Rnordman

By Tibor Shanto - tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

If you follow this blog, you may have seen that several times I have suggested that those people who are not cut out for a career in sales, should seriously consider transitioning to a career in hospitality. Based on recent experiences I’ve had as a prospect, and seeing how some sales people execute their sale, I am beginning to firmly believe that there is an expert on clairvoyance, who on his blog, is recommending to his readers that those who can’t cut it as clairvoyants, strongly consider a career in sales.

The reason I say this is the number of instances I have seen where people, who have a sales title of some sort on their business card, seem to be selling by using the ESP sales methodology. That’s right, you’ve heard of SPIN, The Challenger Sale, The Objective Seller, and other sales methodologies; but all of those combined, don’t come close to the number of sellers who use the Extra Sensory Perception approach to sales and prospecting.

Here are but two examples. I was recently in the market for something that I can either buy some apps and do myself, or hire a service to do it for me. I pursued the latter, and met with a couple of providers in and around Toronto. One I met with did a good job qualifying the opportunity, there was good alignment between their offering and my objectives. For me it was a low energy day, so I was not jumping up and down every time we identified a fit, nor did I high-five them as I was leaving. We agreed that based on the exchange they would forward a proposal by the following Monday, and “follow up with in a few days of sending.” (First mistake, they should have confirmed a time, especially with people not tied to their desk.)

Here we are more than month later, no proposal – no follow up. The only conclusion I can come to is that A) they didn’t like me and didn’t want to help me, not the first time, but it was a nice slice of revenue. B) They are useless. C) They are clairvoyant, they were able to use the ESP method to know that I will not buy their service, so why waste time, effort, or router capacity to send the proposal. Although I have to believe that if they did possess this skill (power) they would have known this the minute I walked in, or even before, and not wasted any time on me.

Myself, I think they are useless, not following up is just not acceptable. Even when I have meetings where I know we will not do business now, or ever, I still send a follow up note, if for no other reason than to keep up my reputation, not being clairvoyant, I don’t know what will happen in the future, where they may end up working next year. If I have any inkling of possible business, I follow up for the obvious (may be not to some) reasons.

Another example is when sales people are tasked with calling either people who stopped by their booth at a trade show, or sales people who spend part of their day collecting cards to use for potential appointments. Time after time, I see people just look at the name on a list, or hold the business card, at a certain angle at given distance from their eyes, and the miraculously divine not only whether the person will give them an appointment, but whether they will buy.

Not possessing that skill, I find that following up by making the call often leads to the same results, no appointment – no sale; but sometimes these people invite me in, and then buy, who would’ve known?

I know it takes effort, not just the actual act of follow up, but the planning, the flow, the means, and more. Start with a plan, map out the various potential outcomes to each stage of the sale, including next steps, (plans A, B, and C). Once you have that flow, just execute, complete the plan; it won’t make non-buyers buyers, but those people on the fence, will more likely fall your way, especially when the competitors don’t follow up.
Seems to me that if you are going to start something, following up, and bringing it to whatever closure, regardless of final outcome, is just more professional and profitable than letting things hang.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto 

No one doubts anymore that Amazon Web Services is a big deal. But few appreciate just how unprecedented its growth has been. In fact, no other software business in history has grown as fast past the billion-dollar mark as AWS, as Businessweek's Ashlee Vance points out. 

See also: Amazon's Cloud Spends Less Than Its Rivals But Outpaces Them In Adoption

Such growth is particularly astounding given the doubts Amazon has had to overcome relative to security, performance and more. Today those concerns seem puny compared to the overarching convenience AWS provides developers.

Just How Big Is Amazon Web Services?

Rumors have swirled for years about AWS growth. Pacific Crest Securities now believes AWS will approach $5 billion in revenue in 2014, and top $6.7 billion in 2015.

That's big, obviously, but the growth is even more impressive: Pacific Crest expects AWS revenue to increase 58% this year to nearly $5 billion from $3.1 billion in 2013, up from just $1.9 billion in 2012. For those doing the math at home, this means AWS revenue is doubling every two years.

That's huge.

It's also much faster than other explosive software businesses have managed. (I tend to discount the Google line below since its primary business is advertising, not software; your mileage may vary.)

As Gartner has pointed out, this translates into 5X the utilized compute capacity of its next 15 largest competitors. While that multiple may have changed a bit since Gartner analyst Lydia Leong calculated it in 2013, what with Microsoft's Azure growth and Google's technical and pricing challenges. 

But AWS remains the pillar of cloud size and growth.

What Makes AWS Tick?

We've rehearsed the reasons before. While competitors like Microsoft try to paint AWS as a complex beast that is unwieldy and difficult to use, the reality is that AWS remains the developer's preferred option for "getting stuff done." Companies worry this results in them having less control.

They're right. But that's the point.

As Forrester has outlined, getting things done fast - regardless of enterprise concerns over control - is the top reason developers and their businesses turn to the cloud in the first place:

While this originally meant that developers turned to AWS mostly for dev and test workloads, Pacific Crest analyst Brent Bracelin notes that "2014 is shaping up to be a turning point for cloud adoption in the enterprise, moving beyond new application test and development to more critical workloads."

For those who think this only applies to small companies—sorry, the facts say otherwise. As just one example among many, I recently heard a senior IT executive at a Fortune 50 bank talk about how its traditional systems—while great for running the bank as is—were failing to help the bank innovate. He has therefore embraced cloud as a way to drive a closer alignment between development and operations and to accelerate the speed of application development.

We're going to see this happen again and again and again, especially given the complexity of running applications at serious scale, as Box has discovered.

AWS isn't exploding because of some fluke. It's booming to the tune of $5 billion precisely because it delivers superior convenience to developers and the organizations smart enough to support them.

Image by Flickr user Hammerin Man, CC 2.0

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It’s one thing to cruise around the planet virtually with Google Earth when you’re bored. Now, Google is bringing out those high-resolution aerial images for business use.

Today, the imagery from Google Earth for the continental United States became available through Google Maps for Business. The move means such files no longer need to sit on companies’ and government agencies’ data center infrastructure — or generate the images themselves. It’s all available through Google’s vast cloud.

Customers can get it through geographical information system software, weave it in to web or mobile applications through a Google Maps application programming interface (API), or put it on top of Google Earth itself, according to a blog post today from Vinay Goel, product director on Google Maps for Business.

The images could make applications more visually compelling, and businesses could use them to show potential customers where to go in real life.

With this news, it’s once again clear Google wants to keep releasing hardware, software, and services for business use. Sometimes Google adjust products for consumers, like Google Docs, and makes them suitable for businesses. At other times Google externalizes tools of its own. That’s been the case with the nascent Google Compute Engine. In this case, the tech giant is doing the former.

Goel did not include detail on the cost of the imagery.

“The pricing for the imagery will vary per customer/organization (depending on their needs, etc.),” a Google spokeswoman wrote in an email to VentureBeat.

Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major glob... read more »

Australia has abolished its carbon tax, marking a victory for prime minister Tony Abbott, a well-known climate change denier.

The tax, which charges the heaviest polluters for every ton of greenhouse gas emitted, was voted off the books even though it appeared to be reducing carbon emissions, according to The Guardian:

The government argues the carbon pricing scheme has been ineffective, but national emissions have actually fallen by 0.8% in the first calendar year of its operation, the largest fall in 24 years of records. Since the tax began, emissions from the east coast electricity market have fallen 11%, but emissions from other sources – especially coal and gas mining have increased.

The move is particularly disheartening since Australia produces the highest amount of greenhouse gas per person among developed countries, according to the World Wildlife Fund. An increase in global greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon, is linked to many changes in climate around the world, including rising temperatures and less rainfall. In Australia, bush fires are becoming a larger threat as temperatures have progressively warmed each decade since the 1950s.  

Bush fires are part of the natural ecological cycle of the country (some types of Australian seeds actually need to be burned in order to germinate). But in recent years, bush fires have grown in size and intensity, as the map on the right shows.

New South Wales saw at least 98 wild fires in 2013, 22 of which burned out of control for a period, according to Weather Underground. About 143,000 acres and 208 homes were charred. Last year was the worst fire season in 40 years, local officials said.

According to Lesley Hughes, an ecologist at Macquarie University near Sydney and a member of Australia's Climate Council, the country is in the middle of a long-term drying trend that is making fires worse:

For example, annual extreme fire weather significantly increased at all seven stations analyzed in New South Wales for the period from 1973-2010. The same study found that overall, 24 of 38 weather stations across Australia saw a significant increase. Overall, only one station reported a decrease, though it wasn’t a significant one.

Abbott's government got the tax abolished after lobbying from the coal industry, the Financial Times says:

Climate change policy has dogged successive Australian administrations, which must balance a powerful industry lobby led by the country’s A$60bn (US$56bn) coal industry against growing public concern over greenhouse gas emissions.

The move will save Australian consumers about $550 AUS a year. It will also punch a hole in Australia's national budget, The Guardian notes.

The tax was $25.40 a tonne and was scheduled to move to the floating and lower international price in 12 months.

The repeal will cost the budget around $7bn over the next four years as around 350 businesses, mainly electricity generators and big manufacturers, no longer have to pay the tax.

But the abolition is a huge victory for Abbott and climate change deniers everywhere. Abbott in 2009 described climate science as "crap" and previously appointed science skeptics as policy officials on energy and business.

Separately, Australia's two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, have become largely denuded of trees.

SEE ALSO: The Scientific Debate On Global Warming In One Chart

SEE ALSO: Why Facts Don’t Sway Climate Deniers

Join the conversation about this story »

Research showing how using event-triggered emails boosts open, clicks and retail sales

As customers of retailers, we have all seen triggered messages based on a response to an action we have taken, for example welcome emails on subscribing, onboarding emails after purchasing, and shipping reminders. More generally, they can be used by all types of businesses to welcome and engage prospects and customers where they’re known as behavioural emails and are one of the key functions of Marketing Automation.

As marketers, we know they can be extremely effective, but research shows, fewer than half of business are using them. This post explains:

• Why triggered messages are effective,
• Typical results retailers can expect from triggered messaging
• Good scenarios for using them,
• Most importantly when they do or don’t work.

Why are Triggered Messages Effective?

Econsultancy reports that triggered email open rates are four times higher than newsletters. And the Direct Marketing Association reported 125% higher click-through rates. Our own data on sales uplift presented below shows a 12% increase in revenue.

The reason for their effectiveness is simple. It’s an example of how marketing works better when the audience is engaged – as all those marketer who link their brand with topical events know well.

Real-time triggered emails get good results because they respond to subscriber actions and are relevant to them, so they benefit from current high engagement. Whereas routine marketing emails can be more like interruptions and are sometimes rejected as irrelevant.

Engagement is highest when emailing a confirmation of an expensive product a subscriber just bought, or a reminder about their holiday flight tomorrow.

When to Use Triggered Messages

Real-time abandonment recovery emails are the “silver bullet” for retailers using event-triggered messages. Our real-time marketing reports show 12% sales uplift from combined cart/form and browse abandonment emails emails). The charts below show the regular benchmarks Triggered Messaging Limited of sales uplift from triggered messaging and cart abandonment rates.

Notes:

• The identification rate is of all visitors to an eCommerce site, whether or not they use product or cart pages. There is a lot of variabilty between clients and data is confidential, so this chart just shows the trend line.
• Average Order Value of recovered purchase as opposed to regular purchases 7% Higher for a recovered purchase
• Average return from a single cart recovery email £12.88
• Average return from a single browse recovery email £1.56

The options for event-triggered emails in retail

There are many flavours of triggered emails, to deepen engagement with your brand, improve customer experience, and deliver upsell opportunities

1. Browse Abandonment Emails. Sent to people who have looked at products, but not put anything in their cart. Acts as a reminder and an automatic bookmark so they come back to your site to look again.
2. Cart Abandonment Emails. Sent to people who have put products in the cart but not purchased. A strong indicator of intent to purchase, and provides an easy way for shoppers to complete the purchase.
3. Welcome emails. Introduce the product and explain its details. Is there online documentation? What are the obvious upsell possibilities (e.g. early check-in or Wifi for your hotel room).
4. Onboarding sequence. You need customers to *use* your product, so they will buy more stuff, so send several emails containing hints and tips.
5. Count-down emails, due date, or replenishment reminders. Similar content to welcome emails, but sent shortly before the product is due (e.g. for flights, holidays, pre-orders) or expected to need re-purchasing (e.g. consumables or subscriptions).
6. Bookmarking. a shopper for a complex product such as a holiday or insurance policy can request an emailed copy of their current choice, so that they can return to it later.
7. Request for Reviews. This is the rare example where a long delay is good, because you want unhappy customers to have disengaged so they won’t open the email.

You can also include triggered messages within your traditional bulk email as dynamic content. These are personalized for the current subscriber, formatted in the cloud at open time, and included in the email as dynamic images. They work by (a) allowing personalization that is difficult for ESPs, such as leveraging product details and behavioral history from an eCommerce system and (b) adding real-time formatting so that you don’t waste space or attention by promoting products that are out of stock or a sale that’s over. Something better can be displayed instead.

For example:

1. Recently viewed products to give similar benefits to browse abandonment.
2. Trending products, or similar to those bought by the subscriber, to make the content more relevant and deepens engagement.
3. Count-down timer for pending products such as holidays, to encourage the subscriber to open their emails and provide a place for upsell opportunities.

When Don’t Triggered Messages Work

You can see we’re being advocates of triggered messaging, but they’re not always suitable. I would advise against investing in sending triggered messages in the following cases:

1. You are not doing both eCommerce and email marketing
2. Your business is too small, say less than £100k turnover per year
3. You choose a free/cheap cart abandonment plug-in that comes with your eCommerce platform (you’ll make some money, but not enough to matter).
4. You choose a system (or custom services) that makes integration complicated.
5. You choose a system that makes you use its own ESP for real-time emails so you double-up on the creative and management work.

So, these are the benefits and results you can expect from triggered messaging! In my next post I will look at the various methods of implementing triggered messaging for your business. There are 3 main options depending on your budget, your ESP and what you want to achieve. It’s important to choose the option that’s right for you.

I have several quotations on the wall in my office. One of them is the following:

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. (George Bernard Shaw)

Why did I select this quote to display to my clients? Because I believe, to be most meaningful, their careers must be created and not simply found through happenstance.

One point from which career counseling can start is your values. I find that many people in their 40′s and 50′s are searching for more meaningfulness in their work… trying to elevate their work beyond merely what they are capable of doing and toward work that connects with their higher values.

Regardless of how far down your career path your are, it’s never too late to begin examining your values and considering how you might do work you find more meaningful. To help you begin this process, here are some words that you might associate with things you value. Pick the four phrases that, if more available in your work and career results, you would most desire:

• Feeling of accomplishment
• Helping others
• Solving complex problems
• Making more money
• Learning and growing
• Being acknowledged for contributions
• Having a comfortable environment
• Participating with a team
• Gaining status/title
• Becoming an expert
• Increasing job security
• Controlling daily schedule
• Using creativity
• Experiencing change and variety

If you had other ideas of phrases that would describe valuable things to have in your career, feel free to list them.

I hope that this simple exercise will begin to get you thinking about what you want from your career and work. By identifying things you value (and would value), you can better evaluate your current career path and consider alternatives that will allow you to create a more meaningful path for your future.

If I have gotten you interested, then take the next step and conduct some internet searches using the term “career values”. You should be able to find a variety of exercises and assessments that will continue to expand your thinking and help you identify key values that can guide your future career choices.

Why you could be irrelevant to 86% of your target audience… and what to do about it

86% of B2B email marketing does not work. That’s the average level of non-engagement in B2B email marketing databases – the people who never open, never read and never engage with any of your content.

Yet email remains an enduring pillar of modern business communication with UK workers dealing with an average of 40 emails per day and spending an incredible 81 days of the working year reading and writing emails.

How can email marketing be failing to reach such a large proportion of its intended audience when email communication is still so prevalent? So deeply embedded in our daily work?

It is not email marketing that has become less effective, it is broadcast email marketing that has become less effective. That average of 40 per day masks an uncomfortable truth for many at the sharp end of things; the decision makers, the ones who would consider 45 emails to be a quiet day. The demands of managing a swamped inbox mean that there is little time for anything from unsolicited senders – those broadcasting to the masses in the hope that someone will pay attention.

In a world of email overload, marketers are way down the inbox priority list behind the boss, the clients, the colleagues and the wife.

Getting your email read

How do we get somewhere into some of that 86%‘s list of priorities then? Segment them from your engaged audience and take a fresh look at them and what is going wrong. Why do they consistently and instantly dismiss your emails on arrival?

For the sake of keeping this article slightly shorter than War and Peace, we will make the assumption that there are no deliverability issues with your emails. So, on the basis that the email got to the inbox and the recipient hasn’t ditched all email communication in preference of Yammer or Post-It notes, we are left with the information you present when the email first reaches an inbox.

Who it is from and what it is about – The Sender/From address and the Subject Line are the only things that are going to influence behaviour. They never see your design, your proposition, your call to action or anything else, because they didn’t open the email in the first place.

Who are you?

What is the relationship between you and the recipient? Do they know you? Do they know your company? If not, why are they going to choose your email over the others?

Individual names tend to outperform company names in the sender address field regardless of whether there is a relationship between sender and recipient. Faceless organisation names are instantly dismissed, but individual names tend to spark curiosity in the absence of familiarity. If you have been sending emails from an individual to that non-engaged audience for some time, then try presenting it from somebody else.

The best way to get your From field firing on all cylinders is to use Dynamic Content – Where a relationship exists, leverage it. Map your “account owner / salesperson” field to the contact record and send emails with this value dynamically inserted into the From field.

What’s this about?

The next challenge is the subject line. These few words are often the deciding factor between email marketing success or failure and yet the subject line is often an afterthought.

Search for the word newsletter in your own inbox and I’m sure you will find a surprising number of emails that you’ve never read. Unless you’re one of those “Zero Inbox” types, in which case the newsletters are in the Newsletter folder. Unread all the same.

Think about your target audience, your recipient. Why is this email going to be something they want to invest time in? What makes yours different from the rest?

There are lots of one off tricks for making a subject line stand out from the rest. The latest fad is single word subject lines – once again playing the curiosity card, but gimmicks don’t tend to help with engaging recipients over the longer term. Also, there’s no need to have a keywordfest in your subject line – email has no SEO benefit after all.

Succinct subject lines that a) seem relevant to the recipient and b) make the email sound interesting tend to work best. As the title of this post subliminally suggested, relevancy is the key to unlocking the apathy shown to you thus far by that 86%.

Relevancy can be achieved by chance. For big B2C brands, the numbers game still works. When your marketing database runs into the millions, a fraction of a percentage response rate still delivers a good return on your investment in creating, building and sending a campaign. However, for most B2B brands, their audiences are much smaller and hence the same percentage returns can amount to practically nothing.

You cannot be all things to all people

Genuine relevancy can be tricky, especially if there is an eclectic mix within that 86%. Different industries? Different roles? Different levels of seniority? How can you be relevant to them all at the same time? Very tricky. So am I suggesting that you need to do ten versions of your email?

Yes, but no. Not ten versions. Ten variations maybe. Back to dynamic content again! How could a couple of words influence different groups within your target audience? What if you were to put words in the subject line that related the content to the recipient?

Let’s say that you want to demonstrate your expertise on a topical IT issue within an industry that you are selling to. We will call the subject “X”. Creative, I know… You target both finance and IT roles within that industry as they tend to both be involved in signing off on your product or service. You therefore write your thought leadership piece and build your email to promote it, but you make one subtle change. The last word in the subject is dynamic:

IF Role = IT, THEN Subject = “Impact of X on IT teams ”
IF Role = Finance, THEN Subject = “Impact of X on IT budgets”

Congratulations. You’ve made your subject line dynamically relevant. The content of the email was relevant in the general sense, but you then honed it down to resonate with the individual recipient.

Data driven dynamic content

As Stephen Covey suggested in his seminal book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, we should seek first to understand, then to be understood.

If we understand our target audience, we are better equipped to communicate with them in relevant and meaningful terms. Rather than simply plying your wares to all and sundry, you will progress opportunities intelligently and appear more customer centric by leveraging demographic and behavioural data to ensure that the right messages go to the right people at the right time.

Automation beats determination

Now, what about the other eight roles and three industries you target?

To achieve the above example on an industrial scale, you need to approach these things programmatically. With that rich and detailed profile of each contact with multiple values to draw from, you can look to automate communications which draw upon those data values. You get that rich and detailed profile by integrating data sources; your CRM, your website, your telesales team, all contributing to your understanding of those in your database.

That may all sound a bit complicated and resource intensive so if nothing else, do something different with that 86%, even if it is manual. When you do, always split test the changes you make in isolation of any others and review the results. If you change too much in one go, you may not find out which change made the big difference.

For more on best practices for B2B Email marketing, you can download a free copy of CommuniGator’s Complete Guide to Effective Email Marketing or register for one of our free UK seminars.

How do feel when reading an article or blog written in error-filled English? Sure, you might overlook a few typos or misplaced modifiers, but did you feel like the person writing the piece had you in mind? Did you feel connected to the content, or were you waiting for it to end?

Reaching out to the Hispanic market is no different; Spanish content writing must come from a place of authenticity. To make a valuable connection with readers, you must speak their language and create content that offers insight, thought leadership, and a bit of entertainment. I can hear you already, “But, with so many automated and in-person translation services available, why should I make the investment?” I’m glad you asked, and happy to answer.

The US Government Botches Spanish Content

A recent report on Obamacare enrollment in California – a state with a Hispanic population nearing 40% – indicated upsetting results from the government’s enrollment campaign. Only one-third of eligible native Spanish speakers in California completed the enrollment. Though administrators are scratching their heads, the Hispanic community isn’t confused about the results. After all, Spanish content writing shares the same goals as English content: to inform and engage.

Between poor translation and a sloppy approach to health education, Spanish-speaking Californians are left out in the cold. Here are a few costly mistakes that serve as a lesson to marketers everywhere:

• Millions of brochures and pamphlets – written in English – were distributed to Hispanic communities.

• Automatic translation services and a disjointed combination of Spanish and English were used to create CuidadDeSalud.gov, the government’s Spanish healthcare website.

• Spanish content writing was shoved aside, leaving interpretation of healthcare rules and allowances to enrollment counselors.

This mishap is a glimmering example of the real cost of getting lost in translation.

It’s Not Life and Death – It’s Marketing

What happens when there’s not a life and death situation to overcome? “It’s only marketing,” some might say. While there is little chance of the government going out of business, your business doesn’t always have the luxury of saying, “We’ll do better next time.” Your goal is to get it right from the start. Content has the power to make a connection with the Hispanic demographic when created by writers fluent in Spanish.

Reaching the Hispanic Market with Targeted Content

According to recent estimates, the Hispanic population is expected to grow at a rapid rate over the next 5-10 years. Currently hovering just above 50 million, the US’ Hispanic community is primed to gain major purchasing power in the years to come. Hispanics will account for $1.5 trillion in purchases by 2015. Whether your company sells widgets, cars, or professional services, reaching the Hispanic demographic is more important than ever. To resonate with Hispanic customers and prospects, Spanish content writing is a must.

3 Elements of Successful Spanish Content

Like all marketing strategies, it sometimes pays to “go big or go home.” Creating content for Spanish-speakers requires brands to think outside of the box while attending to the interests, concerns, and challenges of the Hispanic community. Before creating Spanish content, consider the following:

• Culture – A telltale sign your brand cut corners with Spanish content writing is a lack of attention to Hispanic culture. To help your content hit home, enlist the help of someone with knowledge of the culture and its intricacies.

• Social – Hispanics use social media to follow brands, make recommendations, and discover new products and services more than any other demographic. Promoting Spanish content on social media and engaging followers is a great way to increase your Hispanic customer base.

• Local – From bridging the generation gap to inspiring renewed confidence in local commerce, Spanish content writing can be used to further segment your audience while improving local marketing strategies.

There is more to writing great content than translation, so trusting translation services to reach the Hispanic community with your message is risky. Ensure each element of successful Spanish content is incorporated into every published piece.

Use Content to Strengthen Customer Relationships

Spanish content writing is capable of forging a solid connection between a client and your brand, resulting in higher conversions, a larger base of loyal customers, and increased brand awareness within the Hispanic community. McDonald’s is a great example of a company effectively targeting the Hispanic market. Awarded Marketer of the Year from the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA), McDonald’s is one megabrand getting Spanish content writing correct. Here’s what they’ve done:

• Customized a domain – In McDonald’s case, adding MeEncanta.com to its collection of domain names was a profitable move. This small step made it possible for Spanish-speakers to go directly to a familiar domain – and return.

• Utilized culturally relevant content – By adding Spanish songs, games, and content to MeEncanta.com, McDonald’s created a culturally relevant digital space specifically catering to the demographic.

• Added a variety of content – Like English-speaking customers, Hispanics want more than a menu and blog post – they want engagement. McDonald’s captured the attention of its growing global market through adding a variety of content.

With over 70% of online customers spending the majority of their time browsing websites in their language, it pays to take Spanish content seriously. As the Hispanic population of the United States increases, brands need to secure reputable content writing services capable of providing well-written, engaging, and conversion-inspiring Spanish content.

Do you trust translation services to preserve the integrity of brand-customer relationships?

Your brand is more than just your logo or your tagline. It’s about the internal and external environment of your business—and how you choose to communicate within it. Everything your business does and says reflects on your brand—so it’s important to maximize its potential.

You may already understand the importance of branding, but what goes into a B2B brand? When undergoing a brand refresh, is your strategy covering all the important elements?

First, where does “brand” come from?

The term “brand” originated with livestock, when individuals would physically alter their herd with a distinctive symbol in order to differentiate it from others. Now branding has evolved beyond just a visual mark as a way for the public to distinguish one business (and their unique values) from another.

There are two distinct sets of assets that define your brand: tangible and intangible. Oftentimes the tangible (or “visual”) component is the most obvious, but it’s important to not overlook the intangible components (or brand “essence”) as well. These intangible assets oftentimes have a greater impact on customer perception and—most importantly—sales. Here is what goes into the tangible and intangible assets of a brand:

Tangible Brand Assets

Logo and tagline
A well-crafted logo and tagline starts the baseline perception of your brand. It drives home your brand promise and uniqueness. What’s important to remember is it is not the be-all-end-all for a brand—it’s simply an anchor for the ship.

Name & Trademark
Trademarking your name, logo and key visual assets are a critical step in solidifying and protecting your brand identity. While many businesses will work to trademark name and logo, it’s important to think of other key assets such as unique products, services and other valuable assets so your entire business is safeguarded.

Messaging
While undergoing a rebrand, you should be revisiting mission and vision statements. Ask yourself if tone, verbiage and audience are still appropriately addressed in the current messaging. This messaging should trickle down into everything your business uses to communicate with clients, from brochures to daily emails.

Website
Today, a well designed website is worth its weight in gold. Data shows that if a user doesn’t like your website, it’s an indication to them that the company doesn’t care. Consider what your website says about your brand by visiting it with your ideal client in mind. Or better yet, visit with a specific goal in mind to gauge user experience.

Collateral
From business cards to billboards, your marketing and sales collateral reflect your brand. Key visual components, such as color, typography, style of photography and logos on collateral, should always be consistent. This means no logos stretched across a presentation slide or sticking to a limited color palette. It may seem nit-picky, but these mistakes often translate to your audience as unprofessional and lazy. Keep in mind, branding is all about repetition, the more consistent your brand is represented, the more likely it will be “branded” in the minds of the audience.

Intangible Brand Assets

Company culture
There are no shortcuts here—the company culture you build will be the culture your clients perceive. Your audience and strategic partners like to see the expertise within your business and how much you value it. That doesn’t always mean posting funny staff photos or publishing information about holiday parties. Company culture can be communicated in daily appreciations, success stories and even your office design and environment.

Industry expectations
While company culture is important, there are certainly parameters put on your brand based on the industry. It’s important to acknowledge these expectations, but also think what about your business makes you different. For example, corporate financial firms face industry-specific rules and regulations, so instead of harping on “compliancy” as a main brand trait, focus on customer service, staff expertise or other unique service offerings.

Customer service
Customer service is often the most overlooked, yet most important, part of a brand. It’s at the frontlines, and for larger companies customer service is the only time a client will hear from your business. Ignoring processes and failing to improve in customer service is a quick way to lose your brand credibility.

Customer experience
Tied closely with customer service, customer experience is the sum of every touch point a client has with your business. This includes discovering your service, the purchase/sales process, and future customer cultivation. Your brand should remain consistent during a customer’s experience and if elements are changing (e.g. logo redesign, merger, client point of contact), communication is key to ensure their experience remains positive.

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There’s long-standing tension between economics and marketing — despite the fact that marketing is an offshoot of economics. Marketing is really the blending of economics and psychology (with a little sociology thrown in). And, it’s the addition of psychology that irritates economists.

The major difference between economics and marketing is that economists believe consumers are rational and seek products providing the greatest utility. Marketers accept that consumers (including business consumers) are sometimes (often) irrational — else why would middle-aged men like red corvettes — and utility includes social status, ego stroking, group affinity and lots more borrowed from psychology and sociology.

Even finance is mired in the debate over rationality and utility. Financial formulas include elements such as interest rates, betas, and other rational investment variables. However, a new school of thought, called behavioral finance, mirrors marketing in many respects by including non-rational investment criteria such as the “coolness” factor of Apple.

Of course, ignoring economics is dangerous, but fitting economics and marketing into your business strategy creates success.

Economics and Marketing: A case-study

For some businesses that operate using economic principles, the blending of economics and marketing requires a serious shift in thinking.

A good example of this occurred during the 1970′s gas crisis. During the crisis, the price of gas increased dramatically (a 300% spike in crude in just 3 months in 1973), while production fell short of demand. While some blame the energy crisis on corporate greed from a handful of energy companies, such as BP, Shell, etc., others blame production decisions made by these companies based on econometric models.

Meanwhile, over at Shell, scenario modelling replaced models based purely on economics. Shell built scenarios by including economic factors and idiosyncratic (marketing-type) insights about human behavior — they even included a former magazine editor into Eastern mysticism. 1 scenario pretty accurately predicted the events leading to the OPEC embargo, which precipitated the energy crisis. Of course, adopting this scenario was challenging, but allowed Shell to weather the energy storm better than its competitors.

Now, such scenario planning is commonplace — about 65% of firms used it in 2011. According the Harvard Business Review, that’s because scenario planning provides:

(1) an enhanced capacity to perceive change,

(2) an enhanced capacity to interpret and respond to change,

(3) influence on other actors, and

(4) an enhanced capacity for organizational learning.

The value of scenario planning lies in its break from the status quo embedded in economics to consider non-rational factors impacting the future.

Economics and marketing: Consumer confidence

Another great example of how economics and marketing fit together is consumer confidence. Consumer confidence, published by The Conference Board based on random sample questionnaires reflects consumers’ beliefs in the strength of the economy. Consumer confidence was seriously shaken in 2008 as the US housing market collapsed, taking Wall Street and many businesses with it.

Consumers delayed spending due to worries about their retirement savings, home value, and likelihood of continued employment. Because consumers account for MORE THAN 70% of all spending in developed countries, their crisis of confidence seriously impacted all aspects of the economy.

From an economic standpoint, were consumers in serious danger that warranted drastic spending cuts? Probably not. At it’s height, unemployment reached over 10%, but that means 90% of us were gainfully employed. Many nations would envy such high employment numbers. Sure, many were upside down on their mortgages (especially younger folks), but, unless you planned to sell your home, that didn’t matter much.

Yet, consumers withheld their dollars … in case. Economics be damned; they were afraid.

Consumer confidence dropped further with each news report of how bad things were. Consumer confidence stayed down because the media fueled their fears with idiosyncratic reports of this individual who lost their home or job. Bad things sell, good things don’t, so reports of improving economic conditions got buried on the 5th page or relegated to late night talk shows.

Declining consumer confidence created a self-fulfilling prophesy — consumers believed the economy was bad, so they stopped spending, which MADE the economy bad. And the bad economy hung around too long. Even today, when unemployment is close to what economists call “full employment” and the stock market is reaching all-time highs, consumer confidence isn’t great. Over-corrections in mortgage lending help fuel this and keep thousands from buying a home — historically the path to wealth in the US.

Blending economics and marketing in your strategy

Drawing on these lessons to build your business strategy based on a blend of economics and marketing makes rational sense. Building purely economic models based on supply and demand that assume consumers are rational buyers hurts your business, especially in the long-run where econometric models fail when conditions change. However, ignoring economic realities and relying solely on marketing strategies also suffers.

Blending economics and marketing in a holistic fashion means a higher return for your business.

Innovation

Innovation is a good example where blending economics and marketing makes sense. Traditional innovation planning involves creating economic forecasts for sales of a product that doesn’t exist yet. There’s little room for intelligent exploration in what “might be” preferring what “can be”.

That’s part of the genius of Apple Computers and accounts for much of its success. Imagining what consumers want, rather than what could be created drove Jobs and Apple into radical, disruptive transformations. If instead of relying on their guts, Apple asked consumers to describe what was needed or whether they’d buy something based on spec, Apple would now be defunct.

Solving for a consumer problem (assuming the economics exist for profitability in terms of numbers of consumers with that problem) will always out perform economics-driven innovation. And, innovative products must exist without the pressure to show immediate profitability. Look at 3D printers — it took years before the promise of these printers sparked the imagination of enough consumers to make them profitable.

Strategic planning

Building scenarios based on blends of econometric modelling and marketing — consumer behavior, culture, influence — makes for better forecasting than either alone. Scenarios should aim for probabalistic models rather than predictive models. Sure, predictive models provide more concrete estimates, but those estimates may be WILDLY wrong — either 100% right or 100% wrong. Extending your trend line to future times becomes increasingly less accurate as the time horizon grows.

Pricing

Pricing is another area where using economics alone might fail your business. Commonly, businesses price products to recover their investment or to match competitors. But, are such rational pricing models effective?

Meanwhile, companies blending economics and marketing see higher profitability. Including factors such as segmentation, psychological pricing, and load management all contribute to improved financial performance.

The ROI of Softer Stuff is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

Revenue improvement. Profit increases. Cost reductions. Efficiencies.

These are all tangible, measurable improvements that your product, service, or solution can produce. They make it possible for you to generate and share an ROI with your client. As important as it is to produce a business case, these aren’t the only factors buyers consider when making decisions. They don’t move you to trusted advisor, consultative salesperson, and Level 4 Value Creator status.

Trust is soft. There isn’t a great way to measure it. But without trust nothing that you present really matters. What do you believe your dream client believes the ROI on trust to be?

Caring, like trust, is soft. Your dream client will never list “caring” in a row on a spreadsheet and score you against your competitor (they won’t do that with trust, either). But when your dream client makes a decision, how much they believe you care about them and their challenges is a factor they weigh heavily. If you don’t believe this is true, share with them how much commission you hope to make on their sale and see how it changes your relationship.

Business acumen and situational knowledge (or in the common vernacular, insights) are too soft to be measured. But people in positions of authority value people with the ability to help them deal with their most complex business challenges. They value people with ideas. They trade lower price for greater insights. They trade a marginally better ROI for real relationships of value.

Collaboration isn’t a metric (at least not one I’ve ever seen). But you are being judged by how easy you are to do business with and how open you are to helping your dream client adjust your solution to precisely fit their needs. They value your ability to help them build consensus, and they appreciate being armed to have high value conversations within their own organization.

None of this is to say that your financial ROI isn’t important. It is important, and critically so in some deals. But so is the softer stuff that gives you the opportunity to better develop the ROI, to position yourself as the right partner, to drive a wedge between you and your competitors, and to frame your solution in a way that resonates with your dream client contacts.

This post is part of a series of Executive Interviews of top sales and marketing solutions company. We ask the same questions of every executive so readers can learn about their unique positioning  and their vision for the industry. Full disclosure, Nancy Nardin, CEO of Smart Selling Tools is also a Co-Founder of Hushly.

This week I interview Geoff Rego, CEO and Co-Founder of Hushly.

Nancy: What does Hushly do? What problem/s are you solving for sales and/or marketing organizations?

Geoff: Hushly is a software tool that helps B2B marketers to amplify content reach by up to 5,000% and increase close rates by up to 1,000%. We do this by uniquely enabling B2B marketers to bi-directionally communicate with their anonymous website visitors which represent a whopping 98% of all visitors. Anonymous visitors tend to be early in the purchase process—the due diligence stage—which is when vendors have the greatest opportunity to influence their buying decision.

The problem we’re solving is this… by the time buyers contact vendor sales, they are as much as 70% through the purchase process. B2B Marketers are desperate to connect with buyers earlier in the sales cycle because it’s much more difficult to influence the decision if they don’t.  Today, vendors collectively spend $44 billion on content marketing[1] each year, the end goal of which is to entice buyers to disclose their identity as a condition of viewing content. This approach fails greater than 90% of the time. That’s the percentage of visitors that abandon a page when presented with a web-form because of their desire to remain anonymous while they conduct their research.

Nancy: How does your solution uniquely address the problem (or in what way do other solutions fall short from solving the problem)?

Geoff: B2B marketers have gone to using shorter forms in the hopes of decreasing webform abandonment yet form abandonment is >90%.  The reason for this, is that shorter forms don’t address the core concern buyers have namely, they don’t want to disclose their identity until they’re ready for fear of being hounded by sales or spammed by marketing.

Hushly solution is surgically focused on buyer’s core concern. Rather than trying to force buyers to disclose their contact information on webforms Hushly empowers B2B Marketers to engage with buyers who abandon webforms.

B2B Marketers associate an invisible Hushly widget with each webform. It’s a simple process of cutting & pasting a piece of Javascript onto the webpage.  When the visitor shows intent to abandon the webform, Hushly activates a download anonymously dialog allowing the visitor to download the content anonymously via Hushly. Vendor responds to buyer’s inbound messages, answers their questions, shares documents and tracks activities of buying team members all while respecting buyers need to remain partially anonymous – vendors don’t see the buyer’s contact info but they get to see the buyer’s profile: title, industry, location, company size—information that Vendors attempt to collect today on a webform. This bi-directional communication gives vendors the opportunity to earn the right to communicate ‘live’.

Nancy: What’s the most important thing that today’s business decision-makers should look for (or ask, or consider, or solve)?

Geoff:  For B2B Marketers it’s the production of “stale MQLs.”  MQLs fuel the lead generation engine and if the fuel is bad you are not going to get far.

Allow me to explain, we live in the world of the hidden sales cycle where buyers are 70% complete with their buying process prior to first contact with sales.  So by the time buyers identify themselves to be scored as MQLs (right buyer profile + relevant buyer digital activity) it just might be too late. Today’s MQLs are mostly dead on arrival.

Hushly is an ingenious way for B2B Marketers to more effectively produce MQLs earlier in the buying process.

Nancy: What are you most excited about for the next 12 months?

Geoff: Being a serial LeadGen Pioneer I am most excited about helping to shape the future of B2B Lead Generation.

Like all Pioneers this off-road expedition is going to be super exciting:  forging new trails, finding early adopters, persevering  and winning over naysayers.

Nancy: What do you think is the biggest underlying theme or trend for sellers and/or marketers in 2014?

Geoff:  Generating more higher-quality leads effectively and efficiently has been the holy-grail for B2B marketers for quite some time now.  Leveraging big data technology to more accurately predict propensity to buy, revenue attribution to marketing analytics, sales enablement that can make a dramatic impact to a sales team’s overall success are top marketing initiatives of best-in-class companies.

Nancy: What would you challenge sellers and/or marketers to think about for 2014? 

Geoff: Research shows that today 98% of website visitors are anonymous and 70% of their buying decision  is complete prior to first touch with sales.

If your website requires buyers to disclose their contact information in order to bi-directionally communicate with your company, you are missing out on the “Anonymous-98%.” Your MQLs will mostly be buyers at the end of their sales cycle leaving your sales folks to compete on price like car-salespeople.

Research shows that the vendor who is first-in wins 74% of the time and does not have to compete on price. Find ways to engage with the buyers while buyers are still anonymous and when there is the greatest opportunity to influence their buying decision.

Note: To learn more about Hushly, watch a 60 second video or visit www.hushly.com.

[1] Content Marketing Council

Webinars are a popular – and successful – method of gaining business prospects. You can personally present a product related topic, generate interest in your brand and start to build relationships with new leads.

But you can’t stop there.

A successful online marketer knows the webinar is just the starting point in nurturing new leads into successful clients.

In this article, I’ll walk you through a successful 7 touchpoint process to generate leads and get the sale by using webinar landing pages.

 

1. Webinar Sales Funnel: Create a Website Landing Page

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The first step in any online marketing campaign is to create an optimized landing page. (If you don’t know what a landing page is, check out my previous article “what is a landing page”).

 

 

A webinar landing page can be hosted directly on a standalone page on your website. If you use an awesome landing page builder template, you can get people to sign up for your presentation directly through the landing page.

There’s a number of elements to optimize when you’re designing your page:

• Headline – Your headline should be clear and compelling in order to grab your viewers’ attention immediately. If you’re using PPC Google Ads (as we’ll see soon), you should be using your headline in your ad – so make it clickable!
• List of benefits – Show what the potential customer will gain by signing up for your webinar. Even if it’s free, it’s still your job to convince that person that they should 1) give you their email and 2) spend the time to participate with you.
• Call to Action – Make your CTA color contrasted with your design. It should be one of the first things your visitor sees when they click on your page
• Form Fields – To gain more conversions (and leads), keep your required form fields to a minimum. Ask for an email and a first name. As we’ll see, you can ask progressively more information as your visitor continues to get to know you.

Check out more landing page optimization tips.

 

2. Webinar Sales Funnel: Online Advertising

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Once you’ve designed your landing page with great copy and visuals, it’s time to promote your webinar event. I’m going to assume that you’ll already be posting your event to all your engaged social media platforms. Use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and any other platform your particular market uses. I’d suggest you add fuel to your reach too by using online advertising.

Facebook Ads and Google AdWords are both incredibly effective online marketing tools. For a webinar, they can gain you tons more leads, and extend your brand presence to a far reaching, highly targeted demographic.

Google Adwords gives you the power of intent marketing. People see your ad specifically when they search for campaign keywords – in other words, they see your enticing ad copy exactly when they are looking for webinar topic. AdWords has a click through rate (CTR) of up to 7%.

For best results:

• Use your landing page headline as your ad headline – The better you match your ad to your campaign, the higher your conversions.
• Target your ad with topic keywords – Use your webinar topic keywords as targeting methods, and include at least one of two of them in your ad copy.

 

Facebook Ads gives you amazing hyper-targeting. You can market your webinar to people who work in online marketing, speak English and Like Pages of you or your competitors. Facebook ads are effective at both getting a decent conversion rate and increasing brand awareness.

For best results:

• Use eye-catching, related images – The first thing people see in a Facebook ad is the image. Make it stand out with contrasting colors and a visual that shows your topic without a thousand words.
• Hyper-target to reach your exact demographic – Facebook ads have the most powerful targeting ability available to online marketers. You can target using all of Facebook users’ incredibly rich demographic data like Lookalike audiences, Interests, Custom Audience and even Website Custom Audience (which allows you to target to anyone who’s visited pages on your website).

I’ve been asked if advertising on Facebook is successful for B2B’s – as Facebook tends to be a better place for retailers. My short answer is Yes. If your market is social media managers, content marketers and digital advertisers, for example, it’s the best place to advertise – we’re on the site all the time – for work of course!

 

3. Webinar Sales Funnel: Remarketing

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Remarketing is one of my personal fav’s in online advertising. It’s a more advanced marketing technique that drives bounced traffic back to your website.

Here’s how a retargeting strategy works for your webinar campaign:

• Someone visits your webinar page via your Google AdWords campaign. They bounce.
• Your remarketing ‘cookie’ follows them around as they zoom around the internet.
• Your webinar landing page remarketing campaign specifically targets your bounced traffic with copy like “Thanks for checking out our webinar. Register before July 9 to reserve your spot!”
• The ad then directs traffic back to the original webinar sign-up page. (Or, you could get all advanced and create a personalized landing page specifically catering to your bounced visitors, with copy like “Thanks for coming back….“).

Remarketing can increase conversions by as much as 147%. Personalizing your landing pages with your remarketing efforts only adds fuel to your conversion – and future engagement – rates.

The bonus is that even if you don’t get the conversion, you still benefit by increased touchpoints and brand awareness. You know you’re marketing to the right demographic because they’ve already shown interest by visiting your webinar landing page.

 

4. Webinar Sales Funnel: Email Automation Campaign – Pre-Webinar

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As soon as someone signs up for your webinar, your next objective is to make sure they attend your event. If it’s a free webinar, the drop off rate for engaging with you further and actually attending is steep….

Set up an email automation campaign to send out an immediate message within a minute or so of the conversion. Your marketing automation campaign might look something like this:

• #1 Thank the prospect for RSVPing, and remind them of the benefits your awesome webinar will give them. You could include a link to a blog post or other pertinent content they may be interested in. Show them who you are and that you provide valuable knowledge.
• #2 Send out an email a few days prior to the webinar to remind your prospect to add your event to their calendar. You could even say that there is limited space and you have a waitlist (if you do). Ask people to let you know if they won’t be attending so you can open up the exclusive opportunity to others.
• #3 Send out a second reminder email an hour or so before your webinar starts – and include all the information on what the viewer needs to do (such as download the meeting software, check the volume on their computer, and how to sign in)

A few simple emails on your part can increase your webinar attendance rates and build relationships with people who may have never even heard of you before.

 

5. Webinar Sales Funnel: Email Automation Campaign – Post-Webinar

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Your relationship-building shouldn’t stop just because you’ve gotten a conversion and had the most successful attendance ever for your webinar!

• #1 Send out an email to all your participants scheduled soon after the webinar. Thank your market for attending. It’s at this moment, when you and your brand are fresh in the minds of your prospects, that you need to engage to keep them moving along your sales funnel. Send a link to your free trial page or VIP demo to encourage them to take the next step.
• #2 A few days later, send out an email with a link to your webinar recording (and transcript if you’re making these publically available) as soon as it’s up on your website. Engage with your prospects and encourage them to share your recording. Again, let them know about your free VIP consultation. Keep the sell a little softer by giving them links to additional content related to your webinar topic. For example, if your webinar is about “How to create a landing page”, send them a link to your ebook on How to Create a Landing Page.

Let’s take a short look at your ebook and free trial landing pages.

 

6. Webinar Sales Funnel: eBook Landing Page

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Of course, before you actually send webinar attendees to your free ebook, you need to create a landing page for it. An ebook landing page makes your PDF file easy to download.

You probably already have a long standing landing page for your ebooks. If you don’t – make one for each of your books immediately! An ebook landing page – one that’s optimized for search and designed for conversions – is a no-brainer method of capturing leads even without a full online marketing campaign.

I’d recommend you create a unique post-webinar landing page that’s personalized. Use messaging like: “Thanks for being part of our webinar. As a special offer, we’d like to give you our comprehensive guide to landing page building. For FREE!”

 

7. Webinar Sales Funnel: Free Trial Landing Page

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When you’ve sent out your second post-webinar email, it directs them to your Free Trial landing page. As in the ebook tactic above, I’d suggest you create a uniquely crafted webinar campaign landing page. Personalize it to deepen the consumer connection.

Use copy on your landing page like:

“As a special offer to our webinar participants, we’d like to offer you a free trial of our awesome products.

All you have to do is sign up and you can explore all of our tools – from landing pages, simple-to-make online ads, social promotions, remarketing tools and email automation software.

Your free trial lasts for 14 days. There’s no obligation. What have you got to lose?”

Success! Once you’ve got the sign up for your free trial, give your prospects plenty of support. Send out emails to ask if they have any questions. When the free trial period is coming to a close, send out a reminder email. In that email, reinforce the value of your product. Show the benefits – even send an embedded video with your product benefits or case studies.

Bonus tip: Even if your prospect discontinues the free trial without signing up for paid plan, don’t be angry! Send out an automated email thanking the person for kicking your tires around, and ask them to connect with you on your social sites.

 

Conclusion

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Online sales funnels increase your consumer touchpoints to generate interest in your business and get you sales. Start with a webinar and take it further to build relationships through a comprehensive seven step process. Always A/B test your landing pages and ads for optimal results. A slight variation in your uniquely personalized ebook landing page could increase conversions from 17% to 21%. A 3% increase could mean thousands of dollars to your business’ back pocket.

By Krista Bunskoek @ Wishpond

Image: Eran Sandler via Flickr

Writing effective sales copy is like holding the reader’s hand and leading them gently and firmly to the solution to their problem. Along the way, a professional copywriter will paint a picture of how awesome life will be without it. Here are the seven steps to writing a copy that sells.

1. Know what you are selling

Every product or service carries an underlying experience. A book might promise romance or adventure, while a piece of furniture could tie in with visions of family togetherness. Before you write, have a clear vision of exactly what you’re selling, including the experience. Write about both.

2. Know your audience

Whether speaking to your established readers or luring a new audience of potential customers, you can’t write persuasive sales copy without knowing who your target audience is. Not sure? Use all the tools at your disposal to find out, including analytics and social media polls.

3. Choose a tone of voice

Are you the friend with some word-of-mouth information, the consummate professional with the benefit of experience, or something in between? Now that you’ve determined your target audience, you need to carefully choose the most effective tone of voice. For example, humor works great for some audiences but can come off as unprofessional to others.

Keep in mind that how you say something is often as important as what you say, and choose your tone of voice accordingly. Then start telling a story.

Image: JJ via Flickr

4. Story Part I: Present a problem

Now it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty, storyteller. Your reader has a problem that you can solve, and you must describe that problem in a way that convinces them you have a firm understanding of it because you have been in their situation. The connection of a shared problem is often the turning point for a reader, building trust and making them curious about how you solved it.

5. Story Part II: Play on an emotion

Emotions are powerful motivators, and if you can make your reader feel just one strong emotion through your storytelling then your job is halfway done. Use emotion to make your reader imagine a life without The Problem. Positive emotions are usually preferable to negative, but fear is known to be an excellent motivator, and most people would not categorize fear as positive. How could you use fear in sales copy? Make your reader fear that, without your product, The Problem will never go away.

6. Story Part III: Solve the problem

By now, your reader should be hooked and ready for the final tug. This is the Aha! moment where you reveal how your product or service is the solution to their problem. There are a few things you must do here in order to be perceived as credible: provide proof, add details, give examples, and cite your sources. Can you hear the collective sigh of relief?

7. Eliminate barriers to acceptance

This is where you might expect me to talk about calls to action, so I will.

Include a strong call to action.

There. Now I will go on to say that while it is important to urge your reader to take action and click, download or buy what you’re selling, you also need to make it ridiculously easy for them. If you’ve completed the previous six steps successfully, your reader is already primed, and your most important job at this point is to make their transition from reader to customer as smooth and painless as possible.

• Need them to fill out a form? Embed it directly on the page.
• Have a storefront or product to sell? Link to it with a directive to Buy Now!
• Selling a PDF or ebook? Place the order form directly after or alongside your sales pitch.

Put contact forms in plain view and lay down a red carpet that leads readers directly to the point of sale.

There is a silent eighth step in writing a copy, especially if you are selling a product or service online, and that is the fine art of following up. Once your reader has completed a transaction, make sure they know it was successful, then follow up with a note of thanks. It doesn’t hurt to include information on what they should expect to happen next. Communication is key, and extending it beyond the sale will keep your customers coming back for more—and bringing their friends.

All effective copywriting formulas draw from these steps, with some variation. Every good copywriter has his or her own version of this process, but following these seven steps will help you write more effective sales copy.

Why is it that so many B2B organisations are so unhappy with the returns on their marketing investments, with the accuracy of their sales forecasts, and with the efficiency with which they are able to convert leads into customers?

Why is it that so many sales people are so often so dissatisfied with the quality of leads provided by marketing? And why is it that so many marketing teams are so frustrated with the failure of sales to follow up on the leads they have generated?

This is such a common phenomenon that many people, and many organisations, have come to believe that it is an invitable consequence of the often fractured relationship between sales and marketing. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Research by Aberdeen Group and others has shown that today’s top performing B2B sales and marketing organisations are up to 20 times more effective than their peers in converting marketing enquiries into sales wins.

Success starts at the top of the funnel

Their success starts at the top of the funnel: in today’s top performing businesses, the sales and marketing functions share the same common consensus about what an “ideal customer” looks like, and their efforts are aligned accordingly.

As a result, they avoid wasting time and resources on organisations that are never likely to become profitable customers, and focus instead on identifying, attracting, engaging qualifying and converting more of the right sort of prospects.

What makes an “Ideal Customer”? It’s the combination of the right roles within the right organisations that have business critical needs they can’t afford to ignore – and for which you offer the best of all the options available to them.

Let’s break this down into its component parts, starting with “the right organisations”:

The right organisations

As many vendors have already recognised, the traditional demographic approach to segmentation is a hopelessly inadequate approach to identifying the most promising organisations in your target market.

Structural and situational factors inevitably turn out to far more important. Structural factors include how the company is organised, what systems they have in place, how they make decisions, their appetite for innovation and their position in their market.

Situational factors define whether the organisation is likely to be open to the need for change in the immediate future. Indicators include recent changes in management, new initiatives and changes in the competitive dynamics of their markets.

The right roles

The people who are most willing to talk to you may not be the people who are most capable of making things happen in their organisations – that’s why your marketing needs to focus on the roles that are the likely change leaders.

But even if you’ve engaged with the people most likely to make change happen, they are still likely to have to persuade their colleagues of the need to take action, and of the superiority of your approach over all other solutions available to their organisation.

That’s why your marketing messages and materials also need to appeal to the other key operational, technical and economic stakeholders in the decision-making process – and to show why your approach will also be of benefit to them.

The right issues

Last, but by no means least, you need to focus on the right issues – because whilst interesting issues might trigger interest, and important issues might spark an evaluation, only truly business-critical issues are guaranteed to drive action.

In fact, one of the most common reasons why apparently promising opportunities end up deciding to do nothing is that the need was never – or was not developed into – a truly “business critical” need.

The implication is clear: your marketing and sales campaigns must serve to uncover and develop business critical needs that you can solve better than anyone else  – because these are the only needs that are certain to cause your prospect to take action.

The right roles, the right organisations and the right issues

Explicitly and intentionally targeting the right people in the right organisations with the right issues might reduce the raw volume of leads you generate, but those opportunities are going to have a far higher conversion rate – up to 20 times if Aberdeen’s findings are applicable to your marketplace.

Your sales and marketing people will be happier, and it’s reasonable to assume that your executive leadership will be pleased with your improved forecast accuracy and the vastly increased efficiency of your customer acquisition process.

Let me know how you get along in applying these principles. I haven’t yet found a single organisation that hasn’t benefited from aligning their marketing and sales organisations around a unified vision of what their ideal customers look like.

Selecting the right sales person is one of the most important tasks for someone in a leadership position. Too often it is approached in a casual and unprofessional manner. The consequences of recruiting the wrong candidate are costly, damaging and time consuming.

What are the two most important abilities that a sales person needs? There has been extensive research in this area and the answers are clear. The two most critical factors for a sales person are the ability to ask questions and the ability to listen. Both of these capabilities can be tested at interview yet most interviewers miss the golden opportunity to do so.

Here are some tips to help you when you are next interviewing a candidate for a sales position in your company.

1. Do not put undue emphasis on appearance. The candidate’s appearance and initial impression matter but only to a limited extent. Many interviewers put too much significance on how the candidate looks and their first impression. What the candidate says and does is more important. Do their skills and experience meet the criteria that you have set? Do not let a smart suit, bright smile and firm handshake fool you.
2. Have they done any research? A good sales person will do their homework before the interview. They will have visited your web site, spoken to the agency and gathered as much information as they can find. Ask them about this. See what investigation they have done. If they have failed to some basic market research then it shows a sloppy approach to selling.
3. Assess their questioning technique. After an initial preamble, let them do the questioning. See if they use a structured approach. They should ask about all aspects of the sales cycle for your products. A professional sales person will want to know facts and figures about prospects, leads, order values, close rates, quotas etc.
4. Don’t use standard questions. Candidates can easily prepare for obvious questions such as ‘What are your strengths and weaknesses?’ or ‘Tell me about a recent sale.’ Try putting them into hypothetical situations where they have to do some thinking. Talk about a recent sales challenge in your business and ask how they would have handled the situation. See if they can think on their feet.
5. See what they have learned. I often asked candidates this question, ‘What was the biggest deal you ever lost?’ Then I would ask follow-up questions to see who they blamed for the loss and what lessons they learned. A great sales professional takes responsibility and is always learning.
6. Investigate their sales experience. Resumes can be misleading so check to find out exactly what kind of selling experience they have. Have they been selling face to face or over the phone? How long is the sales cycle? What is the value of the sale? What was their quota and what was their performance against quota. Any hesitancy or waffle in these areas is a cause for concern.
7. Check that they have listened. Towards the end of the interview ask some questions that relate to topics you discussed earlier. See if they were listening or just nodding.
8. Can they close? The interview is itself a sales call so at the end of I would expect the candidate to try some kind of close. They should ask questions like. ‘How do I measure up for this position?’ ‘Do you have any concerns about me?’ ‘What happens next in the process?’ etc. If you raise concerns they should address them – just as if they were handling sales objections – and then check that you have been reassured.
9. Check their resumes and their references. Any deceptions on the resume should rule them out immediately.
10. Get other people’s opinions. Have them meet some other directors or senior managers and one of your sales people. Then compare notes. They will often spot things that you miss.
11. Finally, if you are in the happy position of having two or more excellent candidates and you cannot choose, then try this. Ask the candidates to return and give a short sales presentation on a product of their choice. A presentation is different from an interview and you will be able to assess their communication skills. Did they use jargon? Did they sell features or benefits? How well did they handle objections? Did they ask for feedback? And so on.

Don’t select someone just because they make a strong initial appearance. Don’t appoint someone who is likeable but cannot sell. The use of these simple techniques will help you to avoid that problem.

Do you segment and track leads? Are you reaching the right people at the right time? Before customers buy your product or service, they go through a process of discovery, learning and understanding. Customizing your social tactics based on the buying stage increases sales. In this article you’ll discover tactics that engage customers at each [...]

This post How to Get More Leads With Creative Social Tactics first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

When Raja Rajamannar became CMO of MasterCard Worldwide in 2013, he moved quickly to transform how the credit card giant measures marketing. His artillery: Advanced Big Data analytics. MasterCard had always been a data-driven organization. But the real power and full potential of data was not being fully realized by marketing.

Rajamannar involved finance early. To spearhead analytic efforts, he assigned a finance person – who was already embedded in marketing – to create an ROI evaluation framework and integrated her deeper into the marketing function. With a better understanding of the marketing context, she has brought a new level of financial discipline and rigor to the marketing team. This has reframed the conversation to balance the interests of both sides.

For example, in the credit card business, understanding the importance of deals with issuing banks is critical. While marketing might focus on maximizing card transactions, or swipes, finance understands that not all swipes are equal (depending on the deal with a given bank). Likewise, marketing wants to clearly quantify the impact of its long-term branding efforts while finance is more focused on macro-economic drivers of marketing performance, such as interest rates, employment levels, inflation and retail sales.

At many companies we work with, analytics becomes the connective tissue between the different visions of what drives results emerging from marketing and finance. Combining data from both marketing and finance, analytics reveals the true picture of what drives marketing performance, and connects marketing to revenue.

Inside Intel

Consider Intel, which began eyeing Big Data’s potential to quantify marketing’s contribution to revenue in about 2010. As an ingredient brand, Intel often struggled to link marketing to P&L impact. But David Ginsberg, VP, Corporate Insights, Brand and Strategy, saw the potential for analytics to create a bridge between marketing and finance by illuminating marketing’s impact on sales – the focal point of where marketing and finance meet.

Intel formed a special Marketing ROI (MROI) team – a first-of-its-kind collaboration between marketing and finance. The result has been transformational. Intel’s research team, for example, has been rebuilt as an analytics and strategic insights team that identifies, collects and harnesses unprecedented amounts of the company’s data. This now provides its marketing teams globally with predictive decision-making capabilities they never had before. Financial accountability for marketing performance has become front and center. Marketing and finance share a fully transparent analytics platform that all parties can access to run what-if scenarios, optimize marketing-dollar allocations across products and markets, and get course-correcting feedback on the performance of those allocations.

In one instance, we worked with both Intel and Facebook to quantify how the chip maker’s social media marketing on Facebook affected consumer PC sales. This targeted effort showed that paid Facebook ads and the company’s own unpaid (organic) Facebook postings increased Intel brand and product search volume by 1.9%-2.3% – which in turn led to increased PC sales.

Organizational Anachronisms Exposed

Similar reform in the relationship between marketing, finance and analytics is taking place across many sectors – from manufacturing and retail, to financial services, travel and entertainment, pharmaceuticals and toys. Analytics has exposed organizational anachronisms such as adversarial marketing-finance relationships and a focus on traditional year-long planning (instead of constant optimization) in marketing groups little changed for decades. This has spurred re-thinks that include changes to key executive relationships.

At Mattel, another company we work with, a cross-functional group of executives from insights, brand, marketing, media, digital and finance now meets regularly to adjust spending allocation plans based on modeling and analytic results, says Ed Gawronski, Global SVP. This has brought agreement on a common set of ROI metrics and helped facilitate decision making about investing in short-term sales versus brand equity.

In effect, analytics creates a common language between marketing and finance for the first time by allowing the two functions to clearly see marketing’s impact on financial performance. Consider how USAA – the nation’s 6^th largest consumer P&C insurer – has reinvented how marketing, finance and data analytics work together, starting with a first-ever partnership between the CMO, CFO and Chief Data Analytics officer.

Roger Adams, CMO says: “As USAA developed into a data-driven organization, we were able to accurately predict the impact of different marketing investment decisions. It’s completely reframed the conversation.” Forrester Research recently published a case study describing how USAA’s new partnership between marketing, finance and analytics has helped deliver better business insights.

At MarketShare, we’ve seen these partnerships play out in a change in who’s sitting at the table during discussions with major brands about advanced marketing analytics technology. Once mostly marketing, it’s now equal parts marketing, finance and analytics. In some cases, finance even leads a vendor selection process once dominated by marketing.

Companies that fail to update their marketing organizations and continue using antiquated measurement solutions are at risk of being left behind. New marketing-finance relationships combined with advanced analytics technology are increasing efficiency and delivering “found” dollars to the bottom line. Short of creating a killer new product or service, there are few ways a big company can move the needle quite so dramatically.

Last Saturday morning saw the coming together of arguably the two greatest 6-a-side football teams ever to grace pitch 5 at Wandsworth’s Wandle Recreation Centre. Pathetico Madrid v Real Sosobad was probably one of the most eagerly anticipated match-ups since the season’s fixtures were released the night before, and the event did not disappoint.

One enthralled onlooker described the atmosphere at pitchside as being “all right” and the standard of football as “something you won’t see anywhere else”. The game ended with an incredible scoreline of something like 17-14 (we’re not entirely sure as everybody agreed it was too early for maths) and Pathetico Madrid walked away with a hard-fought victory. Eggy, Real Sosobad’s captain, put the loss down to his “horrendous hangover” and the fact his keeper only turned up at half time.

But as much as I’m sure you’d like me to be, I’m not here to talk about football. Instead, I’d like to turn your attention to another thrilling contest that everyone has been talking about – Content Marketing Agencies v In-house Content Departments.

As content marketing continues to grow into an ever more critical component of a company’s marketing machine, thought must be given to choosing the best way to coordinate this output – either in-house or through a content marketing agency.

There’s been a trend of late that’s seen many organisations opting to produce and manage their content in-house, often by creating new departments and bringing in journalists from the national media and content marketing experts.

B2C marketers use an average of 12 content marketing platforms within their strategies, including blogs, videos, articles, social content, mobile sites, microsites and print.

Massive volumes of rich media content

However, too many companies are failing to recognise the importance of having a digital asset management solution in place to efficiently manage the massive volumes of rich media content any corporate marketing strategy requires.

As Robert Rose, chief strategist at the Content Marketing Institute, points out: “Many brands are still at the experimental stage of content marketing and it’s a bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

“What stands out for me is lack of content marketing strategy in many companies, plus the fact most of them have at least a dozen channels – plus multiple platforms – for all that content.”

If we focus on what’s needed to run social media within the global, multibrand, multichannel marketing arena we’re competing in today, it’s clear that no organisation should rely on just one person to handle this responsibility.

But many are. Taking social media in-house seems like a relatively simple thing to do – after all, everyone’s already on Facebook anyway. You could hand over the responsibility to a marketing assistant or unpaid intern who might be able to give it a cursory glance whenever they get a chance. But what you’ve got to ask yourself is whether posting a few tweets at lunchtime is going to be a profitable approach to social media marketing?

Plus, with the responsibility in the hands of someone professionally inexperienced, there’s every chance it could go catastrophically wrong. Take the recent Twitter incident with KLM, for example.

Say adios to social media howlers

Moments after the Netherlands narrowly beat Mexico in their World Cup second-round clash, the airline sent out a tweet saying “Adios Amigos!” beneath an image of a departures-lounge sign displaying a rather culturally insensitive depiction of a mustachioed man sporting a sombrero.

I’m not sure whether this was posted by an intern or not, but either way it’s a bigger blunder than that time Eggy rifled in an own goal from 2 yards out then immediately ran headfirst into the crossbar. He blamed his hangover.

For companies to avoid this and other social media-related howlers created in-house, a cohesive and transparent work environment needs to be cultivated where all contributors are clear on the issues concerning the running of a hefty content calendar. No mean feat indeed.

Create a positive customer experience

Who impacts the delivery of content? Where is the effectiveness for connecting with customers to be gained? Where in the organisation are digital assets being created and stored? How effective is your content at creating a positive customer experience?

It’s often the case that content assets are created and then distributed among various contributors to produce multiple versions for their particular channels. This kind of set-up almost guarantees poor results as the intended meaning of the message gets watered down or perhaps lost altogether.

So as social media’s role in a content marketing strategy becomes increasingly strategic and managerial, outsourcing it to the right content marketing agency with an asset management solution already installed can have a significant impact on the overall effectiveness of your marketing ROI.

Content marketing sure is in fashion at the moment. But lots of people are, perhaps understandably, reluctant to follow fashion for fashion’s sake.

Senior managers in particular often want to know – beyond the oft-repeated marketing buzzwords – what demonstrable results they can get from investing in content, and how this can all be measured. They’re looking for clear impacts on the business’ bottom line.

There’s an ongoing debate around content marketing and return-on-investment (ROI): basically, we’re all doing it, but few people really know how to measure it’s value – or even if it’s full value can be measured.

We thought we’d use our latest article to explore this subject in more detail: can content marketing ROI be fully measured? And if so, how?

If you’ve ever wanted to take the plunge with content but hesitated because you couldn’t answer the question, ‘How will it make me money?’ (whether that question came from yourself or your boss!) then this article’s for you.

Creating Content: The Costs

The starting point of evaluating any investment is working out what it costs. Costs always seem to be easier to define than value, and that’s generally the case when it comes to content, too.

If you create content in-house, your costs will include things like staff salaries and overheads. Depending on the content type, you may also need to consider factors such as distribution and promotional costs, as well as any software you use to create and share your content.

If you task a Content Marketing agency with creating your content, the costs are even more black-and-white. Here at Wyzowl, for example, we charge fixed prices for content creation, from planning all the way through to distribution. You’re given a simple, predictable, one-off bill which covers the total package.

Obvious value…

As we’ve already touched upon, calculating the ‘value’ of content is where things start to get a little foggy.

The good news is that there are obvious things that you can measure. You can use analytics programs to understand where your traffic comes from – meaning you can measure content-driven inbounds, evaluate which particular pieces are creating interest and driving traffic, and understanding how customers behave once on your website.

Using tools like this, you could, in theory, work out how many qualified orders each piece has generated and – by subtracting your costs from the value of these orders – have a pretty scientific ROI ‘value’ for each piece of content. Of course, that’s only in theory.

Actual value…

You see, like anything else in business and marketing, it isn’t quite as simple as it first appears!

The full value of content is much more sophisticated and difficult to calculate than this. Principally, this is because content has other, holistic benefits which can’t really be quantified – it builds familiarity, relationship and trust among your audience, which can’t be defined numerically.

This approach also carries a pretty naïve view of the way viewers consume content, and exactly how it informs their purchase decisions. It assumes that customers view content and – without delay, having viewed it just once – head to your website and place an order. Sure, sometimes that might happen, but generally, forget about it. It just doesn’t work like that.

This was covered in an awesome Slideshare presentation put together by Moz’s Rand Fishkin. In it, Rand explained that, while many companies expect to see a direct and immediate link between content and sales, that’s generally an over-simplified and unrealistic aim.

In reality, as Rand explains, good content engages your audience. It encourages them to check out other content you’ve produced, and builds a sense of trust and familiarity between them and your brand. Eventually, when they need your product, you’ll be in a highly favourable position to secure their business because you laid the groundwork with that initial investment in content.

Content is forever
Another awesome feature of content – which makes it hard to gauge ROI – is that it has tremendous long-term value to your brand.

Content doesn’t disappear or diminish in value over time – it remains out there on the web, waiting to be discovered by potential customers. It’s lasting and permanent, which means that – although you pay only once to create and share it – you can actually benefit from awesome content far into the future.

Conclusion
As businesses ramp up their focus on content marketing, we’re all gaining an increased understanding of it’s value, and how we can get a return on our investment. It’s not always as immediate and simple as some businesses expect – but we believe the benefits of content are holistic, long-term and very, very real. It may take a little while for the investment to pay off, but the numbers tell us that – eventually – it does, and handsomely, too.

If you’re thinking of taking the plunge into content marketing, why not get in touch for a chat? We’ve recently launched our new Content Marketing Agency and would love to discuss how content can help grow your business, driving traffic, generating leads and developing engagement between you and your future customers!

TORONTO – Shares of BlackBerry (TSX:BB) were taking a beating after details emerged on partnership between two of the world’s biggest technology companies — Apple and IBM — that will cater to business customers.

BlackBerry shares were down more than eight per cent, or $1 to $11.14, at midday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Earlier in the session shares had fallen as much as $1.29 per share.

International Business Machines Corp. and Apple Inc. said late Tuesday they plan to launch a partnership this fall that will have IBM creating more business-themed applications that will be pre-loaded on iPhones and iPads.

The strategy would make available more than 100 IBM apps that cater to specific industries, like retail and health care.

The announcement will put Apple and IBM in competition with BlackBerry, which is trying to reaffirm its position catering to government agencies and businesses that require secure mobile communications.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said his company is turning to help from IBM because it doesn’t understand the needs of corporate customers as well as it does consumers.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said the alliance will help her company by widening the audience for its technological tools, providing bigger returns on the roughly $24 billion that IBM has invested in data analytics.

In an emailed statement, BlackBerry took an optimistic tone on the competition saying it “only underscores the ongoing need for secure end-to-end enterprise mobility solutions like those BlackBerry has delivered for years.”

BlackBerry has dedicated more resources to building its relationship with business customers under the leadership of chief executive John Chen, who joined the company last November.

Chen was hired last year to reshape BlackBerry, cut costs and lead an effort to find a better footing in the competitive tech sector. Before he took the job, he helped turn software company Sybase into a profitable operation focused on mobile business technology.

His strategy has set aside the consumer market as a priority, after the BlackBerry 10 line of phones failed to become a sales hit.

As more of BlackBerry’s competitors turn their attention to the highly lucrative, and generally loyal, enterprise market, the Canadian company could begin to feel extra pressure.

William Blair analyst Anil Doradla said he believes the Apple and IBM partnership will be a “long-term negative” for BlackBerry.

“In the likely scenario of Apple/IBM doing well in servicing the needs of enterprise customers, we see little reason for enterprises to choose BlackBerry’s platform over Apple’s,” he wrote in a note.

Follow @dj_friend on Twitter.

The post Shares of BlackBerry lower after Apple, IBM announce business app partnership appeared first on Canadian Business.

Value drives business success. The premier companies are those that provide distinctive value. The more value delivered to the customer, the more value is typically returned (in the form of revenue, profits, loyalty, etc.) to the provider. The management mandate seems clear: Find ways to create more customer value than your competitors.

Yet value creation as a strategic objective is rarely mentioned in the A/E industry. We prefer concepts like quality, expertise, and experience. Unfortunately, these assets generally don't differentiate us; they are expected by our clients. Added value, by contrast, differentiates. Has your firm made value creation a strategic priority? If not, let me encourage you to give the matter serious consideration.

So what is value? A good working definition is: Value is the perceived benefit received minus the associated cost. Added value, then, is when the client receives more benefit for the cost than was expected.

It's important to understand that there is more to "benefit" than services rendered and more to "cost" than fees paid. To understand value creation, we need to recognize that:

• Value is a personal and subjective concept that exists in the customer's mind (if you need proof, consider some of the items that people will pay good money for on eBay!). Value cannot be adequately quantified monetarily; purchase price is a helpful but incomplete measure of value. Nor should we presume what any given client values; we must uncover it.

• Since value exists in the mind, it is delivered in both tangible and intangible forms. Thus the client may value that your firm is easy to work with as much as the quality of your work products.

With these principles in mind, let's consider what my research indicates are the three most common value-adding strategies. These are not specific to our industry, but they are all certainly relevant to us.

1. Satisfy unmet or emerging needs. This is the classic sweet spot in the product/service life cycle. When you are among the few firms (or the only firm) that can meet a client's specific need, the solution you deliver is inevitably of high value. Yet supply and demand are only part of the value equation. One study of professional firms found that the less the client understands the problem, the more valuable the solution. Getting involved early in helping clients solve emerging, unfamiliar problems is a clear opportunity to provide higher value—and reap the greater profit and client loyalty that comes with it.

Among the three value-adding strategies, this is easily the one most commonly pursued by A/E firms. No doubt your firm has periodically added new services to address emerging markets less populated by your competitors. Unfortunately, this strategy is typically short-lived. As the need becomes better known, more firms move to meet it. With more choices of providers, the perceived value (and the profit) declines. A/E firms are also routinely slow to respond to emerging opportunities. By the time most invest in new services, their competitors usually already know about it and are doing the same.

2. Meet clients' strategic needs. Strategic needs are those that affect the overall success of the client's organization. They commonly relate to financial, competitive, political, or operational factors. Given the critical nature of strategic needs, clients are usually willing to pay a premium for good solutions. That's one reason, I'm convinced, why other professional service firms demand higher multipliers than we do—they do a better job meeting strategic needs.

A/E firms once played a much larger role in this arena, but we have forfeited many of the high value, strategic services to other professionals like management consulting firms. The role of "trusted advisor" is at the heart of meeting strategic needs. Many A/E firms find themselves merely filling orders for design services rather than helping clients define their needs and choose the optimum course of action. We are often focused to a fault on doing what we do best, unable to connect our work to the strategic needs that drive our projects.

3. Provide distinct, valued customer experiences. This is the fundamental asset at the core of what is called the Experience Economy. Businesses that command the highest profits these days usually have tapped into the value of offering superior customer experiences. Consider the entertainment industry (including spectator sports), theme parks, adventure travel. Consider how the "Starbucks Experience" multiplied the value of a commodity like coffee. A five-star restaurant is defined as much by its ambiance and service as by the quality of its food.

Among the three value-adding strategies, I think this one holds the greatest promise for our industry—as I've written about in this space. While A/E firms routinely claim to provide "great service" (i.e., great client experiences), rare is the firm that has embraced this strategy as a management priority. That oversight is your advantage. For an overview of effective client service practices that enhance the value of your services, check out this previous post.
 

You secured the interview, brought your A game, and landed the job. Now comes the hard part: negotiating your salary. 

"Salary negotiations are like any other type of negotiations — except the words you use can be extremely powerful, since there is a personal aspect to the discussion," says HR expert Steve Kane. "The negotiation is not over the worth and price of an inanimate object, but rather the value of you to some enterprise."

Here are 15 words and phrases that may hurt more than they'll help in a salary negotiation: 

"I accept [the first offer]."

Remember: This is a negotiation, so be careful not to end it before it has even had a chance to start, says Ryan Kahn, a career coach, founder of The Hired Group, and author of "Hired! The Guide for the Recent Grad." 

"I'm looking for X."

Never throw out the first number. "You want to leave room for discussion," says Lynn Taylor, author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job."

Kahn agrees. "A good negotiation strategy is to let the employer offer the first number. That puts you in a position to see the number they are offering and gives you the opportunity to negotiate it up from there."

"That's all you're offering me?"

Never say this, or anything else that will offend the employer — even if you think the salary they're offering is laughable. 

"No."

"In negotiations, you'll have to be willing to be flexible and provide counteroffers when the offer isn't in line with what you are seeking," says Kahn. By saying "no" you could be quickly closing the door on the offer at hand.

"I have other outstanding offers right now that are much more lucrative."

Even if it's true, you shouldn't use "that card" to pressure the employer, Taylor says. "Only discuss the offer at hand."

And if you don't have another offer on the table, you'll definitely want to avoid this tactic. "You could shoot yourself in the foot," Taylor says. "The hiring manager may ask you to elaborate and if you're bluffing, it'll be hard to save face."

"Bottom line"/"This is my final/last offer."

These phrases sounds like threats, and they typically close out the negotiation, says Kane. "If you say any of these things, and the demand is not met by the employer, the negotiation will be over and you'll have to be prepared to walk away." 

"I know this may sound a little aggressive, but..."

If your rationale is based on fact, you should never have to preface your request with this type of disclaimer.

"I need..."

You should never say you need X amount more because of expenses or debt. "Don't bring in personal issues; this is about your merit and the job fit," says Taylor.

"I hate to have to ask for this, but..."

True, it might not be the easiest thing to ask for more money — but saying you "hate to have to do it" is a flat out lie. Plus, it's just a really terrible way to preface the negotiation.

"I think..."

Don't use "I think" or "maybe" or any other "uncertain words," says Jessica Miller-Merrell, editor of Blogging4Jobs.com and CEO of Xceptional HR. "Always speak confidently."

"The least I'd be willing to accept is X."

If you tell them the parameters of the lowest offer your willing to take, that could be what you'll get. 

"Sorry"

Have confidence in yourself. "If you know your value and what you'll be bringing to the company, there will be no need to apologize for asking for more," Kahn says. 

"Cheap"/"Lousy"

These words are demeaning or disrespectful to the employer, Kane explains. "The employer may decide they don't want you to work there after all because of the lack of respect you show them."

"But I'm worth so much more."

Of course you'll want to mention your value in a salary negotiation — but try to say it in a way that isn't so obnoxious. You never want to come off as arrogant. 

"You might not think I'm worth this, but…"

Just don't.

"You want to be direct, polite, and concise in your negotiation to show that you are competent and a valued member of the team," Miller-Merrell concludes.

NOW WATCH: 7 Smart Questions To Ask At The End Of Job Interviews 

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Samsung released the dramatic conclusion to its months-long alien invasion saga Tuesday with a six-minute video chronicling the second half of what the company is calling the most important soccer match ever.

The video is part of a larger series created by the mobile company following a dream team of soccer players as they attempt to fight off a group of space invaders planning to enslave the human race.

The previous installment in the series left off at halftime with the human team — led by stars like Lionel Messi, Landon Donovan, and Cristiano Ronaldo — behind by a score of 3-1.

The finale — which of course shows off Samsung products like the Galaxy S5 smartphone — opens with manager Franz Beckenbauer talking strategy with his team and preparing them for the second half.

Things start well when the humans score early in the half, and get even better when Wayne Rooney ties the game with a second goal in the 88th minute. 

Rooney follows with a rough tackle, giving up a penalty kick near the goal. Luckily, super goalie Iker Casillas saves the day.

As the game draws to a close, Ronaldo comes to the rescue, scoring the team's fourth goal.

The match ends shortly after the goal that puts the Galaxy team up 4-3, and celebration ensues. The ad concludes 50 years down the road with an older Messi and Ronaldo looking at the sky, only to find another alien spaceship approaching Earth.

So perhaps we haven't seen the last of Samsung's animated soccer-themed films.  

Here's the full ad: 

SEE ALSO: NIKE AD: Hey Brazil, There's Life After Soccer

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If you are selling something, you must often wonder how to determine your buyers’ willingness to pay (WTP), especially when you have many different kinds of customers. The more accurate your estimate, the more likely you are to sell or the less money you’ll leave on the table for the customer.

My recent experience of shopping for a quality leather coat in a Middle Eastern mall shows one powerful way to discover a buyer’s WTP. When on vacation, my wife and I came to a leather coats store and spent two hours trying different coats. Ahmed, the seller, was a sturdy 50-year-old Turk with penetrating brown eyes. He told me that his family had run shops for centuries.

A fluent Russian speaker, he asked us where we were from, and I replied that we were from Russia, but not from Moscow. I was not being dishonest, I was born in Russia, we speak Russian at home, but now we live in France. But I wanted to pay a price a Russian tourist would pay (not one from Moscow, though, which is known to be a rich city), which I expected would be less than the price a French tourist would end up paying.

When I asked for the price of the first coat that I tried on, Ahmed quoted about 2,000 euros but he also said that he would give me a good discount. After trying 15 plus different models, I realized that I loved a black coat that looked like the one worn by the characters in the film The Matrix, at a list price of 2,700 euros. It was too long for my taste, but Ahmed said that his tailor could reduce the length of the coat and we started bargaining over the price.

Ahmed wrote down 1,500 euros, I wrote 500. Then he wrote down 1,000, I wrote down 700, and then he wrote down 800, which turned out to be the price I was willing to pay. But then my sensible wife stepped in and told me that I should not be paying even 800 euros for the leather coat before it was actually shortened, as there was no guarantee that the tailor would do a good job.

Ahmed countered that he had a similar coat that was already shortened. He showed me a coat with a list price of 1,800 euros. I liked that coat too and we went back to the bargaining table. He wrote down 670 euros. Since my willingness to pay for the coat was already anchored at 800 euros (the price I was willing to pay to look a bit like a Matrix hero), I wrote down 600 euros and we shook hands.

On the way back home, I reflected on the experience. Someone told me that in such stores, Russian tourists could buy coats for 400 euros. But my brain had gotten anchored at a much higher list price (1,800), plus I had been willing to pay 800 euros for a different one, so 600 euros looked like a great deal compared to these two reference points.

In fact, despite my efforts to conceal my French residence and ability to pay a higher price than an average Russian, I had ended up paying a similar price to what I would have paid in France when buying quality leather coats on a reasonable sale. In other words, Ahmed’s negotiation strategy had forced me to reveal my French willingness to pay.

After concluding the deal I asked Ahmed why he preferred bargaining to having fixed prices. His reply was that bargaining was a part of Middle Eastern culture and it “helps us to communicate with a customer and to understand him better.” Which is just another way of saying: I want to understand the customer’s WTP. After all, when I entered the store, Ahmed didn’t know if I was a well-off Russian, a poor Russian, or a Frenchman. If the coat’s price had been fixed at 800 euros and my WTP were 600, then I would not have bought it. Had my WTP been 1,000 euros, but the price were 600 euros, I would have saved 400 euros. At 600, my WTP was exactly equal to the price and the market cleared.

What could I have done differently to get a lower Russian price? I should have done what my wife decided to do: after also trying 15 plus different models, she took pictures of the items she liked the most and said she would come back tomorrow. After looking at the prices that Ahmed wrote for these items on our way back in the car, we decided to come back the next day and ask for a much bigger discount. Taking time to talk through the reasons why we were prepared to pay a particular price for a product helped us to avoid being trapped by an “anchor” of a much higher price and revealing our true WTP.

When I teach competitive advantage or more advanced strategy topics, executives often ask how sellers can accurately assess buyers’ WTP. My Middle Eastern experience shows how effectively negotiations with a high starting price can achieve this goal. It’s an approach frequently used in B2B sales, but I expect it could also find its way to Western retail stores selling moderate to high-priced items. I suspect that in Western negotiation cultures the initial starting price will be closer to the actual price at which the seller is willing to sell the product, so that the buyer with a very high WTP doesn’t feel like he overpaid a great deal when hearing that another person (with a lower WTP) got a much better deal for a similar product. That said, Ahmed and his ancestors have been in business for a long time and we can learn some lessons from them.

Insight Selling: The Next Frontier of Sales and Marketing Alignment

If you think back five or ten years, the focus of sales and marketing alignment at that time was on the sales process. The emergence of usable CRM systems like Salesforce.com and marketing automation platforms like Eloqua and Marketo enabled tracking across the customer lifecycle from lead to close and beyond. As companies made investments in these sales and marketing platforms, it made sense to agree on a single integrated process enabled by the integrated systems and operationalized through concepts like the “lead waterfall,” marketing qualified leads, sales accepted leads, service level agreements, and the sales funnel. Many organizations are making great progress in this area, and others no doubt have a ways to go. However, from an operational standpoint, there’s been tremendous progress.

The next phase for sales and marketing alignment should focus on content. “Content Marketing” and “Insight Selling” are all the rage — just as CRM and marketing automation were five years ago. But in most organizations we talk to, marketing and sales are not even close to alignment on content. Marketing departments generate heaps of keyword-optimized content to support their SEO and search engine marketing efforts, but they create content without any involvement from sales. It’s ironic, but marketing automation has moved marketers even further from the customer and their true needs.

The result of this disconnected process is that sales isn’t aware of the content or doesn’t buy into the point of view the content is promoting. At best, content goes ignored by sales, and at worst, content puts sales on its heels because the customer has consumed the content and may be more knowledgeable than the sales rep responsible for follow-up.  It is only after the customer informs the sales person that they’ve read their latest piece of content that the sales person truly appreciates the fact that “marketing is sending stuff out.”

So, how should sales and marketing better align on content? Consider how we accomplish this through our Selling with Insights program, facilitating alignment through the Insight Blueprints we create for our clients. Start by identifying the challenges you help your customers solve and opportunities you help them unlock. If you don’t know these, then don’t guess. Get on the phone with your existing customers and ask them about the challenges or opportunities they faced that led them to look to the market for a partner. While you’re at it, ask them what about your company led them to choose you and what they believe are your capabilities and differentiators. Now that you have this information, you can infer the “Aha Moment” that will help a prospect make the connection between their challenges or opportunities and your capabilities and differentiators to help. These “Aha Moments” can then become topics to help drive your content marketing and insight selling programs. Best of all, when the content is based on actual input from your customers, there should be very little debate about who’s right or who’s wrong. The customer is always right!

We often get asked how we operationalize this process — what are the roles, responsibilities, and expectations. For example, we get asked if salespeople should be writing their own insights. Typically, our answer to that question is “no.” Most sales leaders want their salespeople spending time using the insights with customers, not researching and creating insights from scratch. Additionally, you don’t want a salesperson (unintentionally) misrepresenting functional specifications of a product or service if you work in a highly technical field or violating a law if you work in a regulated industry. In most situations, the insight creation and management process should be owned by marketing, and marketing should tap subject matter experts throughout the organization and then validate the insight with some representation from sales before they distribute insights to the sales team.

We also believe that marketers should take the same Selling with Insights program with their sales counterparts so that they can appreciate how their work will be applied by a salesperson face-to-face with a customer. Interestingly, marketers are some of the most active and engaged participants despite a bit of trepidation about sending them through because some fear that you’re mixing oil and water.

As buyers get smarter and savvier, there’s a real need for marketing and sales to work as a single unified team in both process and message.

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Learn more about Richardson’s Selling with Insights sales training program.

 

The post Insight Selling: The Next Frontier of Sales and Marketing Alignment appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

This article focuses on a simple, but powerful idea: Regularly talking to your audience (on-the-phone or in-person) to generate topics for content they actually want to read.

Content marketing can work magic for your business. Once you craft an article, blog post or ebook it will work tirelessly for you, day and night, month after month. Your content will inbound traffic, qualified leads, and even the occasional paying customer years after you have clicked “publish”. Also, the more your content gets shared, the more this process gets amplified.

Of course, there are two challenges to developing great content. You will have to:

1. Generate a lot of content ideas.
2. Produce remarkable stories.

And in today’s digital landscape, there just happens to be an overwhelming volume of content being published each and every day – a virtual flood of long- and short-form prose, YouTube videos, infographics, podcasts, and slide presentations.

How Can You Get Noticed Through The Noise?

You need to stand out from the crowd in the age of information overload. People don’t want more information. What they want is better, more relevant stories.

Producing a lot of content is actually incredibly easy. The hard part is producing excellent content — and that usually starts with good ideas.

Publish Content on Topics Your Audience Wants to Read

That is the simple secret to effective content marketing. Create content that:

• Is more relevant to your audience than content from other publishers.
• Is written in the language they speak, with their own lingo, a voice that resonates with them.
• Answers the questions they have in a straightforward and helpful manner.

Producing this sort of content requires an intimate understanding of your audience. That is why the development of a marketing persona is an essential element of every kind of marketing method worth its salt.

How can you build a better relationship with your readers to help you to create amazing content?

Talk With Your Audience

Easily, the best way to discover who your audience is is by engaging them in conversation. Don’t talk to them, talk with them. Listen more than you speak. The true expert is the student of her audience.

Real-time human interaction is an excellent way to do this. With it, you will get an intuitive sense for your audience.

No amount of keyword research, competitive analysis or studying of discussion forums can do that. With these methods, you’d only develop a superficial understanding of your reader. As a great content marketer, you want to dig deeper than that.

By participating in dialogue, you get out of your own head. You challenge your own assumptions through interaction and direct feedback.

Now that we have covered the theory, let us look at a real case study.

16,315 Views and Thousands of Dollars Later…

At Close.io, we publish at least two new posts a week on our startup sales advice blog.

It offers highly targeted, tightly focused content for our readers (startup founders and sales professionals).

For us, focus has advantages and disadvantages:

• Readers love it when every post addresses a specific challenge they deal with.
• It sets tight constraints on what you can blog about and limits the range of topics available to you.

So how do we come up with hundreds of topics regularly on a niche blog?

My secret sauce is what I call Sales Office Hours. Every week I talk with select startup founders who ask me for sales advice.

A recent question that kept popping up again and again was: “Our prospects are asking us for a discount. How should we deal with that?”

If you talk with people, and you hear them ask the same things without fail, what do you do? It’s obvious, isn’t it?

You write about it!

With that in mind, we published Startup Sales Negotiations 101 – How to Respond to Discount Inquiries.

Within a week, the article received 16,315 unique views and has continued to drive steady traffic ever since.

What’s more — hundreds of people signed up to our free startup sales course. Some of them later became paying customers of our sales communication software, while others signed up directly. Although we didn’t have the analytics in place to trace back individual signups, it is pretty safe to say that this blog post helped us generate thousands of dollars in recurring revenue.

Why Was This Post So Successful?

It was not because of…

• Magazine-worthy writing. What I am: an experienced salesman. What I am not: a professional writer or a native English speaker. In fact, readers frequently comment on the quality of my writing and drop not-so-subtle hints that they know a good proof-reader.
• Clever viral promotion or brilliant growth hacks. For our distribution strategy, we shared the post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Hacker News. We also recruited friends to re-share it — not exactly rocket science.
• Advanced keyword research or SEO magic. This didn’t even cross our minds.

What did make this post so successful was that it addressed a very common question many members of our audience had and it offered them a clear, precise, informed, and actionable answer.

Boring, isn’t it? After all, there are plenty of blog posts and ebooks that seduce readers with stories such as, “You won’t believe this 4-minute tweak to increase conversions by 347%!”

But executing the plain basics of marketing effectively is a more reliable way to grow your business than trying to be a sly trickster, jumping from one “hot” tactic to the next quick hack.

When Will You Talk With Your Audience?

If you are not already consulting your audience, brainstorm opportunities to start conversations. Take five minutes right now to do this.

….and in case you wanted a bit of help, here are some ideas to get you started:

• Give away free phone consultations.
• Join meetups.
• Call them.
• Meet up over coffee.
• Attend conventions, trade shows and other events.
• Spend time at their favorite hang out spots.

The bottom line: Talk to your audience. It is the best kind of market research there is and it is the fastest way to create great content — even if you are not a gifted writer.

SPONSORED POST

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This sponsored post is produced by Mike Smith, vice president of marketing, GetResponse

Yes, email marketing works. It’s a much more effective way of finding prospective customers than display ads or social media, according to many experts.

But only 22 percent of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates, notes Econsultancy.  This is particularly true for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) without the large staffs, deep pockets, and squadron of consultants and marketing agencies of larger firms. So what’s the problem?

Two words: landing pages.  Or rather, inadequate landing pages that aren’t eye-catching or specific or designed as part of an integrated campaign that produces promising leads. In the SMB arena, high-powered, finely researched, direct-response campaigns purchased from large marketing automation technology providers aren’t in the budget.  But creating homegrown landing pages that work well on all devices is notoriously challenging in a world where HTML expertise is in short supply.

Landing page design aside, online marketing campaigns can be more effective by avoiding some common mistakes. An easily rectified error is sending prospects to a homepage rather than a specific landing page. Another frequent blunder is too few landing pages.

Companies with 40-plus landing pages get 12 times more leads than those with five or less, according to Hubspot, which noted that companies with 30-plus landing pages get seven times more leads than those with 10 or less. Meanwhile, an easy approach overlooked by 84 percent of marketer is to avoid navigation bars on landing pages, which only send prospects elsewhere before conversion.

Taking these simple steps will help, but what about creating those vexing landing pages themselves?  And how can these landing pages be integrated into the disparate marketing mix used by many SMB marketers, comprised of separate email platforms, A/B testing tools and the like?

Fortunately, while many SMB companies were focused on their all-consuming campaigns, new marketing tools have appeared that take the agony out of landing-page creation and integration into powerful campaigns that get results.  Given the software now available, SMB marketers should use this checklist to make sure they select the new tools that will give them the biggest leg up in efficiently, inexpensively building compelling landing pages and marketing campaigns.

Look for these characteristics:

Easy-to-use landing-page design tools

Knowing HTML is a thing of the past for the latest landing-page creation apps. Look for tools with drag-and-drop editors, a rich selection of landing page templates with matching thank-you pages, a large library of images for pages, and potential added videos, and automatic optimization features.

The best tools should make it possible to create impressive landing pages in 10 minutes or less, based on a solid offer selected by the user.  Some vendors will also host the pages with a dedicated URL and integrate them with a company’s e-commerce and social media platforms.

Autoresponders for campaigns

Potent email campaigns need more than great landing pages. Today’s best tools will enable the fast creation of autoresponders like follow-up cycles, birthday emails, one-to-one communications, customized offers, and more.

Using simple, time-based and action-based messages, these missives help refine an offer’s relevancy, timing, and accuracy.  Like the landing pages, these messages will look perfect on all devices whether mobile or desktop.

Design tools for emails, web forms, & newsletters

Utilizing the same easy-to-use editors, templates, and image libraries as the landing-page tools, today’s best apps enable the creation of responsive emails from scratch, as well as quick web forms and newsletters in minutes.  Frequent “touches” can change prospects into customers and these campaign elements help SMB companies look professional and compelling.

The best tools will make it possible to dynamically build custom personalized messages based on information imported from customer databases, such as gender, age, place of residence, or individual identification number in the client system.

Advanced email analytics

The easiest way to track the effectiveness of campaigns is to use built-in analytics that sometimes come with these email marketing design tools rather than relying on separate analytics not integrated into the solution.  The best built-in analytics will display data in real time using clear graphs and numerical tables.

These apps give marketers the ability to quickly view how many people are opening messages, the number of clicks per link, the number of customers who bought the product and subscribers who decided to cancel their subscription.

A/B testing tools

According to Marketing Sherpa, 64 percent of marketers say that landing pages are the easiest way of testing value propositions.  Remarkably, however, fewer companies are testing landing pages — just 57 percent , according to Ascend2.

Today’s best email marketing tools will enable easy creation of up to 10 versions of a landing page, with the ability to analyze the subject line, CTA, “from” field, best time and day to send email, and more. Top campaigns should know which offer is most effective with an audience.

According to a 2014 McKinsey & Company survey, customized landing pages can increase conversion rates by more than 25 percent, so SMB marketers worth their salt should start hunting for the latest tools to make this task faster and easier. As noted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generates a return on investment of 4,362 percent (every $1 invested generates $43.62 in sales). Thus it’s imperative that everything from that first email click, to the landing pages, to the follow-up information that happens throughout the customer’s decision journey has been optimized for maximum effectiveness.

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Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

In B2B marketing, sales and marketing emails play different but equally important roles in a successful communication strategy. Marketing emails lure the leads, and sales reels them in. But if nobody ever opens your messages, they won’t do your organization much good. Getting a prospect to open an email can be extremely challenging in today’s crowded marketplace. Many of us get hundreds of emails every day. Which ones make you click? Which ones make you hit delete?

We already know what works on us. Putting this knowledge into practice for our customers can be difficult.

Sales Emails vs. Marketing Emails

Before we start optimizing open rates,first let’s look at the key differences between a sales email and a marketing email.

Marketing emails are designed to build relationships with prospects so that when the sales rep enters the picture, the lead is ready for action.

• Newsletters deliver relevant content that can build your brand, set your organization up as a thought leader in your industry, introduce a new product, offer videos and whitepapers, and much more.

• Drip campaigns are automated programs that send content to prospects at the right moment in the sales cycle; “lead nurturing” is a type of drip campaign that helps leads proceed through the funnel. This gives your prospects relevant information at the moment they’re most likely to appreciate it.

• Triggered emails are fired off automatically based on the actions your prospects take, such as a “thank you” for a download.

Sales emails are direct communications between the sales team and prospects.

• They get to the point faster, usually with a call-to-action right up front, and they’re focused on getting the recipient to do something specific.

• They’re sent from a real person, ideally through a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, and they’re customized based on the prospect’s needs and past behaviors.

• They offer a benefit, whether it’s a solution to a problem, an answer to a question, or an offer for something the prospect can use.

• The templates should be created in partnership with marketing so they reflect the brand consistently while still delivering the personal touch.

Both of these types of messages will benefit when you apply some key best practices for improving open rates. Here are:

8 ways to make sure your email message actually gets read:

1. Understand the objective: This seems obvious, but in order to make sure your reader knows what you want them to do, you need to be crystal clear about it. Do you want them to visit your website, or to schedule a one-on-one call? Are you inviting them to an online demo, or are you trying to get them to meet in person? It may be that the goal is to get more information from them, either through direct communication or a survey. If they’re not ready to take a certain step (like scheduling a meeting), do you have a secondary action they can take, like downloading a white paper? Outline your objective before you start crafting the email and you’ll have more chance of success.

2. Consider where it comes from: For both marketing and sales emails, the From address is a key aspect of the equation. Both should come from your organization’s domain rather than a personal address like “sales.person@yahoo.com.” For marketing emails, it’s appropriate to use something generic like “news@yourbizdomain.com.” But a sales email should use a real name. And be sure it’s your full name. Even if your business is just you, you probably shouldn’t send an email from “jane@yourbizdomain.com.” It’s a good way to make sure everyone knows how small your company really is.

3. Grab their attention: A successful subject line is one that stands out in a crowded inbox. It’s one of the reasons why marketers are including symbols (like “Do you ♥ marketing?”) in subject lines. But simply getting someone to notice you isn’t enough. You need to communicate some sort of benefit to your reader, and the subject line is a great place to do it. That’s not easy, because your subject line should also be short and to the point as well as accurate about what’s inside. When sending marketing emails, you can always run an A/B test to find out which subject line is the top performer. For a sales email, you can try your own test with different leads in the same organization – or in similar industries – in order to find a proven winner.

4. Get personal: Try adding your prospect’s name to the subject line; for many companies, this works very well. Test both first-name-only and first-and-last to see the full range of possibilities. Of course, you’ll want to make sure your sign-up forms ask for this information, so your automated programs can make use of it in the subject line or in the body of the email message. And stick with the name by itself. You never want to deliver something to Mr./ Ms. and risk getting it wrong.

5. Prepare for the preview pane: The information that displays in the preview pane is a big part of the reason your message gets opened. Make sure you know how the message will show up in different email clients. Don’t put key messages or the call to action in images only. If the pictures don’t render, or they don’t display correctly (and a lot of preview panes suppress them), your primary message will be lost. Make sure to have your call to action in text as well as a button or banner. When you do use images, adding tailored alt text will encourage your reader to open the email and click to display them.

6. Keep preheaders and subject lines short and specific: The preheader is a short line of text at the top of an email that many email clients display in the preview pane. When images are off, it can be a powerful call to action because it shows up even when images don’t. Be sure to include a link in your preheader, so your reader can act on the email without opening it. Ideally, you should limit the preheader text to no more than 85 characters. Subject lines should generally be about 50 characters or less. And since many email clients are different, be sure to “front load” your subject line by putting the critical information at the beginning. That way if it gets cut off (and it might, especially on a mobile device) your main message still comes through.

7. Make sure it’s mobile-friendly: According to Forrester, 72% of US online adults send or receive personal emails on a smartphone at least weekly. That means your email, whether it’s a sales or marketing message, needs to be optimized for reading on small screen. It also means that you need to think about the preheader and how it works together with the subject line to entice someone to open, because they often display right next to each other.

8. Turn down the volume: Are you over-messaging your audience? It’s surprising how often companies make this mistake. You probably know first-hand how annoying it is to receive emails from the same company every day. Set up a schedule that keeps your company on the forefront of your leads’ minds without spamming them. Make sure sales and marketing are in alignment and working from the same calendar. You don’t want your sales email arriving right on the heels of the company newsletter – that is, unless you sales rep is calling out something in the newsletter that you think this prospect should really see. If you over-message your audience, you’ll likely see open rates go down while opt-outs go up.

Making it Easier

The right marketing automation platform can help you increase email open rates by making it simpler to run A/B tests, automate scheduling and sending campaigns, and integrate messaging with a CRM tool. Integration is key for a number of reasons: You can track how often a prospect has been contacted and which emails have been opened and clicked on. You can swiftly identify the leads that are ready to buy, and you can automate the hand-off to sales. Plus, your marketing team can quickly create email templates for sales to use, and the sales team will be more likely to actually use them if they’re readily available through the CRM system.

Learn more about Act-On’s solutions for automating and optimizing your email marketing, and find out how to make sure every message you send clicks with your audience.

When you're trying to get a prospect to drop their existing software vendor, and switch to your software instead, you'll almost always encounter resistance. How do you manage - and overcome - that resistance to switching software?

I'm going to assume that the software you're offering them actually serves their needs a lot better than the software they are currently using. So switching actually is in their best interest.

The Cost of Switching Software

Understand that the cost of switching is high - it's not just about how much their current software + service costs vs your offer, but also training, adapting new processes in the organization, and many other unquantifiable factors.

How Do You Get an Organization to Switch Software?

You're going to need 2 things to get an organization to switch:

1. Patience and
2. Follow-up.

That's doesn't sound exciting, cool, hip or new... but it's working. And that's all you should care about. 

The Nr. 1 Reason Why Organizations Don't Switch Software

Patience and follow-up help you to overcome the most common obstacle to getting them to switch software: bad timing.

Look at things from their perspective, and you'll understand why bad timing can make a deal almost impossible: They might just have gone through a 3-month long process of talking with different vendors, evaluating all the products in your market, the people involved in making the decision went through all these meetings, championed that software throughout the organization, got sign off on the budget, oversaw implementation... and then YOU call to pitch your software. 

There's no way they're going to switch to your product at that point, even if your product is 10 times better. The cost of switching to your software is currently higher than the value they'd gain from adopting your (better) software.

Be in for the Long Haul

So you need to acknowledge that this isn't the right time, and adapt a long-term approach. The time it takes to close this deal isn't measured in weeks, but in months. Think 6 to 18 months to get them to switch software.

That shouldn't bother you - that should excite you. You're building a pipeline of great, high-value leads that you can close next year. This is an opportunity to build a relationship with them and get to know them better and learn about their sales process.

Systematize Your Follow Up

Follow up with your prospect every month or every quarter via email or with a quick call. Stay on top of their mind (in a positive way). Just by following up consistently, you build a certain level of trust. 

If you're managing more than 100 leads, you'll need some kind of sales pipeline management software to stay organized.

Be Ready When the Day Comes

When their current contract runs out, or there's another change in the organization where the barriers to switching software are lowered, they'll remember you. And they have just spoken with you a few weeks ago. You already have a relationship with them and they know you. You've invested months to position yourself favorably - it's time for the right hook.

How to Decide if a Prospect is Worth Investing That Much Time In?

Of course you don't want to waste a lot of time on prospects who will never close. Being perpetually stuck in "I'm working on my pipeline"-land is the sign of lousy sales people. 

Here's what to go by: Are the prospects problems a good fit for your product? If their wants and needs match what your software really excels at, then keep following up with them even if the likelihood of them buying is currently very low.

The other question to ask is how much is this customer worth to your business? If it's not in the thousands of dollars it will be hard to justify that much follow up from a economical point of view.

On the other hand, a prospect who is showing some buying signals, but isn't really a good fit for your product (even though they're interested in buying)... then they're probably not worth following up with all that time.