I met with my friend Brian last week. Brian runs Worldwide Sales for a Bay Area technology company. Brian shared with me that his recent World tour visiting his field offices could be characterized as "The Complaint Tour."
"Salespeople who are behind on quota are notorious complainers", he added, but one complaint that came up in nearly every office from salespeople and key channel partners was, "I can't find what I need, when I need it - how can I move deals forward?"
It’s a question I hear all the time: “I want to hire a content marketer, but I’m in B2B (or B2C). Do I need someone with experience in my industry?”
Great question, and one we asked ourselves when creating the content the Content Marketing Hiring Handbook. Really, the answer isn’t a simple yes or no.
What you need to ask is whether a candidate has the main qualities of great content marketers, and if they have the ability to understand your customers’ path to purchase. I try to answer this key question in the video below (transcript below). But let us know what you think!
Hi, my name is Jesse Noyes, and I’m the Senior Director of Content Marketing at Kapost. Today, I want to talk about a question I’m hearing a lot, lately. Namely, “Hey, I’m hiring a content marketer. Does it matter if they have B2B or B2C experience?”
Well, first, let’s talk about what B2B or B2C means. For B2Bs, that means businesses selling primarily to other businesses, much like the business I work for. Or, you have B2C, where the business is selling directly to the consumer.
But before we answer the question, “does it matter that the content marketer has previous experience in my industry?,” let’s talk about the qualities of every great content marketer, regardless of the industry they work in.
I can think of three.
1. Do they have writing and editing experience? And I don’t just mean that they keep a good blog or they’ve written for some national publications. What I mean is, do they have the editing experience to help elevate the stories you tell at your organization?
2. Do they have an eye for visuals? Do they understand how the packaging, the design, influences how one enjoys or digests the content that you’re going to put out there?
3. Do they have a commitment to buyer or consumer interest? What do I mean by that? Well, I mean they’re not just interested in pumping your product. What they really want to get at is informing, educating, and entertaining the buyers or consumers that interact with your content.
Those are the three great qualities of great content marketers. But getting back to that B2B or B2C question. Well, when you’re asking me, “Hey, does it matter if they have that experience?” What you’re really asking is, “Do they have the ability to understand my path to purchase or the path of my buyers to purchase?”
Now, if you’re in a B2C, this might look a little more linear. For many B2Cs, the path to purchase might not involve many different touches or lots of different content. It might follow a pretty simple path.
For a lot of B2Bs, that path might look a little more tough. Right? It could be like scaling a mountain. There’s a lot of key decision makers to talk to. There’s many stages to reach. A lot of different conversations have to happen. A lot of content gets consumed along the way. And this could take months. It could even take years.
So, when you’re asking, “Hey, should this person have experience in B2B or B2C?,” what you’re really trying to get at is, “Do they have the experience or at least, the aptitude and interest, to understand how my buyers progress through content towards an actual purchase?”
I hope that address this big question. And I really want to thank you for checking out this video.
When Kuno Creative hired me, I officially became the sole member of the agency’s Content Department. Over the past two years, that department has grown to include more than a handful of in-house creative members with the certainty of a few more over the coming months. Yes, we are hiring—aggressively. As the need for quality content continues to grow for businesses, so, too, does our need for talented writers.
On some scale, your business may be experiencing this same need for content creators. If not, what the heck are you waiting for? If you think content marketing is a passing fad—content shock and all that business—you’re only shooting yourself in the foot. While Mark Schaefer had some great points we should all think about, everyone from Sonia Simone to Joe Pulizzi have come out in defense of content marketing. (Yes, they are biased. Yes, they provided actual reasoning to support their views.)
Truth be told, high-caliber content hires are one part of the strategy you need to have in place to survive content shock.
But content is a tough position to fill. It’s hard to know what to look for in candidates. These past two years have provided a lot of insight into what qualities are essential, what my content department could live without and, most importantly, when to say, “You’re hired!” Here, I offer you my lessons learned.
People don’t go to school for or get degrees in “content marketing.” It is a relatively new field, so the people who are qualified for these positions may not even know about them or they just aren’t sure about them.
Of those who apply, seek out applicants with a journalism or public relations background. They understand their audiences, know how to sniff out a good story and are fantastic with deadlines. There are others that may fit the bill, too, such as English or marketing majors, but you must ensure they are comfortable interviewing subjects and writing all day long.
Bottom line: Hire writers with a newspaper, magazine or robust public relations background.
This term is often used to refer to the ability to feel sympathy for another human. I am simply using it to state that content creators must be able to put themselves into their audiences’ mindsets. What do they care about? Where do they want to get their information? What will make them change their minds?
These questions can only be answered after speaking to these audiences and asking them relevant questions. In other words, an interview. Yes, your content creators need to be able to interview stakeholders and customers to understand the type of content they should create, the format it should be created in, the frequency with which it should be distributed and the tone it should have. Without truly putting yourself into the minds of your buyers, your content will suffer from an overarching irrelevance.
Bottom Line: Find people who can step outside their own perspective to offer valuable insight into their audiences’ perspective.
Content is largely creative, but it needs an analytical eye, too. This is an incredibly difficult combination to find in most people. Trust me, I know. In fact, at one point during my search for a third team member, it took me nine months to find the right person!
But the truth is content creators need to be coming up with new ideas all day long. This isn’t easy, even for a creative soul. Luckily, there are usually analytics that can be reviewed to understand what content is working, what efforts are not working and what ideas should be expanded upon. However, if your content team cannot decipher these things from the data given, the whole endeavor is in big trouble.
Bottom line: Look for someone who can think creatively but also values analytics to make smarter content decisions.
Another opportunity to combat content shock over the next few years will be to promote your people, not your products. It is so important that your employees have already built up a strong social profile where they talk about the latest industry news, share their unique view and offer great tips for readers. Check social channels for vulgar language, lingering negativity and other behaviors that set off mental “NO” alarms in your mind.
Bottom line: Hire applicants with a professional yet welcoming approach to social media.
There has been a huge push lately for defining and following “company culture.” (Check out buffer’s take on it here.) At Kuno, we are moving toward a flexible, remote working culture based on mutual respect and success. We need people who are comfortable working in this type of environment. People who need a lot of structure and are not comfortable in an environment that changes often simply won’t work out.
Think of your company culture like a set of guidelines or values your employees should abide by. Find hires who won’t disrupt this culture, but rather thrive in it. If you need a little help making this connection, check out this robust article from The Bridgespan Group.
Bottom line: Would you want to be stranded with this person at the airport? Yes=hire them. No= keep looking.
Your employees are a huge factor in your company’s success. And the content you are creating will either help solidify new leads and customers or disappear into the abyss. Look for people with these five qualities to ensure your brand overcomes content shock and continues to grow.
What qualities do you look for in content creators? Let us know in the comment section below!
photo credit: Martin Gommel 
In late 2012, market research firm Forrester dropped a statistic on sales and marketing organizations that likely made them shudder with sudden pangs of helplessness and fear.
According to Forrester’s research, today’s buyers complete as much as 90 percent of their decision-making journey before they ever reach out (or respond) to vendors. They search Google, ask for referrals on social networks, read industry blogs, and digest reviews. And if your business is lucky enough to survive that rigorous filtering process, customer might respond to your outreach.
Yes, marketers can still play an influential role in awareness and guidance during that prolonged period of proactive customer research, and salespeople can still have a big impact on the final steps of a buyer’s journey. But for any of that to happen, both functions need to change the way they operate to become part of the conversation before their customers have already made up their minds.
So, how can you do that?
Content and social selling are two great tactics for engaging in two-way conversations with prospective customers earlier in the buying process. These strategies allow sales and marketing teams to monitor customer activity and interest leading up to a purchase decision, and quickly respond — via customers’ preferred communication channels — to questions or concerns with relevant, helpful information.
The post 3 Tips for Incorporating Content and Social Selling into Your Sales Strategy appeared first on KnowledgeTree.
The most effective marketing helps your company relate to your customers on a personal level. Successful marketers don’t think of their company as an institution, they think of it as a person.
Most marketers are charged with developing a brand identity, so the shift in perspective from institution to human to human to human (H2H) isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem.
How do marketers implement such a shift? It’s pretty simple, really. Make it clear that you care about your customers and your customers will care about you back. Here are some tips to get started:
Randomly marketing to a broad audience is like going door to door with your product—it’s a waste of time and money. Before you even begin to market, it’s imperative that you understand your company’s buyer personas. To do this, you must research your typical customers by gathering data on their age, gender, education level, profession, financial situation, and hobbies. These personas will guide the voice, tone, and content your marketing team develops.
…it’s important to reveal the personalities behind your own company.
In addition to researching customer personas, it’s important to reveal the personalities behind your own company. A great way to do that is to feature your employees, the people that make it all happen.
Mozy, a cloud backup solution, has done a great job at this. They publish individual profiles of their engineers on the blog. These profiles include details not only about their work routine, but also what music they listen to and what they’re passionate about. The result of transparency like this? Prospects are more comfortable doing business with a company when they understand who they’re dealing with.
78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing.
Creating custom content on owned media channels is a great way to humanize your company. According to a study by WebDAM Solutions, 78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing. This same study found that nearly 25% of the entire ad market will be Internet advertising by 2015.
Your blog is one of the most important channels where this kind of custom content can live. If you don’t have one, start one. If you have one already, focus on updating it with useful and engaging content that speaks to your target audience.
GE’s blog, for example, reaches out to techies with its entertaining technology and science-related content. The GE editors have made this blog is image-heavy and interactive, often including photography, videos, and music in their posts. If stakeholders in your company are hesitant about investing the time and resources to develop a stand-out blog, consider this: Contently reports that you can increase your visibility by more than 50% when you include a blog on your company site.
Marketers often underestimate the importance of purpose-driven corporate social responsibility to their consumers. Research conducted by the World Federation of Advertising revealed that while only 46% of marketers think consumers share and approve their support for good causes, 60% of consumers surveyed actually claimed to be seeking out brands with a sense of purpose.
60% of consumers seek out brands with a sense of purpose.
Standing for a purpose means a lot more than donating a large sum of money to a charitable organization. Take Starbucks, the poster child for corporate responsibility. They are on a very public mission to minimize their environmental footprint through ethical sourcing and energy-efficient stores. In addition to helping the environment, their efforts are doing a whole lot of good for their brand.
How do you incorporate purpose into your own marketing efforts? Determine what movement makes the most sense for your company, your customers and your industry. Consider the United Nations’ Ten Principles when deciding which area you’d like your business to focus on. Making your company one of the leaders of global change is a great way to showcase the humanity of your brand.
With these three tactics, content marketers can make a real impression on buyers, sparking a deeper relationship that moves them toward purchase. After all, they’re not just investing in your products, they’re investing in the experience of those products and the company they represent.
Jeff Korhan introducing Mark Schaefer at Social Media Marketing World
I recently had the pleasure of helping other speakers as a track leader for Social Media Marketing World.
It was an interesting experience for me because typically I am the speaker , so in this situation I was assuming the role of those that help me to look good in front of an audience.
My primary responsibility was properly introducing every speaker to the audience, facilitating questions, and properly thanking them. In other words, doing the necessary work to make them look good for this live event.
There is a lesson in this for all of us, because every business is serving multiple audiences.
We all know that first impressions are important for establishing relationships and building trust. Therefore, an introduction becomes a powerful tool that prepares the audience for what will follow. For speakers this is the presentation.
For your business, this is the marketing message or sales offer.
Thus, the dynamic of introducing a speaker to an audience is one that any business can apply to situations where they are being introduced to potential buyers, which may be an audience of one or many.
It’s a simple process of helping them to get to know, like, and trust you.
While reading the speaker introductions I began to wonder which words were the most important for connecting with the audience, and therefore deserved special emphasis.
Let’s face it, most people are not good listeners, so it’s important to carefully choose the words that will reliably resonate with them. One way to accomplish this is with emphasis and repetition.
If it’s not about you, as we all know, then why are introductions and marketing messages often all about you or your business?
Review all of your social media bios, and sales and marketing messages in general, to be sure that they include key words that instantly connect with your audience.
Make yours about the audience you serve to help them better understand how you can help them.
A speaker’s personality will become evident from the first few moments of his or her presentation. Logically then, that personality should be embedded within the introduction that precedes it.
During one of my introductions the audience began applauding as soon as they heard the speaker’s name. I paused to allow the laughter and enthusiasm to breathe (see photo above). When I returned to the script, that energy further intensified.
A great introduction is powerful for warming up an audience.
Is there is a wow factor that your business is known for? That personality should be reflected in your social media and content marketing introductions, which are often your social media profiles.
For an offer to be entertained, it’s helpful when the audience understands the benefits it will deliver in advance. This prepares them for the call to action that should be preceded by an educational message that sets it up.
This is your content marketing. For a speaker, this is the presentation.
When people know and like you, and also understand in advance where you are taking them, it’s easier for them to entrust you with their hearts and minds.
Educational content and social media marketing is very much like a great presentation that takes an audience on a journey whose destination is even better than they had imagined. If your business properly introduces that possibility and delivers on it, then it will achieve outcomes that resemble a standing ovation.
Armies of content developers are packaging research results, expert opinions, and success stories into papers, podcasts, videos, and events… all of them rich with hard-earned insights. But does all this content fuel business development efforts? Does it help your sales executives educate customers struggling to make good decisions and get results?
In our work with marketing teams — particularly those trying to connect to an executive audience — we often find there is a disconnect between content creators and sales professionals on the front lines who want tools that help strike up meaningful conversations with clients and prospects. It is not for lack of quality or ideas, but rather a problem of actionable relevance. As one seller at a large technology company put it, “In reviewing a recent study we published, I found it difficult to find the key messages to share with a CIO, which is my target client. The study reported the data rather than spelling out our point of view on actions, outcomes, and next steps for someone like my client to take.”
Actionable relevance matters now more than ever. Executive buyers come to the table more educated and informed, with a desire to get value even more quickly. The same seller commented, “C-levels are becoming much more savvy and we need to be better prepared for a much deeper level of conversation.” It behooves content marketers to present information in a way that hastens deeper conversation and ensures that all of the value embedded in the content is available for the taking.
As you design and develop your content pieces, think about the focus from the perspective of a seller, a client rep or even one of your own executives. Could that person tell a succinct story from what you have laid out? Would the story summarize the output — without lengthy review or deep analysis — into an elevator pitch that spells out what someone should do differently based on the content? If not, take the time to extract the relevant story line for each audience and package it clearly.
Particularly for major reports, key events, and lengthy videos, consider creating a conversation kit. Content creators can provide a set of tools, summaries, highlights, and explicit paths for action — all of which help your colleagues maximize the value of the content when speaking with clients and prospects.
For example, you can consider creating:
We also recommend creating what we call “off-ramps:” mapping out defined activities or actions to take with the client based on the findings or observations at key junctures in the piece. For example, say your team prepares a report about getting business value from the cloud. In the section where you talk about best practices, you may include a customized section that benchmarks the client relative to high performers (and allows your sales team to have deeper, more meaningful conversations). These extra tools designed specifically for internal sellers help to scale the impact of the content and extend the life of your ideas and investment.
As an example, Karla Bousquet, Director of Client Executive Marketing at IBM Corp., shares IBM’s approach to leveraging high-level event content: “A critical component for our C-suite events is helping client reps engage more effectively with the content during and after the event. Our teams package summaries, help to identify related next steps, link case studies, and map the event content themes to potential paths forward to help our executives take action with clients.”
Take time to engage and involve clients in your thought leadership development. As you work to extract meaning and relevance from your ideas and output, test them with clients. Set up a thought leadership review panel, conduct interviews to source ideas and share findings, and test assumptions and talk through their perspective on what actions to take based on what you created. If you take the time to define the conclusions and actions together with a subset of your trusted clients, you improve the value and usefulness of the content… and your clients will usually evangelize the output to others.
Heather Higgins, Strategy and Analytics Marketing Leader for IBM Global Business Services, recently saw the power of client co-creation firsthand. The GBS team was in the process of finalizing the output of a global research effort and decided to share the content with a group of key clients as part of an advisory meeting. The feedback changed the direction of the final piece.
Higgins explains, “We went in thinking the content was close to final, and received a set of specific comments and thoughtful reactions that helped us understand what resonated with our clients and what did not. We got clear direction about how to make the output more useful to our clients, and therefore more impactful for us.” Higgins stressed the importance of the shift to earlier collaboration when it comes to content. “We used to share results after publication. With this piece, we started to involve a few clients in research design, and then tested the output with a group of client leaders. Going forward we will continue to look for opportunities to bring clients earlier into our thinking.”
Just like the executives with whom they are trying to connect, sellers have busy schedules and short attention spans. Keep a rigorous focus on boiling down the most relevant findings and recommendations, and be sure to make these accessible. If you make it easy to see what to do based on your ideas and insights, you will find your content in constant use.
Remember that great content is only half the battle. For content marketing to engage customers and prospects and bring about new business opportunities, it needs to provide a platform for conversation and action. Building an explicit bridge to relevance ensures that your content investment will have more impact and value.
This article originally appeared in the April 2014 issue of Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free subscription to our quarterly magazine.
The Netflix-Comcast truce has demonstrated once more how crucial video has become for today’s internet. YouTube alone streams enough footage each month to theoretically entertain every single human alive for four hours. Facebook users spend an average of 84 minutes a month watching clips on the social network, topping five billion views in January.
The data inside each clip and metadata about each and every viewer’s interaction with a video can make or break marketing campaigns. But are companies making use of the vast treasure trove of data that all those streamed videos give them?
So far, the answer is no. Using big data to boost one’s sales and marketing activities may sound like old news, but most companies today don’t use the full suite of modern business intelligence (BI) tools at their disposal.
Some have embarked on implementing the open source Hadoop framework for data warehousing, including newer iterations such as Impala that make up for the lack in speed of the initial Hadoop versions. Some companies are trying new approaches to turn the entire web into a data repository, connecting sources across the cloud to each other and to their various on-premise datasets to run complex queries in a browser. And some are betting on new appliances that supposedly make mining your data as easy as a search query.
But most companies still struggle to make sense of the basic requirements for all the different big data technologies out there — from budget to necessary staff skills. They also need internal buy-in to connect entirely new data sources to their sales, marketing and other activities to get that 360-degree view of their value chain and operations that software guys have been promising.
That’s a pity because mining video data is a particularly valuable asset. The foray into the rich data sets of social media and video lets companies large and small literally see more and sell more.
Photo from Thinkstock/Oleksiy Mark
Take one European enterprise my firm works with. This company noticed that its sales of one product had shot up and almost drained inventory in a few days. But why? When the sales team talked to the social media guys, they found out that a video about the new product had been viewed more than 100,000 times the day before the spike occurred.
The firm used a team of two to pull together data across the web and inside its firewall: online orders and conversion rates, data from its YouTube and Vimeo accounts, plus Google Analytics and Facebook Insights. Turns out the bestseller story was a bit more complicated.
YouTube views had indeed shot up, but they had only led to a 15 percent increase in orders. What really drove the unusually high sales was something else: the moment when die-hard fans started spreading the word. They shared the clip everywhere from Tumblr to Facebook and got their friends to watch it on mobile devices. Viral plus handheld generated a 40 percent sales increase, but that tidbit only showed up once all the dots were connected.
The company went a step further and pushed this analysis to its salesforce users. It was less a pep talk than advanced prep work for the next launch. “This intel convinced us to syndicate the same content on different channels, but to properly engage each type of audience, whether we’re talking to impulsive, Twitter-happy buyers, careful researchers on Quora, or collector types on Pinterest,” the marketing head told me. “For the next launch, we decided to focus on a mobile promotion that generated similar sales.”
Mining video data is the next big thing in harnessing big data. It simply is too big a data pool to ignore it. YouTube alone has more than a billion unique viewers each month, 80 percent of them from outside the U.S. The number of subscriptions has tripled since last year, and 40 percent of all content is viewed on mobile devices. This is why the POV should meet the POS.
Only when you mash up all these pieces of information, and do so as quickly as possible, do you stand a chance to establish cause and effect. It might not sound as sexy as “big data,” but mining video clips brings enterprises one step closer to understanding marketing success — and how to repeat it. Even better, there are tools out there that do not require nerds.
It would be wrong to declare one data source is suddenly more important than all the others, but companies need to put the spotlight on video and marry those insights with bone-dry sales and marketing numbers.
Rachel Delacour is CEO and co-founder of cloud business analytics pioneer, BIME Analytics, who also holds an advisory role on cloud computing standards with EuroCloud. Follow her on Twitter @bimeanalytics.
Feature image from Shutterstock/photosani
In 2014, content marketing is expected to become a much more widely used marketing tactic. In fact, in a recent survey, 74% of brands expect to increase their content marketing spend in 2014. However, as Jason Falls rightly pointed out, content marketing alone will fail.
Over 2013 and the first part of 2014, many brands have been pummelled online. Facebook’s updated algorithm now means brand pages receive on average a pathetic 2% organic reach. Meanwhile, Google released a series of algorithm updates resulting in brutal penalizations of previously high ranking sites who had been using shady tactics in the past. With all the hype around content marketing, there is the risk that businesses and marketers will see it as a golden egg, and then cut expenditure on SEO and Social Media, which are actually both vital channels.
The truth is, content marketing thrives when incorporated into a wider digital marketing strategy, but fails alone. In this article we’ll look at the benefits of a combined content and social strategy, and exactly how to go about running your campaign.
It is an unfortunate fact that many small businesses begin content marketing using their blog, but stop prematurely after seeing poor results, with no-one sharing their posts, no-one leaving comments, and no noticeable business being generated.
Without a plan for properly promoting your content, you are unlikely to be successful with content marketing.
There are a wide range of benefits from ensuring your content marketing is deeply integrated with the work of your social media team and your SEO company. Notably, is the fact that old school SEO is now much less effective. Gone are the days that an SEO company could achieve high rankings on a large scale, competitive campaign by manually building links, thanks to Google’s constant stream of aggressive anti-spam, anti-link scheme algorithms.
Many SEO companies are now not only incorporating content marketing into their campaigns, they are actually making content the focal point of them. This case study by Gael Breton shows how an SEO campaign actually became more effective by removing the manual link building side of the campaign entirely. Content marketing is now an essential component of an effective SEO campaign, because Google values high quality content. If your site isn’t useful to users, that’s a big reason why it might not be ranking in the search results.
The social media benefits are also huge. The truth is that social media requires content to operate effectively. One of your aims for social media marketing should be to drive qualified traffic to your site, and a high quality article is one of the best ways of doing this.
Quality content also allows you to build relationships with industry influencers and leverage them to grow your own following, as well as driving qualified referral traffic from their blogs.
The most important stage of content marketing is the planning stage, and unfortunately this is the step that many people get wrong. While you could pump out a short, 500 word article every day about whatever issue comes into your head, an effective plan of how you’ll deliver value to your audience can multiply the effectiveness of your content in it’s ability to build awareness of your firm.
The first step is to know your audience. What problems do they have that need solving? Imagine your customer as a patient at a doctor’s surgery. They usually have a problem which needs solving. Imagine your article as the doctor, diagnosing a problem and finding some solutions for them.
You could now write a brief 500 word article on this topic, but is that really the best use of your time? Probably not.
Instead, you should focus on writing an MVP, or Mass Value Post, a technique advocated by Rizvan Ullah. Google loves quality content, and if you produce the definitive resource on your topic, you have the potential to receive large numbers of quality backlinks both now and in the future. The more value you offer in your article, the more your audience will share and link to it, and in turn the more Google will love it, resulting in better rankings.
One method of deciding what write about is by performing a bit of competitor research. Search for the keywords you’re looking to write about, see what your competitors are writing about, and then produce a piece of content that’s even better than theirs.
The result is a ‘linkable-asset’, a term that an SEO company would use to describe a high quality piece of content, that if found by an influencer or blog owner in your niche, would want to link back to. You can read more about this strategy here at Backlinko, which author Brian Dean refers to as the ‘skyscraper technique’, and has been used to more than double traffic in just 14 days!
It is a good idea to have your SEO consultant or SEO company help with the keyword targeting which essential to make the article a success, but then let your in-house expert on the topic write the article itself. To truly produce ‘great content’ that will offer value to your audience, an expert on the subject is needed.
When PageRank was invented, it was influenced by the citations found in scholarly literature, where if the work of another author was used, it would be cited. When writing your Mass Value Post, you should use the same principle. Citing other useful resources not only adds authority to your post, it also enhances the user experience, allowing your post to become a hub page on that topic.
There are a number of different ways you go about this:
One of the best examples is this post, where the author Richard Marriott has contacted influencers in his industry, asking them to take part in his article. When the article was completed, he let them know, and they shared the article, resulting in hundreds of social signals and traffic!
This is my favourite method as it’s so quick and easy to do. Simply log all the links you cite in your article in a spread sheet, then let the authors know that you mentioned them. More often than not they will share your article to their audience!
If you’ve written a substantial beginner’s guide to a topic, why not add a list of articles for further reading on the subject? Not only will that offer your readers even more value, it will allow you to build relationships with other influential authors in your niche.
Create a ‘hub’ article by creating a definitive roundup of the best resources to solve a common problem that your customers have, summarizing each in a paragraph and linking back to the original for further reading.
Once you have produced your content and it’s live on your site, the work hasn’t ended, it’s only just begun! You could have the best article in the world but if you don’t use social media marketing to effectively promote it, it’s unlikely to take off.
All of the content strategies above require citing other authors. List all of these in a spreadsheet and collect their contact details, including email, Twitter, Linkedin and Google+, which are usually in their author bios or contact pages.
The next step is to contact each person you mention. I’ve found success using this tactic by being non-needy, and simply letting them know you’ve mentioned them. You could use the following template in your outreach:
HI [Name}
Thanks for sharing your excellent article [their article name] which I’ve referenced in my post [your article name].
I have, of course, included a link back your original post.
Feel free to check out my post at [your post url] and to share it if you think it would be useful to your network.
Thanks again!
Regards
[your name]
In your spreadsheet, log who you’ve contacted and on which medium, whether email, Google+, etc. and then log your responses.
The best success comes if you are able to get the author’s email, but sometimes this is not possible. If someone doesn’t respond to your message, either with a reply or simply tweeting out your article, chase them up, perhaps on a different medium. For example if you originally contacted them via email or a private Google+ message, try tweeting them instead.
One thing that can sometimes be overlooked when sharing content via social media is posting it in relevant communities. Google+ and LinkedIn are best for this, each with thousands of active, vibrant groups for a range of niches.
When sharing your content, be sure to do so in a group targeted to your audience. For example, I might want to share this post with groups for content marketing, social media and SEO professionals. However, it can be less clear in other industries. For example if you wrote an article on “The Definitive Guide On Renting Commercial Property”, you might want to find a group for small business owners rather than commercial property. Consider where your customers are, rather than what topic you’re writing about.
Industry influencers have the power to expose your content to a large, relevant audience, and learning how to find and engage them is essential. Matthew Barby has written a great walkthrough explaining exactly how to do this here at Wordtracker.
Finally, don’t forget to share your content with your existing audience across all your social channels. Facebook’s recent updates may have caused some disillusionment with investing in social media, but if done well, Facebook is still a valuable source of traffic. Try these 9 social media tips from Buffer to improve your reach and traffic across a range of social networks.
There is huge potential this year to leverage Content Marketing to grow your site’s traffic and increase leads and sales by incorporating it into a wider social media and SEO strategy, whether you perform it in-house or in partnership with an SEO company. Content Marketing should not be seen as a way to escape the mediocre reach seen recently on Facebook, but instead used to supercharge the effectiveness of your social media and SEO campaigns. If leveraged correctly and using some of the content ideas above, content marketing can allow you to generate better results by working smarter, rather than harder.
When I was in high school, I was in track & field team.
It was grueling for me because I lived 2 hour away from my high school (Flushing, NY to Bronx, NY via 1 bus, 3 subways, and 15 min walk). 2 hours in public transportation, 6 hour of school, 3 hours of running/lifting, and 2 hours back.
I wanted to be good.. i wanted to win. Whatever it took was the motto.
One thing I remember was that although my endurance was pretty good, my “burst” power was kind of weak.
So for a whole summer, I trained my legs to have more explosive power.
Then a friend of mine gave me different advice: that my core strength and the way I breathe are just as important as my leg power.
What do you know? Doing that made MORE impact in 2 weeks than my leg training the entire summer.
Best Bang for Your Buck
When it comes to marketing, there are TONS of things you can do… and each one of them requires just as much work as any other channel.
If you’re not a huge company with lots of resources, the odds are that you have to CHOOSE which one is the most effective. The best “BANG” for the buck.
And although it would be nice to have your company seen in public light all the time on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest/Youtube/etc etc., you just can’t afford to do it because labor costs money and you need to be making sales.
Here are 3 types of industries where social media ROI is relatively low.
Ask yourself this question.
When was the last time you went to get a check up because you saw a great Facebook page from a doctor?
No, you chose a doctor because:
This study was done in 2008, and although word of mouth is still the #1 channel, and the trend has changed quite a LOT.
Look at this Google trend for keyword “dentist near me”.
Problem isn’t that social media, TV, radio, or newspaper don’t work, they just don’t work well because of the consumer funnel:
Problem with medical need is that your mind is COMPLETELY turned off if you aren’t aware that you have a need. Medical needs are like porn or games: if you are aware, you want it NOW.
Your awareness & consideration part of the funnel are pretty much the same. There is no “nurture” that you need to do.
If you slipped your disk and are in excruciating pain
And this is why any form of disruption marketing doesn’t work so hot for most medical services because there is no way to tell if there is intent to purchase.
Plus, medical information is not inherently viral. It’s information you consume ALONE. (Just like porn.)
If a gynecologist puts out an article on herpes on her Facebook page, how likely is that people are going to comment on that post with their own discharge problems? Probably not high. (Sorry for the imagery.)
If people don’t comment/share, social networks deem you as inherently non-relevant and your posts don’t show up. Your page just withers away and you just became a victim of digital sharecropping, not because your marketing sucked because you didn’t understand human behavior.
I receive nice emails from my dentists too once in a while. And I can tell they put in a ton of time to research their content, write good articles, and of course, make it pretty.
Is it effective? Maybe… I highly highly doubt it.
1. Invest in good content on YOUR website. Search engine marketing only works if you have good content. Don’t be stingy and write good stuff. No one is stealing your expertise so give it out freely.
2. If you’re going to do social media marketing focus more for your own industry people. If #1 source of your business is referrals, make some friends online and they might refer you some business.
Houses, mortgages, college savings, college tuition, cars, solar, roofing, HVAC, windows, etc etc.
These are all purchases that are cost thousands to even millions of dollars.
As with the doctor/dentist example..
Will you buy a house from a realtor because she has a good Twitter page? Will you buy a college savings fund from some financial planner because she has a huge Pinterest following?
Probably not. Here’s what happens.
They have come across your product or service on some blog, some facebook post, or whatever… then they start developing interest. The odds are that they haven’t book marked that source or search for that original information.
Once they move to the decision / action phase, they’re going to search.
And most of the time, the heavy search (i.e. comparing, analyzing, reading) will be on devices where the input is easier, especially if the demographics is older.
Makes sense right? You’ll probably have multiple windows open and querying bunch of stuff before you decide to engage in a conversation with a business where you’re going to spend huge amounts of money.
For example, 83% of all the leads I generated on for my solar customers at my previous solar lead generation startup was on desktops. (Male, 40+, middle to upper middle income, multiple computing device homes.)
After months of running various search PPC campaigns, i figured out what keywords were “awareness” phase and removed them. I was focused only on “looking/ready to buy” people, while my competitors were spending their hard earned money on social media and useless keywords.
Unfair, right? You do all the hard work of educating them yet they don’t buy from you.
Do all that stuff from the medical/dental section solution… PLUS
1. Write your content that spans all 4 parts of the funnel: awareness, interest, decision, and action.
2. Invest in email marketing / retargeting to bring them back.
My mom’s friend runs a fish distribution business.
I mean, he is KILLING it. Distributing to pretty hundreds of sushi & fish restaurants in NYC.
Despite my advice, he just hired a “social media expert” to try and get more customers.
After 2 years and almost $180k later (in salary, media costs, etc.), he decided to let her go.
Reason? It’s not her fault but her activity wasn’t pulling her “weight” in terms of ROI metrics. He was getting more results from existing customer referrals.
Some industries are just too damn boring… and offline work constitutes 99% of their work. (When was the last time you saw a restaurant chef at a busy restaurant spending more than 3-5 minutes on their phone/computer.)
But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost.
1. Email marketing is STILL king when it comes to developing one on one relationship.
I managed to email top influencers in marketing like Jeremy Schoemaker and Neil Patel to give me their time so I can interview them. They don’t know me personally but I managed to get into their inbox.
Here are some other people I’ve managed to reach
Yes, it’s powerful because no matter what, 99% of people check their email. (Thank you internet addiction)
Don’t just email them random blasts. If you’re not educating them with your industry expertise, have an objective like asking for referrals.
2. Engage people offline with online communities.
Run your own offline events like Meetup.
Yes, old school but highly effective.
I am pretty sure that as long as there are humans selling complex products and services to one another there will be cold calling. Technology – social media in particular – has changed things, but it hasn’t eliminated the need for a salesperson to avidly pursue people he/she wants to speak to.
And while it isn’t going away, cold calling today needs to be sharper, better researched and more focused than it might have been in the past. The following are four things I like to keep in mind when I get ready to cold call.
Do Your Research
You need to know who you are calling and why, and develop a prospect list that has been honed by title/persona, vertical, geography and company size. Build this list using LinkedIn, trade association directories and list tools like Data.com and NetProspex.com. It should focus on prospects you really, truly want to get through to. Check phone numbers against company web sites and cross reference titles from multiple sources if possible. You want the list you are calling from to be thorough, clean and up to date: there is nothing quite as demoralizing as calling on a bunch of leads that are out of date.
Aim high but be realistic – very few people in the C Suite are going to pay attention to what you have to offer unless:
You can ask their assistants to help guide you, but you need to take this direction as only one of several vectors into the organization.
If you aren’t sure who you should be calling on, create a prospect list for three to five companies in the vertical you are going after and use them as research sources, asking for their direction.
Prep Your CRM
Load the target leads into your CRM, teeing them up so that you can add 10 – 20 at a time to your activities. I like to put a one sentence description in the lead record that summarizes the pitch I am making. Tools like InsideView enable you to display current company information in Salesforce.com and other CRMs.
Make sure you are able to display current activities easily and can run reports that will tally what you have been up to.
Craft Your Pitch
Develop your pitch and boil it down to two to four sentences (and no more) – this is actually quite difficult. Brevity, focus and simplicity are key; people will not spend more than a few nanoseconds scanning your email or listening to your voicemail. Avoid superlatives, euphemisms and jargon. Put your pitch in both email and voicemail form and practice leaving your voicemail in a calm, crisp tone.
In most cases, the goal of your pitch will be to get permission/earn the right to schedule a short call with the prospect during which you can learn more about their needs and (as appropriate) tell them about your offering. You will not try and convince them of anything.
Start Calling, and Do So Systematically
Queue up 10 to 20 prospects and send your pitch email to each one. Record each activity in your CRM. Then, call each prospect and leave them your crisp, short voicemail. In fact, it’s preferable not to get prospects live on the phone at this stage. Schedule follow up calls for these prospects two days out (on day three).
The next day, queue up another 10 to 20 prospects in your CRM and undertake the same process as you did with the first set.
On day three, call and email every one of the first set of prospects, recording your activities and scheduling follow up calls for two days further out. On day four, repeat the process with the second set of leads. Continue this process, winnowing out folks that tell you they are not interested, refer you to other people or ask you to call back at a later date. Add new leads as your calling load lightens.
Pound on people for a total of six to eight emails and voicemails before giving up. You will get through to 30 to 40% of the individuals and will engage 10 to 20% of them. Within two weeks, you will begin to generate calls and meetings.
When you get through to a prospect, explain who you are and ask if you can schedule a brief call. However tempting, do not blurt out your pitch, value proposition, pricing or competitive differentiators. Make it clear that you know their time is valuable. If they deflect you, ask for direction as to who they recommend you speak with.
Parting Thoughts
Be systematic, disciplined and relentless. Treat this like a workout, which it sort of is. Sit down at your desk at the same time every day and bang the calls out. Accurately tracking your activities in your CRM is helpful for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that seeing what you have been up to will motivate you when you get discouraged.
Cold calling is hard. Pace yourself, be steady and keep at it – good things will come.
Even the most seasoned social sellers hit a wall sometimes. Much like the traditional sales process, social selling has its ups and downs, and occasionally you may find yourself feeling as though you’re stuck in a social selling rut. But don’t despair! Use these LinkedIn-specific tips to generate new leads or to invigorate old ones.
1. Update Your Profile
Have you recently received new responsibilities that aren’t reflected on your LinkedIn profile? Add them! And while you’re at it, look at other areas of your profile that can always use a quick refresh such as your skills and expertise, summary and professional portfolio. Keep in mind that when you update your profile your network is notified, giving other users a reason to check out your page and interact with you.
2. Reconnect with Old Contacts
Every sales rep has at least a few prospects that seemed promising at first, but ended up not quite ready to commit to a deal. Take this downtime in your social sales cycle to strike up a new conversation with one of these latent prospects and see if they’re any closer to making a decision. It never hurts to check in!
3. Join a New Group
Joining groups on LinkedIn offers a number of benefits, one of which is the introduction to new potential prospects! Join a group relevant to your industry or the industry of your key audience and start interacting with active members. Answering questions, sharing appropriate content (more informative, less promotional) and engaging with other users are simple ways to find new leads.
4. Mix It Up
You may be sharing great content, but that doesn’t mean it’s resonating with your audience. Take a few days off from sharing your go-to content and instead share posts with a different tone or focus. But don’t stray so far from your bread and butter that you are no longer relevant to your prospects! For example, instead of sharing content that is strictly focused on the products you’re selling, share articles that will start great conversations about breaking news or industry-related trends.
5. Check ‘Who’s Viewed Your Profile’
This recently updated LinkedIn widget now has two awesome functions: it shows you which LinkedIn users have recently viewed your profile AND gives great tips for optimizing your presence. Suggestions such as information to add to your profile or specific pieces of content to share can point you in exactly the direction you should be heading to find more prospects.
6. Engage with Content
Sometimes, the easiest way to start a valuable conversation with a potential prospect is by simply commenting on or liking one of their posts. Take some time to look through your news feed and like or comment on a few updates that stand out to you. Remember to keep your comments positive and relevant to increase your chances of a response.
Here’s a question I still get way too often: “What’s the ROI of social media?” It’s usually a B2B marketer that’s doing the asking, someone seemingly resigned to spending valuable time and resources on social media without really understanding why. Or it’s a marketer that totally gets the value of investing in the company blog, Twitter profile and LinkedIn groups but still needs help convincing their “old-school” CMO or CFO that investing in social media is worth it.
Aren’t we marketers now experts at calculating the return on all our online marketing initiatives? Why is social media such a tough nut to crack?
Whatever the case, let’s look at why, 10 years after the founding of LinkedIn and eight years after the inaugural tweet, this question persists.
In my experience working with B2B marketers, I’ve come across a number of reasons:
Another big issue is that many social media initiatives are still in the investment stage. Said another way, most B2B companies are still building out their social media presence and aren’t yet ready to reap the rewards and show a positive Social ROI.
For example, suppose you just launched your company blog. Is now the time to ask about ROI? Of course not. Instead, you need to at least have a sense of how many leads you hope to generate from your blog, how long it will take and what resources you’ll need to invest to get there. The same goes for building out Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media channels.
With that said, here are three things you can do now to start realizing Social ROI.
Launch and manage social media like any other marketing campaign. That means be specific when thinking about which social media initiatives you’re doing, the outcomes and goals you’re trying to achieve, how you’ll measure success and over what period of time. Don’t lump all social media together. Remember: social marketing is different than social advertising and social sales.
The basic tools you’ll need are a link shortener (e.g., bit.ly) for posting and tracking content, dedicated landing pages to capture social media leads and website analytics to measure traffic coming from social channels. Take the time to set these tools up and build them into your processes. Do it right and you’ll also worry less about social media getting the credit it deserves.
Resist the temptation to put a value on things such as likes, followers, and social sharing, which mostly measure progress. Instead, keep the ROI discussion to those social media initiatives that are generating meaningful impressions, clicks, signups, etc. For example, website traffic generated by social media, clicks coming via Twitter and LinkedIn and downloads from social advertising campaigns.
What results are you seeing from your social media initiatives? Are you still mostly in the investing stage or starting to reap rewards and generate social ROI? Feel free to share your comments.
Interested in finding out how other marketers are engaging on social media? Download the social insights report: How Top Marketers at Mid-Size Companies Engage on Twitter
(Note: This article first appeared on CMSWire)
You can lead a customer to your brand with social media, but you can’t make them buy from you using social media. This is my B2B marketing advice.
In other words, social media does not fit neatly into a B2B marketing strategy and last-touch attribution. So, don’t think you can tweet and directly cause a million dollar sale. However, you can get on the customer’s radar and start to build a relationship with relevant content and messaging.
So, if want your customers to start drinking from your fountain of knowledge, you need to get them to the fountain first, right? That’s the job of social media for B2B marketing and sales conversion; to make your customer aware of and consider your brand and solution. And, with 89% of customers using a search engine to start their buying process and 75% of decision-makers using social media as part of their discovery, we all need to focus more on delivering content via social media to increase awareness. Sales conversion is best left for social selling and 1-1 interaction, since we know that email marketing and banner advertising does not work like it used to!
The number of watering holes and digital touch points has dramatically changed over the past five years. B2B customers are no longer waiting for you to send an email or serve up a banner ad. They are learning on their own. Customers are investigating LinkedIn groups and networks, reading blogs, following Twitter accounts and +1ing on Google+. Amplifying your information and content in these watering holes will help you reach an audience on their terms. Think about increasing your message reach and impressions to get your customer to know that YOUR brand is relevant to them.
Some companies, perhaps yours, are picking up on doubling down on social media and its impact on awareness, engagement and influence sweet spot. In fact, 47% of CMOs have stopped measuring social media success using a revenue-per-customer metric (source: February 2013 Business Intelligence CMO survey). And, this same report indicates that 16% fewer CMOs are tracking conversation rates. So why is anyone trying to attribute social media to driving a sale? However, social media is an important ingredient in the multi-ingredient conversion recipe.
With social media budgets expected to increase by 78% by 2018, the smart brands and CMOs are truly investing in social media. This increase will help direct digital marketing, social selling and paid media to work more efficiently convert sales.
So, how do you measure if you truly connect with your customer? Once you choose to focus on using social media to reach, engage and influence, how do you measure it? The questions you need to ask before you begin to decide are the social media activity indicators like retweets, shares, clicks, etc. are:
Where are you or your company landing on effectively using of social media to drive demand, leads and sales in? Please share your experience or plans below.
Remember, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. However, you have to let them know where the water is in order to get them there so they have to choice to drink. And, getting them to drink is another part of a B2B marketing integrated strategy!
You know you’re in a fight right? No, you won’t be throwing kicks and punches, but you are in a bloody scrap to win the attention of your customers.
The blogosphere is a noisy, congested space where everyone is shouting at the top of their lungs trying to get noticed. According to Digital Buzz Blog, there are 2 million blog posts published each day. And each one is screaming for attention.
If you are like me, you’ve tried everything the “experts” preach in order to get your posts noticed:
The list goes on and on.
It’s frustrating isn’t it? You spend hours writing a blog post, finding the pictures, making sure it’s just perfect. And when you hit publish… crickets. A few people share it, and if you’re lucky, you get a comment. But you want more customers, more email subscribers, and more attention.
If you’ve ever wondered why some blogs are more popular than others, or why some posts seem to get more attention than others, I’m going to peel back the curtain and reveal a blog marketing plan you can implement today. Here are the four steps needed to ensure your next post is a success:
Without a clearly defined goal, how can you know if your posts are accomplishing what you want them to?
Start by answering this question: What is the purpose of my blog post? Try to get as specific as possible.
For example, with this blog post, my goal might be, “To get 100 content marketers to sign up for my email list.” In my goal statement, I outline who I’m targeting, and what I want them to do after reading my post.
Once you’ve defined your goal, now you can start the process for achieving it.
After you’ve defined your goal, you need to determine where your ideal readers are so you can reach them.
I like to start my reader research in two places: on the blogs they read and on Facebook. Here’s an easy way to do both:
Search Alltop.com: To find a huge directory of blogs sorted by categories, simply go to Alltop.com.
The key to Alltop is to explore other topics that complement your blog. For instance, if you’re the content marketer for a social media company, of course you’re going to scour blogs in the “social media” category. But you’ll also want to consider blogs in categories like advertising, business, blogging, content marketing, and entrepreneurship. This will help you broaden your horizons, find more potential readers, and get a better understanding of where your blog fits in the blogosphere.
As you’re documenting these blogs, here are some things you’re going to want to take note of in order to make your outreach easier down the line:
Facebook: One of the really cool features of Facebook is its search feature, which can be used to find the content and pages that your Facebook fans are also engaging with. If your fans like a particular page, then there is a strong possibility that its fans may value your content.
For instance, when I enter the search term, “pages liked by people who like Cloud Marketing Labs,” I found that my fans also liked HubSpot, MarketingProfs, Moz, and Social Media Examiner, among others.
It is quite reasonable to assume that some of the fans of these pages will also value my content, and these are the readers you want to target with your blog marketing plan.
You’ve defined the goal of your blog post and you know where your readers hang out. Now it’s time to answer the question, Why should someone read my post?
Remember, there are 2 million blog posts written every day. That means when you hit publish, you’re competing with 1,999,999 other posts.
No doubt, you’ve heard the term Unique Selling Position — the reason why a person should buy your product or service, rather than that of your competitors. In order to get your audience to give their attention to your blog post over your competitors’, you need to create what I call a Unique Reading Position (URP).
Here are three simple ways to create a URP:
When Noah Kagan of Appsumo wanted to write a blog post to show how to start a business in 24 hours and earn $1,000 in profit, he didn’t just sit down to write the post. The first thing he did was start a brand new business in 24 hours and try to make $1,000 in profit.
The blog post he then wrote documented the steps he took to launch that business. He provided the email scripts he sent to his friends. He showed the Facebook status updates, and Twitter updates he sent to his network. He showed how he asked for referrals. And he showed his revenue and profits.
His post wasn’t just some high-level “10 steps to start your first business” kind of post. It showed potential entrepreneurs exactly what they needed to do to benefit from his experience and advice.
The post chronicles his life, a baby born with a rare neuromuscular disorder that was supposed to kill him by age 2 — a disorder that left him paralyzed from the neck down. In it, he tells the story of how he was able to overcome these obstacles to become a popular blogger and successful businessman.
I was so inspired by his blog post, I soon became a customer of Jon’s, then an apprentice, and finally a friend. Not all of us have overcome death and paralysis to build a successful company. But we have all faced failures and overcome obstacles, and it’s personal stories like this that audiences deeply engage with.
But if you publish a list with 75 resources just on copywriting, it has the chance to explode. For example, to date the post, “75 Resources for Writing Incredible Copy that Converts” on KISSMetrics has 2,252 tweets, another 1,957 from Buffer, plus 900 other social shares.
I know you can’t pay the bills with social media shares, but you can’t deny that this post grabbed the attention of the marketing community — and gaining attention is the first step to gaining an engaged, loyal follower.
Guest posting comes with an added bonus: It positions you, your business, and your content as an authoritative resource, giving you a leg up from your competition. This built-in social proof will provide your business with warmer leads and make sales much easier.
By now you’ve noticed that in order for this blog marketing plan to succeed, you need to do your research, and then create a great blog post that will grab the attention of your ideal reader. So it would be foolish to waste all of this time and energy without doing your due diligence to make sure your target audience will find and read it.
Here are a few tricks for giving your blog content the best possible chance at succeeding:
On the day Jon Morrow wrote his first post on his Boost Blog Traffic blog, he had already had 13,000 email subscribers signed up and waiting to hear what he had to say. The primary tactic he used to gain such a large volume of subscribers right from the start? Writing guest posts.
Getting your idea accepted by a popular blog is not as hard as you might think. (Writing a great post that gets published is another story altogether.) Try reaching out with a script like Jon used:
There are entire strategies for getting influencers to share your content, but I’ve found that a simple email works best.
Of course, if you have a personal relationship with the influencer, or if you’ve written a guest post for them in the past, they’ll be more likely to notice you. You can build these relationships over time, but for your initial outreach for influencers you aren’t already acquainted with, a simple email that explains why the person should share your post with their followers will suffice.
Try sending an email, like this one, to get started:
Notice, I didn’t ask for a link, or a tweet, or anything like that. Nine times out of 10, requests like this aren’t necessary: If the influencer likes your post, they’ll likely share it with their fans or followers of their own accord.
By using the “Pages liked by people who like your fan page” search, you can begin to find a list of fan pages to target your ad.
Write an average post, click publish, share on social media, and hope for success. This is the process many content marketers will use when they write their next blog post. Then they’ll wonder why their content marketing is failing to bring them more business.
But you know better. You know you’re in a fight for the attention that will help your blog posts to reach new prospects and drive greater business success.
So roll up your sleeves. Get dirty. Audiences are waiting to hear from you.
Want more instruction on how to manage today’s biggest content marketing challenges? Sign up for our new Content Marketing Institute Online Training and Certification program. Access over 35 courses, taught by experts from Google, Mashable, SAP, and more.
All B2B marketers want sales leads. It’s what pays their bills, pays their company’s bills, and shows that all their hard work is paying off.
It’s not surprising that, when you’re getting the good hang of it, you start pushing for a higher production.
It’s like when you’re in an Easter egg hunt and you realize that you’re getting real good at finding the eggs. You want to get more. You know there are a lot of prizes for the best egg hunters. There is just one problem.
Your egg basket is starting to get real full. Your salespeople feel like they’re being pushed to their limit. Conflict arises and there’s the threat of production coming to a crashing stop.
Naturally, your only course of action is to get a bigger basket. Yet, how exactly do you that in terms of sales appointment setting? Do you hire more salespeople? Tell lead generators to slow down? It may not be any of these things first.
Rushing in when your sales leads are getting good sounds like living the dream. But when your sale people, your ‘basket’, start getting all filled up from all your success, that dream could be their nightmare. Keep that basket from breaking and remember that a volume of good leads isn’t just the only element of a successful business.
Every day consumers are confronted with countless logos, mostly unaware of how these icons are constantly transmitting a slew of messages aimed at the subconscious.
"A company's logo is its shorthand, a visual cue that tells a story of the brand's culture, behavior, and values," said Su Mathews Hale, a senior partner at the New York brand-strategy and design firm Lippincott. Because a logo may only have a second to tell this story, creating one "can sometimes be the most difficult aspect of branding," she said.
We had her guide us through some of her favorite projects she's worked on, as well as some of the corporate logos she most admires.
In 2005, Wal-Mart recruited Lippincott to reimagine its brand. It wanted to shed its image as a big corporate outlet for cheap products and become seen as a place where people could wisely save money and buy premium groceries. Wal-Mart debuted its new logo in 2008.
Mathews and her team felt that the old logo's all-caps, dark blue letters screamed "corporation" and had become inextricably linked to the popular view among critics who saw Wal-Mart as a malevolent giant crushing small businesses across the country. They deemed the star serving as a hyphen generic and forgettable. They also believed that businesses with hyphenated "mart" names conjured up images of corner stores and cheap outlets.
They decided to keep the color blue, which Mathews said is the world's favorite color, but go for a brighter hue they believed evoked modernity and trustworthiness. They replaced the sharp angles of the original letters with "a more humanistic font." Finally, they decided on an asterisk-like symbol they wanted to look like "a lightbulb going off in your head," a metaphor for Wal-Mart shoppers being smart for taking advantage of affordable, quality products. They chose a hue of yellow that appeared hopeful but didn't make it too bright because "bright yellow is associated with low-cost items in retail," said Mathews. She was happy to find that focus groups also interpreted the spark as a sun or flower, both positive associations.
In 2012, eBay basically had the inverse problem from Wal-Mart: It wanted to finally grow up, and its playful logo was getting in the way of its ambition. Mathews said that when Internet companies have electric, jumbled logos, they conjure up memories of the companies that died when the dot-com bubble burst. So, for eBay, she and her team stuck close to the original design but refined the typography, toned down the colors, and put the letters on the same baseline. The resulting logo is "more grounded" and better suited for a company that takes business seriously.
Hyatt Hotels Corporation bought AmeriSuites in 2004, and Lippincott was responsible for rebranding the chain as Hyatt Place, which launched in 2006. Hyatt and the designers believed that AmeriSuite's affordable business-suite market was beginning to be seen as boring, cheap alternatives to upscale hotels, and that the way to turn it around would be to turn it into the option for younger business travelers who may not be very wealthy but still appreciate luxury.
A fundamental component of the relaunch was to give every Hyatt Place an attractive, engaging lobby. The final logo combined two different shapes: In design, said Mathews, "a circle tends to be seen as modern and approachable" and "a square tends to be steadfast and disciplined." The design team chose vibrant colors for seven of the circles and picked black for two. When Hyatt Place signs are illuminated at night, the colored circles create an "H" for "Hyatt," which Mathews finds to be a fun, extra dimension of the logo.
Over the past several years, Starbucks has grown into a global powerhouse and has been heavily promoting its non-coffee products, like pastries, sandwiches, and teas. In 2011, it decided it wanted a simpler logo not tied to the word "coffee." Mathews was not involved in the project, but her Lippincott colleagues were.
The redesign started with a basic premise. When focus groups were asked what color Starbucks' logo was, explained Mathews, participants almost universally said "green." But the thing is, only the ring around the former logo was green — the siren character was outlined in black. Mathews said the designers freed the siren from her constraints and imbued her with the color with which customers were already associating the brand. They nixed the word "coffee" and brought the text outside of the circle, since the siren had become iconic enough to stand on her own.
"It's a great example of how a logo can evolve," said Mathews.
Lippincott has not worked with NBC, but Mathews said the NBC peacock is one of her favorite logos. She thinks the logo has improved over time as it's gotten simpler, and that even though the peacock's colors originally celebrated the advent of color television, the array of colors still transmits feelings of joy and energy.
FedEx's logo is another one of Mathew's favorites. As shown by her work with the Hyatt Place logo, she likes images that have surprises in them, and the arrow formed by the "E" and "x" in FedEx is one of the best-known hidden designs. She also appreciates the timeless nature of the logo. "It could have be designed in 1970 or it could have been designed yesterday," she said.
It was actually created in 1994 by Lindon Leader, and it has won more than 40 design awards, partially for the reasons Mathews mentioned.
Mathews thinks that Apple's logo is a perfect example of how a logo needs to adapt to the changing direction of the company it represents. One of Apple's co-founders, Ronald Wayne, designed the first Apple logo, a weird, detailed etching of Sir Isaac Newton that was supposed to represent the way Apple was an ambitious outsider. That same year, Steve Jobs hired Rob Janoff to replace it with something more modern. Janoff came up with the now iconic image of an apple with a bite out of it, and Jobs decided Apple's unique approach to computers would be represented by making it rainbow-colored.
It became monochrome in 1998 to fit into the clean, simplistic designs that the company decided to pursue.
When tackling a branding project, Mathews differentiates between the "true and new." She say a logo needs to be "true," in the sense that it should not be fundamentally tied to a trend, the "new." The trendiness is more appropriate in supporting elements of branding, like store experiences or website interfaces. That said, a logo should be fundamentally sound but also be adaptable to the ways it will be presented.
"Logos used to have to be recognizable down to the size that they would be represented on a business card. Now they have to work at much smaller sizes, because they'll be seen on mobile screens," Mathews said. That's actually the reason why so many logos have become "flatter," in the sense that they've been stripped of techniques like shadowing that add a dimension of depth or movement.
Here's an example of how Google went flat last year:
"I personally like more simple designs," said Mathews. "Gradients are my worst nightmare."
SEE ALSO: How A Logo's Color Manipulates Your Emotions
Join the conversation about this story »
There is a saying, which has been around for as long as I can remember – and that is a pretty long time – “People buy people first”
What that essentially means of course is before buyers thought about your solution they needed to be sold on you personally.
So has that all changed now?
Well, yes and no.
Over the past few years, I have consistently suggested that “When they first encounter you, buyers really don’t care about you, your company or your products. They care even less about your past successes, your awards or your client base. They only care about what you, your company and your products can do for THEM!” And I firmly believe this to be the case.
What has happened/is happening is that selling has become de-personalized.
As buyers enter the buying/selling cycle much further up the chain, they already know everything about your products/solutions/company. As a consequence, sales success today demands a radical shift from the ‘peddler’ mentality of merely demonstrating products and expanding on their features. It requires treating the customer as a participant. More often than not, a ‘flashy’ sales presentation alone alienates, rather than persuades.
Outstanding sales results today depend on:
The ability to think from the customer’s point of view
Understanding the customer’s agenda, buying cycle and best interests
Beyond a superficial reading of immediate customer needs, salespeople must gain a deeper understanding of both the buyer’s long-term goals and the overall business climate
Today, the salesperson who clings to the product orientation of a decade ago can expect to become extinct within five years.
As client companies branch into new markets and unfamiliar territories, they are demanding unique, flexible solutions from their vendors – customized to support specific goals
Another myth, which can be exploded, is that customers value flexibility: In fact being too flexible (nice!) can undermine the sales relationship.
Now, the best salespeople have become “facilitators” They understand that unless they are bringing something unique to the table, they have no value However, in most industries, differentiation is becoming far harder to prove – the playing fields are now very level in terms of price/performance/support etc.
So why are the top 10% of sales professionals going to survive and thrive? What do they do/have that differentiates them? In a word, “Knowledge”
They understand that personality is no longer relevant at the front-end of the sales cycle, but it is their superior knowledge of their industry/sector/company/products/self.
They have commercial acumen. They can read and interpret financial balance sheets.
One of the first questions they ask is “So, please tell me what your short/medium and long-term commercial objectives are” and they then quickly establish if their solutions can help the prospect achieve any of those objectives.
They have a reasonable intellectual capacity: For example, they understand what is happening with the economy, and how/why it is affecting their industry – this in turn helps them to see their prospect’s challenges through their prospect’s eyes.
So yes, people do still buy people first, but the rules of engagement have changed forever.
What effect does this have on “relationship selling?” It means that you have to sell first – prove yourself first - before you can hope to develop a relationship.
Leading with the notion that you can build any sort of relationship from the outset is hopelessly out of touch – but that is precisely what around 90% of front-line sales professionals are still trying to do.
But be assured “relationship selling” is alive and well, and reports of its death have been wildly exaggerated.
Selling in the information age can be challenging. 20 years ago buyers were dependent on sales representatives. The representative was the main source for providing product insights and education. Today buyers have the ability to access information on their own. This can present several problems.
![17 Steps to a Facebook Contest that Attracts Participants [Infographic] image 17 Steps to an Attractive Facebook Contest](http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/17-Steps-to-an-Attractive-Facebook-Contest.png "17 Steps to an Attractive Facebook Contest")
Are Facebook contests a part of your social media strategy?
Getting more Facebook page likes, increasing your reach, generating leads and sales are some of the benefits you can take advantage of by running Facebook contests. They can give your pages an instant boost which is really important now because of the decrease in Facebook page reach. To help you create a Facebook contest that attracts participants here’s an infographic from Socially Stacked that is loaded with tips. Check it out below…
![17 Steps to a Facebook Contest that Attracts Participants [Infographic] image 17 Steps to a Facebook Contest that Attracts Participants](http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/17-Steps-to-a-Facebook-Contest-that-Attracts-Participants.png "17 Steps to a Facebook Contest that Attracts Participants [Infographic]")
Infographic Credit: Shortstack
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What steps do you take while running a Facebook contest? How do you get more people to take part in it? Please leave your comments below.
If you follow the “sales is a numbers game” metaphor, you might think the salesperson who makes the most calls or follows up on 100 percent of the leads that cross his or her desk is the victor clutching all the spoils.
Metaphors (and their literary cousins—proverbs and adages) are convenient ways to define situations clearly. But choose the wrong metaphor and you can be headed for trouble. In the case of playing a pure numbers game with marketing leads, you’re probably hovering on the edge of a black hole— and you know that’s a metaphor for disaster.
To quote physicist Brian Greene: “Black holes, we all know, are these regions where if an object falls in, it can’t get out, but the puzzle that many struggled with over the decades is, what happens to the information that an object contains when it falls into a black hole. Is it simply lost?”
Not “simply lost,” but lost forever…at least to you.
Just as a black hole’s gravitational force sucks in all matter and light, so too in the B2B universe, our prospective sales disappear when we pass volumes of unqualified leads along to the sales force. Even more likely, they may end up in another dimension and maybe another universe…one controlled by your competition.
Let me put the metaphors aside for a minute and focus on something a little more concrete. In its 2012 B2B Benchmark Report, researchers at MarketingSherpa found that 73 percent of leads are unqualified when handed off to sales and will not readily convert into business. In spite of this, 61 percent of marketers pass all leads (qualified or unqualified) directly on to sales.
Is it any wonder then that salespeople seldom follow up on marketing’s leads? As former Gartner researcher Claudio Marcus documented in his report, “Re-engineering Lead Management:“… more than 70 percent of leads are never acted on—typically because they do not reach the right person or organization at the right time.”
Your salespeople’s primary objective is sales. ABC (Always Be Closing) is practically written into their DNA. And qualified leads are the means to that objective. A recent Forrester Research study confirms that companies that actively qualify and nurture leads will have 50 percent more prospects that are “sales-ready,” and their cost-per-lead will be 33% lower.
So you can expect that your best salespeople will ignore unqualified marketing leads and cultivate their own— based on their years of experience and expertise. Meanwhile, the people who have provided their names, email addresses, and phone numbers to your company in good faith, who may not be sales-ready today, remain ignored. This lack of attention can sour potential customers on you and your products and services…permanently.
The adage reads, “Value is in the Worth, Not the Number,” and it comes from Aesop’s Fable, The Lioness. Today, we often just say “Quality over Quantity,” and it’s the perfect maxim for developing qualified sales leads. The fact is, finding and qualifying 10 hot leads in every 100 is a way to:
But since sales people likely will not qualify any unqualified leads you’re passing along today, you need another resource to do the job, and it’s the perfect task for telemarketing. Whether your lead generation is inbound, outbound, or both, a professional and well-trained telemarketing team is invaluable.
If lead qualification is a new step for you, it’s time to involve your sales force in the process of coming up with the right set of lead qualifiers. You’ll benefit by alerting them to this important change in your lead generation program and gain their buy-in – both of which are critical. Here are a few ideas to get you started as marketing and sales work together to develop a list of key qualifiers:
As spring tries valiantly to push through and make the winter of 2013-2014 a bleak but distant memory, I see a solitary Robin pecking at a bare but still-brown patch of grass. I’m reminded the proverb: “The early bird catches the worm.” While I’m not sure that this brave little Robin is having great success today, as the ground is still frozen, this saying is a powerful metaphor for the need to move quickly on all leads. Don’t let them grow cold.
And here’s the proof: Researchers at South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University found and reported in the March 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review that, “Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead.” Respond quickly, and you’ll be in rarified company as only 37 percent of the 2,241 U.S. businesses audited for this study respond within the first hour.
So don’t put off until tomorrow … well, you know how the saying goes. Put your telemarketing company to work on lead qualification now. Let them do the work your salespeople are reluctant to do by finding the value among your leads and keeping your best prospects warm and well nurtured until your salespeople can work their magic.
For more information download our FREE e-book: “Bridge the Divide Between Sales and Marketing.”
A business’ online presence is obviously a great way to communicate with customers and to help build a community and a following around a brand, and a big part of that is because of the ability to interact directly with customers. Contests and trivia games and thanking fans for their loyalty are a great part of this, but all manner of Q&A’s can do so much to add to the knowledge of customers and solve potential problems quickly that you really can’t afford to ignore the idea as part of your social media or general online strategy.
Answering common questions preemptively (or even less common questions) saves your customers time and limits strain on your service resources - Because of the power of search engines to continually index added information, any time you answer a question online, that information is then (barring a few exceptions) available to anyone who subsequently looks for it. As a customer, if I can do a quick Google search and find an answer, I don’t have to (necessarily) call or email a business’ support team, wait on hold or in a chat queue, and work through explaining the issue and waiting for a resolution before I can get on with whatever I was trying to do in the first place. Being able to easily find the information myself means that not only do I have a better experience as a customer, but your support resources can be devoted to the things that really do need personal attention. And if I was able to find that information on your website or otherwise provided directly by you, the business seems that much more on top of things.
There are a lot of formats and platforms to use to answer customer questions – There’s Quora, Reddit, Yahoo Answers, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, to name just a few. Some of these are obviously question and answer specific sites, like Quora and Yahoo Answers, and some are social media sites that simply give customers a forum to either ask a company directly or to just generally talk about a product or brand, but all of them are a way for you to find out what people want to know and give them that information. You can and should go where your customers are and answer questions directly (which will typically also add your answer to the search results if and when another customer has a similar question) rather than waiting for customers to come to you. Especially places like Quora and Yahoo Answers, a business also can answer questions that are relevant to the brand and that they have people qualified to answer but that aren’t specifically about their product (answering general skin care or beauty tips if you’re a health and beauty brand, for example, or general style tips if you’re a clothing brand), which increases brand awareness and positive associations.
The same information can be used in lots of ways - Even if the resources required to answer a single question only resulted in that question being answered, it would still likely be worth it, but that same information can go to work for you in many different ways. Maybe the answer to a question inspires a blog post, maybe you see the same question asked a number of times and it leads to a revamped FAQ or a how-to video, or maybe it leads you to realize that there’s a gap in the available products that can be addressed. Answering questions is rarely going to lead to just those answers if you pay attention.
Pay attention if you see the same or similar questions being asked frequently - At the very least, this is something that should be addressed in an FAQ or support documentation on your own website in addition to being answered directly where possible. Beyond that, it may highlight a gap or shortcoming in the documentation you include with your product, the information your sales team is giving to new customers, or something in the product or service itself that should be addressed. That may sound scary, but it’s a huge opportunity for improvement!
Give people an easy way to ask you a question directly - Social media is huge for this, but also consider some sort of user forum (that’s both directly searchable and accessible by general search engine results) or chat support for quick questions or issues during non-business hours. Between time zones and the reality of people probably being caught up during work hours doing their work, you want to try and offer an alternative way to access support. Email support is also great for things people don’t want to sit and wait on hold to deal with and don’t need an absolutely immediate answer to but that do need to be resolved reasonably quickly, say within 24-48 hours.
Look through your search terms for clues - Look through the search terms that are bringing people to your site and see if these lead you to specific recurring questions that you could answer more thoroughly or clearly than you already do, or that could inspire other related content. If you see the same question a handful of times, imagine how many other people would want to know but haven’t taken the time yet to search, or just didn’t make it to your site when they did?
Go looking for questions - Actively go look through things like Yahoo Answers, Quora, user forums for your type of product, or social media to see if people have questions that can either be directly answered or have an answer already available in your FAQ or support documentation to which they can be directed. This is a time to be proactive.
Whether you set up scheduled social media Q&As, continually update and tweak your support documentation, or simply do your best to answer all questions that come to you, never underestimate the power of making your brand accessible. What’s one question you wish you could get answered by a brand you work with? Share in the comments, and thanks for reading.
Fact: The number of smartphone users worldwide will total 1.75 billion this year, while mobile phone penetration is expected to increase from 61.1% in 2013 to 69.4% of the global population in 2017, eMarketer predicts.
With more consumers using smartphones and tablets, there will be an increased number of mobile searchers for businesses and information on products or services. It is imperative for companies to leverage the rise of mobile technology and track interactions sourced from smartphones.
Fact: An average of 40 million calls are driven by Google ads each month, according to the search engine. BIA/Kelsey reports 20-30% of search query volume is from mobile devices, and 40-50% of mobile search has local intent.
This means customers are not only browsing brand information from their smartphones and tablets, but searching for nearby companies to seek out assistance or purchasing opportunities. While there may be a rise of searches on mobile devices, it is still easier for smartphone users to use click-to-call to call a company directly from a search results page, landing page, or website than it is to navigate on a smaller screen and fill out a web form.
Fact: 70% of mobile searchers have used “the call button” to access a brand representative directly from a mobile device. About 39% of mobile searchers frequently call businesses directly from search results pages, while 12% always seek to click-to-call.
Fact: Phone interactions are valuable to 66% brands because phone call leads present a greater purchase of intent. Phone leads are reportedly 10 times more likely to convert into paid accounts than online form leads. Furthermore, BIA/Kelsey reports 61% of customers find it extremely or very important to call a business during the purchasing phase of decision-making.
However, despite the value of phone leads, only 19% of inbound phone calls are considered high-quality by sales managers, BIA/Kelsey reports. Many calls come in looking for account information, business hours, or other non-sales-related reasons. Therefore, each phone call should be scored and managed properly to separate the wheat from the chaff and take full advantage of the revenue potential.
If a company can track the source of these phone calls, marketing teams will have a clearer picture of which initiatives and campaigns are generating the strongest leads and the most ROI and revenue. Call tracking also captures key caller data that can help sales representatives offer a more personalized experience in each interaction and accelerate the sales cycle. This phone call data can identify a caller’s:
To ensure your brand is making the best use of marketing spend and supporting decision-making with up-to-date ROI reports, utilize call tracking technology for maximum lead generation potential. The main features of call tracking technology include:
When call tracking technology is deployed across all marketing channels, brands can enjoy a plethora of caller data to support both sales and marketing teams. The solutions offer whisper messaging that captures key caller information and shares it with sales or customer service representatives before the caller is connected. When teams are equipped with specific caller information, it is easier to tailor the conversation to the needs and preferences of the lead, which in turn accelerates the sales cycle and increases customer satisfaction and loyalty. Double win!
In addition, the management and routing of inbound phone calls can be even more efficient with call tracking technology. Brands can create customized call routing options that direct callers to the most appropriate channels based on key information gathered at the beginning of the sales cycle. Companies can decide which channels to offer callers and different paths to reach these ends – whether it be through automated self-prompts or a virtual receptionist. The technology helps businesses separate callers seeking general information from those interested in making a purchase. The faster a caller reaches the ideal source of answers or purchasing options, the easier it will be to close the deal and retain a repeat buyer. Hooray!
To learn more about how to optimize the rising number of inbound calls from mobile devices, download our on-demand “Surviving the Mobile Tsunami: Riding the Impending Wave of Smartphone-Driven Calls” webinar.
As we all know, blogging so much more than just writing words on a page.
If you want to run a successful blog, you also need to think about treating your blog like a business.
That’s why you always see the biggest blogs are supported by and encourage the business behind it.
I want to talk to you today about three aspects of blogging that many people don’t consider until well into the game:
I’m actually going to do something counter-intuitive here and sum up all three by introducing a tactic to you that I’m a huge fan of.
It’s called split testing and if you haven’t heard of it before this article should serve as a great introduction to it and how it can improve your blog/business.
Split testing can take care of all three of the above points when you approach it right.
Split testing, or as it’s sometimes called A/B testing, is the scientific method of creating variations of something and testing the impact of those changes to see if the change brings about a positive or negative impact on some metric.
Generally the metric is something like:
Split testing starts by identifying something on your site or landing page that you want to test.
An example of this could be something as simple as the colour of a button. Does changing the colour of this button bring about more subscribers?
Many people employ split testing on various pages of their site to test and tweak little things like this.
There are a number of tools out there that will do the job, but I want to introduce you to a WordPress based plugin that we wrote called Simple Page Tester.
It’s a tool that has been made specifically for split testing and making these kind of experiments work and will take care of all the traffic splitting and monitoring.
Go and download a copy, the core plugin is free.
To setup a split testing Simple Page Tester all you have to do is goto the edit screen of the page you want to test and hit setup split test.
You then get a dialog that asks you what you want to do for the variation, typically you’ll be selecting duplicate page which makes a carbon copy of the page you’re working on.
I’ve done this using the ‘Start Here’ page on my blog which features several email signup forms.
How you edit the variation will depend entirely on what you’re testing and how you have your site setup.
Many people are using landing page tools so you might need to make adjustments using those tools. Sometimes it’s as simple as making a content change.
Others like myself do things a bit more old school so in order to make the button colour different I had to do make a tweak to my stylesheet.
For me the end result was two pages, very similar, with one main difference: the button colour is different.
Next is the most important part of setting up a split test and that is tracking your conversions.
For me it’s easy since I am using the Premium add-on to Simple Page Tester which gives me conversion tracking with a simple shortcode that I can install on my newsletter subscription thank you page.
Click here to learn more about Premium
If you’re not using the Premium version though, you can also use something as simple as Google Analytics and some Goals to track your progress.
I wrote an article on how to set this up on our blog recently. It might help you out as well.
The one place most people come unstuck with split testing is not letting their test run long enough.
There is such thing as statistically significant results and that’s what you’re aiming to get to.
You want to be certain that the difference in conversion rates between the two variations is statistically significant enough to be considered accurate. i.e. is the variation really 20% better than the original? When it’s a statistically significant result you can be more sure that the answer is ‘yes’.
There is a number of online split testing (or A/B testing) calculators that use statistical analysis to calculate this for you. You can just run a Google search and return dozens.
Simple Page Tester Premium also does it for you automatically so that you can see the result at a glance in the sidebar of your split test.
Once you’ve run one split test, it’s hard to stop.
I definitely encourage you to set up one split test on your blog today. Have a think about what you could test and what would matter to you.
The options are only limited by your imagination so see where it leads you. Your blog and business will be better off for it.
The post How To Increase Conversions, Be More Productive & Explode Your Revenue appeared first on Blogging Tips.
Photo credit: yourdoku
One key to successful B2B lead generation programs is to calculate exactly the right number of qualified leads to provide to sales—as part of your campaign planning. If you generate too many leads, you’ll be wasting precious marketing dollars. If you generate too few, your firm may be at risk of missing its revenue targets, with potentially disastrous financial implications. Moreover, you’ll annoy your sales team by not supporting them properly. So, let’s look at a neat way to figure out in advance how many leads your company needs, so you can invest accordingly.
This easy method uses your sales people’s quotas to back your way into the number of leads required, based on sales productivity per lead. You will need four numbers:
The first three numbers are likely to come from a discussion with sales management, and your finance department. The last number you probably have on hand, from sales and marketing experience.
Revenue quota per rep $3,000,000 Percentage of quota self-generated 40% Quota requiring lead support: $3M*(1-.4) $1,800,000 Revenue per order $60,000 Converting leads required ($1.8M/$60K) 30 Conversion rate 20% Qualified leads required per rep (30/.2) 150
Here’s an example of how to do this calculation, based on a set of hypothetical numbers that might be common in large-enterprise selling environments. We are saying that each rep is on the hook to deliver $3 million in sales in the period. As a first calculation, subtract out the percentage of that revenue that the rep can produce without any leads supplied by marketing. In this example, it’s 40% self-generated, leaving 60%, or $1.8 million, that the rep needs help with from marketing.
We divide that remaining revenue by the average deal size, which is $60,000 in this example, to get the number of closed deals that each rep, on average, needs to complete to deliver on the revenue quota. In this example, it’s 30 deals.
Finally, we divide the number of deals required by the lead-to-sales conversion rate, which is 20% in this example. Voila. Now we know that each reps needs, on average, 150 qualified leads to make quota.
You can also take this to the next step, and calculate the campaign inquiries required by dividing the 150 leads by your inquiry-to-lead conversion rate. With that, you can plan your campaigns to generate enough inquiries for your pipeline that will convert to a known number of qualified leads, and thereafter to the needed revenue.
So, with this simple math exercise, you can avoid waste and keep your sales reps as productive as they can be. Do you use another method that you can share?
Most lead scoring models fail — at least initially. It takes a little time to learn the implications of one simple, undeniable fact: not all content is created equal.
Consider the typical program, powered and driven by the marketing automation platform of your choice. Leads are typically scored based on activity and demographics, and in some cases channel. This is basic stuff, marketing automation 101 — you get points for your title, the size or industry of your company, whether you clicked on a linking an email or attended a webinar, etc. In most cases, sales is brought in to brainstorm with marketing on the factors involved in the scoring program. Everyone comes to agree on the lead scoring criteria (sale sand marketing are in alignment!) and the program is launched.
It works well initially, but over time sales begins to get too many “hot” leads sent over and we are back to square one. Marketing is upset because leads are not being handled, and feel that since the lead score is good (and sales help build the criteria) they should be in good shape. Sales can’t be bothered because the leads are NOT good, they are not close to a buying scenario, and it doesn’t pay to follow up on these “hot” leads any longer. Marketing’s credibility is damaged because this lead scoring program was supposed to solve this problem.
A few attempts are made at adjusting the program to varying degrees of (short-lived) success, but in the long run the scoring model fails because the implicit score related to their activity and engagement is too high. The problem is that the activity score can be tricky and misleading, and most companies make the same mistake by assigning blanket values to things like ‘white paper downloads’ — assigning a point boost for every download of a white paper regardless to which paper it was.
Content offers that are primarily educational or thought leadership pieces should not get the same point score as the ones covering more advanced topics that would only be interesting to a prospect if they were closer to making a decision.
Consider this scenario, with a hypothetical prospect that clicks on a link in an email newsletter to read a blog post. They are then “cookied” by the platform and each subsequent visit to the blog (or website) is noted against their record. Before long, each subsequent visit to the blog has allowed them to accrue enough points to boost their activity score past the threshold and they are sent to a salesperson — that quickly discovers there is no trigger catalyst for an impending purchase and puts the lead in the recycle bin. The prospect’s title and company were right in line with our scoring criteria, but timing and level of interest were wrong because all of their incremental glances in our direction added up to a false positive on the lead score.
Effective lead scoring needs to exist in tandem with a solid understanding of the buyer’s journey, and that knowledge of the buyer’s journey is what needs to inform the content strategy. Content offers and engagement opportunities need to be tied intrinsically to the needs and requirements of the buyer at each step of their journey, and each step of that journey needs to be served.
In other words, if your prospect is not really considering a purchase or is just beginning to become interested in your space (the red E-CO engagement content offers in the diagram above) you need to have thought leadership pieces that speak to that state of mind and level of interest. Lead scoring for the engagement with this content should be minimal, as it is not indicative of an impending buying event. Increasing levels of engagement here would push a prospect to the next level of content offer, not into the hands of a salesperson.
Once a buyer has consumed enough of this early-stage content, or has indicated in some way that their level of interest has matured to include content that is related to the priorities and pains associated with a stage further along in the cycle, the value of the content consumption score needs to increase exponentially. The blue N-CO nurture content offers, for example, would be more valuable, scoring-wise, than their E-CO counterparts. As you move downstream through the engagement model, each interaction becomes worth more to a lead score, until the switch is eventually flipped and the lead is passed to sales.
With a scoring system that considers the audience and intent of a content offer as a part of the final score, your lead scores will be much more accurate and a higher score will be much more indicative of an actual selling opportunity.
I often cite marketing automation vendor Marketo as a shining example of a company that gives away great information as a way to promote its business. Marketo recently contacted several B2B social media marketing pros to get their tips on how to generate leads with social platforms.
They report encouraging results. For example, 58% of marketers who have used social media for more than three years say it has helped boost sales. The marketers quoted here (I’m one of them) offer advice on how to create unique content that stimulates engagement, which is the currency of social media marketing.
Check out “How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation.” It’s a quick read and I think you’ll find some useful takeaways.
![alarm-clock[3] copy](http://corporatevisions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/alarm-clock3-copy-150x150.png)
We all live for that magic moment when your customer says “yes,” and we close our deal.
But too often sales professionals start strong, but find that their buyer slows down. Initial urgency and excitement fades. You hear the dreaded, “This looks good, but we need more time to think about it.”
And all too often, a promising sale turns into no decision.
Work from researchers at Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Chicago helps explain what might be going on when this occurs: two different decision-making processes working side-by-side in your buyer’s brain are conspiring to slow down your momentum. To succeed, you need to address both.
This “dual-process decision making” is described in an article entitled, “Overcoming intuition: metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning.” The article describes four different experiments that highlight the interaction of two different decision-making processes:
A key finding of the research is that “…deliberative and analytical systems of reasoning (System 2) can override or undo intuitive and associative (System 1) responses.” And the more complex the decision, the more likely this will happen.
This has big implications for your selling conversations, and helps explain why your buyer’s enthusiasm wanes as you move through your sales cycle. When your customer is confronted with a complex buying decision, she first makes a fast System 1 decision (hopefully in your favor). But this then sets off alarm bells and activates her slower System 2 thinking processes. And that slower, more analytical thinking trumps the faster decision, and slows down or stalls your sale.
To be successful you must be prepared to have conversations that influence both System 1 and System 2 decision-making:
Do you want to close more business quicker, and reduce the number of “no decisions” in your funnel? Then make sure you’re prepared to have sales conversations that address both fast and slow decision making.
Find out more about creating and executing more effective selling conversations here.