[Guest post by Jeremy Smith.] I absolutely love buyer psychology and neuroeconomics. Want to know why? ● Because it’s like a secret weapon that produces torrents of conversions (and money). ● Because it’s the only real way to understand why [...]
The headline statistic of a recent Forrester report was that 85% of B2B marketers fail to connect content activity to business value. The report raises many questions, the most obvious of which is, Does content marketing work?
Yes, it does, related research indicates. According to The 2014 B2B Buyer Behavior Survey by DemandGen Report, 82% of surveyed senior executives said that content was a significant driver in their buying decisions.
The more important question is, Why doesn’t all content have this impact?
We at Content4Demand have observed and documented multiple reasons. Here are five of them:
Sending to the wrong audience.Buyer-profile development can be an anecdote to this if done properly. Just keep in mind that the B2B buying process is becoming more complex. In the DGR survey, for example, 34% of respondents said the number of team members involved in purchasing decisions increased this year vs. last.
Complicating the message. Often this is a byproduct of focusing on products instead of buyers, and sometimes it’s because marketers work hard on a messaging plan that they want to use as much as possible. The problem is that the buyer doesn’t care so much about these. They care about their problem and the pain it’s causing them. They also have less time to consume content. DemandGen Report’s 2014 B2B Content Preferences Survey revealed that 72% of B2B buyers have less time to read/research than they did in 2013; and they are using mobile devices to access content more often. Both of these trends favor shorter, simpler content formats.
Not saying anything new. Why has orange become the color of “safety”? Because it’s not a common color and so gets attention. Content that blends into the background won’t get attention. By contrast, new research, stories of unique business models, and fresh insight — these tend to get the most attention at the early stage of a nurture campaign and stand out in the larger universe of online content.
Out of sync with buying cycle. There is a time to talk about products, but if you hit a prospect with this information before they are ready, it could be a big turnoff. The reverse also is true. Taking time to map the buyer’s journey and choosing content formats that best match each stage is worth it: 61% of DGR buyer behavior respondents agreed that the winning vendor delivered a better mix of content appropriate for each stage of the purchasing process.
Impact is not measured. The Forrester survey found that 85% of B2B marketers fail to connect content activity to business value, but only 51% report having mature content-marketing strategies. This supports our observation that not a lot of content marketers are measuring impact beyond open rates and downloads. This could be because a link to direct conversions/sales can be hard to quantify, especially in verticals with long buying cycles or rapidly changing technology.
So where do we go from here? Our industry has not yet identified a widely accepted standard for measuring value, and it might never due to the vast number of strategic variables across numerous verticals. But research definitely provides guidance for producing content that buyers respond to. Within that response is the potential for value creation (the sale), but without content, that opportunity might never come.
My cousin let me drive his Tesla recently and it was so majorly cool. It was a custom made beauty that had all the right stuff and it fit him and his wife and family perfectly. The most important part about his purchase is he never dealt with a salesperson, never went into a car dealership, never haggled on pricing with the “closing” team. He made his entire $120K Tesla purchase all online.
Tesla is not only changing the way people drive but the way people shop. Car dealerships may become a thing of the past — just as much as the old B2B sales tactics are outdated and no longer work. It’s getting harder and harder to win customers over with stale, old, traditional sales tactics. The relationship between customers and salespeople is changing constantly. Customers are getting more and more comfortable with online shopping habits, educating themselves online. Take a lesson people.
Customers are becoming more and more independent and more and more informed. They place more value on salespeople who are collaborators, listeners, and partners — people they can rely on to solve a problem. Be that, and you’re in!
As a beginning business owner, there is that tendency to get overwhelmed with the staggering aspects to look at when managing a small business. This eventually starts to take its toll on the investment leaving everything crumbling down.
People, sometimes, forget to see the micro picture, which is very crucial as the nitty gritty details often make up the bigger scenario leading them to heart-breaking failures.
So, if you are eying on establishing your own company, better know how to do it like a pro. With that, get yourself acquainted with the most common struggles you should surpass to have that dream business you always wanted to pursue.
#10 Under-reckoned Market Research
As most of you may have realized by now, a key passport to success in terms of business is a solid and proven business plan. Every budding business owner must understand the fact that business concept is very crucial in achieving success and the only way to achieve such is by having extensive and all-encompassing market research.
You have to assess every aspect of your idea of business such as the size of the potential market, demographics, up to the smallest details of how are you going to reach out to your target clients. The smaller picture that is often taken for granted is usually the one that make up the bigger picture, hence, there should be no way for you to ignore these things. Explore Identity Trends, Competitors, Price Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Location Analysis Report, SWOTAnalysis and other more.
#9 Inferior Business Plan and Concept
While there are stories of fantasies of people who are able to generate a huge company from a sheet of crumpled napkin picked from a restaurant where they had their breakfast, the truth is you really have to get your head together and think of the best plan on how you are going about your business.
Maybe this could work for a while, yes, but you should not think that you are really going somewhere with that out-of-the-blue idea you had. You need to come up with a business plan that could withstand the horrors of business troubles as this would keep you to focus on your goals.
#8 Too Small Capital
From a substandard business plan comes an underestimated budget as well. If you think that you can have that turn around in a matter of weeks and months, well, sad to say, that will never happen.
Regardless of how small the business you are planning to establish, it is always a recommended step to prepare a sufficient amount of money, and the only way you could determine that is by having that well-written and well-studied business plan.
#7 Piteous Marketing Tactics
Yes, another key point for businesses is the advertising techniques. Unless you want your business to be stagnant, or worse, dying, you definitely need to have the best means of interacting and reaching out to your clients. You have to keep in mind that whether you are in the traditional setup or you are using the virtual offices concept, the need for the best marketing strategies apply to everyone.
#6 Playing the I-don’t-know-what-I-want Attitude
Some people resort to investing their money to businesses because they think they can’t work for others. While this could work at the onset, later on, manifestations would inevitably occur. Not knowing what to do and want equates to lack of motivation and focus at what you are doing.
Investing to a business just for the sake of having a way out from being an employee to others will not get you anywhere. So before anything else, you have to keep your head straight out and focused.
#5 Getting too Consumed
If there is that lacking attitude of not knowing what to want and do, then there is also the too-eager attitude. Yes, this is definitely recommended for all business owners. However, the threat here is that you get too consumed by your business that you tend to forget about other important things such as your families and friends.
Keep in mind that when calamity strikes, they will always be the ones you will run to, hence, it would be best to keep those ties and strings attached. After all, not having someone to share your frustrations and feelings of success is not fun at all as well, right?
#4 Work Hoarder
You have to understand this now: there is no way you can do all the work that has to be done to run your business. That is why you need assistants and the right number of employees. Getting too consumed with what you do also sums to being a workaholic and work hoarder. This should not be the case if you really want to have your business operate in the best and most successful means possible.
#3 Compromising Relationships Because of Debts
Yes, it is a given fact that your friends and family will be the ones who can always support you, regardless of where that is emotionally or financially. Although this is really a calming factor for someone who is having business troubles, it could also be the other way around, especially for unmanaged debts.
Money could tick off people, surely you have realized that by now. Hence, business owners should make it a habit to pay debts to people, regardless of who they are in your lives if you really want to maintain that relationship you have with them.
#2 Short-changing Your Business
This comes in when business owners are over-eager to win their clients. For the desire to gain clients, budding business owners have the tendency to short-change their business by offering compromised and too low pricing for their offerings.
Keep in mind that winning a client does not have to be this way – a blending of honesty and professionalism is the perfect equation to have all the clients you need.
#1 The Lack of Suitable and Credulous Business Location
Regardless of how strong or risk-proof your business plan may be, or how extensive your market research has been, not having just the right space and location for your business would just fail almost everything.
And this is where virtual offices concepts (more about VO concept) often come in. There are great things about operating in such setup. You can save a lot of money with the power of extreme flexibility, not just for you but for your clients as well.
However, you have to never forget that even with such office setup, you should still strive to meet and surpass the other common obstacles mentioned in the article.
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Only 38 percent of your lead sources produce top-performing customers, according to a new tool from CertainSource that has tested over 10,000 different sources.
The question, of course, is: which ones?
Above: Evaluating your lead sources and recommending actions …
That’s something that CertainSource CEO Neil Rosen says his new SaaS-based software, Acquire, will tell marketers. And, he says, it’s a unique offering that tests all your lead sources, identifies the best-performing ones that result in the most profitable customers, and helps you discover the dogs that are just wasting your advertising dollars.
“CertainSource provides an enterprise level platform that automates the extremely complex B2C customer acquisition ecosystem,” Rosen told me via email. “CertainSource Acquire … is the first to offer B2C marketers what companies like Salesforce, Marketo, and Eloqua offer B2B brands.”
Above: Marketers can track their cost per acquisition over leading channels
Modern marketers are sourcing leads from social channels (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and more), as well as display ads, mobile ads, email marketing campaigns, and pay-per-click search ads. As any marketer knows, that could easily mean 5-15 different reports and dashboards to view, analyze, and digest. With Acquire, they have a single, simple way to evaluate the relative performance of each.
One customer, Palm Beach Jewelry, says that it’s improved its return on advertising spend by 220 percent with the data.
“Within six months, using CertainSource Acquire, marketers see upwards of 85 percent of their total customer prospects coming from top-performing lead sources,” Rosen says. “Clients see an average 30 percent reduction in cost per action (CPA) such as filling out an application, or completing a sale.”
According to CertainSource, Acquire works “synergistically” with email marketing services as well as cross-channel marketing services like Responsys (owned by Oracle), ExactTarget (owned by Salesforce), SilverPop (owned by IBM), Experian, Epsilon, StrongView and others. But where those focus on nurturing and retaining existing leads and customers, Acquire is focused on new lead sources.
International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed Big Blue (for its official corporate color), is a global technology and innovation company headquartered in the Northeast US. IBM is the largest technology and ... read more »
With more than 100,000 customers, salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company that is leading the shift to the social enterprise. Social enterprises leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies to put customers at t... read more »
Silverpop is the only digital marketing technology provider that unifies marketing automation, email, mobile, and social. Our customers achieve superior Return on Relationship, by uniquely engaging each individual based on their behavi... read more »
It’s obvious that there’s no single right way to deliver content, and that’s why it’s so important to know why and how different approaches might work, and test to see what works for you.
Mark Twain famously said that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
What that means is that statistics are a great way to make weak—or flat-out wrong—arguments seem stronger.
Do not do this.
Like any powerful persuasive tool, use research with your audience’s best interest —and not just clicks—in mind.
IF you have something to share that is already valuable and interesting, that’s when taking the time to do your research can make your content stand out and make people take action.
With that out of the way, let’s get to it.
4 ways to add research and data to your content
1) Cite studies and statistics
If you’re trying to make a point about something that’s been discussed before, there’s a good chance that there’s a research study to back your argument.
But he doesn’t just tell us the wrong time. He shares a fascinating study from Stanford and Ben Gurion University researchers that illustrates his point in a much more compelling way than simply telling us would.
Where to find studies and statistics:Statista.com is like a Google for studies. Type in anything (e.g., “SaaS”) and get research that mentions your search terms (note: some of it is behind a well-worth-it paywall)
The more you filter your search, the better your results become.
There’s also Google itself, where searching for ([topic] + “study”) can yield some fantastic results, and Google’s research-heavy offshoot, Google Scholar.
2) Quote authoritative sources
Instead of asking your readers to believe you, why not cite someone you already know they trust deeply?
When he wrote about how Buffer stopped measuring the direct ROI of social media on this very blog, Kevan Lee made the case that social media ROI isn’t the best direct benchmark for social. But he doesn’t just ask us to take his word from it; he cites Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the godfathers of social media marketing, and the argument that Gary makes about relative ROI.
Where to find quotes from authoritative sources: Again, Google is our friend here. Simply search for the influencer you want to cite, and use additional keywords to maximize your chances of finding a quote. For example, you could search “Vaynerchuk says” for others who have quoted Gary.
There’s also the simplest (and arguably best) method of all: simply reach out and ask the person for a quote. You’d be surprised at how many super-busy influencers would be happy to help you. And as a bonus, you’re building high-value relationships — it’s a win/win!
Because Groove’s blog is about our own growth journey as a business, we use our own metrics and data to tell our story.
When we wrote about the ROI of blogging, we didn’t just say that the ROI was positive, or that we made money from the blog. We bared our data to the world and showed how blog subscribers stacked up against non-subscribers.
Where to find your own data: Depending on what you’re tracking, there are a number of tools for the job. For analytics, we use a combination of Google Analytics and KISSmetrics. For email metrics, we use Campaign Monitor. For blog outreach and other marketing data, we use things as simple as Google Spreadsheets.
The most important thing isn’t the tool; it’s the foundational commitment to tracking everything that’ll arm you with loads of research when you need it.
4) Use someone else’s data
So, you don’t have your own data, can’t find a quote from an authority, and haven’t been able to track down any peer-reviewed research. Do you have any other options?
There are hundreds of companies sharing their own data in blog posts around the web, and they would love for you to use it in your content. Which is fantastic, because that data will help you make your point stronger.
Where to find someone else’s data: If you read a lot of blog posts, you undoubtedly stumble on a lot of data-backed posts. I’ve found that the easiest way to leverage this is to bookmark them as soon as I read them. You could use a service like delicio.us, or do what I do and simply organize your bookmarks into folders.
For example, when I come across a post with some great conversion data, I put it into my “Conversion Research” folder. Then when I’m writing a post like this one, I can just refer back to it, and the content is right there.
To get started, you can bookmark this post!
Ready? Apply this to the next post you write
Data and research can make your argument stronger, build your credibility with your readers and create more memorable content.
Of course, it isn’t enough.
Your posts still have to be interesting, actionable and useful.
But by backing your content with research, you can turn awesome content into awesome, credible content that persuades your readers take action.
I’ve done it. It’s gone. Cold turkey. After years of asserting we need to measure what matters in social business – as opposed to just tracking outcomes we can count easily — I decided to take down the social sharing counter on my blog. You can still share our blog items on social media tools – please do! –but we won’t be quantifying every act of sharing anymore.
Walking the talk? Well, the fact is my social sharing tool was unreliable. When the Leader Networks site re-launched about a year ago, we “lost” all our counts. Thousands of tiny emotional validations which confirmed what we say to our readers matters all disappeared. I mourned the loss. Then my trusty tech team went to work, and soon those big braggy bunches of tweets and likes were back. All better now, I thought.
But as I went on banging the drum of what really matters in social business on stages and talk shows, at conferences and with clients, I realized I had developed a little social sharing addiction. I knew those numbers were not meaningful, but when I posted on the blog I would peek at those numbers over the days that followed. They influenced my satisfaction with my writing. I would feel proud when my posts would trend, and discouraged when they didn’t make a big social bang. I would even tweak a perfectly good post here or there in hopes of improving its numeric fate. Just a few weeks ago, I had a post reach 18,000+ views on LinkedIn Pulse overnight. That was fun, but a closer examination of the comments suggests many people didn’t actually read the article or understand it. Did I achieve my business goals with that post? You tell me….
I went back to my poor tech team who spent hours restoring my broken social share counter and asked them to drop it. They understood and agreed with the decision when I explained why. If my own behavior is any measure, those little counters have created an army of modern marketing monsters who write for the “hit” and not the POV. The share-counter drug is distracting writers everywhere as they focus on the spinning numbers to “prove” their worth, all the while losing sight of the real business purpose of thought leadership.
During this journey over the past year, I’ve seen how social share counts don’t matter the way we think they might. This is especially true in the business-to-business world, where decisions are complex and the most valuable leaders and audience members don’t work in a non-stop social sharing environment. Even if my thoughtful missives may not win a “Miss Popularity” contest, their depth and accuracy triggers a response, and people reach out to learn more about Leader Networks and my work. That is the business value – meaningful connections and new clients. They were also the ones I most enjoyed writing. The numbers didn’t matter and did not predict success.
Taking down the social sharing counter means I’m no longer beholden to the sharing metric. No more temptation to post sexy fluff (haven’t we all done it?) just to boost the sharing number. Instead, I can remain focused on delivering meaningful thought leadership and building mutually beneficial connections.
After all, that’s why I blog. I want to share what I know with people who need help. I use thought leadership to educate and inspire social business leaders, and build awareness of my company’s services and capabilities. I want social business decision-makers to know I have explored and mapped many paths across the social business landscape. My success has nothing to do with counting social shares. Instead, I value the professionals served and connections established though our content. No more sharing counters to influence my feelings … or your first impressions of our work. Maybe we all should dump the counters. That way none of us will be swayed by meaningless metrics, and we can all focus on what really matters.
It’s been a rollercoaster ride since I founded Huddle back in 2006 with Andy Mcloughlin. In just over six years we’ve grown from a bedroom start-up to a 200 strong business with offices in London, San Francisco, New York and (soon to be opened) Washington DC. There have been many ups and downs, especially as a business starts to take off; you can go from feeling on top of the world one minute to bottom of the heap, the next.
It can be daunting starting a new business on your own, especially in London. Although we’re seeing a great amount of money being pumped into Silicon Roundabout by the Government, what we really need is time invested into the community by other start-ups who have made it. So in the spirit of sharing advice, I’ve put together the top ten most useful tips for any budding entrepreneurs out there.
1. Make sure your idea is solid
Your product or service must have intrinsic value; it needs to fulfil a need. You need to do a detailed market analysis, see what is out there and make sure there really is a market for your idea. Ideally find someone from a non-competing business to mentor you; it’s essential that you get some objective advice.
2. Think about your model carefully
Firstly figure out who your actual buyer is, what their motivations are and how you will reach them. You need to figure out what problem you are solving and how to articulate it. You want to think about the business model at the same time as the product, so you can ensure they complement each other, whether its user or subscription based. etc.
3. Don’t compromise on your vision
You know what you want your product or service to look like, whilst it’s important to take advice on board from trusted advisors; don’t dilute your vision too much, just to please someone else.
4. Talk to your customers
People that are customers already can provide valuable feedback from their tried and tested experience. This will give you an excellent case study for future prospects as well; having a customer willing to speak on your behalf is a very powerful marketing tool and provides others with the much needed “comfort factor” when they’re looking to invest in your product
5. Start with a bang
First impressions can only be made once so don’t undersell your product. Don’t be afraid to invest in your launch, as it will be money well spent. Take a lead from other successful launches and use social media to create a buzz.
6. Into the Dragons Den
When you’re looking for investment be mindful of how much your business is worth. Don’t let people walk all over you or you’ll set a precedent for the future and people will continue to take advantage of you. But don’t be afraid to give away a chunk of your business (25-25%) to get it off the ground, it is possible to do big deals early on. But do set a deadline to give yourself a goal to work towards.
7. Go big or go home
Don’t set yourself up to fail; if you aren’t convinced you will succeed, no one else will be either. So reach for the skies and make sure you reach your potential. Numbers mean nothing, all that matters is competitive tension, your team and traction in the market.
8. Getting funding is a job in itself
Raising cash from investors can be full time job and takes months. Make sure you keep your eye on the ball when it comes to your day job and use external resources to give you the boost in support you need. Sf.com took $100m to figure it out and keep in mind that Europe has a much smaller venture capitalist community. So ask for double the money you think you need now and never refuse money when it’s available.
9. Surround yourself with a talented team
You may know about marketing or finance and even have some experience but you may not be an expert and you certainly can’t cover every base in your company at once. Your network of contacts is a valuable resource for setting up a business from looking to expand your team to getting feedback on your product or service.
10. Don’t stop believing
It may sound a bit cheesy but keep faith in your business. Unfortunately many start-ups go out of business in the first year but once you’ve survived that, the only way is up. Don’t lose heart if you feel things are taking too long and everything’s costing more than you thought it would. That’s normal; just keep your eyes on the prize. It won’t be an easy ride but no pain, no gain!
With the continued decline in organic reach in Facebook, opportunities for brands to get visibility for their brand page status updates is getting severely limited.
According to this Social@Ogilvy report, the organic reach of brands’ posts may soon reach zero, meaning that brands will no longer be able to reach their Facebook fans at zero cost. They recommend advertising as one option, which begs the question of the clickthrough rates and costs of Facebook ads. This new report from Facebook retargeting service AdRoll provides useful data for brands to make the case for investment in Facebook advertising.
The research shows that overall clickthrough rates of both News Feed targeting on desktop and mobile were significantly better than general web retargeting according to the report, with desktop having 8.1x higher CTR and mobile having 9.1x higher CTR. The report also shows how incremental impressions, clickthroughs and impressions compare to standard web retargeting.
The report also considers desktop and mobile ad clickthroughs and costs separately. The study demonstrates that the CPM cost of News Feed ad impressions on mobile is 57% lower than News Feed impressions on desktop, and mobile ads generate a 10% higher CTR. This results in a 61% lower
CPC for ads in the News Feed on mobile compared to the News Feed on desktop.
Although actual Facebook ad clickthroughs rates aren’t given in the report, the benchmarks from this report suggest investment in these Facebook ad retargeting options could be worth testing if you’re not already using these techniques.
The free report also has a useful introduction to different Facebook ad formats and retargeting options such as URL-based Web Custom Audience retargeting (WCA) and FBX.
For some of us it is easy to be social in sales, for others it is an effort, and for a third group, a confusing idea. I have been meeting more and more leaders in mid-market companies who are simply confused about the value of having their sales reps focused on social selling because they don’t see the payoff.
I was one of LinkedIn’s first 30,000 members way back in the early 2000’s. My number is 29,426 and am now among 300 million members. There has been a lot to learn over the years – much of it the hard way. If I can share some strategies that could help sellers be successful, and you can learn from my mistakes, it will assist you in being more productive sooner.
LinkedIn, Twitter, and content creation / blogging are the three ways we attract new eyes to our website and to my world. There are hundreds of strategies for success incorporating some social tools into your business. I tend to share what I know has worked. In the last 10, B2B companies we have worked with, I found that this tool combination has worked with 9 of them.
Because things change with these social platforms all the time, you have to be flexible and understanding of these changes as the tools get more sophisticated. LinkedIn certainly had little idea of the power it would later wield among sellers and business professionals, so it has changed quite a bit over time.
These social tools are simply that – tools – they are not earth-shattering new ideas, but rather tools to help you connect better or easier than you did in the past.
Here is one example.
We recently worked with a division of a $4B manufacturing company. I heard about one of their new C-level executives and apparently had just missed meeting him at an event the client put on. On a whim I looked to see if he was on LinkedIn, and sure enough, he was. I crafted a personal note sharing why I thought it would be valuable for him to connect, and he indeed connected within 24 hours of my InMail. Because of LinkedIn, I didn’t have to track down where to find him or make calls and leave voice mails. Now that he knows who I am and was willing to connect with me, I have a new-found confidence to craft a message of value for potential future business.
In this case, the social tool helped me find someone, connect to someone, and ALSO gave me confidence. Did you know that social tools could do that?
Relationships don’t develop overnight. Just like meeting someone in person, you start with a handshake and short conversation to learn about them.
Build your way toward further getting to know them and proposing ideas that are a win for them and a win for you or someone else.
Do this every day and it becomes a way of life. If you are not good at relationship building and follow-up, consider two ideas:
Find someone who is great at it and they can do a lot of it for you
If you don’t want to involve anyone else, create a simple, repeatable process and then step a bit out of your comfort zone but use the process and it will be easier than doing it haphazardly
What will you do this week to connect through social channels to those who can refer you, advocate for you, or collaborate with you?
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.
If your brand has already dipped its toes into the content marketing waters, you know how important it is to occupy a prime thought leadership position in your business niche. With options like blog posts, videos, infographics — and a vibrant social media presence to drive customers to them all — your content marketing strategy should aim to establish your expertise, solidify your core branding, and spread the word about what you do.
The problem is, achieving those goals requires a lot of content, and it can be difficult for customers to find all the great content you’ve created if you are simply adding it to your blog and moving on.
I’ve harped on this a lot over the years, but when you become a content marketer, you are essentially becoming your own publication. Of course, this means developing a rich and highly organized editorial calendar and employing a top-notch creative team to implement your plans, but it also means organizing and displaying that content in an intuitive, visually compelling manner that’s as well thought out as the articles on any professional media site.
In short, you’ve got to create a content marketing resource center.
Wait, what’s a resource center?
Essentially, a resource center is a site within a site, where all of your content is organized. The necessity of having one has only arisen relatively recently with the evolution of content marketing from a single effort here and there to a constant supply of blog posts, videos, podcasts, eBooks, SlideShares, and more. Without a resource center, all of this wonderful content can become buried on a blog’s archives or get dispersed across several sections of a company’s site. This makes it very difficult for consumers to find, and it essentially means that a piece of content’s usefulness will continually decline as it ages, as it simply won’t be findable over the long term.
A resource center, on the other hand, organizes content so that it’s easy to locate via intuitive drop-down menus or another presentable layout format that divides your offerings into distinct sections. This organization scheme can focus on a central theme, on a particular content type, or can feature a mix of both. In this way, a resource center builds your expertise by:
Focusing your topic: Often, I see businesses fall into the trap of trying to provide every kind of content to everyone or, alternately, interpreting their subject area far too literally. As we’ll see in the examples below, a good content marketing plan focuses on a concrete core from which all other content spokes can emerge. A resource center provides the visual organization that highlights the connections between these spokes.
Catering to different audiences: Many businesses often appeal to several different audiences at once. A resource center can help create the space to tailor how your content approaches each audience to its unique needs and interests. You might, for instance, divide your content by varied subject areas, create separate sections that directly reference each kind of audience, or create sections for the different content genres (i.e., infographics, white papers, etc.) that work best for a particular audience.
Encouraging content discovery: If a resource center can successfully bring consumers to your content, it’s even better at helping them get to the second or third piece. Once they’re finished absorbing the expertise of your initial piece, the resource center makes it easier for consumers to find — and click on — additional pieces of related content. This helps your content provide them with greater value. By contrast, this kind of natural discovery is next to impossible with a single-page blog, no matter how vigilant you are about tagging and categorizing.
Building content on content: With a strategically developed resource center, it’s much easier to take a single topic and run with it across content types. You might, for example, start with a simple how-to article, and then add to it an instructional YouTube video and an infographic, all of which you can then organize to live on a relevant section of your website. Moreover, this can be done all at once or over a longer period of time as part of an ongoing email or social media content campaign. You can also revisit your resource center section and repurpose the content to speak to current events or to new tech developments as they emerge. In short, a resource center allows for a much more integrated content marketing strategy — one that allows you to augment your content creation efforts in creative ways.
Promoting more vibrant linking: All of this organization means much more intuitive navigation for your users, which makes them far more likely to link both to the resource center as a whole and to individual pieces. What’s more, it also makes content much easier for you to find, so you can link to or embed any of these pieces as you create further content that refers to the topic at hand down the road.
To gain a deeper sense of just what a resource center is, what potential forms it can take, and what it can help you accomplish, let’s examine three brands that have successfully leveraged this technique as a centerpiece of their content marketing strategy.
Tires are among the more important products we interact with on a daily basis, yet to most of us, they remain a mystery. How do I know when they should be replaced?When do they need to be inflated, and how much air do they need? How can I get better performance out of them? The list of questions we can ask goes on and on.
Naturally, the tire company Bridgestone is chock full of expertise on the subject and is primed to answer our questions. However, tires aren’t exactly a scintillating topic of discussion — and even motivated, in-market readers might quickly become overwhelmed if they tried to absorb a large volume of information that was just deposited onto a blog.
Enter the Tread and Trend section of the Bridgestone website. This resource center separates material into five distinct sections:
Features: This section highlights the most popular recent articles on the site. A section like this is a great way to curate your content and bring your most pressing content campaigns to the forefront.
Driver’s Ed: This is the more how-to section of the site. In addition to car maintenance tips and guides, it also offers expert explanations of car questions users likely have but have never asked about.
Let’s Ride: This section of the site is all about tires and cars in action. While it does offer more tips, like driving tips for teenagers, it also offers broader guides, like one on the best driving roads in the world.
Tire Talk: This is really where the company’s branding comes into play, featuring articles that break down the latest Bridgestone innovations as well as guides to better tire maintenance.
Global Good: This last section is another excellent one for branding, focusing on the company’s green initiatives. This is a great example of a kind of content that would be difficult to integrate naturally and consistently on a single-page blog.
Right out of the gate this is much more visually compelling and intuitive than your run-of-the-mill blog, as it separates sections of the resource center with great photos in a very Pinterest-like manner.
Once users clicks on a section, they can further narrow down the displayed content by choosing subcategories that are most applicable to their current areas of interest, like maintenance tips or safety information. In this way, they can navigate easily to the highly specific content they’re looking for. In some cases, this navigation is evergreen: Tire Pressure, for instance, is a subcategory that’s relevant all year round. Other subcategories, like Winter and Seasonal are a little less so, and yet they’re just as easy to find and share.
Photos are also used throughout all of the content, which makes for a very engaging and clickable experience. Importantly, each post links to other posts throughout the resource center. This linking, combined with the intuitive subcategories, helps customers not only find what they’re looking for, but also to stumble across information they didn’t even know they needed. It also unites diverse content with varied purposes into one logical platform, which can help keep your visitors on your site for much longer than a single piece of content could.
Tips and takeaways: A resource center starts with intuitive categorization and organization. If you’ve already produced a ton of content at this point, take the time to do a content inventory so you can determine what categories might be relevant. Then, as you add these content pieces to your site and build out a full resource center, make sure to emphasize it through the strategic use of relevant visuals, as Bridgestone does in the example above. The more navigating visitors can do just by clicking on a photo they like, the better. And of course, make sure to link to more of your brand content wherever there’s a relevant connection.
Bridgestone’s resource center is a great example of a leading company with important expert knowledge to share — the kind of knowledge that naturally fills out an editorial calendar with minimal effort. However, for a brand like Concert Hotels, which provides rooms near concert venues, there’s a limit to how much value a how-to blog or other expertise-driven content can provide.
But what it can do is create content that appeals to its very unique niche: music lovers — specifically, those who are passionate enough about the music they love that they’re willing to travel to concerts where they’ll need to stay in a hotel room. And that’s exactly the technique Concert Hotels has taken with its resource center, which features a number of fun, interactive tools that are highly reminiscent of the same debates and discussions you’ll find music lovers having in venues the world over.
For example, one content resource Concert Hotels offers is a tool that lets users make their own dance music collaborations, choosing who to remix and giving them a ton of options to do so.
In another, users are presented with minimal visual cues and prompted to guess which famous artist and song they depict. This is exactly the kind of content that visitors will organically share, and it does an excellent job of communicating the brand’s tone and unique approach. These content pieces demonstrate how well the brand really “gets” its audience. In turn, that audience becomes more motivated to support Concert Hotels by driving traffic to its site, sharing its content, and booking its rooms again and again.
So, what does putting this into a resource center do for the brand? For one thing, it makes each piece that much more discoverable. Users may come to the site to give music collaboration a whirl, but they’ll find themselves having so much fun, they won’t be able to help clicking around the main page to find more interactive tools. Each piece forms the core of a content marketing campaign that can be shared over email and social media, while links to the resource center itself can be slipped into the company’s more traditional promotional campaigns. Though each interactive piece may be different, they are all highly relevant to the company’s music focus and branding. Through a resource center, they can function, collectively, to help establish the company’s expertise and demonstrate its understanding of its customers’ interests and needs. In short, the resource center becomes the heart of a well-integrated social media, email, and content marketing strategy.
Tips and takeaways: Whether you’ve got a wealth of expert knowledge to share a la Bridgestone or you’d prefer to create an interactive area where visitors will linger, take some time to get to know your audience before you do anything else. Think about why they would need your services, as well as the peripheral needs and interests connected to that core. Concert Hotels isn’t just creating content around its business of providing a place for concert-goers to sleep; its content marketing strategy revolves around its brand playing an important part in creating a richer concert-going experience. The content in its resource center reflects this by playing to what music aficionados care about and bond with one another on.
In theory, Red Bull faces a similar challenge as Concert Hotels: It can’t exactly build a robust, shareable resource center out of articles like, Top 10 Reasons Why Energy Drinks Are Pretty Cool or, Hack Your Life for Awesome With the World’s Best Energy Drink. No biggie. Without a direct how-to link for its product, Red Bull turned to its target audience for inspiration — an audience that is relatively young and enjoys extreme sports, as it turns out.
With that knowledge in hand, over the years Red Bull has transformed itself into a leading authority on extreme sports — and an important promoter of those sports, as the company often sponsors and organizes its own events. Red Bull TV, which is essentially the brand’s resource center, is a platform for demonstrations of this spectacular content marketing expertise.
For example, the sporting events themselves are live-streamed on Red Bull TV, and there is a steady drip of new shows that cover virtually every area of extreme sports a fan can think of. Of course, the success of Red Bull TV hinges on the fact that audiences are instantly engaged as they watch people push themselves to the limit. Therefore, this content is inherently shareable, and can be easily promoted across the brand’s many social media and wider marketing channels. As such, it makes for an ideal content hub.
However, with so much content to share, the key here again is in the resource center’s organization. Across the top, you’ll see subcategories for a number of different kinds of extreme sports, including, Motorsports, Biking, and Surfing. There is also a subcategory for Athletes and Music. Once you click on any one of these categories, a number of videos appear, each with compelling screenshots, titles, and descriptions, which combine to make each link inherently clickable. As such, it would be difficult for any visitors not to find themselves navigating deeply into the site, let alone a visitor with an intrinsic interest in the subject area. This organization also makes it easy for aficionados to become experts in their chosen sub-subcategory by clicking on tags like BMX or digging more deeply into an athlete highlight. Essentially, it is a comprehensive, go-to resource that makes navigating to any other extreme sports sites unnecessary. That’s great for the audience — and it’s even better for the brand.
Tips and takeaways: Remember what I said about needing to be your own publishing company? Sometimes, you need to be your own media channel — especially when your audience’s peripheral interests relate to something spectacular and unique. Whatever medium you choose, try adopting a documentarian’s attitude to content creation. Reach out to industry leaders for interviews, capture big events on film, and curate pro videos. Then put it all together in a visually compelling and well-organized platform so you can both dominant this emerging genre and promote intuitive customer discovery.
Try it for yourself
When it comes to managing and promoting the dynamic, rich, and massive content marketing strategies that successful businesses must create today, a resource center is essential. It simply can’t be beat in terms of linking, organization, and sharing. The real question is, when will you start building your own?
Looking for more guidance on creating great audience resources through content marketing? You won’t want to miss Content Marketing World 2014, September 8–11, 2014. Register today!
This white paper digs deep into the reasons testing mobile apps is fundamentally harder than traditional web or desktop applications. A collaboration by Tina Zhuo and Dennis Schultz from IBM along with Yoram Mizrachi from Perfecto Mobile and John Montgomery from uTest, these experts explore the complexities of mobile test environments, the value of the mobile device cloud, the unique role crowd sourcing can play, and how teams can leverage automation to help deliver quality apps.
Have you ever taken one of those personality tests? – Tests with names like DISC, Kolbe Index and Myers-Briggs. While interesting, the focus of the results is ultimately based on determining “how you see the world.”
My friend Sally Hogshead has spent the last few years inventing a test that flips this notion around to help participants learn instead “how the world sees you.”
Want to find out how the world sees you? Readers of this post are invited to take Fascination Advantage Personality Test completely free of charge (normally $39)
Visit How The World Sees You – use the book code – ducttape to get your free assessment.
The building blocks of Hogshead’s approach are what she calls archetypes. These 49 elements make up your core “advantages” and give you insight into the best way for you to operate in the most authentic way.
How The World Sees You also introduces the concept of a personal anthem based on your personality advantage. This 2 or 3 word tagline can become your filter for how you make decisions that are right for you.
Listen to the interview linked above and hear Sally break down my personality type and anthem.
I believe this type of assessment and introspection is invaluable for business owners or anyone that interacts with other human beings. (How’s that for a broad statement!)
I also believe that this is an idea that could prove valuable to bring to your clients. Helping them understand their unique value could prove to be one of the best gifts you can give them.
Twitter may be my favorite social network, but LinkedIn was always the network I valued the most. LinkedIn is where I connected with colleagues, clients and business partners. I knew when they moved, when they were promoted and sometimes even what they were working on.
In comparison to the constant ping of tag (or even poke!) notifications on Facebook and the firehose of updates on Twitter, LinkedIn was a quiet and peaceful place. And that was good! You were able to see career changes that would otherwise be lost amid the memes, links and quotes.
Unfortunately, that is all changing. Here are five reasons why …
1. LinkedIn gamified the recommendation
Remember when people actually gave long-form recommendations on LinkedIn, back before relatives started endorsing you for skills they didn’t even understand? Now LinkedIn prompts us to endorse people for skills they don’t even have, but it’s far easier to click “Endorse” than it is to actually edit what you are endorsing someone for!
Adding to the confusion, many social media experts jumped on endorsements as a way to get someone’s attention. Endorse them for a few skills and show up in their notification stream as a way to engage them. Gah!
I was one of the early opponents of endorsements, and LinkedIn has done very little to change my view of endorsements in the nearly two years since it was rolled out.
But LinkedIn is seeing dollar signs. Endorsements are behind the ability to target ads to people based on their skills. So the next time someone endorses you, remember this: your connections are now choosing what information LinkedIn has about you, and advertisers are using that information to market to you. In today’s age of advertising data collection and privacy concerns, how do you feel about that?
2. Profile views became the new vanity metric
Remember in 2012 when LinkedIn notified users that they were in the top 10%, 5% or 1% of profiles based on how frequently their profiles were viewed? More recently, LinkedIn has expanded the “who has viewed your profile” to include how you rank versus your network and your colleagues.
Nothing like seeding a little competitive spirit behind a vanity metric to drive behavior!
3. LinkedIn belittled the connection
In the past, connections on LinkedIn represented a real connection, someone that could make an introduction or even provide a reference. LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers, individuals who connect with anyone) and weak connections were the exception. While LinkedIn still includes the message below on the desktop, it has been dropped from mobile versions of the site.
Now LinkedIn encourages you to connect with people you don’t know (or claim skills you don’t have) because “profile views matter.”
4. LinkedIn started pushing content on you
LinkedIn Signal and LinkedIn Today were once great ways to discover interesting content. But now almost all I see in LinkedIn Pulse is content published on LinkedIn. Gone is the variety, the original content and the opportunity to discover new and interesting source. Chad Pollitt nailed the issue a year ago in Why LinkedIn Just Got Less Appealing.
With an open publishing platform, it is even worse. I recently had five notifications of new posts on LinkedIn. Three were cross-posted (I’d already seen the originals) and two were posts I had no interest in, from connections I value professionally but I never would subscribe to read their blog.
Yes, I know I can unsubscribe from a user’s posts now, but that unsubscribe function is one-by-one. It is almost like opting out of spam emails as they come in instead of using a spam filter.
5. LinkedIn is going Facebook now!
With large header images, the ability to tag users and even prompts to share your birthdate and marital status, there are more and more similarities between LinkedIn and Facebook.
Users are responding by acting more and more like LinkedIn is Facebook, with “Eye Test” and “98% of people got this math problem wrong” updates invading the stream. Make. It. Stop!
I feel like I’ve been manipulated
LinkedIn is successfully manipulating me. I’m spending more and more time on the site, viewing more pages, contributing more data (including data about other people) and ultimately driving up LinkedIn’s advertising revenue. At the same time though, LinkedIn is delivering less and less of what made it valuable to me in the first place.
This may be working for LinkedIn and for LinkedIn marketers, but for me personally, LinkedIn has lost its luster. What about you?
Box may have postponed its IPO, but VCs haven't cooled their newfound interest in the enterprise tech sector. If VCs are investing in the enterprise, then it's a good sign that it's already a hot market. After all, as much as VCs may like to portray themselves as risk takers, they tend to lag innovation, not lead it. VCs like to invest in packs, chasing after whatever the big trend is.
It takes a very special VC to stand alone and make an investment in something that isn't obviously "hot," despite Y Combinator president Sam Altman's (@sama) observation that "the 'hot seed rounds' that everyone is fighting to get in are anti-correlated with very successful investments."
While the overall volume of investments is down, the scale of those investments is way up. Cloudera, Box and others have raised gargantuan sums of money as investors bet on a complete restructuring of enterprise IT.
But this isn't the only indication that the enterprise is cool.
Look To The Cloud
For example, it's a big deal that Amazon Web Services is growing so big, so fast.
But it's arguably an even bigger sign of enterprise "cool" that Microsoft Azure is growing even faster than AWS, as Nancy Gohring points out. AWS has been the cool kids club. When Azure grows even faster, that's saying something significant.
Sure, Azure is growing from a much smaller base, making its growth look more dramatic.
But it's also seeing the kind of growth that other vendors aren't. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on the company's earnings call, Microsoft "started to see adoption of [its] high-value services on top of our base cloud infrastructure" last quarter. This likely stems from enterprises rolling out hybrid cloud workloads, with Microsoft the most likely place to deploy these given its footprint in both public cloud and private data centers.
Developers Show The Way
Finally, it's clear from reading the programming language tea leaves that however much the enterprise may fade from media hype, it remains a mainstay of developer attention. Java and C/C++ have long dominated the top of the programming charts, as recent IEEE data shows:
The consistent money is in the enterprise, as much as we've tried to spend the last decade forgetting it. As VisionMobile found, this is as true for mobile developers as it is for others. Mobile app developers that focus on the enterprise may not have more fun, but they make more money:
In short, not only is selling to businesses cool, but it's profitable. Rather than build out your next Instagram or SnapChat knock-off, consider disrupting 30 years of clunky software with horrendous user interfaces. The office-drone masses will bless you for it.
Back in August 2013, I wrote a blog on 5 Keys to Email Inbox Delivery, which identified engagement as the Number One key to optimal email delivery. In the blog I briefly touched on how engagement is a metric used to determine which customers are interacting with your emails, and in what ways, such as opening and clicking.
Recently, my team and I came to the realization that we should talk about how engagement affects email deliverability, using the framework of tiers of email engagement to show what those degrees of engagement could mean to you as an email marketer.
Engagement affects email deliverability
Over the years, email engagement has morphed and expanded to include many different forms and actions, which we call “tiers.” We’ve identified six, and more may emerge in time. With each tier change, ISPs (Internet service providers, the gatekeepers of the recipient’s email inbox) are building out their pass/doesn’t pass algorithms more and more, based on email recipients’ actions.
Monitoring the key aspects of these tiers will help you stay ahead of the game – and get more of your emails delivered to the inbox.
Note: The reason I’ve broken the tiers into common and uncommon categories is because ISPs are creating new ways to judge engagement that many marketers are unaware of, or unfamiliar with. These fall into the uncommon category. )
The 6 Tiers of Email Engagement
Common Tiers:
1) Opened and clicked
2) Opened but didn’t click
3) Didn’t open (thus, didn’t click)
Uncommon Tiers:
4) Opened and skimmed the message
5) Opened and glanced through the message
6) Opened and deleted the message
With each campaign you create, every recipient you send to will fall into one of these six tiers. It’s your job as a marketer to know which tier of email engagement they fall into and why.
In this post, I will focus on the common tiers. Next month I’ll cover the uncommon tiers.
Navigating the 3 “Common” Tiers of Email Deliverability
Tier One tells ISPs you and your email are great
Tier One: Opened and Clicked. With regards to Tiers One through Three, we could easily designate the level of engagement highest to lowest, respectively. That means Tier One is your most highly engaged segment; these recipients open and click on your messages continuously. ISPs note this engagement; it tells them that your email is valuable to recipients. That means that the group that will help drive inbox placement and ROI. You should continue to mail to them on a regular basis.
Tier Two tells ISPs your email is potentially good, but…
Tier Two: Opened but Didn’t Click. The second tier is considered a medium level of engaged recipients. They’re a little more interesting because their engagement is partial (they open your message but don’t click), indicating something may be lacking, such as a value proposition or a noteworthy call-to-action. ISPs notice when requested actions don’t happen, and having lots of emails in this category may make them look harder to see whether or not your emails are spam.
Creating a strong value proposition is a huge component to the success of email because it lets recipients know “what’s in it for them.” Therefore, every campaign you create should have a value proposition. Stay close to what has historically worked. If you test – e.g., content, design, subject lines, etc. – make sure your value proposition doesn’t take a hit.
The call to action is the focal point of your message. Steer clear of phrases that don’t provide a lot of obvious value, such as “Click Here.” Instead use phrases such as “Call Us Now” or “Download Whitepaper” because they clearly describe the direct action you want your recipients to take, and imply the reward they will get for taking the action.
Also, make your call-to-action noticeable! Don’t throw it in at the bottom of the message; many people won’t take the time to scroll or read your whole message. Put it close to the top and in clear view to make it easy for the recipient to take the action. I’ll touch more on this subject when we discuss the uncommon tiers next month.
Tier 3 tells ISPs that your emails are not valuable
Tier Three: Didn’t Open. These are your unengaged recipients and should be treated 100% differently than the first two tiers. The reason: these people have never engaged with you and the likelihood of them ever doing so is slim to none. And: Sending to recipients who don’t engage lowers your deliverability.
By not engaging, Tier Three recipients send the ISPs the message that your email is uninteresting and of low value, or possibly spam. This lowers your ROI and compromises your sender reputation … which adversely impacts deliverability.
One strategy is to build a re-engagement campaign: This can have high rewards if planned well. If you determine that you want to continue sending email to this group, I highly recommend pulling back on frequency in order to mitigate the hit to your sending reputation at the ISP level, which can cause issues for all tiers. This tier has the power to undo the good that Tier One did for your email sending reputation, so send sparingly and carefully.
The three common tiers discussed above all play an important role in your digital reputation and how ISPs perceive you, and each requires its own strategy.
Stay Tuned …
Next month, we will be taking the engagement of emails a step further by discussing ways to identify more nuanced – and important – information after recipients open your email; that is, are they merely glancing at it, skimming it, or deleting it? Understanding these three uncommon tiers will help your marketing initiatives both now and later on, as ISPs continuously change their algorithms.
Learn More
If you want to know how your messages might be perceived by ISPs, please reach out to our Deliverability Insight team.
We have several ways to evaluate (and help you improve) your messages and digital reputation in the ever-changing email ecosystem.
You think that the only thing you need to be doing is to get traffic. Period.
Maybe getting traffic will increase your income, but it’s not the only way and most of the traffic is useless, if they’re not targeted for the right audience.
Getting traffic is a lot of hard work, I’m with you on this point, that’s why you should get the most of every visitor you get.
Yes, you understood me right. You should build your email list.
But building an email list is one thing and getting people to buy from you is another thing.
The difference between those who buy and those who don’t is that they know, like and trust you.
And the key to make your subscribers know, like and trust you is to…
… build relationship with them. Yes, seriously, you should build relationship with your audience.
Building Relationship with your audience had been a topic that I discussed in many posts here.
But in today’s post, I share with you the insanely simple technique you need to build relationship with your audience. It’s actually used offline also to get people to buy, so keep reading.
But first, make sure to check the previous posts in this series to know more about building relationship with your audience.
The Insanely Simple Technique to Build Relationship with Your Audience is…
to share your story and connect with them emotionally.
According to Jeff Goins:
Story is where we came from. Story is where we’re going. Story is what connects us and binds us to each other.
It is in the story of God and mankind — amongst love and fear and failure — that we make meaning of our lives.
Story is what defines us and sets us apart. It’s what allows us to connect with each another — to truly know andbe known.
Story is powerful.
Yes, it’s that powerful. It’s the best marketing in the latest years.
Big brands are willing to pay thousands of dollars for story tellers just to craft the story right, because they know it works. It’s what makes big brands memorable in our minds.
Jon Morrow did it and created the most popular post on Problogger and Copyblogger
By emotionally connecting with his audience and sharing his story, he was able to reach his audience’s heart and create the most popular post on the 2 biggest blogs about blogging, problogger and copyblogger.
He did it again on his blogs and got his blog a big boost when it was just starting.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past eight years, you’ll know that Twitter is a major player in lead generation. In this article i’m going to share with you the top 6 ways I’ve found to generate leads using Twitter.
To see how powerful Twitter is at generating leads lets look at a recent study from Quicksprout. Quicksprout found that 82% of leads generated from social media sites are referred from Twitter. This means that if you had a 1000 new leads in a month and 500 of those came from social media, 410 of those new leads came from Twitter.
Ready to get serious about using Twitter? Then read on.
1.) Drive Ebook Downloads Using Your Profile
Most marketers just use their Twitter profile to show off their branding, but it’s also a great place to cross-market your offers. I’ll show you how you can use your Twitter profile to generate downloads of your ebooks. I’ll also talk about what I did in the image below and other ways you could create yours.
The following are steps you can take to create a great Twitter profile to direct traffic to your ebook:
Add a subtle Call-to-action (CTA) using your Profile Picture and Banner in combination
In the profile picture use an image that directs the visitor to look at your banner which will contain your CTA.
For example, say your ebook was on Conversion Optimization. You could create a profile picture of yourself looking at a thought bubble above your head and have it read, “Increase your conversion rates now with my 25 secrets.” This will get people curious about what your 25 conversion secrets are and entice them to visit your page. When a visitor clicks on your profile picture a profile summary will pop-up showing the user the entire CTA.
Direct visitors to download your ebook using directional cues
When a user first clicks your profile and is brought to your profile page, they will need help locating your ebook. You can guide their eye using explicit and/or implicit directional signals that point towards your ebook.
Explicit: These cues are very direct and will clearly tell people exactly where they need to go. For example you could have an arrow in the banner pointing towards the link to download. Since I have already used the banner in the example above I have placed an arrow beside the download.
Implicit: These are subtle cues that will subconsciously guide the visitor in the direction they need to go. For example you could have an image of a person looking at your CTA or pointing to it.
Write a concise bio to promote the value of your ebook
In your biography section describe the purpose of your ebook and where they can download it. Following the example above, I have already told a visitor that my ebook contains my 25 conversion secrets. Now is when I can tell them what my ebook is about, “Conversion Optimization” and where to download their copy.
It could look like this:
“Want to know my 25 secrets to maximize conversion on your landing pages? Get your free guide to conversion optimization: [Link]”
This example demonstrates value by telling the user how they can get the highest conversions and ROI. It uses the word “free” to show that there is minimal risk while directing the visitor to where they can get the ebook.
Keep your entire profile focused around your ebook in order to maximize the number of downloads. You want to have a bit of branding, but keep the focus on your ebook.
#2 Highjack trending hashtags to promote your content
Every time a hashtag is used in a Tweet it’ll be displayed on that hashtag feed. Trending hashtags appear on the left-hand side of the Twitter home page and are the result of a hashtag’s popularity on Twitter. If a certain hashtag is used a lot like #worldcup was during the World Cup, it’ll be displayed in the trending topics side-bar. Keep in mind that a lot of the trending hashtags are based around major news or interests, but they can be about anything.
Lets see how using a trending hashtag is great for your business – keep in mind that these hashtags should only be used if they are relevant.
Recently, there was a trending hashtag, #pizzaishealthy. If you search for this hashtag in the Twitter search bar you can find all of the Tweets related to this hashtag. It’s important when you use a trending hashtag to figure out how people are using it and how you can use it to your advantage.
The hashtag #pizzaishealthy would be great for two types of businesses:
First, and most obvious is a pizza place. You could Tweet some great healthy pizza options (and discounts) so that people would feel less guilty about eating pizza. For example, “We have some great new healthy pizza options for you because #pizzaishealthy at Frankie’s, buy 1 get 1 free.”
A second option is marketing your gym or health facility. “We all want to think #pizzaishealthy but if you need to work off that pizza come do it at Joe’s gym, introductory month only $30.”
You can use any of the trending topics to promote yourself or your business on Twitter. Just make sure the hashtag you use is related to your Tweet.
#3 Get your content seen by your target audience using industry hashtags
Say that you just published some great content and you want your target audience to find it. You could promote your content by posting short Tweets about key parts of your content and use industry hashtags to get it in front of the people who follow them.
An industry hashtag is one that people in a certain industry would follow, like #seo or #healthcare. Users on Twitter will specifically look for these hashtags because they are interested in the topic and want to read Tweets about this information. These industry hashtags are great to use because they’re already popular and can be applied to a large number of businesses.
I could use industry hashtags if I wrote a blog post on a topic like Google Hummingbird. To get my blog post shown to a large amount of users on Twitter I would strategically insert industry hashtags like #google and #hummingbird in my Tweet. This would mean that my blog post would be shown to all users searching for #google and #hummingbird.
I would post my Tweets with reference to the content in my blog to get users interested. I have some Tweets posted below that I would personally use to promote my Google Hummingbird blog post. In case you aren’t familiar with what Google Hummingbird is, here is a summary: In late 2013 Google released new algorithm software called Hummingbird that changed the way SEO works. Due to this update, it’s no longer relevant to insert as many keywords as you can, instead consider the person searching for you on Google.
Here are some ways I would use industry hashtags to Tweet about my Google Hummingbird blog post:
“Make #SEO work for you with these tips on #google #hummingbird.”
“Not sure how #google #hummingbird has changed search rankings? Find out here.”
“Do you find #SEO confusing? Check out easy ways to boost your ranking here.”
You can follow this same idea with any content that you’re Tweeting. Just make sure that your posts are varied so your following doesn’t feel like you’re just posting spam. It’s easy for this to happen because your Tweets will keep appearing in the same hashtag streams over and over.
#4 Use a contest to increase your following
A Twitter contest is a great way to interact with all users and convert them into followers or email leads. There are all types of contests and each one will be beneficial for capturing different information. For lead generation purposes I recommend using a sweepstakes.
Here is my 5-step guide for creating your own Twitter sweepstakes:
1.) Pick a prize: The prize should be relevant to your business, like a gift card. This will maximize the number of people interested in your prize as they can pick what they buy. Let users know what the prize is in your title, something like, “Win a $50 Gift Card!” Make sure you show an image of your prize to get people excited and provide all prizing information.
2.) Choose an entry format: On the entry form ask for minimal contact information as this will help maximize sweepstakes entries. If you just ask for their email you can follow-up after and convert them into customers. Below the entry form you can add social share buttons so that entrants can share the contest with their friends.
3.) Promote your sweepstakes: After you’ve created your sweepstakes you need to tell people its happening. So, send out an email blast to your email lists, promote your contest on other social networks, change the banner on your Twitter profile or create a Twitter Ad.
4.) Keep monitoring your sweepstakes: You need to watch your sweepstakes platform analytics in order to see how many people are visiting and entering on your contest page. Wishpond has a great tool to track the success of your contest.
5.) Follow up and promote: When your sweepstakes is over you still have work to do. Start by picking a winner and giving them the prize. You can then share who has won on your Twitter stream and other social media. Make sure you send a follow-up email (maybe even a consolation prize – like a 10% off next visit) and tell entrants about future sweepstakes you’ll be having.
Below I have shown an example of a sweepstakes that was created using Wishpond’s sweepstakes app.
This is a great sweepstakes for a few reasons: It has a clear and relevant prize, a “Summer Party Pack” which is full of goodies that can be bought at their business. They state what the total prize value is and what’s included. The form is simple, asking only for an email address which will lead to more entries. There are social share buttons at the bottom of the form which will make it easy for entrants to share the sweepstakes with friends.
# 5 Use Twitter Lead Generation Cards
The Twitter Lead Generation Card does exactly as the name says; it captures leads. How effective is it at capturing leads? One of the original businesses that used the Lead Generation Card was able to generate over 1700 new emails in less than one week. They also saw an engagement rate of 4.6%, which is much higher than the average on Twitter of 1-3%.
So, how does it work? Basically the Lead Generation Card works like a mini-landing page. It’s an expandable Tweet that’s used to display your offer to interested users on Twitter. You’ll know they’re interested because your Lead Generation Card will be a promoted Tweet. Meaning that it’ll only be displayed to users who are interested in offers like yours. When a user clicks on the Tweet, they’re taken to an enlarged display of the offer. They’ll see what the offer is about and can claim it by clicking the button at the bottom. Their name, Twitter handle and email address will be sent directly to your business meaning no more lengthy forms.
What are some ways I can use the Lead Generation Card?
One way could be through establishing a pre-order list for a product. On your Lead Generation Card upload an image of the product and say “enter your email below to be the first to know when this product becomes available.” Interested buyers would enter their email and once the product is released you could email the list of buyers directly.
Another way to use the Lead Generation Card is by getting users to sign-up in exchange for valuable content like your ebook or newsletter. Once you have them as a lead, you can nurture them into a sale by providing more valuable content to your product.
Remember to follow up with all of your leads. If someone signs up as a lead through your Lead Generation Card and you don’t follow up with them, you may lose a potential customer.
#6 Target users interested in your product or business through mentions
You’ve probably already searched for users and businesses through the Twitter search bar. When you conduct your search like this you’re going to get an untargeted listing of results. Did you know that you can target your search to find users who are already searching for similar products and businesses to yours? Using advanced search operators within your search term will ensure that the results are relevant and useful to you. Lets see how this works below.
You can search for specific mentions to or from a Twitter handle. This is useful in two ways. First because you can see who is having conversations already and target these users by offering your own products or services. You can also find out what customers already like or don’t like about a competitor’s product or service and make yours better.
You will use this function by adding the operators to: or from: before your search term. The to: operator will show all Tweets sent to that user. The from: operator will show all Tweets sent from. So for example, say I owned a coffee shop. I would look up a similar business to mine, lets use Starbucks. I would first search for all users who have mentioned Starbucks by typing in this, to:starbucks. The results are as follows:
The result is a list of users who have specifically mentioned Starbucks in their Tweet. You can see what users think about Starbucks and see what you can improve in your own business.
You could also search for from:starbucks as this will show all Tweets sent from the user. You will be able to see who Starbucks is already having a conversation with and start your own conversation with these users.
Conclusion
Twitter is a fantastic social media tool and can be used to generate quality leads when used properly.
I hope these 7 tips will give you an edge in making the most of your Tweets.
What are your tips for using Twitter in your marketing strategy? Join in on the conversation below.
The reason your sales prospects love all the free, helpful content marketing you create is because they end using it against you. Self-educating buyers are using Google Searches and your (and your competitors’) digital content marketing efforts to do their her homework. And they think they think they know what they need to know in order to hold a balanced discussion with you or a member of your sales team. But they’re usually wrong.
Turning The Tables On Sales Prospects
The self-educated buyer has a huge blind spot. Put simply – the self-educated buyer doesn’t know what they don’t know. The false sense of knowledge crated by self-education blinds them to a simple fact: hey do not always know every question to ask or every scenario to consider. This creates a unique opportunity for you and your sales team to leverage the information gap to create doubt in the mind of the self-educated buyer. And doubt is your friend. This is where Aikido Selling, a simple three step sales process, leverages the buyer’s blind spot to rebalance the selling process in your favor.
The Aikido Selling Process Explained
First – Prospect Triage
Once a prospect has been identified, use their preferred medium to understand what they know. If you can, try to determine how or where they obtained their knowledge. Often buyers’ research uncovers mistaken or outdated information that can hurt your chances of wining the sale. It’s important that you know this and take corrective action to correctly reframe their research data before you begin sharing new information.
Second – Find The Blind Spot
Once you’ve established what the buyer does and does not know and corrected misinformation, identify the missing information they need to make the right educated buying decision – buying from you. Once you’ve determined which questions they failed to ask and/or research, you can highlight any relevant product or service features they may have missed.
Third – Complete Their Education
Whatever you do, do appear argumentative. This is the antithesis of Aikido Selling because it aligns you and the buyer as opposing forces. Instead, approach this step as a caring educator that seeks to enlighten and help the student. Don’t sell. Teach. The goal of the Aikido sale is to let the buyer sell themselves. They want to sell themselves. That’s why they self-educated in the first place. It’s imperative that you and your sales teams understand this psychological underpinning and then leverage it every time you encounter a self-educating prospect.
Learn More About Aikido Selling
Hopefully this article has set you on the right track. But if you’d like to learn more about marketing and selling to self-educated buyers, feel free to go grab a copy of my new book, The Invisible Sale, where I dive much deeper into the topic and discuss actionable strategies to help your company adapt to today’s content marketing driven sales lead and close process.
There is a new axiom being touted by B2B..gulp..”thought leaders” over the last 12-18 months. That axiom being that buyers are 80% through the buying journey prior to speaking to a sales person. The thinking behind this is that on-line content has allowed for buyers to compile and digest all the information they need prior to making a purchase. In other words, they do not need sales people to educate them on the needed products or services. For the most part, I agree with this new paradigm in buying.
Where I have a bit of a problem with this is that this axiom only applies to buyer initiatedpurchases. For example, I am a facility manager at a large manufacturing plant. I have a challenge (pain point) with a specific piece of equipment. What do I do? I speak to my network, I do some on-line reading (i.e. content), maybe speak to some current vendors. Once I educate myself to the point where I am ready to enter a purchasing dialogue with a sales person I have completed the first 80% of the cycle.
The other issue that comes to mind with this thinking is that it assumes that seller initiated sales are quickly becoming a thing of the past. If anything, buyers want more and better relationships with their vendors than ever before. The buyer does need to be educated and engaged as early as possible. It is much more efficient to qualify or disqualify the buyer earlier in the cycle than wait for them to come calling.
With the small exceptions of companies that have brand new products and services or those rare organizations that truly have NO competition, most buyers have a vendor for what you are selling. So having a well polished and nuanced sales team that can create excitement, demonstrate perceived value, and cement a better relationship with your buyers will always be more valuable than content.
I have made literally thousands of sales to buyers that were not looking to make a change or had no real pain, they just saw the value I presented and understood it. It is my belief that this happens, if not more, than at least as often as buyer initiated purchases.
So the next time you review your content and digital marketing budgets and don’t see the ROI you hoped for, maybe it might be time to initiate some outbound strategies. Identify and engage your best prospective customers and take them on YOUR journey with the destination being a customer for life.
It’s time for sales leadership to ask themselves if they are insane. Yes, a ‘mirror-mirror-on-the-wall moment’ may be in order.
Albert Einstein stated that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If you are training or selling the same way that you were 2 years ago and not improving your sales performance, then you should make an appointment with Dr. Einstein.
Many credible sources tell us how sales representatives who layer on or add social media engagement to their daily sales motion (i.e., social selling) perform better than their non-social-media-using peers.
Social Selling Success Persists Despite Sales Management Lack of Adoption
Aberdeen states 64% of sales teams who use social selling reach sales quota vs. 49% who do not adopt it
LinkedIn passes on that sales representatives who use LinkedIn, in a way, that generates a high social selling index are 5!% more likely to attain quota,than social selling laggards
Aberdeen indicates that social selling use correlates into 15% more contract renewals
Are You Embracing Your Inner GlennGary Glen Ross’s Blake?
Even with this key research, sales management continues to expect their sales teams to sell the same way to get different results. No wonder sales team turnover is so high – a Harvard Business Review blog notes that 32% of reps leave because of a poor first-line manager relationship. “Call more!” “Email more!” “Where are the sales opportunities?!?” Are they Willie Loman fans? Do they embrace Alec Baldwin’s Blake character in GlenGarry Glen Ross? Or, are they just too busy to focus on the changing way in which customers are buying.
Are you always trying to close? Maybe you should always be connecting to help you attain quota!
This behavior reminds me of the caveman that said “Don’t tell me about that match idea while I’m rubbing two sticks together to light a fire.” Face it, the average sales manager has been in sales for over 10 years – the amount of years that LinkedIn indicates are the lowest adopters of social selling their platform.
5 Questions To Ask To Your Sales Management Or Reps
1. Are your phone calls being returned as much as they were 2 years ago? TeleNet and Ovation Sales Group states that the average sales rep needs to make 8 cold calls to get through to the right contact.SiriusDecisions indicates the average rep only makes 2 cold calls to make the contact. No wonder with the amount of ‘manual labor’ with researching and waiting on hold! Funny though,LinkedIn states 63% of B2B decision makers engage with vendors, likely your competition, on social media. So, who’s using the phone to make a first contact anymore?
2. Are your emails not being answered as often as they were 1 year ago? 92% of C-level decision makers note they never answer cold call emails anymore, states InsideView. Even if you have great relationships with your customers, your email is likely one of 300 they receive on a regular basis. It’s hard to break through to today’s modern buyer; 75% of whom engage on multiple social and community platforms, says Marketo. One thing is for sure, sending more emails to expect an answer or a different results is not working – especially for the first touch. Using an alternative channel, that your client uses, is a great way to get their attention or nurture your relationship in a nonintrusive way. There are only so many ‘just checking in’ phone calls you can make. There are even less of these types of calls your clients want to receive.
3. Are your customers coming to you more often with their problems framed and their solutions researched more and more every day? Since Forrester reports that 57% of the purchase decision is made before you contact and others state that 89% of purchases start with a search (75% for B2B), it’s likely, you have run into a situation where your customer has laid out exactly what they need.
4. Is your problem-solving reputation becoming more important to get you in the door for a first appointment or to help sell into another department? DemandGen says that 51% of customers are doing a final ROI analysis, up from 21% in 2012. LInkedIn states that 70% of buyers look to solve a problem vs. 30% who look to gain something. This research indicates customers are looking for problem solvers more than ‘sales guys.’ Establish yourself as a problem-solver by tuning up your LinkedIn Profile messaging on a daily basis on Twitter and LInkedIn and maybe even do a little blogging!
5. Do you know where your customers are going to stay on top of their industry knowledge? A saying I have in all of my demand generation and social selling coaching sessions is that you have to fish where the fish are. If you are not reading what your clients and customers are reading or know where there are going to get their information, then you are not going to reel in the big sale. At least if you know that 40% of customers are using LinkedIn Groups to vet their decisions, then use an advanced LinkedIn search to find the groups your customers belong.
Do you have another question to pose that sets off the social selling ‘a-ha’ moment? If so, please share below
You don’t have to be an Einstein to see if you are doing the same old stuff and expecting results. I encourage you to ask yourself these five questions and see how you can begin to become more relevant to your client, more important to your sales team and more productive with your quota.
Like it or not, a lead generation process has a considerable amount of sucking up both on the part of the marketers and on the prospects. How many times have you encountered a scenario where one party is afraid of offending the other (be it via rejection or criticism)?
This kind of behavior isn’t helpful and can blind both parties to the facts that can lead to sales as well as a better business relationship. So what’s the solution? It’s called the inside look.
“If you’re surrounded by people who are kissing your ass you’re not really examining what you’re doing.”
The above quote came from Scrubs star Zach Braff on the issue of yes men (via Co.Create). And while it’s true that yes man have more cons than pros, many B2B marketers often ignore how yes-men-like qualities are expressed across several phases of the lead generation process. More importantly however, this kind of attitude blinds both business vendors and buyers when it comes to each other’s facts.
That’s why an inside look is a better alternative. Ever heard of something like this? “An inside look into the life of a modern salesman! Today on DDC!” This kind of journalism is plenty and often presents itself as having all the facts and the experience straight from the source. (Look at how famed astronaut Chris Hadfield uses it to clarify a lot of movie conceptions on life in space.)
This is also the kind of expose that can send all sorts of yes men cringing. Why? It’s like what Braff said, if you’re afraid to give less than stellar feedback, the person who needs it won’t know what they need to push forward. And by forward, that could include moving forward in the sales process. Think of it like this:
From the lead generator’s POV – The very purpose of lead generation is to discover a prospect’s problems and align them with your solutions. Hesitating to get a deeper look inside those problems is obviously counterintuitive. If you know more about a particular business process than your prospect, a yes-men attitude only downplays that expertise.
From a prospect’s POV – This is basically the other way around. They may not have enough expertise on a particular process but neither do you have enough intel on the things they are experts on. You need an inside look in order to understand a context you may not be all too familiar with.
Information is the lifeblood of the lead generation process. It’s what keeps conversations going and helps your sales reps win the sale. A yes-man attitude is counterproductive while getting the inside look can be a lifesaver.
Sales Reps Need to Earn Their Clients’ Trust — And Keep It
Trust is tough to build and easy to lose.
Buyers in the process of making a purchasing decision consider many factors, but none might be more important than trust. When hiring or renewing a contract with a product or service provider, a lack of trust can undermine any other variable and isn’t likely something that can be haggled over, such as price or delivery dates. This is especially true of large, long-cycle, complex sales typically found in sectors, such as financial and professional services, IT, HR, and accounting.
Consider the fears weighed by your buyers:
Does the seller understand my business?
Does the seller have my best interests in mind and those of my company?
If I give them my business, can I trust them to deliver what they’ve promised?
- On time? On budget? Without complications?
The seller also works for some of my competitors. Can I truly trust them to honor confidentiality agreements and maintain an internal “Chinese Wall” of privacy?
I’ve built a rapport with the sales rep. Once I agree to the sale, can I trust the team to do the work? Will the sales rep disappear for good?
They trimmed their ranks not too long ago; do they still have the best people to take care of my account?
Do I have my sales rep’s full attention, or is he looking past me to his next deal?
Do I trust this sales rep/provider more than the others we’ve considered?
Skeptical in Financial Services
Each industry has its own set of trust factors, but there are poignant issues found in financial services. One of the lingering effects of what has been called “The Great Recession” is that many clients remain suspicious of financial institutions. The source of this distrust depends on the part of financial services in which you reside: Clients may have been subjected to tighter credit constraints; decisions that seemed to favor the bank’s interests ahead of theirs; exposure to illiquid, non-performing, or opaque assets; more stringent compliance requirements; or they may simply worry that you are the next Madoff or rogue trader. It is as true in your team’s professional relationships as it is in their personal ones that trust is tough to build and easy to lose.
Other recent developments in financial services buyer behavior make it harder for you to build trust: decisions are being made by larger groups, buyers require more transparency into your organization, access to gatekeepers is blocked or limited (including procurement officers), and there is greater intent to shift risk from their organization to yours.
Gaining (or Regaining) Client Trust
Several years after the financial crisis, we find that clients remain skeptical and that client-facing professionals often avoid difficult conversations about that time or current conditions. After all, why open a can of worms? Well, if the can of worms still exists, acknowledging it conveys that your organization is attuned to and cares about what is happening on the client’s side of the table.
Even today, you may have noticed that many of your client-facing professionals and partners favor talking over questioning and listening. By driving a shift in this focus, many sales leaders are prompting their teams to discover (or rediscover) that information is power, enabling them to more effectively frame responses to concerns, as well as offer solutions, ideas, and alternatives. This puts your team in a position in which they are actively engaged in building (or rebuilding) client or partner trust.
Focusing on and strengthening your sales team’s questioning and listening skills also improves the impact and efficiency of your business, allowing your team to:
Understand and better navigate more complex decision-making groups within client, prospect, and partner organizations;
Identify gaps that need to be filled in the client’s understanding of your organization or your team’s solution; and
Identify gaps that need to be filled in their understanding of the client, prospect, or partner needs.
All of that listening will help you to know how you can best add value to the buyer, their organization, and your relationship. Concentrate on selling and delivering value to your clients and you’ll earn their trust. Keep your promises, and stay in close regular contact before, during, and following the sale. Nurture the relationship, and beware anything that could undermine the trust you’re striving to build. Mistakes are bound to happen at some point — if you’ve built a strong relationship, you may be able to overcome your error based on its severity and the trust you’ve earned.
Seller Deficit Disorder is a well understood concept by any Force Management client. It’s the age-old fact that there are two sales behaviors that drive clients absolutely crazy. Often, buyers assume these two things about salespeople:
You don’t understand my business
You don’t listen
These are undisputable truths that are critical for sales leaders to understand. Coaching and developing your sales talent to address these assumed traits could make or break your team’s individual and collective success.
But, this is only part of the “sales coaching” equation. When it comes to Seller Deficit Disorder (SDD), the key to solving for an answer is in not only understanding SDD, but also in understanding and overcoming a disorder that plagues sales leaders. A disorder as insidious and annoying to your sales teams as SDD is to clients. We’ll call it Sales Leader Deficit Disorder (SLDD).
What is Sales Leader Deficit Disorder?
Yes, you may be suffering from it.
Yes, even you, and why?
You were once a great sales person. That’s one of the key reasons you got the management role you’re in now. But do you realize the importance of your role; your number one priority?
If your answer to that question is “Sure, my #1 priority is to hit my number,” I’m sorry, but I think you may be showing symptoms. You see, that’s the end-goal, but it’s not your number one priority. There’s a difference. Actually, hitting your number is nothing more than an outcome. It’s your focus and ability to execute on your critical priorities that will get you to your goal.
You see, your number one priority is to create a sales team that is as talented as you. Think about it. The average sales leader has a team of seven people working for them. If each of those team members have twenty selling interactions per week (along with countless other communications to include emails, LinkedIn posts, etc…), that’s a total of 140 client interactions each week.
How many of those are you personally involved with….ten, twenty? Even if you are involved with twenty of these interactions, what about the 120 calls where you aren’t in attendance? What’s happening in these meetings? How effective are your salespeople when they’re on their own?
This is why focusing on making the number gets sales leaders in trouble. If you’re only able to participate in 10-15% of the client interactions then, even if your sole focus is the “big deals” in the pipeline, you are only personally impacting a number significantly lower than your team goal. That’s why the result at the end of the year cannot be your focus. Instead, your focus needs to be on the process.
Know the What. Develop the How.
Salespeople have their opinions of you. They are talking about you; in the bullpen, at lunch, at the dinner table, at a party. And if you’ve got SLDD, they are letting people know it.
Curing SLDD is the key to ensuring that your sales team knows the “what” and develops the “how” to help you achieve your number one goal – making the number.
When salespeople are asked, “What are the two things about sales managers that drive you crazy,” their answers are consistent:
1. Sales Leaders Ask But Don’t Use:
You stand up at all the right moments and say all the right things. We have training and kickoff meetings and you line up behind the sales leadership and shake your head yes and pump your fist. You tell us that we’re going to go to market consistently and use a consistent methodology. As a result, you ask for all kinds of things from me as a salesperson: territory plans, account plans, opportunity plans, etc. But instead of using these to help me, every conversation eventually leads to the only question you care about, “Is my forecast is in good shape?” Why am I wasting my time giving you information that you don’t ever use?
Executive sales leaders do this to their sales managers as well. I had a VP of Sales once, let’s call him Jerry, who would have quarterly meetings with the management team. He’d ask us all to bring the opportunity plans for our top two or three opportunities, so we could have small group conversations to help each other. We’d get to the meeting and Jerry would kick off his agenda with a slide deck and a four-hour monologue about his view of the state of the business. Meeting adjourned. It didn’t take long for any of us to realize that Jerry wasn’t interested in using what he was asking for, which leads us to number two.
2. Sales Leaders Ask But Don’t Give.
What is a salesperson thinking before they walk into your office for an account or opportunity review? Most salespeople say that if you have SLDD, they’re wondering how long it will take for the meeting to turn into another forecast review. They say things like, “I could tape a $50 bill to the middle page of my territory plan and the manager would never see it.”
What’s the purpose of these interactions? Remember, your number one priority is to ensure that I, as a salesperson, not only know what to do, but that I know how to do it, with confidence and conviction.
I remember something that one of the best sales leaders I ever knew, Bob Webb of Xerox, used to say. In fact, he had business cards that he would give to people on his team and he kept this saying on his desk as a reminder. It said, “We are not here to discuss history. We are here to create it.”
Bob knew that his job was to ensure, as a leader, that if you met with him, you left the interaction having learned something and understood how to translate that knowledge into action either on your own or with the appropriate help.
When you meet with your salespeople, you must understand what type of interaction you are having and know what your objectives are for that moment in time. Forecast sessions are for collecting data and ensuring the right deals are in the forecast. Opportunity reviews are to help me as a salesperson take a critical view of my key deal(s) and understand what we need to do to continue to qualify and shape them, thereby closing them faster.
I had a sales leader say to me just this week, “The biggest takeaway from the recent time I spent with you was a clear understanding that in the end, I would be judged by the talent of my people.”
This was someone who is extremely talented and highly regarded in my client’s organization. He understood that giving of his talent in a way that teaches will create a team that is as talented as him. A team with this makeup creates the bottom-line impact that transforms sales organizations.
The cure is right in front of you.
If you ask a sales person for something (Opportunity Plan, Territory Plan, etc.), understand why you are asking for it and clearly communicate that reason to the sales team. Use what they create to drive pipeline, develop accounts and close opportunities. Help them create action.
If you ask for something, give in return. Help your team understand not just “what” to do, but take the time to ensure that your team has the skills to effectively execute the actions you’ve helped them to create. That’s what really matters. That’s what cures Sales Leader Deficit Disorder
Like all things in life, your inbound strategy can use some repair from time to time. Usually when we say something needs repairing it is clearly implied that this something is broken. Can your inbound marketing break? Well, yes it can. As your lead database and content library grow so should your strategy because odds are you are missing marketing opportunities. These natural gaps that come with inbound growth are what can use some repairing. Below are 5 signs that you need to bring out the tools and fix up your strategy.
1. Zombie Leads
As time progresses your inbound marketing gains traction and starts bringing in the traffic and leads you were looking for. Let’s say a year goes by, maybe 2, maybe more. You have a ton of leads sitting in your CRM that have been inactive for quite some time. This is what I call, the Zombie Lead. They are zombies because, well, they aren’t quite dead yet. Your marketing has just sort of forgot about them.
You have to repair this gap. You have potential customers at your fingertips, how can you re-engage them? Start by segmenting them into lists.
1. Segment by interest
See what they downloaded on the website
2. Segment by lifecycle stage
Are they a marketing qualified lead (MQL)? Has sales spoken with them in the past?
3. Segment by recent levels of activity
No activity in 12 months- these leads need something really flashy to re engage
Once they are segmented decide on the best marketing method to revive these zombie leads. It could be an email, maybe a phone call, perhaps some shout outs on Twitter.
2. Stale Emails
Some of the best of us write up an email campaign for our inbound efforts and leave it to run for months… years even. This industry is very fast paced. I highly doubt that the content in your emails from a year ago is relevant today. Even if it is relevant a little sprucing never hurt anyone.
Get into your emails and repair them. Check out their performance metrics and narrow down what worked, what didn’t work and repair it. It’s simple. Don’t send stale mail!
3. MQL Mockery
If you have lead scoring set up then you are being notified when a lead is ready for a sales call. MQLs make for a warm sales call and not a cold sales call. If you are finding that your so called MQLs are not receptive to your call, then something may be up. And that something is most likely your lead scoring.
Overtime your content library will grow and your lead scoring needs to take into account the additional downloads and actions prospects can make and take on your website. If your lead scoring is not kept apprised of your inbound marketing efforts then it is broken. Don’t jump into the pool of cold calling again, fix this problem!
4. The ‘Where’s Waldo’ Blog
Theres a lot of places for your blog to go wrong, it’s not the easiest of things to get off the ground or maintain. In the beginning of your inbound strategy you should establish the audience your blog speaks to and what kinds of topics your blog should address.
Most of us establish the blog’s goal at the beginning but overtime the original blogging structure can lose it’s way. And all of the sudden you have a blog talking to whomever and saying whatever. Finding the heart of your blog is now like looking at a page in a ‘Where’s Waldo’ book.
Why does this happen? Like I said earlier, maintaining a blog isn’t the easiest, especially after a couple of years. Title creation gets draining, topics are repetitive so on and so on. So you tend to have a little fun with it just to keep your interest in it up. If you start to see this happen, then it’s time for some repair.
Take a look at what your blog has accomplished and the kind of traction it has gotten. Also look at other blogs in your industry and check out what topics they are writing about. With this information you can redefine your blog strategy. Realign it with your inbound strategy, find Waldo and continue on.
My Bottom Line…
You need to be on the lookout for these kind of repairs after your inbound strategy has been in motion for some time. Inbound growth means success and it also means gaps! Be proactive about your inbound strategy, prepare for the long haul.
I have been contemplating what I believe are the most significant challenges most companies are currently facing, and I have managed to reduce my list to just five.
My intention is to produce a new white paper, which will be ready for distribution shortly – “The FIVE Most Significant Challenges Facing Every Company Everywhere” and today, I can give you a flavor…
Challenge One: Finding the Opportunities
I am continually surprised to discover just how few companies have a formal business development strategy. The norm appears to be “If we throw enough mud at the wall, some of it is bound to stick… eventually“. For “mud” you should read “resources”. This “Quixotic” mantra is costly, unproductive and naive.
There are so many solutions available today, which assist front-line sales professionals to accurately target potential clients/customers, not to mention resources like LinkedIn, etc. It is incomprehensible to me that the majority of organizations are still flailing in the dark.
For example, how many companies do you know that can tell you exactly what each lead is costing them?
I will of course elaborate on this point in the white paper, and hopefully provide not only a template for an achievable business development strategy, but also some realistic matrix for measuring performance.
Challenge Two: Sales Enablement
It is estimated that between 56% and 58% of front-line salesmen and women will fail to hit quota this year. Why? Targets set too high? Maybe, in some cases, it could be suggested that in a continuing flat-line economy, expectations were unrealistic. But my personal opinion is that we are now witnessing the inevitable results of all those training budget cuts, which were implemented three or four years ago, when the recession began to bite.
The reality is that you cannot expect an under-equipped and an inadequately armed army to win battles – let alone the war!
There is ample and reliable evidence to suggest that for every $ spent on appropriate and relevant sales team development, a return of $100 should be anticipated in incremental revenue gained – it isn’t rocket science.
But do note the highlighted words - appropriate and relevant…
Challenge Three: Customer Retention
For more years than I can remember, I have been “crusading” for greater customer focus and for organizations to work to prevent the constant drip, drip, drip of departing clients out of the back-end, almost as fast as new ones are coming on board at the front-end. How many times do we, commentators, have to point out that it costs at least 15 times more to first attract, then qualify, and then sell to a new customer as it does an existing one? How many times do we have to highlight surveys that shout at us that the most common reason companies change suppliers is because of a perceived lack of interest? 71% was the number I heard last!
How many vendors do you know who have, amongst all the data they examine every year, accurately calculated the true cost of all the customers they lost in any given period? And if you do know any, I am prepared to wager that not one of them included the total costs of winning that customer in the first place!
The reality is that standards of customer care have never been so bad. It is a self-perpetuating downward spiral. We actually no longer remember poor service – we expect it! But we are surprised when we receive good service… How sad is that?
The good news is that any company, who is prepared to raise their game by just a few percentage points, will stand out from the mediocre rest.
Challenge Four: Controlling Costs
Nobody should ever doubt that the successful formula for any company looking to survive today - let alone thrive - is to constantly look at ways to reduce costs, whilst increasing profits. Note my emphasis on profit, rather than revenue. A very wise old mentor of mine – a keen golfer – once said to me “Jonathan, we always drive for revenue, but we putt for profit” and how right he was….
It is a fallacy to believe that the responsibility for ensuring an organization’s financial health and stability lies solely with the “grey men” in accounts. Every individual has a part to play, and especially the sales team – the engine room of any firm – because, although it has become a well-worn cliché, nothing really does happen until we sell something!
Our role is to maximise the profitability of every single deal – that means examining the true costs.
Net margin is NOT simply selling price less buy-in price. True profitability takes into account all of the costs associated with creating the lead in the first place. It allows for all of the pre-sales meetings, including: qualification, face-face presentations and negotiation. These are all time consuming and cost bearing activities. Then there is the value we must place on after-sale support, or technical input. Only when we truly understand the real cost of each sale, can we begin to understand how we are able to improve our profitability.
Much of this is down to control, and that leads me onto …
Challenge Five: Leading from the Front
The average tenure of a sales manager today is less than two years – actually, if the manager was promoted from within, because they were the most successful salesperson on the team, the average duration comes down to eighteen months. These statistics are quite shocking, but not surprising. This role has become the least secure in most organizations today.
It is not possible to identify one single reason – there are a host of them. The responsibility is shared equally between employers and the individuals themselves, and I fully intend to expand on my thoughts and theories in the new white paper.
Show me an under-performing sales team, and I will show you an incompetent, poorly trained and inadequate sales manager! This role has now become critical.
I will alert you all just as soon as the white paper is ready for publication.
From custom TV packages with thousands of channels to creating the perfect station on Pandora, consumers have come to expect plenty of options to suit their unique tastes.
Are you giving users different options to connect with you once they land on your website?
Or are you limiting them to email and online contact forms?
Putting the power of choice in users’ hands – opening up multiple communication channels – can lead to more leads and customers.
Why Some Businesses Don’t Give Users Enough Choices
With all the actionable data available online, it’s easy to get caught up in a quest to optimize every piece of website content for conversions.
After all, websites are the perfect portal to reach customers all over the world. They allow you to connect with anyone with an Internet connection. Who wouldn’t want to make the most of that?
Optimizing your website is essential to long-term success. That isn’t the issue. But some businesses focus so much on the content already on their websites they stop thinking about what they’ve left off. They see a contact form and rush to optimize it without ever considering if it’s the best way to connect with users.
That’s where they get themselves into trouble. Overlooking the importance of giving users choices about how to continue the interaction makes their conversions nosedive.
Forcing Users to Contact You Online Results in Missed Opportunities
Just because someone finds you on your website doesn’t mean they’ll want to interact with you there.
You could have sleek, highly optimized contact and email opt-in forms, but they won’t capture every interested visitor. Limiting yourself to generating web leads exclusively results in missed opportunities and sales.
Many users simply won’t reach out online – even if they’re interested in what you have to offer. They’re worried about privacy, spam, and overcrowding their inboxes. Some just prefer other methods to communicate with the people they’d like to do business with.
Opening up Multiple Communication Channels
Making the most of every opportunity – capturing as many interested users as possible and pulling them into your sales funnel – requires you to open up multiple communication channels.
By giving people a choice how to reach you, you make your website more user friendly and can drive more leads and sales. Users get to choose the way to communicate that’s most convenient for them, which makes it easier to connect with you and further the relationship.
Which communication channels should you open up to connect with more users? Here are three important ones to keep in mind:
1. Telephone
If you’re looking to land high quality leads (and who isn’t?), you owe it to yourself to give users the option to contact you over the telephone.
Even as the Internet matures, many users still want to talk to actual people before considering doing business with them. Nearly 60% of online shoppers call to ask about a product before purchasing it. Improving mobile phone technology only encourages this; it’s simple to go from searching for information on a smartphone to calling the business to find out more.
Most users won’t call you, but that’s beside the point. Just having a phone number displayed on your website creates a strong consumer trust signal. It says you’re more than just a scammer or fly by night operation.
Users who do call will provide invaluable feedback ranging from product ideas to how to improve customer service. There’s no substitute for speaking to customers directly and hearing them voice concerns in their unique language.
There are also several exciting software developments that can help make your telephone lead generation strategy more powerful than ever before.
Call Tracking
It used to be impossible to measure and track leads generated over the telephone. Businesses didn’t have the technology available to find out which ad campaigns were responsible for which calls.
Call tracking software has changed that. This software helps you determine which advertising efforts are generating telephone leads (and which aren’t). You can allocate your limited budget more effectively, focusing on profitable channels and abandoning unsuccessful campaigns.
Each ad campaign is assigned a unique phone number. The software tracks the number of incoming calls associated with each number. Depending on the available features of the particular software, it can also integrate lead data into a CRM, organize a scheduled follow up, and even record the phone conversations.
Click-to-call makes it easier for users to get in touch with you. When someone clicks on a specific button, image or text, click-to-call starts a real-time conversation with the business over the phone.
Mobile traffic continues to account for a larger percentage of total Internet traffic. As mobile becomes an essential lead generation channel, click-to-call will only become more valuable for the businesses using it.
Here’s how. Say a user is searching for information on their smartphone. They land on your website, which gives them some valuable information, but also raises a few new questions. It’s simple to hit the click-to-call button and get in touch with you on the phone. This happens instantly, while their interest is still high and without them having to navigate your website to find your phone number.
According to a survey from Google and Ipsos, 42% of the participants had already used click-to-call in search. And 94% of smartphone users said they needed to call a business directly while searching for information… whether click-to-call was available or not. So there’s a huge opportunity to implement this and make it easier for users to get in touch with you. Businesses that don’t offer click-to-call may miss out on these opportunities going forward.
Live chat software offers users another interesting way to get in touch with you. This technology gives users the ability to start a real-time conversation with someone on your team at the click of a button, link, or tab. If the user does this during “off hours” (when no one from your team is available), the software allows them to leave a message and a rep can get back to them during business hours.
A study from ATG Global Consumer Trend found that over 90% of consumers think live chat is helpful. eMarketer reported on a study that found 63% of the participants were more likely to return to a website that offered live chat. And almost 40% said they had made a purchase due specifically to a live chat session.
This technology doesn’t just make things easier for your users; it also makes your team more efficient. There are less phone expenses to deal with if users have the option to chat in real-time. Because a single chat rep can multitask – fielding multiple chats at once – waits for live chat support are often much shorter than phone queues. Users can also multitask during the wait, and they don’t have to navigate a 1-800 number to get in touch.
If your business relies on people stopping by your physical location to drive sales, including a physical address (ideally, with a map) on your website is essential.
Even if you aren’t relying on users visiting you in person, including a physical address opens up another communication channel and can help you make sales.
Why? Because providing a physical address creates another trust signal. Users don’t interact with your physical address in the sense that they don’t visit your office, but just knowing a physical office exists eases concerns about you being a scammer or untrustworthy business.
Give Users What They Want and Attract More Leads
The recipe for high conversions online starts with making your website as attractive and user friendly as possible.
But it doesn’t end there.
Getting users onto your platform is just the first step. Taking control out of their hands at that stage (by limiting their options to contact you) leads to missed opportunities.
You can give users the choices and convenience they appreciate. Open up multiple paths for users to connect with you – and continue to optimize those paths as part of your overall CRO strategy – and you’ll generate more leads and sales.
Where do your highest quality leads come from? Your website? Over the phone? In person? Leave a comment below and let me know.
Inbound marketing will be ten years old in 2015. The term inbound marketing was coined in 2005 by Brian Halligan, the co-founder and CEO of HubSpot. In reality, however, some aspects of what we now call inbound marketing are much older.
It’s reasonable to argue, for example, that inbound marketing began in 1886 when Reuben H. Donnely produced the first yellow pages directory featuring business names and phone numbers categorized by types of products and services. Consumers interested in a particular product or service could use the directory to find area businesses offering that product or service. The communication channels have certainly changed, but the basic objective of being “findable” by prospective customers is essentially the same.
On many occasions over the past nine years, marketing pundits have proclaimed inbound marketing to be the new paradigm of marketing. They’ve argued that traditional outbound marketing is fundamentally broken, and that inbound marketing is now the most effective and efficient way to create engagement with potential customers. Some pundits have contended that companies should essentially abandon traditional outbound marketing efforts and shift entirely to an inbound marketing strategy.
In my view, some of the hype surrounding inbound marketing has been overdone, and at least some marketing pundits have made unrealistic claims regarding the benefits that inbound marketing will deliver.
Like many innovations, inbound marketing is moving through a version of the Gartner hype cycle. When an innovation is first introduced, the initial enthusiasm (driven by hype) often leads to a “peak of exaggerated expectations” where users/adopters expect far more than the innovation can realistically deliver. When these unrealistic expectations aren’t met, what follows is a “trough of disillusionment” where some users/adopters decide that the innovation is worthless and abandon it entirely. At this point, some users/adopters will develop a more realistic view of what benefits the innovation can deliver, and they will do the work necessary to become increasingly proficient at using the innovation to gain these benefits.
So, after nine years, what do we know about the realistic value of inbound marketing and the role it should play in a B2B company’s overall marketing effort?
First, it’s now clear that inbound marketing is the most effective and efficient way for most B2B companies to acquire new leads. Notice that I said the most effective and efficient way for most companies. In some cases, inbound marketing will not be the best way to generate new leads. For example, if your company sells specialized, complex, and/or expensive capital equipment, consulting services, or information technologies, the number of prospects that are qualified to buy from you is relatively small. In this situation, an effective lead generation program is most likely a combination of inbound and outbound marketing and prospecting by sales reps or business development representatives.
Second, a comprehensive marketing effort for most B2B companies will encompass more than lead acquisition, and inbound marketing is not particularly well-suited for performing some of these other important marketing functions. Therefore, even those companies that rely heavily on inbound marketing for lead acquisition will still use outbound marketing tactics and methods for several purposes. For example, lead nurturing is a critical marketing function for B2B companies that offer complex products or services and have lengthy sales cycles. E-mail is the workhorse channel for lead nurturing programs, and nurturing e-mails are an outbound marketing tactic.
The bottom line? Inbound marketing should be a critical part of the marketing efforts at most B2B companies, and it’s likely to become even more important in the future as “digital natives” increasingly assume decision-making roles in business enterprises. However, inbound marketing will not constitute a complete marketing solution, at least for the foreseeable future.
Are you getting a measurable ROI from your Twitter marketing? Are you struggling to connect with your Twitter connections in a meaningful way?
Signing up for a Twitter account for your business is only the beginning. One of the most important elements of success for a Twitter business account involves formulating a viable plan of action. Doing so allows you to concentrate on the types of activities that will let you see the results that you are after.
Here are 4 Twitter marketing tips that will help you get more bang from your Twitter marketing buck.
1. Send Connections to Your Website
If you don’t send your Twitter connections to your website, you won’t convert leads into sales.
Twitter is an efficient way to discover clients and customers on an ongoing basis. For the best results, however, you need to have a top quality website with effective calls to action that you can direct those users to in order to close the sale.
Pay attention to the types of conversations that your customers are already having and add to them in a meaningful way. Once you’ve established a connection, you can direct those users back to your website to find out more information and make them an offer.
2. Be Insightful
One of the most important Twitter marketing tips involves building up your brand using the social media network. The absolute best way to get people on Twitter to ignore you, however, is to repeat only what others are saying and to fail to add any insightful comments of your own to ongoing conversations.
If you see two customers discussing a problem that they’re having on Twitter, pop into the conversation and offer a solution. Doing so is a great way to promote you and your company as an expert in the area.
When Twitter users start to see how insightful you’re being, they’re more likely to share your future comments with all of their respective followers. Your brand penetration will then begin to grow in an organic way.
If you want to be retweeted you should say something that other people want to distribute, preferably something that makes them look more interesting or insightful for sharing. – Alexia Tsotsis, TechCrunch.com
3. Don’t Focus (Solely) on Numbers
When you sign up for a Twitter account for your business, it can be natural to want to achieve as many followers as possible. When you see a celebrity with millions of followers, you can naturally start to see dollar signs in your head.
It’s easy to forget that the total number of followers that you receive on Twitter isn’t necessarily going to translate into an identical number of sales. Don’t focus on the total number of people who are following you, focus on getting the right people to follow you.
Take the time to learn more about the types of people you’re interacting with on Twitter. Every time you get a new follower, take a few seconds to learn more about what makes that person tick. Find out how they fit your current brand profile if they do at all.
Be sure to interact directly with the people who are following you and get conversations going. Those are the types of methods that you can use to start seeing very real results using one of the biggest social media networks on the planet.
While it’s true that having many followers is an important part of Twitter success, it isn’t the only part. You need to attract the attention of people who have a genuine interest in the product you’re selling or the service that you’re offering.
4. Be a Leader, Not a Follower
Because Twitter has such a massive user base, it can be difficult for businesses to stand out from the crowd. You need to focus on getting the attention of the site’s users. Only then will you be able to turn that attention into the types of sales that you’re after.
In order to do that, you have to stop worrying about getting conversations to come to you and instead go to the conversations themselves. Use hashtags and other search tools to find topics that your clients are interested in and engage with them.
Do you have other Twitter marketing tips that you’d like to share? We’d love to know what is working best for you. Add your thoughts in the comments below.
Since its launch about exactly a year ago, Sponsored Updates has quickly become LinkedIn’s fastest growing Marketing Solutions product, according to the professional social network. The native advertising solution has allowed businesses to promote content shared as one of their corporate profile status updates within the newsfeeds of a target audience.
We’ve been working with a number of our B2B technology clients to leverage this channel, extending the reach of premium content assets like e-books or animated videos to support qualified lead generation. One particular Sponsored Update campaign we supported drew nearly 18,000 impressions and 180 click-throughs to the landing page, effectively costing the client $8-9 per lead and delivering results in just a couple of weeks.
There is huge potential for businesses that sponsor in-feed content on LinkedIn—but getting native advertising right can be tricky. Here are three keys to maximizing the effectiveness of LinkedIn Sponsored Updates:
Deliver content that offers value to your audience. Although more B2B companies are adopting content marketing practices, according to a 2014 Forrester Research, Business Marketing Association and Online Marketing Institute study, few are actually producing high-quality material that speaks to buyers. Content that doesn’t focus on products, but rather offers solutions to problems your audience is facing, features forward-thinking insights or data points, and/or includes other customers’ success stories will go a long way in drawing clicks and qualified leads.
Fine-tune the Sponsored Update itself. An authentic, non-‘selfie’ sound bite that concisely pulls in your target audience is a must. Inspire people to engage with and share your content, versus broadcasting marketing messages; this will help extend your landing page’s reach organically, too. Other must-do’s include: upload a compelling image or video to accompany the text, as well as optimize the Sponsored Update for easy viewing from a desktop/laptop, tablet or mobile device.
Make targeting and testing an important part of your strategy. Interactive Advertising Bureau and Edelman Berland research confirmed that relevancy is the most critical factor for generating interest from native advertising. B2B tech organizations will see a much better return from their Sponsored Updates if the content and offers are personalized for a specific job title, industry vertical or location. Last week, LinkedIn even made it easier to do this; companies no longer need to make every update visible on the corporate profile, as well as trial and adjust messages in real time for tailored audiences to improve campaign performance.
LinkedIn is delivering powerful tools to help B2B companies nurture relationships and drive lead generation. Are you incorporating native advertising into your social media marketing strategy? What else have you seen as being vital to a solid return on Sponsored Updates?
Want to learn more?
In LinkedIn for Lead Gen, we cover:
- The right groups to join for tech B2Bs
- The “champion” strategy to encourage employees to engage
- How to set up & run Sponsored Updates and LinkedIn Ads
- How to optimize a company page for sales & lead gen
The headline statistic of a recent Forrester report was that 85% of B2B marketers fail to connect content activity to business value. The report raises many questions, the most obvious of which is, Does content marketing work?
My cousin let me drive his Tesla recently and it was so majorly cool. It was a custom made beauty that had all the right stuff and it fit him and his wife and family perfectly. The most important part about his purchase is he never dealt with a salesperson, never went into a car dealership, never haggled on pricing with the “closing” team. He made his entire $120K Tesla purchase all online.
For some of us it is easy to be social in sales, for others it is an effort, and for a third group, a confusing idea. I have been meeting more and more leaders in mid-market companies who are simply confused about the value of having their sales reps focused on social selling because they don’t see the payoff.
Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.
If your brand has already dipped its toes into the content marketing waters, you know how important it is to occupy a prime thought leadership position in your business niche. With options like blog posts, videos, infographics — and a vibrant social media presence to drive customers to them all — your content marketing strategy should aim to establish your expertise, solidify your core branding, and spread the word about what you do.
Tires are among the more important products we interact with on a daily basis, yet to most of us, they remain a mystery. How do I know when they should be replaced? When do they need to be inflated, and how much air do they need? How can I get better performance out of them? The list of questions we can ask goes on and on.
My friend Sally Hogshead has spent the last few years inventing a test that flips this notion around to help participants learn instead “how the world sees you.”
Back in August 2013, I wrote a blog on 5 Keys to Email Inbox Delivery, which identified engagement as the Number One key to optimal email delivery. In the blog I briefly touched on how engagement is a metric used to determine which customers are interacting with your emails, and in what ways, such as opening and clicking.
Tier One: Opened and Clicked. With regards to Tiers One through Three, we could easily designate the level of engagement highest to lowest, respectively. That means Tier One is your most highly engaged segment; these recipients open and click on your messages continuously. ISPs note this engagement; it tells them that your email is valuable to recipients. That means that the group that will help drive inbox placement and ROI. You should continue to mail to them on a regular basis.
having lots of emails in this category may make them look harder to see whether or not your emails are spam.
By not engaging, Tier Three recipients send the ISPs the message that your email is uninteresting and of low value, or possibly spam. This lowers your ROI and compromises your sender reputation … which adversely impacts deliverability.
“If you’re surrounded by people who are kissing your ass you’re not really examining what you’re doing.”
Seller Deficit Disorder is a well understood concept by any Force Management client. It’s the age-old fact that there are two sales behaviors that drive clients absolutely crazy. Often, buyers assume these two things about salespeople:
When you meet with your salespeople, you must understand what type of interaction you are having and know what your objectives are for that moment in time. Forecast sessions are for collecting data and ensuring the right deals are in the forecast. Opportunity reviews are to help me as a salesperson take a critical view of my key deal(s) and understand what we need to do to continue to qualify and shape them, thereby closing them faster.
