You know the feeling. You hang up from a sales call, turbo-pumped with adrenalin, giving yourself a mental high-five. You ‘nailed it!’ Your confidence is soaring and you’re positive the prospect is equally excited. This is what happens when you truly connect and have a conversation that feels mutually beneficial to both parties. Taking the next step comes naturally and without hesitation.

It is at this point, the “golden sales moment”, when the level of enthusiasm is at its highest for both the buyer and the seller.

The golden sales moment is just that, however, a mere moment in time. It’s fleeting. From there, the buyer’s enthusiasm is on a track from marriage material to the “friend zone.” You’ve got to close the deal before they get there. The “friend zone” is precisely where deals stall. It’s virtually impossible to close a deal from within the friend zone.

Why do sellers end up in the friend zone when originally, the future looked so bright? A big reason is F.U.D (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).

When people begin to feel skeptical, fearful, dispassionate, or insecure, they invariably retreat behind a plume of questions or worse, go radio silent.

Will the product really do what I’m told it will do? Will I really be able to deploy it (with our resources, skills and timeframe)? Will I really experience the promised results? Do I really need it? Notice these questions have to do with ‘believability.’ The foundation of their belief is cracking, and into these cracks fall those nasty little seeds of doubt.

That is a major problem, because people don’t buy when they have F.U.D.

According to CSO Insights, more than half of forecasted deals end in no decision.”  In other words, after participating in what is often a lengthy sales-cycle, the customer decided not to do a darned thing. Doing nothing is what people do when they no longer believe the product is needed—or able—to accomplish the task, or that they themselves lack the passion or the capability required to make it happen (the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ excuse). Each of these two forms of rationale are worthy of lengthy examination on their own, but the bottom line is, the seller is left standing at the altar, alone and bewildered.

Here are some game-changing strategies to keep deals from stalling-out due to F.U.D.

1. The first step to acknowledge its existence and give credence to it. Do not argue against it. Say something like, “Every customer has had that same concern before they went on to buy.” Share relevant stories that bring to life the blinding apprehension that your current customers experienced (and eventually overcame) before purchasing your solution.
2. Introduce your prospect to eager and supportive references that will not only talk about how happy they are now but will also describe their initial concerns and how they were overcome. Gather and use testimonies that describe the upfront hesitations and how they realized their fears were unfounded after they implemented your solution.
3. Offer supporting content. Create documents that answer questions your buyers are likely to ask themselves at three stages of the sales-cycle—the early stage when enthusiasm is at its peak, the mid-stage when buyers begin to analyze things with a more critical, disapproving eye, and the end-stage when they are in need of a rock-solid reinforcement for their decision.
4. Don’t overuse the rose-colored hue when you paint a picture for your buyer. Tell them, “this will take effort” or “your IT department is likely to challenge you” or “this will not be a straight-up trajectory.” The best strategy is to inform and prepare themor theyll be left in a state of uncertainty when things get difficult, and it will get difficult. Prepare them for every eventuality, the good and the bad. You’ll build an unassailable shield of commitment, credibility, and trust to protect against the effects of F.U.D.

It is a rare buyer indeed that doesn’t entertain doubts about their decision. And if you don’t readily sense it, it doesn’t mean they aren’t, this very minute, wondering how to break it to you gently. Be empathetic to their concerns then take the lead and deliver them from fear or you’ll end up in the friend zone where all deals go to die.

Today I would like to tell you about a powerful new AWS feature that bridges a pair of existing AWS services and makes another pair of existing features far more useful! Let's start with a quick review.

S3 & Versioned Objects
I'm sure that you already know about Amazon S3. First launched in 2006, S3 now processes over a million requests per second and stores trillions of documents, images, backups, and other data, all with high availability and eleven 9's (i.e. 99.999999999%) durability. Since the initial launch, we have added many features and locations, and have also reduced the price (conveniently measured in pennies per Gigabyte per month) of storage repeatedly. One notable and popular S3 feature is object versioning . After you enable versioning for an S3 bucket, successive uploads or PUTs of a particular object will create distinct, named, individually addressable versions of the object in order to provide you with protection against overwrites and deletes. You can preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object in an S3 bucket that has versioning enabled.

You can retrieve previous versions of the object in order to recover from a human or programmatic error.

Glacier & Lifecycle Rules
You have probably heard about Amazon Glacier as well. Glacier shares eleven 9's of data durability with S3, but offers a lower price per Gigabyte / month in exchange for a retrieval time that is typically between three and five hours. Glacier is ideal for long-term storage of important data that you don't need to access within seconds or minutes.

S3's Lifecycle Management integrates S3 and Glacier and makes the details visible via the Storage Class of each object. The data for objects with a Storage Class of Standard or RRS (Reduced Redundancy Storage) is stored in S3. If the Storage Class is Glacier, then the data is stored in Glacier. Regardless of the Storage Class, the objects are accessible through the S3 API and other S3 tools. Lifecycle Management allows you to define time-based rules that can trigger Transition (changing the Storage Class to Glacier) and Expiration (deletion of objects). The Expiration rules give you the ability to delete objects (or versions of objects) that are older than a particular age. You can use these rules to ensure that the objects remain available in case of an accidental or planned delete while limiting your storage costs by deleting them after they are older than your preferred rollback window.

S3 & Glacier & Versioned Objects & Lifecycle Rules
With all of that out of the way, I am finally ready to share today's news! You can now create and apply Lifecycle rules to buckets that use versioned objects. This seemingly simple change makes S3, Glacier, and versioned objects a lot more useful. For example, you can arrange to keep the current version of an object in S3, and to transition older versions to Glacier. You can get to the current version (the one that you are most likely to need) immediately, with older versions accessible within three to five hours. Depending on your use case, you might want to transition all of the versions, including the current one, to Glacier. You might also want to expire each version a few days after it was created (using a rule for the current version) or overwritten/expired (using a rule based on the successor time for previous versions). In other words, this new feature combines the flexibility of S3 versioned objects with the extremely low cost of storage in Glacier, helping you to reduce your overall storage costs.

You can create and apply Lifecycle rules to an S3 bucket to take advantage of this new feature. You can do this through the S3 API, an AWS SDK, or from within the AWS Management Console.

Marketers are often concerned about sending too many emails to subscribers. It’s understandable; email fatigue can become a real problem if the causes aren’t understood and appropriate actions aren’t taken. However, when email marketing is done the right way, marketers can shoot themselves in the foot by holding back on sending email.

Here, we explore five reasons you should send more email starting now.

1. Email remains the No. 1 medium preferred by consumers for branded communications.

Email is a communication tool on your readers’ terms and not yours, which they like. No one wants an out-of-the-blue phone call. Email allows readers to consume your message when they want and do with it what they will.

2. Connecting with buyers takes multiple touches before they will take action. 

Emails—and attention spans—have a short shelf life. Just because a lead deletes your first, second, third or fourth email attempt doesn’t mean she isn’t interested. It can take a number of emails before one gets opened. It could take a few more after that before the desired action or conversion occurs. In all, it can take up to 13 touches to qualify a lead for sales. If you’re only touching this person once a quarter, it’s going to take you a very long time to nurture her through the sales cycle. Try again soon to catch her when she’s ready.

3. Sending more email helps you send smarter email. 

Your subscribers and customers are likely receiving multiple emails from you over the course of a few weeks or months, so why not take a step back and determine how you can make all of those touches work smarter and in concert with one another. Opportunities exist in transactional emails, news emails, lead nurturing emails and customer service emails for cross selling, sales qualifying or further nurturing.

4. You have the technology. 

Email marketing platforms and marketing automation software have made it incredibly easy to send more email without creating more work for yourself. Email campaigns can be built to automatically deploy based on a predetermined schedule or triggered by customer behavior, profile criteria or lead score.

5. You have the data to send smart emails hyper-targeted to every individual on your list.

If you’re sending generic messages to your entire list, you should be worried about sending too many emails. Getting too many irrelevant messages would irritate anyone. Use customer data to send clever brand communications that entertain, inspire and cater directly to your subscribers’ unique needs and personality.

If you don’t have the data you need for this type of personalization, check out what an Email Intelligence service can do for you.

Don’t let that next customer get away because you’re not communicating as well or as often as you could.

Sales Training Article: Gain Access to Key Players Using Need Development by Proxy

By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In my last blog post, I suggested that sellers should avoid asking questions that senior executives may be unable to answer. The risks of doing so include failing to relate to the buyer and the potential of being delegated to lower levels.

If, however, you are at low levels and want to gain access to Key Players you can and should ask questions buyers are either unable or unwilling to answer. One of the suggested approaches is to attempt doing need development by proxy. It can migrate calls from product evaluations to discussing potential value.

After an initial request to discuss offerings, the seller could ask the buyer to share the requirements that have already been established. This respects the research the buyer has done and provides the seller a reading on how knowledgeable the buyer is. The next step can be to ask: "What is your organization hoping to accomplish with (offering)? This begins to steer the conversation toward business issues and the buyer may not be able to answer. For that reason the seller should be ready with a menu of goals that other organizations have achieved through the use of his/her offering. If the buyer can't or won't answer, it would be logical to ask if a call with a higher level can be scheduled.

If the buyer shares an organizational goal, sellers should ask what capabilities they've seen that would help achieve that goal. The seller can then begin a diagnosis that includes questions about how things are done today, what business impact it is having, etc. In most instances the buyer will either be unable to answer some questions or be hesitant to speak on behalf of higher levels. In either case the seller can ask to schedule a call with the buyer and a higher-level person.

Often-inbound inquiries aren't yet buying cycles when you apply the first core concept of CCS®:

No goal means no prospect.

Sellers do buyers a service by helping to ground evaluations in business value. Absent sufficient payback and Key Player involvement, both parties have the potential to waste a great deal of time.

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Need some help with your sales performance? Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you and improve sales performance. Your Roadmap to Revenue Growth® awaits!

Read more sales training articles from CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company.

Who’s Viewed Your Profile is one of the most popular destinations on LinkedIn – after all, we all secretly love to see who’s been checking us out. For many savvy professionals, Who’s Viewed Your Profile is more than just a glimpse of who looked at your profile, it’s a rich treasure chest filled with customized insights designed to help you build your professional brand, generate new opportunities, and manage your network.

Today we’re introducing a new feature as part of Who’s Viewed Your Profile to help you see where you stack up relative to those in your network. With the new “How You Rank” tool, you can now see where you stack up to others in your network with profile views (this feature is coming to mobile). Take a look at the top profiles in your network to gain inspiration for changes you can make to your own profile, or content you can share to increase views to your profile and drive opportunities for advancement. Or, take a look at the suggestions LinkedIn offers on the right-hand side of the page for ways you can begin increasing views to your profile immediately. You can click here to see your rank and get personalized recommendations on how to lift your visibility.

Whether you’re a job seeker or a student, there are many ways to take advantage of the insights available through Who’s Viewed Your Profile, here are some tips to get you started:

For job seekers: Recruiters at some companies receive hundreds of applicants for a single position. If you’ve submitted a resume or LinkedIn Profile already, try taking a look at the profile of the recruiter managing the position. If they see you’ve looked at their profile, they’re more likely to look at yours. Nearly 80% of candidates today are found through networking – so if you notice a recruiter at a company you’re interested in has viewed your profile, don’t be afraid to reach out to them.

For consultants and business owners: Professionals come to your LinkedIn profile from all over the web, but rich data insights such as the keywords that led people to your profile, can help you determine how to effectively position yourself to attract new business and make valuable new connections. You can now also use the “How You Rank” tab to better understand who in your network can help increase visibility for your business.

For students and new graduates: Students in search of their first job or trying to thoughtfully build their network can use Who’s Viewed Your Profile to attract the attention of recruiters or connect with potential mentors. Find alumni that have graduated from your school, view their profile or reach out and say hello. If you notice someone viewed your profile from an industry you’re interested in joining, don’t be afraid to reach out, introduce yourself and see what words of wisdom they may have for someone just starting out. Learn the best practices for crafting a rich Profile by browsing the most-viewed Members in your network in the “How You Rank” tab.

For sales professionals: Curiosity leads many of us to view the profiles of those professionals that have viewed us. Sales professionals that use that knowledge to their advantage treat Who’s Viewed Your Profile as a way to generate warm leads. If someone has viewed your profile, and you share commonalities – it’s a great icebreaker for a potential new business opportunity.

We know that no two professionals are alike and by seeing how you rank relative to your professional peers, we believe you’ll have the added information and incentive to help you put your best foot forward on LinkedIn.

Once a subscriber opens your email, you’ve got just a few seconds to grab his or her attention. Stellar content can keep them glued to the screen. To help you connect with your readers, we have seven tips to help bolster your email content.

1. Host a brainstorming session
If you feel like your content is a little drab, host a brainstorming session to help generate some new ideas, says marketer Izabela Socha with Cooking Planit. This company, which is an online site that helps people plan meals, holds bi-weekly brainstorming sessions.

Even if your staff is small, ask everyone – not just marketing – to come to a meeting and toss around ideas. New topic ideas can elevate your writing. And, if you’re a team of one like many small business owners, don’t fret. We’ve got a guide with inspiring ideas and a blog post with even more.

2. Ask for input
Ideas shouldn’t just come from your staff; they should come from your subscribers, too. Send an email asking recipients what kind of email content they want to see. This gives your customers a voice and gives you more content ideas. Check out the example. This particular online retailer is offering an incentive to participate, which is never a bad idea.

3. Less is more
With the right design and images, your email doesn’t need a ton of text. A promotional email, for example, may only need the sale details. Take a look at the example below. Notice there’s very little text, but the reader gets the point instantly.

4. Write teaser content
Write short and snappy content, then direct readers to the meat of your content on a blog or a landing page like the folks at Cooking Planit. Tease your readers. Get them to click on your call-to-action button, and lead them to more content, such as specific recipes in the example below.

5. Focus on the reader
When you’re writing, use the word “you” rather than “we.” By doing so, you’ll focus on the customer. Take a look at the example below. Instead of saying, “We offer the following benefits” it says, “As a registered user you can.” The Home Depot focuses on the customer, not the business.

6. Write with a single goal
As you’re writing, focus your efforts on one goal. Don’t try to cram too many topics into an email. Unless you’re writing a newsletter, the rule of thumb is one topic per email. Keep it simple, like the example below. It’s clear the goal of this email is to introduce recipients to a new pizza.

7. Say it with video
Try adding some video to your next email to mix up your content (you simply include an image of the video and link to where the video is hosted like on YouTube). Whether you record your company’s CEO thanking customers or showing subscribers a new product like the email below does, video is a great way to spice up an email.

Blogging … social media … webinars …

According to MarketingProfs, 71% of B2B marketers now use content marketing tactics such as these to generate leads. In fact, many recent studies have shown that the tide is turning. B2B marketers are moving away from “me-focused” marketing to attract new leads with helpful content.

However, what often happens after leads opt in for more content?

They get bombarded with sales messages.

Why put so much effort into developing great content that generates leads just to “nurture” them with sales pitches?

When it comes to getting ROI from your content, you must use it to engage leads throughout the entire sales cycle. Each piece of your B2B lead nurturing content should help build a relationship. That way, when leads are ready to buy, they will want to work with you.

Here are three ways you can create lead nurture content that helps you win more customers:

1. Send leads content that aligns with their stage in the buying cycle.

In the 2014 B2B Buyer Behavior Survey, 61% of respondents said they selected vendors who delivered a better mix of content that was appropriate for each stage of their purchasing process. This means you can produce tons of content – even great content – but if it’s not relevant to your target audience, you’ll waste your time and resources.

If you want to create relevant content, you may need to learn more about your buyers. What types of content do they consume during each phase of the buying cycle? What channels do they use to view content? The better you know your buyers, the better your chances of engaging them throughout the entire sales cycle.

2. Showcase great B2B lead nurturing content in your emails.

B2B marketers often get new leads in their system and immediately email them product info. However, many of these leads aren’t ready to learn about a product or speak with a sales representative.

Build relationships with leads by sending them educational content. They might want to register for a webinar, download an ebook or read a case study. As these leads move deeper into your sales cycle, they will eventually need data sheets, demos and other sales-focused content.

3. Provide your sales team with the content they need to turn leads into customers.

Your sales representatives speak with leads on a daily basis and can tell you exactly what types of content will help drive sales. For example:

• Are you lacking case studies for a specific product, vertical or use case? Find out what case studies your leads want to see and create as many as possible.
• What questions are leads asking your sales team? Create blog posts, ebooks or white papers that answer these questions.
• Are your leads asking for training on a specific topic? A new webinar might be in order.

When you arm sales with useful content, they will have an easier time converting leads into customers.

Would you like to learn more about creating content that turns leads into customers?

Catching a liar in person usually just means looking for a variety of nonverbal cues , but that's not as easy when it's written in a text message or email. For that, The Wall Street Journal suggests looking for subtle changes in how someone words things.

Read more...

Your LinkedIn summary is the first thing anyone will see when they visit your profile, so it's important to get it right with tricks like using more than 40 words . The Daily Muse has one more: telling the reader what you want them to do next.

Read more...

A research team at the University of British Columbia is pioneering a water treatment technology for gas extraction that could significantly reduce the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing. Advanced dialysis cells developed at UBC use excess carbon dioxide to desalinate waste water for reuse and also produce hydrochloric acid and carbonate salts as byproducts on site, which are used in fracking and would otherwise have to be purchased and transported long distances, said Alfred Lam, who was a project member during his doctoral studies.

A recent report I came across this week shows that 76% of marketers do not use behavioral information in either segmentation analysis or targeting. They have the data, they’re just not taking advantage of it to better identify and then satisfy their consumers. This shocked me, so I went looking for more information to clarify the situation.

The study was conducted in late 2013 by Razorfish and Adobe amongst marketing and technology executives in the US, Canada, Germany, France and the UK. According to Pete Stein, CEO of Razorfish, the two main reasons for this lack of usage are firstly that today’s marketers are driving consumer segmentation with outdated technology, processes and tools, and secondly that there is an exponential growth in the availability of behavioral data.

In another study called “From Stretched to Strengthened” IBM reports that 71% of CMOs feel unprepared to handle today’s “data explosion”. A third study, Domo‘s “2013 Data-driven marketing survey” found that two-thirds of marketers feel unable to handle the volume of marketing data that’s available for analysis without feeling overwhelmed, and  concluded that there were five reasons why this is the case:

• 69% don’t have the time to analyse it
• 66% can’t see it integrated
• 44% don’t have the time to collect it
• 40% don’t have access across devices
• 40% can’t see it in real time

These statistics suggest some interesting, no vital, changes that business intelligence / planning / market research / insight (BI) departments should make to address these needs of marketers. Once made, they would increase their perceived value and recognition, as well as that of the marketing department as well. Now that can’t be bad can it?

Here are my thoughts on each of them:

No time to analyse the data

I personally believe that if the support function (BI) was doing its job properly, marketing wouldn’t have to analyse the data. In fact I don’t think it is, nor should it be, their responsibility. Of course, this does mean that BI should be attributed with the appropriate levels of resources in both time and personnel to run the analyses and generate actionable insights.

Studies conducted every couple of years by the market research arm of the Corporate Executive Board (MREB), consistently show that world-class businesses have BI departments that have progressed from methodological experts to insight consultants, and then to knowledge synthesizers. Therefore unless you allow your team to develop in this direction, the onus for analysis will remain a challenge.

Can’t see the data integrated

Even before Big Data became a buzz word, companies have struggled to break down the internal silos of information ownership. The ever-increasing flow of data into organisations has just made the matter worse, so that it can no longer be ignored. Information integration may demand a significant investment in both time and money, but the rewards are huge.

For example, from my own experience with clients, I have witnessed a grocery retailer increase sales by 15% whilst decreasing its promotional & discount allowances by 13%. This was achieved by simply making better use of the information they already had, and enabled them to make more relevant suggestions and offers to their customers. Airlines too are realising increased buy-in of their vacation and flight promotions, through more timely and relevant mailings to precisely segmented customer groups. That was only possible because they integrated the information from their different departments.

Don’t have time to collect the data

For me the problem is actually no longer simply not having the time to collect the data, but a rather subtle adaptation of our expectations to near real-time data availability today. We have all become less patient and this as true for the CEO, as it is for the CMO and on downwards.

Marketing must become more agile and flexible to be able to react to the latest data and adjust their actions and communications accordingly. Why continue to reward retailers with promotional pricing for items that are not flying off their shelves? The money could be better spent elsewhere, whether at a different retailer more aligned to the targeted segment, or even to another type of action.

Don’t have access across devices

It amazes me that so many people are still struggling to acknowledge that the PC is rapidly losing out to tablets. In fact, according to the International Data Corp. tablets will outsell PCs within the next year or so. IDC also says that while global smartphone sales in 2013 were up by 39% over 2012, they’re expected to grow by only around 19% this year.

However, as more smartphones get connected to cars as presented at the recent Geneva Car Show, marketers will be expecting to review their latest audience data or sales during their drive into work. It therefore makes sense to enable cross-device accessibility.

As an aside, I hope marketers also understand what this trend means to their communication plans and how they connect with and engage their consumers.

Can’t see data in real time

With the never-ending flow of information into organisations it makes sense that marketers demand to be able to look at the latest data in real time. Retail or audience data that is a month or even a few weeks out of date is of little use in this fast-paced world in which we live. Marketers will also expect market research to provide direct access to consumers and become less and less patient of studies that take weeks if not months to complete.

My conclusion from all of this is that the C-Suite needs to invest even more in data management for marketers and not only for the financial results to which they have become accustomed. They should not demand the ROI of marketing without empowering marketers to be able to analyse the data available to them. What do you think?

C³Centricity used images from Microsoft and Mashable in this post.

Having recently published an article about why email isn’t dead, I thought it would be useful to roundup some case studies to help marketers inject some life into their own campaigns.

I’ve previously looked at how testing subject lines and segmentation can improve email marketing, but these three studies focus more on calls-to-action.

Hopefully they should provide some inspiration for marketers who are in the process of testing their own email messages.

For more information on this topic download the Econsultancy Email Marketing Census 2014 or check out our new Case Study Database...

Buttons vs. text links

AWeber Communications ran a test on its email newsletter to find out whether buttons were more effective that text links in encouraging clicks. 

Previous testing on the website had found in favour of buttons, so the assumption was that the same would be true of email.

The test included two identical versions of the same email, except that one included this CTA button while the other used text links:

AWeber used clicks-to-opens as a measure of success so that if one version of the message got an unusually high number of opens, it wouldn’t skew the results to make that version’s CTA look more effective than it really was.

The initial results showed that the attention-grabbing CTA was far more effective than text links.

In the first five split tests, the button drew a clicks-to-opens rate that was on average 33.29% higher than the text link clicks-to-opens rate.

However it appears that the initial success was down to the novelty factor, as the gap began to reduce over time.

After 20 tests the larger CTA was only winning by an average of 17.29%, and after 40 tests the text links were consistently outperforming the button, winning nearly two-thirds of the time and by double-digit margins as high as nearly 35%.

The key lesson here is that tests should not be run as a one-off, as the results will alter over time.

Had AWeber run a handful of tests then opted for the larger CTA then it may ultimately have caused a decline in clicks over time.

How many CTAs?

Prior to conducting any A/B testing, Whirlpool’s marketing team assumed that having multiple CTAs within an email had a positive impact as it increased the chance that someone would click one of the buttons.

However it was pointed out that all four CTAs related to separate actions. This distracted from the main focus of the email, which was to drive users to a rebate landing page and encourage them to visit a showroom.

It was therefore decided to run an A/B test to see whether a single CTA would have more success in achieving the team’s objective.

Whirlpool’s original email

The treatment with the single CTA achieved a 42% increase in clicks for Whirlpool.

Whirlpool’s new email design

Call-to-action placement

An anonymous restaurant chain used A/B testing to analyse whether CTA placement had any impact on engagement with its non-offer based promotions.

The business builds its promotions around menu items and pricing rather than discounts, and the aim of the test was to get more people to respond to email campaigns and come into its outlets.

Two versions of the email were deployed, with the subject line and copy the same in both versions. They also both contained two CTAs with different copy.

One of the buttons stayed in the same place in both templates, however in example A the second button was near the top of the mailing copy and in example B it was just below the main text.

The results showed that the position of the buttons had little impact on the clickthrough rate, suggesting that subscribers aren’t put off by having to scroll down an email.

However the wording did have a major impact, as the better performing CTA saw a 66% increase in clicks during the campaign.

This case study shows that marketers need to test several different elements to find the optimum email design.

See on Scoop.it – Story and Narrative “Stories, told well, are incredibly effective at engaging intellectually and emotionally with buyers. Turns out, I’m not alone in this thinking as LinkedIn Marketing Solutions (a TopRank client) has put together an excellent eBook highlighting 10 B2B Marketing Masters and their insights on storytelling.” See on www.toprankblog.com

Social Selling is Rad Not Fad

It’s official, social selling is here to stay. The question to ask is not if social selling is legit. The question to ask is are you ready for it? The truth is, not all organizations are ready for social selling. It requires a social business culture that starts in the C-Suite to embrace social selling and have success with it.

Below are five signs that your company is ready for social selling. If you respond affirmatively to all five of these, you are either well on your social selling journey, or you’re ready to embark on it now.

You View Your Employees as Websites

Your employees have a digital footprint that includes social networking profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Twitter and possibly Instagram. Your employee’s online presence integrates with your brand, whether you know it or like it or not. While privacy issues prevent an employer from controlling an employee’s actions in social media, it is acceptable to provide guidelines to your employees, especially in some areas of social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter, where the possibility of overlap with your brand is the greatest. Start by recognizing that each employee is like a website that can be optimized in a positive way, without violating the employee’s privacy, and with the employee’s cooperation. An optimized employee’s online presence is an asset to your social business strategy.

You Want to Convert Employees from Brand Risks to Brand Advocates

To harness the brand value of your employees, you need a plan. Yes, you need a written plan. And, that requires writing a social media policy that gets distributed to all employees with training and sign off from each employee. There are two key things to embrace on this topic. First, it is imperative that a social media policy is written in collaboration with cross functional departments including HR, Legal, IT and Marketing, and possibly others in your enterprise. Second, a good social media policy is not about do’s and don’ts intended to stifle employee’s use of social media. Rather, it offers the employees clear guidelines on how to represent themselves online in a way that is both acceptable and desirable to the brand. It should give employees confidence, not fear in their social media participation.

You Want to Help Employees Generate Leads for Your Brand

Recent research shows that 82% of buyers favor personal recommendations from people online. In fact a friend’s recommendation on social media is the most influential factor when buying software or ebooks. It stands to reason that we should empower employees to generate leads for your brand. I’ve said many times that marketing is not a department. Employees have huge potential to generate leads for their employer when they read what their buyers read, engage where their buyers engage and become part of the same online conversations.

You Want to Integrate Your Employee’s Brand With Your Corporate Brand

If you value the employee’s brand and seek to integrate it with your brand, that’s a social business culture that breeds great results. Your ability to accomplish this is in part dependent on having a documented social business strategy and the trust you’ve built with your plan. A collaborative spirit between the employee and the corporate brand is an absolute must for a strong level of integration between the corporate brand and the employee’s brand.

You Want to Measure Effectiveness of Social Selling Actions

Even if you’re clicking on all cylinders described above, you need to be capable of measuring progress and results without compromising the privacy of employee’s social networking activities. In other words, the employee never wants to have her employer watching over her shoulder to monitor her social media activity. Yet, you need to understand what impact she is having on your social business strategy. Achieving this isn’t as tricky as it sounds.

If you have read these 5 signs of social selling readiness and you’ve nodded your head in agreement to all 5, then you are ready. Ready or not, this webinar might be for you….

Join us for our next webinar June 19th at 2pm EDT: The 5 Pillars of Social Selling

Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing engaging and informative content freely so that your company can attract prospects and turn them into long lasting customers.

The idea behind content marketing is that by distributing content in the form of blog posts, news releases, e-mails, white papers, case studies, e-books, infographics, and video, you come to be known by your prospects as the go-to expert in your sector. Your prospects also come to know and trust you (hence helping them become life-long customers).

But does content marketing really work?

Read below for some statistics about the effectiveness of content marketing:

• Content marketing costs less than traditional marketing (62 percent less) and provides about three times as many leads (source).
• In fact, using this type of inbound marketing is reported to save up to 13 percent in the overall cost per lead (source).
• Of marketers surveyed in 2011 (source), 72 percent of them said they believed branded content to be more successful in delivering customers than magazine ads. Nearly 70 percent said content marketing is also better than direct mail and – gulp! – Public relations.
• Prospects who became customers after reading or seeing branded content tend to make purchases that are 47 percent larger than so-called “non-nurtured” leads (source).
• Prospects and current customers who receive e-mail marketing messages spend 83 percent more when they buy (source).
• In fact, 60 percent of marketers say they receive a good return on their e-mail marketing investment (source).
• Companies and brands that include infographics in their content marketing reportedly (source) receive 12 percent more traffic than companies/brands that don’t.
• A high percentage of all marketers use content marketing: 91 percent of business-to-business marketers use content marketing (source), while 86 percent of business-to-consumer marketers do so (source).
• Finally, nine out of 10 organizations say they engage in content marketing (source).
• Be wary, though: More than 70 percent of consumers surveyed said they become irritated (source) when they go to a website with content that has nothing do with why they came to the website (the content isn’t about the business’ offerings).
• 58 percent of consumers surveyed (source) said they trust editorial-like content.

The takeaway: If you’re using more traditional ways of marketing and not using content marketing to attract customers and turn them into repeat buyers of your products and services, you’re a) spending too much and b) at risk of losing clients to those competitors who are.

Image courtesy of Suart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One would hope that by now all businesses had mastered the basics of social marketing, but clearly that isn’t the case, particularly for small companies. 

So to give a helping hand for any businesses with a fledgling or non-existent social presence, I’ve come up with a few basic rules that need to be in place for a social media campaign to work.

You may well be thinking that all marketing campaigns should involve some element of social media in this day and age, and you’d be right. 

But the aim of this article is to provide some food for thought on the things that marketers should consider when creating a campaign that predominately uses social.

Furthermore, I haven't addressed the tricky issue of coming up with shareable content, largely because that will be the subject of its own post at a later date.

So for now, read on to discover some handy tips on the basics of running a social campaign, or for more inspiration check out our post looking at the best social campaigns so far from 2014...

Plan ahead

Let’s start with an obvious point. In order to be successful in business, one must plan ahead, which is presumably why some of you are reading this post in the first place.

For starters marketers have to work out their goals, target audience, budgetary restraints, KPIs, timeframe, what content is available, and which networks to focus on.

Goals are one of the most important aspects as that dictates everything that follows. For example, you may want to increase site traffic, promote an event, build excitement around a product launch, or host a Q&A with a prominent member of staff or brand ambassador.

Each of these goals will involve different timescales, content and deliverables, which you'll need to map out upfront.

Use analytics

The likes of Facebook and Twitter offer their own analytics products which are generally simple to use and provide useful information.

However it’s also good to use third-party tools to extract additional insights and also to crosscheck the data from the networks.

Only then can you measure the campaign's success against your KPIs and justify the ROI.

Listen for feedback

This ties in with analytics, but in order to properly engage with fans and followers it’s necessary to listen to what they’re saying.

At Econsultancy we mainly rely on Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, but a more thorough list can be found in our Social Listening Buyer’s Guide, or in Christopher Ratcliff’s post looking at great social media tools.

This will enable you to efficiently respond to other users, monitor the campaign's success or modify it in response to audience feedback.

Plan for agility

Agility is all the rage these days, but that doesn’t mean marketing teams should just make knee-jerk, impulsive decisions.

Businesses should plan ahead so there is a framework in place that then allows for a degree of flexibility to react to unforeseen situations.

Marketers have to remember what they are setting out to achieve, the brand values and existing tone of voice, otherwise agile marketing can appear cheesy and clichéd, or even crude and insulting.

It would also help to have a content library prepared so that you have images or videos available to select from at short notice. Adidas has mastered the art of publishing tweets that look reactive but are clearly pre-planned.

Congratulations @andy_murray! #allinformurray pic.twitter.com/3WT0F9pYhD

— adidas UK (@adidasUK) December 15, 2013

Which channel to use?

Much of this will depend on the campaign aims and on which social networks your brand has already established a presence.

Each network has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. For example, Twitter might be most effective for short-term campaign that requires fast, responsive answers from other users, or for a campaign that relies on newsjacking a particular topic or hashtag.

In contrast, Pinterest can be effective for competitions aimed at sharing product images, Instagram is good for user-generated content, and Google+ is great if you don’t want anyone to see your content.

Ultimately though, it will depend on which networks a brand is already using. This often comes down to straight fight between Facebook and Twitter – unless of course the aim of the campaign is to build an audience on a new platform...

Cross-promote

Social media shouldn’t act in isolation so marketers should be using other channels to promote social campaigns.

This could be as simple as using Facebook to cross-reference a Twitter campaign, or else using email or in-store displays to inform users of a new social competition or event.

For example, Urban Outfitters used email to promote this Twitter competition that required people to tweet the last lie they told alongside a specific hashtag.

Stick to the T&Cs

Make sure you’re up-to-date with each network’s T&Cs, otherwise you may fall foul of their compliance teams.

The punishment is unlikely to be harsh, but it means you’ll have to go back and re-think your approach which will cost valuable time and money.

Invest in social ads

It would be nice to think that your content is so awesome that it will gain huge popularity through organic reach alone. However in all likelihood it will need a helping hand, so be prepared to invest in some social ads.

At Econsultancy’s Festival of Marketing last year, Cadbury’s Jerry Daykin revealed that the brand buys social ads once content has proven to be popular with its existing fans and followers, as it then knows that it is potentially onto a winner.

This makes sense as there’s no point in paying to promote a bad creative idea.

Facebook and Twitter ads can still be relatively inexpensive and yield good results, so you shouldn’t have a problem justifying the ROI.

I was reading an interview with Laura Ramos, VP and Principal Analyst with Forrester, and a couple of things she said caught my eye:

“The ideal model for understanding how B2B buyers buy is a life cycle, not a funnel.”

“When your sales involve multiple buyers in a complex, highly considered process, and when there is a distinct hand-off from marketing to sales—it can get a bit murky when figuring out where marketing’s influence ends and sales’ influence begins.”

The question that came up for me (and has for some time) is: Why is there a distinct handoff?

If you look at the first quote above (which I also agree with very strongly) there’s no stop and start for marketers. A life cycle indicates a continuum, not a campaign-type focus. There shouldn’t be any stopping. There shouldn’t be a pause.

What marketers should be doing is addressing each stage of the buyer to customer to advocate life cycle as it happens and in relation to what’s relevant at the time.

If marketers are to prove business impact, they must be able to show influence at every point and pivot.

This doesn’t mean that they need to own it as a “marketing” function, but that they empower the relationships held by buyers and customers with the company – no matter how or with whom they happen.

Marketing has a brilliant opportunity to become the support system for the customer experience lifecycle – across the organization.

Think about all the ways customers play in your business, including:

• Marketing to Sales
• Customer support, service and training
• Product development
• Branding, reputation, credibility
• Advocacy and referrals

Marketing, as the organization responsible for attracting, engaging and initiating relationships, must expand beyond that early role to sustaining and growing those relationships over the entire continuum of the life cycle.

Here are a few reasons why:

• Marketing collects a lot of data about customers and the marketplace their companies serve. They are the ones positioned to provide the most value by integrating other sources of data and feedback from other departments to evolve the big-picture view used to drive business.
• Marketing is on the front lines;, they are often the first “face” presented for the company. If they stop there the story stops with them. Then the organization has to count on whatever story sales shares is complementary and that the story also makes the transition through to customer service and support. Good luck – did I mention that “hope is not a strategy?”
• Buyers and customers are clamoring for higher relevance and vendors who can help them set the vision, realize it and move gracefully forward into the future. This requires consistency in experience and the story that’s started to continue to develop and expand over time. Marketing is in the best position to facilitate this.
• Social media has shoved everyone into a marketing and potentially customer-facing role. Someone needs to provide some orchestration for how the story is shared from those differing perspectives in a way that honors both the brand and the customer.

By staying in the game, marketers can enable every touch point with customers with the parts of the story needed to build a longer-term relationship. With the technology available today, all the points and pivots can be tracked. Proving business impact doesn’t mean marketing must close deals, it means they must be able to show influence across the continuum of the customer life cycle and relate it to business-driving metrics.

It will take time. But I firmly believe a continuum approach is what’s next given the changes we’ve seen so far…

Image credit: heidicohen.com

Online marketing takes different forms such as social media marketing. There are many social media platforms that are very popular for this undertaking. LinkedIn is one of them and you might be surprised that the platform is already used by your competitors for their digital marketing campaigns. If you are not yet aware of it, LinkedIn has the social media marketing value that your competitors might already be leveraging their online marketing campaigns from. About 70% of the sales executives are taking the stance of positioning their market within the social media sphere and use LinkedIn in order to build social and personal linkages for their business. LinkedIn as a social sharing tool

Image credit: lonelybrand.com

You can use LinkedIn for business marketing and as a social marketing tool in establishing relationship with your customers. Because professionals are using the platform, the consumers are getting savvier in looking for professional businesses and digital products and services. You competitors just might be aggressively undertaking social selling and you are already left behind in your marketing strategies. Here’s how you can use LinkedIn as a social sharing tool and boost your business reputation online.

• You can easily make your business known to the social media community by optimizing your LinkedIn business profile and follow up leads. About 70.6% of the LinkedIn users are checking out the other users’ profile and you can use the site’s feature on Who Has Viewed Your Profile to find target leads as LinkedIn users that might be interested about your business.
• Use the platform to share your business with others and build your authority within a particular niche. By using the LinkedIn Groups feature, participate in the discussion and commentaries by sharing your expertise to grow your business reputation.
• Your competitors are likely using the LinkedIn Premium in order to power up their ability to source out contact information and search for potential leads. You might as well pursue this feature instead using the free LinkedIn option with limited social marketing advantages.
• Grow your social media network in LinkedIn by connecting to other people whom you may know by using the site’s People You May Know feature. This will yield better results in growing your social media community network and business contacts.
• Build your business reputation to target potential leads for your business. The platform has about 8,000 new members every day and there will be at least a fraction of this figure that will likely be potential leads to present your business. In order to broaden your audience reach it is necessary to build you social presence and reputation.
• Engage into a conversation with your customers using LinkedIn. Successful sales representatives spend at least 75% of their time entertaining comments, feedbacks and discussions online. This helps build the customer engagement to your business as well as an opportunity to get to know your customers’ profile and understand their needs.
• Target the LinkedIn influencers within your niche group. It is easier to build social relationships through the influencers in your group. In fact, some marketers reported that about 45% of their LinkedIn connections are within the social groups of the influencers within their LinkedIn group. Your business can easily branch out your social connection and audience reach by leveraging on influencer relationships.

Optimize your professional profile in Linkedin If you want others to take notice of your LinkedIn profile, you need to beef it up a bit. This means that you need to provide more information that will help enhance the interest of your potential leads to your business and provide the first step of connecting your business to them. Here’s how:

• Constant profile updates

Your potential leads will be interested in following your LinkedIn profile once they find fresh and new information with constant updates. Profile updates involve providing brief statements that will maintain your connections to your customers and potential leads. Update your followers regarding the latest news about your business such as newly released products or give them statements to keep them at the edge of their seats about an upcoming product release from your business. This will keep your profile active while keeping your connections to your audience consistent for better social visibility.

• Connect your LinkedIn profile to your other social media accounts

Image credit: businessleads.com

If you have a Twitter account you can easily integrate your LinkedIn profile to it in order to tweet the latest news and statements about your business. You can also do so in your other social media accounts that allow LinkedIn integration. This will help keep your social presence and social signals regular and consistent especially in connecting to your social media networks. It is easier to pass your business updates across the social media channels this way.

• Creatively promote LinkedIn profile to prospect customers

Publish Power Point Presentation in your profile in order to engage your audience better. You can also display images that will represent your staff or the people behind your business operation as well as to highlight the behind the scene operations within your company. Your potential customers will likely be engaged with higher interest in learning more about your business and the people behind its success. If you are holding an event you can post information and updates on your LinkedIn profile too. This will give your audience better engagement on what to look forward to from your business activities. Syndicate your blog posts to your LinkedIn profile where a link to your post will be displayed on your LinkedIn web page.

• Rearrange your profile sections according to significance to your business

You can arrange certain sections in your profile which is rarely done by LinkedIn users. If there are important events such as receiving important honors and awards for your business that can give a strong impression to your audience you should place the Honors and Awards section first to appear in your profile. This can attract more leads to your business as more people will get more curious about your business, products and services.

So, you’ve set the wheels in motion for your online marketing campaign. Your blog is generating leads that head over to your website, you’re sharing engaging articles on your social media profiles, unique visitors to your site have increased, and you’ve signed up dozens of new email subscribers. Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

And then there’s the hiccup. Traffic to your landing page is coming in droves, but you’re not seeing the boost in sales you expected after all this work. Leads are viewing your site, but they’re not sticking around. Your bounce rate is on the high side, and you’ll never convert sales when prospects leave after just a few seconds. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go back to square one with your marketing efforts. Instead of tossing in the towel, check out what visitors are doing once they arrive. You might see that you need to put more effort into the dos and don’ts for creating a landing page for your business.

DO make your landing page straightforward and simple.

A clean appearance is probably the most critical aspect when creating a landing page design for your business. If a lead doesn’t like what they see within a fraction of a second, they’re clicking back and you lose the sale. Develop a page that loads quickly, and features streamlined graphics, easy navigation and clear headers. Don’t put your navigation menu on the page or else they might “squirrel” and completely forget why they were there in the first place. Guide them through the process and provide a brief description of what they will be getting along with the form.

DON’T fail to re-direct your lead.

Once they complete the form, make sure you have the proper follow-up. You might re-direct them to a thank you screen, generate an email with additional information, or let them know an agent will be in touch. The important thing is to let them know what to expect next so they’re not left wondering.

DO optimize your landing page for mobile users.

When creating a landing page design for your business, make sure you account for the increasing number of leads who access it via portable devices. If it loads improperly or is difficult to navigate, they won’t stick around long enough to enter their information.

DON’T include endless text.

You can direct visitors to an appropriate page on your site if they want more information, but your landing page isn’t the place for long text pieces. Get to the point with a brief form, using graphics if appropriate. Keep in mind that less is more, and err on the side of caution when incorporating text.

DO make your “Submit” button obvious.

As they scroll down your landing page, you want the clickable button to stand out from the rest of the form. I personally don’t like the word “Submit” so how about we try “Download Now” or “Get Your Copy Here” and call it a day. A contrasting color is one way to draw attention to it, though you could also make it larger or vary the font. Avoid using blinking or other graphics that tend to be annoying.

DON’T request duplicate information.

You’ve already asked them for certain details in a previous visit. Implement smart forms that know that they’ve been to your landing page before and will avoid requesting certain information a second time. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome!

Make sure you test your process from call-to-action to landing page to thank you page, make sure that every step is connecting to the right place. So now that you know the dos and don’ts of creating an awesome landing page you can convert visitors in crazy awesome leads and capture that info!

While sprucing up your landing pages if you feel compelled to try re designing your whole website… check out this free eBook to help you do just that.

Photo Credit: Pixar Short Film “For The Birds”

Today's guest post is by Dick Beedon, founder and CEO of Amplifinity. The consensus is that referrals are the best form of leads. They close faster, buy more, and stay longer. In fact, great salespeople have been good at generating referrals for what seems like forever. Until recently, large corporations have struggled to figure out how to scale the success of individual sales reps to systematically and proactively drive large volumes of referrals. But that is all changing. Technology is coming to market that can help large brands automate the best practices of sales reps and institutionalize the process of...

We recently sat down with Jasmine Sandler, a digital marketing strategist and LinkedIn expert who has been a part of the social media marketing revolution since it’s early stages. The interview gave us the opportunity to gain insight on social media marketing, why LinkedIn is the best tool for B2B lead generation, and how content marketing is evolving.

1. What is your professional background?

At this point, I call myself a digital marketing veteran. I’ve been involved in web marketing since 1995, and even started, owned and sold a social network before the term existed! I also spent seven years as a Sales and Solution Manager for IBM. Basically, I’ve been in digital marketing for a long time, and it’s very exciting to witness how social media has grown.

Most of my work is a blend; it’s a holistic approach that entails digital marketing and B2B sales. I talk a lot about social selling and social sales, but really it’s a mix between social media, digital marketing, lead generation and content marketing. These strategies support all of the points of creating a long-term business relationship.

Currently, my focus is really on helping more mid and enterprise-level B2B companies understand how to overcome their marketing challenges. I actually just got off the phone with a client who said to me, “If you can show me how to use social media to drive leads – I’ll be the happiest person!” I’m always up for that kind of challenge. I’ve been consulting for a while and I also run an agency to help plan and execute social media strategies for companies. My focus since 2009 has primarily been on providing internal client team training and education. I consult clients on how to use their resources in the right way, and train them on implementing digital marketing strategies.

2. What attracted you to social media? How did you get started in the field?

About a decade ago, in 2004, I started to see social sites popping up. I have a background in business, and when I did my MBA, I studied consumer behavior. It was then that I noticed this grand opportunity to capture the attention of individual consumers using the Internet. Back then, I already knew that I wanted to start an enthusiast type of community. As a huge sports fan, that’s where I started – connecting sports enthusiasts and delivering promotions within this community.

If you think about any successful blog or publishing site today, that’s essentially what I was doing back then for the sports industry. My attraction to it revolved around two things. The first is how to leverage the web to drive community engagement, and the second – given my background is business, is how to monetize engagement online.

After I sold the social network I developed, I began to get more into direct-respond work, and became certified on all levels of research marketing and online media. Eventually, in 2006, I shifted all of my focus to social media. I was consulting a large search marketing agency, and saw an opportunity out there for companies to use more grassroots tactics on the web. This motivated me to start my own marketing agency, with a focus not only on social media – but on all around PR. I usually draw a pie chart for people to explain that online PR supports social media and SEO, as well as traditional PR and marketing.

Social media has become much more of a force today than it has ever been. I find that most of my work with business owners and C-Level executives highlights how to use digital marketing to drive sales and showing individual executives how to become spokespeople for the entire company. LinkedIn is really the tool that makes this happen. I’ve been on LinkedIn, driving leads to my own company, since 2005. LinkedIn, for me, is the best B2B social network to drive leads. The way I use it, and what I tell my clients, is that it’s not only a personal branding tool, but also a great means for B2B sales to build up a brand of thought leadership, and implement it effectively. With LinkedIn, you can drive an audience, and have excellent opportunities to gain visibility and leads. I give lots of training courses on social selling and specifically on using LinkedIn in this type of context.

3. Name your top 3 strategies for B2B lead generation.

Given that most of my work lies in SEO, that would definitely be my top strategy. I think SEO is hugely important for driving leads. When you embark on an SEO program, the first thing is to decide what you really want to be known for, and then build a keyword program based on broad and narrow-based keywords.

The second is utilizing social media, such as LinkedIn and Google+. LinkedIn is my top choice for B2B lead generation, but I have to say that Google+ has become a really strong force, especially since it’s so well connected to other Google applications. It’s a great channel for delivering rich content and connecting to YouTube, which I also think is effective for increasing visibility and B2B leads. Social media marketing is all about building you audience, and when I create a B2B social media strategy, my channel selection is definitely going to include LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube. Twitter isn’t nearly as direct as LinkedIn for driving leads, although it’s good for driving thought leadership and gaining attention for your brand.

The third strategy is paid advertising – basically PPC. Whether it’s Google AdWords, or LinkedIn’s advertising platforms, it’s important to spend a few dollars there. You should constantly test your campaigns, focus on a specific vertical and keep it localized.

4. Has content marketing has reached its peak? Where do you think it’s headed?

Without a doubt, I don’t think content marketing is going anywhere. I think in the future it will get more sophisticated and mature, and we’ll start seeing more and more automation tools that support content marketing as a practice. We’ll also see more companies supporting the practice of content marketing being funded. Companies today have been developing guidelines for social media, and I think the same thing will happen with content marketing; it will become a standard practice, and parameters and guidelines will be put into place. There will be less guesswork around content planning, and businesses will most likely implement specific, more targeted content marketing programs.

5. What is the best approach for using content marketing to generate leads?

My approach is to first uncover where clients have experience and understanding, and also identify which verticals they want to own. I always develop a very structured approach, and find out how the company is positioned, its market share, industry focus – and what opportunities it’s missing. Content marketing is strongly tied to selecting themes and topics that a company can support in terms of thought leadership.

Once a company defines its expertise, the next step depends on what content resources will be needed, and budget limitations. If a B2B has a budget to deploy more advanced content marketing, such as professional videos, infographics and motion graphics, then it’s best to plan for that. The bottom line is that any content you generate needs to be consistent – it should support a specific author and vertical, and needs to be distributed online – especially socially, in a targeted manner.

6. What are your thoughts on LinkedIn’s shift towards content marketing?

I love the idea, and I have recently become a publisher on LinkedIn. The reason behind this shift is that LinkedIn is embracing content as a way to support relationship development. When I train people to use the platform, one of the habits I try to instil is to make LinkedIn part of their daily routine. My strongest recommendation is to follow influencers in your industry and read what they are saying, join the right Discussion Groups, and find the right opportunities to comment and engage. Publishing content on LinkedIn is another strategy that B2Bs can use to support relationship building and drive more engagement for their brand.

7. What is the number one mistake that people make when trying to gain business on LinkedIn?

For sales professionals, I think the main issue is that they don’t keep current, or really play an active role on the network. For example, always update your profile, include new projects you’re working on and list your current place of work. Keep your profile picture up to date, and add multimedia if possible.

Another mistake is not getting involved in Discussion Groups. Most members are not proactive, and they often join Groups just for the sake of joining. If you actively participate in Groups by engaging with others and leave helpful comments, you can drive visibility and generate leads for your brand.

8. What is the one key metric that B2B marketers should follow?

Qualified leads. Marketing is not solely about marketing – it’s about helping close deals. B2B marketing teams need to measure their impact on sales, and it’s surprising that CEOs and sales teams often overlook this. Many of them don’t know how many leads their marketing efforts generate on a monthly basis. If I couldn’t leverage marketing strategies to generate qualified leads, my clients would fire me! Marketing requires a lot of work, and you need a team and budget to succeed – but at the end of the day, it’s definitely worth the investment.

9. Do you feel B2B marketing increasingly resembles B2C marketing, or are they still very distinct?

One of my clients develops great marketing programs that are very personalized, mostly by hitting target audiences with the right messages. In this context, I think that much of what is done in B2C marketing can have a huge impact on B2B marketing. There are lots of great opportunities for personalization, and one of the services I offer is helping executives become thought leaders and educators, to assist them with nurturing relationships with prospects on a personal level.

Channel or partner marketing is a strategic part of many B2B organizations, but often times the Demand Generation Strategy is overlooked for this segment of the business. Three of the biggest challenges with channel marketing are defining the buyer’s journey, scale and relevancy. Why are these tough? You can’t just assume you have the same buyers or customers, even if you are partners. You can’t simply change the title of a corporate demand generation program or segment your list to hit channel partners and call it channel marketing to solve the scale and relevancy issue. There needs to a well-documented Demand Generation Strategy for channel marketing efforts to drive the revenue needed.

Channel marketing is complex in general – nothing is straight forward in the channel, right? Who owns the customer? Who owns the account? How do you manage working off joint prospect lists? Who manages the prospect list? Are there data privacy issues associated with sharing lists? How can you assess ROI if your partner’s reporting isn’t great or if different CRM or MA platforms are in place? What about nurturing leads? These are just a few questions that need to be answered before embarking on any program, let alone a comprehensive strategy to support the revenue objectives for the channel.

Take these questions as seriously as you would when you define your own Demand Generation Strategy. It matters. A well-documented and agreed upon strategy helps mitigate any channel /sales conflict down the line.

An often murky area in partner marketing is identifying the customer or buyer. Is it your customers, joint customers or internal customers (partner sales team) you need to connect with? Remember to think just as you would when developing your own Demand Generation Strategy, you need to consider the buyer’s journey and think about who you are messaging to and how you are helping to solve their problems. This is where the relevancy challenge comes in to play as well.

Initial programs for partner marketing might be developed to generate awareness of your solution for the partner sales team (help them understand your value for identifying sales opportunities). Any messaging or call to action has to be specific to this audience so you can connect with them, and show how your solution will help them (sell more, sell higher in the organization, have a sticker solution or other value proposition). Relevancy. But this won’t be the same messaging for every customer or partner. Nor will it be the same at various points in the buyer’s journey and that brings us to the issue of scale.

Scale is a huge challenge in partner marketing because how do you help 10 partners drive more sales and leads, let alone 40 or 100 partners? Every partner wants to be special and unique…and they are. However, it is not possible to create unique programs for each partner effectively. Partner marketers tend to fail when they do not recognize this. To combat this challange- there should be core components developed for channel marketing programs that are used and available for all partners (key messaging docs, graphics or webinar capabilities).

Additionally, unique programs need to be jointly developed as well to keep content relevant for the partner and their customers. No partner wants to use the same piece of content their competition just sent out. Would you? Creating core content helps build a foundation for any partner marketing efforts. Just like our own B2B buyers – partners are unique and want and expect to be treated that way.

To combat the challenges of partner or channel marketing, develop your channel Demand Generation Strategy as you would for your own B2B Buyer. In a recent post by Carlos Hidalgo, Demand Generation It’s Not That Easy, Hidalgo writes that we tend to forget how complex effective demand generation can be. Try building a revenue stream with partners, and it becomes even more complex.

Build your partner marketing strategy to incorporate various buyers, content marketing offers, and define your Lead Management Process, as well as solid reporting mechanisms to track effectiveness. If something isn’t working – you will need to be agile and make changes quickly. Build core components and then work with your individual partners to make partner programs unique. Any partner marketing efforts will be ineffective if you don’t think of the strategy first – and that means answering some hard questions before you get started. When done correctly, partner marketing can add significant revenue to an organization, when attempted without a strategy, it becomes a resource drain and a missed opportunity.

With all the social media platforms out there, many companies – and sales managers – believe that cold calling has become obsolete. The fact is – nothing could be further from the truth.

When it comes to marketing, one of the most incredible present-day advantages has to be the culture of connectivity.

Everybody is online.

Gone are the days when you had to travel to old Mr Smith’s offices, clutching a business card in your sweaty hand, desperately hoping that his 90-year old secretary would let you through the door.

Now, with some simple preparation – and learning to work smart – you have dozens of ways to get through the door and engage with Mr Smith.

Social media enables you to find an incredible amount of information about your prospect, so make it work for you.

How?

Invite potential clients to visit your Facebook page or LinkedIn profile. Work on establishing an online presence, posting, commenting on or sharing relevant information that may be of interest to these prospects, while creating the impression that you are knowledgeable and trustworthy. All of these provide clients with greater peace of mind, knowing that they are dealing with a real company with confidence and interest in their own brand and social interaction.

What I’m talking about here is called Attraction Marketing – very appropriately, I think.

Remember: people buy from people.

Not only that, but they overwhelmingly buy from people they know and trust. That means that you need to get face to face, turn on the charm, put on some good manners, and get your prospect to that first date.

You’re sowing the seeds; you’re establishing trust long before you get face to face. On a much deeper psychological level, you’re doing something called ‘pre-framing’, which is the skill of asserting your personality without the other person even being aware of it.

So, what is cold calling?

If the words ‘Sales’, ‘Marketing’, or ‘Advertising’ appear anywhere in your office or department, then you probably don’t need any introduction to cold calling. The odds are – it introduced itself to you. And for some people, particularly sales newbies, that introduction can feel like a visit to the dentist.

But is that really what cold calling is all about? I don’t believe so, not for one minute.

You see, knowledge is power – and the right kind of knowledge can take a huge amount of stress out of approaching a new prospect. In fact, with the right training and mind set, you can actually look forward to approaching your prospect.

And if you do it correctly, not only will he become your client, but he’ll wind up liking and trusting you. Oh, and giving you money. Too good to be true? Well, it isn’t.

Before you can play a game of chess, you need to learn the rules.
Cold calling – which is defined as ‘unsolicited contact with a prospective client’ – is no different. Once you understand the rules (the simple principles of creatively engaging and interacting), your ability to do so – and to do so astoundingly well – increases in bucket loads.

Did you know that it’s usually just a few people from sales that are responsible for the biggest chunk of the turnover? The reason – they have taken the time and effort to learn specific skills which guarantee them a competitive edge. One of these key skills – possibly the most important one of all – is the ability to consistently seek out new business by cold calling with confidence and authority.

So why doesn’t everyone, well… just do it? The answer can be summed up with a very well-known four letter word beginning with ‘F’.

That’s right: FEAR – which simply stands for Forever Expecting Awful Results.

We all fear rejection. And the vast majority of salespeople out there approach a new prospect with a pre-expectation that they will be rejected. Why? Because it only takes a few rejections to make you believe that ‘NO’ is somehow a default setting aimed at you.

Why Has Cold Calling Received Such a Bad Rap?

There are several reasons cold calling carries a negative stigma. Most of these are down to the salesperson not laying the foundation and trying to play chess blindfolded:

Not knowing who to speak to

If you ‘cold call’ a company and don’t know who to speak to, you’re going to look profoundly unprofessional. Imagine being in the shoes of a switchboard operator or department head. Operator: “Certainly! Who would you like to speak to?” You: “Um… I don’t really know.” Seriously? I wouldn’t want to do business with you either. Do the research, folks!

Lack of knowledge of the target

I’m not talking about whether they like Sushi, but rather about their business function, the company they work for (or own), and their core business offering. Your basic knowledge should include:

• Understanding the business goals of your target.
• Knowing how big the company is; what the company objectives are, and what products and services they offer. Get to know their culture.
• Critically important – find out who your competitors are. Who is providing them with the service or product you’re offering? Why should they rather buy from you?

Here’s a biggie:

Not conversing

Cold calling is not about talking AT someone. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to have someone phone you, and then blurt out a scripted ‘sales pitch’ like a terrified rabbit with Attention Deficit Disorder? You need to calm down. Establish rapport (which only takes a few seconds if you do it right). Ask questions and provide feedback. Understand that it’s about arranging that first date – your prospect has to like you before you can invite them to a movie. If you ignore this, and just shotgun your prospect with a sales pitch, you’ll be setting yourself up for the other ‘F-word’ – FAILURE.

So, How Do You Create a Winning Cold Calling Strategy?

A proper cold calling strategy involves more than one step. It requires investing some time and effort – prospect diligently, decide on qualified leads and use social media to find out more about your prospects – understand their business and needs.

Then – and only then – call to set up a meeting, or to discuss the potential of a meeting.

Social media hasn’t replaced cold calling, but is an incredibly powerful tool that enhances a successful cold calling strategy.

If you are ready to tackle cold calling head on, check out The Cold Call Bible; where you will be taught how to source qualified clients, set up meetings with key decision makers, and increase your sales exponentially.

Success at blog marketing depends on myriad content, design, technical, and promotional factors. Though it would be prohibitively exhausting to excel at all of them simultaneously, the good news is that there are many small changes you can make that can significantly improve the success of your blog content over the long term.

Whether you’re just starting to explore the world of blog marketing, looking to spruce up the look and feel of your existing blog, or are ready to take your efforts and expertise to the next level, the 57 tips on this handy checklist will support your journey to blogging success.

Blog marketing 101 

• Start by developing a basic blog marketing strategy. This can be as simple as determining who your audience will be, defining the goal you want to achieve with your blog (e.g., generating awareness, increasing leads, boosting sales, informing people about industry issues, etc.), how you will distinguish your content from that of your competitors, and how you will source your content (e.g., will you use staff-written posts? Curated content? Will you offer guest posting opportunities?). 

• Establish an editorial policy. Answer questions like:

o   What kind of content should be included?

o   Will we discuss relevant news items or just link to others’ coverage of them?

o   Should writers be limited to sharing facts, or will you encourage them to tell stories and weigh in with strong opinions?

o   Will we talk about our employees?

o   Will we share pertinent case studies?

o   What do we want to avoid doing on the blog?

o   Who signs off on what gets published, and how much latitude should we grant to authors?

The bottom line is that your blog marketing content sources should ultimately serve your preferred readers, so keep them in mind as you make your editorial decisions.

• Define a niche that you will focus on covering — and don’t waver from this. It’s best to write about what you know best and use your blog as a forum for sharing your knowledge in this area. 

• Define your intended voice and tone. If you’re the author, what’s your writing style like? Are you funny, provocative, or straightforward? Even if you have a corporate blog with multiple writers, you can still determine whether all posts should communicate with a particular attitude, or if you are ok with each writer speaking in his or her own style. 

• Back up the contents of your blog on a regular basis so you don’t lose your archived content in case of server failure or other tech issues. 

• Foster trust in the authority of your blog content by including an About Us page on your blog site to adequately convey why you’re an expert on the topics you cover or why your company is an industry authority on those issues. 

• Create a commenting policy that your team can honor. Everyone should clearly understand when it’s appropriate to respond to comments or delete them (or at least alert the author to something that needs to be reviewed). Your posts don’t need to accommodate hateful comments or spam, but you should be open to critical comments, as these might drive ongoing conversations — and increase engagement. 

• Create a plan for tracking your key performance indicators (KPIs), like social shares, comments, page views, leads, etc., depending on what the goals are that you have determined for your blog. How will you determine these blog marketing metrics, how will you keep track of them, and how and when will you review them to identify opportunities for improvement? 

• Learn how a single blog post can inspire other content pieces. Tom Pisello elaborates on this in his CMI post, 23 Ways to Leverage a Blog Post for Content Marketing Success. 

• Stick to a schedule. Active blogs that publish on a regular, reliable schedule provide greater benefits for your business in terms of SEO, brand awareness, leads, and engagement. 

• For inspiration and ideas, spend some time looking at other successful blog marketing efforts, like Cvent’s Event Planning blog — a 2014 Content Marketing Award recipient that serves as a great example on many fronts, including structure, tone, relevance, and engagement.

Design, user experience, and technical details 

You want readers to look to your blog for the great content it provides. But don’t underestimate the role that the design, structure, and overall user experience play in blog marketing success. Even if you publish the most epic content possible, you’ll lose your audience if your content is poorly organized, visually confusing, or doesn’t function properly.

Keep the following blog marketing guidelines in mind:

• It’s ok to buy a theme someone else created. But it’s best if you adapt stock themes so that they match your company’s main branding guidelines and communication principles. It’s not just the overall layout and the navigation that you need to worry about — consider the smaller details, like whether fonts and colors are a good fit, as well. 

• Create responsive blog designs so your content will look good on multiple devices and screen sizes, including tablets and smartphones. 

• Make sure your search boxes are clearly visible on your blog page and that your post results are formatted in a clear fashion. If you use a content management system (CMS), you should be able to adjust the settings for the search results page through the admin dashboard. Otherwise you may need to ask your IT or web development department to adjust this for you. 

• Posts should reference related posts, whenever possible. This encourages visitors to stay involved with your blog for more than a few minutes. 

• Customize your 404 error pages. Don’t settle for the default look and feel. This way, even if readers reach a dead end, they know what to do to get what they are looking for. 

• Include a “Popular Posts” section to lead readers to other posts on related topics that may appeal to them. 

• If your blog covers many topic categories, you don’t need to waste precious space by displaying every single one of them. Simply list the topics that are most relevant to your business, and include a link to a page (or sitemap) where the full list of categories can be found. 

• Don’t detract from your blog content by including long lists of category tags at the beginning or end of posts. Assign only a couple categories to each post to cut down on the clutter. 

• Include the author’s bio and headshot on every post. If you use WordPress for blog marketing, consider asking blog contributors to establish a Gravatar account, which you can integrate into their user profiles and enables their headshots to appear with their posts. 

• Fight and manage comment spam by monitoring the conversations that take place on your blog posts. Tools like Akismet and Disqus will help you do this. 

• Consider whether it would be appropriate for music to play automatically when someone visits your blog page, or a particular post. Though this may enhance your content and make for a richer user experience in certain cases, some users may find the sound to be distracting and annoying. 

General writing and editing tips for blog marketing

• Draw inspiration for your posts from your personal experiences. Tell stories about solutions that have worked in your business or lessons you have learned on challenges that your readers may also be facing. 

• Supplement your own insights by writing about exceptional advice offered by other bloggers or experts in your industry. It’s always good to offer your readers outside perspectives. 

• Always have a backup plan for keeping your blogging efforts on track. If a piece of content falls through or the editing process is taking too long, have some shorter posts on hand that you can plug in at the last minute to fill the gap. 

• Make sure you create captivating headlines, and support them with relevant keywords you have researched (more SEO tips are outlined below). 

• Keep paragraphs to a few sentences in length, and consider converting lists of text into bullet points. Readers need visual breaks, and they’ll appreciate the resulting white space that helps make your content more digestible. 

• Use numbers and adjectives in headlines to grab attention and convey the specific value provided by a post. A headline like 8 Easy Ways to Address Customer Complaints sounds a lot more interesting and actionable than a post titled, Dealing with Angry Customers. 

• Use call to action (CTA) words like “Download,” “Get,” and “Learn” to guide readers toward the next step you want them to take after engaging with your blog content. 

• Proofread every piece of content for grammar and spelling errors before you publish it. Or, better yet, use a professional copy editor who can address grammar issues and improve copy that isn’t clear. 

• Use images to support what you’re writing about. Don’t settle for stock art all of the time. Try creating screenshots and adding commentary to them using an image editing tool, like Photoshop, Pixlr, or Skitch. Use arrows, circles and other effects to clearly illustrate what you’re referring to in your blog content. 

• Ask readers to tell you what they’d like to learn from you. Try going beyond just inviting comments by including a short survey or poll in your content. 

• Follow the additional headline tricks outlined in CMI’s post, Content Strategy: 9 Secrets for Awesome Blog Post Titles. 

SEO considerations

If you want your blog post to show up on search engines, you need to follow some critical steps with blog marketing:

• Have a primary keyword phrase in mind as you write. It must be used several times in the post. Don’t aim too high. Settle for keyword phrases that aren’t too competitive. 

• Log in and use the full features of the popular Google Keyword Planner. But don’t hesitate to try other free and paid keyword tools. 

• Your developer can help to ensure that your blog is set to “www” or “non-www” — allowing both will appear as duplicate content to search engines. 

• Take care with URLs. It doesn’t make sense for them to include all the words in your post title. Instead, pick three or four critical words (including your keyword) and call it a day. Long URLs aren’t as effective as shorter ones when it comes to SEO, so why waste the space you have on unnecessary words like “of,” “that,” and “you” when they aren’t part of your keyword phrases? 

• Include relevant keywords in the file names of each image you include in a post (use dashes to separate each word in the name, like “Blog-Marketing-Success-Tips-List“). 

• Write a brief image alt tag (up to 15 words) for each image you post. This will display when users aren’t able to load the full image, and helps tell search engines more about the visual content you include in your posts. 

• Keep your SEO title (part of your post’s meta-data, which can be set in your CMS) to less than 70 characters, including spaces. Include the most important keyword phrase at the front of your SEO title. 

• Don’t forget to add a meta-description of around 150 characters (including spaces). Use words like “learn,” “find out,” and “get” to draw in readers (who will see this description in search engine results pages). 

• Get a handle on all keyword phrases you’re including in your overarching blog marketing strategy. When you have the opportunity, link those keywords to other posts you’ve written. 

• Connect your posts with Google Authorship.

Spreading the word with blog marketing

• Integrate your social media accounts with your blog pages, so you can easily share your new blog content across your networks, and keep track of conversations that are taking place on relevant topics. 

• Participate on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media. Engage with people who seem to have relevant interests. If they like the things your company posts about, some one-on-one interaction can increase the likelihood that they will seek out your blog for more of your insight. 

• Similarly, stay active in at least a few LinkedIn groups, and weigh in on what others are saying about topics you cover in your blog posts. 

• Encourage sharing by including social media buttons for all the most frequently used networks for your industry, and make sure these are easily visible to everyone visiting your blog pages. 

• Test the parameters for promoting your posts through social media. For example, some times may be more ideal for posting about your content than others. 

• Set up an RSS feed so your blog content can easily be syndicated and accessed, whenever and wherever your subscribers prefer to consume it. 

• Make it easy for people to subscribe to your blog. Include prominent subscribe buttons, calls to action, and links so that converting from a one-time viewer to a regular reader is as easy a process as possible.

• Periodically, look at what your competition is doing to promote their blogs. For example, I routinely use the MOZ Open Site Explorer tool to find out who links to my clients’ competitors (a feature that is available with a paid subscription). 

• Keep on the lookout for new link-building opportunities. Relevant links drive traffic and can influence search engine rankings — both of which are essential for blog marketing success. 

• Reach out to other bloggers on a regular basis. Comment on their blogs, ask them questions about their posts, or engage them in other relevant conversations. Promote what they’re writing about on your blogs, as well — but don’t forget to credit them for their insight and ideas. They’ll likely return the favor when you create compelling content their audience would benefit from seeing. 

• Respond to reader comments and questions as quickly as possible. This is an easy way to hold their interest, show that you value their input, and are responsive and trustworthy. 

• Make sure your blog is clearly visible and easily accessible from your company’s main website (it shouldn’t be buried in the footer). 

• Encourage employees to promote your blog posts on their own social networks, when appropriate. 

• Check out Marcus Sheridan’s post, The Ultimate 11-Step Plan to Launching a Successful Business Blog in 6 Months, for additional helpful tips. 

Your ability to succeed with blog marketing depends more on understanding your target audience members and giving them content they will crave (and share) than most anything else.

So how do these tips and tasks compare with what you’re already doing? What additional tips, tools, and ideas have worked well for your blog marketing efforts? If you have other suggestions, please share them with your fellow content marketers in the comments below.

For dozens of additional tips and insights that will help make your blogging efforts successful, check out our Ultimate Guide to Blogging.

Cover image via Bigstock

Some software leads are so unappealing to salespeople that they’d rather attend appointments with other prospects before closing them. Whether it’s for personal, ethical, or strictly business reasons, they will find grievous issue with all these leads except for the fact that, yes, they can close them.

But when you use them as a last resort, what happens when they fail?

Imagine it like this: say a giant monster is attacking your city. You’ve tried and are still trying to use conventional weaponry to drive it off. Entire Mr. Cold Admiral who says they’re only option is to just nuke the darn thing.

The troops do just that in spite of all risks and moral repercussions that typically comes off with firing off a WMD. But just before they could do that, the monster somehow catches them and now things only get more suicidal because they’ve failed to execute even the last resort.

Same thing can happen when you’re too bent on sending sales to make some highly volatile deals from certain software leads. You demonstrate some of the following mistakes:

• You put your bets on a plan that could still flop – The trick behind planning for a worst-case scenario is to actually know you still only got a 50/50 chance of going through. It’s one thing to pose to your salespeople the possibility of qualifying leads they may not like and another to actually make them do it.

• Your last resort felt more like your only one – Depressed or desperate, either way you felt like there really was no avoiding this situation now was there? If you knew that all along then why didn’t you make more effort to ensure the success of your sales rep? It’s almost like you wanted them to qualify these particular leads. You might as well have been more honest with yourself and pursued these to begin with.

• Alternatives were really out of the question – Following from the previous mistake, did you really share your reps confidence in other leads or did you just let them try for the sake of it? Maybe you should’ve had a little more faith. If your marketers have to constantly meet up with sales to define a lead, why should you be left out of it?

Like the WMD cliché of monster movies, there are so many things wrong with gunning for bad software leads as a last resort that don’t have anything to do with how bad they are. Despite how horrible they may seem, it gets even worse when your sales can’t pull it off.

Book review: Watertight Marketing – Delivering long-term sales results by Bryony Thomas

We know from our research published showing how businesses manage digital marketing, that many businesses don’t have a defined marketing strategy. In fact, more than half of businesses we surveyed (56%) didn’t have a marketing strategy, an even higher proportion than the 46% who didn’t have a digital strategy!

So when Bryony Thomas offered to share her advice on approaches to use a more planned approach to marketing, I was delighted to be able to publish these to help marketers looking to create a marketing plan. The techniques Bryony has shared in her popular series of posts on marketing planning on Smart Insights are based on the techniques she recommends in her book Watertight Marketing: delivering long-term sales results which I have been taking a look at recently to review our marketing approach.

The Watertight marketing approach

The book gets off to a really useful start with Bryony’s review of the marketing funnel. We all know the funnel concept of course, but by reviewing 13 of the most common touchpoint leaks as shown below she gives a great, actionable checklist to help businesses review and improve their communications strategy.

I recommend reading the book for this alone, but there is much else to recommend across the different parts of the book:

• Part 1 – A review of how to reduce the 13 touchpoint leaks. This is an introduction to the Watertight Marketing approach.
• Part 2 – Marketing communications approaches. Reviews how to develop key messages and the best timing to communicate these from different people in the business.
• Part 3 – Bucket, funnels and taps. This explores the leaks in more detail, discussing techniques to grow awareness and use emotional and rational arguments to progress prospects to purchase.
• Part 4 – Planning. I found the simple approaches to create a budget for different media really useful and measurement is covered simply too.

Who is the book recommended for?

The techniques to improve marketing described in the book apply to any type of business, B2C or B2B, but I think these particularly apply to businesses where there is a considered purchase of a relatively high product or service where nurturing of customers using content marketing is needed before purchase.

The clarity and simplicity of the advice mean that the book will work particularly well for smaller businesses, perhaps to be read by an owner who isn’t so familiar with marketing. But I think it will change the approach that more experienced marketers use too by getting them to question their approach. Consultants and agencies could also find it useful to change their approach too.

So, you can see that I thoroughly recommend this book in terms of its content. The style works well too, with a nice conversational style like discussing your marketing issues with a consultant. There are also checklist and frameworks to make the book actionable and small case studies to show how to apply the concepts, including a more detailed running case. You can find out more about Watertight Marketing and get a free sample chapter on this microsite.

What doesn’t work so well? Well, the only thing to bear in mind, is that this is a marketing strategy and planning book. It doesn’t recommend practical techniques to create awareness or nurture leads, particularly through digital marketing techniques. It isn’t practical for it to include these details and it would lose its clarity and strategic focus if it did. So for example, you won’t find detailed advice on using SEO, AdWords or Social media to create awareness, using remarketing using display ads or using email marketing to encourage repeat sales. Of course, Smart Insights has all the practical details you need for each of the digital marketing channels!

You can hear Bryony talk a the CIM Small Business conference on May 23rd where I’ll also be speaking.

Does your business do cold calling?

Having trouble making it effective?

In 2007 it took on average 3.68 attempts to reach a prospect, today it takes 8 attempts to reach a prospect.

This is why most sales people give up when they cannot reach their prospects.

If your work is in sales then I’m sure you know the pitfalls of cold calling. I know myself as when we first started in business I did some of this kind of calling, but now, although we still do a lot of calling, they aren’t so cold anymore.

I will go back to that in a minute but first I would like to discuss the problems of cold calling. No one wants to cold call, we all want better ways to reach our prospects.

The problem with cold calling

If you have ever done any kind of cold calling for a period of time then you will know that it takes a lot of calls to get one interested prospect. You will also know that when you call you do not know if you’re going to be able to reach the person you are calling, never mind if they are interested in what you are selling.

People don’t want to be sold to anymore.

The rate of response for cold calling is very low, only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment. I reckon this is a lot of wasted telephone calls.

Could you and your sales team be spending your time better?

Not only is it time consuming and results in low response rate, cold calling could also harm your brand.

If the first contact you make with a prospect is interrupting them with a sales call this is not a great start to your relationship. Some prospects will take a major dislike to you interrupting their busy day and they may not be open to what you have to say.

How inbound marketing brings leads to you

If people don’t want to be interrupted then how do you reach them?

Your prospects want to do their own research to discover who and what are the best products and services to use.

Inbound marketing was designed to draw your prospects to you. If you create the content they are looking for, then when they do their research and you are helpful, these prospects will come to you.

By nurturing your cold prospects to warm ones, with helpful content via email, content marketing and social media, you will create prospects who know and trust you.

So when you do reach out to contact them, they are no longer cold because they have already shown an interest in your company as you have consistently helped them in their buying decision.

They will also see you as a trusted brand and expert within your industry.

Cold calling  Warm calling in an inbound world

The way to approach a prospect via inbound is different. The prospect may have already downloaded your expert information on their particular problem.

They may also have downloaded some content that is specific to your unique positioning and already have an idea of what it will be like to work with you.

So they know you.

Already a huge advantage over cold calling.

Not only this but the average cost per lead from inbound is 60% less than outbound.

But before you make this call you need to first research your prospect, find out all you can about them to discover if they are a good fit for your business.

Take a look at their LinkedIn profile to see what their position within the company is as perhaps they are not the decision maker and they may be able to make an introduction to the right person.

Look at their interests and try to get an understanding of who they are. Look at their website and read their about us page. There is nothing worse than getting a call from someone who knows nothing about you or your business.

Go the extra mile to personalise the call to them.

Be consistent, if you cannot reach them send them an email explaining who you are and how it will benefit them to speak to you. Don’t talk about what specifically you sell, offer them some free tips or help.

Remember it takes 8 attempts to reach a prospect but don’t harass them. Let a good time to lapse before calling them again.

Key take aways

Cold calling is very time consuming and the response rate is low. So why not spend that time creating content that attracts your prospects to you. When you do reach out to them they are more aware of who you are and have already shown an interest in doing business with you.

Do your research before contacting them, be consistent and make sure you are speaking to the right person.

Now it’s your turn

What’s your thoughts on cold calling? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Many fans of Godzilla see him as the Japanese metaphor for nuclear weaponry. Others say he’s an environmental warning for the industries of science and technology. But whatever’s keeping the Big G going, it should also serve as a warning for marketers who neglect bad sales leads as if they were no more dangerous than radioactive waste.

One can argue that Godzilla himself actually inspired the idea of radiation turning regular species into giant monsters. And in that same likeness, plenty of horrendous mutations await your sales reps if you don’t take care to clean out your bad sales leads. To better understand, let’s take a look at how this sort of movie usually plays out.

• It starts with the dumping – Some clueless company starts dumping toxic waste somewhere where a certain animal formally dwelled. What of your dead sales leads? Where do you ‘dump’ the ones that didn’t qualify well? Do you leave them unmarked? Are they still in your database, piling up somewhere? What of the method used to generate these sales leads? Would you consider them good practice? Without any serious consequence?

• Then something eats it – Realistically, you would think eating something radioactive and toxic is more likely to kill the consumer. But that’s not always the case with monster movies eh? They not only survive, they start thriving off the stuff. It’s the same when your salespeople or your business merely allow the existence of bad sales leads somewhere in lead generation process. From shady marketing tactics to a swelling database, you won’t know that you got a monster of a problem until…

• It grows – Finally, you know it’s there. It’s the big space eating up your CRM. It’s the suspicion raised by your questionable qualification process. No matter what shape or form, this all started simply because you let a huge pile of bad sales leads stock up to feed something sinister. Now a shadow looms over the horizon for your business. The next thing you know, you’re firing off the guns, sending in the PR tanks, or calling to blow up your database and just salvage what’s left.

To put it simply, giant monsters are really just a kind of infestation that’s been horribly, horribly neglected. It’s something that was before off prevented, not dealt with. Likewise, the consequences of having so many bad sales leads stinking up your database could long be avoided if you actually took more responsibility in cleaning up.

Author: Amanda Scigaj

Marketing’s role in an organization often boils down to creating new leads and revenue opportunities, and then passing them to sales. But most marketers know that it’s more cost effective to renew business with an existing customer than to acquire a new lead.

Yet in the face of purchased lists and pressure to generate large lead volumes, the core concept of nurturing existing customers for continued revenue can get lost in the commotion.

So how do you keep customers engaged beyond the purchase? And how do you convert someone from a customer to a brand advocate? In Bluewolf’s new ebook with Marketo, Customer Obsessed Lifecycle Marketing, we outline three essential strategies for harnessing the power of customer advocates. By leveraging these three tenets of lifecycle marketing, you can leverage the power of customer advocates, and experience a more cyclical and explosive form of growth.

1. Increase Engagement Post Sale

Many companies map their lead lifecycles from the “anonymous lead” stage, right up until the moment of purchase. Unfortunately, this leads marketers to neglect customer nurturing after the purchase has been made. Post-sale lead nurturing is essential to keep customers engaged with your brand – eventually turning them into customer advocates.

Start by gathering additional data (through initiatives such as progressive profiling in your marketing automation tool) to create rich buyer personas for your customers. Who do they interact with to complete daily projects? What are their recurring pain points? How can you amplify their success? Once you’ve collected this information, you can create targeted, relevant, and personalized content to help your customers succeed.

2. Build Up Communication and Trust

Sending “email blasts” is no way to nurture your customers. Lasting, trusting relationships are built when you engage your customers with customized content over time. By touching base regularly with your customers to demonstrate that you are mindful of their goals, you can foster their trust and respect for your brand.

This can be done with simple gestures, such as a welcome campaign when customers register on your site. You could also create a sophisticated preference center to help you understand what your current and potential clients want to hear about your offerings. Using personalization software, you can offer them customized images, web content, and calls-to-action based on their behaviors and data.

3. Encourage Advocacy

Try to recall the last time you told a group of friends about a great customer experience you had. What made you transform from a customer into a customer evangelist? Most customers become advocates because they had a positive relationship with the company, or an emotional connection to a brand. When you consider the fact that 80% of all consumer purchases and B2B purchases include some form of word-of-mouth recommendation during the purchase cycle, customer evangelism has become a necessity for any company’s brand equity and ROI.

Here are some ways to encourage advocacy:

• Continue to check in with existing customers to gauge their advocacy. This can be done with satisfaction surveys, one-on-one communication at hosted events, or with incentivized email campaigns. Find groups on social media sites like LinkedIn to tap into common issues, or to create local meet-ups. Allowing your customers to be heard is the pillar of customer advocacy.

• Make it easy to share your brand’s content. This goes a long way toward encouraging customer advocacy. For example, include social sharing, or “email to a friend” buttons on all of your content – this makes sharing your brand as simple as a single click.

• Incentivize your customers to share positive experiences. Leverage gamification to incentivize customers to share ideas (with contests or leaderboards, for example), or host special events for top performers.

Your organization’s marketing team is on the front lines when it comes to facilitating your customer’s success with your brand – so don’t stop marketing once a purchase has been made. To find out how you can nurture leads through the entire customer, download our new ebook: Customer Obsessed Lifecycle Marketing.

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Why Marketing Doesn’t End at the Sale – Customer Obsessed Lifecycle Marketing was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com