sin #5: Only Going After Hand-Raisers

Hand-raisers are those prospects that come to your company voluntarily, requesting more information on your business software and freely giving you their contact information. While these leads are the most qualified, your sales team shouldn’t solely focus on these prospects – if they do, your revenue won’t grow nearly as quickly.

Robust lead generation takes a lot of hard work, including plenty of cold calls and follow-ups. Make sure your team has the right resources and training under their belts so they pursue more than just hand-raisers.

Deadly Sin #6: Incentivizing Reps Incorrectly

Software sales representatives need to be incentivized properly to make sure their work is the most effective not only in terms of time but also in terms of bottom-line profit. Likewise, reps should be deterred from making poor sales or going after prospects that aren’t likely to close.

Instead of just establishing a one-size-fits-all policy of software sales rewards, ensure that your compensation process incentivizes sales reps in the proper way, including rewards such as bonuses, commissions, job security and professional training and development.

Deadly Sin #7: Relying On Bad Data

Relying on bad data for lead generation or during any stage of the sales cycle is the worst mistake of them all. Incorrect, faulty or outdated information in your lead database means your sales reps are wasting their time – when they could be generating revenue for your business.

Avoid this mistake by always keeping your lead database as clean and as updated as possible. When you stop pursuing bad leads or faulty data, you’ll realize a noticeable gain in both new lead generation and closed sales.

Navigating around these seven deadly sins of the software sales process ensures that your salespeople are using their time most effectively to set more appointments and finalize more deals. Even when a prospect encounter doesn’t result in a closed sale, avoiding these sins keeps your company’s reputation solidly intact.

Does your software sales process need an in-depth review? Or what about your sales team: are they communicating effectively? Get answers to your most pressing questions by clicking below to register for this webinar hosted by Invenio Solutions. Discover how a closed-loop software sales cycle gives your sales team the insight it needs to drive revenue more effectively for your business.

Are you overwhelmed by all the moving parts of inbound marketing? Don’t be – sit back and let these short videos walk you through the methodology.

Inbound marketing is a philosophy rooted in the idea that people value personalized, relevant content – not interruptive messages.

The inbound marketing methodology is about helping brands attract, convert, close and delight visitors, leads and customers through a variety of channels like social media, blogging, SEO and email. In essence, inbound marketing pulls customers to your company instead of shouting at them with interruptive messages.

There are many moving parts to inbound marketing and it can become needlessly complicated to explain. Fortunately, one of the best grahpical explanations of inbound marketing is the one shown above from HubSpot. (My marketing agency and clients use HubSpot’s software.)

But reading about a concept can only go so far. That’s why I made a few short videos to help explain the inbound marketing methodology. So sit back and enjoy these videos that I hope will help bring the whole concept together for you. (I have included the text of each video.)

Inbound Marketing

If you’re frustrated with how traditional marketing just doesn’t generate the sales leads it once did, you’re not alone.

The marketing megaphone is broken.

Gone are the days when you could really get your prospects’ attention with traditional, interruptive marketing like advertising, direct mail, cold calling and email spam.

Modern technology allows people to avoid your marketing messages. Be honest, have you ever not answered the phone because it was a sales call?

And now, your prospects want to do their own research before they talk to you. One study found that buyers are at least 57% through their purchase before they first talk to the seller.

So what can you do? You might want to consider inbound marketing. It’s becoming the most effective marketing method for generating leads.

Instead of the old outbound marketing approach of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company. Like a big magnet.

By publishing the right content in the right place at the right time, your marketing becomes relevant and helpful to your customers. If done right, it doesn’t even feel like marketing.

But does it work? Studies show that leads generated with inbound marketing cost less than leads generated with outbound marketing. And that’s why marketing budgets are shifting from outbound tactics to inbound.

From the megaphone to the magnet.

Attract

You don’t want just any traffic to your site, you want the right traffic.

You want to attract the people who are most likely to become leads, and, ultimately, happy customers who buy more from you and tell others.

Who are the “right” people? Your ideal customers. Also known as buyer personas.

Buyer personas are profiles of what your ideal customers are really like. What are their biggest challenges? What would make them really successful? What’s keeping them up at night? What are their objections to buying a product like yours? Your personas are the people your whole business is built around.

So how do we attract these ideal prospects? Here are three of the most important ways.

1. Keywords – Your customers start by using a search engine to find solutions to problems they have. So you need to make sure you’re appearing in the search results. To get there, you need to carefully and analytically pick your keywords, optimize your pages and create content around the terms your buyers are searching for. In fact, your whole site needs to be a beacon of helpful content to lure the right traffic.
2. Blogging – The single best way to attract new website visitors is with a blog. In order to get found by the right prospective customers, you need to create educational content that speaks to them and answers their questions.
3. Social Media – Here’s how Jay Baer explains social media. “Content is fire. Social media is gasoline.” Once you’re generating helpful content, share it on social media, engage with your prospects and put a human face on your company.

So, with the right traffic coming to your site, it’s time to generate leads.

Convert

Once you’ve got the right visitors to your site, the next step is to convert them into leads by gathering their contact information. At the very least, you’ll need their email address.

Contact information is the most valuable currency there is to the online marketer. In order for your visitors to offer up that currency, you need to offer them something in return.

That comes in the form of content, like ebooks, whitepapers, or tip sheets — whatever information would be interesting and valuable to your buyer persona.

Some of the most important tools in converting visitors to leads include:

• Calls-to-Action – Calls-to-action are buttons or links that encourage your visitors to take action, like “Download an eBook” or “Attend a Webinar.” If you don’t have enough calls-to-action or your calls-to-action aren’t enticing enough, you won’t generate many leads.
• Landing Pages – When a website visitor clicks on a call-to-action, they should then be sent to a landing page. A landing page is where the offer in the call-to-action is fulfilled, and where the prospect provides information that your sales team can use to begin a conversation with them.

And that is how you generate a lead! Now, on to the close.

Close

You’re doing great: You’ve attracted the right visitors and converted the right leads, but now you need to transform those leads into customers.

How do you do that? This is where a variety of marketing tools help make sure you’re closing the right leads at the right times, such as:

• Lead Scoring – You’ve got leads, but how do you know which ones are ready to speak to your sales team? Scoring the sales-readiness of a lead takes the guesswork out of the process.
• Email – What do you do if a visitor clicks on your call to action, fills out a landing page, or downloads your eBook, but still isn’t ready to become a customer? A series of emails with useful, relevant content can build trust and help them become more ready to buy.
• Marketing Automation – This involves creating preprogramed email marketing and lead nurturing tailored to the needs and stage of each lead. For example, if a visitor downloaded an ebook on a certain topic from you in the past, you might want to send that lead a series of emails related to that same topic.
• Closed-loop Reporting – How do you know which marketing efforts are bringing in the best leads? Is your sales team closing those best leads into customers? Integration with your Customer Relationship Management system allows you to analyze just how well your marketing and sales teams are working together.

So is that the end? No! Now you’ve got a happy customer. And you want to use inbound marketing to stay in touch with the customer to keep them happy and raving about your company.

Delight

Have you ever heard it’s a lot cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one? It’s true.

Happy customers who love a company are becoming a competitive advantage for businesses.

But one of the biggest unforced errors that companies commit is ignoring their customers after the sale. Or worse, they’re irritating customers AND ignoring them. And now with social media, angry customers can broadcast to the world about a bad experience with your company.

With inbound marketing you can deepen the relationship with your customers and the trust they have in you, and (hopefully) sell them more and enlist them into your army of raving fans. So the same kind of marketing you did to get your customers can help you keep and delight them.

For instance, with email and marketing automation you can keep your customers delighted with more helpful content, and introduce new products they might like. And with social media, you can provide real-time customer service and encourage your customers to share the love.

Inbound marketing not only helps you attract, convert and close, it helps you delight your customers and grow your business.

To many, this is a new approach to marketing. But it works. And the secret to success… is getting started.

The Leadership Playbook: Leaders Teach Values is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

My friend, Howard Bloom, tells a story about Japanese macaques (monkeys). He says that “an innovative leader can spread new practices through the group in hours. But a conservative monkey leader, a dictatorial defender of the traditions he’s inherited or created, can force the group reject opportunities that glitter with potential.”

Howard continues, “In Takasakiyama, Japan, another macaque leader, Jupiter, laid down a cultural pattern that encouraged bullying, beating, and humiliating females. But when Jupiter grew old and died, the new leader–Titan–abolished this extreme emphasis on anti-female aggression. He also shifter the times, destinations, and other ways of wandering–the ‘pattern of nomadism’–of the group and even change the time of day the group ate.”

This story is interesting–and safer–when it’s a story about monkeys. But experts in organizational culture don’t see human behavior as any different.

Values

Leaders teach values.

If the leader believes that integrity and honesty is the foundation of the organization, the agreements they make with their external and internal stakeholders, that is what the organization will value–as long as the leader leads by example and protects the culture.

But the opposite is also true. If the leader doesn’t believe that integrity is fundamental, neither will those he leads. He teaches by his example.

If the leader believes in respecting the individual, treating people with care and compassion, even under the most trying circumstances, that is how the organization will treat people. But this value will only be true if it is practiced inside the organization.

People who aren’t treated with respect, care, and compassion won’t treat others that way. They’ll live the value as it is practiced inside.

Teacher

It’s the leaders job to create and protect the culture, and the culture is, in part, made up of a collection of values, beliefs, and behaviors.

You’re people will be what you are, not what you profess to be. You cast a long shadow. It’s your job to teach values, by your actions, your deeds, and your words. It’s also your job to teach by rooting out beliefs, behaviors, and actions that go against the values you teach.

Discover how to use data analysis to set clear, realistic objectives for your next marketing campaign.

Most Marketing Managers recognise this situation: “We need 10% response rate from this campaign or it doesn’t work for us.”

The request – from the Marketing Head, Sales Director, or other budget holder – is fair enough. But aiming for one number, in isolation, carries risks.

If 10% is where you need to go… you need to make sure you’re starting from a place that makes it achievable. A method called business data analysis can help.

To get where you’re going, start from the right place

Much business data analysis is about asking the right questions. “We need 10%” isn’t the right one. So it’s useful to rephrase. Try asking your budget holder: what has success looked like in the past?

If 10% is the target because that’s what campaigns normally achieve; terrific. You’ve got a very high-performing department. (It’s also a very positive result – since over 80% of marketers use campaigns mainly to increase sales.)

But if it’s 10% because the last three campaigns only managed 1% … other questions emerge. Start with:

• Who are we talking to? Has this audience been approached before?
• How large is the audience? A mass market or a niche?
• What are we saying? Have we sent these messages in a past campaign?
• What happened last time? Did we achieve that 10% target?
• How long did it take? Did 95% of responses come in within two weeks?
• How many leads do we want? Would one good new customer cover it?
• How much revenue should it generate? Do the numbers make sense?

The right metrics can be surprisingly simple

When it comes to lists, an existing list will almost always perform better than a brand new one. If you’re campaigning to a completely new list, the main objective is to find out what happens, not achieve 10% – it’s more of a research project.

(Knowing the ROI of a new list is valuable data in itself.)

While looking at messaging, business data analysis can be easier than you think. For example, you could look only at subject lines of past emails. What words and phrases delivered higher openings and clickthrough rates?

A few simple numbers will help manage expectations. If your average response rate is 2%, that’s already good. (The Direct Marketing Association notes a 0.12% average for email, with 4.4% for direct mail.) While even a low response rate can deliver great results if 1 in 2 of the recipients become customers.

Marketing data analysis isn’t about numbers. It’s about the story behind those numbers.

Finally, remember your objectives are at the end of a sales funnel, not a single campaign. How long is the sales cycle (time between initial lead and first sale?) What revenue does the campaign need to add to your topline?

These numbers let you question any outlandish expectations – such as a new list of 3,000 needing to deliver £1m in sales this quarter. Setting you up to exceed expectations later. (In a survey, an incredible 47% of respondents gave “Measuring the success of a campaign” as their single hardest task.)

So if you’re setting business objectives for a future campaign, make sure you know where you stand today. Knowing which metrics to measure makes it win-win.

How to find those metrics

Discover how to find the metrics to set realistic objectives for your next campaign in this guide; Which metrics to measure

This article first appeared on the Marketscan blog. 

Do you think you’re good at multitasking? Oftentimes, the better you think you are, the worse you actually are.

In the past, the ability to multitask has been seen as an additional skill and tools and technology were built to enable this capability. But researchers around the world have begun to point back to the basic fact that we as humans are built to focus on one thing at a time. In fact, if we insist on multitasking, efficiency goes out the window. Here are four reasons why salespeople shouldn’t multitask:

1. Multitasking: the better you think you are, the worse you actually are: From Maria Konnikova’s reporting in the New Yorker on David Strayer’s research, 98 percent of respondents are predisposed to be highly inefficient multitaskers. The study also found a connection between people’s “perceived” ability to multitask and actual performance. The result was that the better we think we are at multitasking, the worse we actually are. Konnikova reported, “They found a strong relationship; an inverse one. The better someone thought she was, the more likely it was that her performance was well below par.”

2. Sales: Multitasking’s mascot profession: Multitasking is comparable to the life of a busy, device-juggling sales rep. After all, if multitasking picked a mascot profession, it would be sales. Sales reps are constantly handling a range of activities at one time, usually spending half of their day on non-sales related activities. According to Sibson Consulting, the average-performing sales rep spends 65 percent of his or her time on activities not related to selling. One look at this number and it’s clear that something needs to change.

3. Costs: The unseen costs of switching between tasks: Most sales reps spend most of their days shifting between different tasks. From scanning a list of leads to drilling into a lead record, salespeople are constantly jumping between tasks and being interrupted. Researchers have discovered unseen costs associated when switching between tasks, estimating that as much as 40 percent of someone’s time will be lost during short mental blocks.

4. Prioritization: How technology impacts sales activities: Recent research found a significant increase in productivity and performance among salespeople and companies who leverage automatic prioritization, validating the key benefits of single tasking. In fact, salespeople utilizing prioritization technology averaged 88 percent more talk time and 15 percent greater contact and conversion rates than salespeople not utilizing prioritization technology. At a company level, the opportunities and potential are even greater, with those companies that utilize prioritization technology averaging 97 percent greater conversation rates compared to those that don’t.

With so much definitive evidence pointing to how automatic prioritization – which helps salespeople focus on a single activity – improves sales productivity and performance, it’s clear that salespeople should no longer be multitasking.

Congrats! You’re about to publish your ebook on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Maybe it’s your first, maybe it’s your tenth.

But wait – before you hit that yellow “publish” button – have you thought about how you’re going to market your masterpiece?

Whether your goal is to sell a million copies or just to get your words to connect with the right people who will appreciate your work, you need to plan and act on a great online marketing strategy.

Believe me, just because you’ve put your content into a book doesn’t mean people will be tripping over in crowds to buy it. I know, I’ve done it and I learned the hard way.

Marketing your ebook online can be a tough sell. The reality is that most self-published ebooks are lucky to hit 100 sales (sorry for that splash of cold water). But if you’re willing to do the work, there’s plenty of potential for success. You really do have the world at your fingertips – go ahead and make the most of it.

Here’s 10 steps to marketing your ebook online.

How to Market your Amazon Ebook: Pre-Launch

When you self-publish on Amazon (or any other ebook publishing platform), you’re more than just the author. You’re also the publisher. And that means you get to do the work of any good publishing house team of book editors, graphic designers and marketers. This article is about the marketing side, so I’ll be sticking with methods on how to get your creation viewed, loved and downloaded into the right ereaders.

Aside from the book editing (best to get at least one fresh set of eyes on it), the book title (very important to selling your book as well as SEO) and the book cover (yes, people do judge a book by its cover), there’s a number of pre-marketing steps you need to take.

1. Create a Blog

Hopefully you already have a website and you write blog articles related to your subject matter regularly. If you don’t, start one now.

A website gives you a ‘home’ online. These days, creating your own website is really very easy. There’s lots of places you can get free sites from (just Google it – my personal fave is the free wordpress.com), and most make it very basic to upload design templates and images, so you can create a site that’s reflective of your book and resonates with your audience.

Make sure your site has a blog on it. Why? A blog gives you a chance to showcase your writing, engage with future readers, and (once published) drive traffic to your ebook landing page. And besides, you’re a writer, and a blog gives you a pretty cool outlet to write and write often.

Be sure to enable comments and include social share buttons on all your blog posts to encourage reader engagement.

2. Start to Market with Pre-launch Landing Pages

I know, I know, you’ve read all about the value of building up a great email list – even before you start to publish. Every book I’ve read about ebook publishing told me this too. And it’s true.

Collecting emails is the smartest and most effective way to keep in touch with your future buyers. It’s also a really cool way to start generating interest in your book with pre-launch promotions.

The best ways to do this is through email-gated landing pages (don’t know what a landing page is, but were too shy to ask? Check out my article “What is a landing page?” – you’re welcome.)

There are tons of pre-launch campaigns you can run on your website landing pages. For example, you can generate leads and excitement about your upcoming ebook by:

• Getting people to choose a book cover (with an email-gated vote contest)

• Hosting an email-gated sweepstakes to give away a free copy of your book
• Engaging your audience by asking for their input about your book characters if it’s fiction (such as a choice your main character must make)
• Engaging your audience by asking for subject matter advice if it’s non-fiction (you can motivate responses by including the best quotes in your book)

Pre-launch promotions can help to start generating that all-important buzz – before you even publish. The more excitement you can generate leading up to your launch, the better chance of success your product will have.

Keep in mind too, that Amazon has lists of top 100 bestselling books. If you can generate a groundswell of interest leading up to publication your book just might make it on to a genre specific list.

Aside from the dream of being on a bestselling book list, getting into a top 10 spot also helps to sell more of your books. People looking for a new read are more likely to buy a popular choice on a bestseller list.

3. Hyper-target your Reach with Facebook Ads

I hope you’re already marketing your author profile on Facebook and Twitter too (and Good Reads – you definitely need to be networking on the site to connect with your niche readership).

Now, you might be getting lots of engagement on your blog already through your website’s social functions (yes, some websites, like the wordpress.com sites, let you follow fellow bloggers), and you might be getting lots of engagement and click-throughs on your social sites too.

But, you probably want more site visitors, right?

That’s where advertising on Facebook comes in.

Now, I only recommend that you spend money on Facebook Ads if you’re really serious about selling your ebook. If writing that book was a hobby and you really just enjoyed the process and the people you met along the way, don’t spend lots of money trying to advertise it. The average ad on Facebook costs about $0.50 per click, so do the math for your book (or series of books) to determine if they’re worth it for you.

Having said that, Facebook Ads can be a super effective method of promoting your pre-launch ebook campaigns, get more Likes for your Page and raise awareness about your ebook. The ability to hyper-target your advertising to reach your exact demographic also makes Facebook Ads an incredibly reasonable ad spend.

You can target by:

• All the demographic data Facebook has (such as age, gender, relationship status, location and occupation)
• Pages people Like (such as other books or subjects similar to yours)
• Friends of Fans (to reach Facebook Friends of people who already Like your Page)
• And tons more

Use Facebook Ads to drive Likes on your page and traffic to your email-gated pre-launch website landing pages.

4. Send out Email Automation Campaigns

When you start to get lead information from people who are genuinely interested in your upcoming book, it’s the perfect opportunity to stay in touch.

Send out regular emails to keep people posted on the progress of your book, more pre-launch campaigns you’re running, new blog posts and to ask people to connect with you on your social sites too.

You can even send out pre-written emails to be triggered and delivered at timed intervals with email automation campaigns. That way you can pre-plan your emails and not have to worry if you got busy with the many other tasks you have going on in your life and happen to, uh, forget to send out your bi-weekly or weekly messages.

The more people get to know you and your work, the more likely they will want to buy your book to support your efforts.

Additionally, from a marketing perspective, email automation campaigns keep building up the buzz about your book launch. If you can do it well, more people will be lining up to buy your book on that all-important first day. And, as mentioned above, the more sales you get in a short time, the better chance you have of getting noticed on a bestselling list.

How to Market your Amazon Ebook: Launch

Okay, so now that you have an excited, intrigued and super-engaged future readership, you’re getting close to having a successful book launch. It does take about 24 hours for your book to go live on Amazon – and other sites like iBookstore, Nook Press and Kobo can take a bit longer. Be prepared with a few more steps to take, just before you press that ‘publish’ button.

5. Make an Ebook Landing Page

Create a landing page (now that you know what a landing page is) on your website where you give your ‘book blurb’ showing the benefits of your book and creating the hook. Include your book cover image and book trailer (if you’ve made one).

If you have ecommerce or payment gateway abilities on your site, link the Call to Action button (your ‘buy now’ button) to it, so people can buy directly from you. Or link it to your Amazon KDP book page once it’s live.

I’d highly recommend you make your landing page in advance to your launch. That way you’re not super stressed and rushed to make a last minute marketing page. Keep it private until the big day.

(Click on the landing page)

Once your book has been vetted through KDP and is live, make your ebook landing page public.

By having an ebook landing page on your website (whether you’re selling you book directly or through Amazon), you give yourself more marketing opportunities to promote your book and drive traffic to your site. You can make Google Adwords or Facebook Ads that link directly to your website, for example.

6. Announce your Book Release

Just like a traditional publishing house would, you should promote your ebook with a press release or at least an article on your blog announcing the official launch of your KDP ebook.

Pitch your book to publications that are read by your specific niche readership. This could include:

• Online publications in your niche (if your book is about surfing – pitch to surfing sites, for example)
• Popular (or engaged) blogs related to your book subject matter (get in touch with the main bloggers to pitch)
• Local newspapers and online publications (create a press release with a ‘local author’ spin)

Advanced tip: You could also syndicate your press release through PR sites (there are generally costs associated with these), or sign up for HARO (help a reporter out) to pitch your release when a journalist is looking for a story just like yours.

Be sure to send out your announcement to your email contacts to share your great news and generate a buzz with people who are already interested in your work.

7. Promote your Amazon KDP Ebook to your Email Leads and Social Media!

Once you’ve hit the publish button on Amazon KDP, send out a series of personalized emails to your entire prospect database.

Send out your first email before your book is live. Let your engaged readership know that your book is just hours away from being shipped to the Kindle store. Build anticipation by reminding your readers of the hard work you’ve done and the benefits they’ll get from reading your work.

As soon as your book is live on Amazon, send out a second email, with a link directly to your NEW book! Now’s the time you really want to push the sale. If you can get even 30 books to sell on your launch day, you’re likely going to make it to a best selling list (and you already know the benefits of getting on that list).

Over the next few days, keep sending out emails with your excitement. Tell your readers about any updates you’ve had with your launch. If you received press coverage – brag about it. If a reader reviewed your book, tell people about it (and encourage other customers to do the same).

Promote your launch on all your social media sites too. Include the link directly to your Amazon page to make it easy to immediately buy your book.

How to Market your Amazon Ebook: Post-Launch

Once your book is launched, and you’ve successfully made it on at least one sub-genre bestselling list (you can do it!), you still have tons of opportunities to keep promoting your masterpiece. In fact, the marketing is just beginning.

There are hundreds of ways to promote your ebook online. I’ll give you my top three best methods of connecting with the right readership and getting more copies of your book sold.

8. Set up a “Review your Kindle eBook” landing page

There’s nothing so rewarding as getting your first book review (and hopefully it’s a good one!). To persuade people to write good things about you, you could send out your ebook to review sites or ask your friends. Both of these are great methods, particularly the former. There are lots of great book review sites (including reviews within the GoodReads site – which show up on certain ebookstores too). Find your review sites within your genre and submit your book.

There is a more advanced way to get reviews too. I’d suggest you do this, as you’ll likely get reviews back. And those reviews will be from genuine fellow authors who already hold you in a good light.

What’s this advanced method?

Offer to review other authors’ ebooks – for free.

Create a landing page on your author blog, where writers in your niche can submit (or link) to their work. Let them know that you will review their book, and post that review on your blog (with a linkback to their site and book page).

When you offer to give reviews, you can also ask fellow self-published authors to reciprocate. They’ll likely be more receptive and willing to give you positive feedback.

The more you can connect with your community and niche of fellow self-published authors, the better marketing potential you have. If they share your ebook with a review on their blog, you’ve just exposed your market reach to their audience too. It’s a very ‘pay it forward’ type way of getting your name out there – and you may just sell more books by doing it.

Example of a few reviews on the GoodReads site:

9. Schedule a Virtual Book Tour

You’ve heard about the elusive yet alluring traditional book tour. Maybe you’ve been to a few, to see your favourite authors. Maybe it’s been a dream of yours to actually go on one of your own.

There’s now a modern version, that’s some smart indie authors do. I call it the virtual book tour.

A virtual book tour is a pretty cool method of getting out the word for your ebook. It takes the concept of the old-school in-person book tour, removes the costly travel expenses, and gives you the opportunity to speak to more of your audience in a shorter time.

It’s best to schedule a book tour with back-to-back interviews, podcasts, webinars and Google+ Hangouts (G+ hangouts are particularly great for sci-fi or tech related books).

A short time frame gives you a rapid, condensed hit to your book title (and hopefully book sales). And, as you know, if you can get your book onto the top bestsellers within your particular genre (no matter how small a niche it is), your book appears on Amazon’s top 100 list. This can exponentially increase book sales and awareness.

How to make a book tour:

• Contact influential and highly engaged bloggers within your niche.
• Pitch your book and ask for an interview – offer the interviewer something in exchange such as an interview swap, book review or guest blogging opportunity.
• Try to schedule your ‘tour’ within a one week or day time period.
• Promote your book tour on your social sites and to your email subscribers.

Take your book tour a step further by making recordings of your interviews and sharing them on a “book tour” page you create on your website. Include links back to your influencer’s sites.

10. Promotions and Referral Coupons

Just like in a bricks and mortar bookstore, a great promotion can send your sales through the roof.

Kindle has exclusive book promotion offers for its authors. Take part in these, when you can. A few times a year (or so), KDP authors can give away their books for free – for a limited time.

Now, you may think this goes against your goals of making money from your creative work, but it actually helps to spread the reach to your readership. I’d suggest you take part in these sitewide offers when you can.

Free promotions are particularly effective if you have a series of books. Give away your first book for free and promote your additional books with images of your book covers on the last page of your free book.

Another great promotional method is referral coupons. You may know the concept of referral coupons from large multi-national retailers. Starbucks frequently uses them, for example, as have traditional walk-in bookstores. Why do you think they deploy marketing tactics that get people motivated to spread the reach of their product and bring in new customers? They work, and have been working to increase sales for decades.

What’s new about referral coupons is that they’re now very easy to make yourself, and you can easily make them online.

To make a referral coupon, uh, use a easy software tool (like Wishpond). Then set up your coupon directly on your website or Facebook Page.

Make an offer to give away your book for free, for example, if a participant refers and gets three people to buy your book.

This is the best kind of word-of-mouth marketing. Your dedicated and loyal audience will tell their friends about you. Friends tend to trust the advice of friends, particularly when they’re recommending something personal, like a book.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading my two part series on how to market your Amazon KDP ebook. I hope you’ve enjoyed it and that you learned something new.

Publishing your own ebook is a great experience. Although you’re not likely to sell a million copies and retire on a yacht somewhere, reaping in the royalties, you never know! Remember, the average self-published author is lucky to sell about 100 books. But if you’re smart and persistent, you could make enough to live off of for a while.

Give these marketing steps a shot. I really do want you to succeed! Let me know how you do and share your ebook marketing tips in the comments below.

It doesn't matter if you're an atheist, devout follower of your faith, an agnostic, or anywhere in between—there's wisdom to be learned from the world's religions. Here are some of the most important, universally applicable teachings from sacred texts everyone would benefit from learning.

Read more...

With YouTube often referred to as ‘the number two search engine in the world’ and a third of all online activity apparently being spent watching video (via Digital Sherpa), you’d be crazy not to include video in your content portfolio.

Video brings a whole new dimension to your content, allowing you to connect with time-pressed prospects and, of course, those that can’t be bothered to read reams and reams of text.

Where do videos work in the sales funnel?

Videos can be very effective throughout the entire buying cycle. Due to their shareability, fun videos are great for increasing brand awareness and getting people into the top of the funnel.

Educational videos work best in the middle of the funnel where prospects are looking for solutions to their problems. Then, towards the bottom of the funnel, video footage of, for example, how you have helped companies, can be very persuasive when someone is considering which supplier to run with.

WHAT DO OUR JOURNALISTS THINK?

So, what value do videos add to your content portfolio? We ask some of our team what they think:

Steve Masters

Video is a great way to share information quickly and in an engaging way. What you can say in a three minute video may take someone ten minutes to read, if you write it out. And, of course, it’s easier to add tone, pace and emphasis with speech, whereas the strength of the written word relies on the understanding of the listener. Aside from that, the popularity of video as a content medium is growing so much because people are now sharing videos almost as much as they share pictures. It is more fun to share something and say, “Watch this,” than it is to say, “Read this.”

Laura Varley

As we all know, videos are hugely popular online and account for a huge proportion of global web traffic. Check out this infographic on The Drum about what happens in a YouTube minute – you can see it totally makes sense to make video content part of your marketing strategy. People love quick bites of content they can view on the go, but they also love visual content. Video is a combination of both of these things, which is why it’s so popular. Not everything can, or needs, to be said via text or an infographic and sometimes a video is best for getting your point across quickly and easily.

Larissa Hirst

Video allows companies to demonstrate their human side to a wide audience, enabling them to engage on a different, slightly more emotional level.

The Internet is awash with content right now, but videos are catchy and unique. Just some music and colourful images will stand out against every other blog post that resembles a bland piece of paper.

However, videos still have to be relevant to your marketing and content strategy or else they can look a little untidy and out of place. A good place to start is to check out Powtoon where you can create presentations and animated videos for free (with more actions and images available at different pay points).”

Graeme Parton

With mobile displays getting better by the day and Wi-Fi networks increasing in size and quality, consumers have all the tools they need to watch video content wherever they are. The stats show that most are making the most of the opportunity too; YouTube now has one billion unique users every month, for instance. Not only is it easier to grab someone’s attention with great videos, they’re extremely shareable too – engage the viewer and the clip could end up being sent from social network to social network, reaching thousands of new potential customers.

Elizabeth Smythe

It’s always a good idea to provide a wide variety of content. People get bored easily and sometimes don’t want to have to think. That’s where video comes in. It’s perfect for communicating a message in an easy, engaging way that couldn’t be achieved using words. It also injects some personality into your content, which is always nice for the audience to see.

Join us in a fortnight’s time for another ‘Ask The Journalists’.

Thought leadership is a topic I’ve discussed at length, but it’s an area of focus that commands much attention. While it’s usually looked at from a personal point of view, it’s very much a corporate agenda as well. Consider brands like General Electric, The Ritz-Carlton, and ESPN for example. Their corporate strategies have taken them from knowledgeable companies to de facto industry thought leaders.

Have you considered establishing a corporate thought leadership model for your company? You may be surprised to learn about the many internal and external benefits.

What is Corporate Thought Leadership?

Interestingly enough, there’s no single definition for thought leadership. It encompasses so much and varies from person to person. But, because I’m so interested in the idea, I’ve found it helpful to develop my own definition for it. I believe a thought leader is an individual who is recognized as the leading authority figure in an industry and profits from its position. By no means is this a complete or accurate definition, but it’s how I tend to think of it.

You’ll notice that I chose to include the word “individual” and that’s because I view personal and corporate thought leadership as distinct, though similar. The corporate side involves an organization made up of multiple thought leaders agreeing on the same values and beliefs. This form of leadership is much harder than your typical ‘personal’ thought leadership, yet has the potential for even more beneficial results.

The Benefits

Corporate thought leadership, while hard to develop and implement, can provide enormous internal and external benefits. When properly executed and fully supported, it can set your business apart from the competition.

Internally – Corporate thought leadership can improve company culture and morale. When done well, it can build trust, enthusiasm, pride, purpose, and loyalty. Think of it like this: wouldn’t you rather work for a company that lets you in on its goals and allows you to participate in furthering it? It shows that your employer trusts you as a person, wants to see you succeed, and needs your help. As a byproduct, they develop employees who are loyal and proud of the work they do.

Externally – From an external point of view, corporate thought leadership has enormous value. It shows brand consistency, industry authority, attention to detail, and pride. Competitors begin to look at your company as the leading figure on thoughts, ideas, and implementation. Customers see your company as head-and-shoulders above the competition. Suppliers want their resources in your hands. Distributors are happy to push your product out. The benefits go on and on.

How to Establish Corporate Thought Leadership

Once you understand the value in corporate thought leadership, you’ll be quick to jump in. While the benefits are enormous, they are definitely not easy to come by. It takes time, energy, resources, and discipline. With proper execution, you can experience great internal and external profit. Here are five corporate thought leadership steps for your own company:

• Establish your position. Before you can do anything else, establish a clear position. This requires a meeting of the minds between corporate leadership, as well as proper communication between all members of the organization. You must find consistency and purpose in your message for it to be effective.

• Develop a distribution plan. Once you have an idea of which industry you want to own, develop a detailed distribution plan. While you can have the best thoughts and ideas in the world, they are only internally beneficial if you have a distribution plan in place. Your plan should include multiple mediums, channels, and methods. Content should be pushed out via blogs, white papers, social media, industry trade publications, and anything substantive of industry-specific value.

• Identify thought leaders. While corporate thought leadership requires active participation from everyone, you should identify those who will lead the charge. Everyone has a unique set of skills and expertise – use these to your advantage. One person may be particularly good at developing interactive site content, while another may be able to reach people at a grass-roots level.

• Develop production procedures. How will content be developed and produced? Will employees be required to work on aspects of your thought leadership campaign during work hours, or encouraged to spend time on it outside of work?

• Measure and review. No corporate thought leadership plan is successful without proper metrics in place for analysis and review. This is where knowing your employees’ skill sets is important.

An Example of Effective Corporate Thought Leadership

While not always explicitly stated, corporate thought leadership is everywhere. Some companies are open about their approaches while others go about things in a private manner.

General Electric gives us an excellent look at the diversity thought leadership can possess. As its website states, “GE maintains a voice in numerous industries through the active participation in events and forums by its professional staff. These people frequently share their knowledge and expertise with various organizations that look to the company for its perspective on what is evolving in the business world around them.” Think about the many industries GE is involved in: finance, education, computers, healthcare, public administration, production, power generation, residential appliances, aviation, and so on. Yet, despite these involvements, GE maintains a singular corporate thought leadership strategy of sharing its expertise and providing answers. In fact, GE shares white papers on thought leadership on its website.

Your company may not have resources like GE or other Fortune 500 companies, but you can still implement a corporate thought leadership strategy. You can go as far as the thoughts and ideas of the people that make up your organization.

Do you encourage a corporate thought leadership strategy in your organization?

Building reputation is important to any business or individual. For the business, it makes the brand becoming more well-liked and demanded by the consumers. For the individual, reputation increases one’s portfolio value which leads to more opportunities to grow.

Linkedin is a powerful reputation building tool for the business and the individual.

Here are the 7 tips to grow your reputation using Linkedin.

#1 Create an Expert Profile

Credits: thefunnyplanet.com

Let people know who you are, what you do and how you or your business can help them . Other than telling others how awesome we are, we tell them how we can make them or their businesses awesome with our expertise.

#2 Write Original Articles

Be Original. Don’t Copy!

Make efforts in writing original articles. Tell people your opinions on things related to your profession and industry. Many people or businesses do not like to write. So, for those who are willing to write something about their expertise, they will have a better advantage in building their reputation via Linkedin.

#3 Share Your Opinions

Share your expert opinions to gain more opportunities.

Join Linkedin groups and then share your expert views there. Look for groups that your potential customers may be in as well as groups that are related to your industry and professionalism. By sharing your expert views with these groups, your brand credibility can gradually improve as a result.

#4 Give Constructive Comments

Credits: veryfunnypics.eu

Look for popular influencers’ posts on the Linkedin groups and then give constructive comments on them. In this way, you can leverage on the popularity of the posts which can then help to make your brand profile more visible to more professionals. When commenting, try not to use words or phrases that are aggressive or defensive, as these may not portray a positive image for your brand reputation.

#5 Connect with the Right Professionals

Connect with the right people on Linkedin, one person at a time.

Linkedin enhances the power of business networking. By connecting with like-minded professionals, you can extend your network, industry knowledge and also build up your market value. Personally, I had met some fantastic people via Linkedin; in one small way or another, they have linked me to many great opportunities which improve my personal brand reputation thereafter.

#6 Do not Sell Until You Meet!

Credits: blog.straightnorth.com

Although Linkedin is often known as the “Business Social Network”, it does not mean that people can hard sell there! I had disconnected one particular Linkedin connection. This is because after we were connected on Linkedin, he consistently messaged me to ask me to become his product distributors. His over-enthusiastic approach somehow had “scared” me away. Moreover, also try not to sell or advertise massively on Linkedin groups as it may not look good on your brand image. Instead, we convince our consumers on Linkedin with valuable content rather than advertisements.

#7 Create Lasting Business Relationships

Build your professional network one person at a time. Continue to share expert opinions about who you are, what you do and how you can help them. Build a strong brand reputation and business relationship with your Linkedin connection one at a time too. Along the way, some of them will endorse your skills or even recommend businesses or opportunity to you!

Credits: EpicLol.com

As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Building reputation takes time; therefore, do not expect our business or individual portfolio to skyrocket the very next day we get onto the Linkedin bandwagon. However, compare to other social networks or media platforms, Linkedin is considered a faster way to build our reputation and professional network. So, it is still worthwhile to invest every little minute and effort on this social network, to reap in countless amount of benefits in the long run. Remember – one person at a time. Good luck!

This article was first published on Linkedin by Jacky Tan.

When you think of using campaigns for your business, hopefully you think of building things like contests, newsletter integrations, menu displays, RSS feeds and more. All of these are GREAT ways to use campaigns.

However, there are a few ways to use campaigns that most businesses don’t think about, or realize.  That’s what I want to focus on in this article. Each tip includes an example of how my business has used this strategy. What better way to learn then first hand experience?

But any business can take these three campaign ideas and apply them to their business and their online goals.  All of these campaigns can be built using a campaign building software such as ShortStack, Offerpop or Vocus, to name a few.

Ready? Here we go!

Landing Page

I don’t really like to use the term “landing page”  too often because it sounds like a term used to describe a stagnant website. But sometimes that’s exactly what you need! Using a campaign building tool you can build landing pages for your website, advertisements, competitions, coupons, etc. The greatest thing about using a campaign builder for landing pages is you don’t need to rely on a Web developer to design and code the page and place it on your Website, you can do it all yourself. You also don’t need to worry about paying maintenance or website hosting costs.

Here are three examples of landing pages that we’ve built for ourselves.

Example #1: A Landing Page that Announces Our New Campaign Builder. We recently announced upgrades to our designer and some exciting new features. Using the Campaign Builder we built a site that outlined all of the changes, our philosophy behind the changes and how they can benefit businesses. We’ve linked to this Page from our social sites and emails and we’ve embedded the site into our blog. See full Page here.

Example #2: A Landing Page Used to Collect Emails from a Blog Post: When we released our latest eBook, Why Every Business Needs to Stop Obsessing About Facebook Likes we wanted people to give us their email address but we didn’t want them to have to go through Facebook to do it. We also wanted to bring some more attention to our blog since we have a large audience there to target. To do this we built a Campaign and embedded it into a page on our blog. Unlike the previous suggestion where you can embed a campaign within a blog post, you can also create a new page on your blog and embed the campaign there. As you can see below, this enabled us to build a form and use it within our blog to collect email addresses straight into our MailChimp list. From there we set up auto-responders providing further value to those that downloaded the eBook. See full Page here.

Example #3: A Landing Page for Ads: Landing pages are focused messages that your audience sees when they click on your online advertisements. Landing pages have proven to increase conversion rates when created properly. They deliver on your promise, inspire action and provide your audience with exactly what they’re looking for without the hassle of digging through your website. Here are two examples of landing Pages we’ve built for ads we’re running about our recent product changes.

The first page is targeted toward ShortStack’s free users. It focuses on ShortStack’s features that may entice them to upgrade to a paid plan. See full Page here. 

The second landing page is targeted toward ShortStack’s paid users and emphasizes features they receive on paid plans. See full Page here.

Data Collection Point

The second way you might not have thought to use campaigns is to create pages for your website where you collect information from your  visitors. We use this feature on our Webinars Page. We host a free webinar every week and even though we currently host the webinars at 11am PDT, we want to know if there is a time that works better for our users. Building the page in with a campaign builder allows us to have a form that people can fill out requesting their “best time” and it also allows us to easily list out the Webinar times and descriptions. The best part is that anyone in our office can update this page when necessary. People’s time suggestions are collected into a database that anyone in the office can easily access.

Website Offers

The third way to use campaigns that you may not have thought of is for website offers that change frequently. The best time to take advantage of this is if you have a page on your site that needs to be updated frequently. Going through your web developer to constantly update a single page can be a hassle and things can fall behind. If you build your page as a campaign you can update that page yourself without having to access the Website and worry about messing anything else up! Some ideas that can be executed include menus, event listings, store offerings, photo galleries, home listings (for Realtors), portfolios, media newsrooms, coupon offers, etc.

We use this feature on the Login screen for ShortStack. It’s a great place to offer up a free resource or important article to people who are signing into ShortStack. However, we update this page weekly, so using a Campaign allows multiple people in our office to update it each week.

So there you have it, three ways to use campaigns that you may not have heard of! Are you using campaigns in a unique way? If so, who is your favorite campaign provider? Let me know in the comments!

Once again it's that time of week where we round up a load of the most interesting internet marketing statistics that we've seen in the past seven days.

This week it includes Gov.uk's rapid response unit, wearables, mobile apps, Facebook, Twitter, giffgaff, and ecommerce in China.

For more of the same download Econsultancy's Internet Statistics Compendium...

Fixed in a day

• One day. That's all it took for a Gov.uk developer to fix a bug on the site after it was flagged up by a Reddit user. High standards indeed.

We're all talking about wearables

• New data published by Brandwatch shows that social media conversations around wearables have increased 190% from Q1 2013 (973,300 mentions) to Q1 2014 (2,816,814 mentions).
• Wearables still seem to be struggling to find a real purchase outside of the US – the US market accounts for over half (70%) of the conversation about the technology, followed by the UK (7%), Canada (3%), Australia (2%) and India (2%).
• Google Glass, Fitbit and Pebble emerged as the top three products mentioned by volume in the US, while in the UK the rankings stood as Fitbit, Nike Fuelband and Google Glass.
• For a look at some smart products that are destined for failure, read Ben Davis' post on whether the Internet Of Thing has jumped the shark.

App users more valuable than mobile web users

• App users are more engaged and more valuable than mobile web users, according to new data from Poq Studio.
• Not only did app users look at more pages per session than mobile web users in Q1 and Q2, but the conversion rate and average order value was also higher from apps.

Average conversion rate from 1m sessions from January to June 2014

• However the mobile web still accounted for more than two-thirds of revenue from m-commerce (76% in Q1 and 69% in Q2) as it generated a higher number of visits.
• The data comes from 17 of Poq Studio's clients in Q1 and Q2 2014.

Facebook is still king for social logins

• Data from Gigya shows that Facebook is by far the most popular social login on third-party sites, with Google+ coming second.
• In North America Facebook accounts for just over half (53%) of social logins compared to 29% for Google+ and 12% for Yahoo, but Facebook's share rises to 62% in Europe and 82% in both South/Central America and the Middle East.

Twitter reports revenue of $312m in Q2

• Twitter published its Q2 financial report this week, including revenue of $312m and earnings of $0.02 per share. Year-on-year revenue was up 124%.
• 81% of Twitter's ad revenue came from mobile advertising.
• The network's user base continued to grow, with 271m monthly active users in Q2 compared to 255m in Q1.

Giffgaff's payout

• Mobile phone network giffgaff has paid out £1.7m to its customers so far this year as part of its online incentive scheme.
• The company rewards its customer with points if they help answer questions in the giffgaff community forums or recommend the network to friends and family.
• One individual earned just over £10,000 as part of the scheme.

Android continues to dominate

• The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel shows that for the three months to June 2014 Android achieved a 74% share of the European market.
• Apple came in second with 15.3% while Windows share was 8.8%.
• Samsung remains the dominant manufacturer of Android handsets with a 44.1% share across the five largest European markets.

Chinese ecommerce sales worth $446bn

• A new report from iResearch predicts that ecommerce sales in China will rise by more than 45% this year to $446.6bn.
• The company had previously stated that online sales would increase to $396.4bn, but has increased this figure in part due to information included in Alibaba's IPO documents.

The guide to remarketing

• And finally, this infographic from SaleCycle highlights the trends in global sales and abandonment across different industries.

Top Sales leaders are decision makers. They are successful because they establish priorities and set direction. They are always seeking innovative ideas and creative initiatives to reach their objectives. When it comes to HR improvements, these decisions can be especially challenging. Which initiatives have the most value? A common obstacle is answering the question, “Can we afford to make the needed improvements?”

Intuitively, most people recognize the value of a great customer experience. Brands that deliver them are ones that we want to interact with as customers — that we become loyal to, and that we recommend to our friends and family. But as executives leading businesses, the value of delivering such an experience is often a lot less clear, because it can be hard to quantify. Rationales for focusing on customer experience tend to be driven by a gut belief that it’s just “the right thing to do.” The problem with this is that often, whether experience is a priority or not simply becomes a battle of opinions.

It was for this reason that we wanted to explore ways of quantifying the impact of good versus poor customer experiences — and then see what the value was in delivering them. In order to do so, we gained access to experience and revenue data from two global, $1B+ businesses. One of these was a transaction-based business; the other, a relationship-based subscription business.

What we found: not only it is possible to quantify the impact of customer experience — but the effects are huge.

We looked at two companies with different revenue models — one transactional, the other subscription-based — using two common elements that are relevant to all industries: customer feedback, and future spending by individual customers. To see the effect of experience on future spending, we looked at experience data from individual customers at a point in time, and then looked at those individual customers’ spending behaviors over the subsequent year. While transactional businesses primarily care about return frequency and spend per visit, subscription-oriented industries focus on retention, cross-sell, and upsell. We used multiple regression to account for factors that might drive these outcomes other than customer experience — for instance, the fact that exercise enthusiasts might simply enjoy their gym membership more regardless of experience — and estimate how much of the behavioral differences were due to past customer experience. After doing so, it soon became clear: customer experience is a major driver of future revenue.

What we found: after controlling for other factors that drive repeat purchases in the transaction-based business (for example, how often the customer needs the type of goods and services that the company sells), customers who had the best past experiences spend 140% more compared to those who had the poorest past experience.

The results for the subscription-based business were equally impressive. Whereas a transaction-based business is interested in how often customers return, a subscription-based business is primarily interested in how long their customers remain loyal. Our findings: A member who rates as having the poorest experience has only a 43% chance of being a member a year later. Compare this to a member who gives one of the top two experience scores — they would have a 74% chance of remaining a member for at least another year. We were also able to use this data to predict future membership length based on the quality of experience. The difference: on average, a member who gives the lowest score will likely only remain a member for a little over a year. Compare that to a member who gives the highest score — they are likely to remain a member for another six years.

These are dramatic differences.

Of course, the rationale we often hear for not investing to deliver a great experience is that the cost is high. Speaking to executives inside these businesses, however, we often hear the opposite. That is: delivering great experiences actually reduces the cost to serve customers from what it was previously. Unhappy customers are expensive — being, for example, more likely to return products or more likely to require support. Systematically solve the source of dissatisfaction, you don’t just make them more likely to return — you reduce the amount they cost you to serve. For example, Sprint has gone on record as suggesting that as part of their focus on improving the customer experience, they’ve managed to reduce their customer care costs by as much as 33%.

It’s time to stop the philosophical debate about whether investing in the experience of your customers is the right business decision. This isn’t a question of beliefs — it’s a question about the behavior of your customers. Connect the right data, and not only is it possible to quantify the impact of the difference between delivering a great experience and delivering a poor one — but it will demonstrate to everyone in your organization just how big that impact can be.

ANNUITAS recently launched a survey that focused on the Demand Generation function within large B2B enterprise organizations. While the research is still ongoing there have been some key findings in the area of content marketing that are quite revealing.

When respondents were asked, “Do you have a content strategy?” 72.7% responded with yes. While it would seem like good news to see that almost three in four of B2B Enterprises have a content strategy, some of the responses to other content focused questions leaves one wondering on how marketers define strategy. According to the results of the study:

- Only 41% of respondents align their content to the buyers pain points and challenges

- Only 29.1% create specific content for each stage of the buyers journey

- While 78.2% use nurturing as part of their Demand Generation Strategy only 38% of these respondents create nurture specific content

- Only 14.6% of respondents track the performance of their content offers

There seems to be quite the disconnect between what marketers are saying “we have a content strategy” and what they are actually doing. So where is the disconnect?

I believe there are several forces at play as to why marketers are saying one thing, but in reality, practicing another.

Marketers Have Traditionally And Still Do Focus on Tactics-

Each and every week there are reports, webinars and articles written on how to execute an effective “fill in the blank” campaign. Marketers are looking for insights on email campaigns, social campaigns, telemarketing campaigns, etc. These are all tactics i.e. vehicles to deliver content. The reason they fail is they do not take into account the purchase cycle of the buyer, which moves the thought process to a programmatic approach, and not a series of disconnected tactics. When designing your next demand generation program, don’t think about the tactics, think about the content touch points that can be developed to establish a dialogue with the buyer, then determine the vehicles that will be used to deliver the content.

Demand Generation Marketers Don’t Really Know Their Buyers-

According to the survey’s early returns, only 36.4% of respondents stated that their Demand Generation teams are responsible for the development of buyer personas. In order to create effective demand that Engages, Nurtures and Converts the buyer through the buying process, it is necessary for buyer insights to be the starting point of the strategy. This includes knowing their path to purchase, their challenges and pain points among other things. Product marketing and corporate marketing do not get to this level of detail, so the Demand Generation team must. Not having this kind of insight makes it impossible for Demand Generation teams to have the deep knowledge of their buyer – which is necessary for the development of content. Marketers Believe Activity = Value

Both the CMI Content Study launched earlier this year and the ANNUITAS study show an overwhelming number of companies will continue to spend money and put more of their organizational energy behind the creation of content. However, this increased funding and work to create content is not having the intended impact. Note only 9% of marketers in the CMI Content Survey say they are “Very Effective” with their content. Why? Because working harder and simply doing more does not equate to improved results. This is evidenced by the multiple studies that show that up to 70% of all marketing generated content goes unused.

As B2B Demand Generation and content marketing continues to evolve, it is vital that marketers understand what it means to take a strategic approach. Right now, the responses don’t add up and simply saying there is a strategy does not mean there is one.

Different types of marketing are available in the marketplace offering you the best results in an ideal manner that you expect. Email marketing pioneers all such marketing types because of the provision of guaranteed features in exactly the same way as you expect. Emerging business professionals who would like to grab significant amount of market share to increase their scope and offer better services to the customers need to rely upon marketing through email. Free availability of email messaging services from top clients all across the world is an advantage that can never be denied for sure. Checking your requirements in detail will let you explore the best results in an exact manner that you anticipate.

Excellent Email Marketing Services Customized to The Core

Providing your customers with a premium quality service through emails will let you generate maximum enthusiasm always. Perhaps, you get to realize more benefits without going through any complex scenarios as well. More number of emails generated in a less span of time is the most significant advantage for you. Expanding your business to newer communities faster too is easily possible for you. Instead of taking chances with your requirements in any manner, it is necessary that you focus upon your preferences in an ideal fashion that you expect. Ultimate features could be considered in this regard without any major issues experienced as well.

Easy Sharing Options with Email Marketing Service Perfectly

Allowing the targeted customers in bulk receiving the same email in a custom format is possible with the active steps you take in this regard. By going through your latest requirements as per your increased sophistication is something what you need to focus upon on an additional basis. Sharing and forwarding options available along with email will help you in sending the information contained in them to multiple customers or buyers at the same time. Choosing an exact email service offering you the best results is what you need to prefer additionally.

Positive Response for Email Marketing from Customers Guaranteed

Emails meant to advertise products and services are capable of delivering maximum information to the customers along with credentials and references as per the requirement. Checking out your compatibility levels as well in detail will let you explore the best prospects in an exact manner that you desire. Diverse range of email marketing services are now made available to you because of which you get to organize your preferences in an exact manner as you desire. Faster response too is obtained because of the email marketing features that you prefer accordingly.

Valuable Email Marketing Services to You as per Latest Requirements

Taking care of your actual needs in detail is something what you need to focus upon with the exceptional email services you prefer for marketing. Perhaps, it is possible to reach your target on time with the inclusion of best email features in a customized fashion. Attracting customers towards you with the chosen marketing services as per the situation is perfectly possible with ease. Dealing with numerous options without foregoing upon your actual requirements too is possible in an ideal manner that you expect.

The post Ideal Scenarios Where Email Marketing Scores Over Others appeared first on Blogging Tips.

Maybe you’ve over-watered a perfectly good tomato plant and watched it shrivel up and drown. Or maybe an overdose of fertilizer has burnt up your yard.

Whether it’s water or plant food, too much of a good thing can be, well, bad.

See, in nature (and in sales), there’s a fine line between nurturing and smothering. A little TLC can create flourishing environment, while overbearance suffocate.

Not all of your sales leads are ripe enough to convert to customers right now – but someday, a lot of them will be ready to be harvested (according to Gleanster Research, that number is around 50%)

Will your business be poised to reap the benefits?

With a balanced lead nurturing strategy, you can.

Lead nurturing engages contacts with relevant, personalized content over a period of time until they are ready to buy. By sending digestible nuggets of information that strike a chord with their needs, you’ll build credibility over time.

But just like too much fertilizer will burn up a plant, dumping too much knowledge on your contacts can cause information overload, spurring potential leads to pull the plug on your relationship.

The Old School Sales Process – A Lead Landfill

In a lot of businesses, marketing acquires leads from sources like list rentals, pay-per-click campaigns, tradeshows and other sources, then tosses them right over the fence to sales.

Sales picks out the choice leads to try to close. Though many leads will be well qualified to buy, a good portion of them might not be educated about the product or service, or the timing may not be right.

Sales will be able to close some of these leads, but for the rest, it’s like scorching a delicate begonia in the sun – it’s too much of a pitch too soon in the buying journey.

The leads that don’t close just become waste, and marketing starts from scratch to deliver a fresh batch of leads again. It’s an inefficient cycle that uses a lot of unnecessary energy:

• Leads that aren’t ready to buy get tossed
• Marketing is always starting from zero to generate the next batch of leads
• Sales experiences volatility as they churn up leads

Modern Sales and Marketing – A Greener Approach

In lead nurturing, marketing consistently cultivates new sales-ready leads, turning sales volatility into systematic, predictable revenue.

Instead of tossing every lead over fence to sales, marketing acquires leads, then nurtures them with a series of touchpoints until the leads indicate that they are ready to make a purchase.

There are lots of advantages to this evergreen approach:

• Forming Relationships: By connecting with leads over time, they get to know you. You earn their trust along the way and when it’s time to buy, your business is already on their short list.
• Optimizing the Sales Cycle: As you keep in touch with your contacts, you can educate them along the way. Instead of waiting for leads to discover their pain-points and search for your solution, you have the power to inform them, shortening the sales cycle.
• Reduces Waste: With lead nurturing, you aren’t burning up your lead list every month. Hot prospects are handed off to sales while marketing cultivates the next batch into sales ready leads.
• Encourages Growth: As you nurture contacts through email and social touchpoints, your list actually grows organically through peer-to-peer referrals and brand awareness.

Lead Nurturing Strategies

Just like a green pepper plant, leads need the right mix of attention and education to grow into hot prospects.

Lead Scoring: The purpose of each touch point with a lead is to move them closer to the sale. As you email your contacts, make sure they can take an action to indicate their level of interest. Actions such as visiting a link, watching a video, or filling out a form impact lead score so that marketing can systematically determine when a lead is ripe to send to the sales team.

Timing: How often you should connect with contacts depends on the length of your sales cycle and their level of interest in your brand. If your sales cycle is 6 months, it’s probably more appropriate to send an email every two weeks, rather than bi-weekly. Also, contacts who engage with your emails are telling you, “we want more!” and can be communicated to more often.

Segmentation: Garden tomatoes thrive in well-drained soil while tropical cannas like damper conditions. Different plants require different care, just like your leads. Create unique nurturing campaigns that deliver content based on your lead’s unique interests to maximize your yield of sales-ready leads.

Lead nurturing is all about showing your leads the proper care and attention they need to become ripe for sales.