Our technology-first approach has failed the city of the future. So-called “smart cities,” powered by technology, carry the promise of responding to the great pressures of our time, such as urban population growth, climate instability, and fiscal uncertainty. But by focusing on the cutting-edge technologies themselves and relying on private companies to move forward, we […]

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Most marketing automation systems start with known users. Some cutting-edge new systems can also nurture unknown prospects who visit your site but choose not to identify themselves. Few, however, focus on the very top of the funnel: buying signals in social media.

That’s exactly the key differentiator Vocus touts for its marketing automation system, which is almost unknown in the industry but already has more than 8,000 small and medium-sized business customers.

“We are actively searching Twitter for buying signals,” Vocus product manager Anil Yasyerli told me last week. “For example, if you’re an SEO agency … there are millions of people looking for SEO help. We find these conversations that are going on and then hand them over to our customers.”

There’s a reason that almost no one knows that Vocus does marketing automation.

In spite of a claimed $28 million in marketing automation revenue in 2013 and a projected $40 million in 2014, the company started out as a government services agency in 1992, moved into PR in 1997, and only moved into the marketing automation space in 2011. Vocus already owned the popular PRweb press release site and the HARO (Help a Report Out) journalist service at the time, and entered the marketing technology space via acquisition of both an email marketing system and Engine 140, a Twitter social media marketing solution.

All of that complicated history means that one of the mid-sized marketing automation vendors by revenue isn’t well known in the space.

(By comparison, Silverpop, which IBM recently acquired, had perhaps $90 million in annual revenue, and Act-On, one of the companies that made our top 10 list in marketing automation and just took in $42 million in an investment round, might have something like $50-60 million in annual revenue, since it earned $12 million in 2012 and then says it tripled that year, then more than doubled in 2013.)

Now, however, it’s apparently time to make a change.

“We have stayed below the radar for a while, but we’re ready to make a big statement,” Yasyerli says.

Vocus’ claim to fame, its social media integration, works by using technology from the Engine 140 acquisition. The company licenses the Twitter firehose and looks for buying signals at all stages of the buying process.

“These signals range in definition from ‘[a product or service I’m using] is broken or not working well,’ which would be very early in the cycle, to ‘What’s the best [brand or provider of a product or service] I’m now looking at?’ which would be farther along the cycle, to finally, ‘I’m in the process of [purchasing or acquiring a product or service,] where should I go?’ which is at the end of the cycle,” a Vocus data scientist told me.

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We recently released the VB Marketing Automation Index,
based on reports from over 1,000 marketing pros.

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Vocus finds 15 million of these signals each quarter, totaling up to 60 million a year, and it feeds those into prospect-nurturing campaigns for its marketing automation clients.

The company is also working on technology to do the same for other social media sites — although not Facebook, which unlike Twitter is a closed system — and for blogs, which it is already checking but has not yet integrated into the buying signals funnel. In essence, it is not just automating marketing but also automating lead generation.

Once Vocus brings potential buyers into the system, its customers can run their prospects through a fairly standard set of marketing automation technologies: email marketing, landing pages, lead scoring, social media monitoring, and so on. It’s marketing automation “lite,” but it’s certainly marketing automation.

“We were originally oriented to small business,” Yasyerli told me. “We added social media management and social media marketing, and then we started slowly moving up, checking the boxes, adding Salesforce.com integration, and going midmarket.”

The company may be trending that direction, but it’s still decidedly a small-company solution so far, without the depth and breadth — to say nothing of maturity — of features that a Hubspot or an Act-On, never mind a Marketo or Oracle Eloqua have. But later this year it’s adding integrations with Magento and SugarCRM ,and it will continue to add more features, Yasyerli said. With expected 2014 revenue of $40 million just in marketing automation, Yasyerli said the company is “one of the few largest marketing vendors out there.”

That might be a little optimistic, but it’s not crazy. There are almost certainly at least 10 vendors that make more than Vocus in marketing automation, but probably not 20.

The company may have more ammunition to acquire technologies and add features now as well. Just recently, on April 7, Vocus was acquired by private equity firm GTCR for an all-cash $446.5 million deal.

“We are very pleased to … partner with Vocus to help maximize its growth potential,” Mark Anderson, a GTCR Managing Director, said at the time. “Vocus has a demonstrated history of building innovative software and helping customers achieve success. We look forward to the opportunity to work with Vocus to enhance its industry leadership.”

Vocus is a leading provider of cloud marketing software that helps businesses reach and influence buyers across social networks, online and through media. Vocus provides an integrated suite that combines social marketing, search market... read more »

Eloqua, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle, is the leading provider of modern marketing automation and revenue performance management software that helps ensure every component of marketing works harder and more efficiently to drive r... read more »

"Built by marketers, for marketers". Marketo provides online software to manage demand generation marketing campaigns: from generating sales leads and email marketing, to lead nurturing and lead scoring – with analytics to measure m... read more »

HubSpot is the world’s leading inbound marketing and sales platform. Since 2006, HubSpot has been on a mission to make the world more inbound. Today, over 10,000 customers in 65 countries use HubSpot’s software, services, and suppo... read more »

Callidus Software Inc. (doing business as CallidusCloud) provides sales effectiveness software and services. Its sales effectiveness systems enable companies to monitor, analyze and enhance Hiring, Marketing, Selling and Learning effor... read more »

While dozens of startups pour time and money into developing mobile health devices for the young, hale and hearty, they might be better off going grayer. The opportunity to sell technology to senior citizens is huge now and will only get bigger as more of us age into that segment. Which vendors will be best positioned to capitalize on this opportunity – a handful of early movers that are already in the market, or vendors like Fitbit (see disclosure) or Jawbone that focus on younguns?

“Developers making technologies for the 20- and 30-somethings are missing a huge opportunity to supply the 100-million-plus people aged 50 and over in this country,” Laurie Orlov, an analyst with Age In Place Technology, said in an interview. She estimates that this market is worth $2 billion now and will hit $20 billion by 2020. Semico Research puts the number higher, forecasting that the market for gear like remote health monitors, oximeters, glucose monitors, medication reminders, heart rate monitors, safety alert bracelets, etc. will hit $30 billion by 2017.

How big is big?

You want more evidence? Research released in October conducted by Oxford Economics for the AARP said that Americans over 50 spend $4.6 trillion annually, with the ripple effect of that spending hitting $7.1 trillion per year. These are very big numbers. If you have an elderly relative, sooner or later you’ll find out how important technology can be in keeping that person involved and connected with the outside world — perhaps even enabling her to “age in place” as opposed to moving into an assisted-care facility or senior home.

One early mover in this field is Lively, which provides a home monitoring service pairing sensors with a wireless hub. It discretely notes when Grandma leaves the bedroom, opens the fridge or her pill bottle, etc., and alerts family or health professionals if, say, she doesn’t leave the bedroom for 10 hours or fails to take her pill (or at least open the bottle). A keyfob sensor can track when and if the house or car keys are used. Competitors include BeClose and GrandCare. There is a tradeoff here. Nobody wants to feel surveilled, but if the choice comes down to monitoring – with appropriate privacy measures in place — or having to leave the home, most seniors will opt to stay and be monitored.

Tech for senior citizens: Keep it simple

The key to success will be ease of installation and use, which is why Ovum Research analyst Mike Sapien said he hopes the drop-dead simple Fitbit/Jawbone model can be adapted for new purposes. A pill bottle with an alarm on it may seem cool, but if a user is old enough, she might be on five or six different medications and have vision and hearing problems which could make an array of beeping bottles more a puzzle than a solution.

“This stuff has to be incredibly simple,” Sapien  said. Devices like Fitbit may not be able to fulfill all these functions but can certainly do more than count steps and log mileage. They are great because users put them on and forget about them. “They tell you via your computer when the battery is low. You don’t have to worry about starting an app when you go out, then hitting a button if something goes wrong,” he said.

Chad Jones, the LogMeIn VP in charge of the company’s Xively Internet of things business, agreed. The whole quantified-self category needs to be expanded from athletes and healthy young people to the geriatric population, he said. “There is no reason such devices can’t watch a person’s heart rate as they go through their day to see if there’s a spike that might indicate they’re off their meds,” he noted.

Lively CEO Iggy Fanlo sees wearable devices as an adjunct to his company’s home monitoring service. Within the next few months, Lively will add an accelerometer-equipped pendant that will report the wearer’s movement, including falls, back to the caregiver or family. “The problem with pendants now is that people often don’t push the button even if they should because they’re disoriented, unconscious or just embarrassed,” he said.  The accelerometer will detect that fall, but to avoid false positives, it will wait a “non-critical amount of time” to see if movement resumes before alerting help.

That product will compete with existing personal emergency response systems (PERS) like Lifeline and MedicAlert, which are adding capabilities — GPS-assisted map locations, for example — atop their standard emergency-call-buttons.

Great Call, which makes easy-to-use Jitterbug phones, is also a contender in this race, according to Orlov. The phones are designed with big displays and big buttons for the sight impaired and also come with additional services, like the opportunity to talk with a nurse or a doctor as part of the package.

As more device-savvy adults join the ranks of senior citizens, they will bring their skills with them, but there are still huge hurdles among what the MetLife Maturity Institute (now sadly defunct) used to call the “old-old.”  These are the oldest of the senior citizens — people in their 80s, 90s, early 100s, most of whom are not computer-literate. Many don’t even type. For that demographic, the notion of logging into something and remembering passwords, is beyond foreign. So vendors have a lot of work to do to make technology useable for these people.

While there is wiggle room in all these market-size estimates, there’s no doubt that there’s huge demand for technology that helps seniors stay in their homes as long as possible. Added bonus: there are two sets of prospective buyers. First, there are the seniors themselves, who may, as discussed, submit to monitoring if it means staying home. Second are their guilt-riddled (and also aging) adult children, who may live far away and who want to keep their parents happy. Not a bad market at all.

For more on Lively, check out Fanlow’s appearance on Gigaom’s Internet of things podcast:

Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
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• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• The top 10 cloud trends for 2014
• The internet of things: a market landscape

Getting traffic to your e-commerce website is just the first step in setting up your online business. However, to have a successful online business venture, you need to convert those visitors into customers. Next step is to retain those existing buyers and making them loyal customers for your business just because the cost of attracting new customer is as much as eight times more than holding onto the existing ones. In short, loyalty is the new currency in the e-commerce world. However, online companies fail to deliver exceptional customer experience that eventually creates customer loyalty.

Every business has to deal with rude customers. And good business people keep their cool even in the face of dreadful rudeness and downright abusive behaviour. Stooping to the level of the rude customer doesn’t win you any business. Besides, do you really want rude customers in your store or at your meetings?

Generally we find it easier to deal with the extremely rude individual because we can attribute their poor behaviour to them. However, subtle rudeness is more difficult for us to cope with because it implies some kind of error on our part.

Online, it appears that there is a growth in extreme rudeness. People find it easier – thanks to relative anonymity – to be very rude. You can see it every day in negative reviews, for instance, or comments on blogs. In one study the amount of online rudeness doubled from one year to the next. It appears that the lack of feedback from individuals facing us reduces our impulse control mechanisms, making negative emotions come to the surface.

For businesses this can translate into negative comments and reviews. However, new research suggests that the tone of voice of those reviews can have a substantial impact. It turns out that even if those reviews are negative, if they include words of politeness they can actually end up being positive.

For example, imagine your product gets the negative review saying “This is just complete rubbish – too expensive and it doesn’t work”. That is clearly off-putting to future potential buyers. But what if that review says “I don’t want to be mean, but I think this is too expensive and doesn’t work. Frankly it is rubbish.” That says the same thing, but using much more polite language.

The researchers at the University of Chicago found that when reviews included terms of politeness, future customers were prepared to pay more for items, not less. In other words, politeness in your customers helps you increase your revenues.

So how can you encourage polite reviews? The answer is simple: be polite yourself. Politeness breeds politeness. That means when people comment on or review things you need to be polite – thank them and use words associated with being polite. This will lead others to be polite too; we find it very difficult to be rude when those around us are being polite, thanks to social pressure. It also starts to build a relationship – diminishing the perceived anonymity online, thereby lessening the impact of reduced impulse control.

The more you are polite on your website, the more people will be polite back and the higher the prices you can charge. Politeness and profits go hand in hand it seems.

You know the line: "No one likes to be sold, but everyone likes to buy."

That's especially true these days when prospective buyers have so much information available to them about providers and services. They identify what they believe is the problem, research solutions, find providers they think can help them, then they call.

They want what they want, and they don't want anyone trying to push anything on them. It's the same whether they call you or you call on them via a referral, warm call, or cold call. You can't use a heavy hand.

If your prospects act uninterested, don't respond to emails, won't return phone calls, or seem to make excuses for why they aren't buying, make sure you aren't following these four practices:

Over the last 2 years, Google has gradually tightened the screw on its search engine algorithms and has taken several steps to improve the overall quality of its search results. For common users, that is obviously good news.

But for businessmen like you, who depend heavily on Google for website traffic and sales leads, this presents several challenges and opportunities at the same time – depending how you look at it.

On one hand, you can no longer apply cheap SEO tricks to attract long term search engine traffic. But on the other hand, you now have a huge opportunity to demonstrate the true knowledge and expertise of your industry and make a name for yourself with high quality B2B content marketing.

And while there’s still is a debate on how Google actually defines quality, three factors are almost universally agreed upon.

-          In-depth content that addresses issues in detail.

-          Quality backlinks from other established websites

-          Content that gets shared frequently

If you can address these three factors with your content, you’ll not only guarantee regular streams of search engine traffic to your website, but also build a strong brand image that will ultimately establish you as a reliable name in your industry.

What Exactly is Content Marketing?

While many internet marketers have started using the term content marketing almost synonymously with blogging, in reality it is much more than that.

Content marketing, as the name suggests, is marketing your brand using quality content and sharing valuable industry knowledge. This includes all forms of online and offline content.

But since we’re talking about the internet world, we’ll limit ourselves to online content marketing only.

The objective, however, with both of them is the same – providing value through content and creating brand loyalty.

As a business owner, here are some of the most effective ways you can benefit from content marketing and use it to attract search engine traffic, brand loyalty and long term customers.

1- Build a Solid Blogging Strategy

Blogging is at the core of any content marketing strategy. This is where you can address the issues of your particular industry in detail, offer your perspective on them and share views with your target customers.

What you don’t want to do with blogging, however, is to focus entirely on your own products and services. Blogging is not meant for that.

But this is what many business blogs do, and that is why they never contribute to their overall business performance.

Your blogging strategy should revolve around the needs of your customers. The best way to do that is to list down the most common issues of your industry that everyone wants to know about.

Under each issue/problem, list down the solutions that you can provide for each of them. Now with these problems and solutions in mind, create blog post ideas that address each of the problems in detail and provide actionable solutions against them.

Write detailed posts and write like an expert – which is what you’re supposed to be anyway.

This is all you need to do. And this is what will differentiate you from your competitors as well.

Google loves detailed posts with actionable points. If you stick to this simple strategy long enough, Google will soon start sending you more traffic, which will ultimately give you more customers.

2- Combine Infographics With Blogging

Blogging itself is a very effective way to communicate with your target audience and attract more traffic. But when you add infographics to the mix, it becomes an irresistible combination.

Infographics are made by combining text content with eye catching graphics. They’re easy on the eye and can communicate a lot more information than blog posts in a very short time. Infographics are also very effective in getting more backlinks.

Someone like Neil Patel from QuickSprout.com uses infpgraphics extremely effectively and attracts literally hundreds of high quality backlinks from other websites.

And backlinks, as I said earlier, are one of the key indicators that Google uses to rank a website in search results.

You can either hire a graphic designer to create infographics for you, or you can use free online infographic tools to create them yourself.

Either way, they can be very effective in differentiating you from your competitors.

3- Create Viral Videos to Boost Your Brand

With the social networking age in full flow, viral video marketing has become one of the most effective forms of content marketing.

Not only do videos get shared much more frequently than any other form of content, they also bring in much higher referral traffic from other websites.

But the secret to creating viral videos is addressing the issues of your customers in an extremely engaging and interesting manner. They’re all about communicating your message indirectly in a light way.

But if you can get it right, there’s nothing better for boosting your brand image and announcing yourself to the world.

4- Use the Strength of B2B Trading Portals

This is one of the most overlooked, yet extremely effective, ways of getting your content across to your most relevant readers. Online B2B trading portals like QualityTrade.com, TradeBanq.com etc. have thousands of registered business users who are actively looking for relevant buyers and suppliers. These portals also have very strong reputation with search engines because they have millions of products listed on them with lots of content.

So if you register with them as a free supplier, post a few products and then add good quality content that includes backlinks to your website, you will not only get a good chance to rank higher on search engines but will also get your content in front of thousands of highly interested and relevant readers. Moreover, it will immediately build your credibility as a serious business.

5- Create Short Presentations To Build Credibility

Another form of content marketing that can help you attract more search engine traffic and, at the same time, establish you as an industry expert is creating short text and visual presentations.

You can do that by using summaries of your blog posts, turning them into bulleted points and uploading their PDF or PowerPoint versions on websites like Slideshare.net.

Not only can these presentations send you more referral traffic, they can often act as additional proof of your credibility and industry knowledge.

6- Use Social Media Marketing to Your Advantage

Just like blogging, social media presence has become a mandatory part of any content marketing strategy. This is where you can get closer to your customers and engage them using different images, videos and text content.

But that is not the only reason why you should care about social media websites.

As I said earlier, Google now considers the number of times a particular piece of content has been shared as a measure of its quality. So this can have a direct impact on your search engine rankings as well.

There are two ways you can ensure you take full benefit of social media websites.

-          Create your official profiles on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. Integrate social media sharing buttons across your website and blog, using services like AddThis, and encourage your visitors to share your content.

-          Promote your content aggressively across 2-3 main social networks, especially Google+ and Facebook since both of them can impact your search rankings in the long run.

Conclusion

Smart and aggressive content marketing should be your primary focus as far as online marketing and lead generation is concerned. Focus on creating value based content, make it shareable and promote it using different social media platforms and B2B trading portals. If you stick to this strategy long enough, you’ll eventually be able to attract more traffic from search engines and a higher number of conversions through your website.

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The post How to Strategically Use B2B Content Marketing for Branding appeared first on Blogging Tips.

GUEST POST

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The marketing automation space is growing rapidly and will continue to do so over the next couple of years, with marketing automation vendors predicting a 60 percent increase in revenue in 2014.

But are their revenues increasing quicker than your revenue when you implement the tools?

Moving to a marketing automation tool is painful and expensive. You will have to migrate data, get your staff trained, build your processes, set up integration with other software (e.g. CRM systems) and take on the substantial risk that, from the wide range of vendors to choose from, you’ve picked the wrong tool.

So the reality is you start out by losing money.

And depending on the types of products or services you are selling you may still require a sales person to close off the deal so without the right team in place you can do all the nurturing you want but you may not get the sales.

What happens if you’ve picked the wrong vendor? Or if marketing automation is not suitable for your organization? Then it’s a lot of time and money wasted … which impacts your revenue.

But it’s not all bad news!

If your products/services are suitable for marketing automation, you spend the time picking the right tool and you invest the necessary time and resources up front, you can see significant returns, like Andy Mackensen’s H.U.M.A.N. Healthy Vending, who told me he’s seen amazing results:

“We increased revenue by 300% since implementing Infusionsoft.”

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I’m studying marketing automation ROI with VentureBeat.
Help me out, and I’ll share the data with you.

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That, of course, is music to the ears of marketing automation vendors, who are selling potential clients on the increases in revenue that marketing software will deliver:

“Typically our customers see a 20 to 50% increase in revenue after adopting marketing automation – some much higher than this,” Atri Chatterjee, CMO of Act-On says. “Our customers often get 6 times more traffic and 3.5 times more leads when they implement HubSpot,” Mike Volpe, CMO of HubSpot, echoes.

But marketing automation is just a component of your overall inbound marketing solution, so these numbers are not simply due to marketing automation. So what does go wrong and how do you avoid this to ensure you get the returns the industry is quoting?

Decide whether marketing automation is suitable for your business

Marketing automation is not suitable to every business.

Does your team have the marketing skills necessary to take true advantage of it? Do you have sufficient leads that could feed into the marketing automation processes you’ll define? Do you have a good CRM tool to close all the leads you are nurturing? Do you have products or services that don’t require a lead nurturing process?

You need to ask these and many more questions before diving in and buying a silver bullet to all your marketing issues.

Pick the right vendor

Picking the right vendor to work with is not easy.

There are so many vendors to choose from with both the older more established players and the new kids on the block claiming to have the innovative features you require. To evaluate the players you’ll need to understand if this tool will fit in with the existing tools you already use, whether it have the flexibility to suit your workflows, and whether it will be too complex for your team to set up.

There are many considerations and it’s easy to get this one wrong. And it’s easy to under-estimate the work required:

“We dedicated one person full time to work on Marketo but it took us a lot longer to get our ROI because the software is complex and there was a lot of setup and planning required to build out the processes, such as drip campaigns,” David Henzel of MaxCDN told me.

Invest the necessary time upfront

There is significant work involved in moving to a new solution.

As Rick Carlson, co-founder of SharpSpring, said: “Marketing automation systems are not a time saver. You will invest more time but if implemented correctly you will get more results.”

A lot of vendors charge you an onboarding fee where you have a consultant assigned to you to help you build your marketing automation processes. As well as generating more revenue for the marketing automation provider it also helps with customer retention because they know that a lot of their customers will not figure out marketing automation themselves and will need help implementing it. To get maximum value from these calls you need to allocate the time and do your homework in between these sessions.

There’s no magic here: If you’re not prepared to invest the time, you won’t get the results.

Integrate with your existing tools and systems

The marketing automation tool you choose does not replace some of the existing tools or systems you have implemented.

For example, marketing automation providers typically have some form of CRM component in their solution. But they will generally not have the same level of functionality that the CRM vendors provide, so you will probably want to integrate with your existing CRM system.

These type of integrations are typically complex and some vendors may not even support your current CRM system. So it’s vital that you figure out how this is going to work or even if it’s going to work at all. Why nurture all those leads if it’s not fully integrated with your sales process?

Providing good integration options for some of your existing systems or tools will be a key requirement and this integration needs to be tested.

Iterate and test

Your marketing automation set up needs to be refined on a regular basis. Are you doing regular A/B testing? Are you analyzing the results? Are you tweaking to improve?

It’s the same with any digital marketing initiative, it never works perfectly and there’s always room for improvement.

The marketing automation space is hot and can do wonders for your business. But it’s not a magic solution, nor does it operate on its own. Moving to a marketing automation tool comes with a set of dangers but also the possibility of great results.

As with all software it has its pitfalls, but if you invest your money, time and resources wisely and pick the best solution for your needs, it will reap benefits.

What is your experience with marketing automation solutions? What were the key issues when you implemented a solution? I’d like to know.

Ian is the CEO of RazorSocial which has become one of the top social media sites globally since launching in just over a year with over 100,000 visitors per month and 7,000 subscribers.

Question of the day.

How many websites were there by end of 2012?

1. 6.3 million
2. 630 million
3. 6.3 billion

Correct answer? 630 million (src).

Granted that a lot of domains are owned by squatters, even if 10% of them were owned by legitimate businesses, that would be staggering 63 MILLION websites that are looking for traffic.

What’s interesting is that out of that 630 million, about 10% were added in 2012 ALONE. In other words, the rate at which websites are coming online is increasing exponentially.

Of course, what does every website owner want? More traffic! (Even though more traffic doesn’t always mean more customers.)

For some reason, people are taught the old ways of doing SEO, as in the stuff that used to work before all these crazy updates and sometimes even before the mighty search giant Google.

Why? I have no idea.

My guess is that there are SEO “gurus” that are still making money off selling old SEO tactics that used to work in late 90′s. (That’s why you should STOP listening to gurus and run tests yourself to see what really works). People read them and think they are still valid.

Whatever the reason maybe, here are some facts to consider if you’re thinking of investing in SEO. (whatever that means)

SEO is really a content game

(Get it? “Content game”)

No matter what anyone tells you, without content, no one is going to link to you.

Makes sense, right? Linking to a website or a page is like giving a “praise” to a speaker at a conference. But if you don’t open your mouth and give people good content (i.e. media), why on earth would anyone clap for you?

Newbie SEOs or SEO agencies will tell you things like onsite optimization, proper keywords, good navigation, etc etc. Problem is that all that stuff is now handled by most CMS (content management system) is like WordPress and Blogger, and you really don’t need to do any of that.

You need LINKS. Lots of them.

And there are only 3 ways to get them

• spam the hell out of people – which never works long term
• ask people to link to you – very tiring & manually intensive
• make good content and persuade people to link to you

What are good “baits” to get people to link to you?

• Guest blogging (provided that you actually write stuff people want to read)
• Infographics (like this one about how SEO is dying)
• Be an expert & know your stuff down cold
• Freebies (example: turning freebies into revenue)
• Case Studies – (example: starting a “zero risk” business)

But what’s interesting is that now, the content has to be more than just good… they have to be GREAT.

Moz did a research on number of keywords in content that occupy the top positions of Google rankings, and they found that there’s a correlation between length & position.

Why is this the case?

Simply because more words = more likelihood that you’ll attract higher quantity of links.

And this is why the ROI on SEO (if you actually spend money on outsourcing) is tough because the odds are that you are writing your content for your site, while having people elsewhere link to them. Not to mention if you are doing PR, TV/radio ads, social media and so on, how can you really say that the SEO rankings were result of their action vs yours?

And that’s why I don’t “do” SEO for clients.

Without landing page optimization, no amount of SEO will help you

If there’s NOTHING you get from reading this, know that online marketing is TWO sided.

1) Driving traffic

and

2) Converting traffic

Problem with most “marketers” is that they’re so focused on the top side of the funnel: driving traffic. It’s like clapping with one hand.

Without proper landing page & copywriting, you might as well be driving traffic to your competitor because no one is going to take any action. Remember, each page on your website is a chance for you to convince them to do business with you. (And this is WHY i advocate so strongly on people learning copywriting).

Here’s a perfect example from ShoeMoney (where I guest blog regularly)

Three years ago at Webmaster World Pubcon there was a site clinic where top search engine blogger – Danny Sullivan and Google Search Engineer – Matt Cutts were giving advice to people who wanted tips manipulating the Google search results to rank their website higher then it currently (naturally/organically) was.

Dr David Klein stood up and gave out his website. He said he wanted to rank for “San Diego Chiropractic”. After bringing up Dr Klein’s website Danny Sullivan cracked a joke that he might want to have “San Diego Chiropractic” in the title of the website if you want to be ranked. Which also inspired the crowd to have a good laugh at Dr Klein’s ignorance of SEO.

I remember feeling really bad for Dr Klein and evidently so did many others because pretty much every SEO on the planet came out of the woodwork to help him. Now keep in mind before this conference he was not found anywhere for “San Diego Chiropractic”. But soon after… with the help of all the top SEO’s in the world including a post by Matt Cutts containing 8 links to Dr Klein’s San Diego Chiropractic website, he was ranking #1 for San Diego Chiropractic in no time.

3 years later he still holds that #1 listing.

Ok sounds great right? Google ‘s top gun (Matt Cutts) and all the best SEO’s in the world have advised him how to manipulate Google ‘s results to make his website show up #1.

But there is only one problem. When DK (Dr David Klein) came to me for help converting web visitors into customers he told me he was not getting any customers from his website. And honestly a quick look at the website shows you why.

Its not very user friendly and there is no real call to action or incentive to book an appointment.

I told DK we would have to do some serious design changes to get some conversion. But he had no interest in that. He said he did not want to lose his #1 ranking for San Diego Chiropractic by making changes to the website….. even if it delivered him zero actual sales or customers.

If SEO is a marketing channel and it produces NO customers, why keep investing in it?

What’s the point of getting the clicks if no one takes any action?

Social profile / brand is a huge SEO factor

This is probably the GREATEST thing ever that Google has done

Few days ago, I managed to set of my car alarm after losing my car alarm remote. The car honked non stop for 5-10 minutes while I was frantically trying to look for solution. I was so frustrated that I physically removed the car battery (btw.. bad idea, because the alarm is 100x louder without the hood suppressing the sound… do this at your own risk.)

Of course, I started googling for answers.

Back in the old days, search engine results (even Google’s) were littered with links with REALLY crappy content (like most of eHow), where there’s 5% content and rest are ads. In some verticals (like “how to fix car alarm”) is still plagued with crappy content that provides zero content.

But now, thanks to Google authorship, you can tell if an article has been written by an actual person or if it was written by bunch of content farm slaves who know nothing about the topic yet claim to be “experts” just because they have nice looking website.

In fact, “SEO”-d articles with the author’s face next to it gets WAY more clicks:

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That’s a heatmap of where people are clicking on search the engines.

Notice the red (i.e. more clicks) are focused around links that have PICTURES next to them because we are genetically programmed to look at faces, not text.

In another ranking #1 in SEO isn’t the only sole factor in getting clicks, but rather your social profile.

Make sense right? You want to read stuff from people who are doing it every day, not just some “how” articles that gives you 5 sentences on what you should do, followed by 4 pages of ads.

Some verticals are close to impossible rank #1

(…. with the amount of time/money you’re investing in)

If you refer back to the source above that mentions how many websites there are on the internet, you’ll notice a fascinating statistic about spam:

144 billion – Total email traffic per day worldwide.
68.8% – Percentage of all email traffic that was spam.
50.76% – Percentage of all spam that was about pharmaceuticals, the top category of all spam.

If you do the math, that’s 144 BILLION x 68.9% x 50.76% = 50.36 BILLION email spams that get sent daily to sell people viagra, prozac, or whatever the flavor of the month is.

Why?

Because ranking #1 for some of these verticals (even for blackhats) is insanely competitive.

There are entrenched companies who spend millions, if not tens of millions, of dollar pumping out content, doing crazy linkbuilding, PR releases, link baits, etc. etc. to make sure they rank #1.

Here’s a 2012 Moz blog post of some of the most competitive keywords by vertical:

If you’re an insurance sales guy in LA trying to rank #1 for “insurance”, good luck. You’re going head to head against every insurance company in the country. The smarter thing to do is go after long tail keywords like “los angeles insurance company” (which is still competitive, but not as bad as one or two word keywords).

For those local businesses seeking local leads,… unless they want to be in the business of doing SEO, the better bet is to use search marketing to get local customers instead.

We marketers can learn a lot from teachers. Our goals are very much the same:  we want our audience to remember our message.  What teachers have known for a long time is that active participation in the learning process increases attention and that in turn increases memory. If marketers can also encourage active participation from our target audience in the messages and stories we are telling about our products, we will reap the benefits of increased brand awareness, leads and sales.  Delivering our content via webinars is the perfect opportunity to use active participation to increase our audience’s memory of the concepts presented.

To understand more about how this works, let’s first look at what teachers know:

Active participation leads to attention

In Madeline Hunter’s book Enhancing Teaching, she defines active participation as the consistent engagement of the mind of the learner with the content of the lesson.

There are two types of active participation:

1. Overt Active Participation: physically or audibly performing a task that helps the learner grasp the concept more fully

2. Covert Active Participation: performing a mental activity independently

Attention increases memorability

In the study Interactions between Attention and Memory by Marvin M Chun and Nicholas B Turk-Browne of the Department of Psychology, Yale University the following conclusions were drawn:

“…memory has a limited capacity, and thus attention determines what will be encoded. Division of attention during encoding prevents the formation of conscious memories…”

“…it is uncontroversial that attending to or focusing on a fact or event will enhance the likelihood of later memory…”

“Classic psychologists such as William James stated long ago that ‘we cannot deny that an object once attended to will remain in the memory, while one inattentively allowed to pass will leave no traces behind’”

Therefore, marketers need to do all they can to grab the attention of their audience and ensure that audience is focusing completely on the concept they wish the audience to remember.

What this means for webinar production:

If active participation leads to attention which leads to memorability, then the production of a webinar needs to be centered on interactivity for maximum impact. We marketers must focus on keeping the attention of the audience that we worked so hard procure, so that our message breaks through digital distractions and our investment yields a return.

We need to encourage both overt and covert active participation throughout a webinar to engage the audience’s mind with the content we are delivering.  Fortunately, webinar technology is exactly designed to foster interactivity and engagement. Here are some ideas for integrating active participation throughout your next webinar to capture and maintain attention:

Overt Active Participation:

- Share: Use a Q&A or chat to ask the audience to share their experience with the topic at hand. An open chat method for this exercise will allow the audience to learn from their peers attending the event as well as from you.

- Brainstorm: Ask the attendees to write in an open chat what they could do with the information you just presented – engaging their minds around applying the concept you just introduced to their own situation. You might consider a pro and con list using two chats if appropriate for the exercise.

-Write: Instruct your attendees to take out a piece of paper and draw their own version of a diagram, chart or something that you have shared which will help them actively learn and make the concept their own. In smaller webinars or using breakout rooms you can use the white boarding functionality to accomplish this within the webinar room.

Covert Active Participation:

- Visualize: Ask for the audience to consider and visualize what they would do or say as you describe a concept or situation.

- Consider: Prompt the attendees to consider or prepare an answer in their head in preparation for an overt exercise where they will be asked to share their thoughts or insights with the group.  Continually encouraging the audience to think this way throughout the presentation regardless of whether a more overt exercise will follow will help remind the audience to engage their minds with the topic at hand.

I’m sure you can think of many additional ways to foster active participation in your next webinar for maximum content retention.

For more webinar best practices, visit my blog here: http://blogs.adobe.com/adobeconnect/tag/webinar-best-practices

Great customer service is an important element of any successful business. But for small businesses, it’s absolutely critical.

Large companies have many resources at their disposal to build an image and make sales, including dedicated marketing teams, branding consultants, and large advertising budgets. But small businesses rely on repeat customers, word of mouth, and referrals for the bulk of their revenue.

Many small business owners don’t even realize that they’re providing inadequate customer service. Not only does this hurt their bottom line, but it also puts the future of their business in jeopardy.

Here are five common mistakes to avoid:

Being Hard to Contact

Great customer service starts with being available. How can a customer get in touch if it’s hard to find your contact information? Locating your email address and phone number should be an effortless process.

A contact form is another great resource for allowing customers to reach out, ask questions, and provide feedback. The more options you include, the easier it’ll be for a customer to contact your business.

Slow Response Time

Every customer deserves a response. If you’re ignoring customers, that’s a huge problem that needs fixed immediately. Every customer also deserves a quick response. No one should have to wait around for weeks while your business answers their question or solves their problem.

Most small business owners don’t have the time to efficiently respond to every customer. That’s fine. There are many options available for streamlining the process, such as delegating email follow-up or implementing an automated help desk system.

Not Properly Utilizing the Telephone

Don’t underestimate the importance of telephone customer service in the internet era. Many people still prefer talking to a person in real time. Your number should be easy for customers to find and the phone should be answered consistently.

If your staff is often unable to answer the phone, there are many affordable alternatives. You can hire a small business virtual receptionist to handle incoming calls or use a call center service provider. Either solution allows customers to reach an attentive representative for your company.

Failing to Train Staff

Customer service is a group activity. At small businesses, most employees will have some level of interaction with customers. Each customer interaction can impact the image and reputation of the entire business, so make sure that every team member knows how to handle these interactions.

The most important thing is to train them to be courteous, understanding, and helpful at all times, even when facing complaints. They should also do their best to meet deadlines and fulfill any promises that were made to the customer.

Not Asking for Feedback

Most customers won’t volunteer information about the positive and negative aspects of your business. But that information helps you determine what you’re doing right and what needs work, so you should seek it out.

Make it convenient for customers to fill out surveys, forms, or feedback cards, whether online or in-person. It should be anonymous to encourage participation. Including a small gift, such as a coupon or gift card, can also help to encourage participation.

By focusing on these five areas, your small business can have exceptional customer service. This leads to a solid reputation, increased customer retention, and additional referrals. Ultimately, these elements will improve the long-term success of your business.

This post was originally published on the CMS Customer Service Blog.

Is Customer Experience the New Branding?

Something I've been thinking about for some time is the relationship between brand and user experience. I've come to realise that for me, when it comes to exposure in an online world, there really is little distinction and it's hard to determine when one process starts and the other ends - or even if there are start or end points... Working as Digital Director for a brand consultancy, more often than I and my team are tasked with making a brand "come alive" or "get their story across" online. For me these client driven terms have some weight and value, but for me the key challenge for our digital team is making their "brand values, promises and customer expectations, clearly and appropriately experienced online".

Branding Before Jesus

To help explore this new shift in branding, it's important to explore the origins of brand. Staring in 2,000 BC there was branding, farmers' cattle and livestock were branded physically and since then everything has had a "mark" "watermark" or "logo". Of course since the industrial revolution, we all now understand that branding is not just a logo or graphical representation of a product or service; branding is the communication of features, benefits, lifestyle fit and the emotional connections it sparks with its audiences.

The big shift in recent years in branding has come about because of the internet, social media and connected consumers. Branding used to dovetail nicely into advertising and the brands that advertised the most, in the biggest and best way won. No matter how much we connect and have some kind of emotional brand connection with Coca Cola today in an internet ruled world, the hard work to establish a market leading brand was done in the 50's - 90's through massive, one way advertising spend. But now the playing field has levelled - advertising can only attract eyeballs - true brand affinity is harder and harder to achieve. That's where online experience is a massive differentiator. Online experience is where the brand promise can be proven.

Branding in 2015

There is a bit of confusion as to what branding 'actually' means in 2015. I mean, the principles and ethos are the same, but it really has had to move with the times and clients demanding branding services must start to realise that their brand is "everything" about them and in a super - connected and socially driven world, it's also everything about their online presence, behavior and the suitability of their customer online experience. Seth Godin puts it well.

Brand is a stand - in, a eupmism, a shortcut for a whole bunch of expectations, worldview connections, experiences and promised that a product or service makes, and these allow us to work our way through a word that has thirty thousand brands that we have to make decisions about every day.

Experience is Everything

The stand out word here for me is "experience" - experience is really the key differentiator online in such a competitive, consumer driven and connected world. Having an experience that matches the brand expectations set by the positioning, promises and expectations already built up by the product, advertising, editorial piece etc, is really what matters in terms of consumers and their brand connection. If you ask many UX professionals, they'll say that they don't work in branding, they work in experiences and may use "brand guidelines" supplied by the client or agency in the form of colours, typefaces and style guides.

For me UX professionals and in fact anyone involved in providing customer centric digital solutions, need to be branding experts. Everyone in the 'online experience' team, from the client, through to the web designer, content creators and project managers need to fully understand the brand values, the customers, their expectations and provide a suitable experience to match it. It doesn't mean that the online experience has to be beautiful, quick, responsive, ultra detailed in content or rich, it simply has to match the brand; whether you are Coca Cola, Rolex or a local coffee shop. Sometimes good UX is ultra simple - 1 page, 1 function and lack of content. Sometimes it's Amazon and their basic design, yet beautifully tailored, efficient and intuitive web and mobile experience - every scenario is unique.

I feel that businesses, when considering branding, should not treat their brand and their web experience and digital footprint as separate when it comes to considering their online representation of services or customer interaction. Quite the opposite needs to happen in my view; all the dots need to be super - connected and they need to realise that the online presence is much, much more than a new logo, new font and nice new branded imagery from an expensive photo shoot.

In this example diagram, courtesy of Steven Fisher in his presentation "UX - The New Brand Order." we can really connect the brand promise, then the experience, which then leads to the real differentiator, which is the perception and value that a brand can bring.

Branding vs Customer Experience and UX

So when we consider branding and user experience are they really separate elements? If you're the consumer of a brand they most definitely are not. Consumers will become aware, consume, get recommendations of and first and foremost experience the sales process of a brand through so many different independent and connected online channels, both passively and actively. Consumers will also build brand affinity and in many ways can shape your brand by their interaction and their sharing behavior - turning what you wanted your brand to be known and valued for to be something else altogether.

Listen - Act - Improve

We all are aware that good UX is not simply applying best practice; it's researched, considered, tested and refined elements of content, functionality, accessibility, UI design and personalisation all weaving their way together into a suitable experience. Branding, in 2014 is really no different. Whether promoted or experienced online or offline, your brand is only as good as it's ability to match expectations set by the positioning from the environment you present to customers to, how you talk to them, to how you signpost them in the right direction in an intuitive fashion and by how you service them pre - post and during a sales process.

The evolution of branding today is something not driven by a business, but shaped by how the consumer wants or needs your product to work individually for them, is a very real thing. Ultimately it will be this customer behavior, their expectations and the feedback you receive from their experience that will determine how well a brand survives. Unless a brand takes time to listen, act and improve continuously their online user experience, their brand will surely be doomed to failure of not meeting their customers expectations.

So to conclude and to re-iterate, for me branding and user experience or customer experience are extremely hard to treat as distinctly independent disciplines and I truly believe that UX could easily be described in many contexts as the "NEW Branding".

Sometimes, it's okay to take shortcuts in your marketing. Sending 9 tweets instead of 10 one day of the week is probably not going to make your metrics sag too much. Having 7 bullet points instead of 10 in a blog post? Probably not going to make your readers angry and upset. 

Other times, taking a shortcut could make or break the success of a marketing channel -- especially in email marketing. For example, if you send one email to everyone in your database because you didn't have time to segment specific lists, chances are you'll have a pretty low response rate ... and it's possible your future deliverability rates will be affected. Yikes!

So if you want to make sure you're not mucking up this really important marketing channel, keep on reading. We teamed up with Bryan Harris to create an introduction to email marketing video series, and here's the first one of the bunch. We'll walk you through the first big step to having a successful email marketing strategy: growing your list the right way.

Check out the video and/or transcription below to get the inside scoop on building up your contact database in a way that'll make your subscribers, your boss, and your bottom line happy.

Not a fan of video? Read the transcription below.

How to Organically Build Your Email List [Transcribed]

Hi, I'm Bryan with HubSpot. Today we're talking about how to build an email list the right way. I'm going to share with you a two-step process that you can start using today to grow your email list. 

But before we get started, I have four words for us to remember: Never buy a list.

Let's be real for a second -- no one likes spam. And if you're buying lists and sending email to them, that's exactly what you're doing. There's no such thing as a good list for sale. The people on the list don't want to hear from you. And it hurts your email deliverability and IP reputation, which means future emails you send that people actually want will have a much harder time getting past spam filters. 

So the big question is: How do you go from a company that's in the habit of buying email lists and spamming people to one that's growing email lists full of people who are eager to hear from them?

There are two parts to this answer:

1. Traffic
2. Conversions

I'm going to break them down for you and show you how to get both on your website. 

How to Get Traffic

First you need to start blogging. Blogging brings people who are interested in your industry to your website. Each article you write is a chance for search engines to index your site and for readers to share your content.

Think about any time you have a question. What's the first thing you do? You Google it. If there is an article with the exact answer to the question you're looking for, that's the article you click to. If you reverse-engineer this process for your business, you can produce highly targeted traffic and leads. 

For example, at HubSpot, when anyone types in the phrase "what is marketing automation" into Google, we're the first result that comes up. A large percentage of people who search will click on the first result they find. And since we've written an article with this exact title and about this topic, we're able to generate a lot of traffic and leads from this page. 

Just ask yourself: what are the most common questions I get from prospective customers? That question will be the title of your blog post. The answer to that question? That's the body of your blog article. 

Now repeat this process for all of the most common questions you get and you'll get better and better at producing this educational content. If the answer to these questions are what your current and future customers are looking for, you'll start building long-term, sustainable traffic to your website -- which is exactly what you need to do to start building your email list.

Let's say that you ran an explainer video production company and the number one question asked is "how much does an explainer video cost?" If you were to write an article answering that question and begin to rank high for that search term, over time you could expect to see an increase in traffic to your website. 

Now that you have that traffic coming to your site, how do you convert that traffic into email subscribers, leads, and eventually customers?

How to Convert Traffic Into Email Addresses

Our favorite method of converting visitors into email subscribers is to give people something in exchange for their email address. For example, there's this awesome Mexican restaurant right around the corner from my office called Tacos Mamacita. Every Friday, they have a jar sitting at the cash register that you can drop your business card into. Once a week they do a drawing, and the winner wins a free lunch. I give them something small, and they give me something large in exchange. 

You need to do the exact same thing on your website to convert traffic into email subscribers and leads. 

We suggest starting with two types of free offers. One top-of-the-funnel, educational piece of content like an ebook, and one middle-of-the-funnel offer to let someone speak with your sales team to get a demo or a quote or a free consultation or whatever works for your specific business. By having these two types of offers on your website, you can capture potential leads and convert customers that are in different stages of the buying process. 

For example, this specific HubSpot blog post has calls-to-action for both types of free offers. On the right-hand sidebar there's a call-to-action titled "Are you evaulating marketing software." When you click that, it brings you to a page that lets you fill out a form to demo the software. At the bottom of the blog post is another call-to-action, which'll send you to a landing page with a form for a free ebook called Optimizing Landing Pages for Lead Generation, which is related to the blog post topic. 

So remember. Stop buying lists and start focusing on two things: traffic and conversions. If you already have a steady stream of traffic coming to your website, you could see immediate results. Your specific results will vary depending on your exact industry. 

But remember the key to all of this -- the key to building a healthy organic list -- is helping people and providing theme industry-relevant content in exchange for their email address. 

What other inbound tactics have you used to grow your email list? Share your ideas with us in the comments. 

3 Steps to Double Inbound Leads in 60 Days written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is from Erik Luhrs – Enjoy!

I love talking to new prospects! They are ALWAYS convinced that they’ve already tried “everything.” They are convinced that the only way to get more leads is to increase the amount of people who see their messages. They are convinced that rapidly multiplying leads and sales is just a fantasy.

And they are always wrong.

Now you’re probably thinking “Oh BS, Erik! What could you possibly know that is so much better than all the other experts we’ve asked for help?”

The short answer is that it’s not about what I know. It’s about what your prospects know…that you ignore! We’ll get to that in a moment.

First, let’s sum up the problem of “not enough leads.”

The cause of this situation is 3 factors:

1. You blend in with your competition because you are a “me too” business (“Oh they sell widgets? Me too!”) .
2. You define yourself / your business the same as your competition (“We are the #1 Widget producer in North America”…same thing everybody else says).
3. You think quality/service/price/experience/caring about our clients/etc means something to the prospect (“With our 50 years of experience we have created a quality team that can deliver the service you need at a price you can afford. And remember we really care about our customers”…SNORE!!!)

What happens with all of this type of communication is that you are trying to be logical and trying to communicate with the conscious mind of your prospect.

The problem is that humans live their lives 99% SUBCONSCIOUSLY, so the subconscious is in control. The 1% of conscious awareness humans have is not in control, but that is the part of the mind EVERYBODY tries to talk to. It makes no sense!!!

So the simple secret to rapidly increasing leads is to start talking to the 99% of the mind that is in control!

How? Well, there is a lot to it, but here are 3 steps to get you moving in the right direction (and if you actually use them you will be ahead of 95% of your market).

1. RE-POSITION: Instead of trying to solve every problem your audience has ask your target what their real, immediate problems are. Go deeper than “we need more sales,” “we need more staff,” “we need faster processors.” Find a single problem BEHIND their general problem, and solve that. Hint: When you can hear someone’s voice change or you see them start to look uncomfortable you will know you have touched one of their subconscious issues.
2. RE-PRESENT: Once you have chosen that one deep, real problem that you will solve become the go to experts for that aspect of that problem. Basically, focus and stay focused.
3. RE-PACKAGE: Connect your offerings to that one aspect of that one problem you now solve and describe what you do in that context in all of your messages.
4. (bonus step) RE-DISTRIBUTE: Use every channel (online and offline) that you can access and spread the word of your new “Position” to the world. Own this new space!

Once you are talking to the subconscious mind of your target audience they will have no choice but to pay attention. More attention means more people looking at your messages, which means more responses, which means more leads.

Or you can just go back to doing and saying what everybody else does and says. The choice is yours.

Choose wisely!

 

Erik Luhrs is known as The Bruce Lee of Sales and Lead Generation. He is the creator of The GURUS Selling System and Front-Loaded Lead Generation. He is the author of the book BE DO SALE and the ONLY expert in the world on Subconscious Lead Generation!

On April 30th Erik will be hosting the FREE webinar ‘3 Steps to get Prospects to Contact You Ready to Say YES!’ In the webinar Erik shows how to apply Subconscious Lead Generation tactics to your Lead Generation and Marketing messages to immediately double or triple open, read and conversion rates. To register go here now: http://bit.ly/JantschLuhrs

 

 

Social media marketing is a hot topic for discussion among small business owners and digital marketers. It is one of the hottest topics here at Digital Marketing Philippines and one of the most effective internet marketing tools DMP is endorsing. But despite all the buzz, many business owners and digital marketers still find themselves struggling to drive engagement around their social media content.

Of course, many business owners and digital marketers want to increase likes, shares, comments, and other social engagements with their online content. The higher the engagement, the bigger the chance of connecting with targeted audiences that convert as leads or sales. If you’re like these marketers, then you should pay attention and learn precisely how to do it with the following top 10 ways of driving engagement to your social content.

The infographic (click to zoom):

Embedded from Digital Marketing Philippines

TORONTO – After nearly two decades, an Ontario court has dismissed the last two lawsuits involving the Bre-X Minerals scandal, which resulted in investors losing an estimated $1 billion.

In a ruling Wednesday, Ontario Superior Justice Paul Perell said the case will no longer continue because there is “no reasonable prospect of recovery from any of the defendants, even if the outstanding actions were successful.”

The motions to dismiss were brought by lawyers for the plaintiffs.

The lawsuits alleged Bre-X engaged in “stock fraud” when it reported it had found a major gold deposit in Indonesia. The find was later revealed to be a fake, resulting in the company’s shares nose-diving and losses to thousands of its investors. Bre-X filed for bankruptcy in November 1997.

“It was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated in Canada, and maybe the U.S., and nobody goes to jail and nobody pay any money,” said plaintiff lawyer Paul Pape.

In a motion filed jointly with lawyer Harvey Strosberg, the two said most of the money being held in the Cayman Islands that their clients were pursuing “has been dissipated for living expenses and legal expenses.”

Pape said the more than 5,000 Canadian plaintiffs in the class-action had come to terms a long time ago with not recovering their losses. The majority had losses less than $1,000, while more than 200 plaintiffs suffered losses totalling more than $100,000.

The lawsuits named the estate of Bre-X’s president, David Walsh, who has since died, former geologist John Felderhof and his ex-wife Ingrid Felderhof, who have all maintained their innocence.

“I think it was a perfect storm of circumstances,” Pape said. “Everybody recognized that the losses were so large, billions of dollars, that there wasn’t going to be any pot of money large enough to make any difference to anybody. It was a long time ago that people notionally wrote this off.”

Perell agreed with the plaintiff’s motion to donate to charity the remaining $3.5 million held in trust and owed to the claimants. It was agreed that if those funds were redistributed, it would only mean a recovery of two cents on the dollar for each claimant after fees.

The majority of the money will go to the Access to Justice Fund of the Law Foundation of Ontario, which helps pay for legal aid. Twenty per cent of the money will go to the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.

Perell also ruled that the plaintiffs’ lawyers will be paid a total of $850,063 for their work on the lawsuits between November 1999 to December 2013, noting that they incurred nearly $2.6 million in fees during this time.

“Quite simply, there is no purpose to be served by continuing the remaining actions,” he wrote in the 19-page decision.

Follow @LindaNguyen on Twitter.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version incorrectly spelled the name of Justice Paul Perell.

The post Ontario judge dismisses Bre-X lawsuits, orders remaining money to go to charity appeared first on Canadian Business.

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Slightly more than half of the people who watched the Sochi Olympics on NBC also used a computer, tablet or smartphone to get information about the games while the TV was on, the network said Wednesday.

NBC closely studies how Americans follow the action partly because the Olympics are a huge investment, but also to get a peek at how media habits are changing. This year’s takeaway: the multiscreen experience is rapidly taking hold and is doing so across all age groups.

“It’s not 25-year-olds who wear black and live in Williamsburg,” said Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s chief researcher. “This is America.”

NBC and its cable networks televised 541 hours of Sochi action and made all Olympic competition available online. The flood of material only increased the appetite; NBC said 49 per cent of viewers said they watched more Olympics action simply because it was more available, and that number shot to nearly two-thirds among viewers aged 18 to 34.

The ability to find out results or even see live competition before events were shown on a tape-delayed basis on NBC in prime time didn’t hurt viewership. NBC had its second-biggest prime-time audience the night it showed American ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White win gold, even though that performance was shown live online and on cable earlier in the day.

In fact, NBC said people who watched live Olympics action on cable were 43 per cent more likely to watch NBC’s taped prime-time show. NBC’s ratings were up slightly over Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2010 despite a time difference that allowed for no live competition in prime time and arguably a poorer performance by American athletes.

Only 9 per cent of Americans reported owning smartphones during the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics, compared with 60 per cent during Sochi, NBC said. Although Olympic fans of all ages used these devices to follow the games, it was dramatically more so among the young, many of whom followed the Olympics more on their phones than they did on TV.

That’s a concern for NBC. Television networks still have no reliable way of measuring — and monetizing — viewing of video on smartphones, and that represents a lot of potentially lost revenue if smartphones become the viewing habit of choice for many in a new generation.

Wurtzel also said he was surprised that social media use surrounding the Olympics was not more widespread. An estimated 3 million people said they sent at least one Olympic-related message on Twitter during the 17-day event, a relatively small number considering NBC averaged more than 21 million viewers each night in prime time.

“Before the Olympics I thought I’d say this was the first social media Olympics,” Wurtzel said. “The reality is, it’s not a game-changer yet.”

___

David Bauder can be reached at dbauder@ap.org or on Twitter@dbauder. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/david-bauder

The post NBC says Olympic viewing shows how second (or third, or fourth) screens changing habits appeared first on Canadian Business.

SASKATOON – Saskatchewan has a new customer for the province’s potash.

A contract with Bangladesh worth US$40 million will see Canpotex Ltd. supply 120,000 metric tonnes of potash to the Asian country in the next year.

There’s also an option worth another US$20 million for an additional 60,000 metric tonnes of the pink mineral used in fertilizer.

Premier Brad Wall was in Saskatoon when the Canadian Commercial Corp. and the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corp. signed the deal.

Wall said the agreement will provide more jobs in the potash industry.

He also said the deal was planted when he visited Bangladesh a few years ago.

“We took part in a trade mission about three years ago and I had a chance to meet with the prime minister of Bangladesh at the time,” Wall said at the signing Wednesday.

“I talked a bit about fertilizer knowing that we weren’t moving any fertilizer (to them) just then.”

PotashCorp is one of three branches of Canpotex. CEO Bill Doyle said shipping potash to Bangladesh shows a true change in agriculture in that country.

“Rice is a huge one, but they also grow all sorts of vegetable,” Doyle said. “They’re self-sufficient now in food. A lot of people don’t realize how far Bangladesh has come over the years.

“It’s a tremendous accomplishment because they used to have to import a tremendous amount of food, which was a huge drain on their treasury.”

Doyle said the contract is actually quite small compared to others. Canpotex struck a potash deal with India for more than one million metric tonnes.

(CJWW)

The post Bangladesh becomes new customer for Saskatchewan potash appeared first on Canadian Business.

Licensing can generate big business for brands. The top 150 global licensors accounted in total for almost $230 billion, according to License! Global. Disney alone reported $39.3 billion in retail sales of licensed merchandise worldwide in 2012, fueled by the popularity of its Marvel Comics properties.

Brands in categories from apparel to automotive to sporting goods to spirits are licensed.  Even celebrities license their brands – Usher Cologne, anyone?

Licensing’s popularity makes sense. It can boost brand exposure and expansion without significant investment, helping companies enter international markets or play in new product categories without having to incur the usual product development costs and risks. Licensing can also be used to expand a brand’s footprint into adjacencies, as demonstrated by iPad cases, keyboards, and other accessories.

But the benefits of brand exposure and growth through licensing don’t come without risks. Counterfeiting and brand piracy have kept pace with the uptick in licensing. Legitimate companies aren’t the only ones who have benefitted from increasingly borderless commerce and improvements in the quality of manufacturing and materials in emerging markets. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 500 million counterfeit handbags, belts and wallets worth $1 billion were confiscated just last year.

The prevalence of licensed products combined with the sophistication of knock-offs make it more difficult to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake.  It’s also easier for branded goods to get into the wrong hands. Anyone can set up shop online and pose as an authorized dealer.  And even offline, the once-underground black market has become quite visible. Inauthentic goods are now sold through unauthorized channels unabashedly, as the discovery of over 20 copycat Apple stores in Kunming, China, a couple of years ago revealed.

Another risk is old-fashioned over-exposure. When products with Nike logos or trademark Burberry plaid can be found everywhere, the exclusive appeal of those brands takes a hit. Market saturation of branded goods, genuine or fake, can lead to brand burnout – or even brand backlash. When Angela Ahrendts took over at Burberry, the brand had become so ubiquitous and watered down, with 23 licensees around the world each making their own versions of everything from dog leashes to polo shirts, that the company faced problems besides declining profits.  Far from being a luxury brand, its famous plaid had become associated with football hooligans and was even banned from some pubs.

However, when managed appropriately, even these downsides can actually benefit brand owners. Authorized or not, brand awareness in a new market is usually a good thing. And increased brand exposure can lead to a migration from counterfeit to original goods when the economic climate of that market improves or discretionary spending increases. Brand piracy can also be considered an indication of a brand’s health; only compelling brands are victims of counterfeiting. On a recent trip to Shanghai, Italian designer Giorgio Armani purchased a fake Armani watch and explained, “It was an identical copy of an Emporio Armani watch…it’s flattering to be copied. If you are copied, you are doing the right thing.”

So companies must balance brand exposure with brand protection.  Your attorneys may advise vigilant trademark monitoring and enforcement — but chasing down unauthorized products and dealers can be time-consuming and expensive — and ultimately, counterproductive. Starbucks seemed to understand this when it refrained from lambasting the comedian who recently set up a “Dumb Starbucks” store in Los Angeles. The city’s Health Department ended up shutting down the store after just a few days, sparing Starbucks the expense and negative press it might have incurred.

Instead, take a different approach to protecting your brand — one that optimizes factors that are directly under your control vs. trying to manage those that aren’t.  Ensure that you set, communicate, and deliver on your brand standards clearly and consistently in everything you do. Even, and especially, licensed products should appropriately reflect your brand promise and shine brightly in the constellation of your brand offerings.

Consistently excellent brand execution will ensure that purchasers of counterfeit products know they are fakes and therefore won’t expect the same performance from it.  If the quality of your brand is so well-known, knock-offs may be compelling but they will never be mistaken for the real thing. Those who know real Rolex watches, for example, can point to at least 10 telltale signs of fake ones, including a magnifying bubble that doesn’t magnify all that well. Fans of the Tiffany & Co. brand know that a Tiffany product for sale anywhere other than in a Tiffany-branded outlet is not real, thanks to the brand’s tightly controlled distribution.

And since your authorized product may not be the only representation of your brand out there, monitor the totality of your brand presence. You may need to temporarily scale back your own licensing or promotional efforts if a market is being flooded by unauthorized product. That’s what Ahrendts did at Burberry by centralizing their product line – even though in this case, the licensees weren’t doing anything illegal. To reassert Burberry as a luxury brand, she decreed that all clothing would be made in Britain; all designs would go through one “Brand Czar;” and that the company would pull back from offering so many types of products to focus on outerwear. It worked.

The best way to enhance and protect your brand at the same time is to extend your brand value beyond the product. When your brand is comprised of a complete customer experience — including service, environment, communications, shopping experience, personality, and values — it is inimitable and far more valuable. A pirated product may mimic your brand but it doesn’t replace it.  It simply whets consumer’s appetites for more of your brand.

Trademarks are some of companies’ most valuable assets and legal actions are sometimes necessary to defend them. But when it comes to brand protection, the adage “the best defense is a good offense” applies — and the best offense is a clear, well-cultivated brand identity.

The Roomba has made all of our lives easier from cleaning up after us to serving up some much-needed laughs moonlighting as "DJ Roomba." Someday soon you may be seeing a similar looking robot make an appearance in the world of architecture. Designer Han Seok Nam is looking to cut down on labor costs and up efficiency with his design, Archibot. The mobile printer works with in-room sensors to print uploaded CAD files that signify different construction points and plans right onto the floor of a work area.

The recently patented Archibot has been designed to recognize where building elements such as doors and walls need to be built. The printed plans can be compared to larger print-outs, making them easy to interpret and cross-check for both architects and contractors. Check out the video to see how it all comes together:

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Content marketing is listed as a priority within the marketing strategy of companies. A technique that is already present in 9 out of 10 companies and it is ranked as one of the major trends that will be consolidated in the next few years, according to eMarketer.

Earlier this year, several studies indicated that 60% of marketers planned to increase their budget over the next 12 months. The report published in December by the CMI along with the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) showed that 18% of companies spent more than half of its marketing budget on their content strategy, while 17% of respondents intended to spend between 25 % and 50% of their investment. Among the most commonly techniques used, a few important ones can be highlighted, such as, social media, blogs, writing articles, and sending newsletters.

Also, these professionals have adapted their strategy depending on the audience and their specific goals. Thus, 6 out of 10 designed content based on industry trends; while 57% focused on the individual profiles of a particular niche. In contrast, only 32% took into account these particular characteristics throughout the process.

Meanwhile, the study published in February by Marquetingquery indicated that 49% of those responsible for the B2B marketing developed a content strategy adapted to all stages of the customer cycle and intended to apply it in the next 6 months. Broadly speaking, these companies focus their efforts on providing targeted content, 6 out of 10 of them state that their purpose is to show the right content in real time, in terms of patterns of customer behavior. 46% indicated that the design uses people in order to better understand the different audiences.

One of the main ways that companies are establishing authority and gaining trust with consumers is by consistently creating valuable content through a variety of channels. This typically involves relevant industry information that provides insight or entertainment to an audience. Doing so allows a company to steadily build rapport with its demographic and develop a loyal following. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the top B2B content marketing strategies are social media, articles on a business’s website, e-Newsletters, case studies, videos and articles on other websites.

By using one or more of these channels, businesses are able to build a positive reputation within their industry. This trend suggests that marketing to the masses through techniques like television ads and radio ads are becoming less effective. The most recent data include the report published in March by Forbes, where it appeared that companies use content marketing more and better than ever. Content marketing is present both in the B2B strategy (50%) and B2C (68%). An activity that most companies are able to develop with their own resources (86%).

Companies participating in the study believe that the most effective type of content is the one developed for social media; this type of content that is generated by 71% of these brands. Then, 38% of companies bet on white papers and corporate blogs (34%), video (30%) and computer graphics (23%).

The new challenge that arises is to improve the analysis and measurement of the effectiveness of the content marketing strategy, as well as in the implementation of Big Data as a basic reference for a greater impact on the shares.

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Google+ launched back in 2011 and has been the subject of hugely mixed opinions ever since. As the social network of search engine giant Google, the platform integrates a number of Google services including Google Profiles and Places, but has always been met with a lukewarm reception.

Recently the user base of Google+ has exploded, but that is mainly down to the fact that Google integrated YouTube with Google+, meaning all YouTube users had to sign up for a Google+ account; artificially adding hundreds of thousands of people to their user base.

Google now says that there are 540 million users actively interacting with the social platform, but more relative to its social network competitors is the number of its “in-stream” users, which has now hit 300 million. This means that Google+ now has more active monthly users than Twitter (241 million) and is not to be ignored.

Even though many people end up on Google+ through a default situation rather than choosing to go onto the platform specifically to find content, market research company, Forrester, say that the engagement levels on the two platforms are pretty much equal, so every marketer should be using Google+.

So how can your business incorporate Google+ into its marketing strategy and make the most of this active user base?

Use Your Circles Wisely

One of Google+’s best features is the ability to group people into circles. This means you can have one circle for your family, one for your friends, one for work colleagues and so on.

With other social networks, the content you put out will be seen by anyone who is a fan or follower, but with Google+ circles, you can target certain parts of your audience with content specific to them.

When it comes to sharing content, it is important you are putting out information that your audience need and want to see, but this is not always possible with a large audience, so being able to divide them appropriately is great.

By sharing certain content with specific groups, you can monitor and analyse different strategies and see what works best for who. If you have some great content you want to share with everyone, then you do still have the ability to share content publicly.

Optimise Content and CTAs

There is no character limit on Google+ as there is with Twitter and unlike with Facebook where you can engage with existing customers, Google+ allows you to reach out to influencers and potential customers who would not be likely to see your content otherwise.

Make your content stand out on Google+ by using an engaging image – visual content is now vital in social content as visuals are processed 60000 times faster than text. You can edit photos directly from Google+ and it also allows you to upload and share animated GIFs.

It is also incredibly easy to mention other Google+ users in your posts by simply adding a “+” sign before their name – this is great if you are sharing someone else’s content and what to include them. It also means that your post will appear in search results for that person’s name giving your content an increased reach.

Another important point is making sure you have Calls to Action on your content itself. By having a +1 button on your blog, your readers can share your content on their Google+ without having to even leave the page.

Google+ Reviews

Reviews on Google+ show up in search results and this could make the difference between whether someone decides to choose your business over one of your competitors.

Great reviews and testimonials are second to none when people are looking for a recommendation of who to choose. It is important to provide a great service and give your customers a link to your page so that they can leave a review.

These reviews will be linked to your Google+ business page, which will have all the relevant information about your business and appear on Google Maps in local search results with opening hours and contact details. This is a must-have for any small business

Use Hangouts

Hangouts are a great way to give customers an insight into your world and demonstrate complete transparency. Live video chat gives you the opportunity to create a range of different situations.

If you are an expert in your area then you can host a webinar on hangouts, where your audience can interact and answer questions while listening to you answer them in real time. If you have a customer service issue, then you can actually speak to the customer in question and give them a more personal experience.

If you have a new product or service launching, then hangouts can be used for demos to show your customers what they can expect and how your new product or service will work.

The most obvious one of course is using hangouts for meetings. You can have up to 9 people in one hangout, so they are a great way to speak to clients without having to huddle around a conference phone.

Join Communities

There are many different people around the world and they all have different interests and skillsets. This is where communities come in, as individuals can join up with like-minded people and talk about the things that really interest them.

By joining a community within your industry, you have the chance to create relationships with relevant people, meet prospective customers and best of all; share your content.

Don’t go in there guns blazing though, as it will make you look spammy if the only reason you join a community is for self-promotion. Share your knowledge and listen to others and if you can’t find the right community then why not just start your own.

Conclusion

It can be scary embroiling yourself and your business in a new social network, but with such a high level of engaged users you would be silly not to take the opportunity while it is there.

Google+ is perfectly designed for businesses as it allows you to appear on Google Maps and in the local search results. It’s free and easy to set up a page, and as a powerful platform for content sharing there is no better time to start building authority and reaching out to relevant and influential people.

This is a rundown of the most incredible seemingly sci-fi technologies that already exist and are being used today. We also take a look at where the technologies are going.

OTTAWA — All 26 U.S. lawmakers representing four northwestern American states have asked President Barack Obama to launch negotiations by this summer to re-write the Canada-U.S. Columbia River Treaty. The 1964 pact provides the U.S. with flood control assistance and other benefits through construction of dams and reservoirs in B.C., while the B.C. government gets an average of $220 million in payments every year as its share of the power generated on the U.S. side of the border.

Customers are doing more research and talking to salespeople further into the process – for B2B organizations everywhere, this has become increasingly clear. There have been countless articles on how to coach organizations to insert their representatives into the decision-making process at the right time and more efficiently. Once you have their attention, however, are you offering true solutions to their business problems, or are you pushing a set of product features in an attempt to fit their needs into your product specs?

According to Forrester research, executive buyers today are frustrated by “product-focused” salespeople. In fact, only 7% of executives even feel that salespeople are interested in helping their initiative succeed. Don’t become a product-focused salesperson – keep these tips in mind to close the gap between what the buyer wants and the sales quota your organization needs.

1) Lay the foundation for outreach by focusing on the right market:  Equip your salespeople with the right tools to find relevant companies by searching industries of interest. Further segment your results by selecting things that are most important to you and that best fit the problems your product solves (i.e., if you sell recruiting services, you may be interested in all companies who are currently hiring). This will ensure that you actually have a highly qualified person on the phone that would be a good fit for your solution in the first place.

2) Introduce your team to segmentation via business “signals”:  In addition to looking at basic company information and structure, you should be relying on real-time changes that may indicate readiness to buy. The changes or “triggers” and may include things like executive changes, IPOs, rounds of funding, and more.

3) Shift your salesperson’s agenda from offering product insight, to action-oriented solutions: Salespeople should have one goal in mind, and that is to provide prospects with insight that even they didn’t know was an opportunity for their company. It is nearly impossible for executives of large, global organizations to know everything that is going on in every branch or every office around the world.  Imagine the power of your sales call if you could give executives insights into their companies of which they may not be aware. By understanding the topics or conversations in which this company is involved including news, blogs, social media, and other sources, you can paint a comprehensive picture for that executive about the company position in the market.

To avoid being a product-focused salesperson, organizations must enable insightful and informed sales calls and marketing campaigns by implementing the right tools that leverage the vast amount of data available. With the right solutions, organizations can aggregate, correlate, weigh and score this data to uncover the right market, timing and talking points that will help salespeople meet quota and achieve greater success.

Sales Training Article: Common Buying and Selling Ground

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

Image courtesy of Franky242 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One of a sales manager's primary responsibilities is ensuring salespeople work on qualified opportunities. After executing sales ready messaging® sellers trained in CustomerCentric Selling® should be able to answer the following call debriefing questions:

1. What title they called on?

2. What goal(s) the buyer shared?

3. For each goal, what are the reasons it can't be achieved today (without your offering)?

4. What capabilities within your offering are needed to address the reasons?

5. What is the value (potential benefit vs. estimated cost)?

Oddly enough, if non-Key Players with or without a seller's help evaluate offerings and request funding, financial approvers will want answers to questions 2 - 5. In the same way, sales managers want to know opportunities are grounded in value and payback, so it is financial approvers want the same assurance. Both parties recognize that without adequate payback expenditures won't be made.

Sign-up for one the next sales training workshops to learn how to better qualify opportunities and collaborate with buyers.

You've heard me rail on about how many internal evaluations done without seller help focus on products and lack enterprise views of business outcomes that can be improved. Two comments regarding the CCS® approach to qualification:

• When champion letters address the debriefing questions, the buyer is far better positioned to explain why initiatives should be funded.
• If Sequences of Events (SOE) are agreed upon, one of the most critical steps is the cost vs. benefit (usually a "Go/No-Go step) for buyers and vendors.

This points out the value sales professionals should bring to the table. The old view that sellers "educate" buyers should be a distant memory. Information on the Internet is in such abundance that non-Key Players self-educate and value being shielded from seller attempts to influence requirements.

Ultimately sellers and buyers share a common objective: Determine if buying offerings is a sound financial decision. Self-service, non-executive buyers are ill equipped to build business cases. For that reason funding is likely to be denied (and a great deal of time wasted).

For decades, sellers enjoyed an advantage as the keepers of product information. The pendulum swung when the mind-numbing amount of information became available via the Internet and social networking. The pendulum appears to have swung too far. Enlightened buyers armed with information about offerings could benefit from seller efforts to quantify the potential benefits and payback that can be realized.

Buyers and vendors would benefit if they found ways to collaborate when evaluating offerings.

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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.

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

Real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran has seen a lot of passionate entrepreneurs come and go on ABC's reality pitch show "Shark Tank." She's learned that overexcitement can drive a business into the ground.

"Too much passion blinds an entrepreneur, just like a guy who's madly in love," Corcoran tells Business Insider. "He can't see clearly, he can't listen, and he knows for sure that the girl is 'absolutely perfect!' Being too wrapped up in a love affair with your new business idea doesn't allow you to change what's wrong."

Corcoran, who recently launched online class "Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship: Pitching Your Business and Yourself" with Skillshare, first realized that being too passionate could be bad for business when she invested in a young, aspiring entrepreneur. He had a great product with a lot of consumer appeal but refused to budge an inch from his vision.

"After giving him my $100,000, along with my truthful, experienced feedback about what needed to be improved — like a needed design change and offering a lower-priced model that everyone could afford — he didn't listen and changed nothing," says Corcoran. "He was too much in love with his original product to hear or act on a single word. One year later, his business is still bumbling along, but it's sure not going to succeed."

Of course, Corcoran readily admits that she's made this same mistake herself. She recalls falling head over heels for one of her business ideas in the early '90s. She decided to put all of her apartments for sale on videotape, so buyers could view them without leaving their La-Z-Boy chairs, and named it H.O.T. for "homes on tape." A year later, stacks of unwanted videotapes sat untouched in her office basement, and not one person had checked out what Corcoran had considered an "ingenious" video tour.

"My blind passion didn't allow me to realize my idea had one big flaw: Our salespeople wouldn't show their customers the tapes because they included the names and phone numbers of the other competing agents in my office," Corcoran remembers. "My great idea was dead on arrival, and my pig-headed passion had cost me $71,000."

Today, Corcoran thinks of a healthy business passion as more of a slow burn than a raging fire. Sure, it should start out strong, but it should also grow stronger as the business evolves, she says. When she evaluates entrepreneurs, she now looks for their persistence and ability to stick with the business the way a committed spouse stays with a marriage. "It's mostly hard work and doesn't feel very passionate when the bad times hit, but stay you must."

How can you tell the difference between a healthy passion and a blinding lust for your exciting new business? Corcoran recommends not going the traditional route and asking friends and family what they think of your business idea. They love you too much to be objective, she says. 

Instead, she believes you're much better off going outside your circle of friends and family to get unbiased responses to your product or service. If you get lukewarm or negative reactions, you can use that feedback to make your idea stronger. And if they love it, Corcoran suggests you "tell them you'll take an order right then and there, and see if they'll hand over the money!"

SEE ALSO: Here's What Happens To Investments On 'Shark Tank' After The Cameras Stop Rolling

Join the conversation about this story »

Six Critical Skills for Successful Sales Conversations

Fundamental communication and persuasion skills that flex as needed during a sales conversation

There are numerous factors and variables that go into a sale or selling situation. Many of those are beyond the sales rep’s control or influence, but the one aspect that is absolutely in the rep’s control and can make or break the sale is the conversation.

Richardson has identified Six Critical Skills to be used in dialogue with buyers needed for sales excellence. They are critical because you cannot be highly effective in sales without mastering all of them. These skills provide the flexibility to be client-focused. If you are weak in any one of the areas, it will reduce your overall effectiveness. Your objective in using these skills is to maintain a 50/50 client-to-salesperson dialogue.

1) Presence. Projecting interest, conviction, energy, professional appearance, and confidence. What image do you portray as you stand before your potential clients? Too boyish (and therefore unseasoned) to understand the complexities of business? Too old (and therefore too seasoned) to connect with the way things work today? Do you come off as smug and overconfident or too humble and possibly desperate?

To be effective, you need the right combination of each of these traits that will cause your prospect to want to work with you.

2) Relating. Connecting with the client includes three levels of relating: rapport, acknowledgment, and empathy. One you’ve established the right presence with your audience, you then need to show that you can relate to your client and their needs and interests.

• Rapport: You don’t need to become best friends, but you also have little chance of a successful relationship if you rub each other the wrong way. Building rapport takes feeding off of their verbal and nonverbal cues to know how best to communicate with your prospects on an interpersonal level. Finding things in common to bond over helps, but it isn’t absolutely critical as long as comfort and trust are enabled.
• Acknowledgment: It’s not about you — it’s about your client and their needs or wants. It’s also about their personal stake in a successful outcome of what you’re selling them to make their company better. Share with them your sincere understanding of why you’re there and of the client’s situation. You could also share what you hope to achieve, but this is in very broad terms at this point — don’t launch off into a presentation, but rather, set expectations for the discussion.
• Empathy: Further to acknowledgment, you need to demonstrate that you not only understand the issue but that you realize the impact it has on their business and the importance of rectifying it. A key factor in conveying empathy is to effectively restrain and hide any critical opinions or judgments beyond stating the obvious.

3) Questioning. Probing to understand the prospect’s needs or wants. This can be tricky and might take longer than you’d like, so be patient. You know where you want to lead your prospect, but how you get there can vary depending upon the prospect’s degree of understanding and acceptance of the issue and solution. The best outcome is for the buyer to feel as though they had an equal part in leading the way or that it was their idea all along.

Imagine getting directions to a destination. As the seller of the solution, you can see the clearest, shortest path from point A to point B. However, if you rush to get there without the consent or understanding of the buyer, you could lose them (literally). Realize that in questioning, you might be better off taking a more circuitous route that satisfies their concerns and expectations before arriving at the destination. Of course, you also need to collect any relevant information that explains how they got where they are and where they want to go, key stakeholders, timing, etc.

4) Listening. Listening in an effective way vs. efficient listening is one of the most critical skills to master in sales. You have your own agenda for the conversation, but don’t forget that so does your prospect. You can’t half listen if you’re going to really engage your audience and respond to what they’re saying or asking instead of simply preparing to barrel forward with what you want to say. This brings to mind one of my favorite movie quotes:

“… You can listen to Jimi [Hendrix], but you can’t hear him. There’s a difference man. Just because you’re listening to him doesn’t mean you’re hearing him.” — from the movie White Men Can’t Jump (1992).

If you’re not actively listening, then several things could happen (none of which are good). You could miss an important piece of information that, while you can inquire about later, makes you look distracted and inattentive for not hearing it the first time around. You could miss an opportunity to cross- or upsell your prospect. Or, you could be seen as what you are: someone with their own agenda regardless of what is of interest to the client.

5) Positioning. Being persuasive vs. only exchanging information.

While it’s important to maintain focus on what the buyer wants and says during the conversation, don’t lose sight of why you’re there, too. You want to be actively engaged, but don’t be too passive either.

The buyer may already be sold on you and your services, which should make your job easier. But when you’re up against competitors, are facing an uncertain buyer, or if the buyer has objections, you’ll need to be able to respond accordingly and persuasively. There is an art to doing this effectively without coming off as arrogant or defensive.

6) Checking. Remember that this is a conversation, not a presentation. As such, you must get into the habit of asking for feedback on what you have said.

This is important because it lets you know how the client is reacting and lets you adjust your presentation. It also keeps the client involved. Checking is a key aspect of Questioning, which was covered above. You want to confirm that everyone’s tracking on the same page before you find yourselves in drastically different places.

Of course, you don’t want to stop after every sentence, which gets tedious and annoying very quickly. Rather, think in terms of bits and chunks of information to discuss and validate before moving on to the next point.

These Six Critical Skills will allow you to create a dialogue; understand client needs, priorities, and perspective; and close profitable business.

To reiterate what was said at the beginning of this post, being weak in any of the skills will reduce your overall effectiveness. Your objective in using these skills is to maintain a 50/50 client-to-salesperson dialogue.

You can also use the Six Critical Skills as shorthand to prepare for and critique your calls and give yourself and your teammates feedback.

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Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below.

 

The post Six Critical Skills for Successful Sales Conversations appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

This post originally appeared on the Ecommerce section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to the Ecommerce section.

The parts of a well-designed ecommerce site are many and varied. All have some of the good elements, but not every site out there has all of them -- except perhaps ModCloth. I may not shop there personally, but I’m a huge fan of the ModCloth ecommerce inbound marketing model. When breaking down the anatomy of an amazing ecommerce site, ModCloth seems to have it all, from an elegant and intuitive design to pre-transactional educational content to email marketing that rarely relies on coupons.

I'm trying to get beyond the echo-chamber of sites on which I personally shop to find great examples of inbound marketing for ecommerce in action. So let’s take a look at what makes ModCloth's site such an inbound marketing powerhouse, shall we?

The Anatomy of an Inbound Ecommerce Site (As Told Through ModCloth)

1) Blog

ModCloth must know that business sites with a blog get 55% more visits than sites without. ModCloth uses their blog to move potential buyers through the marketing and sales funnel, just as it’s designed to do. The blog features products, how-to videos, images from customers, and general lifestyle information. In addition to working hard for the business, the blog is also a great way for people to spend a few minutes of downtime.

Their great strength in blogging is that they're targeting the lifestyle -- or psychographic dimensions -- of their buyer personas. They're not just churning out keyword rich content to rank in search engines; they're building an audience of relevant consumers that they can nurture toward a purchase.

2) Filtering Options

In addition to the search bar at the top right corner, ModCloth also offers a very intuitive filtering process for every item. Users can search by size, price, designer, and popularity. The easy-click buttons leave little room for error, so customers can quickly narrow down options to find exactly what they need.

As an added bonus (and this shouldn’t be a bonus so much as a way of life), the filtering options really do return only relevant search results.

3) Instant Customer Service

While ModCloth does offer an email option for customer service, they also make employees available through a live chat option, or by phone -- for those buyers looking for immediate service. These options can all be found in one spot, too, by simply clicking on their Customer Care link.

But ModCloth doesn’t stop there. Not only can you find someone to talk to about the questions or problems you might have, but you can also reach out to a stylist to receive personalized suggestions and recommendations.

4) Secure Checkout

Buyers love ModCloth’s checkout process because it’s clear and linear. You can see from the progress bar at the top of the page that you’ll be taken through each step in the process with no links back to previous pages or unnecessary paths toward other pages.

They also make sure to show their security certificates with large icons so they’re visible. This gives buyers the warm and fuzzies, letting them know personal information will be protected at all costs.

Finally, they also offer alternative payment methods so buyers don’t need to share credit card information if they don’t want to. The ability to purchase through PayPal is just one more way ModCloth makes buyers more comfortable.

5) Up-Front Information

One of the biggest reasons buyers abandon shopping carts before finishing the purchase is because the cost of shipping is a surprise. So, ModCloth makes sure buyers get up-front info about shipping. As you can see, buyers willing to wait a bit for their new threads can also take advantage of free shipping. Cha-ching.

6) Well-Written Product Descriptions

It’s easy enough to simply list the basic product stats in your description copy, but ModCloth gives whimsical descriptions that still manage to convey the most necessary information. Sometimes, it’s fun to just read about the products even if you can’t afford to buy them all.

Again, the key factor here is the customization of the website experience to the psychographic dimensions of their buyer personas. They're not cold, clinical recitations of the manufacturer specs; they're written with the tone and information that their best customers want to read.

7) Social Proof

This company does a great job of including and engaging with followers and friends on social media. As you can see, visitors have several chances to connect with various social platforms during the shopping experience.

The first time comes on the main page, where all the different accounts are listed. Next, buyers have a chance to tweet or Pin the items they’re about to buy (or just recently purchased). In addition to bragging rights for the customers, it’s also good press for ModCloth.

Finally, the company does a great job of keeping social outlets current. Facebook includes images contributed by users -- not just those posted by the company. Twitter asks random questions throughout the day to boost engagement and make followers feel included.

Instagram also features heavily on the site as both a user-generated style guide and a place where customers can share videos with their thoughts on the products and the brand.

Pinterest is used for various reasons, but perhaps most importantly as a secondary product catalog.

Whoa. These guys are busy.

8) Customer Voice

Social media channels aren’t the only ways customers get to share their experiences. Located on each product page is a list of reviews for that particular item.

ModCloth doesn’t censor, either. For each less-than-stellar review, the customer service team reaches out with offers of assistance. Not only do the buyers get a chance to say exactly what they think, but ModCloth also uses that opportunity to improve customer delight.

9) Smart Email Marketing

Sure, ModCloth sends out discounts for their most loyal customers, but they don’t simply rely on coupons to keep their email marketing on track. Check out this particular email that simply informs users of new features coming soon. What a great way to keep building a relationship between buyer and seller.

Email follow-ups for abandoned carts are just as effective. Images are used to remind the user what they almost purchased, and a fun subject line prompts a smile instead of a growl. Well done, ModCloth.

10) Responsive Design

Because so many purchases are made on mobile devices, responsive design is a must. Fortunately, this site also makes shopping on smartphones easy.

First, the menu is very easy to read, and there’s plenty of white space around the links to make clicking easy for thumbs.

The images are easy to see, and adding them to your cart just takes one click.

Even the filtering options are easy to use -- you can drill right down to the very thing you want to buy right there on your phone instead of having to wait until your laptop is in reach.

 

All of these elements on their own are admirable, but finding them all on one site, as part of a cohesive inbound marketing program, makes ModCloth an exemplary inbound ecommerce site to follow. If you're looking for guidance on making your own site more inbound-friendly, this is a great place to find a role model.

Engagement is the end game for content marketing. Getting people interested in and involved with your product is half the battle in making a sale. When your customers know that they can look to you for stellar insights and advice about the industry, you’ve succeeded. But achieving this goal is not easy. It takes a lot of time investment to create the high-quality content you’ll need.

Here are five tips on how to use content to increase your audience’s engagement.

Create Gated Content

“Gated content” refers to information or whole sections of your web site that are only available to people who agree to provide something in return. Gated content creation can be tricky to execute, but when used well, it’s a great way to not only pump up engagement but also to generate leads. For marketing purposes, that “something” is usually contact information, such as:

• Geographic location
• Name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Company information

Gated content may also require payment for information, such as whitepapers or exclusive video, but generally speaking it’s just another rung on the sales funnel.

WebpageFX’s gated content for a free marketing template

Not every company is comfortable with using gated content. Some are wary of alienating potential customers who are not ready to establish contact, or sending them to competitors who do not have gates. It’s best to reserve gated content for premium information; be sure to leave product descriptions and blogs free to navigate for any visitor.

For instance, a site such as Gate to Garage, which sells a wide variety of furnishings and décor, would not benefit from walling off its product listings to visitors. But it might consider requiring potential customers to submit an email address for future contact if they want to see a how-to video or white paper.

One thing to keep in mind, don’t gate all your content. Leave blog posts and infographics as free material for everyone. That free material will drive traffic to your site and then special gated content can be used to increase engagement and build an email database.

Run a Live Q&A Based On of a Controversial Piece of Content

Live chats have a colorful history on the internet. They’re one of the earliest ways that companies engaged with their customers, dating back well before the age of social media. Though they’ve evolved over time, they still remain a great way for businesses to gauge opinions about not only their products but also their industry. The smartest way to draw people in is to play off a piece of content that’s gotten a lot of attention.

This type of content will inspire strong opinions on both sides, which will draw people into the conversation. Be sure to promote the Q&A beforehand, but don’t just rely on live questions to fuel the discussion. Solicit questions and topics beforehand via social media, and keep things open-ended so that you can engage as many people on as many aspects of the issue as possible. If you’re doing the chat on Twitter or Facebook, look over your analytics beforehand to decide what the best time is to hold the conversation.

Last year Paper.li, an online content curation service, sponsored a live Twitter chat to promote awareness for bloggers, who make up the hottest area of its community. The success of the Q&A surprised even the company’s community manager, who personally heard from more than 200 people after the chat via email and on Twitter asking for help and offering their input. The chat also reached people in other countries, a bonus Paper.li hadn’t expected.

Include Calls to Action at the Bottom of Content

Sometimes when you become engaged in a great piece of content, whether it’s a whitepaper, a blog post or a podcast, you’ll forget how you stumbled upon it and your true purpose for looking into the subject. Don’t let that happen to your potential customers. While you don’t need to hammer them over and over with sales pitches, you do need to gently remind them as they reach the end of their time with your content that there’s something they need to do. That may mean registering for something, buying a product or filling out a form.

Whatever it is, make sure your call to action is clear and concise so that you don’t lose your fish from the hook. On the blog for WritersRelief, an author submission service, posts end with reminders that the site can help make writing dreams come true and a link to their submission page, a succinct but effective call to action.

Ask Questions at the End of Blog Posts to Increase Comments

This sounds like an obvious way to increase engagement, but a surprising number of sites do not try to interact with their readers this way. They’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Once you’ve finished discussing the topic at hand, ask your readers what they think. Many blogs put a daily question at the bottom of a blog post in bold, training readers to look for these queries and answer them, thereby increasing engagement.

Don’t just get people to comment, though. Interact with them in the comments section and see how you can further engage them. For instance, the Gawker network of web sites have perfected this approach. Writers interact with readers, exchanging ideas — okay, and often insults — in such a way that the comments sections themselves have become must-reads.

Be Consistent at Something

Consistency is the very best way to establish yourself on the internet, which is largely a bastion of inconsistency. Muck Rack is known for newsletters. Shweiki Media is known for webinars. Find something content-wise that you can be great at, that your customers have a real need for, and that you can deliver on a consistent basis. Then carve out your niche.

Muck Rack’s Newsletter

Play to your personal strengths. If you don’t have time to blog, but you’re a pithy tweeter, make Twitter your thing. Establish a following for your brilliant daily take on something in your industry, whether it’s the latest headlines or even a reality TV show. Author Jennifer Wiener, for instance, is just as famous for her prolific tweeting about “The Bachelor” as she is for writing New York Times bestsellers.

Building an engaged community of readers takes time. Start with these tips in mind as you work on the content that just might make your site a hot spot for customers.