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17 Jul 16:21

Why Growth Hacking Isn’t Growing Your Bottom Line

by Patrick Dodge
Permission based marketing

I asked Gaetano to join me in a discussion about permission based marketing and growth hacking – and where the boundaries lie with user consent. Here’s a lightly edited version of our conversation.

Gaetano DiNardi pissed off a bunch of marketers recently.

We run in the same circles on LinkedIn, and I’d been watching his content for a while when I saw him post something that stopped me in my tracks.

He said the most disturbing trend in marketing today is “influencers” promoting spam tactics to their fans and calling it “growth hacking.”

He went on to describe how a well-known marketer recently posted about a way to hack Product Hunt. This marketer told his followers to export their LinkedIn connections, email contacts, and merge them into a CSV and upload them all into Product Hunt for their next launch.

Then you can send people notifications and updates about your launch, regardless of whether they asked for it.

This tip drew the usual thunderous applause from people in the Facebook Group where the post went up, but Gaetano was not impressed. And he called the guy out, telling him this is a terrible tactic that amounts to little more than spam.

The whole interaction got me thinking about the forces at work behind this.

The Two Opposing Forces in B2B Marketing Today

GDPR and finding the path of least resistance

There are two dichotomies at odds with each other in marketing today.

On one hand, we’ve got GDPR forcing us to take consumer data more seriously than ever before. We have to pay close attention to how data is managed and used, and we have to be very transparent about this with users.

On the other, the growth hacking community is obsessed with finding the path of least resistance to building a massive following. They are taking liberties with user data that many people (including enforcers of consumer data laws) would not be okay with.

I asked Gaetano for his take on this.

“The whole idea of permission-based marketing is we’re not supposed to send unsolicited email promotions to people who haven’t given us permission, and taking it a step forward. We now need their permission to send them the stuff that they originally agreed to receive,” he said.

Related: Get Peace of Mind: A Final Look at Your GDPR Compliance Checklist (24 Steps)

It all comes down to explicit vs. implicit consent

“It really comes down to the idea of explicit versus implicit consent. We don’t want to jeopardize our business in any way, but really there’s still a lot of gray area about this. It really comes down to how much are you willing to risk. A lot of these startups feel the big GDPR laws are not going to be as laser focused on a company like ours as opposed to Verizon or Time Warner.”

“That may be true to some degree, but look at what happens in these Facebook Groups. The majority of the people are amateur startup marketers. They’re just looking to chase the next big shiny object, and it’s a bunch of people just sort of posting hacky ways to get ahead of the game.

“When I saw that post I was like, oh man. Not only is this a GDPR nightmare, do you really want CEOs you may have connected with on LinkedIn to suddenly start getting your spammy updates on some product that’s not even relevant to them?”

As he wrote about this on LinkedIn, Gaetano tagged the CEO of Product Hunt to get his thoughts, and he said there’s not much they can do about this.

“This is not marketing and when I challenged the person who posted this tactic, not only did I receive lots of backlash from people in the group, but the group’s owner took the defensive posture that it’s not spam until everyone starts doing it. If you’re ahead of the curve with finding new ways to break through, it’s only spam when everybody else catches up.”

That’s shaky ground there.

Related: GDPR Could Cut Your Sales Pipeline in Half—Here’s What You Can Do About It

Growth Hacking Is Not a Strategy

The problem with this approach to growth hacking, according to Gaetano, is that you continually have to discover and deploy new hacks to stay ahead. When everybody else catches on and starts doing it, you have to find the next big thing. It’s not a sustainable strategy.

For the record, the GH community also spends a lot of time talking about the mechanics and work ethic of content creation. The hard work that forms the basis of every good marketing strategy, but these lessons sometimes get eclipsed by hacking tactics like the one mentioned above.

We talked a bit about the importance of building a strong foundation of organic traffic based on keywords, content, link acquisition, email, social, and marketing automation, and then adding layers of “growth hacks” that will add jet fuel to your marketing.

It’s not easy to get to that point today, and I think the problem lies there.

Why Do We Need Growth Hacking?

Content marketing is more than a grind these days.

Some industries are so competitive it’s damn near impossible for a startup to establish a foothold without an extremely niche-focused strategy. And even then success is not guaranteed. One of my favorite marketers, Mark Schaefer, writes about this at length in his book, “The Content Code.

Amazing content is not enough

In it, he states what so many of us feel, but are afraid to say out loud – amazing content is not enough. Not anymore. Today, you need an amplification and promotion strategy that gets your content to move. Startups, in particular, have no time and resources to waste. They need ways to get ahead fast.

This is why growth hacking is a thing.

This is why so many well-intentioned marketers are willing to try tactics that bend the rules of permission-based marketing pretty hard. They are desperate for an audience. And scraping emails from various lists blasting them with messages from another site can sound awesome, despite the risks.

Related: PODCAST 15: The Art and Science of Pipeline Generation

The gray area in retargeting vs. growth hacking

Here’s where it gets complicated. Facebook has allowed us to do this for years. In ten minutes you can upload a contact list and start targeting a custom audience right away.

So why is retargeting okay, while other growth hacking tactics are not-so-okay? Gaetano and I agree the answer lies in this gray area where users accept they will be retargeted when they opt-in to your contact list.

But emailing them from other sites and apps isn’t so cool. Here’s why.

Marketers Have to be Accountable

When users opt-in for emails from your website, they expect to hear from you about certain things. GDPR tells us to go a step further and specify what we intend to email them about, and how their data will be managed.

But when you upload email addresses to another site and start sending people messages, you are no longer accountable from the user perspective. They are getting messages they haven’t opted for, and when it’s coming from another site, they may not necessarily place the blame where it belongs.

“There is a buffer layer between [the users] and [marketers] and if people get pissed they just unsubscribe from this other site,” Gaetano said, “but they won’t make a spam complaint against us.”

This is an important point. Marketers must be accountable to their contacts if trust (and legality) will be maintained. That accountability disappears if you are using another site as a buffer between the user and your brand.

Getting By With a Little Help From Your Friends

Sean Ellis, the founder and CEO of GrowthHackers, is the legendary marketer credited with driving explosive growth for several companies, including Dropbox. He’s a brilliant guy who realized early on that activating your most loyal customers can achieve powerful results. In one example, Dropbox offers 16 GB of free space to people who sign up their friends, and it worked famously.

It seems to me this sort of referral sales embodies the true spirit of growth hacking because it puts the power directly into the user’s hands, incentivizing them to tell your story.

This may or may not always involve a tangible reward, but as Schaefer reminds us, activating your alpha audience is key to viral growth.

“That to me is the pillar of growth hacking,” Gaetano says. “At the end of the day, it can be very simple idea. How can you make an impact with fewer resources, and still get a sizable return on those efforts?

“The thing is you want to hit people in that early adoption phase. These tactics include simple things we don’t ordinarily think of as a growth hack. Take Uber and Lyft that say invite your friend and give them a couple of free rides. That in itself is a growth hack.”

If It’s Legit, You Should Plan and Test It

One piece that’s often missing from these discussions about growth hacking is how it fits into the overall strategy. If you are experimenting with an idea, it should be tested and measured against clear objectives.

How to evaluate whether a campaign is worth running or not

“You have to figure out how long to run the experiment. And the cost – not just money, but also sweat equity from the team.

What are other things could you have done instead that may have been more valuable? All these sorts of things need to be taken into consideration. A growth hack has to be treated like a campaign. You have to agree what the outcomes should be, and determine whether it was successful and worth doing again. ”

It’s equally important to figure out whether the tactic is worth trying in the first place. For example, Sales Hacker uses a system called BRASS (Blink, Relevance, Availability, Scalability, Score). This is how they assign a numeric values to different aspects of an idea to evaluate its worthiness.

Where growth hacking ends and permission based marketing begins

Gaetano feels it’s time for the industry to define exactly what growth hacking is. Where does it stop overlapping with permission based marketing?

When trying something out, you need a good practical framework to validate the impact. You have to know how long to run it and how you will know if it was successful or not.

Growth hacking is a necessary part of marketing today, but it’s important to remember there are no shortcuts to success. If your strategy doesn’t involve hours, days, months and years of hard work – you are building something that won’t last. Guaranteed.

The post Why Growth Hacking Isn’t Growing Your Bottom Line appeared first on Sales Hacker.

17 Jul 16:20

Cold calling? These 3 simple voice techniques will help you close more deals

by steli@close.io (Steli Efti)
tonality in sales

There’s a cold, hard truth about cold calling few sales reps want to admit: It doesn’t actually matter what you say. Sure, you can practice your script until your lips go numb. But those first few words out of your mouth are way less important than how you sound.

What am I talking about?

Take a second and think back to the last time you picked up a call from someone you didn’t know. Before they got to the end of their first sentence, you’d made a judgement call about whether or not you trust them and want to hear what they have to say. In fact, studies agree that communication is only 7% verbal.

That means that when you dial a prospect and they can’t see you, 93% of the potential success of your cold call comes down to the tone of your voice.

When it comes to cold calling, tonality can be one of your biggest strengths or your greatest weaknesses. So how can you make sure you’re doing everything you can to sound confident, smart, and enthusiastic?

Are you making a lot of sales calls? With our newly launched Predictive Dialer, you can spend more time actually talking with prospects, and minimize the time you'll have to listen to dial tones and ringing. Click here to learn more about the first all-in-one CRM with a built-in predictive dialer.

3 simple hacks to sound smarter and more confident on cold calls

When you’re making a cold call, you’re already dealing with a healthy dose of skepticism. The prospect doesn’t know who you are or why you’re calling. And they’re looking for any excuse to get off the phone as quickly as possible.

Sales is all about quickly building trust. And your voice is what instills that trust on a cold call.

So, it’s incredibly important to sound good when talking to prospects. If your tone or style of speaking makes prospects confused, upset, or angry, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling. They’re not going to buy from you.

However, there are a few simple changes you can make to your voice that can help you sound more confident and strong.

These aren’t magic tricks that will make your prospects want to buy from you or not get off the phone. But they are going to dramatically increase the attractiveness of your pitch:

1. Use the right volume level to sound confident and clear

The first thing a prospect is going to notice about your voice is how loudly you’re speaking.

If you’re talking quietly, most ears will interpret that as a lack of confidence. Your prospect will instantly think you’re being quiet because you’re afraid, nervous, and generally unsuccessful—all incredibly unattractive qualities on a sales call. Not only that, but if they have to ask “what?” over and over, you’ve already lost them.

On the other end of the spectrum, yelling at your prospect can come across as aggressive and like you’re overcompensating.

But there’s a sweet spot in the middle where you’re speaking slightly louder than average. Not only does this ensure they hear every word you’re saying. But even just speaking a bit louder than most people makes you sound more confident, in control, and authoritative.

2. Use pacing and cadence to sound intelligent and create a sense of attractive urgency

Close your eyes and imagine you pick up the phone and hear:

“Hello… uhhh.. This is Bob…… you don’t know me… But I.. ummmm. I’m calling from company X….. and…. Can I have a minute… umm… of your time….”

If that sentence was painful to read, imagine what your prospect is feeling when they hear that voice coming out of their phone?

The pace and cadence of your words is another huge factor in how prospects perceive your pitch. Again, if you’re speaking at a below average pace, most ears will interpret that as you being unsure or confused. They’ll think you’re taking your time because you don’t know what you’re saying. And if that’s the case, why should they trust you?

Ironically, speaking slowly also makes it harder to understand what you’re saying. We’re used to a certain pace in conversations and anything below that is frustrating to listen to.

Now, this doesn’t mean you need to speed through your pitch. Again, you want to aim to speak at a pace that’s slightly above average. Not so quick that words and meaning get lost, but fast enough that you sound well rehearsed, confident, and smart.

3. Use body language to build confidence, even when you’re on the phone

You’d never sit at a meeting with your head slumped staring at the floor and expect to get the sale. Yet that’s exactly what so many sales reps do on the phone.

But body language isn’t just for your prospect. Changing how you’re positioned during your cold calls can give you more confidence and energy. And the person on the other end of the line will pick up on it.

When you’re making a cold call, stand up with your shoulders back and chest out. Look up from the ground and smile. Try it now. That energy you’re feeling is going to make its way into your pitch, making you sound confident and excited.

Listen back to your calls and learn how to master the tone of your voice

If you think cold calling is only about your pitch, you’re missing out on 9/10 of what people are actually listening to. When your tone doesn’t match the energy of your pitch, it doesn’t matter what you say, you’ve already lost the person on the other end.

Take some time to listen back to your call recordings and hear how you sound (Close.io can automatically record and securely store all your sales calls. If you haven’t tried our software out yet, start your 14-day free trial today).

Ignore the words and listen to the tone. Do you sound confident? Do you sound smart and strong and organized? Are you speaking slightly louder and faster than most people?

If so, you’re going to sound good. And your prospect’s going to like and trust you. Even if they don’t know why. 

Want to take your calling game to the next level? We've created an entire email course for you that teaches you step by step how to become a cold calling pro.

Start your cold calling course today

17 Jul 16:04

Top Metrics that Measure Inbound Call Center Performance

by Chris Woodard

geralt / Pixabay

Front-facing employees are the lifeblood of a business. Being in the frontlines, they brave through the challenges that come with delivering great customer experience on a daily basis.

According to a 2017 report from Microsoft, 97% of global consumers say customer service impacts brand loyalty and their buying decisions. The job isn’t only about picking up the phone 24/7, it entails establishing customer relationships based on value and satisfaction.

How does a contact center know it’s consistently delivering high quality service? It begins with setting metrics. The right metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) should effectively measure a business’s specific capacities.

Here’s a list of the most crucial metrics that inbound call center must measure.

First Contact Resolution

First Contact Resolution (FCR) is an essential part of managing your company’s relationship with your customers. It is a direct reflection of an agent’s and a center’s capacity to solve problems, answer questions, and provide needs the very first time a customer calls. Simply put, it’s getting it right the first time and reducing customer effort.

From a recent poll, over 60% of contact centers track First Contact Resolution as a KPI. In addition, this metric is known to contribute to customer loyalty while driving the contact center’s profitability. The better a contact center’s FCR is, the more successful and efficient they are in providing solutions rather than creating problems.

FCR is measured by dividing the number of cases resolved in a single call to the total number of issues that have been resolved. Although this sounds easy, it can get quite tricky as certain criteria should be in place. The cases that should be included in the formula are issues that can be resolved during the first call–for example, booking changes, cancellations, and upgrades.

A contact center’s FCR improves when clear goals and outcomes are laid out while continuously tracking agent performance. Training that focuses on the most frequent issues that lead to high AHT can also make agents better problem solvers. It also pays to conduct training that can aid in familiarization of the current tools, policies, and processes so they can provide working solutions to even the most complicated problems. In addition, the use of gamification also fosters friendly competition as it inspires agents to work harder in delivering quality customer service during the first contact.

Cost Per Contact

The Cost Per Contact refers to the expenses related to running a contact center (i.e., operational costs, wages, benefits).

To calculate the average cost per contact, the total cost associated with operating the business is divided by the total number of contacts handled.

Whenever an agent picks up the phone, it costs a contact center money—salary, software, hardware, electricity, etc. Smart Insight’s most recent research indicate that customer service provided over the phone and through SMS are have been rated the least satisfactory in terms of response time and costs. In addition, only 1 in 5 (18%) customers will reach out over the phone if they use a premium rate telephone number.

This metric helps determine which channels are the most effective including phone, email, live chat, SMS, and social media.. The omnichannel customer service approach helps contact centers gain better insight on which communication platform is best suited for delivering quality customer experience. Based on the available data, contact centers can weigh which channels perform better than the rest.

Service Level

A vendor signs a contract or Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a client to seal the deal. The SLA contains the requirements and standards in which the operation of the contact center is based on. The Service Level KPI measures the organization’s alignment with the goals and targets within the SLA.

Some factors that may affect the Service Level include unplanned service outages, high call or ticket volume, and frequency of agent absenteeism. To ensure that a contact center meets the terms stipulated in the SLA, the above factors need to be addressed. In most outsourced inbound call centers, failing to hit the required service level can result to penalties and losing the contract.

The formula in calculating the Service Level might be different depending on the SLA and the contact center’s preferences.

To calculate for the Service Level, divide the total number of calls answered within the threshold by the total number of calls and the total number of abandoned calls. Then multiply the result by one hundred.

A 2016 survey by Call Center Helper shared that 62.7% of call center professionals view Service Level as the most essential KPI.

By deploying reliable call center analytics software, performance-based results can be accurately measured. With real-time access, the service vendor can immediately identify problems and take appropriate action. Likewise, it’s imperative for companies to enable customers to help themselves. This is achieved maintaining a comprehensive knowledge base (FAQs) that customers can use as the first line of support.

Abandoned Call Rate

In an inbound call center setting, the rate of abandoned calls refers to the total number of calls where a caller hangs up before an agent answers.

A report from Glance shows that 67% of customers hang up in frustration while waiting for a customer service representative to answer.

The most common factors that lead to abandoned calls are lengthy wait times and unnecessary hold times. An inefficient IVR system may also cause callers to abandon the queue. To ensure compliance with the SLA, a 5% or lower abandoned call rate needs to be maintained. To compute for the ACR, divide the total number of abandoned calls by the total number of inbound calls.

A method of reducing the number of abandoned calls is to start off the call with ringing rather than going straight to the IVR system. Pre-occupying a caller with the traditional ring can buy agents some time to wrap up current calls and handle the next call in queue. It’s also best to set expectations and be transparent with the wait time. Callers tend to wait longer when they know exactly how long they need to wait for.

Offering self-help options via the website through your IVR system also reduces the volume of call received. Aside from this, offer customers the option to leave a voicemail message to facilitate a callback. Lastly, curb abandoned calls by making sure the headcount during the peak hours is enough to handle incoming calls.

Average Speed of Answer

The Average Speed of Answer (ASA) refers to the average amount of time wherein a call is required to be answered. It’s an essential part of the SLA where the service vendor promises to answer an X amount of calls within an X amount of time. Generally, a contact center’s ASA should not exceed 28 seconds.

To calculate, divide the total amount of waiting time by the total number of calls received within a certain period. For example, the waiting for 20 calls while the total waiting time is at 30 minutes. The ASA in this instance is 1.5 minutes.

The lower the ASA score, the less time customers spend waiting for their calls to get answered. A higher number indicates inefficiency and poor customer service. This metric affects Customer Satisfaction as today’s customers tend to lean toward immediate resolutions to be delighted. In fact, 82% of customers decide to discontinue doing business with a company that provides substandard customer service.

Not only is this crucial to achieving high CSAT scores, a lower ASA lowers the occurrence of abandoned calls while increasing the First Call Resolution rate.

Reducing the number of abandoned calls improves a contact center’s ASA score. Also, a contact center can easily improve their ASA by having streamlined call routing in place. Getting ahold of the right person the first time also ultimately improves customer experience.

Average Handle Time

Average handling time (AHT) is the average time spent by an agent in handling customer issues or transactions. This also includes the amount of time a customer is placed on hold within the duration of the call and the after-call work time which the agent spends doing back-office tasks.

The AHT is calculated by adding the agent’s total talk time plus the total hold time plus the total after-call work time. This is then divided by the total number of calls.

According to a 2015 survey conducted by Aspect, 32% of respondents pointed to phones as the most frustrating customer service channel. For this reason, this KPI allows contact center to gain insight into their service level by assessing an agent’s performance and efficiency as far as urgency in resolving customer concern goes.

However, a low AHT isn’t always a good thing. For example, Agent A receives a call from an irate customer. Frustrated and angry, the customer vents out. Agent A spent over 30 minutes on the phone but she was able to calm him while offering a win-win solution. Surely, Agent A’s AHT suffered but the interaction led to customer satisfaction and retention. On the other hand, Agent B received a call from another upset customer. Concerned that his AHT would suffer, he immediately gave in to the customer’s request to cancel his subscription. His AHT is exemplary but the client lost a great-paying customer.

To improve AHT, quality training and customized coaching should be done. This should not only be limited to call handling and product knowledge, but should also extend to tool familiarity.

Another great way to help lower AHT is by making use of automation. Automate tasks like note-taking and manual form-filling. A user-friendly interface that supplies agents with useful customer information they need, when they need it. Also, simple features such as call routing, automatic call logging, call recording can do wonders in reducing AHT. The agent can then simply focus on each call and provide effective solutions.

Average Call Transfer Rate

The Average Call Transfer Rate is a metric that monitors the number of calls transferred to another department, a supervisor, or a different queue.

For example, Agent X receives a call from a customer who needs assistance with her current monthly bill. The call should’ve been for the billing department but was routed to customer service. Agent X either has to place the customer on hold to get in touch with a billing rep or returns her back into the queue. This can highly affect customer satisfaction.

Accenture reveals that 89% of customers get frustrated when repeating the same exact issue to different representatives. It’s important to monitor this metric to pinpoint areas of improvement, may it be agent mishandling or inefficient call routing.

To calculate, divide the total number of calls transferred by the number of calls handled and multiply it by one hundred.

To greatly reduce the number of transferred calls, ensure that your IVR system is easy to navigate and provides a clear yet concise description of each department. It’s also best to equip agents with the knowledge and skills to better handle customer concerns.

Customer Satisfaction Score

The goal of every inbound contact center is to keep customers happy. The customer’s happiness equates to the organization’s profitability. A great indicator of customer happiness is the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).

Customer satisfaction is so powerful that a study revealed companies that put in the effort to take their customer experience from average to awesome see 30-50% increase in the likelihood of the customer recommending the product or services to other consumers.

This metric is calculated by asking a question that pertains to the customer’s feedback on a particular interaction with an agent, “How pleased were you with your experience?” or “Was the agent able to handle your concern satisfactorily?”

The customer is then provided with a survey scale where answers commonly range from 1 to 10, 1 to 5, or Very Satisfied-Satisfied-Not Satisfied. The highest number being the best and the lowest being the worst. Note that there isn’t any standard format currently observed but the scale hasn’t changed for decades. The agent’s Average CSat score by adding all of the scores received and dividing the total by the number of surveys received.

For example, Agent Y received 18 (1 to 5 rating scale) surveys in a week with a total score of 70 out of 90 (5 x18). Seventy then has to be divided into 18 to get the average CSat Score for Agent Y, which is 3.8 out of 5.

CSAT scores can be improved through personalized coaching and training as well as ensuring that the best practices are observed to exceed the bar set for other inbound contact center metrics (FCR,AHT, service level, call abandonment, etc.).

Customer Retention & Churn Rate

Customer Retention (CRR) and Customer Churn (CCR) rates go hand in hand.

Retention rate refers to the percentage of existing customers or users that are still part of the organization’s pool of consumers with a certain period of time.

To calculate the CRR, you would need the total number of active customers you have in a given period (30 days, 60 days, 360 days, etc.), and subtract the newly acquired customers during the same period. The result would be the total number of customers an organization has retained. For example, the number of customers you began with 2800 customers. During a 60-day period you acquired 300 more and ended with 2600. {(2600-300) / 2800} x 100 = 82% retention rate.

On the other hand, the churn rate refers to the percentage of customers you have lost. This can be determined by dividing the number of customers who left by the number of customers you had started with and multiply it by one hundred. For example, in a span of 30 days, the client has lost 150 customers while you started with 1,500. The formula would look like this: (150/1500) x 100 = 10% churn rate.

These metrics determine whether an inbound contact center is capable enough to retain customers through providing excellent customer service. Generally a 5-7% churn rate annually is a healthy average. This means an organization’s monthly churn rate should only be .5% or lower.

A Harvard Business School research study recently revealed that increasing customer retention rates by 5% skyrocketed profits to 25% to 95%.

To help increase retention rates and reduce churn, it’s important for an inbound contact center to have a Customer Retention team or department that handles complicated issues and cases that could possibly lead to customers churning.

Focus on the problem and come up with creative solutions. Not all customers that come across with a product issue require a refund or a discount. These gestures can be quite costly. Discover unique ways of delighting upset customers by deciphering the personal information stored in your CRM and using it to connect with the customer. Sometimes, a little empathy could go a long way.

Establish expectations and realized that not all customers can be retained. There is always gonna be a certain percentage of customers that will leave. The earlier an organization accepts that, the better their customer retention strategies would be.

Agent Schedule Adherence & Agent Attrition Rate

Agent Schedule Adherence is used to find out whether agents are working efficiently within their set schedule. To calculate, take the total time of when the agent is available and divide it by the time the agent is scheduled to work. Adherence to the schedule facilitates smooth shift transition that reduces the occurrence of missed or abandoned calls, which may affect the contact center service level.

The use of automated workforce management tools as well as agent scheduling software and integrating these to any system of record and phone system help in reducing errors in the data collected, which may negatively affect schedule forecasting. This also helps identify an agent’s non-productive hours and take the necessary steps to remedy the problem; thus, increasing the agent’s productivity.

Most likely, working toward improving schedule adherence will require a contact center to revamp its currently policies and guidelines for its employees. It’s best to speak with the workforce and gather their feedback prior to implementing new processes and standards to enhance the team’s schedule adherence.

Schedule adherence is a great gauge in determining whether an agent enjoys working in an inbound call center environment or not. As stated in the 2016 U.S. Contact Center Decision Makers’ Guide, a customer service representative stays employed in the same company for 3.3 years. Agent Attrition is a major concern for both inbound and outbound contact centers. Whenever an agent leaves, the workload of those that stayed increases.

Promoting an employee-centric work environment make agents feel valued; thus, making them lead happier lives, which transitions to each customer interaction.

Ensuring that the tools they use work for them instead of the other way around. Call center software should help agents make better-informed decisions, not add to the number of tasks they do each day. It’s imperative that an inbound contact center wisely chooses the hardware and software that the agents use on a day to day basis.

Conducting exit interviews provide the management access to honest feedback. The information shared during these interviews can help prevent similar issues from recurring.

Measuring and tracking KPIs are crucial to the success of a call center–but what matter most is the accuracy of the data at your disposal and what you do with the data you acquire from each one.

17 Jul 16:02

B2B sales: what should we be measuring?

by bob@inflexion-point.com (Bob Apollo)

Money Chart SquareIf we’re in sales, there are two obvious monetary measures of our success: revenue and margin. Revenue is particularly important for organisations that are primarily concerned with driving top line growth. Margin is particularly important for organisations that are primarily focused on growing a profitable bottom line.

The relative importance of these two metrics can vary according to what type of business and what stage of development we are in, but I can’t recall coming across a B2B sales organisation that hasn’t defined one or the other (or both) as their primary success metric.

But what else should we be measuring?

The obvious answer is that we should be measuring the key factors that are most important in ensuring that we are on track to achieve our revenue or profit targets.

But what are those metrics? I’ve observed a tendency amongst some organisations to place undue emphasis on activity-level metrics - for example the number of calls made or the number of meetings booked or completed.

Whilst these activity-based metrics have some general predictive value, over-emphasising them can drive behaviours that are more focused on quantity than quality, and which fail to drive revenue or profit in the way we might hope.

It’s common to measure sales pipelines in terms of the number and value of opportunities, but a larger-is-always-better mindset can result in dysfunctional behaviours here, as well. For example, we can inadvertently encourage sales people to keep weak opportunities in their pipeline rather than qualify them out.

Emphasis on outcomes

The best way of avoiding these measurement traps is to focus our attention on outcomes rather than activities. We need to recognise that activities must always have a measurable purpose - and that purpose is to make tangible progress towards our revenue and goals.

It’s much more effective to measure advances. How many of those activities resulted in tangible progress? How many of them resulted in a customer commitment to move forward in their buying decision progress and to invest their time and energy in a valuable next step?

Measuring the number and percentage of calls, meetings and other activities that result in a measurable customer advance is much more effective in both assessing the quality of our activities and our progress towards achieving our revenue and profit targets.

It not only has genuine predictive power, it also provides valuable learning opportunities. What are the activities that are most likely to result in genuine progress? What is it that our more effective sales people do to improve their chances of success in these activities? How can we equip the rest of our sales organisation to emulate these winning behaviours?

It’s probably inevitable that we will conclude that our progress towards our ultimate goals will be enhanced by choosing to do fewer things more effectively:

  • To make fewer calls, but to plan them better
  • To have fewer meetings, but conduct them more effectively
  • To do fewer demonstrations, but with better results
  • To submit fewer proposals, but with higher success rates

Once we have identified and addressed our quality challenges, we can of course turn our attention to increasing the tempo with which these high-quality activities happen. But if we believe we can work our way out of a revenue shortfall by doing more of the same things as badly as we were doing before, we are deluding ourselves - and probably burning our sales people out in the process.

Pipeline management

The same principles apply to pipeline management. It is a well-documented fact that it takes far longer to lose a deal than to win one. Research by Altify and others suggest that the deals we end up losing hang around in sales pipelines at least 2-3 times longer than the deals we end up winning.

Progress and momentum are critically important in assessing the true quality of our sales pipelines. Of course, there are some critical foundations that need to be established - for example, it is essential that every member of the sales team applies consistent criteria to accurately place every opportunity at the correct stage in the pipeline.

Having established that consistency, we can turn our attention to establishing outcome-based sales pipeline metrics:

  • How long, on average, does it take winning opportunities to progress from stage-to-stage and from top-to-bottom of the pipeline?
  • What are the stage-to-stage conversion rates of our most successful sales people?
  • How do these metrics vary from one type of opportunity to another (for example, new vs. existing business)?

Armed with these benchmarks, we can not only forecast much more effectively but also transfer the learning from our top performers to the rest.

One of the most common conclusions is that our top performers have a completely different shape of their personal sales funnel compared to their less effective colleagues. They tend to invest more time in discovery, to qualify out much more ruthlessly, and to progress and convert qualified opportunities that have reached the middle of the funnel much more effectively. Their post-qualification close rates are typically far better than their less effective colleagues.

Measure what matters

Let’s make sure that we’re measuring what matters. In particular, let’s make sure that we never confuse activity with progress, or inadvertently drive our sales people to do more of the wrong things rather than motivating them to make intelligent quality-based choices.

Whatever we choose to measure, let’s make sure that achieving the metric provably improves our chances of achieving our ultimate goal. Take a look at the metrics you are applying to your sales process today, and if you can’t say with confidence that they are allowing you to do this, I’d suggest that you revisit what you have chosen to measure.

Have you any other thoughts on important sales metrics? Please add a comment, give me a call or drop me a line.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Apollo_3_white_background_250_square.jpgBob Apollo is a Fellow of the Association of Professional Sales , a regular contributor to the International Journal of Sales Transformation and the founder of UK-based Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners. Following a successful career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and corporates, Bob now works with high-potential tech-based B2B-focused scale-up businesses, equipping them to Sell in the Breakthrough Zone® by systematically creating, capturing and confirming their distinctive value in every customer interaction.
17 Jul 16:02

What Your Business is Missing If You Aren’t Using Predictive Analytics

by Mike Alaimo

We live in an incredible time. More data was created last year than in the 5,000 years previous. Businesses have access to an unprecedented amount of information which can help them to anticipate the challenges and opportunities that will shape them in the future. One such company is Facebook, who utilizes millions of data points to identify trends and patterns and offer recommendations based on a user’s interests. Their well-defined algorithms have led to their incredible success, with over 2 billion active users. But you certainly don’t need to be as massive as Facebook to leverage company data to the full extent. In fact, if you’re not capitalizing on the power of predictive analytics, your business is missing out on key opportunities.

Improve Your Business Outcomes

Data and analytics can be game-changing information for the performance and success of an organization. The ability to forecast sales, production needs, peak business, and service demand helps companies to more efficiently run their operations. By utilizing this data and getting ahead of the industry curve, companies can reduce cost, improve quality, and boost consumer satisfaction.

For example, Johns Hopkins University uses their analytics to discover new scientific measurements and models in the hopes of predicting the trajectory of diseases in current patients. They’ve also used it to lower the risk of misdiagnosis, limiting adverse reactions to medication or procedures, by examining each patient’s unique genetic makeup. In short, big data plays a massive role in the execution and the quality of their services, putting them ahead of the curve in the healthcare field.

Reduce Risks

There are few certainties in the business world. The complexity of the market, evolving technology, fluctuating competition, and customer demands often turn business decisions into a gamble. However, predictive analytics can help make sense of these factors to reduce the risk involved with decision making.

For example, let’s look at Netflix, who wanted to make their mark with original content – a potentially risky move that would impact both their reputation and their bottom line. Data told them there were common viewers among David Fincher’s “The Social Network” and the original British version of “House of Cards.” The data helped them predict where audience demand might be, allowing them to create highly targeted content. Enter the American version of House of Cards. They invested a reported $100 million into the show – a seemingly high-risk decision with astronomical impact if it fell flat. Thanks to predictive analytics, that risky decision was made with confidence, and Netflix saw its subscriber base grow by 10% as a result. It’s a great example of how using predictive analytics to identify future market trends can allow you to act nimbly and innovatively while minimizing risk.

Boost Cybersecurity

Can you foresee where data breaches are going to happen? Preventative measures are the only sure-fire way to reduce cybersecurity threats, so some are turning to predictive analytics as a way to determine their vulnerabilities and security priorities. This data doesn’t just tell you where cybercriminals have attempted to attack, it helps forecast where they’re going to hit next, if there are any weak points in the code, and how well prepared your systems are.

Last year, cyber-attacks cost U.S. businesses an average of $1.3 million. By identifying and mitigating potential threats, you’ll be saving both your business and your bottom line. Plus, automating more of the workload takes pressure off of your IT department; instead of spending hours attempting to find weaknesses and compile reports, they can focus their efforts on interpreting findings and protecting the system.

What Your Business is Missing If You Aren’t Using Predictive Analytics

As big data and machine learning begin to take a decisive role in every industry, it’s fair to assume that predictive analytics are going to play a crucial part in shaping the future of business decisions. With so much data floating out there, from consumer satisfaction statistics to cybersecurity measures, collecting analytics can be revolutionary for companies that value innovation. Anticipate challenges, alleviate future pain, and set your organization up for success with the power of predictive analytics.

17 Jul 15:55

Sales Pipeline Radio, Episode 122: Q&A with Dave Gerhardt @davegerhardt

by Matt Heinz

By Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing

Enjoy another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio, and catch us live every Thursday at 11:30 a.m. Pacific.  It’s just 30 minutes long, fast-paced and full of actionable advice, best practices and more for B2B sales & marketing professionals.

This episode will air for the first time on 8/2/18 but you can listen in and read the transcript now!

We’ve featured some great guests!  We cover a wide range of topics, with a focus on sales development and inside sales priorities. You can listen to full recordings of past shows at SalesPipelineRadio.com and subscribe on iTunes.

Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift joins us this time to discuss how the buying experience is broken and why the only way to fix it is to enable more conversations

  • Here’s an example of how this plays out:
    • It’s never been more important to make it easier for your customers to buy
    • This is because of “the Amazon effect” – customers are used to getting what they want on demand, with one click. Whether it’s a taxi, a meal, a piece of furniture, etc.
    • These buying expectations are carrying over to B2B purchases as well
    • But businesses have not adapted yet. Customers are still often forced through a maze of funnels and forms before they can talk to a sales rep
    • So what can YOU do about this?
    • You need to make it easier for your prospects to have a conversation with you – whether that’s through chat or on the phone
    • Because a sale doesn’t happen without a conversation
    • And whoever gets closest to the customer wins (Netflixs vs Blockbuster)
    • Reps need to get closer to prospects, and do that quicker – and organizations need to have the right tools in place to enable that, while avoiding the noise of non-sales related conversations

Definitely check out:

More from our guest:

Hey, I’m Dave Gerhardt.

I’m VP of Marketing at Drift and I’ve spent the last 7 years learning at SaaS marketing companies in Boston, including HubSpot and Constant Contact.

During that time, I’ve launched products that have made it to the top of Product Hunt, created a top five business podcast on Apple Podcasts, landed multiple features in the New York Times, created a deck that Andy Raskin called “The Greatest Sales Pitch I’ve Seen All Year,” and helped create the category of Conversational Marketing.

I love building an audience and getting the right people to pay attention.

Matt:  Thank you for joining us for Sales Pipeline Radio. We are normally live every week, Thursday, at 11:30 Pacific, 2:30 Eastern. The week of Fourth of July, 2018, OC Talk Radio, our great producer, Paul, he’s taking the week off. We haven’t talked about what you’re going to do, Paul. Are you going to be back watching your Twins win a couple games? Are you going to be out hiking in the wilderness? What are you going to be doing while everyone is listening to this episode?

Paul:  I am going to be trying to work on next week’s Sales Pipeline Radio. I’m going to try and really spend that week off to really try and figure out how we can take this show to the next level. That’s what I’m doing.

Matt:  That is the kind of commitment that makes you special, that makes this show special. I appreciate that very much. Well, thank you very much for joining us on another episode. If you’re listening to us live on the Funnel Media Radio Network, this is not a live show, but it’s still going to be awesome. For those of you that are joining us on the podcast, as normal, thank you so much for subscribing. You can find us on the iTunes store and Google Play anytime and anywhere that fine podcasts are sold and made available. Every episode, past, present, and future, of Sales Pipeline Radio, always available at salespipelineradio.com.

Each week, we are featuring some of the best and brightest minds in B2B sales marketing. Today is no different. I’m very excited to have with us today, Dave Gerhardt. He’s the VP of Marketing at drift.com. If you’re not familiar with Drift, and you’re a B2B company, you’re one of the last to learn about Drift. There are over 100,000 companies that have used Drift to engage their customers in conversations.

Dave has been the VP at Drift for a couple years. He is part of the HubSpot Marketing Alumni Network that seems to be running half the companies in B2B right now. I’m very happy to have him on the show. Dave, thanks so much for joining us today.

Dave:  Thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this. I wish I could just print out your intro. I think you just wrote our whole website.

Matt:  Sweet! Well, we will give you the transcript. It is all yours.

I appreciate you joining us. I just noticed earlier today, we have 404 mutual connections on LinkedIn. There should be some kind of rule, once it gets to that level, where we’re forced to meet each other, because I don’t think we’ve ever actually shaken hands and met the other person.

Dave:  No, no. I keep seeing you, crossing paths at different events, and I’ve been speaking more and doing more stuff, and I always see you there, so I think it’s good that this happened. This could kick off a real friendship, I hope, so that’s good.

Matt:  Yeah, no doubt. I appreciate you joining here. You will have … hopefully maybe see you at the HYPERGROWTH Conferences you guys are doing. You’ve got one in Boston coming up in early September, one in San Francisco in late September. We’re going to talk a little bit more about the HYPERGROWTH Events you’re doing here in a second.

First of all, I just want to talk about Drift, I think, for people that aren’t familiar with Drift. You guys are doing some really amazing things. The title we put on this episode was “Is the Landing Page Dead?” For most marketers that rely so heavily on forms and landing pages, that may sound a little scary, but talk about the perspective you guys have, and what you’re doing to create more conversations with your prospects.

Dave:  You nailed it. I think what’s happened is over the last five or 10 years in marketing, we’ve just gone so far the other way, where we don’t actually want to talk to people. We want them to open our emails, click on our links, go to a landing page, fill out a form, register for my event, register for my webinar, register for my whatever. The reason that Drift even exists in the first place is because just things have changed in the market. Companies don’t have all the power anymore. Me, as a consumer, I just think about how I buy the products that I buy.

I talk to my friends. I do this thing all the time. I don’t know if you do this, too, Matt, which is I tweet out, “Does anybody have any experience with …” blank. I’m a marketer, and I have … using a million technology tools. I’m just so skeptical of salespeople and people trying to sell to me, that that’s how I buy. I like to Google stuff. I’ll go read a review on G2 Crowd, and then I might engage with a salesperson.

What we’re seeing is a website, a business’s website, especially B2B, is oftentimes the last place somebody goes when they have a question about your product or service, and so that’s shifted the balance of power from the company, who used to be able to lock everything down and say, “Hey, fill out this form, then we’ll talk to you,” to, now, the customer has all the power. The potential buyer has all the power, and so we need to build a product that puts the hands in the power of the customer, but allows the company to get everything that they need to generate leads and book more meetings.

To me, I think the reason Drift is taking off is not because we have a great product, which is a piece of it, but it’s because the timing is just so right in the market now, where buyers are set up with the traditional way of doing marketing sales. They have a couple very specific questions they want answers to, and it’s the perfect match between the company and the customer.

Matt:  Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Dave Gerhardt. He’s the VP of Marketing at Drift. At the top of your LinkedIn buyer, underneath your title and your experience, it says, “Drift is the new way businesses buy from businesses.” Based on what you just said, it almost sounds like this is the new way people in businesses buy from people in other businesses, right?

We think of B2B as business to business. Well, it’s really people at those companies selling to each other. I’ve heard it described as P2P, people to people. Tiffani Bova, who’s an evangelist at Salesforce has been calling it B2E, business to experience, that the experience you have is a huge part of the product that you’re buying. I think that experience starts before you buy. It starts with the experience you have when someone comes to your website, when they interact with you. Talk a little bit about the shift you’re seeing in how people are engaging, especially with younger generations coming into companies and really changing the communication habits, not just inside companies, but between companies and their vendors.

Dave:  Yeah, I mean, what’s interesting is, you look at the data, it’s not just younger people now. It’s everybody. We are all used to communicating. I just think of my day. I spend half my day on Slack and then half my day on iMessage; iMessage is where I talk to my wife and my mom and my friends and family, and Slack is where I spend all of my time at work, talking to the people on my team. I think what that’s done is it basically has reset expectations as a consumer.

We all expect to get real-time answers from a business, and then when you can’t get them, it’s super frustrating. That’s really a key piece of this, is the real-time element. The other thing is there’s just more buyers inside of a company than there ever were before. Granted, if you’re at a bigger company, there is still a procurement process, and to get on a new vendor, but I just think about the marketing team at Drift. Everybody on my Marketing Team has a credit card, and for basically anything under a thousand bucks a month, they can pretty much just swipe that and go buy something.

There are also more buyers inside of a company, and so it’s all about removing friction. That’s where people start to get a little scared, because they’re like, “Well, Dave, if I remove friction, and I give people all the keys here, how am I going to track this? How am I going to score it in Marketo and then sync it to Salesforce, and how am I going to route it the right way?” Those are all the hurdles that we’re helping people get over, with what we’re doing with Drift.

I think what happens is, once you get a taste of that, a taste of having conversations with the people who are on your website, we think of it a lot as your website is the equivalent of a brick and mortar store. You’re a B2B company. You don’t really sell things in a store, so you have a website. If somebody came into your store, you wouldn’t ignore them. You’d say, “Hey, let me know if you have any questions. I’m here to help.” We’ve just seen something as simple as doing that on your website can be so powerful in changing the way that people are communicating with your business.

Matt:  I would agree with you. I think that the devil’s advocate I’ve heard from some people is that they will say, “Well, that’s what my forms are for. They can click the Contact Us button. They can click the Download a Page button. They can click a Fill this Form out for a Demo,” so I think a lot of what you’re facing is that status quo, and getting people to think differently about something. Talk about what that’s been like, as you engage with the market and especially move past the early adopters. You may be facing not just the status quo, but a little fear of the unknown, to your point earlier, the fear of giving up on having something you can track that is a form fill and having something that might be a little less trackable, but potentially more valuable.

Dave:  Yeah, I think about this a lot, because I’m a marketer, and I have to educate people on how this is working, but I’ll give you a real example. One of our best sales reps here is a guy named Seamus, and he was like … He got an alert on his phone that one of his prospects was on our website. He was literally at home at nine o’clock on Tuesday night.

Dave:  This guy comes to the website, and he immediately starts just peppering Seamus with questions. You don’t get that with a form. It’s not just about the conversion rate of a form versus conversation, but how do you ask questions in the form?

What Seamus did was he basically sat on his couch on a Tuesday night, and literally just replied back to this guy, question after question, objection after objection. The guy ultimately ended up saying, “Okay, great. Can you talk at ten o’clock tomorrow, give me a demo?” He gave him a demo. He signed on for basically $5000 a month. To me, that’s one of my favorite examples, because that’s an engagement that doesn’t happen if you have to put somebody through a form.

The other thing is I think the biggest misconception is that I’m not out there saying go rip out everything you’re doing. I’m saying, add conversational marketing to what you’re already doing today. What you’re going to see really quickly is you’re going to create this fast lane for the best people that visit your website. Think of it a lot like … I love coffee. I love my Starbucks. Now that I have the mobile app for Starbucks, and I can order ahead, I can literally just walk to Starbucks, and I know that my coffee is sitting there. I don’t have to wait in line. That’s the equivalent of what’s happening in the B2B world, and that’s exactly what happened to Seamus.

Matt:  I think it’s interesting to hear you say that, because I think there are an awful lot of companies that, when they’re trying to challenge the status quo, they’ll say something else is dead. Well, cold calling’s dead, and forms are dead, and content’s dead. Oftentimes, when you hear something that’s dead, you think, okay, you’re probably trying to sell me the other side of that, more often it’s a transition, more often it’s an addition, more often it’s an augmentation. Just as there may be a lot more people that are interested in engaging through chat, which there clearly are, given the circumstance, you might still want to just be sent information, registering, get a white paper or download or a webinar may still be part of the mix. How do you figure out what the right context is? Is it based on a known past relationship with a buyer or a visitor to your website? Is there a way to segment the experience people have that’s optimal for them and what their preferences are?

Dave:  Yeah, so, I mean, this is a tough one to answer in a blanket statement, because I don’t know. It takes testing, just like everything else in your business. The worst thing you could do I think is put it on your website and just turn it on to everybody and just … Some people, depending on the amount of traffic, but if you have hundreds of thousands of people visiting your website, you can’t just do that and turn it on. You’ve got to pick and choose your spots.

The advice that we give is we think about the intent of different website pages, and then the traffic to those pages. You might have a page on your website that is very high intent, but low traffic. That might be a very specific case study. That’s one where I would like, boom, I would test there.

Now, you also might have a very high intent page that’s very high traffic, which is like your pricing page. There, I might start with a bot that’s going to answer five or six questions for me, as opposed to me having to do it myself. I think it’s really unique to each business, but especially in B2B, there’s a couple really familiar spots that a lot of people have on their website, whether that’s to get a demo, like Get a Demo or Request a Trial button, or Contact Sales, the pricing page, the blog. There’s a couple really specific use cases that most people start with, depending on the type of business that they have.

Matt:  We’re talking to Dave Gerhardt today on Sales Pipeline Radio. He’s the VP of Marketing at drift.com. Before we take a quick break here, let’s talk about HYPERGROWTH. You guys did this conference last year. It was a huge success. There was tons of people that were excited about it. They were commenting, and lot of social buzz around it, so this year you’re doing it twice. It the world’s fastest growing marketing and sales conference, your words, not mine. I’m just reading your website here.

You’ve got one coming up in September 4th in Boston. Some amazing speakers for that, September 24th in San Francisco. Quite honestly, because I’m looking at the speaker list, and you could attend both, and there’s not a lot of overlap and some great speakers on both. Talk about what it’s like to run a conference like this, and talk about what you’re most excited about for these that are coming up here just in a couple months.

Dave:  Yeah, I mean, last year when we did HYPERGROWTH, it was crazy, and it was a ton of work. Then, you don’t know what to expect until that day. Then, the second we hit 9:15 that morning, like 10-15 minutes into the event, I was like, wow! All of the stress and fear of events were completely worth it, because there’s just something about, especially the marketer, there’s something about getting people together in person. You don’t get that response.

I love doing webinars, because it’s very close to an event. I love speaking, because you’re actually out in front of real people, but having your own event with thousands of people that are close to your business there was just an unbelievable thing. This year, we wanted to do it even bigger, and so we’re doing one in Boston, and then one on the West Coast, new for us, in San Francisco.

I just think I’m really bullish on events. I think we are, at Drift, the connection between people. It’s even more important than ever today, in a world where we’re just driving people to our content in different forms of marketing. There’s no better experience, as a brand, than a day or a couple days or a week or whatever it might be, where there’s all these people that are connected to your business there in person.

You get the buzz. You get the amplification from everybody tweeting, and then you create this sense of fear of missing out, for people who weren’t there. I’m super excited. It was a little bit crazy to do two different events, because we’re just going to basically block out the whole month of September for us, but that’s the part, as a marketer, that I’ve got to, I guess, figure out behind the scenes.

Matt:  I love it. Now, we’re going to talk just a little more about HYPERGROWTH. I want to talk about some of the speakers. We’ve got to take a quick break here, pay some bills. We’ll be right back with more, with Dave Gerhardt, on Sales Pipeline Radio.

*Break*

Matt:  Thanks, everyone, for joining us on this special edition of Sales Pipeline Radio, recorded for your holiday week listening pleasure. We’ve got listeners, Paul, all over the world, and especially in North America, so those of you that have just celebrated the Fourth of July and for those of you who, a couple days before, celebrated Canada Day, I hope you were safe, but enjoyed some time with family, and some barbecue and beer and whatever else you like.

We are joined today by Dave Gerhardt. He’s the Vice President of Marketing at Drift. We were talking, before the break, about the HYPERGROWTH Conferences. Go to hypergrowth.drift.com. You can learn more. I may have to find a way to get to both of these.

If you go on September 4th in Boston, September 4, 2018, the speaker list is amazing. You’ve got Jocko Willink. He is the author of Extreme Ownership. He’s a former Navy SEAL. I have seen him speak. He is incredible. He’s a truly inspirational speaker, some amazing stories. He is a badass and a true American hero, amazing. You guys also have Grant Cardone, who is the author of The 10X Rule, one of the most well-known sales authors, speakers, influencers in the country. You’ve got George Foreman III, just an amazing group of people in Boston.

If that’s not enough, I know you’re not paying me for this. I’m just super excited. September 24, 2018, in San Francisco, another amazing list, you’ve got Patty McCord. She’s the author of the book Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility. These are not your usual sales and marketing conference speaker folks. You’ve got Amelia Boone, who is both the American obstacle racing champion and a lawyer. She’s a legal counsel at Apple.

Dave:  Yep, yep.

Matt:  Just some amazing speakers at these two conferences, so hypergrowth.drift.com. Check it out. Get your tickets. I look forward to seeing you there.

I want to take a little bit of a change in direction here, in our conversation, and talk about just the work that you and your CEO have done, from a content standpoint. I feel like I see you guys out a lot. You do a lot of work with video. It seems to me you’re focused on building your personal brands, and I’ve seen you, in particular, Dave, on lists of when people ask who has really been really good at building a personal brand online? Your name comes up a lot. Why has that been a priority for you, and how does that benefit Drift in the process, as well?

Dave:  Sure, yeah, I mean, it hasn’t been a priority for me. That’s just how I do marketing. I just believe that people want to deal with people today, so I try not to hide behind the Drift logo. I want you to see me, because I’m the one that, as a marketer at Drift, you’re getting emails from me. You’re getting sales messages from me. You’re getting promos. You’re getting tickets to HYPERGROWTH from me, and so I feel like people need to build a relationship inside of a company today, and so it’s just really important for me that, on our podcast, I’d feel the same to you, as I would do on a video, as if you actually met me in person, as if you got an email from me.

Then, ultimately, it’s all about people want to connect with people. My favorite lesson from this is from a guy named Gary Halbert, who wrote this great copywriting book, called The Boron Letters. He said every day you come home from work, and you have two piles of mail. You don’t know it. You go to your mailbox. You pull out this big pile of mail, and instantly, subconsciously, you just start separating those piles of mail. You have your A pile and your B pile. The B pile is the flyers from Home Depot, and Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and J. Crew, and you’re putting those aside. The A pile is what looks like a white envelope with a handwritten note on it, that looks like it’s from your aunt, who sends you 25 bucks on your birthday every single year.

As a marketer, I know that. I’m a person, too, and I know that a red flag goes off, or something goes off in my brain, whenever I get an email that super highly designed or I see a banner online. I’m just blind to that. Everything that I try to do tries to be real and personal, because I just know that that will cut through the noise out there.

Luckily for us, and for me, not a lot of people are doing it yet, but I think that’s the future and something that I stole from Gary V., which he perfectly nailed what this is, which is I just believe that the best marketing is documenting, not creating. We’re not trying to manufacture our brand. We’re trying to be us. We’re trying to be real. We’re trying to be authentic. I just try to make sure that is portrayed on every channel.

We always try to use real people, whether that’s us or our customers. All of our emails that we send are plain text, and they feel like the exact same email I would send to my mom, if I was sending her a note, right? We just try to write like we talk. That stuff is just fundamental to who we are in our brand.

Matt:  Well, I think the idea of authenticity there is really important. You used Gary V. as an example, and he’s a force of nature. He maybe has a couple extra shots of espresso before he does his videos, but that’s who he is. I mean, he’s an aggressive … He’s a fast talker. He throws a lot of swear words into the conversation. That’s who he is.

I see a lot of people say, “I’m going to be authentic like that,” and what they do is they try to be Gary V. It’s not who they are. It’s not what’s natural, and it shows. Allowing yourself to be authentic sometimes can feel scary to people. It can feel like you’re exposed, but I think that that’s part and parcel with creating an authentic brand for your company, as well as for yourself personally, is it not?

Dave:  Yeah, I think you have to be exposed. There’s a great book, called Let my People Go Surfing, by Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, and he said their whole brand is to be us. Our brand is us. It’s real people. They’re like, “We don’t try to create a fictional character, like the Marlboro man, for example. We are us, because it’s easier to write nonfiction than it is to write fiction.”

Your question about authenticity… You can’t try to be Gary V., or you can’t try to be authentic. You have to be who you are, and so you have to just be you. That’s more important than ever today, because buyers are just more skeptical than ever. Even if I have a typo in an email that I send, I stand by it, because I’m like, “Oh, yeah, sorry. There was a typo,” because I wrote it. I’m a real person. We all have screwed up like this. I think it’s just, it’s an element that is super important today, because I’m thinking about marketing and sales alone. There’s 7000 companies in this space, and so for us, at Drift, to think that we’re going to compete, because we’re going to get more people to fill out forms than another company, or because our logo is better, or because the colors on our website are cooler, that’s just not going to happen.

There’s too much noise out there. The only way that I think we can win is by being real and authentic. Maybe you’re shy and you’re introverted. You don’t have to do the selfie, LinkedIn videos that I’m doing, but maybe you have a podcast or maybe you have a blog or a newsletter that you get personal in. Authenticity doesn’t mean be Gary V. It means be authentic to who you are and to what your brand is.

Matt:  I agree with that, Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at drift.com. Dave, you’ve been at HubSpot. You’ve been at Constant Contact. I mean, you’ve seen quite a bit the last few years in the evolution of marketing. What are some things that you think have changed the most for the better for marketing over the last three or four years, in particular, that you’re taking advantage of at Drift or that you see having a bigger impact for marketers and sales teams, moving forward?

Dave:  I think that, for me, there’s just so many channels that you can be creative as a marketer, right? It’s not like you just have your website and you just have email. You have Instagram. You have Snapchat. You have video. You have YouTube. You have your website. You have social. You have email. You have every channel under the sun, direct mail, whatever you want.

I think that there’s a new era of being creative in marketing again, where for a couple years, like probably the better half of the last decade, we shifted too much into robot marketing mode, which is like everything’s got to be a spreadsheet, everything’s got to be a funnel; whereas, now, the funnel’s gone away, because there’s so many different channels out there, and people can find out information. You can’t force people through this linear funnel.

I think that things for the better are more channels. Honestly, for me, the thing that I’ve been paying attention to the most is just people. I think the thing that I’ve seen through Constant Contact, through HubSpot, through Drift, the technology has changed, but people haven’t, and you’re still trying to win the hearts and the minds of the people that you’re trying to sell to. I spend more time going back and reading old school copywriting books and psychology books, and really trying to understand people, and just observing how people act and behave online, than I do trying to keep up with marketing technology, because you’re always going to be able to figure out marketing technology. Companies have to publish guides and videos and research, but if you can really understand people, then the rest of the marketing stuff, whether that’s tools and technology, that’s going to be easier to you, if you can really understand how to get to people.

Matt:  We’re running out of time here with Dave Gerhardt, as we always do at the top of the hour, here on Sales Pipeline Radio. Last question for you, Dave, before we let you go. You’ve referenced a number of books that you’ve read that have influenced you. I’m curious, in your career thus far, who are some of the people that stand out, either authors, speakers, mentors? They can be people dead or alive. Who are the people that have most inspired you, that you would encourage other people in marketing to go and check out?

Dave:  Yeah, so, I mean this one, it’s going to sound cliché, but to me it’s Steve Jobs. I think a lot of people say that, because everybody’s using Apple devices, but I don’t think a lot of people have actually gone back and studied what he’s done. If you’re listening to this, go and watch the 2007 Steve Jobs iPhone keynote. That is the only thing you need to know about how to speak onstage and you’ll never worry about creating fancy slides again, if you just watch that.

Dave:  I go back and study Apple and those ads. I’m obsessed with Nike and Phil Knight, and his marketing strategy. They have some amazing copywriting and storytelling that they’ve done from when Tiger Woods first came on the scene, and his whole Welcome World, and Hello World campaign. There’s so much stuff that I want to dig into from there. On top of that, I’m mostly obsessed with people that are dead now, which is David Ogilvy, Eugene Schwartz, some of the best copywriters of all time. That’s where I spend most of my time studying.

Matt:  Well, we are out of time, as usual, at the top of the hour here. Thanks so much for our guest, Dave Gerhardt, the VP of Marketing at drift.com. Check out hypergrowth.drift.com if you want to just check out an amazing conference in September this year, East Coast or West Coast. We’ll be back next week live again, 11:30 Pacific, 2:30 Eastern, for another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio. For my great producer, Paul, my name is Matt Heinz. Thanks for joining us again on Sales Pipeline Radio.

The post Sales Pipeline Radio, Episode 122: Q&A with Dave Gerhardt @davegerhardt appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

17 Jul 15:55

Marketing Plans Should Start with the Buyer’s Needs – Not Yours

by Adele Revella

I can’t blame marketers for avoiding the development of marketing plans, launch plans or any other version of a strategic plan. This apparently reasonable request usually requires countless hours of writing and revisions, only to be filed away in some dusty online folder.

The reason marketing plans don’t get implemented is that they are focused on what you want to achieve. In fact, countless articles and templates for marketing planning suggest that you start with your goals, obstacles, and objectives. While these are certainly critical components, I don’t see how marketers could possibly expect anything built around internal needs could withstand exposure to the pressures of new priorities, ideas and people.

What do your buyers want?

While marketers often try to include market data and audience profiles in their plans, if you look closely you’ll see the plan says nothing about what your buyers want to know during their journey or where they go for this information. Thus, the actual content of marketing deliverables is left to the imagination of the team that is doing the work. It should be no surprise that depending on where the work originates, the content differs dramatically. Even more costly is the team’s guesswork about how to deliver the content, which has much more to do with your preferences than the buyers’.

A more rational and sustainable approach to planning begins with clarity about what affects your buyers’ decisions (and just as critically, what doesn’t matter to your buyer). It might feel like cheating, but what if you knew the buyers’ true story about everything they did, and every question they asked, as they went through their awareness, consideration and decision process? Now your marketing plan could be based on the information buyers are seeking and actual insight into how buyers decide that a competitor’s solution (or the status quo) is better suited to their needs.

Information your buyer needs to make a decision

To illustrate this potential, here is a mock-up of several different buyer’s journeys wrapped up into one. Note that we mixed up the findings from several personas to protect the intellectual property of the companies that invested in this research. So please don’t use this mock-up to guide your own planning, but this will give you a sense of the detail about your buyer’s informational needs that results from the proper research.

What your buyer does to make a decision

In this example, we have also combined results from several studies to illustrate the steps a buyer might take during their journey. You’ll note that unlike a lot of buyer journey examples you’ll find online, this one is about what the buyers do, not your marketing activities. Once you know where buyers go for trusted information and who influences their decisions, you’ll have the data you need to decide which marketing spend is most valuable and what deserves less attention.

Not knowing this information is costing you

Many marketers who wish they had deep buyer insights say it is difficult to justify the investment. If this is you, consider the very tangible costs of making stuff up as you go and failing to give buyers the useful information they are seeking during their journey. You’ll discover quite quickly, the costs are enormous for you, your sales team and your company’s bottom line.

For more recommendations, attend our virtual Buyer Persona Masterclass or read our book; Buyer Personas: How to Gain Insight into Your Customer’s Expectations, Align your Marketing Strategies and Win More Business (Wiley). If you are even more passionate on the subject, contact the Buyer Persona Institute directly so we can learn about your special circumstances and tell you how other marketers have solved the same challenges.

17 Jul 15:50

20 Statistics About Sales Email Subject Lines You Need to Know for 2023

by ahussain@hubspot.com (Anum Hussain)

Sales emails are a great way to capture customer attention and drive revenue. Of course, this comes with a caveat, since recipients have to actually open these emails for campaigns to work. Here, the old adage holds true — you only get one chance to make a first impression.

And the first thing prospective customers see? Your subject line. To help you create attention-grabbing subject lines that boost open rates and get potential purchasers interested, we’ve collected 20 statistics you need to know.

Ready to go from email trash bins to open sesame? Let’s get started.

Download Now: 2023 Sales Trends Report [New Data]

Sales Email Open Statistics

  • There are over 4 billion email users worldwide, and this number is predicted to reach 4.5 billion by 2025. (Statista, 2023)
  • More than 300 billion emails are sent and received each day across the globe. (Statista, 2023)
  • The average open rate of emails across all industries is 22.61%. (Mailchimp, 2022)
  • When it comes to welcome emails, meanwhile, open rates are 68.6%. (GetResponse, 2022)
  • The average click-through rate of all emails is just 2.91%. (Mailchimp, 2022)
  • 64% of recipients decide to open or delete emails based on subject lines. (Finances Online, 2023)
  • 33% of users choose to open emails because of catchy subject lines. (Finances Online, 2023)

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  • 71% of B2C sales professionals say that establishing rapport during the sales process is the most effective strategy for selling to new customers — and it all starts with email subject lines. (HubSpot’s 2023 Sales Trends Report)

Now that you understand the importance of your subject lines, it’s time to build out the body of your email and turn initial customer interest into curiosity and conversion. Start with some of our most effective sales prospecting email templates to boost open rates.

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17 Jul 15:47

LinkedIn: Know What You Need to Know

by Colleen McKenna

illustrade / Pixabay

Have you ever been charged with presenting something you’re not entirely sure you’re an expert on? If so, you probably thought, “Wow, I can’t do this. I’m not an expert.” Then you realize you better learn it fast. People are relying on you to teach, inspire, and perhaps even entertain them. Something important may be on the line; a job promotion, a sale, a product launch, a new service offering, an acquisition, and you need to rise to the occasion. You need to show up uber-schooled and more than proficient. So what do you do? You go to work, you dive in, and you dig deep.

Well for the last four months I have been heads-down working on content for in:side, Your LinkedIn Mastery Program, our new membership site. To say it’s been a labor of love, well, would not be exactly accurate. I consider myself an expert on LinkedIn. I spend 80% of my workweek talking about LinkedIn; practicing, not theorizing. I’ve been using LinkedIn almost daily for the last 13 years. And, over these last four months, I have learned more than I thought.

You might wonder, how can that be? Well, when you are trying to teach someone something you have to think about them first.

How do they want to receive it?

How will they benefit from learning whatever it is you’re teaching?

I’ve had to think about it from each of your perspectives, including:

  • The CEO, the small business owner or hired-gun President
  • The experienced salesperson who hates adapting or maverick salesperson who is a LinkedIn rock star
  • The hiring manager who is heads-down and doesn’t think they need a LinkedIn profile to hire candidates for their company
  • The marketing team who quite frankly doesn’t get LinkedIn and wants to use Facebook to find B2B leads
  • The head of operations or customer service who has forgotten that their client-facing team influences prospective and current customers
  • The CFO who never plans on looking for another job and well, so many others of you.

I consider myself and our team LinkedIn translators. It’s what we do to fast-track people out of confusion to proficiency and ultimately, mastery. If we continue to learn new things on and about LinkedIn and we’re on it all day, every day, what about you and your team. How do you stay ahead of the curve, proficient, in the know?

It’s a fascinating process to continually learn and teach, to translate and apply, and to earn the respect of any group of people (readers, followers, advocates, family, friends and always, clients.) You’ve got to be excellent, passionate, thoughtful, interested, committed, bold, and always looking beyond the obvious, the next stop, the likely conclusion. That’s why my team and I are jazzed about in:side. We want you to take what we know and apply it vigorously to your world, your process and your business initiatives. We want, more than anything for you to be successful and leverage LinkedIn to do so.

in:side is our collective brain, our best insight and process all designed so you can master and engage on the world’s largest professional network to better your career, build your network, craft your online professional brand, and identify and nurture new business opportunities every day. LinkedIn is the most purposeful business platform available; it’s where you will find business people in a business frame of mind. And, as we know and will discuss, our frame of mind is always where we need to begin.

If your organization is B2B focused, sells products and services, has a sales team, needs to hire, markets to key decision makers, sign up to learn more about in:side today. It’s coming soon and you’ll want to be among the first to take advantage of our pre-launch specials.

17 Jul 15:47

Integrated B2B Marketing Efficiency: Reducing Wasted Budget

by David Crane

“Last quarters results were excellent, but can we get better results from the same budget this quarter?”

Sound familiar?

B2B marketers are experiencing increasing pressure to squeeze more performance from their marketing budgets. But, trying to get more and more mileage from the same spend can feel like a practice in futility. At some point, you have to turn to efficiencies as a source of savings.

Within a single integrated marketing campaign, there can be dozens of tactics, channels, tools and partnerships. Each of these components has the potential for waste and inefficiency. Solving for these two things can free up the budget, which can then be reallocated to drive more results.

Reducing Wasted Spend From Integrated B2B Marketing

Where can you find sources of waste and inefficiency? That depends on a number of factors unique to your organization. However, these are some common areas of waste we’ve seen over and over again, regardless of industry.

1. Bad Leads

Bad-quality lead data and invalid lead entries are likely the single most significant source of waste at many B2B marketing organizations.

Integrate analysis of 3.64 million B2B leads revealed that one of the most significant sources of waste is bad leads. Of the leads included in the research, 33% (1,217,769) contained duplicate data and 10% (376,942) contained invalid data for reasons such as non-working email addresses, incorrect field values and ranges and more.

Invalid leads don’t convert into sales pipeline or marketing-attributable revenue. However, the total consequences of poor-quality leads can have a more significant impact on the health of the organization as a whole. Ashley Shailer, Senior Associate at Inverta, states:

“Losing credibility is the biggest consequence of poor lead quality. Sales loses faith in marketing – and then they stop following up with the leads they get….It’s very difficult to dig out of this vicious cycle.”

How to Solve Lead Data Quality Challenges

To avoid paying for bad lead data or suffering the consequences, B2B marketers need strategies and tactics to identify root causes of poor-quality data before it enters the marketing automation (or CRM) in the first place.

Identify Lead Quality Issues

The root cause of lead quality issues can vary, depending on technologies, processes and partnerships. If an organization lacks well-defined processes for lead data quality control, bad data quality issues can be rampant.

In other cases, organizations may have some manual filtering techniques, but lack a tool for catching issues not easily undetectable by the human eye, such invalid email addresses, duplicate leads or leads that are old (e.g., contact moved to a different organization).

Develop an Ongoing Lead Quality Strategy

Once B2B marketing organizations identify the cause of their lead quality issues, winning support requires a strategy for implementing new processes and solutions.

Commit to Ongoing Quality Management

Lead quality control isn’t a one-time or occasional effort. Even implementing more technologies for lead quality may not solve the issue. Ensure your safeguards provide comprehensive quality control, or at the very least commit to manual efforts to ensure you’re not paying for bad leads.

2. Employee Turnover

Excessive turnover is costly.

Estimates vary, but the cost of replacing employees who leave the organization may be 6-9 months of salary, or one-third of annual wages, according to Employee Benefits News. For a demand marketing vacancy with a $60,000 annual salary, avoidable employee churn can cost $20,000.

There’s a shortage of skilled integrated media marketers, especially individuals who can manage the many tactics, strategies and channels used to power multi-channel B2B marketing campaigns. To avoid lost productivity and periods of transition, organizations are wise to focus resources on improving the total employee experience, including superior employee engagement.

According to HR Dive, which recently surveyed employees who voluntarily left their role, respondents cited a number of reasons for transition. Some of the most common motivations for switching jobs included:

  1. Career development (22%)
  2. Work-life balance (12%)
  3. “Managers’ behavior” (11%)
  4. Compensation and benefits (9%)
  5. Well-being (9%)

While total compensation matters to today’s workforce, it’s not the only factor which can shape moral and retention within a B2B marketing organization. In addition to making sure wages and benefits are competitive, demand marketing executives should protect team productivity and engagement by pursuing opportunities for employee education, work-life balance and monitoring manager-employee relations.

3. Manual Processes

Manual, time-consuming activities that could be replaced with technology-assisted process automation are common sources of waste within demand marketing organizations. McKinsey research published in the Harvard Business Review estimates that 10-15% of marketers’ existing workload could be automated with technologies that are currently available.

The same study found that heavily manual work is not necessarily associated with marketing interns and other entry-level positions within the B2B marketing organization. In fact, marketing executives and other leaders are typically performing work than can be replaced with smarter technology.

Opportunities for Automation

Some ways that existing sources of wasted manual labor can be efficiently replaced with existing technologies in a demand marketing environment include:

  1. Adopting lead data validation and enhancement tools to automate lead processing and quality control, instead of manually scrubbing spreadsheets and uploading lead data to the marketing database.
  2. Replacing manual lead assignments with technologies for automated lead processing and routing.
  3. Centralizing all 3rd-party demand gen sources for easier program launch, management and optimization.
  4. Embracing full-funnel analytics and measurement tools for visibility and drill-down optimization opportunities throughout the entire sales cycle.

The Benefits of Automating Integrated Marketing

There are benefits to replacing manual work with automation. Not only does the average B2B marketing team stand to save 15% of their time each week (by McKinsey estimates), but the adoption of smarter technology can also free up human talent to spend more time on innovation and more strategic efforts.

Further, automation often mitigates errors and speeds up processes, allowing sales to engage with qualified leads quicker and more accurately. Technology may also have the edge over humans at identifying patterns in information, modeling and analytics, enabling marketers who adopt sophisticated tools for in-flight campaign optimization to identify sources of waste in real time.

4. Redundant MarTech

Waste related to MarTech is surprisingly common.

  • How often do B2B marketing teams pay a monthly subscription fee for an app their teams don’t need or use?
  • How many add even more tools to their marketing tech ecosystem when the current marketing automation platform (MAP) or CRM aren’t even being used to their full potential?

Business software waste across industries is a multibillion-dollar annual problem, according to a 1E study. 38% of B2B software paid for by enterprises goes to waste, and in some large enterprises, the annual cost of unused licenses can average $7.4 million.

The app economy has made software adoption as simple as signing up for a monthly recurring subscription for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. When B2B marketers focus on fulfilling immediate needs instead of following a thoughtfully created MarTech roadmap, it’s easy for one or more of the following forms of waste to occur:

  • Software under-utilization: Poor adoption of existing software, unused features or abandoned subscriptions.
  • Software redundancy: One or more subscriptions to tools which serve the same purpose.
  • Shadow IT: Unauthorized software or apps used by employees without marketing or IT leadership approval.

Wasted MarTech resources cost more than subscription and licensing fees. Redundant software or software that doesn’t integrate or serve the greater goals of the program can lead to data quality issues, collaboration problems and miscommunication.

Optimizing Integrated B2B Marketing Resources

Within an integrated marketing environment, identifying sources of waste and opportunities for optimization can be inherently complex. Without technologies in place to orchestrate full-funnel marketing efforts across channels, B2B marketers can struggle to understand where they’ve gone wrong and how to improve.

Integrated marketing success exists when people, processes and technology are working together optimally. By improving the employee experience, adopting automation opportunities and taking a more strategic approach to technology, B2B organizations can ensure their resources are contributing to revenue-based goals.

Successful integrated marketing requires efficiency. Use the Demand Marketing Assessment Guide and Orchestration Workbook to identify where your team may be struggling with inefficiency and what you can do to scale your results with minimal time and effort.

17 Jul 15:47

Agile Data Orchestration: A New World for Marketing and Sales

by Ed King

Anyone working in marketing and sales knows data is growing exponentially. There are an abundant variety of technologies anyone can buy that promises to generate more and better leads, improve conversion, predict outcomes, and attribute program ROI. Every marketing and sales process can now be now data-driven.

The challenge for the modern marketer is no longer a lack of data. But, drowning in data you can’t use is worse than having no data because it costs money to acquire and store all that data. There’s a growing trend of too much unusable data and too many applications that are continuing to get worse, all the while there’s a shortage of available talent for those with experience in analyzing data and extracting insights.

In order to create data-driven marketing and sales organizations, leaders must decide on the foundational data capabilities their organizations must acquire and nurture. The traditional answer is to develop a “360 view of the customer.” Throughout the years, this concept of pulling all your data into one repository has taken on different labels: data warehouse, data mart, master data management, and the latest trending label is Customer Data Platform. All these essentially refer to the same solution with minor variations, namely:

  • Aggregate multiple data sources into a single data repository
  • Clean and merge data into a single unified schema
  • Deploy various types of reporting, analytics, and machine learning technologies to make sense of this data
  • Perform various types of discovery, management, and governance capabilities to support this data

This approach works reasonably well for an established company that operates in a mature market and grows slowly. But, it works poorly for any company that operates in a dynamic market and works with rapidly evolving mobile and cloud technologies. These projects typically go through a death-spiral like this:

  • 9 to 12 months of analysis and meetings just to agree on what data needs to be collected and what this “uber data schema” should look like. The number of stakeholders and priorities involved makes this a cat-herding process.
  • A governance process and committee is put in place to approve any changes to the consensus requirements and schema. Because it’s so hard to get consensus in the first place, the governance committee becomes the “NO! Committee.” In order to have any hope of finishing the project in 12-18 months, scope creep is aggressively thwarted.
  • Strict change controls allow the project to move ahead, but the business keeps on evolving at a faster pace and its needs are no longer being met by the project. As a result, the business does what the business always does, which is to take the matter into its own hands and do whatever is necessary to address its changing needs, which means going around the project and doing its own thing.
  • When the project is finally completed, it’s 12-18 months out-of-sync with where the business is. The business has already deployed a patchwork of technologies, vendors, and manual processes to meet its needs and keep the lights on.
  • If the project is lucky enough to go live, it usually takes so long to make changes that it’s unable to keep pace with the business. It becomes more of a burden than an enabler for the business.
  • The “good data” is only available in the central data repository and not reflected in the systems of record, so the automation in those operating platforms such as sales automation and marketing automation still don’t work and require localized effort to improve data quality, which goes out-of-sync with the central data repository. As a result, incorporating information from support, product, and billing systems into sales and marketing automation is out of the question.

Although the project label keeps on getting sexier and technology keeps on getting more advanced, the fundamental approach hasn’t changed. It’s all based on a “build-it-and-they-will-come” approach. Put all the data in one place and people will figure out what to do with it. This utopian approach is why projects like these are so fragile and have horrible ROI. The approach is structurally flawed and doomed to fail from the start.

Instead of “build-it-and-they-will-come”, it is much better to always ask:

  • Who is coming?
  • Why do they come?

In other words, understand whom the stakeholders are and what they’re trying to achieve with this data. One truism about data that people must understand is that no one works on data for the sake of working on data. The only reason people work on data is to drive analysis, decision, and process. Depending on the specific needs of the analysis, decision, and process, the data must be manipulated to support those specific needs. To think that you can come up with a single data repository and schema that can meet all the different needs of the various stakeholders and projects is naive at best.

So, what’s a better approach than “build-it-and-they-will-come?” The answer is agile orchestration. An organization with agile orchestration capabilities can:

  • Rapidly prototype and deliver data-driven automation to meet the unique requirements of each specific analysis, decision, and process, in terms of days and weeks, not months and years.
  • Update and evolve the automation as business changes, again in terms of days and weeks, not months and years.

To have such organization capability, the team must have the technical capabilities to:

  • Improve and maintain the data quality in each system of record, whether it’s Salesforce automation or marketing automation, to avoid the need for repeatedly cleaning the data for every new analysis, decision, and process.
  • Pull only the necessary data from only the necessary systems of record to support each project requirement. Don’t do anything more than absolutely necessary. It’s more important to have the ability to react to changes vs. trying to have a crystal ball that can predict future requirements.
  • Manipulate data to support business requirements and integration requirements.

This capability should be made available from a single technology platform, instead of relying on a patchwork of tools. This single automation platform should have the following characteristics:

  • Usable by sales ops, marketing ops, and business analysts. Ideally no-code, but at least low-code. Programming and IT skills should not be required.
  • Out-of-the-box templates to perform the common tasks sales and marketing use cases commonly required, such as cleaning email, standardizing address, segmenting job title, matching lead to account.
  • An automation engine that has sufficient configurability to support 99% of the data orchestration needs.
  • Built-in reference data sets to simplify data cleansing and standardization tasks, such as lists of countries, states, postal codes, free and disposable email service provider domains, and job title keywords.
  • Out-of-the-box connectors for popular applications, including sales and marketing automation applications such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, and Pardot.
  • Built-in integration to data enrichment services spanning a wide selection of data choices, such as B2B, B2C, firmographic, contact, email validation, social media, mapping, and translation services.
  • Built-in security and privacy capabilities to ensure any automation can meet compliance requirements, such as GDPR and CASL.
  • Support for application-to-application level integration using REST API.
  • Ability to display data in the context of any application or website page so that end users can interact with the data.

Cloud and mobile technologies have fundamentally changed marketing and sales. In order to compete and scale in the digital world, the leading marketing and sales organizations need the agility to keep pace with the changes in buyer behavior and advances in technology. The organizations that will pull ahead of their competition are the ones that can out-execute their peers, experiment, and pivot to what works. Agility must be a core competency of any data-driven sales and marketing organization and, in this day and age, if you have any aspiration of scaling and being competitive, you must have a data-driven organization.

So before you launch a new data warehouse, master data management, or customer data platform project, ask the question, “Will this project give your organization the agility you need for data for the next decade, or are you building a glass house that may not have the practicality to support your rapidly changing business?”

Want to see what a solution for “agile orchestration” can look like. Sign up for a demo here.

17 Jul 15:47

Running Effective Referral Programs: The Formula For Success

by Amity Kapadia

While not all effective referral programs yield the same results, there are some steps you can take to set your brand’s referral program up for success. Long story short, your goal is to help your brand ambassadors help you.

In order to build a successful referral program, let’s start with a few basic questions:

1. Are you manually enrolling brand ambassadors into your program?

2. How do you manage referral activity – with spreadsheets and multiple documents, or via a dedicated referral marketing platform?

3. Do you have a strategy in place to track and measure referrals?

4. Are you modeling your program — if you have one at all — after proven best practices?

5. Are you leveraging the right technologies to optimize your campaigns, scale your program, and drive referral ROI as high as possible?

Ultimately, referral marketing is most valuable when you’re able to easily amplify results without also proportionately amplifying internal resources. With the right tools, capabilities, and systems in place, achieving efficiency at scale is quite possible.

Effective Referral Programs Image 2

Formulating Effective Referral Programs

Referral marketing, like most marketing strategies, is not a “set it and forget it” initiative. In order to see real results, you need to manipulate certain variables until you figure out what works best for your business. While you still might have to tinker around a little, we can give you a head start with how to run effective referral programs. We’ve gathered best practices utilized by our most successful clients to create what we’ve coined as The Formula for Success. The tips and tricks outlined below are turnkey, low effort ways to create a fully scalable referral program that drives new business and significantly increases your bottom line.

Variable A = Audience

The first variable in the equation is audience. Focus on increasing the quality and quantity of your ambassadors by leveraging these 5 factors.

Create an Open Program
Some website visitors may never buy, but they could know people that will! Open up your program to allow anyone visiting your website to refer.

Auto-Enroll Customers
Every customer has liked your brand so much that they have gone through the purchasing process. Turn those customers into ambassadors by auto-enrolling them as soon as they make a purchase to maximize your referral opportunity.

Utilize Net Promoter Score
NPS® helps identify promoters who should be enrolled in your program. Contact us to learn more about Net Promoter Score.

Kickoff the Program
Don’t just hope that ambassadors will find your program. Announce your program launch through dedicated emails and social posts to start seeing results quickly.

Build a Program Overview Landing Page
Provide ambassadors with a comprehensive overview of the program. For increased visibility, include a link to the overview landing page in the header or footer of your site.

Variable B = Engagement

The next variable to consider is engagement. How are you communicating and engaging with members of your referral program? Here are six ways to keep your program top-of-mind with brand ambassadors.

Add a Refer-a-Friend Module
The most successful referral programs make it easy to share. Add a refer-a-friend module across your website, including post-purchase, to see your share volume go up.

Add a CTA in Emails
Whether you include a call-to-action in your newsletter or in email footers, this is an easy way to promote the program via existing marketing efforts.

Encourage Employee Promotion
Employees tend to have the highest touch points with customers. Have them include the referral program in their email signatures for increased visibility.

Post on Social Channels
Continuous social promotion of the program will help you enroll new ambassadors and remind existing ones to share.

Send Dedicated Emails
Encourage engagement by providing useful program information in dedicated emails. These emails can offer suggestions for seeing success or even highlight top ambassadors.

Offline Promotion
If customers are engaging with your brand offline, ensure that you’re promoting the program in-person, as well. This can be implemented via flyers or shipment inserts.

Variable C = Incentive

The last variable in the formula is probably what your brand ambassadors consider the most important factor: The incentives. Ensure you’re referral program is offering the right incentive at the right time to increase referrals by utilizing these three best practices.

Set up a Commission Bonus
Encourage your ambassadors to send you more referrals by setting up a commission bonus. Each time they hit a threshold, they’ll earn a higher reward.

Offer a Dual Incentive
Rewarding both the ambassador and the referee can provide a substantial lift. Coupon codes are a great option for incentivizing the referee to convert.

Set up a Multi-Event Reward
Keep ambassadors motivated during long purchase cycles by offering a reward for more than one event. For example, configure an initial commission of a lower amount for a new lead in your pipeline and a secondary commission of a higher amount when the new customer completes the sales cycle.

effective referral programs image 3

The formula for success results in growing referred customers and new business as well as increasing brand awareness. By leveraging these referral marketing best practices, tips, and tricks, your marketing team will be able to remove much of the complexity, tedium, and guesswork that comes from running referral campaigns. And that leads to executing efficient, measurable, and profitable referral marketing campaigns that, over time, positively influence every aspect of your marketing strategy.

16 Jul 15:23

Timing Cashflows of Your Sales Commissions and Your Customers

Your sales team is starting to close some terrific accounts. As your startup grows, your sales team will experiment with different sales techniques. For example, qualification, pricing, positioning, incentives and contract structure. This is a wonderful phase for a startup. However, there’s a common mistake to avoid.

Your VP of Finance should model the impact and approve each experiment. Many startups don’t do this at the early stages of go to market. Failing to consider the cash flow impacts can balloon your burn.

Customer contracts determine how and when customers pay you. Cash flows in. Sales commission plans govern how and when your startup pays account executives. Cash flows out. The inflows and outflows should match.

When the inflows and outflows align, things work well. A customer signs on, sends a check to the company. The startup receives the cash and distributes a fraction to the sales team.

Mismatched cash flows create hairy problems. Let’s say a startup sells software for $250,000 ACV. This quarter, four account executives close contracts. The commission payout totals approximately 20% of the sale or $200k.

Your commission plan promises sales teams payment immediately. Contracts permits customers begin to pay 60 days from now. End result: your quarterly burn just increased by at least $200k. And this scenario assumes annual upfront payment. If you promise your customers monthly payment, your cash shortfall lasts five months, not two.

Worse, imagine you have paid commission to an account executive. Before the 60 day window, the customer cancels the contract. You have to decide whether claw back the sales commission from the account executive or eat the cost.

Discounting also presents cash flow timing risks. Imagine the sales team offers four months free on a 16 month contract. Your startup fronts the commission four months before being paid.

The impact can be serious. One startup doubled their burn in a quarter because of novel sales tactics. Bookings went through the roof and so did the burn. Because the impact became apparent more than a quarter later, it took the business more than 6 months to react burning through millions and forced an early fundraise.

When experimenting with novel compensation or new sales tactics, for use in the contract, ensure that your cash flows are well-timed.

16 Jul 15:21

Almost Too Late, These CEOs Learned their Pricing Problem was Really a Packaging Problem

by Doug Bain
Taking the above conclusion at face value, it forces a hard choice –  drop the price and hurt margin, or maintain the price and sacrifice sales. Rock, meet Hard Place. That sort of choice can stymie decision-making, causing you to
16 Jul 15:20

Industrial building in Prince George holds record for most airtight

by The Canadian Press

PRINCE GEORGE — The Wood Innovation Research Lab in Prince George, appears to be nothing more than a modern cedar and black-metal building, but look past the cladding and you’ll find an engineering feat that has earned it the recognition as the most airtight industrial building on the continent.

The University of Northern British Columbia building has received Passive House certification, making it the first of its type in North America to meet the internationally recognized standards for energy efficiency.

Guido Wimmers, chairman of the Integrated Wood Design Program at UNBC, said the building is very efficient and cuts heating and cooling bills by up to 90 per cent in a central B.C. climate where temperatures range from -30 C in winter to 30 C in summer.

“To get to Passive House standards in this climate, with this geometry, that was a big challenge and hasn’t been done, to the best of my knowledge. There are three or four industrial buildings worldwide,” he said.

There are Passive House organizations around the world advocating for high-performance buildings in design, construction and livability. Thousands of Canadian homes have been certified by the group indicating they have met limits for heat, energy use and being airtight.

The research building is 30 metres by 30 metres, with walls that are a half-metre thick and contain blown-in mineral wool insulation.

Generally construction costs about five per cent more for passive buildings, but the university is the owner and it’s also interested in the operation costs, said Wimmers.

“The initial investment is higher, true, but the actually monthly costs of ownership are lower. And that’s always the goal. It has to be cost-efficient, otherwise nobody would do it.”

It will cost about $1,000 a year to heat, Wimmers said.

“A normal building of this type would have had a heating bill of $16,000, or something like that.”

The biggest challenge to obtaining the certification was a large overhead door that allows material to be brought into the research lab.

Wimmers said they brought in the big red door from Germany and had to optimize it even further to increase the air seal.

“Well, first you close the door,” he said, laughing as he explained how they got the seal. “Those bay doors are prone to leak. They are very well known for not being airtight.”

The other doors and windows in the building came from Poland, he said.

The B.C. Energy Step Code will set much stricter provincial regulations for housing energy efficiency and be in place by 2032, but the construction industry has been slow to catch on and manufacturers don’t see the value, he said. Some cities, including Vancouver, are already enforcing higher energy efficiency standards.

“The long-term goal is clearly not to keep on importing stuff. The goal is to create a local market so that local manufacturers can sell their inventions and new products.”

Wimmers said he’s been in consultation with several B.C. municipalities and companies about construction of more passive buildings.

The end result is all about comfort, Wimmers said.

“Imagine you have a power outage. Typical buildings would be almost unlivable in 10 to 12 hours or so. In a Passive House, you just don’t care. You can be there for days and days and days and most likely it is never going to drop below 15 degrees.”

— By Terri Theodore in Vancouver

CLICK HERE to report a typo.

Is there more to this story? We’d like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com


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16 Jul 15:20

Drones are no longer a cool novelty only a handful of companies are testing — they're infiltrating a slew of industries and applications

by Nicholas Shields

Drones — also commonly referred to as unmanned aircraft — are no longer a cool, new novelty that companies in only a handful of industries are testing.

Businesses across various industries and levels of government in the US are utilizing at least a handful of drones. But more importantly, drone users are now realizing a deep return on their investments from the aircraft's ability to help save hours of time and labor.

Farmers' Plans for Drones in 2018

However, to successfully get a drone program up and running, businesses need to have an idea of what they want the aircraft to do, and the value they hope to create. To that end, companies need to know what their competitors are doing with the aircraft so they can plan their own projects accordingly.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence details how unmanned aircraft are disrupting a slew of different industries, including agriculture, construction and mining, insurance, media and telecommunications, and the public sector. We also size the market for global enterprise drone shipments, and pinpoint the features that make drones useful tools within different industries. Lastly, we make predictions for how drone use in these industries will evolve over the next five to 10 years and to what extent their impact will be magnified over this period.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

  • Since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implemented its Part 107 regulations for unmanned aircraft in August 2016, the commercial drone industry in the US has taken off. 
  • Companies across the US have rushed to deploy drones to cut costs, boost operational efficiency, and open up new streams of revenue. Meanwhile, firms elsewhere in the world have taken notice and ramped up their own drone projects.
  • Unmanned aircraft have the potential to create the greatest business value in the construction, mining, and agriculture industries. The agriculture industry was a relatively early adopter of drones, and today one-third of farmers in the US plan to use at least one drone this year. Meanwhile, drones will have a less significant, yet noticeable, impact on media, telecommunications, and insurance businesses.
  • Drones will lead these industries to become highly data-driven in the coming years, making the aircraft a must-have for companies to keep pace with their competitors. They will allow businesses to synthesize and analyze trends in their workflows to bolster their operational efficiency and predict problems before they happen.

In full, the report:

  • Analyzes the development of drone use across five different industries.
  • Offers a look at how drone use in these industries will evolve over the coming years.
  • Sizes the market for enterprise drone shipments over a seven-year period, both in the US and abroad.

Join the conversation about this story »

16 Jul 15:20

We’re still clueless about lifetime value

by Seth Godin

If an Apple upgrade breaks your phone and you switch to Android, it costs Apple more than $10,000.

If you switch supermarkets because a clerk was snide with you, it removes $50,000 from the store’s ongoing revenue.

If a kid has a lousy first grade teacher or is bullied throughout middle school, it might decrease his productivity for the rest of us by a million dollars.

Torrents are made of drips.

The short-term impact (plus or minus) of our work or our errors is dwarfed by the long-term effects. Compounded over time, little things become big things. [I riff on some of this in the new interview I did with Larry King.]

 

PS Today is the early decision deadline for fall’s session of the altMBA. It’s a thirty-day workshop that will pay dividends.

       
16 Jul 15:17

What Does ‘Quality’ Really Mean in Content Marketing?

by Joshua Nite

Quality in Content Marketing

Quality in Content Marketing Have you heard the good news about quality content? It’s the latest innovation that’s sweeping the nation. It’s going to revolutionize your content marketing efforts. If your current strategy is to crank out crappy content, then quality content is going to blow your KPIs away! Okay, sarcasm aside: Every content marketer knows their content needs to be good to be effective. We call it “quality,” or “value,” or “usefulness.” But all of these traits can vary widely depending on your audience. For example, conventional wisdom might say that 500-word blog posts don’t connect with readers. But that word count may be just the right length for the people you want to reach. So, when we get into the specifics, quality is relative and highly subjective. But it’s possible to define quality content marketing in a more universal way: Quality content demonstrates to your audience that you are listening to them. It’s that simple. Well, one step further: Quality content demonstrates that you’re listening and you care. We often think about what action we want readers to take. That’s a valid question; in fact, it’s the foundation of content marketing strategy. But for quality content we need to consider the flip side: How will the reader’s life be better after reading this content? Or, to really boil it down: What’s in it for them? That’s the essence of quality content. And here’s how you can make sure your content passes the test. First, at the broadest level, there are two minimum requirements for quality:

All Content Marketing Should Be ...

#1: Hyper-Relevant

We talk a lot about best answer content at TopRank Marketing, content that:
  • Serves a proven search need
  • Addresses a customer’s burning questions
  • Is substantial and comprehensive
Basically, it means that you’re putting in time and effort into researching your audience, what they need and how they’re searching for it. Then you’re crafting content that acknowledges that search and makes a genuine attempt to give them exactly what they’re looking for.

#2: Non-Promotional

It’s hard to convince people you’re listening to them if all you can talk about is how great you are. Quality content has to be non-promotional. Now, some brands take this advice to heart, but create content that’s still promotional, just with a thin veneer of solving a problem. They’ll publish a “10 Ways to Be Better at X,” but each way just leads to their solution. That’s a cheat. Real customer-centered content gives away valuable information that people can use even if they never buy from you.  For example, here’s Quicksprout’s “Advanced Guide to Content Marketing.” It’s massive. It’s ungated. Only a tiny fraction of it is related to the solutions they sell. Advanced Guide to Content Marketing Example Of course, your content mix should include some bottom-of-funnel content that will show how your brand solves a problem. But the majority of your content should focus on the reader. [bctt tweet="It’s hard to convince people you’re listening to them if all you can talk about is how great you are. - @NiteWrites #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] So, quality content demonstrates to your reader that you’re listening and care about them. It does this by being hyper-relevant and non-promotional. It’s a good working definition, but still a little vague. Here are five ways you can approach content to guarantee quality:

Five Ways to Create Quality Content

#1: Tell a Story

Humans are storytelling animals. We're wired to process narratives, to get pleasure from a good tale and retain the information within it. This is why people have a favorite novel or movie, but few have a favorite white paper or instruction manual. Tell a story that shows your reader you understand what their world is like. Tell a story that shows you understand what they wish their world was like. Even better, make them (or someone very much like them) the star of the story. [bctt tweet="We're wired to process narratives. This is why people have a favorite novel or movie, but few have a favorite white paper or instruction manual. - @NiteWrites #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] Read: Be Honest Like Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling

#2: Show Vulnerability

One of the quickest ways to make an emotional connection is to reveal your own shortcomings. Everyone has moments of failure; they’re what makes us human. Use your brand’s failings, and the lessons learned from them, to connect with the reader and help them improve. The Buffer team is great at the kind of honest, meaningful discussion I’m talking about here. Their “5 Times We Failed at Diversity Big Time (and How We Fixed It)” is a good starting example. Buffer Quality Content Example

#3: Help Them Look Smart at Work

What do most working people have in common, regardless of industry, function or seniority level? We all want to look good in front of our boss. If you are the boss, you want to look good in front of shareholders. Everyone can benefit from a little competitive edge, a tip or a trick or a bit of wisdom they can pull out at the next meeting.

#4: Help Make Their Job Easier

Another thing all working people have in common is that we would prefer to not work so hard. Anything that can help us get the job done quicker, with less effort, without sacrificing quality, is incredibly valuable. Keep that idea in mind when writing checklists, tools and tips, or how-to posts. It’s not just “here’s how you do this,” it’s “here’s how you do this better, regardless of your current skill level.”

#5: Help Them Improve Themselves

Your audience’s lives are bigger than their interaction with your brand. They’re bigger than the pain points your brand has the expertise to solve. If you can reach out to the broader sphere of their life experience, you can bring quality in new and unexpected ways. This piece from LinkedIn's* Jason Miller, “How to Survive a Mid-Career Crisis in Marketing,” is a stellar example. It’s a guide that’s not really about marketing at all; it’s about finding your true voice and pursuing passion. Bonus: Notice that the piece tells a story and shows vulnerability, too. LinkedIn Quality Content Example

Quality Is Job One

Have you ever said to anyone, “I consumed some quality content the other day?” I sincerely hope not. Instead, you likely said, “I saw the greatest article,” or “Check out this cool video.” When content is useful, valuable, and meaningful, it’s not part of the deluge of content that surrounds us. It’s signal, not noise. That’s the only type of content we should be in the business of making. Not just because it gets better results — it does, but that’s only part of the equation. When we create quality content, that means the work we do is useful, valuable, and meaningful. Personally, I wouldn’t waste my time doing otherwise. [bctt tweet="When content is useful, valuable, and meaningful, it’s not part of the deluge of content that surrounds us. It’s signal, not noise. - @NiteWrites #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] Create content that connects. Check out these 10 powerful lessons in resonance from some of the industry's top marketing minds. Disclosure: LinkedIn is a TopRank Marketing client.

The post What Does ‘Quality’ Really Mean in Content Marketing? appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

16 Jul 15:17

What Are Pillar Pages & How They Impact Content Marketing & SEO

by Ryan Shelley

markusspiske / Pixabay

When it comes to growing your organic visibility and position, your company as an industry, or topic thought, quality content is a must. While blogging and page optimization is very beneficial, there is one popular strategy, when executed correctly, that can take your game to a whole new level. They are called “Pillar Pages.”

The idea of a pillar page, or what I’ve always called a core page, is to increase your topic authority by creating an in-depth piece of content that covers as many aspects of that specific topic as possible. Brian Dean has been using the strategy with great success for years. To see an example of one of his pages click here.

As you see on this page, there is a ton of content, broken into multiple sections (chapters). But the idea is to give as much information as you can around a topic to show your authority to your users and the search engines.

Pieces of content like this don’t just happen. They take a lot of time and careful planning and execution. Check out the video below to learn more.

Video Transcript:

Hey, thanks so much for checking out this video. If this is your first time watching, I want to say welcome. If you’ve been watching a while, hey, welcome back. If you haven’t yet subscribed, please hit the button to subscribe now. We would love to have you join our community.

Over the last couple of years, or maybe a year and a half or so, HubSpot has been pushing something known as pillar page. HubSpot is an inbound marketing software used to get everything that you need to do to achieve high-level inbound marketing under one roof. Now, they’ve been pushing pillar pages for one main reason. Google is focused on topic authority. This is nothing new. This is something that we’ve known about for quite some time. They’ve been really gearing towards this in order to better understand user intent and to deliver the content that a user is expecting, that’s actually going to answer their questions.

What’s the difference between topics and keyword?

Topics you can think of as the meta-category. The top category. The big thought. We can have a topic like SEO. Let’s say we have this topic. Now, this is our big idea. This is something that we want to be known for, something that we want to do. Underneath this, we are going to have things like local SEO, or things like search marketing. We’re going to have things like Google. These are all keywords and terms that are now related to this meta topic, this main topic.

In Google, when they’re looking for authority figures on ideas, they want to know that you’re a topic expert. Yes, you want to be a niche expert as well and maybe this is going to be your focus over here. Then, there’s going to be subcategories under there. What they’re looking for, is do you know what you’re talking about. One of the ways that they do that, is they look at the content. They look to see whether or not that your keywords and the content that you’re writing about matches the topic authority of what you’re talking about.

Where does a pillar page fit into all of this?

Since Hummingbird was released and Google began to focus more on topics and more on relational search or search that’s more contextual, we have been focusing our SEO strategies on our services pages, on what we would call our core page, which is the exact same thing as a pillar page. These are pages that prove your topic authority and help the user better understand. A pillar page is not really a high-level piece of content. It’s more in that consideration, more in that middle of the buyer’s page. It’s going to add a lot more context. It’s also going to help that user take the next step into building that relationship with you.

What you want to do is have these pages on your site that display topic authority and then you want to build relationships between those pages and other related pieces of content. Again, let’s take a look at how this strategy works.

If you’ve got a website, you’ve got a number of pages. Right? You’ve got your home page, about, services, and content. Underneath your services pages, you’re going to have probably what you’re known for. I’m just going to use what we do as an example because it’s going to be easier for me and I hope it still makes sense to you. We’ve got SEO, we’ve got inbound, and we’ll also say analytics.

Now, we can treat either our services pages as core pages, or we can build a separate pillar page. What a pillar page would be, would be something like you’ve probably seen like the Ultimate Guide to SEO. What this guide is going to be is a really in-depth piece of content that covers everything about SEO from on page, off page, maybe some backlinks, maybe we’ll talk about the technical side, maybe we’ll talk about schema, maybe we’ll talk about local, Google, ranking factors. We’re really going to just create this really comprehensive piece of content that’s going to be this guide that lets our users know everything that they need to know about SEO. In that, we’re going to have these different sections that really show our authority. Each under these sections is going to have very targeted terms in them, like on page SEO, link building, Google algorithm, Google analytics, local SEO, ranking factor. All these other terms that are related to SEO, which we’ll want this page to rank for, is terms related to what is SEO. How does SEO work? You know, a guide to SEO. Those are the things we want searchers to find us for. So, we start creating all this content.

It doesn’t just stop there. We don’t just create this one page. Now, we’ve got to take this page and build relationships between our site, because we’re going to be doing this with each one of our core pages here. Then, Google now wants to see relationship. Just because you have this big giant piece of content and some links in it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to rank. I think that’s a lot of disconnection sometimes. We assume that, hey, as long as I build a lot of content, people are going to naturally rank to it, put links to it, and they’re going to like it. If you don’t put the work behind your content, and you don’t build the right linking, internally linking structure as well as building backlinks, you’re not going to get the visibility you want, which is why a lot of people get frustrated with pillar page campaigns or any other link building and content marketing campaigns. It is because they haven’t taken the extra effort to make sure one; they’ve added the context within their website and two; they’ve gotten outside sites to link to them as well.

Let’s talk a little bit about how that all flows together. So, you’ve created this pillar page and you’ve created this really in-depth piece of content that you want to ultimately drive your users to. A pillar page’s goal isn’t to move people to a blog, it’s to move people deeper into that page and hopefully take some action. This can be your pillar page.

Now, what you want to do is start driving traffic or start to show relationships to it. Again, let’s say this one is about SEO again. Now, I might have a blog article that is an SEO how to. I want to add an internal link from this SEO how to into the pillar page. Maybe I’ve got one on local SEO. Again, I want to add an internal link to that. I also maybe have one on backlinks. I want to add an internal link back to that. What this is doing is starting to create a web. Go figure, right? Where Google is able to crawl our sites and begin to see the relationship. Not just the content on this page, but that we also have other authoritative pieces of content on our website. Now, what we also need to do is take these pages and, if appropriate, interlink them where it makes sense. Again, we’re showing that relationship. We also want to find high-quality third-party sites that we can build relationships with that can also build backlinks to these pages. That’s HQ for high-quality.

That is going to raise the visibility of these blog pages. The authority of these blog pages, which then is going to pass that authority to the pillar page as well. Alone, this pillar page should be attracting tons of links as well. If it is a really good piece of content and it’s being marketed well and distributed well, it’s going to increase in value which in return has the potential to increase the value of all your other content.

This really starts to work in a very cyclical way and it needs to all be integrated to each other. You can’t just put one page up and spend a lot of time creating this content and hope that people are going to find it and link to it. You may have people on social. Great. Push it out to social. Use it in your newsletter, but make sure you’re doing the other things. Make sure that the technical side of it is done right, that the content is well written, that it’s easy to read, that it’s digestible, that it’s contextual, and then make sure that you have the links in place.

This is a critical piece of this strategy to make it work. A lot of people don’t do it because it’s hard and it does take time. It takes a lot of organization and understanding what are these types of sites that you should be linking to. Not all links are created equal. You can spend a lot of time and a lot of money buying or going after bad links that are actually going to do the opposite of what you want the strategy to do for you. Make sure that you take the time to not just identify what you want to create that core pillar page about, but what are the other assets you have that you can interlink and begin to build this web. What resources can you build outside of that? Maybe you can do some guest posting, get some resource pages, maybe you find some high-quality niche communities in LinkedIn, or some other places, where you can begin to build in some of these links and these other assets and traffic that are going to build the credibility of your pages, which is going to allow those pages to rank better. Rank is not everything, but it still matters. There are more opportunities now than ever with the way that Google is working using rich snippets and a lot of other things inside of the SERPs.

We have a lot of SERP features now that we have access to in creating content that’s very high quality but also answers the questions that people are looking for answers to. You have a possibility to get in front of them and really drive them towards connecting with your business and building that relationship.

Again, the goal of the pillar page isn’t just traffic. It’s to educate somebody and push them further down the buyer’s journey so that they can make an informed decision about whether or not to do business with your business.

If you have any questions, I would love to continue the conversation. Comment below or shoot us an email. We would love to continue this conversation. Until next time, Happy Marketing.

16 Jul 15:12

How to Lay Out Your B2B Website to Maximize Conversions

by Jaime Nacach

How to Lay Out Your B2B Website to Maximize Conversions

While there are several ways to increase your conversion rate, the very first part to pay rapt attention to is your website design. Remember, it’s the first thing your customers will meet when they get to your website.

A well-designed website is one of the most critical parts of your success online.

In a recent study, marketers say building a website or a landing page and testing them is one of the five challenges faced by B2B marketers.

Build a Landing Page

Having a well-optimized website can double or even triple the number of leads you generate from your campaign.

But how do you know if you’re doing it right?

Because there are so many variables to consider in the construction of a lead generation website.

In this post, you’ll learn all the best ways to maximize conversions on your B2B website.

1. Build your product or offers with the user in mind

Your product is the reason why you created your website or landing page in the first place, right?

And it’s meant to solve your users’ challenges — it makes sense if you look at the offers to determine whether they are the best deals you can provide for your prospect. [source]

Build products with users in mind

Then you can develop ways to make the offer irresistible. You could give additional value by adding extra high-quality products to their cart for free if they purchase your product.

The first step to maximizing conversions from your website is to have a great product that effectively solves your customer’s challenges.

This will most likely shape everything you do on your website to maximize profit. For example, it’ll trigger excellent reviews on Review Websites which you can include on your website to help you boost your conversion.

In fact, in a recent study, 68% say positive reviews make them trust a local business more vs. 72% in 2014.

Online Consumers Reviews Opinion Affect your Local Business

It’ll shape your value proposition and will allow you to create content that appeals to your user’s emotions — this will likely resonate with your website visitors and could land you a sale.

And with this, you can focus on telling your visitors about the benefits of your products and not your product’s features.

Make every effort to ensure that the product doesn’t only meet your user’s requirement — but also has an intuitive user interface that’s not confusing to use.

Overall, don’t create a bad product, no amount of optimization will make a bad product good. Instead, it’s an easy kill. This is an important variable to consider before even thinking of optimization.

2. Use directional cues to guide users through your website

You got your B2B website or landing page design ready and hopefully, you’ve got everything in place and ready to start promotion.

Directional cues are visual elements that guide or lead website users toward important sections of your website or landing page. Take a look at the arrow in this landing page, it’s a typical directional cue.

Basecamp

Assuming you’ve got a video on your website that will likely increase your conversion, how do you ensure that 90% of people who visit your website watch that video?

It’s a bad idea to leave it out to chance. For your marketing effort to pay off, it’s important you show your website users exactly what to do on your website when they first get there.

Using directional cues also known as visual cues can influence the visitor’s activities on your website and compel them to take action.

By the way, what are directional cues, you ask?

They are visual aids such as arrows or eye gaze that points directs users to the most important elements of your website. For example, your CTA, lead capture form, testimonials, videos, or video.

Here is a practical example:

Fitness Leads

The first thing a person observes when they get to this page is the GET MY FREE COPY button, right? And it’s because of the arrow.

That’s the essence.

Visual cues could also be in the form of a person staring at an element. For example:

Write as you speak

Or even, lines:

How Treehouse Works

Visual cues are a great way to increase conversions on your B2B website or landing page.

3. Narrow your content focus to reach the most targeted audience

Do you know your audience well enough?

If you want to attract your target leads to your website and have the chance to convert them to customers, you should create engaging content that is focused on solving your target audience challenges.

This is especially important if you’re concerned with maximizing your marketing budget. Stop creating content for everyone. Focus your energy and investment on compelling content that will benefit your target audience.

Customers love customized content. When the right prospect reads your personalized content, it resonates with them and they tend to buy from you.

In fact, it’s so important that 74% of customers feel frustrated when a website content is not personalized.

Facts about personalization

4. Create a responsive website to cater to users on any mobile device

Do you know that By 2019, mobile advertising is expected to represent 72% of all U.S. digital ad spending?

And it’s not surprising that 80% of internet users own a Smartphone. Every business savvy entrepreneur will take this very important statistics and consider creating their website responsive enough to cater to their users on different devices.

Google is a strong advocate for responsive design. Mashable named 2013 “The Year of Responsive Design,” this isn’t just a hype, you could be losing a lot of conversions if your visitors land on your website which is not responsive and they find out that they are not able to use the website effectively because it looks nice on desktop but broken on mobile devices.

User experience is really a great factor that when improved can go a long way to boost your bottom line.

Here is an example of a responsive website:

Responsive Design

O`Neill Clothing is also an example of a brand that has seen a lot of success with responsive design.

When they made their website responsive enough to support iPhone and iPod users they increased their conversion by 65.71% and they increased their conversions even more by over 407% — that’s a lot of conversions.

5. Create a landing page for every campaign message

In internet marketing, a landing page is a special web page created specifically for the purpose of marketing or advertising campaign.

If you want to get the best out of your marketing campaign, it’s a bad idea to point all your marketing campaigns to your homepage. In fact, it’s pointless.

Unfortunately, a recent study by Kissmetrics reveals that 52% of B2B PPC ads point towards a homepage, not a landing page.

That’s bad. And can be one of the worst advertising mistakes you can make in your business.

You should create separate landing pages for your campaigns and advertise specific products on those pages.

Since you should have ad campaigns targeting users at different stages of your customer’s journey, it’s important you send a unique message at each point and to do this you need a separate landing page for most of the stages of the campaign as well.

6. Embrace multi-channel content marketing

Multi-channel marketing is a great way to keep your customers in sync across your different marketing touch points.

Multichanel Marketing

According to Forrester, 86% believe successfully integrating multiple channels under a single integrated marketing strategy is critical to long-term success.

There are a lot of reasons you should embrace multichannel marketing, one important one which is that you must be where your customers are.

Customers are very smart nowadays and they expected you to be able to measure up. You don’t want your customers to outsmart you, do you?

7. Use non-intrusive popup forms to capture email address and build trust

Email marketing is an age-long effective digital marketing strategy. You probably have heard the saying that the money is in the list, of course, it’s still true.

Using intrusive pop-up on either your landing page or website is a huge mistake. It’ll kill your conversions.

Using non-intrusive popup forms will ensure you don’t annoy your website visitors. For example, the popup form could appear when the user is about to exit your website, or when they click to download your ebook.

That way, the form doesn’t interfere with the content they’re reading. Here’s an example:

Not intrusive design

Capturing the email address of potential customers from your website is a very critical part of your business considering that most visitors might not come back after browsing through your website.

The best idea is to get them to stick around your brand and build a relationship with them. And the best way to do this is through emails.

But the challenge is the means to capture the email addresses. Especially with the new GDPR policy by the E.U., You need to use tools that don’t forcefully collect visitors data without their knowledge and not give them a chance to choose opt-out.

Have you visited a website where the only option was to subscribe or close the page completely?

Instead of showing your customers an opt-in form immediately they land on your website, it makes sense if you allow them to read the content to a large extent — from 70 – 80% into the content is the right time to initiate a pop-up.

At that time, the customer will likely be ready to give you their email address, and not feel pressured.

In 2017, Google started cracking down websites that used intrusive pop-ups. They stated that websites with intrusive pop-ups will not rank high in search engines.

Conclusion

Every B2B website should be designed with the user in mind. This will ensure that the conversion goals are met.

It doesn’t matter how long you have been running your business, if you can implement the web design best practices as laid out in this post, you’ll boost your traffic, acquire more leads, and grow your sales exponentially.

16 Jul 15:12

The Greatest Threat to Your Sales Results

by Anthony Iannarino

Your strategy for acquiring new clients is not very likely to be the difference between your results and the results you need. Your sales process and your sales methodologies are almost certainly up to the task of acquiring new clients.

Your product, service, or solution is also not what is hindering your sales results. There are an immeasurable number of poor products that sell relatively well, as well as commodities with zero differentiation with revenue in the billions of dollars. The same is true of your service or your solution.

No doubt that one obstacle might be your salesforce. There are only four challenges a sales organization faces here, too little activity, too little effectiveness, both of the preceding two, and poor leadership. And since the first three are all a result of the final factor, that makes lack of leadership the greatest threat to your sales results.

Specifically, the greatest threat to your sales results is some combination of the first two factors, enabled by the final factor.

If there is one thing I would indict sales leaders for, it would be for allowing apathy, complacency, and the lack of real effort against the tasks of creating new opportunities and winning those new opportunities. Creating and winning new opportunities are the outcomes a sales leader and their sales force is responsible for producing.

Selling is not a passive, reactive endeavor. It requires a proactive approach, one based on effective activity designed to produce the outcomes necessary for growth. When a sales force is allowed to sit in a passive, reactive posture, waiting for marketing to produce leads, and waiting for clients to respond to automated messaging, and spending more time in software designed to help with the sales process rather than being face to face with their prospective clients, it is a failure of leadership.

No one wants to be a micromanager. And no one wants to be micromanaged. As a leader, however, you are responsible for setting the priorities, setting the goals, and ensuring that the resources provided to you are applied against those priorities. When some of those resources, including the human resources, decide to spend their time and energy on things different from the priorities, it is not micromanaging to require that time and energy be shifted to what’s most important.

Recently, I learned that there is no word for accountability in Spanish. The word is consistently used here in the United States, but it’s hard to recognize the definition of the word from the actions of those who are responsible for ensuring accountability. The greatest threat to your sales results now is a lack of leadership that allows salespeople to spend their time and energy on things outside of creating, winning, and serving their clients.

Everything is important. But not everything can be most important. There is no way to generate the results you are capable of without doing the work necessary.

The post The Greatest Threat to Your Sales Results appeared first on The Sales Blog.

16 Jul 15:11

3 Lead Magnet Ideas for More Website Conversions

by Donna Campbell

What does it mean when your website visitor traffic is solid, but your website is not converting visitors’ leads? Website traffic generation is only valuable if it’s pulling in the right audience, and if that audience is converting into customers.

High traffic means that you’re probably doing a good job with SEO and search. But how are you doing with lead capture and conversion? Does your website have enough (or any) conversion points?

Enter lead magnets. By offering high-value content at each stage of the marketing funnel, you’ll increase your odds of converting visitors and growing your email list so you can start nurturing more leads!

What are Lead Magnets?

According to HubSpot:

“A lead magnet is a marketing tool that generates leads by offering a long-form resource in exchange for a prospect’s contact information.”

Some examples:

  • Checklists, templates, and comparison grids
  • Case studies, white papers and ultimate guides
  • Webinars and online classes
  • Opt-ins or subscriptions to blogs and newsletters

Each of these magnets fits into a different stage of the marketing funnel and you’ll need to create content for:

  • Top-Of-The-Funnel (TOFU)
  • Middle-Of-The-Funnel (MOFU)
  • Bottom-Of-The-Funnel (BOFU)

So let’s supercharge your lead generation strategy with some examples of lead magnets.

1. Top-Of-The-Funnel: The Checklist

Checklists are simple to create and promote and they work well at the top-of-the-funnel. They’re great for customers who are having a problem and are researching, Googling and seeking solutions to that problem, but don’t yet know what the solutions are. Our own Budget Prep Checklist converted really well, and was responsible for several new pieces of business for us. Checklists help people get organized so they can make some sense of their problem. The bonus: it pushes them further down the funnel to research solutions like the ones you offer.

2. Middle-Of-The-Funnel: The Product Catalog

For product-focused marketers like manufacturing companies, it’s a good idea to promote your product catalog throughout your website. This helps visitors who have decided that what you offer might be the solution to their problem, but they’re still deciding between product A and product B. Don’t neglect to offer a printable version of your catalog. People still love to print things out, so give them a PDF.

3. Bottom-Of-The-Funnel: The Free Consultation

Once a customer has reached the bottom-of-the-funnel and is ready to buy, it makes sense to meet those final objections with a free consultation. Offer up 30 minutes with one of your sales engineers to walk them through your proven process or do a free demo of your product to seal the deal. Make it super easy for them to schedule the consultation by connecting the landing page opt-in form to a specific person’s calendar using tools like the HubSpot scheduling tool.

Stop letting your visitors fall into the abyss! Include CTAs (calls-to-action) throughout your website that push visitors to your lead magnets. Pro tip: Keep your opt-in forms super simple, and don’t ask for more than your content is worth.

14 Jul 16:36

B2B Reads: Funnel Fundamentals and AI in B2B

by Kailee McKinney

In addition to our Sunday App of the Week feature, we also summarize some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the Web each week. We’ll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is worth sharing please add it to the comments below.

10  Top of Funnel Fundamentals
Some great advice when it comes to building your funnel. Thanks, Lori Richardson.

B2B marketers are ‘generally unclear’ of what AI means, according to research
B2B marketers are still in the early stage of understanding AI and what it means for their businesses. Great article, Minda Smiley.

Dear CEO: Fix these three things and increase revenue
Three things your marketing and sales teams need to do to see real results. Thanks for the tips, Dan McDade.

3 Ways Customer Experience Differs From Customer Service
A look at the important difference between customer service and customer experience. Thanks for your thoughts, Carlos Hidalgo.

6 Great Email Lessons From the GDPR Deluge of 2018
Some helpful emailing advice learned from the GDPR email deluge. Thanks, John Hanson.

10 Overlooked B2B Optimization Opportunities to Boost Your Website
Some great B2B optimization tips to check out. Thanks, Iris Shoor.

3 Graphic Design Tips for Non-Designers
Visual content is extremely important for marketers, these are some great tips for those who want to create it themselves without the help of a graphic designer. Thanks for the tips, Midori Nediger

Why Better Prospecting Means Slowing Down
Sometimes faster isn’t better. It’s important to slow down a little if you want your prospecting to be successful. Thanks for your insight, Ben Taylor.

How Sales Managers Secretly Sabotage Revenue
Great sales managers are worth their weight in gold, but most sales managers fail to tip the scales. Thanks for your thoughts, Jason Jordan.

High-Profit Prospecting Secrets: Know the Customer’s Customer
What you learn about a customer’s customer will often apply to other prospects you want to reach. Thanks for the advice, Mark Hunter.

The post B2B Reads: Funnel Fundamentals and AI in B2B appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

14 Jul 16:32

4 Ways to Leverage Email Marketing For Audience Engagement

by Jared Evers

The digital landscape is constantly changing, and publishers are taking note. A few years ago, publishers got a lot of mileage out of social media posts and digital ads, but digital dollars don’t go as far as they used to.

Facebook is now prioritizing user content above all else. That means a post promoting your latest article won’t reach as many readers as it once did. New privacy regulations, known as GDPR, which recently went into effect, make it harder for publishers to get to know their readers and send targeted messages. Consumers are tired of digital ads—just 9% of ads are viewed for more than a second and just 4% were viewed for more than two seconds, according to Marketing Week.

All of these seemingly small changes are forcing publishers to shift their focus (and budgets) to more reliable channels like email marketing. Email gives you a direct line of communication to readers, and you can use automated email marketing tools to deliver the kind of relevant, targeted messages your subscribers want.

Try these four tactics that leverage email marketing to increase audience engagement.

1. Curate and send a newsletter with a “news feed” look

People flock to social feeds to get instant information. Users scroll through a list of messages, scan the content, and read posts of interest.

You can accomplish the same goal with an email newsletter. Curate your best posts and put them together in a newsletter. To mimic a news feed, pick a template that gives you an organized list design. You can use a drag and drop designer to customize the design, but make sure you create one that’s clean and easy for readers to digest.

For example, Rolling Stone uses this newsletter design:

Rolling Stone – Email Newsletter Design

It looks like a news feed, right? Each article has an image, title, and description. The template keeps all of the elements in a tidy design. All of the images are the same size and left justified, the titles are all one-line and in a bold font, and the descriptions are brief yet informative.

Using automated email marketing, you can create newsletters in advance and schedule them to send on a specific date. By scheduling newsletters, you make sure they’re delivered with regularity, which is important for continued engagement.

2. Send attention-grabbing content

To increase engagement, you have to deliver attention-grabbing messages to every inbox. But what qualifies as attention-grabbing? Of course, short and snappy headlines are a good start. Stunning images play a vital role too.

We suggest taking a lesson from Fashion Magazine. Fashion Magazine sends a regular newsletter, but their content is instantly noticeable. Take a look at a recent newsletter. What stands out?

This publisher uses GIFs as a way to draw readers in. After seeing these moving images, readers can’t help but read a title or two and start clicking on content they want to read.

GIFs are more attractive than images, but not as costly or as time-consuming as video creation. There are a lot of do-it-yourself tools out there that can help you create them too, like Giphy and Ezgif.com.

While GIFs are effective, the takeaway is to create stunning content that forces readers to pay attention. You can always experiment with different kinds of visual elements. It’s estimated that 87% of communication is now visual, so adding GIFs, mini-slideshows, or short videos to your email can help you drive engagement.

3. Give subscribers more control with a preference center

Digital and social advertising platforms give marketers the ability to select targeted audiences to show their ads to, but consumers are getting tired of ads. Mounting research shows ad-fatigue is spreading rapidly.

Fortunately, publishers can send hyper-targeted messages through email. With email, readers can actually tell you what kind of messages they want to receive.

By setting up an email preference center, subscribers can self-select the kind of content they want from your publication.

Penguin Random House has its readers select their favorite book genres from this preference center.

Penguin Random House - Email Preference Center

You can use your preference center to segment your contacts. Penguin Random House could create a segment for each book genre, for example, and send relevant messages to each group.

Using automated email marketing, when a reader joins a specific segment, like Mystery and Suspense, it can trigger an email delivery to that subscriber. The new subscriber, who loves Mystery and Suspense, gets a welcome email that features several books they might enjoy.

Publishers can also use automated email marketing to schedule a newsletter to send on a certain date. At the beginning of each month, Penguin Random House uses automated email marketing to send suggested book titles to readers based on the genres that readers select. Here’s an example:

Penguin Random House - Automated Email Marketing

4. Form relationships directly with advertisers

Since digital ads aren’t returning the ROI that many publishers desire, some are creating relationships directly with advertisers.

You’ve spent time cultivating a list of niche subscribers, collecting subscriber data, and tracking your email response rates. By teaming up with an advertiser, you can align their needs with your own.

Of course, there’s a lot to consider here. You’ll need to examine your data privacy protocol, decide what kind of advertisements your audience will respond to, and figure out how to include ads in your emails tastefully.

Apartment Therapy shows ads inside its newsletter. Here’s a look at one of their newsletters with a simple banner ad at the top:

Apartment Therapy – Email Newsletter with Ads

Sometimes, Apartment Therapy also includes ads inside the newsletter. Rather than an image and an article title, the content block will showcase an advertisement instead.

Working with advertisers gives publishers a revenue stream and a way to add engaging content to email in an organic way.

Wrap up

While many digital marketing channels are making it increasingly difficult to attract and retain customers, email marketing remains a proven, cost-effective communication tool. When you combine best email practices with automated email marketing options, you can create personalized, scalable messages that your subscribers engage with now and in the future.

14 Jul 16:24

How to Set Affiliate Commission Rates

by Robert Woo

 

A question we overhear frequently from our new clients is where to start when setting up an affiliate marketing commission structure with their partners. Not paying enough can make it hard to find reps to work with, but overpaying can slash your profits. We’re here to help. Here are the four questions to answer that will help you determine your commission rates for your affiliate program.

1. What are my margins?

The first question is easy to ask, but complicated in arriving at an answer. That’s because your profit margins depend on many changing aspects such as volume, overhead, and even the general economy. We fully expect your margins to change over time, but you do need a general grasp of what you have to work with as your start your affiliate program.

A good place to begin is calculating the Life Time Value (LTV) of a new customer, as well as the Operational Cost (OC) of your business. Once you have an average of what a new customer means to you in revenue, and can parse out the general cost of running your company, you’ll have some decent math to go on.

Here’s a simplified LTV equation:

Average Order Value X Purchase Frequency X Average Lifespan = LTV

Pretty straightforward, though you can get much more complicated with your LTV calculation if you wanted to. As for the OC, that’s simply the sum of your business expenses. Divide OC by the number of customers you have to approximate how much each one “costs.”

So for example, let’s say your average customer’s LTV comes to $300 over 2 years, and OC/customer is $30 each year.

$300 -$30(2) = $240, the profit margin of each customer over 2 years.

So, the maximum of what you can pay out in commission to the rep that brought in this new client, and break even, is $240. Of course, you’d never pay this much. Almost all merchants pay a commission that’s based on a percentage of the sale, not the LTV. But knowing your ceiling is the first step in calculating the payouts you can afford to set with your affiliate partners.

2. What do competitors pay?

Affiliate marketing isn’t new, and odds are that there exist competitors in your niche that are already engaging in this channel. Leverage their prior knowledge and experience and inquire about the rates they have been setting in their history. There are many ways to go about this:

Google it. Most of the time, you can search your way to approximate ranges in various verticals. Here are some numbers by way of eCommerce Affiliate Network (via heycarson.com):

Are these completely accurate to what you’ll eventually settle on? Unlikely, since these categories are very broad, there are no insights into how large or small the companies in this aggregate are, and even a single percentage can make or break your personal model. But even a general sense of these averages can help you narrow down to your base commission rates.

Ask people in your niche. Business is by nature competitive, but that doesn’t mean business owners are so cutthroat that they aren’t willing to answer your questions. Reach out to companies in your niche and ask what their general rates are. You’d be surprised how helpful SMB owners can be if you just ask.

Read competitors’ affiliate sign-up Terms & Conditions. Often times, many companies will flat out list the commissions rates they offer reps right on their sign-up page.

Sign up for a competitors’ program. It’s not exactly Mission Impossible-levels of clandestine activities to sign-up on a form or email them to inquire about the rates that they currently have.

Again, getting a general sense of what others are doing in your niche won’t completely be your answer, but it continues to narrow down your range. Additionally, you’ll know what you need to pay out to stay competitive.

3. What bonuses & incentives will you offer?

You’ve got your ceiling. You’ve got your industry averages. Now let’s factor in the other incentives you can offer. One of the best ways to motivate affiliates is to give them something to help them feel like part of the family. From exclusive deals & events, to branded merch, to just excellent partner care & service; think about what your specific company can offer reps that can a) endear them to your brand, and b) help you stay competitive without strictly relying on monetary compensation.

In other words, a 1% commission bump may not excite your reps. But a care package worth 1% might go a long way. If your competitor offers a 20% commission, but you’re struggling to get to 15%, think of creative offers you can give to your partners that can keep them interested.

 

image4you / Pixabay

Another strategy to keep in mind is to leave room for seasonal and temporary commission increases. You may not be able to pay your reps at 18% all year round, but maybe you can bump them up for a few weeks each year to help juice your revenue and keep reps motivated. It works, and it’s another way to stay competitive in your niche even if your rates are on the lower side of the general range.

By factoring in these bonuses and incentives, you can narrow your commission range even more, as well as knocking the percentages down a bit.

4. How are future sales attributed?

Finally, you have to decide whether affiliate sales after the first one are worth the same amount to your business. According to the Harvard Business Review, “increasing customer retention rates by 5% increase profits by 25% to 95%.” While that speaks to mitigating churn, the reason it’s more profitable is because it’s easier to sell to customers who have already purchased once from your business.

Thus, that first sale is more valuable than subsequent sales. So if your affiliate marketing is continually bringing in repeat customers, are all those sales worth the same to your business? Not really.

So it’s good practice to offer a higher commission for bringing in a brand new customer making his or her first purchase. This incentivizes your reps to go after people who have never shopped with you before, and also saves you money since commissions on subsequent sales will be lower than the initial.

This way, it can make more sense to offer your reps, say, 25% on first-time purchasers and 15% for repeat customers; instead of a flat 20% across the board. Overall it should save you from shelling out too much on customers who probably would have bought direct from you anyway. You can even put a cap on regular customers (ie. after 10 transactions, your affiliate no longer gets any commission).

Answering these four questions will funnel down to the rates that work best for your business, at least to start. It’s good practice to evaluate your rates at least quarterly to make sure that they’re not only still competitive, but make fiscal sense for your bottom line.

14 Jul 16:21

Selling Value – Not Fear | Sales Strategies

by Colleen Francis
Recently, I was speaking at a large conference that was focusing on sustainability and building technologies in the green space. After my presentation, someone came up to me and said, “Colleen, we need to stop focusing on the gloom and …
Read More »
14 Jul 16:18

Agile Transformation: Mastery, Autonomy & Purpose

by Michael Gibson

Mastery Autonomy Purpose — Synopsis

Master autonomy purpose — in this article, I present a slightly different way of viewing agile maturity, through Dan Pink’s lens of Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose; as a simple and useful way of fostering conversations and ensuring all relevant perspectives are considered.

Mastery Autonomy Purpose — Age-of-Product

Background

Let me start by saying that if you haven’t seen Dan Pink’s video on ‘Drive; the surprising truth about what motivates us,’ then check it out STRAIGHT AWAY. The concepts are very relevant to the agile space; and, for me, it’s up there with David Marquet’s video on ‘greatness.’

Anyway, Dan talks about:

  • Mastery: i.e. being great at what you do / achieving excellence in your field
  • Autonomy: i.e. being self-directing / the master of your own destiny
  • Purpose: understanding the ‘why’ behind your work and the value it delivers.

Even though Dan discusses these concepts in relation to the individual, as key drivers/motivators; I also like to think about how these 3 dimensions can be applied in the agile context. Straight away you can see how the above relates to specific agile principles. And it seems to me that just about any agile value/principle you can think of can roll up under one of these.

M.A.P. as a Simple Framework

But why should I start thinking about my agile world this way? Well, these 3 concepts can act as a great, simple framework for thinking about how to create great agile teams — i.e. to consider how we can make each of our teams achieve mastery, become autonomous and to have a purpose.

Let’s examine each one:

  • Mastery: each agile team typically wants to undertake their work to a high standard – delivering maximum value and avoiding crippling technical debt – they also want to be supported by the types of processes and tools that help them be agile (and ensure tight delivery & feedback loops), not hinder them (check out Spotify’s ‘engineering culture’ stuff for an idea of what I’m talking about here and here).
  • Autonomy: we also know that successful agile teams are self-directing and possess the necessary skills to deliver their work – with as few dependencies as possible.
  • Purpose: perhaps we can consider this from the alternate perspective – i.e. what happens when teams do not well understand the value they provide to customers and/or the reason for their existence. Teams without a purpose often spend their time on value-less work, thereby failing to deliver maximum value.Key Agile Roles

And, depending on the specific method / framework you’ve adopted, some key agile roles translate very well to this way of thinking – especially when considering the notions of how ‘servant leadership’ focuses on 2 main things; enabling teams and providing them with direction / purpose:

  • Mastery: Chapter Leads (and the chapter members more broadly) fulfil much of this agenda
  • Autonomy: Agile coach / scrum master can help the team achieve this through understanding agile principles & practices
  • Purpose: your Product Owners can provide squads with the context they need to see how they add value to customers and the organisation.

You may even use this construct when conducting health checks, both at the team level and for the scaled agile organisation (i.e. not specifically SAFe, but any method of scaling agile).

Before I thought about things this way I used to utilise the traditional split of People, Systems/Tools, and Processes – which is still useful, but not nearly as much as M.A.P.

Leveraging this construct can save you time also – when talking to people about certain continuous improvement initiatives, you can simply say some like ‘This will help our squad achieve Autonomy’ – which folks can simply accept without much more explanation.

Pragmatic Application

But how does it work in the pragmatic sense? Well, as with most things agile related, you need to build something into your cadence. Many of you may have heard of a ceremony called POCLAC that commonly operates in agile organisations – well, POCLAC stands for Product Owner, Chapter Lead and Agile Coach – and is a squad level ceremony that, in the case of Spotify, bills itself as a ‘support structure for the squad’ (i.e. in the model of servant leadership) and focuses on overall squad performance and health from the perspectives of People, Process & Product – which is a fairly close match to Mastery, Autonomy & Purpose.

So, given I prefer the Mastery, Autonomy & Purpose terminology over People, Process & Product, I’m going to opt for calling this ceremony SquadMAP instead of POCLAC.

Note that with somewhat of a cross-over of purpose many often ask how SquadMAP and squad retrospectives align. i.e. why do you need SquadMAP when retros serve the purpose of continually improving squads. Well, typically Chapter Leads don’t attend squad retrospectives, which means that their perspective is often overlooked. A dedicated ceremony for Product Owners, Chapter Leads, and Agile Coaches means that we’re covering off all the important bases.

Applying to the Scaled Agile Scenario

And those of you who are thinking ahead are surely asking yourself about how this applies when scaling agile – well, you guessed it, there’s also room for a TribeMAP, where the collective tribe leadership, Product Owners, Chapter leads and Agile Coaches gather according to a regular cadence to consider all things tribe health-related — and similarly thinking along the lines of Mastery, Autonomy & Purpose. Agenda items are typically things that are being escalated from SquadMAP or squad retrospectives.

But beware – do not assume or treat this group as a typical, old-fashioned leadership team. It is a leadership group, but only in the context of servant leadership – TribeMAP exemplifies servant leadership by ‘enabling’ squads to succeed.

Examples

I’ll illustrate further via a couple of examples:

Scenario 1

The nature of the work our tribe is committing to (in alignment with its mission) doesn’t happen to logically fit with any of our current squad missions, and we’re tempted to artificially split the Epic into 2 separate ones – shoehorning each into separate squads.

How SquadMAP and TribeMAP can help: in this scenario some senior squad members recognised this as a potential problem when reviewing the tribe backlog, and while considering which future work their squad might pull down. They’d noticed that a certain Epic didn’t fit nicely into any of the squad’s current missions – nor did any squad seem to possess the necessary skills to deliver that work. In this case, knowing that their squad couldn’t resolve this issue themselves, those individuals raised this issue for consideration by TribeMAP directly. During the next TribeMAP session the group sought to better understand the problem and decided on some actions – which included confirming that the work should sit with that tribe and not another, and then reviewing the squad structure/skills mix to ensure it could deliver the work. Primarily, it’s the Autonomy and Mastery agenda that drives these actions.

Scenario 2

During several recent retrospectives, a relatively new squad has considered the reasons why they haven’t been delivering value to customers. They identified ongoing, systemic issues with their workflow that inherently involves dependencies on other squads within other tribes. And given the nature of this problem, the squad is not able to resolve this issue themselves. How SquadMAP and TribeMAP can help: In this case, the squad escalates this issue to TribeMAP for consideration. This group makes decisions based on what’s best for the tribe’s ability to successfully achieve its goals — autonomously. Which in this case involves acquiring new skills within the tribe and negotiating for, and taking ownership of those activities formerly performed by the other tribe. Again, it’s the Autonomy and Mastery agenda that drives these actions.

Culture Change

I also believe that this lens will help us with the cultural change that’s so important to any agile journey. Exploring your world through this lens can help you identify the values and principles that are important to you, as well as the types of behaviours that you’d like to encourage or avoid. Perhaps the obvious example is to focus on the need to drive greater Autonomy within teams, which aligns well with existing agile principles and practices, but Mastery and Purpose are sometimes neglected. A focus on improving Mastery can help progress the way in which team members do their work; and the tools, systems, and processes they use which will speed up their cycle times and shorten feedback loops.

Conclusion

I find Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose a useful lens through which to view our agile environment; it helps us gain a more holistic perspective on our agile journey, ensuring we consider a wide range of success factors. What I’ve covered above is only a small sample; I’d encourage you to consider how else it might help you through your agile journey – especially with respect to any cultural/ behavioral challenges you may face.

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14 Jul 16:17

Writing a Listicle: The 11-Step Guide and Why They’re Awesome

by Ben Mulholland

listicle

One problem dominates the field when setting out to write a listicle.

They’ve been done to death, and a lot of us are sick of them.

From Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post to Bustle and beyond, thousands of lists are published every year, the majority of which are not exactly high-quality.

People see lists and have been trained to think “clickbait”. That’s what this post will help to avoid and prevent.

Read on to find out:

  • What a “listicle” is
  • Why they are so popular (to read and write)
  • How to plan a listicle in 6 steps
  • How to write a listicle in 5 steps

Enough talk – let’s get to it.

What are “listicles”?

A “listicle” is an article made of a list, usually with some kind of extra detail to each item.

The format, however, is flexible. You could write a listicle which is nothing more than a title, five sub-headings for each list item, and a picture or gif below each.

On the other hand, listicles can be used as a framework to make a complicated topic easier to understand.

The subject you write about can be literally anything. Even if there isn’t a list which naturally fits a given topic, you can create one by looking at the subject with a certain angle.

For example:

There is an almost unlimited number of ways in which you can use listicles to make your argument, explain a topic, sell a product, and so on, but I feel like that’s enough to get the basic idea.

Why are they so popular?

Listicles work for many of the same reasons that traditional lists do – we just like to read them.

Lists (and listicles) are great to read because:

  • The title tells you what to expect
  • They’re easy to skim for important information
  • You always know how much is left
  • It’s easy to put down and come back where you left off
  • They can break complex topics down into digestible chunks

With titles like “How to Keep Hair From Getting Greasy” you know exactly what you’re going to get and whether the article will be useful to you. Quality of the article aside, it’s a great way to know that you aren’t going to waste your time reading an irrelevant discussion of a similar topic.

list scannability

To save even more time, many (myself included) like to skim-read articles to get the important information without having to read the whole thing. Listicles are perfect for this, since the main points are often expressed in either obvious sub-headings or bullet-pointed lists which are easy to spot and read at a glance.

Then there’s the mental aspect of listicles; it’s similar to the psychological effect of having a checklist or task list. There’s an inherent sense of progress and accomplishment as you work your way through the piece, which itself encourages you to finish reading.

As for why they are so popular to produce, there are a few reasons (aside from their popularity with audiences):

  • They’re easy to plan and write
  • Each item written feels like an achievement
  • Lists are great for targeting core keywords
  • Smaller listicles can be adapted to suit long-tail keywords
  • Updates are easier to make

Listicles are easier to plan and write than traditional articles because they don’t have to worry so much about the order of their points.

Sometimes a particular order might be more effective but, in general, any extra items can be added to the end of the list without disrupting what’s already there. This makes it easy to slot in new points without having to restructure what’s already there.

This is the same reason why updates are easy to make. If a new point needs adding you can just slot it at the end of the current list and change the title. If an existing point needs changing, the format will make it easy to find and tweak.

However, just because they’re easy to read and write doesn’t mean you can be lazy with your content and expect to get away with it. Audiences have been exposed to so many listicles at this point that you can easily run the risk of being seen as producing clickbait or worthless drivel.

The key to avoiding this is knowing how to properly plan and write your content.

How to plan a listicle

buzzfeed listicle

Planning a listicle involves six steps:

  1. Choose your topic
  2. Select a keyword (if necessary)
  3. Search your competition
  4. Choose a unique angle
  5. Write the list points
  6. Decide on accompanying material

1. Choose your topic

First, you need to choose your topic. This can be anything you like and will largely depend on why you’re writing the article.

If you’re writing on your personal blog it could be a topic that you’ve wanted to tackle for a while. A business blog may instead use a topic relevant to their product’s audience.

Whatever you choose, it’s worth creating a document in your writing app and taking notes on your choice. If possible, it’s also a good idea to record what the purpose of the article is, as this can help you decide what angle you’re going to tackle the topic from.

2. Select a keyword (if necessary)

listicle keyword research

Next, you should find the right keyword for your post. This is only really important to content designed to get a lot of (or more frequent) readers; if you’re writing for fun, don’t worry about this.

Keywords are essentially the words that search engines associate your article with. Then, if someone searches the relevant term, your article will be marked as relevant and have a chance to be put higher up the search results.

Higher ranking for a keyword means your content it closer to being the first result for that term. The closer you are to first place, the more people will read your content.

There are some fantastic tools out there to help with your keyword research, such as Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs. Use these to find a keyword with a decent amount of traffic (volume) and as low a difficulty rating as possible (to make it easier to rank for).

If you need help, check out our free SEO and keyword research process.

Listicles are also great for targeting the long-tail of a keyword, as they’re easy to write and read. You could even create a landing page to target a main keyword and then use it to link to a collection of listicles which target all of the long-tail variations of that keyword.

3. Search your competition

Once you’ve selected your keyword (if at all) the next step is to look up your competition for the topic. That is, search your keyword or topic in Google and see what results are currently top-ranking.

By checking these results you can see both the type of information your audience is looking for when they look up the topic and what quantity and quality of information you’ll have to surpass to get significant traffic.

In other words, if everyone else has lists or articles containing no more than 10 points, you need to aim for 15 or 20 to have an advantage.

check keyword competition

Having said that, you shouldn’t add new points for the sake of it. If there are indeed only 10 significant points to make, consider going into more detail, having a more scannable structure, or even adding bonuses to make your piece stronger than the competition.

Irregular numbers are also more eye-catching than standard figures like 15 or 20. Lists of 19 or 23 are more unexpected, and so are a little more intriguing for potential readers.

Whatever you decide to do to beat your competitors, note it down in your plan along with the rough information, number of points, and level of detail in other posts. That way you don’t have to keep looking them up to know what you need to aim for and surpass.

4. Choose a unique angle

It’s time to choose a unique angle to tackle the listicle from. This is a great opportunity to use what you’ve learned about your competition and what you already know personally about the topic.

The angle needs to provide value that nobody else can; otherwise, your post could be easily eclipsed by someone taking what you’ve written, adding their own expertise, and not even having to reference you.

If your information isn’t in some way unique to your own post, there’s also little reason to link back to you instead of your sources. Not to mention that your audience may well have heard everything you have to say before and quickly bounce from your page.

To give you some ideas of unique angles, you could:

  • Write from personal experience on the topic
  • Use an interesting example/case study to frame the information
  • Dig out obscure but useful statistics to shed new light on the topic’s importance
  • Give relevant content upgrades to encourage further action and provide extra value
  • Collect information from multiple sources to provide a summary

The last method (collecting information) isn’t the ideal way to frame a listicle as literally anyone can look up a few sources and provide a summary – there’s nothing unique about the information itself. However, if you can’t do anything else then it’s better than nothing.

Under no circumstances should you just take what the current top-ranking post has said and turn it into a list. Not only will you have to heavily reference that post in your work to avoid plagiarism (which will only make its ranking stronger), but there is literally no reason for someone to read yours instead of what’s already ranking.

5. Write the list points

how to write a list

It’s time to plan the meat of the article – the list itself.

Go ahead and plan out the number of points identified when looking up your competition. Don’t worry about the order of your list just yet (or any detail for the points you make).

Get the list written in its base form, make sure you’ve covered everything you want to, and look up information from existing sources if needs be.

Quick note; it’s always best to try to find the original source of your information to link back to rather than using a second-hand source. Not only do you get a sense of how reliable the info is but this can also avoid giving backlinks to your competition.

If your sources have citations, follow them until there are no more links to follow. If there’s no citation but there’s a reference to the source (eg, “from a 2016 study”) try entering the information into Google along with the rough source. Even if you can’t locate it, it’s good to get into the habit of trying.

6. Decide on accompanying material

Finally, decide on the level of detail that will accompany your list and whether any extra material (eg, content upgrades) will be provided.

This will largely depend on how much information you have on each point, along with what your competitors have already published.

If everyone else has included minimal detail in their post, you can probably get away with writing only a paragraph or so for each point. If they’ve gone into detail, consider topping that with a content upgrade to sweeten the deal.

How to write a listicle

You’ve now got a solid plan, and it’s time to write your listicle.

To do this, you need to:

  1. Choose your listicle type
  2. Stay away from clickbait titles
  3. Be specific
  4. Use images and/or gifs to illustrate your points
  5. Have a solid conclusion

1. Choose your listicle type

types of listicle

First, you need to choose what type of listicle you’re going to write. This will mostly depend on what you feel suits your topic best, and what you think will be ideal for covering the points you want to in the most direct and interesting way.

While there aren’t any real set formats for your list article, the rough categories are:

  • A personal essay/experience-based listicle (X things I learned about Y)
  • Advice from experience (X tips from 3 years of working remotely)
  • Research roundup (a heavily sourced list of information)
  • Reported list (more of an article turned into a list to make it scannable)
  • Editorial-turned-list (a list being used to argue a specific point)

Each has a different appeal and it’s up to you to decide which best suits your goals with the article, along with what you can provide in terms of the angle you approach it from.

Once you’ve decided, it’s time to move on to the title of the article.

2. Stay away from clickbait titles

Clickbait is difficult to avoid, as it encompasses different things for each reader.

In general, clickbait can be taken as something which uses its title to promise something unrealistic or plain doesn’t follow up on what its title claims to do.

For example, unrealistic claims could be:

  • 36 Inventions You Won’t Believe Exist
  • 13 Tips to Solve Any Problem For Good
  • 16 Amazing Recipes to Convert Your Friends to Veganism

As long as you stay away from making bold claims which are completely (or even mostly) impossible to meet, you should be fine. That is, as long as any claims you make are actually met within the body of the article.

Speaking of which, it’s time to move on to actually writing your listicle.

3. Be specific

Lists are a perfect medium for giving value without any fluff. While this helps, you also need to make a conscious effort to be as specific as possible with each item.

This advice holds true for most blogging and article writing in general; the key is doing it consciously until it becomes a habit.

The best way to make sure that you do this and cut any meandering in your work is to put an extra check in your pre-publish checklist. Add a step to check for filler words and remove them.

If you don’t have one already set up, check out our free blog pre-publish checklist for a handy checklist to get you started.

4. Use images and/or gifs to illustrate your points

Lists by themselves can be pretty dull. Even the most dedicated of readers can quickly zone out if there’s nothing but text to occupy their attention.

That’s why you need to include relevant images and/or gifs to add some flavor to your listicle. Don’t spam them if they’re not required, but try to break up the post so that you have around one image per page of text scrolling.

The same can be said for regular articles – we here at Process Street use this very tactic. By making sure that your readers always have at least a portion of an image on screen you can help to encourage them to scroll further to see the rest.

Whatever you decide to use, make sure you have the appropriate permission levels to use it.

5. Have a solid conclusion

Most of the value of listicles comes from the list itself. After reading that, most people will want to close the article and get on with their day.

That doesn’t mean you should skimp on the conclusion.

Most listicles (and articles in general) have lackluster conclusions which either summarize what’s already been said or give a short sentence with vague comments. Heck, I’m guilty of doing the same thing from time to time.

Instead, try to use the conclusion to do something extra. Here are a few ideas:

  • Give unique examples of your topic to inspire experimentation
  • Tie everything back to your central argument and hammer the point home
  • Offer a content upgrade or have another call to action
  • Suggest activities or techniques to use what you’ve written about

Listicles aren’t just easy content

skyscraper technique

While this post has shown you how to write a basic listicle, that doesn’t mean every list has to be short or easy. With a little more effort and planning, you can thoroughly dominate search rankings with advanced list-based techniques.

One of the best examples of this is Brian Dean‘s skyscraper technique. This involved a formulaic approach to looking at a keyword’s competition, then crafting content which was better and having a set outreach plan.

Once again, this is easier to achieve with a list (where appropriate) because of how easy they are to write and update.

Don’t believe me? Well, with this method he was able to increase his search traffic by 110% in just 14 days.

Still, whether you go for gold or just want to create an engaging list post that doesn’t stink of clickbait, you now have everything you need to know to get started.

What do you think of listicles? Are they nothing but clickbait? Let me know what you think in the comments below!

14 Jul 16:12

Is Pinterest Worthwhile for B2B?

by Brooke Tomasetti

27707 / Pixabay

I get this question a lot, so I’m excited to shed some light on the subject. Pinterest presents an interesting opportunity for B2B companies to drive traffic to their websites and convert those visitors into leads.

Users on this platform tend to be well-educated with above-average income, and 93 percent of them utilize Pinterest to plan purchases, while another 87 percent of users indicated that Pinterest helps them decide what to buy. Sounds great, but what if you aren’t selling visually appealing jewelry or cute dog toys?

Hopefully you weren’t expecting a direct yes or no answer, because like most things in marketing and business, the answer is “it depends.” I put together a list of questions to think through that will help you determine whether or not Pinterest is worthwhile for your B2B organization.

What goals do we want to achieve by using Pinterest?

Pinterest is an ideal platform for driving traffic to your website and strengthening your brand identity by positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry. These are the two focus goals that align best with Pinterest. The platform is also ideal for inspiring and delighting existing customers with content they love. I would argue that this is more of a secondary goal, with the primary goal being to generate top-of-funnel traffic back to the site.

Is our website fully optimized for conversions?

Let’s say that you follow all of the Pinterest best practices for scaling an account that drives thousands of visits a month to your website. If you can’t convert this increase in traffic into leads, the effort you put into the Pinterest account is all for nothing. Sure, you might be building brand awareness, but if your website isn’t set up for success, you are better off allocating resources to increasing the conversion rate of your site than putting resources toward Pinterest.

After your site is optimized and you’ve started working on increasing the visit-to-contact conversion rate, keep in mind that traffic from Pinterest typically converts at a much lower rate than organic or referral traffic. Even when it comes to e-commerce stores, which tend to perform best in terms of generating purchase conversions on Pinterest, the conversion rates from social media are higher on Facebook (1.85 percent), Vimeo (1.16 percent), YouTube (1.16 percent), Instagram (1.08 percent), and Twitter (0.77 percent), than on Pinterest which has an average conversion rate of 0.54 percent for e-commerce shops.

How does our industry tie into popular Pinterest categories?

The top 10 categories based on a 2017 survey of Pinterest users’ favorite categories include:

  • Art, Art Supplies, and Hobbies
  • Flowers, Food, Drinks, and Gifts
  • Home, Garden, Pool/Spa
  • Health and Beauty
  • Clothing and Apparel
  • Entertainment
  • Jewelry, Handbags, and Accessories
  • Sporting Goods
  • Footwear
  • Baby Gear

Just because your products and services don’t fall into one of those categories doesn’t mean that you should rule Pinterest out. Get creative when thinking through how your industry might tie into some of the more popular categories. For example, HubSpot has created several holiday gift guide boards on Pinterest. They also have a board focused on career advice for Millennials.

Who are my primary buyer personas?

There are a few key user stats to keep in mind when determining if Pinterest is a viable social platform for your business. A research study found that about 41 percent of women use Pinterest, while only 16 percent of men say they use the site. Pinterest indicates that:

  • Half of new signups are men, and men make up 30 percent of their user base.
  • 50 percent of Millennials use the platform every month.
  • 40 percent of users have a household income over $100k.
  • 60 percent of user households have children under the age of five.

Many companies assume that because their target market is men they shouldn’t bother with Pinterest, but in reality, men are using Pinterest at an increasing rate. You also have a better chance of standing out in the eyes of male users if your boards and content focus on men.

Can I get creative in terms of visually displaying the brand?

B2B companies often shy away from Pinterest because they understand that their products aren’t visually appealing, or maybe they provide a service and haven’t thought through all of the different ways to create relevant visual content. This might be the only question on the list where the answer is always yes. If you’re providing a product or a service, you are impacting the lives of other people in some way. Think about what your product or service does for other people, what other interests and values your buyer personas have, and how these might translate visually.

Below are a few ideas for creating unique visual content for your Pinterest account—even if you’re in the most boring B2B niche:

  • Turn a white paper or e-book into an infographic.
  • Create quote images that resonate with your buyer personas.
  • Put statistics related to your industry and buyer personas into visuals.
  • Highlight industry influencers and/or news.
  • Focus your boards around your buyer personas’ interests and lifestyles. For example, if I own a productivity and time tracking app for agencies, I might create a board called “10-minute meal prep.” If my potential customers are interested in productivity in their work life, they’re likely also interested in productivity hacks at home.

Do we have the resources to execute a consistent strategy?

Even if you believe Pinterest to be a good fit for your brand and target market, if you don’t have the time and resources to allocate to this platform, it likely won’t make sense to start right now. There are tools that can help you whip up creative pins, schedule pins, and more, but if you’re going to give the platform a true test for at least six months, you’ll want to have enough time allocated to it.

Making the Decision

What conclusion did you come to after reviewing these questions? Did you decide to commit to building and launching an optimized Pinterest account, or did you find that your time may better be spent on other platforms such as Instagram (a.k.a. the new Facebook)?

Either way, I hope these prompts helped you think through what’s best for your business. Next time someone asks you if Pinterest is worthwhile for B2B companies, you’ll have some great talking points!

13 Jul 16:20

Sales Leadership Really is a Team Sport

by Mark Hunter

I describe sales as not a solo activity, but as a team sport.  A person asked me if I felt the same way about sales leadership being a team sport, and the answer is yes. It certainly is!

Leadership in any form is about influencing and raising up others.  This applies significantly to the essence of what sales leadership is about.  Sales leadership is about influencing customers and others, and it’s about raising them up to allow them to see and achieve opportunities they would never see on their own.

Read the last sentence again and ask yourself what it means to you.  To me it means creating incremental opportunities.

If all we do is focus on base business and opportunities everyone else sees, then where is our leadership?  Yes, leadership is needed in everything, but what I want you to aspire to be is someone who doesn’t just see opportunities, but also creates opportunities from which others can benefit.

Last week a client asked me to dig deep into a particular department of their business and assess why the output from the department isn’t what it should be.   It didn’t take long for me to see it was a lack of leadership in the team in being able to create focus toward achieving the objectives.  Each person was working, and in the end it was activity, but not the kind that was producing great results.

Think about this with regard to your customers and your sales process.  Are you doing nothing more than going through the motions and taking care of the basics?  This is what far too many salespeople and, for that matter, employees in general, are doing each day — simply going through the motions.  You can’t afford to be one of those people. Not only is it not satisfying, but it also isn’t going to get you anywhere in your career or your income.

Sales leadership is a team sport. Make it your objective to engage others, bring them along, and help them see what they didn’t think was possible.   When you do this, you’ll find yourself having a totally different perspective on your job and your life.

You know I believe sales is fun. I hope you do, too! What’s even more fun is sales leadership!

A coach can help you excel in your sales career! Invest in yourself by checking out my coaching program today!

Copyright 2018, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results