The Types of Consumer Buying Behavior

Do you remember when seemingly crazed parents flocked to shopping malls across the country to snatch up their very own Furby? The year was 1998, and for no discernable reason, everyone wanted to get their hands on those rather creepy furry robotic creatures.

Though it might have seemed unreasonable, sense can be made from such a trend when you begin to investigate the types of consumer buying behavior from a psychological perspective. Everybody had to have a Furby that holiday season, so a sort of herd mentality took over. Those who couldn’t get their hands on the toy risked upsetting their children. After all, every other parent was almost certainly going to get their hands on one.

The Furby craze is a perfect illustration of some of the things that go through consumers’ heads while making purchasing decisions. Consumer behavior is determined by the buyer’s level of involvement and interest in a product or a situation. In the above example, while the parent isn’t likely interested in the Furby per se, he or she is interested and heavily involved in the situation: delivering to his or her child the hottest holiday gift. This creates the perfect storm for trying to get something that is exclusive.

Inside the Mind of the Consumer

When it comes to purchases with which consumers are highly involved—like buying a car or planning a summer vacation—buyers weigh personal, social and economic risks. Those risks carry more weight in decisions that are more visible or involve higher-priced objects:

• Personal:

  How will buying a used car make me feel about myself?

• Social:

  If I buy a brand new BMW, how cool will my peers think I am?

• Economic:

  But if I do that, will I be able to afford other expenses?

Not every purchasing decision is one with which consumers are highly involved, though. Generally speaking, there are four types of consumer buying behavior:

1. Routine response:

When you go to the grocery store and are trying to grab a loaf of bread, odds are you’ll either buy the variety you’re familiar with or the one that is carrying the lightest price tag. In these situations, products are essentially purchased without any significant thought.

2. Limited decision making:

If you’re in the market for some new clothes or a new collapsible chair that you can bring camping, you might do a little bit of research on brands, but odds are—unless you’re Kate Moss or some other model or celebrity—you’re going to go with what’s in your budget and what looks good or seems the most practical.

3. Extensive decision making:

Imagine you’re a first-time homebuyer looking to settle into your first home with your new spouse. You’ve never bought a house before, but obviously you understand how big of an investment and how expansive a decision such a purchase is. Such a decision comes with evident economic risks. But how are you going to feel, personally, about the purchase? How are your peers going to look at you? Extensive decision making requires the most research.

4. Impulsive buying:

Consumers who buy something impulsively wake up that day without knowing they’re going to spend money on a particular item. But all of a sudden, they are inspired for whatever reason and make the purchase. Impulsive buying requires no conscious planning. The person who goes to a liquor store to buy a six-pack and snags an airplane bottle of whisky when checking out is someone who’s just bought something impulsively.

Everyone Is Different

It’s important to remember, however, that those four types of behavior are not universal in the sense that the gluten-free eater might spend a lot of time trying to figure out which loaf of bread to buy. In other words, what might be a routine response purchase for one person can morph into an extensive-decision-making purchase for another person.

On the other hand, buying a new car might be an impulsive-buying decision for someone like Justin Bieber who has seemingly all of the money in the world at his disposal. However, for the regular consumer, buying a car is a once-in-a-decade decision (hopefully).

Keeping with the car scenario, it’s important to remember that extenuating circumstances can also have a major influence on consumer buying behavior. If a consumer has had a car for 10 years that still runs, he or she may begin thinking about whether to replace that car despite the fact that it still works. Such a looming purchase would likely be categorized as an extensive-decision-making purchase. But if that person’s car died all of a sudden and the need for a new car presented itself overnight, the consumer might not be able to do his or her due diligence. These changing circumstances could result in a limited-decision-making purchase, rather than the previously deemed extensive-decision-making purchase.

The takeaway for marketers is this: understanding what goes on in the mind of a consumer can be extremely beneficial for ensuring increased sales. By weighing the risks that a buyer persona might consider against the four types of consumer buying behaviors, marketers can craft targeted campaigns that encourage spending.

“The Mindset Divide”

“Perhaps one of the biggest myths in B2B branding is that the nature of the decision process is so rational that emotions do not play a significant role.” Kevin Lane Keller @ Phillip Kotler

Yesterday we looked at similarities between B2C and B2B marketing.  For dyed in the wool B2B product manufacturing folks this can be counterintuitive and pretty darned uncomfortable.

Generally though they become comfortable with story telling in the context of some video, documents which map to the buyers journey and even infographics.

But social media is often too big a leap.  How many times have you thought or heard a senior exec from a B2B manufacturing company sound off about Facebook and Twitter?  Those seem to be the lightning rods (occasionally I hear folks blast LinkedIn as well – but most are blissfully ignorant of GooglePlus, Pinterest and others.)

Is time and attention paid to those channels fruitless?  It can be – just as it can be incredibly fruitful.  Not every channel is appropriate for every B2B product or business model.  But there are almost certainly some that are right for yours.

Why are there such differing opinions?  Certainly people are people – each with personal preferences.  But there’s more.  A fundamental difference in perspective.

Process vs. Results & People vs. Biz

Geert Hofstede’s work on organizational culture established six dimensions of corporate culture.  They include:

• Process-Oriented vs. Results-Oriented
• Employee-Oriented vs. Job-Oriented
• Parochial vs. Professional (does one’s identity come from company or profession)
• Open System vs. Closed System (inclusive vs. secretive climate)
• Loose Control vs. Tight Control (of people’s activities)
• Pragmatic vs. Normative (procedure or market driven)

These differentiators are often applied to national culture – to predict and explain business conflicts which originate in different cultural norms and expectations.

But to understand the different comfort with social media, consider for a moment how they also define critical differences between generational approach to business in the US……

Personal vs. business – boomer vs. millennial (& gen x)

Generational differences in perspective are behind much of the conflict over the value and efficacy of social media in B2B marketing.  Fundamentally those who see work as distinct from non-work view perpetual engagement differently than those who are digital natives (e.g. millennials.)

One of the hardest things for B2B execs to accept is that not everyone makes purchasing decisions and buys the same way they do.  (Step 3 in my 13 step program calls for that awareness.)  But buying is different today – and those who are constantly connected embrace tools which enable that.

That includes social networking – and many consider it a prime source for solutions to problems and challenges they face, and recommendations.

Obviously there’s a continuum of connectedness across generations – there are extremes and large variations.  Many boomers wouldn’t consider searching for B2B solutions on line – asking their accountant, attorney or golfing partner instead.  But the center of mass is rapidly moving toward digital tools.

While the lines are blurring, personal remains distinct from professional…sort of

“Professionally when I network, it’s for information to do my job better….it is an essential part of being successful.” LinkedIn / TNS data on social networking

And this may be where some of the resistance lies.  If you see Facebook solely as a tool to vent about politics and keep up with children & grandchildren, you understandably don’t associate it with any substantive business purpose.  You are likely inclined to be process and job oriented, and inclined toward the closed system, tight control and pragmatic approach to the market.

On the other hand if you use Twitter to keep current (in real time) with notable thought leaders in areas of professional importance to you – then that is a tool which is worthwhile.  (And likely one for which you might maintain distinct profiles for your personal and professional sides.)  And you are probably more apt to have a results and employee centric view, preferring and open and loose environment and market based outlook.

And between the two, there is likely a very different sense of propriety, appropriateness and pertinence of social networking in different contexts.

Get over it

Everyone instinctively finds a comfortable spot in their social and professional context based on individual preferences.  But the general societal context is shifting.  Companies must shift to remain relevant.  And their sales & marketing must be assiduously tailored to carefully crafted target buyer personas.

Just as one can recognize that promiscuous selfies uploaded to social media channels are likely to have unfortunate consequences for adolescents.  One can also intuit that if 70% of the B2B sales process happens before a rep becomes involved, that increasingly social networks are a resource to those seeking solutions.

One can remain skeptical of the value, but embrace a best practices approach and reserve a final judgment based on carefully measured KPIs and ultimately ROI.

And if you’re still struggling to understand…here’s a final question for you.  Have you ever turned to Consumer Reports (or some analogous source) in print or online to get an opinion on what you were about to buy?

Of course you have.

Where do you think folks turn now?

Struggling to come to terms with the reality of B2B digital marketing?  Check out our Step by Step Guide.

image credit

Sales Training Article: "Send Me Some Info"

Image courtesy of Chaiwait at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Ending personal relationships is difficult. I had a friend in college that was in and out of relationships on a regular basis. One day he shared with me that when it was over he had a foolproof way to end things gracefully and abruptly. He would simply say: "You deserve better. I'm just not good enough for you."

Sign-up for one of these sales training workshops to learn how to better engage with prospects. 

Years later as I started in sales, I discovered buyers had a foolproof way to end sales cycles gracefully and abruptly. At first when prospects asked me to provide information I naively thought it was a step in the right direction. In most cases, after receiving the material it allowed them to say they reviewed it, now was not the right time and they'd get back to me. Game over, but they let me down easy because they said they were interested.

Several years ago, I had an opportunity with a CEO that was considering two very different approaches to training his sales staff. My offering was many times more expensive. I was on a fairly lengthy phone conversation, feeling Rocco was trying to justify the higher expense. About 25 minutes into a phone conversation, it became clear he wanted to end the call. He did so by asking me to send him some additional information.

This request took me back to my early days and caused me to challenge him about why he needed additional information. When he gave me a vague response, I asked: "Rocco, are you actually telling me that we aren't going to do business?" The question just came to me and during a long pause I wondered if it had been too direct. To both his and my surprise he said: "You know, you're right." At that point I suggested scheduling another call to have a hard look at the cost vs. potential benefit of implementing a sales process. As you can imagine, this had a happy ending and I got the business (blog posts aren't often about bad outcomes).

Buyer-seller relationships are fascinating and complex. If and when buyers ask for information, try to hone in on exactly what they want and try to understand why. You'll be better served not to assume that the buying cycle is moving forward.

Need some help with your sales performance? Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you and improve sales performance.

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

Many content marketing strategists who generally know how to create great content and tell stories, but don’t really self-describe as “numbers people.” Only 27% of B2B marketers say they are effectively tracking content utilization metrics.

We know you’re not a statistician, but don’t let analytics become the monster under your bed.

This post will cover the necessary analytics to track. You can get a more in-depth version by downloading the Content Marketing Analytics presentation, a deck walking you through everything you need to know to measure the right numbers.

The 4 Key Areas of Content Analytics

If you follow these four analytics categories in your reporting, you’ll not only demystify the impact of content marketing, but you’ll have your boss swooning over the data.

1. Production

What? Production refers to the total amount of “stuff” being created. Only 32% of marketers say they effectively execute enough content. But by setting production goals and literally counting your content production stats, you can change that. Depending on what makes sense for your business, the areas to include could be:

• Content by Type (number of eBooks, webinars, or blog posts created)
• Author Output (number of content pieces each author produces)
• Content by Category (number of content pieces related to certain categories in your business)
• Content by Persona (number of content pieces targeting each of your buyer personas)

Why? Production metrics are important because they track the yield of your content team. Content strategists use these metrics to define goals like how many blog posts should be created in one month to meet goals (like lead generation), or which author is producing the most material. Marketers can also benchmark the data to compare the volume of content creation month-over-month, year-over-year, etc. When well-executed, production analytics ensure an optimal level of output throughout the year.

Engagement

What? Engagement measures the amount of social or digital activity a piece of content evokes. It answers the questions, how involved were users with this content? Did this content spur a reaction? Typically social sharing suggests users like your content and brand, and also spark purchase intent. 67% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from brands they follow. Types of engagement metrics include:

• Total Social Shares (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn shares combined)
• Page Views (how many times was this content viewed?)
• Comments (how many comments did people leave on your post?)
• Links (how many link backs did you get?)

Why? Engagement metrics are a good barometer for how valuable your audience feels your content is. Users will share and spread your original content if they feel like it’s worth it. A high number of engagement shows a content piece was successfully elicited a response either by being entertaining, relevant, or emotional to users. However, engagement metrics should be tracked with a grain of salt. A piece of content that renders high engagement, does not guarantee it’s rendering new business.

Performance

What? Performance refers to the effectiveness of a piece in a broad sense. Performance metrics often combine engagement and production metrics to take a higher-level look into your content. Think about tracking:

• Top 10 Post (in a given time)
• Top Categories (which categories have the most content associated with them)
• Top Authors (which author’s work is getting the most engagement)

Why? Performance metrics are a great top-level view of all your content analytics. A quick, top-10 or top-5 list provides an at-a-glance metric for your higher-up to check out.

Content Scoring

What? Content Scoring is an aggregate number that uses attribution modeling to see how effective a singular piece of content is at converting leads to sales and ROI. In short, it shows how much money each piece of content bring in for your company. It’s a fairly complicated analytic modeling effort that you can learn about here, but is the most important analytic to prove the value of content. You can sort content scores by:

• Author
• Category
• Content Type vs. Campaign Type
• Coversions
• Revenue Generated

Why? The ultimate result of content marketing is revenue. Content Scoring is the first tool that automatically calculates ROI rendered by content published. It effectively shows which individual pieces of content are ushering buyers down the sales funnel.

Putting It All Together

Choose the metrics that matter to you. Identify which analytics are most important to your company or firm and put those into your monthly reporting. Develop a system of tracking that works best for your business. The point is to hold your content marketing team accountable to driving business objectives and tracking the numbers over a long period of time.

I’m writing this blog in Finland. I’m here for the week for different speaking opportunities and I can’t help but notice how ‘Angry Birds’ is everywhere here. It’s not that surprising, really, since Angry Birds was created by a Finnish company. Their change in business model is an interesting story, actually. They started out as a gaming industry outfit but now they are looking to position themselves as a Disney-style company. As in so many other countries, Angry Birds is omnipresent here thanks to merchandising, activity parks, etc. It’s a wonderful success story. Essentially they’re doing what Disney does but contrary to the Americans, their point of departure is not a movie or a cartoon. Instead, they built their empire around a highly successful game. This is a very clever business model innovation. This type of story is popping up everywhere now. Not rethinking your industry is a very dangerous thing to do these days. Still, every week I hear loads of excuses from companies that don’t see how this is relevant to them.

Below I’ve listed the five most popular excuses. If you catch yourself or your company using them, think fast and correct your course.

1. Look at our results, we are very successful

This is probably the top answer. Executives with excellent financial results don’t see the need to rethink their business. The truth is that rethinking your business is actually the most fun when you’re doing great. When your results fall short of expectations, the pressure to rethink your business can lead to a negative vibe. The best time to think about the future is when things are going superbly well. Rethinking the future doesn’t mean changing all the good things in an organization. No, the goal is to anticipate changes in the market that may influence your business in the future. Proactive behavior may help you make some important strategic choices: making certain acquisitions or hiring specific talent are just two examples.

2. Our industry is conservative

‘Our clients don’t change that fast’. ‘Our competitors are the most boring companies in the world. They will never change, so we are safe’. This line of reasoning is very dangerous because it implies change can only come from within the industry. The most recent models of business disruption originated outside the industry in question. When a good alternative presents itself, industries are often surprised how fast buyers are willing to adapt. Who would have thought consumers would be so fast to switch to tablets or use Uber taxi services, Airbnb… Benchmark your company against the most successful companies in the world instead of merely looking to the most successful competitors in your sector.

3. We are not a technology company

Business disruption is not about technology; it is about new models of customer relationships. Many of the newly successful companies figured out new ways of presenting themselves in their market. They use technology in a smart way, but the key point is often the amazing customer relationships they are able to establish. Also, global digitization is impacting every sector now. If you’re not seeing it, open your eyes because it’s there.

4. We don’t have the structure to reinvent ourselves

Some companies feel the need to change, but they are afraid their current structure can’t handle it. This is true in many cases. If you start by changing the company structure, the road ahead can be long and painful. That’s why I don’t think you should start by implementing structural changes. First you need to devise a strategy. Once your road map is finished you can take the necessary structural measures, not the other way round.

5. Cultivate a new company culture before making changes

The last argument I often hear is that the company’s culture is not ready for change. This is probably the most difficult problem to tackle. Company culture is an intangible factor and changing it isn’t easy: a company’s culture changes because of new behavior and a new attitude within an organization. Like before, it’s a good idea to start by working on a path for the future. Do small things differently and hire staff to suit the new philosophy. After a while, you will feel the wind of change. Don’t expect your company’s culture to change overnight because it won’t. Make small changes in how you think and act and a new culture will gradually develop.

If you would like to learn more about the path to re-inventing your future, check out this slidedeck I made last month.

If you do any kind of B2B (business-to-business) work, you probably are using LinkedIn. I recently started implementing a LinkedIn strategy as a way of expanding my local area connections, and sent connection requests to people I thought looked interesting and wanted to know. I began to receive responses from people, and many were really friendly…but some folks sent me responses that revealed to me The Weirdest LinkedIn Strategy of All Time.

What Is LinkedIn For?

LinkedIn is a social media platform where business professionals can connect with other business professionals. You can post what amounts to your full CV/resume on your LinkedIn profile, and then tell people what you’re interested in—job opportunities, advice requests, networking, consulting opportunities, whatever. It’s online dating for business professionals.

How is LinkedIn Misused

All too often, LinkedIn is used inappropriately. People spam LinkedIn groups (which can be super-useful when properly moderated), send spam emails to people they barely know, and try to sell like crazy. But you’d find that in pretty much any social media platform or in-person networking experience, so it’s not surprising. What is surprising is how people are connecting (or not connecting) via LinkedIn.

The Cue to The Weirdest LinkedIn Strategy of All Time

The first cue I got that there was a weird strategy at work was when I received a couple of emails from people saying the following:

Normally I do not approve connection requests from people I don’t know. However, I saw the article about you in the paper and enjoyed it very much, so I decided to approve your request.

Incidentally, this is the article they were referring to. I liked it as well.

The important part of this message is: “Normally, I do not approve connection requests from people I don’t know.”

This is the exact face I would have made, had someone said that to me in person. Just so you know.

And there it is right there, people, The Weirdest LinkedIn Strategy of All Time. Tadaaaaaaa!

The Weirdest LinkedIn Strategy of All Time

The weirdest LinkedIn Strategy of All Time, my friends, is to not connect with people you don’t know.

Look, I get it. There are a lot of weirdos out there. And you don’t just want to throw around your credentials willy nilly, connecting with strangers, right? Wrong.

Why this is a weird LinkedIn strategy:

LinkedIn is designed in such a way that you can connect with people you don’t know. In fact, that’s the entire point. Successful business is built on relationships. It’s not just built on the people you already know, but on the people you make an effort to meet. That’s why we have networking groups—to meet people you don’t know.

If you’re not accepting connection requests from people you don’t know, you’re missing the entire point, not just of LinkedIn, but of business in general.

Why this is a weird LinkedIn strategy for people with businesses or jobs:

When you own a business, especially a B2B business, you want to connect with buyers of your product or service who might be in your target market or who might know someone who falls into your target market. LinkedIn is a fantastic place to make those connections, because you never know what someone might be looking for now or in the future, and you don’t know who they knight know.

This part is obvious. But when it comes to people with jobs, I think there’s often the notion that if your paycheck comes every other week, you don’t need to worry about networking anymore. Au contraire, my friends. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, but when the economy does funny things (or funny things happen in a particular industry) companies can and do fire perfectly good employees—even people who are performing well. So despite the fact that you feel safe, the truth is, you are never really completely safe from the whims of a corporation or the economy. Isn’t it better to have as many connections as possible, so that if and when your job becomes tenuous (er, or nonexistent), you can easily reach out to recruiters and connections to let them know you’re looking?

I would probably not approve a request from this person. I mean, I might have to think about it for awhile, because really? What a courageous fashion choice. Honestly, now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t decide if I would or would not approve a LinkedIn connection request from this person. What if they were awesome? I just don’t know.

The Alternative

I’m not saying you should approve connection requests from anyone and everyone on LinkedIn. There’ll be folks on LinkedIn who don’t know how to use social media and don’t know how to market themselves properly. Those people will spam you and annoy you—just so you know, you can disconnect from people on Linkedin and you can (and should) report them for spam.

But instead of just turning people away because “I don’t know them,” look at who they are and what they do. And don’t be afraid to have a conversation with them.

I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone who said, “I don’t usually accept requests on LinkedIn from people I don’t know. Can you refresh my memory on where we might have met?” And while I find this response a little awkward, I had no problem just saying, “We’ve never met, but you popped up in a search and I thought you seemed like you might be an interesting person to know.” That exchange led to a phone call and that led to a meeting with some very interesting opportunities for both of us.

My point, friends, is that you never know. So open your mind to the possibilities and think about whether LinkedIn might be a convenient and efficient way to reach out and connect with others in your industry and outside your industry, whether you’re a business owner or an employee.

What do you think? What’s your LinkedIn strategy? And do you connect with people you don’t know? Most importantly, would you connect with Bear Face over there?

Above: The Tact app for iOS.

Image Credit: Tactile

Tactile CEO Chuck Ganapathi, a former Salesforce executive, aims to simplify enterprise software the same way Dropbox and iCloud did for consumer storage.

Today, enterprise software startup Tactile officially launched Tact, a free iOS app for sales professionals that syncs data from email, LinkedIn, and Salesforce. Rather than bouncing around between all those different repositories, salespeople can use Tact as a central, mobile hub to manage their relationships with leads and customers.

Two forces are driving Tactile as a company, said Ganapathi: sync technology and a user-centric approach.

“The dirty little secret in this [$140 billion enterprise software] business is that there’s a massive user-adoption problem,” Ganapathi told VentureBeat. “We’re trying to reimagine business apps that put the end-user at the center of everything we do.

“We started by looking at what’s happening in our personal lives — software like Dropbox and iCloud — and drawing inspiration from that.”

Rather than selling to enterprises, Tactile distributes Tact through Apple’s App Store. Ganapathi described it as an app you could carry around from one job to another. But when you sever a relationship with a company, “you’re not taking any information that the company believes is theirs,” he said.

Tactile has been beta testing Tact for about a year. Around 10,000 salespeople synced data into the platform during that period.

The app mirrors the native iPhone experience, with tabs for contacts, conversations, and agenda. The conversations tab is a joint inbox that aggregates all of your calls, meetings, and notes.

“It’s a very simple way to balance and bounce between multiple client conversations as you’re moving through your day,” said Ganapathi. “Because everything is in one place, you can boost your productivity and bang them out one at a time.”

Tactile intends to introduce a premium version of the app down the road, but right now its focus is on getting the word out.

Tactile also announced $11.2 million in financing from Accel Partners and Redpoint Ventures today, though the company actually raised the round in the middle of 2012. It’s used that financing to develop its sync technology and the Tact app.

“We think sync is the future,” said Ganapathi. “We’re really trying to build a new generation of business applications into what we call the sync generation.”

And, at least by one standard, they’re doing a great job.

“In the last year, I’ve gotten a lot more emails with the word ‘love’ in it than the last 15,” said Ganapathi, chuckling.

Why pay to advertise on social media? The better question is — why aren’t you? Social media marketing is at an all-time high right now. Gone are the days to simply post and hope you engage your fan base. With all the conversations that happen on the platforms daily, brands need to start paying to be seen and heard.

With Facebook’s ever-changing News Feed algorithm, brands are having a harder time getting their posts viewed by fans. The new algorithm favors content that is timely and relevant. Posts that receive a lot of engagement or are considered higher quality, such as content from publications, will appear in a fan’s News Feed more frequently and for longer amounts of time. Therefore, brands need to seriously consider paying to promote their posts and using targeted ads to reach their intended audiences.

The same goes for Twitter! The “Twittersphere” is already very saturated with content. In fact, there’s an average of 500 million tweets per day. Brands cannot expect their tweet to reach a large audience when it can get swallowed up by the handful of other tweets that happen within the same second it’s posted. However, if a brand promotes a tweet or its account, the chances of their audience seeing them through all the clutter is greater.

And don’t forget about Pinterest and Instagram in the near future. Although the two platforms are relatively new to the advertising game and are still ironing out the details before they are open for everyone to use, brands should start to consider how they could use them when they are. This brings me to say, one of the most important aspects of social media advertising is to know which social media platforms your customers use and how they use each one. Before you even begin thinking about advertising, you need to know where your fans are and how you should be communicating with them there. For example, if you are trying to reach women and you have visually-pleasing content, Pinterest is your place. The platform is still predominately used by women. Also, if your brand is trying to reach a younger demographic, Facebook might not be the place to reach them. Younger audiences are starting to move away from the popular platform and, instead, are turning to photo-focused platforms Instagram and Snapchat. Trying to reach more of a B2B audience? Consider LinkedIn and Google Plus.

Here’s a great example of a successful Facebook advertising campaign from our client, Hudson & Marshall. The company is a home auction firm that specializes in selling foreclosures. M/C/C developed a campaign to achieve the company’s goal of expanding brand awareness by increasing the number of fans (or likes) on its Facebook page. Each week, M/C/C tested different advertisements based on targeted demographics to see which one performed the best and optimized accordingly. When M/C/C began the campaign, the page had approximately 1,050 likes. With much success, the page has grown to more than 7,500 likes to date, marking an increase of 614 percent over six months. Additionally, M/C/C strategically promoted posts throughout the campaign and saw an incredible success rate in boosting engagement! Before the campaign, there was an average post reach of 612 users on a weekly basis. To date, an average post reaches 34,048 weekly! This truly shows the power of social media advertising. The campaign not only increased the number of fans for Hudson & Marshall, but it also resulted in the fans directly liking, commenting and sharing the company’s content.

This infographic represents the success of the first phase of the Hudson & Marshall advertising campaign.

No matter what platform you are trying to use, the basics of strong social media advertising can be applied (with some minor tweaking) to all of them:

1. Posting helpful content usually grabs the attention of the consumer better. This can be anything that helps the customer in the decision-making process, such as a special offer, how-to tips, customer testimonials or downloadable content.
2. Promoting social media contests will garner more attention from fans and will help your contest gain more success.
3. Using strong images is important because, more than likely, the image will catch the audience’s attention and then they will stay for the text. Try testing out different images and see which one gains the most clicks or engagement. Then, optimize your ads along the way so you know the images are really working.
4. Target ads to reach different audience segments. Even if your brand can be applied to several different audiences, the same ads will probably not work for each. Tailor and customize your ads so they relate to that specific audience. For example, in the Hudson & Marshall campaign, we targeted ads to real estate agents, newlyweds, investors and home buyers so we could reach all segments of the home auctioning community.
5. And always remember: quality over quantity. The ultimate goal is to reach the most relevant people, not the most people in general. It’s great if your ad reaches 5,000 people, but not if only 1,000 of them will actually have an interest in your brand and might engage with it.

Additionally, the cost of social media advertising is significantly less than traditional advertising. Each ad on social media can get down to a marginal amount. For example, the average Facebook ad is usually less than a dollar per like. Although you are targeting a more narrow audience, as opposed to running a television ad that can reach millions, you are reaching the niche audiences that your brand wants.

So as you decide whether or not to begin social media advertising for your brand, consider the perks of it – more visibility and higher fan engagement. Although social media is still free, the days of brands successfully engaging without advertising are numbered. Therefore, join the fun of promoting your brand on social media. I can guarantee you’ll start seeing results almost instantly because, in this game, winning plays happen in just seconds!

Previously published on The M/C/C Minute at www.mccom.com/blog. Tweet us — @mccPR!

Above: Eric Lukoff of One Degree (left) and Vineet Singal of CareMessage (right)

Image Credit: Kia Kokalitcheva

Y Combinator welcomed its first non-profit a little over year ago, and now, with its Winter 2014 batch, it has a whole handful of companies looking to use tech to do good.

“I think YC is recognizing the trend of nonprofits acting a bit more like companies by investing in a handful of nonprofits,” said Rey Faustino, chief executive of One Degree, a nonprofit that made it into this most recent batch.

“The partners are seeing a way to make a commensurate impact in the nonprofit world as it has on the for-profit world.”

Many of these nonprofits and social enterprises are drawing existing technologies and ideas from the usual roster of consumer, medical, and even enterprise applications. Text messaging and chat have now expanded to health applications, peer-to-peer interactions online can result in crowdfunding in Africa, and Yelp-like search engines are being developed to help people find basic social services.

Over a handful of companies presented today that aim to make money and do good. But Y Combinator attendees, including investors and business execs, helped us narrow it down to five stand-out “tech for good” companies:

CareMessage

CareMessage‘s co-founder benefited from Stanford Medical Center-level patient care, including resources and help in between doctor’s visits. But many low-income patients do not — 30 million of them, to be exact.  MessageCare wants to enable medical providers to connect with those patients through their cell phones and send them precious resources such as appointment reminders, personalized information about their health problems, reminders to check their glucose levels, and much more.

One Degree

Say what you will about Yelp, but it’s handy when you’re searching for a restaurant in town. That’s exactly what One Degree wants to do for social services. Sadly, there are 1.3 million people living in poverty in the Bay Area alone — and over 46 million in the U.S. This non-profit is serving up resources and personalization for people living under the poverty line and helping them locate much-needed social services. It has already partnered up with non-profits and other organizations to deliver the best possible resources to people in need, and has expanded into other categories such as tax experts and children’s summer camps.

Zidisha

Zidisha calls itself the “Kiva for now.” Zidisha’s Julia Kurnia explained on stage at YC that while Kiva launched the idea of “peer-to-peer” lending to entrepreneurs in developing countries, it still goes through intermediary banks that charge high interest rates. Zidisha is cutting out the middlemen to enable direct lending to the entrepreneurs. Kurnia calls it “true peer-to-peer lending.” So far, the company has processed $1.8 million in loans to 5,000 entrepreneurs in Africa and Asia, and only needs 10 percent in fees to cover its cost (that’s versus the 30-80 percent Kiva requires).

Noora Health

Much like MessageCare above, Noora Health is focused on what happens to patients outside the doctor’s office. The company provides in person, video-based training resources for families of high-risk patients to effectively take care of them once they’ve left the hospital or clinic. Oftentimes, families are overwhelmed by the complex care-taking instructions they receive from doctors and nurses, making it difficult for them to execute them. But Noora Health has already trained over 7,000 families through its partnership with a low-cost hospital chain in India, and has reduced complication risks by 36 percent and readmissions by 23 percent. It’s now moving into the American market (already counting 9 partner hospitals) because it found that even American hospitals want this for their patients.

BellaBeat

Bellabeat is the only for-profit on this list, but we think it provides an invaluable health service that expecting parents would be willing to pay for. The company offers a portable device and accompanying smartphone app for expecting moms to listen, record and share their baby’s heart rate, kicks and movements. It’s part of the “quantified self” trend that is on par with what trendy health startups like Scanadu are doing. People can track their own health vital signs, and with Bellabeat, they can make more informed decisions about their (and their baby’s) health. “It’s also a platform though which women connect,” co-founder Urska Srsen added during her presentation.

A bit of a provocative and disruptive statement that calls for an interesting conversation.

Let's consider for a moment all the statistics floating around  about buyers and the knowledge they now have at their finger tips. Anywhere from 48% to 79% of buyers already know what they want to buy because of their access via technology to these products. If this is true then that effectively means that half of the sales conversations that are happening out there right now are redundant. They're redundant because salespeople are still following a sales methodology that is past it's 'use by date'. They are asking Situation questions, Problem questions and Implication questions but, hang on, doesn't the buyer already know what they want to buy?

And leaders, does that mean you are spending resources on training your salespeople in a language that is outdated. Try selling a cassette to someone who has an IPOD - nothing wrong with the cassette because at the time, that was the epitome of success. So, too, with SPIN selling methodology - fantastic grounding at the time.

Now don't get me wrong. Understanding how to discover problems and the implications of those problems is key, and not dissimilar to the skills of a great executive coach, but what if you have a potential client who really doesn't have a problem? They do exist, don't they?

What if your potential client is quite happy with the status quo? How then does the salesperson react?  I mean, try asking an avid Apple user what problems he or she is having with the current model they are holding in their hand as they queue in the cold and the rain,  the night before a new model is released - try speaking to them about the situation, the problems and the implications of their pocket friend.

What about the early adopter who buys without a salesperson? How was SPIN rolled out in that super successful salesperson's conversation?

Selling today is moving in a direction that is already sorting the wheat from the chaff. Buyer expectations today have moved up a level yet again. The salesperson the buyer wants to work with today is not the hunter or the farmer. It is a new breed that shares 3 key attributes:

• Conviction in how and why they back themselves and what they stand for
• Context through which they are able to have conversations that are commercial and complete with relevant business acumen
• Contribution where their Intention is to make the customer the hero in the story and contribute to their business growth

Having hosted a breakfast this morning at The Hilton in Melbourne with sales leaders across different industries, the topic  'Redefining the Sales Conversation' is about making change happen as opposed to managing change and is clearly a topic that generated positive feedback, a topic for discussion and one in which I am passionate about.

YOU are the difference in the market place today - always have been and always will be. So, how do you, even more:

• Own Your Value
• Know The Value Of Your Offering
• Be Of Value To Your Market

Let's not throw SPIN on the rubbish heap yet though, let's simply give it a SPINE by adding some Emotional intelligence, some Education, some Entertainment and some Expertise into our approach to the market and watch our numbers soar.

For anyone who missed the breakfast and would like to have a one on one conversation with me around the direction of selling today, please don't hesitate to contact me and let's connect.

Be Bold and Brilliant 

SPONSORED POST

Image Credit: Sprockit

This sponsored post is produced by SPROCKIT.

Last week, NAB Show introduced the first 10 startups participating in SPROCKIT, a year-round startup program now in its second year with more influencers, participants, and visionaries than ever before. The program brings together disruptive startups with industry leaders to collaborate, innovate, and accelerate solutions to problems currently facing the media and entertainment industry.

Today, meet the remaining 17 startups. Each of these companies has introduced technologies that are changing the way people create, manage, monetize, distribute, and consume media and entertainment. With many of these companies working in various stages of the content lifecycle, here is how take each is impacting one area in particular.

Content creation

Media and entertainment no longer begins and ends in a studio. Today, content comes from various sources — from a broadcast network to a consumer’s smartphone. These are a few of the companies fostering this change:

• Chute helps brands and publishers tell stories using visual media by making it possible to discover, organize, obtain consent, and publish fan photos and videos at every customer touch point, whether on a website or social properties or in ads.
• SportXast is a free mobile app for sports fans to capture, watch, and share the best video highlights in amateur athletics with zero editing.
• Paladin Innovators develops software and hardware solutions for streaming and broadcasting, including the Paladin, an all-in-one streaming studio that fits in a backpack.

Content management

Broadcasters, brands, and consumers alike have an incredible number of ways to produce and absorb information and need more informative, secure solutions to help manage the content. In other cases — for broadcasters and advertisers in particular — how can they unlock the data within their platforms to better understand not only who is interested in their programming but how they feel about it and why? Enter the next five startups:

• CloudFlare, Inc. makes websites run twice as fast, protects them from cyber-attacks, ensures they are always online, and makes it simple to add web apps with a single click.
• Discourse Analytics humanizes data by uncovering why individuals connect to digital assets which, in turn, help broadcasters better understand and personalize the digital experience for audiences.
• Eyeris develops artificially intelligent emotion-recognition technology. Its flagship product, EmoVu, reads people’s facial microexpressions as they watch videos on computers or mobile devices using webcams.
• nFluence‘s consumer-powered marketing is powered by autograph, a personalized cross-device technology that gives people the freedom to securely communicate their interests to broadcasters and advertisers.
• XYZ Stream Hosting is a cloud-based, turnkey streaming platform for digital media, delivering greater efficiency to content producers, owners, and distributors through state of the art solutions.

Content commerce

NAB Show brings $20.7 billion in buying power into one room. Media and entertainment is no doubt a strong market, but traditional advertising and other business interests have changed along with the rest of the content lifecycle. Below are several companies who are helping brands and broadcasters monetize content and make more informed business decisions:

• Civolution provides automatic content recognition (ACR) technology and solutions that help advertisers, content owners, rights holders, and distributors identify, manage, and monetize media content.
• clypd is an advertising platform built exclusively for TV. It connects the buyers and sellers of TV asset inventory, automates the workflow, and leverages data to enable audience-based targeting.
• FEM Inc. has developed a video-discovery platform embeddable into any website, entertainment network, or app that has or wants video and seeks to engage female audiences.
• SocialNewsDesk is a social media-management tool created by news-people for news-people, so broadcasters can increase social engagement, manage a team, and monetize social media from a single dashboard.

Content distribution and consumption

Consumers no longer serve as silent spectators during the viewing experience. They have become increasingly engaged in what they watch and seek to become part of the story. These organizations help audiences find the content they want and involve them in the viewing process beyond just displaying visuals on a single screen:

• iPowow creates participation-TV formats for broadcasters to engage viewers in the story on the TV show, second by second, via their mobile devices while enabling advertisers to connect directly with the consumer.
• Lingospot enhances TV viewing by providing relevant articles, photos, profiles, stock charts, and other information in second screen and on smart TV applications.
• net2TV combines streaming technology, advanced advertising capabilities, and programming from major media partners to create free, special-interest TV channels on tablets and smart TVs.
• Shoelace Wireless develops software solutions that speed up content delivery to mobile devices by combining multiple wireless networks.
• Watchup, incubated at Stanford, reinvents news watching by providing viewers with a personalized stream of videos from the world’s most trusted news sources.

Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

If you're like me, every day you see people and businesses who could use your services. You might read an article about them, see examples of their work, or see an ebook they published and think, "I can definitely help them."

You could cold call them and try to work your way in that way. Or you can create an inbound marketing strategy that establishes you as an expert in your field and attracts prospective buyers to you.

The word strategy sounds daunting, but if you break it down into its basic parts, it can be done in three steps.

Author: Dayna Rothman

Finding the right marketing automation software is tough when you are searching for the first time. That’s why we teamed up with Software Advice to speak to hundreds of companies, determining what drives organizations to purchase these systems. Plus, we have been speaking to our own customers for years, so we know what goes through their minds.

Check out our infographic below for some key stats found in Software Advice’s survey. Did you know that 91% of buyers are evaluating marketing automation for the first time? This didn’t surprise us, as we know that marketing automation is becoming more widespread each year—more and more companies understand that to remain competitive, marketing automation is necessary. Another key finding was that the top reason companies evaluate marketing automation software is to improve lead management and automate processes.

To find out more about selecting the perfect solution for your brand, visit Software Advice online, where you can read reviews and get expert advice on thousands of solutions.

Read on to learn more about what people look for when purchasing marketing automation tools:

View the infographic in a new window here.

Please use the HTML code below to embed this graphic

<a href="http://blog.marketo.com/2014/03/infographic-state-of-marketing-automation-trends-2014.html"><img alt="State of Marketing Automation Trends 2014" src="http://blog.marketo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/State-of-Marketing-Automation-Trends-2014.png" width="100%" /></a><br><p><small>Brought to you by <a href="http://www.marketo.com/marketing-atuomation">Marketing Automation Software by Marketo</a></small>

The State of Marketing Automation Trends 2014 [Infographic] was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

Image Credit: G2 Crowd

Each of small, medium, and large enterprise marketing automation solutions combined to win top honors in G2 Crowd’s newest marketing automation grid.

The business software review site released the ratings, based on more than 800 user reviews, today. G2 Crowd’s “grid” measuring tool analyzes both customer satisfaction ratings, as well as social signals and public data, to rank vendors as either leaders, contenders, niche players, or high performers.

We asked over 1,000 marketers about the best marketing automation systems.

We asked over 1,000 marketers about the best marketing automation systems.
The top five tools span the business size gamut. Act-On primarily targets smaller and medium-sized non-tech businesses. Hubspot is primarily used by medium-sized companies. And each of Marketo, Pardot (which is owned by Salesforce), and Eloqua (which is owned by Oracle), primarily target larger enterprise customers.

According to G2 Crowd, Hubspot won the highest customer satisfaction ratings — which we’ve also seen in our surveys — with a 95 percent customer satisfaction rating. Act-on was second with 87 percent, and Pardot, Marketo, and Eloqua round out the top five, with results also in the 80s.

Interestingly, while Net-Results, Ontraport, and Salesfusion had slightly lower overall customer ratings with scores in the 70-80 percent range, they joined top systems in at least one category: Over 90 percent of their users said they would recommend their systems to others.

Above: Part of Adobe’s marketing cloud services

Image Credit: Adobe

“Satisfaction rankings are generated from user reviews consisting of up to 71 questions, including ratings of features and functionality such as email marketing, online marketing, and lead management,” G2 Crowd said in a statement. “Market presence is calculated from vendor size, market share, and social impact.”

While G2′s grid is a useful measure of customer satisfaction, some enterprise solutions have yet to get enough reviews to be rated effectively.

For instance Adobe’s Campaign, part of its marketing cloud, has received 16 reviews so far, probably too few for G2 to be confident to rate it extremely high. Other enterprise solutions such as those provided by IBM and SAS are also not showing up in sufficient numbers to be ranked.

That’s something that will likely be rectified over time as more users of those systems discover and use G2 Crowd.

Content marketing – either through blogging, newsletters, social media or microsites – is growing in popularity for a reason. The results of our most recent study show that 71% of marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend this year, as 76% of survey takers saw an increase in buyer engagement and 62% saw an increase in lead quality.

Even with this surge in content marketing, however, not all marketers understand how to leverage content. Content for readers cannot just be repurposed internal assets, consist of only your brand’s opinions or be rephrased material from other sources in your industry. Successful content must be relatable for your audience.

Enlightened content marketers know how to humanize their content by publishing thought leadership pieces, curating from third-party sources and finding inspiration for new created content from their customers. Always remember to write for people – not search engines.

My advice to getting the most out of your content strategy is to follow these four guidelines.

1. Develop a Content Workflow

If you don’t already have a company blog, start with a free blogging tool such as WordPress. Then set up your editorial calendar as the basic framework of your content marketing workflow. An editorial calendar is perhaps the most important aspect of your content marketing strategy as it will answer the following questions:

• What topics are we writing about and when?

• Why are we focusing on these topics? (Are they part of a larger content initiative, such as an eBook campaign?)

• Who is writing each piece? Who is editing and publishing each piece?

• When is the draft due? When are the edits due? What is the posting date?

• Where is this content being posted?

• How and where are we going to promote this piece of content once it’s published?

Once you get your blogging strategy down, here are some key content marketing tactics to pursue:

• Perform (and leverage) your own primary research to establish thought leadership

• Turn your research into eBooks, webinars and whitepapers

• Implement the Content Marketing Pyramid into your strategy to get the most out of each piece of content

• Make sure to market your marketing and distribute it to appropriate channels, as well as measure the impact of each piece of content

• Attend industry events and push for speaking engagements

• Create engaging, digestible content with infographics and videos

• Establish relationships with reputable publishers in your industry and push your content out to these sites

• Curate content from credible third-party sources to support your created content strategy, save time & money and provide a valuable variety of information for your readers

• Utilize social media platforms to promote and distribute content

It’s important that content has it’s own department, or at least it’s own executive, within your organization. Forty-three percent of organizations already have a content marketing executive in place to facilitate the ideation, creation, promotion/distribution and analysis process. Content marketing is no part-time job and requires a dedicated team of coordinators, managers and writers.

2. Writing for People, not Search Engine Bots

Many marketers believe that quantity, not quality, is factored more heavily into search engine ranking. This is not the case. Although optimizing for search is important, keyword stuffing and misleading titles for clicks could be potentially damaging to your brand’s reputation as a trusted source.

The most effective content marketers write for quality, not quantity. This means writing for customers, not for search engine bots. Search visibility and traffic will come with high quality, valuable posts that seek to inform readers. Become a trustworthy source of information on your topic, and readers will be more likely to read and share your content.

Keep the interests and goals of your readers in mind when you publish content in order to provide as much value as possible. Performance metrics are important, but they must be taken into consideration in parallel with quality during the content development process. Plan titles, inbound & outbound links and promotion & distribution methods ahead of time. This will ensure that content meets your readers’ standards as well as your campaign goals.

3. Drop the Ego

Even with the best intentions of providing content of value to buyers, many marketers are communicating with audiences in their voice only. As knowledgeable as your organization is on your topic, readers want to hear from other credible sources. If you’re not publishing a diversity of information, potential buyers are going to look elsewhere. Variety means value.

Egocentric marketing can be cured with content curation. Content curation is when an individual (or team) consistently finds, organizes, annotates and shares the most relevant and highest quality digital content on a specific topic for their target market.

Curating content from reputable third-party sources gives readers diversity in perspectives. Publishing curated content alongside your created content will make your organization a go-to source of information – as well as lightening up your marketing budget and the creation load on your writers. Best-in-class marketers employ a content mix of 65% created, 25% curated and 10% syndicated.

4. Create Value & Build a Connection

Technology

Our recent Content Marketing Tactics study found that marketers are naming their top content challenges as limited staff, limited budget and creating enough content. If your organization doesn’t have the budget or resources to fill these needs, there are still plenty of ways to create value for customers and potential buyers with content marketing.

Utilize content marketing specific technology to publish high quality content consistently even with a small marketing team and matching budget. Content curation platforms allow users to publish content consistently in a fraction of the time it would take one of your writers to create an original post – and a fraction of the cost it would be to hire an in-house writer or freelancer to create content.

Content management solutions keep your workflow organized so small teams can efficiently push content out the door, and marketing automation platforms & social management tools give small marketing teams a major leg up when it comes to keeping track of leads, assets and your online community.

Inspiration & Ideation

Readers want diversity and fresh content on a consistent basis. Running out of ideas? Draw inspiration for new created content by listening to and following your audience. Read and interact with their comments and social posts. What types of content are they looking for? What are their challenges? Seek to provide information that addresses their needs, helps them overcome challenges and guides them through the buyer’s journey. Switch it up in terms of format as well. Some readers may be more visual learners – create infographics and presentations.

Tap into your marketing and sales teams for inspiration as well. Even though they may not be a part of the content development team, they’re speaking to customers on a daily basis. Crowdsource ideas from across your organization. This will strengthen your connection with customers and allow your content to resonate with their interests.

Practice Selective & Ethical Curation

Build a connection with your audience by hand-picking only the most relevant, high quality articles to curate. Publish only information that pertains to what your readers are looking for. Always be sure to annotate it with your own insights and opinions as well. Never simply regurgitate common market insight and opinion.

Enlightened marketers contextualize all content that they hand-select for readers by adding commentary, insights or opinions to the curated piece. In many cases, curated pieces with these added annotations are more valuable than the original article. This helps establish thought leadership in your industry and provides new information for your audience.

Not only is annotating content an enlightened marketer practice, but retitling curated pieces, using thumbnail images and making sure your commentary is longer than the quoted segment of the article are all ethical best practices. Ethical content marketing is essential for a successful content strategy as it will establish trust with readers, peers and help boost your search engine rank.

When you have the right strategy in place and employ the necessary tactics to relate to your audience, content marketing is the most effective way to reach readers and drive leads. Looking to get started on the path to content marketing enlightenment, or need some more tips on how to attain it? Download our latest eBook, The 4 Steps to Content Marketing Enlightenment or request a free demo of Curata.

When companies set out to innovate a new business model, they are signing up to fight a battle on two fronts. Here is how they can succeed.

Henry Chesbrough is known as the father of Open Innovation and wrote the book that defined the practice. Henry is the Faculty Director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, at U.C. Berkeley in the Haas Business School. Henry and I teach a corporate innovation class together.

----

Thanks to Steve for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you all. This post follows directly on Steve's earlier excellent post, Why Companies are not Startups.

The question of how corporations can be more innovative is one I have wrestled with for a long time. For those who don't know, I wrote the book Open Innovation in 2003, and followed it with Open Business Models in 2006, and Open Services Innovation in 2011.

More recently, Steve, Alexander Osterwalder and I have started sharing notes, ideas and insights on this problem. We even ran an executive education course last fall at Berkeley on Corporate Business Model Innovation that helped each of us understand the others' perspectives on this problem. In this post, I want to share some new thoughts that build on Steve's post and connect them to Lean Startup methods. I will then, however, argue that while these methods are necessary to managing new ventures inside a company--they are insufficient.

First, let me recap a key insight for me from Steve's post. A startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, scalable business model. A corporation, by contrast, is a permanent organization designed to execute a repeatable, scalable business model. While a simple statement, this is a profound insight. When companies want to innovate a new business model (vs. innovating new products and services within an already scaled business model), the processes that companies have optimized for execution inevitably interfere with the search processes needed to discover a new business model.

This has serious implications for corporate venturing, for innovating new businesses--and new business models--inside an existing corporation. The context for an internal venture inside an existing company is dramatically different from the context confronting an external startup out in the wild. The good news is that corporations have access to resources and capabilities that most startups can only dream of, whether it is free cash flow, a strong brand, a vibrant supply chain, strong distribution, a skilled sales force, and so on. The bad news is that, as Steve reminded us above, each of these assets is tailored to execute the existing business model, not to help search for a new one. So what seem like unfair advantages for corporate ventures become inflexible liabilities that block the search process of the venture.

But the contextual differences go even beyond these substantial differences. A corporate venture, struggling to search for a new, repeatable and scalable business model, must wage that struggle on two fronts, not just one. The external startup has to work long hours and make many pivots to identify the product-market fit, validate the MVP, and articulate a winning business model that can then be repeated and scaled. The internal venture must do all this, and more! The internal venture must fight on a second front at the same time within the corporation. That second fight must obtain the permissions, protection, resources, etc. needed to launch the venture initiative, and then must work to retain that support over time as conflicts arise (which they will).

Knowing Steve's fondness for military metaphors, think of the corporate venture as fighting a war on two fronts at the same time. Just as Germany's domination of Western Europe in World War II was eventually undone by its decision to launch a second front by invading Russia, so too unlike a start up, corporate ventures cannot focus solely on winning in the external marketplace. This leads to two key points:

Point one: You have to fight--and win--on two fronts (both outside and inside), in order to succeed in corporate venturing. As Steve would say, this is a big idea.

One memorable example of this was Xerox's internal venture capital fund, Xerox Technology Ventures (XTV). Launched by Robert Adams in 1989, this $30 million fund grew to over $200 million in the next 7 years, as it launched companies like Documentum and Document Sciences out of Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center. This financial performance was extraordinary and put XTV in the top quartile of all VC funds launched in 1989. Ordinary VCs would use this success to raise an even larger fund, and try to create the magic once more.

But Xerox instead chose to shut XTV down in 1996, despite its external success. Why? XTV's success created lots of internal dissatisfaction within Xerox. The success of Documentum and Document Sciences, they felt, came largely from Xerox technology and customers, yet the startup companies XTV funded got all the credit. Worse, Robert Adams and his two partners got 20% of the carried interest in the fund, resulting in payouts of $30 million to the partnership. This was more, far more, than the Xerox CEO was paid in those years. So XTV won in the market, but lost inside the corporation.

This leads us to:

Point two: Corporate ventures may need to pivot to obtain and retain internal corporate support for the venture. This is likely to be controversial for adherents to Lean Startup thinking because we traditionally think of pivoting to improve the product-market fit in the external marketplace. But astute corporate venture managers, realizing that they must fight the war on two fronts, will also be alert to the need to pivot if needed in order to keep the internal support they require in order to succeed. For example, the new venture might pivot away from current customers of the corporation in the early days of the venture, in order to reduce friction with the established sales force (who want to sell large quantities of the current product, not test minute quantities of some future product that may or may not ever be built in volume. Worse, the potential new product might give customers a reason to delay the purchase of today's products).

This also suggests that the internal organization must be carefully designed and prepared in order to sustain internal support for ventures over time. Ventures that launch without this preparation are at great risk as soon as the initial enthusiasm for innovation begins to wane. One bad quarter for the company, or one transition for a key internal champion, or the arrival of a new CEO who wants to clean house, any of these unforeseen changes could spell doom for an unprepared internal venture program.

This suggests a further modification to Lean Startup: Get Upstairs in the Building. You will need strong, sustained internal support for successful internal venturing. You will need to get the bigwigs upstairs to sign up to the risks, and put structures in place to insulate and protect the ventures from the execution processes in a large company that will attack the new venture. Think of it as internal political product-market fit, and prepare to pivot in order to increase that fit (and your support).

We will continue our conversations, and I fully expect that Steve, Alex and I will have more to say about how best to structure and support new ventures inside a large corporation in future posts.

Lessons Learned:

• Internal ventures face a different context than do external startups.
• Venturing inside a corporation is a 2-front war.
• Lean Startup Methods are necessary, but insufficient, to fight this war.
• An internal venture may need to pivot to gain or maintain internal support. Get Upstairs in the Building, to generate this support.
• Stay tuned, as Steve, Alex and I have more coming….

It might sound funny, but it’s amazing how many times the following scenarios play out in marketing departments. It isn’t due to bad intentions by the marketing team, but rather due to a team that is just running fast doing what they are doing, and not taking the time to stop and think about the value they are providing to the sales team.

I used to be one of those marketers myself. But when you get a chance to take a step back and look at these behaviors, it becomes quite obvious how much of a rift they are causing in marketing and sales alignment.

Take a look and see if you recognize any of these in your own team.

1. Define leads without getting sales input. I agree it is so much quicker to just do the legwork on your own. It can be hard to get the attention of the sales team. But how are they going to be aligned with the leads you send if they don’t buy into the definition of a lead?
2. Don’t provide anything other than demographic information when you send a lead to sales. Where do you draw the line between what marketing should do and what sales should do? Sales seems to want to control all of the communication, but yet they also need to work more efficiently to meet their quotas. The answer is that marketing should provide as much information as possible to sales to make their conversations and next steps more efficient.
3. Send the sales team all of the information about your campaigns before the campaign goes out and then get annoyed when they don’t know what the campaign is about. I’ve been so guilty of this in the past. It’s frustrating when you feel like you’ve said it ten times and no one is listening. But when you put yourself in your salesperson’s shoes, you can see that their main focus day-to-day is trying to make sales and make their quota. Your campaign is one little piece that doesn’t affect them until they get a lead from that campaign. They need just-in-time information.
4. Jump every time they ask for a brochure to support their sales efforts. Your sales team may love your marketing team because they are so responsive at creating stuff on demand. But just like if your kids ask for candy all the time, it’s not what they really need to make them successful. Taking the time to plan out content carefully that will support your prospects’ buy cycles will actually be more helpful to sales in the long run, even if they don’t like being told no in the short run.
5. Create your campaigns without sales input. Just like #1 above – it can slow your process when you need to get more input. But who actually has the best information about your customers and prospects? Who talks to them every day? And who needs to follow up on leads from the campaign? Those are the people who should have input.

A recent survey revealed 50% of credit card customers will start their interaction with customer service teams over the phone rather than email or live chat. This may seem counterintuitive as more companies continue to launch online help portals such as live chat or email support. However, when the credit card customers were able to utilize a phone number to reach support lines, they reported higher satisfaction and brand loyalty.

But the customer journey does not end with the initial phone chat with support teams. The survey found multiple channels and devices are tapped during the resolution process for most customers, including:

• 30% make a second phone call
• 25% move to website content
• 82% communicate with support teams through at least three channels from start to finish
• 88% use at least two devices when dealing with customer service teams

The variety of channels and devices used to address customer questions or concerns may be the result of availability or convenience at the time, as well as individual preference. No matter the reason, companies must have tools in place to accommodate customer device and channel usage. This includes technology to track customer information, interactions, and experiences while saving the data into an overarching profile.

Build the Customer Profile

It is not enough to deploy a solution that tracks phone calls, gathers customer data, and stores the information for the next interaction. The information collected from voice interactions should be integrated with data from other customer service or sales experiences to build a more complete profile. The more information that is collected, stored, and shared regarding a consumer, the easier it is to keep he or she happy and loyal to the brand.

This can be a challenge with multichannel customer service platforms. It is imperative that each channel has a solution in place to bridge the gap between customer service interaction and the CRM database. Call tracking solutions that integrate seamlessly with CRM platforms make information available on demand, in real time to enhance the customer experience. When sales and customer support representatives have direct access to customer information, the happiness is hard to avoid:

• Customers enjoy a more meaningful conversation with appropriate context and relevancy
• The source of the caller’s engagement is identified to determine which components of a campaign are driving leads
• Less time is spent gathering basic information so the problem can be resolved, or the sale closed, faster and more efficiently
• Errors from entering incorrect data are significantly reduced which improves reporting accuracy to support decision-making
• A simplified, more personalized customer experience will increase loyalty and satisfaction – thus driving brand awareness

Furthermore, call tracking technology is able to identify what search terms were used prior to the call, which can provide brand representatives with a preview of what specific products or services the customer is calling about. The ability to prepare based on caller context will make the interaction easier and more efficient for both the customer and the agent.

DIY

As helpful as customer service and sales agents are, there are many questions or concerns callers may have that do not require a one-on-one conversation. Just as websites have FAQ sections to help answer common inquiries, voice-based interactions can also offer a do-it-yourself functionality. Because no one wants to waste time, a simplified, automated solution can elevate a customer experience in a matter of seconds.

With the use of an interactive voice response (IVR) system, companies can select a series of prompts presented to callers to guide them on their journey toward a resolution. The IVR will receive the inbound call, offer options, and allow certain concerns to be resolved by the caller while others may be directed to customer service or sales. This will shorten wait times while reducing the number agents needed to handle inbound calls. Everyone wins!

Our “Tips for E-Commerce: 4 Steps to Drive Sales with the Phone” white paper dives into more detail on how VBMA solutions are making it easier for brands to track, manage, and optimize phone and voice interactions for increased revenue and improved ROI.

By Tibor Shanto - tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Almost everyone in sales will tell you that incentives drive behaviour, but beyond that there is often little agreement among the pundits as to what the right incentive plan is. Some see it as a black art, while others, usually sales people, see it as something to manipulate, hence the expression ‘gaming the plan’. But ask Christopher Cabrera, founder, president and CEO of Xactly Corporation, who has a different view, and believes that front line reps and CFOs do not need to be at odds when it comes to incentives. In fact, Cabrera literally wrote the book on incentives, “Game the Plan: Every Sales Rep’s Dream; Every CFO’s Nightmare”, which suggests that when it’s done right, reps can and should game and maximize the plan, and everyone wins.

I had the opportunity to discuss incentives and the book with Cabrera, and ask him some questions many of my clients ask when it comes to their challenges around incentives and driving behaviour that leads to everyone’s success, buyer, seller, and company.

One aspect of the incentive where the pendulum of opinion swings back and forth is between simplicity and complexity of a plan. While some try to engineer things down to the minute detail, others, look to perhaps over simplify by offering 100% commission based pay. As you would suspect, the reality is somewhere in between. Cabrera’s view is that 100% is not the most effective, but over engineering a plan has faults as well. He suggests that structure is much more important than the specifics. What “counts is the number of measures; there is a strong correlation between the number of measures and a successful plan.” Measures being the elements being paid on, Cabrera suggests that optimal number is three measures being incented. As you exceed that number, you lose focus and therefore the effectiveness of the plan.

Another factor was the number of people being paid on any given deal, an extreme example Cabrera gave was a company that had over a hundred people on any given deal. He suggest that the right number of people is five.

Cabrera is also a proponent of paying different rates on different products. While paying on net revenue is a start, companies should also incent higher margin products at a higher rate, thereby driving sales and higher profits. He also discussed that managing activity is the role of management not the incentive plan.

Another area of discussion was the use of SPIFFs (Sales Promotion Incentive Fund). Cabrera explained that while this was an effective practice, companies need to keep them fresh and not overuse them. “Keep them guessing by changing the annual cadence, if they know it is coming and when, it loses the desired effect.” He also recommends that they not be overused, three times a year, and at different times, for different element. Tying them to quarter end each time really misses the mark.

The thing that gives the book teeth and makes it a must read for sales leaders and sales people is not only Cabrera’s own extensive experience in the field of sales incentive and incentive management. But more importantly, the volume of data that is available to him as a result of the work Xactly does. The ability to leverage the empirical, anecdotal and other elements give Cabrera, the book, and by extension the reader, an unparalleled level of insight into incentives, and doing it right.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woN3w1Kucco)

I recently got to spend some quality time with Jill Rowley, a force to be reckoned with in the emerging field of social selling. She was kind enough to share some of her insights on this red-hot idea.

Jill made headlines recently for being fired by Oracle for talking to an Ad Age reporter. You have got to be kidding, right? It’s not the first questionable HR move Oracle has made and the world is better now that Jill is being unleashed as she starts her own social sales consulting business.

Jill tells us in this interview that the Millennial Generation will be taking the world by storm. By 2020, 50 percent of our employees and customers will be Millennials, setting up a gigantic tension between how we hire, retain, and market to the digital natives.

In this short video, Jill discusses some big ideas.

• Reverse mentoring
• Framework for social selling
• The importance of optimized digital profiles, content
• Social listening for leads
• Feeding your network
• Measuring social selling

Also, she dances.

I’m sure you’ll love this lively discussion! Be sure to follow Jill as she starts her new business at www.jillrowley.com.

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

Lead generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring, lead grading. The bountiful terms we have to describe different actions we can take with leads show how incredibly pervasive the lead is to sales and marketing. Salespeople are trained to pursue the them, convince them that their product is better than the competition’s, and close out the deal.

But according to Forbes.com’s Amy Morin, that’s where the problem lies. Too many salespeople are spending their energy on trying to get the consumer to choose their product. What they don’t realize is that most consumers are not even at the stage of choosing any product – the prospect of them changing their product is not even on the table. She says, “About 60% of qualified leads fall by the wayside because the customer doesn’t find value in purchasing something new and therefore, they decide to forgo any type of change.”

The concept makes a lot of sense: salespeople assume people are on the line between two products and pitch towards that group, but in reality a good number of those people feel perfectly comfortable sticking to an old favorite. So why would they listen to a sales pitch that doesn’t even apply to them?

The disconnect can be fixed, but not easily. Psychology has shown over and over that people’s minds are resistant to change – salespeople may have originated this sidetracked tactic because it’s harder to get people to change than it is to advocate for a product.

Let’s look at some reasons why people resist change:

1. Confirmation bias. “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons,” said Michael Shermer. In other words, people look for and retain the information that validates their own beliefs, and hold arguments against their beliefs to a much higher standard of proof. For instance, psychologist Elliot Aronson conducted a study during the Civil Rights Era where people were presented with both plausible and silly arguments for and against segregation. He found that people who were for segregation remembered the plausible arguments for it and the silly ones against it, and the people who were against segregation did just the opposite. It’s hard to change someone’s opinion when they ignore points that go against them!
2. Cognitive dissonance. Here’s a paradox for you: the harder you try to get someone to buy a product, the less they’re likely to like it after they get it. Why? Cognitive dissonance theory says that if you are dissatisfied with a product that someone else pressured you to buy, you justify your bad purchase by blaming that other person. But if you yourself wanted the product, you will work harder – without realizing it – to like the product so you can feel more content with yourself and your decision. No one likes being wrong! So in the context of trying to get someone to start changing their mind, you have to strike a balance between being vocal enough and too vocal – or you won’t get the results you want.
3. People are always distracted. Studies have shown that getting people to change their minds for good requires a good deal of concentration and especially motivation on their part. Needless to say, most people just don’t care that much. If people are distracted, your best efforts at getting them to change their minds will be short-term. Counteracting that effect, however, is that when people are actually trying but are being unwillingly distracted, they are more likely to rate the arguments as plausible. A possible loophole in the system!
4. Timing matters. It’s no secret that children’s and young adults’ opinions are more malleable than their adult counterparts, and that habits that form in young adulthood can continue for a lifetime. For this reason, 18 to 22-year-olds are often a highly attractive segment to target. However, it’s yet another reason why adults are harder to convince.

Despite all the psychological forces working against it, marketing still shapes our consumption habits. All in all, marketing is still a remarkable practice.

April 17th from 8.30AM – Noon PDT: The Funnelholic Sales Summit is BAAAACK! Come join Jill Konrath, Matt Heinz, Jill Rowley, and Dan Waldschmidt as they provide real, tangible advice, tell at least one joke, and challenge your status quo.

Click here to check it out!

Speaking of brilliant minds in sales and marketing, one of our amazing speakers for the event is Matt Heinz. His topic will be 15 Must-Have Sales Technologies. He is great with tech, tools, and efficiencies with sales teams and is one of be the best presenters I know. As we getting pumped for the summit, I thought we would showcase some of Matt’s work. Matt had a great post on sales productivity and I thought I would share his tips and add some funnel-commentary.

First a note on sales productivity: As an organization, your goal in life is to strip out as many inefficiencies as possible and allow sales to focus on what they do best. It’s 3-4 years old now, but in 2011 CSO Insights released data that showed sales reps only spent 41% of their time selling face-to-face or by phone. (If you know any updated data on this  – let me know). So 49% of the time sales reps are doing something else besides selling. Can you imagine if that happened on a manufacturing supply chain??? The six-sigma guys would have a field day with that one. Sometimes, I wonder if some companies plan to continue to add administrative duties every month to their sales person’s plate until they spend 1% of their time selling.  I can imagine them saying: “Hey, we need to track this, let’s add the 150th field to the Opportunity Tab!”

Matt’s 10 sales productivity hacks with a little bit of funnel-ness to each:

1. Batch admin work

Matt: Don’t get in the habit of making a call, leaving a voicemail, then disrupting your phone time to record the conversation in CRM, send a follow-up email, etc.

• Batch work items together to get and keep yourself in a groove. For example, make 10 calls all at once.
• Keep notes on a pad of paper for any unique follow-ups.
• Then do all of your CRM and follow-up work at once.

This batching of activities is proven to be faster and more efficient than doing everything in a linear sequence over and over and over again.

Craig: I am a fan of the double-tap which means you leave a voicemail and send an email within minutes. So I recommend doing setting up blocks of time to deliver double taps. Trish Bertuzzi once gave me a saying that I try to live by: “10 before 10″ (10 calls before 10am.)  Everyone who sells gets derailed by admin tasks and it can be painful. For example, I have to do my own prospecting so I set blocks of time to do it and nothing is allowed to get in the way of my output.

2. Automate parallel or redundant tasks

Matt: Anywhere you can automate activity on parallel tracks, you save steps and save time. Email is a great example. Every Salesforce.com user has a unique email address assigned to them. If you blind-copy yourself with that email address on any outbound email to a customer or prospect, it’ll automatically record that email as an activity in the contact or lead’s record. No need to go in and mark that separately.

Craig:  I will make one recommendation to sales managers: Sit with your reps for a couple hours and watch what they have to deal with doing their jobs. Ride-alongs are critical to not only listen to them make calls but to watch how they work and find ways to eliminate waste. There are things you can only see if you are sitting with them. DocuSign and the e-signature movement is a game-changer for me. I hate the back-and-forth of paperwork and as such, DocuSign is one of the bigger no-brainer applications on the market today to eliminate un-necessary time-wasting.

3. Automate buying signal & trigger event alerts

Matt:  Driving efficiency on your sales floor is about more than just eliminating steps & tasks. It’s also driven by automating the filtering, highlighting and execution of prospect touch-points that are more likely to generate a response & conversation. Every day, there are buying signals and trigger events among your prospects & customers worth following up on. Here are some tips to manage them:

• Don’t search through social channels all day
• Set up a series of alerts using apps such as LinkedIn, Newsle, OFunnel to bring those alerts to your inbox.
• Dedicate time each day (first thing in the morning is ideal) to process through these alerts (By doing outreach in the morning, you increase the likelihood that you get a response later that same day.

Craig: I like this recommendation. Buying signals are so powerful when used correct, but you can’t have sales people doing research all day. Other apps to look at: Socedo, SocialPandas, Compile, InsideView…

4. Develop and follow a prospect/account research process

Matt: Do you leave your sales reps to their own devices to research a prospect before a meeting or call? How much time should this take anyway?

• Create a standardized system or process to increase both consistency and success of these efforts while significantly reducing the time it takes to complete.
• Design a three-minute process for each rep to follow prior to any new prospect call.
• Check LinkedIn profiles, do a quick Google search, etc. to identify a specific set of information to leverage in the call.
• Use the information as an ice-breaker, to begin a consultative conversation, etc.
• Train the team on how to do this quickly, cleanly and efficiently.

This alone could cut up to an hour a day of non-selling time for some of your reps.

Craig: I have stolen the 3X3 rule from Vorsight. (I am on the record with this theft). Find 3 tidbits you can use to sell in 3 minutes or less. If you don’t find anything, the Alec Baldwin in Glengarry rule is in effect: “Are they all here? Well, I am going anyway.”

5. Invest in better tools (penny wise, quota foolish)

Matt: Don’t be penny-wise but quota-foolish when it comes to tools investments. What would you spend to get even a 10% increase in productivity.Take Velocify, for example, which could help your sales reps more quickly decide who to call next. How much time do your reps currently waste deciding who to call? And what if they decide to call someone that’s not as ready for that call, and that decreases their connect and success rates? All of a sudden, that tool investment looks mighty attractive.

Craig: Well, don’t mind if I do. Find out more about Matt’s views on sales tools at the Funnelholic Sales Summit on April 17th. (I love finding reasons to deliver gratuitous promotions). Also, LeadSpace is another application that allow sales reps to quickly score contacts and decide who to call next.

6. Fewer victory laps

Matt: This can be hard to enforce, but a disciplined sales rep can save themselves a ton of time by simply staying in their seat and moving to the next task. Breaks are fine, but we’ve all seen reps get an ounce of momentum on the phone, then get up and refresh coffee, flirt with the receptionist, etc. Encourage your reps to stay in the zone longer, and establish some rewards at the end if necessary.

Craig: We call this “peacocking”. Needless to say, I am a notorious peacock. I can’t sit in my seat for more than 20 minutes. (Imagine how long it takes me to write a blog post!)

7. Better leads

Matt: Better leads not more leads. More leads might mean the reps are calling prospects who aren’t ready to buy. Their dials and talk time might increase, but their conversion rates will suffer. Many sales organizations see dramatic increases in productivity and output by delivering fewer leads to the sales team, but ensuring that those leads are qualified and ready for the conversation.

Craig: A-men.

8. Invest in great sales operations teams

Matt:  Great sales operations can be the most important investment in sales productivity you can make. Read more about why we think that here.

Craig: Agree and agree. An investment in just one person wholly focused on sales productivity will drive far greater returns than their cost. Sales leaders like to use their budget on headcount so it’s a big leap. But one thing I will mention is that sales operations are not just glorified IT guys. They focus on the sales process, reporting and analytics, and technology (not just implementing but ensuring successful onboarding). That sounds worth it right? It should.

9. Improve the organization & availability of good content

Matt: How much time does your sales team waste looking for the right piece of content to get to their prospect based on their unique stage of the buying process? When they find it, is it the most accurate and up to date content? Does your team know which piece of content (or type of content) is most appropriate for each prospect at each stage? Enormous efficiency gain potential here.

Craig: OR — do they send the same piece of content every time? I once shadowed a rep who had been sending the same piece of content for three years. Content selling is one of the biggest game-changers in sales effectiveness. Your goal is to enable sales to deliver the right content to the right buyer at the right time. In order to do that, you need a centralized content repository that is updated and managed. And (drum roll please…), sales needs to know where it is (no joke) and how to use it (Again not a joke). KnowledgeTree is a good app to check out for this.

10. Structure meeting time better

Matt: This applies to both 1:1 meetings with your reps as well as group meetings.

• 1:1 meetings: have a specific agenda and keep your time focused. If you complete the agenda early and there’s nothing left to discuss, give everybody their time back.
• Group meetings: have an agenda as well and ensure that what’s covered is relevant to as many people in the room as possible. Pipeline reviews for example can be highly inefficient for the rest of the room if all you’re doing is focusing on one rep’s pipeline at a time with little to no value for the rest of the room.

Craig: On the other hand, please make sure you have meetings. Sales people often feel left in the dark. They only hem and haw when your meetings are a waste of time.

Wow, that was fun — almost like a conversation! Ok, now check out the Sales Summit on April 17th — Matt will be there and we will have FUN!

What do successful brands use Twitter for? According to a survey by Statista, companies use Twitter to boost brand awareness rather than sales.

Over 90% of Twitter’s revenue is from advertising and promoted accounts, particularly via mobile, but according to studies the company has had trouble attracting marketers.

In a recent report from Socialbakers only 23% of marketers said they use Twitter’s ad platform, compared to Facebook which 92% of marketers said they use.

Driving sales on Twitter doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as important as spreading brand awareness for companies.

According to Statista’s chart, 72% of brands use Twitter to increase brand awareness, 58% use it to drive traffic, 55% use it to engage existing customers, and 51% use it to find new leads.

Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn all rank above Twitter in social media companies that are utilized for marketing.

It should be noted that Twitter’s ads are currently only available to certain regions around the world.

You can check out the survey’s results here.

As LinkedIn gives sales professionals direct access to targeted decision-makers and influencers, it can be and should be one of the most powerful tools in their arsenal. However, many sales professionals complain that they are not getting an ROI from their LinkedIn efforts. They are making many connections, but they are generating very little leads and sales.

There are many reasons for why this is happening, including:

• Poor targeting; they are connecting with anyone that comes their way.
• Having a resume-based LinkedIn profile that does not pique their interest further since it’s not case study driven.
• Only spending 15 to 30 minutes per day on LinkedIn. This does not give you time to make meaningful connections, build a community of key decision-makers who have an interest in your area of expertise, nourish relationships, or engage in conversations.
• Taking the five actions listed below.

Ineffective LinkedIn Action #1: Email Scraping

Inside one of the LinkedIn groups that I belong to, the CEO of a high-tech industry business development firm mentioned he’s using software that scrolls through LinkedIn and extracts the contact information of people who represent his ideal target market. He’s then transporting the information with one click of the mouse to his Salesforce CRM where his sales team can send personal emails introducing his services. Sounds good in theory, right?

However, he is “cold emailing” out of the blue.

Instead of taking the time to build and maintain relationships with key decision-makers by providing value where they want to opt in for more information and enter his CRM, the CEO is forcing prospects into their funnel. These prospects he’s entering into his database are not even marketing qualified, as they have not shown any interest or need.

Ineffective LinkedIn Action #2: Trying to Sell Too Soon

Once a connection is made on LinkedIn, or once a prospect joins a LinkedIn community, many sales executives try messaging the prospect with a quick description of their products and/or solutions. They then suggest a phone call to discuss how their company can help their new connection. Most of the time, these messages are ignored. In fact, one sales executive I recently spoke to mentioned that he may get two responses for every 100 to 150 emails he sends.

Prospects on LinkedIn don’t want to be sold to overtly. In fact, a recent LinkedIn report for the technology industry shows that 75 percent of IT buyers would be willing to connect with a vendor, but they are hesitant because they don’t want to be inundated with marketing and sales pitches. They want to be educated. They want relevant content that will help them with their challenges so they can make smarter business decisions. Focus first on establishing a relationship and demonstrating your thought leadership and relevance, then on moving prospects down your sales funnel.

Related Class: LinkedIn Marketing Engagement Strategies

Ineffective LinkedIn Action #3: Using LinkedIn Groups as a Place to Distribute Your Newsfeed

Many sales executives are taking advantage of LinkedIn groups. They’re useful for prospecting, but also as a place to get wide exposure with targeted audiences, as you can easily share content. However, they’re sharing content in an ineffective manner.

Before working with my LinkedIn marketing firm, a CEO of a software firm for the recruiting industry had his sales team post content at least three to four times a week, sometimes more. But they were generating very little traffic and leads from LinkedIn.

The sales team was not creating relevant, thought-provoking discussions that had context and standalone value. They were simply sharing the first couple lines of the blog post and a link, so there was no engagement. Their links were getting lost in the deluge of wall-to-wall newsfeed-like posts, press releases, and promotional content.

By creating real conversations and earning the right to get their prospects’ attention by sharing valuable insights before linking to the CEO’s blog, we increased traffic by 3,620 percent in six weeks.

Ineffective LinkedIn Action #4: Becoming Too Much of a Resource

Many social media experts tell you to share other people’s content 80 percent of the time and your content 20 percent. On LinkedIn, I think it should be reversed. Most sales executives are so focused on curating and sharing other people’s content that they are becoming known as a resource. But, prospects invest in thought leaders. You’re able to put content directly in front of key decision-makers – yet you are sharing industry news and other people’s content. Our clients are sharing their case studies and thought leadership information and getting 11.5 times more engagement.

Ineffective LinkedIn Action #5: Focusing Too Much on Gated Content

As I mentioned several times throughout this article, your prospects on LinkedIn want a value-added relationship with potential vendors. But they don’t want to jump through hoops and break down gates to get the information that can help them with their business decision. They want you to act like the rest of their network (their peers and established experts) by having a point of view and freely sharing valuable content.

As a marketer myself, I know the importance of landing pages and getting prospects to sign up for white papers, webinars, and other offerings. But you need to prove to decision-makers that they’ll want to enter the next stage of the relationship.

Now that you know what’s not working on LinkedIn, fix your actions. Then, let me know if you start generating more leads and sales using LinkedIn.

Image Credit: Pat Loika/Flickr

Scoring sales leads based on computer-generated predictions of how hot they will be — that’s great, but it’s not enough of a step forward for data startup Infer.

At a company event in San Francisco later today, Infer cofounder and chief executive Vik Singh will announce a simple new user interface for setting powerful priorities for leads as well as new features that can give salespeople good ideas about how they should spend their time.

“This is going to allow companies to do a variety of things to drive up conversions,” Singh said in an interview with VentureBeat.

Infer’s cloud-based software integrates its technology with popular customer-relationship management software, like Salesforce.com, as well as marketing-automation systems like Eloqua and Marketo.

Taking in data as it does from many seemingly unimportant sources — like whether a potential sales lead’s website has a shopping cart — and using it to improve marketing and sales processes positions startups like Infer as key innovators in these areas. The approach could lead to more sales.

Other newcomers analyzing lots of different kinds of data to boost sales include RelateIQ.

Infer, based in Palo Alto, Calif., has been riding on the $10 million round of funding it announced last April. Infer counts AdRoll, Box, Jive Software, Tableau, and Zendesk as customers.

Infer has been busy building a new self-service frontend for marketing and sales managers to train Infer’s system for categorizing and scoring leads. The startup has been slowly rolling out the new user interface on Infer.com to customers. It’s a step up from the previous user interface, which Infer engineers had to walk customers through, Singh said.

On the new system, a manager can log in and drag and drop sliders to adjust the parameters for the A, B, C, and D buckets for sales leads, based on the scores Infer has already assigned to the leads. Those dead-simple buckets will get pushed down into the interface that individual salespeople and marketers see alongside the leads they can work on. The whole point is to prevent such people from wasting time on leads that probably won’t become paying customers.

Above: Infer’s filtering page.

Image Credit: Infer

Managers can drill down to individual data points comprising the formulas for Infer’s lead scoring algorithm. A cluster of different-colored bubbles gives a cute-looking graphical representation of the weight of the factors in relation to one another.

Above: Infer’s visualization of factors of lead scores.

Image Credit: Screen shot

Managers can tweak the rules in place for the algorithm, too. For instance, they can dictate that the number of job openings should be greater than 10, and they can make that the highest-priority rule.

A dashboard visualizes the results of the leads — which led purchases, which got rejected, and so on. If they don’t like the results, they can go back and change the configurations for the lead-scoring system.

Above: Infer’s dashboard showing what happens to leads.

Image Credit: Screen shot

Infer is also adding to its own site a series of “applications,” or more practically, more ways to make sense of all the data Infer is analyzing. Infer lets managers assign certain categories of leads to particular salespeople. It shows tidbits of information from Google AdWords to show which campaigns are working better than others. And it provides tips on data points that managers might not have given much thought to, which can help marketers push our more applicable messaging.

Singh’s example: 60 percent of closed accounts run servers on public cloud Amazon Web Services. Marketers could then mention Amazon Web Services in their email and other marketing output and thereby improve results.

Infer even lets managers set rules about how fast Infer’s service runs for different kinds of leads.

“There are so many different ways you can drive up conversions,” Singh said. “This is what heads of sales and heads of marketing care about. This is what they’re asking us for and what delivers on.”

Social media has historically been a great conversational tool for businesses. It has enabled engagement and interaction between the brand and the consumer -- but as marketers, we crave more. We want to impact the bottom line, enable our sales team to be successful, and be an integral part of achieving the overall company goals.

Thankfully, we've learned that there's a layer of science behind social media marketing, and we can actually extract highly valuable data that can inform our overall inbound marketing strategy.

The key to getting the science of social right is in realizing all of the data that is actually available to us, and utilizing it in a meaningful way. Digital marketing is, afterall, about not having to guess any more as the data informs the strategy.

Social data takes that insight to a whole other level. Richer and more connected, we can use social data in the following ways:

1. Segment Based on Sales Cycle Stage

With so much conversation online, it's hard to know what we should be paying attention to, or at least, what to prioritize. Segmenting your social contacts based on where they're at in the sales cycle is something that few companies are aware they can do. The data is available, all you need is a system in place to filter for it.

HubSpot's Social Inbox tool helps to sort through the clutter to bring you the important data - colour-coded - to make it really easy to spot important social conversations from your prospects, leads, and customers, and use that data to inform your strategy.

Once you have the information at your fingertips, you can start to use it in your inbound marketing strategy and send your sales team some really engaged and highly qualified leads.

A really cool example of using this data in a meaningful way is in setting up social monitoring streams. You can create a stream for each of your sales reps with a list of their leads and quickly get notified if one of those leads mentions your company name, or any variety of keywords that would indicate interest or intent to hear more from you. 

2. Find Out What's Working for Your Competitors

Social Crawlytics is a free tool that allows you to see what platforms your competitor's content is getting shared on most. You can export that data into an excel spreadsheet and sort by the different networks to see what content resonated best on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can then take that information to:

1. Identify your competitor's most successful content
2. Identify the influencers who promoted and amplified their content
3. Identify their most successful authors

This process really helps you build out your content strategy because most likely, what's working for them will work for you as well. 

Another way to track what's going on with your competitors is through HubSpot's Social Inbox, which can help identify pain points from people who are using your products, but purchased from competitors. You can do this by setting up a stream to monitor Twitter for your product names as well as your competitor's name, then set it up to receive a daily email notification that sums what conversations people are having online about them. If there are some negative comments, you can always jump in and offer a free trial of your product or service to cheer them up!

3. Find Influencers and High-Performing Content

BuzzSumo is another free tool that helps you find influencers and content that's performing really well under different keywords and phrases. You can find good people, brands and companies to carry out co-marketing campaigns with, as well as content topics that are performing well at any given time.

If you are a HubSpot customer, you can also use the Social Inbox monitoring functionality to find influencers by creating a stream for people mentioning a particular keyword or keywords. 

4. Spot the Trends

Bottlenose can inform our content strategy by allowing us to spot and visualise emerging trends and threats to our business across social media, and track what instigated them, how long they will last, as well as what drives them. Using Bottlenose, we can create some real-time marketing that's relevant to what people are interested in consuming at any given time.

5. Find Your Most Engaged Audience

Monitoring social enables us to see how people interact with our content and can tell us a lot about where we should be focusing our efforts; topics to write about, formats to deliver it in, and where to promote it.

Look at your page analytics to see where your social traffic is coming from. If you get more Twitter traffic on a certain topic or format of content, it may be worthwhile looking at investing in some paid distribution on that network to get even more traction.

Using HubSpot's Analytics, you can clearly identify which platforms worked better for a particular piece of content.

With this tool, you can clearly see the ROI of your social media efforts and see where you are generating revenue for your company; what efforts are generating interactions, visits, leads and most importantly -- customers. This is a big step forward in social media monitoring as 53% of social media marketers don't measure their success. (Source: Awareness, Inc.) 

6. Integrate Social Data with Your CRM or Contacts Database  

Now that you know you have access to all of this information, integrating it into your CRM or contact database, will finally allow you make it even more meaningful to your strategy. Having social data as well as a complete history of your leads and customer's activity in one place is invaluable to your company, and you can finally stop wasting time on what doesn't work, as well as equipping your sales team with the information to help them close more deals.

With HubSpot's Lead Management tool, you can clearly see all of the historic activity for any contact, including emails sent, conversations on social media, web pages visited, etc. so you can tailor every conversation to be a more personalised experience for the contact.

For a deeper insight into what's possible with social media marketing, join our webinar on March 27th with UK marketing agencies, Distilled and Zazzle Media. 

When setting the course for your company, first think about how your company fits into the world around you.

The two most important questions for entrepreneurs looking to take their business to the next level? “How can we play our current hands of cards better” and “How is the world changing around us and why?”

Both questions are essential for identifying a successful business strategy and eventually need to be tightly integrated. But where you start may influence greatly where you end up.

Let me explain: The first question represents an inside-out approach to strategy since it starts with your own strengths and weaknesses. Naturally, it's good to know this, but if you focus too much on your own internal issues, you could miss the bigger picture--along with any chance of fostering radical innovation and disruptive strategies.

So, in addition to that question, the second question is even more important since it forces you to look outside your business. That outside-in approach has the advantage of making you scan wider and not prejudge whether some external changes are good or bad. Here are two ways to adopt outside-in strategies.

Start with outward focused questions

In traditional planning sessions, a company’s leader may ask “how can we serve our customers better” or “how should we improve our products?” Both are highly relevant questions, but they're not the best ones to start with. Instead, save them until the end of your meetings, since these questions bring the discussion back to yourself and help close the loop.

At the start, it is better to ask “why are many customers not buying from us” or “in which ways do our competitors offer superior products?” These questions force you look at your company from the outside in.
Research shows that an external market-driven orientation leads to superior results because it overcomes such common human tendencies as myopia and confirmation bias. By asking why customers don’t always favor you, the team puts itself in your customer’s shoes.

The answers won’t be about product features, relative costs or capacity utilization. Instead words like "trust," "long-run relationships," "superior benefits," "solutions," and "valuable partner" may come to the fore. Your team will be thinking about the changing needs of your customers as well as your competitor’s intentions and capabilities.

Bake the policy into your strategy sessions

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, showcased the outside-in business philosophy when he said, “…rather than ask what we are good at…you ask who are our customers? What else do they need? And then you say we are going to give that to them regardless of whether we have the skills to do so…"

Your company may already have practiced outside-in thinking by “stapling yourself to a customer order” (to imagine what they experience), or role-playing your toughest competitor or undertaking a review of lost sales. Most likely, however, these are only occasional forays into the customer’s world, rather than practices deeply baked into your company’s mind-set.

Some firms can sustain themselves with inside-out thinking for long time, especially if competitors think the same way or if they have a very good hand of cards to play. But this is not a safe approach in turbulent markets where new competitors are challenging conventional wisdom, offshore entrants are arriving with deeply discounted prices or technological changes disrupt the business model.

Effective responses demand fresh outside-in thinking that understands the turbulence better. Eventually, the outside-in questions must be connected to the inside-out ones as well in order to become actionable. Just make sure you start with the outside-in approach since internal organizational forces usually pull the discussion inward anyway.

Note from Lee: It is with great joy that I get to  introduce new TopRank Marketers to our readers here at Online Marketing Blog. Ever since Brooke Furry joined our team, she has been opening up smiles on the people around her. Turns out, she’s pretty good at getting people to open emails too.  Please welcome Brooke as a contributor to Online Marketing Blog! 

If an email arrives in Judy’s inbox and she never opens it, was it worth the send?

Email Marketing is all about the open. Digital marketers who throw their hearts and souls into creating email campaigns with real personality and value know that regular, consistent email campaigns can accomplish great things. But even if you’re sending something you think your target audience will love, who’s going to know, care, or click if you can’t get them to open it?

Unlike the latest social media tactic du jour, email marketing is nothing new.  For over 30 years when the first emails arrived in an inbox, brand emails have had to combat everything from message size limits to spam filters to the Gmail message categories of today. But it’s not time to throw a funeral for email marketing. It’s time to get out the whiteboard and start strategizing.

Marketers seek leads and conversions – and if the statistics don’t lie, the ROI on email marketing for B2B and B2C companies is one of the best. According to an Econsultancy article, half of all businesses achieve over 10% of their sales through email marketing. As Hubspot reports, 91% of people check their email every day. Email marketing may not be snazzy or new, but it works.

If email marketing is so successful, what’s the challenge? The issue is that nearly 2 billion non-spam emails being sent every day, and inboxes are cluttered. In order to reach email marketing success, marketers need to break through the noise and filters.

So what’s the secret to get those emails from cyberspace to your customers’ inboxes with high odds for an open? Here are 6 email marketing tips to make your investment worth the send.

Build a reputation for really helpful, valuable emails

It’s hard to land that one-in-a-million emotional concept that will floor your audience. Many email marketers struggle to come up with campaigns that will resonate with their customers for just that reason – they think they haven’t hit “The Big Idea” that will work yet.

But you don’t have to dangle pictures of golden retriever puppies or offers for free coffee in order to get opens. That may work for pet stores and cafes – but many brands just don’t do warm fuzzies or coupons. If you’re worried about bombarding your customer base with emails that seem too salesy, don’t be salesy! Start by delivering helpful, valuable information. You can:

• Conduct a survey and offer to share the results
• Share top blog posts or articles from your website
• Give your audience a free preview of a new whitepaper or ebook

You know more than anyone else what your target audience needs to hear. If you live by this concept every time you send an email, your audience will begin to trust that you don’t want to waste their time – and that you actually have something important to say.

Promise something specific in the subject line – and deliver

The subject matters. Litmus reported that nearly a third of people will decide to open or not based on the subject line alone. Why are you emailing these people? Don’t mess with your email recipients. Although creativity can be appreciated, the subject line is no place to play around. Be clear about the purpose and scope of the email. Don’t risk confusing your audience with wordy titles.

In fact,  a recent study by MarketingProfs showed that 6-10 word subject lines yielded the highest open rates, despite over half of all emails containing subject lines of 11-15 words.

So be concise and clear, and, in the words of John Mayer, just “say what you need to say.”

Craft to-the-point summary pre-header text

Whether your recipients use Gmail or the mail application on their iPhone, the first line of the email will show up to preview the contents. Many marketers go with the  “Can’t see this email? View it online” text.  Don’t. As Pamella Neely at Web Marketing Today points out, you can use this scant 50-character space to give recipients one more reason to open your email. If you can get them wanting to finish just one sentence – the first! – then there’s a good chance you’ll achieve that coveted open.

Make sure it appears nice on mobile

More email is read on mobile devices than on desktops, according to Litmus. Will your email display well? If your recipients have opened your email in the past and been unimpresed, don’t expect them to try again in good faith. Deliver emails that look good no matter the device.

Test timing and wording as much as you tweak visual design

While many marketers report spending more time on design than on testing and optimization, the fact remains: nobody will care what it looks like if they don’t open it. Conduct A/B testing on your subject lines. Send emails at different times to test effectiveness.

Studies show that smartphone users are grabbing their phones immediately in the morning – will sending emails bright and early work for your audience? Mid-morning may work better for emails that people have to engage with, like a survey or questionnaire.

Try to avoid weekends. Weekdays tend to be more effective times to deliver emails.

Climb into your own inbox

What kind of subject line, intro text, and email copy do you tend to pay attention to, and what do you tend to ignore? Create the kind of emails that you would open yourself. If you wouldn’t open it, why should anyone else?

Try increasing your open rates by paying more attention to these 6 areas. Through time, effort, and testing, you can increase those open rates to attract, engage and convert your subscribers into buyers. When people actually open your emails, you have won a moment where someone is listening – and in a busy, cluttered world, that privilege is valuable, indeed!

What tactics have you used to increase your email open rates?

Photo: Shutterstock

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2014. | Email Marketing Essentials: A Checklist for Writing Emails That Get Opened | http://www.toprankblog.com

Finding the right prospective buyers and then actually having conversations with them are the top two challenges most sellers are facing now.

In order to find the right buyers and interact with them you need to firmly understand the market niche that you are going after and who your buyers are. You need to know how to find these buyers, and then determine what your options are in connecting with them.

Understanding Your Target Market 

The easiest way to determine who your best future buyers are is to take a look at your best current and past customers. What characteristics do they have? What makes them such great customers for you and your company?  If they represent an untapped market niche, you could certainly look for more companies like them in the same industry / niche.

You can also often make some progress in attempting to reach them by referencing the fact that you’ve worked with others in their industry.

Look Socially

If assigned a vertical territory of financial services I would do several things right away:

• look at who my existing and past customers in financial services are
•  look to see other companies my contacts in my client companies are associated with through their LinkedIn profile.  (These are companies I’d want to start following and looking for contacts in that could be connected to my existing contacts)
•  create a list of companies that fit my target within the financial services sector based on factors important to my best targeted buyer profile
• take these targeted companies and start looking for contact names if I didn’t have them already

Calls would be placed right away. Yep, I’d start dialing sooner than most people working to create a “perfect” list.

Why?

It takes many attempts to reach potential buyers, and my contacts will be receiving a multi-faceted approach. I will be calling them, emailing (assuming I have their email or can figure it out), and reaching out via LinkedIn. Additionally, I will find strategic partners in financial services who can refer me to those they are aware of. This one tip can cut the time from research to conversation dramatically.

Bottom line - even though I have massive options for research, I need to get out there and talk to people. Any way you can get a conversation going, you need to do that. Find helpful people within targeted companies to learn the lay of the land and to gain insight that leads you to anyone on the decision making team. This team will be made up of several to 6 or so people.

Next we’ll talk about all of the options you have to connect and reach potential buyers.

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

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

The post Reaching Prospects appeared first on Score More Sales.

Marketing analytics application Bizible just released a report on multi-touch attribution after tracking every single marketing touch for nearly 500,000 leads and analyzing how the various marketing touches affect: revenue, marketing cycle, win rates, and more..This post will dive into a few of the more surprising findings that are broadly applicable to companies with sales teams.

1. Search dominates ‘first touch’ leads

When looking at first touch, defined as the first point of contact a visitor has with the website, search (a mix of paid and organic) drove or the majority of leads — 56%. The next highest channel that can be directly controlled was social at just 5%. In fact, social, email, and display combined accounted for just 8% of leads.

2. Win rates varied across the board

Since all the companies in the analysis use a CRM, closed leads can either be lost or won. When looking at which first touch marketing channels at the highest win rates, Bizible found at direct was (though not surprisingly) the highest at 57% and search was second at 41%. However, display came in the lowest at just 12%. This means that the first marketing touch has a significant weight on the win rate and quality of the lead and opportunity.

3. Social dominates the marketing cycle

Marketing cycle, that is the time from the very first marketing touch to when the lead was converted into an opportunity (typically when the marketing cycle ends and the sales cycle begins), was dominated by social which was only 18 days. For comparison, search was 22 days and the worst was email at 54 days.

4. Referral generates the most revenue per deal

The first marketing touch of referral generated revenue 1.4x average while search was 0.9 and social the lowest at 0.73. Surprisingly, email generated more revenue per deal than search.

In summary, search is a powerful channel for B2B companies, but all channels have their place. The important takeaway is the importance of tracking customers to their first touch rather than last touch.