Rnordman

Has all the interest in mindfulness got you intrigued? Here are a few ways to dip a toe in the water and see if meditation is for you.

No doubt you’ve noticed that mindfulness and meditation have moved out of the monastery and into corporate America.

The topic is so hot that Wisdom 2.0, a conference, started in 2009, dedicated to exploring how to be more mindful about our technology use, now has a waiting list that runs into the hundreds. There are meditation apps galore, and organizations from Google to the Marine Corps have embraced the idea of promoting mindfulness. Some longtime meditators and Buddhists are even complaining that this new frenzy is corrupting the real meaning of mindfulness.

With all the interest, maybe you’ve considered seeing what all the fuss is about, but embracing a wisdom tradition thousands of years old is pretty intimidating.

How can the average entrepreneur with a jam-packed schedule get started? PsyBlog recently rounded up quick and easy ways to fit a little meditation into your day. Some are less appropriate for business owners (the candle meditation, for example, isn’t recommended for those sitting at a desk stacked with invoices), but here are a few that might work for you:

If you already go for a walk now and again to clear your head, then you have all the time and opportunity you need to give meditation a whirl. A 10- to 15-minute solitary spin in the park is the perfect opportunity to try walking meditation. PsyBlog explains: "As when cultivating all forms of mindfulness, it’s about focusing the attention. At first, people often concentrate on the sensation of their feet touching the ground. Then you could just as easily focus on your breath or move the attention around your body, part by part. The key, though, is to develop a sort of relaxed attention. When your mind wanders away, bring it back gently, without judging yourself."

No excuses available for this one. Everyone eats, so everyone has the opportunity to inject a little mindfulness into mealtime. "When you take the first bite of any meal, just take a moment to really pay attention to the taste. Look at the food carefully, feel the textures in your mouth, smell it and notice how your body reacts to it. You don’t need to keep this up all the way through the meal, but use it every now and then to focus your attention," PsyBlog instructs.

For many of us, our first impulse when we need to take a break is to open up email or social media. Next time you’re feeling the need to refresh your concentration, why not try a few minutes of mindfulness instead? It’s supersimple, according to the post: "Turn away from the computer/tablet/smartphone and sit for a moment noticing the sensations in your mind and body. How do you feel? What can you hear? Try to be as present in that moment. If your mind wanders off to tasks that you have to complete or starts working over things that happened yesterday, let these go. Gently bring your mind’s focus back to the present."

Are you interested in finding out what all the fuss around mindfulness is about?

GUEST POST

Image Credit: Olivier Le Queinec/Shutterstock

From smartphones to smart homes to web-connected fridges, it’s beginning to feel like there is no escape from this always-on world.

Many of us want the option to switch off the ubiquitous, real-time digital deluge.

Call it a new ‘peace movement’ if you like, and you don’t have to look very far to see evidence of this shift. From the explosion in interest in mindfulness meditation to digital detox holiday resorts, the need to get away from the digital scream is becoming increasingly apparent.

Businesses should be mindful of this shift in attitude and not miss the opportunity to help employees and customers to disengage when they need to. Some well-known brands are already leading the way.

German car manufacturer Volkswagen stops its Blackberry servers sending emails to some of its employees 30 minutes after their shift has ended so they can achieve a healthier work/life balance.

Another German automaker, Daimler, allows employees to have incoming email automatically deleted during vacations so they don’t return to a flooded in-box.

And at Google and AOL, staff are given access to ‘sleep pods,’ with earphones playing soothing music, shutting out external stimuli like the ringtone of your cell phone, so employees can properly recharge during breaks.

Brands like these have discovered that forcing their employees to be switched on all the time actually undermines productivity. It’s a fact many in the psychology world are all too aware of. In a study conducted by psychologists at the University of Utah and University of Kansas in 2012, people scored 50 percent better on a creative problem-solving test after spending four days disconnected from electronic devices.

And the peace movement is not just finding its way into the workplace — marketers are also discovering they can create value by offering consumers the some peace and quiet.

Brazilian beer brand Polar has developed a glass holder that nullifies cell phone signals within a 1.5 meter radius. The idea is to prevent people from constantly checking their devices during social gatherings.

A popular bar in Brazil is attempting to tackle the same issue but with a more low-tech solution. Salve Jorge Bar in São Paulo has developed a beer glass with a step in the base requiring the drinker to place his or her phone under it, making it unavailable for use, to keep the glass upright.

The increasing number of hotels and travel agents offering strict digital-free experiences also forms part of this trend. Witness Palm Island in the Grenadines, where visitors are asked to hand in their digital devices on arrival. Life coaches are available if guests need guidance and advice on how to use their free time productively.

The ubiquity of technology has brought huge benefits to our lives and, for that reason, we’re unlikely to see the digital world rolled back wholesale. But people will demand and create spaces and times where they are free to be human for a moment or even a week or two.

As technology encroaches more and more on our lives, expect a growing number of people to shift towards the peace movement.

People of all ages are beginning to take a step back and reassess their attitude to wellbeing, balance, and happiness. It’s time the businesses world did the same.

Ian Wood is executive director of brand strategy in the London office of global brand consulting firm Landor Associates. He has helped develop strategies for many major companies, including bmi, BP, British Gas, Land Rover, Marks and Spencer, Mazda, PepsiCo, and Pick n Pay. He has worked worldwide in Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Russia, and the United States, and has generated much intellectual content for Landor. Ian recently served as Landor’s first global strategy director, a rotating position. He is also a frequent blogger on Landor.com.

The most recent LastPass app for Android adds an incredible new feature: now, it can autofill your login and password information for you, both in Chrome and in other Android apps.

Read more...

The right activity gets results. It is not just being busy that gets appointments and gets demos and gets deals. One of my favorite slogans in selling is:

Never confuse activity with accomplishment.

Stop telling everyonehow BUSY you are and start having a professional conversation around why you will be successful and accomplish the results you were hired for based on a plan that you have, or will put, in place.

Measure your actions and time spent.

Create a To-do list and work to accomplish the top 3 items on it today.

Make a “bucket” list for all the things you need to get done – by having two separate lists you won’t overwhelm yourself.

When it comes to selling, you must have these things in place:

Understanding of exactly who your target market is – where you and your company do their best work

Contacts and connections in that target market

Strategic partners in that industry or geography who can refer multiple people your way

Referrals to those in your target market

Well-crafted messaging: voice mail, e-mail, and for direct conversations.

The act of dialing and emailing enough “more probable” potential prospects each day to give you enough prospects to talk with every day and every week. Unless you get 100% of your business through referral, you need to be prospecting every day.

Qualifying as you talk with potential new buyers – are they a right fit for your company, and vice-versa?

Recording your results and setting next actions – do this in time blocks, or chunks so as to not interrupt your calling and emailing routine.

Important

Now – here’s the most important part. Think of what else you have been doing today and how MUCH of your time was spent on any or all of the above, as opposed to time wasting, grazing online, planning personal activities away from the office, thinking about your vacation, and talking to your co-workers.  You know what grazing is, right? Mindless web surfing – you pick up some information for prospecting but mostly you are wasting your efforts and looking at stuff that has NOTHING to do with your prospects, your messaging, or you getting a deal closed.

I talk a lot about focus – a most critical element to your success in selling.

Inside Sales Power Tip 122 was about Keeping Your Focus. I encourage re-reading it.

Inside Sales Power Tip 145 was about Execution - while action and execution are similar, I don’t think we could talk about it enough since it is so critical for your success. Did you read Tip 145 and take any of the suggestions to heart?

What THREE actions can you take right now that will bring you closer to one of your sales opportunities closing?

Do the first one now. I’ll wait.

Successful sellers are in continual motion moving conversations and potential opportunities forward.

It is time to get off your slow moving pace and ramp thing up. You have less time than you think you do, and probably you don’t have enough prospects to close the business you need to close to make your numbers.

Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the “Top 30 Social Sales Influencers” worldwide. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog and the “Sales Ideas In A Minute” newsletter for sales strategies, tactics, and tips in selling. Increase Opportunities. Expand Your Pipeline. Close More Deals.

email lori@scoremoresales.com | My LinkedIn Profile | twitter | Visit us on google+

The post Inside Sales Power Tip 153 – Activity Gets Results appeared first on Score More Sales.

Businesses that invest significant time and money to produce static content like PDFs, brochures, and product materials are often unable to measure the yield of their efforts because these formats fail to tell a complete story. On the other hand, multimedia such as videos are proven to significantly increase exposure and audience engagement with brand messages. Research by PR Newswire shows that companies who are incorporating multimedia into their communication strategies experience almost ten times more visibility than those who don’t. Despite the apparent benefits, an additional survey amongst PR and marketing professionals finds that a lack of resources is cited as the top reason that companies are not utilizing visual elements.

Given today’s noisy digital media environment, attention spans are shrinking and the importance of utilizing video to tell a story can no longer be ignored. Therefore, if you are going to be successful in your communication efforts you MUST find the time, budget and experience to produce video in 2014.

“If you’re sitting on some highly produced print communications and you’ve noticed that your investment isn’t being read by a large enough audience, then you need to think about converting your messaging into visuals,” says MultiVu’s Executive Producer, Larry Cardarelli, “It needs to be something that speaks to your audience and influencers in an engaging, and meaningful way.” Those lengthy PDFs and brochures can be reshaped into concise, attention-grabbing videos that simplify complex messages and attract prospective buyers.

Click the image to register for our upcoming webinar on using multimedia content to engage leads and convert them into customers

Successful luxury real estate broker and reality TV star, Ryan Serhant, transformed his 36-page company brochure into a stunning short-form video with help from MultiVu’s team of experienced producers and editors. Take a look at the final result:

Even without a large budget, self-made videos can still be an effective way to tell your story. Major outlets like CNN and The Chicago Tribune regularly feature videos taken from ordinary devices such as cell phones and laptops in their news coverage. The MultiVu team suggests the following tips to help you turn your static content into creative and interactive videos:

Understand the audience. “Hold a creative session with your key people and ask something like, ‘What images come to mind when you think about our product or service?’” advises Cardarelli, “from there– the creative juices naturally begin to flow.” Decide who you want to reach and think about what is going to be the most interesting to them. What will make them “feel the most feelings?” The three E’s of a successful video are:

• Entertain
• Educate
• Engage

Create sound bites and b-roll footage. Prepare interview questions and feature a variety of spokespeople who will appeal to different audiences. For the location of the interviews, think about where you will get the best lighting, the best sound, and avoid a background that might distract viewers from listening to your key messages. Additionally, decide what scenic shots will tell your story best. For instance, the example above features shots of the Serhant team at work in the office as well as stock footage of a bustling New York City where the company is headquartered.

Choose the sound bites that tell your story best without the corporate jargon. Remember, audiences don’t care what you do; they care why you do it. It only takes a few seconds for a viewer to decide if they will watch a video in its entirety or not, so make every second count. Be wary of speaking with too many filler words; sentences ridden with “uhs,” “ums,” and “likes” come across as nervous or obtuse and diminish the value of your message. Though you can refine a sound bite for clarity with skillful editing, it is not the best option if you are limited in time and resources.

Pair your sound bites with the best visuals to emphasize statistics or key selling points. The beauty of video content is having the ability to highlight spoken words with short written text or pictures simultaneously on-screen. For perspective, six pages of a booklet can be effectively compressed into one scene of a video. Keep in mind that the ideal video length is no longer than 90 seconds.

Challenge yourself throughout the editing process to ensure your video tells a cohesive story. Now that you’ve chosen the best components to tell your story, you want to make sure those pieces flow well together. Keep an eye out for details such as unnatural vocal inflections throughout a sound bite or unflattering camera angles. You might also want to include music that establishes a positive vibe and maintains upbeat energy; it affects the viewers’ mood.

Include a call to action at the end of the video. Do not waste a valuable opportunity to generate leads and ROI.

Consider reallocating the resources you’d have spent on lengthy PDFs or glossy brochures into a more effective video format. Audiences will appreciate it, and your message will be amplified exponentially.

Register to attend our free webinar for more ideas on powering your content marketing campaigns with multimedia.

Image Credit: Baer Tierkel/Flickr

Soon, you’ll be able to buy and sell contracts for cloud computing resources as easily as you can trade contracts for soybeans and feeder cattle.

Later this year, the CME Group, a leading exchange of options and futures, will launch a spot exchange for servers that people can rent for short periods of time. The exchange will use standards for cloud infrastructure that 6fusion devised, enabling the trading of infrastructure from many cloud providers, according to a press release 6fusion issued today.

Trading cloud contracts on a major exchange could further legitimize the public cloud. And that evolution could continue when more than one major exchange rolls public cloud credits into their offerings next to precious metal, livestock, and grains.

Last year Deutsche Boerse, which runs the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, committed to launching a cloud spot market of its own in the first quarter of 2014. That launch has not been announced yet.

It’s unclear to what extent the biggest public-cloud providers, like Amazon Web Services, would actively support these spot markets. Amazon offers a wide range of cloud services, some of which other vendors don’t carry.

But 6fusion talks about its ability to make apples-to-apples comparisons with its Workload Allocation Cube, or WAC. That way, buyers can figure out what exactly they’ll need should they want to run workloads on cloud resources.

Cloud commentators like to describe the cloud as a commodity that companies can buy in vast supplies and at low costs because of stiff competition. In just a few months’ time, that commodity will have common platforms, just like more generally accepted commodities.

We’ve all been hung up on. Some of us might have even been yelled at or berated for calling at an inconvenient time. Most people would rather have their teeth pulled than make a cold call. 

However, cold calls are necessary. Many companies don’t have enough warm leads to fill sales reps’ quota demands. Cold calling also puts you in contact with potential customers you wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise. 

If you want a seat at the table in your industry, you and your sales team will have to warm up to going in cold. By incorporating effective strategies, you can thaw that frigid first interaction enough to lay the groundwork for a valuable customer relationship.

4 Steps to Easier Cold Calls

Time is short. You have to quickly convince potential customers that you can offer them something of value. Your team can benefit from the following tactics:

1. Make the call. It seems obvious, but the initial act of punching in the numbers is often the biggest obstacle. Stop stalling, and start dialing.
2. Refine your message. If you can’t hit your selling points within 30 seconds, you won’t make it to the 31st. You must be dynamic and enticing within that window. Pull that off, and you’ll earn three minutes of the prospect’s time.
3. Set a meeting. Use this time to prompt prospects about how they can use your product or service. Schedule a 30-minute demo in the near future. You can delve deeper when you’ve scheduled a face-to-face meeting. Your goal at this stage is to help them envision your potential value within three minutes.
4. Prepare for the next contact. Once prospects have agreed to a demo, you’ve moved beyond cold-call territory. You now have a warm lead to pursue. Formulate your plan, and direct your energy toward any specifics you learned during the initial call. 
5. Ease back — for now, at least. Turning up the heat on a potential sale or contract does not mean dialing up the aggression. Once you’ve successfully navigated the call and developed rapport, nurture the relationship carefully. Being too brazen can extinguish the flames, rather than stoke the fire. 

Interested or Just Polite?

One of the biggest challenges to productively pursuing cold-call prospects is distinguishing between prospects who are interested and people who are merely polite. Sometimes, prospects will express enthusiasm and willingness to hear your pitch — even if they have no serious intention to buy. They won’t say no to spending time, but they will say no to spending money. The more cold calls you make, the clearer the distinction between truly curious customers and the amiable (but uninterested) ones becomes.

Conversely, some prospects may seem reluctant at the beginning, but will ultimately follow through after considering the opportunity. I’ve had calls I thought were going nowhere fast. Surprisingly, some of those customers ended up asking me leading questions that indicated they could envision the benefits of our services when we met. 

The moral of the story: Don’t be too quick to judge; you’ll often be wrong. However, don’t be too slow to judge because you will often waste time.

Buckets of Success

So, how do you avoid spending too much time on prospects who aren’t very promising? I use the bucket system to organize prospects. You can use whatever labels you want for the buckets — numbers, colors, favorite sports teams, etc. — as long as the labels are consistent among your staff. Let’s use temperature-based buckets as an example:

• Cold Buckets: During your first interaction with prospects, everyone’s in the cold bucket. You’ve had no previous contact with them, so you must depend on your skills.
• Warm Buckets: These consist of your appropriate contacts within an organization. Who are you trying to reach? Who would have the pain your solution was built to fix? Warm buckets are your intended audience. Once you connect to “warm” individuals, gauge their level of interest and build a timeframe for taking action. If they want collateral, send them collateral and schedule a follow-up for the next week. At this point, everyone in that organization not involved in your meeting may be considered “frozen.”
• Hot Buckets: If your contacts are legitimately swamped and ask for a follow-up next quarter, set a date and time to touch base and mark them as “hot.” Your contact people are, most likely, just as busy as you are. They’re still high on your priority list, but they’re not necessarily demanding your immediate attention like the next level.
• Boiling Buckets: Once you have a meeting scheduled, you’ve entered boiling temperatures. These are your top-priority prospects. They’re interested enough to hear your ideas and numbers. It’s your job to form a lasting relationship. Seize these opportunities!

Cold calling is unlikely to top anyone’s list of favorite tasks. It can be nerve-wracking. Many prospects will not be interested in what you have to offer. However, by refining your message, securing that all-important first meeting, and categorizing your priorities, you could be looking at the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

In the old days, back when Blackberry was the hot digital platform, enormous time and effort went into website creation and design. Like sculpted works of art, websites resided in a beautiful online gallery called the World Wide Web (which you reached via a dialup modem and AOL).

Back then, website design and development was dominated by two classes of professionals: Print designers, who brought their aesthetic sensibilities for look and feel to the web; and IT managers, who brought their deep knowledge of coding in nearly forgotten programming languages and early HTML.

Ah yes, the good old days – back before the companies and people who actually OWN websites were able to manage them to drive business results.

As the graphic above illustrates, it ain’t that way in the 21^st century. And by and large, it’s a good thing. Because, as one of my favorite sales buddies says, Google can’t see pretty. In other words, on the Internet, success is not about how beautiful your website is. It’s about how well it delivers results that drive the success of your organization, whether it’s a nonprofit or a for-profit enterprise. This great infographic comes from HubSpot, a leader in the inbound marketing game (we are a HubSpot partner agency).

Now before my design and IT buddies get on my case, do not misunderstand me. Great design and solid technical performance are still important; in fact they are table stakes. In other words, if you don’t have those two attributes, you’re not even in the game. And there are enough low-cost, high-quality designers and web platforms around the world that great design and solid performance are available to nearly everyone.

In the 21^st century, the Google search engine and the company behind it set most of the rules for being found on the Internet. And guess what, folks? The Google search engine can’t see how pretty your website is. Nope. It’s evaluating other information that frankly, is more important in search. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, guess what? Google can’t behold beauty, period. It reads text associated with images, called ALT tags, not the images themselves. And color, well, it doesn’t see that either. People see all of these things of course, but only AFTER using Google search and typing in keywords and phrases that bring them to your website, where they can decide for themselves if it’s beautiful or if it functions well.

So if great design and technical competency are table stakes, what in the world do you need to consider (and perhaps fix) so that Google and anyone hunting for what you do will discover your website in top search results? Here are my top three critical elements that will drive engagement and results for your website:

1. Know your current performance metrics. Huh? See nothing about how your website looks. We’re talking about how your website performs. If you said you were going to run a marathon, the first thing a running coach would want to know is what shape you are in, not how good you look in your running gear. Here are some areas where you need to know how you’re doing on the web:
   1. Number of visits/visitors/unique visitors
   2. Bounce rate
   3. Time on site
   4. Current SEO rankings for important keywords
   5. Domain authority
   6. Number of new leads/form submissions
   7. And yes, how about total amount of sales generated?

If you don’t have access to this information, you should add a tool like Google Analytics or HubSpot’s marketing analytics to get better tracking and learn more about your current site performance.

1. Determine your goals. And yes, “I just want our website to look better,” is rarely a good answer here. Again, a person who takes up running (or advances to more competitive running) isn’t doing it to look better – they have tangible goals – lose so much weight, improve average time to run a mile, improve cardiovascular health, etc. So what do you want your website to do, actually? Most of our inbound marketing clients what their websites to help them engage more deeply with the audiences they care about. And for our for-profit companies, that means help them drive sales. So what do you want visitors to your website to do once they get there? Most often, you want strangers to become customers and then you want those customers to become promoters of your brand. This happens when you create remarkable content that engages people and builds a relationship that leads to you doing business together.
2. Define your brand. As yes, so if website success is about performance, what is it that your website has to say to the world about you and what you do? In other words, what is your brand or story? This is the fuel that will power your website success. In those bad old days I mentioned earlier, clients wanted to talk about content and too many designers wanted to talk only about pretty. Too many IT wonks wanted to talk code. On the Internet, content is king! Eureka! That stuff that people read is what really matters in website success. Yet the key here is content that is well written and that really tells your intended audience who you are, what you do, and why they need to engage with you.

Yes, Google doesn’t see pretty and truth be told, it never has. That doesn’t mean pretty doesn’t matter. It means that being pretty, but without substance, is no more of a formula for long-term success in cyberspace than it is in real life.

Want to know more about how to create a website that drives results? Download our free eBook on the topic produced by our partners at HubSpot. It includes more about these three tips and four more tips that will make a great difference in your thinking about the potential redesign of your website to improve performance.

And feel free to share your own experiences in the comments below.

A successful inbound marketing campaign can flood your website with leads, but many people don’t take advantage of their leads correctly and let potential sales and revenue slip through their fingers.

A lot of the times this is due to poorly executed lead nurturing and follow-up, as well as a general fear of being viewed as annoying. When you are dealing with other business professionals and consumers alike, the last thing you want to be is annoying, especially when you are trying to land a sale, a business relationship, and revenue.

Do you think you are the only person or business contacting the lead? They could be receiving a couple emails a day or several hundred. When an individual is receiving so many emails they naturally cannot respond to them all at once. If you reach out to a lead and you don’t receive an immediate response it doesn’t necessarily mean you are being ignored and the prospect isn’t interested in your products and or services. It can simply mean that they are extremely busy and will eventually reach out to you.

Many businesses make the mistake of not following up when they don’t receive an instant response. This is the wrong approach and it can lead to a lot of missed opportunity. The lead requested information from you so there is obviously a certain level of interest, so follow up with them often until you speak with them. There is a way to do it without being annoying about it, so take a look at the following 5 tips to help you follow up with your leads in an effective manner.

Tip #1: Don’t Pester Your Leads

Understand that your prospects have jobs to do and a lot of responsibilities on their plate. Calling them and emailing them every day is going to appear to be overly eager and pushy, but you don’t want to let meek go by and have them forget about you. Start with an initial email and phone call introduction and inviting them to contact you at their earliest convenience. You can then follow up weekly for a couple of weeks and then switch to a couple follow-ups each month.

Tip #2: Be Respectful and Knowledgeable

Going back to tip number one, don’t forget your leads are extremely busy, so acknowledge that in your communications. If you are not hearing back from a particular lead don’t let your frustration show in your emails or voicemails. Let them know that you understand they are busy and ask them to contact you when it is convenient for them. Also, provide some knowledgeable and useful information for them the communications. This can be great bait to cause a faster response.

Tip #3: Ask Leads if They Would Like You to Stop Contacting Them

You will notice that your leads will respond well to honesty. If you have made several attempts to get them on the phone or reach them via email with no response simply send them an email acknowledging that you understand that they are busy and ask them if they would like you to stop contacting them. Some will say yes, and this is great because it will save you from chasing a dead lead, but you will also notice that some will apologize for not getting back sooner and reach out to you.

Tip #4: Give Them a Reason to Contact You

A good percentage of your leads will be receiving emails and phone calls from other companies as well. You need to make sure that you stand out in order to grab your leads attention and trigger a contact back. Give them some tips, some information, or make the contact personal if possible. If you take the time to stand out form the others it will help your chances of connecting with your leads.

Tip #5: Change Your Approach

If you are not receiving a good response from your follow-up emails and calls then you need to change up your approach. Change your email messages, the times of the day you send them, and even the tone that comes across in the emails. Your leads are busy, so the time that they come into contact with your messages has a lot to do with the response you receive. Keep trying until you find messages as well as times that work well to deliver a good response from your leads. This is not something that will happen overnight, but in the long run it can help you make great improvements in your lead follow-up.

There is no need to be shy or to be afraid of upsetting a prospect. Follow up until you get the answer you are looking for: either a sale or a request to stop following up. You owe it to the prospect to attempt to touch base with them to inform them about the product or service they inquired about.

Have you written a business eBook? Are you trying to generate more leads from it?

Try optimizing your landing page.

eBooks are a great method to give your potential customers something for free, show you’re an industry leader and build trust with your readers. Put your eBooks on an email-gated landing page, hosted directly on your website – and you can generate warm, qualified leads for your business.

But even with the greatest of all eBooks, you won’t get leads unless your landing page converts.

Even the smallest of tweaks on your page can increase your conversion rates exponentially.

In this article, I show you 3 sector based examples of real ebook landing pages. I’ll run through them with a critique of what’s good, what needs changing and how you can optimize your own ebook landing pages.

Retailers eBook Landing Page

One Stop Retail Solutions gives support to retail businesses. They have an entire library of retail related resources, including free eBooks.

Here’s what one of their email-gated eBook landing pages looks like:

What’s Good:

First off, this landing page is terrible. On initial glance, this page looks like it is from 2004 – or earlier. There are still a few good points about the page:

• Visual of logo – Their logo is prominently placed on the upper left corner of the page. This is good marketing to reinforce who they are, and breeds trust.

• Image of smiling woman – The image of a smiling woman has shown to increase conversions in online marketing. On this page, it’s prominently placed. It also visually explains what the page is about – books. (But the image is, well, boring, and looks stock. Additionally, the eBook that’s being ‘sold’ on the page is poorly photoshopped in – and hard to see.)

• Contrasting color scheme – I give the landing page points for the contrasting blue/ orange color scheme. The orange banner makes their “free ebook” selling feature stand out.

• Includes contact info – Putting a phone number on your landing page can increase consumer trust. It shows you’re available and easy to access as a business.

• Good SEO – This ranked high in Google search, appearing on the first SERP. There’s clearly good use of relevant keywords, site links, alt tags and other SEO tactics. Honestly though, it’s tough to see why this ranks so high. They would definitely benefit with a higher converting page.

What’s Needs Optimizing:

To increase conversions, the page needs to be more visually appealing and user friendly. Here’s a few reasons why their page is not getting the leads it could:

• CTA not above the fold – This is one of my pet peeves. Your Call to Action needs to be above the fold. Studies have shown that a viewer rarely scrolls down on your site. If your CTA is not visible immediately, you’ve pretty much lost the lead.

The CTA and bullet points about the book are “below the fold”. The visitor does not see the benefits and action ask – unless they scroll through the entire page.

• Lacks clear visuals – If you look closely, you can actually see the image of the book cover (you have to look very closely). It is not prominent, and doesn’t ‘sell’ the book. A customer these days sees hundreds of sites. Your page needs to attract a customer’s attention with a clear selling point within 5 seconds.

• Too cluttered – The page is too wordy. There are too many distractions with the left hand side links. Again, this page looks like it was styled in 2004. Today’s landing pages are much more visually based and simply designed. Give some breathing space to your leads.

• CTA not clear – There’s no distinct CTA button to download the ebook. This tactic of simply having a list of form fields, with a non-distinct “submit” button may have been effective a few years ago. But in 2014, your customers have an exponential amount of visual distractions online. You need to make your CTA stand out with contrasting colours, and more enticing form fields.

• Too many value propositions – Is the objective of this page to get customers to “Request a free consultation today”, or to download an eBook? The page has too many focal directions. Keep your landing page value proposition to one. Don’t confuse your prospects – they will just leave.

• No social share buttons – Again, this page is outdated. It needs social share buttons to increase its reach.

Free Recipe eBook Landing Page

Purdy’s Chocolatier makes fine chocolates sold at their own retail outlets. The company has a number of innovative marketing strategies for their sector, including their own blog, contests, and eBooks.

Here’s a look at one of their recipe eBook landing pages:

What’s good:

• Clear headline – The title of their blog landing page “Purdy’s Hot Chocolate Recipe eBook” is clear and to the point. It uses their keywords (which is good for search), and it visually stands out on the page.

• Clear CTA – The Call to Action is visually distinct with a ribbon-like overlay on the large image. It’s above the fold, branded, and reiterates what it is the prospect will get. The action to take is simple: “download”.

• Strong visuals – The hot chocolate theme is obvious through the image. It shows the reader what the topic is, and gives a taste of what they’ll get in the download – without having to read it. The visual flow is optimized – I’d say they’ve used visual heat maps to determine where the to place the image. (Most people tend to scan to left side of site first).

• Share buttons – The site has social share buttons for Facebook and Twitter.

• Clever marketing – Ok this isn’t specific to a critique on the landing page itself, but I’ve got to give a shout-out to the clever lead generation strategy here. The company is a chocolate maker. By producing free eBooks, they expand the use of their products and give customers creative reasons to buy more chocolate to enjoy.

What needs optimizing:

• Broken link – Unfortunately, the link to download the ebook is broken. This is a huge miss. You’ve worked to get your customers to click on your ebook page, you’ve sold them with your landing page. Then they can’t get what you’re selling them. FAIL.

• eBook not on page – Aside from the broken link itself, the eBook had been hosted on Facebook, not on the business website itself. They should optimize the lead generation opportunity by uploading the ebook directly onto their website for people to download while on their own domain. (Hosting an eBook on Facebook is so 2011.)
• Additionally, they would increase conversions by decreasing the number of clicks their customer needs to take. Include a clear CTA on your eBook page, where people can get your book without leaving the site.

• Not email-gated – This campaign was clearly intended to get more Likes on Facebook. In 2014, however, they should be focused on gaining more email leads to nurture, convert and gain the coveted repeat consumer.

• Host on unique landing page – They should host their eBooks on a unique landing page – not on their blog. A web page gives more SEO opportunities, and greater styling flexibility.

Wedding Resource Lead Generation Landing Page

The Perfect Wedding Guide is an online resource for both brides and for wedding planners. They offer resources and listings for how to plan the perfect wedding.

Here’s a look at one of their wedding guide eBook landing pages:

What’s good:

• Clean design – The page employs a great use of whitespace and complementary colors. The pink banner accents the pink colored value propositions. The green headline makes the darker green “Download” CTA button pop. It’s not too cluttered, and is easy to understand the offer and ask at a glance.

• Clear headline – It is clear what to expect from the book – a practical workbook for brides. The more obvious you make your offer, the more conversions you’ll likely get from your particular market.

• Shows the benefits – The page gives a number of enticements for why a bride to be would want (or even need) this book. It offers their market the ability to “Plan your wedding painlessly” (a huge benefit for a stressed out bridal parties). It also give the promise to “Become a Better Bride!” (another huge benefit for – well the bridesmaids and family at least!)

• Personable and understanding – Yes, a standard landing page can (and should) be personable. They write the landing page copy using words like “you”, “keep you sane” and “you’ve come to the right place”. It sounds like they understand their customer, which develops trust. The more your customer trusts you, the more likely they’ll buy from you – or at least give you their email for your free stuff.

• Bullet points – People are scanners online today. Succinctly tell the benefits of your book in a few well coined bullet points. Be truthful about what your book is about, and show how amazingly good it is for your consumer to get. Their bullets points start with “learn”, “discover” and “stay on top” – these are all great words to entice a download for a free resource.

• Optional fields in lead generation form – The color contrasted lead gen form stands out on the page, and the required fields are not a large ask. I love that they ask for more fields than they require. This marketing tactic makes the consumer feel like the information ask is less than it could be – so it seems like a deal. Additionally, the business could end up with even more information about their prospects.

What needs optimizing:

• Testimonial – They could include a testimonial from a former bride-to-be. This would deepen the feeling of a personal connection and increase the level of trust.

• Image of smiling bride – Instead of held flowers, they could show an image of a happy, stress-free bride on her wedding day. They could A/B test where on the page it gets the most conversions (i.e. the top left hand side vs. the bottom left hand side).

• Include social share buttons – Most brides want to share their planning with friends and family. Make the email-gated landing page easy to share on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, and they could easily increase conversions.

Conclusion

Producing helpful, customer-related ebooks and giving them away for free can increase your customer trust level, build your business brand as an industry leader, and even get you qualified leads.

Make it easy to download your great content. Use a well-optimized landing page directly on your website to increase your leads and start the sales conversion process.

What do you think? Do you make eBooks? Do you generate leads with landing pages?

Written by Krista Bunskoek @ Wishpond

You Relied on What You Were Told

“Never ever mistake the smile upon my face as agreement to the words coming out of your mouth. There’s no telling what I may be thinking.” – Lisa Pool

There are plenty of reasons I may be smiling while you are talking. One of the most common misconceptions people make is a smile mean agreement, acceptance, understanding or mutual understanding, approval, or endorsement. If I could teach any new sales rep anything it would be, “don’t trust your gut!”

There are likely other reasons for the smiles.

1. They read a leadership article citing all the reasons leaders should smile more.
2. Smiling boosts confidence.
3. To make a difficult task easier.
4. Their mind wandered off to their impending vacation
5. It’s good manners

Emotional or “gut feelings” are not the way to forecast. As Bob Nichols stated, buyers have four compartments of information they evaluate: product, price, support, and the company. Customers aren’t buying a smiling face. They are buying what they are trying to accomplish as an organization.

You Relied on Bad Data

Hate to tell you this, but most of the data in your CRM is missing, inaccurate, not what you need, or out of date. Most sales people don’t want to enter information into Salesforce.com or other any other CRM. And truthfully, why would they? It’s cumbersome. They’d rather spend time in front of customers than behind a computer screen. You’re not holding them accountable for the information being entered or not entered.

You Relied on a Dirty Pipeline

When was the last time you summoned forth your sales team, threw down the gauntlet, and challenged the sacred cow we call a pipeline? Have you really looked at the stuff in there? How long has that opportunity been in the pipeline? When was the last time the opportunity was touched? Do your sales people know what information is needed to make it a valid lead? Do you know? Do the leads in your pipeline match your ideal customer profile? Do you have an ideal customer profile? Do your sales people know the buying criteria of each? If not, it’s time to do some housecleaning.

You Relied on the Wrong Dates

One of the most common mistakes sales managers make in forecasting is telling the sales team how many sales have to be made by a specific date. Just because your organization has a date, it doesn’t mean your clients have to have the same date. That’s a little like telling a baby the date and time down to the minute what time it will be born, how much it will weigh, and how long it will be. Good luck with that. Like babies, organizations make their decisions based upon their own needs, not yours.

You Relied on Fallax Indicium

My Latin is likely off, but the idea is you relied on false information based upon survival rather than accuracy. Did you actually ask your sales people how many sales they were going to make? You did, didn’t you?

Sales people are not willing to risk their job security by openly admitting they are going to perform below expectation, and most likely neither are you. Forecasts become a mixture of hope and fear. Even some of the most successful sales reps would prefer to avoid the embarrassment of an upcoming off month and make up a forecast. In some cases, sales people will fill their CRM with activity that isn’t real just to keep you off their back. I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit I have also behaved in that manner. Every week, I had a sales manager wanting a report saying what deals I was closing the following week. Seriously? I’m the girl who doesn’t believe anything is solid until the ink has dried and the client has taken possession. I didn’t have a crystal ball, and I couldn’t read minds, but sure, let me make a number up for you.

Unfortunately, sales managers often use these kinds of criteria for sales forecasting. You may as well go to Las Vegas and play the craps table. Seriously, you have better odds at a craps table in Vegas than you do forming an accurate sales forecast.

Increase Your Odds of an Accurate Forecast

There are better methods to increase your odds of an accurate sales forecast that don’t involve “gut feelings” or “instinct.” However, if you like your odds, go for it. All you need is a seven or an eleven unless it’s a two, three, or a twelve. If it’s a different number, the rules adjust. Get busy forecasting.

Don’t forget: This  Thursday April 17th from 8:30-Noon is the Funnelholic Virtual Sales Summit feat. Jill Konrath, Jill Rowley, Matt Heinz, and Dan Waldschmidt. Please click here to learn more. It will be the most fun you will have all week (or month)…

First, the video. BIG TIME WARNING: There is profanity in this video and I am warning you now to not watch the video if you are offended by cursing. I know that posting something with cursing is risky and I could lose some of you. I hope not, but I understand. Here is the thing — when I run into the issues that I am about to detail in this post, I think of this scene. I just have to present it as is.

I am surprised I even need to write this. The one thing I love about sales and sales leaders is single-minded pursuit of the number. Unfortunately, I have spent a lot of time with b2b startups and I have seen this really weird situation: The sales leader is spending his/her time on the wrong things and the results are a disaster. Sounds weird right? We think of sales as voracious sellers…they can sell the Brooklyn Bridge and can’t wait to get out there. Not always the case. Let me give you some use cases:

• I was recently at a startup (2 sales guys) where they hired a veteran b2b sales leader. The sales leader spent lots of money and time setting up Salesforce.com, getting the preso ready, etc. Now this is fine, except with 2 guys, this should not be a 2 month project. But more importantly, he was telling the CEO that he would not sell until all the pieces were in place and the product wasn’t ready (it was ready, they had customers already using it. It wasn’t perfect, but there was something to sell). He spent very little time on sales calls or even working deals because he kept complaining “they weren’t ready”. Sales guys were following up on leads but with no direction, were getting a couple pots and pans deals here and there. I told him: “Dude, you gotta sell something or this won’t be good”.  He disagreed. He was let go in like 3 months.
• My buddy is Salesforce.com consultant and was working on a project with 5 field reps already in the seat. The VP of Sales was spending all his time having him install all this technology before they had even sold anything like a complex sales compensation application that “he had at his old company” (which had 200 sales reps). No activity happening in the field. No idea what was going on. I used to run into this all the time in my days at SalesRamp. The sales leader spent all this time setting everything up and not beating the street.

See the issue? That’s not going to work.

Follow the GoodFellas motto and always keep your eyes on making it happen. Here is some food for thought:

Reality check: The solution you are selling is incomplete

Here are your warnings before you join: There are problems with the product. Yes, they misrepresented how far along they were. No, they do not have all these happy customers. If you join a startup, thats the game. This will be hard — know that before you join.

Be agile

I am certainly NOT the guy saying to ignore people, process, and technology. That is my livelihood. But lets be agile here. Start with a simple plan with simple process and absolutely must-have to sell technology. The CRM should be functional and basic…The product guys are doing. They go to market with the MVP (minimum viable product) and adjust accordingly. You have to do the same. In one of my old companies, I was working with a sales leader. First day on the job, I told him we could do a sales call at a buddy’s company but told him we could wait. We had a deck for investors that we had done one rev of changes for the sales deck. His response: “Let’s go. I’ll give it”. We spent 30 more minutes fixing it up and he went for it. It was on. I was inspired.

Sell what’s on the back of the truck

As sales leader you have to tell the organization what you need to sell. Conversely, you have to sell while they go fix it. The problems with the product are rarely a fatal flaw and if you bring in the right deal — they will fix it. There is someone you can sell it to. Focus on the good things and identify customers who need it. Start there. If you sell, the organization reacts. Just charge.

Do things that don’t scale

“Craig, that doesn’t scale.” Craig: “Well, you won’t be here when it does if you don’t”. One of the best posts of the last two years is Paul Graham’s Do Things That Don’t Scale. Startups love hiring guys from Salesforce or other great, successful sales cultures. They know how to scale. I love that so don’t get me wrong. But again, as a sales leader plan to go big but be prepared to do things that won’t work later to win deals and make people happy NOW. Be hands on as hell in the start. You can’t sit in the ivory tower yet. You gotta take 10 meetings a week, get into deals, etc.

Figure it out because you have to

That’s your job. The organization hands you an imperfect piece of art — you figure out how to go to market. PERIOD. I recently talked to my VP of Marketing buddy who was talking about their new VP of Sales. “He walked in and spent a couple weeks looking at the product, did 20 sales meetings, and met with executives. He then rolled out his plan. Stage one: we are increasing the price and selling only to companies with between 200-1000 employees. We will focus on this very specific set of problems. I request that the organization provide us with X amount of leads. In the meantime, we will get our own deals. I need the following product enhancements over the next 3-6 months. This is how we will deliver the number.” The company grew IMMEDIATELY and I love that guy for it. The VP of Marketing: “We would be out of business without him.” My man.

Exhausted yet? There are startup vp of sales who just get it done and I love them. I remember Bill Binch, early days at Marketo, telling me how when he got there he met with a rep who hit his number for the month. “What do you have for next month?” Rep: “I don’t think I will hit next month.” Bill: “Just to be clear: You have to. Let’s dig in and make it happen.” And you know how that story ends.

I love startup sales leaders who make it happen. It is so hard sometimes. You have to literally scratch, grab, and fight to hit early numbers. Many aren’t suited for it and unfortunately, people who have succeeded elsewhere can fail at startups. I’ll leave you with one more story: In 2002, I consulted for a sales leader at an early stage startup trying to find their way. He was a mean son-of-a-gun from Oracle. First meeting with the sales team, one of the sales reps complained that they were missing XYZ. His response: “We sold a billion dollars worth of Oracle Financials and it didn’t even work.” The secret that the sales rep didn’t know was the sales leader passed that back to the executive team as something they needed. He wasn’t being unresponsive, his message to the team was: “We won’t be stopped. No matter what.”

Remember, the board, CEO, and the rest of the company is thinking one thing: “F you, pay me”.

Another reminder!: This  Thursday April 17th from 8:30-Noon is the Funnelholic Virtual Sales Summit feat. Jill Konrath, Jill Rowley, Matt Heinz, and Dan Waldschmidt. Please click here to learn more. See you there!

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic and a co-founder of Topo. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Marketing automation has revolutionized the way B2B organizations manage their leads. Not only has it provided marketers with effective and innovative ways to conduct campaigns and manage leads, it has given firms access to invaluable insight into daily marketing operations.

As a result, marketers have less and less opportunities to excuse poor performance. Here are seven lies they can no longer tell because of marketing automation:

1. The database we have to work with is flawed.

Marketing automation arms you with the necessary tool to keep your database clean and up to date. Most software will give you the ability to automatically merge duplicate leads, append incomplete records, handle soft and hard bounces, and manage unsubscriptions.

2. We are missing ways to reach our target audience with the content we have on hand.

Marketing automation gives you several ways to utilize your content and distribute it to your audience. You can gate it with a form and to capture leads or use it in your email campaigns to nurture prospects and even distribute it via social media.

3. Our database is too large for us to create customized campaigns.

Marketing automation makes it very simple to segment a database so you can create campaigns that are highly relevant to your leads. For instance, you may want to segment your database by industry, geographic location or even readiness to buy (using lead scoring).

4. We can’t manage to convert opportunities because leads aren’t qualified.

Most marketing automation software includes CRM integration, which translates into Marketing and Sales working transparently with one another. Among other information, they have access to a lead’s score. This allows both Sales and Marketing to determine whether leads need further nurturing by Marketing or if they are ready to be contacted by Sales.

5. Marketing can’t be held responsible for poor results.

The same transparency that allows marketing and sales to work hand-in-hand also provides a scale to measure the effectiveness of marketing initiatives. With marketing automation, the performance of your marketing team is trackable and measurable via metric such as email open rates, click-throughs, pages visited and the reach via social media.

6. I think the last campaign did pretty well.

The advanced reporting and analytics features of marketing automation also allow you to dive deeply into the performance of your marketing programs. Rather than being vague on the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, you can actually measure how marketing activities performed against a set goal. In addition, marketing automation permits to conduct A/B testing on your landing pages and subject lines; and, it also provides insight regarding the effectiveness of your email campaigns (open rate, click-through rate, link performance, bounces, etc.).

7. We don’t have time to reinvent the wheel for each marketing campaign.

Marketing automation allows you to automate your processes so you don’t have to start from scratch each time you initiate a new campaign. You can also easily repurpose previous emails, landing pages and templates to deliver up-to-date customized content in no time.

Photo by Trsitan Schmurr

Social media marketing is still cool but there is a new kid on the block. The name…”content marketing”

So when you think about it, what drives traffic on the social web are two key things. Great content in all its multi-media glory and the social networks that distribute it at high velocity. The better the content and the larger and more engaged the social networks, the more visible your brand becomes. That creates brand awareness, inquiries, leads and sales.

It about being ubiquitous.

You’ve also probably heard about content marketing a million times over but how much effort do you really put into yours? Are you using every method that you should? Check out these top 10 tactics you “must” use in your content marketing strategy and get inspired…

1. Blogging

If you don’t have a blog, or if it’s pretty non-existent then you need to start changing your priorities. A blog will not only increase your SEO, but it will give your brand more authority, create better customer relationships and drive more traffic to your website. So what have you got to lose? Don’t just rely on your own blog either – search around for influential bloggers that you can guest post for, to help get more eyeballs on your content.

Put it into action:

• Find out what your audience wants to read
• Create interesting, shareable content on a weekly basis
• Guest post on influential bloggers websites

2. E-Books

Fear not, an e-book doesn’t have to be a lengthy novel. It’s the perfect way to provide your visitors with interesting content to read. It’s also great for gaining more email contacts as you can offer the e-book as an incentive to sign up. Make sure each page is useful and hire a designer to ensure it looks visually awesome. Keep sentences short and use bullet points to help with the flow of the book. Stats and reputable quotes are also a great way to back up your statements with facts.

Put it into action

• Make it visually appealing
• Add statistics, numbers and quotes
• Offer it as a free incentive for customers to sign up to your emails

3. Video

Did you know Video is the most engaging way to connect with your audience? According to Forrester Research, a 1 minute video is worth 1.8 billion words. That’s because a video is so easy to digest and it’s much more memorable than text. The best type of video you can create for your business is an explainer video and these tend to come in the flavour of animated, or screen recorded. If you want to create a video then you need to think about your customers. Think about what problems they face, and how you go about solving those problems – and use that as the basis for your story.

Put it into action

• Showcase the best parts of your product in an explainer video
• Think about the problems your customers face and show how you solve those problems.

4. Infographics

Infographics are all about statistics and numbers and are the perfect way to get the point across quickly. If designed well, they look great and people on the web seem to love them. When it comes to creating your infographic, you need to think about telling a story. Make sure you do plenty of research to find the right stats and the right story that you want to tell. A great tip would be to conduct a survey so that you get the latest and most up to date facts possible. Here is an example of a post with an infographic included.

If you need some more inspiration, check out Visual.ly for a website full of creative infographics.

Put it into action:

• Tell the story using powerful design and statistics
• Conduct surveys to get the latest facts
• Share it on blogs, social media and communities

5. Slideshare presentations

SlideShare is an awesome way to show off the content you create – with 60 million global users, it’s actually the world’s largest content marketing platform. As you might expect from the SlideShare brand name, the service is commonly used to exhibit presentations, which users can click through slide-by-slide. But that’s just scratching the surface; you can also upload and share infographics, documents, PDFs, webinars, and even videos. It’s a great way to distribute your content, raise brand awareness and establish your business as a leading authority in your field.

Put it into action:

• Make sure you share all your content on SlideShare
• Monitor your SlideShare account for comments – your content can tap into SlideShare’s huge audience and create valuable opportunities for your business!

6. Social media

Social Media is the perfect way to show off your personality, and your content. You need to be strategic with your posts, switching it up for different social platforms. Discussions are great for social media and a really engaging way to connect with your audience. On Google+ and Linkedin, you can join communities and groups that are relevant to your customers and start discussions.

Twitter is slightly different because you’ve only got 140 characters to play with, but organised chats such as ‘#contentchat’ really help bring awareness to your brand. The idea is that you all hashtag the same topic, while asking or answering any questions related to the topic of the chat. When it comes to Facebook, think about injecting your personality and post plenty of fun images to get those likes, shares and comments up.

Put it into action:

• Create discussions – ask your audience questions
• Be yourself – show off your personality
• Partner up with industry experts to create an engaging online chat

7. Email marketing

Never underestimate the power of email marketing. If people have signed up to your emails then chances are they want to hear from you. But, be sure to provide your contacts with useful content, rather than just a barrage of sales spiel. There’s plenty of different types of content that you can email your customers including; competitions, blog posts, e-books, event invites and exclusives.

In order to build your contact list, think about implementing plenty of sign up tabs on your website. Make sure you give your customers an incentive to sign up and follow through in order to build up customer confidence.

Put it in action:

• Send your email list useful, shareable content
• Don’t constantly hard sell to your customers
• Put sign up forms visible on your website with examples as to why they should sign up

8. PR

The essence of PR is to create brand awareness, so content marketing fits perfectly within this ideal. Creating a press release is a great way to attract attention to the latest goings-on in your company. It really depends on your industry as to what your press release could be about, but think about any awards you’ve won, new partnerships, or charity events. And if all else fails, try and think outside the box. Don’t be disheartened if it doesn’t get picked up by any publications because any unique content on the web that relates back to you is always great for SEO.

Put it in action:

• Create press releases that people will want to read
• Post your press releases on blogs, PR websites and send to publications
• Think outside the box.

9. Webinars

Hosting a webinar can be great for content marketing. Think about inviting industry experts, clients or potential customers to join in with the webinar and start a discussion. You can talk about your products, answer FAQ’s, give industry insight, or even ask your clients to talk about why they decided to work with you. Don’t expect to see any jaw-dropping results while you’re recording. The secret to a successful webinar is to create great content, record it, and then post it on your social channels in order to reach a large audience.

Put it in action:

• Invite your clients, potential customers and industry experts to join in with the webinar
• Plan before you record with everything you want to discuss
• Once you’ve finished, share it on your social channels and blog.

10. Testimonials

Testimonials have been around for nearly as long as business itself…but they remain a valuable tool to establish confidence and trust. Customer success stories are a powerful way to build empathy with potential customers, and convince them that your service is more than worth their time and money. Once you’ve worked with a few people, ask them to to rate your service and then you can start to feature those testimonials on your website. Even if you get negative feedback, you can always learn from it and improve on things in the future.

Put it into action:

• Approach a few of your key clients and see if they’d be willing to write a testimonial for you.
• Position your testimonials prominently, and make sure they’re easily visible to your users
• Don’t ignore negative feedback – learn from it!

So there you have it, 10 content marketing methods that you need to be using. With so many tools readily available on the web, there has never been a better time to get creating interesting, shareable content! Good luck and if you can think of anymore – let me know!

One of the questions we are asked the most about social media is “what’s the next big thing”? What’s the next big network? Where should companies be looking next? How can we get ahead of the curve and find the next Facebook, the next Instagram, etc.?

The answer may be a bit disappointing. Facebook seems likely to be the last of the mega-networks. It’s a rare and unique accomplishment to build a brand that talks to over a billion people on a regular basis, a rare and unique accomplishment to connect 44% of the Internet-enabled human race. What’s next isn’t likely to be another single major player at all. What’s next is more likely to be fragmentation. More and more companies see an opportunity to specialize in an aspect of social networking and excel at it, something that sets them apart from the monolithic Facebook/Twitter/Google+/LinkedIn oligarchy. After all, if a new market entrant offers no feature better than Facebook, chances are people will just stay with Facebook, since that’s where all your friends are already.

What kinds of features might compel someone to spend less time on Facebook? Here are three classes of social networks you should probably pay attention to. First are the chat apps. These apps are incredibly popular, especially in parts of the world where SMS text messaging is expensive and Internet access is cheap. Apps such as Tango (SHIFT client), WhatsApp (now a part of Facebook), Line, Kik, WeChat, Path, and others provide a friends circle without the “pollution” of commercial advertising that fills up Facebook news feeds. Serendipity and meeting new people is more difficult with these apps, but users make that tradeoff in exchange for being able to privately talk with their friends.

The second class of social networks are the rise of anonymous apps such as Whisper, Rumr, Secret, Confide, YikYak, etc. These apps are growing in popularity by leaps and bounds because they offer a promise of anonymity (though how anonymous they truly are remains to be seen), which in turn stimulates discussions that aren’t found in identified public social networks. It’s much easier to state something controversial when you believe that your identity is not at stake. In an era when your entire career can be ended by one tasteless tweet, anonymous apps have a great appeal.

The third class of social networks are the increasing dominance of media-first apps such as Instagram, Snapchat, Flickr, Minecraft, DeviantArt, etc. that have social aspects but are fundamentally about the creation of media. YouTube isn’t just a search engine, it’s also a social network (though technically part of Google+). Content creation online is nothing new, but in an era when everyone is struggling to find their voice, versatile content creation abilities is a defining factor.

These three classes of applications and social networks pose three very difficult problems for PR and marketing professionals. First, they’re incredibly difficult to monitor. The era of “full firehose” social media monitoring has numbered days as more and more conversations occur behind closed doors in private chat groups, or on platforms where identity is completely obscured. There will always be a place for public discussions and communities, but the trusted referrals and conversations will increasingly happen out of sight and out of monitoring tools’ reach. How much more powerful is a positive brand mention if no identity (and thus no social status) is tied to it?

Second, they’re incredibly difficult to participate in at scale. When consumers have conversations in invitation-only private spaces without brands, there’s no way to fight new fires or perform advance crisis communications. The first signs of a problem will be when larger groups of people begin taking public action together – long after a decision has been made behind closed doors. Brands will largely be excluded from participation at the lowest grassroots levels or intercepting problems before they brome crises.

Third and finally, these changes will demand much more of brands. Brands will need to become much more versatile at content creation just as a differentiator – the days of posting text status updates are growing shorter. Most importantly, with many of the trend-setting conversations happening behind closed doors, brands will need to focus much more on what their brand actually means and stands for, since the only people who will be able to defend the brand in a million private conversations will be its advocates and evangelists. Closed-door communities are largely immune to astroturfing and other popular (but dishonest) tricks.

None of these changes will happen overnight, or even in a couple of years. Facebook’s dominance isn’t likely to fade immediately, no matter how many times they change the newsfeed. These are large macro trends, not imminent changes, and brands will have a few years to make changes. That said, the top ways to future-proof your brand against these trends are to strengthen the brand with quality products, incredible service, and unique experiences that only your brand can deliver. Your brand’s future success hinges on your ability to get people talking about your brand without your participation. Build now for the day when your best fans and worst enemies will be largely invisible to you.

The Importance of buyer personas in B2B

Buyer personas are the very foundation of any selling activity. Indeed, they help your organization understand who has a need for your product or service and allow you to adapt marketing strategies accordingly.

Buyer personas are especially important in the inbound era. A study conducted by the Corporate Executive Board showed 60% of the purchasing decision process has already been made when B2B customers first engage with a salesperson.

For this reason, you have to enable sales with elaborate content strategies that will naturally guide prospects to finding your business. However, content will only be effective if it is relevant to your audience – hence the importance of buyer personas.

Now that you understand the importance of buyer personas, you might be wondering where you will get the information to complete them. Ask yourself, “Who in my company knows most about prospects and customers?” Sales. Sales are in contact with leads every day, and they will be your most valuable resource to start building your buyer personas.

We have compiled 13 questions we believe Marketing should be asking Sales to gain deep insight into whom your buyers are and what influences their buying decisions.

A. Understanding your own company and its offerings

1. What words and phrases do you use to describe our offering to prospects?

Goal: Integrate marketing communications

2. What words and phrases do our prospects and customers use to describe our offering in the market place?

Goal: Use a language that resonates with your audience

3. Who are our competitors?

Goal: Understand what alternatives your buyer is exposed to

4. What differentiates us from competition?

Goal: Figure out how to position yourself in order to stand out in the market place and help prospects find you

5. What questions do prospects ask to identify our services?

Goal: Ensure prospects are clear on who you are and what solutions you provide

6. What do prospects and customers say that shows their excitement about our services?

Goal: Understand what makes you remarkable in the eyes of your customers

B. Understanding the company we are selling to

7. What is the company persona for the person you would like to target?

Goal: Understand what types of businesses typically buy from you: industry, company size, revenue, etc.

8. What business problems does our offering solve for our customers?

Goal: Identify your prospects’ and customers’ pain points

9. What goals are our customers trying to achieve when hiring us?

Goal: Understand the value your customers expect to gain from trusting you

C. Understanding the buyer

10. For current customers, what are the titles of the individuals with who the contracts are closed?

Goal: Identify your target audience

11. What are their various responsibilities?

Goal: Focus on the areas that matter to your prospects and adapt your marketing strategies accordingly

12. Who do they normally report to?

Goal: Identify the ultimate decision maker

13. What are some common objections you hear from prospects to buying our services?

Goal: Address objections before they are brought up or be prepared when they are brought up

Have you buyer personas ready? It’s now time to develop content. Discover our 5 Secrets to Highly Effective Content Marketing.

Photo by Marco Bellucci

Good writing has become an indispensable skill for success. Develop this habit to help your own writing turn the corner.

Despite the many dire warnings that the written word is dead, people are in fact reading more than ever before. As with so many changes in our 21st-century world, the main reason is the Internet. Though fewer people are consuming information via dead trees, many more are devouring blogs, news sites, e-books, and the like. And when it comes to determining which websites come up at the top of the page when a person looks something up online, search engines like Google still rely on good old-fashioned text.

As a result, being a compelling writer is no longer a nice-to-have. Prospects are simply not finding entrepreneurs, business owners, and executives who treat writing as an afterthought. Fortunately, there’s a habit you can build that will allow you to quickly generate the kind of material that will get your business noticed.

If you want to develop the ability to pump out interesting and entertaining material every time you put your fingers to a keyboard, you must learn to be a thief.

Now what I’m talking about is different than plagiarism, which is taking someone else’s work and trying to pass it off as your own. This kind of stealing is based on recognizing that as human beings we’re more alike than we are different. As such, we’re wired to respond to the same kinds of communication and storytelling structures in the same ways. Many fantastic writers before you have developed and honed these structures to great effect. All you have to do is uncover them and use them in your own work.

For example, next time you’re standing in a supermarket checkout line, glance at the magazine rack. You’ll find headline after headline engineered to grab eyeballs and drive impulse purchases. Buy a few of these magazines and study how the headlines are constructed. You’ll be amazed by how easy they are to adapt to any subject in any niche or industry.

Take the time to read some commercial bestselling novels as well. Look at the end of each chapter. You’ll find that many use similarly built cliffhangers to keep you turning the pages. Even if you’re not aiming to be then next James Patterson, you will find ways to apply these techniques to produce writing that keeps your readers--or customers--hooked.

There’s great storytelling and great communication everywhere, so learn to notice how it’s engineered. If you get in the habit of relying on structures pioneered by masters of the craft, all you’ll have to do is fill in the details.

A guide to the benefits and setup of 3 essential Google Analytics features

Adding Google Analytics tracking code to a site is quick in most cases, but I find that many businesses leave it there and don't add more customisation to use some of the more advanced Google Analytics features. These features can give great advantages in understanding how users interact with your site, to support ideas for conversion optimisation. You may not consider these features advanced, but they are missing in many cases, so are advanced in this sense!

The three customizations I will cover, which work best when considered together, are:

• Event tracking codes
• Goal setup
• A/B testing and content experiments

1. Event Tracking Codes

The power of event tracking codes is shown by the many user actions that you can monitor within your website. Event tracking codes can make your life easier since you can monitor all these micro-conversions that matter to your business. You can monitor almost all online actions in your site that occur from users. These actions, are triggered once users click on a button, or a link or even when they scroll by 50% or 100% your site. Examples of events that can be tracked include:

• PDF downloads
• Videos interactions
• Social follows/share/like/tweets
• Blog comments
• Gadget downloads
• RSS subscriptions
• Newsletter signups
• Product rating (especially useful for e-commerce sites)
• Live chat activation
• Outbound links
• Scroll reach/Content Bottom/Page Bottom/Start Reading/Article load
• Clicking on a link
• 404 pages
• Internal banners
• Rank tracking
• Form completion progress/drop out
• Light box conversions
• Affiliate ad clicks
• Tracking form errors
• Tracking engagement with embedded maps
• Tracking video engagement and activity
• Organic rank tracking with custom events
• Tracking conversion rate optimisation variations
• Tracking interactions with custom widgets
• Baskets adds and checkout steps

To use event tracking you have 2 options:

1. You can either manually implement the event tracking codes with your developer’s assistance since these require Javascript implementation within the code to trigger the events.
2. Or, you can use Google Tag Manager (auto-event tracking).

Initially, if we want to find where the Events are located, we can find them under the Behaviour section. Under the Events subsection:

You can the details on how to setup event tracking in my previous post.

Once we start populating the source code of our site with event tracking codes, we will be able to see actual results, for more decisions based on actual data.

Below you can see an example list of Event Categories such downloads:

2. Setting up Goals

Once events are setup you can these monitor them on your dashboard as goals. You can set up goals based on any of your Events, these are known as Event-goals - Dave Chaffey introduced them in this post covering 17 options for Event goals.

In this way, you can setup funnels and monitor in details the checkout experience of your site. In this way you will be able to see if your site is user-friendly, monitor where your users bale out of a process (essential if the checkout is implemented as a single page where the URL doesn't change).

Once you know in which part of the checkout process your users drop off the most, then it will be easier for you to run A/B tests in order to decrease the drop out rates.

Initially, you need to set up the goal (e.g. based on the Destination URL) and arrange the funnel steps.

Having setup the goals and the funnel steps will allow you through Funnel Visualisation to have detailed information for your customer’s journey within your website.

In this way, you can take better-informed decisions (e.g. Content Experiments in order to reduce the number of drop-offs).

3. Content Experiments

The implementation of event tracking codes should be developed in a way that will serve a long-term purpose. Implementing event goals for all these user actions/events can be extremely valuable for understanding and improving our micro-conversions using Google's Content Experiments.

Let's take the example of increasing subscribers to a newsletter.

To encourage more people to sign up as subscribers for your newsletter you can use Google Content Experiments to create up to five variation pages and then you can see which page is more effective. For example, you can change:

• The colour or size of the button.
• The verbal part of your CTA (call-to-action).
• Text to persuade a subscriber to sign up.

Content Experiments will then show you the version which works best:

Bonus SEO Tip: Once you start working with Content Experiments (and according to Google) the optimal practice when we create variation pages is not to forget to add the rel="canonical" attribute to the variation pages (as you don’t want these variation pages to be indexed). This attribute should be implemented in all variation pages telling to search engine bots that the only page that should be indexed is the original page.

Summary

To summarise these techniques, we can see that the 3 actions are interrelated and that, by combining all 3, you have a powerful tool in your conversion optimisation arsenal, that will make your supervisor and clients happier.

Of course, there are much more customizations that are also important, such as these, but I find that the biggest ones missed most often are the ones covered in this posts:

• Site search
• Filters
• Advanced segmentation
• Cross domain tracking
• Custom variables
• Social sharing measurement etc.

If you work as a consultant or for an agency, what would you say are the Google Analytics features that you consider essential for your clients?

Optimization Before You Even Write a Word

There are many ideas about what makes up a good inbound marketing strategy, but there is one thing that always makes the list.

Eric Wittlake, in his article 5 Key Elements of Inbound Marketing insists that writing great content is at the core of inbound, but search engine optimization is on the list.

The folks over at Brick Marketing think that there are three components to every inbound program and they are social media, SEO and content marketing.

HubSpot has built an entire movement around their inbound marketing theology of Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight (which includes SEO in the mix).

Although the theologies differ on the basics that make up a good inbound program, an inbound marketing expert can agree on two things. First, there is no such thing as an inbound expert. Second, SEO is a vital component of the entire inbound process.

Let’s take a look at how search engine optimization affects the inbound marketing efforts of your business, before you even write your first blog:

WHAT IS SEO AGAIN?

Search Engine Optimization is basically about making your website more appealing for Google, Yahoo and Bing to come and crawl all over your content and see if it is worthy to be ranked higher in their results. Kind of creepy huh? And yet Inbound Marketing Strategies have good SEO sprinkled everywhere so those engine spiders can grow fat on SEO.

Why? Because people all over the place are using search engines to find information about your business. According to HubSpot, 79% of online shoppers are spending 50% of their shopping time doing research. Remember this later when we discuss lead nurturing.

Using carefully researched keyword strategies throughout every component of your inbound process can get you powerful results.

SEO AND BUYER PERSONAS

The first place to look when you are forming your SEO strategy is at your Buyer Persona. Who are you marketing to? Who do you want to sell your product or service to?

It may not sound like much, but there are probably two or three main buyer groups that you can identify as your personas.

Creating your persona can be a fun process, as well as very educational. Understanding the exact nature of your potential customers, which translate into possible website visitors, is an important part of your SEO strategy and making sure you get your message to the right people.

In addition to getting your content to the right people, as a business person who is trying to foster leads into the inbound equation, you want to get the right content to the right people at the right time.

The stage of the buying process that your visitor (turned lead) is in will have a great impact on what you want to say to them.

For example, if you are a small business man who sells widgets, are you trying to appeal to other businessmen? Or maybe you need to attract a stay-at-home mom who lives in the suburbs. Perhaps your potential visitor is a millennial who lives in the city or even a young family who needs to find the right widget for their needs.

Building personas around your target markets and then picking SEO keywords just for them will save you time, money and lots of marketing ROI when you utilize them.

PICKING KEY WORDS

Once you have an idea of who your potential website visitors are, it will be easier to identify the keywords you need to get them there.

It is time to pick out some key words to attract visitors to your website. Google, Yahoo and Bing will be the main lines to your potential buyer.

When choosing your keyword strategy think about each of your buyers and the questions they would ask when they sit down to a computer to research your product or service. How would they type in a research term regarding your product?

Examples include:

• limo companies in Nashville
• management consulting in Atlanta
• best cupcakes in Brentwood
• who sells phone systems in LA
• how do I organize my taxes

It may seem a little daunting to come up with keyword strategies, but the research is worth it. The words you choose are going to go with you throughout the rest of your inbound process. Your keywords will be splashed throughout your website, your social media platforms and your lead nurturing process.

Choose them wisely.

Google Adwords is a fabulous free tool to use when you are crafting your keyword strategies.

HOW TO GET ONTO GOOGLE ADWORDS

Go to Google’s Adwords Page and click on “Get Started Now”. When you are entering your business name and your website address, remember that you will not have to pay anything to use Google Adwords. You will also need to enter good things like your time zone and the country you live in.

Don’t worry, the pain is short. You will soon be presented with a CONGRATULATIONS page. Just hit the key at the bottom that says “I know the basics” can we get on with this please?

Once you get your Adwords account go to the homepage.

Then click on Tools and Keyword Planner

Once you get to keyword central, you are going to want to play around a little bit. Research one word, two words together and three to four keyword phrases.

Here is some great news. You can also look up the keywords that your competitors are ranking for and use them in your SEO process.

SITE ORGANIZATION

When you decide on your buyer personas, and you have a solid product or service to sell to them, how your website is set up is yet another way to make sure that search engines find you.

Does a visitor to your website have to click five times to get to the content they need? A search engine wants to be able to crawl  your website just as easily. Websites that are old, clunky and slow to load are a nuisance to engine spiders.

If a website has too many layers to it, the search engines may grow tired of digging so deeply in order to index every page. They may just assume that the deeper layers of a website stay the same and will only visit them every once in a while for ranking efforts.

Building a website that is lighter and more navigable by the crawlers is the best way to make sure their visit is comfortable and inviting.

Come on in website crawler,

my domain is immaculate.

No pages hacked with tags,

no fake SEO going on here.

And certainly no H4’s.

Does any of the language here scare you? It really shouldn’t. A little bit of Inbound Education  would serve you well, or maybe a certified inbound agent can help you find your way through the SEO pitstop and get you started on the inbound highway .

XML SITEMAPS & SCHEMA MARKUPS

As if the site set up wasn’t enough for you, there’s more scary inbound language to consider when you are creating an SEO strategy.

When a new website goes live there is no guarantee that search engines are going to find it. In fact, a link to the site it what usually triggers search engines to come crawling.

Creating an XML sitemap or a schema markup is a way to make it easy for search engines to see that you are out there. It says, “I have pages and html’s and they are available to be crawled.” XML is Match.com for search engines.

If you can’t find a way to do it yourself, have your web designer or inbound agent prepare one for you that has your URLs and other metadata so that search engines can pick you up more easily.

Although it is no guarantee, adding XML maps or schema markups to your site code certainly make the odds better that Google will pick up your site and include it in rankings.

Creating buyer personas, choosing pinpoint keywords, proper site organization and creating XML sitemaps are each a vital component of making sure that your inbound process is utilizing SEO to its maximum potential. Making sure that your website is razor focused on the right audience and highly attractive to search engines even before you go live takes planning and research to ensure the success of your business and creating more leads.

In part two of this article we are going to reveal the parts of the inbound process that are affected by SEO WHEN you begin writing content. The blog, the landing page and other pages, as well as your social media platforms and how you engage all should take SEO into consideration.

read more

Communicating and Selling Value: Why a Strong Offense is the Best Defense

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have begun a Cloud Price War. How will you respond?

I recently wrote about the need for a “heads up” approach to managing and leading. Fortunately for me (but unfortunately for many), recent headlines about a shakeup in the technology space provide a great example of why it’s so important to look up and look around.

Game-changing Situations

There are some Cinderella stories about smaller startups being bought by Facebook or Google for a bazillion dollars, making a few people instant millionaires. For example, Facebook recently acquired WhatsApp, a company with estimated 2013 revenue of only $20 million and 55 employees, for an astonishing $19 billion! Party time!

The other scenario that’s far more threatening is when one of these behemoth companies decides to disrupt the market by altering the scope of their services or price. What happens to the other companies (most of them smaller) operating comfortably in the same space?

That’s what’s happening in the cloud computing and storage space:

• Google Announces Massive Price Drops For Its Cloud Computing Services And Storage, Introduces Sustained-Use Discounts (TechCrunch.com, March 25, 2014)

• Microsoft Joins Amazon and Google in Cloud Price War (Recode.net, March 31, 2014)

Cloud computing has blossomed in recent years and will likely continue to do so. But can the many companies that have been providing this service survive this sudden game-changing price move by the heavyweights?

The tale is familiar for some. Remember West Coast Video and Blockbuster? They had cushy businesses until VHS tapes gave way to DVDs, which merely forced those companies to change their products. But Netflix changed the business model and looked like a champ for a while until they almost got caught napping with competing streaming services. (I’d say they picked their heads up just in time to notice the threat and react.) The story isn’t finished here and continues to force companies in the space to stay one step ahead of the others to avoid falling behind and becoming old and obsolete.

Contracts Won’t Save You

Sooner or later, cloud computing clients will begin to question why they should stay with their current provider instead of taking advantage of cheaper offerings by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. And why shouldn’t they ask? Even happy customers need to reevaluate their service providers to keep them honest and attentive. It never hurts to shop the competition’s offering to either feel better about your current situation or make a change.

If your business runs on contractual agreements with your clients, you may be initially immune to big swings in your sector. But once those contracts begin to expire, you’ll be hard pressed to justify charging more (or the same if your peers are charging less).

The key is to get out in front of a big story like this before your clients come knocking and expecting not only an explanation, but a discounted rate. Being proactive will give you a fighting chance, but what should you say?

Articulating Your Value: A Strong Offense is the Only Defense

Few businesses can rely on price as a successful long-term go-to-market strategy. Yes, there’s always an expensive option sold at a premium that’s counterbalanced by a bargain basement-priced discounted offering. But anyone who believes that you get what you pay for will likely look higher up the food chain.

Before you fall victim to a cloud war discount scenario for your business, you must realize that there’s more to value than the price of your product or service. Especially if you’re smaller than your larger competitors or leading brands, you need to articulate the value you provide, not just, “we’re cheaper!”

How are you communicating and selling value? What value do you provide? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Measuring value delivered to the customer. You must be prepared to quantify the value you are delivering to your customer. This requires you to develop a simple but meaningful measurement approach and adopt the discipline to measure your impact on the customer’s business. This requires you to understand what’s important to the customer, how they define and measure success, and when necessary, educating them on how to measure success.

But measuring value is not enough. You need to communicate that value to the customer on a regular basis to ensure that they appreciate and buy into the value you are adding. This discipline gives you the opportunity to determine if your solution is working as expected, and if it’s not, it then gives you insight into how to correct course.

2. Capabilities and differentiators. Take a dispassionate view of your business’ capabilities and differentiators. What makes your offering different than everyone else’s, and why is this important to the customer?

Examine your product lifecycle from concept through delivery to identify capabilities to highlight. Examples include ingredients, manufacturing, processes, warranty, customer service, performance, security, organic, locally sourced and manufactured, imported, talent, size, and scope (broad or narrow).

The list can become quite lengthy. It is important to know what makes the most difference to why buyers will select you and how they’ll benefit from your offering.

3. What do others say about you? There is considerable insight to be gained by talking to others about what makes your company. Even if your assumptions are accurate, most people will still appreciate that you’ve asked for their opinions.

• Long-term customers, satisfied customers. It’s amazing how few companies take time to talk to their clients. Find out what they like about your product or service. What keeps them coming back? What do they see as the key benefits? Your assumptions could be wrong, which makes it worth asking.
• New clients from recent wins. When you’ve closed a deal for which you had to compete, it can be quite enlightening to know the reason you were chosen. It might be obvious, but there may be some surprises for you to further explore and leverage.
• Interview employees who used to work for your competitors. These people have a unique perspective that could help you to differentiate you from your peers. Without breaching any confidentiality or non-compete agreements, there is likely much to learn about the value you provide.
• Glowing reviews and case studies. If someone is willing to provide good feedback about their experience working with you, don’t keep it a secret!  Use it.

4. Claims. What can you say about your capabilities that will help you stand apart and tell your story, and why are these important to the customer?

• “We were first.”
• “We took their idea a step further and improved upon it.”
• “This has been our core business for decades.”
• “We have a more efficient process and can therefore deliver the same (or better) product sooner/cheaper with a faster up time.”

It should go without saying, but be sure that you can substantiate any claims you make. Nothing is worse than undercutting your own credibility by making false claims. These statements should help you tell your story — one that is factual, not fiction.

5. Educate your salesforce. The final step is to ensure that your sales reps know the story to tell and can represent your business in a manner that highlights the true value you provide. Hone the messages and sharpen the delivery, but also, train your sales reps to listen for feedback that could impact perceived values (either positively or negatively).

The post Communicating and Selling Value: Why a Strong Offense is the Best Defense appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

This five-part informational series is designed for all those marketers around the world who are aspiring to lead a marketing function. The objective of this series is to share insights, experiences, and ideas for passionate marketers who want to grasp what it takes to be in charge of marketing, especially in these amazingly progressive times where marketing has attained a more strategic role.

Digital and the Big Picture

Let’s first stand back and explore how the emergence of digital channels, technologies, and practices have changed the business world in general. After all, sometimes it is difficult to see through the smoke when in the midst of a revolution.

Thanks to the evolution and adoption of online communications, businesses are fundamentally changing the ways in which they operate. The number of mechanisms for connecting, collaborating, sharing, and executing business has become richer and more powerful. Immediate access to information, conversation, and opinion has created new opportunity for organizations to create value. If organizations can embrace digitally oriented business models, they stand to gain far more than they lose. Online communications, especially in the form of social networks, are creating a means of interaction within and between businesses that can vastly improve productivity, performance, and organizational effectiveness. The biggest risk is not modernizing your business, particularly your increasingly strategic marketing function, as more agile and sharper organizations are leapfrogging competitors in the land grab for digitally savvy customers.

For businesses, digital adds both complexity and opportunity. Thanks to search engines, businesses can actually be found rather than continually having to go out into the market and hunt for customers. Of course it takes planning, experience, and expenditure to maximize the quantity and quality of visitors who reach your business via search, but it is now one of the fundamentals of today’s business to be able to be found online, 24/7.

Additionally, social media and professional networks allow people to break down barriers to knowledge, which means that it is no longer possible to have a gap between what you say and what you do. Businesses must avoid damaging reviews and negative online sentiment at all costs. It has never been more important than to monitor and manage the reputation of your business online, as this genuinely influences whether prospects and existing customers will conduct business with you.

Over time, as decision-makers become used to searching for goods and services online in their personal lives, so they are naturally inclined to bring the power and convenience of online research into their business lives. Decision-makers are open to influence from multiple online and offline information sources. In many businesses, prospects are not connecting with sales personnel until much later in the decision cycle. Sales has lost the control of acquisition and retention that it once had.

Marketing has assumed more responsibility of the revenue cycle

The Internet is gradually enabling the establishment and enhancement of relationships via more convenient research, networking, and online collaboration, which in turn is gradually displacing face-to-face interaction. Social media, content marketing, and online search are turning traditional customer acquisition and retention practices on their heads. As Internet marketing accelerates and old techniques begin to falter, firms that ignore these trends will certainly be vulnerable.

I believe Peter Drucker once said that the only two functions of any organization are innovation and marketing, and that was before the Internet!

Marketing’s Increasingly Strategic Role

What we can reasonably conclude is that marketing is central to the remarkable recent change in business models and practices. Given marketing’s understanding of the customer, the modern buying cycle, competition, and market dynamics, it is now most important that the board has a representative from marketing.

Due to the empowering nature of digital business, the customer is way more in control of the initiation and ongoing desire for any business relationship. Organizations must become truly customer oriented and operate every aspect of their company with the customer in mind. The CMO needs to play a crucial role in constantly updating the boardroom and the CEO about the latest customer preferences and market trends, and how well corporate resources are aligned to meet those evolving customer needs.

Marketing can become the glue that bonds any customer-oriented business together, by internally nurturing a culture of information transparency and sharing of customer insights. Employees will feel more connected to the business, and a more natural collaboration between sales, marketing, customer support, and other functions will occur as overall customer intelligence increases.

Some execs will be skeptical about this next comment, but over time when it comes to identifying the sales forecast for next quarter, the CEO will approach the head of marketing, not necessarily sales. This will be because marketing is assuming greater control over more of the marketing and sales funnel, to the point where the ratios of targets-to-prospects-to-leads-to-sales become so scientifically predictable that forecasts and future growth will ultimately depend upon the number of prospects (new or repeat) delivered to the top of the funnel.

Do You Have the Desire and Ability to Run Marketing?

Make no mistake, to be a successful CMO or head of marketing is a tremendous challenge. A past history of juggling should help with the mindset needed, as there are way more variables to understand and manage than in previous eras.

To be a modern CMO means being extremely informed, right and left brained, hybrid in your skillset, utterly data driven, and agile in your execution.

The many variables to manage by today’s CMO

The remaining posts in this series will consider the mindset, skills, strategies, and practices needed to succeed as a marketing leader.

Of all the things I have to worry about on a daily basis, video marketing has really grabbed my attention, and I hope it’s starting to grab yours.

Video marketing is climbing in popularity because companies are realising how useful it can be to communicate with customers in new, more personal ways. If you haven’t been thinking about using video to market your brand, now is the time.

To get the ideas flowing, here are 16 facts about video marketing that will keep you up at night musing over how you can leverage the channel to better connect with customers.

1) YouTube—A Search Engine?

YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. Not Bing. Not Yahoo. But YouTube.

While everyone focuses so much on Google, YouTube is sitting there waiting to be used to generate leads.

Action Steps:

- Set up a YouTube channel.
- Choose a channel icon (think of it like your profile picture) that reflects your brand.
- Upload a trailer to introduce non-subscribers to what videos they should expect.

2) Increase Understanding

Videos increase people’s understanding of your product or service by 74%. If you have a complicated product, or you’re just trying to raise awareness of a new innovation, videos can help customers grasp new concepts.

Action Steps:

- Post product information videos on your website, and point back to them when customers have questions.
- Create a series of videos that explain your product with varying levels of detail and complexity. Which video you show to customers depends on their knowledge level and where they are in the buying process.

3) More Information

26% of Internet users look for more information after viewing a video ad. If it’s a well-targeted ad that lasts in the consumer’s mind, it’ll generate more views.

Action Steps:

- Always consider your audience when creating and placing a video ad.

• What types of videos do they appreciate?
• What do they want to know?
• Where do they hang out?

- Create a landing page that provides the information they’re looking for and entices them to navigate through other pages in your site.

4) Better Memory

80% of Internet users remember the video ads they watch online. This statistic really stands out to me because the web has become a chaotic, clustered place, and as a result, getting customers to remember your brand has become a daunting challenge.

Action Steps:

- Be intentional with what you put in your video ads. What do you want customers to remember? Product feature? Company name? Sales rep?
- Integrate other promotions via social media to further expose customers to the information you want them to remember.

5) More Willing To Watch

80% of your online visitors will watch a video, while only 20% will actually read content in its entirety. Even highly involved customers won’t take the time to finish reading your content. When customers aren’t personally invested in your product or service yet, video is a good way to still get their attention.

Action Steps:

- Do a video post on your blog discussing a topic you would have otherwise written about.
- Track this post to see what users say about it and how they interact with it.
- See the next statistic . . .

6) Vlogging

Blog posts incorporating video attract three times as many inbound links as blog posts without video—in case you needed another reason to try incorporating video into your normal posting schedule.

Action Steps:

- Take a poll of your readers to see if they would be interested in seeing more video content.
- Research competitor blogs to see how they are using video to discuss industry-related topics.

7) 1 Minute

45% of viewers will stop watching a video after 1 minute and 60% by 2 minutes. You don’t have a lot of time to make your point, so plan each second carefully. Every moment in your video should have a purpose.

Action Steps:

- Don’t waste time with unnecessary introductions or wordy answers. Edit these parts out.
- Always have a plan and a completed script when you film to make sure you’re touching on only the important points.

8) Shorter The Better

Videos 15 seconds or shorter are shared 37% more often than those that last between 30 seconds to a minute. Truly—the shorter the better. Respect your customers’ time and be as concise as possible.

Action Steps:

- Keep your videos short and sweet.
- Use applications like Vine and Instagram Video—both are perfect for developing to-the-point videos.

9) Extra Visits

75% of users visit the marketer’s website after viewing a video. It’s always challenging trying to find new ways to interest customers. Videos can pull customers into your website.

Action Step:

- Tweet, pin, and post videos on social media to distribute them as widely as possible.

10) Mobile Mania

Mobile users will watch a video anywhere from 2.4 to 5 minutes. While I just used the last two points to touch on the importance of keeping video lengths manageable, there is a place for longer videos, and it turns out, mobile users are more than willing to consume longer videos.

Action Steps:

- Optimise your videos for mobile.
- Make visuals and graphics large enough to be viewed on a smaller screen.
- Make sure your video can render quickly on mobile devices.

11) Data Trends

Two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2016. That’s less than two years away, and two-thirds is a large chunk of data. You need to have a mobile video presence by that time.

Action Steps:

- Even if it’s just one video per month that gives customers a company update, start posting—you may learn a lot from your customers’ initial feedback, and you will gain experience creating and posting videos.
- Optimise your video content so mobile viewers can have the best experience possible.

12) Introductory Emails

An introductory company email that includes a video receives an increase in click-through rate by 96%. That first contact with customers after they sign up for your email list is so important. You don’t want to waste it.

Action Steps:

- Use that first contact to introduce your company, employees, or even a special new product that the customer needs to know about.
- Begin incorporating video into your general email marketing strategy.
- Bonus stat: including video in an introductory email reduces the number of subscriber opt-outs by 75%.

13) Executive’s Love Video Too

75% of executives told Forbes they watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week. Talk about a great tool for B2B businesses. Video is an effective way to share valuable information and insight with other professionals.

Action Steps:

- Connect with other professionals by targeting them with informative videos on industry-related topics.
- Use LinkedIn to better target upper-level employees with more authority.

14) Average Site Duration

The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video. Not only do videos attract more click-throughs, they also do a pretty good job of keeping customers interested in your offerings.

Action Steps:

- Use video on product landing pages to retain customers and pull them further into the sales funnel.
- Consider adding video to your homepage to introduce customers to your company, brand, and offerings.

15) Comedy Club

Comedy is the most popular form of online video content among all viewers (39%). No secret here—people love to laugh. They love to be entertained, and if you can entertain them, you’ll build brand loyalty. People protect what they like.

Action Steps:

- Avoid being too stuffy with every video—show customers you’re human with a sense of humor.
- Keep your humor relevant to the industry. You still need to target an audience.

16) Increasing Investment

76% of marketers plan to increase their use of video marketing, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2014. Now is the time to get your team together to start developing a video marketing strategy. The longer you wait, the less of an impact your strategy will have.

Action Steps:

- Set your goals for video marketing. What do you want to accomplish by using this channel?
- Analyse some of the most viral video marketing campaigns out there, and then start piecing together your own strategy.
- Most importantly—get creative!

Final Thoughts

As I was researching these facts, I can’t say I was very surprised. The web has become very cluttered with content. If you can reach customers visually, your message is going to stand out. The more your message stands out, the more effectively you can reach customers.

Which was your favorite video marketing fact and why?

Providing relevant and valuable content in webinars is key to a successful strategy. But for Adobe, while the content was there, the strategy was not.

“When I came on in 2008, we had a webinar program and a lot of other programs running very disjointed. Every program, every webinar all had various different promotional plans behind it, and they were really a one-off situation. We did a lot of work to look at that one-off strategy. Actually, I wouldn’t even call it a strategy. There really was no strategy,” Shelby Britton, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Adobe, explained.

After realizing this challenge, Shelby and the team at Adobe put forth the idea that by creating more useful and relevant content to prospects, they could use that data to better qualify leads to Sales and discover where those leads were in the buying process based on what webinar content they consumed.

Watch this brief video from a MarketingSherpa Lead Gen Summit 2013 session to hear Shelby and Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, discuss how the team assembled a webinar strategy to better serve prospects as well as be more useful for lead scoring.

The results of this transformation in webinar marketing led to a 75% increase in open rate and 120% clickthrough rate increase in emails promoting the webinars.

Watch the entire session, “Lead Qualification: How demographics, content and behavior helped Adobe boost conversions 500%,” to discover how Shelby took this challenge even further by scoring webinar leads and how that effort resulted in a 500% conversion rate increase in sales.

You might also like

MarketingSherpa Lead Gen Summit 2014 – San Francisco, November 3-6

Webinar Marketing: Adobe revamps strategy and achieves a 500% lift in conversion to sale

Content Marketing: Your questions on B2B online lead gen, metrics, content from SMEs and more

Infographic: Customer experience in the digital age

By Tibor Shanto - tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

I was never big on Shakespeare, took me long enough to master English as my third language, good old Willie just confused things that much further, I must admit that I do have an appreciation for the phrase from Hamlet “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”. Not only as a parent, but perhaps in a similar vein working with sales people, as exemplified by a recent exchange with a rep I am working with.

Earlier this month in a post title To Call Or Not, I cited some stats about the level of effort required to engage and sell new buyers. The rep in question was very defensive about some of the numbers, asking where they came from, when I shared that with him, he kept on protesting and questioning, just like the lady in Hamlet.

Having remembered that the company had recently done a trade show about a week before our conversation. I asked how many leads he picked up, he told me about a hundred or so. I went on “how many have you contacted or followed up with?” He told me about thirty or so. Or so? What is there a margin for error, or a margin for slackness? Either way, below the stat he was protesting, and likely the reason he was protesting, the light was just a little too bright.

At this point you have no choice but to don my Kevlar reinforced wetsuit, and ask “what about the rest?”

I bet if I asked you to look away from the screen you can guess the excuses, go ahead give it a go.

First just the lack of time, apparently there was a battery that had to be driven across town to a client. I took a bullet, in as much as he had to attend training. But my favourite was “Some of these are not real, some were just tire kickers, I can tell which are worth following up with, so I went to hose first, I will continue down the list.”

I right away called my wife “Honey, I met a real celebrity, I spent my morning with Kreskin”  I can just see him holding those business cards up in the air, one by one, and divining which were buyers and which were not.

“Have you sent a follow up e-mail to the bunch?”

“I though Marketing was gonna do it”

Sales people are no different than others, if you don’t like the message, you shoot the messenger, and if the messenger is wearing Kevlar, try to undermine the numbers in question.

As discussed here before, sales people fall into one of two groups, what I’ve referred to as the X Factor of sales, execution, or excuses.  Not only was our boy not ready to execute, he was great excuses, a complete lack of accountability. Now to be fair, there was little clarity from the organizations as to what was expected after the show, i.e. “follow up with all leads within 72 hours.” But in the end, for someone so ready to question the numbers, he was doing a lot to hide form them and little to disprove them.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto 

Several years ago, when social media was really starting to take off, the idea that an individual or organization could successfully engage in “just minutes a day,” was rampant. Then reality sunk in and people recognized that effective engagement requires time, hard work, and commitment. Finding ways to be more efficient and effective was still a primary focus, but the guidance offered was better grounded and more pragmatic.

Every once in a while, however, we see a resurgence of what I consider late-night infomercial, Ronco-style proclamations about how to leverage social media in simple! and fast! ways… No fuss, no muss, and for just pennies a day – less than you’d spend on a cup of coffee! This recent piece on Mashable - How to Spend Only 10 Minutes Per Day on Twitter – is a great case in point.

If I had to guess why these kinds of pieces continue to pop up, I’d venture to say they’re in response to continuing new waves of adoption, as individuals and organizations that heretofore have had little to no digital engagement are finally ready to commit themselves to moving forward. And as busy, strategically savvy, but technologically naïve professionals, they’re looking to capitalize on the experience and expertise gained by earlier adopters. Their hope – and who can blame them – is that they won’t have to climb messy and slow learning curves unnecessarily but can instead achieve steady-state performance in leaps and bounds thanks to the trails that have already been blazed by their predecessors.

The people who are trying to help later adopters achieve their desired end-state more quickly are generally well meaning, especially when they give their advice away for free. Many seem genuinely motivated by a desire to demystify social media and other digital technologies, reduce fear, and lower barriers to adoption. But their Easy!Simple!Quick!Cheap! silver-bullet advice strategies are ill-advised. Here are seven key reasons why…

Reason 1. They minimize the strategic importance and value of social engagement. Like anything worth doing, social engagement requires a thoughtful, focused, and disciplined investment of time and resources to be successful. If an individual or organization has determined that it’s necessary to become more digitally engaged to achieve strategically important goals and objectives, they should be prepared to commit. If it’s not important, then it’s probably not worth spending any time or effort on. Dabbling is a waste of time – if that’s all you can do, don’t bother.

Reason 2. They overestimate initial skill levels and learning curve steepness. If you’re digitally sophisticated but not socially engaged, then the initial ramp-up to proficiency is relatively flat. But most social media rookies are also not that adept at using digital technology in general. They lack many skills that are now considered basic, like copying/pasting and embedding hyperlinks, using bookmarklets and other time-saving tools, and knowing how to check and correct their work. They also need to learn new terminology, like activity stream and tagging and category cloud, as well as normative expectations like when and how to use a hashtag, whether it’s appropriate to like your own post, and the proper quantity and frequency of posts – on each channel.

Reason 3. They neglect ramp-up time and costs. Even for digital sophisticates, it takes time to establish an initial presence on any social platform. Yes, you can create a Twitter account, LinkedIn profile or Google+ account in mere minutes, but that’s just the beginning. First, you have to decide which platforms on which you want to be present and engaged, at least initially. Then you have to learn how that platform works, how best practices are defined, and what it takes to be successful. Now that we’re well-past the early adopter stage, there’s little to no tolerance for rookie mistakes on the most established platforms, and the brand and reputational risks of mis-stepping shouldn’t be disregarded or underestimated. The best way to minimize that risk is to listen before engaging, which could take weeks or even months. Finally, building out your networks of relationships on each platform takes time and understanding.

Reason 4. The time parameters are unrealistic and misguided. I once read a piece that provided tips for doing “social media marketing in 15 minutes a day.” It suggested, for example, that you could find and pin five images to Pinterest in two minutes, and that you can scan, read and comment on one to two blog posts in three minutes. Seriously? Even if you’re a graduate of the Digital Era equivalent of an Evelyn Wood speed reading course, that kind of – ahem – efficiency is virtually impossible. In addition, the advice disregards the fact that engaging in what I call “cluster posting” once a day is likely to be ineffective and potentially off-putting, especially in time- and activity- sensitive channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (for status updates).

Rather than trying to engage in 15 minutes a day, it’s probably more effective – and efficient – to try to carve out fewer, bigger chunks of time to review, read, comment and share relevant content. You can probably engage on a fast and fast-moving platform like Twitter in short bursts of time, but reading and commenting on blogs and participating in LI groups requires larger investments. And with all platforms – even Twitter – it’s a good idea to use a tool like HootSuite to schedule posts so that you can engage consistently without feeling tethered to the channel.

Finally, it’s important to remember that as your engagement grows, so does the necessary time commitment. If you create a Facebook page, a LinkedIn group, or a SlideShare or YouTube channel, for example, you have to invest in establishing a solid presence and commit to feeding, seeding, and weeding the related activity as needed. And if you want to start a blog, well that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax! These commitments are not unwieldy or excessive – and they can certainly be managed efficiently and effectively – but if you want to do it right you’re going to need more than a few minutes a day.

Reason 5. They (indirectly) emphasize quantity over quality. One of the common complaints about Twitter – besides oversharing banalities – is that people retweet (RT) content somewhat indiscriminately, often without vetting it first. And too many bloggers share rehashed or unoriginal content and don’t do the necessary research to ensure their posts are complete and accurate. When posting frequency and speed are emphasized, quality suffers, and the signal-noise ratio everyone complains about gets more abysmal.

The pressure to post quickly and frequently also promotes carelessness and can also lead to mistakes, some of which can be serious enough to court disaster. In this example from the NY Times, a journalist retweeted a misleading post from a fake Twitter account, @nytkeIler, that he thought came from @nytkeller. The differences in the handle are subtle, but it’s a classic trick: the first “l” (el) in the fake account is actually a capital “I” (eye).

Reason 6. They misrepresent – or ignore – cause and effect relationships. Another piece I have read was headlined “5 Ways to Double Your Twitter Followers in 10 Minutes a Day.” Ironically, none of the advice directly addressed that premise – and even if it had, it would have been wrong. One of the biggest ongoing challenges with social media and digital engagement is determining the ROI (return on investment). There are so many variables at play that it’s almost impossible to determine whether and how involvement leads to a particular desired result. That doesn’t mean engagement is not worthwhile, but we need to be realistic about why we’re engaging and the results we expect that engagement to produce (for more on social media ROI, check out this post).

Reason 7. They create false expectations and set people up for failure (or a sense of it). People are generally inclined to look for quick fixes and silver bullets, but feeding into their naïve hopes isn’t doing social media rookies any favors. Instead, it’s doing them a disservice and undermining the importance of digital engagement. No one advertises how to help organizations do accounting, finance, operations, HR – or even marketing and sales – in “just minutes a day,” and no one expects to be able to master those functional areas on their own without a serious investment. Digital engagement is no different, but because of the ubiquity of social platforms, their low (or no) costs, and the ease of access, people underestimate them and think that mastery is easily obtained and maintained. Then, when mastery eludes them, these rookies feel as if they have failed in some way – or they blame the technology for not being all it was cracked up to be. Either way, they’re likely to give up and/or quit in disgust, which is ultimately not in their best interests.

A More Realistic Perspective

I have written a series of pieces targeted to social media rookies and others who want to engage more efficiently and effectively. They capture many of the “Welcome to the Digital Era” themes I highlight in the presentations I give and offer realistic guidance. You can find them by reviewing my previous posts on this site.

As always, your comments, questions, and additional insights are welcome.

Original post on the Denovati SMART Blog.

One of the realities of social media is it’s a constant march forward. Every day, brands share, post and engage to drive awareness, thought leadership, a competitive presence and, often, sales.

With such a focus on day-to-day activity, it can be difficult to take a step back to get some valuable perspective.

While monitoring activity is part of this process, bigger questions need to be asked on a regular basis:

1. How are our social media efforts going?

2. What’s working? What’s not working?

3. How can we improve engagement, the content being shared, leads, etc.?

4. Are certain social channels performing better than others? If so, why?

These questions require brands to spend time reflecting and thinking about how they’re doing social media and whether the time and effort is generating the expected ROI.

This is particularly relevant to brands leveraging a variety of social media services, including those with multiple accounts on a particular service.

One of the advantages and disadvantages of social media are the lower barriers to entry. It means that, over time, a brand can accumulate a broad social media portfolio – all of which demand attention.

This makes it necessary for brands to review how each social media account is performing and, as important, how are they performing against other social media channels.

While making improvements is a primary focus, another consideration is getting a handle on whether weaker parts of a brand’s social media portfolio need to be eliminated.

At some point, it may not make sense for a brand to keep going with the same social media mix. It means making changes to come up with a better and stronger social media presence.

In some cases, it could mean putting more of an emphasis on existing social media accounts. In other cases, it could involve embracing a new social media channel to connect with target audiences in different ways.

At the end of the day, it’s important to carry out regular social media audits. This is an invaluable to ensure a brand’s investment in social media is generating the right returns. Like any marketing activity, brands have to assess how social media is performing against other opportunities.

The post The Importance of Regular Social Media Audits appeared first on Sysomos Blog.

In a modern business, the ideal situation is that sales and marketing work together in a cohesive way. After all, both functions are aiming to deliver the same result – increased sales and business growth.

Unfortunately it is often the case, particularly in larger organisations, that there is a significant disconnect between sales and marketing departments. Sometimes they can even be working in completely different directions, targeting different audiences with different products and different messages.

The solution enlightened agencies, including us, have been using to bridge the sales-marketing gap is marketing automation. Marketing automation platforms offer clients the ability to generate visibility, nurture leads and allow marketing to qualify the prospect before handing them over to sales to begin the sales process.

So marketing automation is undoubtedly a great way to deliver high quality leads in a resource-efficient way, and visibly increase conversion rates. But only if it’s done properly.

The problem in many organisations is that sales and marketing don’t collaborate on the target, message or the focus offer for each marketing automation campaign. This means marketing could come up with a great campaign delivering valuable hot leads to sales; but without any interdepartmental communication, sales could be focusing on a completely different offer and be unprepared for the influx of leads from a specific sector.

This could mean unfocused resources and poor conversion rates.

My advice would be this: when planning your next marketing automation campaign – indeed the same is true for any marketing campaign – having a robust, integrated strategy in place is key to success. Making sure you gain buy-in from all key stakeholders including not only sales teams, but also product development, operations and PR means everyone across the organisation is pulling in the same direction, and resources are used in the most effective way.

Combining this cohesive, integrated approach with good cross-team communication, through both regular channels and a shared CRM and performance management system means that each team can see what the other is doing, and how to work alongside them.

It also means that all teams are accountable to each other, with the result of giving each team a better understanding of the challenges faced by other departments, but also motivates them by creating a competitive element, with each department aiming to avoid letting the group down.

So, to leverage marketing automation effectively in your organisation to deliver valuable leads and drive revenue growth, make sure you have a robust strategy and a cohesive interdepartmental network established. By putting these processes in place, you will be able to direct resources to the right market at the right time, and deliver real business advantage for your next campaign.

This blog post was originally published on the Novacom blog. Click here to view the original post.