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This week, Alan Alda and The Moth’s Catherine Burns join us to talk about storytelling. What makes a good story? What makes a good storyteller? How can we use storytelling to communicate better, to sell people on our ideas, to make people like us?

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If you tackle AdWords and Facebook in the same way, you’re headed for ROI disappointment.

Facebook, unlike AdWords, offers advertisers custom audiences, and if used correctly, can payoff in a BIG way: earning it the rightful place of eCommerce’s second leading paid traffic source. It all comes down to perfecting your audience and therefore pushing the right messaging to the right people at just the right stage of your sales funnel.

The bottom line is that market segmentation is the key to winning at Facebook marketing and by setting up your audiences for optimization before you implement campaigns you can save you tons of optimizing time down the line. This week, we look at how to hack Facebook’s Custom Audiences for big payoffs.

Hacking Audiences for Brand New Traffic

Hack 1: Use Engagement History to Build Audiences

If you are a new or smaller store with lower traffic than you would like, but an active social media presence with lots of engagement, creating custom audiences based on previous engagement is an awesome way to drive traffic to your store.

This audience hacks allows you to create lists of people who have viewed your video content, interacted with previous lead ads on Facebook and Instagram, people who have interacted with your Facebook page, Instagram accounts or Canvas content.

Hack 2: Exclude Audiences

Just like you would do when optimizing your Facebook ads, excluding converted customers from seeing your ads helps fight ad fatigue while enabling you to market them deeper in your sales funnel with more relevant ads. Save time by setting exclusions before your campaigns go live; as people respond and click through to your site, they will automatically be pushed to other remarketing or pixel campaigns.

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Bonus Hack: Lookalike Targeting

Find potential shoppers by leveraging the power of Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences. You can find this by clicking on ‘Create audience’ and selecting ‘Lookalike audience.’

For more on how to create these types of audiences, Facebook’s comprehensive guide will help.

Hacking Audiences for Repeat Traffic

Hack 3: Turn Content Engagers into Customers

If you’ve been hustling your content marketing game, chances are you get some nice hits from your blog. By creating custom audiences of your content readers, you will be able to target them with specific ads for those potential shoppers who are aware of your brand, designed to send them to landing and/or product pages and increase your conversions.

Pro Tip: Split audiences into recent blog visitors and ‘cold’ leads to further segment your audiences and therefore drive clicks with more targeted advertising. Custom Audiences only allows you to target those visitors who haven’t visited in a certain amount of time; the only drawback is that it is applied to your whole online store and doesn’t allow page (or blog) segmentation.

Hack 4: Target Your Email Lists

You can also target those potential customers who are already on your email lists, using Facebook Custom Audiences to upload your email lists. This is a great hack because it allows you to create highly segmented audiences. And, bonus: if you have been doing great admin without your email marketing lists, half the work is already done.

Here you can upload a CSV or TXT file (which takes up to 30 minutes to load, depending on the size of your file), or for MailChimp users, you can automatically do this by connecting your MailChimp account.

This is a super helpful audience hack that leverages your email marketing, allowing you to create targeted audiences based on whether they opened or didn’t open the email, offer product ads accordingly, and increase your ROIs through audience and campaign segmentation.

Marketing Pro Tip: Use this segmentation to send campaigns that remind potential shoppers to complete an action or remind them of a deal that they opened in their email, or generate competition entries by leveraging your already extensive mailing list.

Hack 5: Remarket, Remarket, Remarket!

Remarketing to existing customers will definitely have big payoffs – I touched on this extensively a couple of weeks ago in our Facebook Remarketing Tips post. With Facebook Custom Audience, you can set up remarketing audiences before you test campaigns, therefore saving you a bunch of optimizing time. You can do this by creating an audience made up of people who have clicked through to your ‘Thank-You’ page after purchasing, allowing you to test a variety of upselling, new deal or new stock, just in ads to these audiences.

eCommerce Pro Tip: Use Facebook’s Dynamic Product Ads to target specific product ads to those potential shoppers who have already viewed them on your site.

Facebook’s list of must-haves to run these types of remarketing campaigns are:

• Facebook Pixel
• Facebook SDK
• Business Manager
• Product Catalogue

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Final Thoughts

There you have it, 5 awesome Facebook Custom Audience hacks that save you time and get great results. The ideal scenario would be to take your sales funnel and split it into the type of audience you would want to attract/talk to at each stage and then create a custom audience for each, making it much easier in the long run to tailor very specific campaigns to each, and thus improving your results in a big way.

Have some audience tricks of your own? Drop them in the comments below.

It may sound crazy to give your employees control of their own thermostats, but it may just make them more productive.

Business Insider spoke with Emma Stewart, chief business development officer at Impact Infrastructure to find out what could be done around an office building to increase productivity. Impact Infrastructure runs simulations to find out how a company can alter its offices in a way that benefits both the environment and worker productivity.

Impact Infrastructure uses Autocase software to customize recommendations for each company, because not every company has the same building size or materials to work with. Some suggestions might work for certain companies, but not other companies, which is why customization is so important.

We asked Stewart to run a few simulations of changes companies can make to yield higher productivity, using an average office building in San Francisco as her example.

Here's what she came up with:

SEE ALSO: LinkedIn took over a 26-story San Francisco skyscraper, and it's unlike anything else we've seen

DON'T MISS: 16 cheap and creative ways to stay warm when your office is freezing

1. "Is it just me or is it cold in here?" says everyone at some point.

If you give 60% of your employees access to control their own thermal comfort, you could see a 3.7% increase in productivity and a 16.2% increase in health benefits, Autocase predicts.

Oftentimes buildings blast either the air conditioning or heat, to the point that offices are either freezing or boiling. This could be wasting an awful lot of energy for people who don't want that much heat or AC.

2. Let there be light!

Giving 100% of your employees control of the interior lighting around their workspaces could yield a 10.7% increase in productivity.

People prefer different levels of light, Stewart says, so companies might be wasting an awful lot of lighting for people who don't want it.

3. People like pretty views.

If you can manage to make 85% of views indoors and outdoors quality views, you could see a 3.9% increase in productivity, and a 20.2% increase in absenteeism benefits (fewer days off), the Autocase software found.

A 2015 study concluded that just looking at nature can improve focus and productivity. Green roofs work exceptionally well for this in cities, the Washington Post reported. Business Insider has also identified 11 health benefits of spending time in nature.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Publishing content regularly is important, but how do you come up with ideas to keep the pipeline fed? Here’s a secret: you already have all your ideas, they’re just in a different format.

By taking the content you already have and repurposing it, you can plan out your LinkedIn posts for weeks in advance.

Using the content you have for LinkedIn

1 – Your blog posts

Take a look at your previous blog posts and see what information is in there you’d like to share. People who started following your company on LinkedIn may not have read the content on your blog yet, so it’s new for them. Repost the content on LI Pulse, with a slightly reworked intro and/or conclusion, and you’re good to go. Don’t forget to include a link to the original post to get more traffic to your site! Win-win.

2 – Your podcasts

Do you have your own podcast? Or maybe some of your employees have been interviewed on other podcasts? Regardless, it’s time to spread the word on LI. Write up a quick post summarizing the podcast episode and then publish it on LI. Include links to the original publication site and you’ll get even more traffic. Pull out some quotes from the interview to include in your news updates and spark interest in the content.

3 – Your webinars

Not only can you post a summary of the webinar on LI, but you can also use it to create updates that you can send out on a regular basis. Just take a look at the questions people asked during the webinar and write up short answers that you can post as updates. If a question requires a longer response, then write a new LI Pulse article for it.

4 – Your eBooks

Are there any areas you wanted to explore a little deeper in your eBooks, but you didn’t want to make the book any longer than it is? Now’s your chance. Take the ideas and expand on them in LI Pulse articles. Use headlines or headings as updates that you can then point to the article.

5 – Your landing pages

Landing pages are filled with quotes and short proof statements about your products that are great for driving traffic to your site. But what about using some of them for updates on LI? You can then direct readers to the landing page or another page on your website and you didn’t have to write any new content.

You’ve already got the content…time to start using it on LinkedIn

Your LinkedIn company page doesn’t have to be a stale page that just sits there. It can work for your tech or sports company just as easily as the rest of your online content. Use your existing content to start generating some buzz and traffic to your company page by repurposing it.

Have you been repurposing your content on LinkedIn? Share your experience in the comments as I’d love to hear how it’s going.

Several years ago, I started getting regular consulting requests from companies seeking help managing Millennials. When I asked what they were struggling with, I heard comments similar to these:

“Millennials don’t seem to care about the work or the company.  They will let us train them and then quit the following week for a job for more money.”

“Millennials don’t understand the meaning of work — they want rewards without having to do the work to earn them.

 “Millennials only want time off for vacation. That seems to be all they care about.”  

As a college professor, I teach Millennials. These complaints didn’t seem to describe the students I knew. They were hardworking, with internships and jobs outside of school they seemed to value. In fact, when I asked them about what they found meaningful in work, Millennials had plenty of answers that weren’t just about money and leisure time.

This got me thinking: Maybe the problem is not that Millennials don’t value meaningful work. Maybe they just define it differently than other generations.

In order to find out if there were generational differences in definitions of meaningful work, my colleague and I started our investigation the old-fashioned way: by asking people. We interviewed five employees from each generation, inquiring about how important meaningful work was for them, what they find meaningful in the job they currently do, what their ideal job would be, and whether they saw any generational differences in definitions of meaningful work.

Employees from all generations — defined according to birth years that have experienced common historical events during their formative years — said that they valued meaningful work, as is evidenced from the following quotes:

Traditionalists (born between 1922-1945): “I can’t even imagine going to a job that…I didn’t think had value.”

Baby Boomers (born between 1946-1964): “If I didn’t get personal fulfillment and feel like I was doing something good, it would be miserable to put that much time and effort into something.”

Generation X (born between 1965-1983): “If your job is without meaning, what would get you out of bed?”

Millennials (born between 1984-2002): “I would rather make nothing and love going to work every day than make a ton of money and hate going to work every day.”

However, we found that when asked spontaneously, each generation defines meaningful work slightly differently. The traditionalists we interviewed said that meaning comes from challenging work that allows people to grow, and also from work that helps other people.  One expressed it this way: “I think if your job does not challenge you to improve your skills, then you’re not in the right job.” Baby boomers tended to be slightly more goal-orientated, with one explaining that meaningful work involves “success at achieving your personal goals, and if you’re working with other people, helping them to achieve their goals.”

Although Generation X also thought accomplishing career goals was a key component of meaningful work, they focused much more than older generations on work-life balance. Meaningful work happens when “you feel that your work is not all-consuming or that you feel that you can strike a good balance,” said one. Finally, Millennials spoke more about having nice coworkers, and helping others and the community: “I really think the most meaningful job is a job of service…if you can do something that you know in one way or another directly benefits somebody else, it can be very rewarding.”

You and Your Team Series

Making Work More Meaningful

No sales process can be considered a one-size-fits-all solution. Yes, you want to provide a consistent and repeatable process for your salespeople, but it should never override the buying signals of your buyer – nor should your rep ever abdicate good ol’ common sense.

The following is an excerpt from the new e-book, The CMO Primer For The Blockchain World: How This “Trust Machine” Impacts Branding, Customer Experience, Advertising and Much More by Jeremy Epstein, CEO of Never Stop Marketing.

It features forewords by the CMO of NASDAQ, Jeremy Skule and the CMO of Dun & Bradstreet, Rishi Dave. The e-book explores seven different marketing functions and how blockchains might impact them as well as highlighting a few emerging vendors in the blockchain marketing tech space.

To download the free e-book, please click here.

You can also hear Jeremy speak at the MarTech conference in Boston, October 2-4, where he’ll present a 45-minute, in-depth session on Blockchain and the CMO: The Next Era of Marketing.

EXCERPT: Advertising Becomes More Accountable

Familiar Challenges

You know you are not getting enough value for your advertising dollar. For every $1 you invest in advertising, you only get $.44 of value. One Forrester analyst claims that publishers who remove middlemen can increase CPM from $1 to $5.

The Ad Maze report in the Wall St. Journal is only the most recent illustration of the number of middlemen (and resulting lack of transparency) between you and your intended audience. As if that is not bad enough, you also do not have enough visibility into how your advertising performs. To top it all off, bots inflicted $7.2 billion in fraud last year.

Awareness is critical and advertising is a necessary component to driving consideration. You also know that the current model does not optimize your effectiveness or your return on marketing investment. John Wanamaker’s quote still rings true:

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

Where Blockchain Technology Can Fit In

This next line will not help with the popularity of agencies, but that does not mean it is not accurate.

Any industry that is full of intermediaries, has a lot of value lost along the transaction path, and lacks transparency and trust is an industry that is ripe for blockchain-driven disruption.

It comes as no surprise that the first and most advanced wave of blockchain-based protocols and technologies are seeking to upend how digital advertising is purchased, delivered, measured, and valued.

Near-Term Impacts and Benefits

Expect to see initial traction from the first generation of solutions as early adopter CMOs and digital marketing leads begin to experiment in the next 12-18 months. You will hear of preliminary proof-of-concept implementations that reduce reporting time, improve reporting accuracy, reduce fraud, and reduce costs in the advertising supply chain. You may also see downward price pressure on traditional agencies responding to the competitive threat.

The field of contenders is starting to fill up. Expect to see more join as well. You will also see several different strategies. Some of the early entrants include:

• AdChain, built by MetaX, which offers a protocol for establishing trusted relationships for buying and selling advertising space via its own native token. The token will represent your right as a shareholder in the network. Together with the other shareholders, you will have an incentive to keep it clean from fraudulent or low-value publishers. In return, you will benefit by getting more ad value for your investment and verifiable campaign auditing through cryptographically secure impression tracking. In late June, AdChain raised $10 million in 6 hours in its initial coin offering.
• NYIAX (New York Interactive Advertising Exchange) claims the world’s first advertising contract exchange. They are using NASDAQ’s blockchain technology to combine a financial matching engine and trading concepts with advertising technology. The goal is a transparent marketplace for buying, selling, and re-trading of future premium advertising inventory as guaranteed contracts. They expect fees to lower as the number of intermediaries goes down to one.
• AdShares is a decentralized, peer-to-peer market for programmatic advertising. It gives advertisers and publishers ability to trade directly without the need for centralized ad exchanges.
• MadHive is a video advertising and data platform that allows brands and publishing partners to build audiences and target those audiences across multiple screens and platforms. MadHive’s back-end product uses blockchain technology to allow brands and publishers to leverage the inherent trust and verifiability of a decentralized, peer-to-peer sharing network. MadHive is a founding member of AdLedger, the advertising industry’s blockchain consortium.

As these solutions start to come to maturity, you will have greater trust that your advertising investments are being placed as you intended. Wanamaker’s quote may not go away entirely, though you may be able to reduce the percentage wasted slightly.

Long-Term Impacts and Benefits

In his book, The Attention Merchants, Tim Wu writes:

If we think of attention as a resource, or even a kind of currency, we must allow that it is always, necessarily, being “spent.” There is no saving it for later. The question is always, what shall I pay attention to?

As marketers, we sometimes take for granted that the attention of others comes without any cost to ourselves. Since others pay for attention, marketers have historically just done whatever they could to get it. Advertising has been based upon this paradigm since the first penny papers of New York and Belle Epoque posters of Paris.

In a blockchain-based world, this paradigm could change. Arguably, it is already changing as more than 600 million devices worldwide run some form of ad-blocking software. William Gibson writes:

The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.

In the future, though, if you want someone’s attention via advertising, you may end up having to pay the person for it directly. You certainly will not swipe a credit card every time someone sees your ad. However, you might pay them a small fraction of a cent. Micropayments for attention can only work at scale with a digitally native currency.

Making and tracking these types of payments at scale is precisely one of the inherent strengths of blockchains. Brave offers a glimpse of this future. On the surface, Brave just looks like another web-browser. Built by the creator of JavaScript and the co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox, it is already a strong browser experience for end users. It natively blocks ads and prevents cookies, which makes it much faster than its competitors. However, it is in the “Payments” tab where the story starts to get unique.

Brave offers the capability for site visitors to directly make micropayments to a publisher via cryptocurrency for their content. You may not be willing to pay $200 a year for a subscription to The Economist, but you will pay a fraction of a penny to read an article. At scale, some of the most popular sites will start moving away from advertising as we know it.

The next iteration will come in the form of something like the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a function built by the architect of the Brave browser. The token is the mechanism through which an advertiser pays for attention-based mental effort by an individual. With Brave and the BAT, you will pay end users for their attention, instead of the 73% of all ad dollars going to Facebook and Google.

Brave may be destined for failure and there are valid critiques from very smart people that are worthy of attention (even though you will not be paid for it just yet).

Still, it is radical and different and a possible hint at a world in which the CMO of the future is going to live.

Bottom line:

Advertising will be the one of the first disciplines to be disrupted by blockchain technology. The good news is that you will have much greater trust in knowing that your advertising and outreach efforts are going exactly where you intended them to go. The bad news is that attention of others will come with a price tag.

Suggested Actions:

Talk to some of the initial entrants to the blockchain-based advertising space. Even if they are not ready for prime time, they can help you understand the direction.

Download the Brave browser and play around with it.

And, most importantly, come hear Jeremy speak at the MarTech conference in Boston, October 2-4, where he’ll present a 45-minute, in-depth session on Blockchain and the CMO: The Next Era of Marketing.

The post How blockchain technology will revolutionize advertising appeared first on Chief Marketing Technologist.

Marketing is 10% what you say and 90% how you say it. There are many companies who have great content yet continue to underperform because of their execution and delivery. With so much content and so many conversations online, it’s not hard to get lost in the shuffle. The brands and businesses that manage to rise above the noise do not do so by accident, but it’s because they understand the “secret” to really great content.

In this episode of Hack My Growth, I share the not so secret, “secret,” on how to create really great content. Here’s a hint, it has nothing to do with keywords, backlinks or any of that stuff. All great pieces of content, from Books to Blog posts, from telegrams to tweets, all share one thing. Ready to learn more? Check out the video below!

Video Transcript:

Hey! What’s up, everybody? Welcome to Hack My Growth. I’m Ryan Shelley, and I’m stoked that you’re here today. We’re going to be talking about one of my favorite subjects, and it’s context. Context is the key to successful marketing online. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Content is king. We need to have more content.” What’s happened because of that is content farms have kind of blown up, and there’s just all of this junk content online. Now we really have to sift through to find things that are actually valuable, and that’s what Google’s trying to do with their rank algorithm to make sure that the good stuff shows up on top. That’s what Facebook is trying to do with their ranking algorithm and Twitter. Everybody’s trying to sift through all of this content to make sure that when we’re delivering it to the viewer, it’s in the right context. That’s really what they’re trying to do is put your content into context.

You can make this easier on social media, on the search platforms, but more importantly on your users by making sure that your content is contextually appropriate. I know there’s a lot of C’s in there, and it’s kind of hard to say, but it’s true because the context is how your content is being framed. You can say something, and it may be a really good thing. You may have a really great piece of content, but if you deliver it at the wrong time and in the wrong way, it’s either going to miss the mark, or it’s going to come off as awkward. That’s really the difference between wisdom and foolishness. You can say the same thing but you say it at the wrong time, and it could be a great statement, or it could be a foolish statement. The same thing goes for social media or a blog, or it goes into creating a video, it goes for creating web pages. All of these things need to have the appropriate context to actually deliver the message effectively.

We live in a noisy world. There’s so much for us to pay attention to. Maybe you’ve seen those statistics where people’s average attention span is eight seconds, and it’s not that we don’t know how to pay attention, it’s that we have so much going on around us that we have to choose within eight seconds what we’re going to pay attention to. They’re looking at posts, they’re looking at pictures, they’re looking at things that are just coming up in their day, whether it be emails or social threads, and they’re trying to understand: What speaks to me? What’s going to hit me right now? What’s the most important thing for me to spend my time on or enjoy or engage with at this moment? They’re making those decisions very, very quickly.

Context will help you frame your content in a way that allows them to engage more naturally and authentically. Brands that do this the right way are the brands that are building a relationship. Our economy today is really built on relationships more than anything else. If you can generate a large following, you’re going to generate a large group of people and build a community that feeds off of each other and grows with one another and adds value to one another. You’re more powerful, and you have more behind you than some of these massive corporations. That’s how a lot of these bootstrap companies have started, they’ve built communities, and people who love their product and love what’s kind of going on around it and a whole community has sprung up around this.

We’ve seen this with a number of different social platforms. The one I can think of is WordPress; it’s this open source web platform that now more than 70% of the world’s websites are built on. (I was wrong on this, it’s acutally about 25%. But that still a lot of sites.) It’s because of the community that was built and content that was contextually appropriate to people looking for a solution at that time that spoke to them and created this massive wave of just web developers and people wanting to get together. I think WordPress is a really great example of that. Small businesses can look at this, and large businesses can look at this and understand what they need to do is slow down and take the time to listen, to really understand their users’ wants, needs, and desires. This is using social tools like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and wherever your audience is online and listening to the things that they’re doing. This is looking at our Google analytics and understanding the pieces of content that have performed well versus the ones that aren’t performing well and how that’s impacting our search visibility and how people are engaging with us.

It’s just taking the time to maybe craft a short questionnaire to get to know people or even maybe pick up the phone and call the customer to understand their wants, their needs, and their desires so then we can build messaging, then we can build content that’s going to add value to them and it’s going to be contextually appropriate. Context is the key to success when digital marketing, with inbound marketing, with any sort of online marketing or even just face-to-face marketing, context is the key to successful communication. That’s what helps you deliver your message at the right place to the right person at the right time.

I am obsessive lately about context, and I’m not great at it, I miss the mark plenty of times. I’ve been guilty of just posting stuff and putting stuff out there because I want to meet a schedule, but lately I’ve just really felt this weight and understanding that just because you can post something or you can say something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to say and sometimes it’s better just to step back, wait a minute, think about the context of the situation and then deliver a much better offer, a much better piece of content, a much better Tweet that’s actually going to lead to a conversation and connection.

I kind of want to challenge you guys this week, anybody watching this video, to slow down with their marketing, slow down with your sales, slow down with all the craziness for a minute and just pause, understand what’s going on, the context of what’s going on, and then think about how you can add value to that area. How can you add value to the people in the community that’s actually going to allow you to come across as a more natural human being? We can have brands, but our brands can still be human, and that’s really important. It doesn’t matter how much AI is involved or how much planning is involved; we have to have a human element to what we’re doing because we’re dealing with people. At the end of the day, we’re making connections with people and context is what allows us to do that more effectively.

Until next week, happy marketing. If you’ve got any questions, please comment below. Share this video if you like it. Post it on Facebook, post it on Twitter if you think it’s contextually appropriate please make sure that you hit the subscribe button as well. We put out videos every week trying to help marketers and small business owners do better with what they have and excel and grow even more.

Thanks for watching Hack My Growth and we’ll see you next time.

I don’t think I am exaggerating too much when I say that the political scene in Washington is a rotten mess. Congress is completely paralyzed by its own self-inflicted anaphylactic shock. The pathogen? Leadership blindness. It seems that politicians, on both sides of the aisle, have become so fixated on specific outcomes that they no longer see how to lead the American people by establishing sound public policy.

When leaders sit down to govern, whether in the private or public sectors, they are responsible for three policy tiers that govern the relationships (and accompanying expectations) that exist between management and their employees or constituency. In the business world, we call this overarching relationship, the Employee Experience. In the case of politicians, we might call it the citizen experience. A common way in which the Employee Experience or citizen experience breaks down is when leaders fail to understand what is required of them within each of these three tiers.

I have organized these three policy tiers into what I call the “Policy Pyramid.” At the top are the organization’s governing principles, with the organization’s First Principles forming the apex. An organization’s principles are those values and beliefs that inform where the organization wants to go and what it wants to be. “First Principles” are those principles that are unique to the organization and which are adopted solely for that organization.

Here are some examples of organizational principles. For Apple, they value innovation and beautiful design. In the case of Starbucks, they focus on quality and communal experiences. In the United States, we value freedom of speech and other key characteristics of liberty.

An organization’s governing principles range from a few to several, depending on each organization’s circumstances. And, these principles differ across the board depending on market needs, mission, etc. For example, some may advocate for gender diversity (Morgan Stanley) while others may push for unparalleled customer service (Nordstrom).

In the middle of the Policy Pyramid is what I call the expectation framework. In this tier, leaders work on establishing rules and procedures that promote positive behavior and limit negative conduct. It should be noted that a good framework is not necessarily focused on creating specific outcomes. Instead, a well-designed framework promotes efficient micro-markets or creates well-functioning communities.

As stated, it’s best if a framework is outcome agnostic. Here’s an illustration. Consider a tech start-up that is interested in closing the gender pay gap. Its CEO establishes a policy that hiring managers should not make a salary offer that is based on an applicant’s prior compensation levels. The policy prohibits managers from asking applicants what type of compensation they received from prior employers. This policy is agnostic. It does not create rigid pay bands, nor does it require that all women receive a set compensation amount. Instead, it is indifferent to the amount of compensation and lets the internal hiring “micro-market” take care of itself. Frameworks like these allow for variance and promote market forces without requiring rigidity or specific outcomes.

At the bottom of the Policy Pyramid are specific outcomes. These are tightly-worded policies that say things like, “If you work for us for two years, you will automatically be promoted.” Or, all children under the age of 12 must receive healthcare regardless of their ability to pay.” Outcome-based expectations are important, but they are difficult to manage, especially within large populations and by leaders who are removed from what is happening on the ground.

Here is a possible case study to consider. A hospital was worried about reducing the number of patients that were falling and injuring themselves. Management sent out an organization-wide memorandum mandating that, “All patients that are up and walking around must be accompanied by a staff member at all times.” The problem is that there was no buy-in from those best able to police the situation, and it was unrealistic to think that in every instance a staff member would be present when a patient decided to walk around. The policy felt like a mandate from an out-of-touch leadership team.

Leaders get into trouble when they focus on a section of the pyramid that does not correspond with their level of responsibility. The natural tendency is for most to go right to the bottom and start working on specific outcomes. Yet, note how the Policy Pyramid follows the same shape as an organizational pyramid. CEOs and executives are responsible for policies. Senior leaders are responsible for frameworks. Team leads and supervisors are responsible for specific outcomes.

Right now, in the healthcare arena, Congress is trying to draft legislation that produces specific outcomes; e.g., this many people will be given Medicaid or all pre-existing conditions will be covered. Instead, Congress should first be clear on its governing principles: who should be covered, where, when, how, and who pays. Once those principles have been established, then, in my view, Congress’s primary job is to work on a framework that promotes an efficient marketplace and incentivizes behaviors that are aligned with these principles. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” will take care of the rest, and the market will find innovative solutions to drive specific outcomes.

Congress is too focused on the outcomes, and since no one will ever agree on the precise details, healthcare reform seems destined for failure. Health insurance companies don’t need politicians to tell them how to deliver healthcare. They need politicians to create regulatory frameworks that promote efficient and fair marketplaces.

The same is true in business management. Let’s go back to our example of the hospital that was trying to limit episodes where a patient falls. The CEO and other executives are responsible for the hospital’s governing principles, which should include an emphasis on patient safety and care. Senior management implements these policies by developing frameworks. For example, at this level, senior management might implement an employee recognition system that finds positive behavior and rewards it. Finally, at the team-level, supervisors are empowered to work on specific outcomes as they see fit. It’s also at this level where they have actual visibility into whether something is happening or not. Here, one-on-one meetings can address performance issues, including whether an employee has been ensuring that someone is present when a patient leaves his or her bed.

Again, leaders and politicians get into trouble when they focus on a level of the Policy Pyramid that does not correspond with their level of responsibility. The natural tendency is for most to go right to the bottom and work on the specifics. This tendency can be very problematic, as evidenced by the GOP’s current struggle with healthcare.

The key is for leaders to constantly be asking themselves, “Should I be building principles, frameworks, or outcomes?” Right now, we need more politicians that are willing to focus on principles and frameworks, regardless of who gets the political bacon.

Before we work with clients to generate new ideas, we often show them an old AirTran Airways commercial that epitomizes the wrong way to brainstorm. In the commercial, a “facilitator” prompts the team to come up with ideas for what they should be putting in their vending machines. The team sits around a table shouting out uninspired ideas, anchoring immediately on the initial ideas of chips and crackers. The only unique idea is also the worst idea—toast—and it results only in humiliation for the proposer. The commercial ends with a man raising his hand to make his only contribution: “You had me fly in for this?”

People often debate whether brainstorming is an effective way to generate new ideas. Unfortunately, many people we talk to have only participated in poorly run brainstorming sessions—those that look eerily similar to the session in the AirTran commercial. An inexperienced facilitator throws out a generic prompt about what the next big solution should be, a few people shout out a lot of not-so-novel ideas, and most people sit quietly wondering when they can get back to work. The only unique ideas that surface are those that the organization will never implement. Moreover, ideas get reduced to a few words on a flipchart, and the discussion and context are quickly forgotten. Then somebody looks at the flipchart a week later and is truly baffled about what might have gone on in that meeting room.

If you see the world through customers’ eyes, the new solutions may appear obvious, save for the fact that no one has ever created them before. Further in this guide, we’ll take a in-depth look at how to use the insights you’ve gathered about your customer to hold targeted idea generation sessions that produce promising new concepts.

The Wrong Way To Generate New Ideas

Brainstorming sessions are often doomed from the start. From who’s invited to the structure of the session, most brainstorming meetings are actually set up—albeit unintentionally—to quash creativity. For starters, boss-led ideation tends to produce fewer original ideas. In those situations, team members worry that ideas that seem too crazy won’t be respected, so they volunteer safe ideas and those that they think their boss wants to hear. People throw out the easy answers—those that every competitor has likely come up with as well.

To expand on the problem, those early uninspired ideas are likely to dominate the conversation. That’s for two reasons. First, it’s extremely difficult to come up with new ideas while you’re preoccupied with listening to and evaluating the ideas that others are presenting. Second, we have a psychological tendency to anchor our thinking around the first ideas we hear. Those safe ideas that were thrown out first have now unintentionally established boundaries for how innovative future ideas will be.

To illustrate the problem, what would happen if we asked you to come up with a list of five different tools? We’ll help you out by suggesting a hammer as an example of a tool, though that shouldn’t be one of your five. What does your list look like? Most likely it contains at least a few other small tools used for building. Perhaps a screwdriver, a wrench, some pliers, or a saw made the list. Maybe, as you struggled for ideas, you branched into power tools. Rarely, with this exercise, do people consider tools from other professions. If instead of an easy answer (the hammer) we had given you a targeted prompt designed to widen your lens (“What are the tools that artists, educators, and accountants use to do their jobs?”), your list would look very different. Importantly, it would also look very different from anyone else’s list.

When a facilitator simply asks for ideas and the first ideas are safe and unoriginal, the tone has been set. One researcher found that by having people record several ideas on their own first—without being influenced by ideas from others—groups generated 20 percent more ideas and 42 percent more original ideas.

One other fallacy of brainstorming is to push for overall quantity of ideas. Clearly just having one or two ideas isn’t likely to cut it. However, don’t mimic the example of a convenience store chain that once approached us asking for a daylong session in which they would generate 2,000 ideas. Honestly? Those ideas were likely going to be incredibly incremental and shallow. Plus, no organization is going to implement anything close to 2,000 ideas, ever. Creativity can be a lazy human function, so it needs to be pushed. Consider only what’s realistic and useful.

Strategies For Better Brainstorming

One of the easiest (and often overlooked) ways of improving the quality of your ideation sessions is to be clear up front about why you’re brainstorming, how ideas will be evaluated, and how far flung ideas can be. Companies often worry that by setting up strict rules, they’ll be limiting creativity. Instead of setting boundaries, they tell everyone to think outside the box. Worse, they throw open the doors to the whole organization, asking for a flood of new ideas. While the intention is respectable, the outcome is unfortunate. Ideas that the organization would never implement are collected and ignored, ultimately demoralizing those who submitted what they thought were good ideas. While you don’t want to judge ideas early on, be clear about what’s realistically going to be considered. Are you just looking for new product ideas, or are business model innovations also in scope? Are acquisitions and partnerships on the table, or do new ideas need to leverage existing assets or those that can be developed in-house?

In addition to this early guidance, a good facilitator will focus ideation discussions around specific questions and challenges. Don’t just ask everyone for new ideas; you’ll get concepts that lack context beyond what proposers already know in their own daily work. An insidious result of that approach—invisible but harmful—is that what might be a big idea is made to sound small. Rather, tie your discussions to customer insights. Ask for ideas on how to satisfy important jobs or eliminate relevant pain points. Inexperienced facilitators try to stimulate creativity by creating ridiculous scenarios (“How would your ideas be different if the Earth had no gravity?”). These tactics tend to leave participants frustrated, and they rarely produce better ideas. Instead, use the common job drivers you’ve uncovered to think about how different customer types would react to certain products or problems. Consider how you can overcome obstacles that are particularly onerous for some customers.

After you’ve come up with a few targeted questions to ideate around—and remember that you can introduce additional prompts after some ideas have begun to surface—here are the steps to follow for a better outcome:

• Start off by getting everyone on the same page. Explain the purpose of the ideation session, discuss the boundaries of what will or will not be considered, and elaborate on how ideas will be evaluated. It’s also important to choose the right setting for ideation. Try to choose a location with an energetic vibe. We often look for smaller spaces where people can actively converse with each other without feeling like they’re onstage. Keep in mind that you may want access to additional nearby spaces that can be used for breakout sessions.
• Give participants some time to quietly reflect and ideate on their own. Ask participants to come up with their own lists of ideas first, thus avoiding the anchoring problems just described. Give them a quota in order to encourage them to push themselves.
• Depending on how many people are present, break the group into small teams of people with dissimilar backgrounds to discuss and expand on these ideas, coming up with new ideas and identifying which ideas seem to have the highest potential. Have someone in the group meticulously record the details of the conversation, as this often encourages team members to think more deeply, and it provides something tangible that can be referenced later.

Once all the participants have shared their ideas, you can group similar ideas together. This will help to highlight important themes that run through multiple ideas, and it will also help to focus the discussion on a smaller number of topics. It’s often helpful to separate the ideation portion from the organization and prioritization, such as with a lunch break or even a break for the day. Having a bit of time off gives everyone a chance to gain some perspective, think more critically about their most recent ideas, and better understand the relationships among ideas.

At this stage, it might be a good time to discuss what’s on the table. Without being overly limiting, question whether any of the ideas are too far out of scope. More importantly, spend some time identifying the big questions everyone has about the ideas you’ve generated.

Before you evaluate these ideas, break into groups and build out your ideas in more detail. While you’re not expected to build the business case for your preliminary ideas, create a one-page visual that helps highlight why the idea is a good one:

• What jobs are satisfied and what pain points are eliminated? (Jobs are the tasks that consumers are trying to get done in their everyday lives.)
• What customer types would be interested in the idea?
• How does the idea create value for the business?
• How does the idea satisfy the major criteria identified at the start of the ideation session?

Once you’ve built out each idea, you’ll be able to have a more informed discussion about the merits of the ideas, rather than simply eliminating ideas based on gut reaction. It’s important to ask the more senior team members to hold their opinions until others have had a chance to express themselves. If the actual evaluation and selection of ideas will be done by a more senior group later on, it may be wise to avoid voting on ideas within the ideation group, thus avoiding a scenario where project teams and leadership have reached different outcomes.

Finally, as you prepare to leave your brainstorming session, be clear about what the next steps are. Are the ideas going to be presented to senior management? Will there be a full vetting process with a larger group? Does a business case need to be prepared for the best ideas? Rather than leaving team members wondering, be clear about what needs to happen and who will be responsible for moving ideas forward. Without clear ownership, even the best ideas are likely to die in limbo.

Vetting Your New Ideas

Once you’ve come up with a new idea, it’s easy to fall in love with it. From entrepreneurs to executives, everyone has a great idea that has passed the “I’d buy it” test. Yet as we’ve shown, most new ideas don’t succeed. Assuming you’ve been following the steps above, you’re probably well on your way to some great ideas. But maybe you’re jumping in late and already have some ideas in mind. Or perhaps you’ve brainstormed some ideas and want to think through them before you evaluate them against your organization’s new business criteria. Whatever the case, it’s useful to know that the Jobs Atlas — featured in my book —in addition to being a tool for gathering customer and market insights—also provides a framework for vetting existing ideas.

Each of the eight categories in the Jobs Atlas can be used to help evaluate an idea you’re considering. We’ve highlighted some key questions based on the Jobs Atlas that can help you critically assess whether you’ve truly come up with a winning idea. It’s strongly recommended that you invite others to participate in the vetting process, asking the tough questions that you may be tempted to gloss over. That will also improve organizational buy-in to the ideas.

Fully answering these questions and vetting your idea may require some research into the dynamics of the market you’re attempting to serve, as well as some consideration of the business model that will support your offering. For those creating solutions within established businesses, you’ll also need to consider how your new idea ties to the business’s strategic objectives and evaluation criteria.

Generating Ideas The Right Way

A client once called us and asked for our help leading an ideation workshop. The goal was to help identify and select growth opportunities outside the core business. Before the workshop, we arranged to have discussions with the organization’s leadership team and the individuals who would be participating in the session. We wanted to know what ideas had already been surfacing, but we also wanted a better sense of why we were being invited in. We wanted to learn how ideation had worked in the past, what the results had been, and how folks felt about past efforts.

What we heard was fairly typical; two issues came up repeatedly. First, conversations tended to wander off topic, often turning into repeat discussions of old ideas rather than the exploration of new ideas. Second, some people felt that the “real” decisions were always made by senior leaders outside the sessions without much indication of why the chosen ideas were better.

Knowing that the group would be skeptical, we carefully planned a process that would encourage new ideas and avoid the problems of the past. Well ahead of the workshop, we conducted some research into the dynamics of our client’s industry. At our first meeting with the workshop participants, we filled them in on why we were there. We discussed why the organization wanted to explore adjacency growth, how much money it would be investing in the projects that would come out of our session, and how the new opportunities would need to fit into the organization’s overall portfolio plan. We then shared some of our earlier research and had a discussion on what it meant for the organization. When the conversation began to drift into a discussion about the past, we put those topics onto a “parking lot” list so that the team could discuss them in more depth after the session.

Eventually, it was time to come up with ideas. We talked the participants through a few scenarios based on what we knew about industry trends, key competitors, and customer demands. For each scenario, we asked the participants to individually write down some ideas for how the organization could respond. At the end, we compiled all the ideas, grouped them into themes, and shared the full collection with the group. Discussion of the ideas yielded new options, which we added to the collection. We broke for the day to give everyone some time to reflect.

At our next session, we used stickers to vote—with relative anonymity—on the ideas. Each person had five stickers to put on their top ideas. The group seemed happy with the results, because they had thoroughly bought into the process being used. We then split the participants into breakout groups, each of which was given two or three ideas to build out in detail. Each team was also given a series of questions to answer. They recorded detailed responses that could be shared with future project teams, and they also prepared one-pagers to facilitate sharing the built-out idea with the group. Senior leadership ultimately chose a few of the ideas to advance, reporting back to the group why each idea was or wasn’t selected.

Sometime later, we followed up with the client to see how things were progressing. Not only was the ideation team more satisfied with the process, but the new projects that had come out of the session were generating real excitement organization-wide.

To recap, keep these four points in mind for more productive ideation:

1. Bad brainstorming is common but quite avoidable. The key to generating great ideas is following a structured process designed to maximize context sensitivity, creativity, and ruthless prioritization. The best ideation sessions reduce the temptation to go after the low-hanging fruit, instead encouraging people to dig for more innovative ideas. They eliminate the pressures for participants to please their bosses, and they ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate. By adding structure and guiding the discussion around important topics, ideation can be not just exciting but also productive.

2. Bad brainstorming sessions occur when only a few people participate, shouting out easy ideas to impress others. Avoid anchoring the discussion around those early, unoriginal ideas. Give everyone a chance to quietly reflect and ideate.

3. The best ideation experiences follow an eight-step process that involves level setting, reflection and ideation, collaboration, organization, discussion, build-out, evaluation, and follow-up. Start by getting everyone on the same page about why you’re there and how ideas will be evaluated. Then provide structured questions, and encourage teams to fully build out their ideas.

4. Whether you’re coming to the table with ideas you’ve already thought up or you’re leaving an ideation session with loads of new ideas, it’s important to critically vet those ideas. Beyond looking at whether those ideas are right for the business, use the Jobs Atlas to think about how your ideas reflect customer needs and circumstances.

More of this approach is featured in my new book JOBS TO BE DONE: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation.

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A recent study cited in the New York Times found that one of the surprising ways for people to increase their happiness is to buy more time by paying for personal services, like taking a cab, ordering takeout meals, or hiring a housekeeper. When people can take their least-liked tasks off of their to-do lists, they see a big increase in happiness that is worth the tradeoff in terms of money. We’ve all experienced the happiness that comes from ordering takeout at the end of a long day or coming home to a clean house or a clean hotel room that was tidied up by hired housekeeping help, instead of having to do it ourselves. But the same concept of “buying time” in our personal lives can also apply to your business. If you’re a business owner, you need to look for opportunities to invest in business outsourcing.

Here are a few reasons why outsourcing and sub-contracting makes sense, and can make small business owners happier:

Time is Money: There’s an old saying that “time is money,” and this is especially true when you consider the value of your time as a business owner. What is the value of an hour of your time? Consider your annual income divided by the number of hours that you work – consider as well the full value of your company, the employees who depend on you, and everything else that makes up the full productive output of your business. Let’s say that a value of an hour of your time – at a conservative estimate – is $100. Isn’t it worth hiring someone else to do your laundry, deliver your groceries, or otherwise help lighten your workload at work or at home?

Do What You Do Best: Lots of business owners pride themselves on being hands-on managers who fulfill every job description within the company, as needed – from CEO to janitor. It’s great to have a hands-on view of your business’s operations. But the downside is, sometimes if you have a tendency to micro-manage or a reluctance to delegate, you will spend too much time doing “little” jobs that take you away from the big picture of your business. Outsourcing lets you focus more on doing the most important managerial functions that “only” you can do as the business owner. Don’t get bogged down in minutiae – look for ways to outsource your less-essential tasks so you can be productive at a higher level.

Make More Money: The best part of business outsourcing is that it doesn’t just save time – it helps you make more money! Ideally, if you’re choosing great partners to outsource your business functions to, they will help you be more productive, more profitable, and more inspired. Business owners don’t outsource just to save time or gain some convenience; they do it so they can work with specialists and experts who can bring new insights and new opportunities to the business. Outsourcing isn’t always about cost cutting or watching the bottom line – it should help you boost your top line revenues as well.

Just because you’re a small business owner doesn’t mean you’re in it alone. Don’t feel like you’re supposed to be so independent and all-knowing that you have to do everything yourself. The most successful business owners know how to delegate, how to break down their company’s operations into smaller tasks, and how to outsource the grunt work while freeing up their time and mental space to tackle the company’s highest-level strategic challenges. Outsourcing isn’t just for home anymore; it can help make your business life much happier too.

Many people — especially young people — avoid the stock market because they fear risk.

But that fear may be misplaced, according to a recent investment risk analysis performed by personal finance website NerdWallet.

Using a common risk assessment tool — called a Monte Carlo simulation — NerdWallet ran 10,000 possible outcomes for investors, based on historical S&P 500 and Treasury returns, and the volatility (riskiness) of those returns.

The results?

A 25-year-old earning a starting salary of $40,456 (adjusted annually for inflation) and saving 15% each year has over a 99% chance of maintaining at least their initial investment — the same as a traditional savings account — over 40 years.

Investors also had a 95% chance of earning nearly three times their initial investment, while traditional savers had less than a 3% chance.

Not one of the 10,000 simulations resulted in a stock market investor losing their initial investment.

"This analysis shows that the effects of even significant downturns can be smoothed out by a long-term investment strategy, if the investor is willing to stay the course,"Arielle O'Shea, investing and retirement specialist at NerdWallet, told Business Insider.

Given the potential opportunity cost associated with avoiding the stock market — which could be as much as $3.3 million over 40 years, according to NerdWallet — as well as the benefits of compound interest over four decades, the bigger risk may be not investing at all.

But the tide may be turning. According a survey from Legg Mason, 78% of millennial investors plan to take on more risk this year. And nearly a third say they are moving their cash into investments, according to a quarterly investment survey from E-Trade.

And while NerdWallet emphasizes that past market performance doesn't guarantee you'll earn the average historical return of 10% in the future, the value of investing in stocks over a long period of time is still significant.

When you invest in your 20s, no matter the amount, two things happen: you take advantage of compound interest and your investments have time to bounce back from downturns in the market.

It's important to note that the outcomes of NerdWallet's simulation are dependent on diversification of stocks, including the type of mutual funds, like low-cost index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), offered in a 401(k) or IRA. The figures were not adjusted for inflation, but did account for a 0.70% annual investment fee.

"A lot of young investors have grown up in market downturns, which can scare them out of investing in the market," O'Shea said. "But these are compelling odds, and they should give investors peace of mind — if they're willing to stay invested and ride out any waves."

SEE ALSO: Where you put your savings in your 20s could make a difference of as much as $3 million by retirement

DON'T MISS: There are 3 things to understand about investing if you want to make money in the stock market

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“As the value goes up, heads start to swivel and sceptics begin to soften. Starting a new currency is easy, anyone can do it. The trick is getting people to accept it, because it is their use that gives the “money” value.” – Adam B. Levine

CryptoCurrencies such as Bitcoin readily make global headlines for various reasons. One of the reasons is the digital currency’s enigma, especially around its concept and how it is structured. The second reason is that, although it is a volatile digital currency, its value is high at the moment; however, there is no knowing what the currency will do in the short-term.

Bitcoin pricing: A case study

The advantages of using a case study or a practical example to illustrate a point has clear advantages. Ergo, it is easy to state that the Bitcoin price is volatile, but adding a concrete example adds weight to the topic. Therefore, here is a simplified study of the highs and lows that the Bitcoin price reached over the last year or so:

The Bitcoin price volatility can be seen by looking at its trading prices from the second half of 2016 until today (26 June 2017). It started off at around $650 to 1 Bitcoin in July 2017. It then had a strong run in latter half of 2016, reaching highs of $1,153.86 on 5 January 2017. However, seven days (12 January 2017) later it dropped to lows of $766.53. It started climbing again, and it is currently sitting at around the $2505 mark.

Bitcoin investments: The risks versus the rewards

The case study mentioned above clearly shows the volatility in the Bitcoin price; Ergo, it is important for all traders to plan their investment strategies accordingly.

Anthony Di Maggio, a Senior FX Analyst at Stern Options, added weight to this argument when he was quoted in a FxPips.com article titled “Bitcoin’s Steep Price Drop is Harsh Reminder of Bitcoin’s Riskiness” as saying that “while the returns potential for holding bitcoin is very high, investors should be very clear about the fact that they can also lose half their money within a short period… Investors need to be aware that when putting money into Bitcoin they will need to tolerate massive price swings…. If investors want to invest in bitcoin, they should only allocate a small part of their overall portfolio to the cryptocurrency and put the rest into more mature asset classes, such as stocks and bonds.”

There is no doubt that investing in Bitcoin looks very attractive at the moment. Furthermore, it is made even more appealing by reading online articles on sites such as the Telegraph.co.uk that occasionally run with headlines about a high school dropout (Erik Finman) who bought $1000 worth of Bitcoins in 2011 at between 3 US cents (January 2011) and $4.74 (December 2011) per Bitcoin. The article details his investment successes and what he plans to do with his life now that he is a millionaire; however, the takeaway point for us is that his investment is worth over $1.09 million (at the current rate of $2700 to one Bitcoin).

The extremely high risks linked with investing in cryptocurrencies cannot be emphasised enough. On paper, Finman is a USD millionaire. Additionally, if he trades his Bitcoins for dollars, he will more than likely have over $1 million in the bank (depending on the Bitcoin price at the time). Moreover, because the rate is very high at the moment, and there is every indication that it will continue to increase, it makes sense that there is a strong attraction for Finman (and others) to increase the size of their Bitcoin investments.

Final Words: Personal investment goals versus risk management

However, based on the historical volatility of the cryptocurrency, the question that needs to be asked and answered, is what happens if the price were to drop sharply in a short space of time? In the short- to medium-term, investors are likely to lose large sums of money. However, as a long-term investment, and once again, looking at the historical price movement data, the price should recover and continue to increase.

By way of closing, the simple answer to the question of whether investing in Bitcoins is a good idea, it depends on each investor’s risk profile, experience, as well as his investment goals.

What was your childhood dream job when you grew up? Actress? Singer? Today, the answer for a bulk of teenage girls and boys is probably an influencer. Fame, popularity, and an overload of free stuff is guaranteed, as the Instagram postings of Zoella, Chiara Ferragni, and Ohhcouture suggest. But what’s even more alluring: Their salaries are mind-blowing! And so is the ROI for brands!

Hopper recently published the Instagram Rich List 2017 and revealed which influencers earn best in the Instagram universe. With the help of the InfluencerDB software, we compared HopperIQ’s results with the media value per post of the high earners to evaluate the ROI (Return On Investment) for brands collaborating with the influencers. Is it worth it?

HUDA KATTAN (20.8M)

Dubai based beauty mogul Huda Kattan built up a beauty empire from scratch after quitting a career in finance. Well-known for her vast collection of false lashes, the artist expands her same-named brand day by day.

Pricing per post: $18,000

Media value per post: $92,576

ROI: 5.1 times

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CAMERON DALLAS (20.1M)

 

Californian actor Cameron Dallas initially became famous on Vine and YouTube and has come a long way since then. By now, he has his own Netflix show and cooperates with high-class brands like Dolce & Gabbana.

Pricing per post: $17,000

Media value per post: $100,959

ROI: 5.9 times

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JEN SELTER (11.4M)

American fitness model Jen Selter is the third in this list. She gained popularity due to putting her curves on display via Instagram and has her own fitness program today.

Pricing per post: $15,000

Media value per post: $56,909

ROI: 3.8 times

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ZOELLA (11.1M)

Zoe Sugg is one of Britain’s most influential social media stars. She started on YouTube with the ever popular ‘Favorites’ videos, launched her own beauty and home décor lines, Zoella Beauty and Zoella Lifestyle, and published three books in the meantime.

Pricing per post: $14,000

Media value per post: $55,619

ROI: 3.9 times

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NASH GRIER (10.2M)

Nineteen-year-old Nash started his career on Vine and later released mobile games and social media apps. With 10.2 million followers on Instagram as well as 4.8 million subscribers on YouTube, he managed to assemble a huge audience during his two-year career so far. For his loyal fan base, he offers a collection of shirts and sweaters on his website.

Pricing per post: $13,000

Media value per post: $51,008

ROI: 3.9 times

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CHIARA FERRAGNI (10M)

Chiara was born in Italy and became famous for her blog The Blonde Salad which revolves around fashion and beauty advice. Although she initially studied law, she soon dedicated herself to full-time blogging.

Today, Chiara is one of the most well-known social media personalities in fashion and works with high-class brands like Guess, Chanel, and Christian Dior. In 2015, Chiara made it onto Forbes’ ’30 Under 30: Art & Style’ list.

Pricing per post: $12,000

Media value per post: $50,075

ROI: 4.2 times

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JULIE SARINANA (4.6M)

In 2009, Californian girl Julie founded her blog Sincerely, Jules as a creative outlet, but the blog quickly turned into a highly successful and popular source of fashion inspiration for women all over the world.

Her laid back outfit posts and incredible travel photographs enrich both her blog and her Instagram channel, which assembles more than 4.6 million international followers today.

Pricing per post: $10,000

Media value per post: $22,013

ROI: 2.2 times

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AIMEE SONG (4.6M)

Aimee Song’s world revolves around fashion and interior design. Her blog Song of Style as well as her same-named Instagram channel feature outfit shots, travel inspiration, and home décor. In 2016, Aimee was included in Forbes’ ’30 Under 30: Art & Style’ list.

Pricing per post: $9,000

Media value per post: $21,795

ROI: 2.4 times

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DANIELLE BERNSTEIN (1.7M)

Danielle founded her blog We Wore What in 2010 to inspire her followers regarding fashion, but soon evolved into interior design and menswear as well. Today, she owns two fashion brands and was featured on Forbes’ 2017 ’30 Under 30: Art & Style’ list.

Pricing per post: $7,000

Media value per post: $7,768

ROI: 1.1 times

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LIZ ESWEIN (1.3M)

Never heard of Liz Eswein? Well, that’s your loss! Her Instagram channel goes by the name @newyorkcity and is so popular today that Liz herself was even titled the most influential person on Instagram!

In contrast to the other high-earning influencers who made this list, Liz does not appear very frequently on her channel. Instead, the account focuses on pictures of New York City and its many facets.

Pricing per post: $6,000

Media value per post: $6,029

ROI: 1.0 times

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THE TAKEAWAY

Our calculation shows that when companies pay more money for bigger influencers, the returns from these influencers increase at a much higher rate than they do for smaller influencers.

The examples of Jen Selter and Cameron Dallas illustrate this scenario perfectly: Cameron almost doubles Jen’s reach (20.1 million followers vs. 11.4 million followers), his pricing is not much higher than Jen’s (he charges only 12% more) but the ROI for companies working with him is 44% higher compared to Jen’s ROI.

Thus, companies should take the pricing and the media value of channels into consideration when identifying influencers for cooperations. These numbers, as well as the follower numbers, should be compared to see which influencers have the best value for money and create the best ROI for your brand.

Keep in mind, though: There are other factors than pure numbers which impact the pricing of an influencer as well as the ROI for companies. If an influencer is a perfect fit for your brand but the ROI is not ideal, the influencer might still create high value for you by raising awareness about your brand and building strong connections between you and your potential customers.

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Published originally on InfluencerDB | Influencer Marketing For Professionals

For a freelancer, especially one new to the field, it can be daunting to figure out what you need in order to have a successful business. One of the most common tasks that people forget to do is having a invoice system in order to process your orders. It’s easy to overlook, but without a proper invoice option, you’ll never get paid for the services rendered.

The only problem is, there are so many choices out there. How do you know which one is the best for you? Listed below are a few of the highest recommended options that might be your next invoice system.

1. Due

Due is one of the best choices for creating and sending out professional invoices. It offers a wide variety of benefits, including fast and reliable services that will generate your invoices in no time at all. Using Due will help you create invoices, capture expenses and keep track of credit card processing and money transfers with easy to use tools. If you need to process payments though, they do charge a flat rate of 2.8 percent on any invoices paid with a credit card.

2. Housecall Pro

If you’re looking for a reliable system that will help your business run quickly and smoothly, Housecall Pro would be the one. It allows you to forego paperwork in favor of digital automation. It also offers a lot of features including job scheduling, payment processing, automated receipts and invoices, company chat and customer notifications. The prices begin at $39 a month and rise according to whichever plan you choose.

3. FreshBooks

One of the more popular softwares on the market, Freshbooks provides buyers with multiple features that offer high value for your money. Their platform is one of the easiest to use with a smooth interface that helps you quickly figure out what you need to do. Their 24/7 support team, which many competitors do not have, will assist with any problems or questions that may arise. Freshbooks offers a 30-day free trial, but afterwards, plans start at $19.95 a month.

4. Invoicera

As a program with over 2 million customers, it’s no wonder that Invoicera makes our list as one the best choices. A unique benefit it offers customers is providing features for different-sized businesses. So whether you’re a freelancer or an enterprise-size company, Invoicera has a track tailored for you. The pricing for Invoicera starts at $19.95 a month, but there is a free plan for subscribers with fewer than three clients.

5. BillGrid

A clean and easy interface is what you’ll get if you choose BillGrid. This program comes with features that allows you to customize invoices with logos and designs with ease. Automated email notifications enable you to delegate late payment reminders to BillGrid, and their customizable templates prove BillGrid is a heavily underrated competitor. The pricing for BillGrid starts at $20 per month. However, additional users can be added on for as little as $5 a month.

6. Hiveage

Hiveage, once known as CurdBee, is a program that is specifically tailored to the needs of the smaller business owner. Besides the features mentioned earlier in other programs, Hiveage also sends you detailed reports and enables you to track your time, thus giving you the power to manage multiple users and businesses. Hiveage is a free to use program. But if you wish for something a bit extra with your plan, they start at $6.95 a month.

7. BillingOrchard

What BillingOrchard offers is a rather simple invoicing tool that will help you get what you need in a respectable amount of time. The HTML invoice that they include allows the customers to pay directly from email without the need to open any invoice attachments. Plans start at around $29.00 a month depending on your needs.

8. Xero

With offices based in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand, there’s no question why Xero has such a high customer rate and and a spot on this list. Their dashboard shows real-time cash flow as the customers are billed and their payments are received. Xero gives you a 30-month trial and then afterwards, subscriptions start at about $19 per month to issue five invoices and record five bills.

9. M-Tech Digital

This online billing software includes tools such as appointment calendar, customer database, invoice tracking and project management. M-Tech Digital does offer desktop PC software but the digital service offers more features at a lower price. If you’re interested in this software, the prices start at $10 and can range up to $40 a month for additional features.

10. Invoiceberry

The unique quality this software boasts is support for over 200 currencies and multiple languages. Invoiceberry does not have add-ons such as project management or inventory management, but they do offer an easy and simple invoice program for beginners at no cost. They have a free plan that works with up to three customers and one user. But if you’re looking for more, the plans start at $15.

The new cottage industry that has sprung to life on the social channels are self-loathing sales improvement experts.

These folks talk down to you, suggest that you are terrible at selling, and suggest that the vast majority of salespeople can’t sell and have everything backwards. They spend their time publishing the mishaps and poor attempts some salespeople make, suggesting that somehow the poor SDR is to blame for the poor approach and not their manager.

This new crop of commentators on all things sales will tell you that buyers now have all of the power in the relationship between buyer and seller and that the best that you can hope for is mercy when they abuse you, misunderstanding the very statistics they cite as evidence. They also tell you that your job is practically gone now, due to automation.

Let’s set the record straight.

The number of salespeople who make their quota has been relatively stable for a long time. But like all statistics, who knows what makes sense? Were half of those statistics the result of sales leaders and entrepreneurs believing that requiring a 50 percent increase in sales was going to be achieved because they mandated it and called it quota?

The United States economy is some number North of 19.2 billion dollars, and that is the highest number in history. Someone, somewhere, must be selling something with a fair bit of success.

Are there terrible salespeople? Sure there are. But no more as a percentage than terrible doctors, lawyers, tattoo artists, and barbers.

The Internet provides buyers with information. That is a factor when it comes to selling effectively. But the Internet provides you with information, not wisdom. It doesn’t provide you with the experience to understand how to make complicated decisions. The Internet moved information closer to the person who needs it, but it has not eliminated the need for help understanding how to evaluate strategic, expensive, and risky decisions. And it doesn’t tell you anything about who you should trust as a partner, or how well you do working together.

Artificial intelligence and automation are factors when it comes to the future of every job. If a robot can perform complicated surgeries, then nothing is off limits. But not today. And not tomorrow either.

I promise you are not as bad as this new crop of self-loathing sales experts suggest you are. Quite to the contrary, you are far and away better than the generations that have come before, being better trained, better developed, and better coached than salespeople were in the past. And, you are going to be able to make a living selling for a long time into the future, in some form or fashion.

The post You Aren’t That Bad, and It Isn’t Over appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Raza Mirza knows he could earn at least US$40,000 more a year south of the border.

The high-tech engineer, who was recruited to Vancouver from Pakistan in 2008, has watched many of his foreign-born colleagues grab their first high-tech jobs in Metro Vancouver.

But then, as soon as they can navigate the more difficult migration process into the U.S., many have moved to cities like San Francisco, Dallas and Seattle.

For a variety of reasons, Mirza is one of the foreign-born workers who intend to put down roots in Canada. He says he has “immensely benefited” from making the relatively easy immigration transition to B.C.

Mirza is one player in a complex global competition for high-tech talent, which has turned into a political and corporate tug of war.

It’s a battle that sometimes pits North American companies that seek foreign labour against homegrown Americans and Canadians who yearn for more access to computer training.

Metro Vancouver’s high-tech companies are growing rapidly in large part because they hire a host of foreign-born nationals and because, even with the city’s extreme housing costs, they are able to get away with offering significantly lower wages compared to U.S. companies.

CBRE Labor Analytics reports that Metro Vancouver and Toronto pay its software engineers, who are considered to be of high quality, average annual salaries of about US$63,000.

That compares to US$105,000 on average a year in cities such as Dallas, Columbus and Baltimore — and more than US$125,000 in San Francisco and Seattle, the latter just a few hours drive south of Vancouver. (See chart at bottom.)

Related

• Douglas Todd: Techno-immigrants fuel Vancouver's high-tech sector
• Why immigrant students prevail at Canadian universities
• In rental crisis, foreign students add to pressure

Metro Vancouver’s high-tech sector has expanded at the same time Democratic and Republican administrations in the U.S. have been making it difficult for foreign high-tech migrants to work south of the border.

While many transnational workers dream of climbing the high-tech ladder in the U.S., that country’s politicians are pressuring American companies to train, hire and pay more to domestic Americans to do wide-ranging computer operations.

American high-tech companies have been pushing hard in the opposite direction, however.

They want to liberalize U.S. immigration law and open the country’s doors wider to immigrants and foreign students, particularly those from low-wage countries.

Microsoft first recruited Mirza, 32, to Vancouver directly from his homeland of Pakistan. He now works as a software engineer at Move in Richmond.

Since Mirza wants to live and work in Metro Vancouver with his wife and child, and looks forward to the city expanding as a high-tech hub, one of his missions is to encourage politicians to find ways to cool the city’s frenzied real estate market.

To make housing more affordable, Mirza specifically seeks legislation that would discourage real-estate purchases by offshore speculators who don’t pay significant income taxes in Canada.

Who is getting hired in Metro Vancouver, which some enthusiasts call Silicon Valley North?

They’re referring to the giant high-tech region known as Silicon Valley, which surrounds San Francisco.

Metro Vancouver houses major high-tech satellites of U.S.-based companies, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Electronic Arts. As well it’s home to Hootsuite, Slack, Avigilon, Vision Critical and more.

Simon Fraser University’s Karl Froschauer and the University of Calgary’s Lloyd Wong have discovered that Metro Vancouver’s high-tech companies assertively look abroad for workers, mostly from Asia, especially China.

High-tech companies do so, the professors say in a report, “because they spend a very small fraction of their salary budget on training and because B.C. universities produce relatively few graduates in the technology field.”

One cohort of workers often hired in Metro’s high-tech circles, says Mirza, are international students who “come here to study and get the work permit that goes with it. A lot are Asian, while others are from Latin America.”

In addition, Mirza said, Metro Vancouver’s high-tech companies tend to hire the children of immigrant parents, or more commonly young immigrants who came to Canada with their families when they were children.

“It’s partly a cultural phenomenon,” says Mirza. “Asian parents want their kids to be engineers or in high-tech fields. We’re not really big on the liberal arts.”

The Microsoft Corporation serves as a prime example of the industry’s migration strategy in regards to Canada and Metro Vancouver.

The Seattle-based company, which has 114,000 worldwide employees, frequently lobbies politicians to ease U.S. migration policies, at the same time it funds research by scholars who tend to endorse the mobility of labour.

One high-tech CEO in Vancouver told Froschauer and Wong that the main reason Microsoft opened a branch in the city is Canada’s easier immigration rules.

Former B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark also assisted in luring Microsoft to Vancouver, by offering it a labour-market exemption.

Despite Clark promising during the 2017 election to create more high-tech jobs for locals, her exemption lets Microsoft bring in foreign workers without having to conduct a labour market impact assessment to see if there is a Canadian to fill the job.

Even though Mirza believes Metro Vancouver’s universities and colleges don’t produce enough local graduates to satisfy the city’s high-tech sector, it doesn’t stop many of his trans-national colleagues from wanting to leave for the U.S., especially Seattle and California.

Many are taking advantage of a U.S. law, he says, that allows foreign nationals who work for one year for an American satellite company to get an inter-company transfer to the U.S.

Although Mirza is grateful to be experiencing the better pay and freedom of speech that comes from working in North America, he acknowledges the downside of Canada’s approach is a “brain drain” on developing countries.

“It’s a tricky situation. It’s true that (Canada’s) immigration policy doesn’t help the people of the countries that often educate high-tech workers. But at least many of us send remittances back home.”

Since he’s committing to Canada and its high-tech sector, though, Mirza’s key focus is on struggling for more affordable housing in Metro Vancouver, which is far more costly than almost any U.S. city.

In addition to extending the 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers of residential real estate in Metro Vancouver, he thinks politicians should lend a hand to locals who pay income taxes in Canada.

“I think,” he said, “governments should be providing housing incentives to newcomers and others who actually want to live, work and raise families here.”

dtodd@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/douglastodd

 

 

Episode 72 of Landscape Digital Show reveals the connection between surfing and personal branding that instantly influences buyers and outcomes.

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In all walks of life, people are most admired not for what they have achieved but how they went about it doing it.

How people get things done in life used to be known as reputation management, but now that we all manage our own media it is best described as personal branding.

A Harvard Business Review author observed that all surfers end their ride in exactly the same way: They fall into the water. It doesn’t matter if that ride was an epic success or dramatic defeat; the outcome is the same.

This is why what happens next matters most. Does he or she head back into the surf or pack it in for the day? I imagine that is something surfers talk about that defines their personal brands, who are the risk-takers and who are not.

Evaluating outcomes and taking action to create something better is what life and business are all about.

People admire winners, but history proves we are especially interested in the path they chose to get there.

As an entrepreneur, this is your personal brand, and it’s never been more important for attracting the opportunities you desire for your business and your life.

Celebrate Endings That Create New Outcomes

Like so many other practices, surfing is a series of events. Knowing they all come to an end makes it that much easier to get back up and do it again in the quest for the perfect ride.

The truth is the perfect ride probably doesn’t exist for surfing or any other profession. Whether it does or doesn’t, the question that arises is always going to be the same.

Now what?

By definition, winning is an ending. It’s an event or outcome that had a beginning and now it’s over.

Now what? Were you a gracious winner that acknowledged your team? Your current customers want to know. More important is that it shapes your personal brand for anyone that may be watching, and these days that audience is as large as the Internet.

Were you a gracious winner that acknowledged your team? Your current customers want to know. More important is that it shapes your personal brand for anyone that may be watching, and these days that audience is as large as the Internet.

What happens off stage matters as much and probably more than what happens when the spotlights are bright, because almost everybody can be good when they others are watching. Then there is that uncomfortable gap before the next event when we as human beings have all kinds of feelings

What happens in those gaps between events influences buyers more than we care to admit because that’s when your true character is revealed.

This is why it is vitally important to close the gap by celebrating the wins and the losses, and then taking action to create the next new one.

Your Brand Story Lives Between Wins and Losses

Have you ever noticed that when people win too often their methods and practices are scrutinized and sometimes criticized? This is one reason to publicly celebrate your losses just as much as your wins to humanize your personal brand.

If you are an introvert like me it can feel like work to live your life out loud on social media. But the truth is if you are not telling your story people will make assumptions based on what they think they know.

It’s fair to say that the term personal branding has business connotations, but it’s much more than that. Your personal brand impacts your success in life because it communicates who you are and what you care about, which of course either attracts or rejects people with similar interests and values.

The story of you is your personal brand and the easiest way to give your audience of fans, friends, and followers a glimpse into the authentic you is to document what’s happening in your world.

Video may be the best way to do this because it’s pretty hard to not be yourself in front of the camera. Just be mindful that it’s not so much what you have to say but how you say it that people will notice and remember.

Make no mistake that being your best self is a performance. After all, being yourself is typically being who you think people want you to be in the role you find yourself. You will have to find that balance for yourself.

You will have to find the balance that’s right for you.

Good luck.

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to plan your personal brand just like a celebrity because it deserves that attention.

Determine the qualities that best represent who you are as a person because that personal brand is what will attract the right people to your business for years to come.

The playbook concept for bringing together marketing and sales teams has become increasingly popular. When conceived and used correctly, playbooks can align the efforts from marketing, sales, product development, and customer service to provide a consistent voice to the buyer. They are also inherently efficient, providing a ready central source of the information and guidance that sales and service teams need. Unfortunately, not all playbooks are conceived, structured, and used correctly, and thus some wind up providing neither consistency nor efficiency.

If you are considering a playbook to improve sales messaging―the specifics of what salespeople ask, say, and show with meeting with customers―then I recommend your team begin with a clear understanding of what a good playbook is and is not.

Good Playbooks Are Not a Library of Sales Collateral

Most sales teams want access to updated, attractive, and engaging material to make their jobs easier. Marketing teams are happy to oblige with sales collateral that follows the overall brand message. Yet it is often the case that sales and service teams simply don’t use much of the collateral material prepared by the marketing team. What’s the problem?

The difficulties can arise when sales people aren’t sure where relevant collateral material is stored, what has been updated, and what they should use in different situations. When the sales teams don’t know where to find needed materials or what they can trust, they then will tend to either ignore the collateral or try to modify it in some way. The results show up as low usage rates or inconsistency in what is shown, shared, and talked about with customers and prospects.

One pattern of response to this issue is to create a library or repository for all of the existing sales collateral, toss in the content, and call the finished product a playbook. That does solve one issue (the sales team knowing where to locate things), but it does not provide any guidance to the users. In fact, this improper use of the playbook concept can make the inconsistency issue worse.

Playbooks Are Not a Long List of Product or Service Features

For companies with an extensive product or service portfolio or solutions which are technically complex, one of the greatest challenges is to simplify the message. Salespeople must be able to explain the performance and benefits of their solutions to non-technical, business-level buyers. Salespeople also need a means to answer questions and make clear recommendations in the moment.

Some companies take the playbook approach to mean they should have one location for the volumes of product information, price sheets, and technical spec sheets. Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t make things simpler. Salespeople might default to overwhelming the prospective buyer with product information, options, and specifications. In a time when non-technical buyers in procurement, finance, and operations can drive the buying process, overwhelming prospects with features and functions will only hurt progress.

Playbooks Are a Guide for Specific Conversations

The concept of a playbook comes from the world of team sports, particularly football. Coaches use playbooks so all team members know exactly what to do in specific plays—which themselves are designed for specific goals (e.g., score quickly, convert a third down, or run time off the game clock). For sales messaging, playbook content might be organized around certain business initiatives on the part of the buyer, specific buying audiences and roles, or industries—omitting stale, irrelevant, or overly complicated content than is needed in that situation. That helps everyone stay focused and move faster.

The head coach of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, Sean Payton, once saw his team collapse from fourth to thirty-first in the league’s defensive rankings. He allowed his defensive coordinator, Rob Ryan, to keep his job but on the condition of simplifying his playbook. A 2015 ESPN story stated, “Ryan has been known throughout his career for having a complex scheme—sometimes for the better, but too often for the worse because of the kind of assignment and alignment errors that plagued the Saints last season.” Later, after the playbook was made simpler, one of the Saints defensive players said, “We’re playing faster, I’ll tell you that.”

Building Your Playbook

I have found two management decisions are key for creating playbooks that lead to better performance for marketing and sales teams. The first is to agree on the purpose of the playbook, including the specific behaviors and business outcomes that the playbook should help produce. The second key is to involve all of the relevant business units in creating and validating playbook content. That process begins with high performers from the sales and marketing teams but also might include colleagues in product development, sales, operations, communication, or research who are important to the selling process.

And remember—simple is better than complex, less is generally better than more, and fast is certainly better than slow.

Because starting a business isn’t difficult enough, life decided to throw in some distractions too along the way. I have listened to so many people rhyme off what they think they need to have or do to start a business. Most of them fail to realize that all you really need is a good old fashioned hard work, a dash of inspiration and a whole load of motivation. And don’t forget to ride out the rollercoaster too!

I often hear the same things repeatedly. Start-up owners getting bogged down in the details of things that ultimately are irrelevant to the success of their business. They forget that in the beginning, you have to work in your business as much as at it. And if you’re a sole trader, freelancer or one man band, then you are your business. It’s entire success or failure depends on you. I have lost count of the number of times that I’ve seen a great idea in the hands of the wrong person. Even the best business idea in the world will ultimately fail in the wrong hands. And often because those hands are distracted by the fluffy stuff on the outside taking them away from the actual business stuff on the inside.

So, are you like a business magpie being distracted by lots of shiny things? Or have you got some misapprehensions that are distracting you from actually starting that business you’ve been dreaming about for years?

Here are the top 5 business start-up distractions I see the most and why you need to avoid them

Money

Why do you think you need loads of money to start your business? List out what you think you need the money for. Then cut out the crap you really don’t need. A few weeks ago I was talking to someone who was obsessing over the cost of her stationery. The letterheads, envelopes, comp slips, pens, pencils, keyrings, notepads. All with her perfectly designed logo on. Great, yes, oh so pretty. But a big cost. When I asked her how many letters she envisaged herself sending in the first year of business, she couldn’t give me a figure. That’s because it was probably a big fat zero. A total waste of money.

There are many things you can bootstrap for your startup if funds are low. I think a lot of people are put off going into business because they get all these daft ideas about it costing them a fortune. It doesn’t have to be that way. Unless you must buy stock (consider drop shipping to start off with if that’s an option) or you need premises, then stop sending and consider the more cost effective alternatives.

Did you see my post about going freelance without going broke? Keep your money to cover your basic living expenses and bulk buying toilet rolls.

Do you really think that cheap plastic pen with your logo on is going to clinch you some business at the overpriced trade show you just bought a stand at? No! So why are you ordering 5000 of them?!

Unfinished Product

How do you know your product will sell? Or people will buy your service? Or online course? You don’t. Realistically you can’t put a figure on it starting out. So why spend all that time and probably money on getting it absolutely right before you’ve tested the water? This is why people build prototypes or order a really small amount of products to start with. Why they have webinars about their fantastic online course when they haven’t even written it yet. Don’t go all in on anything until you know you’ve got the sales lined up.

Likewise, don’t be afraid to bring your unfinished product to market. The feedback you get from a soft launch will enable you to fine-tune to what your buyers want and provide you with invaluable insights into your customers needs. By listening to your customers wants and needs you will deliver them a product or service they value more. More value equals more sales. Your short term profits may take a hit but at least you won’t be stuck with 10,000 units of something stuck in your garage forevermore that didn’t sell.

Hiring (the wrong) Staff

It’s easy to think, in the early days, that by Christmas you’ll have an office full of staff all calling you boss. The reality is, staff are probably going to be your biggest investment. So, don’t hire in haste. Do you really need someone to do the admin? Or answer the phone? Really? Or will they be just a glorified tea maker? It’s more cost effective for small business to outsource rather than hire in the early days. With the rising costs of pensions and national insurance, not to mention all the legislation, can your cash flow withstand the expense in the quieter periods? It’s not that easy or simple to just get rid of staff during the quiet months. But outsourcing to a freelancer means you only hire them (and pay them) when you need them.

If you really must hire someone then be cautious. Very cautious. One bad hire could give you one almighty headache. Make sure you are 100% confident in your new hire before letting them loose in your kingdom.

Office Space

Oh, the joys of sitting back in your big fancy office chair, surveying your beautiful, modern offices in the swanky end of town. But it’s just you. And you don’t get many visitors. So why do you need it?

Office space is a cost draining myth. You don’t always need it. Can you use a virtual office address instead and work from home? Or use a coworking space? Do you really need that fancy office? Or is it just an excuse to say you have a fancy office?

I know working from home may not always be the most practical thing or productive for that matter. But neither is committing to a large chunk of cash to pay in rent every month that you haven’t actually earnt yet. Start-ups be warned: don’t spend it until you’ve earned it. Could a little bit of furniture moving around at home or finally sorting out the spare room be a far more cost-effective alternative? I’m guessing yes. Especially if you took my advice of not hiring staff and using freelancers. They come with the added of bonus of having to sort out their own working space.

Dining Out

“Let’s do lunch” is just the best phrase to hear when somebody else is paying. A sniff of free food and I’m there. And chances are I don’t care what you’re trying to sell me. The free lunch isn’t going to convince me. So stop offering to buy lunch for every single potential prospect you encounter. You’re wasting money, you’ll get fat and spend your afternoons being unproductive. And you’ll be distracted by the amount of time you’ll be wasting chasing a potential client you think is going to sign on the dotted line just because you bought them lunch.

Save the free lunch for when the prospect is a client that’s paid a few invoices. It’s a reward then not a bribe or just a free lunch.

Things Which Distracted You

What things distracted you as a startup? What did you waste money on? If you could pass on one tip for startups to avoid, what would it be? Let me know in the comments below!

Cold emailing often reminds me of my favorite outdoor sport—fishing. As the daughter of a retired fish biologist, I’ve been fishing since I could barely walk.

To catch a lobster or hook a trout, you need two entirely different approaches: setting a trap or dangling a nightcrawler on a hook, respectively. Catching a bass? Make sure you have the correct bait for the season and don’t fish right after a storm, which is the worst time to catch bass.

Likewise, with email campaigns, there are many types of sales tactics to account for the wide variety of “bait,” or selling techniques, that appeal to different audiences. Are your potential buyers driven by a little fear or do they find motivation in success stories? Do they just want to see numbers?

You don’t want the wrong approach to ruin a perfectly good sales lead. With that in mind, here are some tips from the world of fishing that will help you send the right message to potential clients.

1. Know what bait to use.

Nightcrawlers may be the traditional bait for trout, but depending upon where and when you fish, you may have better luck with salmon eggs. That said, scented marshmallows are hugely popular in certain types of trout-fishing environments. Most of us wouldn’t have guessed that on our own—it’s the research prior to the fishing trip that lets us determine the bait.

That same premise holds true for email messaging. You can A/B test all day long, but if you haven’t done your research, you could waste a lot of time trying out techniques that aren’t remotely appropriate for the audience.

Start by identifying the buyer’s job, industry, and other basic intel. Even things like geographical location and company size matter. Then, consider which of your company’s benefits your potential clients respond to. Do enterprise-software companies really like statistics or are they more likely to read an email that quotes an “expert” influencer? Do managers at small companies want competitor news or does it paralyze them with fear?

2. A/B test the waters.

Maybe you have a theory that salmon really love gummy worms. (Believe it or not, people actually try this.) Intriguing as that idea sounds, there’s a high possibility that salmon don’t, in fact, respond well to candy, and so setting out in a boat with that as your only bait would put your whole fishing trip in jeopardy.

In the same way, don’t assume that all technology companies respond to statistics or that name-dropping celebrities is the best way to reach all C-level executives. Instead, test a few different kinds of “bait” to see what works. Rather than blast your entire list of contacts with a single approach, divide it into two samples and test different emails against each other.

For example, try one email that uses a fear approach against another that demonstrates value. Or test a qualitative example against a quantitative one. By examining the open and response rates to different email strategies, you can determine which approach works best for that particular type of buyer.

3. Pace yourself—patiently.

You never know when external factors might affect your sales emails. Perhaps you sent a cold email to someone who went on vacation but forgot to set an autoresponder. Don’t give up after a couple emails just because of the silence. Just as fishing often requires hours, if not days, of waiting, it may also take time and multiple emails to get a response to your sales emails. And if one approach doesn’t work, try a couple more. This is why having the right targeted approach and A/B testing are so important.

Once you know what works, you can use it to bring in an even bigger haul. Scale up: if you emailed 100 marketing directors and found that one approach worked, try it on 500 marketing directors, or 1,000. (Just be careful with scaling up your volume too fast so that you don’t harm your email deliverability.) You can also apply your learnings from the results of your email campaigns to other aspects of your business, like your website or blog, and use them to lure even more leads.

On a final note, be open to changing up your bait every now and then. New technologies and changing markets will inevitably lead to different sales techniques over time, and what’s seen as a best practice today might be antiquated in a year. Plan, and fish, accordingly.

As I have been promoting The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales, some who have seen the posts have decided, without reading anything about the book or the sample chapters, that this is a book on closing tactics, complete with tie downs, tricks, and self-oriented motives. They mistakenly assume that this is a book on closing, with each close being given a clever name, and using short phrases designed to help you in a battle with your client.

• They have suggested in their comments that there is no reason to close, that all one much do is serve the client and wait.
• They have replied to social posts that the salesperson should allow their prospective client to lead the process.
• Without knowing what’s in the book, they have decided that it is a self-oriented approach, and that it is something that they believe is self-oriented, smarmy, hard sell tactics.

None of these things could be further from the truth. But that said, those the comments are also terribly incorrect, and that is why I wrote this book in the first place.

Serve the Client and Don’t Wait to Be Asked

The idea that one should “never be closing” is a dangerous idea as it is practiced by many salespeople today. The idea that you should not ask for the commitment to buy before you have done the work necessary to do so is accurate. But the idea that you should wait for your client to decide for themselves while you wait patiently is poppycock.

Your prospective clients need someone that can help them through the process of change, moving from their present state to a better future state. They don’t need some milquetoast order-taker hanging around hoping that they ask to move forward. What they need now is someone who is a peer, trusted counsel, and who can earn the right to be a trusted advisor by advising them on what comes next, why it comes next, and how it is going to move their business forward.

Don’t Hope the Client Leads

There is probably not a more dangerous and debilitating idea when it comes to sales than allowing the client to lead the process. The underlying assumption here is that the client knows how to lead that process.

If your client has a process, it’s called a request for proposal, and there can’t be too many practices that destroy the value sales organizations are capable of creating, and not too many things that hurt the buying company’s results. The process is arm’s length, and the choice of provider is often so transactional that the buying company spends all of one hour in a conference room with the potential partner who is going to serve the organization.

Let’s check this. Does your client know that they need to make the commitment to collaborate with you and your team? Do they know that they need to bring in all of the people who are going to be affected by a decision to buy, including the obstacles? Do they have a process for making trade-offs and mitigating the problems that a new solution and a new partner are going to create? Do they believe they should be investing more in the outcomes they need, or does their “process” require reducing the investment in the strategic outcomes they need, as if better, faster, and cheaper is possible?

If your clients knew how to get the results they needed without you, they wouldn’t need you. If your competitors knew how to compel and lead the change they need, they’d be doing it right now. If you aren’t going to lead this process, then you are not playing for the role of trusted advisor; you are playing for something less than that, and something that doesn’t serve your clients.

Back to the book.

The Lost Art of Closing isn’t a book of closes with names, nor does it rely on tactics, tricks, or tie downs. What is inside the book is quite the opposite. It contains the 10 commitments you are likely to need as you help a prospective client change. The ideas are other-oriented, not self-oriented, and the underlying premise is one of serving the client with a process that helps them do what is necessary on their side.

The ideas and the example language is something that professional salespeople need now. It is a replacement for the closing techniques of yesteryear. There is nothing in the book that would give you pause or that would cause you to feel bad about what you are doing for and with your client. It does, however, require you to have the courage to push back and help your client have the difficult—but necessary—conversations to make real change inside their company, because that is what it takes to be a trusted advisor and a consultive salesperson.

 

The post Waiting for the Client to Decide What’s Next appeared first on The Sales Blog.

What percentage of your LinkedIn connections are in your target audience?

That's a question I've been asking the people who have taken advantage of my special $175, one-hour, one-on-one consultation in the last few months (see below for details). Here are the answers I get from the majority of the people:
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• I don't know
• Never thought about that
• Maybe 10 to 15 percent

That tells me most people aren't being very strategic in adding connections to their LinkedIn network and maybe need a little tuneup on how to strategically grow their network.
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Who should be in your network?

Let's start with this idea. Connections are the gas in your LinkedIn tank, and every time you connect with someone on LinkedIn, it affects the quality of your network—just like the quality of the gas you purchase affects how your car runs. In other words, not all connections are created equal.

Most people add connections haphazardly, but to be highly successful on LinkedIn it's important to develop a strategy for growing a dynamic network that will help you reach your most ambitious goals.

Everyone's situation is unique, but here are some general suggestions that will help you understand what types of people you should connect with to strengthen your network and help you enhance your brand, find a job, assist your favorite nonprofit, or grow your business.
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Who can help you enhance your personal brand?
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• People who have had similar career paths to yours
• Leaders in your industry associations
• Individuals who have large networks (LinkedIn or otherwise) concentrated in your region or industry
• People who work for some of the well-respected companies in your region and industry
  .

Who can help you find a new job or advance your career?
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• People who work in your industry and region
• People who work for companies you are interested in
• Recruiters who specialize in your industry
• Consultants and experts in your industry
• Human resources professionals who work at your target companies
  .

Who can help your favorite nonprofit thrive?
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• People who volunteer for or sit on boards of similar nonprofits
• Individuals who work at large corporations, foundations, etc. and tend to support nonprofits like yours
• People who are involved in groups that have large volunteer pools (e.g., religious organizations, schools, clubs, etc.)
• People who work for media outlets
  .

Who can help you generate sales leads, market your company's products and services, and grow your business?
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• Individuals who are the direct decision-makers for the purchase of your products and services
• People who are indirectly involved in the decision to purchase your products and services (strategic influencers or people from the company who weigh in on the decision)
• High-ranking officers at the companies that purchase your products and services, even if they're not the direct decision-makers
• Individuals who hang around with the people listed in the first two bullets (probably deliver similar services to the same purchasers)
• People who are recognized industry experts
• Leaders of your industry associations and/or people who manage industry events
• Individuals who are well networked in your region or industry
• Experts who provide educational content for the industry

If you strategically improve the quality of your LinkedIn network by connecting with the above-referenced people, you'll be better positioned to enhance your brand, find a job, assist your favorite nonprofit, or grow your business.

If you'd like to get my expert advice on your personal connection strategy and answers to your LinkedIn questions plus an in-depth critique of your LinkedIn profile, sign up for a one-hour one-on-one consultation with me for the significantly reduced rate of $175.

Book your personal session today at https://calendly.com/waynebreitbarth/special1on1linkedinconsult.

The post Is Your LinkedIn Network Made Up of the Right People? appeared first on Wayne Breitbarth.

Long gone are the days when we could store all our contacts in our rolodex.

Spreadsheets can be useful, but at some point, if you want to grow your business, you should centralize your contacts in a contact relationship management (CRM) solution.

If you’re like most people, you probably have contacts saved in multiple inboxes and spreadsheets. You likely struggle with syncing your contacts, hence the reason you have contacts scattered in different places.

You probably also spend too much time searching for contacts or finding the right contact information for those contacts. In addition, I’m almost certain you have duplicate contacts, multiple emails for the same contact, and don’t have any idea if the information is current.

As you can see, having contacts saved in multiple locations can present significant challenges! So, if you’re not using a CRM for small business, you need to start using one stat.

I’ll show you exactly why below…

A CRM is a great tool designed to help you centralize your contacts in one place, maintain accurate information, manage relationships with your prospects and customers, track data related to all of your interactions, and serves as a single source of truth.

Here’s why:

Data Integrity

Having accurate data is by far one of the biggest advantages of adopting a CRM.

Study after study shows that having bad data can significantly impair your business. Lost revenue, wasted time and resources, and poor customer service are all things that are commonly linked with bad data. The findings of a report on bad data from Harvard Business Review are staggering. They claim that bad data costs the U.S. $3 trillion per year.

So, how exactly does that astronomical figure relate to you? According to their findings, knowledge workers (aka your sales people) spend 50% of their time searching for the correct information, correcting information, and double-checking data.

Can you afford that?

CRM for small business will save you and your team crucial time and money by helping you with your data integrity in many ways.

For starters, you can centralize your contacts in one place and utilize a de-duping tool to merge and/or remove any duplicate contacts. This alone will save you time in the future. No more searching in three separate places for a contact or hitting Ctrl + F in your spreadsheet and coming up with three of the same contacts. These days, most CRMs even have a built-in feature that automatically de-dups and/or merges any duplicate contacts when you import contacts.

Secondly, you can adopt and implement data standards to ensure data quality and help with adoption rates across your team. Start by defining what data you want to capture and what you really need. Keep it simple. The less fields the better. Then develop a common data nomenclature within your organization. For example, spell out states vs. abbreviating them. This ensures everyone is on the same page on how data is entered and makes for accurate record keeping.

I’ve seen numerous CRMs and spreadsheets with data all over the place, states spelled out vs. abbreviated, first names and last names in the same column for some contacts but not for others…. One of the most awkward data scenarios I can remember was when a small business had been trying to maintain the contact information of clients’ spouses by cramming all sorts of random information into various columns.

Deciding on a data language doesn’t mean your team will adopt it, so assign somebody (or a group of people) to monitor the data so that your small business can track and measure the data quality. This will ensure that users adopt the norms, and ultimately ensure you have accurate data.

With some CRMs like Salesforce, you can even create rules that won’t allow you to enter a contact without completing all the required fields. For instance, when someone goes to enter a contact, they can’t save that contact record until they’ve entered a phone number and email. This can help you make sure you always have complete information on contacts. With Salesforce, you can also buildout a CRM architecture and workflow that not only scales with your company growth but also ensures you have complete records – no missing emails or phone numbers.

Manage relationships and sales processes

Another advantage of implementing a CRM is that it can help you manage your relationships by keeping contacts top of mind and help move prospects down your sales funnel.

This aspect of CRM for small business is very cut and dried.

Maintaining relationships

The purpose of a CRM is captured in its name: customer relationship management.

At its core, CRM is software designed to help maintain relationships with new and existing customers.

Most CRMs have built-in syncing features that capture all your email correspondence with contacts. Some even have the capability to use a third-party app that allows for call recording.

One of our CRM best practices is to utilize a “next contact date” field. By making this a field that must be completed anytime you update the record, you’ll ensure that you circle back to the contact. It could be 2 weeks or 3 months, depending on your last interaction and workflow. Regardless of when your next contact date falls, the point is that you’ll be sure to have one queued up.

Capturing your interactions is crucial. This practice can help you maintain and build stronger relationships with your customers and potential customers.

Often, high-performing executives and entrepreneurs don’t have time for data entry, which leads to lost opportunities where relationship management is concerned. In those instances, many professionals hire a virtual assistant from a managed service provider that offers virtual assistant services. While not everyone opts for this level of admin support from virtual assistants, those who do experience increased productivity and business growth.

Managing your sales cycle

By leveraging a CRM, you can easily keep track of where your prospects are in your sales process.

It’s as easy as using a drop-down field to identify what stage your prospect is in. This is a great way to categorize your prospects so you know where to focus your time.

CRMs typically come prepopulated with the specific stages of a sales pipeline, but most will allow you to customize fields to match your unique sales cycle.

Ultimately, leveraging a CRM can help with delivering your service and marketing efforts, and with selling your products to your customers in an organized, centralized, and systematic way.

Reporting

Your reports are only as good as your data, so make data integrity your top priority (as mentioned above).

Most CRMs are great for real-time reporting insights into sales and marketing campaigns, customer service support, and overall performance. Once your team is dialed in with your CRM best practices and processes, you should be able to leverage your CRM to provide your organization with insights that can help your organization grow.

When implementing a CRM reporting protocol, be sure to think about the information or questions you wish to answer. For example, you might want to have a report that identifies all prospects that are in your discovery stage? Or how many prospects a sales rep closed last month? Or what where your last quarter closed won prospects?

The important thing to remember is that you need to track the information you want to report on. Having analytical data and reports can provide your organization with key insights on your customers and team members that can allow you to grow your organization in the most cost and time effective ways.

Conclusion

Using a CRM for small business will help you maintain data quality, drive connectivity with your customers, optimize your sales process, and provide you with real-time reporting all in one place.

These CRM best practices are only the tip of the iceberg, and that is why all small businesses should leverage a CRM to save time, help streamline sales processes, and ultimately grow business.

Personalize your emails.

If you read the HubSpot Sales Blog frequently (or even infrequently), you’ve likely seen that advice. It’s a common theme on the blog.

After all, personalized messages add more value. They’re more compelling than generic email blasts. They treat the prospect like a human, not a name on a list.

But will personalizing your emails actually help you win more deals?

To find out if salespeople who invest the time in personalization get better results, a HubSpot engineering team analyzed the impact of personalization on reply rates.

Read on for the results.

How We Ran the Study

For the purposes of our study, an email was “personalized” if it was significantly different from the original template. We quantified this difference as the percentage of words changed from the sales email template to the sent version, coming up with a “text distance score” measure.

In other words, changing a couple words would be less impactful than adding a new paragraph or switching sentences around.

What We Found

Our research proved more personalization leads to higher response rates. That might not be so shocking, but we did notice two more surprising facts.

First, most of our customers aren’t taking advantage of benefits of personalization. Less than 20% of the template is changed for 80% of emails sent.

Second, personalization has diminishing returns. After you’ve altered 50% or more of your template, the impact on reply rate is negligible. That’s important to note, since changing roughly half of a template is a big time and energy investment.

You might be wondering if these results hold true for every relationship. After all, if you just got off the phone with a prospect, they’re probably much likelier to reply to your email than someone you’ve never spoken to before -- whether or not that email is personalized. To account for this, we ran the same analysis on outreach emails.

The results were nearly identical: Personalization drives more replies, up to a point (the same 50% mark).

How You Should Use This Data

Good news: We’ve built an email personalization score so that you can determine while you’re composing an email if you’ve hit the sweet spot between not enough personalization and too much. It’ll also factor in your previous interactions with a contact, meaning you’ll get different scores if you’re emailing prospects at different stages in your sales pipeline.

We’ll be rolling this tool out in the near future. In the meantime, you can check out these real-life examples of personalized emails.

Low Personalization:

Template:

Hi [name],

It was very nice to meet you at [event]. We didn't get a lot of time to chat, so let me know if you would be interested in getting together for coffee or a quick call to learn more about each other's businesses and how I can help. You can check out my calendar and find a time that works for you here.

Thanks,
[Salesperson]

Sent Email:

Hi Jane Doe,

It was very nice to meet you at [event]. We didn't get a lot of time to chat, so let me know if you would be interested in getting together for a 15-minute call to learn more about each other's businesses and how I can help. You can check out my calendar and find a time that works for you here.

Thanks,
[Salesperson]

Text Distance Score: 0.05882 (Roughly 5% of words changed, Corresponds to roughly a personalization score of 1 on a 1-5 scale)

Moderate Personalization:

Template:

Hi there, Team [Company name]!

I was wondering if you were looking for content writers for your blog and/or for white papers? If so, i'd love to help. I've been writing for startups for a while and have a small team helping me. I'd be happy to jump onto a phone call or video chat if you wanted to talk about it :) I hope you have fantastic rest of your day and thanks for the consideration!

- Mat
P.S. Check out my blog here.

Sent Email:

Hi there, Team [Company name]!

First off, congrats on the new venture, [prospect]! I wish you many successes. :) I was wondering if you were looking for content writers to start up a blog for you? If so, i'd love to help. I've been writing for startups for a while and have a small team helping me. I'd be happy to jump onto a phone call or video chat if you wanted to talk about it.

I hope you have fantastic rest of your day and thanks for the consideration!

- Mat
P.S. Check out my blog here.

Text Distance Score: 0.27160 (Roughly 27% of words changed, Corresponds to roughly a personalization score of 3)

Significant Personalization:

Template:

Hello [prospect],

I left you a voicemail this morning to follow up with you. I know you were interested in looking into [rep’s company]. I'm happy to speak with you to discuss this opportunity. Please let me know if there is a better time to reach you.

Thank you,
[Salesperson]

Sent Email:

Hello [prospect],

I'm following up with you to introduce myself. I am the newest team member at [company]. I would love to touch base with you to see if the timing is right for you now. We have had so much going on in the last few months that I'd love to share with you. Please let me know when is a good time for a call.

Thank you,
[Salesperson]

Text Distance Score: 0.861538 (Roughly 86% of words changed, Corresponds to roughly a personalization score of 5)

The bottom line: Personalize your emails, but don’t spend 25 minutes on a single message. Your prospects will get a more human experience, and you’ll get a response. Win-win.

The post The New Type Of Sales Lead Your Reps Will Be Fighting Over appeared first on Sales Hacker.

When I moved from traditional marketing to digital marketing at Wishpond, I couldn’t have imagined the complexity of what I was diving into.

Sometimes it feels like all us marketers do is try to fix what’s lacking. Once everything is set up, all we do is plug the holes.

In our product pages, our sales/checkout pages, pricing pages, free trial dropoff emails… The list goes on and on. And yet so many prospective customers (and free trialers) keeps slipping through the gaps.

The solution is marketing automation – a strategy which allows you to make your sales funnel as solid as you can, without constant attention and late nights trying to do it all manually.

But it’s intimidating.

This article breaks it all down into bite-sized pieces. I’ll outline five of the most dangerous “holes” in your sales funnel, and show you how to plug them with optimized email drip campaigns:

1. Winback Drip Campaign: Recapturing those customers who bought from you once and left. Or, in the case of software, people who used your service but left.
2. Upselling Drip Campaign: Turning those free-plan users or single buyers into premium plan holders or purchasers of something more valuable.
3. Subscriber Drip Campaign: Turning your blog subscribers into customers through intelligent email nurturing.
4. Billing Dropoff Drip Campaign: Emailing bounced leads (who visited your billing page but left) and encouraging them to convert.
5. Free Trial Onboarding Drip Campaign: Boosting the percentage of free trialers that become paid customers.

I’ll show you diagrams which outline the flow and triggers of these marketing automation campaigns, as well as break down exactly what content to include in the emails.

Winback Drip Campaign Example

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Drip Campaign Trigger:

This campaign is sent to people who canceled their plan or last purchased from your business more than six months ago. If they haven’t yet unsubscribed from receiving emails you have an opportunity to recapture them as customers. The goal of this campaign is to get them on a call.

Email #1:

Subject: Updates to the [Business Name] Platform/Service

What to Include: Introduce yourself, personally, and break down the biggest change that has been made since they left (you can do this by segmenting people who left before you updated your platform or service). Invite them for a call.

Email #1a:

Subject: Get 30% off your first [biggest change]

What to Include: This is the email which is sent/triggered only if your recipient clicked through on the previous email. You send it because you know they’re interested in whatever update you made. Include a discount for that specific addition or change to your service or platform.

Email #2:

Subject: Top Tips for [Strategy Related to your Business]

What to Include: This is an educational email designed to provide value beyond your service or platform. Relate it directly to something you do, however.

Email #2a:

Subject: Get 30% off [Product Related to the Strategy in Email #2]

What to Include: This is a promotional email only sent if recipients opened Email #2, sent because you know they’re interested in the subject of your promotion. They wouldn’t have opened email #2 otherwise.

Email #3 (Sales Email):

Subject: Do you have time to talk about changes to [Business Name’s] Platform/Service?

What to Include: Make this one super personal and short, but to the point. You’re trying to get this person on a one-on-one call in order to better understand why they left and to address their specific pain points.

Top Tips for This Drip Campaign Example

Send this drip campaign to people who last visited your site or last-bought more than 60 days ago. This way you’ll be able to ensure there’s enough time for significant changes to have occurred to your service or platform. If you hit them with an immediate winback campaign a day after they left, they won’t believe anything will have improved.

Upselling Drip Campaign Example

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Drip Campaign Trigger:

This is a campaign sent to your free plan holders (WordPress, perhaps), as well as people who have been on your Basic plan for more than 60 days. It’s often easier to upsell existing, happy customers than it is to get new ones. The goal of this campaign is a more expensive plan upgrade or more valuable purchase.

Email #1:

Subject: [Until July 31st]: Get 6 Months of Our Pro Plan for the Price of Basic

What to Include: This email is all about communicating the difference between the plan they’re currently on and what they could get with the more expensive plan, and then giving them an economic reason to move

Email #2:

Subject: How [Business Like Theirs] Achieved [Positive Result] with [Business Name Advanced Plan]

What to Include: This is a case study email with an embedded video (or sending people to a video via a link) from a company like the recipient’s. It shows people that they can get better results if they upgrade to a better plan.

Email #2a:

Subject: [Business Name] Found Success with our Pro Plan. Want to Talk about You?

What to Include: Only sent if the recipient clicked through on the case study video email above, this email is a demo prompt, which ties that previous case study to possible success the recipient could have.

Email #3:

Subject: 24-Hours Left to Upgrade your Plan (Save $588!)

What to Include: Very simply, this email is a final attempt to upsell people. Prompt an email reply or VIP demo to better communicate the difference between what they have and what they could.

Top Tips for This Drip Campaign Example

Where possible, use peer pressure and case studies when upselling. People respond far more to the success of others than they do to promised success from you.

Subscriber Drip Campaign Example

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Drip Campaign Trigger:

This drip campaign example triggers as soon as someone subscribes to your blog.This is an optional drip campaign, because (of course) you can simply send your blog subscribers your newsletter whenever you publish a new article.

However, we’ve started to drip our subscribers because it gives us a better chance of turning subscribers into customers in the early stages of the relationship. Also, dripping enables us to segment more effectively, as we can see what article they were reading when they chose to subscribe. This means we can send more content and frame our messaging around that subject.

What it looks like:

Email #1 & 2:

What to Include: The first two emails in this drip campaign are educational – related to what they were reading when they subscribed. Before we can get anywhere near a sales email, we need to send (at least) two educational, value-oriented emails.

Email #3 (Sales Email):

What to Include: This is your first sales email, so keep it chill. We’ve found success with framing this email as a “consultation” rather than a demo, as it feels like less commitment. Ask if your recipients want to jump on a call to discuss a strategy which relates to their interest.

Email #4, 5, 6 & 7:

What to Include: More educational emails,. You need to be providing overwhelming value to your subscribers so that when you do prompt a sales ask they feel that A) you know what you’re talking about and B) you have their best interests at heart and, also C) they’ve received enough context for the value of what you’re selling.

Email #8 (Sales Email):

What to Include: This is your second sales email, and you can go full-on with this one. Ask if they have time this week (test giving a specific day and time) to jump on a cal. If you like, add a follow-up email to be automatically sent the next day (if they haven’t responded) making sure they received the previous email.

Email #9 & 10:

What to Include: Again, educational emails. Keep them focused on your subscriber’s interest, but be sure you’re also communicating the value of your service. Consider sending case studies or including examples of a strategy which show screenshots of your platform/service.

Email #11 (Sales Email):

What to Include: Final sales email before this subscriber gets dropped into the general subscriber list and starts receiving non-automatic newsletters. My recommendation would be a discount or limited-time promotion alongside the demo prompt.

Billing Dropoff Drip Campaign Example

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Drip Campaign Trigger: This short set of emails is sent as soon as your prospective customers leave from your billing page without purchasing (this would also be the “abandoned cart” drip for ecommerce businesses). It’s a pageview trigger where they’ve seen your sales page and seen your billing page but not seeing your “Thank You for Purchasing” page.

Email #1:

Subject: “Forget Something?” (Ecommerce) or “Oops! Was there an error at our end?” (SaaS/B2B)

What to Include: A reason to return. As you can tell from the subject lines, these emails don’t assume that the person who dropped off your billing page did so intentionally, though of course 90% of the time it was completely intentional. This is so we don’t assume the reason (plus these lay the blame on someone other than the person who left). This email, though, should address the most likely reason they left (usually price) and either explain it or reduce it.

Email #2:

Subject: How [Business Like Theirs] Achieved [Positive Result] with [Your Business Plan/Product]

What to Include: This is a case study email with embedded video. It uses the success story of another business or customer to sell a reason to finish a purchase.

Email #3:

Subject: How [Your Business] Stacks Up Against the Competition

What to Include: This is the third and final email (though you could add a demo prompt if you wanted) and addresses the second-most-likely reason someone bounced from your billing page: they were shopping around and believe someone else may be better than you. So this email (and the whitepaper or “competitor comparison” page you send them to) needs to address why you’re the best.

Top Tips for This Drip Campaign Example

You should definitely retarget those people who dropped from your billing page while this drip campaign is sending. Retargeting (also called remarketing) ads only send to a specific segment of your website visitors – those who viewed specific pages. They allow you to target people with very specific copy (like “Return to [Your Company] and Finish Your Purchase!” and know with confidence that you’re addressing their experience.

Free Trial Onboarding Drip Campaign Example

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Drip Campaign Trigger:

This drip campaign is your onboarding strategy, designed to improve the chance of your free trialers completing their trial and purchasing. It’s triggered as soon as someone signs up for your free trial.

Email #1:

Subject: Welcome to [Your Business] Free Trial!

What to Include: This email is very much about introducing yourself and your brand. Focus on tone, here, and deliver value. We always prompt a demo in our welcome emails, links to our help content and any videos we might have to make using our platform as simple as possible.

Email #2:

Subject: How [Business Like Theirs] Achieved [Positive Result] With [Specific Part of your Platform or Service]

What to Include: This is a video case study, showing free trialers the success they can have if they choose a paid plan. Focus on a specific element of your platform the customer took advantage of.

Email #2a:

Subject: Want to talk about how your business can find the same success as [Case Study Business]?

What to Include: Only sent if they opened the previous email, this follow-up (prompting a call) is sent very soon after the second email, and includes something like “I’ve just seen that you checked out our case study from [business]. Would you want to schedule a time to talk about how it relates to your business specifically?”

Email #3:

Subject: How’s your free trial going?

What to Include: Prompt a conversation, whether over the phone or via email. If you start building a personal relationship with your free trialers they’ll be less likely to leave after their trial has completed.

Email #3a:

Subject: Did you want to talk?

What to Include: Only sent if the previous email was opened but not clicked-through on (or replied to), this short email prompts the call referenced in the previous email.

Top Tips for This Drip Campaign Example

Free trial onboarding is a bit of a challenge for me to recommend, as every business is different and every business has different resources. If you have enough staff to get every free trialer on a call, do so. If not, create awesome help content (particularly video) which shows the personal side of your business and drives a relationship.

Wrapping it Up

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This article only scratches the surface (though it is a bit of a gouge, I admit) of what’s possible with drip campaigns.

Get creative with what you put together, and be sure to test your email subject lines and formatting to determine what your recipients respond to best.

And if you have any comments or questions, don’t hesitate to reach out in the comment section!

If you want to try out email automation and drip campaigns for your business,