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Sales Managers are supposed to be kingmakers—their job is to inspire and guide sales superstars towards glory – and effective sales managers unlock the potential of their sales team, especially when rewards and retribution alone aren’t driving sales results. They boost their team’s confidence during sales slumps and rally them to work together in the pursuit of profit— and fulfilment. In the end, the best sales managers are not managers at all, but are guides, advisors, trainers, cheerleaders and coaches all rolled into one.

In order to be exceptional at their jobs, sales managers need to have one skill above all else— they need to be master motivators. They need to be able to drive sales results through the efforts of others.

Highly Motivating Sales Leaders

Master motivators abound in the sports. A coach who understands how to motivate people can transform a bunch of fresh-faced recruits into world-class athletes. And once-great teams can slump quickly in the hands of insipid leaders.

It’s a similar story in the sales world. As recounted in the Harvard Business Review, research conducted by Gallup shows that “having the right manager can improve a seller’s performance by 20%.”

The Dale Carnegie Training Institute also confirms the importance of managers who are great coaches. “Over 55% of employees who express confidence in their manager’s leadership ability and who are inspired by the communication with their direct supervisor feel engaged.”

“having the right manager can improve a seller’s performance by 20%.”  Gallup

The Sales Manager’s job thus, is not just to manage sales, but to also manage and coach the people who get the sales.

Unfortunately, most sales managers are abysmal at coaching others. According to research by the Objective Management Group (OMG), only 7% of all sales managers are effective at sales coaching (In fact, OMG research shows that Presidents and CEOs find 4 out of 5 sales managers ineffective overall – ouch!).

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Six Reasons Not to Promote your Top Reps to Sales Management 

When to Promote Your Top Sales Rep to Sales Manager 

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Clearly, sales managers who can coach well are rare. This means that companies need to be extra attentive when headhunting for potential sales managers. Here are a few questions to ask candidates to figure out if they are experts in the art of motivation:

 

1. How are they motivated?

Inspirational managers lead from the front—they are motivated to perform, and focus on constant self-improvement. They earn respect most often by simply living out the principles that they are trying to inculcate in their teams. If candidates cannot explain what motivates them, or how they continually improve, they will be unable to ignite passion in the hearts of their team members.

There is a wrong way to answer this question though. If a sales manager is overly coin operated, concerned only with numbers, and not with the people bringing in those numbers, then even if that leader can stimulate results in the short term, the numbers are likely to suffer over the long term. You need a charismatic leader, not a glorified accountant.

A great sales manager is almost always motivated by the opportunity to inspire and lead others. Great sales managers will always want to invest in their sales reps not because they expect returns for themselves, but because they thrive on watching others grow.

 

2. What’s their motivational style?

Experienced sales managers can often develop bad habits. They increasingly rely on either carrots or sticks to “motivate” their sales teams. The problem, as Dr. Paul Marciano points out in his book Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT, is that neither of these techniques is effective. People who are motivated by the fear of losing their jobs work with less drive and energy, and those who are enticed by big payouts quickly become complacent even when receiving the payouts.

What motivates people then? According to Frederick Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene theory, real motivation comes from within. John Baldoni, author of Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders, agrees that true motivation comes from wanting to do something of one’s own free will.

Master motivators realize this truth. They know that financial rewards or competition are not enough to motivate someone. Instead, salespeople need to be allowed to set their own targets and encouraged to be creative in solving their own problems. This is what will lead to a sense of fulfilment and self-drive.

The best sales managers, thus, believe in creating an environment of growth and appreciation which will spur their salespeople to develop a strong sense of internal motivation.

 

3. How do they motivate different types of people?

Ask your interviewees: “How have you inspired overachievers to continually excel? How do you motivate those who have chronically underperformed?”  The motivational tactics will differ in both these cases, and so should your candidates’ answers.

Truly exceptional sales managers make it their mission to discover what triggers each of their employees. They will be obsessed with helping each of their salespeople—hunters and farmers— realize their individual potential. If your sales managers have a “my way or the highway” attitude, or if they only focus on inspiring the top salespeople, you will soon have conflict on your hands.

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“Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.” – Eddie Robinson

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4. How do they give feedback?

Great coaches are supportive and approachable. They listen patiently before providing unconditional support and solutions to empower the person seeking help.

Unfortunately, such a supportive atmosphere is rare in sales. Most sales managers believe they are providing “constructive criticism,” but are usually just fault-finding.

Master motivators will instead approach feedback as an interactive process, by assisting their sales reps in figuring out how to improve their own weak points. For great sales managers, feedback is not a chance to point fingers, but an opportunity to refuel their team’s fire to succeed.

 

5. Is the person sitting in front of me charismatic?

In his best-selling book Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson illustrates a unique concept: the Reality Distortion Field. He describes how Steve Jobs, the most famous motivator in Silicon Valley, could distort others’ perception of reality through the sheer power of his personality and convince his team to achieve milestones that seemed impossible at first.

Bud Tribble, a software designer at Apple, is quoted in the book as saying: “Steve has a reality distortion field. In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything.”

Jobs would set out ambitious goals for others and use the force of his charismatic personality and self-belief to convince others to complete month-long, industry-leading projects in a few days. This is largely the reason why Apple managed to zoom to the top position in so many product verticals in the tech industry.

Of course, a reality distortion field isn’t a physical phenomenon, but it works! The best sales managers continually apply some version of reality distortion to break the mental barriers of their sales people and convince them to rise above and beyond what seems possible.

Such managers are interpersonal superstars, with unfailingly positive attitudes even in the face of low morale or negative experiences. Through their charisma, they are capable of changing both the skill sets and the mind set of their salespeople.

However, when you spot someone with an allure, a presence or the elusive X factor, make sure that they aren’t just all talk and no action. Consider how they measure up to the standards we’ve laid out above, and use multiple interviews, behavioural questions and panels to ensure that their charisma holds up in the long run too.

Download our free eBook: Make the Right Sales Hire Everytime to make your sales hiring process more effective today.

References

How To Motivate Employees: 4 Vital Management Skills— Dale Carnegie Training

The Most Challenging Leadership Job— Harvard Business Review -

Underlying Science— Objective Management Group

Presidents  & CEO’s: 4 Out of 5 Sales Managers Are Ineffective!— Dave Kurlan -

Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT—Dr. Paul Marciano

Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders— John Baldoni

Steve Jobs—Walter Isaacson

The post 5 Secrets for Hiring Sales Managers Who Are “Master Motivators” appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting | Sales Recruiter.

As the modern workforce becomes more and more mobile, businesses of all sizes should see themselves not as static, localized organisations, but increasingly as players on the global market. This broadening marketplace is providing companies with a higher standard of employee to choose from, but conversely it offers potential workers the opportunity to pick and choose from a much greater pool of employers.

Emigration from the UK has stood at around 400,000 people per year for the last decade, with retirement and employment being the two strongest factors pulling people away from their home. How are businesses standing out as the most attractive option for these foreign employees?

Poaching someone away from their home country is an impressive feat of persuasion, and it cannot be done without understanding the factors that inspire candidates to invest their talent in a company outside of their home.

Having Aligned Values

Top performing candidates will chose to work for a company whose corporate values align with their own personal values. Therefore organisations that exhibit high standards of innovation and creativity, but are also founded on more specific values, like non-conformity, style, or sustainability, are the companies most likely to be discovered by similar-minded people across the globe.

The youthful Gen X and Gen Y are a workforce that value authenticity and if your company vocalizes authentic values (via social media etc.) chances are you will find foreign matches.

Providing Administrative Incentives

Many people have thought about moving overseas to work, but often the impediments to travel far outweigh the motivation for wanting to move. Developing a strategy for recruiting foreign talent should include assisting foreign workers with work visas and other domestic documentation (e.g. Social Security, UK Border Agency sponsor licence, domestic driver’s license etc.).

The American border patrol has been criticized for being slow, inflexible, and not synchronized with the nation’s labor needs. China, on the other hand, has begun refocusing its immigration policy to ensure talented workers find their way into the country, with the introduction of a green card system in 2004.

If they want to remain globally competitive, businesses in the Western world must make a greater effort to ensure ease of access into their country by developing strategies that accelerate the immigration process.

A Global Perspective

There are a number of ways multinational corporations can reach foreign talent. If a British company exports goods to Germany then, rather than sending over a host of British marketing, sales and public relations representatives, it makes much more sense to hire German professionals, as they already live in the country and have an understanding of the market. Once hired it then makes it much more feasible to recruit foreign workers over to the head office.

Be sure you are aware of the legal considerations when hiring abroad.

Demonstrating Cultural Diversity and Offering Expatriate Support

Companies should always be striving to create a multicultural environment for its workers – having many different voices and perspectives fosters a culture of creativity and curiosity. The U.S. Commerce Department defines diversity as the unique characteristics and experiences people bring to the work force.

Organizations should develop policies that accommodate a diverse work force, address possible harassment and are always striving for equal opportunities in the workspace. Just like a good host, it’s incumbent upon businesses to provide support for employees that may not be accustomed to domestic businesses practices and protocols.

The U.S. Commerce Department recommends that organizations implement policies that foster inclusiveness, organizational effectiveness, productivity, customer service and day-to-day efficiency. This includes adopting employee training measures that reinforce the importance of diversity.

Working on Retaining Talent

If you do manage to recruit talent from overseas, then one of the main challenges is keeping that person in the company. One of the best ways to retain foreign employees is by eliminating cultural and language barriers by offering opportunities to learn via employer-sponsored language classes and training that exposes employees to the different business practices and protocols.

Anything you can offer to make the transition into the new environment as efficient and stress-free as possible is going to make the difference between a temporary and a loyal employee.

The stakes have never been higher for corporate learning professionals. Employees want learning experiences that can help them take the next step in their career. Plus, executives are demanding accountability and results that directly impact corporate performance, strategy, and future success.

To address these requirements, many executives are betting on the cloud. For them, the ability to access, disseminate, and update learning programs anytime and anywhere is very alluring. According to Forrester Research, the growing use, maturity, and financial viability of cloud platforms are proving to be valuable—encouraging CIOs to view this approach as a core deployment option.

I caught up with Jenny Dearborn, senior vice president and chief learning officer at SAP, to get her thoughts on how the cloud will shape the learning organization of the future.

Q: What does “moving to the cloud” mean to corporate learning professionals today?

JD: For some organizations, the cloud can be intimidating. It offers a high level of transparency and pretty clear measurement of activity, knowledge gained, interactions, and more. There’s no more pretending for anyone involved in learning—and that includes participants, instructors, planners, and leaders. No one can hide behind vanity metrics or a checked-off line item on a learning plan.

But the benefits of cloud-based learning far outweigh any initial trepidation. Learners can gain instant online access to a vast knowledge base of content from experienced professionals, university-accredited programs, fellow students, and peer communities. Instructors can more easily develop effective learning content, capture knowledge anytime and anywhere, and deliver it efficiently. And of course, executives will appreciate the reduced costs and ability to link learning results to the business’ bottom line and strategy.

The cloud also supports content delivery models and social sharing and networking that mimic the mobile apps and virtual media millennials and Gen Xers use in their personal and professional lives. That’s critical for winning and keeping young talent.

Q: How will cloud technology change how corporate learning functions in 2020?

JD: The biggest and most important shift comes from the power of data. The cloud combines information from many different systems and accelerates the speed at which that data can be analyzed. This will enable the learning function to become more strategic and provide even greater value to the overall business.

For example, by combining data on sales reps from your CRM, HR, formal and informal learning, and other systems, you can start to pinpoint the characteristics of your most effective salespeople and then train others on those valuable skills and approaches. This enables corporate learning to provide the information executives want. How does a particular learning program increase revenue, market penetration, and our leadership’s ability to understand and execute on a strategy? These are just some of the questions corporate learning can answer.

Perhaps most amazing is that the cloud empowers us to build the workforce of the future. By analyzing employee profiles and performance data, as in the example I just mentioned, we can predict success rates and focus energy on developing those who exhibit high potential and creating intervention plans for employees in danger of failing.

But no matter what, high-quality instructional integrity will always be the rule. As technology continues to be the norm, employees will become less forgiving about poorly designed learning content. Learning programs must be interactive, engaging, helpful, and impactful. Learners must feel that the content is made just for them at the time they need it. If this is done right, employees can become more effective, innovative, engaged, and loyal.

Q: How can corporate learning professionals prepare to use the cloud to its fullest potential—now and in the future?

JD: They should take three fundamental steps.

First, understand the full potential of cloud-based technology to address learners’ desires, needs, and behaviors. Learn how to build mobile apps. Offer massive open online courses [MOOCs] to help engage your workforce. Dive into social channels, video-streaming providers, and file-sharing programs to determine which features can best help your employees easily consume and share knowledge.

Next, become more comfortable with number-crunching, statistics, and the holy grail of data known as predictive analytics. Because the cloud brings incredible volumes of data from a variety of systems, executives increasingly expect learning professionals to have answers to questions about course effectiveness, impact of training spend, and more. They want hard evidence supporting budgetary and other key decisions. Know how to find the right information, analyze it, and communicate it. For most learning folks, that will mean hiring outside experts and/or training team members to think, act on, and pretty much live for analytics. I can’t emphasize enough that data is incredibly powerful only when you can harness it.

Finally, continuously curate new content and delivery formats. By creatively thinking about new ways to deliver learning, corporate learning will never go stale—keeping employees engaged and fostering a true learning culture.

Did you miss Jenny Dearborn’s session at SAPPHIRE NOW 2014? You can watch the replay here!

When I explain what I do for a living, I get a lot of questions from friends and family—including “why are companies doing content marketing?”

To me, this a very obvious answer: Content marketing drives revenue.

Content is at the heart of any local or global marketing strategy. It allows startups to make a splash. It builds trust. It’s the infrastructure B2B companies rely on to drive business.

I’m sure other content marketers get asked this “why content marketing” question too. That’s why I’ve made a list of 15 things content marketing does for your business.

Hey friends, this is what “content marketing” is all about.

Content Marketing…

1. Drives organic traffic to your business as people search for answers to their questions.
2. Beefs up your site with semantically relevant copy, giving you competitive search advantage.
3. Makes your site map huge and visible to Google. Again, an SEO perk.
4. Impresses Google‘s Panda and Hummingbird updates to keep your site atop search results.
5. Establishes your business as a thought leader by showcasing your knowledge in your vertical.
6. Surfaces content for discovery meant for any audience that’s looking, increasing your overall reach.
7. Keeps your site fresh and vibrant, which makes your organization more credible. 46.1% of people say a website’s design is the number one criterion for discerning the credibility of that company.
8. Provides sales teams with insights for conversations with prospects.
9. Warms up sales calls, by providing contextually relevant conversation starters.
10. Provides fuel for marketing automation and email marketing campaigns.
11. Supports customer service with answers to common customer questions and concerns.
12. Develops connections between industry leaders in the form of influencer outreach and interviews.
13. Provides case studies of your product via interviews with customers.
14. Establishes trust between you and your customer. The more altruistic your content, the better the emotional connection your customer will have with your brand.
15. Gives your site a competitive advantage for paid search. Your assets provide a foundation for great paid content campaigns.

…but I’m confident the list is longer than 15 things. If you have one, add another value you think content marketing brings to the table in the comments below.

Today, millennials make up 25% of the U.S. population (that’s 77 million people), and their economic spending power is $1.3 trillion dollars, according to PTTOW. In order to sell millennials on a product, concept or service, marketers have to connect with them on an emotional level that aligns with their complex value sets surrounding socioeconomic conditions and new cultural norms. In the past decade, one of the most helpful tools used to address the nonlinear path to connecting with this demographic has been music.

Music is powerful because it is content, and it stimulates social interaction and drives loyalty. Disruptive streaming technologies and the onset of multi-screen user behavior have forced drastic shifts in the use of music as a marketing tool by music labels, entertainment companies and brands across multiple consumer categories. Read more...

More about Marketing, Millenials, Android Music App, Festivals, and Business

TicketMaster recently settled a pricing-related class action lawsuit that provides important pricing lessons to all businesses. In addition to paying for admission to an event, the ticketing giant used to tack on additional charges such as convenience, facility, order-processing, and delivery fees to purchases. The class action plaintiffs claimed these fees were misleading; had they known TicketMaster was making profit off the order-processing and delivery fees, the suit claimed, they might not have purchased.

As a pricing consultant who goes to a lot of concerts, I’m particularly interested in this litigation. When I read the lawsuit, my first thought was that it’s crazy. Why is it anyone’s business how a company’s profit is structured? Isn’t it the final price that matters—if you pay $25 to attend an event, does it really matter what individual fees (and the associated profit structure) that cumulatively make up the final price?

But then I thought about a purchase I recently didn’t make. I send engraved thank you cards to friends and business associates as an expression of my gratitude. Recently, I was pleased to see my favorite cards on sale for $19 (for a box of 10) on a leading ecommerce site. Ready to purchase, at checkout a $6 shipping fee popped up. “Six dollars to ship a box of cards?” I noted with a twinge of anger. I felt the e-tailer was taking advantage of me and as a result, I didn’t make the purchase. I later reflected on this experience and concluded that had the price been structured as $25 including shipping, or even $22 plus $3 shipping, I would have purchased. It was simply the $6 shipping fee – not the total price – that bothered me. All of a sudden, $25 wasn’t $25.

Understanding this consumer behavior, StubHub recently moved to an “all-in” pricing strategy. Market research by the eBay-owned ticket reseller revealed their buyers didn’t care for the mandatory additional fees that were tacked on at checkout. Previously, after agreeing to a ticket price, customers were hit with a delivery charge as well as a sketchy 10% “buyer fee.” While a delivery charge is reasonable and customary, this “buyer fee” seemed out of place (or at least could have been phrased better). For example, since StubHub provides excellent fraud insurance (if a resold ticket is fake, one call to StubHub will get you into the event no matter what), this charge would have been more consumer friendly had it been labeled a “buyer security fee.” Now Stubhub includes all fees in the initially viewed price. As a result of moving to this all-in pricing strategy, StubHub claims its customer satisfaction ratings have increased by 10 points and sales are growing.

Since $25 is indeed $25, why do individual component prices matter? To be clear, customers don’t always behave in an economically rational manner. After all, is 99 cents significantly cheaper than one dollar? Most consumers behave as if it is, which is why so many prices for consumer goods are set at a penny below a round dollar value.

The key lesson is that many customers evaluate prices sequentially. Each presented price in a transaction is judged for fairness. Thus, even if the total price is acceptable, a charge that is not customary or seems unusually high puts the entire transaction at risk.

Companies can use this understanding of sequential pricing decision-making to their advantage. To be clear, I don’t recommend including all of the customary charges into the initially presented price – as StubHub now does – for two reasons. First, this “all-in” price will likely be higher than the “first” price (before additional charges) of competitors, which can be disadvantageous. But more importantly, it’s the act of having customers review (and evaluate) these customary charges that is critical to boosting a company’s brand. For instance, if shipping is “free,” we all know that it is baked into the price. However if shipping is presented as a low-priced “pass through” cost to customers, many of us will code this as being fair.

I’m dubious on the merit of class action plaintiffs’ key claim – they might not have purchased had they known TicketMaster was earning profit from ancillary fees. After all, what’s next? Outlawing “free shipping” in favor of “shipping included?” Still, the lawsuit highlights how all companies can benefit from smarter sequential pricing. By strategically setting customary additional charges in a manner that engenders a sense of fairness, companies can enhance their brand.

Soccer fans everywhere are anxiously awaiting the start of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The 20th tournament begins today in Brazil. I’ve been staying up to date on news coverage and information related to the World Cup through their official website, and my background in marketing left me curious about which brands were sponsoring this year’s tournament. I skimmed through the World Cup’s sponsorship page, taking note of the Adidas, Coca Cola, and Budweiser logos. At first glance, these pairings made sense to me. Adidas and Coca Cola both have partnerships in place with FIFA, and Budweiser is a staple at most major sporting events. They are all CPG companies that will likely reap the benefits of their World Cup sponsorship.

Upon further review, I also noticed that this year’s tournament was being sponsored by a company called Yingli, a solar panel manufacturer. Thinking back to the 2010 World Cup, I also remembered seeing banner advertisements for this company lining the field. It left me wondering why this particular brand would choose to pair up with FIFA in the first place. I was having trouble making the connection between solar panels and a global soccer tournament. I decided to take a deeper look at the data to see if I could make some sense of the sponsorship.

Why did Yingli choose the World Cup?
Since Yingli announced that they would be advertising at the 2010 and 2014 World Cup tournaments, many were left scratching their heads. There is no obvious connection between an international sporting event and a solar company. But before signing on as a World Cup sponsor, Yingli did their homework. They conducted an analysis of which markets were at the forefront of the sustainable energy movement, and they uncovered some interesting information related to solar panel purchases. According to their findings, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are four of the largest solar panel markets in the world.

Given this, you’d think that Yingli might be better off focusing their efforts on a major sporting event like the MLB World Series to broaden their reach with US residential customers. After all, baseball is America’s pastime. But further analysis reveals that World Cup viewership is on the upswing in the US. It has skyrocketed by nearly 70% since the 2006 tournament. Over 24 million American viewers tuned in to the 2010 FIFA World Cup match in South Africa, and US adults purchased the most tickets to the event after South Africans.

It’s also important to note that the Yingli sponsorship isn’t just about raising brand awareness in the US. Further research reveals that the solar energy company is also interested in elevating their brand on the global stage. And they’re not just targeting residential consumers. Yingli also seems to be interested in making connections with global sports franchises and stadiums. Thanks to their FIFA partnership, they’ve already caught the attention of several stadiums around Brazil, as well as the NFL’s New York Jets.

To help expand their reach, they’ve taken their sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup a step further by fully powering Brazil’s iconic Maracana stadium for the 2014 tournament. Not only does the installation of solar panels at Maracana fall in line with the World Cup’s tenet of preserving the environment, it also puts the Yingli brand in the spotlight. Yingli’s solar panels are expected to significantly reduce energy costs at Maracana stadium, and this data will undoubtedly be reported at the conclusion of the 2014 tournament. Concrete proof of cost savings is likely to pique the interest of many other global sports franchises and generate some hot new leads for the solar energy company.

How did their 2010 World Cup campaign fare?
After Yingli signed on to sponsor the 2010 tournament, MEC Global, a large media company, spent some time analyzing how the brand fared with regards to raising awareness among potential residential customers. Research indicated that consumer awareness increased 30% thanks to their World Cup sponsorship, and that Yingli Solar successfully piqued the interest of many. 18% of those surveyed said that Yingli was now their preferred brand for solar panels, and 11% said that they intended to purchase products from the company. Not only did Yingli succeed in raising awareness about their brand, their creative marketing efforts converted potential customers into buyers. It will be interesting to track the results of their 2014 sponsorship.

At first glance, the connection between a solar company and a soccer tournament wasn’t particularly clear to me. But a deeper look at the data shows that the 2014 FIFA World Cup sponsorship was actually an excellent choice for the sustainable energy company. Their campaign will help increase their brand awareness with a global audience. It will also help them broaden their reach with residential customers and sports franchises around the world. Be on the lookout for Yingli Solar’s ads during this year’s tournament!

This is a guest contribution from Sonja Jobson.

You’ve been told that blogging is a great way to grow your business online, snag leads, and ultimately make sales.  And so far, your blog is helping to boost your traffic, spread the word around on social media, and build up an audience.

But leads? Customers? Money? Not so much.

There is a difference between blogging and blogging for business and, if haven’t been seeing much return on your blogging investment, you’re probably participating in the former.

But don’t sweat it – you can easily turn things around and start transforming your blog readers into cash customers and clients by avoiding three common mistakes and counter-acting them with simple changes to your blogging strategy.

Mistake #3 – Never mentioning your products or services

We’ve all been warned that, when it comes to marketing our businesses via social media platforms, we should avoid “pitching” our audience at all costs. That being promotional and sales-y will just turn people off and leave you shouting into an empty void.

Look, over-promoting your business is never attractive. If you’re constantly trying to make a sale – at the cost of being helpful and human – then you’re going to alienate your audience. Content and social marketing is all about being of service, providing value, and giving before getting. But there is a limit to this rule.

We can get so caught up in avoiding the “pitch” that we become media producers instead of business owners. 

You have to find a balance between producing really helpful content that your audience will get value from (which is very important) and educating your audience on your business and what you sell.

If you leave the last piece out, you may attract an amazing, engaged audience – but you won’t make any money.

Mentioning your products and/or services in appropriate places, at an appropriate frequency is not an offense, it’s a smart business move.

#2 – Creating content that appeals to peers, not prospects

A blog isn’t going to help find valuable business leads unless you are attracting the right readers. It may sound obvious, but a lot of people miss the mark on this one.

It’s all about the subtle differentiation between creating content that would attract your peers (or other industry leaders) and your prospects (people who are ideal for your product or service).

Let’s say you’re in the career coaching business. Your prospects probably don’t care about the latest development in career coaching techniques – that would be your peers. Your prospects would much rather read about how career coaching can help them get the raise they’ve been working so hard for or the five simple steps for figuring out what type of job they should pursue.

When writing blog posts that would appeal to prospects, it can sometimes feel like we’re writing about “dumb” stuff. Topics that surely everyone knows about. But it only seems that way because you spend all your time immersed in those topics. You’re the expert. Your prospects aren’t.

#1 – Not focusing on the opt-in

The number one reason most business blogs aren’t converting readers into customers: a lack of strategy for moving blog readers through the sales funnel.

A blog in and of itself isn’t a direct selling tool. It’s powerful way to grow awareness of your brand, build the “know-like-trust” factor with your prospects, and educate people about your business, but on its own it doesn’t generate sales.

A blog can get people ready to become a customer, but you need to have a strategy that goes beyond the blog to convert readers into buyers.

And that strategy is all about your email list. Once you get an interested blog reader to opt-in to your email list, you can begin the sales conversation.

Directing people to your email list should be one of your top blogging priorities. Include opt-in forms on your blog (the side bar and below each blog post are good locations) and prompt readers to subscribe often.

Once you get people on your list, you can deliver more great content to their inbox (like your latest blog posts) as well as sales messages.

Wrapping Up:

Remember that it’s OK (and smart) to mention your products and services on your blog when appropriate. Don’t get super self-promotional, but don’t hold back from including a link to your newest product or mentioning your helpful service if it fits naturally into the context of your post.

Your content should always be written for your ideal prospects, not your peers. Even if something seems obvious to you, it might be just what your prospects were searching for.

A blog all by itself won’t convert readers into customers. You need a follow up system: aka your email list. Make growing your list a top priority when blogging for business.

Sonja Jobson helps small business owners and entrepreneurs become incredible on the internet with content marketing. Grab her free, weekly biz training series and profitable marketing guides for even more business-growth goodness.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger


3 Mistakes that Are Keeping Your Readers from Becoming Cash Customers

Last week, LinkedIn announced the new LinkedIn Premium Experience, with new ways to make your profile stand out visually, suggestions to help you optimize your profile, the ability to stand out more in search results (think of Google’s AuthorRank here), opening the privacy settings on your profile to allow more people to find and engage with you, and better tracking ability to understand your impact and visibility.

[Note: The majority of these features are only available to paying LinkedIn customers at this time, but some will make their way into the free accounts over time as well.]

Enhance Your Profile Visually

Taking its cue from other social networks, LinkedIn now allows premium members to add a cover image to their profile. This can be a great way to extend your brand or give viewers a visual clue as to who you are and what you are like.

You’ll have access to:

• Larger profile photos
• Expanded backgrounds

Artfully combining the two can convey a rich story. For example, Richard Branson’s cover image is of clouds, with his profile picture looking upward, denoting his reputation for progressive ideas that push the normal boundaries of business (and that he owns an airline that’s reaching for the stars).

In a few months, all members will be able to add the custom profile background, which is great, if you find an artful way to use it! You can request early access here.

Optimize Your Profile with Keywords

Based on content you already provide, LinkedIn suggests keywords that you might want to use in your profile to appear more regularly in search results.

Be sure to incorporate these same terms into the following areas to maximize your impact.

• Headline
• Summary
• Experience
• Skills

If you don’t optimize your profile with the right search terms, you simply won’t get found. So, don’t discount the importance of these suggestions.

Stand Out in Search Results

Awhile ago, Google+ introduced “AuthorRank,” which I’ve written about before. Content creators enrolled in the program have search results that are simply more attractive than results of individuals who aren’t enrolled.

LinkedIn appears to be applying a similar concept, enabling premium users to stand out in LinkedIn search results by displaying more information from your profile in search results. However, they don’t give specific examples of what’s different, and a search of my network didn’t make that obviously clear.

I believe that the new search results show your current and past positions, education, etc. in addition to the information already displayed (name, photo, headline, shared connections, similar people). However, I didn’t really see anything else that stood out as looking different, and I can’t swear that the positions and education weren’t there previously.

It would be nice if they did something to make premium users stand out a bit. For example, a larger profile image or part of your summary. However, whatever it is that they’re claiming will help you stand out in search results, I’m not seeing it yet…

More Flexibility in Your Privacy Settings

LinkedIn has introduced the concept of an open profile. This means that, if you choose to, you can set your profile in a way that everyone can see your details and contact you. This means that whether you are in the same network or share a group or not, people can interact with you.

While this sounds like it could be a good thing, a very real concern is that its primary function will be to generate a lot more junk mail in your inbox.

It may be great for LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers), but I don’t think it’s a feature I’ll be embracing any time soon…

Track Your Impact More

Premium members will have a more robust experience with the Who’s Viewed Your Profile page. Instead of seeing who’s looked recently, you’ll be able to check for the past 90 days.

While that may seem good, since this is something I keep up with on a regular basis (so that it doesn’t become overwhelming), it’s not really as beneficial as it might sound.

Do you want to spend an hour looking through profiles from the past 90 days to see who’s viewed you and to figure out how to deepen those relationships so that they eventually lead to partnerships, leads and sales, or do you want to spend a few minutes once a week doing that? For me, the shorter amount of time makes more sense.

However, this new feature also allows you to see how you compare to the top 100 profiles of your first-level connections. This is intended to help you see how your LinkedIn presence measures up against your peers.

Is it helpful to know that I’m in the top 24% of the most viewed profiles in my network? Not really… It’s more of a curiosity factor than anything.

But if I can use that information then to see what people are doing who are getting more profile views than I am, to look at their profiles and deconstruct what I can do to improve my own, well then… That’s not such a bad thing.

Of course, their profile views will be prompted by more than just how they appear in search results. They’ll be affected by how they use LinkedIn, what groups they’re active in, etc. But the information helps to identify those in my network who are “doing things right,” and allows me to watch and learn as I go along.

More importantly, it gives me a metric to watch as I seek to improve my use of LinkedIn. It’s a sliding scale that’s only relevant in relation to my network, who will improve and backslide just as I do, but it becomes a measure that I can watch as I seek to maximize my own use of LinkedIn. And that’s not a bad thing!

Social channels offer a plethora of opportunities for identifying new leads. It is relatively simple to identify a one-off lead from a LinkedIn post or a tweet and nurture him or her. The question however is: how do you do it at scale? We at NextPrinciples believe there are six steps to systematically identify, profile, score and nurture leads on social channels.

1. Identify

The first step is to identify new sales prospects. You can create social media filters using keywords and phrases to identify who is talking about the category of products or services you are trying to sell. You could also look for folks who have a negative view of your competitors’ products/services or a positive inquiry about yours. This is like throwing out a big fishing net with the objective of catching as many fish as possible. Some of them will be of high quality and others not.

2. Profile

Just getting a Twitter handle or Facebook name may not be very useful. So, the next step is to create an extended profile for each lead, wherever possible. You can do a far better job of segmenting and targeting your leads if you have as much information about them as possible. There is a lot of information that your leads are sharing on social channels – how do you bring them together seamlessly across the many different channels? Also, how do you ensure a high level of accuracy in automated matching of profiles across the myriad channels?

3. Analyze

One of the biggest challenges marketers face today is not having enough relevant information about their leads. Profiling, as described above, is one important step forward in resolving this issue. The other is being able to analyze the behavior and patterns for the leads e.g. what are the top topics that the lead is interacting about or what are the hashtags that he/she has used most frequently in the last 30 days. The analytics are important for demand generation teams to do a better job of segmentation and targeting while sales teams find the analytics extremely useful in order to get a better understanding of the lead before making that first cold call.

4. Score

In the ‘Identify’ phase, we talked about throwing out a big fishing net and pulling in as many fish as possible. Once you have done that, how do you know which fish are the most relevant for you to look at? That’s where Scoring comes in. Just as with traditional marketing automation systems, you can score your leads on Demographic and Behavioral attributes – the main difference is that, in this case, the attributes are based on information that is publicly available from social profiles and interactions (such as tweets and posts).

5. Nurture

Similar to what you do in traditional marketing automation, you should set up drip campaigns on social channels to nurture the leads you have identified. It is important to be able to do this at scale while at the same time being able to personalize the context to the best extent possible. This is where all the fruits of the above steps come to bear.

6. Attribute

Attribution of revenue to your efforts on social media is the Holy Grail. Newly created sales leads captured on social channels should be tagged in your CRM so you can track their progress through the entire sales funnel. This will help you attribute revenue to your social efforts and calculate an ROI.

Would love to hear you thoughts on the process shared above.

It’s no longer enough to present a message to your customers in order to influence them. You’ve heard it 650 million times, but it’s worth repeating until you embrace it – you need to deliver the right message, to the right audience, at the right time.

Your content marketing needs to assist the customer’s journey and deliver a message designed to move your audience further along the sales funnel.

Web Presence Management speaks directly to that need – making sure you reach customers earlier and more often in the decision making process with various media and messages. To achieve this effectively, four things must happen.

1) Know Your Customer Throughout The Sales Funnel

To serve your customer’s needs, you must fully understand their psychological motivations throughout the purchase process. This requires an examination of the psychographics of your target audience from the moment before they decide they want something to the point of sale (or conversion).

Note, you will need to define several different profiles. Your audience’s motivation and needs will change over time and you must use your marketing efforts to reach them with different content at various moments in time.

Your audience’s motivation and needs will change over time and you must use your marketing efforts to reach them with different content at various moments in time.

As Conductor’s CEO Seth Besmertnik recently wrote, “Understanding who these customers are, what their pathway to purchase looks like – and using the right content at the right time…. that represents the future of digital marketing.”

Imagine you own a website selling consumer electronics and want to increase your computer sales. Your customers’ needs change drastically as they move towards their purchase decision. They decide they need a new computer, define their needs, gather and filter through feature options, establish a budget, compare brands and models, read and/or watch reviews online, search for the best deal, and finally make a purchase.

Your customers’ needs change drastically as they move towards their purchase decision.

Each of these decisions can be influenced by content and provide an opportunity to interact with your audience. Analyze the pain points a consumer faces on your conversion path, create distinct customer personas, and use content to alleviate them in a way that brings them closer to converting at your site. Only by fully understanding the customers’ needs over time (map their buyer’s journeys) can you decide what content they need and how to get it to them.

2) Pick The Right Marketing Channels

Internet marketers have an incredible arsenal of tools at their fingertips – content marketing, social media, paid advertising, and email just scratch the surface of the techniques available. Each of the marketing channels has its own pros and cons. Monetary costs, effectiveness, and reach represent a fraction of your considerations for choosing among the many marketing channels.

Think back to the computer example. You may want to create an infographic flowchart-guide to computer features demonstrating why now is the time to buy, regularly tweet about the latest computer news from around the web with occasional links to products or articles at your site mixed in, provide reviews of the best-selling models you sell, and run paid advertisements targeting people closest to making a purchase.

Example: Combining Marketing Channels to Promote a Coupon Campaign

At CouponPal, that’s exactly what we did for a campaign to promote our Toshiba computer coupons. We created multiple touch points with the goals to drive awareness and sales. Among our promotional methods we did the following:

• Partnered with other blogs to host a Toshiba Chromebook giveaway in which people could earn more entries by sharing content from our site and promoting the contest via social media. This expanded our social reach and drove new visitors to our site.
• We created custom content on our blog addressing a variety of concerns that customers coming from the partner blogs might face at various parts of the decision making process – including discovery and comparison. These articles drive traffic to each other keeping them at the site, and also to the coupon page itself moving them closer to conversion.
• On the coupon page, we provided educational content about popular products, how to use coupons, and other information about purchase decisions. This content is intended to influence a customer and encourage him or her to make a purchase.
• Lastly, we drove paid traffic to the coupon page targeting purchase and discount-related search queries aiming to capture the audience closest to making a purchase.

It’s important to note that these activities took place simultaneously. Additionally, note that you can use the same medium multiple times to reach your audience at different points in their journey.

For example, you can run a paid display campaign in the awareness phase, provide content corresponding to different points in the sales journey with the intent to rank organically, target different influencers on social media with messages designed to reach a different audience, and run a Google AdWords campaign targeting the highest converting keywords all at once.

Consider what the most effective way is to reach your target audience at various points in the sales funnel and select the appropriate method for each.

3) Understand What Works Where

This is the age of attribution. An in-depth look at what attribution models exist and the technology available to you is an article for another day. That being said, it is important to understand the value of each touch point you are establishing along the way.

Just as the psychological needs of your audience change throughout the sales funnel, the best marketing channel to reach customers will vary. Your job is to choose the most effective way to reach buyers at every interaction opportunity and make sure every touch point leads logically to the next. Your marketing channels must work in harmony in order to guide the customer one step closer to conversion.

This requires you to establish micro-conversions, or checkpoints, throughout your content funnel. You will not be able to drive sales at every touch point, but every messaging channel should lead towards conversion and have a success outcome associated with it. Furthermore, you must decide the most effective way to reach customers where they are – be it at another site, in a Google SERP, on social media, or at your site. Customers can only be reached by, and will only respond to, the right type of media to match their needs at that time.

Establish micro-conversions, or checkpoints, throughout your content funnel.

Measuring content allows you to identify what messaging does (and does not) resonate with your audience and drive conversions. Do not rely on assumptions to understand the way in which customers interact with your message – let the data guide you. Only by identifying what communication and channel is most effective, can you scale out your content marketing efforts in a way that maximizes your ROI.

Multiple methods exist to measure attribution, from the very simple, to the very complicated. You can work with a big data company like VisualIQ to analyze your marketing or get your hands dirty with Google Analytics Custom Attribution Models.

Avinash Kaushik has written extensively on the subject and gives a good overview of multi-channel attribution modeling to get you started thinking about what is best for you. Whatever path you choose, make sure that you learn what efforts provide the most value. That way, when it’s time to review your strategy, you can do so in the most educated way possible.

4) Craft Your Message

By now, you should be seeing the pattern. You have already segmented your audience, selected specific ways to reach them where they are, and developed a plan to measure the returns of each channel. Now you must develop a coherent message strategy that works to drive conversions by stitching together several smaller messages.

The overarching message strategy should directly correlate with the sales funnel. Your marketing must attract new customers and persuade them to convert at your site. The message strategy paints a complete picture of how people enter your sales funnel and ultimately convert.

You must develop a coherent message strategy that works to drive conversions by stitching together several smaller messages.

To execute your marketing plan, each individual message must align with the larger messaging strategy. Each piece of content is part of a larger narrative tailored to reach the audience at a specific time and meet a specific need. To help structure your thinking about each message you create, apply the 5Ws and H by asking yourself the following:

1. Who (think psychographics) is the target for this message?
2. What do you want to achieve with the message?
3. Where is the customer interacting with the message (e.g. what medium)?
4. When in the sales funnel will the customer interact with this message?
5. Why is your message relevant to the audience?
6. How does your message impact the customer’s purchase decision?

Only when you completely understand your audience, their needs over time, how they interact with media, and the goals of your messaging will your marketing campaigns be effective.

This approach of web presence management forces you to look at the entirety of the customer’s lifecycle and to stop looking at content as a single-serving solution. It’s time to embrace content strategy instead of content marketing.

Don’t lose your train of thought! Start figuring out the right customer personas and buyer’s journey for your business with the interactive WPM worksheet.

Banner image via Times of Malta.

If we’re to take a lesson from the 2014 FIFA World Cup, it’s that winners put in overtime. Even though the world-renowned event only happens every four years, FIFA athletes are learning, training, and growing year round to refine every aspect of their craft.

Are you ready to take your business to an elite level? Then it’s time to refine your online marketing strategy even further. Put your business in good company by improving these five aspects of your online marketing program.

1. Don’t stop with SEO.

While a proactive approach to SEO will help you get leads in the door, go further. Consider what happens when prospects get to your website. Is it clear what you want them to do? Are there valuable resources that provide information that’s actually valuable to them? If not, all the search returns in the world won’t actually bring in the gains you’re looking for.

Improve your SEO traffic by providing useful, informative content on your website. Identify keywords and write them into your content, but take into account the context of those keywords to encourage prospective clients to click through. Focus on words your customers use to describe their search queries, not just the keywords they might type into Google.

2. Provide multiple levels of engagement opportunities.

Pop open another browser and head to your website. Then answer quickly: how many opportunities do you give your customers to engage with you? If there’s only one, there’s room for improvement. Your website needs to speak to the prospective customer who’s not yet ready to contact you but who wants to get more information. You need lead generation forms that let these customers access in-depth content or sign up for low-level commitments like social media updates and email newsletters. If it’s “Contact Us,” they’ll likely just close the browser.

3. Track phone calls resulting from your website.

Sixty-three percent of website visitors complete their transaction offline. Just imagine how valuable that data would be if you could harness it! While correlating web activity with phone calls is a historically difficult task, the tools and software you need to do so are now available. Offerings from Invoca, Marchex and ifbyphone make this possible, and in conjunction with marketing software like HubSpot, can feed directly into your CRM.

There are three powerful benefits to call tracking: you can be alerted when a user returns to your website after calling you, identify the source of your leads, and automatically compare this close rate to the close rate of all other leads. This leads to a better long-term understanding of how your marketing efforts play out.

4. Keep your IT team in the loop about online marketing priorities.

It’s easy to get lost in high-level thinking: your teams have a job to do, and the most important thing needs to be done first. But with these shifting priorities come dangerous bottlenecks that leave your IT team overwhelmed and overly reactionary. Understandably, your overwhelmed IT team wants to publish the updates and move on to the next priority item — not test, change, and adapt over time. But in reality, it’s testing and adapting over time that will have the biggest impact on your bottom line.

Save your business this oversight by keeping your IT team in the loop about your online marketing priorities. Show them the value of website updates, A/B split testing and other marketing experiments so that everyone’s on the same page. Report changes in metrics to the CIO and high-level IT managers so they can see how their team impacts company revenue.

5. Spend some time with your customer service and sales people.

When you first started your business, you may have spent a lot of time in the front line trenches. But success has a way of pulling you away from your customer and into the daily life of running a business: human resources, accounting and management.

Get to know your business again by spending time with your customer service and sales teams. They’re the ones on the front line who hear from your customers and prospects on a daily basis. They know what what customers and prospects are asking for and can give you priceless, in-depth insight into your customer personas.

***

This information is only as valuable as far as it inspires you to apply it to your online marketing and website strategy. Because no matter how profitable, how proactive, and how cutting edge you are, the best in the business (and in the World Cup) are focused on getting even better.

photo credit

We’ve all hit it – that wall that seems to sap away all your magical creative marketing juices. Suddenly you feel like Peter Pan without his pixie dust.

If you’ve never seen Run Fatboy Run, it’s a great movie!

All you need is a bit of help to kick your marketing strategy back on track. And guess what? We’re dishin’ out 64 marketing ideas and inspirational tips to help you bust through that brick wall. Let’s get started with…

• Social Media Marketing Ideas
• Urban Marketing Ideas
• Contest Marketing Ideas
• Marketing Ideas for Contest Promotion
• Content Marketing Ideas

Social Media Marketing Ideas

Push your handles – If you’re really looking to bump up those Twitter followers, you can’t be afraid to be a bit shameless. Speaking at a conference? Put your Twitter handle on the slideshow (heck, keep it in the corner the entire presentation). Ordering new business cards? Better include that adorable handle!

Very cool Twitter-themed business card from Luis Felipe Silva

Join in on weekly hashtag themes like #ThrowbackThursday – If you want to build your social media following, you need to be an active participant in the community. This means posting regularly, and also joining in on fun weekly social media traditions that already have a loyal audience. Show the kids how hip you can be!

Vines – Vines, quick 6-second video clips, are largely under-utilized. With a little work and some fun content, you could become a big fish in a small pond on Vine.

Pin your own images (and others) - Don’t underestimate the value of this image-sharing site. Post your strongest visual assets (templates, infographics, etc) on Pinterest and link them to your webpages for some serious traffic.

Keep social tabs on competitors – Facebook business pages allow you to follow other accounts via the Pages to Watch feature. Follow your competitors and see what they post, and which of their posts get the most shares and likes. See what works and follow their lead.

From Inside Facebook

Urban Marketing Ideas

Living in a concrete jungle allows for some pretty creative concepts.

Step out on the streets – In an online age, there’s something to be said for going au naturel and exercising a little IRL marketing. Go old school with flyers and poster in local cafes, do some sidewalk chalk writing. This strategy is most effective for locally oriented businesses, but it can work for anyone.

Street chalk Twitter handle by Marquette ITS

Commission a mural – Try getting permission to decorate the side of a prominent building with a large mural.

Great Di Bruno Bros mural found on Yelp

Use your surroundings – Get a little imaginative and think about how you can use your urban surroundings for potential marketing magic.

Very creative urban marketing efforts by Vijar Barbecues, found on Owni

Unusual sponsorships – Urban living results in some unique marketing opportunities you won’t find elsewhere. They secret is, you need to think creatively to capitalize on these opportunities.

Citi Bank sponsoring Citi Bike (image from Bicycling)

Contest Marketing Ideas

Photo Contests - Photo contests are great for a number for reasons – they’re relatively easy to enter (anyone with Instagram and a few spare seconds can submit), and they also provide sponsors with a great form of user-generated content that can be reused and implemented elsewhere.

Check out Harpoon Brewery – they’ve mastered the art of photo contests.

Video contests - Not as many people will enter video contests, but you’re more likely to get a higher caliber of content since creating a video requires more effort on the user’s part. This kind of content can be extremely valuable for businesses down the line, especially when you have talented filmers creating video content just for you!

Submit your vote contests – Voting contests get a ton of entries because they’re so easy to participate in (just click a button, in most cases). What’s cool about voting contests is that you can use the data obtained from the votes to create a mini data study. Share what you learned in a blog post!

Caption Contests - Post a photo and ask users to submit their best caption – this kind of contest can get some pretty great laughs.

Sweepstakes – The most traditional of contests, sweepstakes/giveaways are a tried and true classic. They are quick and simple to enter – plus it’s easy to ask for email subscriptions as part of the submission form.

Marketing Ideas for Contest Promotion

Post to deal sites – People love free stuff, some more than others. The people who really love a good deal tend to frequent deal sites and forums. There’s almost always a sweepstake/contest forum section where you can add your contest into the mix.

I’ve seen contests in which 90% of traffic is driven from these types of sites – alright, they aren’t always the most qualified leads, but if you want quantity over quality, this is a sound strategy. Start of submitting to Slickdeals and go from there.

Hashtag-ify your contest – Adding a relevant (and unique) hashtag to your contest helps you keep track of entries and makes them easy to scan through and organize. Besides, they’re just plain fun.

Make contests super sharable - This means adding “share this contest” buttons if you have an entry form on a website, or simply encouraging social sharing in general. The more people who know about your contest, the merrier (for you anyway)!

Offer bonus points for sharing - If you offer users bonus points for sharing news of your contest via social media, they’ll be much more likely to concede. Tools like Rafflecopter make it easy to offer users extra entries for different actions (e.g. Joining the mailing list = +5 entries. Sharing contest on Twitter = +2 entries).

(image from Website Spot)

Notify email subscribers of contest – Remember, you already know that your email subscribers like you and are interested in what you have to offer. If you’re running a contest for a free year of your software, you know your subscribers are going to want in!

Promote your contest on (all) social media – If you’re running a photo contest via Instagram, make sure you still promote the contest on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. You want all your followers, across all social media networks to know about your great giveaway!

Share buttons from WordPress plug-in

Content Marketing Ideas

Write for your audience – The best pieces of content are the ones directed at your key audiences. Understand your customer: know their pain points, what gets them psyched, and what keeps them up at night. Killer content address your audience’s needs and concerns!

Add a visual element to ALL your content pieces – People get bored with text really fast! To keep visitors reading, it’s essential to have images breaking up your text paragraphs. Don’t overlook the importance of a visual element, even in blog posts that are predominantly text-based. You can see some examples of highly visual business blogs here.

Infographics – We know readers love visual content, and infographics are a prime example of beloved, linkable visual assets.

While the idea of creating a top-notch infographic may sound daunting, it doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t need fancy software – in fact, you can make a decent infographic just using Powerpoint. There are plenty of infographic guides templates out there to get you started. Speaking of…

Useful templates – Templates are another powerful form of visual assets that visitors find extremely helpful. Templates serve as a visual framework that can help users create custom piece without completely starting from scratch. Take this landing page template as an example – it explains the basic layout and fundamentals, letting users get a grasp on great landing page essentials before making their own.

Graphs and Charts – The infographic’s less cool cousins, one-piece graphs and charts still have their place as formidable pieces of visual content. They may not be as impressive as infographics, but they require considerably less time and effort to create and are still shareable, so don’t be afraid to use them generously. For visual learners, a graph will be much easier to interpret than a chunk of text and numbers. Make sure you appeal to all kinds of learners!

That’s why you find so many dragons at the animal shelter (image from Reddit)

Videos – Video is incredible when it comes to drawing in and retaining the attention of users – retention rate for visual information can reach 65% vs. 10% for text-based info. Plus, customers who view product videos are much more likely to convert than those that don’t. Video content is a powerful tool, whether you’re trying to demonstrate how your product works IRL or educating visitors.

Statistic lists – Are you hitting a content idea wall? For an easy content marketing fix, collect interesting statistics on a subject matter related to your biz and create a blog post about what you’ve learned. Massive stat lists are easy to make and extremely sharable. Plus, some of the wilder stats may get your gears turning about other content ideas, such as…

Future predictions – Play the soothsayer by predicting future trends in your industry – just make sure you have at least some data to back up your hypothesis.

Controversy – Controversial content always earns attention, but it’s not for the faint of heart – playing with fire can get you burned! Rather than stirring up controversy yourself, the safer road may be to answer or respond to larger industry controversy with your own interpretation.

Rumors travel fast

Aggregate awesomeness from other sources - Another easy way to create killer content is to curate quality content from elsewhere. No, it’s not stealing … at least, not if done properly.

It’s completely kosher to borrow content from other sources if you’re doing something new with it. For example, take our guide to the best SEO Reddit AMAs. The content we quoted from was originally posted on various Reddit forum threads. We took what we deemed the “best” portions of the Q&As from different threads and put it all together to make a super SEO advice guide. This new post is much easier for users interested in SEO to read, rather than scouring through various Reddit threads. NOTE: Play it safe by always giving credit where it’s due.

Ask the experts – Another great content marketing idea is to interview industry thought leaders with set questions and share their responses in a blog post; for example, our interview with industry experts on the future of PageRank. This kind of content tends to do well, and it’s always interesting to see where industry gurus agree and where they don’t. One great thing about sharing expert opinions – chances are, the folks you write about will share your write-up with their own followers! (Pro tip – ask the opinions of groups with large Twitter followers!)

A very impressive panel of experts

Top 10s – People go nuts over top 10 lists – top 10 tools, top 10 blogs, you name it.

Lists – Piggy-backing on top 10s are lists in general. Starting your title with a number can make it stand out more in search listings (e.g. 3 Ways to Slice a Pineapple). Why do people love lists? Because they are super scannable and quick to read. This is probably why over a third of Buzzfeed’s posts have a number in the title. Great content strategies involve a mix of quick, snackable content pieces and more in-depth, long-form articles. Variety is the spice of life, yo.

Product comparison guide – Decisions, decisions – oh, the pitfalls of capitalism. It’s tough being a consumer with so many products to choose from. Help out users with a marketing comparison guide, especially if you have a series of product offerings for different needs. If you’re comparing your product with competitors, be objective and fair; maybe you’re a better fit for small businesses, while a competitor is better for larger corporations.

Alternatively, write up a comparison guide for a product you don’t offer, but which relates to your audience’s business. For example, a video game reseller could write a product comparison guide for different video game controllers. This is helpful content that gets relevant users familiar with your brand.

Content is an open door – Don’t just create awesome content and abandon it – feature your best stuff in other related blog posts as well. You can link to or call out other pieces of content mid-post, or list some related articles at the end of your post. Something along the lines of “Want to learn more about ________? Check out our _________ guide and our __________ infographic.”

Content, love = apples, oranges. (Image from Disney’s Frozen)

Slideshare – The slideshow is back and better than ever! Repurpose PowerPoint presentations for audience-friendly slideshares. Check out these tips from Jonathan Colman on getting more views on Slideshare.

Webinars – Host your own free webinar or partner with another business for twice the expertise (and twice the promotion power). Webinar are a great source of business leads.

Google related search – Checking out the Google related searches (found at the top and bottom of the SERP when you perform a search) for a keyword query is a great tool for generating content ideas. Just Google a term and see what related searches turn up. You may be surprised!

Pop-up opt-in – There’s a lot of debate around newsletter opt-in pop-ups. They’re annoying, they’re intrusive, but quite often, they also work! A/B test one and see how it affects your newsletter subscriptions. If newsletter subscribers have proved to be valuable leads for your business, do what you must to obtain them.

Continue your lucky streak – Not sure what to write about? Go into your analytics account and take a peek at your most popular posts to see what subjects users get excited about, then write a variation or extension of one of your most popular posts.

eBooks – Another great marketing idea is to write a comprehensive ebook on a known pain point or popular industry topic, then create a quality landing page around the offer. Better yet, don’t start from scratch; repurpose past blog posts and articles into a mega e-book collection.

101 guides – There’s always someone just starting out in the biz; beginner’s guides and Industry Knowledge 101 content pieces will always get linked to and shared around by newbs.

Even great content needs promotion – Don’t just publish your content and expect it to promote itself; share it with your email subscribers and social media followers.

Post about industry hot topics – What’s the buzz in your field? Post about topical news and trending topics related to your industry to get in on the burst of action and show that you’re in the know.

Guest Posts – While the SEO value of guest posts has been called into question, there’s nothing wrong with guest posting if done right. Just focus on the value of getting your brand in front of a new audience, rather than the links.

(Image from Flickr user matsuyuki)

White papers – Guides, e-ooks, white papers – they’re kind of all the same thing, but labeling your assets differently can help your message resonate with different audiences. Test your labels to see which works best with your prospects.

Quality content – This should go without saying, but only produce quality content that you can be proud of! Google hates thin content, and users don’t like it either.

Show some skin – I mean metaphorical skin of course – show that you are not a robot. Don’t be afraid to have some fun and show off your company’s personality. Express yourself; and if that means literally showing some skin, well then, more power to you. You’re human after all.

Online magazine – Producing your own virtual magazine is another epic form of content marketing. For a great example, check out Dark Rye, a stylish online magazine produced by Whole Foods. For a quick and easy fix, make your own online newspaper with Paper.li.

Podcasts – Podcasts are great because users can download them and then listen on the go! Possible podcast concepts include discussing hot industry news or interviewing experts, in your space.

Cover events – If you attend a conference (or even an online event), consider writing a post about what info you gathered from the event, what you found valuable, etc. Chances are others will find it valuable too! Use the hashtag from the event in your promotional efforts.

Collaboration – Collaboration can extend your reach and build your reputation. Consider all the different partnerships you could build – partner with a charity? A related business? You can co-author a blog post or guide, co-host a webinar, etc.

Memes – Memes are fun and familiar for internet-goers. Get a little cheeky with some fun memes – it’s easy to make your own with sites like meme generator.

#SummertimeSadness

Social proof – Sometimes great content marketing ideas also serve as fantastic forms of social proof. Take this inventive content project by a haunted house called Nightmares Fear Factory. They take photos of victims…er, I mean guests, and post them to their Flickr feed. The photos are absolutely hysterical and prove that Nightmares Fear Factory is as scary as they claim to be! (Thanks for the heads up from Shopify).

Divvy up your content – Don’t go content-overboard or you’ll end up overwhelming users. We live in a competitive attention economy, and if you’re creating new stuff every single day, people may tire of you, even if everything you share is excellent. Them’s the breaks, kid. Figure out what pace works for your audience.

Conduct a content audit – Is your existing content up to snuff? What is driving conversions? What isn’t – and why? Asking these questions might make you sweat, but you’ll be better off knowing the truth. Finding the answers to these questions will ensure that your marketing strategy moves forward in the right direction.

Branded tools – Create awesome, valuable tools that your audience will find useful. You can use parts of the tool to push towards your product offering, but make sure the tool itself is high-caliber – don’t just make it a glorified sales pitch. Providing free tools will make users think fondly of you and extend your brand as more people share your awesome free tool!

Mobile! – With 79% of internet users conducting online shopping via  mobile devices, you should be embarrassed if you’re not mobile-friendly. This is not optional, although many still treat it like it is.

Gameification – Gamification is a great marketing idea to get users excited about engaging with you. As on Whose Line is it Anyway, the points are meaningless, but you’d be surprised how much people really enjoy getting points. We all love instant affirmation – it’s like virtual crack!

Apps like Belly and Foursquare combine gamification with customer loyalty programs. Starbucks also has its own tame version of gamified loyalty programs in which you earn stars for Starbucks purchases. Consider if gamification could work for your biz.

Get by with some content help from your friends – There are a ton of great tools out there to help you find quality content (Storify & Buffer to name a few). Remember, you don’t want to just share your own content – sharing great pieces by others in your industry shows that you’re a team player and valuable source of unbiased knowledge.

Comics – While newspaper funnies are a dying breed, online comics are alive and thriving! Consider making your own internet comics that relate to the absurd and surreal aspects of your industry. Try free tools like Pixton or Strip Generator to get started.

Copy the masters – Watch to see who is creating great content, and follow their lead. Take a close look at sites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed that get a ton of shares; while their audience and content subjects will be different from yours, they serve as an excellent study in how to improve your marketing strategy. What are they doing right? Can you implement something similar?

Take your time with titles – While we’re on the subject, Upworthy is famous for their killer, clickable headlines. Even a superb blog post won’t get the attention it deserves without a good title. Should it be clever? Eye-catching? SEO-friendly? Think about what will appeal to your audience. It’s recommended you write as many as 5-10 titles for every article, then choose the best!

4-1-1 – The 4-1-1 concept comes from Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping. Davis’ social media sharing strategy dictates that for every six pieces of content shared on social media:

• 4 should be content from other industry influencers that is relevant to your audience
• 1 should be your own original, educational content
• 1 should have a sales aspect (coupon, product news, press release), aka, a piece of content most people will simply ignore.

The philosophy behind the 4-1-1 concept is that when you share industry thought leadership, you’re building relationships within the industry and demonstrating a certain level of selflessness which earns serious reputation points that come in handy in the long haul.

This concludes our ultimate marketing ideas guide. What are your best marketing ideas?

It’s a familiar story with most startups. Budgets are tight, investors’ ideas for the company’s future are poles apart from those of the founder(s), there are a million things to do and only a bare bones team to do it all, competition with deep pockets is threatening to crush the startup before it even gets a real fighting chance.

This is the perfect time for a startup to smarten up and save resources – time, money, people and effort – wherever possible. Luckily for us, the proliferation of coders, web developers and designers has meant that there are now smart automated tools available for every small thing you need to do in your business.

Let’s take a look at the top 20 automation picks that should be on the wish list of any budding startup.

1. SalesFusion

An easy to use marketing automation tool, SalesFusion allows you to move a cold contact into a website visitor to a lead to finally becoming a paying customer. It has various modules that encompass the length and breadth of marketing operations.

Key features:

• Web Analytics
• Lead capturing, scoring and lead to revenue analysis
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Management
• CRM and customer care
• Event Management and ROI

Pricing: The starter plan (which is pretty comprehensive) is priced at $950/ month with add-on features costing more with every upgrade.

2. Agiliron

Not all businesses operate just on the web or only online. There’s a whole host of startups that are brave enough to straddle multiple turfs – online, offline, mobile and so on. Agiliron is the perfect end to end ERP tool for multichannel businesses.

Key Features

• Ecommerce platform
• Product Catalog
• Email Marketing
• Pricing Tools
• Lead Management
• Order Management
• Vendor Management
• Inventory Management
• Customer service
• QuickBooks integration
• Business Intelligence and reporting

Pricing: A surprisingly cost effective tool given its extensive capabilities, Agiliron’s pricing starts at $49 per month and can go on to $199 per month for a fully loaded, all features included package.

3. DemandBase

DemandBase is a great sales and marketing plug-in for a B2B business that you can use with Google Analytics or any other analytics platform. It helps qualify leads, accelerate the sales cycle and track the exact position of ach lead in your sales funnel on a real time basis.

Key Features

• Track your leads to conversion funnel
• Create and monitor advertising campaigns
• Identify the individuals who visit your website – which industry and company each visitor belongs to, what is their spending capacity
• Serve personalized content to visitors based on their needs and industry profile.
• Shorten forms to be filled on your site with pre-filled lead information
• Choose which customer is worth spending Live Chat resources on by identifying and qualifying each visitor.

Pricing: No flat rate pricing available, though you can receive quotes on request.

4. HARO – Help A Reporter Out

Enjoy free PR and publicity with the top publications in the country by signing your business up for this community of companies who need publicity and reporters who need leads for newspaper items that day or month.

Key Features

• Experts and business owners can respond to reporters’ queries regarding the latest case they are on.
• Business owners can pitch stories related to their industry or company directly to top journalists from the New York Times, Associated Press, ABC News

Pricing: Absolutely free!

5. BidSketch

Bidsketch is a great B2B tool that allows you to create professional looking proposals and presentations in a matter of minutes. You can validate them with e-signatures which are actually verifiable in a court of law.

Key Features

• A range of ready made professional templates for proposal design and creation
• eSignature on Document
• Automate workflow for each client, track your progress on each project
• Track and record clients contact details all in one place with Bidsketch

Pricing: Beginning at $29/month for a freelancer package and going up to $149 / month for an agency level plan. They also have a free 14 day trial period without swiping your credit card details.

6. SpyFu

In this competitive world, it is not just important to remain at the top of your game in your business, it is also necessary to find out what your competition is up to. SpyFu lets you do just that. Spy on your competitors’ best performing SEM keywords, how much they bid on them, what ad copy has worked best for them and so on.

Key Features

• Check the Search Engine Ranking history of any keyword you want for the last 6 years.
• Download a list of your competitors’ best performing keywords every month
• Build your own keyword lists that boost your site’s performance
• Access to industry benchmarking data on SEM and SEO – keywords that worked, budgets of each company, contact details, social media accounts and email IDs of executives who are related to the company being researched.

Pricing: Spyfu starts at $69 per month with the costs inching up till they reach $999, based on the final mix of features and requirements.

7. Intelius

Talented people who care about their jobs are the best kind of employees a startup could hope for. Save money that you’d spend on recruitment agencies with a tool like Intelius to run thorough background checks and tests on your prospective employees based on their public records. It can also be used by sales and marketing teams to dig out contact details, email IDs, social media accounts of regular visitors to your site as well.

Key Features

• Check criminal and past employer records, landlord records of prospective employees
• Get email, phone and social media contact details of clients
• Reverse Phone Number Lookup – Find the name and address details of a person based on their phone number

Pricing: Ranging from $3.95 to $49.95, Intelius offers reports on a per individual basis. The price per report varies based on the number of details requested.

Technology exists for almost every imaginable task under the sun. It’s up to us to hunt down useful tools that will make our lives a tad easier and make our work a lot more productive. Hope this set of tools does exactly that for you and your startup!

Recognizing the challenge

For those of us that are advocates of digital marketing for manufacturers and B2B sales growth, it’s easy to focus on the outcomes (since the ROI is what drives most programs and distinguishes inbound marketing from traditional “marketing.”)

Ultimately that accrues to everyone’s benefit – at least nearly everyone.  But it overlooks the angst that even a simple inbound marketing implementation creates in a company.

Successfully integrating well planned and appropriately executed digital marketing into an existing B2B marketing program is a significant change management challenge.

It begins with understanding who’s impacted by the change, their likely perspective, and whether the ultimate consequences will be positive or negative for them personally.  After all, while nearly every business that “does it right” benefits, there are some folks that end up left behind.

Change management theory

A 2013 Strategy&/Katzenbach Center survey of global senior executives on culture and change management found that the success rate of major change initiatives is only 54 percent.

The three key issues around change management which tend to derail efforts included:

1. change fatigue
2. “lack the skills to ensure that change can be sustained over time”
3. “transformation efforts are typically decided upon, planned, and implemented in the C-suite, with little input from those at lower levels”

None of that should be surprising – Dilbert’s hardly the only one to offer commentary on change management (or lack of!) in organizations.  But it’s rarely discussed amidst the excitement and projections of a new inbound marketing initiative.  And the second obstacle is often overlooked.

This trips companies up in two ways.  First, as noted, the skills.  Too often inbound marketing is perceived as a set of discrete tasks (e.g. blog posting, social media promotion, SEO) which can be implemented independently.  Second it’s assumed (actually often sold as) to require relatively little work.

Both are wrong.

There’s no surer path to failure of B2B digital marketing than simply treating it as a bunch of tasks to be managed in parallel.  Without unifying strategy to guide and synthesize each element, the effort will nearly always flounder – EVEN THOUGH almost 100% of the effort is being expended.  Similarly without the resources (internal or outsourced) to support the volume of work required over the long-term, initiatives will also fail.

Inbound marketing – who’s likely to chafe at the change

Let’s take a quick look at who may resist the change.

CEO/President – They are accustomed to delegating.  Once they look at the numbers and approve the investment, they’ll assume they’re going back to the usual assortment of tasks with lawyers, bankers and accountants.  Watch their expression when you tell them they will be writing blogs too, tweeting from their new handle and participating in LinkedIn group discussions.

VP Marketing – You’d hate to be this person….you know the one who’s been budgeting and squandering resources on traditional marketing approaches without measurable ROI or even demonstrable results.  Add as the revelations around target customers, value proposition and pain points arise from the work, this individual will likely feel threatened.

VP Sales – Inbound marketing “leads” are awesome – but they are different.  The sales team is going to have to accept the new reality – that the marketing sales continuum has shifted much of the sales responsibility to marketing; AND that a new set of sales skills is required of both management and reps.  They may intuitively understand and embrace the change….or they may protest (probably passive aggressively!)

Marketing Staff – Imagine if suddenly you showed up at work and learned that you were now going to be measured on what you did each day?  That you would have to be accountable to an editorial calendar, and swing way up the marketing skills spectrum from artist to data wonk?  Good folks will quickly come to embrace the new challenge – but not without some trepidation.

Sales Staff – The “right” ones will be thrilled.  And the others…..well that’s why you have a sales manager.

Outside resources – Your “PR” agency that writes occasional press releases but has no clue about how to create releases as a form of content, optimized for personas and oriented around campaigns, won’t be comfortable as this gets rolling.  Neither will the other “marketing agency” resources you might use for specific design tasks – after all, they’ll realize they’ve missed the boat.

IT – “Oh no…not another integration!” is what they’ll think.  And every integration they’ve ever faced has been sold as simple. They’re going to be skeptical, and you won’t convince them otherwise.  Just roll with it.

Darkest before dawn

Finally, like every major change initiative, initial excitement wears off quickly as the slog begins.  There is a lot of work to be done, over an extended period of time, before there are likely to be substantial results.  Sure there may be some quick wins and indications of success; but often there is simply hard work and growing skepticism that inbound marketing really will work.

That’s the phase during which a change management strategy is critical to the process.  When real success is close, but not quite yet apparent.  (But it’s also why a strong B2B manufacturing business background, solid strategy and meticulous execution are critical – because all the work could be for naught if it’s simply poorly coordinated effort!)

Not sure if inbound marketing is right for your manufacturing business?  Check out this brief video below, and download our free guide.

Download your free Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing here:

B2B manufacturing internet marketing video 1 of 3 series

images – www.globalhivmeinfo.org & tomfarina

Choosing to outsource any aspect of your sales process is a big decision, and not one you should take lightly. After all, with an outsourced lead generation partner, you’re putting a huge stake of your company’s sales cycle into the hands of another business – that’s why you need lots of information to make the best decision possible for your business.

The good news is that partnering with an outsourced lead generation company has more benefits than you might have initially thought. Consider the following six reasons you should capitalize on an outsourced sales partner for your B2B lead generation:

1. Less Financial Headache

Think about it: What would be your financial burden of hiring a completely new sales team? Or even for hiring additional staff to your current team? What about the cost of a trainer to get your salespeople up to speed?

It’s not just personnel costs either: think of all the time and budget that go into infrastructure, support and administrative costs. Those indirect, hidden expenses add up quickly, but with an outsourced sales solutions partner, you don’t have to shoulder those costs – or the headache that comes with them.

2. Easier Budget Approval

Hiring additional sales team members can also be an internal approval nightmare – not only for the additional budget but also for the hiring and sanction of the new salesperson. Plus, the timing of when you need another salesperson doesn’t always align with when your management will actually approve the hire.

Instead, it’s usually easier to find an unused area of your budget – or repurpose an existing budget – to hire an outsourced lead generation team who’s available on your timing. That way, your ramped up sales cycle gets moving faster and with less approval worries.

3. Warmer Appointments For Sales

If you work in marketing, imagine this scenario: What if you could hand off not just leads to your inside sales team, but warm appointments? Not only would your sales team love you, but you also increase the credibility of your hard work in generating initial leads for your company.

Having an outsourced lead generation partner turn your leads into warm appointments for sales helps your existing sales team do more of their best work: closing final sales. Warmer appointments also mean more robust follow-up on all of your marketing efforts, and fewer leads slipping through the cracks.

4. Better Feedback For Marketing

When you partner with a metrics-driven outsourced sales partner, your marketing team receives a scientific breakdown of your lead quality organized by individual program. For example, your outsourced lead generation partner should be able to give you an analytics breakdown on the success of your PPC campaign or any other given marketing tactic.

With a partner that gives your sales and marketing teams crystal clear feedback on lead quality and success rates, you’re empowered how to generate better quality leads and profile them with precision. These sales process insights let you put your demand generation dollars where they count the most – and not where they’re generating only little return.

5. Expert Guidance

Oftentimes the latest sales and marketing technologies are confusing or outright intimidating, especially when you’re using a tool for the first time in your industry. While you know particular sales technologies help build your sales pipeline, you just need some help to get them started.

This is where an outsourced sales solutions partner makes all the difference: Acting as an extension of your internal sales and marketing team, the right partner provides you with expert guidance on setting up each of your sales technologies in the way that best fits your business. That way, there’s a smoother learning curve and everyone is allowed to get back to what’s most important: closing more sales.

6. Robust Sales Cycles and Shorter Time to Ramp

Especially when it comes to the B2B sales process, every business appreciates a robust sales cycle and a shorter time-to-ramp and kick-off lead generation and development. An outsourced B2B lead generation partner helps make that happen for your business, acting as an efficiency catalyst between your marketing and internal sales teams.

When an outsourced sales partner delivers higher-quality warm appointments to your internal sales team, it reduces your follow-up time on initial leads. In addition, an outsourced lead generation team is already bought into your program, so they start kicking off your sales cycle on day one.

While making the decision to outsource your lead generation and appointment-setting efforts is still an important one for your business, it’s a much easier one when you consider these six benefits. When you find the right lead generation partner for your business, you’ll appreciate the boost in your revenue.

Need to ramp up your sales pipeline? Whether you’re looking for outsourced lead generation or other sales solutions, every business appreciates more efficiently generated leads and quicker closed sales. Click below to download a free tip sheet from Invenio Solutions to start realizing warmer leads and a swifter sales cycle for your business.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals is trying to acquire Allergan, the maker of Botox.

The tactics it's using to do so might end up killing the pharmaceutical industry. 

Valeant first approached Allergan in April 2014. It has twice raised its bid, which it is making with hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman. Allergan has so far rejected each of Valeant's three overtures. Valeant's most recent offer was made on May 30. 

But Allergan says it isn't rejecting Valeant's bid because of price.

It's rejecting Valeant's business model. 

Valeant's Business Model

Valeant is a pharmaceuticals company now domiciled in Canada. In 2010, Valeant acquired Canadian pharmaceutical company Biovail, and following the acquisition moved its headquarters to Montreal. 

As of February, Canada's corporate tax rate was about 26.5% compared to about 40% in the U.S., according to data from KPMG.

Under CEO Michael Pearson, the company has executed more than 100 deals as part of a strategy to grow through acquisitions, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

On Valeant's first-quarter conference call, Pearson said that in the first quarter alone, the company completed 10 transactions. 

Pearson elaborated on what Valeant looks for in an acquisition, saying it looks at cash flow and what he called a "certain return to our shareholders." 

When Pearson refers to a "certain return" for shareholders, he walks into a central criticism of Valeant's business model: Namely that Valeant strips costs, including research, development and staff, from the companies it acquires and just sells their finished products.

But is low R&D spending sustainable?

Allergan's Self-Defense Strategy

In a letter to Pearson, Allergan CEO David Pyott said Valeant's latest offer does not include enough "sufficient or certain value to warrant discussions between Allergan and Valeant."

In a May 12 letter rejecting Valeant's first increased offer, Pyott said:

Valeant's strategy runs counter to Allergan's customer focused approach. In particular, we question how Valeant would achieve the level of cost cuts it is proposing without harming the long-term viability and growth trajectory of our business. For those reasons and others, we do not believe that the Valeant business model is sustainable.

One of Allergan's main problems with Valeant's business model is that the company does not invest in research and development.

In its latest presentation rejecting Valeant's offer, Allergan said its 2013 R&D costs were equal to about 17% of its revenue, while Valeant's R&D spending was equal to about 2% of revenue. 

On Valeant's first-quarter-earnings conference call, Pearson said he expects the company to exit 2014 with R&D spending at about a $200 million a year. 

Allergan argues that its R&D spending doesn't result in a bunch of wasted money. The $7 billion it spent on R&D between 1992 and 2013 resulted in about $50 billion in cumulative sales, the firm said.

The company also said additional R&D spending will result in $120 billion in additional sales over the next 10 years. 

This chart of R&D spending as a percentage of revenue drives home how much less Valeant spends on R&D than some of its biggest pharmaceutical rivals.

Other Skeptics

Valeant's aggressiveness has gotten significant attention in the market. Jeremy Levin, former CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals, told The Wall Street Journal that "Valeant will eventually run out of things to buy ... a company without R&D short term and midterm can be viable, but long term is not." 

John Hempton, a noted finance blogger at Bronte Capital, has also expressed concerns about Valeant and is short the stock. He has promised a series of posts analyzing Valeant's financials.

Business Insider's Linette Lopez detailed some of the problems with Valeant's ploy, writing that Ackman and Valeant aren't seeking to buy Allergan but swallow it whole and digest it quickly. 

Also following Valeant's first offer for Allergan, The Financial Times' John Gapper argued that if the entire pharmaceutical industry adopted Valeant's approach, drug discovery would grind to a halt.

Gapper outlined two visions for the pharmaceutical industry, one where companies invest heavily in new drugs and another where R&D spending is cut "to save cash and please Wall Street." 

Gapper called it a "moral choice."

What Now?

Following Valeant and Ackman's latest offer, Ackman disclosed in an SEC filing that his Pershing Square fund is preparing a hostile bid for Allergan. 

A hostile bid is when a potential acquirer engages directly with the shareholders of the company, rather than the company's board, regarding its takeover proposal. 

A hostile bid now seems likely given that Allergan's CEO said Valeant's latest deal isn't worth discussing.

Ackman owns nearly 10% of Allergan's stock, and the company has already adopted a so-called poison-pill provision preventing any shareholder from acquiring more than 10% of the company, so his voting sway over Allergan's decision will not increase.

This story is unlikely to reach a conclusion soon: Citing analysts at BMO Capital, the FT said the fight could last "well into" 2015. 

The Death Of Pharma?

Just this week, Merck purchased pharmaceutical company Idenix Pharmaceuticals for $3.85 billion; in its first quarter, Idenix recorded no revenues. And while Merck is certainly betting that Idenix's hepatitis-C drugs in development will be approved, the deal essentially amounts to a one-time R&D expense. 

R&D spending is not dead. 

But others have started to imitate Valeant's methods for boosting their stock price. The Wall Street Journal notes that Endo Pharmaceuticals has begun to adopt an acquisition strategy similar to Valeant's. 

Shares of Endo are up more than 77% over the last year.

Valeant's strategy has also been a boon for shareholders, who have seen the stock gain more than eight times since Pearson joined the company as CEO in February 2008. 

Whether or not Valeant and Ackman are successful in acquiring Allergan, this deal has raised eyebrows among investors and executives in both the pharmaceutical space and the broader market. 

Expect pharmaceuticals companies to start taking closer looks at their strategies before someone else does.

SEE ALSO: Valeant's sweetened offer denied

Join the conversation about this story »

A good reminder from Tomasz Tunguz: The Hidden Costs Of The Switching Products In The Consumer Web

“In most of the consumer web, I’ve come to believe switching costs are significantly greater than I ever suspected…switching from one product to another requires effort: the time to learn new software and build new behaviors. This is why so many US businesses still use Excel for their book keeping and Word for everything else. No time investment is required to keep the business going.”

You have to know who your real competitors are. Word and Excel are flexible tools that everyone is already using…so using them is just easier than switching to something new.

Consider this: if switching was easy we would do it all the time since there would be no penalty. Here are some switching costs that may or may not be apparent:

• Price – Price is merely the most visible and tangible cost of switching.
• Time – How much time does it take to switch? In Tom’s case, and I’ve experienced this myself, just moving gigabytes of files around is a non-trivial task these days. I tried to back up all my image files to Dropbox recently and failed.
• Workflow – How does switching change the way you work? Do you have to change your workflow to incorporate the new product? Ideally it makes your workflow easier but often it just makes it different.
• Team – How does switching change your interactions with others? Do others rely on the same product as you? Do you use the product together? When you use something as a team the switching costs become much higher because it means multiple people must switch at once.
• Social – Increasingly social changes are part of switching costs. As social interactions become embedded within products, switching costs will include changes in social interaction. Are your friends using the new thing? Are there social signals in switching over? Etc. Probably a bigger piece of the pie than we realize.

When designing products, its much better to be completely aware of the real switching costs of your product. In many cases we focus on the obvious ones and miss the hidden ones. I’ve also found that people don’t always report on these hidden costs…they point to your product deficiencies instead. They’ll say “I’m not buying your product because it doesn’t have X feature” when that’s not really the reason why. The real reason is deep-seated and has more to do with costs like Team and Social instead of some missing feature. Missing features is often a bogey…people say all the time that they’re not switching because of a missing feature and that’s just an excuse.

As usual…look at real behavior in addition to doing interviews. Watch what people return to over and over instead of switching to your product. If they’re continuing to hack something together in Excel instead of using your product then you’ve got your work cut out for you…

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FYI: I’m writing a new book on how to communicate your product or service called Make them Care!. If you would like to be reminded when it comes out, sign up here. For an excerpt, check out Designing for the Next Step

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The post The hidden costs of switching appeared first on Bokardo.

Many of you may think AT&T Inc. (NYSE/T) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE/VZ) are some of the best ways in the stock market to play the mobile sector, but there are other choices; it’s just that you need to leave our friendly borders.

The biggest growth area for mobile is found in the emerging markets. I’m talking about such countries as Brazil, India and, the biggest one of them all, China.

China has the most dominant mobile market in the world. There are over one billion subscribers and counting as the rural population comes on board. Think about it this way: there are more people on the country’s mobile network than in the U.S. and the European Union combined! What a massive market. And I think our readers should get a taste of it.

Now, you may think there are dozens of mobile providers—so how will you choose? But the truth is that the Chinese government decides on how many major operators are allowed. The country currently has three major mobile providers with access to the massive market potential.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ/AAPL) has significant potential in the country, especially with its recent alliance with China Mobile Limited (NYSE/CHL). China Mobile is the biggest mobile phone operator in China, with about 785 million subscribers as of April 30. That’s a lot of business.

With a market cap of around $199 billion, the company is massive. By comparison, AT&T is the largest mobile provider in the U.S. with a market cap of $181 billion, and Verizon has a market cap of $204 billion.

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

China Mobile has been ranked the top brand in BusinessWeek’s “20 Best China Brands.” The stock pays an annual dividend of $1.88 for a current dividend yield of 3.8%, based on the prevailing stock price of $49.43 on June 10.

And while China Mobile is already king of the mobile space in China, the company is also expanding outside of its borders. The company announced an $880-million purchase for an 18% stake in Thailand-based True Corp.

China Mobile already owns Bertrange-Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular S.A., a telecom operator with about eight million subscribers in Central America, South America, Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia.

So while China is clearly the dominant and key focus market, China Mobile is showing that it wants to expand into other emerging mobile markets via acquisitions.

I think China Mobile has what it takes; it’s definitely a company to watch.

Some people may hate the term, but there's no doubt that content marketing has caught on big time. 

As many people point out, there isn't anything especially new in the concept of using content to attract customers, but what's new is that content marketing roles are being created, and teams are being restructured.

Content is becoming more tactical as a result. 

Here's a selection of 15 of the best content marketing tips...

Read more...

Website personalization, product, offer, and content recommendation services to help retailers and other businesses personalize their proposition to nurture prospects toward conversions The website personalization tools we recommend in this article enable you to segment visitors and then deliver personalized …..

The post 30 website personalization and recommendations software tools appeared first on Smart Insights.

I'm often asked, "Which is better – an elevator speech, unique selling proposition or value proposition?" All are effective at different times, but there is one clear winner for piquing prospects' interest in your offering.

It stands to reason that if you want your employees to come up with high-powered ideas, you need to offer high-powered rewards. That’s why Google created its Founders Awards to provide stock worth up to several million dollars as an incentive to innovation.

But our research shows that high-powered rewards are no better than low-powered incentives at producing radical innovations. They may generate excitement and high hopes, but they result in few breakthrough concepts.

High-powered incentives do produce a flood of ideas, but that’s not necessarily a good thing—a flood can be overwhelming, leaving companies unable to act on many of the ideas. You’re better off implementing low-powered rewards, which are much cheaper and yield a more manageable stream of ideas.

The basic question that motivated our research—Should firms reward their employees for innovative ideas?—is far from settled, even after years of research. Various management scholars, for instance, have argued that rewards are hard to administer and may corrupt employees’ motivation and creativity. Nevertheless, many firms continue to reward good ideas: 3M and Google allow employees to spend 15% to 20% of their time on projects of their own choosing, and other companies actively solicit suggestions or stage innovation tournaments.

To study the effectiveness of rewards, we used a simulation model—an unconventional but powerful tool. A simulation model provides a virtual “laboratory” in which researchers can manipulate every variable of interest (the reward level, say) while eliminating noise such as inappropriate management intervention. Simulated people are programmed to act like real individuals.

Our goal was not to mimic the innovation process at any specific firm, but to develop a model that was as simple as possible without oversimplifying. The virtual organizations we designed consisted only of employees that could search for ideas and a top management that selected the best ideas and shared a part of their value with the inventor. Low-powered rewards typically shared 5% to 10%; high-powered shared roughly 30% or more.

The model’s underlying assumptions are based on past empirical findings—for example, that employees respond positively to incentives but become discouraged by low odds of securing a reward or by being overlooked. We also made sure our model reproduces what we already know about the innovation performance of real companies.

The beauty of a simulation is that once you’ve set it up, you can let it run, much like a Sim City game, and then puzzle out its results, some of which may be surprising. Our model provided valuable insights about incremental innovation in large firms. As our simulated employees responded to their firms’ offer to share a large amount of an idea’s value with them, they put more effort into the search for innovations, and ideas poured forth. The companies were quickly hampered by what we dubbed the “congested project pipeline” effect: Because taking action would have required investing resources such as management attention, the firms were unable to act on most of the ideas that were generated. (This effect doesn’t apply to small firms, where the pipeline rarely becomes congested.)

As employees competed for space in our simulations’ increasingly crowded idea pipelines, more and more came away empty-handed and gave up trying further. This demotivation reduced their effort and prevented them from putting in the time and energy needed to come up with breakthrough ideas.

Could this have been why Google cut back its Founders Awards in 2007, switching to smaller rewards instead? Google hasn’t revealed the reason, but we wouldn’t be surprised.

We found in our model that low-powered rewards such as 10% of the idea’s value produced a healthy number of ideas (the vast majority of them, course, being incremental ideas) without clogging the pipeline or crushing employees’ hopes. Corporate practice seems to bear this out: A recent comparison of the idea-management systems at 105 German firms between 1980 and 2011, for example, suggests that rewards for valuable innovations often range between 5% and 15%. A 2005 survey of 306 German companies showed that ideas yielding a return worth 1.4 billion euros had been rewarded by incentives totaling 159 million euros, or about 11% of the ideas’ value.

Some companies take a tiered approach to incentives. Volkswagen, for example, shares up to 50% of the value of small ideas, but only up to 10% for high-value ideas. That makes sense, because a company can easily act on a lot of small ideas, such as “If we change the position of these two machines, the production process is shortened by one second,” but can implement only a small number of big ideas.

But because breakthrough ideas are so rare, a simple reward system is unlikely to generate many of them. To get more breakthroughs, the best approach is to focus on increasing the variety of ideas that are generated. Past research suggests you might need a culture or organizational structure that encourages play, serendipity, and random interaction. A few companies are experimenting, counterintuitively, with switching the focus from success to failure, rewarding employees who dare to stick their necks out: At Google’s lab X and at WPP’s advertising firm Grey Group in New York, employees can be rewarded for brilliant failures that provide some sort of insight, even if they turn out not to work. Similarly, at the Tata Group’s regional and global innovation contests, a rubric named “Dare to Try” provides rewards for failures that are informative.

Programs such as these help people get over the fear of failure and stimulate employees to stretch themselves—to go far beyond the “acceptable” innovations that they think management wants to hear.

Canadians don’t trust Asian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with their companies, according to a new survey by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

National Opinion Poll: Canadian Views on Asia found that respondents opposed the acquisition of Canadian companies by Chinese and Indian SOEs, but were more open to British and Australian buyers. The survey asked “If a company, bank or investment fund controlled by a foreign government were trying to buy a controlling stake in a major Canadian company, how would you feel if the foreign government were…?”

National security concerns explained some of the discrepancy in attitudes. From the report:

Canadian views on economic engagement are strongly associated with their views on security issues. Canadians who view foreign control of the economy as a threat to national security are less willing to support trade agreements with Asian countries. Canadians who express favour for traditional allies tend to accept investment from state-owned firms controlled by Western countries but not from those controlled by Asian countries. For many Canadians, economic engagement and security issues go hand in hand.

Worries about foreign influence also pushed down support for economic engagement with Asian countries, particularly for emerging economies. Chinese company CNOOC’s $15 billion takeover Alberta oilsands firm Nexen Energy created controversy last year with this publication among others criticizing the federal government for a lack of clear policy on SOE takeovers. Critics questioned the wisdom of allowing a non-democratic state to acquire a significant stake in Canada’s natural resource development.

The survey’s respondents seemed to agree, showing more enthusiasm for strengthening economic ties with democratic countries, though that only applied to traditional allies like Australia or Britain, and not Asian democracies like South Korea or India. Russia fared particularly poorly, with the survey being undertaken at the height of the Crimea crisis.

When it comes to their companies, it seems Canadians would prefer the government pulling the strings be based in London, not Beijing.

The post Here are the countries Canadians wouldn’t trust to take over our businesses appeared first on Canadian Business.

With mega-banks continuing to dominate the mortgage industry, the smaller players need a smart strategy for retaining customers and intelligently targeting new prospects. With limited marketing budgets and resources, competing for customers with the big banks is no easy feat.

The marketing game used to involve saturating the market to the fullest extent of a company’s pocketbook. But the game is changing.

The rise of digital marketing and online consumerism

With the evolution of the Internet, there has been a drastic shift in the way consumers make spending decisions. With increased access to online information, customers are empowered to explore and discover products and services on the Web at their leisure. They are active participants in their own buying pathway, and their specific buying interests can be identified by marketers based on the Web pages they visit, the emails they open, and the content they consume.

This means that companies need to take a more targeted, digital, marketing approach, focusing on identifying buyers who are in the discovery process, and leveraging marketing automation technology to deliver appropriate sales messages at a calculated cadence.

The rise of digital marketing and online consumerism has created a new paradigm in which massive budgets aren’t a prerequisite for creating a powerful marketing presence.

Optimizing the use of LOS data

Mortgage professionals are uniquely positioned to leverage this shift, as most have ready access to potential customer data via their loan origination software (LOS). (Note to non-bankers: most LOSs are huge databases containing loan histories and borrowers, including when the person took on the last loan, changes in their income and credit score, etc. -Ed.) Marketing automation can help companies intelligently communicate to these potential clients with automated drip email campaigns (known as lead nurturing to marketers) to get higher engagement rates and higher conversion rates for prospective customers.

It’s common for LOS data to be used in postcard mailings or other offline initiatives, but taking a cost-efficient digital approach can generate a higher yield given that consumers are spending more and more of their time online, and paying less attention to print ads, mail, and other forms of traditional marketing.

A new digital marketing tool set

Taking advantage of this new paradigm requires businesses to adopt a new set of tools and tactics for targeting customers. These tactics can be broken into three distinct categories:

1. Attracting traffic to your online properties (social media, search optimization, search ads)

2. Converting web traffic into sales leads (web site sign-up forms and useful free content)

3. Converting sales leads into sales (lead nurturing and lead scoring)

For smaller competitors in the mortgage industry, this opens up a world of opportunity for winning out against big banks.

All it takes to win is the right technology, the right mindset, and proper planning.

It’s well worth your time to craft a better call to action; that CTA is the heart of your marketing message. It’s the magic button, image, or phrase that makes the reader take that critical next step with you – whatever that step may be. If you don’t say the words just right, your readers will click away without responding, and your opportunity to connect with them will be lost.

Know Your Customer – and Precisely What You Want Them To Do

In order to create the perfect call to action, you need to know exactly what it is you want your audience to do. A call to action is not an order or a request – it’s a suggestion. You need to understand what your customer wants, as well. Consider the CTA as a helpful guide – something that points the reader in the right direction so they can continue with their journey.

It doesn’t have to be a hard sell, like “buy now” or “add to cart before this deal explodes!” But it does have to clearly state exactly what your audience should do next

Remember, if you tell your potential customers to click on a link to visit a website, make sure the site is ready for them and that it contains all the information they’ll be looking for. Obstacles and annoyances at this stage are sure to make people to give up on you and look elsewhere. An effective landing page is a great way to help people find what you’ve promised them in your call-to-action. Every CTA exists in the context of a bigger picture.

Digital marketing strategist Rebecca Otis recently outlined the importance of context in a great blog post about content strategy. She pointed out that helping site visitors understand the Before, During, and After (BDA) process of a call to action is a key factor in building a better relationship with customers – and encouraging them to act. With a solid BDA process, you can become a better partner to customers and prospects because you reduce their doubt, set their expectations appropriately, guide them throughout the process, help them if something goes wrong, and reward them for their successes.

Call to Action Strategies That Get Results

So what does it take to create the right magic phrase that gets people to act? Here are seven tips that can help you create better, more effective CTAs.

1. Keep it straightforward: The best, most powerful calls to action are often simplest. Calls to action should be as short and easy to follow as possible. Complicated instructions may drive your potential customers away or frustrate them, and that’s bad for business as well as your brand image. Phone numbers should be easy to remember, clickable (especially for mobile), or tied to an image or statement that will boost recall. Web addresses should be short and clear.

2. Use action verbs: Verbs indicate action, and strong verbs make it clear what action should be taken. Your CTA should begin with an action verb that tells your potential customer what to do next. “Consider giving us a call” is weak. “Call now” is simple, direct, and to the point. Try to avoid any verbs (or verb forms) ending in “ing.”

3. Make your CTA stand out: The two most prominent elements of your advertisement or marketing message should be the headline and the call-to-action. Set off your CTA so that it can’t be mistaken for something else. Use larger fonts, appealing graphics, or some other way to draw attention to the CTA. And make sure it’s placed prominently; a call-to-action that’s buried below the fold isn’t going to get noticed. A sidebar or navigation bar can be a great place for your CTA.

4. Use the right tools – and the right incentive: Technologies such as QR codes can improve the response rates for your call-to-action – but only if they’re done right. E-Consultancy has some great examples of good, bad, and ugly QR codes. Using them on product packaging and in printed marketing messages makes it easier for readers to respond. But a QR code isn’t a call-to-action – it’s just a shortcut. Slapping it on a magazine ad doesn’t mean someone will scan it. You need to have a value attached to it, like “Scan to go behind the scenes” or “Get a special bonus just for readers of this magazine.” And remember to make sure the code links to a mobile-optimized landing page.

5. Connect with social media: Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other sites as destinations for your calls-to-action. Providing a direct link to your social media platform will give potential customers another way to engage with you. Don’t just ask someone to “like” you if you haven’t given them a reason. Provide value here as well, like “Share your favorite product on Facebook and get entered to win a $10 gift card.”

6. Don’t limit your CTA to an image: Have other (one or more) CTAs in the text. If an email or website doesn’t render images correctly, the primary message in your image CTA will be lost. And remember: many email programs (such as Outlook) disable images by default, so your text CTA must do the heavy lifting as well.

7. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself: Use multiple CTAs at the top and bottom of the page and within the content itself. If you’re sending an email, make sure images, headlines, and products all link to relevant landing pages. Provide different value propositions for taking the same action. For example, in addition to a button that says “Download the guide” at the side of an email, in the copy, you could include a text link that says “get 7 winning CTA strategies for marketers.” By the same token, don’t be afraid to limit your message to a single action. The more decisions you force your audience to make, the more likely they are to decide against making any choice at all. Multiple, parallel offers and links can be confusing.

Bonus call to action tip:

To find a better call to action for your audience, test out multiple versions to find one that resonates. Test colors, fonts, button styles, wording, placement, and anything else you can change in your creative execution. Do limited-time offers really work with your customers? One size doesn’t always fit all. The best way to find out for sure is to test it. Consider testing different CTAs for different segments. Try out whether or not personalization works with your audience. Some people might respond well to seeing “Jane, buy a sleeping bag to go with your new tent!” Others might be turned off by it.

And once you’ve found a winner, don’t rest on your laurels. That shiny blue button that says “ORDER NOW!” might work today, but in a few weeks, the subtle green link that says “Get fresh deals for smart shoppers” might resonate better.

Continually test new strategies in order to optimize your results. It’s the best way to make sure your call-to-action drives the response you want – and the results your business needs.

Who would have thought that this image-based social media platform would be the powerhouse businesses needed to boost their sales? Pinterest has garnered a huge following since its inception in 2010, and it’s continuously getting more and more users. The beauty of Pinterest is that it’s so simple. Each link can be represented by a catchy image, so you can instantly get the attention of users so that they’d be interested in checking out your link.

But what does this all mean to marketers and brands? Why should they invest their time on pinning when they can be investing it on promoting via Facebook or Twitter or by paying for online ads? If you’re a digital marketer who is still skeptical about the power of Pinterest for marketing, prepare to have your mind blown:

• Pinterest can drive more traffic than other social media sites. When you use Pinterest for your advertising ventures, you’re using a social media site that has 50% higher conversion rates than its rivals. People are more likely to be interested in your content, particularly if you have a great image and a catchy caption to go with your link.
• Pinterest users spend more money than other social media site users. Pinners tend to spend more when they’re online, so they’re the perfect market for online sellers. Combine that with higher conversion rates and you’re practically advertising to sure leads! A lot of online shops have Pinterest boards that direct their followers straight to product pages. This allows users easy access into the online shop for easier transactions.

• Pinterest recommendations have a huge impact on sales. Up to 47% of online consumers from the US have bought stuff online based on Pinterest recommendations. It shows how Pinterest can help increase the level of trust online buyers have for a product. In addition, a lot of Pinterest users have a penchant for online shopping. Add the propensity for online shopping with the trust they put on Pinterest recommendations and you have the ideal audience to sell to.
• Only 20% of pins are original, the remaining 80% are repins. This shows that if you have a unique image posted on Pinterest, it’s highly likely that your content will be repinned over and over again. That’s means you can potentially garner a lot more brand recognition as opposed to Facebook shares, retweets and Instagram shares! Just make sure your pins are relevant to your products and to the interests of your audience.

• The contextual relevance of each pin can garner 4 times more revenue per click compared to Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are used to follow entire entities such as real people and the brands they’re interested in. Pinterest, on the other hand, gives people the option to follow only a couple of boards from a user. For instance, they can follow a friend’s tech board but not his DIY board. This ensures that the pins on the user’s dashboard are relevant to their interest and may therefore encourage them to click through to the links.

So now you know about the wonders of Pinterest, what can you do about all the stats outlined above? Here are some ways in which you can start converting clicks into potential sales for your brand:

• Know what your audience finds interesting. You can do an experimental board to see if any of your pins will generate any engagement, but a simpler technique is checking out what other brand pinners are doing. Check for brands in the same industry and find out which of their content gets a lot of repins, likes and comments. This shows you what your target audience is interested in. In addition to this, take note of the pins that tend to get more attention like colorful images, images with warm color tones and those that are light on the eyes.
• Excite your followers with your products. As stated above, Pinterest recommendations matter. So if your product makes it big on Pinterest, this can potentially lead to more sales. One thing you can do it to generate excitement among your followers by giving them sneak peeks of upcoming product launches. Make it Pinterest-exclusive and promote it on other channels to ensure they go through Pinterest before they can see what all the fuss is about. Once the product gets released, pin the link to the product site to ensure that users can easily purchase your product.
• Hold Pinterest contests that ask users to submit Pins to your brand page. The first step is to outline how people can join your contest. This can be done by repinning certain pins from your board or pinning products that are currently on your site. For example, cosmetics brands can ask users to go to their site and pin the cosmetics they would use during the summer season. The best boards can then be given gift certificates or huge discounts if they win. The second and most crucial step is creating a contest poster that’s catchy, informative and relevant to your audience. Lastly, post the poster pin on your board and promote it on other channels to encourage more people to join.

• Use Pinterest contest to get email opt-ins. One of your preferred requirements for joining the contest may be to opt in to your newsletter. You can send contest participants newsletters on your latest product updates or content so they can be encouraged to check out your site from time to time. By entering your contest, the users are already expressing their interest in your brand. This makes them great leads for future promotions and contests.
• Measure your results. Pinterest has its own set of analytics tools to check how well your Pinterest promotion has performed. This allows you to check which content drives traffic back to your site and which content generated any sales. In addition, you can also check which style trends help with the success of your content so that you can use it again for future promotions. Just make sure that your links can be tracked by the analytics tools before you post it on Pinterest!

How Target uses Pinterest to boost sales

Training your marketers does little to help them generate leads that are more 'acceptable' to Sales, nor does increasing the training of your salespeople improve their ability to close. If this is the case, why bother investing in training at all? In this week's blog, Hugh explains why investing heavily in training for Sales and Marketing does deliver benefits, but not where you'd expect. Keep watching to find out how to get a copy of this landmark report - for free!

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When it comes to lead generation for B2B companies, traditional advertising and marketing techniques reign supreme — at least in the mind of many.

Yet, many companies that sell to other companies are struggling because their industries are changing, and sales and marketing is changing too. They haven’t kept up, and now they face challenges.

In B2B lead generation, if you keep doing the same thing, you’ll get the same results

You won’t get your company to the next level using the resources you have now.

We speak with B2B companies all the time that say:

• “Our sales are flat.”
• “We’re spinning our wheels.”
• “We want to see if there’s something different out there we should be doing.”

The problem, though, is that most B2B companies are paralyzed. They can’t measure their marketing efforts to know what to drop in order to add new tactics. They have done the same things so long that they’ve lost touch with modern marketing tactics.

This became evident to me while reading a LinkedIn Group conversation where a B2B veteran asked the question,“Why do many new or young marketers seem to believe that we must forgo the marketing techniques that have worked in the past in favor of using only ‘digital marketing’ or ‘content marketing’ now?”

Admittedly, you hear a lot more today about “content marketing” and “digital marketing” than you did about direct mail or trade shows due to the nature of the web today (there are so many more people publishing).

If you want to grow your business, you need to invest in aspects of your business that are there for your customer’s benefit: educational resources that support the early stages of the sales process.

Digital has its place in the B2B marketing mix because it meets your customers where they are — online — and lets them go at their own pace.

Spending money to make money

Contrary to what some say, social media and content marketing — done right — aren’t free. They’re not as expensive as exhibiting at a trade show once a month, but to generate significant leads, you’re looking at a significant investment.

Yet, inbound marketing can provide an outrageous return to companies who commit to it. But unlike traditional outbound marketing, inbound marketing employs tools that can look suspiciously like expensive office decor or frivolous expenses.

Two of the most questioned tools in the inbound marketing toolkit are a frequently updated blog and an active social media presence. Here’s why they’re worth it:

Blogging for ROI

If you blog regularly, you’ll likely have a few top-performing blog posts (especially if these posts are expertly written and drawn from your own experience). But when you compare the majority of your company blogs to these high performers, they may seem like a B2B lead generation let down.

Your company still needs a blog.

Ask a manufacturing client of ours that made a $20,000 sale in one month because the customer found their blog on a competing technology. Their normal sales cycle of 6-9 months was shortened to a single month.

This is an example of how a seemingly simple inbound marketing tactic can produce sales ready leads. As you accumulate more blog posts on your website, you increase the opportunity that your ideal customer will find your company when searching for information.

The purpose of your blog is to attract customers, and it’s your website’s job to convert them. The more you work with an inbound marketing firm for more concentrated B2B lead generation, you can begin to track metrics that will show you an ROI over the long haul.

Did you know that 92.7% of companies using inbound marketing increase their lead generation?

 

Finding the ROI in social media

An active social media presence is a digital form of reputation management. While you may not be able to tie a direct ROI to your social media presence’s B2B lead generation, having one is a vital part of a successful inbound marketing campaign because it:

• Increases brand awareness.
• Can be targeted toward where your potential customers are online.
• Allows your company to establish a welcoming environment for your customers — whether they’re looking for information or they’ve captured your name from a referral and want to see how your company presents itself online.
• Is a way to perform market research in your target industries.
• Lets you monitor your competitor’s feeds to see what they’re up to.

Measuring the effectiveness of your social media efforts doesn’t have to be difficult. HubSpot, for example, reports on website visits, leads and customers gained from social media efforts. It ties to your Salesforce or CRM to report on revenue, too.

Don’t ignore these important inbound marketing tools for B2B lead generation. While you can’t always easily tie a number to a fully stocked company blog and active social media presence, these tools are two important ways to show you customers that you understand your industry and are capable of providing results.

Do you find it hard to blog or keep your social media platforms updated? What would motivate you to invest more time in them?

photo credit

Congratulations, your landing page has converted a lead. That’s awesome and you should be proud of the work you’ve done.

Before you pop the champagne cork, however, I’m afraid you have to hold on for a second.

Your lead is warm right now, in this short moment. Don’t let them slip away without a quick, “oh, one more thing!”

There’s no better time to push further engagement than the moments after a lead has first engaged.

This article will introduce the concept of a post-conversion landing page, and why it might just be the most important thing that most businesses are skipping.

 

Why A Post-Conversion Landing Page

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As I mentioned above, right after your lead has first engaged is when they’re (arguably) most primed for further engagement. Think about it – they’ve just gotten something from you for very little. They’re happy. Satisfied. Pleased with themselves and your business.

Don’t waste this moment with a simple “Thanks for downloading! Seeya later” page. Instead, use it.

Here are a few suggestions on how:

• Further your relationship with your lead by communicating legitimacy and personality
• Earn more lead information with a further “ask”
• Promote a free, one-on-one demo that will answer any questions they have
• Promote your social Pages (this adds to your digital touch points, meaning email isn’t your only way to communicate)

 

What a Post-Conversion Landing Page Looks Like

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The most important responsibility of the post-conversion landing page is to further your relationship with a lead. You want them to leave their exchange with your business feeling satisfied and personally influenced. The best way to do this is by featuring your business persona, individual persona, or business as a whole.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

This is only one option for a post-conversion landing page. I’ll discuss more in depth below the best practices for this page, but here’s what you’re seeing above:

• An emphatic and genuine “thank you” for submitting lead information, downloading an ebook, registering for a trial/demo, or making a sale
• A short paragraph, explaining what you’re now going to promote in personal and friendly terms. Something like: “Because you downloaded this ebook I thought it might be worth letting you know we’re actually hosting a live webinar on October 3rd on the subject of landing page optimization. Check out an introduction from landing page guru James Scherer!”
• A video, featuring you, your CEO, or someone from your business talking briefly about this second “ask”. This increases relatability and the friendliness of your company
• The entry form (ideally pre-populated with information from your previous landing page). Test if you’re going to ask for more lead information here or not.
• A conclusion and signature, something like: “Either way I’d like to thank you again for downloading our ebook. I look forward to working from you. Don’t hesitate to get in contact with me at james@acmesaas if you have any questions or just want to chat!”
• A CTA button is still as necessary as was before your lead converted. I recommend using the same color scheme for this page as you did for the one before it (your pre-conversion page). Your lead is still within your lead-generating sales funnel at this moment so you’ll get higher conversions if you stick with the design, format and colors that worked.

Post-Conversion Landing Page Best Practices

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Your post-conversion landing page should be optimized as much as your pre-conversion landing page. And here’s how I recommend you do it.

 

Add personality

1. Use video:

Video is the clearest way to showcase your business as friendly and personal – the goal of this whole thing. Videos feature real people – people that your leads can relate to and are more comfortable communicating with. After watching a video of you or someone on your marketing team, an account manager or a customer service agent, your lead will be far more open to engaging with your business (and increase open-rates on your emails as well).

2. Use a letter:

A personalized letter (from the same person who would do a video) is a great way to introduce your business on a personal level. Write it exactly as you would a normal letter. Be casual and friendly, and communicate your appreciation for their initial download.

3. Show your personality:

Get creative with communicating your brand personality. Don’t be afraid to push the limit to be memorable (though don’t be afraid to test this either).

 

Choose the right “ask”

1. Webinar:

Live content takes your personal relationship with your leads to a new level. Webinars are a great form of content to promote in your post-conversion page primarily because they feature your marketing team personally. Like the video intro, they work to create a relationship and, again, aren’t asking leads for anything more – instead offering more value to their engagement with our business.

2. Free Demo:

Free demos are a great way to engage with your lead on a professional level (far more than the webinar). Feature a four-part benefit list that lets leads know what they stand to gain from your demo, and ensure they understand it’s free, no-obligation, and one-on-one (all of which keeps them comfortable and feels more like they’re getting something more from you than giving something more).

3. Promote another ebook:

The beauty of content lead generation is that it is also an awesome segmentation tool. For instance, you know that a lead who downloaded your guide to landing pages is interested in landing pages, and you can segment them accordingly for your email marketing campaign.

The beauty of promoting another ebook after they’ve downloaded a first is that you learn even more about your leads. For instance, a lead who downloaded your guide to landing pages and then promptly downloaded your guide to online marketing for small businesses is extremely likely to be a small business owner.

Segmentation increases conversion rates. This is simply fact. You can tailor your marketing emails to your leads based on content you are sure they’ll be interested in, instead of random email-blasts that have miserable open-rates and do nothing more than encourage an unsubscribe.

Don’t worry if your email automation campaigns or customer-relationship-management system aren’t quite to this level of automation and segmentation. It can take a good marketing team months of time, energy, testing and thought to achieve. That said, segmentation on some level can be done by any small business, and most CRM tools support it extensively.

Bonus: Optimizing The Goodbye Page

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Unfortunately, that unsubscribe I mentioned is an inevitability of your email marketing campaigns. Perhaps you haven’t segmented as well as you could. Perhaps you’ve been pushing too hard too fast. Perhaps your lead is just having a bad day and your email came at the wrong time for them. Whatever the reason, unsubscribes are a part of doing business.

However, the page that you put up after an unsubscribe doesn’t have to be the end of your relationship.

You want to ensure that (where possible) your lead doesn’t leave annoyed. Even if they’re unlikely to engage with your business again, the last thing you want is an unimpressed previous customer running around the web bad-mouthing your business on every review site they can find.

There are things you can do to help your chances:

Here are a few I recommend:

• “Sorry to see you go!”
• “To help us improve our service, Can let us know if you have any comments or concerns? We’d love to get your insight!”
• Get insight with “What caused your unsubscribe?” Offer three or four options like “content wasn’t useful to me”, “too many emails”, “I hate your face”, etc)
• “Don’t want to subscribe to our email list but still like us? Why not connect on Facebook or Twitter?” with social media icons
• Use humor: “We already miss you!”, “Time to get out the tub of icecream…” or a video embed of Three Dog Night’s “One is the Loneliest Number” playing softly over a picture of a crying puppy
• “If you’re ever interested in re-subscribing, we’ll be here tossing discounts left and right!”

Conclusion

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Hopefully that’s given you some ideas and inspiration for your own post-conversion landing pages.

Remember to experiment with promotion of different types of content. What does your new lead respond best to? Does it depend on what conversion they just completed?

By James Scherer