Rnordman

Sales people sell. Sometimes they sell themselves best of all. Resumes are not the only way to measure the value of a salesperson and arguably not even the best way. However, given the volume of resumes recruiters typically receive for a posted sales job, recruiters and HR departments need to understand how to read between the lines on a resume and be able to focus their time and attention on the candidates most likely to succeed.

Sales people sell. Sometimes they sell themselves best of all.

Peak’s customers engage us because we are adept at recruiting sales people with a unique ability to meet or exceed sales targets in a certain sales environment. We consistently meet our customer’s needs by leveraging a structured search process and a bias for proof. We seek proof that someone will exceed expectations in a certain sales environment by finding sales people that have excelled in a similar sales environment. With that bias in mind, and based on reviewing millions of sales resumes and profiles over many years, we can share some of our inside secrets on what we look for in resumes and profiles.

1. Key Facts - A big aspect of a sales person’s make-up is the role in which they are currently employed. Who are they working for and what are they doing which will be found at the top of the employment history and not in the objective statement at the top of the resume, which is more about the things the person wants to be doing than what they are doing. We also want to know what the person’s past two roles were. Have they advanced in one career stream or bounced around in different roles and sectors?

2. Stay Objective – Halo effect, confirmation bias,  prejudice and other subjective factors are real issues in the employment world and often impair hiring success. For instance, according to MarketingProfs, “on LinkedIn profiles, recruiters spent an average of 19% of their total time per candidate looking at the profile picture.” This creates an enormous risk that the decision to advance a candidate in a hiring process will be influenced by factors other than performance and abilities. To counter this and other human errors that stand in the way of recruiting the best candidate, we focus on the data in the resume that supports history of production and success.

3. Show Me the Numbers - In the profession of sales, results are critical. Anyone can call themselves an “over achiever” or a sales “superstar” but only a small percentage of the sales population can point to empirical results and sales volumes that demonstrate success. Conversely, if a candidate does not quantify his success in the resume, it may be an effort to downplay less than stellar results and this would be an automatic red flag for us.

4. Look for Winners - Strong sales resumes often have an “awards and achievements” section. That’s because great sales people often win awards and can list significant achievements like important wins and large deals. It is another way to demonstrate results.

5. Are They an A-Leaguer? – World class companies are successful because they hire high quality people. Has the candidate made it onto a big league team and been successful. Have they been hired to represent marquee employers?

6. “You should hire me because…” – In addition to results, a resume should have a succinct sentence in the summary that captures the essence of the candidate. Sales superstars know that their role is to produce revenue, profits and growth and that you should hire them because they do this for all of their employers.

Red Flags

Since we know that on any search we undertake, there will only be a very small percentage of sales people that have the right experience and abilities, we are often looking for ways to narrow the field of candidates and exclude people that we know will not qualify. Scanning for these red flags is an efficient way to discard candidates that are unlikely to help drive sales success.

1. Consecutive Short Stays – If the candidate has a pattern of staying at companies for one year or less, he or she is probably not making quota, or perhaps is repeatedly losing interest before building momentum. While it is true that some good people have bad luck and could regularly be in the wrong place at the wrong time (and finds themselves laid off more than once), optimally, we are looking for someone that selects employers where they will be successful and stays three to five years at most sales jobs.

2. Words. Words. Words – When candidates provide lengthy explanations of their “soft skills,” it is a red flag to the recruiter. Coupled with an absence of numbers, this screams “no results.” Not quite as bad are the resumes that have a big section of keywords at the top which are meant to attract the eye of a recruiter searching a database for resumes – this may be a sign the candidate is a regular job seeker – proceed with care.

3. Responsibilities – A focus on “responsibilities” signals a mismatch. Candidates who write anything more than brief descriptions of the companies they worked for in the past and what they were responsible for (eg. supervised a team of colleagues, oversaw initiatives) may be focused on things that don’t matter to super star sales people.

4. Gaps in employment – Missing months in the job history, unless credibly addressed (eg. took hiatus to spend time with new child, launched a business) can indicate a failure to reach targets. Top Performers are always employed and making money. If gaps show up repeatedly, put that resume on the reject pile.

5. Long and Verbose – When sales results and recent roles are the only relevant information for assessment purposes, it is not necessary to provide extensive detail on jobs that were held 20 or more years ago. An unusually long resume would indicate that the candidate is unable to be succinct or has included many unnecessary details in their cv.

Reference
Eye-Tracking Study: How Recruiters View Resumes

Image courtesy of phasinphoto | freedigitalphotos.net

The post How to Read a Sales Resume – 11 Secrets for Sales Hiring Managers appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting | Sales Recruiter.

The Internet will be 25 years old this year. It may be hard to remember (or even imagine), but there was a time when some questioned whether people would turn to the web for news or products. Clearly, those days are behind us.

The fact is that spending on digital advertising is expected to top $134BN globally in 2014, growing 15.1% from 2013. Although I’ve argued many times that a lot of that ad spending is probably wasted, the fact is that digital ads are a force to be reckoned with and will play an increasing role in today’s multi-channel marketing world.

Of course, digital ad spending doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Ad spending is simply a means to an end, and that end is ultimately the sale of a product.

Some might argue that ad spending is sometimes deployed to drive eyeballs to content, but that content is ultimately used to sell downstream ads that are ultimately designed to sell products.

If the Internet turns 25 years old this year, then it makes sense to look its earliest and oldest golden child—Amazon.com—a company that is only 20 years old itself.

While digital ad spending is expected to top $134 BN in 2014, B2C ecommerce is expected to reach $1.5TN. Yes, that “TN” stands for trillion. That’s a global figure, but to but things in perspective, the US economy generates around $15TN in production annually.

That means that global ecommerce sales to consumers are about 10% of the total US economic output.

That’s big, and those figures are expected to get much bigger over time.

So the Web is big. Digital ad spending is big. Ecommerce is big. But where am I going with all of this?

In large and fast growing markets, it’s not uncommon for people to go crazy and overspend on things that don’t add value. In this regard, the Web, digital ad spending, and ecommerce are nothing new. Replace any of them with the booms in energy, the railroad, telecommunications, or air travel, and the trends are similar.

What is less similar is the fact that three large forces are coming together at the same time, amplifying the amount of misinformation and inefficient investments.

The proliferation of experts and consultants over the past several years in digital marketing has been breathtaking.

One can scarcely turn around without bumping into a range of next generation agencies:

• Social media agencies.
• Search engine marketing (SEM) agencies.
• Content marketing agencies.
• Mobile marketing agencies.
• Affiliate marketing agencies.

The list goes on and on, and despite the disparity of skills and value propositions, the message is often remarkably similar.

Content is king, and you need to be #1 in search engine rankings.

Now don’t get me wrong. I believe that expertise in all of these areas is important, and I won’t discount the value of content nor the allure of appearing as the #1 search result on Google, Bing, Yahoo or whatever other engine is being used.

Assuming that one’s goal is ultimately to sell a product (or service or somehow otherwise get a customer to pay money for something of value), digital marketing is designed to support ecommerce. In this case, there are only four variables that matter in the world of digital marketing.

Acquisition: This is sometimes mistaken for traffic, but there’s a critical difference. Traffic that is off-target or doesn’t convert is traffic not worth paying for. At the same time, there are a number of means of acquiring leads, prospects, and customers. This can be done through special promotions, joint partnerships, affiliate marketing, and a variety of other mechanisms that don’t necessarily equate to traditional sources of traffic. The key here is to ensure that acquisition costs are as low as possible at every stage of the sales funnel.

Conversion: In the old days of direct mail, conversion was informed by a “response mechanism.” In the digital age, we refer to this as a “call to action.” No matter what you call it, conversion is what happens when a stranger takes an action that helps you better understand who they are and moves further along the sales funnel. This might range from a newsletter signup to filling out a survey to purchasing a product or service. The key here is to balance efficiency with cost. There’s no shortage of people constantly looking to “improve conversion” as a percentage of all traffic versus a percentage of visitors who take a specific action. This is a useful exercise, but conversions as a percentage requires context. Low percentage conversions with large sources of traffic that don’t cost much can be as powerful as high percentage conversions on low traffic that’s expensive. Conversion is a means to an end, and part of a broader set of economic analyses.

Pricing: Very few firms do a good job in pricing their services. Most companies fall into one of two categories: price is fine, but they try to charge for a product or service too early in the sales process. Or price is simply too low.

Very few firms have prices that are too high. This fact has been repeated many times by McKinsey; in fact, McKinsey has gone so far as to point out that every 1% increase in price (on average) leads to an 8% increase in profitability.

Of course, pricing is all a matter of context, timeliness, and relevance. In other words, people will pay a certain price based on need, availability, and usefulness of whatever it is they are considering. Pricing strategy requires the marketer to get inside the head of the customer and align the selling process to the customer buying process. This might result in an end process where the entry price for the initial sale is relatively low because there is a longer term strategy to increase customer life time value.

Customer life time value (LTV): Customer LTV is nothing new in the world of marketing, but it is surprising how many companies forget how valuable it can be to engage customers in an ongoing dialogue. Sales is a process, not an event, and if you believe that your job is to sell as many products as possible, you’re dead in the water If you believe your job is to identify, engage, and maximize the economic value of a customer by continuing to delight them with your value propositoin…then you might be on the right track.

These are the four variables that affect the success and profitability of digital marketing—or any form of marketing. No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what product or service someone is trying to sell, if that person can’t tie his or her value proposition directly to one or more of the variables above, keep on walking and find someone who can.

It’s 2014, and if your business does not have a website, does it even deserve to be called a business? In an effort to claim coveted online real estate, businesses have realized that having a website is a must. But what if your website turns out to be a dud? Instead of attracting more customers, does it in fact drive them away?

Here are six sales killing website mistakes you want to avoid.

1. Not Optimizing your Headline

In the digital realm, everyone is a browser first and a reader second.

They key is to catch your visitor’s attention in the first few seconds. The best way to do this is with an eye-popping headline. If it’s not immediately clear what you can do for them or how you can add value to their business – it’s bye-bye for you!

Let’s have a look at how KISSMetrics is killing it with their attention-grabbing headline:

Tip: The simpler the headline, the more likely visitors will stick around.

2. A Site That Loads too Sloooooooooowly

Your target market is unlikely to include toddlers, but believe me, while online, adults have the attention span of 3-year olds. And with the help of your worst nightmare – i.e. the “back” button – they’ll be more than happy to exit your site if it doesn’t load quickly.

In 2009, Google’s Jake Brutlag & Microsoft’s Eric Schurman explained how certain performance tests can critically impact sales and more specifically, how pages that load slowly can hurt your bottom line.

Tip: Skip the fancy animations and videos and make sure your website loads in a couple of seconds.

3. Distracting Music or Videos

Do people still play music when a website launches? Apparently some do, leaving visitors annoyed and rushing to close the page.

While you may be in love with a particular pop song or your company’s own anthem, the chances that your visitors will appreciate it is slim. They come to your website to look for information that is valuable to them, not to hear your playlist.

Tip: Ditch the 90s website and keep things lean.

4. A Website Filled with Typos

Aside from the fact that your message may be misunderstood, a website filled with typos looks plain unprofessional.

Further, you want to ensure your potential customers understand what it is you are trying to sell.

Tip: Hire an experienced copywriter to make sure you don’t have any typos.

 

5. Not Being Transparent About Pricing

Does your website require visitors to email for quotations? You may not realize this, but there’s a good chance that you’ve lost visitors because of this hurdle. There are plenty of businesses and if a customer is merely window shopping they want to make the most of their time. Rather than wasting it emailing you, they could easily find an alternate company that publishes its pricing schedule.

So, shorten the process and let your customer see what you have to offer in one place.

Tip: Make your pricing schedule easily visible to all customers.

6. A Site Cluttered with Ads

Some businesses try to use ads as an alternative revenue stream. In an effort to monetize their web real estate, they might lose their actual customers who find it very distracting.

Keep in mind that your products and services should be the core of your marketing and sales efforts – not alternative monetization channels.

Tip: Keep the focus on your products and services.

Ask yourself what experience you’d like to have when you visit another’s website, most likely, that’s how your prospects also feel.

What improvements have you made recently that have improved your website’s conversion rate? We would be delighted to know your thoughts in the comments below.

CALGARY – A natural gas supply deal signed Wednesday between Russia and China includes some mind-bogglingly large numbers — but not big enough to get British Columbia Premier Christy Clark worried about her province’s future as a global energy exporter.

The value of the contract — signed amid growing isolation of Russia by traditional customers in the West — is pegged at $400 billion and covers a 30-year period. The Russian gas, expected to flow to China by pipeline as early as 2018, would represent about a quarter of China’s current annual gas consumption.

“I’ve never said that B.C. would be the only supplier of natural gas to any country, but what I have said is that every country, every receiver of natural gas is going to want to have one reliable partner in their portfolio,” Clark said at a conference in Vancouver.

“We’ve certainly seen the way that Russia likes to do business these days, and we certainly know that the Chinese want a dependability of supply. We can supply that.”

So far, seven export licences have been granted to proposed West Coast LNG projects, said federal Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford.

“Canada’s vast energy supplies represent an opportunity for countries looking to diversify their energy imports, especially in the Asia-Pacific,” he said in an emailed statement.

The International Energy Agency predicts a quadrupling in Chinese gas demand by 2035, he noted.

Ed Kallio, director of gas consulting at Ziff Energy, said the Russian exports to China will be “just a drop in the bucket” when its future gas consumption is taken into account.

“It doesn’t even come close. This doesn’t even scratch the surface.”

Hal Kvisle, CEO of Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc. (TSX:TLM), agrees the deal shouldn’t rattle Canada.

“It’s not a quantity of gas that’s going to swamp the market,” he told reporters on a conference call.

“It certainly doesn’t shut the door on LNG exports from Canada.”

Talisman has been active in Western Canadian shale gas, although it is looking to sell some properties and has no ambitions to invest in West Coast LNG export infrastructure. The company is also a big natural gas player in Southeast Asia, but Kvisle said it’s a “huge” market that shouldn’t be affected by the Russia-China deal.

Gordon Houlden, director of the University of Alberta’s China Institute, said China’s energy needs are “massive” and even though the country’s economic growth rate has been slowing, it’s still formidable.

China is heavily dependent on coal for power generation, but is keen to replace it with cleaner-burning natural gas, he added. The country also wants to make sure it has a steady source of supply, with the aim of buying from a wide array of different players.

“I agree the numbers are impressive. It’s easy with Chinese numbers, though, to come up with impressive outcomes,” said Houlden.

“It doesn’t fundamentally change the equation. China wants diversity of supply. We represent that.”

There’s voracious demand for LNG elsewhere in the region, with countries such as South Korea and Japan eager to get their hands on Canadian LNG supplies, Houlden added.

But that doesn’t mean Canada should be complacent, he said.

“Time is of the essence. The faster we can move, the more nimble we can be as a country in terms of getting energy infrastructure built, the better our options will be and the greater benefit to the country.”

In some ways, Canada has an edge over its global LNG competitors, which also include Australia, Qatar and soon the United States, said Barry Munro of Ernst & Young.

Several companies from China, Japan, Korea and Malaysia have acquired interests in Western Canadian natural gas fields.

“By owning the underlying gas reserves, they can deal with some of the potential pricing pressures,” he said.

However, there are some “real concerns,” Munro said, not the least of which is getting First Nations on side with the projects. Plus, Canada is at a very early stage in the game.

“It’s a greenfield industry in Canada, so not only do you have to prove up the natural gas reserves, we’re going to have to build all the pipelines and facilities.”

— With files from James Keller in Vancouver and Julian Beltrame in Ottawa

Follow @LaurenKrugel on Twitter

The post Russia-China gas deal not seen threat to Canadian West Coast LNG prospects appeared first on Canadian Business.

Many companies constantly wonder how they can instill loyalty in their customers…how customers can be encouraged to come back to their business time and time again. Is it in the quality of products supplied? The speed of the service? The convenience of where the company is located? It seems that almost anything and everything can affect whether a customer will give a company their repeated business, and a company’s brand strategy can easily become convoluted and unfocused as it strives to figure out what that might be.

But it’s actually very simple: if you express loyalty towards your customers, they will be loyal in return. It doesn’t have to involve a complex strategy – just a simple intention to make the first move. When companies care, the customers will care. Demonstrating loyalty to your customers is one of the easiest and fastest ways to generate longer-term customer loyalty.

So what do we mean when we talk about showing loyalty? Loyalty is:

• Visibly showing gratitude to customers for their business
• Recognising and rewarding your best and oldest customers
• Showing you are there for customers, and that you care about their lives (not just their experience of the product)
• Valuing customers’ needs by going out of your way to fulfill needs and concerns.

And a loyal company isn’t just defined by the loyalty it shows towards its customers. A loyal company is loyal towards:

• The environment (accepting responsibility for its environmental impact and sourcing materials sustainably)
• its people (paying employees and partners fairly and competitively)
• the community (channeling some of its successes into benefits for others).

Harvard Business Review (HBR) has estimated that on average, companies lose 50% of their customer base every five years. Therefore, maximising customer loyalty is crucial for companies that wish to see more repeat customers and a slower customer turnover; instead growing their customer base to form a reliable and valued community.

Here are four essential characteristics that can help a brand demonstrate its loyalty.

 

Transparency

Customers like to know what they are getting, and how. They like to know what has gone into their product and any extra information that lets them know their product is superior.

American-based burrito chain Chipotle is renowned for demonstrating transparency with customers. The company goes out of its way to source only the very best ingredients, using methods that are sustainable via its ‘Food with Integrity’ program. It also uses its ‘Farm Team’ loyalty program not just to reward its most frequent customers, but also to teach them about the chain’s ethical food production efforts.

Amazon is another company that values transparency. By showing its customers various pricing options from different sellers and openly displaying customer reviews, it allows its customers to make informed choices about what they are buying.

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Consistency

Loyal companies can be relied on to deliver an exceptional customer experience…not just once, but over and over, as many times as it needs to. Tech giant Apple is a company that, despite decades of change and innovation, has retained a consistently high quality in both its products and its service.

Apple is a company whereby customers will actually pay to upgrade their products, even just for minor additions, because their belief that Apple will not let them down is overall strong. And despite these frequent upgrades, Apple’s interface has remained consistent, making it easy for customers to adapt to new products and manage multiple Apple devices. This makes them less likely to turn to another brand when looking for their next smart phone, tablet or laptop. Once an Apple fan, always an Apple fan.

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Responsibility

Customers like to see companies take responsibility not just for their own actions, but for other issues that may have a detrimental effect on society. In a Corporation executive Board study published by HBR, 64% of customers with a strong brand relationship cite ‘shared values’ as the primary reason, and it has long since been ascertained that customers are loyal to beliefs, not the companies themselves.

It’s therefore worth finding out what your customers and target customers care about, and fighting for it. It could involve you signing a pledge; launching a campaign; creating awareness; raising funds, or even working out ways to make your production line fairer and more sustainable.

LUSH Cosmetics is a British company that, besides reducing its own environmental impact through the use of natural ingredients and recycled materials, is an active campaigner in causes close to its customers’ hearts. This involves animal testing for cosmetic purposes and the fair trading of imported ingredients like cocoa. UK logistics company DHL, meanwhile, works to reduce its customers’ carbon footprints via its GoGreen products and services, which include vehicles with alternative drive systems and energy-efficient warehouses.

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Dedication

Contrary to popular belief, “slowing down can be a good thing,” says Gregory Ciotti of HelpScout.net. While speed is certainly a valued factor in the customer service experience, there is much research to show that customers don’t necessarily regard speed as being more important than manners, helpfulness, and the overall quality of their interaction with a company.

Shoe and clothing company Zappos broke the record for the longest customer service call ever known, spanning across a grand total of ten hours and originally ending in a sale of a pair of Ugg boots. Despite initial mockery and criticism from the public, Zappos maintained that allowing team members to stay on the phone with a customer for as long as is necessary is all part of the company’s strategy to deliver exceptional customer service.

Showing dedication towards satisfying the needs of a single customer, and staying present with them throughout their experience, is likely to go a lot further than getting them in and out as quickly as possible. Customers like to feel that a company is committed to making them happy, and a sure way of showing this commitment is by giving them one of your most precious commodities: your time.

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When customers see that a company is doing right by its customers, its employees, its partners, the environment and its community, they are far more likely to want to give that brand their business – both present and future.

Millions are spent daily trying to understand customers. Understanding why your customers shop for your products in the first place can help you better meet their needs. It also ensures you maximize sales and get the most out of your advertising dollar. However, understanding how your customers buy is just as important as understanding why they buy. A unified approach to how the customer buys leads to oversights, which is a lesson learned this week by none other than Chris Christie.

The New Jersey Governor recently admitted to an $800 million shortfall when it came to online gambling in New Jersey. The bill that was expected to generate nearly $1 billion in revenue in the first year for the State; However, the estimates were recently downgraded to $200 million, and it turns out, one of the reasons is credit card processing.

“Currently, Visa and MasterCard are accepted for online gambling services, while American Express and Discover are not. Visa approves only 44% of requested transactions, but Mastercard approves 73% of requests.” reported payment processors, Vision Payment Solutions. “A lot of transactions are being declined by credit card merchant services, and only roughly 44% are actually getting approved.”

New Jersey knew there was a market. However, the “hows” of the conversation were unfortunately not discussed, leading to the shortcomings. So with cash, credit cards, ecommerce markets, mobile card readers, and everything short of bartering their possessions, how do you target customers by the way they purchase?

Understanding the Online Shopper aka the Researcher

Customers who primarily buy online tend to be your researchers. These types of customers pay by credit or debit card, and usually search multiple store sites for the best value or items with the most features before finally making a purchase. They are your comparison shoppers. These types of customers tend to be the most cautious with their purchases and also value warranties, generous return policies and internet safety.

Because these kinds of customers value getting the most for their dollar and feeling secure about handing over their card information, you can win them over in a variety of ways. Showcasing your products and pricing along with listing the products and pricing of your competitors shows customers that you offer the best deals and saves them research time. Offering money-back guarantees and ensuring a high degree of security at the point of sale increases the likelihood that customers who primarily buy online will buy from you.

Cash and the Impulse Buyer: What Does this Customer Buy?

The less an item or service costs, the more likely someone is to buy it impulsively. Although impulsive people tend to make impulse buys more than others, on the whole, people make impulse purchases based on two factors: availability of funds and want/need of product or service. A customer with money in her pocket and a desire for something she doesn’t have is the most likely to make an impulsive buy, whether she’s buying a cup of coffee or a new laptop. Still, because large purchases take a bigger chunk out of a customer’s budget, people are far less likely to impulsively purchase big-ticket items like a refrigerator or a new vehicle.

Can Your Business Benefit from Impulse Buying?

The answer to this question is, in many cases, industry specific. Coffee shops, inexpensive restaurants, grocery stores, and stores that carry home goods and décor are among the most likely to capture the impulse buy dollar, simply because people tend to buy these items on impulse. If you’re running an electronics store or a carpentry business, for example, most people simply won’t buy from you on impulse because they need time to consider their purchase and even plan for the cost. However, you can potentially increase your sales volume if you have the ability to take down payments in an instant.

Mobile Card Readers Are Changing Every Industry

Small business owners and entrepreneurs can increase their overall sales volume by adding mobile card readers to their smartphones. Mobile card readers allow you and your sales force to take payments anywhere you can bring a phone. A mobile card reader allows you to take credit card payments through a small device you attach to your phone. This makes it easier for customers to buy small items when they don’t have cash available. A mobile card reader also allows customers to prepay for services or put money down to reserve an item on the fly.

A mobile card reader is a small device that you can attach to your phone or tablet as needed to swipe credit cards for business transactions. Several companies including Square and Paypal offer mobile card readers and provide credit card processing services for a small percentage of sales. Costs to your business are about the same as having a traditional card processing service, and getting paid from a reputable service provider isn’t much different, either. Most providers don’t charge businesses for the card reader itself because they earn income on sales instead. In most cases, you will need to install a specific phone app to be able to process payments.

“Smart strategies and development plans for mobile should rely on an in-depth understanding of the user and be designed to deliver a meaningful experience. For the mobile market in particular, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’.” said mobile app developer Perpetuating in a recent blog post.

Mobile card readers are already working their way into every day businesses like coffee shops and food trucks, as well as larger retail stores like REI. The biggest advantage businesses have is really the mobility of the mobile processor, allowing them to take cards anywhere. Customers can pay anywhere without cash or a nearby ATM. This opens up opportunities to reach customers in strategic locations previously inaccessible or cost effective and stimulates the demand for creativity and innovation in marketing and sales.

Whole Foods has a bad taste in its mouth – it recently had to revise both its sales growth and earnings for the third time in six months. As a result, its stock dropped by 19% in one day. To be clear, Whole Foods’s financials are still healthy: in FY 2013, its revenue was $12.9B, EBITDA $1.2B, and earnings per share increased by 19%. And yet investors are jittery over whether the company will be able to deliver the growth necessary to justify its still-hefty valuation.

The drivers behind Whole Food’s diminished growth prospects are two-fold. First, its success has drawn in new competition. Whole Foods has done a great job of cultivating the organic and all-natural market. Rival organic and all-natural chains such as Fairway and Sprout are thriving. Grocery chains such as Kroger now offer similar products (often with discount private label offerings). Even Wal-Mart has entered the game with Wild Oats products and, not surprisingly, a pledge to be 25% cheaper than national brands. While Whole Foods’s advantage of “being the only game in town” is slowly being eroded, this competition doesn’t automatically foretell disaster. In fact, it reveals a growing consumer interest in organic and all-natural products – and it’s good for Whole Foods that the category is flourishing.

But just as importantly, Whole Foods has a poor pricing image problem – the rather unflattering “Whole Paycheck” moniker – which it needs to and can reverse.

Whole Foods Market Co-CEO John Mackey recently confessed, “We haven’t been investing in price as aggressively as we probably needed to.” Admitting a problem is a great first step – but what’s less great is how Mr. Mackey proposes to fix it. He wants to simply lower prices to “hopefully get a lift on that item as people purchase more of it, and the overall perception of your basic price value ratio is improved, and it helps your overall sale.” This statement reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the scale of the pricing problem and the efforts required to fix it. A lackadaisical price slash of, say, five-to-ten percent is a slow-boat-to-nowhere strategy.

Instead of focusing on current customers and hoping a small price cut will induce them to purchase more, Whole Foods needs to communicate lower prices to bring in new customers (something I think of as “activating dormant customers”). But what exactly does announcing that Whole Foods is lowering its reputedly sky high prices mean? Are prices dropping from “exorbitant” to merely “expensive?” Who knows? This is exactly Mr. Mackey’s problem. His pricing baby step is so ambiguous that it will make little headway toward the goal of changing its image.

Sure, Whole Foods’ gross margin (36%) is much higher than, say, Kroger (21%). But its gross margin isn’t far off from direct competitors (Sprout, 30%; Fairway, 33%). Regardless of whether the “Whole Paycheck” label is justified or not, what’s critical is the fact that “expensive” is ingrained in consumers’ minds.

Whole Foods needs to take concrete pricing actions, not tinker with pennies. These should be initiatives that can be summarized in a line or two that clearly change its price perception. For instance, since Whole Foods is known for its outstanding produce, they might make the claim (and take the action) that it sells produce for no more than 15% above its wholesale price (a pricing action that Costco makes for all of its products and that has built trust with its customers). Another example would be to publicize more than they already do that its private label products are priced on par with comparable products in the area. Both of these actions would reap the same benefits as a weekly grocery flyer – drawing in new customers — but equally importantly, these fact-based pledges will work to change Whole Foods’ pricing image.

The “Whole Paycheck” pricing brand image has been built over decades and it’s going to take drastic actions to reverse this long-held belief. What Whole Foods and companies in a similar situation need to understand is that vague pricing communications such as “cutting prices” or “everyday value” will have almost no effect on their brand. To revamp a pricing image, companies must provide concrete, guaranteed data that demonstratively conveys change to consumers.

Pave the way for a profitable business by tapping into the more than 2.5 billion people in the Internet though effective Lead Generation campaigns. Just a mere fraction of this immensely huge market is enough to drive endless streams of highly targeted traffic right into your business – eventually converting themselves in very valuable leads, subscribers or even sales. The key to success however lies in how effective and profitable your lead generation campaign is.

Digital Marketing Philippines (DMP) tries to remove the guesswork on how to start and conduct an effective lead generation campaign by providing to you in greater detail the six important parts of a lead generation campaign that is effective, results-driven and profitable. So, sit back and relax and enjoy this wonderful and exciting ride towards increasing sales and revenues with a profitable lead generation campaign.

The infographic (click to zoom):

Embedded from Digital Marketing Philippines

If you’re a B2B marketer scratching your head about social media ROI, guess what – you’re not alone! In a recent survey by B2B Marketing, 50% of Marketers said proving ROI remained their top social media challenge in 2014, followed by lack of time, strategic planning and lack of understanding.

Although we marketers love a retweet, like or +1 for brand awareness, what use are they if you can’t prove how they affect the bottom line?

So, how can you attribute revenue to your social media activity and grow your ROI?

Measuring likes or shares against followers or retweets gives a good indication of our favourite social media buzzword – engagement. But it doesn’t always translate to lead generation or sales activity.

Engagement happens differently for each social platform and you’re dealing with isolated metrics for the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and Google+ . Comparing these metrics against one another will be counter-productive and will end up with you having to maintain one huge spreadsheet!

The secret to successfully measuring ROI from your social media is knowing what you’re trying to achieve before you get started. Define what single metric you want to measure (whether it’s enquiries, content downloads, link clicks or new prospects) and make sure that you stick to that metric across all your social platforms.

You also need to have a predefined goal. According to Social Media Today, the top 5 goals of B2B marketers are:

1. Brand Awareness (82%)
2. Lead Generation (74%)
3. Customer Acquisition (71%)
4. Thought Leadership (68%)
5. Engagement (64%)

You can see from SMT’s stats that a whopping 82% of B2B marketers rated brand awareness as their No. 1 marketing goal, followed by a huge 74% saying that lead generation was their top goal. Defining what your goal is will give you a sense of what your metrics need to be. This, in turn, will make calculating your ROI much easier.

Once you have your goal and have decided on your metrics, think about using Lead Forensics as your website intelligence solution to accurately measure, report and grow your social media channels.

• Measure  which social media channels are driving the most visits to your website with Lead Forensics referrer report.
• Report and track each lead conversion from the source – You can see who your hottest leads are and where they came from. And by keeping track of when they convert, you can accurately attribute revenue to the correct channel. No more guessing your social media ROI.
• Grow your social media reach by identifying your strongest performing content (by page views or downloads) and sharing it across your social media – don’t forget to actively engage with followers too!

Click here to see more lead generation resources from Lead Forensics including whitepapers, blogs, news and much more!

Ah yes, the excitement of creating your company’s first buyer persona.

The interviews, the surveys, the extensive research … the PowerPoint presentation you put together so you can properly unveil your personas in all their persona-y glory. 

“Turns out, Sample Sally checks her Facebook religiously, but isn’t too keen on using Twitter,” you explain to your team, who are visibly dumbfounded by your amazing insights. “Also, Example Eddie hates Snickers bars,” you continue, "but he's quite partial to Toblerones."

Of course, after the ceremonial unveiling of the personas, there’s the requisite "I-just-made-our-company’s-buyer-personas" honeymoon period, which is typified by congratulatory handshakes from execs and a newfound “marketing rockstar" status that you maintain around the office for the next few weeks. 

And then what happens?

Well, naturally, you take your carefully crafted buyer personas, put them on display on the lunch room refrigerator, and never think about them again. 

Wait a sec ... what’s wrong with this picture?

Take Your Personas Off the Fridge and Put Them to Work

Marketing isn't arts and crafts. The goal here isn't to make something pretty that you can take home to Mom (sorry, Mom). Instead, the goal -- simply stated -- is to generate leads and convert leads into customers.

So, once you've taken the time to create buyer personas for your business, don't let them go to waste. There are lots of ways you can use your personas to drive results.

Here are 14 ideas to get the wheels turning:

1) Reallocate your ad spend.

After creating your personas, you’ll have a better understanding of where your personas spend their time online. And -- ideally -- you’ll also know what their favorite online publications and news sources are. Armed with this knowledge, you can audit where you’re currently spending resources (e.g. on Facebook ads, retargeting, etc.) and reallocate those resources based on your persona research.

2) Reallocate your human resources.

The same principle can be applied to personnel: If you know the majority of your audience is on Twitter, you'll want to make sure you -- or someone on your team -- is regularly monitoring that network and engaging with people who belong to your target persona.

The goal here isn't to hunt people down (you're not Dog the Bounty Hunter ... are you?). Instead, you just want to make sure you're hanging out where you're personas are hanging out.

3) Use the lingo that your personas use.

Once you know how the people in your different persona groups communicate, start speaking their language! Use the buzzwords they use. Use the slang they use. After all, you're not some foreign entity that has maliciously transplanted itself into their world (if you are, Dog the Bounty Hunter is coming for you). You're a member of the community and have a deep understanding of how people in that community like to interact. Using their lingo should come naturally.

4) Segment your list of contacts by buyer persona.

List segmentation is the key to delivering more personalized experiences to your leads and customers. Once you’ve segmented your list by buyer persona, you’ll be able to do all sorts of fun stuff. (Just keep reading!)

5) Write an ebook with a specific persona in mind.

Creating buying personas gives you an enhanced knowledge of what your ideal customers like and respond to, as well as what they struggle with. Using those insights, you can create a targeted ebook that solves a common problem -- or answers a common question -- that a particular persona has. And if you’ve segmented your contacts list by buyer persona, guess what? You can easily share that ebook with just the group of contacts who you know will be interested in it.

6) Write blog posts with specific personas in mind.

You can target very niche long-tail keywords, and eventually, you may even decide to create persona-specific sections or channels for your blog. 

7) Create a video with a specific persona in mind.

Of course, creating content for your personas isn't limited to ebooks and blog posts: There are tons of other content formats out there that a persona might prefer. In fact, you might discover during your research that one of your personas hates reading, and would rather watch short videos than read 400-word blog posts.

By catering your content formats to the preferences of your personas, you can deliver a more enjoyable experience. 

8) Audit your existing content for persona alignment.

Perform an audit of all your content and try to figure out which persona each piece aligns with. If you discover content that doesn't align with any of your personas, you might to consider updating it or -- if it's had zero success in generating leads -- just get rid of it.

At the end of the day, to attract the right people, you need to create the right content.

9) Combine personas with lifecycle stages to map out content ideas.

In addition to targeting content according to personas, you can target content according to another dimension: lifecycle stage. Lifecycle stage refers to how far along someone is in your sales cycle (and how close they are to making a purchase).

By adding this dimension to the mix, you can ensure that you're not only creating the right content for the right people, but that you're also creating it for them at the right time. Want to learn more about content mapping? Download our free content mapping template.

10) Optimize landing pages for personas.

When you offer up a new piece of targeted content, make sure that the accompanying landing page conveys to your persona -- in their language -- how that content can help them solve a problem or add value to their lives.

Not sure what call-to-action copy is going to drive the best results? Run some A/B tests to figure it out!

11) Use dynamic content to tailor your website to different personas.

Say goodbye to the one-size-fits-all website. With dynamic content (at HubSpot, we call it Smart Content), you can display different messaging to different people based on what persona you have them assigned to.

12) Do some co-marketing with companies that your personas dig.

Whether it's a webinar, a co-written ebook, or simply a guest blog post, working with other businesses that you know a particular persona likes and respects can score you some serious street cred.

Let's face it: Businesses, like people, are often judged by the company they keep. So make sure you're always in good company.

13) Segment out your negative personas.

A negative -- or “exclusionary” -- persona is a fictional representation of who you don’t want as a customer. This could include, for example, professionals who are too advanced for your product or service, students who are only engaging with your content for research/knowledge, or potential customers who are just too expensive to acquire.

If you take the time to create negative personas, you’ll have the added advantage of being able to segment out the “bad apples” from the rest of your contacts, which can help you big time with lead generation and lead-to-customer conversion rates.

14)  Put your negative personas on a dartboard and throw darts at them.

Just kidding, that’s not nice.

Voodoo dolls, on the other hand …

Have some other ideas for what you can do with your buyer personas? Let us know in the comments section below!

An essential part of developing a human-centered approach to modern marketing is hearing and observing your customers and buyers. The aim is to reach a level of deep understanding, which helps us to make more informed strategic business decisions. CMO’s and their C-Suite peers are collecting a tremendous amount of information. Whether it is big data, sales intelligence, or companies engaging in careful qualitative studies of their customers.

Making sense of a mountainous collection of information can prove to be a daunting exercise. While we may gather better clarity on segments and groups of buyers, obtaining a sensible and informing view of customer and buyer goals, their motivations, thinking, and behavior-driven activities is proving to be elusive.

Trying With Big Data

In the past two years, you cannot say companies are not trying. How they are trying to get this elusive painting of their customers and prospects may be making the lake in which we seek to understand murkier. Companies are investing in big data crunching in pursuit of better insights and decisions. However, as the surge of information becomes greater, the harder it is to gain the easy to understand painting of customers.

While quantitative big data can be very valuable, what organizations must be wary of is the deluge of data does not drown out the voice of their customers and buyers. Even worse, completely put a veil over having a human-centered perspective of their customers and buyers. The risk is customers can become mere digits on a screen.

Buyer Personas Represent The Human Perspective

Bringing a human-centered perspective to strategic planning and decision-making in marketing and sales requires deep understanding. Buyer personas represent archetypes of customers and buyers based upon research, which is qualitative in nature. While buyer personas have gained in popularity, organizations must be on guard not to create superficial target caricatures based on surveys or win/loss analysis. Giving such superficial caricatures labels as “the hard-charging executive information hunter” yields little in the way of developing a human-centered perspective.

A common pitfall for organizations introduced to or adopting buyer personas is their miscast role as target sales-oriented profiling. This perspective in relabeling traditional buyer profiling lacks human-centeredness and hinders much needed innovation in modern marketing. More importantly, the wrong perspective prevents modern marketers from gaining the maximum value from a true human-centered buyer persona perspective – which makes for powerful sales messaging and content marketing.

(For example, one Fortune 500 Company I helped had previously fell into this pit. They had created an extensive spreadsheet of buyer personas – thirty-four (34) in all! Sorely unmanageable and fraught with traditional pre-modern marketing business speak. This was due to a misguided view of buyer personas as a win or loss profiling exercise versus an attempt to gain a human-centered understanding of goals and behaviors. In the end, five (5) buyer personas were developed, which represented common views of customers and buyers both marketing and sales can work with and understand.)

Buyer Personas Are An Important Part Of The Understanding Phase

In human-centered marketing, there are three important phases. A process I call H.U.M. – for hear, understanding, and model (see more here). Buyer personas represent the synthesis and translation of the qualitative research conducted with customers and buyers. It is here in the understanding phase where we put a human face to our research, findings, and uncovered insights. We bring our customers to life visually. Using descriptive narratives, scenarios, illustrations, stories, and a focus on goal-centeredness to illuminate behaviors and realities.

In human-centered marketing, buyer personas play an important role in deepening an organization’s empathetic view of their customers and buyers. They also help in challenging or validating assumptions as well as dispelling preconceived views. Oftentimes, marketers can unintentionally communicate or market through their own personal view of the world versus those held by customers. Buyer personas help with putting a focus on people.

Buyer Personas Help Guide Modern Marketing

Within a human-centered marketing framework, we seek to model and create meaningful communications and connections with customers and buyers. We attempt to answer important questions, through our buyer personas, related to challenges in content design, communicating a value proposition, and uncovering new revenue models.

In the era of modern marketing and the disruptive digitization of business, businesses must hone in on the impact to human behaviors. Learning how these impacts translate into new buying behaviors. Buyer personas, within a human-centered marketing framework, can illuminate new goals, motivations, and thinking of buyers. Helping to bring a common view and understanding of customers to an organization.

For today’s modern marketers, buyer personas become the central characters in iterative testing of new modern marketing concepts and strategies. What we do know is approaches we are using today may very well be inadequate in a short amount of time. If not so as of now. Buyer personas provide the understanding and human face needed to help guide innovative modern marketing approaches, which put organizations in the best positions to help their customers and buyers. Thus, earning their hard fought loyalty.

Do you even know what a USP is? It’s a Unique Selling Proposition and without one, your business is fighting an uphill battle for survival.

Why worry about having a unique selling proposition?

The key to effective selling in this situation is what advertising and marketing professionals call a “unique selling proposition” (USP). Unless you can pinpoint what makes your business unique in a world of homogeneous competitors, you cannot target your sales efforts successfully.

Pinpointing your USP requires some hard soul-searching and creativity. One way to start is to analyze how other companies use their USPs to their advantage. This requires careful analysis of other companies’ ads and marketing messages. If you analyze what they say they sell, not just their product or service characteristics, you can learn a great deal about how companies distinguish themselves from competitors.

For example, Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, always used to say he sold hope, not makeup. Some airlines sell friendly service, while others sell on-time service. Neiman Marcus sells luxury, while Wal-Mart sells bargains.

You need to give customers (and investors) a REASON for buying your brand over other brands.

Finding a good unique selling proposition

First, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Then, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What problems do they face? Customers buy solutions, not products.
2. If others offer solutions to a particular problem, how does your brand solve the problem better?

What makes a BAD unique selling proposition?

Cheaper. Cheap often means your brand isn’t very good. Instead, think about providing value – and deliver on your promise.

That’s especially true for shopping and specialty goods. If you’re selling oranges, being a little cheaper might provide a good USP, but selling cheaper jewelry might backfire on you. In his book, Influence, Cialdini tells the story of a retailer selling “authentic” Indian jewelry near an Indian reservation. The stuff wasn’t selling until she DOUBLED the price, convincing would-be buyers that the jewelry was, indeed, authentic.

Better. Better is a loaded word – subject to the evaluations of others. If you’re using better as your unique selling propositions, your brand must have objective proof that it’s better than ANY other brand – not just some brands. And, the feature that makes your product better must be something consumers value as part of the solution.

Often, convincing your market that your brand is better than all the rest is an expensive proposition, better left to big brands with deep pockets.

What makes a GOOD unique selling proposition?

1. It solves a real customer problem. Look at the minivan – the most successful new car type in decades. That’s because it solved a real customer problem by providing a car that held lots of people and gear, without being clunky or hard-to-drive.

Want a more recent example? Look at AirBNB, which offers affordable housing by renting out spare bedrooms, basements, and even couches across the world.

2. It’s easy to use. For example, Apple succeeded all these years despite its higher price because it provides a unique selling proposition – it’s easy to use. In a time when other companies offered free computer training, Apple made a computer that didn’t need training – it was intuitive.

A corollary is that it’s easy for consumers to understand your unique selling proposition.

2. It’s really NEW. You can add the word new to all your packaging, but if it’s not really dramatically different inside, you’re wasting your time. Again, the NEW has to solve a customer problem. Look at 3D TV’s – they’ve stagnated in the market because, while they’re very new, they don’t really solve a customer problem. No one is out there asking for images to jump off their TV screens. Maybe the time just isn’t right for 3D TV’s, but firms would be better off waiting for customer need.

4. It benefits the planet. Consumers want to believe in the brands they buy. That’s why companies like Tom’s shoes (which give a needy child a pair for every pair sold) and Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream (which uses local sources to support the economy) have such strong, loyal followings.

How to create your own unique selling proposition?

1. Think outside the box. Don’t do what everyone else is doing and just hope you can do it better. Do it differently.
2. Don’t try to appeal to everyone. Find your sweet spot – those consumers for whom existing products just won’t do. Target your products (and USP) to just those individuals.
3. Figure out what everyone else is doing. Too often, companies THINK they’re offering is unique only because they haven’t done due diligence to find those out there already offering your solution.

Content creation was initially a simple concept for most marketers — any content would do so long as it moved their handful of keywords up the search listings.

Then, content marketers became more sophisticated. Their swathe of keywords widened, and content marketers became newly concerned with content discovery on channels such as social and search to build their brands and connect with their audience. However, this iteration of content marketing does not address all the needs of the modern content marketer. Content marketers are beginning to perceive that and move away from two persistent problems holding back their content’s success.

What are those costly mistakes? First, content marketers are struggling to show content’s ROI. The second is the enormous, missed opportunity of aligning content to the buyer’s journey.

Mistake 1: 7 out of 10 Marketers Aren’t Able to Show Marketing Impact

We find that overall, marketing executives have great difficulty in measuring the impact of marketing spend. An amazing 70% of CMOs admit to not being able to show the impact of their marketing spend at all, or only having a qualitative but not quantitative sense of it. Since a quarter of marketing budgets typically goes to content, this is a very real problem for content marketers.

Proving the ROI of content to marketing execs can be tricky, but we’re collectively getting better at it as an industry. On the whole, we’re seeing more and more marketers successfully tie dollar values to their content and follow it down the marketing funnel. (That’s based on firsthand experience from watching customers track revenue in Searchlight’s Content Insights with Analytics.)

Mistake 2: Failing to Align Content with the Buyer’s Journey

Here’s a stat that makes it clear that change is imminent: 68% of marketers recognize the importance of aligning content with the buyer’s journey.

In fact, only 12% of marketers feel confident about how they are currently measuring their content efforts and report being “sophisticated in our content alignment with the buyer’s journey and measurement.”

Marketers are clearly aware that all is not well in content measurement. 49% of marketers that say they are planning on working to change that in the next six months by better aligning content with the buyer’s journey.

The content needs of buyers/visitors differ based on their stage in the buyer’s journey, and the metrics used to measure success may also differ based on the buyer’s journey. A couple examples of companies with excellent content strategies are REI and Rockler – both companies are paying attention to customers’ content needs at both the conversion (late stage) and research (early stage) ends of the marketing funnel. (Write-ups about their content strategies here and here.)

Savvy Content Marketers Are Segmenting & Measuring Content

While content marketing began with an unsophisticated ‘publish content to a broad audience with limited measurement,’ we’re seeing the industry shift to a deeper understanding of audience segments and measurement of the effectiveness of content to those segments.

Content marketers are rapidly becoming adept at content targeting and ROI. There are other impressive evolutions too, like creating customer personas, performing content gap analysis, and finding and fixing content that isn’t being found. That’s starting to sound like a whole new process, right? That’s why we’ve packaged the emergent best practices into the term Web Presence Management (WPM). WPM is a combination of what we see our most sophisticated and successful customers doing online. It’s a strategy to help marketers better connect with their customers, educate them through the buyer’s journey and wring more value from their content dollar with better measurement of what does and doesn’t work.

Read “What is WPM?” for more info on managing and measuring your content’s web presence. And tell us what you’re seeing in the content marketing industry in the comments.

Digital marketing is a very important tool for businesses.   However, small business owners have a tough time growing their businesses using online procedures.   Although the process may seem challenging, there are a few simple strategies that any small business owner can use.

The Goal

Gaining more customers is the easiest way to increase success.   To grow the business, a solid goal will be needed.   Digital marketing methods are highly recommended, but a carefully designed strategy is required.

Marketing Funnel

Businesses that are successful have an efficient marketing funnel.   Understanding the marketing funnel design is important.   It involves mapping out the customer’s path to the website.   As some point, a potential customer was a lead; a successful business owner must gain this data.   The marketing funnel data must be used to design strategies to encourage customers to travel through the funnel.   A marketing funnel has various pieces, such as a call-to-action, lead magnets, offers, and opt-ins pages.   A great marketing funnel typically has four parts.

Awareness is one part of the funnel.   Customers must know about the product or service.   Although customers are strangers, they always visit a store for a reason.   Business owners must design the main page efficiently.   It should display something that a customer may want.   To handle this task, use a call-to-action or a lead magnet.   Either technique should be used to give the customer a helpful resource in exchange for contact information.   Most stores commonly ask for a phone number or an email address.  Direct mailing lists are also recommended.

Interest in another part of the funnel.   Most customers show interest in specific products or services.   If a customer provides a phone number or email address, the next step involves providing more information.   However, this particular information should be tailored based on the customer’s specific needs.

Desire is the next part of the funnel.   After a customer shows interest in the product or service, the next step involves scheduling a consultation.   At this point, provide information that shows a customer why the product or service can solve a common problem.

Action is the final part of the funnel.   This part of the funnel is used to make a customer spend money.   At this point, the customer has a lot of valuable information, and the customer knows the benefits of buying the product or service.   The final step involves discussing the price of the product or service and basic payment procedures.

An efficient marketing funnel, however, will not generate more leads, but it will generate more repeat buyers .   If a customer enjoyed the shopping experience, the customer might return to buy another product.   In some cases, the customer may also recommend the store to friends and family.

How To Design A Call-To-Action

A call-to-action uses text to get customers to take action.   An image can also be used.   Most business owners ask customers to sign up for a newsletter.   A call-to-action should direct potential customers to landing pages.   From these pages, the customer must provide contact information in exchange for a great business offer.

How To Design A Lead Magnet

A lead magnet can be used two ways.   It can be used alone or with a call-to-action.   The lead magnet should provide something valuable.   The purpose of a lead magnet is to trade information.   For example, offer a free download if the customer fills out a form.   This information should be used to interact with customers as they move through the funnel.

How To Drive Traffic

A marketing funnel will not be effective if the website does not have traffic.   There are several ways to get traffic.   Most businesses use SEO and various social media methods.

If you were to ask five different people what the fundamentals of social media were, you’d probably get five different answers. In fact, I asked an entire group of SteamFeed authors and got 9 different answers!

Most of those answers fit into one of the five categories we’re going to go over in this post: Content, Community, Conversation, Collaboration, and Conversion.

Using the 5 Cs together will ensure you’re building the foundation to a solid social strategy.

Content

To me, content is the cornerstone of social media. You simply cannot waltz onto a social network and be successful without amazing content and some sort of content marketing strategy.

Good content is:

• Valuable
• Engaging
• Searchable (SEO, anyone?)
• Easy to read
• Actionable (which leads to the 5th C: Conversion)

Actionable can mean several things:

• Likes, Plus 1s, comments, shares
• It creates a snackable bite that someone else wants to use in their writing, podcast, study, blog post, etc.
• Conversion: A sign up, a subscriber, a download, a prospect or a lead

As Keri from Idea Media Girl put it, content is less about you and more about what your would-be consumers are looking for.

Your content is the hook that will draw in the community. Without it, your community will likely be nonexistent, small, or uninterested in what you’re saying on your social media sites.

Community

Once you have great content to lure interested parties to your social pages, you begin building a community.

This is the hard part for a lot of peeps because they focus on the medium (social media) and not the meaning (relationship building).

Carrie with BTC REvolutions hit the nail on the head:

“Be the biggest fan of your fans.”

If you focus on putting people first, it will lead you to do things like:

• Picking the platform where your target audience is, rather than picking the place you think will work
• Creating a strategy for disseminating content
• Testing guidelines that are firm, but fair, to run the community
• Allowing — and ENCOURAGING — conversation and discussion
• Celebrating your community members

A good community will help you shape and mould your brand. A good community will spark ideas for new content, and maybe even new products & services.

You’ll know you have a good community when the conversation flows easily (with or without you).

Conversation

With our tag line being,

“Think Conversation, Not Campaign”

this is probably my favorite C. Conversation drives everything on social media.

If you’re putting your people first — while still trying to get to the 5th C, Conversion — then you should be trying to understand your community. You need to know what drives them, what makes them buy.

This doesn’t happen by sharing kitten memes or quotes from Zig Ziglar. That’s one-way conversation. And while it may be entertaining, it doesn’t move the process along.

As Darin from ZipMinis points out,

“… what we have to say as bloggers is powerful too. You must be in harmony with the audience while highlight your voice and ideas.”

And Kim from Kimberly Yuhl Media Works shows the other side of that, which is also important:

“Stop using [social media] purely as a distribution channel and just talk to people.”

So how you you play both sides? How do you make it about them but make sure you’re getting what you need too?

Think of it like dating. You’re going to have to “woo” your community with great content and even better conversations. You’ve got to prove you’re trustworthy, and more valuable than the next guy or girl.

You’ve also got to prove you’re:

• Truthful and transparent
• Caring
• Helpful
• Accepting

Emotional marketing comes into play here.

You should be using psychographics — beliefs, feelings, opinions, attitudes, values — in conversation to extract the psychographics of your audience.

The power of taking your would-be consumer’s feelings and putting them to work for your brand can help you make direct correlations to their buying patterns.

Psychographics answer the question every marketer is trying to answer: What do my buyers want?

Once you’re past the dating phase and having regular conversations with your community, you’ll get to the 4th C: Collaboration.

Collaboration

Collaboration is where savvy brands are sitting right now.

Look at brands like Target and Urban Outfitters. They are taking user-generated content (UGC) and changing the way their stores are laid out, using customer photos on Instagram, and even changing the way their website looks and feels.

That’s collaboration at its finest.

You have to realize that these brands worked very hard to get there. They started with content, built a loyal community, and started having lots of in-depth conversations.

And it was through those conversations that they were able to start the next level of social media marketing … collaboration.

Dorien from More In Media highlights this when she comments,

” … Great Team … Solid Strategic Plan … Oh, an an understanding of basic human sociology.”

Collaboration can happen on the backend, the frontend, and definitely through social media channels.

It’s taking those psychographics and doing something useful with them. It’s listening. It’s having more conversations than you’re having now. It’s showing that you listened, that you care, and that you DID SOMETHING about the feelings, opinions and beliefs of your community.

One of your goals and KPIs (key performance indicators) should be to garner collaboration from your customers and community. By meeting this goal, you’ll help make more conversions (our final C).

Conversion

Finally. We’ve made it to the part that most companies start with. What’s my ROI (return on investment) for using social media?

Conversions take a lot of work.

As Daniel, Growth Manager of Social Media for /newsrooms said:

“Start with a top level strategy … what KPIs are important to you …”

If you can’t see your ROI in the other 4 Cs, maybe social media isn’t the place for you.

It’s this simple: With social media, I don’t think you can have a ROI without a ROC (return on conversation).

You also won’t see a continuous ROI with:

• Lack of strategy
• Sucky content
• No sense of community
• No efforts for collaboration

Maybe it should be: You can’t have a ROI without a ROCs! Cs = Content, Community, Conversation and Collaboration.

You’re going to have to leave your comfort zone.

You’re going to have to think differently.

You’re going to have to think more deeply about the conversations you’re having online.

The bottom line is that you can’t afford to see consumers as dollar signs. You can’t even “see” them as the avatars that pop up on your social media sites. User1234 isn’t buying your fluff.

If you want to get to conversion, then you’re going to have to work through ALL 5 Cs of social media.

What Cs do you need help with? Am I missing any points, or Cs? Please let me know in the comments section below!

See you in the social sphere!

Although B2B eCommerce doesn’t garner the same buzz and attention of its B2C counterpart, it already accounts for more revenue ($559B vs. $252B) and is growing faster as well – 20% in 2013 vs. 12% for B2C. A key reason behind this explosive growth is the expectations of B2B buyers. Just as they’ve become accustomed to the ability to make retail and lifestyle purchases online, they’ve begun searching for a similar user experience when making business purchases. This has disrupted the B2B market significantly and consumerization is presenting complexities that B2B companies have never faced before. (Take a look at our friend Bill, who ran into the same problem.)

Best-in-class B2B eCommerce companies are growing and innovating so rapidly that they’ve already pulled far away from their competitors.  In fact, they’re about to lap them.  But it’s not too late to get in the race. Many B2B and B2C eCommerce best practices are similar – so take a look at these to get a sense of what you’re up against. Then, simply pick the best partner for your integration, consult with them on the best technology for your business, and follow these best practices:

Offer smart product offers

Leaders in the B2B eCommerce space react in real-time to market demand, and offer customer-specific promotions and pricing accordingly. They take advantage of customer segmentation technologies to offer special discounts and pricing for any customer, group of customers, order, item or geography.

 Implement a premium user experience

As more and more B2B buyers clamor for enhanced user experiences, those who respond with robust online commerce capabilities will gain revenue and global market share, while those that ignore the e-commerce imperative will gradually become irrelevant to large sections of the marketplace.

Provide mobile tools for shoppers and staff

Best-in-class B2B suppliers use mobile to build customer loyalty, streamline back office processes on both sites. Customers like mobile because they can track budgets and costs, and place orders from virtually anywhere. Suppliers like it because they can use the data to provide relevant offers and based on customer context.

Offer tools for buying efficiency

Bulk, repeat, and scheduled ordering are all very common in B2B eCommerce. Support for these features is a must-have for any eCommerce site that hopes to compete. Companies also prefer the ability to leverage quick ordering capabilities.

Provide customer self-service and administration

B2B customers prefer to manage their account settings in self-service area within B2B eCommerce store. They can assign rights to their employees, maintain cost centers and budgets, manage individual spending limits and setup new approval rules and workflows.

Maintain real-time inventory levels and pricing accuracy

Industry leaders maintain use mobile tools to ensure their business is always on top of shipping, order fulfillment, and accounting. Inventory control tactics prevent customers from inadvertently making orders that cannot be fulfilled, and provide suppliers with insight into exactly what’s going on at their warehouses and fulfillment centers.

Offer different incentives and promotions and spiffs per customer

Best-in-class B2B eCommerce sites use customer segmentation to offer customer-specific promotions and incentives as a way to drive volume, increase conversion rates, boost average order value, reward loyalty, and even clear out inventory. Of course these promotions can be a challenge to manage, but with the right platform and partner, you can easily configure the technology so it’s easy to manage and integrate promotions by customer.

Support punch out shopping

Punch out is often a requirement for working with by large enterprises. Through strategic partnerships with key customers, integrated punch out lets customers order from a supplier directly through their internal standard procurement system.

Integrate with all back-office technologies

The key is word here is “all’. Don’t wait to integrate with your EDI, CRM, ERP, PIM, OMS, and any other system involved your business. It will cost more money to re-enter the data later when (not if) you need to do so. In the short term, partial integrations can cause inefficiencies and duplication of effort in the back office.

Hopefully these B2B eCommerce best practices get you on the right start. To learn more, feel free to download our white paper, B2B eCommerce: The New Rules of Engagement.

The Pipeline Guest Post –  Megan Totka

We talk quite often about sales tactics and marketing ideas in a general sense. But who exactly is your company trying to sell to?

People can be classified in so many different ways. But one of the most common classifications is by generation. Most recently, the generation we’ve talked about the most has been the baby boomers. Born in the post-World War II era, from the years 1946-1964, baby boomers have made up a huge consumer base for many, many years. Many people consider baby boomers to be the first real consumer generation, raised after the Great Depression and in a time of pretty impressive technological advances.

In the no-so-distant past, the baby boomers have arguably been the most important group to market to, as they did (and still do) make up such a huge portion of the population.

But there’s a new group on the scene – the Millennials. This generation, made up of people born from 1980-2000, is estimated to encompass 80 million people. That’s more than the baby boomers.

The biggest thing that sets the millennial generation apart is their familiarity with the Internet. The Internet and related technology are not new and exciting to this generation; it’s been around since they were small children. While it might still be possible to impress other generations with technology, Millennial have come to expect it.

So how do we cater to this new generation of buyers? One thing is for sure – give them what they expect. This Forbes article likens hotels that don’t have free Wi-Fi to the same hotel charging to use a toilet. At this point, we’ve all come to expect free Internet, just about everywhere we go, millennials in particular. Millennials also respond to an “omnichannel” concept. This means that people should be able to contact you or your company in whatever way they want to, without having to do it the same way that they did the last time. For example, if a customer contacts your company once via Facebook, they should be able to expect the same information and level of service from any other avenue, such as phone, Twitter, email, etc.

Does your company have any lessons to share concerning marketing and sales that is geared towards a particular generation?

(Photo Source)

About Megan Totka

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

Let’s rip the Band-aid right off: For B2B content marketers, eBooks are overrated. (I will now dive for cover under my desk.)

Now before you bombard me with every object within an arm’s reach, let me first explain that I don’t have some weird personal vendetta against eBooks. I find them to be quite a gentle content species. I just think we obsess over creating them a bit too much in B2B, and I know we can do better. Not only have I watched eBooks generate diminishing returns lately, but I think it’s time to inject much more creativity into what we produce in order to stand out. Isn’t that the point of our work? Don’t content marketers count as creative professionals — at least in part? 

But if not eBooks, then what kinds of content should we be creating to both gain attention and drive audience action? To understand where I’m headed here, let’s first take a look at what’s been happening to this tactic, and introduce a new way of thinking in Year 1 “Ae” (After eBooks).

“Be better than the Gap”

There’s a great scene in the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love (which you can go ahead and assume my wife made me watch. Yup. That’s totally what happened…). Anyway, in the scene, Ryan Gosling looks at Steve Carell’s drab, average attire, grabs him by the face, and demands that he “be better than the Gap.”

As content marketers, it’s time we had a similar inspirational moment. But since Ryan Gosling isn’t likely to jump in here (damn), you’re stuck with me (double damn). So, here goes: Marketers, we can — and should — be better than the eBook! Say it with me: “I am better than the eBook.”

Yes, it’s time we focus some of our energy on actual creativity and content production, not just the mechanics of distribution and measurement, as the days of us trying to make dud missiles fly are all but over. It’s time to give “content” just as much attention as “marketing,” which will yield better business results to boot. I promise.

And here’s how to approach it all…

A new rule to guide B2B content production

Prior to my current role at NextView Ventures, I led content production at HubSpot. Right around the time I joined, we noticed that our eBooks had started to underperform. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been a surprise — the phrase, “how-to marketing eBook” alone yields 107 million results on Google. But we as B2B marketers acted like, well, B2B marketers: We found a tactic that worked, and then we beat the snot out of it.

Dozens of competitors emerged in that niche (and other niches) and started to use this tactic, blanketing the world in eBooks about marketing. They were no longer considered a unique content format. And, even worse, readers felt they were no longer worthy of the extra effort (i.e., conversion) it took to access their information. Asking for a handful of personal data started to seem like a lopsided request for a business to make, when all it could offer in return is one of the hundreds of millions of eBook options out there (literally, if you believe the Google results).

But while our eBooks began to underperform, we noticed that one experimental content effort continued to stand out: a collection of free stock photos. When marketed to our audience, they generated double or even triple the results of our other content efforts, as shown below:

We wanted to know what was happening here. Why were these B2B content launches so much more powerful than eBooks? And how could we replicate this success?

Clearly pumping out more and more eBooks (as every B2B content marketing machine seemed wired to do) was not the answer. No, there was something much simpler yet extremely powerful at play here. And the way I codified it was this:

Will this piece of content save our audience time, money, or both?

Asking this simple question became our rule, our bar to measure an idea. If we thought it would, we’d move forward with that content effort. If not, we would kill it, even if it might make a great long-form thought exercise. (Note that this applied only to our lead-gen content efforts. HubSpot continues to write eBooks and other long-form content pieces for other purposes.)

This rule makes a ton of sense from a B2B standpoint. When you think about it, B2B companies exist primarily to solve the problems faced by other companies and their people — regardless of whether those solutions come in the form of marketing software, sales analytics, HR services, training, or what have you. And the bulk of those solutions can be distilled down to saving the buyer time and/or money (which an executive may deem as one and the same).

It makes just as much sense when you zoom in on the marketing tactic angle, as well. Giving away a free collection of stock photos saves audiences the time it takes to search for individual image providers, sort through their collections using their (often sub-par) search engines, and decipher paragraphs of legalese on how you can and can’t use their photos. These free giveaways save users money too — stock photos are typically items for which you must pay to access. It’s no wonder the results were so much better.

EBooks, on the other hand, don’t necessarily save their readers time or money. Maybe several years ago, back when paying for an eBook was standard practice, a free one was a big deal. But in 2014, eBooks are largely considered free items in the minds of most business audiences. And as one of the longest-form pieces of content marketing there are, eBooks are more likely to cost readers extra time, rather than saving it.

So what should we create instead? 

There’s no way I could sit here and propose everything you could create to save your audience time and money — as usual, it comes back to knowing your audience intimately. I’m also not sure I’d want to propose every idea possible to replace the eBook, since we could wind up repeating the repetitive, dead-end approach I described above all over again. No, the idea here is to be unique and creative when you create content. But to give you a few ideas, here are six formats that you might want to try your hand at:

1. Workbooks, playbooks, and blueprints

What they are: The cousins of the eBook, these formats are less about reading and more about using documents as a step by step way to guide readers through a recommended process or activity more efficiently and effectively.

For example, at NextView Ventures, we just launched a Growth Guide for content marketers, with the motto: “Less reading, more doing.” It aims to help startups launch and execute their content strategy. Instead of reading it cover-to-cover, we recommend that marketers keep it at their side as they work, only moving on to the next section once the task at hand has been completed.

How to brainstorm your own ideas: Examine your competitors’ content, as well as your own. Think about ways to make that content more actionable, and package the very specific steps that are involved into a foolproof PDF format that is easily distributed. For these formats, you should try to limit any discussion of theory to one or two pages — stick to discussing the actions your reader should take instead.

2. Project templates

What they are: Guardrails that direct your buyers to complete a project more efficiently or effectively than existing best practices would for that task. For example, sales teams often share cold outreach emails amongst each other — this presents a perfect opportunity for a content marketer to create a collection of boilerplate content that sales can grab and customize. Another example: Marketers need to set up multiple social media profiles for their brands. So a template that helps them resize all their brand’s images to fit the most common social networks would make for great content.

How to brainstorm your own: Line up all the steps your buyer takes to complete his or her daily tasks, and list out ideas for resources that can replace or remove those tasks. This may not save them money, but it should save them significant time.

3. Collections of free assets

What they are: Packages of items that can be plugged into your audience’s projects. The stock photo giveaways mentioned earlier fall into this category, as do collections of free icons, buttons, fair-use music clips, and so on.

How to brainstorm your own: Again, think about the steps your buyer might take to complete a common task that your product also helps them accomplish. Identify the small, annoying parts of the process that feel repetitive (like searching for stock photos for every single blog post) and curate or create a package of free assets they can return to time after time.

4. Reporting templates

What they are: Spreadsheets, presentations, and other files that can be used to report performance to executives and other stakeholders. These templates should be outlined and wireframed by you, including any computational formulas that you might want to include in a relevant spreadsheet (should you choose to create this type of template). Your target buyer can then simply plug in their own data whenever they need to build a report. For instance, at NextView, we’re planning to give away templates of great presentation decks we’ve seen startups use, along with some light descriptions on what makes each style or slide valuable in a presentation to a board of directors. And at HubSpot, we created a monthly reporting template for content marketers that broke performance down into specific channels used.

How to brainstorm your own: Move through your buyer’s month or quarter in your mind again. (Notice a pattern here?) When and to whom do they report their performance? What elements should be included? Whether they’re presenting data to their boss and/or their teams or are just trying to keep themselves honest, most B2B audiences could find some kind of value in having templates like these to work from.

5. Educational videos with info capture

What they are: Short instructional videos that make one activity abundantly clear to an audience (which saves them the time it might take to read and learn that activity if they had to track down and reference multiple sources). Wistia stands above most other companies as the prime example. They’ve built a huge audience and converted thousands of customers through video content marketing… and not an eBook to be found. Here’s an example (note the call to action at the end).

They’re so good, their content all sits in front of the form, which I think is tremendous. There. I said it (as I cower further under my desk).

How to brainstorm your own: Rather than educate through long-form text, consider shorter (1–3 minute) instructional videos that you script ahead of time. Luckily, the same example I used above, Wistia, offers an entire Learning Center to help you learn more about this exact tactic. The goal is to save your audience time by delivering knowledge in quicker, more snackable segments than really long eBooks.

6. Interactive tools and apps

What they are: There might be a tech gap when it comes to scaling these right now, but I’d bet that this approach to marketing winds up replacing a good amount of the formats we use today. These projects feel more like technology than they do media, and they actually help your audience produce work, at least in part. Two of my favorite examples are blog headline generators: There’s this one from HubSpot (though I take only copy editing credit), and BlogAbout from IMPACT Branding and Design, which is just plain beautiful.

How to brainstorm your own: Mock up the exact steps a user would take in PowerPoint, and shop the idea to developers, product teammates, and potential users. You are basically developing a small product, so proceed with caution — there could be considerable up-front time and cost elements here, though the resulting efforts could be well worth it. 

Robots haven’t replaced writers… yet

The ability to create content that truly stands out still rests squarely on our human shoulders — so it’s time we all embrace it a bit more fully. The marketing side of content marketing gets a ton of thought, just as it should. But it’s high time we direct more of our attention to the creative side of the equation.

In doing so, remember this: B2B content marketing involves finding ways to solve your buyers’ problems — just like your products and services do. And thus our marching orders are also very much the same: Save them time and money.

(Can I come out from under my desk now?)

Looking for more inspiration on delivering unique, compelling content experiences? Read CMI’s Content Marketing Playbook: 24 Epic Ideas for Connecting with Your Customers.

Cover image via Bigstock 

Down with Comic Sans! Death to neon text! Some aesthetic web features have become so widely reviled by developers and designers that they have reached the public conscious. People often claim they feel digitally ill over a certain typeface or colour palette but, while many people know which websites they like and which they don’t, few would be able to successfully identify the features that make their favourite sites likeable.

What is even more foreign to the public, and in particular business owners, is what makes a site a successful lead generator. In other words, how to make your website generate business. We have a look at 7 crucial features you need to consider to maximise the leads generated by your website.

These features can be broadly divided into things the visitor can see and things they can’t see.

Things you can see

The Fold

This is a term cropping up more consistently in web design forums and even general discourse, as the web becomes more crowded and web design becomes less of an esoteric pursuit. The fold describes the line that separates the bottom of the visible web page from the rest of the page that cannot be seen without scrolling. It helps if you imagine the web page as a single sheet of paper with a horizontal fold in it, everything below the fold cannot be seen and everything above can.

What a good, lead-generating website does, is make sure that the most important elements of the site are above the fold. Everything in that first frame should be tailored to your buyer and optimised to make it easy for them to find what they want. The fold is something you should be examining for every web page you have. There longer seems to be any validity in the claim that people don’t like to scroll beyond the fold, but it is still wise to use the space above the fold as effectively as possible.

CTA’s

Calls to action (CTA) come in many forms, some look professional and some look like massive bear traps. Any business serious about online lead generation needs CTA’s. These buttons are the bridge that leads your buyers to the next step in their buying journey. In the case of digital marketing, this is downloadable content. If no one clicks on your CTA’s, no one will visit your landing pages or fill out any forms and you will not generate any leads.

Your CTA’s need to be clean and concise and should let the visitor know exactly where they are going when they click. This can be done by giving a thumbnail image of the downloadable content that will appear on the landing page or using similar font and wording on both CTA and landing page, thus keeping a mental link for the visitor and letting them feel comfortable that they have followed the right path.

Landing Pages

Once your visitors have decided they want your downloadable content and have clicked one of your CTA’s you need a page where they can quickly review what the content will deliver, easily fill out their details and download the content. Landing pages are much better when they are simple. You do not want to overwhelm the visitor; you want to briefly let them know what they are downloading and how it will help them. Bullet points are a successful strategy for this purpose and you should be able to get the content’s value across with a few simple bulleted points.

Below is an image of an extremely simple but effective landing page from Wistia (a video hosting service). It offers 4 concise bullet points and one field to fill out. The page is so simple and makes it so easy for the visitor to take the step you are asking them to take. While some people are advocates for having minimal navigation on the page so as not to leak any visitors, Wistia has offered the navigation for those who want more information and are still unsure.

Social Sharing

This is a crucial element of any modern successful lead generating website. Countless studies have shown that buyers are most influenced by friends and family. Social sharing taps into this in a simple yet incredibly effective way. If my family or friends tell me to look at a McDonald’s promotion or buy a Big Mac I am more likely to do it than if Ronald McDonald or the Hamburglar implored me to. The power of social sharing is in tapping into a buyer’s strongest influencer network. All the work you do on every other feature mentioned in this blog will be multiplied every time your site or content is shared socially or recommended to someone else.

Look at how Tupperware parties started or Herbalife works today, tapping into that personal network to make sales. We do not have to exploit the network in the same manipulative way that other companies have but we should offer customers and leads the ability to easily share their views about our product, services and content. Simplicity is key, however, so it is important that you do not overload your visitors with sharing options like the image below. Keep to the top three or four channels used by your target audience.

Invisible to the Eye

Analytics

The metaphor of your webpage being a shopfront is commonplace in digital marketing, but your website can be so much more than just a shopfront. Given the right tools it can automatically sift through visitors and find the right ones for you to target, present different content to them and send out emails to correspond with your buyer’s journey.

Analytics give you the ability to see what works and what doesn’t, to test and improve. With a solid analytics system attached to your website you can optimise and test all your online marketing channels and strategies, be they organic search, email marketing, social media or paid search. The insights you gain from the data on your buyer’s experience will give you evidence for what they are interested in and you can take this evidence and create an even better offering.

Responsive Design

Do you have a smart phone? If yes, then this point should be a no brainer for you. If not, then have a look at your website on someone else’s device and you will understand. If you still aren’t convinced these statistics showing how mobile devices now account for 31.2% of total web traffic should do the job. With the dramatic increase in mobile traffic, sites need to be responsive to visitors coming from a vast array of devices. Your website needs to be able to generate leads from a desktop computer, a tablet and a mobile phone equally well.

A simple check of the relevant screen sizes should be enough to let you know that you will need a different look and feel for each device. Luckily, software such as the various marketing automation platforms on offer exist to make those differences easy to manage. Ignoring responsive design and the increase in mobile Internet usage could dull your business’ competitive edge and with the continually rising percentage of mobile users eventuate in a large loss of business.

A Logical Sitemap

The final feature to consider for your website is something that many businesses leave to their developers. But it is something that each business should consider and work on during the website development phase. Work out the key pages of your site, how they interact and how you can make that interaction as easy as possible. From the home page how many clicks should your buyers make to get to where you want them to be?

Most importantly, always consider your user and how they will use the site. Think about how they will find their way around the site. It should be easy for the buyer to navigate your site and easy for them to find the information they need. They may not see your sitemap, but they will feel its effect and a well-thought out sitemap will translate into a pleasant experience for your buyer.

These are just some of the steps you need to create a strong lead generating website. If you would like to read more about generating leads online have a look at our recent blog on the three main challenges to effective lead generation. Or to learn about how social media is replacing traditional search engine optimisation tactics, please download our free eBook by clicking on the link below.

According to Google, progressive profiling is “a method of asking questions incrementally, gathering more information about a prospect over time.”

With progressive profiling, instead of putting a 15 field form in front of your next potential prospect, use progressive profiling and only ask for the first couple pieces of information. Then, as they come back over time, continue to gather a little bit more.

And then it all falls apart.

The Problem With Progressive Profiling

Most people simply don’t come back to your site that frequently and they don’t see that much content from you.

According to DemandGen Reports’ 2014 B2B Buyer Behavior Survey, only 38% of buyers said they viewed more than 4 pieces of content from the vendor they ultimately selected, and that includes videos, articles and other content that doesn’t require registration. (Source, Page 6)

Most of your potential prospects will never even see your second form. Even the people who ultimately buy from you will never see it!

The Biggest Progressive Profiling Mistake

Marketers bury critical information they need to identify a prospect in the second, or even the third, form.

Unfortunately your prospect never gets the chance to provide it. Marketing never gets the opportunity to identify and deliver a lead.

Alternatively, consider the math (stick with me, this isn’t that hard):

• Without progressive profiling, you may get a 5% form complete rate on your landing page.
• With progressive profiling, let’s be generous and assume you get a 3x form compete rate, or 15%! Now they are in your database. Next you send three emails and get a unique click rate across those emails of 30% (wow, that’s generous). If 35% of these visitors complete the second form in your progressive profiling sequence, the complete rate from the initial visit is 1.6%.

Thanks to progressive profiling, your database is a bit larger, but your conversion rate dropped by more than two-thirds with a very generous set of assumptions. Your reality is likely much worse. Return visits will only close the gap a little bit.

Fixing Progressive Profiling

Instead, the first form needs to include the critical information that identifies a potential prospect. For many marketers, this minimum can be as simple as name, email and company.

Progressive profiling can then be used to capture additional nice-to-have information, from location to current purchase plans to preferences and attitudes that can shape the following communications from both sales and marketing.

If you sell cloud services, your progressive questions could capture additional information about preferences (public vs private clouds), current state of cloud adoption or perspective on security in cloud computing. Each response helps to build a more complete profile, but it isn’t critical information.

Finally, if your critical, must have information includes 15 fields, you don’t need a new form solution, you need to re-evaluate your lead requirements.

Your Turn

Have you frequently been on the receiving end of progressive profiling? If not, is it because you don’t give most companies the opportunity to put multiple forms in front of you over time?

Photo Credit: Phil Manker via Flickr cc. (It took a focus group setting to get this much information!)

When you want to buy a new television or you search for a specific item to purchase, where do you usually find it? Some are more inclined to go directly to the store and check out all the different brands of the products they want to buy. Others would choose to search for the product on Google and look for reviews before they head out to the shop, or check out retail websites and ads on TV.

In a study conducted by Parago, a retail engagement firm, the results showed a lot of insights into how consumers behave when they’re intent on buying something. The study used participants who lived in the United States, and up to 40% of them were employed full time. There were eleven categories for the products they wished to purchase, which included clothes, electronics, sporting goods, groceries and toys among others. The products in each category included jeans, cosmetics, video games, cable packages and more. The study also asked for the preferred type of media the participants turned to when they want to buy something, from going to the actual shop to perusing online shops to watching television for relevant ads.

From this study, we can conclude that there are four vital considerations when you, as a brand, would like to entice customers to buy your products.

1. Consumers don’t usually turn to social media to do research on products. Parago’s study found that consumers would only look to social media sites 15% of the time to find the product they’re looking for. Though this looks bleak for social media, it does not mean that social media has very minimal influence when it comes to consumer behavior. Many businesses use social media in other ways such as to raise brand awareness, showcase their products and entice customers to consider buying their products when the need arises.

Social media can have some influence on purchases thanks to marketing and advertising strategies, but it’s still not the most common resource that customers would turn to when they already know what they want to buy.

2. Google is more often used than Amazon when it comes to product research. Many businesses and researchers would assume that Amazon would get the top spot when it comes to consumers searching for products to buy. Amazon has established itself as an easy-to-use and reliable source of information for all sorts of products. It has categories and subcategories for all the possible products, as well as buying options for those who wish to purchase second hand items. On top of that, Amazon allows its user to post reviews of the products they’ve purchased, giving their insights to other potential buyers about the product and even the person or business they purchased it from.

Overall, Google is still the top contender for product research. With the right keywords, consumers can find exactly what they’re looking for in record time and make an informed purchase, rather than browsing a store or even Amazon. Considering Google’s strict ranking procedures, you can be quite confident that the top results would be reliable and trustworthy.

3. Retail websites rank third as the most commonly used resource. Research shows that consumers still make decisions based on their brand loyalty to the point that they would rather go directly to the brand’s retail site instead of searching on Google or Amazon. This is particularly true for those who are looking to purchase clothing items, possibly because the purchase of clothing requires more consumer trust than other items that can be purchased online.

The same holds true for subscription services. It’s possible that consumers look to buy subscriptions from the actual retail website because this is the only place where the subscriptions would be available. It’s also possible that consumers are more likely to trust the official site of the service provider of their choice over Google or Amazon.

4. In-store shopping still doesn’t beat out online shopping for a lot of products. It used to be thought that online shopping would be restrained because people would want to be able to have a look at the product in real life before purchasing. Though this was thought to be the limiting factor for e-commerce, it’s been shown that for many product categories the need to handle the products doesn’t stop people from purchasing online. Even things like electronics, furniture, household equipment and sporting goods only cite in-store displays as their third or fourth most turned to channel for purchases.

However, consumers who are looking to buy groceries and pet supplies are still more likely to turn to in-store displays. It’s possible that they would rather go to the physical shop because groceries and pet supplies are immediate needs that must be within their possession as soon as possible. It’s also possible that they would rather look to in-store displays since shipping and handling for pet needs and groceries are different from electronics, clothing and household equipment.

Important Points for Online Retailers

In line with all the information from the research above, there are some things that online sellers should keep in mind in order to ensure that they can still attract consumers:

1. Get to the top of search results. If you’re not in the top results for keyword searches involving your products, consumers are less likely to see your selection of products. As Google is the top resource that consumers use when searching for products, you have to ensure that your site is optimized in order to grab their attention. Using SEO, social media and user reviews, you can increase your link profile and visibility in online searches.

2. Give consumers an online experience that can replace the need to do in-store shopping. An in-shop store can give the customers the full sensory experience of having their desired product within their reach. In order to step in, online sellers should be able to give the customers something to replace the real-life feeling of having the products within their grasp. You can do this by giving them more information about the product, showing them videos and showing them images that give them a relative idea of the product.

The availability of the Internet providing information and enabling online shopping has definitely changed consumer behaviour. Being wary of how consumers use the Internet to surf and shop, you will be able to figure out how you can best promote your business, your goods or services. Be sure to keep these tips in mind for when you’re devising a new marketing strategy!

For the past year, Google has been doing everything it can to prove to its advertising partners that people purchase their products after seeing ads on Google.

In October, the company announced a solution to track the purchases people made on their laptops after seeing an ad on a smartphone. Last month, it rolled out a product that tracks when people make an in-store purchase after seeing a Google ad.

But for all of the work Google has done tracking these so-called "conversions," there's one big hole in the company's measurement strategy: most of the world's really big brands aren't necessarily trying to get people to buy a product right away.

If you think of what you see on television from brands like Nike and Bud Light, the ads are less about getting people to run to the store during halftime and more about communicating the brand's "personality" so that people will remember it the next time they are in a store.

As a result, these big brands are spending the biggest chunks of their ad budgets on television, where they can have a full screen and 30 seconds to tell viewers their story, as opposed to an easy-to-ignore banner ad or a search link.

Not only that, brands and the media buyers who work on their behalf are comfortable with the idea that TV ads are effective because they have been buying them for decades.

According to eMarketer, brands spent $66 billion on U.S. TV ads in 2013, compared with $42.3 billion in online advertising. (Google itself books about $60 billion a year in ad sales.)

In a speech Tuesday at LUMA Partners' Digital Media Summit in New York, Google vice president of display ad products Neal Mohan laid out the company's plan for cutting out a slice of the $66 billion TV pie.

In Mohan's mind, the two things that will allow Google to do this are the video storytelling capabilities of its YouTube platform and the company's dedication to proving that its ads actually work for big brands.

Mohan told those in attendance at the Digital Media Summit that 84% of the marketers he spoke with said they would be willing to spend a 25% more of their budgets on digital advertising if they had a good way to measure the impact of their online ads.

"What I would say is that we need a true revolution here, if you will, around brands," Mohan said. "We need to make brand advertising just as measurable as direct-response advertising has been with things like impressions, clicks, and conversions."

To that end, Mohan says the company is investing in new ways to show brands how consumers changed their perception or behaviors after seeing a video ad on YouTube. As an example, he talked about a campaign Oscar Mayer ran on YouTube, where Google was able to show Oscar Mayer how many of the people who saw their ads later searched for the company on Google.

The ability to use Google's search results as an analytics tool was also touted during YouTube's big pitch to advertisers last month.

What Mohan says is special about Google's analytics is that the search giant was able to show Oscar Mayer these brand interest statistics in real time, allowing Oscar Mayer to tweak its campaign based on which demographics were responding favorably to the ads. The analytics also allowed the brand to see which times of day were best to run the ads.

In sum, Mohan said the Oscar Mayer campaign, which you can see here, increased brand awareness among people who saw it by 19%, and yielded a 112% increase in ad recall.

The allegiance of big brand advertisers like Oscar Mayer is increasingly important for Google because it is pushing the limits of the revenues it can wring out of the direct-response advertisers — small and medium sized businesses, often — who buy its search ads.

As it stands, the company has a $60 billion-a-year advertising business that accounts for more than 40% of the online ads market. That market, eMarketer says, is still made up primarily by direct-response campaigns.

In order to increase the size of its ad business in any meaningful way, Google — like rivals Facebook and Twitter — needs to get some of the big brand dollars that are currently flowing into television.

And to do that, it needs to prove to big brands that its online ads can influence consumer behavior in the same ways as television.

SEE ALSO: 4 Things You Need To Know About YouTube's Big Advertiser Presentation

Join the conversation about this story »

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Apparently, to provide high-quality help-desk software as a service, you absolutely must have the word “desk” in your name.

But that’s just one of the lessons from G2 Crowd’s latest report.

Time to ROI, for instance, averages eight months. And Zendesk, Desk, and Freshdesk were the highest-rated services, winning “Leader” labels. G2 Crowd, a crowdsourced business software review site, asked about 350 software buyers what help-desk services were the best, which features were most-used, and what didn’t work well.

The best features across the board turn out to be the ticket-creation experience, at 90 percent average satisfaction, which makes sense since it’s a core part of help-desk software. Social integration, however, ranked lowest at 76 percent satisfaction. G2 Crowd’s report also shows that modern help-desk software is fairly easy to implement and integrate, requiring only about one month for companies to get up and running, on average.

Interestingly, G2 Crowd’s data also shows which services get compared and contrasted most frequently.

Freshdesk appears to be a top-compared solution, as it is one of the top three most-common comparisons on G2 Crowd’s site. The top comparison is Freshdesk versus Zendesk, followed by Zendesk versus Freshdesk, followed by Freshdesk versus TeamSupport, which was rated a Top Performer but not a Leader.

(If you’re wondering about the first two comparisons above, no, that is not a mistake. Rather, the order indicates what solution someone is comparing from and which solution they are comparing to, which can be significant in terms of what software is top-of-mind.)

Zendesk, of course, recently raised $100 million in an IPO, seeing almost a 30 percent stock price pop in its first day of trading. The company calls itself the “new face of customer service,” and many users seem to agree.

“It took us a very short amount of time to configure (Freshdesk) to work with our own environment (loading agents, integrating security, branding etc.) and the user experience is outstanding,” Paul Cardno, a 3M manager, said in the G2 Crowd report.

The poorest-rated solutions include Parature, Kayako, and IssueTrak.

Zendesk provides a customer service platform designed to bring organizations and their customers closer together. With more than 40,000 customer accounts, Zendesk is used by organizations in 140 countries to provide support in more tha... read more »

Freshdesk is a web based customer support platform that enables companies to support their customers in a way that they never could before. With email to ticket conversion, self-service portal, knowledge base, multi product support, SL... read more »

Desk.com is the leading web-based customer support app for small & medium-sized businesses. Desk.com's sophisticated tools make it easy to deliver responsive customer support by email, mobile, chat, phone, self-service FAQ, and soc... read more »

... read more »

If you’re an online business and quality content development isn’t part of your digital content strategy, you’re a step behind. That’s what search engines want in 2014 – that is what consumers want. If you plan to “ride the gravy train,” you had best follow suit.

The truth is that content has always been king on the Internet. However, whereas the focus was always on quantity in the past, quality now holds the trump card and determines the success of marketing campaigns. A somewhat logical progression, it seems like.

According to studies, the average small business spends between 25 and 30 percent of their marketing budget on content creation and distribution. Some companies invest as much as up to 50%. Why? Because they see return on investment. They make money.

Are you cashing in? If you’ve been outsourcing to budget writers, or you’re on the fence about increasing your marketing spend, here are eleven good reasons why you should pay professionals to focus on producing quality content for your web pages.

1. User Expectations

The Internet is growing up. People expect more. Users are more web-savvy. They can tell a spammy site or page from a qualitative one, and they are quick to hit the back button on their browsers if your copywriting even looks like it might not deliver. Where do they go? Usually to your competitors! Give your visitors a reason to not leave by entertaining them, captivating them, and providing useful information.

2. Click-Through Rates

Quality content increases click-through rates (CTR). It starts with your headlines. Create magnetic headlines for your blog posts, emails, and paid ads and prospects will click through to your pages. Because you need to get people to them in order to sell, increasing your CTR is important for online success. While there are other factors that affect click-through rates, ensuring that headlines compel readers is critical.

3. Engagement

Good blog writing and article writing engages readers. Engaged readers come back to your site again and again because they find it useful, informative, and interesting. They bookmark your website, subscribe to your feed, and sign up for your newsletters. Every visit is an opportunity to sell your product or service, as well as an opportunity to get clicks for your ads and referral programs. It all translates to more money in your pocket.

4. Authority

These days, every man and his dog has a website. Some of them even look snazzy and offer great products. To stand out, you need to develop your brand and build authority in your industry. To do that, you need to produce high-quality content consistently (or hire a copywriting agency that can) and position yourself as an expert. Once you have established trust, you will not only win more customers, but also attract new opportunities.

5. Lead Generation

Without leads, how will you makes sales? You can’t. You need people to sell to. You can generate online sales leads in number of ways; there are many content marketing tactics that can help you draw prospects. But these methods usually have one thing in common when effective: the ability to persuade. Persuasion is how things get sold online – even offline. You will not persuade anyone with slapdash, mediocre copy.

6. Conversion Rates

Web pages that contain quality content convert more visitors into buyers. Of course, that’s if you have compelling call-to-actions in the right places, but even these form part of your “quality pages.” Prospective customers will fill out your forms, call your company, and purchase products from your website if you successfully engage them. Sometimes, even when they didn’t intend to. Improve your SEO copywriting to boost conversion rates.

7. Inbound Links

Professional copywriting, content writing, and blogging attracts incoming links from other trusted websites and blogs in your industry. When your content is valuable, other site owners will link to it because their visitors may find it useful and engaging. This can boost your web traffic, authority, and sales. Inbound links from influential sites also convey to search engines that your site is qualitative, which can improve SERP rankings.

8. Search Engine Rankings

Speaking of rankings, gone are the days when article writers could churn out hundreds of second-rate articles and land a number one spot in the SERPs. Search engines like Google have made it perfectly clear that they are after high-quality content now, and pages that contain that are awarded the top spots in the results pages. Low-quality pages are demoted or punished by the likes of Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird.

9. Web Traffic

Naturally, trusted incoming links and high search engine rankings bring more web traffic. That means that if your website copywriting is up to scratch and your inbound marketing basics are in place, you can sell more products and generate leads. As a business or marketer aiming to succeed online, creating (and continuously testing) landing pages that sell should definitely be part of your marketing strategy.

10. Social Shares

Can your content writers write in-depth quality content that is newsworthy and informative? If they can, there is a good chance that readers will share it with their friends, family members, and colleagues through social media, which can boost your search engine rankings and traffic. It could even go viral, in which case you would experience a surge of traffic to your web pages and could acquire a lot of new business.

11. Pride

Whether you’re a freelance writer, a blogging service, or a small business, everything that you write and publish is a reflection of you. That’s an excellent reason to put out the very best that you can every single time. Why create content that could hurt your reputation? Sloppy and inefficient are probably not your own personal traits, so why give others that impression. It’s better to take your time and deliver epic content.

Can you think of any other reasons to focus on creating quality content? Why do you do it? Tell us in the comments below.

With the rapid rise of content marketing, time-pressed marketers know they have to get the most leverage out of each piece of content they produce. It’s difficult at best for marketing teams to continually pump out a high volume of quality content, so it’s important that the man hours and the budget that gets poured into content production really pay off. Building an organic following and readership through content production is certainly possible, but connecting your content up with third-party audiences is often quicker and more cost effective. Many businesses have turned to content syndication to get more exposure (and more sales leads) out of the content they’ve produced. Here’s a quick run-down of the three primary types of content syndication:

1. Pay-per-lead programs with whitepapers/eBooks

One of the most popular forms of content syndication is pay-per-lead content distribution. In a nutshell – the content syndication vendor will promote the client’s PDF whitepaper/eBook (usually behind a lead generation form), and anyone who downloads the content is sent to the client as a sales lead. Most vendors who offer these services will charge on a cost-per-lead (CPL) basis. Costs can vary greatly depending on the program specs, selected audience filters, and the target lead volume.

You’ll find a variety of different vendors who offer services in this arena – everything from niche websites who cater to smaller, more targeted audiences to the Goliath content aggregators who control massive distribution networks including dozens of websites and email newsletters.

2. Lead Shares

Another popular form of content syndication is lead sharing. This type of program is more of a partnership than a vendor/client relationship. This type of “syndication” often happens between two affiliated businesses or related businesses that don’t directly compete with each other. Typically, partner #1 has content and needs an audience, and partner #2 has an audience but needs good content to trigger engagement from that audience. The two partners pair the content with the audience, and then share the leads that are generated.

If you’re interested in setting up this type of program – reach out to top clients, vendors you work with, or thought leaders in your area to seek out these types of opportunities.

There is an SEO consideration here: Google or another engine may consider your links to be “paid.” (Your intent to benefit commercially from this sharing is one factor, of several, that could lead the search engine to draw that conclusion.) Search engines see paid links as very bad news, and that’s in turn bad news for your SEO rankings. The solution is to use nofollow links. Nofollow links don’t interrupt or change your traffic at all; they just signal the search engines not to follow them so the links don’t add to your PageRank.

3. Syndicating Blog Posts

You can also set up relationships with related blogs to re-publish all or part of your own blog posts. Blog syndication comes in a variety of shapes and forms, so it’s important that you pursue the syndication relationships that will work best for your brand. Many blogs with well-established audiences will feature content from other sources for a flat fee, others will gladly accept guest posts at no cost in order to bolster their content library, and still others actively seek external content from blog directories like Technorati or Blog Flux. Different types of relationships can offer different values and drawbacks, so define your objective first:

• Are you after brand exposure? Syndicate posts that mention your company and/or branded images (that link to your site) will get you the play you are after. You can link to your company name, if it’s appropriate to use it in the text, or you can link a concept in the text to a landing page that explores that topic. (Don’t use exact match anchor text in your post.) Check out networks like NewsCred if you are interested in licensing your content to other sources.
• Are you after website referral traffic? Find partner blogs willing to publish partial posts that will then lead back to your blog, or include a strong call-to-action in the post that leads readers to your site.
• Are you after sales leads? Syndicate a post with a strong call-to-action that promotes a whitepaper or video behind a lead generation form.

In all cases, make sure you’re providing original content. Don’t submit a blog post you’ve already published on your own site.

Content syndication caveat for SEO building

Blog syndication can be helpful for SEO, but there’s a caveat, and you need to be very careful. (We mentioned this in the lead sharing section, but it’s really important, so we wanted to include it wherever it’s a risk factor.) Search engines view a link as a vote for quality (this is called “passing SEO value”). If they think that that vote has been paid for…they will crack down on you. If a publisher wants to share your content with their audience because they feel the audience will benefit from the information, then it’s okay for the links back to your site to pass SEO value.

If you are paying the publisher for sharing your content in any way (cash, lead share, free trial product that they can keep, cookies, etc) the links need to be no-followed. You still get full value from the people reading the content and coming through to your site, but Google and the other search engines won’t count the links for SEO purposes. More info http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2324561/Matt-Cutts-Says-Stop-Guest-Blogging-for-SEO-Heres-Everything-You-Need-to-Know

No matter what type of relationship you enter into in the blog syndication world, remember to define your objective first – so you can build a relationship that gets you closer to your goals.

Got a content syndication story to tell?

Photos:

“Nighttime Electricity,” by Trevor, used under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

“Books,” by Muellemartin, used under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

“Blog,” by David Saunders, used under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

WitMarketing is going through some pretty rapid changes over the last few years. I’m not just talking about the rise and power of inbound strategies. Sales and marketing have become components that work closer together than ever before. Communication between the two branches is crucial and strategies work best when developed together.

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My view is that there are two categories when it comes to selling: One defines sales as beating your competition, and customers happen to be involved; the other defines sales as serving your clients well, and competition happens to be involved.

I believe strongly in the latter—that customer-centric approaches rule. In fact, a recent article from Forbes suggests that “Your Competitor Isn't Your Real Competition: Status Quo Is.” According to Tim Riesterer, co-author of Conversations that Win the Complex Sale, most sales training programs aren’t effective because salespeople are being taught how to beat out the competition, not how to convince a prospect to make a change. It’s no surprise that 60 percent of qualified leads fall by the wayside because the customer doesn’t find value in purchasing something new.

If you’re focused on your competition, you’re simply not focused on your clients. You’re not concentrating on how you can help your client—how to prevent something bad from happening or how to enable a positive change. Customers who do business with these types of firms feel this—they know they are working with a salesforce solely focused on beating competition. Doing so can ultimately alienate your clients.

On the other hand, if you’re always focusing on the customer, then you may not always be competitively aware. Setting the client aside, if you’re not thinking about your own business and lack competitive awareness, you could be squandering your BD dollars and working on a deal that you can’t win. Even if you could serve the client well, you’re competitively disadvantaged. And you may not have the skills and capabilities to sell in a competitively strategic way.

The sales approach I prefer and recommend is to focus on your customers, while certainly being aware of your competitors. As the Corporate Executive Board has articulately captured in The Challenger Sale, when you focus on your clients, you should focus on bringing them insights and new ideas. While The Challenger Sale discusses this from an organizational perspective, I believe that individuals can do this, too. There are many individuals who have the intelligence—both “IQ” and “EQ” (intellectually and emotionally)—to execute an insight-driven sales strategy, bring new ideas to their customers and help them think about things they haven’t before. And in doing so, that approach in itself is a strong competitive strategy—they’re creating the opportunity rather than simply responding to it.

I received some sage advice early on in my career, when an experienced sales executive told me, “Pick one thing and know it well if you want to be in sales.” I’ve found that focus of sticking with something to be critical to success. This idea of the Challenger, of insight-driven selling, can be executed by an individual when they pay the price: when they choose a specific area, a type of client or a given problem they devote their entire career to studying—as opposed to rattling back-and-forth across different products, employers, and so forth.

Without picking something and making it your life’s work, it would be virtually impossible to provide valuable insight to your client. What’s the one thing you’ve picked that has enabled you to become an insight-based seller?

Communicating to prospects is a natural part of qualifying software leads. But of course, that normally carries the responsibility of contacting them when they’re not too busy.

What if that’s not always the case though?

What if a prospect is busy but at the same time, that busy work is steering right into the direction of your sales process?

Imagine an accountant getting back to their desk. They just finished another of those regular monthly meetings with the CEO/CFO. During the discussion, they got the go-ahead to acquire better accounting software because their current tools were just not cutting it any more. (It could be due to growth issues, larger workforce, more money being circulated etc.)

In any case, wouldn’t it be incredibly convenient for them if they just got a message from a promising software firm such as yours? It’d at least give them an option to start with. You also have the equally promising possibility of being found online after a quick Google search.

Either way, it’s clearly a prospect is quite busy and that’s exactly why they’d like to have a word with you.

Like any opportunity though, you have to careful because their urgency could easily take them over to a competitor. So whenever you encounter a prospect with a sudden and immediate need, here’s how you qualify them:

• Ask for their budget – First and foremost, you should know how much leeway a prospect’s been given in their purchasing decisions. Urgent needs lose their significance when you realize they don’t have enough to pay for their services.
• How immediate is their need – Sometimes urgency can vary among prospects. Some would want to get their hands on the first tool that gets their attention. Others would like to browse a bit before going on ahead.
• How serious is their need – Being immediate doesn’t always make for a serious need. Sometimes they just want the tools so that they can move on to more important tasks. Other times the need is serious enough that they take a lot of time to evaluate before the sales appointment.
• They’ll likely use it straight out of the box – Think of it like using a new toothbrush straight after grocery shopping or popping batteries to replace dead ones in your remote. Prospects who finally decide on a sales appointment have a similar need to get straight to using the tools.

If a prospect carries a busy mood when they engage your business, you have to get busy as well. All of you have work to do so qualify without delay and quickly cover the important points of their budgets and requirements.

If you need a guide to selling in the digital age, it has arrived.

I received an advanced copy of John Jantch’s new book Duct Tape Selling: Think Like a Marketer, Sell Like a Superstar and this is a very important book. It’s not just about updating your CRM system or catching the “social” selling wave, this is an entirely new integrated framework for the sales professional.

And it’s a little scary.

John does not pull any punches in this book. It’s direct, honest and even in your face about what it is going to take to sell successfully in a world where your biggest competitor might be inbound leads from Hubspot.

I was lucky enough to be able to interview the author about this important new book …

Mark Schaefer: John, I love the new book. It’s a bold manifesto for radical change in the sales mindset, techniques and leadership. And although this is a natural extension of the Duct Tape brand, there is nothing really simple in what you’re proposing, is there?

John Jantsch: Is anything about sales really simple? I guess it comes down to how you look at what your end game is. If the long view is the make a sale, then this might seem like a big commitment, but if you recognize that you’re building an asset, one that serves your clients and your organization, then you just might view this as an investment in your business or career.

Mark: You’re unequivocal in your position that a salesperson today must take a leadership role in content creation, social media engagement and even public speaking. As I think about the sales people and sales teams I grew up with, I would say 90 percent or more would actively resist these changes. Am I wrong?

John: I’m hoping you’re off by a bit! There’s no question that a cultural shift in both the sales and marketing leadership must occur for this change to manifest in the best possible form, but there are signs that organizations and individual sales professionals are waking up to the power of this approach.

Obviously it is much harder for a salesperson who is measured solely on dials to take this longer term view, but as this change occurs so too will compensation models and sales metrics. Eventually this may lead to hiring that is based in some new skillsets.

Mark: You’re pretty bold in your claims that unless salespeople change dramatically and change now, they are at risk of being a commodity order taker in a world of inbound, content-related leads. One thing you don’t directly address in the book is the raw skillsets required for the new social seller. Would we better off hiring natural content creators and social media fanatics and then teaching them to sell?

John: The book’s final section addresses the role of the new sales coach or leader. Chapter 17, Rethink Hiring, addresses the need to think far outside the traditional sales closer model but stops short of suggesting that you hire journalists and social media fanatics. The answer is somewhere in between.

Flexibility, analytical thinking and a knack for service are the traits that just might define today’s salesperson.

Mark: I have been brought in to do a lot of social sales training. I certainly teach (and even preach) about the ideas you have here. And although the initial reception might be enthusiastic, I find change is difficult to sustain when the training is over. What steps should a leader take to actually sustain the recommendations in your book?

John: The first thing you have to realize is that this isn’t training – this is a mindset shift and that happens over time through consistent reinforcement and adoption at the highest level.

If this mindset shift is stuffed into the can of “social selling” it will simply perform as this week’s new tactic and lose its luster quickly. Integrated selling means fully integrated across the entire customer journey involving every element of marketing, sales, and service.

Mark: Writing a book is difficult work, especially one like this with so much original insight. How are you different after writing this book?

John: I think it’s hard to know for sure as it’s a gradual growth but I do certainly acknowledge that I have a renewed appreciation for the need to think, act, market and sell on a more personal level once again.

Mark Schaefer is an educator and marketing consultant specializing in social media workshops. He blogs at {grow} and is the author of several best-selling marketing books including Return On Influence.

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If you’re like me, you burn to know how popular you are on LinkedIn and how you match up, popularity-wise, against your peers. Actually I’ve never wondered this, but LinkedIn seems to want me to now.

The professional social networking site has launched a new feature called How You Rank; it’s presented as an additional tab on the “Who’s viewed your profile” page. There, you’ll see how many times your profile page has been viewed, and a ranking. For instance, mine tells me that I rank 85th in page views among the 306 people in my network, or in the top 28th percentile.

Pretty good, right? Not good enough, says LinkedIn. The whole right side of the page is filled with inspirational (LinkedIn’s word) ideas for generating more page views and pushing up my ranking. I’m advised to make more posts, join more groups, update my profile, etc.

The left side of the page shows the master ranking of the most viewed people in your network. The real movers and shakers! If this doesn’t make you burn with envy, LinkedIn ratchets it up a notch by displaying the ranking of the people in your company who have the most views. Dave the sales manager has more page views than me?!? Game on.

It feels like LinkedIn is trying to inject a little competition into networking experience. Is the service getting gamified? Do I get a badge if I win? Well, no.

The real point of How You Rank is apparently to generate more interest around the Who Viewed Me page. LinkedIn will tell you a few of the people who have viewed your profile, but then tries to temp you to buy a Premium account to view the whole list.

At any rate, the new How You Rank feature will roll out to all English speaking users by end of day Wednesday, a LinkedIn spokeswoman told me.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the most popular person in my network. I’ll have to live with that. Is “most congenial” still available?

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network on the internet, with more than 259 million members worldwide, including executives from Fortune 500 companies. Founded on May 5, 2003, by Reid Hoffman and founding team members f... read more »