Anyone who’s ever written a marketing email has asked themselves these questions:

• How do I get my subscribers to open this?
• How do I get them to take action?
• Did they even *see* me in their inbox?

Not getting the results you’re after might make you want to visit your subscribers one-by-one and personally remind them to read your emails and click your links. Fortunately, you don’t have to do anything so drastic. By following some basic rules of copywriting, you can dramatically increase your email engagement and get subscribers to take action. Here are a few best practices you can start using in your email copy right away.

Use a Conversational Tone

Your goal is to communicate. This starts with everyday language, short sentences, and short paragraphs. Famous writer Elmore Leonard said: “If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.” That’s a good rule. Your copy should read as close to spoken English as possible. It should be easy to read and easy to scan. Big words don’t make you sound smart — they make you sound like someone trying to sound smart. So how do you know if you’re writing conversationally? According to Copy Hackers, a conversion copywriting site, Dr. Suess is a good example of how to use short words and short sentences in a way that captivates the reader. If you need more help simplifying your writing, check out Hemingway App. It flags overly complex sentences and assigns a reading level to your writing (the lower, the better.) This post, for example, reads at a sixth grade level. That’s about where you want to be writing.

Avoid Jargon, Buzzwords, and Acronyms

Jargon, buzzwords, and acronyms are an epidemic these days — especially in the world of tech and startups. Jargon and acronyms can alienate readers who don’t know what you’re talking about. You might as well speak gibberish to them. Instead of using these overly technical terms or abbreviations, be sure to use simple, easy-to-understand language and to spell out terms before you use them in acronym form. As for trendy buzzwords: Try to think beyond them. Words like ‘pivot’ and ‘disruption’ are becoming cliches that make people tune you out and take you less seriously. Instead, take the time to come up with simple alternatives:

• Cohort = customer group
• BoFU = Bottom of the funnel
• Virality = popularity

This is really just the tip of the iceberg, though. Forbes has a list of the most obnoxious startup jargon — like ‘rockstar’ and ‘hacking’ — while TechRepublic suggests we stop using these 10 Buzzwords, like ‘curation’ and ‘freemium’.

Write a Killer Subject Line

Headlines have always been the foundation of good copy. In email marketing, your subject line is what gets you opened and read. Without a good one, you’ve got nothing. When writing your email’s subject line, think about:

• Personalization: By personalizing your subject line, you can increase open rates by 50%, according to Marketing Dive. That might mean incorporating a subscriber’s first name in your subject line to make the message feel tailor-made.
• Curiosity: Evoking a sense of curiosity in the the reader can get that person to click through and open your email. Ex: Want a chance to win $100?
• Scarcity: Promoting limited time or quantity items can create a sense of urgency around your email that piques interest and drives conversions.

If you need more help figuring out a home-run subject line, here are 6 subject line formulas that will improve your open rates.

Know the Medium

One reason that email remains the number one marketing channel is that it gives you the power to talk directly to your audience. You’re leaving money on the table if your copy doesn’t reflect this. Why “batch and blast” with the same generic message to everyone when email gives you the power to personalize, segment, and automate? After all, automation can increase leads, conversions, and revenue…and it can save you time. The stats prove it: Automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates than other marketing messages, according to Epsilon Email Institute. And here at AWeber, we saw a 118% increase in open rates when we segmented our audience. We sent smaller groups of subscribers the exact information they were interested in, instead of sending our entire list the same exact content. Set up automated emails that help make every email you send relevant, interesting, and timely.

Write for People (because businesses can’t read)

The term B2B is misleading because you’re not writing for businesses — you’re writing for decision-makers within a business. Humans, in other words. This is why we take the time to come up with buyer personas that reflect our customers’ unique needs. These people have emotions, so don’t just throw statistics at them. Don’t just use logic to appeal to their minds. Aim for the heart and connect on an emotional level. In your emails, use emotion-based principles like reciprocity, commitment, and social proof (to name a few) to make an emotional plea to your readers.

Agitate Problems, Then Solve Them

Whether you’re outlining single email or an entire campaign, this is your formula:

1. Identify a problem (P) Ex: Need an easier way to open cans.
2. Agitate that problem (A) Ex: Isn’t it frustrating to use a hand crank can opener? It’s slow, hard work.
3. Present your solution (S) Ex: With the electric can opener, you can open aluminum cans in seconds with no effort.

TV infomercials absolutely nail PAS. A voiceover identifies a problem: “Do you always end up making way too much pasta?” Then a montage in black and white agitates the problem with people tripping over big tangles of spaghetti in the kitchen. Finally, we get the solution: A happy family eating just the right amount of pasta, thanks to the Pasta-Matic. Obviously, there are other reasons not to copy what infomercials do, but they give a larger-than-life example of this formula in action. The key is to be relevant. There are millions of problems out there, and most of them don’t matter to your reader. The problem has to be real, not just an excuse to talk about your product. In an email, your copy needs to express a genuine understanding of what this problem means to your potential customers — and then swoop in with a simple solution.

Don’t Be Too Salesy

You don’t have to be salesy just because you’re selling something. Email readers have a good sense for “salesy” tactics (like when you try to get them to click on a CTA with misleading copy), and 9 times out of 10, it will alienate your audience. These days, people have zero tolerance for interruption, pressure, tricks, and manipulation. The reason: Research shows online attention spans are shorter than ever, and therefore most people have developed a strong detector for these time-wasting tactics. But you still want to sell to them. What can you do about that? Simple: Tell stories instead. Storytelling is the opposite of being salesy. You can still drive traffic, convert, close, and all of those nice things without resorting to cheeseball tactics. The great thing about storytelling is it’s actually less work than being salesy. You don’t have to resort to tricks and hacks. You simply communicate in a way that’s clear and interesting. Stories (be it personal, fictional, etc.) are how our brains evolved to learn new information. According to science, we’re hardwired to take in stories. By harnessing this powerful form of communication, you’re putting tens of thousands of years of evolution on your side.

Parting Wisdom: Don’t Stop Learning

A final catch-all tip: never stop learning. Writing is a skill that takes time and practice to master. And continue to read content by great writers. We recommend Ann Handley’s newsletter. She’s an author and AWeber customer who sends interesting, smart, and beautifully-written stories in her newsletter Total Annarchy. For copywriting tips, sign up for AWeber customer Henneke Duistermaat’s Enchanting Marketing emails. For the basics of grammar and composition with books like Eats, Shoots & Leaves and the classic (but always relevant) Elements of Style.

When I first started doing SEO it seemed like a piece of cake to me. In 2018, boy, how wrong I was. This job can drive you crazy, sometimes. Literally.

You have to do stuff like:

• Analyzing a ton of competitors links
• Finding the right keywords for the content
• Finding the right influencers for the campaign
• Finding their contact information
• Outreaching all of them in an organic way
• Tracking any little link trend

Folks who don’t know how it works could think it’s not stressful. But I used to drink more coffee than a whole Starbucks client base during my first campaigns. And, for some unknown reasons, my right eye used to do a really weird nervous twitching thing.

So, if you don’t want to run for a Guinness world record as the most stressed SEO pro of the world, check out these link building tools and use them to run your campaigns. They’ll make your life much easier (and less caffeinated!).

1. Ahrefs This is probably the most popular tool among SEO professionals, because it takes many useful features and puts them all in one place.This platform gives you pretty accurate metrics about:
   • The organic traffic keywords and top site pages that drive more visits to your competitor’s website
   • Thousands of keyword suggestions, keyword trends and a keyword difficulty score, which will make it easier to decide what keyword you’re going to target.
   • Backlinks. With advanced reports and filters.
   • Most shared content around the web for specific keywords
   • Rank trends. You’ll could not only see trends in clear and handy charts, but also set up alerts for specific changes in your rankings.

   Add to this a simple and good-looking interface and you’ll have a hell of a rockstar link building tool.

2. Buzzsumo Struggle to find the people to contact for your guest posts or links to your site? This tool reveals the humans behind the domains you’ve put your eye on.Most marketers prefer using this platform to find the right influencers and analyze what content is performing better on the net, in order to prioritize outreach.

   It also allows you to build and manage lists of Twitter influencers by industry. And this makes it a hell of a lot faster to connect with the valuable publications you’ve found.

3. Buzzstream Want to track and manage all the steps of your elaborated outreach campaigns from one single place?Well, Buzzstream is right up your alley.I have to say that the contact finder feature may not the best.

   But you can:

   • import from other sources the contacts you don’t find here
   • create different contact lists for different campaigns or different purposes
   • run bulk emails
   • avoid being too spammy, adding personalization to your pitches
   • monitoring responses
4. Hunter.io If you don’t know how to find the email of an influencer, this tool will be gold for you.It’s much better than Buzzstream in finding emails on a site, and much easier to use.Thanks to the Chrome extension, you don’t have to switch tabs or tools.Just activate the plugin on the prospect’s site and let it do the magic. You’ll have your much-desired email address in just a few moments.
5. Mailshake While Buzzstream offers you more features to manage your outreach campaigns, it would seem a bit complicated for some people. Not to mention that it could be a bit expensive for not established marketers.In which case you should opt for Mailshake. You must accept less functionality, but you’ll also have a simpler interface and a cheaper price plan.This makes Buzzstream better for large campaigns, while Mailshake for smaller ones.
6. Facebook Most of the businesses have a Facebook page.If you check the about section of the page, you’ll often be able to find the email you were looking for. Even if it’s not present on their site and the plugins can’t pull it out.
7. GuestPostTracker This site has the largest list of sites that accept guest posts.The list is constantly updated and integrated with the contact information of the site owners.Your whole campaign can’t be based on this site alone, but it’s obviously a great time-saving tool.
8. Linkedin This social media giant is a huge business database that can make your outreach much smoother.You can find a company info and message the directly, without the need of their email.But, if you prefer to manage all of your outreach in one platform, you can just pull out the contact info using Hunter.io, as you would do on the company’s website.
9. Google Sheets
   Some tools have developed specific features and reports to manage lists of influencers, links, domains, keywords and all the other stuff without leaving their platform.Nevertheless, Google Sheets are an awesomely useful tool for any marketer. You can easily export the data in these documents from any of the best SEO services, including all the above-mentioned ones. So, sharing all this data with your colleagues in an organized way will be a piece of cake.

Conclusion

Some of the link building tools mentioned here are very similar to others.

For example, SEMRush, NinjaOutReach, Pitchbox, CognitiveSEO, Kerboo, Majestic, SpyFu and others are very solid alternatives to the services I’ve talked about.

If you’re on a tight budget, check them all out to compare the pricing plans and the features, to make sure you pay only for the things you need the most right now.If you’re an advanced marketer, on the other hand, you could try several tools at the same time, especially for finding, analyzing and tracking links.

Having large amounts of data from different sources will make your campaigns more accurate. But such a sophistication is required only for large, complex and expensive campaigns. Definitely not the cup of tea of the average newbie.

If you have other favorite link building tools, feel free to tell us about them in the comments.

You spend a lot of time and effort getting your company’s phones to ring. You design engaging website content, create targeted search and digital ads, optimize your SEO, promote your business via email and social, and much more.

But what happens after that? The challenge most digital marketers face is not only measuring the volume of calls driven to each business location from each source, but also the sales quality of those calls. An ad can drive thousands of calls, but if none of the leads convert, there is no true return on the investment. The more data marketers have about what happens on the calls they generate to each location, the better they can optimize their spend, messaging, and audience targeting to drive revenue.

We’ve compiled a list of the top reports and insights digital marketers should be collecting from inbound calls with the help of AI. The reports make it easy to:

1. Validate the quality of calls
2. Understand which marketing channels are driving the highest quality leads
3. Optimize Website Conversions Across Devices
4. Gain a deeper understanding of operations & location performance
5. Drill down to the individual caller to identify the most motivated prospects
6. Identify those who are having a negative experience with your company and repair the relationship

Believe it or not, these are all reports that other marketers are viewing now with the help of conversation analytics data provided by artificial intelligence (AI). Below, we’ll break down each of these reports and how they can benefit your business.

1. Validate the Quality of Calls

When it comes to inbound calls, quality trumps quantity every time. But, without manually listening to recordings of the calls you generate to each location, it can be difficult to answer the following questions:

• How many of our inbound calls are service/support inquiries vs. potential sales?
• How many of our inbound calls are from new customers vs. existing customers?
• Is our total number of quality calls increasing or decreasing from month to month?

With a easy-to-deploy AI solution for scoring calls you can monitor your KPIs within a dashboard so that you can quickly and easily evaluate the quality of inbound calls your marketing drives to each location. AI does the work for you, analyzing the words and phrases spoken by your callers to quantify their potential value to your organization with a “lead score.”

2. Understand Which Marketing Channels Are Driving the Most Quality Leads

Rather than evaluating your marketing channels, ads, search keywords, and other campaigns by the sheer quantity of inbound phone calls they drive to each location, AI tools allow you to assess which campaigns are driving the most qualified leads. You can then integrate these AI insights directly into your martech stack to understand which strategies are producing the best results—online and over the phone. With this information at your disposal, you can allocate your budget to the tactics that are truly delivering the highest value to your company.

[Sample Report] Track which marketing sources are generating the highest quality leads.

3. Optimize Website Conversions Across Devices

Callers who engaged with a brand online are more likely to convert than unengaged callers. AI-powered tools can track clickpaths and even locate the exact piece of website messaging that drove each call (for example, a call to action on the bottom of a “services” website page).

These insights will help you map out the customer journey on your website—you can then determine where you’re delivering value to prospects and where you’re falling short. You can also view lead score by device and tweak the customer experience on mobile vs. desktop. Ultimately, you’ll be able to optimize your website messaging to create a frictionless end-to-end experience.

[Sample Report] Track the specific landing pages and website pages are driving the highest quality inbound calls.

4. Gain a Deeper Understanding of Operations

Once you’ve analyzed the KPIs regarding the lead quality of call conversions, your next logical question is: “what conclusions can I draw from this?” AI-based call analytics can help you understand what days and times your best calls come in to each location, so that you know how to allocate spend to ensure your call-focused ads are present during these times.

Plus, you can work with the staff at each location to ensure they are prepared to field the influx of calls. Then, you’ll be able to assess how often your sales reps at each location convert calls to appointments, opportunities, and customers.

[Sample Report] Visualize lead volume and score by time of day and day of the week.

5. Drill Down to The Individual Caller to Identify The Most Motivated Prospects

Which callers should your organization prioritize? Which are close to purchase? Which are at-risk? By analyzing key words and phrases spoken by callers, AI can provide deep customer-specific data which allows you to prioritize your sales funnel and allocate your resources effectively.

You’ll also be able to identify customers who are motivated to buy, but for whatever reason did not convert. This will allow your sales team to call these leads back right away to win back the sale. It will also allow your marketing team to retarget those leads with the right search, social, display, or email campaign to get them to re-engage and convert.

6. Identify Negative Experiences to Repair Relationships

Finally, you can save at-risk customers by taking advantage of AI features designed to locate customer experience issues. Lost customers can damage your brand’s reputation and pose a risk to future customer acquisition, if they air their grievances publicly.

One bad Yelp review can cost your business 30 potential customers. A bad review on Google search results can cost you 70% of potential customers. So knowing which customers to follow up with before they churn or take to social media can be invaluable.

Empower Your Team with AI Insights

In summation, these reports and the insights they provide will allow you to harness AI insights to:

• Optimize campaigns based on quality of phone leads, not merely quantity
• Understand how your lead quality from marketing campaigns is trending
• Understand which locations are closing the most phone leads
• Gain insights into which days and times your best leads come in
• Pinpoint sources of customer experience issues that can be hurting your ROI

As a result, your marketing team will be empowered to drive more quality leads—and your sales teams at every location will be equipped with best practices to close them.

“We didn’t need to hire a large team of data scientists and invest in AI tools. Conversation Insights Pro just worked. The data was delivered to us in a very straightforward, actionable way, allowing us to see what marketing efforts were driving the best leads and what best practices were being used to help close sales at the individual locations. Conversation Insights Pro is a game changer for us.”

Bryan Huber
Director of Digital Marketing at Comfort Keepers

Isn’t it annoying on LinkedIn when you connect with someone and you want to see who they know but they’ve hidden their connections. Kind of weird on a networking site isn’t it?

Wouldn’t it be good if there was a way to unpick some of those connections that they’ve hidden from you without them even realising? Well you can, let me explain …

1) When they hide all their connections it doesn’t hide all connections, it only hides the ones that people connecting with them don’t already share a connection to.

So, if you’re connected to a competitor you can see the clients they have if you’re connected to them too. It exposes the shared connections to the people you connect with making it easier for you to target them.

2) You may not have also thought to look at their feed of activity (if you’re connected or not) as you can see who they are interacting with and this most often is their own connections, and hence that exposes them to you as well.

3) When they share an update telling people about how fab they are or the latest role they are almost always done publicly and hence any casual viewer (connected or not) can see who interacts with their status update and these are most often their connections.

4) Their skills section is visible to all viewers and hence you can see everyone that has endorsed them, and they are all their level one connections. You can also see all the people that have recommended them too.

So now you can see who interacts with users on LinkedIn, unpick some of those relationships and start to make it work just a little bit better for you.

LinkedIn is one of those tool sets; it is huge and often misunderstood, but thinking about how you could use it, how to apply it and where it can add some significant insights and value could really help you to move forward.

In the rapidly evolving marketing landscape, new terms, buzzwords and acronyms are popping up constantly. Sometimes, it’s hard to keep pace. That’s why we’ve assembled a comprehensive list of terms and their definitions that B2B marketers should know.

Bookmark this page and revisit it the next time someone throws out a term you’re not familiar with. If there’s a term we missed or if you’re looking for a definition of a term that’s not on this list, let us know in the comments below.

– – –

Account Based Marketing: a strategic go-to-market approach that coordinates personalized marketing and sales efforts to open doors and deepen engagement at specific accounts.

Account Development Representatives (ADR): a type of inside sales rep who solely focuses on prospecting into target accounts.

Account expansion: the process of growing revenues within an existing customer account through up-selling, cross-selling or selling to different subsidiaries within a parent company.

Account funnel: is a visualization for breaking down the stages an account goes through during the sales process. From top to bottom, the accounts funnel stages are: target account, no engagement, awareness, Marketing Qualified Account (MQA), opportunity, and customer.

Account hierarchies: a system that shows the association of subsidiaries within one global view of a company through a Parent Account field in your CRM.

Active demand: the second stage of SiriusDecisions Demand Unit Waterfall®, this stage measures the number of demand units that are either in the market or need to be in the market for your solutions.

Activity metrics: numbers or stats that look at the day-to-day activities of your sales and marketing teams.

Account scoring: a methodology used to rank accounts and help predetermine their propensity to buy. Account scoring is usually measured in “engagement minutes” and takes into account many different dimensions, such as title, job level, department, content consumed, actions taken, etc.

Algorithmic attribution models: this attribution model uses statistics and machine learningto determine and assign credit for touches in the journey.

Attribution analytics: a broad set of metrics and data analysis that explains the connection between marketing campaigns and ultimate business outcomes.

Attribution model: attribution models tell your analytics program how to weigh the importance of different touch points. There are six major types of model: first touch, last touch, linear, time-decay, position-based and custom.

Automatic transition: a transition rule in the account journey when engagement data causes the account to progress to the next stage automatically.

Awareness: when an account interacts with your company in some way, from visiting the website, replying to emails, or attending events. This account- level metric answers the question “are the target accounts aware of your company and its solutions?”

Balance: in the context of account journey analytics, it’s the number of accounts in a particular stage at any one point in time.

Benchmark: measurements that dicate a specific performance metric and allow comparison of metrics between like applications, websites, or companies.

Campaign influence: a metric that measures how multiple campaigns influence single opportunities or outcome.Channel: the people, organizations, and activities that transfer the ownership of goods or information from one point and deliver it to the point of consumption.

Click through: a click on a link, which leads to another website or section of a website.

Closed opportunity: an opportunity that has fallen out of the pipeline due to either winning or losing the deal.

Closed opportunity (stage): the last stage of SiriusDecision’s Demand Unit Waterfall® where you have successfully closed the opportunity and realized revenue.

Conversion: the point at which an activity or response to a call-to-action fulfills the desired outcome (i.e. subscribing to a newsletter or purchasing a product).

Coverage: this account-level metric answers the question “do you have sufficient data, contacts, and account plans for each target account?”

Cost metrics: numbers or stats that look at the cost of a certain outcome.

Customer: accounts with closed, won opportunities.

Customer journey: the complete sum of experiences and interactions that a customer goes through when making a purchasing decision.

Dataset: a dataset contains a set of source data, specially formatted and optimized for interactive exploration.

Deal nurture: the process of identifying stalled opportunities and orchestrating relevant interactions between Marketing and Sales to accelerate deals and improve win rates.

Descriptive marketing analytics: a set of metrics and data analysis that describes and shows what’s happening in the data set without providing any specific information about why it might be happening or what you should do about it.

Demand generation: the focus of marketing programs to drive awareness and interest in a company’s products and/or services.

Demand unit: as defined by SiriusDecisions, this is a buying group that has been organized to address a need the organization is challenged with.

Diagnostic marketing analytics: a set of metrics and data analysis that explains why something is happening, as in provides a diagnosis.

Direct transition: a transition rule in the account journey when someone updates a CRM field.

Disqualified account: an account that previously displayed behavior indicating it is appropriate to actively market to, however it has been determined by the sales team that it is not a good fit for your product or solution.

Domain-based matching: the process of mapping leads to the respective accounts based on matching the domain name in the email address.

Engaged demand: the third stage of SiriusDecisions’ Demand Unit Waterfall®, when one or more member(s) of the demand unit responds to a marketing, tele or sales stimulus.

Engagement: engagement is the most fundamental metric in ABM. This account-level metric answers the question “are the right people at the account spending time with your company, and is that engagement increasing over time?”

Flow: in the context of account journey analytics, it’s the type of data that changes over time and refers specifically to accounts moving or “flowing” through the account stages over time.

Forecasting: the process of estimating future sales, which enables companies to make informed business decisions and predict performance.

Engagement analytics: an analytical approach for measuring relationship quality, usually expressed in minutes.

First-touch attribution model: this is an attribution model that assigns full outcome credit to the first account interaction.

Fractional attribution models: this attribution model recognizes multiple touches across multiple people at target accounts. It allocates a fraction of outcome value to individual touches.

Impact: this account-level metric answers the question “how are the ABM activities improving sales outcomes such as deal velocity, win rates, average contract values, retention, and net promoter scores?”

Impression: the number of times an asset or piece of content is seen.

Indirect transition: a transition rule in the account journey when someone does something that triggers a stage change.

Land and expand: a customer acquisition strategy by which you first land a deal with a customer, then you expand into different opportunities at that same company.

Lead funnel: is a visualization for breaking down the stages in demand generation that a lead goes through during the sales process.

Journey analytics: define stages of customer journeys, track progress toward intended outcomes, and measure key metrics including balance, flow, conversion, and velocity.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): a type of performance measurement that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives over time.

Keyword: in search engine optimization, the particular word or phrase that describes the contents of a web page. Keywords serve as clues or shortcuts that summarize the content of a page and help search engines match pages with searches.

Lead-to-account matching (L2A): the process of matching leads to their respective accounts in your CRM.

Last-touch attribution model: this is an attribution model that assigns full outcome credit to the last account interaction.

Lost account: target account that has reached the end of a sales cycle with you but did not buy.

Marketing Qualified Account (MQA): the subset of your ideal customer targets (accounts or demand units) with engagement levels indicating possible sales readiness.

Measure: a measure is a quantitative value — like revenue and exchange rate. You can do the math on measures, such as calculating the total revenue and minimum exchange rate.

Multi-touch attribution: an attribution model that uses different weights in order to allocate credit to multiple campaigns along the buyer’s journey.

New visitor: a visitor who has reached a site for the first time. This is important in comparison with return visitors as an indication of loyalty and site value.

Opportunity: pending deals that are in an active sales cycle.

Pipeline: the estimated dollar value of all open opportunities.

Pipeline opportunity: the sixth stage of SiriusDecisions’ Demand Unit Waterfall® when Sales is able to assign a close date and dollar value to an opportunity.

Pipeline velocity: the pace at which opportunities move through the sales pipeline.

Post-sale customer journey: the complete sum of experiences and interactions that happen after the post of sales.

Predictive marketing analytics: a variety of statistical techniques from predictive modeling, machine learning, and data mining that analyze current and historical marketing data to make predictions about future business performance or otherwise unknown events.

Prescriptive marketing analytics: a variety of statistical and data analysis techniques dedicated to finding the best course of action for a given situation.

Programmatic ABM: a one-to-many style of Account Based Marketing that targets desired accounts without dedicated personalization and customization.

Prioritized demand: the fourth stage of SiriusDecisions’ Demand Unit Waterfall®, the level of engagement from the demand unit has reached a threshold that justifies additional interactions from tele or sales resources.

Qualified demand: the fifth stage of SiriusDecisions’ Demand Unit Waterfall® when, based on interactions with demand unit members, the fit and urgency of prospect needs, as well as potential purchase resources and willingness to engage have been verified.

Reach: this account-level metric answers the question “are marketing programs reaching the target accounts? How much waste is there?”

Recycled account: target accounts that became an engaged account but were not ready to become an opportunity.

Return on Investment (ROI): a metric used to measure the amount of return on an investment relative to the investment’s cost. ROI = (gain from investment — cost of investment)/cost of investment.

Returning visitor: a visitor who can be identified with multiple visits, through cookies or authentication.

ROI analytics: a variety of statistical data analysis and metrics that measure the “return on investment” of a specific marketing investment or campaign by marking a connection between the investment and the business outcome.

Sales accepted account: target accounts where Sales/Account Development Representatives (SDRS/ ADRs) have set up meetings, but Account Executives have not ascertained if opportunities exist.

Scale ABM: a one-to-few style of Account Based Marketing for accounts that are strategic but don’t warrant top-tier investment.

Single-source attribution model: this model assigns 100% credit to one touch.

Strategic ABM: a style of Account Based Marketing that directly engages strategic target accounts with highest revenue potential.

Target account: a company that you have specifically named as high-value and will be the center of your ABM efforts.

Target demand: the first stage of SiriusDecisions’ Demand Unit Waterfall®, this is the size of the target market and defines the number of potential demand units you believe exist for a solution in the market.

Timely engagement model: in the context of modeling the account journey after the initial sale, this model emphasizes the importance of ongoing and timely customer engagement throughout the customer lifecycle.

Unified account strategy: in the context of Account Based Marketing, this strategy emphasizes the close coordination between all stakeholders, such as marketing, sales and customer success.

Vanity metrics: numbers or stats that look good on paper, but on their own don’t necessarily directly correlate with important business metrics. Examples of vanity metrics are pageviews, re-tweets, content downloads, etc.

Everyone loves to complain about how competitive their market is. But I hate to break it to you, it’s not just you. Technology has made it easier than ever to create game-changing products and every single industry is only going to get more competitive. It’s sink or swim out there and if you don’t know how to compete, you’re going to drown.

Here’s one great example: Every year, an industry report analyzes every company in the marketing technology space. In 2011, there were 150 companies on their list. Today? That number has ballooned to 7,500 companies competing for those same customers!

This isn’t meant to scare you. It’s simply a reminder that there are no guarantees in business. Anyone can get into your space and start eating up your market share. So you better be ready to compete.

Why I thought it was crazy to enter the hyper-competitive CRM space (but did it anyways)

If you told me 5–6 years ago that I would be running a CRM business, I probably would’ve laughed in your face. Not only is the market crowded with options (including the billion-dollar behemoth that is Salesforce) but 90% of companies still build an internal CRM.

If you’re looking for an easy industry to succeed in, this would be last on your list.

So why attack a market that’s already flooded? To be honest, we inadvertently stumbled into it. But looking back in hindsight there were some crucial events and decisions we made that allowed us to beat the odds.

Today, I want to share some of those “secrets” that have allowed Close.io to compete in one of the most competitive industries. And how you can use these same lessons to stand out in your own market.

Want a step-by-step guide on growing your startup? Download a free copy of my book on B2B customer acquisition for every stage of your startup.

1. Find your unique product vision

You’ll never win in a market if you’re following what everyone else is doing. But still, so many companies are afraid to make bold, unique products.

Let’s use the CRM space as an example. In the beginning, every CRM was simply a contact database. Companies needed to store the information on their customers and who better to maintain those databases than the salespeople who were using them regularly?

Eventually, someone decided to start adding more sales-specific features and the modern CRM was born. But the problem was that this new software was being built by engineers who rarely interacted with or understood the pain points of the salespeople who would be using them. Even worse, they were sold to upper management who had very different needs than the actual sales reps who would be using them (such as forecasting and reporting).

In other words, the tool that was supposedly made for sales reps was made by engineers who didn’t understand, nor care for their needs, and sold to management who had vastly different requirements than them.

When we launched Close.io, we chose to do the exact opposite.

Up until that point we had been running an outsourced sales team for startups and Close.io was our internal tool. With more than 200 different sales campaigns from companies in every imaginable industry, we needed a tool that was flexible and focused on selling. So our product vision wasn’t to build the best CRM tool, but to empower our reps to be the best sales team possible.

By approaching our CRM from the user’s perspective (not the management that would be buying it), we developed a drastically different vision than every other company. This is how we became the first CRM with inbound and outbound calling baked in as well as two-way email syncing.

While every other competitor was just trying to keep up and copy the major players, we went back to the basics and developed a unique point of view for a specific user. Similarly, if you want to stand out in a crowded space, you can’t simply iterate on what’s out there. You need to be unique, different, and bold.

2. Understand who your exact customers and stakeholders are

It’s easy enough to say “make a unique product,” but how do you actually do it? It all comes down to understanding who your ideal customer is. Everyone wants to buy a product that feels like it was made specifically for them. But few companies do this.

And when you try to sell to everyone, you end up selling to no one.

Knowing your ideal customer will not only allow you to make those bold product choices you need to stand out, but also to create a powerful identity people can identify with.

At Close.io, we’ve committed to servicing exclusively SMBs. This means turning down Enterprise clients or people who don’t fit our ideal customer profile.

That’s a good start. But to be truly successful you have to take it a step further and understand who your key stakeholder is at that customer’s company. Even if you’re selling to startups with a team of 30 people, you’ll have different stakeholders to consider. For us, that means:

• Company founders who ultimately make the buying decision
• Sales Managers who run sales teams and help decide what software to use
• Sales reps who actually use our software
• Technical teams who need to integrate our software
• Support & success teams who want access to our software
• Marketing teams who want to make sure they can connect to our software

Most people would look at this list and pick the top two. Founders and management have the most decision power when buying your product, so why not build and sell to them?

Again, you won’t succeed by just doing what everyone else does—especially when you believe what everyone else is doing is wrong. To us, it only made sense that a tool should be built first and foremost for the people who would spend the most time using it. That’s why we chose to focus solely on the end user as our key stakeholder. While we want to do a good job for everyone at the company, our number one priority is always the sales rep.

Whoever you choose as your main stakeholder is up to you. But you have to pick one and make sure they always feel like their needs are your top priority.

3. Adopt a business model that supports long-term thinking

Your business model will determine how you can act as a company. And if you want to compete in your market for the long run, you have to have a business model that allows you to think long term.

Unfortunately so many “standard” business models don’t give you the freedom to do this. Instead of the freedom to build the business and product you believe in, a business model that relies on venture capital means someone else always has a say in how you operate. Who you hire. What markets you go into. The customers you chase.

In our experience, this is how so many companies die. You know your product, customer, and market best. And being beholden to someone else who wants you to chase buzzwords and trends won’t help you truly compete.

When it came time to grow and scale Close.io, we chose to stay profitable instead of taking more outside funding. We chose independence over investors and stayed small, lean, and remote. Because of this, we get to think long-term. Our customers support us and our responsibility is to them. Not investors.

If you want to build a business that can truly compete, you need to have the freedom to do it on your own terms. And while this can happen in some venture-backed situations, more often than not you lose that independence the second you take someone else’s money.

4. Build a brand that connects with customers on an emotional level

Your brand becomes more valuable and impactful as the marketplace gets more crowded. The less differentiated products become (because everyone can quickly copy good features), the more people start to ask questions like:

“What company have I heard about/do I trust more?”

“What company makes me feel the way I want to feel?”

The way you present your company and the brand you build is one of the most important factors in surviving in a hyper-competitive market. But I didn’t always think so. Before starting a company I thought all this talk about branding was a waste of time. I didn’t realize that human beings make decisions not based on facts, but emotions.

To stand out, your brand needs to connect on an emotional level. You can have all the best features in the world, but what you really want is for your customers to feel like the second they buy from you, they’re going to become better at the thing you’re promising. You want to give them inspiration and aspiration. Not just tools.

The most powerful way we’ve found for doing this is content marketing.

When Close.io first started, we realized we could never out-sell, out-market, or out-advertise the competition. But we could out-teach them.

Five years ago, every CRM company’s blog was full of outdated, 80s sales advice. So we set out to change that. Using our own experiences, we wrote posts full of real, honest, actionable advice that readers could see immediate results from. It was a high standard, but since day one, content has been one of our only two sources of growth (the other is word-of-mouth).

If you want to connect with your customers, you need to share what makes you unique and exciting to them. For us, that meant years and years of hard-earned and time-tested sales knowledge. Whatever that is for you, find it, share it, and grow naturally from it.

5. Compete on value. Not price.

When you’re faced huge competitors like Salesforce, it’s an attractive idea to try and beat them on price. You want their customers. Everyone wants to save money. So why not become the cheapest option?

But you’ll never win if you compete on price. The cheaper you price your product, the more your business model will have to change. You’ll need to raise more money, spend more acquiring users, and operate on razor-thin margins. In the end, you won’t be able to focus on and champion your users.

With Close.io, we knew we could never compete on price. So we decided to compete on value. We marketed ourselves as a premium product and charged a premium price. Were we missing features? Sure. But being profitable from the start let us talk to our users, build and grow with them, and continually provide value to them. And in turn, they told more people about us.

Not only did we make more money, but we attracted the right customers who were getting value from us and were more than happy to pay the premium price. It may seem counterintuitive to try to compete by charging more. But remember, even if you win the race to the bottom, you’re still nowhere near the top spot.

6. Ignore FOMO and be ultra-focused on your company identity

All of these factors will help you compete in a busy marketplace. But the most important by-product of following them is that it will give you an incredible amount of focus.

If you spend your days trying to copy the competition or chasing after the latest buzzwords, you’re going to zig-zag your way to nowhere. But, when you know who you and your customers are, why they want to buy from you, have a brand that people trust, and continually create value for everyone, you won’t get sidetracked with hacks and trends.

You need to have self-awareness and self-confidence as a company to stay the course when everyone else is drowning in the noise of the marketplace. When you’re confident in who you are, it lets you say no to opportunities that might sound exciting, but aren’t right for you.

For us, that meant turning down partnerships promising thousands of customers (which never materialized). Or saying no to Enterprise customers promising millions of dollars in revenue (which went against our brand and identity, and would most likely have required us to loosen our focus on the sales people’s productivity). It also meant focusing only on features we knew our customers wanted (not expensive nice-to-haves like a mobile app).

Focus will ultimately be what separates you from the hundreds and thousands of other companies in your space. Know who you are as a company and have faith that the path you’re going down was the right choice. This will help you clearly recognize where to invest your resources, and how to compete in even the most crowded markets.

If you’re going to play the game, play to win

The business software world isn’t getting any smaller. So why spend time complaining when you could be competing?

Don’t just look at what other people are doing and copy them. Look at what everyone else is doing and then turn around and look at your customer.

What do they need? Where are they being undervalued and ignored? How can you build something that brings them value and opens up a niche for you?

It won’t always be smooth sailing. Your competitors will copy your features, your strategies, and your unique vision. But if you learn how to compete effectively, build a loyal customer base, and constantly create value, the competition will never be better than second best.

You can’t change the game.

But you can always change the way you play.

Want more tips on growing your startup? Grab a free copy of From 0 to 1,000 Customers & Beyond, a book on customer acquisition for B2B startups I co-authored with Hiten Shah.

Download our B2B Customer Acquisition Book

With a record 90% of consumers reporting that they read online reviews before even checking a company out, honest feedback from verified customers is the lifeblood of business these days. A lot rides on your reputation, and 67% of purchasing decisions are influenced by online reviews.

Though you may have a large number of seemingly happy customers, getting their honest feedback can be a struggle at times. Star ratings are great; answering surveys are better. But long-form, written reviews? Those can be pure magic for your business. Sadly, less than 10% of American consumers will leave a review after a purchase, and only half of the customers will do it occasionally.

However, seven out of ten customers will leave a review if the business asks them to. For this reason, many businesses are turning to customer review software solutions not only to incentivize customers to leave reviews but to make the most out of them.

According to BrightLocal’s report, customers pay the most attention to star ratings, overall sentiment, and the relevancy of the review, such as how recent it was and its level of detail. Customer service software can help to organize and compile reviews for effective data points (like star reviews) and highlight your strongest feedback for highlights on your website.

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If you’re on the hunt for customer review software, be sure that above all else, it simplifies the process. From gathering feedback to compiling analytical reports, in general, the two systems that come out on top are Trustpilot and PowerReviews. Both of these platforms offer excellent tools and systems, but each has its own set of areas where they truly excel.

Let’s compare.

1. Stats and Facts

Trustpilot was founded in 2007 but quickly grew to become one of the most popular review platforms online, gathering half a million reviews each month. Their system has a licensing agreement with Google, allowing reviews to be listed as “Google Seller Ratings” that pop up during organic search engine results. As of now, over 179,000+ brands have used Trustpilot to publish customer reviews. The attractive free plan they offer has encouraged a large number of brands to use their service.

PowerReviews was created in 2005, and though they have only published reviews with 2,500 brands, they have reportedly gathered 30 million reviews. Power Reviews also has a partnership agreement with Google, allowing reviews to be listed as seller ratings with organic searches.

2. Web Traffic

It should be noted that according to Similarweb, Trustpilot clearly has the upper hand in terms of website traffic. Trustpilot’s website has nearly 24 million visits, with visitor duration sitting at nearly two minutes. It also ranks far higher in its category than PowerReviews, which has just over one million website visits.

Winner – Trustpilot

As far as online popularity is concerned, Trustpilot is a clear winner leaving behind PowerReviews with a huge margin.

3. Pricing

Each platform offers various plans according to your business’s size and needs, making them excellent options for growing companies.

Trustpilot offers a free basic starter kit for brand new businesses who need to build up a review database. This allows for 100 review invitation emails to be sent out per month, plus it includes a free TrustBox widget for the website. Social media sharing, statistics overview, and customer online and email support is also included.

The Lite Plan sits at $299 a month, but it is charged as an annual fee. This includes everything offered in the free plan but increases your review invite number to 300. Along with additional TrustScore boxes to display specific reviews rather than the mean average, this plan also allows you to customize your TrustBox displays to fit with your website’s theme.

The Pro plan starts at $549 a month (again, this is charged as an annual fee) and allows for 1,000 feedback invites per month. The Pro plan offers further customization for review invitations and provides full analytical and statistical report access.

Its most comprehensive plan, the Enterprise, requires contact with a sales representative for a quote depending on your business’s size and needs. This plan has all the bells and whistles, with multiple integration tools for platforms like Shopify and Magneto.

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PowerReviews offers no free plan, and their packages are slightly more expensive. The Standard plan is $399 per month, but it only allows for 75 reviews to be collected. This plan does offer Google review ratings and tools for better SEO and rankings.

The Business plan is $699 a month but offers up to 250 monthly reviews to be collected. Furthermore, it offers daily content exportation to keep your reviews up to date. Some syndication is provided for retailers, but there may be an additional charge for brands.

Finally, the Enterprise package starts at $1,000 per month but can go up to $10,000 depending on the business’s size and requirements. This plan includes customization options for collection and publication services, plus you can create a customized limit on the number of reviews collected.

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Winner – Trustpilot

With more affordable pricing packages and higher numbers of invitations for different plans, Trustpilot takes the cake here. Furthermore, Trustpilot offers a FREE plan for small businesses just starting out. While PowerReviews is certainly a quality option that offers a great deal of customization, its best suited for medium to large sized businesses, whereas Trustpilot has great functionality for startups all the way up to large enterprises.

4. Platforms Supported

Both of these programs support most e-commerce platforms and even offer their own solutions for some systems, such as Shopify.

Trustpilot’s plans offer Yext, Magento, Shopify, ShopifyPlus, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Google, PrestaShop, Magneto, and more.

PowerReviews also offers a wide selection of e-commerce support which can be integrated into almost any platform. The program has prebuilt solutions for Shopify, Shopify Plus, Magento2, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware).

Winner – It Depends

Again, both of these solutions cover your basics, so unless you work with a specific e-commerce platform, either should offer seamless integration.

5. Open or Invite Only?

Allowing anyone to leave an online review can be risky, especially if an extremely disgruntled customer wants to leave some scathing ones. However, customers are far more likely to trust businesses that showcase both the good and the bad.

Both Trustpilot and PowerReviews offer open platforms, which means that anyone can leave a review. However, you may also send out email invitations from both systems to customers following a purchase. Both services offer protection against fake reviews, too.

PowerReviews verifies that feedback is from verified customers to keep things in check, along with anti-fraud software protection to shield brands from spam. Additionally, PowerReviews allows clients to hide the Write-a-Review form from their public page to block “fly-by” reviews. Companies are not allowed to reject negative comments simply because they are negative.

PowerReviews places a verification badge on reviews that came from actual buyers. The program boasts 100% human moderation and fraud protection throughout their tiers of service. This ensures that all content on the site is appropriate and reviews are genuine. For more information, here are the Authenticity and Moderation policies.

Trustpilot has been, and always will be committed to being an open platform. This means there will never be options to hide, un-publish, or conceal authentic reviews from real customers – whether they are positive or negative. However, Trustpilot will delete reviews it identifies as fraudulent with its smart fraud detection software. If a review is detected, the system will promptly delete it from the platform before it is published. Additionally, the review will be deleted if it is flagged by a company or a consumer for the compliance team to investigate. See more on how Trustpilot combats fake reviews here.

Each review collected with Trustpilot’s AFS system is marked and verified. When it comes to sending review invites, Trustpilot only allows companies to send them to verified customers to ensure authenticity. Also, reviews can be written by consumers who have had previous experience with a certain company but have not received a formal invite to review. Since the system is open and free, these types of organic reviews are published immediately and remain posted unless they get flagged for investigation.

Winner – It’s a Tie

Both of these tools offer similar protection in terms of guarding against spammy feedback, and both also allow any customer to share their opinions. PowerReviews and Trustpilot are all about transparency and consumer openness. Through these platforms, all real and honest customers have a voice to be heard.

5. SEO Benefits

Both Trustpilot and PowerReviews have partnerships with Google, so you will have the obvious benefits of seller ratings which can affect your ranking.

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However, it is important to note that Trustpilot comes with its own SEO benefits, as the company itself has a higher traffic ranking than PowerReviews. Trustpilot also offers TrustBox for product pages, which has been proven to boost rankings in Google’s algorithm.

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Winner – Trustpilot

With the additional TrustBox feature that can increase your search engine ranking, along with a higher webpage ranking in general, Trustpilot is the clear winner for this category.

6. Edit Existing Reviews

Some customers tend to get a little long-winded and may include misspellings, unnecessary details, or just incorrect information. However, there must be a check in place to ensure that brands can’t manipulate reviews and twist them in their favor.

If a company using Trustpilot sees that a customer has left a negative review on their website, they can contact that customer, solve the issue and then ask them to edit the review and give a good rating. The right to edit the review stays with the customer only and the company cannot edit any review.

PowerReviews doesn’t allow for any changes to reviews; however, it does support brand responses to address any issues. You can also send customer reviews into PowerReviews for observation, and if deemed to be spam or incorrect, PowerReviews will delete the post.

Winner – Trustpilot

Trustpilot ensures that reviews are only altered by the customer for authenticity. This can also have an effect on SEO rankings, as it changes star ratings and keyword inclusion in feedback.

7. Transferring Reviews to Amazon

Next to Google, Amazon’s review platform can be extremely influential when it comes to customer purchases. However, customers that purchase through your brand’s website or other retailers will not leave an Amazon review. Therefore, it can be beneficial to transfer this feedback over to help your online sales and Amazon rankings.

PowerReviews allows the users to share a review directly to Amazon through a single click.

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Unfortunately, with Trustpilot, this is not possible. However, PowerReviews does allow users to directly share their feedback from the merchant website to Amazon for a verified purchase. According to their research, 33% of reviews are published to Amazon.

Winner – PowerReviews

PowerReviews is straightaway a winner here.

Amazon is truly the e-commerce giant, so if your business sells through this platform, it can be extremely helpful to share customer feedback for better rankings.

8. Social Media

Obviously, social media has become another research hub for future customers. 75% of online shoppers will check out the brand’s social media and look at reviews and product images before buying, and 60% will engage with the social brand as well.

Trustpilot allows for brands to share customer reviews on social media along with an image for better engagement. You can personalize the image by using a default one from Trustpilot’s large image library or uploading your own.

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PowerReviews gives brands the power to include user-generated content from customer’s social media pages. These images can then be embedded onto your website (with permission of course), creating truly authentic content for customers to check out before a purchase.

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Winner – Depends on Your Goals

Both systems offer different ways to integrate social media content into your marketing strategies. Both offer helpful tools to build customer trust and share authentic content, just different methods.

Conclusion

It’s difficult to pick a clear champion here, as there is some overlap in the two system’s features. Both offer excellent platforms that do make things simple, and each one has specialized tools to help you integrate customer feedback seamlessly into your website and other platforms. However, when it comes to price and overall value, Trustpilot does seem to offer a little bit more bang for your buck, which can be the deciding factor for many smaller companies. However, this doesn’t mean that PowerReviews is without its advantages, especially with its ability to transfer reviews directly to your Amazon product page.

The true decision maker here is your business. Depending on your needs and strategies, either of these customer review systems could be extremely beneficial.

One of the more important skills one needs is to develop is the skill of self-development and improvement. It is also one of the more difficult skills to acquire, unless one happened to be born with the deficiency need for growth. Without the skill of being able to develop and improve oneself, one cannot reach one’s full potential (something that, as far as we can tell no human being has been able to do, all of us having a greater capacity than we can possibly imagine).

Comfort Is the Enemy

One of the reasons it is so difficult to develop the skill of self-development and improvement is that one becomes comfortable. Comfort is the feeling that one has when we are avoiding pain, struggle, strife, or exertion. Comfort is the feeling of having enough, and not being driven to be more, do more, have more, or contribute more. Comfort is the enemy because it leads to complacency, and complacency is the recipe for standing still.

There is something to be said for the idea of “enough.” There is also something to be said for being pleased without being satisfied, especially as it pertains to one reaching their full potential.

Desire

If you want to develop the skill that leads to all other skills, self-development and improvement, it starts with desire. It’s the desire to be more than you are right now and recognizing there is some area where you can and should produce better results. It might also start with the desire to have more than you have now, even though that idea is not popular in some quarters. You may also desire the ability to do something you presently are incapable of doing, or something you want to master. Or maybe you want to make a greater contribution, and developing yourself into the person who can make that contribution is what drives you forward in developing some new skill.

Will and Self Discipline

Those with the skill of self-development have certain character traits and attributes that allow them to develop new skills and to improve themselves. The primary character traits are the will to act and the self-discipline to do so over longer periods of time; those who do not develop themselves never develop those traits. Like a great martial artist, they are willing to practice the same thing hundreds or thousands of times until they gain mastery. They’re able to stay on the mat and do the work without any loss of enthusiasm, and without giving up. Where others dabble, those with the skill to develop other skills and improve themselves go deep.

What one person is capable of, so are others. This is the belief of those with the skill to develop other skills. There are not very many things that appear to be out of the realm of possibility for those who have the mindset and the skill set to improve themselves. Most, however, believe that what one person is capable of, is too difficult for them. When they are infected with a negative belief system, they believe that natural talent is the difference, or that some individual’s achievements are the result of luck. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who develop themselves pay the price in full for the skills and abilities they develop before anyone recognizes their mastery.

The post The Most Important of All Skills appeared first on The Sales Blog.

If you don’t think you’re good at sales, you better start learning. Even if your position has nothing to do with sales, you’re still going to need to learn how to do it. Whether you’re going to close a multimillion dollar deal or convincing your partner where you want to eat dinner, it all requires the same basic set of skills.

If you’re new to sales, here are six sales tips that will help you succeed.

Be disciplined and stay consistent

If you want to become a great salesperson you need to put in the hours. All too often we hear about the quick-tips, hacks, and one-off strategies that will help you close more deals. While those strategies may work every once in a while they won’t do you in favors in the long run.

You need to teach yourself how to perform at 100% every day regardless of the outcome. Throughout your entire sales career you’re going to experience times of total brilliance and times of complete and utter disaster. The quicker you learn how to become disciplined and push forward consistently the more successful you will become. It’s that simple.

Invest in education

Sales is all about learning as much as you can. Whether you’re learning on the job or from a seminar it’s all beneficial. The earlier in your career you invest in your own education the better. Like most other things, becoming great requires building a solid foundation. Your sales foundation is built upon learning key processes, strategies, advice, and any other helpful tips from those who have succeeded before you.

To get started, it’s always best to identify your best learning style. Some prefer to learn by doing. If that’s’ the case, you should try and pursue as many prospects as possible. Take calls just for practice. Typically, it’s best to only spend your time on qualified leads. That said, if you have the time and you can use the call as a learning experience it’s well worth it.

Every failure is a learning opportunity

This goes along with the message above about investing in your education. This learning experience however, is likely not something you were hoping or expecting to happen. The experience i’m referring to is failure.

Failure is something you need to embrace. Failures big and small will happen all the time throughout your career. That big deal you were hoping to close may fall through right before the papers get signed. The executive promotion you’ve been working towards for the last four years may be given to your colleague instead. You need to become resilient and always use failures as a learning opportunity.

What caused the deal to fall through at the last minute? Was the timing off? Were you talking to the wrong contact and when it came time to sign, the decision maker wasn’t up to speed on the deal? Regardless of the reason you should make an effort to learn so you can adjust accordingly next time you’re in a similar situation.

Seek coaching and mentoring

There’s a strange stigma around seeking outside help. The misconception is that it shows signs of weakness or that you’re unable to accomplish things on your own. That is total garbage. Seeking guidance from sales coaches or mentors shows that you’re proactive around identifying your faults. This also shows you’re able to check your ego.

The biggest benefit of using a sales coach or mentor is that you have the opportunity to be fully transparent with no repercussions. If you tell your boss or manager you aren’t confident that you can meet your quotas, they may just replace you. A mentor will help you identify where you see the faults. Is it a mental block? Do you lack the skills or tools? Are you not familiar with the product or industry? Whatever it may be – their one job is to help you succeed.

Have an objective for every sales call

Prospecting is how you fill your pipeline with leads. Your email outreach is what starts the conversation. And your sales calls are where you bring home the bacon!

After 50 emails, and hundreds of follow-ups you finally get your call on the books. Before going into the call you need to clearly identify your objectives. You’re probably thinking that’s a no brainer. Your objective is obviously to close the deal right? While that does hold some truth, it’s not necessarily the strategic way to handle every sales call. Especially the initial ones.

Initial calls are all about listening. By the end of that call you need to know what the deal means for the specific client. For example, let’s say you work sales in a marketing agency. A client comes to you who wants to run a campaign to sell 100 more subscriptions to their service. After a lot of listening and asking questions you soon discover that if they hit their target, they get a promotion at work. This means the deal is personal to that client, which means if your marketing solution can deliver the deal is as good as closed. But notice how you didn’t have to “sell” anything yet to get to that point. To reiterate, your objectives for sales calls aren’t always to go for the close. Sometimes you just want to get key information.

Only sell what you believe in

You’ve probably heard this a million times but I’m going to say it just once more. Selling is very, very, very hard. You’ll have months where you don’t close a single deal. When the times are tough you need to be able to draw that extra motivation from somewhere. That said, it’s extremely important that you only sell what you believe in. Sure the best salespeople can sell ice to an eskimo. That doesn’t mean you should be selling ice if you hate the cold.

Not only will it keep you motivated, but it’ll also show when talking to clients. If you truly believe your products and or services can help the client, it’ll show in conversation by your tone, body language, and overall authenticity.

Are you missing massive opportunities? Are you not in a frame of mind to SEE the opportunities moving toward you each day?

I am convinced you are going to have a massive opportunity today, but you will miss it if you are not intentional with your optimistic attitude and your focus.  Your sales motivation is dependent on those!

Check out the video to see what I mean:

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

If there’s anything marketers have in common, it’s the goal to find methods to generate more highly-targeted leads. After all, this is the way to boost your revenue and expand your business. But how do you get there?

It requires a strategy that’s effective, measurable, and scalable. To date, there’s nothing that meets these criteria better than inbound marketing. What’s great about the inbound methodology is that it enables you to attract qualified prospects and convert them into leads using foundational content that is delivered through blogs, eBooks, email, automation, social media and other digital tools and content.

According to the B2B Procurement Study from the Acquity Group, 94 percent of business buyers do some form of online research before deciding on a product or service:

• 77 percent use Google search
• 84.3 percent check business websites
• 34 percent visit 3rd party websites
• 41 percent read user reviews

Prospects spend a lot of time reading content published by businesses they’re considering. This speaks volumes about the importance of content in marketing. A whopping 80% of business decision makers prefer getting information about a brand from an article.

Needless to say, if you’re not already implementing an Inbound Marketing program, then it’s time to start. But in doing so, some businesses report that they have not realized the results they expected from Inbound.

We have heard people who have not had a good experience with inbound describe their experience in many ways:

• Inbound Marketing just has not worked for us!
• Inbound Marketing is overrated and a waste of time and money!
• With so much buzz about inbound marketing, why hasn’t it worked for us?
• I have been so tired of paying for keywords and thought Inbound Marketing would help with that.
• … and several more choice expletives – you can fill in your favorite here.

Like any tool or methodology, if Inbound is not implemented correctly, then it just is not going to work for your business. On the other hand, when done well, Inbound generate a continual stream of sales-ready leads to help your business grow.

Bristol Strategy has done what I like to call “Inbound Marketing Rescues.” A business leader intuitively likes Inbound Marketing because it is prescriptive, targeted and measurable. But if they are not experiencing the results they expected, many seek third-party experts like Bristol to help them diagnose what’s wrong.

Let’s review the most common problems businesses experience with Inbound Marketing and how to solve them

1. Poor user engagement
2. Not developing a clear inbound marketing strategy
3. Being impatient with the inbound methodology
4. Not enough resources to implement successfully (aka: starving the Inbound Marketing effort)
5. Not optimizing for conversions
6. Not using integrated marketing tools and analytics
7. Lack of alignment between sales and marketing

1. Poor User Engagement

Difficulty with audience engagement is a challenge many brands experience. About 77% of agencies say poor website user experience is one of the biggest weakness for their clients. When you have poor user experience, you’ll see signs like a high bounce rate and depending on how well each page tells your brand story, you will also see a low time on page.

Once you look into the common reasons why users become disengaged, you can easily see what needs to be done. Here’s a quick look at the most common ones:

• Poor website design: Nearly 40% of visitors stop engaging if images don’t load or if the layout or content is unattractive.
• Poor mobile-optimization: Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. As of March 2017, 80% of top Alexa websites were mobile adaptive.
• Poor user experience: About 47% of site visitors go directly to a products/services page and 86% prefer to see info about products/services on the home page.

Fix the user engagement issues.

The key to overcoming these three issues is to locate the usability problems on your site and fix them. For instance, is your site layout professional, organized, and easy to navigate? When visitors come to your site, are they getting the information they need quickly? You want your home page to be insightful and your navigation buttons visible and easy to understand so visitors can get to the content they need quickly.

And as the market trends listed above show, let’s not forget the importance of mobile-optimization. Not only do you need it to appease the many mobile users, but you also need to do it to maintain your rank in the search engine results pages (otherwise known as SERPs). If you’re not mobile-optimized, then your rankings will suffer, along with user engagement.

You can simply make upgrades to your site page by page or do a complete overhaul with the help of an expert. This article describes the website design process we used for our own website and those of our clients.

2. Not Developing a Clear Inbound Marketing Strategy

With all of your enthusiasm and excitement, you learn about inbound marketing and jump right in without a clear plan. That’s the way it goes for countless B2B businesses – around 68% to be exact.

One of the leading problems with not developing a clear Inbound Marketing strategy is you are implementing without a clear plan for the content that is the foundation of your site. If the content is not relevant to the visitor’s needs, then they’re less likely to convert into a lead.

Only 12% of marketers are actually crafting content with specific customers (buyer persona) in mind. The major concern here is that it takes consistency in publishing and quality to attract and retain your audience.

Clear up the Inbound Marketing Strategy gap.

So how should businesses address this issue? To develop a strategy around a particular persona and their specific buyer’s journey. Every page and blog post on your website should be geared towards a specific audience who’s in a specific area of your funnel – called a buyer’s journey stage.

• For example, you want to craft content that are more informational for the visitors who are at the top of your marketing funnel.
• For those who are considering your business, provide educational branded content that both educates and differentiates your solution.
• Then for someone who’s near the end of your funnel, you can point them to content that’ll help seal the deal, such as testimonials, demos, product videos, and so on. Also, the tone and content should resonate with the specific group you’re targeting.

This graphic shows buyer’s journey stages and the types of content for each.

If you haven’t already done so, it’s important to create buyer persona profiles for each of the groups you market to. You can use this for all of your content marketing efforts – email, ads, and blogs to make them more personal and engaging.

3. Being Impatient with the Inbound Methodology (and Ignoring PPC)

One analogy to help you gain insight into inbound marketing is with a real estate example.

In a sense, you can think of Inbound Marketing as buying a home. Once you purchase it, it’s yours forever — it’s the same with the content investment portion of Inbound Marketing. Once you purchase it, you own it forever and continues to perform for you as long as you have the content published on your blog or website.

PPC, on the other hand, is like renting a property. It’s only yours for as long as you’re paying for it. As soon as you stop, you’re evicted from your apartment. And once you stop paying for your ads, they’re removed by the ad publisher and no longer generate leads.

Moz created a blog article and a whiteboard Friday by Rand Fishkin titled “Surviving the SEO Slog” where he described the gap of disappointment – image below. The key point is, it takes time for content you create and publish to have an impact on traffic and leads. We have found that a good measure of progress is to use a tool like Moz or SemRush and report the number of organic keywords that rank in the top 3, 10 and 100 of search. As you publish and rank, your business will see more (non-branded) keywords rank over time. Stick with your Inbound Marketing investment and it will pay off.

How can your business survive the Inbound Marketing disappointment gap?

First, set your expectations correctly. Secondly, invest in PPC to drive leads while your investment builds organic results. Pay-per-click is an important element of your digital marketing strategy. PPC is not something you want to use alone and it should not be your only tactic for attracting visitors and generating leads.

This is why some marketers implement PPC ads into their content strategy. It’s a quick way to start generating traffic while your investment in content gradually ranks in organic search. Then, once your content starts bringing in organic traffic, you can scale back on your paid ads.

As a business owner or marketer, it’s essential to develop an inbound methodology that’ll provide consistency for your brand. If you have the above strategy in place, you will begin to see results within months. You will experience continued traffic growth over time as long as you continue to publish valuable content.

One reason brands are implementing inbound marketing is because it costs 62% less than other marketing methods. Almost 75% of companies say Inbound Marketing is increasing their lead quality and quantity once you pass the gap of disappointment, this is because your ideal prospect is finding you (through organic search) precisely when they need your products or services.

This is likely the reason why 91% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers are now using Inbound Marketing strategies. With the right mix of content and paid ads on social and search, you can generate leads that convert, thus boosting marketing ROI.

4. Not Enough Resources to Implement Inbound Successfully

You understand the importance of Inbound Marketing and building a solid strategy that’s effective. But what if your efforts get bottlenecked because you don’t have enough manpower or financial resources? If you’re a medium or small business, then you likely don’t have a large marketing department to handle your content needs.

This is why 62% of marketers are struggling with posting content at least once a week. And that’s a major problem because 90% of customers expect consistent interactions across channels with brands.

Address resource issues with freelance writers and an Inbound agency partner

This will keep you ahead of your publishing calendar and ensure your brand is consistently connecting with your audience. Be sure to test their writing style and quality. There are a lot of bad freelance writers out there but you can find the good ones.

By hiring a professional writer, you ensure your content is great quality, engaging, and optimized for SEO and conversions. Why is this important? Because almost 60% of people say they won’t use a company with poor grammar and spelling mistakes on their website and marketing materials.

Trying to go it alone may inhibit the success of your inbound marketing campaign in more ways than one. This is especially true if you’re not producing targeted content on a regular basis. Your best bet is to hire an inbound marketing agency to help you manage and outsource at least a portion of your content.

5. Not Optimizing for Conversions

Calls-to-Action offers (CTAs) are the bread and butter of inbound marketing. If you’re publishing content that’s getting the attention of your target audience, but they’re not converting, then you have to look at your calls to action and premium offers that they promote (or lack thereof).

Once businesses put content in place, they often either have too few conversion opportunities (offers and forms that convert a visitor into a lead) or they have not used the analytics to optimize the conversion of the visitors into leads.

Thankfully, there are solutions to the conversion rate optimization (CRO) issue

First, understand the principals of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and then look at your highest converting pages and optimize those pages first. Then work down the list to increase the number of leads you’re generating. As your visitor traffic grows, your lead flow will accelerate.

Every form of content you create, whether it be text, image, or video, should contain a CTA. 90% of website visitors that read your headline will also read your CTA.

CRO should not be limited to your website content. It should also be applied to your email campaigns. Emails with just one clear and strong CTA see 371% more clicks. Then CTAs in videos help boost conversions by 144%. This all shows how effective a simple call to action can be for your inbound strategy.

6. Not Using Integrated Marketing Tools & Analytics

Now, it’s very important to point out that all of your marketing methods should integrate seamlessly together. If your content marketing campaigns, email campaigns, advertising campaigns, and social media campaigns aren’t aligned, then your inbound marketing is not optimized for success.

Businesses may attempt to implement inbound marketing with a variety of digital marketing tools, none which work together. This approach creates a productivity problem for the marketer and a lack of visibility across marketing methods.

They can’t obtain the analytics they need to understand which of their campaigns are generating leads and opportunities for their sales team. Then there’s the inability to understand the ROI of their marketing investment. Business leaders should strive to trace website visitors from first visit source all the way to a sale. With these metrics, you gain the insight into where to invest more.

How integrated marketing tools and analytics enable success

The solution is to consolidate the digital marketing tools into one tool that’ll implement it all while also providing the analytics needed to optimize performance. In the beginning of this article, we shared that business leaders wanted a marketing strategy that was effective, measurable, and scalable. Integrated tools enable scalability and measurability.

We have said before that we use the Hubspot platform for Inbound Marketing and Sales Enablement because it is easy to use, guides the user in ways to optimize results and is very effective. Previously, before adopting Hubspot we use WordPress for websites, Hootsuite for social media, Mail Chimp for email, Google Analytics for website metrics and more. Daily work required logging into different platforms, trying to understand the intersection of how social media affected a website campaign. The problem was not the availability of metrics in each tool, it was tying it all together to measure the contribution of each element of our strategy toward the sale.

The most important capability that pushed us over the edge and has been a key enabler to success when adopting Hubspot is the ability to know what an individual contact did, which content they consumed, and how they behaved both on and off of our website. We look at this data across contacts that purchased and those who did not. These insights enable us to continually refine what and how we do it, so we are constantly improving our digital marketing approach.

7. Lack of Alignment Between Sales and Marketing

As you can see throughout this article, inbound marketing yields some pretty impressive results. This leads to brands jumping on the bandwagon without fully aligning their sales and marketing teams with a unified strategy.

A common problem for many is that the marketing team has one point of view of a great lead and the sales team has another. If the team that’s working hard and generating content to attract leads is focused on the wrong target, then the leads will have a lower conversion rate into a sale.

The solution is to align the sales and marketing strategy before implementing inbound marketing:

• the ideal prospect (buyer persona), their likes, dislikes, biases and preferences
• the triggers (problems) that cause them to search for a solution and be willing to invest in solving it
• educational material that answers their questions and reinforce your solution to their trigger topic

The chart above ( from the state of inbound 2018 report ) makes the point extremely well. When marketing and sales teams are aligned, the teams believe their marketing strategy is effective.

Marketing and sales should not only meet once, they should structure a documented working agreement and meet weekly to measure progress and results. This type of tight partnership will ensure the most effective business results are realized.

When your sales and marketing strategies are in alignment, you can witness a 36% higher customer retention rate and a 38% higher sales close rate. It is amazing that such a simple topic can have a significant impact to success.

Putting it All Together – Solving the 7 Common Inbound Marketing Problems

Now that you have all this information, what should you do next? If there’s anything you take from this piece, it’s that it’s absolutely critical to have a holistic view of inbound marketing and the strategy to implement it correctly.

You need a plan for all the elements required to enable your sales and marketing to work together to boost traffic, as well as conversions into opportunities for sales. With this, your business will succeed with Inbound Marketing and realize a positive ROI for your investment in it.

If you’d like assistance with building personas, content, or inbound marketing strategies, we would be excited to help. Contact us today to learn more and request an inbound marketing assessment to understand the gaps in your current plan.

First Image Copyright: 123RF Stock Photo

Free-Photos / Pixabay

“Be a writer first and marketer second.”

Ann Handley, head of content at MarketingProfs, shared this idea in a recent webinar I attended, and it’s one that’s all too forgotten by marketers.

Too many times, businesses tout their products and services—cholk-full of industry jargon and terms that most people have no clue about—in an attempt to “sell” the user.

But if the words used are unable to grab and keep the user’s attention, are those truly the “right words” to use?

The goal with any marketing activity is to get someone to take action. Whether you want someone to click on your email, fill out a form, or contact you directly—the words you use matter and you must be able to relate to people.

Given that humans now have the attention span of a goldfish, what are some tips you should remember as you write and publish content? Here are a few:

1) Lighten Up: Use “Talk” Instead of “Converse”

Web content should be easy to read and have a conversational tone with readers. Using unnecessary or uncommon words doesn’t help you resonate with your audience—it alienates them—and you should avoid using them.

This is why throwing industry jargon or “branded” terms on your products and service pages isn’t a good idea. Instead, you should be telling stories about how people use your product or service, how it helps them solve everyday problems, and how it improves their life and work.

2) Use the Return Button Often and Write in Short Sentences

To keep the attention of your readers, your content should be clearly formatted and easy to read. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is to use the return/enter button every two to three sentences as you write.

Big walls of text are overwhelming to readers, and it makes people feel like they’ll have to read everything to understand your message.

Think about the last time you received a lengthy text message. If you’re anything like me, you probably got overwhelmed just looking at it!

So make sure you’re spacing out your words and writing in clear, short sentences; this will make for a better user experience and give you the best chance to keep the attention of your reader.

3) Use Coherence Markers

Coherence markers include prepositions and other transition words/phrases that are used to help connect ideas: words like but, as, so, etc.

It turns out these words can add clarity and actually boost persuasion in readers.

Below is an example of two ads from Dove—one that uses coherence markers and one that doesn’t.

Dove Soft-Touch Ad #1

Your skin’s natural oils keep it silky and supple. As you age, it becomes less elastic and the production of oil slows down. Aging can cause dull, dehydrated skin. It’s essential to replenish the lost moisture with a natural, soothing alternative. Dove leaves your body clean and smooth. It contains ten times more natural oil than regular shower gels.

Dove Soft-Touch Ad #2

Your skin’s natural oils keep it silky and supple. But as you age, your skin becomes less elastic and the production of oil slows down. That is why aging can cause dull, dehydrated skin. So it’s essential to replenish the lost moisture with a natural, soothing alternative. Dove leaves your body clean and smooth, because Dove contains ten times more natural oil than regular shower gels.

So as you write, make sure to use coherence markets and other psychological triggers to add clarity and keep the attention of your readers.

4) Tell a Story and Use Conflict

Every story has a beginning, middle and end—and no story is ever complete without conflict.

As you draft copy for landing pages, blogs, emails, etc., you want to make sure you’re illustrating a conflict and how your product/service helps resolve that issue.

Here’s an example of how you can create conflict on a landing page:

Situation: Too many salespeople from company X were leaving before completing their 12-month sales training program.

Conflict/Complication: In fact, the issue was so bad that it cost company X over $50,000 just to recruit and replace the employees who left.

So he called Superior Sales Training.

Resolution: Superior Sales Training helped cut Company X’s sales training program to six weeks, drastically reducing onboarding time and allowing employees to jump right into the field.

Think about the best TV shows, movies, or books you’ve ever seen and read; there is always conflict. And it’s the conflict (and resolution) that keeps us engaged and entertained.

5) Be Authentic and Transparent

Businesses are ever focused on driving leads and customers. But before you can turn a prospect into a customer, you first need to earn their trust.

So how can you gain trust through your content? It starts with being transparent about your company, its goals, and why you’re in business in the first place. Share your experiences and why you began helping people, and don’t be afraid to address any shortcomings you may have dealt with.

Wells Fargo, Uber, and Facebook have all recently faced backlash for how they’ve dealt with internal crises, and all three have now released ads to try to earn back the trust of users.

At the end of the day, consumers need to trust you. So be authentic and honest in your writing.

Here are a few tips that can help you relate to people as you write:

• Write in the 2nd person (you should)

• Use common pain points and experiences that people are familiar with

• Use simple words (see above, “talk vs. converse”)
• Avoid using too many industry terms/jargon (remember that you can’t change how people talk, but you can change how they think)

6) Format Your Posts

In addition to avoiding long paragraphs and writing in short sentences, there are a few other tips you should follow as you’re formatting content.

To make your content easily readable, you should:

• Use bulleted lists or numbers when possible
• Use subheaders to clearly label what the next section/paragraph is about
• Bold important text and phrases, but use it sparingly
• Always end with a summary or a call to action telling the user what they should do next

Keeping your content cleanly formatted will help you maintain the attention of your readers. So take a few minutes before you publish your next landing page, blog, or email, and ensure that readers—at a quick glance—can see exactly what you’re trying to communicate.

Summary

The internet is filled with content, and it’s only going to get more cluttered when you consider the fact that 90% of the content available has been created in the last two to three years alone.

As more and more content is added to the internet each day, you need to make sure your content isn’t getting lost in the shuffle.

By keeping these tips in mind as you publish, you can be confident knowing that you’re giving your content the best possible chance to perform.

How do you communicate with your prospects and customers? If your answer is “not very well,” then it may be time to consider how you can improve interactions. To help companies of all sizes with communication efforts, HubSpot launched Conversations, a new tool designed to help you interact with one-to-one messages that are smart, simple, personalized, well-organized and a valuable contributor to the overall customer experience.

Clker-Free-Vector-Images / Pixabay

Why HubSpot Conversations Was Born

Technology has lead the way for many developments, including the way we communicate. People of all ages are increasingly choosing to interact with one-to-one messaging, with 56 percent of customers preferring to message a company than call its customer service line.

But not all businesses have been updating communication methods. Sure, businesses are capable of interacting one-to-one through email, texts, Facebook Messages and other online platforms. Yet many still lack an overall strategy for effective communication, resulting in unorganized messages from disparate sources.

Prospects or customers may start a conversation on the phone, continue with a text or email exchange, and then end up online using Facebook Messenger. Their interactions are fluid, portable, and constantly moving across various channels without any information being lost or forgotten. Now businesses can enjoy that same streamlined, seamless experience with HubSpot Conversations.

What HubSpot Conversations Can Do

HubSpot Conversations is an all-in-one solution for your one-to-one customer interaction needs, letting you manage, scale and maximize the efficiency of personal conversations with leads, customers and loyal fans across a variety of different channels.

Universal Inbox

Instead of heading to Facebook, your email inbox, chat message transcripts and texts to try to track down past interactions with prospects and customers, all of your past conversations from multiple platforms will be stored in HubSpot. This allows you to keep a record of your prospects and customers past questions and needs to better be able to offer them future support.

Scalable to High Volume

Whether you need to respond to a single one-to-one message or send out a large volume of responses across the board, Conversations allows you to do it quickly, easily and efficiently. Like other HubSpot tools, Conversations is scalable to take on heavy volume loads to suit a variety of business needs.

Automation via Chatbots

HubSpot recently acquired the chatbot platform Motion A1, which lets teams scale one-to-one conversations using artificial intelligence. As a visual chatbot-building tool, Motion A1 lets companies create chatbots on their websites, on Facebook Messenger, via SMS or elsewhere without needing any technical skills.

Once chatbots are in place, companies can automate HubSpot Conversations to respond to common inquiries, qualify leads, book appointments, diagnose issues, launch customer service interactions or just about anything else they can imagine. High-quality conversations automatically become the norm, responding to customer needs as quickly as they arise.

Targeting and Lead Routing Capabilities

Targeting capabilities let you select the areas on your website you want, or don’t want your Conversations chat widget to appear. Lead routing functions allow you to assign incoming leads to specific team members tasked to perform the follow-up and nurturing.

Available to Users of HubSpot CRM Free

If you’re already using or planning to use HubSpot CRM Free, then you’ll have access to HubSpot Conversations. The Conversations tool is built right into the CRM platform, which allows it to gather and store all past interactions right in the lead or customer’s profile.

Accessing the profile gives you full context of all interactions, no matter where and when they may have taken place. You’re also treated to other information stored in the profile as well as marketing data insights pulled in from Conversations, allowing you to personalize your interactions even further.

Valuable Tool Across Marketing, Sales and Service Hubs

As if HubSpot Conversations doesn’t make interactions powerful enough on its own, you can add even more drive to your inbound marketing communications with additional HubSpot tools. The HubSpot Marketing Hub gives you no-cost marketing software, while the Sales hub offers free sales software.

HubSpot Service Hub is the all-in-one customer solution from HubSpot, a paid feature that’s also accessible through the CRM Free platform.

What HubSpot Conversations Can Do for You

With the ability to store, scale, automate and manage interactions, HubSpot Conversations can enhance your communications as well as your relationships. Being able to quickly access past conversations can make future conversations proceed more smoothly. You’ll be much better able to personalize interactions, solve problems and satisfy prospects and customers, resulting in greater happiness and increased business.

Customers want and expect a fulfilling customer experience when they interact with every company, and HubSpot Conversations is one of the most potent HubSpot tools that can help you deliver it.

Most startups don’t fail because of bad ideas.

They fail because of bad assumptions, poor execution, and the failure to validate an idea or hypothesis early.

Despite, the fact that many articles have written about how to develop a Minimal Viable Product (MVP), you may be asking do we need ANOTHER post from someone else who has lived through a startup and may know something about startups?

I believe that answer is, YES.

MVP’s are one of the rare topics that enough can be written about.

The MVP thought process and mentality is one that I believe every entrepreneur should focus on mastering — and inherently it’s challenging to master simply because it’s human nature to complicate things.

Over the last year, I’ve had the privilege of talking with hundreds of entrepreneurs who have built many different types of new products.

Physical products, digital products, big products, small products, green products, products launched via Kickstarter and similar…

Founders in every vertical mentally create artificial barriers that prevent them from finding traction and real market validation. For many, this is not a conscious thought process or decision. It’s more driven by fear.

Fear of failure and rejection than anything else.

These obstacles are usually most profound in the early days of a startup simply because this is when available time and resources are the most limited. They are also almost always born out of an unnecessary assumption.

“I think that to do X to get to Y or for people to be interested in our product and company we must have X, Y, AND Z.

These are significant assumptions, with little to non-existent data to back them up.

The truth is that the hardest part of starting a business isn’t building something that people will buy — it’s winning this epic battle that we wage against ourselves.

Staying focused. Staying minimal.

Founders need to think and act like a cockroach: Instead of trying to solve all problems, you must focus your effort on solving the right problems for the right audience if you want your startup to live to see another day.

So how do you ensure that you are always focusing your time and energy on the right things and not getting trapped behind self-induced barriers?

This is where first time entrepreneurs and successful veterans typically diverge in their approach.

After hearing a pitch for a new product, I often ask “What’s preventing you from launching this tomorrow?”.

90% of the time there are one or two features that still need to be finished and “a few weeks away from launching.”

However “a few weeks away” turns into a month which turns into three months and so on.

The search for perfection kills many startups.

The danger in making too many assumptions is that your MVP quickly loses its minimalism and its viability. So you’re left with a product that was difficult to create or develop into what your customers want.

I think the root of the problem is less about assumptions and really because many people have a misconception of what an MVP is.

Which brings me back to the reason I’m writing yet ANOTHER post about minimal viable products.

Instead of thinking about an MVP as a first version of the final product, I like to think of an MVP as the experiment required to test and validate a hypothesis.

What’s surprising about this approach is you quickly realize that although it’s a bit of a misnomer, you may not even need a product to achieve this.

Your MVP can be as simple as an email list that results from spending $100 on Facebook ads to test your hypothesis.

So take a minute and ask yourself one simple question.

What’s preventing you from launching tomorrow? Probably less than you think.

My suggestion is that you bootstrap your business for as long as possible. Investors can add a layer of bureaucracy that you may not have the bandwidth to deal with. Also, not all investors have the best interest of the company at heart.

Some investors do not have the patience required for a startup and begin looking for an ROI long before the company is profitable and resort to disastrous methods attempting to force their will on founders.

Hypothesis tested, now what?

Now that you have tested your hypothesis and ideally have the beginnings of an email list it’s time to create your company.

I’m not going to spend any time on the legal requirements to form a business in this article; I want to focus on the actual mechanics required to bring a product to market.

You’ve validated your idea, show that there was a market demand, now you need to develop the actual product and go to market plan.

If you have a digital product offering, you need to write your or create your video series and build the platform that will hold the offering. This can be as simple as a WordPress website with a subscription plugin.

If it’s a hard good product, now is the time to locate a manufacturer. This can be done domestically or via websites such as Alibaba. You need to contact several manufacturers and ask for samples or have them take your design and fabricate samples. Quality matters, this product will carry your brand name.

Once you have market ready samples, it’s time to contact the people on your mailing list and ask for pre-orders. These pre-orders are when things get very real. Many people may say they are interested; now the rubber hits the road. The email sequence needs to raise awareness and create the marketing funnel.

Using a simple Google search, you can find many examples of email sequences that you can use as a model and customize for your product offering and re-engage your target list.

If you booked pre-orders, I would strongly suggest that you reconfirm the orders and then proceed with placing the first order from the manufacturer. No one wants to receive a product they forgot they ordered and you do not want excessive inventory that ties up cash.

Driving Web Traffic

Every business depends on traffic to drive sales and revenue.

Without traffic to your business or website you are a hobby at best and not a business.

Taking the ad that you ran on Facebook to test your hypothesis, you need to develop a complete marketing plan to attract an audience to your website, or if you are using Amazon for your platform, you need to drive traffic to your sales page.

What’s your brand story? Every brand needs a story, consumers want to know whom they are dealing with and the “why.”

Creativity and authenticity are important here; you need to define your target audience personas, the KPI’s and a content marketing strategy.

How will you build an emotional connection with your target market persons? People buy from brands they connect with, and many brands miss the mark or discount this aspect. Take the time and invest in developing your brand story and how you will connect with your consumer.

This effort will pay off handsomely.

What is social selling?

Next up is to develop a social selling plan. Social media needs to be a critical aspect of your marketing plan. Sales is about relationship building, establishing rapport and credibility, and providing the right solution to the right prospect at the right time.

Social selling doesn’t change that.

Social selling is the art of using social networks to find, connect with, understand, and nurture sales prospects. It’s the modern way to develop meaningful relationships with potential customers that keep you—and your brand—front of mind, so you’re the natural first point of contact when a prospect is ready to buy.

At its core, social selling is about finding and connecting with your target audience and prospects on social media to build relationships and increase sales.

B2B Companies Need to Incorporate Social Selling

We live in a digital world today. As a result, 74% of B2B buyers conduct more than half of their research online before contacting the business, and three out of four B2B buyers rely on social media to engage with potential companies before making a purchase decision. Social listening and sharing valuable content is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a must have.

Step 1: How To Establish a Professional Brand

I strongly suggest that you begin with an audit of your social media channels. Most business professionals use Twitter and LinkedIn for business purposes, and consumers use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, depending on your product offering.

You will need to decide which of these social media channels you should focus on and will bring the most success.

What should you consider when conducting an audit?

Presence: Set up your social media profiles with the customer in mind. Take a hard look at your profile and ask yourself: Is your brand you easy to find on social? Is your profile picture, profile description, company information, and handle consistently across all channels? Do you link out to your company’s website or to valuable content?

Personality: What you do on these social media channels is just one aspect of who you are. Don’t be afraid to show your personality (within reason, of course); people like to know whom they are dealing with.

Have a passion for football and music? Add it to your Twitter profile, what to give a shout out to your home state? Give it a shout-out and geotag your location.

The more information you share about yourself, the more likely you are to form a genuine connection with others who share similar interests. This allows you to start conversations with prospects who are not as likely to respond to posts about your product.

Step 2: Listen with Social Media

Now that you’ve optimized your social profiles, you need to start listening to conversations and connecting with your target personas. There are several tools that can facilitate social listening, however, before you choose one, you need to do some legwork first.

Follow + Connect: Invest time locating and following your target market personas and influencers on social media with every channel you are using. This allows you to develop a better sense of what they care about as buyers and who they are as people. Specifically, on LinkedIn, when sending out an request to join their network, you need to customize the request. If you don’t know the individual, giving a few details about why you want to connect with this person is more personable than having no context to the request.

Read + Analyze: In addition to following individual people, following key brands and subscribing to their emails and newsletters is critical. This gives you an overall sense of their personality or brand, if this is a B2B sales process, you will garner critical information on their current marketing efforts, and target audience. The more background information and insights you have, the better prepared you are.

Identify + React: Social Media gives you the ability to listen for buying signals from prospects. Is your prospect posting or asking for purchasing advice? Active social listening allows you the opportunity to jump into the conversation.

90% of all B2B buying decisions are influenced by peer recommendations, listening carefully to the conversations on social can identify when your target audience is ready to buy.

Once you have done the manual work in making connections and joining relevant groups, it’s time to choose a social listening tool.

Most of these tools offer free functionality; there’s no need to break the bank adding yet another tool to your marketing stack. I recommend to cover all of your social networks or Buffer for robust, customizable listening capabilities on Twitter.

Step 3: Engage on Social Media

The final step is perhaps the most critical in social selling: engaging with influencers industry leaders, and prospects on social. Not only will sharing content that you created to educate your audience or to share their content will help you connect with your target audience and grow your personal brand as well.

Share Content that Counts: Let’s be honest, there is a lot of horrible content on the web and in social media today.

You do not want to be adding to the noise. You want to be sharing, and retweet content that educates entertains and brings value to others. You want to be a problem solver.

Curating and sharing content other than just what your brand produces and publishes gives a sense of balance.

Being a resource gives you a softer sales approach and sharing third-party content is essential to building your brand and demonstrating an unbiased and honest point of view.

When someone publishes, or shares thought leadership content from you make sure to show your support and thank them. Thanking people for the consideration goes a long way towards building a long-term relationship.

Reach Out to Influencers:

One of the quickest ways to jump-start your brand is to reach out to influencers in your target market. Use the direct messaging function of most social media platforms and offer them your product for free. Yes, you heard me, free. No strings attached.

If they like the product, they should reciprocate with a shout out about the product. You now have the basis to develop a relationship with them. Make a list of influencers with 50,000 or fewer followers and start reaching out to them.

Plan Ahead: Today, with the tools mentioned above, it is easy to schedule a week’s worth of social media posts on just about every channel.

Engage with your Audience: The more interactive you are with your target audience, the better. Social media is being engaged and demonstrated by this by liking, sharing, retweet, and commenting on their posts.

Engaging with influencers, you position yourself as an expert in your field. This will help cultivate critical relationships with potential buyers.

This also allows you to develop and cultivate key relationships with your target audience. By starting a conversation on social media, you have an improved chance of moving to email with a significantly better chance than reaching out cold and blasting a brand message to an audience who has no relationship with you.

The ROI of Social Selling

There is a high potential for ROI with a minimum spend with social selling.

Social selling takes a mind shift and needs planning.

How to get started:

30 Minutes: At the start of the week, spend half an hour to schedule social media posts for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn about your market area. This can be original ideas; custom created content that educates or entertains your target audience (content marketing) links to branded content or third-party content about what interests you the most.

20 Minutes: On Wednesday or Thursday invest 20 minutes for engagement and active listening. Participating and reading Facebook and LinkedIn group discussions, following hashtag conversations on Twitter, your follower’s pages, Instagram posts and jumping in where relevant. Sharing posts drives engagement with fans, thought leaders, and influencers.

10 Minutes: Every day, check all social channels you are using for notifications, friend requests, new followers and direct messages. When you start engaging and contributing more, you’ll notice an influx of inbound requests.

Content Marketing

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Content Marketing is providing truly relevant and useful content to your target audience to help them solve their problems verse pitching your products or services.

Content that is not relevant and valuable is informational garbage. The web and social media is full of companies trying to sell you “stuff,” it’s most of the time it’s not relevant or valuable.

It’s spam.

No marketing is possible without great content

Content marketing should be part of your marketing tactics, not a separate part.

Marketing regardless of the tactics used depends on quality content:

• Social media marketing: No social media strategy can or will be successful without a content marketing strategy.
• SEO: Google and other search engines reward businesses that publish quality, relevant content consistently.
• PR: Successful PR strategies address issues readers care about, not your business.
• PPC: For PPC to work, you need great content behind it.
• Inbound marketing: Driving inbound traffic and leads requires content marketing.
• Content strategy: Content strategy is part of most content marketing strategies.

That’s what makes content marketing so important in today’s environment of consumers being bombarded with thousands of marketing messages each and every day.

Email Marketing

With very limited marketing dollars in your budget, you want to make sure you’re spending your money and time effectively.

Email makes money. For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $38.

Social selling combined with content marketing can and will drive email marketing. Every piece of content created needs to have a call to action coupled with a lead generation offer that drives email capture. There are several great examples of email campaigns that you can review and customize for your product offering.

Best practices for email marketing subject line is as follows:

When it comes to subject lines, boring works best. When you write your subject line, don’t sell what’s inside—tell what’s inside.

How effective is email marketing, the stats tell all…..

Wrapping it Up:

Bootstrapping a business is not that difficult, it takes forethought and planning.

The tools outlined here are all relatively inexpensive, it takes effort and some hard work coupled with dedication. As your business grows, then look into adding in social media marketing (SMM) and pay per click (PPC) ads.

Your biggest opportunities are in growing your audience, by using content marketing coupled with social selling to educate and/or entertain your target audience.

This drives web traffic and turns your website into a lead generation machine.

Using lead generation tools you can easily build an email list of prospects that are interested in your content and products.

People are looking to have their problems solved; that is where your products come in.

Building relationships and trust drive sales. People buy from whom they trust

Always under promise and over deliver.

Lastly, take care of the customer, and they will take care of you.

Air travel itself can’t be digitally scaled — at least not yet anyway — because it’s hard to imagine teleportation from Boston to New Zealand without, you know, boarding a flight and sitting there for 16+ hours. But the overall travel experience can be scaled via mobile and technology, and some brands are already on that big-time. Below are 4 mobile trends taking off this summer:

1.) Chatbots, or “get the answers you need faster.”

Image Source

One of the worst things about travel (among many great things) is that something can go wrong when you’re far from home, and that’s going to become a stressful situation super quickly. Airlines and other travel outlets are inundated with customer service requests — lost bags, ticket changes, other concerns — and often when you’re in a super stressful moment at the Barcelona airport (this is not me speaking from experience or anything, sigh), you can’t get ahold of someone who could help you solve the problem. That’s changing with technology, though. Air New Zealand’s Oscar chatbot has reportedly enabled the airline to answer 75% of questions in Australasia, freeing up its customer service agents to focus more on handling complex queries. In short: you get your issue solved faster.

2.) Internet of Things, or “seamless from exiting the plane to your hotel.”

Get this: Lufthansa is using IoT to enable passengers to track their baggage via a link found on their mobile boarding pass in the Lufthansa app. So as you’re deplaning, you can figure out the status of your baggage.

Singapore-based Drop Positioning Systems has created an all-encompassing Smart Hotel Eco-System to simplify the process of storing and locating guests’ luggage, manage inventory and even tracking of lost & found items, enabling hotels to save on manpower while boosting workflow efficiency at the same time.

Now, obviously that’s one airline and one set of hotel chains that DPS sells their product to — but basically, your luggage (often the source of travel concern) is now on a seamless journey (can luggage have a ‘customer journey?’) from plane to ramp to bag claim to hotel. And tech — that you can access on mobile! — is backing it up every step of the way.

3.) Push notifications, or “will anyone get Secret Fares right?”

Hopper got some attention in late spring for “Secret Fares” within its app, with Travel and Leisure even claiming it would save consumers $500 per flight. Well, unfortunately “Secret Fares” got discontinued in June, with Hopper’s CEO saying he needed to “eliminate any further confusion about the program.” That’s a bummer.

Here’s what’s not: push notifications on various stages of the travel journey are still massively important to travelers and a way to gain loyalty to your app, be it an airline, a hotel, or even a sightseeing destination (send pushes about traffic, where to check in, or even rich pushes of what the traveler is about to experience). Secret Fares may be a ways off because of the intricacies of airline pricing, but push notifications are a powerful mobile travel tool.

4.) Voice, or “Siri, where is the Eiffel Tower?”

Voice search currently presents the greatest opportunity in hotels. According to Travelport Digital Mobile Travel Trends Survey 2017, 31% of travel brands intend to invest in voice technology in 2018. Makes sense: we’re becoming increasingly comfortable with voice and voice search, and embedding it within travel apps is psychologically relevant too — if you’re in a place where the majority of people aren’t speaking your primary language, having a trusted phone in your pocket where Siri will speak that language is comforting.

The 2018 TravelPort Digital Mobile Travel Trends Survey

We referenced the 2017 one above, but the 2018 one is also out — and this might be the most data-packed slide from it:

Clearly the idea of mobile communication with travel brands and airlines is at scale and still growing; admittedly this is a smaller sample size survey (about 1,000 travelers), but think of most people you know. Are they using apps to plan, research, book, or get notifications of various parts of the process? They probably are, especially for domestic travel. Mobile is a powerful player in the travel space — it will continue to connect travelers to quick, ideally seamless information about their belongings, their times, and the experiences they want to have.

What’s the best travel content you’ve seen on mobile so far?

The General Electric story, of a long-proud initial member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling out of that index — and appearing to be in competitive free fall — provides a powerful illustration of two effects we see throughout today’s corporate world: clueless, but deep-pocketed, activist investors and mergers and acquisitions folks masquerading as strategists.

GE’s fall accelerated on October 25, 2015, with activist hedge fund Trian announcing a $2.5 billion equity investment in GE stock, one that made it a top 10 shareholder. GE stock was trading at $25.47 at the time of announcement, with a dividend of $0.92 per share. Trian announced that with its help, GE could look forward to a stock price in the $40–$50 range by 2017, and threatened a proxy battle unless GE put Trian cofounder Ed Garten on the board. In June 2017 longtime CEO Jeff Immelt resigned under unrelenting Trian and shareholder pressure, and John Flannery took over as CEO. Four months later Garten joined the board.

During the Immelt era, the dominant mode had been of strategy by way of mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures (MA&D), including most recently the disastrous merger of the GE oil and gas business with Baker Hughes in 2016. In the fall of 2017 under Flannery, MA&D unsurprisingly became GE’s turnaround strategy tool. Along with a surprise halving of the dividend, Flannery announced a review of the portfolio that would see the divestitures of numerous historic GE businesses, which ended up including light bulbs, appliances, and locomotive engines.

The approach of seeing strategy as the act of rejuggling one’s corporate portfolio of businesses is common in the large modern corporation. Many have strategy heads, who are ex-dealmakers at investment banks, whose default assumption is that if the company has a performance problem, the natural fix is to buy and/or sell something. The idea does not naturally come to mind that perhaps the problem is an uncompetitive value equation with customers. The result is a boon for the private equity business, which gets to buy underperforming corporate divisions for a song and turn them around at a huge profit, and for the sellers of growth businesses, who get paid crazy multiples of earnings and sales for businesses that are purchased to generate growth for big companies that are, on their own, incapable of organic growth.

It is not as though MA&D can’t help strategy. It can when the moves are designed to help improve the value equation delivered for the customer — like Google buying Android, or Facebook buying Instagram, or P&G buying Tambrands. But for a business that is struggling with growth and/or profitability, MA&D is not going to be of assistance if it distracts management’s time from fixing the core customer value equation problem — and it almost inevitably distracts. That is one reason why so many acquisitions are abysmal failures: They are distracting Hail Mary attempts. Take, for example, News Corporation getting into the exciting internet space by buying MySpace, or Microsoft into smartphones with Nokia, or HP into software and services with Autonomy — all written off virtually in their entirety.

In the case of GE, unsurprisingly, all the acquisitions and divestitures (plus the massive cost-cutting) of the past several years haven’t improved performance. So on June 26, 2018, Flannery announced that GE was going to be fixed by doing more, and bigger, divestitures, this time spinning out the giant GE Healthcare and Baker Hughes businesses — and cutting costs some more.

Good luck with that, GE and Trian! Remember, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect a different result. Maybe a slimmed-down GE with only aviation, power, and renewable energy businesses will be able to focus on the strategy task of improving the customer competitiveness of that portfolio. But equally likely, I suspect, this will just be the starting point for another spate of MA&D masquerading as strategy.

The happiest folks out there are probably GE Healthcare’s two big global competitors, Philips and Siemens Healthineers. While GE Healthcare’s executives spend the next two years on carve-out audits, creating services and systems to replace the GE shared services, negotiating new stock-based compensation, and doing road shows for investors, Philips and Siemens (which completed its 18-month health care spinoff/IPO exercise in March) executives will be focused on building their businesses at GE’s expense — an awesome window of opportunity for them.

What does Trian get as a reward for all of its clever help in driving executive change, cost-cutting, and divestitures at GE? Well, Ed Garten isn’t a board member of a Dow Jones 30 company anymore. And with the stock closing at $13.96 the day after Flannery’s latest announcement, Trian’s TSR on its investment in “helping” GE is approximately minus 36% (giving credit for $2.47 per share in cumulative dividends). It is no wonder that other CEOs tend not to welcome activist investor “help” with open arms.

Sadly, that is the core story of the toxic combination of activist investors and mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures masquerading as strategy in the modern economy. Executives can’t wish away the plague of activist investors — they will be here to stay until their true track records become clearer — but by pursuing strategies that continually improve their value equations with customers, they can at least keep the activists looking elsewhere.

PhotoMIX-Company / Pixabay

No sales business model is “forever.” As our markets change, as our customers change, as our own business strategies change, there is a necessity to reassess our sales business models and go to market strategies.

Unfortunately, too many companies ignore these transitions. They stay stuck with one model, working harder and harder, failing to produce the results, but failing to recognize the characteristics of their markets have changed–requiring a need to change the sales business model.

Or they may have chosen the wrong business model in the first place.

We’re all familiar with the classic “S curves” of growth. Some of this was popularized (at least from a sales/marketing point of view by Geoffrey Moores’ work. These can give us some insight about the sales business model most appropriate for the business. Let me walk through some.

The sales business model for each of these stages is different. The characteristics of customers in each segment are different. The sales business model is different. How we engage innovators, how we create value, how we help them navigate their buying process is different from what we must do for early adopters, early/late majority, or laggards.

Yet if we apply a sales business model optimized for one segment to others, we will fail.

Let’s walk through some of the implications of these:

1. Innovators: If our ICP is the innovator category, the sales model is very different than other categories. By definition, it’s a relatively small market. These customers are likely to contribute to the development of our solutions and the very early development of the market. “Selling” in this market tends to look more like developing strategic alliances, development partnerships, and so forth. It requires deep expertise and focuses on customers that are willing to experiment, learn, co-develop. They have a high risk profile–they recognize some of these “experiments” may not work. Typically, they will isolate the “experiment” to a small part of their business. Our “selling,” is very focused–probably led by our CEO and other top managers. We are focused on pinpointing these innovators and approaching them at a very strategic level. We have no “sales process,” we have limited to no marketing, we can’t staff the traditional sales roles, because we and the target customers are trying to figure out just what our solution is, what our value proposition is, and who our mainstream customers are likely to be. The big challenge is there is little in our sales approach to these customers that is adaptable and meaningful to scaling our approach to selling.
2. As we move into the early adopters, we are still in a rapid learning and adaptation position. We are refining our ICP, we are still discovering and refining our value proposition, we are just beginning to develop our sales process, and refining our “go to market strategies.” Early in this stage, we are experimenting, learning, adapting, figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. We start to look for the “patterns” that drive success and what it takes to replicate and scale those. We are less concerned about “efficiency,” more concerned about figuring out what works. Our win rates may be low, but increasing as we move through this stage. Our sales cycle may initially be long, but decreasing as we move toward the early majority stage. The sales people have to be more mature–in each role. They will be the people figuring out the right approaches, refining them and teaching them to new people as the organization grows. The people who focus on day to day execution early in this stage probably end up as the managers and leaders as we exit this stage. As we move to exiting this stage, we have locked in our ICP, our messaging, our sales process, the organizational structure, roles/responsibilities, our value propositions. In this stage, we are focusing on sales effectiveness. As we move to exiting this stage, we add a focus on efficiency–which enables us to scale.
3. When we move into the early majority, we are rapidly scaling. We have the “formula for success,” now we are trying to replicate and scale this a quickly as possible. We are optimizing our overall operations. Increasingly, we are concerned about efficiency and cost of selling. In some sense our sales efforts may be easier, because the customers/prospects are increasingly more comfortable with the solution category. At the same time, this is where we will see more competition, so we are likely to see greater price pressure as we sell.
4. As we reach the peak and start moving into the late majority, there’s a huge shift in our selling approach. The solution category is getting commoditized. The perceived risks or the solution are low and very well known. The sale may be moving more toward a transactional sale. The primary focus becomes efficiency, reducing the cost of selling/customer acquisition. We may no longer be able to afford our old selling model, we may have to leverage other channels much more than in the past–perhaps moving much to web based efforts, channel partners, Direct, field based sales may become unaffordable, We look to higher levels of efficiency and much lower cost in our inside efforts. The important thing to recognize as we are moving from the early adopters to the later adopters is it probably means a huge shift in everything we do and how we sell. If we don’t recognize that shift and adapt quickly, we quickly become uncompetitive and our sales organizations are unaffordable.
5. As we move into the laggards, it’s a very small market, it may be a less profitable market. We need to focus on the lowest cost of selling possible. Some may choose to abandon these markets–the margins for deals may be unacceptable.

Most of this is pretty obvious, but there start to be some complications that start to overlay this–these become sales effectiveness/efficiency/performance killers.

Let’s walk through some of these:

1. Our marketing changes depending on where we are in the cycle. How, who, what do to engage customers who are innovators is completely different from engaging laggards. Unless we change our approaches based on the target segment, then we won’t be as effective as we should be.
2. Our selling process is different for each stage in the process. How we engage innovators and move them through the buying process is different than that we need to to with early adopters, the early majority, and so on. If we aren’t changing our sales process as we move through this maturity cycle, we will not be engaging the customers in those stages in the best way possible.
3. Our value proposition and the way we create value changes depending on which stage we are in. The value proposition for early adopters is different than the early majority. There may be some overlaps, but there will be some important differences. For example a value proposition focused on low risk is probably important to early, late majority and certainly to laggards. But it is likely to be meaningless to innovators.
4. Each of these stages has different implications for the skills, competencies, capabilities of our sales people. We may need very deep product/solution, problem, market knowledge in some segments, and less in segments that are more mature.
5. If we sell multiple solutions, some solutions categories may be in very different stages of the solution/market maturity. For example if we are selling ERP solutions, the market is very mature. As we add AI enabled solutions, the solution category is much less mature. Who we target, how we engage each, the skills for success may be very different.

I’ll stop here, I think you get the idea. It’s really critical to understand the maturity the solutions category/customers we are trying to reach and we develop sales business models optimized to those segments.

A few years ago, I wrote the book 1-on-1 Management: What Every Great Manager Knows That You Don’t. Admittedly, the title sounds pretentious. After all, who am I to suggest you don’t know something?

However, most people do know the difference between an effective and an ineffective manager. What separates the two?

In my experience, one thing great managers understand that their ineffective counterparts do not is the value of one-on-one meetings. In fact, you might be surprised to know that the vast majority of managers do not meet individually with employees on a regular basis.

But there is some distinction between an effective one-on-one meeting and two people who happen to have a meeting of some kind. Simply passing in the hallway and talking together doesn’t qualify as a one-on-one. A meeting to discuss a current project might involve just two people, but that doesn’t qualify either.

One-on-One Meeting Template

The one-on-one meeting has a very distinct purpose and structure, and it is designed specifically to benefit the employee, not the manager. Yes, the manager does benefit as well, but the intent of the meeting is to help the salesperson reach his or her potential through coaching and accountability. That's the critical difference.

So, how do you structure your meeting to best support your salespeople? Use this step-by-step guide to help you create an agenda for each meeting.

1. Select a time to meet.

Schedule your one-on-one meetings weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly for the same time and day. If you run into a scheduling conflict, reschedule the one-on-one. Depending on salesperson's experience level and how much coaching they need, the meeting time can vary from 30, 45, or 60 minutes in length.

2. Set expectations with your employees.

Communicate to the salesperson that they should come prepared to each meeting with topics to discuss and questions. For added accountability, have them send you an agenda or document ahead of time, that outlines what they'd like to cover in the one-on-one. Not only does this help the salesperson, but it also allows you to prepare before the meeting.

3. Review the salesperson's metrics.

Before each meeting, review your employee's metrics. This helps you see if they're meeting their targets and identify areas where they might be struggling (even if they haven't communicated those struggles to you yet.)

4. Prepare questions.

Based on your review of the sales rep's performance, come up with some questions to ask during the meeting. Cater your questions so they're specific to each rep, their experience level in the role, and the goals they're working towards.

One-on-One Meeting Agenda

With all these steps in mind, here's a one-on-one meeting template you can use to outline an agenda.

• 5-10 minutes: Catch-up
  • Ask about the previous week
  • Actively listen to the salesperson 
• 30-40 minutes: Discussion
  • Review the salesperson's weekly performance
  • Ask your questions for discussion
  • Listen to the salesperson's insights, questions, and concerns
• 5-10 minutes: Prepare for the upcoming week
  • Collaborate with the salesperson to set up goals
  • Write down the action items and steps to achieve the goals
  • Share the action items with the salesperson

And here are the magic questions I've structured my one-on-ones around for years that keep the focus squarely on the rep.

1. "Tell me about last week."

The primary objective of one-on-one meetings will vary depending on the salesperson’s specific situation and level of experience, but the mechanics of the meeting are fairly consistent. In fact, my one-on-one meetings for 30 years have started with one very simple phrase:

“Tell me about last week.”

I know it sounds ridiculously simplistic on the surface, but trust me, there is a lot behind the curtain. You see, the real objective of a one-on-one meeting is to encourage dialogue.

Like any effective sales call, a sales manager should ask good questions and listen carefully. Unfortunately, in my opinion, too many one-on-one meetings become one-on-one beatings, where a manager focuses solely on numbers, constantly corrects behavior, dictates activity, and solves every problem.

But being a sales manager isn’t just about sales forecasts and KPIs. In fact, the critical aspect of sales management is actually the coaching and leadership involved. The one-on-one meeting provides a prime opportunity to instill confidence, demonstrate support, provide encouragement, and tune in to motivation. Done well, the dialogue created in consistent one-on-one meetings allows the effective manager to transform potential into top performance.

And it is this one simple question that gets the ball rolling. By letting the rep start the meeting with their view of the past week, the manager avoids the temptation to criticize and dictate. Just sit back and listen. Very carefully.

In my experience, when the salesperson does most of the talking, the manager will develop tremendous insight into that rep and their attitudes. You will understand why her performance is the way it is. You will know what is creating challenges for her. You will see how she reacts to adversity and failure.

During the meeting, I listen for specific areas that may need to be addressed. For example:

• Does she create an effective plan each week; one that is consistent with her overall sales plan?
• Is she executing her plan?
• Does she have a strong understanding of our sales process?
• Is her sales pipeline full of qualified opportunities?

However, I resist the need to correct and criticize every problem I see. Don’t jump into major correction during the first two or three one-on-one meetings because you'll want the pattern to surface and become apparent through observation.

2. "What do you think the problem is?"

When it is necessary to address a particular issue, I take a very specific approach. I first tell the salesperson what I am seeing and then ask her for potential solutions:

“Jane, the past couple of weeks, I have noticed you’re struggling to follow through on some of your key priorities. What do you think the problem is?”

It’s way more work, and is probably less satisfying than jumping in and solving the problem personally, but salespeople approached in this matter begin to understand that they are expected to think, plan, and solve problems. Also, there is an enormous amount of information to be gathered from how the salesperson answers this simple question. Do they make excuses and blame others? Or do they openly talk about issues and ask for help? Then together you can identify root causes and create plans for behavioral change.

When things are going poorly, I may observe poor planning, poor execution, a failure to meet expectations, attitude problems, and so forth. And the one-on-one meeting provides the perfect opportunity to address these issues. I certainly don’t want to wait for the end of the quarter or, worse, the annual review!

In those situations when I most definitely want to offer specific advice, I actually ask permission: “I have a couple of ideas that I think might help. Would you like me to share them with you?” You will be surprised at the difference it makes to ask rather than simply dictate next steps.

3. "What about this week? What are your plans and priorities?"

The review of last week’s activity is the perfect set-up for the second phase of the meeting. In each one-on-one, after the rep and I have reviewed the past week’s performance, I then ask the following question:

“What about this week? What are your plans and priorities?”

As they tell me about their plan, I jot down a few notes, which I can then refer to in next week’s one-on-one meeting. This means that the following week, when they describe their activity, I can compare it to their stated goals and answer some important questions. Did they accomplish what they set out to do? Did they follow through on key objectives? Did they actually work their plan, or did they just tell me what they thought I wanted to hear? Most importantly, I get to evaluate their ability to plan and prioritize, which are critical skills for any salesperson and especially important if they aspire to sales management.

4. "What's one thing that worked and one thing that didn't, last week?"

It's important to get specific about their wins as well as their challenges. This question gets to the heart of both. Alternatively, you can ask your employees to list one thing they'd like to start doing, one thing they'd like to stop doing, and one thing they'd like to keep doing.

For sales, this might look like:

• One thing to start doing: "I'd like to start being more proactive about entering prospect data into our CRM. I'm going to do this by blocking off 10 minutes after every meeting to enter data immediately."
• One thing I'd like to stop doing: "I've been emailing prospects when I really should be calling them. This week, I'm going to call each of my prospects at least one time before sending a follow-up email."
• One thing I'd like to keep doing: "My meeting prep has been paying dividends lately. I'd like to keep my prep work rolling so I'm ready for the different needs each prospect brings to the table."

This keeps your meetings actionable, your reps honest, and their path forward positive.

5. "Do you have any feedback for me?"

It's just as important to ask them for feedback on your performance during your time together. I recommend using the SBI model of feedback. It looks a little something like this:

• Situation
• Behavior
• Impact

In a feedback setting, your rep might use the SBI model this way:

• Situation: "Last week, we had a meeting with Marketing to discuss the state of our pipeline."
• Behavior: "Mark kept interrupting me, and you stepped in and made sure I was able to finish my thought."
• Impact: "I felt heard and valued, and it was great to know you had my back."

This ensures, whether the feedback is constructive or positive, it's always specific, which gives you actionable steps to repeat or work on.

The one-on-one meeting has a singular purpose -- to develop the salesperson’s potential through the improvement of critical skills. By prompting the rep to lead the conversation, you keep the focus on them. And if you’re executing the meetings well, one-on-ones will help you develop your relationship with the salesperson.

As an employee, how do you ensure you get the most out of your one-on-one meetings?

Come prepared with talking points and questions Here are some questions to ask your manager to ensure you have an effective meeting.

1. "What should I know about your communication and management style?"

This is a question you can use if you recently started a new job or received a promotion. Management styles vary from person to person, and it's nice to know your manager's style. They might even provide additional resources like a "how to work with me" document that provides some more details on how they prefer to communicate and work.

2. "What are your goals and priorities?"

For additional perspective, ask your manager what their priorities are. You'll get a better understanding of the higher-level metrics your manager and your team are held to.

3. "What skills should I develop to excel in my job?"

If you've been through coaching and shadowing sessions with your manager, they likely have some recommendations about areas for improvement. This gives you an idea of what to focus on in the upcoming week or month.

4. "What do you think I can do to improve [skill/competency]?"

Asking for feedback will help you identify skills to work on, and goals to set. Your manager can likely provide additional resources and recommendations on how to develop these skills.

These questions and template will help you run an effective one-on-one meeting. If you have questions on how to improve your sales one-on-one meetings, check out my website. And to learn more, check out the ultimate guide to sales coaching next.

{Author’s note: For the purpose of this article, value chain is defined as every element that goes into creating a final product or service, and who is sourced to provide various elements of it.}

When the term “partnership” is used, typically one envisions a traditional arrangement where two or more parties share vested ownership and governance in a business.

For this post, however, the idea of partnership will take on a broader definition: the result of a strategic decision by a business to navigate and innovate within the changing competitive landscape to bring new value to its customers.

When it comes to consumer intelligence, the stakes are not only high; the ability to attain a competitive advantage is an ever-elusive goal. The rapid acceleration of new technologies such as beacons, virtual reality, and machine learning is seemingly putting everyone in the business of buying, building or partnering.

The Risky Business of the Buy vs. Build Paradox

Traditionally, many companies have operated as solitary entities—fortresses that demand internal investment to ensure market dominance. This mindset also carries forward as companies strategically acquire smaller players to bolster their position in the marketplace.

While in some cases, this traditional way of thinking seems logical, data also shows that it often leads to less-than-desirable results. In fact, a 2011 HBR article authored by innovation icon Clayton M. Christensen cites the failure rate for traditional mergers and acquisitions stands at an abysmal 70-90%.

Beyond its riskiness and marginal success rate, the traditional “go-it-alone and acquire” model is out of reach for many small and mid-size companies that lack the financial resources to compete in this way.

Therefore, in the modern world of business, a much broader and more dynamic way of approaching partnerships is necessary. The blistering pace of changing client and consumer needs, the rapid rise of new kinds of competitors, and the unrelenting acceleration of technological shifts demand a new model for companies to create value in the marketplace.

Given this, a central question arises: How can companies design their value chain in different ways to seize growth opportunities and meet client needs?

Below are five illustrative situations that organizations in the consumer insights and intelligence space commonly find themselves in, challenging the traditional buy vs. build paradox:

1. Rapidly innovate for competitive advantage while reducing the risk to the organization
2. Quickly go to market to address unmet client needs
3. Deliver highly specialized (and infrequently utilized) capabilities to clients
4. Build flexible capacity to seamlessly deliver to customers without hiring new employees

Moving Beyond Buy vs. Build: Value Chain Design for the 21^st Century

A powerful way to face these situations lies in the discipline of strategic value chain design. This approach focuses on looking at the Strategic Value Add (SVA) of any new potential opportunity in light of a number of specific factors to determine what value chain is best to capitalize on it, including:

• IMPORTANCE: Importance to customers for the company to have internally built the capability
• CLOCKSPEED: The pace at which the underlying technology is changing
• COMPETITIVE POSITION: A company’s ability to gain a competitive edge by developing it
• SUPPLIER BASE: The depth of capable third parties to fulfill on the capability
• ARCHITECTURE: The ease by which the capability integrates into the company’s workflow

Rapid-Response Capability in Value-Chain Design – MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2002

Dependent on how an opportunity nets out amongst these various factors, this framework provides guidance about whether the organization should invest, outsource, acquire, or develop a strategic partnership to capitalize on it.

In the past, our company prided itself in a go-it-alone spirit. Decisions about pursuing new, innovative opportunities were almost solely based on whether or not we had the internal expertise to control and capitalize on them.

However, as the evolution of our industry accelerated, it became clear that there were more compelling opportunities in front of us than we had the internal resources to pursue. As the nature of our business and the needs of our clients shifted, we found that adopting a more strategic approach to the design of our value chain necessary. And, given that many firms in our indusry face similar challenges, we believe this framework could likewise offer needed direction to address them.

A Case in Point: Creating New Value in the Customer Experience (CX) Space

In early 2016, a more strategic focus to help our clients with their Customer Experience needs became a logical extension of our path to purchase, customer journey mapping, and analytics expertise. Additionally, given how rapidly CX is growing as a competency, it is obviously attractive from a business perspective.

In engaging with an industry consultant with deep CX knowledge, we began to explore this market, the players, and the scope of services that comprise the CX value chain. In surveying the landscape, the white space opportunities for us became evident. At the same time, it was also clear that the central data collection mechanism (known as Voice of the Customer [VOC] platform) was dominated by a number of strong, well-established technology providers.

Historically, our mindset would have led us down the path of trying to build a VOC capability into our proprietary Instinct platform, and as such go to market with a hybrid service/platform offering.

However, in applying the strategic value chain framework, several things became clear with respect to VOC technology:

• IMPORTANCE: With most CX clients already having embedded VOC systems, they place almost no importance on Gongos bringing its own proprietary VOC technology
• CLOCKSPEED: As a rapidly growing discipline, the technology underpinning VOC capture is relatively fast and requires consistent investment by the company developing it
• COMPETITIVE POSITION: Lacking an existing VOC technology offering, we are at a strong competitive disadvantage to already-existing players
• CAPABLE SUPPLIERS: There are many VOC technology providers willing to provide the technology to a Gongos client if it was needed
• ARCHITECTURE: Given the range of analytical and insight curation-related CX services, we are fully agnostic to the VOC platform used to collect data

Given this, it became obvious that it was in our best interest to pursue a partnership with one or more VOC platform providers. Under this scenario, clients could benefit from the complementary strengths of Gongos’ consultative, analytics and socialization approaches, and the power of the VOC platform’s real-time interaction engine.

Our decision to approach the market in this manner has opened up new possibilities for clients. Beyond just measuring the experience, we are able to link it to their entire ecosystem ensuring they capture the right information while helping devise pragmatic actions that align with their business strategy. We then develop consumable and immersive deliverables that connect the right insights to the right people at the right time. As a result, our offerings are more agile and differentiated than if we stuck to our historical go-it-alone services-and-technology mindset.

Partnerships have existed since the beginning of time and they will continue to serve businesses of all types. That is why frameworks like the Strategic Value Chain are essential for companies to reimagine the power of purposeful partnerships as a way of creating new and innovative solutions for clients.

Embracing the velocity of business and technology opens the door to strategic relationships with firms that are concurrently trusted partners and potential competitors. This flexible partnership mindset is not only becoming a new norm, but ultimately, it is a vehicle for creating new kinds of value for clients and customers that would otherwise not exist.

Every piece of marketing content you write should have a clear call to action. The CTA serves a simple yet crucial role in telling your readers what steps they should be taking next, like buying your product, calling for an appointment with you, signing up for your email list, or simply sharing your post with their friends. Not all CTAs are created equal, though. If your calls are not generating action, it could be for any number of reasons. This blog lists four reasons why your CTAs are falling flat and five best practices, so you can improve yours.

4 reasons why your CTAs are falling flat

Amanda Clark lists four reasons why your CTAs are falling flat. Here they are:

1. You forgot the action part

This happens more often than you might think. It is common to assume that the CTA is any short, snappy wrap-up to your content but the goal of the CTA is not to summarize. The goal of a CTA is to encourage your readers to take the next step. So, if your CTA does not include a clear verb, it is simply not doing its job. Some examples of effective CTAs are ‘Call today to schedule your appointment,’ ‘Download our free e-book right now,’ and ‘Sign up for additional updates.’

2. Your verb choice is weak

When it comes to verbs, it is important to pick some really evocative ones. However, all too often, CTAs are written with bland, boring verbs like ‘Enter,’ ‘Continue,’ and ‘Click here.’ Yes, they qualify as action words but they are hardly motivating. Aim for something a little more exciting, such as discover, explore, and start your journey:

• Discover the secrets of content marketing by joining our email newsletter.
• Explore your financing options by calling a loan specialist today.
• Start your journey with meditation today; download our free guide!

3. You forget about benefits

It is not enough to tell people what to do. You also need to tell them why they should do it. What is in it for them? A good CTA conveys real value.

• Save money on your monthly utility bills by downloading our energy efficiency e-book.
• Get one-on-one content marketing assistance when you call one of our consultants.
• Increase your sales numbers by up to 20 percent when you download our program.

4. Your CTA is too long

Finally, remember that the hallmark of a strong CTA is that it is short and snappy. You do not need to rehash your entire sales pitch. Get to the point. There is no reason for your CTA to be any longer than one to two sentences, clearly laying out the invitation and the benefits.

Five best practices

Will Schmidt calls writing CTAs very challenging and uses the following five best practices to keep in mind as you refine your own CTA copy moving forward.

1. Balance creativity and practicality

Creativity can take you a long way toward encouraging clicks and conversions but it can also detract from your success if you go too far with it. Puns, play-on words, and double entendres are fantastic and appropriate only if they also incite action.

2. Keep it simple

Simple will almost always trump complex. It is your job to refine dense messages and convey them in a straightforward way to your audience. If you want people to take a specific action, sometimes it is as easy as just saying it. Sometimes being straightforward can be the most effective. If you can write it in five words, write it in five words (or fewer if it gets the meaning across).

3. Keep it clear

Your CTA is only going to be effective if your audience can understand what you are saying. Avoid run-on sentences, poor grammar, jargon, and fluffy language. Spell out precisely what you want your audience to do. This provides a foundation for you to work off of. Once your message is clearly and correctly written out, you can whisk in some creativity and play with stronger words to elicit a more emotional connection to the message.

4. Use strong verbs to start your CTA

As Amanda said, a direct, simple, and effective CTA starts with a powerful verb. Power verbs can help take your CTA from a place of inaction to action. “Please Consider Donating to Our Campaign Today” is very different from “Donate to Our Campaign Today.” They express the same sentiment, but the second one is much stronger because it starts with an impactful “donate” as opposed to a softer “please consider.” Schmidt suggests the following words: view, donate, support, fundraise, create, discover, explore, learn, read, and see.

5. Create urgency

Amazon puts a countdown clock on their daily deals because they want you to feel a sense of urgency. If you do not buy this item right now, you may never get this awesome deal again. Anything you can do to include a similar sense of urgency in your CTA will go a long way towards getting people to click and take action.

This does not necessarily need to be a specific measurement of time. It could be a general feeling that you convey. You extract urgent tidbits around opportunities that might not come around again and include them in your CTA. Personally, I urge you to use this CTA honestly; do not make up a time limit if there is none.

Digital marketing trends

CTAs can be found in nearly everything you do in your digital marketing plan. Digital marketing has changed a lot over the last few years so what worked for you last year might not work for you this year. One of your jobs as an entrepreneur is to keep up with this change. In How Can Current Digital Marketing Trends Help the Entrepreneur?, I discuss ten current digital marketing trends and what they mean for entrepreneurs. In addition, here are some new releases of books about digital marketing.

If you need help with your digital marketing efforts and CTAs in other languages, you can contact me. I am a translator, so I can translate your company’s content for you.

Are you cold calling small to medium sized local clients?

Qualifying questions are designed to help you efficiently collect specific and useful information.

They’re a critical tool. Correctly used, they will help you to:

• Determine if you have a viable prospect
• Identify potential roadblocks in the sales process
• Discover a prospect’s needs
• Plan an effective close
• Estimate the prospect’s price points
• Uncover your competition
• Establish who the decision makers are

You already know that sales is a numbers game. Based on your talents and product, you close a certain percentage of sales. The more you present, the more you close.

There are two ways to improve. Get better or make more calls.

Using qualifying questions will help you do both.

I’m going to cover 13 general qualifying questions.

This isn’t a quick list, my friends. We’re going to talk about each one.

You don’t need lists of qualifying questions, they’re all just different versions of the same basic questions. You need to understand what their intent is and what the answers received mean.

A little coaching tip for beginners: Under most circumstances, you should not recite your qualifying questions.

There are a couple scenarios where an interview is ok (analyticals and assertive people sometimes prefer it), but you want to avoid it if at all possible.

Brush up on your basic personality types and how to approach each one.

Construct your information seeking around the type of client you’re dealing with. If you aren’t doing this already, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

Remember, use your voice and your words to make the questions flow in the conversation. If your prospect recognizes probing… their guard will go up.

Use details like your ideal market, company size, target roles of decision-makers and the regions you’re most likely to get responses to your email. Once the conversation is started, it’s easier to get a face-to-face (or phone call).

1. How long have you worked here?

We’ll start with a couple ice-breakers. Ice-breakers help to size up your prospect. Watch for clues that identify their personality type. Assertive alpha types and analytical introverts are easy to spot. Others can be more subtle.

Keep casual chit chat going for a bit.

You’ll learn something about how to approach the more difficult subjects.

Ice-breakers will often lead to information given without prompting. In this example, it wouldn’t be odd for your prospect to reply:

‘20 years. I was in sales for 10 and I’ve been the marketing director for the last 10.’

That’s quality information right there. Your prospect is likely a decision maker and they’ve got sales experience. That helps… don’t try any cheap tactics.

2. Personal question ice-breaker.

Yeah, I know. That’s not a question. If you don’t get anywhere with your first ice-breaker or you want to try for more, take a look around the office.

Do you see a lot of personal touches? Family photos, hobbies, awards or certificates? Anything you can relate to?

If there’s a lot of information on the walls and desk then chances are it’s ok to bring some of it up.

‘I see your kayaking photo there. I’m out on the water every weekend. Do you go often?’.

Personal questions might not expose budgetary or timeline information. They will still help you to narrow down their personality and mood.

This allows you to work out the best strategy for moving forward. You can also build rapport. Common interests can give you an advantage.

Your niche and the flow of conversation will usually dictate the order that they come in.

Try to use the questions that could disqualify the client quickly so that you waste no time. Yours or theirs.

At this point, with any luck, you’ve got a little back and forth going. You’ve started to form an idea on how to move forward with your prospect.

3. How are you involved with the use of this product?

This is a great early question if your prospect is knowledgeable. People love to sound smart. Let them talk, show positive listening traits, encourage them to continue. Ask relevant questions. Getting your client to explain their direct involvement can reveal extremely useful information.

It can:

• Showcase the decision maker’s personal thoughts on your product or a comparable one.
• Identify features that your prospect is unfamiliar with.
• Identify bottlenecks in your competitor’s product that your prospect is unfamiliar with (that your product can correct!).
• Keep your client talking. The more they talk, the more you learn.

4. What are you currently using?

Again, word this to fit your product. Producing a quality pitch and close is much easier when you know what your client is currently using. Like any skilled salesperson, you’ll positively compare your product to its different competitors. Right?

This can also shed some light on the financials. Are they using some nickel and dime, small dollar stuff? Are you packing the Ferrari of your industry?

You might be barking up the wrong tree.

Maybe they’ve got a lot of bells and whistles. They’re clearly spending some money in your niche. Now you know you probably won’t scare them with your high quality, high priced wares.

5. What’s your budget?

If only it were that easy. Well, sometimes it is. Know when to be direct and when to be a little more coy. Did the prospect give you clues that their current spending may be much lower than your service costs? It’s probably time to be direct… respectfully. Try something like…

‘Are you making some big changes? You’d be stepping up into a much higher price class.’

If the client isn’t aware of the cost, this will let them know that they might be out of their depths.

But it makes no assumptions.

It leaves the door open to the possibility that they are aware of the cost difference already.

Don’t offend. You’re a stranger. People can be sensitive.

Even professionals.

If they weren’t aware, and can’t afford it, then you saved yourself a bunch of time. Disqualify and move on.

If they acknowledge that they’re aware, carry on.

They’re making changes and you’ve got information to collect. Find out what the changes are. See if those changes would make them a reasonable prospect.

If they don’t, be more clear.

‘Based on what I’ve learned so far, you’re probably looking at (amount here, give a wide range) per (whatever). But I’ll need some more information before we get into that.’

If they get beyond that statement, then do your job. Work in some “yes” questions like;

‘Does this sound like what you’re looking for?’or ‘Have I covered your concerns so far?’

All while you show your stuff.

Be sure to do your homework before getting into finances. Get some idea of their needs before diving in.

6. Will anyone else be working with us? AKA are you the big dog?

Be inclusive! You might not know who you’re speaking to. Use terms like…

• Are you the only person that I’ll be working with?
• Will anyone else be joining us?
• Aside from us, does anyone else need to see this presentation?
• Before we get to the important stuff, anyone else we should conference in? (phone)
• Do we need anyone from Finance, Operations, or Marketing before we get started?

Have a prepared folder to store your customer notes and information. Inside the cover of the folder, put a list that says “Who to call”. Beneath that list things like billing questions, creative questions, approval questions, technical questions. Put blank lines next to each. Try something like…

During this process and then after you’re up and running, I’ll have questions about these different areas. Will I be going through you for everything or do you know who my contacts will be?’

Sometimes you don’t get to pitch to the decision maker. It happens. If you’ve realized that it’s happening to you, be strong with features and benefits. This person will be selling for you. Less focus on financials (though qualify them), more focus on the product.

7. What challenges are you having with your current product?

Be careful with this one. If this is a cold call, they may very well say ‘none’. Yecch.

I find it’s best to use the process question above. Have them explain how their process works. It will help you identify opportunities they don’t know about.

They may also voluntarily share bottlenecks and preferred features. Many times, you’ll be able to get this information without having to flat out ask for it.

Still, you might not get a very good description of what they’re doing and then you’ll have to ask. Try things like…

‘If you were to replace your current plan, what would you like to see improved?’

8. Have you been through this process before?

The main point of this question, and others like it, is to identify potential roadblocks. If your client has been down this road before, did they have difficulties? Were there things they didn’t like? Use the information gathered to better prepare yourself to avoid those situations.

Maybe your product avoids those issues altogether. That’s a focus point later.

9. What are you currently spending?

Money questions are fun. Most experienced buyers will see right through the tactics you use. But at some point, you’ve got to cross that bridge.

Are they not giving you an opening to work into their budget? You can always try:

‘We’ve got a full range of features for all size businesses. Can you tell me what you’re currently investing in your service? Is it fulfilling your needs? That’ll help me figure out which packages will get you a better ROI.’

It’s simple, straightforward, and polite.

10. Why are you making this change?

Have they even decided to make a change?

First, determine that the customer is actually in the market for your product or service. Then, use this question to help you gather feature and benefit information. They may be changing due to growth. It could be because they’re dissatisfied with their current product.

Find out and figure out how your product makes that change better for them.

11. Are there any features of other products that you’re particularly impressed by? Which is most important?

How do your features compare to your competitors? Can you present your product in a favorable light?

Other salespeople may have impressed your prospect with a feature that you have. Maybe yours is even better. Know your product!

Jabir Mohamed, founder of Search Beast Digital Marketing Agency, says, “Know your product like you know yourself. Be the expert that instills confidence in your prospect. The confidence that they have found their solution.”

This question can tell you who your competition is. It can also tell you where you need to focus on your feature/benefit presentation.

12. . Where do you see this project leading in a year?

Just because the customer has told you what they need, doesn’t mean that they’ve told you what they expect.

Unreasonable goals are a serious issue, particularly if you’re building long-term relationships. If your customer expects something that you know your product cannot deliver… tell them! Find out how they arrived at that expectation and see where the problem is. Can you solve it?

Keep expectations reasonable and clearly outline the prospects part in reaching their goals.

This doesn’t apply as much with a one-off sale type niche. Provided you’ve explained the capabilities and potential returns on your product.

13. What is your target date?

This is an underrated question. It can do a lot for you. Answers with immediacy or a specific nearby date could mean that you’ve got a buyer who is ready to spend. If you’ve got a good feel for their budget, it’s time to dazzle.

Answers that are more ambiguous aren’t always a bad sign. But it could mean they’re just window shopping. They’re not quite committed yet. Dial up the confidence and sell those benefits.

If a prospect is too far out, let’s say a year.

Suggest going over their needs and gathering information. Try setting up a presentation in six months.

Keep in touch. You don’t want your competition closing them next month.

Keep your tools sharp. Be product smart and confident. Ask strategic questions that get you the information you need with the least amount of probing. Be sure to leave your battle proven qualifying tips in the comments. See you there.

Tips

• Roleplay. Out loud.
• Qualifying questions are a road map each often leading to others. When used skillfully, your client is far less likely to feel defensive.
• Avoid interviewing. People are less defensive when engaged in naturally-flowing organic conversations.
• Know your personality types. They’ll help you determine the most suitable way to get the information that you need. If you aren’t trained, check out this post, then learn as much as you can. It’s invaluable.
• Be results-oriented. Work toward qualifying your customer quickly. Ten minutes wasted is far better than two hours.

For busy marketers, technology is a lifesaver. With so many marketing tasks, technology helps you juggle everything from social posts to email campaigns. But are you getting the most out of your marketing technology?

Research shows 63% of marketers use technology to engage customers, but only about half (32%) actually use their tech to the fullest, according to a report from Ascend2. It’s time to get more out of marketing technology.

If you’re ready to increase engagement with intuitive marketing technology, email marketing automation tools are the answer.

Email marketing automation goes beyond the “set it and forget it” mindset and gives you the tools to track customer behavior, segment customers based on their interests, and send relevant emails that subscribers can’t ignore.

To help you streamline your email marketing automation strategy, here are four automation hacks to implement today for better engagement:

1. Use website tracking snippets

What happens when a subscriber clicks on a link in your email? Does the subscriber make a purchase? Read a blog post?

Understanding what happens after a subscriber clicks on a link in your email can provide valuable insight. Fortunately, Campaign Monitor offers a website tracking tool that does just that.

Using the website tracking snippet, you can monitor how subscribers move from your email to your website — and what they’re looking at.

With this tool, the subscriber journey turns into actionable statistics on your advanced tracking platform, like Google Analytics. You’ll see important KPIs like click-throughs, bounces, first-time visitors, and conversions. You’ll also get important information about subscribers, like their geographical location.

If you can understand subscribers’ online journey, you can tailor your emails and website content to drive better engagement.

2. Try segment builders with access to website behaviors and relative dates

With the website tracking snippet in place, you can start organizing your contacts into like-minded groups.

Segment subscribers based on the purchases they make on your website or the type of content they look at on your blog. These types of segments go beyond classic segments that are typically based on demographic data like age, location, or income, and focus more on a subscriber’s behavior.

With Campaign Monitor, you can use the segment builder to create these groups.

You can even create groups that visit your website and take a specific action within a certain timeframe. For instance, you can create a segment of customers that purchase a specific product from your website in the last month.

The segment builder helps you organize subscribers into small, niche groups that share a similar behavior.

3. Consider segment-triggered automation

After using the segment builder, you have the groundwork complete to create and send hyper-personalized emails. With email marketing automation, the process is a breeze.

You can pre-make and automate emails based on a subscriber’s actions. That’s right, you can deliver emails based on actual actions taken by the customer.

Let’s say you want to send a welcome email to subscribers who join your list. When a contact is added to a segment, like a new subscriber segment, that action triggers an email to send. Those subscribers receive a welcome email.

The email sends automatically. You don’t have to log into your account every day, review new contacts, and manually send emails. Just set up the automated journey and new contacts will receive a welcome email from you.

You can trigger emails based on other actions too. Here are six different triggers Campaign Monitor customers can use as a starting point:

• Subscriber joins a list
• Subscriber enters a segment
• Subscriber exists a segment
• A date
• An anniversary
• Subscriber activity (advanced plan)

Let’s look at another example. Let’s say you’ve created a segment of customers who bought a high-end digital camera from your website in the last two months. You want to encourage these customers to purchase accessories like a camera bag and tripod. You can create and send a follow-up email with this goal in mind.

The purchase triggers the delivery of the follow-up email that showcases add-ons available for purchase.

This kind of email marketing automation makes sure you’re engaging current customers in a timely, relevant way. These subscribers have just made a purchase, they’ve taken your product for a test spin, and are ready to think about accessories that make picture-taking even better.

4. Employ basic dynamic content

Marketers are always crunched for time. If you need to send a personalized email in a hurry, rely on dynamic content.

Dynamic content gives you the ability to create one email, but customize pieces of it based on the subscriber receiving it.

Let’s say you want to send an email promoting a new line of formal footwear. You want men to see their styles and women to see theirs. With dynamic content, the product image changes based on the gender of the subscriber, so women see a picture of heels and fancy flats while men see loafers and wing tips.

Showing products specific to a subscriber’s gender is the most common use case, but you can customize dynamic content to fit your needs. If you’re opening multiple store locations, for example, you can change the image of the storefront based on a subscriber’s location.

Of course, to make dynamic content work, you’ll need to collect subscriber information to ensure the right content gets to the right person.

You’ll need a variety of tools at your disposal to collect information. Here are a few ways to collect customer information over time:

• Email sign up forms
• Surveys
• Website tracking tools
• Event registration forms
• Forms to access gated content

Use the data you have to create smart segments so your dynamic content is tailored to specific subscribers.

Wrap up

With the right technology in place, marketers can make significant improvements in their engagement rates — and email marketing automation can be a significant piece of the puzzle. To learn more about Campaign Monitor’s advanced automation features and see how other brands are using it, check out 5 Brands Crushing it with Email Marketing and Automation.

Prospecting is difficult. There’s no denying it. In fact, one study revealed that 40% of salespeople said prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process.

Why is it so hard?

There are a lot of reasons. It’s hard to capture buyer attention and to stimulate interest and desire. It’s difficult to persuade buyers into action. Many sellers don’t have the right mindset around prospecting.

If you’re looking to step up your game and achieve greater prospecting success, here are five ways to instantly improve your results.

1. Lead with Content that Captures Buyer Attention

In order to break through and secure meetings with buyers, you have to find a way to capture their attention. Buyers are sold to all day. That’s why it’s even more important that you do your homework and provide buyers with useful content that impacts their business. If you can do this, you have the best shot at buyers accepting a meeting with you.

In the latest Top Performance in Sales Prospecting research report, 488 B2B buyers revealed the top five offers that are most likely to sway them to accept a meeting or connect with you.

Those include:

1. Primary research data relevant to the buyer’s business
2. Content 100% customized to the buyer’s specific situation
3. Descriptions of the provider’s capabilities
4. Insight into the use of products or services to solve business problems
5. Best practice methodology based on the provider’s area of expertise

Of the buyers studied, they shared that only 42% of sales meetings are valuable to them. Buyers want value in their meetings, but most sellers aren’t delivering it. They want your insights and expertise. At the same time, they want to hear about your products and services and how you can help them reach their goals. If you want that meeting, bring your content “A” game.

2. Leave Bulk Emails Behind and Send Customized Messages

80% of buyers say they prefer to be contacted by sellers via email. While email is the No. 1 way buyers prefer to be contacted, sellers must be careful about how they use email to communicate. If buyers prefer email, then you can get away with sending mass emails, right?

Wrong.

Only 5% of sellers say sending bulk email is effective. Buyers don’t want stock emails. Instead, they want tailored, 1-to-1 emails that pertain to their company and industry. Take the time to create high-quality, customized emails and send them individually. This should significantly improve the chances of your emails not only being read but also responded to.

3. Cold Calling Lives and the Phone Still Matters

The notion that cold calling is dead isn’t anything new. There’ve been numerous articles claiming that it’s history. Some sellers simply despise cold calling and hopped on this bandwagon. Unfortunately for those sellers, or fortunately for their competitors, they’re missing out on sales opportunities.

Of the 15 outreach methods studied in terms of effectiveness in prospecting, three of the top five involved the telephone:

• Making phone calls to existing customers
• Making phone calls to prior customers
• Making phone calls to new contacts (i.e. cold calling)

Whether it’s cold calling or warm calling, the phone is very much alive and a crucial part of the prospecting process. In fact, 69% of buyers say they have accepted a phone call from a new provider in the last 12 months. Given that it takes on average eight touches to generate a meeting or conversation with a targeted buyer, one or several of these touches should be made via the phone.

4. Convert Cold Meetings Into Sales with Value

It typically takes a lot of work to land that first conversation. Once you do, your next big challenge is to win the sale. Buyers make purchases for different reasons. However, we found that there are four key factors that influence if a buyer purchases from you.

1. Provider focuses on the value they could deliver to buyers
2. Provider collaborates with buyers
3. Provider educates buyers with new ideas and perspectives
4. Provider offers valuable insight related to the buyer’s industry or market

If you want to convert more meetings into actual sales, sell the way buyers want you to. Given that buyers report that 58% of their sales meetings are not valuable, there’s a huge opportunity to improve here.

5. Make a Great First Impression on LinkedIn

One of the most surprising results was the sheer number of buyers using LinkedIn. Consider this: 82% of buyers look up providers on LinkedIn before replying to their outreach efforts.

That’s the vast majority of buyers.

A response from a buyer likely hinges on your LinkedIn profile. Put your best foot forward and make a good first impression with these tips for optimizing your profile.

Prospecting doesn’t have to be the most challenging part of your job. You can overcome this hurdle, but it’s going to take the right mindset and you’ll likely have to tweak how you’re currently doing it.

Before you make your next outreach, find content that’s going to resonate and make the buyer want to meet you, customize your messages so the buyer knows they’re not just another one of the 200 emails you blasted out, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone, focus on the value you have to offer, and make sure your LinkedIn profile is all-star status. Following these tips will pay off in the end.

The post 5 Ways to Instantly Improve Your Sales Prospecting Results appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Unless you’ve been hiding out in the dark ages, you know social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. Everything from the degree of personal information we share to the way we communicate with others has completely evolved.

Whether this shift has been for better or for worse, is your personal judgment. However, no one can deny the significant impact it’s had on how we live and function on a daily basis.

The impact of social media is no different in the business world. Companies who strive to be innovative trailblazers in their respective industries must leverage social to set themselves apart. Social media isn’t something that can be mastered overnight, nor something that you can mindlessly manage.

When it comes to a successful social strategy that delivers an ROI, you must keep a close eye on rising trends that elevate your marketing efforts to a new level.

Video

Video is perhaps one of the most effective forms of content on social media. If you haven’t integrated video into your strategy yet, now’s the time to start.

The consumption of video is only going to increase, meaning brands must create a strategy that produces high-quality, relevant content that serves real value and catches attention.

This highlights ephemeral video content that’s short-lived, up to 24 hours, which is increasingly becoming popular. And social platforms are catching on to it, with Facebook and Instagram housing their Stories features, which are very similar to the pioneer of ephemeral video – Snapchat. This type of short-lived content drives the best engagement if it’s done right.

Other forms of video like live streaming is an incredibly effective way to capture the attention of your audience. In fact, users comment 10x more on live videos than they do on regular videos on Facebook.

Chatbots

Social media has become an unprecedented channel for customer service. Brands are continuously uncovering the true power of bots when it comes to communicating with their audience.

Chatbots are able to answer your customers’ questions or concerns in real-time when they land on your site. If it’s done correctly, your customer won’t be able to detect whether they’re talking to a human or robot.

These bots are an incredibly powerful way to instantly connect with and deliver a personalized experience for your users. If you haven’t already implemented chatbots on your website or on Facebook, use this time wisely to take advantage of it before it’s too late.

Mobile

You probably find yourself bumping into someone far too often from being distracted on your phone. Seeing how consumed we are with our phones, there’s no surprise to hear that mobile devices account for nearly 80% of internet usage.

Mobile marketing should continue to be a main priority in brands’ strategies. We are in a constantly on-the-go society where people expect quick and timely responses to any of their concerns. Your website should be optimized for mobile, meaning it must have a responsive design and must quickly load on mobile devices.

According to Google, if your site isn’t optimized for mobile, you will likely see your search rankings suffer. By neglecting the impact of mobile, you additionally interfere with improving conversion rates and overall brand engagement.

Social Listening Tools

You must focus on your customers’ needs first and foremost. Brands who recognize the importance of doing so are relying more on social listening tools.

Social listening is the process of monitoring conversations on social channels to better understand what customers are saying about your brand. You track these conversations by focusing on specific keywords or phrases that are relevant to your brand, and then use those to create more effective content for your audience.

It’s an incredibly insightful way to not only gather data and metrics on your performance on social, but to gauge how people truly feel about your brand on an emotional level. These help you further gain actionable insights that improve your social strategy and customer care and experiences.

Social listening tools help you actively engage in conversations about your brand. Some of these tools include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buzzsumo, and Mention.

Micro-Influencers

There’s no longer a need to dish out major budget spend on celebrity influencers. Influencers who have smaller followings will be just as much – if not more – worth the investment. These influencers have a close-knit following of people who are connected with them and who strongly value their opinion.

Reach out to micro-influencers and ask them to share their personal story in connection with your brand. Ensure that your brand’s values are closely aligned with their’s, and build meaningful relationships with them. If your influencer marketing isn’t done as authentic as possible, people will easily weed you out as ingenuine and overly salesly.

The biggest community of influencers lives on YouTube. In fact, according to Think with Google, YouTube stars are more influential than traditional celebrities. According to the study, 70% of Millennial consumers relate better to their YouTube influencers than major celebrities.

Conclusion

With more brands trying to reach customers across various social platforms, each will have to actively fight to win the attention of their audience.

With a carefully planned social strategy, you’ll certainly see your efforts deliver improvement across all metrics. Remember that content that’s personalized, compelling and relevant will make the best impressions with your audience.

At the end of the day, effective marketing today revolves around what your customers want and the value they’ll take away from your brand. Prioritizing the experience and the quality of connections you deliver and build will significantly determine your success in the competitive social landscape.

Editor’s Note: Product-led growth is a go-to-market strategy propelling the rapid expansion of companies like Slack, Dropbox and Expensify. In fact, we’re seeing it as the primary driver behind many of the companies OpenView has invested in most recently.

We feel this strategy is so important to SaaS companies looking to scale, we’re ungating our Product-led Growth Playbook, which features advice on how to implement a PLG strategy in your own company. You can access the full book here and read the eight characteristics of PLG companies below.

There are primarily eight characteristics that product-led growth companies embody. Without following at least some of these eight qualities, it is extremely difficult to make a PLG strategy work for your current product or company. These eight characteristics are:

1. The product market conditions are right for the strategy.

When it comes to implementing a product-led growth strategy, the right market conditions are imperative. The market enables product-led growth when:

• Marginal costs of serving each user are low
• The user plays the additional role of being the buyer, or one of the buyers, of the product, or the users have reasonable influence over the buyer(s)
• The known solutions in the market are inadequate for user needs

2. The value of the product is perceived by the user as being a unique “highest-value-product” that they want to use regularly.

• The product allows the user to achieve their daily tasks with more efficiency
• The experience can be personalized for the individual user

3. The user realizes significant ongoing value quickly and easily with little-to-no help from company personnel.

• The product integrates easily into other products in the user’s product ecosystem
• It is very clear what the product does and requires little explanation
• Users can use the product without creating an account
• The initial value is real, not a “demo account” with “dummy data”

4. The product “paywalls” follow, rather than lead, the actual value that the user receives and pricing scales as usage increases and more value is delivered.

• A free product is offered to show value and build credibility as part of the sales process
• As user needs become more sophisticated, customer success and direct sales are deployed to complement the sales process

5. The product has features that allow the product to market, sell and onboard new users.

• Users have a strong incentive to invite others to use the product and the user of the product can easily invite other users to use the product (viral potential)
• The product automatically communicates through non-product communication channels (for example email, push notifications, text, etc.) to deliver additional value and bring the user back into the product
• The product monitors user behavior and makes ongoing recommendations to the user to provide additional value
• Users can connect with other users to exchange ideas from within the product

6. Marketing aims to engage users with the product rather than engaging buyers with a sales team.

• Users often discover the product when looking to solve a problem
• Users have great places to learn and exchange ideas with other users and potential users (for example through content marketing, online forums, Meetups, online training and so forth)

7. The product has a built-in network effect.

• The more people using the product in a network or company, the more valuable it becomes
• If it’s a platform, the more services you connect to it, the stronger the value

8. There is a strong product champion within companies using the product to drive greater adoption.

If your company embodies the above eight characteristics, you should be using a product-led growth strategy to grow product adoption. In fact, a PLG strategy can impact how you think about marketing, product optimization, pricing and sales. Read OpenView’s on to learn how to implement a PLG strategy in your company.

Ready for more product-led growth content? You can access OpenView’s Product-led Growth Playbook here.

The post Is Your Product Right for Product-led Growth? appeared first on OpenView Labs.

The growing importance of digital demand generation channels in the B2B marketing mix was reflected by the results of DemandGen’s 2018 Benchmark Survey Report. Out of the ten channels most effective in driving “early-stage engagement” and “driving conversions later in the funnel,” eight were digital.

These findings aren’t astonishing to anyone engaged in B2B marketing. While analog channels, like in-person events, are still effective ways to drive demand, the shift to digital has been underway for more than a decade. As technology continues to be developed and embraced at increasing speeds, demand marketers are rushing to keep up.

With organizations facing more challenging success metrics, and demand marketers increasingly measured by their ability to drive contributions to total revenue, B2B marketers must not only demonstrate familiarity with digital channels, but they must also show expertise

Pro Tips for the Top 8 Digital Demand Generation Channels

Image Credit: DemandGen Report

New technologies bring new marketing channels with them – sometimes replacing older channels. Facebook Messenger, for example, is moving to become the new 1-800 number. Others assume Messenger will eventually replace email entirely.

This has caused many to proclaim that email is dead. A lot of new technologies, like Slack, have marketed themselves as a way to get out of email. So, it may be surprising that email marketing still reigns supreme in driving conversions and engagement at the top and bottom of the funnel. In fact, email is more effective than both websites and SEO, although websites get the most investment and SEO gets most of the news chatter.

While new technologies need to be embraced and mastered so that demand marketers can stay ahead of the curve, these eight digital channels are currently driving the most results.

#1. Email

Email marketing is nowhere near dead, and it’s still the number one channel for B2B demand generation. According to the Benchmark Report, 59% said that email was most effective in driving early-stage engagement, while a whopping 81% said it was most effective in driving late-funnel conversions. These results mean that email is the most effective channel throughout the entirety of the funnel.

Pro Tip: Use Data Enrichment Emails

Data enrichment emails invite the lead to self-identify with a survey question in the email. Each answer click updates their contact record with the lead’s selection.

Data enrichment lead nurturing emails are not only a way to engage the lead and update the contact record, but it’s also a way to ensure they’re being served with personalized content. It’s a win-win. The following are just a few examples of the types of data enrichment questions you can ask your leads:

• “What type of content do you want to receive?”
• “What’s your biggest challenge?
• What task are you trying to complete?

#2: Search

Google remains the king of the search engine hill, while YouTube has solidified its second place position. Search is most effective at the very top of the funnel, as prospects turn to search engines to solve problems, B2B organizations provide content to solve those problems. For the last decade, Search has been a leading way for brands to introduce themselves into the prospect’s buyer journey. However, for the bottom of the funnel conversions, only 18% said that search was effective.

Pro Tip: Centralize Search Optimization Efforts

Jen McAdams, Vice President of Demand Generation and Field Marketing, believes that an all-in-one search optimization technology is a crucial component of effective B2B marketing. She writes,

“Search is still among the most vital pieces of a solid demand marketing strategy.”

Instead of one-off search tools, McAdams’ team uses Moz as a “go-to resource for all things SEO.”

Pro Tip: Create a Long-Term Commitment to SEO

Jessica Levenson, VP Search & Engagement, writes in DemandGen Report,

“SEO programs are a long-term commitment. If you need leads in a hurry, you may want to look at other options, like…pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.”

Levenson advises CMOs to consider SEO as part of a long-term strategy, and to be prepared to “bump and weave” along with changes in search marketing best practices as Google’s search algorithm continues to evolve. Other expert recommendations issued by Levenson include:

1. Focus on tracking SEO metrics that matter
2. Forget about SEO shortcuts–they no longer exist
3. Write clearly, and use keywords and phrases your buyer personas use

#3: Website

Great web experiences are key, not only for lead generation at the top of the funnel, but for driving sales at the bottom of the funnel as well. The results from the Benchmark Report were nearly even, with 51% saying the website was most effective for early-stage engagement, to 50% saying it was most effective for driving late-stage conversions. Although native content on external channels is rising, the website remains the hub of all digital marketing efforts.

Pro Tip: Personalize and Test Your Message

Jen McAdams, Vice President of Demand Generation and Field Marketing, believes many B2B marketers can benefit from an enhanced ability to create a personalized, measurable website experience with A/B testing and one-to-one content delivery. She writes,

“While marketing automation platforms do include these features to some degree, there are a variety of options to increase your ability to personalize and test different messaging and designs.”

Technology options cited by McAdams which may enhance the website’s ability to serve as demand generation engine include Unbounce, Optimizely, and Typeform.

Pro Tip: Maintain Control of Web Tech & Design

Scott Fingerhut, VP of World-Wide Marketing & Demand Generation at Elastic, believes you should,

“fight as hard as you can to own a prominent piece of your company’s website for demand purposes.”

While many B2B marketers maintain CMS access, they should retain a place in conversations around website technology, integrations and design.

The marketing team needs the voice and the freedom to experiment and optimize as needed – including with personalized content delivery, A/B testing, new content strategies and other demand generation tactics.

#4: Social

When social first emerged as a viable B2B marketing channel, it was primarily used as an on-ramp to the website. Most social posts were short value props with attached links. Twitter may be the only social channel that still maintains this type of experience, although they have experimented with native content with apps like Vine and Periscope. Most other channels, though, are pushing a native experience, promoting content that keeps users on their platform.

Social should no longer be considered an on-ramp to another platform. Brands must engage their audience on the platform in a meaningful way. This truth is apparent in the disparity between early-stage (44%) and late-stage (17%) effectiveness of Social in the Benchmark Report.

Pro Tip: Avoid Formulas

Sapir Segal, Director of Marketing at Oktopost, advises B2B brands striving for authenticity to avoid the use of pre-formulated responses on social media. She writes,

“formulaic conversations and responses might hurry the process, but in return, they will damage your authenticity.”

Pro Tip: Be Authentic

Dr. Alice Boyd writes,

“No one likes people who are consistently whiny and complaining on social media, but try to present the good and bad aspects of your experiences in a balanced way, that’s an accurate reflection of reality.”

The behind-the-scenes look of your B2B reality doesn’t need to be a less-than-glamorous look, but it also doesn’t need to be a photoshopped glimpse of your workforce that looks a little bit too much like a stock photo, either.

#5: Online Ads

Yes, pay-per-click and social ads are less effective and more expensive today than they were yesterday. However, they are still beneficial. Best-selling author Gary Vaynerchuk says that online ads are grossly underpriced. While they were cheaper and more effective last year, they are still a very inexpensive way to drive demand and earn attention.

According to the Benchmark survey, 27% said that online ads were most effective at early-stage engagement, compared to only 6% for late-stage conversions. This means that for a B2B organization that needs to fill the top of their funnel, online ads are a viable way to accomplish that goal.

Create a Solid Baseline to Optimize at Scale

Eddie Morales, Director of Demand Generation, relies on a third-party Google Adwords agency which he describes as “top notch” to navigate the “idiosyncrasies” of online advertising and pay-per-click (PPC) platforms. He writes,

“this is still a very highly valuable marketing channel despite the power that Facebook and mobile is wielding these days.”

According to Morales, the best approach to online advertising success consists of the following components:

1. Domain Knowledge
2. Solid Campaign Strategy
3. A Scalable Approach

When combined with platform-specific knowledge, Morales’ organization has succeeded at achieving all the components “crucial to building a strategy and optimizing at scale.”

#6: Retargeting

Retargeting, while a type of online advertising, earned its spot as a standalone channel. It works differently than top-of-funnel advertising in that it builds the relationship while pushing conversions. And, it performs strikingly well.

According to the Benchmark Report, 19% said it was most effective at early-stage engagement. However, near the end of the buyer journey, retargeting becomes just as effective at driving late stage conversions (27%) as early-stage online ads are at driving top-of-funnel engagement.

Pro Tip: Use Retargeting to Nurture, Upsell and Build Relationships

Siobhan McGinty, International Champion, Customer Marketing, highlights the potential of retargeting as more than just an opportunity for capturing the interest of lost leads and re-engaging website visitors.

With the right retargeting strategy, B2B marketing organizations can ensure that every touchpoint during retargeting campaigns aligns the right person with the right content at the right time. She writes,

Retargeting helps you stay connected and engaged with your audience, and increase brand recall and conversions–feeding all stages of your marketing funnel.

Several of the McGinty’s best recommendations for B2B demand gen retargeting include:

1. Push people through the funnel – similar to email nurturing
2. Use retargeting to promote events
3. Exclude visitors who spend less than 10 seconds on your website
4. Feature well-recognized thought leaders and faces from your company in ads
5. Use retargeting to encourage customer loyalty offers and programs
6. Cross-sell and upsell with retargeting
7. Connect with missed calls and unopened emails via retargeting

#7: Content Syndication

If you’re relying on organic traffic to generate top-funnel demand, you’ll likely hit a plateau. As David Crane wrote in an Integrate blog post,

There’s a point in inbound marketing in which you start squeezing everything out of it that you can just to drive a bit more traffic or acquire a few more prospects. …At this point, it’s often the right move for marketing orgs to divert resources to 3rd-party demand gen marketing methods; and by that I mean methods that leverage the same persona-based, educational content concepts employed in inbound, but delivered via 3rd-party channels, especially through the use of media partners that have niche, highly engaged audiences that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to attract.

According to the Benchmark report, only 17% consider content syndication (which is one type of 3rd-party demand gen) as most effective in early stage engagement and a lowly 11% for late-stage conversions. This reveals, to me, a couple of things. First, content syndication is better for top-of-funnel engagement, introducing your brand to a new audience.

Moreover, the fact that only 17% consider it most effective reveals that there is a lot of B2B marketers that aren’t using it to its potential. This is a common problem among demand gen teams because managing multiple media partners and processing all the resulting leads largely remains very manual, draining time and resources, and also difficult to optimize without the right strategy and tools. Done right, however, content syndication and 3rd-party demand gen offers a big opportunity for your brand to fill the top of the funnel through strategic content-sharing partnerships. (See how brands like Commvault, Iron Mountain and Avalara have used 3rd-party demand gen with great success.)

Pro Tip: Streamline Cross-Platform Syndication Programs

Stephanie McArthur, Senior Campaign Manager, has adopted Integrate to streamline her organization’s content syndication programs. She writes this technology has driven significant change in visibility, stating,

“We’re able to keep media partners accountable to our needs, control data quality and integrity, and have complete visibility into which leads are truly performing the best. It has allowed us to make real decisions and given us so much buying power.”

Much like other demand generation organizations, McArthur’s team believed that “quality always trumps quantity.” With the ability to centralize insight across content syndication partnerships, they can rely on real-time data for in-flight optimization.

#8: Predictive Analytics

While predictive analytics accomplished virtually nothing in the early stages of the funnel, 11% said it was most effective assisting late-stage conversions. Predictive analytics is valuable, even to account-based marketing initiatives, using data to identify companies that will most likely buy from you.

Pro Tip: Analytics & Attribution

Dave Rigotti, VP of Marketing at Bizible explains,

“I’m a firm believer in the 80/20 rule. [I use] attribution to find the ‘Moneyball’ marketing channels and initiatives that others have ignored but drive” revenue.

With tools for measurement, analytics and attribution, it’s possible to understand the channels and initiatives that are underperforming and driving results in real-time–not after a campaign has come to a close. This provides B2B marketing organizations with the opportunity to adjust performance and budgets in real time to maximize budgets and performance to optimize the pipeline and performance and achieve steep targets.

Digital Demand Generation: Always Shifting

It’s easy to get caught up in the latest digital marketing fad. Some experts were all-in on Snapchat until Instagram added competitive features, and the Snapchat bandwagon cooled down. Every week, it seems, there’s a new way to drive “amazing results.” If you’re a marketer, scroll down your news feed on Facebook, and you’ll see multiple ads of people offering a “new and improved” strategy that will “change the game.”

For example, we talked about Messenger looking to replace email. HubSpot, recently published a post exploring if Facebook Messenger, with artificial intelligence chatbots, was a more effective channel than email. In their tests, Facebook Messenger experienced an 80% open rate compared to only 33% for email. The click-through rate win also went to Messenger, with 13% clicks compared to just over 2% for email – a whopping 619% advantage.

Yet, email is still the most effective channel for B2B marketers. For sustainable success, marketers must not be bashful on trying new channels and tactics to increase results and efficiencies. However, at the end of the day, doubling down and mastering the channels that are driving the most results right now is the shortest path to a higher ROI.

Curious about how the most effective B2B demand generation marketers are shaping their 2018 strategy? Download your complimentary copy of the new DemandGen Report’s 2018 Benchmark Survey Report.

According to a report by BI Intelligence, 15% of all digital marketing revenue comes from affiliate marketing, and that number is climbing as more brands wade into these water. But how can your company make the most out of your efforts? What pitfalls should you avoid? We’re here to help. Here are 15 best practices to follow for affiliate marketing.

1. Start with a plan

Launching into any marketing campaign without a solid plan in place is a recipe to flush money down the toilet. Too many businesses just sign up for an affiliate network with very little planning, and it always leads to low conversions and even lower ROI.

Ask yourself a few questions: what does your ideal affiliate look like? Who are the people you’re targeting? Where do your potential customers spend their time online? What is your competition doing in your niche? What can you offer the affiliates you want to work with?

Do your due diligence before starting, and your ounce of prevention will be worth while as you start up your affiliate program.

2. Have a compelling offer and commission rate

Your program isn’t going to get off the ground if you’re offering a 5% commission when your vertical’s average is 8%. Make sure you’ve done your homework in two ways: 1) what the industry averages are, and 2) what you can afford to spend. After all, if your margins are razor-thin already, you might have to tweak your business model even before starting your affiliate program.

But maybe your brand is fun enough that your affiliate reps would be happy with free products. It could be cheaper for your business to kick-back an item instead of a commission, as long as the community is compelled by what they get. Test out a bundle offer and see if that works for your network.

3. Convert customers to affiliates

Loyal customers and fans of your brand are the first groups to turn to when building your affiliate network of representatives. For some companies, they never need to go seeking anyone else since they have a large pool of customers to draw from.

The absolute best way to convert customers to affiliates is to provide excellent service at every step in your relationship with them. From browsing, to the purchase, to refunds, to customer support; the more 5-star experiences you can give to your customers, the easier it will be to ask them to start referring your brand, especially when you add the incentive of a commission. Here are more ideas on how to convert your customers.

4. Get affiliates to find you

While eventually you will seek out great affiliates one by one (see the micro-influencer section below), it can be more efficient when you’re first starting your program to build out a funnel that draws in new affiliates that you can passively let run. It’s like dragging net as opposed to spearfishing; you’ll get a lot more with less effort.

Make sure you have a compelling affiliate sign-up landing page that’s SEO friendly and optimized around the keywords you want to show up for on Google. Be sure to link this to your homepage, your footer, your newsletter, and anywhere else that will be put in front of potential reps. Finally, make sure the sign-up process itself is automated which will increase your bandwidth as your build up your network.

5. Be data driven

You’d be surprised at how many businesses run their affiliate programs without really looking into the metrics to gauge performance. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can employ tracked links and coupon codes to measure just about every part of the process. Keep an eye on your KPIs and adjust your program at least once a month.

For example, your metrics can show you if there is room to offer a higher commission during certain periods of the year. If your ROI numbers show that you can boost commissions by 2X during the summer months, that change could motivate your reps to do massive numbers that you otherwise would have missed by ignoring the data.

6. Change up your commissions

Speaking of which, changing up your commissions from time to time is important to keep your affiliates engaged and effective. If percentages haven’t budged in years, even your best reps can get complacent. Or worse, your competitors could have caught up and surpassed your offer.

At the very least, try surge commissions for short periods of time (2–4 weeks) that can shake up an otherwise slow sales month. Or build in sales streak bonuses where X amount of sales in a time period unlocks either a bonus gift or a bonus bump in commission rate. You can even A/B test different commission rates and see which get the best results. These sort of varied incentives are invaluable to energize affiliates.

7. Pay on time

Nothing kills a relationship with an affiliate faster than late paychecks. There isn’t much to say here other than don’t be late! If possible, automate payments or at the very least set calendar reminders to make sure you send out checks on time. Sounds like a no-brainer? We see this happen with our merchants all the time.

8. Work with the influencers in your niche

We’re big fans of the micro-influencer and reaching out to work with them can be a huge boost to your sales. Sure, if you’ve got bottomless pockets then go for the giant social influencers of the world, but if you’re like most businesses, working with smaller, passionate influencers with followings of 2,000 to 10,000 people is a great place to start.

Not only can they bring in conversions, but they can lend credibility to your brand with their endorsement. Once your business has a solid affiliate marketing program in place with a growing network of reps, start reaching out to these micro-influencers with enticing offers and commissions. They can be well worth the additional expense (but pay attention to your metrics!).

9. Nurture your affiliates

Your relationship with your affiliates shouldn’t start and end with just signing them up and paying them out. It should be a partnership, and a great way to work together is to collaborate on content.

Remember, your affiliates rely on your images, ideas, and blurbs to craft their own blog posts and videos. Make sure you provide them with great content that they can reuse and remix for their social media. User-generated content is key to successful affiliate programs, so invest time into providing your reps with what they need.

10. Start an affiliate newsletter

An exclusive newsletter to your reps is an effective way to communicate new products & services, upcoming events & deals, and highlight their success stories. While you can also maintain an online community (ie. a Facebook group for your reps), nothing beats the monthly newsletter at propagating information.

Don’t believe us? Check this post out on DreamGrow that outlines why newsletters consistently beat out social media when it comes to reach. For example, Facebook’s reach is dropping like a rock:

Newsletters, especially coming from the company that’s paying the affiliates money, will be read. Fill it with tips, ideas, content they can use, affiliate success stories, and exclusive offers. It will become a powerful tool for communication and motivation for your reps.

11. Hold “office hours”

In addition to the affiliate newsletter, it’s important to make yourself available to your reps on a regular and scheduled basis. It not only allow them access to get their questions and concerns heard, but will keep you motivated to be an active participant in your affiliate program by having a set date and time to focus on it.

It depends on how many affiliate you work with, but holding “office hours” every other week is a good place to start. Say, every other Thursday at noon for an hour, reps can contact you and know that you’ll be there to help them with affiliate matters. It’s a great way to improve communication between you and your partners, keeping the relationship healthy and moving forward.

12. Optimize for mobile

Especially if you’re working with a younger generation of reps, you want to make sure that each step in your business is mobile-friendly. After all, your reps may mostly exist as Instagram profiles that draw in other Instagram users.

Is your site mobile-optimized? How about your affiliate sign-up page? Do you have the right image sizes to be reposted to mobile social media sites? Can shoppers make mobile purchases at all? The more mobile your entire business is (and these days, 40% of online transactions are done via mobile), the easier it will be for your affiliate marketing to work with today’s consumers.

13. Be wary of fraud

While affiliate marketing is inherently protected against most types of fraudulent transactions (after all, you only pay commission on a sale), that doesn’t mean there aren’t shady reps who try to game the system to make a quick buck. From trademark bidding to sending out spam emails to credit card scams, there are certainly ways fraud can hit your program.

Knowing the warning signs and being vigilant about shady tactics can save you time, money, and a lot of headaches. Monitoring your metrics for oddities is a great way to be proactive about catching fraudulent activity. Does one rep have a higher than normal amount of sales-to-refunds? That could be a red flag. Check out other ways to avoid fraud in this blog post.

14. Have clear terms & conditions

On the topic of fraud, sometimes trouble can come from your affiliate partners simply not knowing what they can or cannot do. That’s why having very clear terms & conditions is important to a) laying out the ground rules, and b) protecting yourself if a rep goes rogue.

On the affiliate sign-up page, write in plain English (or your language of choice) what each affiliate is agreeing to when he or she sign on to become your brand representative. Make it readable and understandable so you can always point to your T&Cs in the future if/when a rep oversteps their bounds. Don’t hesitate to include an FAQ section here as well to expand on any particular topic.

15. Make it fun!

From the companies we’ve worked with, some of the most successful affiliate marketing programs are the ones where the partner reps feel like they’re in on some secret, exclusive club. From special offers, to bonus packages, to branded gear as gifts; the more fun and exciting it is to be working as a rep for a company, the more they want to get out there and spread the word.

As you grow your affiliate program, how can you impart that sort of fun? Can you host meetups in certain cities? How about sending out branded gear? Even low-cost stickers can get reps jazzed up about your brand. For ideas, check out some of our Client Spotlights on our Refersion Blog.