Rnordman

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Facebook is testing a “Buy” button in its latest effort to help businesses boost their sales through the world’s biggest online social network.

The company said in a statement Thursday that the button will let people buy products directly from businesses without leaving Facebook. A “Buy” button appears at the bottom of sponsored ads and is being tested by a limited group of several small- and medium-sized U.S. businesses.

The move comes as Facebook continues to grow its advertising business. The company will account for 7.8 per cent of global digital ad spending this year, up from 5.8 per cent in 2013, according to eMarketer. Google, the world’s No. 1 recipient of ad dollars, is expected to account for 31.5 per cent of ad spending in 2014.

EMarketer analyst Debra Aho said that not long ago, most businesses thought Facebook was better suited for building awareness than driving sales, but the Menlo Park, California-based company is trying hard to change that image.

“With this step, Facebook is becoming even more firmly established as a major player in direct response advertising, and though this test is still only a test, it’s a definite sign that Facebook wants to restart its efforts to become an e-commerce company as well,” she said.

Facebook says it won’t share users’ credit and debit card information with other advertisers. The company said it will provide more details once it has gathered feedback from the test.

In January, Facebook said in a blog posting that it was working on offering more ways for direct-response marketers to communicate with Facebook users.

Mobile advertising is one of Facebook’s fastest-growing revenue categories. Nearly 80 per cent of its users access the site on smartphones and other portable gadgets. In the January-March quarter, earnings nearly tripled and revenue grew sharply as advertising revenue rose 82 per cent.

Meanwhile, mobile commerce is growing at a fast clip, and is expected to total $304.1 billion in 2014, up 15.5 per cent from the prior year, according to eMarketer. Mobile commerce will account for 19 per cent of all e-commerce sales this year, or $57.79 billion.

Facebook shares fell $1.25 to close at $66.41 on Thursday.

The post Facebook tests ‘Buy’ button to help businesses drive sales through the social media site appeared first on Canadian Business.

When asked for advice, comedian Steve Martin likes to say, "Be so good they can't ignore you." 

Whether you're just starting out in your career or trying to get to the next level, your goal should be to master your craft to the point where people can't help but notice. 

In his book "So Good They Can't Ignore You," Georgetown University professor Cal Newport shares his insights on how people can achieve their goals and use their skills to create a fulfilling and passionate career. 

Here are five steps to becoming so good they'll have to pay attention.

1. Don't follow your passion.

Being passionate about your work is a great goal. However, "following your passion" is not going to get you there because it has two fundamental problems.

The first is that "follow your passion" assumes that people have a pre-existing passion they can identify and use to make career decisions. However, most people have no idea what they want to do and can end up feeling lost.

The second problem lies in the assumption that if you really like something, then you'll really like doing it for a job. "We don't have much evidence that's true," says Newport. "If you really study people with meaning and passion in their work, it has little to do with whether the topic of their job matches their pre-existing passions."

He gives an example of amateur photographers or bakers who open up businesses but end up facing extreme financial difficulty that leads to unhappiness. "That's because having work that you love is a lot more complicated than, 'Hey, I like this thing! If I do it for work, I'll like my work!'" explains Newport.

Don't follow your passion. Instead, "let your passion follow you, in your quest to become so good you can't be ignored," says Newport.

2. Find a skill and career path to pursue.

Now that you understand the dangers of blindly pursuing your passion, you need to build skills. "Try something that's interesting to you," Newport advises. "It doesn't have to be your one true passion or calling." If you're stuck between two paths, flip a coin. 

The only criteria you should have for your career is that it fits your values and rewards skill with more options and flexibility.

Contrary to popular belief, there are no set skills that are intrinsically more practical than others, he says. Even if skills don't seem directly valuable, you can make up for them by making yours more rare or by reaching a high level of expertise.

For example, many people look down on English majors for being impractical. But if you can become very good at a particular type of writing, that makes you stand out, says Newport.

Don't worry about loving your job from the start. Newport believes that passion is a side effect of mastery. "If you study how people end up passionate about their work, the most common answer is that their passion developed over time, after they built up skills that are rare and valuable," he says.

If you don't feel your engagement or interest in your work growing as you work on the skill, you're probably not developing the skill fast enough, not becoming rare or valuable enough, or you didn't choose a field that matches your values. If you recognize this, don't be afraid to switch career paths.

3. Master that skill through deliberate practice in order to gain career capital.

Once you've settled on a career path, it's time to master the skills you need to become irreplaceable. Once you do, you'll gain career capital that you can offer in return for a great job.

"Until you become good, you don't have leverage," says Newport. The more mastery you have over your skill, regardless of the field, the more control and satisfaction it'll give you in your career.

When working to improve your skill, watch out for a common mistake: If you simply show up and work hard every day, you'll hit a performance plateau and stop getting better. "Many workers build their basic skills quickly at first, but once they're comfortable, they stop getting better because they're not stretching themselves," says Newport.

To avoid this, you need to use deliberate practice. "People need to train their skills like an athlete, musician, or chess player would," says Newport. Identify a clear, specific stretch goal based on something that you're not quite able to do yet, and push yourself beyond your comfort zone to get there. Strive to tackle ambitious projects, ask for brutally honest feedback, and experiment with new ways to develop your skills.

To make sure you're on the right track, use money as a neutral indicator of the value of your skill. "People will only give you money if they're getting value for it," says Newport. "You know you're getting better at something if more money is being offered to you."

Newport calls this idea "the law of financial viability." The point is not that money is the goal, but that money is a great source of honest feedback. If you don't see people giving you an increasing amount of money for what you're doing, then you're not getting that much better at it.

4. Use your mastery to negotiate for more control in your job.

"Once you're really good at something, that by itself isn't enough," says Newport. "You have to use your skills as leverage to take control of your working life, whether through your work hours, vacation time, or projects."

Take control of your career to gain benefits that resonate with you. For example, if you are a television writer, once you have established a strong portfolio, you will have the opportunity to choose the specific shows you want to work on and collaborate with any big name you desire. When your skills become valuable enough, finding clients will never be a problem again.

The better you are, the more doors will open for you. You'll have the freedom and flexibility to jump for whatever opportunity seems most promising to you.

5. Find your mission.

"One way to find great meaning and satisfaction in your work is to end up with a mission that organizes your goals and working life," says Newport. You don't need to have a mission to love your work, but it's a common thing that most people want to pursue.

However, finding your mission is one of the last steps you should think about. "The most important thing to recognize is that you don't just start with the mission and go off and pursue it," says Newport. "If you study people who actually have meaningful missions in their life, they start by getting really good in their field at first."

This is because a career mission is similar to a scientific breakthrough — it's an innovation at the very cutting edge of your field, so you can't know about it until you get there. Only when you establish strong expertise can you really identify a real, sustainable, impactful mission.

There's no way to escape it: You have to get really good at something before big things start to happen.

SEE ALSO: 27 Tips For Mastering Anything

Join the conversation about this story »

Earlier this year, representatives from McKinsey and Company presented compelling information about the power of brands.

At a roundtable event, they explained how their report found a disconnect between the interests of B2B marketers and consumers.

The report examined public documents from 90 of the largest global companies to develop a list of brand positioning messages. These 13 themes range from topics like “low prices” to “promotes diversity.”

To get the other side of the story, McKinsey surveyed 700 global executives to see how important each theme was when evaluating brand strength.

The chart below shows how companies and consumers compare on different issues.

As you can see, B2B companies stress their corporate social responsibility and sustainability efforts, while buyers find those issues less than relevant.

Buyers found that the strongest brands have an open, honest dialogue with their customers and act responsibly across its supply chain.

B2B companies continuously miss opportunities to connect with their customers when they don’t talk about the issues that are most important to them.

In the United States, brand influences 18% of a consumer’s total purchase decision, making it vital to highlight what’s important to the customer. Many companies miss out on the emotional dimensions that affect a brand’s perceived strength.

How to ensure your brand’s message talks about things that really matter to your customers

Address pain points

Listen to your customer. Determine what their biggest pain points are and address how your offering fits in as a solution. If you truly understand your customer’s main concerns, you should be able to effectively communicate how you help solve the problem.

Be transparent

To think your customers don’t consider alternatives to your product is naive. Acknowledge that other companies have viable alternatives, but help your potential customer decide which is right for them.

For example, take a look at how a plastic tank manufacturer makes light of the fact that their products are incompatible with some chemicals on their website.

Cater to their emotions

McKinsey suggests using a combination of hard and soft facts to successfully reach your customers. It’s useful to show your customers the statistics behind your offering, but cater to their more emotional side as well.

The study indicates that B2B customers are interested an honest dialogue and a company’s values, so don’t be afraid to show a softer side.

Focus on value

Emphasize the benefit of your offering to your customers instead of filling your message with product features. B2B customers who see personal value (emotional, social, professional benefits) are 49% more likely to purchase a product and 60% more likely to pay a higher price.

The customer is interested in the value they will receive from choosing you, so clearly demonstrate this value by showing that you work hard to understand your customer’s needs and strive to meet them.

Talk to your customers, not around them

Instead of displaying your brand as “#1 in the industry” or “lowest prices around,” test your messages to make sure they’re effective.

Listen to your consumers and focus your message on the actual human that is interested in your offer. Reevaluate your message frequently to ensure you’re connecting with these consumers.

A brand message that is misaligned with the customer’s needs can have a negative effect on your perceived value.

Try to craft your message in a different way than your competitors – set yourself apart and constantly evaluate the way you’re connecting with customers.

McKinsey explains, “Consistently gathering information…and evolving in response are valuable ways of closing any gaps that may be opening up between your brand messaging and your customers’ needs.”

As a content marketing consultant for several tech startups and small businesses, I’ve seen a steep rise in the number of companies who’re now taking content marketing much more seriously and understand its potential impact on their brand image. There are a lot more companies with dedicated content marketing teams and a few have even diverted large portions of their conventional marketing budgets to purely content marketing.

However, despite this increased awareness, a large number of content marketing campaigns still fail to achieve their desired objectives.

Why?

Because most of them lack certain key elements that are essential for success. The list is quite long, but I’ve summarized it into 5 key points that are absolutely critical for a successful content marketing strategy.

1- Have Clearly Defined Objectives

Having clarity in your objectives from the start is crucial for success. In an ideal world, I shouldn’t even be mentioning this point. But a surprisingly high number of businesses seem to ignore it. When a client hires me to review their content marketing strategy and advise them on their future plan of action, the first question I ask them is about their objective with content marketing.

It’s a simple question: What do you want to achieve with content marketing?

Most of the times I get a vague, immeasurable and impractical answer. This is why it’s absolutely critical that you know from the start what you’re trying to achieve.

I’m not saying that you need to know everything from the start. Of course, over time, you’d come across many other benefits of content marketing and identify new ways it can help you in achieving other objectives that you didn’t have in mind from the start.

But you do need to have a starting point.

To make things easier, ask yourself these questions

- Why should I invest in content marketing?

- How will it benefit my business?

- Can I measure the benefit in some way?

- Is that benefit important for my business as well?

Write down these answers in a separate document and keep reviewing it every 2 months to see if your activities are aligned with your objectives.

2- Know Exactly Who Your Audience Is

This should have been a part of the first point, since it’s not possible to create a clear objective without knowing your target audience. But because of its significance, I want to mention this part separately.

One of the main reasons behind the failure of most content marketing campaigns is that their content is either too broad or too narrow for their target audience. They often address issues, which are totally irrelevant to their target audience, in unnecessary detail, and ignore the ones that are really important.

To avoid this from happening, you need to create buyer personas, target the personas that are most important for your business and then create content that addresses the most important issues and problems being faced by these personas.

Not sure what a buyer persona is?

Without complicating things, buyer personas are imaginary profiles of your potential buyers. They are based on real life examples of people who have previously bought from you or who you believe would fit well as your customers. Buyer personas are based on factors such as buyer age, gender, language, interests, income bracket, general preferences and social values.

Accurate buyer personas would help you determine the issues of your buyers and the kind of content that help you address those problems in detail.

3- Optimize For Maximum Conversion

This is another vital point to consider when developing a content marketing strategy. Even if you have a clear objective and understand your audience, you’d need to create a platform where you can address their problems, convert them into loyal followers and eventually into paid customers.

In most cases, this platform is either a blog, a website or a landing page. You need to optimize these platforms for maximum conversions. They should be designed to give you tangible results. Here are few areas that need to be considered.

-  Page Design

The page design includes everything from the positioning of your logo and email opt-in box to the colors and font style you choose. It is one of the main conversion drivers.

-  Email List

Email lists are the key to getting tangible results from content marketing. Your page design should facilitate email subscriptions and ensure that your visitors get a clear view of your opt-in box.

-  Page Content

Apart from your blog or website content, the content that you create for attracting opt-ins is crucial for your success. This includes free giveaways like eBooks or email courses and the landing page copy.

4- Be a Great Storyteller

Storytelling is an art that is becoming increasingly important for B2B and B2C content marketing. As a marketer you need to be a great storyteller. Your customer should be able to relate with your brand through its unique story.

While I’ve always considered this important, I recently came across a post on LinkedIn by Kelli Law, the CEO of Entwine Creative Group. Kelli’s post was all about brand storytelling and how organizations should use it to create an emotionally attached audience (since that is what her company does as well.)

I couldn’t agree more with all the points she mentioned, because in my experience engaging storytelling is the only thing that can separate your content from the countless other companies barraging your customers continuously with new blog posts, videos and other forms of content. The only way to make your content stick in the minds of your audience is by going beyond the usual rhetoric and connecting with them at a personal level.

Storytelling should be an important part of your content marketing strategy. In fact, your whole strategy should be based on a unique brand story that immediately relates with your target buyer personas.

5- Promote Aggressively

Content promotion is often a misused terminology, especially when it comes to online marketing. Far too many online marketers and organizations limit content promotion to posting content links on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc., leaving a few spam comments on different blogs and practicing a few SEO tricks.

If you’re serious about content marketing, you need to move beyond this.

It’s important to promote your content the RIGHT way. Online interactions have become much more sophisticated. Direct promotions rarely work now. In fact, they’d do more harm to your brand than good.

The focus, here as well, should be on building relationships and being authentic. Here are a few tips for content promotion.

- Guest Blogging

Target other blogs in your niche that your target audience also visits. Write high quality guest posts for these blogs and include your content links where relevant. Guest blogging brings credibility, traffic and SEO benefits all at the same time (I know what Matt Cutts said about guest blogging, read this to know what he really meant)

- Email List Content

As I said in one of the earlier points, email lists are crucial for your success. A healthy email list gives you access to guaranteed readers. They are people who you can work on and convert them into your biggest word of mouth marketers.

- Social Media

Again, I’m not talking referring to just broadcasting content links on your social media profiles. These are platforms where you can connect, engage and grow your audience. Just like guest blogging, only contextual link sharing will be beneficial.

- Forums, Groups and Tribes

Out of all the forums and groups, Triberr is by far the most effective, in my opinion. You can interact with marketers from other companies and customers looking for advice at the same time. It’s a great place to grow your network and get your content out in the limelight.

Conclusion

The significance of content marketing is only going to increase in the coming years. There will be newer forms of content and new promotional platforms, but the core concept is only going to get stronger. The key to success, however, lies in being clear about your objectives, creating memorable content and promoting it intelligently. If you get these steps right, you’d be on your way to establishing the most cost effective and high-conversion channel for lead generation.

Throughout the calendar year, and particularly near month-, quarter- and year-end, sales professionals everywhere keep an especially watchful eye on their end-of-cycle opportunity pipeline. In the business-to-business (B2B) space, the stakes are especially high, with commissioned accelerators, bonuses and President’s Club qualification often on the line — not to mention job security for the “C” players in our sales organizations. The challenge that reps and managers alike face in these final sprints to the finish line is that this pipeline is frequently lacking in both quality and quantity. For front-line sellers, it is easy to stress out when their buyers “go dark” near the end of the selling period, and some of their high-probability deals start to look slippery. At the management level, understanding which opportunities have the best chance of closing is an essential ingredient in knowing where and how to apply executive pressure, price discounting and other last-ditch efforts to push deals over the goal line. A new Research Brief examines the value of utilizing social relationships and user-generated content to improve the quality of B2B sales pipeline content, maximize deal closure rates, and avoid a quota-miss at the end of the selling period.

Best-in-Class Work Smarter…and Harder

The title refers to the classic, self-fulfilling prophecy that afflicts too many enterprise sales organizations: sales leaders take a look at the overall opportunity forecast, and harangue their team members to “put more in the pipeline;” so reps add half-baked deals to the CRM to shut up their bosses. However tempting it may be, the “If you throw enough spaghetti against the wall, enough of it will stick” approach is not an effective strategy for contemporary B2B sales success. The problem with this quantity-over-quality approach is that the politics of sales management get in the way of creating better, more valid opportunities that are substantiated by more in-depth, personal interactions. This, in turn, accelerates the eventual wins that, in fact, help everyone make their number by the end of the selling period. In Aberdeen’s Sales Effectiveness research library, a substantial body of work speaks to the value of creating quality sales opportunities rather than a falsely optimistic, huge pipeline of deals that are not nearly as likely to close, when compared to prospecting relationships that have been more thoroughly developed between buyer and seller. Recent research published in Breaking the Laws of Physics: Shortening the Last Sales Mile through Workflow Automation (April 2013) clearly illustrates how the strongest-performing, Best-in-Class companies are able to report far more efficient pipeline management proficiencies:

Figure 1: Best-in-Class Sales Success Metrics

Much like baseball — “the only endeavor where failing two-thirds of the time will get you into the Hall of Fame” — there are no B2B selling environments where a rep can bat 1.000, or win all of their deals. While there is certainly no way for research to prove that Best-in-Class sales organizations work harder than under-performers, the efficiency metrics represented in Figure 1 clearly indicate that they are working smarter. With a 44% gap (52% vs. 36%) in the overall win rate, these strongest performers must be doing something very differently than Industry Average and Laggard firms in managing their pipeline. They are also far more realistic when it comes to tagging deals with a “sure thing” label that eventually fall out of the win column. Let’s take a look at the best practices and technology enablers — the art and science of efficient pipeline management — that Best-in-Class companies utilize to achieve these superior results. The full report can be found here.

A recent survey of chief information executives (CIOs) revealed that 30 percent feel communication is the top challenge of managing virtual projects. But do the workers who serve on virtual teams see communication as an issue? And what are their preferences for communicating on projects?

Software Advice created an online survey of people who regularly work on virtual projects to find out whether the communication challenges identified by executives matched what team members faced. We also talked to Matthew Miller, a project leader at open source technology company Red Hat, to get his tips for the best communication strategies for virtual teams. Here’s what we found.

Key Takeaways:

 

• Thirty-eight percent of team members said communication was difficult on virtual projects, making it the top-cited challenge.
• Poor communication regarding task management was perceived as the top threat to project success, selected by 41 percent of team members.
• Email was a preferred channel for 41 percent of respondents—though 23 percent noted long email threads were a communication pitfall.

Over One-Third See Communication as Top Challenge

Amongst our sample, 38 percent of respondents said that the top challenge for successfully completing virtual projects was communication.

Top Project Challenges According to Members of Virtual Teams

This finding closely aligns with the aforementioned survey, in which 30 percent of CIOs selected communication as the top challenge.

Thirty-three percent of these team members said the lack of the right software or technology was the primary challenge of working on virtual projects. Finally, 28 percent considered a lack of productivity the biggest threat to project success, since many team members believed those who work remotely are held less accountable.

Those who have been involved with virtual teams on a large scale may see communication issues slightly differently. Miller has worked for over a decade with thousands of contributors on open-source operating system the Fedora Project (which he now leads as part of his role at Red Hat). He says that for distributed teams, communication is important, but not necessarily the “direct problem.”

He points to a deeper challenge of most remote teams: the fact that members are typically “drawn from other teams,” and thus have only partial responsibility to their virtual projects.

“I’ve never been in an organization where there isn’t more work that needs to be done than time to do it, and often commitments to virtual teams are the easiest to break,” Miller says.

This may also shed light on the above-mentioned 28 percent who equated working remotely with decreased productivity. While team members may perceive remote workers as less productive, the issue may simply be that they have other commitments that take priority. Managers may need to consider analyzing the scope of a team’s commitments when assigning tasks or attempting to pinpoint problems.

Task Management a Key Communication Concern

Since communication was the primary concern, we next drilled down into the top communication-related challenges of remote projects. Approximately 41 percent of respondents answered that the failure to clearly assign and update tasks was the top threat to effective project communication.

Virtual Team Members’ Top Project-Communication Problems

For 23 percent of respondents, long email threads were the top obstacle to communicating effectively. For others (19 percent), they most experienced trouble scheduling virtual meetings and conference calls. And 16 percent of virtual team members experienced confusion about which communication channel—phone, chat or email—to turn to for which tasks.

Miller says he’s participated on teams that successfully managed tasks by writing on cards with markers and physically taping them to the wall. He explains that virtual teams can get the “card wall” experience in the form of an interactive Web application, such as an agile project management tool.

Indeed, many turn to software solutions for task management; in fact, we found in a recent report that 52 percent of project management software buyers were seeking a task management application. However, Miller stresses that what’s most important is not using a particular tool, but rather, having established processes in place for your team.

“The important thing is to make sure that you have regular group interactions about your shared tasks,” Miller says.

Email Is Preferred Communication Channel

Beginning a few years ago, thought leaders such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made arguments that workplace email would decline in favor of SMS or chat. However, our study confirmed recent reports that email usage has not yet declined to the extent some predicted. To the contrary, 41 percent of virtual team members surveyed selected email as their most preferred communication tool.

Virtual Team Members’ Preferred Communication Channels

This finding is complicated by the fact that this favored tool was also viewed as problematic by some. As stated above, 23 percent of respondents considered long email chains a threat to effective project communication. Miller confirms that long email threads can be a problem, and that it’s often about team members who need to have the last word.

“It’s important to step in and ask people to stop when these [email] threads have run their course,” says Miller, “while, at the same time, making sure people know that their viewpoint is indeed heard.”

After email, phone was selected by 36 percent of those surveyed as their preferred communication channel. Surprisingly, tools designed for online collaboration were selected by the fewest respondents. Only 12 percent selected virtual conferencing as a preferred communication channel, and discussion forums and chat rooms were selected by just 10 percent.

Phone communication may have some of the benefits of a “real-time” collaboration tool, but Miller recommends instant messaging (or chat) as one of the more effective real-time communication channels for virtual teams. At Fedora Project, they use an instant messaging tool called the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) system.

“This is much higher-bandwidth—in the human-time sense—than e-mail, and is a much better way to collaborate on something that’s in active progress, or to reach a final decision on an issue,” says Miller. Further, chat can be used to link directly to Web pages or relevant documents that may come up in conversation.

When facing virtual workers who prefer traditional communication channels, managers may need to push adoption in order to help bridge the gap between the tools team members are accustomed to and the tools that help them collaborate most effectively.

Younger Team Members Prefer Digital Communications

To add further complexity, our findings revealed a shift in communication preference based on age. Generally speaking, the preference for digital mediums (such as email) decreased with age, while the preference for analog communications (namely, phone) increased with age.

Demographics: Communication Channel Preferences by Age

Email preferences were greatest among the youngest team members surveyed: nearly half of those aged 25-34 had a top preference for email (46 percent). This preference was slightly less for 35- to 44-year-olds (41 percent), and lower still for 45- to 54-year-olds (36 percent).

The greatest preference for phone was held by team members in the 45-54 age category, at 41 percent, while 34 percent of the 35-44 age bracket and 29 percent of the 25-34 age bracket preferred communicating by phone.

These trends change when it comes to video conferencing and discussion forums and chat. The 35-44 group is less likely to prefer virtual conferencing and more likely to prefer chats and discussion forums than both the older and the younger age groups.

These differences may mean that companies with trans-generational teams run into subtle misunderstandings, as diverse communication preferences result in people not answering the phone or not replying to emails. To keep distributed teams on the same page, Miller recommends a “multifaceted” approach.

“For Fedora, we use the already-mentioned IRC and mailing lists, but we also have a wiki, and both a blog aggregator for contributors’ blogs and an official project blog,” Miller says. (Because Fedora is such a huge project, the blog allows developers in different sub-teams to see development in parts of the project.) “And beyond that, we have an big annual contributor conference. We get as many active project members [as possible] together face-to-face.”

Successful virtual projects, therefore, require more than just selecting the right communication tool for your team to use. Managers and project leaders for remote teams should supplement communication channels with engaging online information, collaborative environments and even perhaps in-person events to ensure that all team members stay in the loop.

Conclusions

Executives and team members agree: Communication is the core issue at stake when when a project is worked on by virtual teams. However, as Miller says, communication—when managed effectively—can end up being more of a solution than a problem for a variety of issues, such as task management and team members with commitments to multiple projects.

Moreover, a multi-pronged approach, including instant messaging, agile project management tools, blogging and wikis, should be used to engage teams and foster effective communication. When confronting teams with diverse preferences, a comprehensive communication strategy involving a variety of tools and techniques can help solidify team connections, as well as improve project visibility.

“It’s important to keep enthusiasm and engagement high, and to make sure that team members’ direct managers or sponsors have easy access to meaningful information showing the value of the work and the overall return,” says Miller.

Methodology

To find the data in this report, we administered an online survey of four questions to a random sample of people within the United States. We worded the questions to ensure that each respondent fully understood their meaning and the topic at hand.

After we gathered responses from 600 adults for each survey question, we narrowed down our sample to include only those who regularly work on virtual projects, and who had an opinion on the challenges of virtual projects. The resulting sample size for each question was an average of 247 people.

To further discuss this report, or obtain access to any of the charts above, feel free to contact me at noelradley@softwareadvice.com.

The post Survey: How Team Members Prefer to Communicate on Virtual Projects appeared first on The Software Advice Blog.

I don’t know about you, but two days before July the 4^th business slowed down and then after the holiday, it seemed to stop!  We do have business, of course – very much like you – but the pace of business, the new leads and especially the urgency of the first half of the year seems gone…

What happened??

Summer happened, that’s what.  As I speak to clients and colleagues (who aren’t on their family vacations) they tell me the same thing – many of their bosses, co-workers, suppliers or business partners are either on vacation, just coming back from a vacation, or just about to take a vacation. 

In fact, many people I know are taking as much as three to four weeks off!  (I just spoke with a potential coaching client, and when I asked him when he was thinking of starting our coaching relationship, he told me it would be after his month long vacation in August.  He and his wife will be back right before Labor Day. 

So there you have it.  Business is seasonal.  Kids get out of school.  The weather changes.  People have worked hard and are now ready to take some time off.  The business environment changes and people start to relax. 

Does this mean companies aren’t buying or planning for the fall?  Of course not.  It just means that they are going to begin doing things on their time table for a while, not yours.

So here’s what you can do to not only keep sales coming in now, but also set yourself up for the best finish of any year you’ve ever had:

1) Don’t let up. 

Keep working hard – if not harder.  Make more calls.  Send more emails, stay later and come in earlier.  The time you put in now may not seem to pay off right away, but in the fall you’ll see the fruits of your labor.

It reminds me of the “dog days of summer” in NFL training camps.  I still remember what Bill Parcells told his players in late December when they were about to begin a drive that would determine whether they got into the playoffs or not.  He looked at his exhausted linemen and said: “This is why you lift all those damn weights!” 

The effort you put in now will make the difference at the end of this year…

2) Connect with established clients. 

This is the perfect time to send a card, make a call and talk with clients about things other than business.  For example, where are they going for their summer vacation? 

Face it: if things are slow for you, they are probably slow in their business as well.  How about asking what they are doing to deal with this period and what they are doing to get ready for the fall.  And how about asking how you can help them do that??  Set yourself up to work with them when they’ll be ready…

3) Work on improving your skill set, new product development or other part of your business that will make a difference in the second half of the year.

 If any of you have thought about developing a greeting card campaign to stay in front of your customers and prospects, this is the perfect time to do it!

Some of you know that I use Send Out Cards to keep in front of my clients and prospects, and did you know that you can now use that same system without a sign up fee?  Click Here to find out how.  Just use this number to try this system out for free: 83661

Why not design a card with a picture of yourself and family on YOUR vacation and send it to all your clients and prospects!  That’ll give you something to talk about.

4) Make goals for September through December and develop a plan of action to accomplish them. 

 Develop an affirmation card and goal sheet of what you’re going to earn, what it’s going to feel like over the holidays to have accomplished that specific goal, and then begin smiling each day as you feel the feelings of having done it. 

Remember, “Fear Pushes, but Vision Pulls.”  Use this time to create an exciting and compelling vision of the rest of the year for yourself and family, and let that vision pull you all through the summer…

5) Feed your mind a positive diet. 

This is the time to feed your mind every single day (and many times during the day as well).  My favorite book to re-read during each summer is: “The Advanced Formula for Total Success” by Dr. Robert Anthony.  It’s discontinued, but you can get used copies of it on Amazon.com 

I’ll bet you have your own list of positive reading material you’d like to finally read.  Another book I recommend is “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. Pick out a couple of books tonight, put them on your desk and commit to reading them before Labor Day.  That alone will make a big difference for you.

The most important thing to remember during the summer is that “This too shall pass.”  If business has slowed down, that will change.  And if you take advantage of any of the five suggestions above, you will be more prepared than your competition is to prosper when it does…

If you sell you have to learn to deal with rejection.  It makes no difference what you sell, who you sell to, how experienced or inexperienced a seller you are, or how successful you are, the fact remains that you will hear “no” far more often than you hear “yes.”

How we handle the “no” is one of the keys to succeeding in sales. 

Depending on how you market, dealing with a “no” can be a direct, in-your-face rejection, or can be an anonymous trashing of our direct mail letter.  However, all of us must, at some point in the selling process, deal with the reality of rejection.

If you cold call, your rejection is immediate-and if your cold calling is done on the phone, can appear to be very personal.  When you call a complete stranger and they hang up on you or rudely tell you to get lost, the tendency is to take that as personal rejection.  The salesperson that has sent out a thousand direct mail letters actually suffers the same rejection but is protected by not knowing the recipient did not even look at the mail piece that they worked so hard to perfect.  In actuality, the rejection is the same–the individual is rejecting your offer, not you.  But one salesperson must hear in a loud, clear click his rejection, while the other never hears the soft drop of the letter into the trash.

Worse, once you get the opportunity to get in front of a prospect, the “no’s” continue to come.  You make your presentation.  You get your no.  You answer the prospect’s objections–and you get your no.  You drive home your close–and you get your no.  Repeatedly, at times, it seems that no is the only word people know.

Then, finally, you get a qualified yes.  The prospect agrees to purchase IF you can do this or that, usually something out of the ordinary.  YES!  Finally, someone has his checkbook out and is ready to go, all you need is a little help from your sales manager.  And, then, it happens again.  Your sales manager says NO.  Sometimes you feel that you not only have to fight prospects, but your company also.

You managed to get your manager on board?  Great.  Now all you have to do is get the warehouse to agree to nudge a delivery in a little earlier than the calendar allows.  And, again, no.

Do the “no’s” ever stop?  No.

Of course, there are the yes’s–and that is what keeps us going, striving to get to that occasional yes.  However, all of those “no’s” can stop us dead in our tracks if we allow them.

How we handle the “no’s” is the key to how we get to the “yes’s.”

Attitude is one of the great limiters of salespeople.  People have a tendency to anticipate outcomes and many times that anticipation has an influence on the actual outcome.  If you approach a task with a defeatist attitude, there is a good chance that you will fail.  If you approach the same task with an attitude of success, there is a good chance you will succeed.  Why?  Several reasons, but two are of importance to our discussion.

First,if we assume we will fail, we will not give our best effort.  Why should we?  We already know the outcome before we even try to tackle the problem.  After all, we are just wasting our time.

Secondly,our prospect can read the defeatism in our voice and body language.  Moreover, if we do not believe in what we are saying, how in the world can we expect a prospect to believe it?

Consequently, in order to be successful, we must be able to take the rejection we experience and deal with it in a positive manner.  We have to find a way to eliminate the residual negative feelings we have from the rejection that seems to be all around us.

Advice for handling rejection has generally centered on either understanding that each “no” gets us closer to “yes” or understanding that, since the prospect does not know us as an individual, the rejection cannot be personal but is rather a rejection of the offer we made.

Both of these are true statements.  For many of us, neither gives us much relief.

So, if the traditional methods of dealing with rejection do not seem to work very well, what can we do to rearrange our attitudes?  It seems we need to find a format that will give us the opportunity to offset the rejection with success.  We need to institute a program that will allow our brains to regroup and experience the joy and positive reinforcement of getting the yes’s that offset the “no’s.”

How can we create a method to give our brains the positive yes’s it needs to readjust after receiving a chorus of no’s?

One method that has been very successfully used by a number of salespeople is to set aside tasks during the day where they know for certain they will be successful.  You have a contract to sign with a new client?  Try to schedule it later in the day, after you have done your cold calling tour of duty for the day.  End the day on the positive note of signing a contract.  Have a couple of very strong referrals to call?  Again, make the positive calls after you have made your cold calls.  Save the best for last.

Some salespeople have found that reversing this schedule leads to more productive cold calling time.  Having just come from signing a contract or having made two very successful calls to strong referrals gives them the positive mental attitude needed to sound strong and convincing on the phone when they make their cold calls.

Better yet, try to arrange your schedule where you have two or more positive tasks to perform each day and split them up so your brain is readjusted several times during the course of the day.  The more regularly you can feed your brain positive experiences, the easier it is to deal with rejection.  Rejection becomes the exception, rather than the norm.

Other salespeople use bribery to handle their rejection.  Bribery comes in all forms and fashions.  The salesperson will assign themselves a certain number of phone calls or presentations or other tasks that they must perform and then, as a reward, they allow themselves to do something they desire to do–work on their client files, go to lunch, work on marketing materials, or some such.  Others reward themselves with new cloths or some other object.  Others will allow themselves to go home early or take a day off at some point in the future.

Other salespeople have found that detaching themselves from the rejection allows them to ignore their rejection.  These salespeople will use a number of impersonal prospecting methods, such as direct mail, email blasts, and advertising.  By not experiencing the rejection first-hand, they believe they can be more positive and successful when dealing directly with a prospect when making a full presentation.

My experience has been that methods two and three have serious drawbacks.  Let us take each in turn:

Bribing yourself can become expensive-both in terms of the rewards you give yourself, whether buying something for yourself or allowing yourself time off.  In addition, it really does not reprogram your brain.  All it really does is encourage you to get through the task as quickly as possible to get your reward.  If the reward discourages quality work during the task, it really is not a reward for doing the task, but is rather a reward for putting on the show of doing the task.

The third method–using an impersonal prospecting tool to replace direct prospect contact can also be dangerous.  There certainly is not anything intrinsically wrong with marketing via direct mail, advertising, emails, and such-as long as the object is not to avoid prospect contact.  Besides being relatively expensive, these methods of prospecting should be a supplement to your direct prospect contact, not a substitute.  Unfortunately, if your objective becomes avoiding prospect contact to insulate yourself from direct prospecting and rejection, the task of sending out direct mail pieces, sending emails, constructing ads, etc. become the goals in and of themselves.  They no longer become a format for increasing your potential pool of prospects, but rather they become the reason for your existence–you live to create the perfect direct mail piece that generates interest and sells your product or service without your involvement at all.

Arranging your schedule to allow daily activities that reinforce your positive selling activities, including prospecting. tends to be the most successful way to deal with rejection.  Certainly, if you happen to be one of the lucky few who can simply ignore the rejection you receive, I envy you.  Nevertheless, for the vast majority of us in sales, we must find a process that allows us to reformat our brains after experiencing sustained rejection.  Allowing our brains to experience success on a regular basis, particularly after having experienced rejection, seems to be the attitude adjustment mechanism that works best for the majority of us.  Try arranging your schedule to purposely take advantage of the successes you know you will experience every day.  Place them in your schedule when you know your attitude will need their positive influence and you will see a marked difference in the way you handle rejection.

Does your business want leads? Have you been approached by “lead-providers” offering you “qualified” and “warm” leads at the low, low cost of $50 per lead?

There’s a better way (actually, there are a bunch). This article will get into my five favorites.

I’ll break down the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of five lead-generating strategies and give you step-by-step guidance on how to make each strategy work for your business.

Why Lead Generation?

This is a great question actually, with a more complicated answer than you might think.

What are leads, really? Well, the answer varies from business to business and sector to sector. It also varies within a business.

Leads (in the simplest terms) are people interested in your business (or a part of it) but who have not yet forked over money in exchange for your tools or services.

Leads come in many different forms. They can be anywhere between warm (very interested and prime for a sale) and cold (older, with fewer instances of brand engagement). Someone whose first engagement with your brand is to sign up for a one-on-one demo of your tools, for instance, is already an extremely warm lead without any nurturing whatsoever. Someone whose first engagement is to subscribe to your blog is a cooler lead (but worthy of nurturing towards a final sale) and someone who has Liked your business on Facebook is different again.

All are leads, though, and all worth concrete dollars to your business in the long run.

Lead generation, and the different campaigns that make it up, are an integral part of your online marketing sales funnel. So let’s take a look at a few ways you can start generating them!

#1 Lead Generation: Ebooks

Ebook creation and promotion is officially the cheapest way to generate leads online. But only if you do it intelligently.

Here’s the step by step:

• You’re already writing content. Consider writing 4-5 articles about the same subject. Ensure the articles start with a basic introduction and end with advanced tips and strategies.
• Collate those articles into a single PDF and use a simple, professional template to make it visually appealing.
• Upload the PDF into your website’s WordPress (or whatever web platform you use) as media
• Create a lead-generating landing page, which requires visitors to provide their email address before allowing them to download the PDF.
• Promote your ebook on social platforms and with Facebook Advertising (Adwords don’t work particularly well for ebook promotion, as few people are searching for your ebook title).
• Facebook Ads allow you to target people who have expressed interest in your ebook’s subject matter. For instance, an ebook entitled “Guide to CRM for Small Businesses” can be targeted at people within the US, UK, Australia and Canada who are small business owners interested in customer relationship management. This will give you an ad audience of 240,000 for your ebook and (with a .1% CTR, a 50 cent cost per click, and a landing page converting traffic at 25%) generate your business leads at $2 a pop.

That cost per lead is all there is – that’s your entire budget. You created the content for your blog anyway, and putting it together, making the landing page, and creating the ads was simply time and energy.

#2 Lead Generation: Sweepstakes for Gift Certificates or Products

Okay, the simplest form of lead-generation is bribing people. Seriously, if you want to generate email addresses or Facebook Likes for your business, use a contest app and give away $2,500 to one lucky winner. You’ll get a bunch of email addresses and increase your Facebook Page’s popularity astronomically – but you won’t get qualified leads or interested Fans.

Someone who gave you their email address in order to have a chance to win $2,500 doesn’t care about your business. They’re not going to register for a free demo or become a loyal customer. They’ll unsubscribe immediately from your email list as soon as your contest is over.

You’ll find far more success if you offer a gift certificate or one of your products, however, you exclusively attract prospects (leads) who actually want what your business offers.

Here’s a step by step:

• Create a Facebook, Twitter, or Website-based contest page.
• Offer a gift certificate or gift card usable for your business’ products or a product itself.
• Promote your contest on social and (if applicable) in-store as well.
• Like-gate your contest to generate Facebook Fans and email-gate it to generate email leads (or both if you’re offering a tidy sum).
• Your contest will generate ONLY people who are interested in your business’ products and services.
• Sure, you’ll get less leads and Fans overall, but they’ll be engaged, warm leads who are clearly interested in what you have to offer (otherwise they wouldn’t have entered!)
• Your leads will convert to a real-world sale at an exponentially higher rate, nurture faster, and be more engaged (as well as spreading the word about your business).

The prize you offer (whether thirty $25 gift certificates given out each day for a month, one large amount or one of your products) should be tested and measured for the ROI. Test out what prize (and the format it takes) resonates most with your target market. Do more people enter (and spread the word to their own contacts) if you offer a prize a day for a month, or do you get more email leads with a single giveaway? Does the visual of offering one of your products increase engagement, or is the dollar value of a gift certificate better for your business?

Test it out!

#3 Lead Generation: Webinar Entries

Webinars are incredibly valuable pieces of content. They are a chance for your business’ experts (or you) to deliver advice, best practices, and exclusive information in a personal format. They are also a chance for your business to coordinate with an influencer, and cross-promote an interview or conversation with that person.

Because they’re so awesome, they’re great for lead-generation.

Here’s a step-by-step:

• Develop a relationship with an influencer in your sector through blog commenting, social media interaction, guest contributions, etc.
• Send an email (formal or informal, depending on your relationship) requesting a joint webinar or Q&A session.
• Once you have a yes from the influencer, create a webinar landing page within your website.
• Duplicate the landing page for the Facebook platform (easy to do with 3rd party landing page tools like Wishpond’s)
• Email-gate entry to the webinar. Depending on the reputation and influence of your guest, ask for more details from leads such as job title, size of business, or a dropdown where they choose their primary business concern.
• Send confirmation (and thank you) emails to leads detailing the specifics of the webinar.
• An advanced tip is to run the webinar multiple times to coincide with different time zones. The time zones that your leads choose can be noted for future email marketing campaigns to ensure you’re delivering emails when your leads are most likely to engage with them.

It is absolutely an option to run your webinars yourself. Test how many leads you get for a webinar with an expert versus by yourself. Test running a webinar as a conversation between two of your business’ employees or a CEO.

#4 Lead Generation: Offers with a Partner

Running a lead-generating marketing campaign in conjunction with another business is a great way to increase awareness and spread your business’ reputation.

It’s essential that you coordinate your marketing campaign with a business that has a similar target market. For instance, two SaaS companies working together increases the reputation of both amongst people relevant for both. Equally, a business promoting high-end clothing would find success working with a business promoting high-end vacations, spas, or luxury cars.

Here’s a step by step:

• Approach a business (or individual) with the same target market as your own with a formal request for coordination.
• Outline your view for the lead-generation campaign, and work with them to convince them how well the campaign will work.
• If compensation is discussed, be sure you have a good idea of what the ROI will be for the campaign before you agree.
• Promote the campaign several weeks in advance, generating buzz and increasing excitement.
• Ensure your partner is also promoting the campaign amongst their circles – on social, in email, and with their existing clients.
• Create a contest landing page, ensuring you’ve email-gated the prize for entrants.
• Share the leads generated by the campaign. If your existing clients are included in the list of leads, exclude them for your business (and visa versa).

Promotions and campaigns like this are a great way you can give your existing customers something valuable while gaining new leads from a business similar to yours. With the right prize, both businesses involved get new, qualified contacts.

#5 Lead Generation: Coupons

Coupons, like sweepstakes, are a quick and easy way for your business to generate leads and increase brand awareness.

Especially awesome for retailers, coupons ensure that you are only receiving leads who are interested in your products and also ensure that you’ll be making a profit (or at least splitting even) on every person who submits their details.

B2B businesses can also run successful coupon campaigns :

• Consider running a month-long discount for all new customers.
• Consider dropping the cost of your consultations by 50% for the first 25 entrants, and 10% for the second 25.
• Consider giving away access to one particular tool within your business’ suite.

Here’s a step by step:

• Decide the discount you’re going to be promoting.
• Are you going to make the discount online exclusive? (I’d recommend this, as the word “exclusive” increases engagement with your campaign)
• Consider offering your existing clients a discount if they promote your campaign within their own circles
• Create a coupon contest or landing page with a 3rd party provider. Ensure you’re including the dollar value, percentage signs, and a visual element
• Promote your campaign on social and (if you’re going the referral route with existing clients) email
• Run your campaign for at least a week, and no more than a month. Any less than a week and it’ll be hard to generate the leads you need. Any more than a month and the excitement factor disappears.

Lead generation through coupons is also one of the cheapest strategies. Consider that you’re generating new business with every lead (as there’s no point in engaging/submitting personal details) if the lead isn’t going to use the coupon. This strategy is doubly-awesome, as you generate qualified, interested leads, but also real-world sales (even if they’re discounted sales).

Conclusion

Hopefully that’s given you a few ideas on how to generate leads for your business. I recommend you segment the leads you get from these campaigns into their own email list. Personalizing your email marketing strategy increases conversion rates hugely, and the details you get from these five lead generation strategies are invaluable down the line.

For instance, leads who engaged with your business in order to win access to one of your tools are more likely to be interested in that tool than others. Don’t waste marketing budget promoting other tools when they’ve told you, explicitly, which they’re interested in.

Make sense?

When it comes to branding you want your business to have maximum exposure online and social media is a tool that every business can use to do that. Over time and with a committed effort to market your brand using social media, you will reap the benefits that come with being recognized for your brand.

Once a social media account is created it is not enough to just have a nice image with a few posts and tweets. Think of each piece of content as part of the whole branding building block, designed to project a unique image for your company. They key is to be consistent with posting each day, and create memorable content that will stay in the minds of your audience.

Here are the seven rules for kick butt social media branding:

1.) Keep a consistent pattern

The first step to developing a winning branding strategy on social media is to stay focused on the image of your business. This includes the design and logos used on all online platforms, along with posting content on a regular schedule that best represents your brand. Take advantage of free services like Buffer and Hootsuite when managing your content each day. And remember that the name of your brand needs to be the same or similar on all networks to make it easy to recognize your business.

2.) Make your brand’s voice unique

While it is important to have a logo and mission statement, it is the culture of your brand that will stand out. Decide on what the unique voice is for your business and build from that on social media. Create a tone and stay with that when creating posts and tweets whether you are doing this yourself or hiring a social media manager. Keep your online communication positive, and remember that social media has now become a customer service tool that can be used to build trust with your audience.

3.) Determine who your target audience is

Know the needs of your community when creating social media content. Focus on who is in your niche and offer information that those followers want and need. Word-of-mouth is still at the top of the list for marketing, and connecting with the right people creates powerful brand ambassadors. Easy ways to learn about your social media fans and followers is to conduct surveys, ask questions, study customer service concerns, and research the competition. There are certain social media platforms that will work better for your brand depending on who your target audience is.  Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Instagram are the largest platforms, but don’t forget about taking advantage of video marketing on YouTube, Vimeo, and even Snapchat. Knowing your audience’s favorite watering hole – where they gather the most – will help your brand focused on the best social networks to engage on.

4.) Create a great impression

Having a website is not enough these days when people are finding the right business to deal with. In the ever changing online landscape, social media has become the testing ground for feedback and first impressions. Always communicate in a professional manner, and check in frequently for any customer service issues that might need to be addressed. Your business can benefit from encouraging reviews as well as having a well-rounded image across the board online. An inactive social network with very little or no images and content can paint a negative picture of your brand, even if you have been in business for years. Create a brand image that is high quality, and represents your company in a way that is easy to recognize.

5.) Know what to share on social media

Decide ahead of time the type of posts and tweets that will be going out from your brand, and know which ones are not appropriate for your business. While it’s good to show images and the human side of your company, it’s also important to project an image that fits your business.  One way to build engagement is to ask questions of your audience, share useful information, inspire others with quotes and images, share videos that are fun and informative, and setting your blog to post automatically to your social networks. Remember that social media is not a place to directly sell products and services, and should not be used to handle disputes with customers.

6.) Build trust with customer and leads

Loyalty and support is like gold to your community. The key is not to approach them as a marketer, but rather as a relationship builder. A trusted brand creates word-of-mouth, and shows people that your company is the real deal. Find creative ways to add value to your audience, and meet the needs of both your current customers and potential leads. Social media is a place to share tips, useful information, answer questions, give away free products and services, and keeping the lines of communication open and friendly.

7.) Set goals and measure your progress

Once you have established a community on social media your brand will need to set specific goals and measurements to follow.  In order to track your progress you will want to conduct a search for your business to learn how effective your brand reach is. Find out what’s working and change the strategies that are not performing well. Be sure to address and respond to any complaints, and pay special attention to social media engagement, which will later translate into sales. A great place to start is with Google Analytics which will show you how much traffic is coming from which social media platform.  Hootsuite can also provide a way to analyze your individual social networks. Keep tweaking your social media marketing until you find the ‘sweet spot,’ of when to post, what content works the best, and the top social networks your audience is engaging on with your brand.

Each brand is unique when it comes to creating a social media strategy. Always be flexible and open to change testing your results and modifying your strategy. Marketing online is a daily process of building your community, and it is important to remember not to give up just because there might be a dull spot in the midst of your social media marketing. Keep going and keep growing!

If you’re like me, you’ve relied on a calculator to determine a selling price or figure a margin. I sometimes have used my phone calculator, but that’s not always easy to use and before long I’m coming up with a series of errors. The solution is an app that a salesperson I respect gave me.  It’s called […]

Science explains everything, so there’s always a market for people who understand it. Canada has a shortage of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates, so those skills are likely to be in even more demand as the economy continues to grow. Here’s a list of Canada’s top 10 jobs in the natural and applied sciences.

Click or tap any job title highlighted in red to see its complete job profile. You can see our methodology here.

Rank	Overall Rank	Job Title	Median Salary	5-Year Wage Growth	5-Year Job Growth
1	11	Specialized Engineer	$79,997	28%	7%
2	20	Scientific Research Manager	$79,997	-2%	20%
3	24	Engineering Inspector	$79,040	28%	-20%
4	25	Civil Engineer	$79,331	19%	20%
5	26	Software Engineer	$82,992	11	37%
6	27	Computer Systems Manager	$70,720	12%	27%
7	34	Engineering Manager	$88,005	3%	2%
8	42	Petroleum Engineer	$100,006	18%	19%
9	44	Geologist, Geochemist & Geophysicist	$88,525	19%	-3%
10	52	Chemical Engineer	$78,936	12%	30%

The post Canada’s Best Jobs 2014: Top 10 jobs in natural & applied sciences appeared first on Canadian Business.

Summer is in full swing, and the musty hallways and crowded classrooms of Canada’s campuses are probably a long way from students’ minds at the moment. But tuition bills are about to arrive in the mail and students intending to apply for financial aid need to start now, because the system is ridiculously complex according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

“It’s Complicated: An Interprovincial Comparison of Student Financial Aid” suggests that the average student in Ontario has to go through some 94 steps to be eligible for student aid, compared to just 18 in Nunuvat or 17 in the Northwest Territories:

Matthew Halliday outlined the challenges that most student face managing their money for the first time:

It seems very, very basic, but if someone has never dealt with their own finances before, even the simplest transactions and financial concepts, from bill payments to interest accumulation, can be flummoxing. It happens every year with incoming students, says Janet Peddigrew, a BMO district vice-president for Midwestern Ontario (and mother of a soon-to-be university student.) There are a significant number of those who are simply financially unprepared, and who don’t take advantage of the financial planning available at their local bank.

READ: Student savings are easier than you think »

But most provincial aid programs are so frustratingly convoluted even savvy students would have a hard time navigating them, according to the CCPA:

This is not to say that understanding these systems is a matter of simple financial literacy. Even with the amount of time and analysis given to this report, the surface of understanding student financial aid eligibility in Canada has merely been scratched; it is much less likely that a student could deconstruct and accurately navigate a system that is so exceedingly complex.

Students’ own contributions make up anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the individual, family, program and province. Earning that cash has never been harder: an interactive project from the CCPA earlier this year shows that students have to work almost twice as long to pay their tuition as they would have in 1972, and young employees are the most likely to be paid minimum wage.

With the workforce shrinking and not enough students enrolling in science, math and tech, this latest revelation of barriers to millennials’ education and skills development doesn’t look promising for anyone hoping that Gen-Y will help Canada navigate the modern economy.

The post Applying for a student loan in Canada is insanely difficult appeared first on Canadian Business.

The second element of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto is Expect nothing in return (you’ll be delighted with what you do get back). It’s extraordinarily simple while being profoundly hard.

It’s simple because it’s easy to say “I’m doing this without any expectations.” That felt good, right? You are going to be a good mentor, helping another up and coming entrepreneur, and it’ll be good karma. It’s good marketing – who doesn’t like people to say things about him like “Joe is such a good guy – he helped me without expecting anything back.”  Simple, right?

It’s profoundly hard because this just isn’t human nature, especially in a business context. We live in a transactional world, constantly deciding where to invest our time to get the best ROI – there’s even a phrase for that which is “return on invested time.”  We worry about things like reputational effects, being cautious of spending too much time with low impact activities or unknown people, while being drawn to the spotlight and well-known people, even if the activities are hollow and lack substance or value. We feel overwhelmed with the base level of work we have and struggle to justify spending time on activities with an unknown impact on what is directly in front of us. We prioritize how we spend our time, gravitating towards things where we can see the payoff.

I have two constructs I use that have broken this cycle for me which are at the core at being an awesome mentor: Give Before You Get and Random Days.

Give Before You Get is a cousin to a concept many of us are familiar with called “pay it forward.” With pay it forward, someone once did something for you to help you with your life or your career and you are now helping someone else out to “pay it forward” as compensation for this previous support. While nice, it’s still a transaction concept, which is where give before you get differs. In give before you get, you enter into a relationship without defining anything transactional – you “give” in whatever form is appropriate, but you have no idea what you are going to “get” back. Now, this isn’t altruism – you will get something back – you just don’t know when, from who, in what currency, or in what magnitude. You enter into the relationship non-transactionally and are willing to continue giving without a defined transactional return.

This is at the core of my Startup Communities thesis. To truly activate a startup community you have to get everyone in the startup community putting energy into the community, essentially giving before they get. If you create this culture, magical things happen very quickly as an enormous amount of kinetic energy goes into the startup community, generating rapid activity, results, and powerful second order effects.

In the construct of give before you get, it’s important to remember this isn’t altruism, which is why I’m repeating that notion. You will get something back, you just don’t have any expectations around what it will be. That’s unnatural for humans, and is the fundamental difference between a mentor and and an advisor. An advisor says “I’ll help you if you give me a $3,000 / month retainer and 1% of your company.” A mentor says simply, “How can I help?”

Random Days is one way to practice being a great mentor and giving before you get. I started doing random days in 2005 after a long history of random 15 minute meetings – something I’ve always done, but at some point realized I couldn’t effectively squeeze them into the normal flow of my day anymore. So I started setting aside about a day a month to do a dozen or so random 15 minute meetings. Some magical things, including Techstars, have come from Random Days. The trick to an amazing random day experience is to meet with anyone (zero filter) and let the 15 minutes be entirely about them and their agenda. I typically start each meeting with “Hi, I’m Brad Feld, the next 15 minutes are about whatever you want to talk about.” That establishes that I have no expectations and I’m fully available and present for the person I’m meeting with.

In a busy world with constant performance pressure and expectations around outcomes, the concept of give before you get and the idea of having a periodic random day may seem ridiculous. If you are thinking “that sounds nice and utopian, but I don’t have time for that” or “yeah Brad, whatever, but you are in a different position in life than I am”, I challenge you to rethink your position. I’ve been doing this since my first company in my early 20s. I’ve built the notion of give before you get into the core of my value system. I’ve allowed myself to continually be open to randomness and many of the incredible things I’ve gotten to be involved in have come from one of these random interactions. Most importantly, I continually am amazed by what comes back to me, over and over again, from people I’ve put energy, time, and resources into without any expectation of a return. The payoff, financial and non-financial, has been profound for me.

So try it. Don’t shift to a 100% give before you get mentality, but allocate 10% of your time to it. Find ways to give before you get. And if you are a mentor for an accelerator, a younger person, a peer, or someone in your organization, make sure you internalize the idea of giving before you get and expecting nothing in return. You’ll be delighted with what you do get back.

The post Mentors 2/18: Expect Nothing In Return appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

When nonfiction book authors do readings and lectures, and teach seminars and workshops, they create a virtuous cycle of PR. A well-written book on a great topic of interest gives an author instant credibility with people who hire speakers and workshop leaders. The speaking engagement itself promotes their book, which generates book sales. It creates fans, who spread the word about them and their message, further adding to book sales and enhancing the author-expert’s professional brand. And all this buzz promotes the expert and turns her into a media newsmaker, thus encouraging new business opportunities, new clients, and new speaking engagements.

Where To Find Good Speaking Opportunities

Of course, the easiest way to land a high-value speaking gig is to use the services of a speaker’s bureau. These professionals know how to match your expertise with the right audience. However, you can get yourself out into the world without a speaker’s agent by using the following strategies.

Do A Book Signing
If you want to try to get speaking gigs on your own, an easy place to start is your local independent bookstore. When you’re just starting out with self-promotion, a book signing is a great way to get your feet wet. Ask your local bookstore if they will sponsor a reading by you, a local author.

Next, contact all the bookstores within a 50-mile radius and tell them this is part of your media tour. By doing several readings in the area, you’ll get local media coverage in papers and events calendars, which creates more buzz for your book. Also, you’ll learn which questions people typically ask and how to answer them succinctly.

Target Organizations
Look to organizations in your field that sponsor member meetings and conferences. These could range from PTAs, if you’re a parenting author, to support groups, if you’re a health author, to local business groups, if you’re a business author. Be imaginative. Again, building up your name locally is a great way to make connections and promote yourself, your book, and your expertise.

On a bigger and more ambitious scale, as you hone your speaker’s chops, research all the  industry conferences and associations in your field that are looking for presenters. Depending on your expertise and credentials, these are harder to book on your own without the help of a speaker’s agent.

Be A Workshop Leader
Before seeking out the top-tier, big-name retreat centers and institutes, which are difficult to book without using a speaker’s bureau, try organizing a local workshop in a church, synagogue, library, or other community space that holds workshops. This will give you valuable experience doing longer-format presentations and interactive teaching.

Every area of the country has local as well as regional retreat centers and institutes that offer or host seminars, lectures, and workshops. These are often quite competitive, so it’s good to have a solid resume of speaking and lecturing appearances before you apply.

Make A Video
Once you’ve crafted and mastered a dynamic, motivating, informative 15-minute presentation, create a YouTube to post at your website. As you progress in experience and prestige, you can also try applying to national forums such as TEDx.

Book publicity is a cumulative process. Your book-PR platform should include many elements–a good website, blog, social media strategy, media appearances on radio and TV and in print and online venues, and of course, speaking engagements. Even if you decide to hire a book publicist and/or a speaker’s agent, there is a lot you can do first on your own to gain valuable speaking and teaching experience.

I was recently onsite with a prospect and was told that if this company could simply add $10,000 to every customer renewal each year they would add $400,000,000 in incremental revenue to the bottom line.  This was a significant statement that would have major impact for the organization.  However, there were significant barriers that existed that prevented this revenue from being realized.

In my work with many large enterprise B2B organizations, I find this is the case more often than not. Sadly, most organizations do a poor job selling back into their customer base and as a result are missing a huge opportunity to generate revenue.

Everyone has seen the studies that state it costs twice as much to acquire a new customer as it does sell into a current one.  If this is true, then why are so many organizations so bad at doing this?  How can an organization have metrics that show $400 million in revenue is within their reach, but not be able to capitalize on it?

There are several consistencies across organizations that I see and if addressed, could help organizations add significant dollars to the bottom line.

1. Lack of Data Governance

The plain truth is that most organizations have no clear picture of their customer.  Data sits in different parts of the organization, CRM systems are full of duplicates, finance has their own database that consists of procurement contacts and there is no one database that provides a holistic view of the customer.  In one recent meeting I had, one of the operations folks said, “Let’s just hope a customer does not ask one of our reps what products they own, because we could not tell them.”

These issues stem from a fundamental lack of data governance across the organization.  With the multitude of systems and information that exists in an enterprise, things can and often do get messy quickly and organizations need to define data standards to govern:

-          Who has access to the data and what levels of control do they have?

-          What systems need to be integrated to show a complete view of the customer?

-          What is the data hygiene process?

These are just a few of the things that an organization needs to think about in terms of data in order to make the most from it. Without the proper governance in place, little value will come from your data.

2. Lack of Demand Generation Focus

Typically when I speak about Demand Generation, marketers automatically assume that I am referring to generating new business. While new business should be a focus for Demand Generation, it should not be the sole focus. Fundamentally, the same principles of Demand Generation apply in any sales instance –you need to Engage, Nurture and Convert your buyer.  In the case of selling to your current customers, you are simply looking to expand the relationship with them. This is easier than starting from scratch as there is already a level of engagement there and a relationship.

With all of the potential revenue that is to be had from current customers, organizations need to develop specific programs aimed at creating demand among their customers.  In doing so, they will not only see an improvement in their retention rates, but a vast improvement in their customer lifetime value.

3. Lack of Analytics

As mentioned above, many organizations have data scattered all over their organizations which makes it virtually impossible to market well to your customer base.  However, even organizations that do have control over their data often lack the analytics necessary to determine the best approach to sell effectively to their customers.  This can be remedied however, given the numerous tools that are available to help with analytics for marketers today.

The analysis of data to inform decisions and provide insights into marketing and sales is still a huge gap in many organizations.  In terms of generating more from your customer base…this is costing organizations millions.

For marketing leaders that want to make a profound impact to their companies’ revenue, data analysis should be made a top priority.

Mining the install base may not be as sexy for marketing and sales as chasing the next big new deal or beating out a competitor for a new logo.  However, it is often times a more profitable venture and will have a significant impact business.

Author: Carlos Hidalgo @cahidalgo is CEO and Principal, ANNUITAS

Most people have heard of SlideShare, but they probably don’t realize how powerful and diverse the platform is, or the important role it can play in their content marketing and digital engagement efforts. This post offers seven reasons for taking another look and considering an upgrade.

According to this infographic, SlideShare is the “quiet giant of content marketing.” I consider our SlideShare presence a vital part of the Denovati Digital Network. We’ve had a Silver Pro Account for years, and it’s definitely been a worthwhile investment.

Here are some of the reasons SlideShare could make a significant contribution to your digital presence and engagement as well…

1. It’s not just for sharing slides. Sure, it’s a great way to share samples of your work and expertise via presentation decks, but you can also use it to share documents, videos, and infographics. And as SlideShare noted in this post, it’s a great outlet for repurposing content from other channels.

2. It reduces the need for attachments. When you want to share content (e.g., a presentation deck) with someone, you can include a hyperlinked reference to the deck on SS in an email rather than attaching a large file.

3. It’s public AND private. With a Pro account you can upload files you want to share only with select groups (e.g., attendees from a private, paid-for presentation), as well as files you want to share widely. The private files have a “secret url” you can then send to folks via email or embed in a document.

4. You can do LOTS of tracking. SlideShare provides ongoing counts of the number of people who have viewed, favorited, and downloaded shared content. With a Pro account you can also gather “leads” from folks who have downloaded files. And when a presentation is trending on another platform like LinkedIn or Facebook, SlideShare will feature it on its home page. We’ve been fortunate to have that happen with our content about half a dozen times!

5. It’s a search engine itself, and is search engine friendly. This is probably the #1 reason to love SlideShare, even though few people talk about it. I certainly try to cross-promote our SlideShare content via other channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest, but most of the views come from within SlideShare itself or via other searches. For example, there have been over 20,000 views of the different versions of the Social Media Sophistication Quiz over the past couple of years, the majority of which have come from searches rather than our sharing and promotion. In addition, even though our new channel is just over a year old and has only about 30 pieces of content, it is approaching 20,000 total views – that’s FAR more than we’ve gotten on our Facebook or Google+ pages, and probably even more than the content we’ve shared via Pinterest and Twitter, two platforms on which we’re much more active.

6. LinkedIn integration. In the wake of their acquisition by LinkedIn, SlideShare has continued to enhance the integration between their platform and LinkedIn, increasing the value of sharing content with one’s professional network and through groups.

7. They keep getting better. Even before SlideShare was acquired by LinkedIn, they were committed to continuously improving and enhancing their product and features. Recently, for example, they optimized the viewability of content on mobile devices, in addition to creating Apple and Android apps. They’ve also added the ability to upload content from sites like Box and Google Docs. And in their emails and on their blog, they’re promising more big changes in the coming months.

It’s worth noting that like LinkedIn, sometimes “improvement” in SlideShare means discontinuing features that some people find very valuable. In the past 6-9 months, for example, they have discontinued the Zipcast and Slidecast features, as well as Send Tracker. In the support forums, the general explanation has been that the features were underutilized, which is why they decided to stop supporting them. Perhaps if more people were aware of the less typical SlideShare features they’d be more likely to use them, and SlideShare would continue to support and develop them.

Are you an avid user/fan of SlideShare? What other recommendations for leveraging it would you add?

One thing I’ve learned at Buffer is that being open to not knowing things seems to be the best way to learn quickly and teach others at the same time. So many of our biggest hits on the blog have come from saying, “We don’t know the answer. Let’s find out!”

On many matters, we haven’t any authority.

Is this an OK way to get by?

We’ve found great success in not knowing, and there’s no reason why you can’t, too. While we can certainly see the value in establishing yourself as an authority in your industry, being the answer-man or answer-woman isn’t the be-all, end-all of your options.

You can survive and thrive by embracing “I don’t know.”

Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

The leading authorities on not knowing

An interesting phenomenon occurs when you’ve been not knowing things for as long as we have. You become an authority on not knowing.

That seems to be the case here at the Buffer blog. We’d like nothing more than to be known as a go-to source for social media content. When you think about social media, we’d love for you to think of us!

At the same time, we understand that we may not be authorities on everything social media—we may not have all the answers right away, near at hand.

And that seems to be alright.

Instead of being authorities on social media, we can be authorities on thorough research, fascinating statistics, and personal experience. In other words, there is more than one way to cement yourself in the minds of your followers beyond traditional authority. If we can earn a reputation as a go-to source for social media content by embracing what we don’t know, then the opportunity’s there for you to do the same.

If you aren’t able to claim authority in your chosen field, you can still seek after a subset of authority. You can be an authority on:

• Tools
• Infographics
• Slideshows
• Writing with humor
• Having an awesome voice and tone
• Sharing your data
• Curating ideas and curating content

Find whatever it is you’re good at, and become the best you can be. Soon enough, your Facebook and your Twitter and your blog will be known for the quality, exceptional work you do, regardless of what it is that you don’t know.

So maybe authority means more than expertise, influence, and confidence. If we expand our definition, we can each find our own path to authority, however it may look.

Impostor syndrome: We all feel like we don’t have all the answers

I’ve had moments where I wasn’t sure I was cut out for my job. Have you had these moments, too?

We’re not alone. Psychologists call this impostor syndrome, and it applies to those of us who are unable to internalize accomplishments. Despite outward evidence that we’re great at what we do, we’re convinced that we’re frauds and undeserving of our place.

This level of “I Don’t Know” is more common than you might think. The term has been around since the 1970s, and researchers believe that up to 70 percent of people have felt the effects of impostor syndrome at some point.

If you’re interested in finding out if you have any characteristics of impostor syndrome, you can take the Clance Impostor Scale survey and see where you land. For each statement in the survey, you mark how true it is of you. For example,

1. I tend to remember the incidents in which I have not done my best more than those times I have done my best.
2. I often compare my ability to those around me and think they may be more intelligent than I am.
3. At times, I feel my success has been due to some kind of luck.

Part and parcel of impostor syndrome is the feeling of not knowing—the lack of expertise that we’ve been talking about so far. Via the Crew blog, here is a simple illustration that shows how impostor syndrome feels:

In the same Crew blog post, Andrea Ayres explains what the manifestations of impostor syndrome might look like, how people may compensate for feeling like a fraud. Do either of these sound familiar to you, whether you’ve done them yourself or witnessed them from colleagues?

Overdoing: When people prepare to an almost obsessive level, putting in much more effort than is realistically needed in order to ensure they don’t fail

Underdoing: People will under prepare or put off doing something until the last minute so they can blame any possible failures on a lack of readiness, as opposed to their actual ability. If you don’t really try you can’t really fail, right?

Of course, neither of these outcomes is preferable. Overdoing will lead to pressure and burnout; underdoing will lead to poor quality and performance.

With the prevalence of impostor syndrome being as great as it is, there must be a better way to survive and thrive while feeling like you don’t have all the answers. Here’s one way that we’ve found.

Giving yourself permission to not know it all

I believe part of the reason for the pressures of impostor syndrome is that there is a stigma around not knowing something. If you feel like an impostor because you don’t have all the answers, it’s because somewhere along the line you learned that it’s best to have all the answers all the time.

Not only is this impossible, it might not even be the best way to go about it.

I’m fortunate to work at a place that embraces the “I don’t know.” Buffer’s values highlight the fact that it’s okay to not have all the answers. We phrase this in terms of curiosity, improvement, listening, and humility.

Here are some choice phrases pulled from our Buffer culture slide deck:

You take the approach that everything is a hypothesis and you could be wrong

You approach new ideas thinking, “What can we do right now?”

You are suggestive rather than instructive, replacing phrases such as “certainly” and “undoubtedly” with “perhaps,” “I think,” and “my intuition right now”

You seek first to understand, then to be understood

Does your company share this belief? I’d be interested to hear which perspective your work takes on the matter of authority and knowledge.

It certainly helps to have an employer so openly embrace the idea of not knowing. And at the same time, there is power in the individual assertion that you don’t have to know it all. Even if your company isn’t outspoken on the matter, you can change your personal philosophy and give yourself a break from chasing authority. You may find this new mindset refreshing, among the many other benefits of embracing the power of “I don’t know.”

3 incredible effects of embracing what you don’t know

“I don’t know” and trust

Jason Freedman of 42 Floors shared a story about a competitive hiring process where one of the key deciding factors for the candidate was Freedman’s openness about not knowing an answer. When Freedman said, “I don’t know,” the candidate was sold. Here’s the reason why:

When people say I don’t know, it lends credibility to everything else that they’ve said.

Think about someone who always seems to have an answer for everything. You’ve maybe wondered along the way if he or she really could know all this stuff, right? But when you admit to not knowing, you give power to the things you do know. People learn to trust your responses to questions and to know they can get an honest answer from you at all times.

“I don’t know” and innovation

Stay hungry, stay foolish

This quote from entrepreneur Sahar Hashemi plays off the idea of embracing the power of “I don’t know” as it relates to curiosity—a key to innovation. Hashemi believes that being clueless and curious is essential to entrepreneurship. Without it, you no longer dream, tinker, and ask “why not.” In this way, knowing too much can actually be a detriment.

“I don’t know” and creativity

Would you hire someone with little experience in your industry? Common sense might say no; however, some would argue that inexperience might be just the thing a company needs.

Nils Sköld writes about this idea on Medium, telling how a lack of knowledge can actually be an ideal way to spur creativity and think outside the norms of an industry. Have you experienced anything similar to this?

My theory is this: when you know everything about an industry, you don’t know whats good for it. What an industry needs is people who have no idea on how it operates. People that don’t know that there are any rules. While it is good to break rules and to push boundaries, it’s much better to just never know that any rules exists.

Our key to not knowing: “We don’t know the answer. Let’s find out!”

In our experience, there’s a bit more to the matter of not knowing than simply embracing our lack of knowledge.

We’d be sunk if we stopped at “I don’t know.” That’s why we follow up by finding out.

Much of our blog content comes from experience. We hunt for answers to our questions (and your questions!) and we report back with what we find.

What we lack in authority on social media, we make up for by seeking input from our audience in chats and conversations and by approaching our social updates with a curious, open attitude.

Q1: Before we get into a discussion of what's next, how do you define digital marketing? #bufferchat

— Buffer (@buffer) July 16, 2014

Embracing “I don’t know” is an opportunity to discover. We’ve found that having an attitude of improvement, experimentation, and curiosity makes it such that there’s no need to worry about not knowing this or that.

If we don’t know, we’ll find out.

Over to you: In what ways has not knowing benefited you?

Having authority in your industry is great, but it isn’t the be-all, end-all for growth. You can enjoy authority in many number of different ways from being the expert of experts to being the expert of your unique perspective.

We’ve embraced the power of “I don’t know,” and we’ve seen the benefits for trust, innovation, creativity, discovery, and so much more.

How do you feel about the topic of authority? Is it acceptable to embrace “I don’t know” in your workplace? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experience in the comments.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy our Buffer Blog newsletter. Receive each new post delivered right to your inbox, plus our can’t-miss weekly email of the Internet’s best reads. Sign up here.

Image sources: mikecogh, Crew

“Lean and making money”, to one person completely logical, to the other completely the opposite. There can be major differences of opinion when it comes to revenue generation and cost saving around the implementation of lean within an organization. In this article, I explore a few of the ideas – and misconceptions – that exist around what exactly ‘lean’ can and should be expected to achieve.

Lean is a cost-cutting measure
This is absolutely the wrong idea. It’s very common, particularly in the healthcare sector, to hear “Lean is going to help us save some serious money “. If that’s the idea, please stop immediately – there’s no point in continuing. Cost cuttings are done by drawing red lines through a budget behind a desk. Savings are created by looking together at how you can make a process faster and smarter. It may not sound it, but that’s a big difference. To try and underline the difference, you can think of it this way: Cuts are one-way traffic, savings involve turning a cross roads into a roundabout.

Lean costs money
One of the reasons why organizations can be reluctant to start with lean is the thought that it costs a lot of money. Well, it certainly does involve costs – but it doesn’t cost any extra money. When an employee starts working on a problem, he or she needs to find time to invest. This time is a small investment that will deliver an improvement in a process. This improvement in the process then has the potential to return way more to the organization than the initial outlay. It will keep delivering time savings as long as the process continues to run.

Look at companies like SEW-Eurodrive. They worked, before they began with lean, with more than 400 employees. After 12 years, there are now less than 200 people working in the factory, and not one person has been let go. That’s a lot of manpower available for other value-adding activities. They’ve decreased the shop floor by 60% and run double the production volume compared to the year before they started with lean. And furthermore, the employees are very happy with the improvements, the total sick leave staying low. For me, these numbers paint a pretty clear picture of whether lean ‘costs’ money or not.

When to do the sums
There are many different ways to try and calculate the savings generated by lean within organizations. One may choose not to look any further than the pure financial impact the changes have had in the business. Another might choose for the Lean 6 Sigma approach. Lean 6 Sigma involves using a business case for a share of the lean-related projects rolled out by a Green or Black Belt (experts in the Lean-methodology). The aim is to make a clear justification for the resources that were deployed. It makes it possible to begin the project with a reasonable idea of the potential cost savings that can be expected and promotes good monitoring of actual expenses and returns. In addition to these projects, there will be a wide range of improvements that aren’t monitored but that also deliver savings and are not directly visible. Individually they may not have the greatest impact, but if they can be counted up together, their impact often becomes extremely clear.

Quality and cash
Lean can also be implemented to improve product quality and align products better with customer requirements – the added extra here being the increased availability of cash for other activities. In the healthcare sector, increasing quality can free up money for further product development or to increase service for particular patient groups.

Lean is thus, in short, about savings not cuttings, and savings are done by looking carefully at how processes can become more intelligent and more efficient. Lean doesn’t cost you any extra money, and the application of Lean 6 Sigma can help you keep a close eye on both your outgoings and incomes. And, as a further step, think carefully about opportunities to drive improvements in product or service quality. In short, lean offers huge potential to do things better. As such, it should seriously be considered to help tackle inefficiency and and remove bottlenecks – whatever industry you’re active in.

How often do you review your content marketing metrics and report results to your leadership team?

That question to marketers is like when a dentist asks you, “Have you been flossing regularly?” Usually the answer is what they want to hear and a lie, or it’s what they don’t want to hear and the truth.

No matter if you are a CMO of a large Fortune 500, own or run a small business, or are in charge of marketing at any size company – keeping and reporting metrics is very valuable.

If you’re running a content marketing campaign and expect to see results, you have to measure and report results, and do so often. A recent article from eMarketer revealed that only 33% of marketing executive report results weekly or daily. The rest report results less frequently, some as little as quarterly or annually.

Why is that? As the article announces, “85% of marketers worldwide said the pressure to measure marketing’s business value and contribution had increased.”

Of course there’s going to be pressure when it comes to marketing, but by not measuring and reviewing metrics, you’re blindly leading your strategy down the path to failure. The good news is that by signing up for BoostSuite, you’ll receive a Weekly Web Marketing Report via email, instantly putting you on par with the top one third of marketers in the world. What a great, quick way to get ahead and show your leadership team how you’re performing!

At the least, you should also make sure you set up Google Analytics and start tracking the following metrics on a weekly basis:

1. Organic Search Traffic

One of the main reasons you’re publishing content on your own website and optimizing it using specific keywords is to drive more qualified traffic in via the organic search results.

This traffic channel is one of the most effective when it comes to seeing results in the form of new subscribers, customers, and evangelists. Your potential prospects trust the results that Google returns when they conduct a search looking to answer their question or solve their issue, making this metric very important.

To find this metric in Google Analytics, set your date range then head to “Acquisition > Channels”. This will show you what percentage of your overall traffic is coming from organic search results during that period.

Click on “Organic Search” to see which keywords people are coming to your site for most often. You can leverage these in your content marketing strategy in the future by adding them to your blog articles and other site content. One thing to note is the dreaded “not provided” keywords. These are keywords that Google isn’t giving to you, which really stinks.

BoostSuite doesn’t limit any keywords, so if you want more information about these “not provided” keywords, my suggestion is to set up Google Webmaster Tools and then export your keywords from there and add them to BoostSuite to find out which are best for your content marketing strategy based on competition and search volume.

Another great idea is to find which pages visitors are landing on the most by going to “Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages”. This will show you a table of your landing pages that you can sort by pageviews over time. Find any blog posts in there any leverage them by testing new calls to action or promote them more via social media.

2. Referral Traffic

Another content marketing technique that is extremely effective at sending qualified traffic to your site is guest blogging, or co-marketing. The traffic you receive from your co-marketing partners is known as “referral traffic”. The way to measure referral traffic in Google Analytics is through “Acquisition > All Referrals”. That’s the list of sites that are referring traffic your way.

If you have the opportunity to get your content and brand in front of a brand new audience, then you should definitely do it! The more sites you add your content to, the larger your audience will become. BoostSuite makes this easy by automatically sharing your content with potential partners who are already working with your best prospective customers.

Also, each article you share on a guest blog will (should) include a link back to your homepage, showing the search engines that you have another vote of confidence when it comes to the context of the article. You need that link juice to show the search engines you’re an authority on the subject matter.

Keep track of which sites are referring the most traffic to your site week to week and reach out to them to see how you can increase their referrals even more by exchanging more content or offering some sort of promotion to both readerships.

3. Conversions

Conversions are often the most difficult content marketing metric to set up, keep track of, and report, but it’s essential that you do because they’re the most important and indicative metric for success and growth of your business.

When someone visits to your site, they’re considered a visitor. When they convert into a lead or customer, that action is known as a conversion. To view conversions in Google Analytics, you’ll go to the “Conversions” section, but first, you’ll need to set up some conversion goals.

It’s best to set up as many conversion goals as you can because then you can see which goals are being completed most often. Once you know that, you can leverage that information in your content marketing even further.

For example, if you find your newsletter subscription form converts 10x more than your lead generation form, then in your next blog post, request that your readers sign up for your newsletter instead of your lead generation form. New subscribers can be just as valuable as leads because they can share and engage with your content, leading to more leads and customers down the road.

By tracking and reporting these three metrics every week, your team will have a better idea of what’s working and what isn’t working in your content marketing strategy. That’s what it’s all about. Figuring out what works best for your audience based on actual data and then leveraging that in your strategy moving forward!

One of the downsides of using Google Analytics is that it isn’t perfect. The data should be used as a trend, not as an absolute because sometimes there are inaccuracies caused by errors. Some of these errors you can fix yourself, while some need to be fixed by your webmaster. These inaccuracies can frustrate us as marketers who need our data to be accurate in order to extrapolate what to do next.

To ensure that all of your metrics are being properly tracked, sign up for a BoostSuite account now. Our tracking code is 100% accurate when it comes to tracking and measuring data.

Also, BoostSuite will tell you what your next best content marketing and co-marketing moves are based on the data analysis from your traffic and keywords, so you won’t have to spend any more time glossing over analytics. You can just log in and get right to work sharing content on your most opportunistic keywords and optimizing your conversion funnel. You’ll be able to trust that you’re working on the best possible items to better your marketing results.

After all is said and done, no marketer has EVER been afraid to report awesome increases in their content marketing metrics!

Are there any other content marketing metrics that you track and review on a week-to-week basis? Let’s hear them in the comments along with why you keep them!

A new study by Forrester finds that only 4% of B2B content marketers are “true masters of content marketing.” The other 96% are “doing” content marketing, but not at an advanced level.

This stat reveals a disconcerting trend. Most B2B marketers think they are more advanced in content than they are in application.

As Forrester puts it, “Content marketing self-confidence outpaces actual capabilities.” 51% of those surveyed rate their content marketing as “very mature,” yet the vast majority (87%) feel challenged to produce content that actually engages. Moreover, the majority of marketers report creating content to supply specific channels (like websites, social media, landing pages) individually. This disrupts the flow of information and and results in a disjointed buyers journey.

“While just more than half of respondents rated their content marketing practices as mature, we weren’t convinced that actual practices would prove their perceptions to be correct,” wrote Laura Ramos, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

The research is important because it highlights a dangerous discrepancy, and illuminates the fact that a majority of marketers must evolve and strengthen their content marketing operations to stay competitive.

Content marketing is a crucial strategy in today’s “new buyer journey” landscape. As business buyers can now access an abundance of digital information at any time, they’re empowered to make the majority of their purchase decisions on their own. To attract and engage these more knowledgeable buyers, companies must transition from product-centric tactics to trust-building tactics.

The companies that are doing content marketing well, will get in front of their customers. The ones who aren’t, will fail.

Forrester suggests that marketers focus on the following five areas to strengthen content marketing efforts and deliver better revenue results:

1. Consistently incorporate customer feedback into editorial processes.
2. Document the content strategy and hold business teams accountable to guidelines.
3. Establish an editorial board chartered with extending best practices companywide.
4. Arm field teams with technology and processes that fuel demand and manage content.
5. Refine metrics to demonstrate clear correlations between content and business outcomes.

The easiest way to integrate these recommendations into practice is to build out a real content marketing operation. A content marketing operation is the organized process for producing, distributing, and analyzing content while increasing productivity, delivering measurable results and reducing organizational friction. Investments in content marketing software can aid in the execution of these steps, automate processes, and ensure trackable returns.

The Forrester study, published yesterday, surveyed 113 B2B senior-level marketers. It features additional interviews with 10 companies to provide examples of content marketing strategy in action, and is available for purchase ($499) on their website.

One struggle I see marketers dealing with on a consistent basis is driving social traffic back to their websites. A lot of content either performs well on your domain or performs well in the social world, but bridging the gap is difficult.

One solution is to create quizzes, which are highly share-able on social media but can also drive traffic to specific pages on your main website. Here are three ways of using quizzes to drive social traffic back to your domain.

3 ways to use quizzes

Provide more information on your site.

A quiz titled “Which Cake are you?” is responsible for driving 10,000 new visits back to Food52.com from Facebook and Twitter.

Each result of the quiz was a different type of cake, and included a link to check out the recipe for that cake on the Food52 website. It was a subtle but effective method for driving people from social media to the quiz and then to the Food52 main site.

Explain the quiz personalities in detail on your site.

Personality quizzes are great fun because we learn something about ourselves while also being entertained. Grist.org took those elements one step further by encouraging quiz takers to learn more about their personalities by clicking through to the main website from social media.

Their quiz “What Type of Environmentalist are you?” results in one of several different environmentalist types. In each result is a link to learn more about your environmentalist type, which leads to an article on the Grist.org site.

In one week, the quiz was shared 1,700 times on Facebook and led to over 5000 new visits to pages on Grist.org which were direct follow-ups of the quiz results.

Provide an opportunity to connect.

Worth Global Style Network does analytics for fashion brands like Puma and Tommy Hilfiger. Their customers are large brands that are always interested in increasing their bottom lines.

WGSN created a quiz “What’s your customer type?” and shared it out on social media. In each result of the quiz was a short description of the company’s customer type along with a call to action to “get in touch” and learn more.

Of course that call to action led back to the WGSN website where potential customers could learn more. In just one week this quiz drove 1500 visits back to the WGSN site from Twitter and Facebook, resulting in 300 new leads.

How to go about making a good quiz.

Picking a topic.

In order to maximize the exposure your quiz gets in the social world and in turn maximize traffic back to your website, you need a quiz topic that resonates with your audience. Here are a couple of tips for accomplishing that.

• Write for one group of people. Don’t try to reach everyone in one fell swoop – it won’t work. For example, the Grist environmental quiz certainly won’t appeal to anyone who isn’t passionate about the environment, but the people who are passionate about the environment will thoroughly enjoy it. Don’t be afraid to exclude people from your quiz, even a small group that is very excited about your quiz can spread it very far.
• Talk to a single person. Think of one person who would really enjoy your quiz and write to them. This will not only help with coming up with topics, but also with the overall tone of your quiz. Also, if you can’t think of one person who would enjoy your quiz topic, it’s probably no good.

Writing a quiz title.

80% of people will choose to click on your quiz based on the title – show the title some respect. After looking at over 1500 quizzes, here are some template that consistently perform well.

• The “actually” title. “How Much Do You Actually Know About World Cup Soccer?” This quiz is really just a knowledge test, but by adding a challenge aspect to it, the quiz becomes much more fun.
• The Celebrity Comparison title. “Which Celebrity Would Play you in the movie version of your life?” We are naturally wired to compare ourselves to celebrities, so this quiz template plays right into that. To make one like this, you start with the Meyers-Briggs personality quiz and then swap the personalities with celebrities.
• The Which Blank are You? Title. “Which Type of Cake are You?” from Food 52 got 20,000 views in two days, “Which Yoga Pose are You?” from StyleCraze has amassed 40,000 views. We like to find out what we are. Again, this is just a personality quiz with the personalities replaced by whatever your quiz is about, whether that’s cakes or yoga.

Creating quiz questions.

The questions of a quiz are what sets quizzes apart from the loads of other content produced every day. In quiz questions you’re able to speak directly to your visitors and carry on a conversation unlike articles and videos where you are addressing a large audience all at once. Here are a few tips to maximize this advantage.

• Let your personality shine. One way to build a connection is letting your personality shine. People enjoy talking to one another, and by making that conversation fun, you’ll establish a stronger connection.
• Get personal. We enjoy talking about ourselves. A full 40% of our everyday conversation is about ourselves, and when we talk about ourselves it actually stimulates our brains. Don’t be afraid to ask personal questions – just not too personal.

Building quiz results.

The results of a quiz is where you get to use the information you know about the quiz taker to provide them with a personal and powerful outcome. The goal here is to pique the interest of your quiz taker so they’ll be more likely to click through and check out your website. Here’s how to pull that off.

• Be positive. A big part of the reason the Food52 quiz got shared so much is because every result was very positive. First off, each person was a kind of cake, which is pretty good to start with. Then, the quiz writer made the cake descriptions both personal and very positive to the point where people were proud to share their cake result.
• Controversy is okay. The Grist quiz was met with some serious controversy. Some people were very happy with their results and others were angry. The quiz racked up hundreds of comments with people getting in heated debates. However, the result was over 2200 total social shares. It’s okay to be polarizing – it will get the conversation flowing.
• Tell a story. Specifically tell me my story. After quiz takers answer your questions, you have some valuable information about them. Use that information to tell me my story. Stories are a natural form for humans and will make your results both memorable and share-able.
• Prepare to be shared. There is a specific formula that works best for sharing quizzes. It works like this: “I got (my result)(title of the quiz)” which would look like “I got chocolate decadence – which type of cake are you?” When creating your results make sure to have result titles that work well with this formula.

Getting social traffic back to your domain where analytics and your sales funnels can go to work is a constant struggle. Quizzes provide one method for pushing social visitors back onto your domain – All it takes is a bit of strategy and a strong quiz. To jump in and try it for yourself, make a quiz here – you might just be surprised by how well it goes!

   

Related Stories

• Be the editor of your brand
• Content Lessons From The Real Pros
• Eight tips to kick summer’s butt

Everyone is looking for the "secret," the "trick," the "one thing," and so on that will make their lives easier. Whether it's losing weight, looking younger, getting more Twitter followers, or generating more leads, we'd all love to have a quick and easy way to make it happen.

The truth is the Easy button does not exist (sorry, Staples). There are no secrets or tricks. Everything takes time and effort. Everything is a process.

And sometimes the thing that's needed to achieve a goal is ignored. Consider marketing professional services. People know they should focus their efforts on specific markets with a targeted set of services, but they don't, writes Michael W. McLaughlin in his article The 'Secret' of Professional Services Marketing.

Author: Josh Hill

When I first heard about marketing automation, I was running demand generation programs for an economic research firm. One year after I’d implemented it, marketing automation had saved me 1,832 hours across the entire team — the equivalent of one full-time hire.

To give you a little background, I’d previously been working in sales, where I’d learned the importance of developing a relationship with your audience through educational, entertaining materials, rather than immediately delivering a hard sale.

But going for a softer sell also meant that many leads were increasingly “not ready” to be handed off to sales, leading to pushback from my former colleagues on the sales team. We developed basic lead ranking, so that the sales team could distinguish between qualified and unqualified leads, and we trained the sales team to use sales automation tools effectively, identifying the leads they did want, and providing feedback to the marketing team.

But after a particularly successful promotion, we were faced with a mixed blessing: more leads than we could accurately rank using our current system. That’s when marketing automation appeared on my radar. Here’s how it saved my team major hours:

• Deduping. Updating leads from events, webinars, and external systems was a huge pain point. We were spending eight hours (or more) after each webinar just to properly dedupe and update existing records. With advanced marketing automation, this can be done in minutes.
• Autoresponders. This made each lead feel we acknowledged their request — regardless of how many leads we had.
• Automatic lead routing. With thousands of leads held back from sales in a nurture state, and hundreds more each day, I needed automation that could save me and my colleagues time better spent on creative work.
• Email deliverability. I needed a platform that would improve list performance and track individual leads’ engagement. Previously, I had only limited tools across several systems.
• Seamless integration with sales data. This ensures all the right activities and campaigns are updated in both your sales and marketing platforms.
• Sales funnel reports. I was doing this manually in Excel — very time-consuming, and prone to error. With marketing automation pulling these reports, my team would have necessary visibility into sales funnel data.

Now, let’s take a deeper dive into the three biggest wins — deduplication, autoresponders, and automatic lead routing.

Marketing Automation’s First Big Win: Deduplication

Deduping your database is a key data cleanliness task. It helps focus your sales team, while also ensuring a lead’s interactions are properly recorded. To give just one example, my colleague and I used to waste hours checking and dedupe webinar registrations. If we missed a duplicated record, we often annoyed a sales person who owned the original lead or we missed a chance to qualify a hot prospect.

Once we had marketing automation, we simply fed our spreadsheets into the system, getting all of our work done in minutes. Because we were running two webinars per month, often with 800 registrants each, that is a clear savings of at least 16 hours per month. That’s 12 months x 16 hours = 192 hours per year, on webinar dedupes alone. I also saved about four hours per live events, which I ran 20 of, saving me 80 hours per year.

In summary, deduplication capabilities saved the company 272 hours per year.

Marketing Automation’s Second Big Win: Autoresponders

Many software-as-a-service (SaaS) products and many premium content products offer free trial periods to build the funnel as well as the email list. The challenge is that marketers then have to sort the wheat from the chaff. I make it a point that every legitimate inquiry receives a response. Even if the lead is not qualified, I believe their first experience should be excellent. You never know who will be in a position to buy in five years.

Before we used marketing automation, I had to go through my regional email queue and my regional trial queue to sort up to 100 requests per day. Even with templates and an experienced sales mentality, I easily spent 10 hours per week sorting and routing emails and records. Now multiply this by two other managers and you’ve got 30 hours per week of time. (30 x 52 weeks = 1,560 marketer hours per year — almost a full-time hire!) Sure, an “intern” or “associate” could do this — if we had one. But why have anyone do this when you can use marketing automation?

So I built a series of workflows based on campaign codes, territory rules, and sales campaigns to do the following:

1. Send an automatic response providing further details on the product in question, asking them nicely to reply if they were serious. Students received a special response, while spammers received nothing.
2. Route inbound leads based on urgency factors such as real email addresses, product, location, and if they requested a call. This is important! Always make sure people can still request a direct call so the lead can qualify faster. And always review the leads to avoid ignoring a hot lead.
3. Use lead scoring to help rank leads by activity and target audience qualification.

Setting this up took a few days and a few tests, but I gained back 1,560 hours each year, and 10 hours per week for three of us. What could your team do with 30 extra hours each week?

Marketing Automation’s Third Win: Automatic Lead Routing

If you have a sizeable database of prospects and customers, it can be tough to identify engaged or sales ready leads. With a marketing automation solution, you can easy score, rank, and route prospects who are engaging with your content. With marketing automation, you can then send the most promising leads (those who are engaged and in your target audience) over to sales as Marketing Qualified Leads.

Why is that important? According to a 2011 CSO Insight Survey, salespeople report spending 24% of their time researching leads and 41% of their time selling. If you rank leads based on predetermined criteria, you save time for your sales team to call more leads, and more qualified leads.

At the end of our first year with marketing automation, the solution had saved my team 1,832 hours per year across the entire team — or, as I’ve said, the equivalent of one full-time hire. Questions about how marketing automation can save you time? Drop them in the comments below.

---

How to Double Your Marketing Team…WITHOUT New Hires was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

In regards to analytics and reporting, B2B marketers tend to focus on early-funnel leads and their conversion. That’s practical; generating enough qualified leads remains the #1 concern for many marketers and their organizations. However, there is much more useful information to be gained through careful reporting and analysis of key metrics at all stages of the customer lifecycle. For example, it is marketing’s role to build awareness among prospects for the company and its products, so that the top of the funnel collects enough of those convertible leads. Similarly, marketing has a role to play in customer marketing that helps in retention and upsell.

A traditional sales funnel sketches the progressive relationship between buyer and seller from the sales rep’s point of view. The “buyer’s journey” is a recreation of the steps a buyer goes through as they move from sticking with the status quo to committing to change, to researching and then deciding on potential solutions, negotiation, purchase, and post-purchase – the entire lifecycle. Sales doesn’t get involved in this journey until fairly late in the process, but marketing can, and should be there for every step of the way.

With this broader B2B customer lifecycle marketing view under consideration, we’re going to review the five sequential stages in the B2B marketing lifecycle, and discuss the metrics for each that may give us the key insights we want. In Part 1, we cover the first two stages: Attract and Capture.

The five stages of lifecycle marketing

1. Attract: Getting your brand and product/service known in the marketplace, and attracting people who may be interested
2. Capture: Capitalizing on the prospect’s initial attraction to you and gaining enough of the prospect’s information to start a new relationship
3. Nurture: Progressive communications to answer questions and educate the prospect while building trust and reinforcing need, so that the lead continues to consider buying from the product category in general – and your product in particular
4. Convert: The lead becomes a sales opportunity; you convince the lead to buy your product over both the status quo and your competition
5. Expand: This stage includes retaining your customer base, generating up sells, and inspiring advocacy

At each stage there are factors you can measure that will let you evaluate how efficient your efforts are, so that you can improve them. Now, let us dive in to each lifecycle stage and explore the finer questions and key metrics that are relevant in each.

I. Attract

The marketing lifecycle starts with attracting relevant people to your company brand and products. The typical B2B company uses some combination of content marketing, advertising, social media, tradeshows, media relations, and optimizes web efforts with search engine optimization.

Key questions you want to answer in this stage include:

• How many people visit your site?
• How attractive is your content?
• How popular is your brand?

To answer those questions, you need to select the metrics that are most relevant for your business and track them consistently, say monthly, to see a pattern. Consider:

1. People visiting your web site: Track the number of individuals visiting your web site during the month. You can refer to external sources such as Google Analytics. (If you are an Act-On customer, this metric is provided in the Act-On platform.)
2. Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who enter your site and exit it on the same page – “bounce” – without visiting any other pages. By itself, bounce rate means little. If the time spent on your site is short, it could mean that your content did not engage them or was not what they were actually looking for. On the other hand, it also could mean that they were looking for just one quick thing and they found it (e.g., your address). If the time on the page is long, then the reader was definitely engaged, and found what they were looking for on this one page. Note that if your company name contains a very commonly looked for word (“deal”, “Gaga”, “Brazil”) you may get more bounces.
3. Social media followers: For this metric, select a group of social media sites you are actively participating in and sum up the number of followers. Stick to the same sites as you track over time.
4. Social shares: The number of shares in the given tracking period for each social media site you track.
5. Number of pieces of new content on your site: This could include blog posts, web pages, white papers, webinar descriptions and registration forms, data sheets, and so on.
6. Number of press releases that your PR department creates and distributes.
7. Number of events that your company had an active presence in during the time period; these could be virtual or real-world.
8. Google ranking: This is the most visible result of all your online activities. Pick a key word or phrase that is most relevant for your business (for Act-On, it is “Marketing Automation;” for NBA.com it would be “basketball”). Type that phrase into Google periodically and see where your site ranks. If your SEO/content efforts are consistent and more competitive than your competition’s, your company’s position will probably rise over time.
9. Search volume for brand: Use Google Trends to check the trend in searches for your brand performed by people directly in the search engine. Studies indicate this is a convenient proxy for online brand awareness. Note that the values shown in Google Trends are dynamic – therefore, the individual values for a given month will keep changing, requiring historical updates. The real insight is from the trend line graph.

The Google trend line for the keyword phrase “Miley Cyrus.”

The bottom line for “Attract” lifecycle activities is to measure activity so you know what works to increase your visibility and share of audience, so you can make the best decisions about increasing the distribution and appeal of your content and brand.

II. Capture

Okay, you’ve attracted people to your website. Now what? Unless you find a way to get their contact information, you cannot start a dialog with them. That is where the “Capture” lifecycle stage comes in. The key questions you want to answer at this stage are:

• How many content consumers became known prospects?
• Which calls to action are the most effective? With which audiences?
• Which channels are the most effective in conveying messages?

Key metrics that help to answer these questions include:

1. Conversion rate on Calls to Action (CTA): This number shows you the effectiveness of your CTA buttons in converting unknown visitors to known visitors through form fills.
2. Cost per Click (CPC) and Cost per form fill: If you are using online advertising tactics like pay-per-click (PPC), these metrics are relevant.
3. Number of net new prospects: The number of new prospects (from all sources) for the time period being considered.
4. Leads by source: The lead source has a direct implication on the conversion potential of a lead. (Incidentally, tracking lead sources is another key benefit of using a marketing automation platform.)

You can determine the conversion rate of CTA by dividing the number of form fills (“submits”) by the number of unique views. In the Act-On platform, the conversion metric is available under Reports > Forms & Media reports.

The bottom line at this stage is to know what’s working and what isn’t, so you can plan ways to increase known prospects in the sales funnel. These will become your leads.

Stay tuned for Customer Lifecycle Marketing Reporting, Part 2, in which we’ll discuss the concerns and metrics for nurturing, late-stage conversion, and expansion.

And in the meantime…if you’re interested in how digital marketing affects the sales funnel – and have 15 minutes to spare – check out the Digital Marketing Funnel Essentials Toolkit, which will guide you to understanding the basics of digital marketing in just 15 minutes.

Inbound marketing for B2B lead generation has now become a science for marketers. The shift towards continuous improvement using data means that marketers, who are often thought of as creative types, are now being called upon to apply a certain amount of science to their art, in order to create an efficient lead generation machine. Effective inbound marketers are taking on an analyst role and, they accept and embrace their responsibility for generating revenue, not just leads. They examine and interpret the results of their efforts so they can make strategic business decisions. They adapt their marketing efforts where needed and then measure those changes to see if they’re having a positive impact.

At g2m Solutions we think, that if you’re a marketer or about to hire a marketer, you should be looking at a set of skills to develop or for your potential employee to display in order to be successful. Find our top 5 skill list below.

1. Knowledge of social media platforms

It’s hard to get a job as a B2B marketer these days without knowledge of how social media platforms work in order to help build engagement with potential and existing customers. For example:

• Twitter provides the opportunity to share the headlines and key points of your business blog as well as other key influencers within your industry.
• LinkedIn establishes a more in-depth, professional connection, which we’ve found yields more conversions than any other social platform.

An effective marketer will develop an in-depth social media communications strategy. This will achieve multiple things including determining the messages and the tone with which the business will communicate to their buyer persona; finding out where their personas ‘hang out’; and identifying influencers to engage with in order to build up a following and create opportunities for sharing content.

2. Writing and editing skills

The single most constant requirement in inbound marketing is content. Creating remarkable, educational, compels-a-stranger-to-hand-over-their-contact-details content. Content is not necessarily a 600-word article on your business blog, it can range from ebooks, videos, webinars to slideshares or infographics. But for the purposes of getting my point across within this blog post, I’m referring to creating the written word, namely blogs and ebooks.

Through effective and well planned out SEO, remarkable content is what will bring visitors to your website, drive up your website ranking in Google and attract links from other sites. An important skill is being able to write well and be a good editor. Marketers need to be able to produce highly engaging and locally relevant content for their targeted buyer persona that will convert visitors to leads and leads into customers.

3. Analytical skills

With inbound marketing everything is measurable but it’s what you do with all of this data that makes you different from your competitors. A key skill is to understand how all marketing tactics tie directly into a company’s revenue. Marketers will:

• Invest in the right technology to assist them with analysing data and use it to respond dynamically to strangers, prospects and customers.
• Have a structured change process in order to incrementally improve their campaigns.

4. Matching marketing strategy with business objectives

Transforming strategy into action is a skill that takes practice. Knowing the importance of aligning a marketing strategy with the business objectives, and actually doing just that, is an even greater skill. This allows you to develop a set of tactics and create a methodical plan to not only generate sales qualified leads but convert them into customers.

5. Always wanting to learn

Lastly, NEVER stop learning. At no point should an inbound marketer ever think “I’ve learned everything there is to know about inbound marketing.” The digital world is forever evolving and marketers need to evolve with it. An effective inbound marketer will take time, whether it’s every day or every week, to read and learn what’s happening in the world of inbound marketing and apply it to their daily work life. There will always be something new to learn…always.

An excellent inbound marketer knows the importance of measurement and will have a rock solid process and methodology that aligns with their business’ objectives to help drive real change. With the right resources, they will be able to plan, design and build a cost effective B2B content and lead generation engine that converts visitors to leads and leads into customers.

There are plenty of skills that we haven’t covered here as there’s only so much you can say in 1 blog! Do you think we’ve left out any important skills an inbound marketer needs to have? We’d love to hear what you think, so please leave your comments below.

To enter the next phase and learn the critical steps you should take to build a powerful lead generation engine that will deliver a consistent stream of quality leads for your salesteam, download our free ebook ‘How to Win the Race for Quality Leads’ by clicking on the button below.

Social proof is a concept that is as old as time. It has just begun to gain traction amongst online marketers as it explains a lot about the success of some online ventures, and the failure of others.

To put it simply:

“Social proof in a social media context is the theory that accounts that have high follower numbers are trusted and followed more often”

It can be used to build trust in a social media environment for your business.

Social proof marketing is not new but often forgotten.

Peer pressure

One of the earliest influences on human development is something we have all experienced…”peer pressure”. When one person within your group of peers pressures you into doing something, you’re not so likely to do it.

When many people within your peer group are pressuring you to do something, you’re much more likely to do it. This will escalate as more people join in.

The world of social media is, as you’d guess, much like the real world. In a social media context, social proof comes into play when web users see that a large number of people already follow, like, shared, or commented on a piece of content. The increased activity is seen as something desirable to join in on.

What video are you more likely to watch?

Another view of social proof is the idea that people will refer to the past actions of other when they’re unsure as to what they should do. When on YouTube, if someone isn’t sure they should comment on a video or not, a large number of comments will say to them “Yes, you definitely should.” No, or few, comments will say “No, not worth your time.”

The search below was for “social media advice,” who are you more likely to watch when you look to viewer numbers?

Let’s take a look at a more practical setting that we’re all familiar with… television. TV shows have been using social proof for decades.

Watch a sitcom with canned laughter, or laugh tracks, in the background. When you hear those people laughing you’re more prone to laugh as well, increasing your enjoyment of the show and the chance that you’ll watch it more often.

Examples of social proof

There are a number of excellent examples of social proof over on this blog. I’ll summarize them in point form so you can quickly expand your knowledge here before clicking over:

• Facebook Sponsored stories rapidly increase exposure which leads to more likes, and even crossovers with other social platforms due to their recognition – even algorithms recognize social proof.
• A key guest blog on a relevant website can increase sales better than an article in the New York Times, or a spot on CNN.
• Klout is a successful social media tool that actually only measures your social proof.
• Yelp’s entire designs is centered around social proof – higher star ratings and better comments are a result of customer reviews. You’re more likely to go when more people have given it a high rating – just like peer pressure.
• Bloggers have been promoting their number of subscribers for years. More subscribers = more trustworthy.
• Endorsements on your website from major news outlets is a HUGE social proof. If you’re blog says “appeared on CNN, ABC, PBS, The Washington Post” along the bottom, expect your social proof to increase dramatically.
• Customer testimonials have been used in commercials for years. Some real, some fake – both are examples of social proof.

These are all more advanced forms of social proof. That most immediate one, and the one that people will see the most often and make the highest number of judgements on, is quite simply your follower numbers.

A low number of Twitter followers leads to few people taking you seriously. Few subscribers on YouTube leads to people thinking that your videos aren’t any good.

What aspects of social proof should you focus on for success?

We just spoke about your follower numbers as a key aspect of social proof, but what else do you need to think about?

Here are 5 points to consider:

1. Positive social proof is better than negative

Negative social proof is the type of bullying behavior that we all resent. To look at the most basic examples in the Twitter images below, which are you more likely to click on? You’ll never truly win people’s trust with negative social proof, just like those schoolyard bullies.

2. Money is less persuasive than social proof

A study in the Wall Street Journal showed that consumers were more likely to make decisions based on social proof than the potential of saving money.

In the study, “Your neighbors are already doing it,” was more persuasive than “you’ll save $54/month” when it came to influencing consumer behavior!

3. Use pictures to make your social proof real

Social media is the perfect platform for building social proof as it gives you a nearly limitless number of ways to attached pictures to your social proof. You can post photos with calls to action that breed comments that lead to social trust. You can take comments, with the author’s permission, and post them to your website along with their photo. You blog posts can be filled with images of success enjoyed by your products or services.

Check out this excellent tweet that shows a brand with a story to tell, and with a picture added for visual impact:

Testimonial from Brent Jackson, Academic Program Manager- Massage Therapy, CCTC http://t.co/4VgchsRZMn

— Bon Vital' (@bonvital) July 11, 2014

4. Your best social proof may be the stories you tell

Statistics are great for bored, sorry, board meetings, but they are hardly ever going to truly interest people on social media. A compelling story, from a customer with a positive experience, could be a positive social proof that increases engagement more than any other thing you do. People understand stories, people relate to stories, people are entertained by stories – statistics are work and are often ignored.

For bonus points, get one of your customers to shoot a video:

5. Influencers: The friendly online bullies

As discussed in the point form notes above, nothing quite equals the positivity of having a respected leader say something positive about your products or services. Their behavior is able to “bully” their users with their positive influence. They’re much more likely to trust your product when someone they trust speaks of it positively.

Social media is an absolute dream for this type of social proof – no more paying celebrities for an expensive commercial, just cut right to the key influencers in your industry!

Social proof is more than an ego

Social proof is something as old as the human race itself, but social signals and social media have made it something tangible for modern marketers to use. Remember the next time you make a push to increase your followers that you’re not stroking your own ego, you’re trying to show the next person that finds your account that you are worth their time and trust.

Are you guilty of making the three worst business blogging mistakes? It’s easy enough for busy small business owners and professionals to determine. Just ask these three questions:

1. Are people finding your business blog and website?

2. Are you seeing an increase in website traffic and qualified leads?

3. Are you getting sales results?

When I work with small business owners and professionals on their content marketing and blog strategies, the conversation generally starts with the statement about a lack of traction from a blog.

My first step is to review their business blog and website. Typically, what I find is one or a combination of the following:

1. The blog is not updated frequently enough, there’s not enough content with keywords, or poor website/blog design that makes search engine indexing and capturing visitors difficult, if not impossible. The result is that prospects (and new clients!) are not able to easily find you and your solutions.

• There’s no way for people to try out your services or products for free before buying; no information products available; no way for you to capture email addresses for follow-up marketing. You’re not providing an easy way for new clients to sample your services. They are not getting to experience your products or services.
• Your web pages, blog posts, ezine and other content lack benefits-driven reasons why visitors or email recipients should read, care, and act on your messages. You’re not persuading anybody to do anything.

In other words, your clients can’t find you, get to know you, or hire or buy from you. The whole point of business blogging is to get found, get known, and get clients!

The cost to small business owners and professionals who make these three worst business blogging mistakes is no/poor lead generation and no pipeline/sales.

Small business owners acknowledge this. It’s not really new news. But often they just can’t afford to hire an expensive copywriter and they’re often the one in charge of blog writing.

The good news is that each of these common blogging mistakes can be avoided with good writing skills. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. or a degree in marketing. You do have to be able to clearly communicate the benefits of your solutions (i.e. products and services.)

That means putting yourself into the mind of a potential prospect, and writing with their needs in mind. When you address the problems of your readers, you’ll be using the keywordsthey use in search directories to find solutions to their problems.

You write about them, they search for solutions, they find you (your website, your blog, or your landing pages), and everybody goes home happy.

Image via Shutterstock

Are You Ready for Inbound Marketing?

Most businesses that contact us are looking for guidance on how to get started with inbound marketing.  They know what it is, or at least have an idea, but they aren’t sure where to start or have greatly underestimated the time commitment and complexity of managing a fully executed inbound marketing plan.  If your a marketer or agency owner you know this all to well especially the underestimation of the time commitment.

Business owners are hearing the buzz of content marketing, social media marketing, and inbound marketing along with SEO and they know they want to get into the game, but don’t want to invest buy hiring an internal team or an agency and do it on the cheap.  This is where the problem starts because if you are going to dip your toe into the inbound/content marketing pool you better prepared for the water to be ice cold.

Wait until the end of September and slowly walk into your pool.  The water will be freezing. Dive in and start swimming around for a few minutes and your body will start to acclimate the temperature and the water will feel much warmer after time. This is what happens with 60% of new inbound and content marketers as it takes time to build up momentum if executed correctly.  If not executed correctly you are dead in the water from the get go.

1. What are your goals?

Goal setting is often overlooked because your not sure what to expect prior to starting, but goals are critical as you need to set a benchmark for success.  These goals need to be a specific as possible and tied to specific components of your the strategy your going to implement.

• Increase organic visitors by 25% in Q1
• Convert 100 leads in Month 1, 200 in Month 2, 300 in Month 3
• Qualify 25% of the leads each month
• Acquire 25 customers in the first 90 days post launch
• Decrease cost of customer acquisition (COCA) by 30% in first six months

The goals you set will be different than these, but they need to be in place and specific to your business model.

2. Who or whom is going to execute?

You are going to need to cover a lot of skill sets from writing and editing to social media and graphic design.  Let’s not forget about coding, website design, and a great understanding of your sales cycle/process and customer personas.

This is not a question to take lightly as a typical recent college grad (no disrespect to millenials) is not going to have all the skill sets you need to be achieve your goals and this is where most businesses fail as they hire on the cheap and think there new marketer can learn on the fly. Not to say this can’t be done, but it is very uncommon.

You need to identify the specific requirements needed and hire accordingly rather be an agency or employees.  You will need the following:

• good writers
• social media marketing (having a personal Facebook & Twitter account doesn’t qualify)
• graphic designer
• sales experience to manage workflows (lead nurturing campaigns)
• project management skills
• search engine optimization for your content, web pages, blog, and landing pages
• coding skills (at a minimum basic HTML and CSS)

3. How are you going to source this person or team?

If you don’t have these skills covered already your going to need to recruit new talent which isn’t easy unless your located in a major city filled with young digital marketers. Using social media is the best way to recruit viable talent as anyone worth their salt is actively monitoring for available positions to apply for, but if your not active on social yet then use the following resources:

• LinkedIn
• Indeed.com
• Inbound.org
• Facebook advertising
• Twitter (use hashtags like #inboundmarketing #internship #jobs)
• Recruiter (Robert Half has a division called The Creative Group that specializes in IT and digital marketers)

If you are hiring anyone with at least a couple of years experience I highly recommend that you test their skills in the 2nd interview. If your not set up to administer a test then use HubSpot’s Inbound Certification which is available to the public for free via their website.  If your applicant can’t pass this test then they most likely aren’t qualified to run your inbound marketing.

4. How much time are you willing to invest on a weekly basis?

This a big question to answer if your going to implement in-house because inbound marketing is time consuming. If you are going to rely on one person to execute you must plan this being a full-time position.  Here’s why…

• 2-5 blogs per week / 2-3 hours per blog (research, writing, editing, posting)
• On-Page SEO / 5-6 hours per week
• Planning / 2-3 hours per week (marketing plans, content calendar, social calendar)
• Email marketing / 2-3 hours per week
• Lead generation campaign / 15-20 hours per month (ebook, landing page, thank you page, form creation, CTA creation, A/B testing, workflow creation, analytics review, iteration)
• Social media management / 10-15 hours per week
• Content distribution / 2-4 hours per week

5. What is your timeframe for results?

Patience is not a virtue with inbound marketing.  It is required so plan accordingly.  Having a realistic timetable to see measurable results must be understood prior to launch as it won’t happen overnight. You will get some quick wins via social and email marketing, but it takes a long-term commitment to content and honing in on your buyer personas before you will see metrics start to spike.

If your looking for results in 60-90 days then inbound isn’t for you.  If your willing to invest and commit to 6-12 months and have a solid team in place then you will see measurable results.  Some of the most aggressive and experienced marketers and agencies take 5-6 months before seeing tangible and measurable results, so be patient and give it time.

Focusing on short-term results is why 60% plus of new content marketers quit within the first year. This is great news for people that can and are willing to be patient.

6. Is your website ready for inbound marketing?

This may seem like a crazy question, but if your site isn’t optimized with quality SEO, have a modern design theme that is simple and visual, and have a conversion path designed to drive visitors to your 2nd page (the 2nd page is the most valuable) then your not ready for inbound and may need to consult an inbound marketing agency on implementing a new design before you get started.

7. Will you need a CRM?

If you have a sales team and/or want to implement closed-loop marketing so you can accurately track your ROI then you will need a CRM.

8. How are you going to handle SEO for your site and your content?

Search engine optimization is an integral part of inbound marketing yet many think it is a totally separate tactic.  You will need to optimize your blog posts or you will miss out on hundreds or thousands of visitors.  You will need someone to conduct keyword research to build out your content calendar, optimize web pages and landing pages, and even social media posts.  Yes, social media posts and even profiles need to be optimized to maximize rankings.

Most qualified marketers can handle this, but you may need to look a little deeper for off-page SEO, schema markup, Google authorship, and link building.

Take it from me.  I started doing inbound marketing 6 1/2 years ago when I became a HubSpot customer and didn’t have the answers to these questions.  It was just me and my current COO Pat Owings and it was very tough at the start because we didn’t anticipate the time or fully understand the skill sets we needed.

The good news is we turned a $700,000 business into an $8,000,000 business in less than four years and you can do the same, but you need the right “People – Product – Process” to be successful. There is nothing more gratifying then creating your own case study, just look at Marcus Sheridan who did it wit River Pools and then launched the The Sales Lion.

Today’s marketing is not just about awareness, promotion, and lead generation – it’s about the complete customer experience and creating consistent and impactful impressions at every single touch point. This means that the role of marketing within a company is transforming and there are new rules, considerations, and collaborations necessary for ongoing success.

Marketing professionals and CMOs must take some time to understand how to navigate these new waters that fuse together marketing, customer service, and IT, and be able to work within a team that has accepted the shift of focus and wants to support the entire experience from end-to-end.

To better understand these changes, the SAP Center for Business Insight gathered a panel of experts who discussed the future of marketing and spoke more about the five key responsibilities marketing must embrace.

The first responsibility is that marketers must represent the voice of the market. Thomas Stewart, chief marketing and knowledge officer at Booz. & Co. said that, “The voice of the market has become much more cacophonous than it used to be. But many employees don’t see and hear the market at all or see only pieces of it…more and more we are asking every employee to take on more decision-making authority…they must know how to connect the voice of the market to the strategy.”

And that leads into the second responsibility, which is to synchronize the customer experience across all channels. David Edelman, partner, Marketing & Sales Practice at McKinsey & Co., points out that the digital landscape has increased the number of touch points in an experience and they must be consistent in presenting the brand. Stewart agrees and added that “…somebody has to be able to connect them [channels] all in such a way so that I, the customer, recognize that I am dealing with the same bank, bookstore, or clothing store wherever I approach it from.”

There are also the concepts of being the brand steward and capitalizing on insights. Rebecca Carr, CMO of Foxwoods Resort Casino had a very accurate observation that most companies using data aren’t “looking at a full, 360-degree view and doing it in real time.” She continued that, “…the CMO’s relationship with the CIO is so important. It’s about really being able to tap into the data that’s being [captured] across the myriad of mediums.”

The last key responsibility is that marketers must be an integrator and force multiplier across the company. This means that marketing must ensure that the brand promise is translated across every interaction. Every employee must understand, adopt, and carry out the brand in a way that makes sense.

Tom Stephenson, director at McKinsey & Co. weighed in stating that, “Marketing can be a force multiplier by creating transparency around information, data, and the market. And that last one’s the new one, because historically, that hasn’t been marketing.”

To read more about marketing and the customer experience and hear from marketing experts about the future of marketing, check out Marketing’s Customer Experience Mandate.