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In the ever so changing landscape of marketing, how do you know what tactics work best for your brand’s marketing strategy? The various platforms and marketing strategies that fuel them are constantly evolving. Thus, the ability to be agile and to be able to adapt to the fluidity of marketing is essential for survival.

You’ve probably come across dozens of articles discussing the newest trends in marketing and digital, and the ones to adjust your strategy towards but we’re going to go over key trends your brand shouldn’t focus on. While it’s hard to certainly tell what the future of marketing holds and what tactics will be the most effective, there are surely some things to cross off of your to-do-list this year. Partner up with your digital strategy agency today to make sure your marketing is focused on the right priorities.

1. Focusing on Clicks over Conversions

Sure clicks are important, but conversions are what really matters. This is particularly important for businesses that invest in paid search optimization or paid campaigns because money needs to be spent carefully. Your top priority should be to get your audience to take a certain action (hence, the importance of a call to action) such as making a purchase or entering contact information.

INSTEAD OF OPTIMIZING WITH THE GOAL OF ENTICING CLICKS, TRY AND THINK MORE HOLISTICALLY ABOUT AN APPROACH THAT WILL HAVE THE END RESULT OF CONVERSIONS.

Evaluate things in your strategy that may be holding back conversions like poor web design or landing page. Then ask your digital strategy agency to optimize your conversion strategy to be aligned with your target audience and their needs. The biggest thing to keep in mind is to not to waste time and resources focusing on clicks over conversion.

Related Video: Rob Farrell Talks Digital Marketing Trends

Source: Digital Marketing Institute

2. Quantity Over Quality

Make your content count. Having tons of content that lacks in quality is pointless. Valuable content is the foundation of successful digital marketing! Don’t turn your users off by creating spammy content. Instead, focus on quality and organic interactions to drive engagement.

Google does everything with the end user experience in mind, and so should you. Good content is what drives your SEO and search rankings. Take advantage of this. A qualified content marketing agency will help your brand determine what type of content drives valuable results for your brand. The lesson here is that less is more (if it’s good).

3. Being Immobile in a Mobile-First World

You’re setting your brand up for failure if you’re still avoiding mobile optimization. We’re diving deep in to the mobile-first world and we’re going in heads first. Make sure your site is optimized for mobile capabilities to stand strong against the competition.

Cater your content and website to your mobile users. You’re missing out on a big opportunity if you don’t do so. To survive in 2017, ensure your site is mobile-friendly and is locally optimized.

4. Outsourcing Your SEO Needs

Many companies outsource their SEO needs to offshore companies for a cheap solution. We see it over and over again among our customers who usually end up paying dearly for a “cheaper” option. While they outsource to save money, they are doing the exact opposite and harm their business and lead generation.

For larger companies, investing in an experienced in-house agency will prove to deliver valuable results. A knowledgeable in-house agency will power up your content and SEO while aligning with your brand voice and culture.

5. Avoiding an Omni-Channel Perspective

Too many companies still have to adopt a true omni-channel perspective when approaching digital marketing.

OMNI-CHANNEL IS VIEWING THE EXPERIENCE THROUGH THE EYES OF YOUR CUSTOMER, ORCHESTRATING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ACROSS ALL CHANNELS SO THAT IT IS SEAMLESS, INTEGRATED, AND CONSISTENT. OMNI-CHANNEL ANTICIPATES THAT CUSTOMERS MAY START IN ONE CHANNEL AND MOVE TO ANOTHER AS THEY PROGRESS TO A RESOLUTION. MAKING THESE COMPLEX ‘HAND-OFFS’ BETWEEN CHANNELS MUST BE FLUID FOR THE CUSTOMER. SIMPLY PUT, OMNI-CHANNEL IS MULTI-CHANNEL DONE RIGHT! – JOHN BOWDEN

It’s essential to have one consistent and cohesive brand voice. It’s crucial to implement a seamless and personalized experience for your consumers regardless of whichever device or channel is used. Focusing your marketing strategy around your customers and their experiences will allow your brand to deliver the most value, in turn creating the most profitable results for you.

6. Counting on PPC for Growing Business

Solely depending on pay-per-click (PPC) and paid advertising to drive successful digital results is risky. Yet we still see many companies do it. The growing popularity of ad blockers proves that there can only be so much paid advertising that delivers results.

This points back to the importance of content. Original and creative content is the most powerful tool to drive traffic and potential leads to your site. Nothing will power up your SEO and digital efforts like good quality content. Ask your digital strategy agency how to adjust traditional PPC tactics and to benefit from multiple lead sources.

What to Do Now?

These 6 marketing strategies to avoid will guide you to focus on the right priorities this year. With a long-term content strategy, SEO and social campaigns you will see more return overtime and an increase in ROI. Power up your content and you will see other key elements in your marketing stack improve. A knowledgeable digital strategy agency will gear up your content marketing strategy to successfully propel your efforts.

This article originally appeared on MP Modern and has been republished with permission.

The temptation for most businesses and indeed most brand managers is to look for growth right across their portfolios. But that’s far harder and far less effective than it sounds. The secret, it seems, is focus.

The paths to extracting greater value and growth for brands are well-trodden. Perhaps too well-trodden – because many are now unquestioned assumptions. Brands looking to grow are expected to advertise heavily, grind out efficiencies, invest in areas that show promise and push their portfolio out to demographic segments in the hope of gaining their attention and their loyalty.

The problem, according to Strategy+Business, is that flat economies have stalled market growth, cost cutting has become more difficult, and the cash to drive meaningful innovation has become harder to source as investors look for returns within timeframes that are increasingly short. So fewer and fewer brands can afford to blindly speculate across their entire portfolios in the hope that some areas will prosper and that those wins will make up for losses elsewhere. Yet they persist.

“In many markets, one-third of customers or products typically generate more than 100 percent of the company’s value, while one-third create no value and the remaining third actually consume value,” the authors note. Lovers of segmentation may see this as a repudiation of Dr Sharp’s views on brand growth. But, before you rejoice, look a little closer. The secret is not segmentation, per se. It’s profitable segmentation: resourcing those areas of the portfolio that deliver the greatest returns with services and experiences that help those customers feel recognized and rewarded.

The observations are timely because they remind marketers that brand lift is never uniform, and for that reason, brand managers and owners should be careful in how they identify and support the brands that are in their care. Instead of treating all their brands as precious, brands should work from heat maps that reveal where and why value is concentrated in terms of return on internal resourcing, comparative market profitability and likely future value based on dependable market trends.

In the ebb and flow of today’s markets, some brands will thrive, some will remain steady, some will stall and some will decline. By investing in those brands that are displaying the strongest growth and rethinking those that are not hitting their benchmarks, brand owners can ensure that every brand is working to its full potential. That’s important because it turns brand portfolios into meritocracies, driven by a 6 point framework of actions:

1. Resource generously – winning brands should be rewarded with priority. They should receive a greater share of the resources to achieve targets that are set higher than other brands in the portfolio.
2. Maintain strongly – steady evergreens should be tasked with keeping the middle-earning part of the portfolio accelerating over at a good period. Done right, these brands underpin returns and provide much-needed reliability.
3. Re-energize decisively – brands that are flagging should be restructured so that they are able to better achieve their returns. That may mean actively looking for new efficiencies, repositioning of the brand to appeal to a part of the market with higher yields, or the injection of new value to boost market interest.
4. Simplify aggressively – too many brands can cause a company to lose focus. I often find that businesses are reluctant to rationalize their portfolios because they don’t want to send a signal to the market that they are cutting back. The key to distilling your portfolio is to do so confidently and with intent.
5. Remove objectively – these are the hardest decisions, but often the most important. Taking the brands that are holding you back out of your portfolio via divesting, parking or dis-establishing not only lifts your returns, it also enables you to redirect those resources to your top performers.
6. Introduce regularly – just as your sales teams must look to bring in new leads, so you should be looking to extend or expand your current brands where that makes sense, and to introduce new brands to test market viability. Those extensions, expansions or new brands should then be evaluated via the five criteria above to determine next actions.

Interesting to see Revlon choosing to prioritize their brands over their distribution as their key growth driver. Reach is vital – no-one’s denying that – but at a time when consumers are less picky about where they shop, ownership of targeted relationships through brands matters more than ever. You need to be as close to your customers as you can. But you also must represent as much of what your customers want as possible. Valuable is much more profitable than available. More brands really need to get that.

Don’t let the future leave you behind. Join us in Hollywood, California for Brand Leadership in the Age of Disruption, our 5th annual competitive-learning event designed around brand strategy.

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“I only want a team of A-players!”

“I only want a team of A-players!” says every Head of Sales and CEO. Unfortunately, having an entire team of A-players is rarely, if ever, the case for a specific team or organization. “Why?” You may ask. Well, for a few reasons:

1. The simple fact that past performance doesn’t automatically lead to future performance
2. How someone conducts themselves in the interview (confidence, polished rhetoric, maturity, etc.) doesn’t reflect how they’ll actually act once they’re hired
3. People, unfortunately, aren’t predictable. We, as humans, are mercurial, volatile and often inconsistent.

So, if no team is purely made out of A-players, then surely there are B, C, D, E F G and ad infinitum levels of players. But, you can slice a cake any which way you want. For simplicity and sanity’s sake, let’s say there are only three types of players on your team: A-players, B-players and C-players. Before we get to how to manage the three (hint: they’re all managed differently), let’s define them.  

Defining your Players

When I used to bring up the concept of A, B and C-players to candidates or recently hired salespeople, I’d saying the following: “C-players miss their numbers often. B-players hit their numbers more often than not, but miss once in awhile. The question of, ‘Will I hit my number?’ never occurs to an A-player. They’re more concerned about how early they’ll hit and by how much they’ll surpass their number.”

Now, that quick and dirty definition is all fine and well if you’re looking to motivate and inspire people with typical sales bravado, but it’s not good enough; it’s too qualitative. In order to build any scalable system, there needs to be a healthy balance between qualitative and quantitative data.

The easiest way to classify your reps is based on performance (quantitative) and non-performance related (qualitative) data.

Note: Before getting to examples, it’s very important to note that how you break out your reps into A, B and C-players depends on how much weight you ascribe to performance versus non-performance related items. For example, in my previous place of employment, we placed an emphasis on non-performance related items more than performance-related. In other words, if you were top closer but also most disrespectful, you’d be more likely to being out the door than an average closer who does all they can to positively impact the team and overall company. I’ve expressed this in a screenshot of FakeCorp, Inc.’s SDR team below the examples.

Examples of performance and non-performance related items below:

• Performance
  • % of quarterly goal achieved
  • Conversion rates
    • SDRs: Lead to SQL, SQL to deal, Calls / Emails to SQLs, Meetings to no-shows
    • AEs: SQL to deal, meetings to disqualifications, % of deals lost, % of no-pays, % of churned deals

Note: With performance data, it’s best to look quarterly. Month-to-month creates a level of unnecessary pressure and while a rep could have a horrible January, they could set themselves up for a monster March.

• Non-performance related
  • How often a rep offers to help newer reps
  • The extent to which a rep can take, and implement, feedback
  • Which reps step up to own a new project / share knowledge
  • Who looks to leave once the clock hits 5/6pm (staying longer doesn’t equate better rep, but a manager should be able to distinguish who’s efficient vs. who just wants to leave or, conversely, stay for facetime)
  • General respect for other employees
  • Ability to take ownership and responsibility vs. blaming leads, manager, season, etc. (list is endless)
  • How often a rep needs to be disciplined for not following the rules

The list of non-performance related items can go on and on. Despite being qualitative, it’s still data and should be treated as such. Meaning, managers document both good and bad non-performance related behavior (quick Google Doc or Evernote is perfect for this) and cite to reps when necessary.

Example spreadsheet:

How to Manage Them

A-players

A-players are your all-stars. They consistently perform, both in numbers and in ways that move the organization forward. They typically move quickly and are encouraged by success, positive words of affirmation (albeit, some couldn’t care less for them) and more often than not like making a nice commission check. The best way to manage them is by doing the following:

• Establish career “pathing” that makes sense. Make sure there’s a clearly laid out career path for them within your organization. If not, they’ll either become de-motivated, plateau or decline in performance.
• Acknowledge their performance. People no longer just bust their asses for a paycheck. There’s a human side to sales and the human needs to be recognized. Buy them lunch, bring them and other top-performers out on an excursion or just give them props in a company email. It’s the little things that count.
• Get out of their way. Being an A-player doesn’t mean they know it all. And, if the rep is self-aware, they’ll know this. This means that managers need to trust them to get the job done and ask for help if and whenever they need it while also checking in every once in awhile to make sure all is well.
• Give them projects / opportunities for learning. A-players want to move up. Whether that means becoming a manager, AE or some other role, they are goal-oriented. Provide them with opportunities to formally step up (e.g. projects, mentorship, trainings, etc.) and learn. If your top reps aren’t learning, they’re leaving.

B-players 

B-players are necessary! Yes, read that again. They’re necessary. Not every rep is going to be knocking their numbers out of the park, each month, and the chunk of reps who are good, albeit not great, performers need to also be recognized and motivated. The need for this became so apparent in my last role that I needed to think long and hard about B-players. The best way to manage them is by doing the following:

• Give them the coaching they need. The best thing about B-players is that they can be turned into A-players. The worst thing about B-players is that they can be turned into C-players. This means that while part of the responsibility falls on them, much of it falls on their manager. Identify where they’re lacking and help make them better.
• Recognize them. In many organizations, A-players (yes, as I said above, they need to also be recognized) get all of the glory. When you have ten reps and everyone only hears two or three of the same names over and over again, people begin to feel devalued. If they feel devalued, they are demotivated. When they’re de-motivated, they hurt the company and themselves. Counteract this by recognizing and giving some of the glory to B-players who deserve it.
• Bring focus to their days. Unlike with A-players, make it clear that they’re not allowed to do any extra projects, trainings, etc. (unless this is where they’re lacking) until they earn the right to do so. What’s great about reps, especially younger ones, is that they want to do it all. What’s not so great about reps, especially younger ones, is that they want to do it all.  

C-players

Ah, the C-player. For one reason or another, it’s not working out. But, that doesn’t mean they need to go (yet). Some C-players are unaware they’re C-players; some think their A-players because of their quarterly performance but are actually C-players because of behavior. Others feel it on every call they hop on, in every meeting they have to speak in and when they see their name on the board. The best way to manage them is by doing the following:

• Make their performance (or lack thereof) known. If a rep isn’t performing, they need to know it. It should never be a surprise. This means that managers need to communicate this, formally, in a meeting. And, in some cases, via email so that the company and rep has it in writing if they’re going on a Performance Improvement Plan (PiP). Also so that no one party is at fault or liable for any termination (legal stuff, etc. etc.).
• Give them the coaching they need. This is where you manage a C-player like a B-player. The simple fact is that their lack of performance (whether in numbers, behavior, etc.) is a reflection of their manager. This means that managers need to give them the coaching they need in order to work their way out of the trenches of the Cs and up to the Bs and, hopefully, As. I’ve seen a handful of C-players, with the right coaching, encouragement and guidance, become A-players.
• Let them go. If a manager has done all she / he can to communicate the rep’s lack of performance to them, work with them (in a defined time period e.g. 30, 60 days) to improve and the rep has not improved, the best way to manage them is by ceasing to do so. Keeping them around is not only hurting the organization, but also them. Letting them go will let your team know that you value those who work hard and positively contribute to the organization’s success, as well as let the rep know that at the end of the day, they need to perform (again, could be numbers-wise or not). In some cases, if a rep performs well numbers-wise, but has serious infractions behaviorally, I’d give them a one-strike policy.
  

  ---

Calling a rep an A, B or C-player doesn’t mean their status is set in stone. They can move throughout the rankings for better or for worse. The best thing to do to make your team A-player heavy is to ensure that managers are doing everything in their power to make everyone an A-player with the knowledge that not everyone will inevitably be one. Different players require different types of managing in order to make them successful, which is what everyone wants at the end of the day.

The post How to Define and Manage each type of Player appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly integrated into many industries such as healthcare, alongside particular business departments such as sales and customer service. In a society where everything is becoming more technology dependent, it is inevitable that AI will play a role in sales interactions in the future.

We expect that sales reps will increasingly use AI in their day to day activities within the next few years, and knowing where and how to take advantage of this new technology will ultimately help sales reps to improve their sales skills and leverage AI to deliver an enhanced service to clients.

Using AI to stay on top of data

According to HBR, 85% of all sales rep activities have the potential to be automated (1). Tasks such as gathering information from customers and prospects, taking customers’ orders for a particular product or processing the sales transaction itself could all be done by AI technology. However, other tasks such as making nuanced commercial decisions or building an ongoing relationship with a customer cannot be automated and will likely remain at the core of what sales reps do in the future.

AI is not a substitute for sales people; it would instead complement their day to day activities; helping them to become more efficient and freeing up their time to focus on what matters.

AI can also be of use in relation to the after sales service. It is often after a sale has been completed that focus on a customer wains. A follow up is sometimes not carried out by the sales team to check if the customer is satisfied or has any problems with their new purchase. It is time consuming to keep track of all of this and sales reps may find that it takes time away from researching prospects and getting in touch with potential customers. Here is where AI can help them. AI could be used to gather all the data from new purchases and check in regularly with each customer, in a quick and effective way. AI tools could be used to check if customers are happy or whether they need further assistance with their product. This leads us to another field where AI can be really useful and cost effective: customer service.

Customer service with AI:

Analysts say that for complicated and sensitive complaints, customers want to speak to a real person and not with an AI chatbot (2). Customer service via telephone is often a frustrating process, with lots of questions and security procedures, so it is understandable that customers want real people to be on the other side of the phone once they get through. On the other hand, emails and live chat functions could harness AI technology to respond to simple information requests. Many emails are unstructured, chaotic, and sometimes difficult to understand. AI could filter, classify and “decode” them in a quick and cost effective way so that customer service departments do not have to spend half their time deciphering content and deciding which category they should classify a particular email to. If AI can take this ‘painful’ process away from them, then sales reps and customer service teams have more time to focus their energy on delivering the best service possible to customers.

AI as a guide, not as a replacement

Nothing can replace the relationship between a sales rep and a customer; BUT, in many cases, sales reps tend not to follow a particular set of processes, as each sales rep has their own way of doing things. This can lead to ineffectiveness and obstacles that can slow down transactions if sales behaviours vary across an organisation. Incorporating AI into the picture can be a win-win situation, both for the vendor and the sales rep; as AI can support the sales cycle by ensuring that sales reps follow processes, speeding them up whilst guiding b2b sales reps through steps so that they spend as little time as possible on admin activities. AI can even coach sales reps to uncover new ways to interpret data, enabling more effective procedures throughout the whole business.

AI should be thought of as complementary to sales reps and customer service teams; taking care of simpler, automated tasks so that individuals can focus on the most demanding activities which require skills such as empathy, relationship building and decision making. Ultimately, the use of AI can help sales reps to spend their time in the most efficient way, taking all the frustrating, costly and time-consuming tasks away from them.

So, what else does the future hold? We are already seeing AI-driven tools being used by sales teams today; to keep up to date with clients’ social media activities and guiding reps in how to write the most effective emails for their recipients. The next step could be AI-enabled chatbots to take customers through the first part of the sales process.

References:

• https://hbr.org/2016/06/why-salespeople-need-to-develop-machine-intelligence
• http://www.mycustomer.com/service/channels/is-artificial-intelligence-the-future-of-customer-service

It has often been said that the world doesn’t move at the speed of light, but at the speed of technology.

We live in a golden age of innovation, with new gadgets, gear and gizmos popping up in the market almost every day. And the further we go into the future, the more advanced we’ll become. 

It can be amazing to consider how far tech will take us in the next few decades. What will the world look like by 2050? The reality is that a lot of the innovative devices that will dominate society during the first half of the 21st Century are already creeping into our lives right now.

The technological changes we’ll witness in these 50 years will be nothing short of extraordinary. Rarely, though, do we stop and think about how so many of these advancements actually already exist right now. Read more...

More about Robots, Artificial Intelligence, Tv, Amc Humans, and Amc

Some Starbucks customers are threatening to boycott the coffee giant, after the CEO took a stand against President Trump's executive order barring immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. 

On Sunday, Starbucks announced it plans to hire 10,000 refugees worldwide in the next five years.

"We are living in an unprecedented time, one in which we are witness to the conscience of our country, and the promise of the American Dream, being called into question," CEO Howard Schultz wrote in a letter to Starbucks employees about the plan. 

While many customers were immediately supportive of Starbucks' actions on social media, others threatened to boycott after the letter's release.

"Upon hearing about your decision to hire 10000 refugees instead of Americans I will no longer spend any money at Starbucks," one such Facebook user wrote on Starbucks' page. 

Many said they were angry that Starbucks was hiring refugees instead of veterans. In fact, Starbucks does have a program in place to support veterans and their families, hiring 8,000 veterans and military spouses since 2014.

Starbucks has no plans to end its program to hire veterans. 

Other users said that the plan to give jobs to refugees would make it harder for Americans to get jobs. However, the 10,000 hires will be spread out over the 75 countries where the company does business. 

Some felt that Schultz was needlessly political in his plan to hire refugees.

Schultz has long been vocal regarding his progressive beliefs as CEO of Starbucks. In September, he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, and would have reportedly been Clinton's pick for secretary of labor had she won the election. 

This is not the first time there has been an online movement to protest Starbucks.

In November, Twitter user Baked Alaska encouraged followers to go to Starbucks and tell the employees that their names are Trump, in an effort to "normalize Trump" and the populist, white-supremacist alt-right movement. When Starbucks debuted a green cup intended to promote unity in the week leading up to the election, social media users accused the coffee chain of "political brainwashing."

Despite the protests, Schultz seems unlikely to back down from his political stances. 

In Sunday's letter, the CEO also expressed his support for undocumented immigrants who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, as well as Mexican employees and customers. The letter restated Starbucks' policy that, if workers are eligible for benefits, they will have the option to access to health insurance through the company, whether or not the Affordable Care Act is repealed. 

"I also want to take this opportunity to announce specific actions we are taking to reinforce our belief in our partners around the world and to ensure you are clear that we will neither stand by, nor stand silent, as the uncertainty around the new Administration’s actions grows with each passing day," Schultz wrote. 

SEE ALSO: http://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/starbucks-ceo-howard-schultz-reportedly-was-hillary-clintons-pick-for-labor-secretary/

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 'This is not about religion': Trump defends his immigration ban as thousands protest around the US

Very few people know the richest man on earth, billionaire Warren Buffett, more than his daughter, Susan Buffett.

She takes part in a portrait of the financial genius, HBO's "Becoming Warren Buffett," which premieres Monday at 10 p.m.

In the documentary, Susan, who was named after her mother and goes by Susie, provides a lot of intimate details about her parents, growing up in the family's Omaha home, and what drove her father to give away a large chunk of his fortune to charitable causes, including her children's charity, the Sherwood Foundation.

But despite Warren's reputation for being frugal and highly opinionated about how one invests money, Susie said finances were rarely spoken about in the Buffett home. In fact, she had no idea how rich her father was until her late-teen years.

"My parents never talked about money. They didn’t fight about it at all, either," Susie recently told Business Insider. "It was nonexistent, really, except that my brothers and I got a weekly allowance. We never got the lessons I think some kids get — you know, you can spend this much and you should save the nickel or whatever. None of that went on."

In fact, Susie said that there are a lot of unique aspects of her father that people often get wrong.

Here are five misconceptions about Warren Buffett, according to his daughter:

SEE ALSO: The 'Going Clear' director is making a documentary about ousted Fox News boss Roger Ailes

DON'T MISS: The 6 biggest things that are shaking up the TV industry right now

Warren Buffett wasn't as stingy about donating to charity in the early years as his critics said.

Prior to his large gift to several foundations and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation earlier this year, Warren was ridiculed by critics for not giving money to charity. Susie believes this is a side effect of her father's belief in investing for the long haul.

"His theory, of course, was that he was good at making money and there would be a lot more to give away if he could keep making it," she said.

But she said that her parents were giving back to the community for decades. They just weren't tooting their own horn.

"My mother was quietly giving a lot away," she said. "She started a scholarship program, actually, when I was in high school. It was only a couple kids a year, but she started as soon as there was some money there to give away. Neither of them have ever been the type to look for any recognition when they were doing philanthropic things. And it was certainly my mother doing it more than my dad at that point. And so I think there was a little more happening than people realize."

Warren Buffett is more generous with his children than people give him credit for.

"I actually agree with his philosophy of not dumping a bunch of money on your kids. And, by the way, my dad gets a bad rap for that," Susie told us. "He has been much more generous than people are aware. I feel extremely grateful to have the parents I had and for what they’ve given us. But certainly, he’s not going to leave us $50 billion and shouldn’t. It would be crazy to do anything like that."

Warren's decision in 2016 to give much of his fortune away to charity partly benefits foundations created by his children.

While Susan Buffett is credited with influencing her husband's departure from the Republican Party, she grew up Republican, as well.

"My mother, by the way, grew up Republican, too. And nobody knows that. That’s a funny thing," Susie told us.

At one point, Susie recalled, her maternal grandfather ran her paternal grandfather Howard Buffet's election campaign.

"The only time my grandpa Buffett lost, actually," she said. In all, Howard served four terms in the US Congress. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

This is part two in a series on Content Marketing Strategies from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.

On the first day of your content creation process, you’re going to choose your topic and create what I call the “backbone” of your post.

Need to review the 4 Day Content Creation System introduction? Read it here: A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content.

Hopefully you already have a content idea library. It’s a concept I talk about in my book Master Content Marketing. It’s nothing fancy — just a place where you’ll consistently maintain a running list of content ideas that fit within the already-established categories on your website.

When you have a content idea library, you don’t have to spend time staring out the window, waiting for an idea to hit you — you have content ideas to draw from and can easily find something to write about.

With your content topic in hand, let’s create the backbone of your article, which consists of two parts: your headline, and your subheads.

Write Your Headline

Your headline is the most important promotional part of your content. Your headline is what gets people to click on your content and read it.

Spend plenty of time generating lots of headline ideas.

When I write headlines, I like to think of writing the first 10-20 headline ideas like clearing a clog in a pipe: once you get the “junk” ideas out of the way, the good ideas can flow. So don’t worry if your first attempts at headlines are dull, or clichéd, or boring. Just get them out of your system so the good stuff can flow through, and keep writing.

Writing great headlines becomes easier and more natural the more you do it, so keep at it. For more guidance on writing headlines, refer to the headlines chapter in this book.

Write Your Subheads

After you’ve written your headline, map out the subheads you’ll use in your article.

Subheads are like signposts that guide your reader through your content.

But they’re also signposts for you, the writer!

Writing subheads at this early stage of the game helps you to think through how you will present and develop the ideas you want to communicate in the piece.

If you’re aiming for around 1,500 words for your article, you could write five or six subheads.
For more on writing subheads, review the Subheads chapter in this book.

Day 1 Tips

Tools to use: I like to keep it simple, and I tend to do everything on my laptop. But because some people strongly prefer to interact with tangible objects like pen and paper, I’ll make recommendations for both.

My writing life changed for the better when I incorporated mind mapping tools into my process. Any mind mapping software will do: find one that looks good, seems easy to use, and fits your budget (many are free).

The reason I love mind maps so much is they allow me to get ideas out of my head quickly and easily, and move them into a format where I can work with them. My ideas don’t come to me in a linear or logical order (do yours?). I don’t fret about that — I just use the mind map to record them in whatever order they appear.

When I’m done thinking, I begin moving things around on the mind map to arrange them into an order that makes sense. As I move things, I notice gaps in my thinking, and I fill those in with more ideas.

In the end — once I have my ideas arranged — I can see what subheads are needed. Some of my main ideas can be lightly edited to turn into subheads.

If you prefer to work with tangible objects, you could use index cards or sticky notes. I have a friend who makes major decisions by standing in front of a window with a pad of square sticky notes, jotting down short concepts with a marker and sticking the notes to the window, moving them around and grouping them together until she can see what she needs to do.

Some people swear by a combination of colored and white index cards arranged on a table top. Remember, you’re just jotting down main ideas at this stage, so don’t feel like you need to fill the lines on your index cards if you use them. Jot a concept across the top and that’s it.

Use whatever system works best for you. Remember, the magic isn’t in the tools you use — it’s in what you do with them. So don’t get hung up on trying a bunch of different tools or techniques: find one that works and stick with it.

Once you’ve finished writing a compelling headline and strong subheads, you are done with Day 1.

Walk away and go about the rest of your day. Your mind will continue to work on the content — you may get ideas about it when you’re working on completely unrelated tasks. Find a way to save those ideas: you’ll need them for the next day’s work.

Here’s the sneaky thing about your Day 1 tasks: by the time you finish, what you’ve created is an outline of your article. But since most of us are still recovering from having to generate outlines for our term papers in English class, we won’t call it an outline. Instead, think about it as the backbone of your content.

You’ve created the main structure you’ll hang the rest of your content on. It’s the foundation of your article. Good job!

Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.

*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.

The post Day One: How to Build a “Backbone” for Your Content Marketing appeared first on ProBlogger.

If the proponents of the multiverse theory are in the right, then there is a universe that is perfect for the people who work in customer success and who are trying to give everything to their companies.

In this universe, customer success people work in perfect unison with all the other departments within their companies. In this universe, the best of all the relationships is the one they have with sales.

This universe we operate in is not such a universe. It is a very chaotic and customer success people sometimes have to deal with a certain level of discord between them and other departments. Unfortunately for them, when discord between sales and customer success exists within a company, it is the customer success team that gets the short end of the stick.

Customer Success Limitations

Customer success is still a relatively new concept and, as is often the case, some people are having troubles understanding exactly what the customer success team can do for a company. While there are those who think CS is nothing more than a buzzword, there are also many on the opposite end of the spectrum who see the customer success team as something of a deus ex machina.

Companies that are struggling to keep their customers from leaving them decide that a customer success team is this magic wand that will make all of their worries disappear, no matter what everyone else is doing or how their customers are doing.

It does not work this way.

A customer success team has to be given a chance to succeed. Often times, it is the sales that withhold this chance.

How Sales Impede Customer Success

The most common and direct way in which sales impede customer success people is that they simply go out and sell to everyone and anyone.

Your company is struggling to pay its electricity bills? What you need is an expensive and overelaborate piece of accounting software!

You cannot handle the orders you already have? Let us tell you how our solution can bring you more customers!

Okay, these examples are a somewhat exaggerated, but you get the idea.

Basically, the sales sell the product or service to customers who simply cannot achieve success with it and whose experience cannot be a positive one, no matter how great the customer success team is at doing its job.

How Companies Get It Wrong

In the SaaS and B2B arenas, no one is really so bad at their job that they consider a simple sale a win. It all revolves around churn rates and customers that stay on and continue paying for extended periods of time.

Even though the upper management is perfectly aware of this, their commission practices are often too single-minded and revolve around a single date. For example, if the customer stays with the company for 3 months, the salesperson is paid a full commission. Often times, this results in an unusually high percentage of customers that leave almost immediately after 3 months have passed.

Both consciously and subconsciously, the sales (like almost everyone in this world) find a way to hit that threshold that secures them the commission and they do not worry about churn once this period of time has passed.

To reiterate, there is little that the customer success people can do in such situations. They are put in front of an insurmountable challenge.

How Companies Can Change This

The good news is that companies which have customer success teams can do something to change this and to stop the sales from directly and indirectly hindering the customer success people.

For the most direct approach, the commission practices can be adjusted so that the commissions are paid out over a longer period of time, encouraging the salespeople to target only those potential customers that will be realistically able to achieve success with the product (service) over time. This way, the customer success people are allowed to work with customers that are actually achieving success with their product (service) and to whom they can perhaps even upsell.

It might also be a good idea for the salespeople and the customer success team to meet regularly and exchange their experiences and their expertise. This way, the salespeople will be able to explain their motivations and their approach while the CS people will be able to share their insights into the existing customers. Together, the two departments will work on building better customer relationships and with the right customers, at that.

Closing Word

Many companies are still getting used to the presence of a customer success team and there are often misalignments that can hurt both the CS people and the businesses in general.

Perhaps the most important misalignment to avoid is of the sales and the customer success department because it makes it all but impossible for customer success team to do their job.

The Internet of Things is growing so fast that there are already more connected devices than there are people. Check out this infographic to see what lies ahead both for consumers and for companies--and for the entire globe. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

There’s nothing good about running out of juice when you’re trying to get stuff done, and being unable to find a plug to recharge your battery in the meantime. If you work on the go at all, here are some easy tips to extend the life of your laptop’s battery, both in a pinch and before you leave the house.

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After confusion over how the travel restrictions would be enforced, more companies and unions went public with concerns, although most avoided direct attacks on the President's policy

Millennials take a lot of flak, but studies have shown that they’re dedicated workers, skilled at collaborating with others, and very connected; according to research firm Gallup, 91 percent of millennials have a smartphone and 71 percent name the Internet as their primary source of news and information. As such, there are some jobs out there that suit America’s largest generation better than any other.

Let’s take a look at ten jobs in particular that only millennials in the workforce would understand.

1. Emoji Translator

A London-based language firm is on the hunt for an Emoji Translator. Seeking experts in “this rapidly evolving form of international communication,” the company lists such responsibilities as cross-cultural research on emoji usage, monthly reporting on emoji trends, and “a passion for emojis.” With studies indicating 64 percent of millennials communicate with emojis on a regular basis, this job could be a Generation Yer’s dream come true.

2. Social Alchemist

You don’t need to have aced high school chemistry to work as a social alchemist, but it helps to know the ins and outs of social media the way millennials do. What better fit for a social media native with an average of four social media accounts and a vocabulary that includes terms like friending and FOMO than a job as a social alchemist?

3. Video Playlist Curation

In recent years the term “curator” has expanded well beyond museums to become associated with everything from social posts to online video. Some companies are now looking for experienced YouTube users to compile video and movie playlists in various languages. The catch is that the job pays by the playlist. Better get to curating that content.

4. Video Fellowship – Nifty

Only a BuzzFeed regular — the news site reaches 60 percent of millennials — could make sense of a job like this. Responsibilities of the chosen “Nifty Fellow” include researching and producing “original projects and hacks” and participating in ideation for the Nifty section of the BuzzFeed site (according to BuzzFeed, haters need not apply).

5. Engagement Editor

If this reads like a job at a bridal magazine to you, you probably aren’t a millennial. Media company Mic, which caters to millennial consumers, is looking for candidates that can effectively engage its audience with email newsletters and mobile apps. Mic’s job post notes that a “passion for changing the world and empowering our generation” is a must.

6. Growth Hacker

The concept of growth hacking — getting creative with product development and marketing to rapidly grow a business — has millennial written all over it. Those with digital marketing skills who are also product-savvy and can think outside the box can maximize today’s multiplying growth hacker opportunities.

7. Marketing Ninja/Digital Overlord

Most millennials will tell you they know exactly what this title represents. That’s good news for the pest control company currently seeking a Marketing Ninja/Digital Overlord. Duties include content marketing, web development, and being “ridiculously awesome at communication.”

8. Visual Storyteller

Storytelling isn’t just for grandparents and children’s book authors anymore. Millennials with experience in digital media and visual design are sure to flock to jobs like this one, which involves creating “listicles of dance moves in new Rihanna and Justin Timberlake videos” and “recaps of last night’s ‘So You Think You Can Dance.’”

9. Head of Body and Mind

It might sound like an anatomy lesson gone wrong, but millennials familiar with Elite Daily, which calls itself “The Voice of Generation Y,” get that the job relates to the site’s health and wellness vertical. Like other editing gigs at digital publications, this one requires that applicants can maintain the brand’s signature tone of voice (so Head of Body, Mind, and Voice would have been an equally relevant title).

10. Freelancer

Plenty of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers freelance, but it’s millennials who are really embracing this way of working. According to reports, 38 percent of millennials are already freelancing — more than any other generation — and 82 percent are optimistic about their freelancing future. Among other things, freelancing appeals to the millennial workforce’s desire for flexibility and work-life balance. By making themselves available for new opportunities, they’re well-positioned to find job satisfaction for years to come.

Most sales reps are making a fundamental mistake when handling the pricing objection. They’re always trying to get the buyer to make an apples-to-apples comparison on the pricing and that’s not what we want. We want the buyer to be …
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There’s a new kind of foreign student streaming into Canada: They’re adults, typically with spouses, often with children.

Canadian immigration offices in Asia are reporting that “mature adults” are increasingly applying to come to Canada as foreign students, especially those who want to live in Metro Vancouver.

It is a result of the Canadian government’s recent decision to classify foreign students among the front-runners to become permanent residents, particularly through Ottawa’s new “fast-track” program.

Andri Thorarinsson, a 34-year-old from Iceland, is among the new trend. He recently arrived, with wife and two children, to complete a masters in business at Simon Fraser University. They’d love to stay.

The University of B.C.’s Bo Fang, from China, Rony Das from Bangladesh, and Alejandro Elgueta from Chile also ventured here as adult students with partners. They’ve done well.

Although it has been technically possible for a while to study in Canada as an adult foreign student, Canada’s busy immigration office in the Philippines reports it’s becoming an increasing popular way for entire families to gain entry to Canada and, importantly, go to the front of the line for citizenship.

“At the most recent study fair in the Philippines, most questions were from mature, married clients with children, who were interested in open work permits for their spouse and study permits for their children,” said an internal immigration staff memo.

“They do not fit the profile of a typical international student,” reported the office in Manila, which handles hundreds of thousands of applications from throughout East Asia.

Related

• The hidden costs of foreign study policy
• Douglas Todd: Foreign students make a big impact on Metro Vancouver
• Mixed motives fuel rise of foreign students

There are at least four advantages in coming to Canada as an adult foreign student, say immigration lawyer Richard Kurland and Shinder Purewal, a former citizenship court judge who is a professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

“This is the new normal. It’s the most significant change” that has opened up in immigration patterns as a result of Ottawa creating its fast-track entry program in early 2015, Kurland said.

• In addition to foreign students and their relatives getting high priority for eventual Canadian citizenship, a bonus is both the students and their spouses are allowed to take jobs.

“SFU’s MBA program was pretty well our ticket into the country,” said Thorarinsson, whose wife, Anna Geirsdottir, 32, works in animation. Their daughters, ages 11 and five, attend elementary school in north Surrey.

“Everybody told us education is the way to get into Canada. We love it. We’d love to stay longer. Compared to Iceland, the weather here is great. People here have been complaining about the recent snowfall, but to us it was nothing.”

• Spouses of foreign students are permitted to work as much as they want, say Kurland and Purewal, who have different views about the value of the foreign-student program and its competitive effects on domestic students.

“The new game is a multi-year strategy (to immigrate). You get points for completing a Canadian diploma or degree. And for being married. And while completing your Canadian degree, your spouse is entitled to an open work permit. So your spouse also gets points for work experience,” Kurland said.

• A third advantage arises for an adult foreign-student couple as a result of one working in Canada: Their children receive free access to public schools.

• The fourth bonus, Purewal said, is the entire family receives subsidized health care from Canadian taxpayers.

Acadia Park home to foreign-student families

UBC’s picturesque Acadia Park Residence has 624 apartments for adult students with partners and children, most of which contain two, three or four bedrooms.

Rony Das, a 33-year-old PhD student in engineering from Bangladesh, estimated 60 to 70 per cent of those living in Acadia Park Residence are foreign-student families, mostly from China, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Das and his wife, Snigdha Madhuri, who graduated from women’s studies at UBC, came to Canada as adult foreign students years before it became popular, in 2015.

“I actually got my citizenship on February 12, 2016,” Das said, as he pushed the baby carriage of their Canadian-born daughter.

Both Das and his wife have worked extensively during their more than six years in Canada, with Madhuri employed at MOSAIC, assisting immigrants.

Das appreciates the many inter-cultural family programs at Acadia Park, where family units rent from $1,088 to $1,912 a month.

The leap in mature foreign-student adults contributes to Metro Vancouver being by far the most popular destination per capita for foreign students in Canada, and arguably the world.

Despite having just over a tenth of the country’s population, B.C., and that mostly means Metro Vancouver, is home to 130,000 of the 330,000 to 400,000 foreign students in Canada at any time.

The largest group of foreign students is from China, followed by those from India, Korea, France, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. One in four students at UBC and SFU are now non-Canadians.

In addition to attending public universities and colleges, many foreign students sign up at one of the more than 100 B.C. private colleges created especially for them.

Citizenship ‘not a slam dunk’

Although Kurland generally supports Ottawa’s strategy of favouring foreign students as potential immigrants, he has warned prospective students to recognize the risks.

The Vancouver immigration lawyer told a recent conference in Thailand that adult foreign students and their families are by no means guaranteed permanent resident status.

“The point I was making in Asia is ‘don’t think it’s a slam dunk’” to become a permanent resident of Canada by starting off as a foreign student, said Kurland.

A frequent adviser to the federal Immigration Department, Kurland said odds remain stacked against foreign students (and temporary foreign workers) being approved as permanent residents.

Competition for citizenship is intense, even if a foreign student completes higher-education degrees in Canada and works for years, Kurland said.

About 60,000 people a year receive fast-track approval to become permanent residents in Canada, he said. But there are almost 400,000 foreign students in Canada at any one time, plus another 500,000 temporary foreign workers, most of whom wish to become Canadians.

“That’s the danger. You’re up against an inventory of almost a million people.”

Nevertheless, Kurland believes foreign students, most of whom pay high fees, are the most likely newcomers to Canada to quickly and inexpensively integrate into the country.

“It’s in Canada’s interests to pick people with the lowest integration costs. So why not select people who are already here studying or working? You won’t have as many doctors driving cabs anymore. You can have seamless integration.”

‘Cheaper way of gaining immigration’

Purewal is more critical of Canada’s foreign-student policy.

The Kwantlen political science professor is concerned foreign students indirectly take precious classroom spots, and jobs, from domestic students.

“The main reason why adults with children study in Canada is the fact it is a cheaper way of gaining immigration,” said Purewal, who is also an immigration consultant.

“But places like Surrey do not have enough classrooms for the sons and daughters of Canadian taxpayers. Yet the children of students on study permits, and the children of temporary foreign workers, study for free … and they all receive free medical care simply by paying monthly MSP.”

Ottawa’s recent decisions to hike the number of foreign students and temporary foreign workers increases the competition Metro’s domestic students face to find decent jobs and housing, Purewal said.

“Once an adult foreign student gets a two-year diploma he is entitled to a three-year open work permit. Thus a student and his family can be here working for five years. All this helps them get permanent resident status,” he said.

“Compared with all other Western countries our system offers the fastest way to citizenship to foreign students and their families, with taxpayer-funded education for the children and the health system at their service.”

Son ‘lived here more than half his life’

Every foreign-student story is different and many are hard to obtain.

Public affairs officials at five universities and colleges in Metro Vancouver cited privacy reasons for not directly helping Postmedia meet adult foreign students.

When Postmedia visited UBC’s Acadia Park Residence to interview adult foreign students and their spouses, most declined. Some struggled with English and others did not want media attention.

But Bo Fang, a 32-year-old computer science PhD from Mainland China, agreed to talk. He said he and his spouse have found “everything nice” in Canada and he appreciates working with “great scientists” at UBC while learning English and earning money teaching. He declined to have his photo taken.

Since Fang’s mother and father still live in China and it’s uncertain they would ever be granted Canadian citizenship, he said he and his partner and children, who have been in Canada for more than four years, haven’t decided about seeking permanent resident status.

Chilean geography student Alejandra Elgueta and her husband, Ricardo Halabi, a jazz guitarist, say they have to return to their homeland because the Chilean government helped pay for her many years at UBC.

As he picked up his nine-year-old son at UBC’s Norma Rose Point Elementary School, however, Halabi, 38, said they are thinking seriously about their son becoming a Canadian citizen.

“Canada is a great place and he’s lived here more than half his life. We’d do it just for him. He deserves it.”

dtodd@postmedia.com

Follow @DouglasTodd

Every morning, I commute to work with about 20 of my closest friends. And they all fit neatly in my pocket.

OK, so I’m really talking about podcasts. There aren’t actual tiny people in my pocket. Except for Steve, the tiny person who lives in my pocket. Obviously.

Anyway, if you’re a fan of podcasts like I am, you’ll know why I dubbed them my “friends.” Each show feels built just for you. You get to know a host or a brand’s quirks and personalities in a deeper way than you can with most other forms of content. Podcasting is intimacy that scales.

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#Podcasting is intimacy that scales, says @jayacunzo.
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However, that personal, almost casual feel of many podcasts belies their true nature: A great show is incredibly hard to create.

Despite the difficulty in creating an addicting show, more brands are launching their own podcasts to support their marketing, including Slack, GE, eBay, HubSpot, Buffer, and venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to name a few.

But marketing teams face problems in keeping their show both consistent and high quality. Just ask brands that started strong then “pod faded” like Prudential or those with endless resources and smarts who can’t seem to grasp the simplest quality issues in their sound or listener experience like McKinsey.

While there’s virtually no barrier to entry to create and share a show, there’s tremendous friction in making that show great.

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A #podcast has virtually no barrier to entry, but there’s tremendous friction to make it great, says @jayacunzo
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Luckily, if we squint hard enough, we can see how top shows stay afloat and, more importantly, innovate. Let’s take a look at a few podcasts, each with one major productivity lesson we can learn for our own podcast process – as well as other forms of content marketing.

At the end, I’ve shared a template for a Trello board to help organize your podcast’s editorial pipeline.

Lesson 1: At first, format trumps talent

­This is a hard pill to swallow, especially for someone like me. (I host two shows – one for my own business about creative intuition, and one for NextView Ventures about early-stage startups.) But as my executive producer Andrew Davis likes to say, “The audience has to fall in love with the format before they can fall in love with the talent.”

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#Podcast audiences have to love the format before they can fall in love with the talent, says @DrewDavisHere.
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In thinking about any truly big, special podcast, he’s right – there needs to be some kind of underlying plan to your show. It improves both efficiency and quality. It helps you ditch the meandering, awful intros that lose listeners. It helps you keep producing episodes when other things get in the way. And it ensures that you spend time thinking about the experience for the audience, not just the name of the guest and the size of his or her Twitter following. (Besides, if you’re in an industry that has a popular list of influencers, as I am in marketing, your listeners will be sick of the same names that appear on every single podcast or in every single blog in the industry.)

Ask yourself: What’s my show’s episode format?

Where we can learn this: The Full Monty from Scott Monty, CEO of Brain+Trust Partners

Scott Monty is the former head of social media for Ford and a well-known keynote speaker and brand strategist. He now leads the C-suite advisory group, Brain+Trust. His weekly newsletter, The Full Monty, features a companion podcast of the same name – a weekly, 15-minute show.

The hallmark of the show, aside from Scott’s golden voice, is a really tight format that helps him produce episodes with minimal time and budget while still delivering a really great product to his listeners.

Looking under the hood of his podcast, here’s Scott’s format, broken into blocks, similar to how a TV show writers’ room would view it:

• A BLOCK: Intro – 60 seconds: Scott intros the show concept in about 30 to 40 seconds. Then he gives you the headlines he’ll cover in the episode in the next 20 to 30 seconds.

• B BLOCK: Lead story – 4 to 5 minutes: Scott then gives one quick headline (e.g., “LinkedIn Spam”) that’s compelling enough to make you keep listening. He gives you the source of the story first, whether it’s coverage of a news event or a personal anecdote that led to a realization. He finishes this section with a clever limerick about the story.

• C BLOCK: Trivia question – 30 seconds: You then hear tuba sounds and an announcer briefly introducing the trivia section. Scott delivers the question and promises the answer at the end of the show – a great tactic to help him accomplish really the No. 1 job of any good host: Get listeners to finish the episode. The tubas then transition into the next section.

• D BLOCK: Page 2 – 4 to 5 minutes: The second and final large chapter of his episode is called Page 2. Scott teases a larger lesson from something that happened in the last week. For instance, when CBS Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood retired, Scott used Page 2 to talk about the cult of personality – a large topic with something both brands and individuals can learn in the era of social media, personal brands, and mini-media empires built around people. As in B Block, Scott closes with a limerick about the preceding story. He then plays a quick musical tone to move to the next section.

• E BLOCK: Trivia answer – 30 seconds: Scott answers the trivia question, followed by one final tuba sound signaling the end of the trivia and end of E Block.

• F BLOCK: Calls to action – 2 minutes: You hear the usual housekeeping list (got a story? can you rate us? want to subscribe?). Then, Scott points out a couple big news items from his newsletter that didn’t make the podcast, as well as the big questions they create. In doing so, he teases listeners to check out the newsletter.

• G BLOCK: Outro – 30 seconds: A similar sign plays each time, culminating in him saying, “I’m Scott Monty, and I’ll see YOU … on the internet.” The announcer reminds listeners to subscribe to the newsletter. Then, the music stops, and Scott drops one inside joke about the week that was (e.g., “I’m surprised the Emmys didn’t award Best Reality Show to the Donald Trump campaign.”)

Look, I know you’re thinking, “Man, that’s a lot!” And it is. Remember, that’s just a 15-minute show. But now that Scott can predictably and consistently create a high-quality episode, he can experiment with that rundown, produce more and better shows, and ultimately help the listener fall in love with The Full Monty.

Avoid the race to the bottom of simply booking the biggest guests in your niche and meandering through an unplanned episode. Instead, find your format.

Lesson 2: Time constraints are your strength (Spoiler alert: Nobody wants your 60-minute show)

The beauty of podcasting is its open-endedness, and the danger of podcasting is, well, its open-endedness. So many things prevent us from creating an episode worth finishing. One issue is the amount of stuff we pack into an episode since we never get “talker’s block.” Another is that guests who readily agree to appear often love to talk – and they can often take the interview in directions you wish they hadn’t. Lastly, we simply fall in love with the wide open creative field that is podcasting and careen around without purpose.

But just like an episode rundown puts constraints on the creative, a time target provides the necessary constraint to make you a better host/producer/writer for your show.

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A time target constrains you to become a better host/producer/writer for your #podcast, says @jayacunzo.
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I know you love listening to your own 60-minute episode. You even hear from colleagues and others in your network that they love the show. And while drop-off data is tough to come by with this medium, look in the mirror and ask yourself: Is 60 minutes really necessary to deliver the most value to others?

If you answered yes, please call, email, or tweet me. Because, well, why don’t you just sit down a moment? We need to have a little talk …

Where we can learn this: The Way I Heard It from Mike Rowe

Mike is the host of the popular show Dirty Jobs and arguably the only podcast host whose voice is higher-karat gold than Scott Monty’s.

Mike’s show is a lot looser than Scott’s, containing fewer individual sections in the episode rundown. But Mike’s extremely tight time target makes the episodes incredibly good listening. While many of us struggle to keep an interview to less than 60 minutes or perhaps 30, Mike’s target is an eyebrow-raising 10 minutes! TEN! How can you possibly deliver value in the same time it normally takes branded shows to finish the intro music and resumes of its guests?

Well, Mike’s a pro who, yes, comes from TV, where the show rundown and time constraints are simply realities. He knows the value of maximizing every moment, and while this certainly makes the creative amazing, it also makes him way more productive than the average marketer.

Not unlike you, Mike’s a busy guy. He hosts Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel. He hosts another on CNN. He narrates several more. He does commercials, most notably for Ford. All of that requires travel and preparation time. On the side, he launched a foundation focused on blue-collar workers and jobs. So naturally, he wanted to launch a podcast, that friction-filled media project.

When he can finally find time to sit in a studio, don’t you think it behooves him to record multiple episodes? Kinda hard to do that with 60-minute shows, no? With his 10-minute format, not only is he forced to deliver just the good stuff, he can knock out tons of episodes in just a couple hours’ time. Brilliant.

Lesson 3: Create recurring segments or content brands within the show

Simply by trying a bunch of potential segments or series within your show, you can see what your audience loves and redeploy those segments periodically on a repeat basis. You can even give that section a name or a musical intro. Again, we’re killing two birds with the same stone, because man, how much do you just hate birds?

The first bird to aim for is the listener experience, and the second is your productivity. The experience gets better when a listener feels that sense of intimacy, and a semi-recurring content brand helps your audience feel like they’re “in” on it. They know what to expect and eagerly anticipate these sections of your show.

The second avian adversary to address is your own productivity. When you’re pressed for time, lack material, or need to work on something else, you now have a predictable section or entire episode style to use.

Here’s what this might look like …

Where we can learn this: Reply All from Gimlet Media

Gimlet creates highly produced podcasts, including Reply All, a show that claims to be “about the internet,” but really focuses on the human condition through the lens of the web. Over time, hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman have established multiple content brands within their show.

One such brand is called Yes-Yes-No. The concept is simple but addicting: The co-hosts’ boss and Gimlet CEO Alex Blumberg finds a tweet involving internet culture that he doesn’t understand, and the boys help him get it. Typically, the tweets involve multiple layers of internet meme-dom (e.g., a GIF from the presidential election but shared with someone’s comment that pulls from another internet trope). They begin the section by defining what a Yes-Yes-No is. Once listeners hear the tweet, each host and the CEO reveals whether or not they understand it. Generally, the co-hosts both say yes, while Blumberg says no – hence the name.

Bonus lesson: How to organize a podcast’s editorial pipeline

As a bonus, I wanted to share a public Trello board outlining the editorial pipeline of a story-driven podcast. Feel free to borrow, adapt, or outright steal from this – since it’s my show, I can say such things.

My podcast, Unthinkable, explores the interesting trend of everyone racing to average by following a list or best practice. How do you break from that cycle to create exceptional content instead? My thesis is that you have to trust your intuition. It won’t come from someone else’s idea or advice. I ask big, ambitious questions and want to match that concept with a big, ambitious show style.

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Create exceptional things by trusting your intuition, says @jayacunzo.
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All of this to say: My workflow could derail. Fast! So we rely heavily on Trello to stay organized, and I wanted to take you behind the scenes in the hopes it’ll help you better turn your creative intuition into action.

Image source

You can view the board here. If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer in the comments.

Want to hear how Jay’s three lessons work in CMI’s podcast, This Old Marketing? Subscribe to the free weekly podcast through iTunes or Stitcher.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 3 Hidden Lessons Behind Top Podcasts to Help Yours Stand Out appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

It’s the beginning of the year, and you’ve just been handed your new sales compensation plan.

As a sales rep, you need to quickly get up to speed with this plan so you can develop a strategy.

You may need to shift your prospecting focus, modify your sales processes, and incorporate the latest tools -- not to mention, keep up with your normal selling tasks like filling your pipeline, working on existing opportunities, publishing fresh content to social media, and staying up-to-date on industry and product-related news.

To quickly understand your new commission plan, use this eight-part guide. Answering the questions below will help you maintain or even exceed your current earnings level.

1) Quota

Ask yourself:

• What is my new quota?
• Do I have one quota or several?
• Which quota is the most important?
• Am I measured on achieving the annual quota or are there smaller targets, like quarterly or monthly milestones, driving my commission?

Watch out for:

An unattainable quota -- it should be aggressive yet realistic. If your quota is overly ambitious, consider trying to negotiate it lower. Use fact-based arguments, such as, "My territory is shrinking by 30% yet my quota is increasing by 25%, and I'm selling the same products," rather than emotion-based arguments such as, "This quota isn't fair because it's too high for me to maintain my current earnings."

2) Sales crediting rules

Ask yourself:

• What do I receive credit on/what counts toward my quota?
• When do I receive credit for the order?

Watch out for:

A shift in timing. For example, maybe you used to receive credit for the order when the customer signs, and now you receive credit upon receipt of payment. This change will impact your cash flow: It will take at least 30 days for your company to receive the invoice so you, in turn, can get paid.

3) Sales value rules

Ask yourself:

• How is the value of my sale determined?
• Is it based on the amount I closed the deal for?
• Is there a different method for calculating the value for different types of products?
• Can I calculate the sales credit value myself?

Watch out for:

Credit value that Finance determines through multiple and/or complex calculations. If it's difficult for you to understand the value of the deal at closing, it's also difficult to know how close you are to hitting your quota or earning your bonus. When in doubt, ask Finance how much more you need to sell. Sometimes salespeople are only a few dollars short of attaining their goal -- don't let that happen to you.

4) Commission rates

Ask yourself:

• Do I earn the same rate on everything, or are some products and services earned at a different rate?
• What do I have to do to earn a higher commission rate?

Watch out for:

Products or services that have higher commission rates but aren’t necessarily worth focusing on. The difference in commission should be proportional to the difficulty or length of the sale.

5) Commission thresholds

Ask yourself:

• Is there a sales threshold I must cross before I receive payment?
• Once I cross that threshold, will I be paid back to my first sale?
• How often does the threshold reset?

Watch out for:

An excessively high threshold. Unfortunately, some companies establish high thresholds to avoid paying a significant amount in commission. I once analyzed a company’s data to find one rep had earned $90,000 more than another rep. They had brought in the same amount of business that year, but the rep who had earned more had strategically timed closing deals when they would count the most. Some months he didn't close any sales because he didn't anticipate crossing the threshold, while other months he exceeded his quota so the accelerator would kick in.

6) Earning possibilities

Ask yourself:

• What do I have to do to earn as much as I did last year?
• If I sell what I believe I’m capable of, what will I make?
• How much do I need to sell to reach [target amount]?

Watch out for:

A compensation plan that combines two or more separate elements to determine earnings. It should be relatively easy to calculate your earnings potential by multiplying your projected sales volume and your commission rate, then adding any bonuses you expect to earn. I recommend using your earnings and sales volume from last year as a baseline.

If your plan is confusing, ask for help. You won't be motivated to sell if you don't know how you'll benefit.

7) Earnings caps

Ask yourself:

• If I’m a top performer and crush my quota, will I be paid for every sale?
• Will the commission rate change?

Watch out for:

A limit on how much you can earn. If there's a cap in the plan, you might want to postpone closing a big deal until the next month or quarter.

Some companies tie their earnings cap to deal size (also known as the bluebird clause). If this clause applies to you, try to structure deals to avoid the cap. For example, you might break one order into several smaller ones or arrange to have deliveries made over time rather than all at once.

8) Payment timing

Ask yourself:

• Will I get paid the month after the sale is made?
• Will the company hold earned commission until another event happens?

Watch out for:

Commission that’s earned when one event (such as booking) occurs but not paid until another event (like cash receipt) takes place. If you earn it at booking, you may have to wait several months to be paid commission. If you leave the company, you might be eligible for unpaid commission payments, so check with a lawyer.

Knowing your sales compensation plan inside and out allows you to craft a winning strategy. Use these questions to familiarize yourself with your new plan.

There’s a continuum of action for business. (And life, but we’re really only talking business here.)

One the one end is strategy. It’s cerebral. It’s thinky. It requires many post-it notes and paper and books and maybe my favorite, a bullet journal.

At the other end is tactics. These are the actual things you do: the Tweets, the emails, the podcast, the webinar, the Facebook Live, the in-person networking meeting, the price setting, the sales-page writing, etc. etc. etc.

And somewhere in the middle the rubber meets the road. It’s where the big strategy you’ve designed meets the tactics that will make it happen.

And we’re going to call it strategic execution.

Strategy: is thinking about what you’re going to do.

Tactics: are things you can do.

Strategic Execution: is doing things in a thoughtful way.

Most of the gurus in the content marketing space talk tactics. There’s a reason for that: tactics are easy to generalize. It’s easier to write a post that says “do this thing and get results” than it is to say “think about this strategy.” By its very nature, strategy is harder to generalize. In fact, I would suggest that most gurus would suggest that when you see their tactics, you must decide whether to do them based on your strategy.

Instead, what tends to happen is that if people choose to try to execute a tactic they read about (and that’s a big if; most of us have more tactics in our toolbox than we will ever need or use), they do so randomly. They try this tactic and that tactic without any big picture strategy that ties them all together.

The sweet spot in the middle is “strategic execution;” picking and choosing the tactics you will use with a well-considered strategy.

You following me so far?

The problem is, very few people are teaching this, or even talking about it not just in my little corner of the information and content marketing world, but throughout the online business community that I’m familiar with.

To quote the Harvard Business Review, “The reason strategy execution is often glossed over by even the most astute strategy consultants is because primarily its not a strategy challenge. Its a human behavior one.”

A strategic execution metaphor

Let’s pretend you make a goal to lower your cholesterol this year.

If you focus on strategy, you might go out and buy some books to help you understand high cholesterol, and learn all about the diet and exercise plan you should do to lower your cholesterol. You might visit a doctor, and have her tell you all about your cholesterol and how you can go about lowering it. You might research the pros and cons of cholesterol-lowering drugs. You might even go so far as to synthesize all this information into a plan for yourself.

And you’ll probably do it all while eating fried eggs, bacon and hash browns while sat idle on your sofa.

If you decide to focus on tactics, you’ll start throwing everything you’ve got at lowering your cholesterol. You’ll change your diet, take up running, take all the cholesterol lowering drugs at least for a while. But because you’re not regularly having your cholesterol tested, you won’t know what if anything is working, and you’ll probably give it up when it becomes painful, inconvenient, or boring.

Because it wasn’t working anyway.

If you choose strategic execution, you’ll probably do the strategy part read the books, talk to your doctor, research the drugs and then choose a few tactics that make the most sense for you. Then, you’ll not only have a plan for how you’re going to execute those tactics, say, a workout buddy, diet plan and a prescription for a drug, but you’ll also have a way to test and measure whether those tactics worked, like a follow-up appointment with your doctor.

Now, this example probably seems a little silly on the surface; of course you’d choose strategic execution if your health was on the line.

But do you?

Not to point fingers, but how many of us have made a weight loss plan and then gone out for burgers? How many of us have tried a fad diet for a weekend and then quit when it got hard? (This has certainly happened to me!)

More uncomfortable question: How many of you have sat down at the beginning of January and planned out a business strategy… but then got lost along the way somewhere?

Or, maybe you’ve read about a new tactic like podcasting or Facebook live and jumped in with both feet… without having a strategy for how to make it work?

Your business depends on strategic execution

Here’s the deal:

If you’re so busy making plans and creating strategies that you never execute, you’re never going to make progress.

If you’re trying every new tactic you read a blog post about without considering how it fits into your plan, you’re also not going to make much headway (though it will feel like you are).

The most important question you can ask in your business is: How can I align my (and my team’s) efforts to accomplish our most important goals?

Tara Gentile calls your most important goal your Chief Initiative, but it doesn’t matter what you call it; it’s the one driving force that’s going to move your business forward. And when you define it, it makes choosing which tactics to execute on much, much easier.

You just ask yourself: Does this move me closer to my goal?

That’s it.

Want to start a podcast? Great. Does it move you closer to your goal or is it a distraction?

Think you ought to blog every day? Amazing!Does it move you closer to your goal or is it a distraction?

Want to cut back your blogging to once a month? That’s legit. But does it move you closer to your goal or is it a distraction?

My business has always been about strategy teaching it, showing people the value of it but I’ve strayed from that, trying to reach everyone, trying to teach everything.

Trying to provide tactics, when what I’m better at is strategy.

And, turns out, what I’m best at is strategic execution.

It’s a word you’re going to hear a lot about from me in the future. So stay tuned.

By Mark W. Schaefer

I was interviewed this week about my views on how the new U.S. President has used and abused Twitter. I was asked if Donald Trump has changed Twitter, perhaps even pumped the channel with new life and vitality. And even more important, how has he changed the dynamics of PR … any company or public figure could become a tweet target!

Twitter is consistently underestimated by the press. It’s had some bad PR because it’s not meeting Wall Streets expectations for profitability and user growth, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an important and powerful network. They still have 330 million active users and for many, Twitter is part of the fabric of their lives.

Has Donald Trump changed Twitter? Yes and no.

First, the “no” part.

Twitter is the ultimate viral channel

It always amazes me when I see a news story that begins like this: “Today Ukranian leaders announced on Twitter that Russian tanks have been placed along its borders.” Why would a national leader announce anything on Twitter? Simple. They know there’s no better platform on earth to send news on a viral path.

For years, national and local leaders have used Twitter to connect directly with their constituents. Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, may have been the first national leader to tweet freely, as far back as 2010.

Twitter has been used effectively at every level of government to create transparency and take a message directly to the people.

So Donald Trump has hardly been the first leader in history to broadcast his views and opinions on the world’s viral machine. However, his use of the platform may be … unique.

Twitter as a weapon

The beauty of Twitter is that it is the most human-powered social media platform. All the best stuff on Twitter has been invented by its users, not by the company. Hashtags. Twitter Chats. Twitter games.

But the thing that’s different now is that Donald Trump has invented a new role for Twitter, a use that might be forever unique to him. He is using Twitter as a weapon of mass destruction.

People have always argued on this platform. “Twitter wars” usually involve short, angry outbursts and sometimes they’re even fun to watch.

But the most powerful person on earth has never used social media quite this way before. While president, Barack Obama tweeted 352 times. You’d be hard-pressed to think of a single tweet of Obama’s that was really memorable, let alone newsworthy.

Trump’s tweets have become a source of dread and fear. There’s a growing business right now in getting companies ready for a presidential tweet. If you’re the target of a Trump tweet, your response may define you for years. It’s an unprecedented situation and in this way, I do think Donald Trump has changed Twitter.

He has 20 million followers. He’s the president. The world is watching. You can’t ignore that.

The post What to do if the president tweets you appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

SalesLoft is proud to announce the appointment of Fred Fried as Vice President of Enterprise Sales. Fried joins the executive management team in the company’s San Francisco office and brings over 20 years of experience and passion for hiring, building, and scaling sales teams to an already fast-growing SalesLoft.

A key hire for 2017, Fried’s role focuses on continuing to scale SalesLoft’s ability to serve enterprise-level clients, helping SalesLoft to transform more companies into modern sales organizations. SalesLoft is on a mission to help sales professionals believe – in the process they’re following, in the product they’re selling, and in themselves – by delivering a modern sales experience to their prospects and customers. Fred will be a tremendous asset in expanding the reach of this mission and catalyzing this type of change in more sales organizations.

“This is going to be a breakout quarter for us,” shares Kyle Porter, co-founder and CEO of SalesLoft, as he welcomes Fried to the organization. “With an intentional focus on providing value to our customers, we have the features and the capabilities to service some of the world’s largest organizations.”

“It was the culture of customer focus and improvement that drew me to SalesLoft” said Fried. “Culture that extends well beyond vanity values and words, but instead cherishes positivity, bias toward action, and customer love. It’s that value-based system and a relentless focus on the customer that has helped SalesLoft have such a dramatic impact on the industry. I’m excited to be a part of that movement.”

Fried brings extensive experience in creating and winning business categories. Prior to joining SalesLoft, Fried held leadership positions at Box and Thomson Reuters, both SaaS organizations and leaders in customer-driven solutions. As the Director of Enterprise Sales at Box, Fred helped the company grow revenue in his region over 800% in 2 years, and was recognized as the top region in FY15. At Thomson Reuters, he was responsible for all revenue for a $35M business unit as their Head of Sales. Fried has additionally served as an advisor for multiple organizations in which his key missions were to advise on go-to-market strategies, prospecting, sales processes and structure.

The experience Fried brings to the SalesLoft family are key-drivers for the overall success of our customers, prospects, and employees in the new year.

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Want to meet Fred and countless other Sales Leaders in person? Then don’t miss this year’s Rainmaker conference, March 1-3 in Atlanta Georgia. We can’t wait to see you!

The post SalesLoft Hires former Box Executive for VP of Sales Role appeared first on SalesLoft.

The partner channel has played a critical role in the software industry, but with the adoption of a SaaS-based business model, a referral partner program has become even more important. Take into consideration the importance of recurring revenue in a business model that requires less upfront cost to the customer relative to the one-time charge, on premise model. It makes reducing churn vital to the survival of SaaS companies. This is especially true when considering the need to generate ‘replacement’ revenue for lost customers. In addition, the immediate impact of a lost customer including the loss of upsell, cross sell, and reference opportunities only deepen the proverbial wound.

So how can channel partners help? Well, one of the most effective ways to reduce churn is to attract the right customers. Partners have the ear of potential customers and a deep understanding of the buyers’ need for your solution. Bringing this type of context to the deal improves the quality of the connection between your customer and your product. By increasing partner referrals, SaaS companies reduce the need to take on customers who aren’t a great fit for their product, decreasing the risk of customer churn.

This is reflected when comparing how referred customer stack up to non-referred customers. According to the Harvard Business Review, referred customers have an 18% decrease in churn and 16% increase in LTV compared to non-referred customers. But how are companies supposed to take advantage of this? Both referral partner program software and deal registration software have been used to facilitate referral partner deals. The question is, how do you choose between deal registration software and referral partner program software? Let’s look at the facts.

A referral partner program vs. a deal registration program

A referral partner program is a specialized and streamlined form of deal registration. Within deal registration software, deal registration functionality works by allowing a partner to refer or register a prospect they know is in the market for your product. That referral is then pushed to your company’s sales team to take action. For most partner programs, deal registration functionality is buried in larger partner management software. The added engagement capabilities of these platforms can introduce a high level of complexity to both the deal registration workflow and program management. Furthermore, other deal registration solutions often lack the functionality needed to properly manage these valuable leads.

CompTia’s Third Annual State Of The Channel Study: Channel Conflict And Deal Registration Trends, document the challenges of traditional deal registration software, including:

• 61% of channel partner respondents citing deal registration programs have inadequate communication such as lack of reporting on deal success, status of the deal payout, and overall incentive information.
• 49% of responding channel partners had technical issues with deal registration software that made the tool difficult to use.

These challenges partners face with traditional deal registration software leads to poor partner experience and disengagement with a company. And because the SaaS industry has a low barrier of entry, no individual product or company can truly dominates the market, which mean partners have a choice in who they partner with. This creates an even greater need for SaaS companies to keep partners engaged.

For many traditional partner programs, referrals are a viable alternative to streamline the deal registration workflow for partners. Since referral partner program software takes a focused approach, its functionality supports continued partner engagement and partner interaction with the referral deal to speed up the sales pipeline. This includes:

• Partners facilitating an introduction between the referral and business.
• A personal partner homepage to keep track of the deal’s progress to sale and how close the partner is to receiving their payout.
• The ability for partners to invite new advocates to the program and keep track of their activity.
• Automatic email updates to partners on their referred deal status.

Along with better engagement, make it easy for partners to refer or register a deal. After all, time is money, and if the software to refer a deal is hindering the process you’re trying to enable, your partners won’t refer. Basically, you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot.

Try creating a simple and easy interface for partners to refer, manage, and gain insight into their referral deal all in one place. This way you offer better usability and partner experience to increasing the number of referrals.

But these claims aren’t mere postulation. A leading SaaS company has had amazing result with their referral partner program. In the first 3 years of the program:

• 8,966 partners have enrolled in the program
• Partners made 5,208 each year
• 39% of referred leads end up becoming customers

With partner engagement being such a large revenue generator, you need software to enable their referrals. And while companies looking to influence partner behavior say they need deal registration software, 70% of their deals still go unregistered with that software, (Third Annual State Of The Channel Study: Channel Conflict And Deal Registration Trends). Don’t let your company’s growth reflect that. Use this free ROI calculator to see what your referral partner program ROI could be.

Systematic improvements are the best way for a marketing organization to make consistent gains in performance. To have an impact over the long-run, changes should be made at the fundamental level to how the budget gets allocated, how content is created, how performance is measured, etc. That’s why marketing performance management (MPM) has increased as a focus for so many B2B marketing departments.

What marketing performance management means to B2B organizations varies quite a bit. For those who are just developing marketing performance management practices, it can be as simple as tracking channel performance and trying to base budget allocation decisions on demand generation goals. At the other end of the spectrum, the most advanced marketing organizations are able to automate optimization and make smart decisions using predictive insights.

There clearly is some distance between what marketing performance management can mean, so we built this framework to help you think about where you are on the MPM spectrum, as well as how to develop and mature your practices.

Below, we’ll look at each stage and break down what they mean across three dimensions: strategy, planning, and measurement.

Stage 1: Channel Performance

Strategy: Use as many channels as the team feels comfortable using and do your best. Optimization is reactionary. If emails have a low click-through rate, test a new sequence. If PPC ads aren’t generating enough clicks, try a new campaign.

Planning: At this stage, budget allocation is done mostly based on what-we-did-last-year thinking. Again, it’s mostly reactionary. While it’s done with intent to hit certain goals, leadership is not confident in the accuracy of their marketing performance forecasts.

Measurement: Marketing performance is measured with channel analytics — impressions, clicks, open rates, and form fills. Visibility into how marketing is impacting the bottom-line is limited and largely a guess — “According to industry benchmarks, 1,000 leads results in about 50 opportunities, which results in about 10 customers.”

At this stage, marketing leadership is typically aware that how things are run is not on the cutting edge, but they’re stuck using legacy technology due to inertia, red tape, or budget limitations.

Stage 2: Revenue Performance

Strategy: Place marketing bets and optimize based on down-funnel performance metrics.

It’s still largely reactionary, but the depth of data that you’re using to inform your decisions is much richer.

Planning: Budgeting is still based on historical data, but it now includes marketing data that’s connected to revenue. With the knowledge of how much marketing dollars and resources went into making $X revenue last year (by channel and campaign), marketing leadership can create forecasts with more confidence.

Measurement: In addition to top-of-the-funnel metrics like leads, the marketing department can now measure their performance with down-funnel metrics like opportunities, closed deals, and revenue.

Using opportunity and revenue data to inform your marketing decisions is a big step forward. Additionally, it aligns the mindset and performance metrics of the marketing team with the sales team and finance team, which adds credibility for marketers.

At this stage, marketers either do not yet have the capability for predictive analytics or are not using them to inform marketing decisions.

Stage 3: Predictive Performance

Strategy: Use predictive insights to make smarter decisions while prospects are still in the funnel.

With predictive insights, marketers can say things like, “If I engage Prospect A right now on X marketing channel, they are more likely to take a demo because other prospects who look like Prospect A did the same.” The ability to make decisions based on predictive insights allows marketers to place smarter bets, as well as modify bets in real time.

Planning: Allocating the budget looks pretty similar here to what it looked like in the previous stage. The only difference is that with predictive insights, you have a better idea of which accounts will close in the next period. It makes your forecasts a little more accurate.

Measurement: Marketing performance is still measured using full-funnel metrics; however, the metrics are then used to create forward-looking insights.

This stage takes marketers beyond using historical data by leveraging it for predictive analysis. Organizations at this stage take the step from using data to assess past performance to the next step of using that data to improve current performance.

Here’s the difference. Using historical data allows you to say, “When we ran campaign A to these 100 prospects, it converted 20 of them, which is 2x the average. Therefore, we should run campaign A to all of our prospects.” On the other hand, predictive data allows you to say, “If we run campaign A to these prospects, X of them will convert. If we run campaign A to this other set of prospects, Y of them will convert. Therefore, we should run campaign A to this set of prospects and campaign B to the other set.” Predictive allows you to use both historical and current data to impact current prospects.

Stage 4: Proactive Performance

Strategy: Place marketing bets based on down-funnel metrics and allow the predictive engine to deliver insights and proactively optimize budget allocation.

Rather than just getting the data and then having to manually analyze and apply the learnings, a predictive insight solution automatically runs the analysis and outputs the action that will optimize performance.

Planning: Using a predictive engine that incorporates historical data and machine learning, marketing teams can enter the desired output and see exactly where the budget needs to go in order to achieve their goals. This results in more confident forecasting and smarter budgeting.

Measurement: Measurement is the same as in the previous stage. Marketers use full-funnel measurement and a machine learning algorithm to produce predictive insights.

The most sophisticated organizations use marketing performance management not only as a way to measure performance, but to proactively improve performance through reallocation to higher performing programs. It leverages the richest historical data with powerful machine learning to both deliver and act on marketing insights.

While marketers at Stage 3 can answer the question of “Will we hit our goals?,” marketing organizations at Stage 4 can answer “How do we hit our goals?” using their predictive insights.

So where does your marketing organization fit? What is your strategy for allocating your marketing budget to hit your targets? What tools and metrics are you using to forecast performance?

Customer Success is still a relatively young discipline, and as a result, leadership teams are often unsure about where it fits into their organization. Companies that don’t want to miss out on the trend of branding themselves as “customer-centric” might consider repackaging an existing team, like Account Management, as Customer Success. This would be a short-sighted move since Customer Success and Account Management are distinguished by more than just a naming convention. Customer Success teams drive user adoption and engagement through onboarding, training, and a compelling user experience. Account Management teams build relationships and align the value their products can bring with the customer’s goals. Companies that only have one team or the other will find it more difficult to manage critical phases of the customer lifecycle. This inevitably leads to higher churn rates and missed expansion opportunities. With so much of a company’s long-term success riding on retaining and expanding their current customer base, having both teams is a necessity.

The work of Customer Success and Account Management teams is so interconnected that it can be difficult from the outside to note where one begins and the other ends. This is because there is never a clean handoff from one team to the other. Their responsibilities change throughout the customer lifecycle, but even when one team is at the forefront, the other is not far behind. The rest of this post will outline the responsibilities of each team during different phases of the customer lifecycle.

Phase I- Contract signed (Day 0 – 7)

A key focus for Account Managers (AMs) is building strong relationships with their customers. AMs will tell you that one of the best parts of their job is building meaningful professional and personal connections with their clients. These mutually beneficial relationships come from a foundation of mutual respect and accountability. When AMs are brought in post-sale the first question they should ask the customer is “what outcome do you hope our company will help you achieve?”. The obvious answer will be a list of goals and success metrics that were created during the sales evaluation process. But AMs often need to dig deeper to uncover the motives and incentives that will drive a customer’s behavior. Is this launch part of a special project overseen by the CEO? Are they hoping to pass this project off to a lower-level colleague? This context will be important as the AM builds this relationship moving forward. To ensure there is accountability on the customer’s part, the agreed upon goals and success criteria should be clearly documented.

Phase II- Implementation and onboarding (Day 21 – 45)

Once the AM has an understanding of what the customer is hoping to achieve, a Customer Success Manager (CSM) is tasked with tying these goals into a launch plan. This project plan details how the two companies expect to meet these goals through specific milestones and launch stages. Implementation and onboarding are critical to setting customers up for success. Getting a new product integrated into a company’s spiderweb of internal systems and workflows doesn’t happen over the course of one 15 minute phone call. Products on the periphery of these core systems find it hard to generate adoption and demonstrate ROI. Effective onboarding demonstrates the product’s value to the end user. CSMs will spend the majority of their time in this phase focused on driving adoption and engagement with end users. To scale this 1: many relationship, Customer Success teams look for ways to leverage data and systems to drive a compelling user experience across a broad user base. These systems should allow your Customer Success team to impact almost every user in some fashion. The AM’s primary contributions during this phase are to secure leadership buy-in for the launch plan and keep all parties up to date as things progress.

Phase III- Maintaining success (Day 45 – 200)

Creating a simple framework that details which person will be managing each aspect of the customer lifecycle and relationship post-launch reduces ambiguity and confusion for customers. CSMs handle all training and optimize the integrations between systems. AMs demonstrate value across the customer’s organization. They manage all strategic business conversations such as QBRs, discussions around price, and are the escalation point for any major issues. Ultimately, the AM is the customer’s key point of contact. Over the course of the next few months, the CSM and AM work to ensure the customer has been successful towards reaching their goals. The two teams regularly brainstorm strategies to improve ongoing product adoption and engagement. The AM continues to maintain a positive business relationship between the two companies. AMs provide internal feedback on what features and systems will be necessary to support their current customers in the future. CSMs work closely with the Product team to address user pain points.

Phase IV- Upsells and cross-sells (Day 200 – 230)

AMs and CSMs are able to identify opportunities for additional product usage and cross-sells because they have such a clear sense of the value their products bring customers. If their company offers another product that the customer would benefit from, or their products can successfully support an additional use case, only then should the AM initiate an upsell conversation. These upsells and expansions make Account Management a key source of new revenue, with the median SaaS company bringing in 15% of new ACV from upsells and expansions. With this upsell, the process starts all over again from Phase II.

Customer Success is much more than just a feel-good name for Account Management. Companies who support their customers with both Customer Success and Account Management teams allow each team to focus on how they can best serve the customer. AMs do this through building 1:1 relationships, while CSMs empower companies and end users to be successful. Unless companies invest in supporting customers across both dimensions, they will not be able to effectively optimize their customer’s success in a way that coincides with their own.

If eyes are the gateway to the soul, a subject line is the gateway to an email. Everything a prospect needs to know about an email is in the six to eight words they see in their inbox: Do you seem human? Do you have interesting insights to share? Does it seem like you could potentially help?

Prospects will make assumptions about the answers to those questions the moment they read a subject line. If you choose your words wrong, your emails will never get opened. It doesn’t matter how good your insights are or how cute the GIF you included is -- if your subject line sucks, you might as well have sent a blank email.

When you only have six or eight words to capture a prospect’s attention, every single one has to count. It’s bad enough when the words you choose aren’t compelling or interesting. It’s even worse when your subject line uses a word or phrase that sets off subconscious alarm bells. Avoid the words below unless you want your prospects to send your messages straight to the trash.

15 Words to Avoid Using in Sales Email Subject Lines

1) "15 minutes"

Judging by all the cold emails in my inbox asking for 15 minutes, salespeople think this is a great inclusion. But asking for your prospect’s time before you’ve even introduced yourself is a rookie move, and buyers won’t respond well to being asked for a meeting with no established value.

2) Your company name

How do you know your buyer’s even heard of you? Putting your company name in a subject line is a waste of space and also reinforces that this is a sales email. Put the customer first.

The one exception here? When you’re following up with an inbound lead who’s just converted and has your brand top-of-mind.

3) "Hi, [Prospect name]"

This phrase may have been novel in 2000, but it’s 2017 and things have changed. Customized outreach no longer means dropping in personalization tokens and copying a generic subject line. If you want to personalize, tweak language according to your buyer’s industry or role.

4) "Quick call?"

This follows the same principle as #1. Here’s what a buyer sees when they see this subject line: A salesperson who they’ve never met or heard of asking for a meeting. There’s no faster way to establish yourself as just another pushy salesperson.

5) Anything misspelled

Making typos is a rookie mistake that makes you appear unprofessional and unorganized. Buyers have hundreds of emails and other priorities pulling at their attention. You’d better believe they’re not going to spend time reading an email from an unknown source with misspellings in it.

6) "Re:"

This is another trick that’s come into vogue lately. The thinking seems to be that writing "Re:" in the subject line of a first-touch email will fool buyers into thinking they have corresponded before. Even when this tactic worked, the subsequent realization that this was a first-touch sales email creates bad feelings between buyers and salespeople. And by now, this technique is so ubiquitous that buyers see through it immediately.

7) Branded terms

Like your company name, a branded term is a waste of space and relies on the assumption that the buyer already knows you. Use the buyer’s language for the best shot at connecting with them.

8) "Connecting"

… But don’t say "connecting," because it is -- and sounds like -- jargon. Instead, get right to the point -- why are you connecting?

9) "Outreach"

Another jargony word, "outreach" automatically brings to mind the days of direct mail, cold calls both physical and over the phone, and that’s just about the last thing you want prospects to be thinking about when you are reaching out to sell something.

10) "Touch base"

Like "connecting" and "outreach," touching base is a mostly meaningless phrase that doesn’t hook the prospect’s curiosity in any way.

11) "Services"

You might offer unique and valuable services, but including the actual word transactionalizes your role immediately as merely a provider. Position yourself as a consultant instead.

12) "Great deal"

Unless you’ve been regularly speaking with a prospect and have an end-of-month pricing package to offer them, avoid this phrase. It puts price top-of-mind before any real conversation has happened, and makes you sound like a storefront holding an "everything must go!" sale.

13) "[FIRSTNAME]"

Remember when I said personalization tokens aren’t enough? They’re not, but what’s even worse is using them wrong. Misspelling a token or pulling in the wrong field not only makes the message seem less human, it also makes you look sloppy.

14) "Free"

Nothing makes your message look like an email blast than "marketing speak" like "free," "consultation," "promotion," and so on. Try to use simple, straightforward language (like you're talking to a coworker) to avoid an instant delete.

15) Urgent

Is it actually urgent? Unless the buyer's house is on fire, and you sell water, steer clear of this term. Not only will you provoke your recipient's ire when they realize you're asking for a phone call to "discuss their business goals," you'll also lose the ability to use this phrase when you actually mean it (it's 6:40 p.m. on a Friday, the big discount you're offering expires that night, their corporate credit card isn't going through, and you need to catch them before they sign off for the weekend.

Keeping your subject lines free of these words and phrases will have a noticeable impact on your open and response rates. Yes, it's hard to craft a great subject line -- but it's worth it.

Platform business models continue to roll across the business landscape, transforming whole industries and rewriting basic business assumptions. The popular examples are companies in the ‘sharing economy’ like Uber and AirBnB. But the transformation is equally powerful in B2B software.

For B2B it is the platform that dominates the ecosystem. With many people suffering from ‘app exhaustion’ (Do I really have time and attention for another piece of software?) and companies trying to rationalize the maze of web services they have subscribed to platforms are on the rise again. They are becoming the best, and in some cases the only way, to get to industry buyers and they are critical to driving user engagement. Salesforce and its App Exchange are the classic example, but Slack is rapidly emerging as one of the best channels into the enterprise, especially for applications that need people to communicate with each other. Slack provides a powerful case study for how people need to think about pricing software that is delivered with and through software platforms like Salesforce and Slack.

Slack continues to roll across the collaboration landscape. How many Slacks are you on? Currently I have to monitor four and am actively engaged on two. Inside each of these there are an average of seven channels. That means following about 28 channels. And most of these channels are populated by at least one Slack bot.

What is a Slack bot? It is an application that communicates with you through Slack and leverages Slack for key elements of the user interface. Conversational robots are an example. These bots listens in on a Slack channel and inject comments when relevant. They ask and answer questions and provide access to value-added services. It is easy to recognize the Slack bots in your channel.

While they listen, some Slack bots are also collecting data and putting it into data lakes for analysis. With the amount of information flowing through Slack and the context supplied by conversations it is becoming a rich source of data for machine learning systems.

How many of these bots are there? It is difficult to come up with an exact account as teams can have private bots that are not visible to anyone other than themselves and Slack. But in this post I am more interested in the bots that any of us can add to our own Slack channels. You can find these on the Slack App Directory where Bots get their own page. A quick count gives more than 1,000 Bots from everyone from the Harvard Business Review to well-known web apps like Quip (a very useful collaborative authoring system) and interesting new comers like Leo. Of course there are some bots that are there just for the fun of it. Check out Autocomplete (that guessing Google autocompletes has become a game says something about how much we rely on search). There are even bots that help you script other bots, see Hubot.

I have even caught the bot bug myself and am working with a small team to build a bot that will help you to learn about pricing and will answer your pricing questions (bots are likely to be an important mode of e-Learning.)

But all this effort has to be sustained, which means bot creators looking to grow businesses on top of Slack must learn how to accurately set prices. How will companies make money from bots generally, and Slack bots in particular?

There seem to be four basic models:

1. Charge for the bot directly (Leo from Officevibe)
2. Use the bot to add value to a larger application and use the bots popularity to drive adoption and engagement (Quip)
3. Collect data to monetize (it is hard to know who is doing this)
4. Have the bot function as an ad channel (have not seen this but you know it will come in one form or another…perhaps as a form of ‘product placement’)

In this post I will focus on the first of these – charging for your bot directly – as it raises some interesting pricing issues.

Most bots are being priced between $2 and $4 per user. Leo for example is $4 per person per month. Why is this? Well, Slack is priced between $6.67 and $12.50 per month (at time of writing). Bot developers I have been talking with say “How can we charge as much as Slack when this is the application we are building on?” This is a rather pernicious example of ‘price framing’ and it is the wrong way to think.

We have seen this before with CRMs especially Salesfoce.com which has one of the best developed application ecosystems. A few years ago people were reluctant to charge more than about 20% of the cost of the CRM for a CRM add on. As one marketing manager said to me “You can’t charge more for the tires than you do for the car.”

Why is this wrong? Because it ignores pricing basics.

1. Price is based on the value you provide to a customer
2. What matters is the differentiated value, the value you provide that the customer cannot get from the next best competitive alternative

If your bot is creating value and there is no other way to get that value then price appropriately.

Framing is important in pricing. Buyers generally have a slot in their minds for about how much something costs. You know what to expect to pay for a cup of coffee or a compact car. As a marketer it is your job to control the framing.

How should we frame the relationship between bots and Slack (or Facebook, or any other communication platform)? One approach is to think of the bot as an add on that enhances the core offering be that the CRM or the collaboration platform. With this framing the buyer expects the bot to cost only 20-30% of the host application.

What happens if we try a different framing? Think of the collaboration platform as a communication channel, a commodity really, and the content communicated on the channel as the source of value. In this case the right bot could be many times more valuable than the channel that carries it. Imagine a bot that helps you build the skills you need to get a job. Is that worth more than $6 per month? How about a bot that finds the very best RFPs for you to respond to, gives you background on the opportunity and coaches you on how to craft a successful response?

If you are building a bot, and want to take it to market at a reasonable price, think of Slack as a communication or delivery channel. Collaboration channels will become a commodity service and you want to be riding on top of the channel and not be trapped under it.

It means no disrespect to Slack to position it as a commodity. Commodities are extremely important things. They are commodities because we all use them and use them without thinking about them very much. It is a real achievement for a category of software to become a commodity, and it opens up all sorts of new business models. Email, spreadsheets, document processing, relational databases are all commodities. Customer Relationship Management, Learning Management, Human Resources Information Systems are also on the brink of becoming commodities. Collaboration, digital asset management and project management software is on the way as well.

In Part 2 of Pricing Slack Apps we will look at some specific pricing strategies that can be pursued.

I would like to thank Boris Mann for provoking me to write this piece. Boris is one of the smartest people I know working at the intersection of business and technology. You can read his own thoughts here.

The post Framing Effects of Platforms on Price: Pricing Slack Apps (Part I) appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Now that you’ve got a good flow of visits and leads from your search engine marketing efforts, what better way to amp up your search marketing game than by optimizing your website and local presence for the organic, or unpaid, search results?

SEO is the perfect complement to your search advertising and can help you generate more traffic and leads from search results pages and lift the results of your efforts. But there are so many factors that go into search engine optimization, how do you know where to start? And what SEO tactics will have the biggest impact on your lead generation efforts?

Get on Google My Business

Google My Business is the first place you need to add your business information so your profile can show up for local, Maps, and organic searches on desktop, mobile, and apps. By making sure your business information is accurate and robust, you can help drive search traffic to your Google business profile, which can result in phone calls, in-person visits, and website visits that can all contribute to leads and sales for your business. Learn more about setting up Google My Business with our in-depth ebook.

Emphasize Your Local Presence

When a local search is conducted, search engines scan your website for local information, like your business name, address, and phone number (known as your NAP). So, by listing your contact information clearly on your site’s content and in the structured metadata, search engines can more easily find your website (and help you collect more leads.) Local SEO also includes making sure local directories (not just Google’s!) contain information about your business that’s consistent with your website. Since these local listings can show up as a link or Map result separate from your website, they help you grow your overall presence in search results.

Update Your Website Experience

Today’s search engine algorithms favor a positive and consistent website experience that includes mobile friendliness, simple navigation, fast load times, and relevant content. Not only will updating your website with these features help it index quickly for relevant searches, but it can also help keep visitors on your website when they find it and help them convert.

Publish SEO-Friendly Content

To show up in the organic search results for search queries related to your business, it’s important to do thorough keyword research, then create content for your website or blog. Make sure your content appeals first to your target audience, since search engines now have sophisticated ways to understand searches and no longer rely only on exact keyword matches. You should also optimize your site with keyword-optimized metadata including page titles, tags, and short descriptions that help search engines quickly read and index your site.

When you couple SEO and search advertising, you increase your chances of attracting more online searchers and converting leads into customers. Learn more about using SEO to boost lead generation on our website and download our free on-demand webinar below to learn five search marketing trends you need to know.

Lots of Englishmen move from dreary ol’ England to warmer climates. However, none but one of these expats has ever become the most notorious and celebrated pirate in all history.

Meet Edward Teach. He’s just relocated to Jamaica with his family and begun working as a shiphand in the nearby port. He’s really loving it. The warm breeze on his face is pleasant and his sea legs are sturdy.

After enlisting in the Royal Navy, he sails through the Queen Anne’s War of 1716 without a scrape. After a few more years, he becomes a privateer and gets a taste for obtaining pricey mercantile goods via irregular means.

Within the next year, Teach commits numerous acts of piracy. The taste of plunder suits him nicely. Soon he’s overtaken a massive vessel of his own, renamed it the Queen Anne’s Revenge, and outfitted it with 40 cannons and guns.

He and his crew are the scourge of the English Navy and seafaring merchants for years. Now a man, Teach sports a massive beard and an overall fearsome appearance (he’s rumored to light cannon fuses from his captain’s cap during raids on unfortunate ships).

Today we know this historical buccaneer as Blackbeard the Pirate. You may recall Johnny Depp’s character in Pirates of the Caribbean?

Yep, same guy. And like Jack Sparrow, Blackbeard was – gasp – a peaceful pirate. His crews all served voluntarily under his renowned leadership and he never once took a life, preferring intimidation tactics to force.

Cool pirate story, right?

Here’s the turn: growth hackers have much in common with Blackbeard the Pirate. Both use unconventional tactics to achieve their goals, both are rapidly effective, and no one gets hurt. Quite the opposite: loot! As marketers, our job is to captain our brands to growth. And growth hacks are like pirate tactics for those who choose to accept it.

Today we’re start off by defining the differences between growth hacking and growth marketing. These terms have been floating around for some time now, and since both are effective models, they deserve some clarification before being put to good use.

I’ll also introduce you to growth automation, the analytics framework pirate metrics and show you a process for using these strategies at your own company.

Ultimately, our discussion will center around how to create and align customer-centric initiatives that focus on customer retention, growth, and high customer lifetime value.

Shiver me timbers, let’s start already!

What is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing is the practice of building campaigns and tactics that improve the entire customer lifecycle. Moving beyond traditional marketing metrics around Awareness and Acquisition they are also focused on technical projects deeper in the customer experience that improve Product Onboarding Flows, Viral Loops and Pricing Plans.

Here’s some stats to help you out:

• If a typical SaaS business loses 2-3% of their customers each month to churn, they must grow by at least 27%-43% annually to maintain the same revenue. (Source)

• 79% of leads never convert into sales due to poor performance, nurturing, and/or engagement. (Source)

• Reducing churn rate by 5% can increase profitability between 25-125%. (Source)

• Existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more when compared to new customers. (Source)

• Loyal customers are worth up to 10x as much as their first purchase, on average. (Source)
• The lifetime value of a referred customer is 16% higher – Wharton School of Business (Source)

“Growth” itself can be understood as a fusion of marketing, product, and engineering. This blended concept becomes important when we consider that growth marketing – unlike other marketing strategies – focuses upon the entire funnel rather than just the top.

Thus, having not only marketing tactics, but product developments, and engineering savvy on your side enhances your ability to affect change throughout the entire funnel with a diverse array of activities.

For example, you could release a new product feature to attract growth. Or better optimize your customer experience with improvements to retain more users and encourage sharing. At the core, growth marketing means taking a step back and considering your full funnel and being selective and streamlined about how you appeal to your best customers.

Sean Ellis and Brian Balfour have long championed the growth marketing movement, and both endorse “high tempo testing” – a methodology of launching new experiments regularly and at a high frequency to quickly determine winning initiatives.

To do this set a goal, then brainstorm how to accomplish the goal, predict an outcome, measure the outcome and change your course depending upon the results.

(Source)

Slack’s meteoric growth testifies to growth marketing done well. Having found a pain point in team communication and collaboration, the platform focused upon delivering its users a total relief pain pill in the form of a replacing work emails. The company started by inviting a few thousand to try but now boasts 2 million worldwide users and 500,000 active subscribers.

Yes, Slack shows us that delivering an experience that users want – nay, crave – is a surefire way to see massive growth. This highlights how product and customer experience retains users on value alone.

Probe your own funnel to follow Slack’s lead. Identify your top channels and then assess how these impact the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel experience. Where are your weaknesses in customer experience?

Is it in the middle funnel where lead nurturing falls short? Is better customer support during trial onboarding?

Focusing on bottom of the funnel activity like customer advocacy and loyalty programs can increase revenue per customer. Growth requires an overarching perspective that truly rewards customers as they move throughout the funnel.

What are Pirate Metrics?

Yohoho and a bottle of rum is not what Pirate Metrics is about, fun as that might be.

This analytical framework was created by Dave McClure to categorize key KPIs and metrics within the customer lifecycle. The name derives from the acronym “AAARRR” to discuss ways in which companies can improve the customer lifecycle.

The model is broken down into these 5 customer lifecycle stages – Acquisition, Activation, Revenue, Retention, and Referrals. This model complements growth marketing in that it provides a holistic way of looking at the full funnel as a function of growth.

Acquisition – Land ho! This is first contact with your brand, be it a free trial or a free download. Prioritizing quality lead sourcing is essential, but the next step is to segment users into engaged and ‘otherwise’; newsletter signups don’t signal the same level of engagement as a trial signup, right? Look to new leads, email subscribers, downloads, and product sales as your metrics.

Activation – Huzzah, people are using your product! Now’s the time to make it as WOW-ing as possible with automated campaigns to keep them around. Metrics to watch: trial conversion rates, user activity and repeat purchases.

Retention – This is the amount of incremental value you’ll gain from the customer. Time to think of cross-sells and upsells, but also about improving the customer experience after the first sale. Monitoring churn rates and CLV is important. Use product emails, visitor retargeting and push notifications with post-sale coupons to reactivate customers.

Revenue – You’ve been paid yet the work’s only halfway done. Users grasp your value, but you need to preserve this good feeling to retain them. Use client data inform how best to develop your relationship, be it with automated campaigns focused on plan or cart upsells and product recommendations. Keep an eye on revenue per campaign and customer churn in this area.

Referral – Customers like your offering enough to tell their friends. This closes the full funnel loop and reinject awareness into the growth loop, so facilitate and optimize for sharing. Social shares, referral rates, product reviews, net promoter surveys – these metrics all feed into your referral campaigns.

What is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is using analytical thinking with creative strategies and tactics to drive company growth.

You know growth hacking when you see it, yet it’s hard to define. If it makes you go, “Oh, that’s clever” – odds are, it’s a hack. For example, when Airbnb tapped Craigslist to email promotions to people posting temporary apartment rentals. Hack attack.

Growth hackers are marketers like you and I – just with a different set of challenges and tools. I’ve pronounced them pirates, but you can think of them as part programmer, part creative, part analyst, part subversive who’s interested in outside the box growth schemes.

They set objectives, run an experiment, gauge the effects, and move quickly towards new objectives in order to uncover the real growth options. And they’re unafraid to try new things.

“You’d probably have a lot of the same types of roles you see in traditional teams,” Sean said. “Those would include copywriters, analysts, designers, but you’d also want to add some development skills for deeper funnel optimization and growth (i.e. viral) feature development.” — Sean Ellis, Growthhackers.com

(Source)

If you’ve been on Groupon recently, you’ll recognize this. The coupon company uses growth thinking throughout their brand experience, just as show in this photo from their “Featured Deal” page.

Already a social product, Groupon customers can share their coupons with others in order to unlock premier deals. This twist on social proof and referral marketing uses consumer psychology such as exclusivity, scarcity, and altruism to influence purchasing behavior. Hacks like this helped steer Groupon to a $12.7 billion IPO and 228% growth in one year.

(Source)

But Groupon doesn’t stop there. It costs Groupon $10 per person to run their referral campaign. The referral program is integrated with popular share mediums Facebook, Email and Twitter to give customers an easy way to share the deal.

What’s a Process for Growth Hacking?

#1 Define Actionable Goals

Set goals that are concrete and measurable. If you’re looking for more active users, more email subscribers, or a higher revenue per customer – choose a goal and stick with it. Example: increase sales by 15% in 3 months.

#2 Experiment within Your Network

You’re going to be running experiments in a given period of time to gauge effectiveness, so be sure to approach each campaign and customer touchpoint so you make the biggest impact.

#3 A/B Test

Set a goal, run the experiment, and check the data after the given time period. A willingness to dive into data across any customer segment is what really gives growth hackers power, so be relentless and fearless in your pursuit of outcomes. And if something doesn’t work, move on to the next experiment.

What is Growth Automation?

Growth automation is any campaign that full funnel marketers use to increase customer lifetime value.

Whether we’re designing an acquisition campaign to get more first-time visitors or creating a special offer to encourage repeat purchases. Growth marketers are looking to help their company with structured campaigns that impact the bottom line.

For example, we look can look to campaigns that:

• Send offers to trial signups to convert them to paid users
• Increase WOW! moments during onboarding
• Reduce subscriber churn with cancellation offers
• Promote customer advocacy with refer a friend campaigns

The idea is that if a growth marketer can design campaigns across the entire customer lifecycle they’re able to deliver measurable company growth.

Setting Sail

Pirate metaphors aside, by now you should have a grasp on what separates growth marketing from growth hacking. Whether you’re looking to get a parrot for your shoulder and become a growth hacker yourself – or just expand your full funnel initiatives and emphasize customer experience – these strategies and tactics will help you achieve your goals.

Ask yourself: where are my funnel weaknesses? Where do users fall off and start to churn. Focus on these areas with larger growth automation campaigns and fix the gaps with little growth hacks wherever possible.

Email with its ubiquity, immediacy, familiarity, and simplicity has grown from a mere business communication tool to a platform for many business operations. Using your inbox and complementary tools to manage your sales pipeline can eliminate a lot of complication in the process.

Let’s look at the different stages in a sales pipeline and see how you can manage it better via email:

source

Stage 1: New leads

The first stage is gathering potential leads. This is a simple enough process. You find prospects in various places, on your website on your competitor’s website and gather their contact information such as their email ID.

When reach out to someone new, cold emailing someone emailing is the best way to approach since it is the most preferred form of contact for the consumers when receiving emails from companies and businesses.sa

You can set up a couple of templates ready to send for such new-found leads and share them with your team members so that there is a standardized and consistent way of approaching prospects.

Also, perfecting the art of cold emailing can help you achieve good results here. The first contact email you send to your prospect should first contact email you send to your prospect should not be too self-promotional – something like a welcome email is a good start.

The important thing is to keep your fresh leads categorized separately as the way you approach them should be different from an already engaged lead.

Stage 2: Information gathering

Not all leads are the same. Some are high priority and need a lot of attention, others relatively less. After collecting the leads, researching them and gathering data about them is the next step.

We use this information to categorize, segment, and sort them. This is where the rules, folders, and labels that email clients offer can be highly helpful.

This data will not only help you figure out how to approach lead such that you have the highest probability of success, but also understand and estimate how much of your time each lead is worth or if it is worth pursuing at all.

You can divide leads into groups – for instance, have the highly-qualified lead and easy-to-approach in one category, have the highly-qualified but hard-to-approach in another etc.

Stage 3: Make an offer

Now you have established the first contact with your lead and you also have all the data you need to approach them with the right proposal. It’s now time to make an offer.

Again, you can set up templates for different kinds of offers. For instance, if your client is a B2B company, then depending on the size of the company you can pitch your offer. If the company is small, then you can offer a simpler version of your product and so on.

The important thing to remember is the offer you make must not be absurd and should be as close as possible to what the customer is looking for. If your proposal is too out of context, then they will outrightly reject and you won’t have a good chance of convincing later either.

One advantage of using emails to handle this stage of sales pipeline is you will have all the conversations recorded for any future reference. It will also make it very easy for your team to collaborate with each other via email with the tools with features such as Shared Mailboxes.

Stage 4: Follow-up

In my personal experience, I learned that this is one of the most important stages of converting a lead. Oddly enough, most businesses give up at this stage. Once they don’t get a reply from a prospect, they just let it go cold and forget about it.

At my startup, we have seen that sometimes leads suddenly convert for the 3rd or 4th follow-up, even though they don’t respond to the initial emails.

Not following up implies leaving a lot of money on the table. Again, email is the best way to send polite reminders and nudges to your prospects. Phone calls and instant messages to follow-up can become quickly annoying; writing an effective follow-up email can pay off better.

Using features labels is a great way to keep track of things here. For instance, if you have sent the second follow-up for a lead, add a label ‘2nd follow-up’, so that when you look at the email you know you have already approached them twice.

Also, for each follow-up you set up a specific template and use them repeatedly, without wasting time on drafting a fresh email every time. Using tools that will allow you to share those labels with your teammates and collaborate effectively, can smoothen the process even further.

Stage 5: Sale

This is the final stage; the stage where the results show and the final delivery of the product/service happens.

Managing emails at this stage is quite easy. So easy that you can, in fact, automate the process. For instance, when a customer finishes a purchase, set up an automated thank you email. You can also do some upselling in these ‘Thank You’ emails, by mentioning a few other products your customer may be interested in buying as well.

Summing up

With so many tools and plugins that integrate with your inbox, running business operations from your email has become a popular option. In order to manage your sales pipeline effectively from the inbox, here’s what you need to know:

• Use labels, folders, and filters to keep the inbox sorted and also to segment your leads.
• Set up templates, to make things easy and less time-consuming.
• Find avenues where you can simply automate the emails such as ‘Welcome’ emails and ‘Thank you’ emails.
• You can further simplify the process by using shared mailboxes, where your whole team has access to the inbox, and the appropriate person can deal with appropriate email.

Ordering your lunch or coffee using a self-serve computer screen instead of speaking to a human is one of the most obvious examples of how the workplace and retail experience is becoming more automated.

Such automation has become so common that Starbucks is taking steps to make sure the process doesn’t feel so, well, robotic.

Starbucks announced this month that it was installing two-way video screens at its drive-thus to personalize the transaction, “allowing customers and baristas to see each other and truly interact when the order is being placed.”

Starbucks also said its mobile order and pay program, which allows customers to order through a phone app and swoop in to pick up an order without waiting in line, also provides “personalized customer experiences.” 

Other fast food outlets, including A&W and McDonald’s, also give customers the option to bypass or minimize human interaction with self-serve screen kiosks, and experts predict the automation of work tasks is likely going to speed up in coming years.

While such kiosks may be the most visible face of automation today, a U.S. study by McKinsey Global Institute predicts half of work activities performed today by humans could be automated in another 40 years, give or take two decades, so maintaining that human touch may become more important.

But no one can predict how fast or how far automation and robotics will go. Whether or not you can be replaced by a robot or a computer depends a lot on your job.

“We have seen a dramatic effect already in automation technology in terms of robotics and in terms of general information and computer technologies in the workplace,” said Henry Siu, a UBC economics professor who specializes in robotics and how they’re going to change the workplace.

The more obvious automation over the past several decades occurred on factory floors, with robots standing where workers used to, but he said it’s been happening in offices, too.

“Back 50 years ago, there used to be things called typing pools,” he said. “We don’t have as many office administrative support workers as we used to.”

Already, self-driving cars are being tested in traffic, computers are helping surgeons perform operations and pharmacists fill prescriptions, touch screens and self-check-outs are increasingly offered in retail and restaurants, and robots are beating humans at poker and Go.

Increased machine learning and neural networks that could make computers “smarter” and drive artificial intelligence in the workplace in ways not even imagined yet.

The McKinsey study looked at more than 800 occupations across the U.S., and how their 2,000 work activities performed in 18 categories.

It found 60 per cent of all those jobs have 30 per cent of activities that can be automated and five per cent of occupations can be fully automated.

Extrapolated to the global economy, the study estimated “49 per cent of the activities that people are paid to do in the global economy have the potential to be automated by adopting currently demonstrated technology.”

Siu said jobs that focus on a narrow set of tasks that repetitively follow a set of procedures are ripe for automation — bank tellers, travel agents, data processors, assembly-line workers — and the field is growing.

He pointed to Amazon’s experimentation with robotic stock retrievers during the 2008 global economic downturn that has now permanently replaced its forklift drivers.

And on a trip to the University of Texas, Siu was impressed by two oversized robotic baristas that took up the entire wall in one room and dispensed a foamy latte.

“I got a coffee from there, it’s pretty good,” he said.

Preparing the beans and getting the milk the right temperature and frothiness, “we think of this as art but there is a lot of science behind it and once scientists understand that art, it can be done likely better than human beings in a consistent way,” said Siu.

Machine learning, a subfield of computer science where machines learn a task without being programmed for it, and neural networks, where computers model the way a human brain solves problems through interconnections with other computers, is likely the next frontier in automation, he said.

“Machine learning is about pattern recognition,” said Siu. That would allow computers to “diagnose” biopsies for malignancies or retinal scans for signs of adult-onset diabetes, for example.

“We have doctors who do those highly specialized tasks, but once machines learn to recognize the patterns that pathologists are able to recognize, obviously that has important labour market ramifications. You have a highly trained pathologist for many years training in a very specific thing and suddenly their services aren’t going to be as needed,” he said.

But even though robots are being employed to dispense medicines in some hospitals, it’s unlikely all nursing tasks can be automated, he said.

“Human beings will always have a comparative advantage,” said Siu. “To be a good nurse, you perform many tasks during the day. And I don’t think I would want to drop off my children at a daycare where there are no humans around.”

Leo Stocco, a UBC biomedical engineer in its robotics lab, said there’s a misunderstanding about robots, like the computerized tool called da Vinci Surgery, a robot-assisted apparatus he demonstrated in his lab. It allows surgeons to use hand and foot controls on the machine to allow the robot arm to perform intricate tasks with minimum invasion on the patient.

“The first time I tried a da Vinci, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. He used the robot to tie a knot, something that using old technology “would’ve taken me a week. Whereas the first time I sat down at a da Vinci, it took me 30 seconds to tie the knot.”

“But this robot, like many robots, they aren’t replacing anything. All they are is a very high-tech tool. A robot is essentially some sort of moving mechanism that has some intelligence. The intelligence in this case is just the copying of the surgeon’s motions.”

He said the tool means less invasive surgery in a torso — “it saves the patient from enduring a large opening and the spreading of the ribs” — and a quicker operation, which reduces the length of time under harmful anesthetic.

“It has a very big beneficial effect to the patient,” said Stocco.

He said orthopedic surgeons use a “robodoc” to make more precise holes for repairing broken bones or another robot that keeps the surgeon from drilling in the bone where she shouldn’t.

But will such tools ever replace humans?

“That’s often the running joke, oh, here’s the robot that’s going to replace me,” said Stocco.

In manufacturing, robots complete tasks on their own but in skilled occupations, “it does not remove the human from the loop whatsoever. It’s just expanding their abilities, whether it’s imaging or diagnostics or performing surgery,” said Stocco.

He said he’s surprised that autonomous cars have made it to the roads so soon — Google cars through the company Waymo is testing the driverless cars in Kirkland, Wash., among other cities — and he’s sold on 3D printers, including the one he owns. And he’s grateful for the improved turnaround time for books he requests from the UBC library, which has an automatic book retriever.

Stocco has toured the robotics departments of MacDonald Detwiler, which is developing robots to crawl around the space station, and of Bombardier, where they create motion simulators to train pilots, both of which he said were impressive.

Robotics have been called the most disruptive technology since the Industrial Revolution.

“It’s part of the Industrial Revolution,” said Stocco. “The term disruptive technology, it may have a negative connotation, but it just means it’s going to effect a significant change.”

Will that automation lead to machines that start “thinking” for us and replacing us at work meetings?

“AI (artificial intelligence) machine learning is going to be a powerful tool, for if you know what you’re looking for, the computer will be able to find it for you much more effectively. It’s a tool for problem solving. Posing the questions that need to be solved, that’s still us,” said Siu.

“But overall the pace technology change in terms of information computing technology, it’s not slowing down, it’s just speeding up,” said Siu.

 How quickly it will happen is anybody’s guess.

The McKinsey report predicts automation will increase productivity growth over the next 50 years by 0.8 to 1.4 per cent. That compares to productivity growth from the steam engine (1850-1910) by 0.3 per cent, early robotics (1993-2007) by 0.4 per cent and information technology (1995-2005) by 0.6 per cent.

“I don’t know that it (automation) compares to the Internet. I’m not so sure it compares to mobile phone technology and how that’s transformed people’s lives,” said Stocco. “It’s a little behind technologies like that and there are predictions and we’ll have to wait and see. Who knows how things are going to turn out?”

Sample workplaces

How robots and AI is already changing or may change the workplace in these three examples, according to the McKinsey Global Institutes report:

Emergency rooms: Instead of seeing a medical secretary, patients would pre-register by phone and receive a wearable monitoring device to collect their vital signs before triage nurses administer automated diagnostics. Lab tests and reports would be automated. Automatic “tugs” to pull beds and bring medicines (dispensed by an automated pharmacy) to the patient would replace orderlies and some nursing duties. AI would be used to diagnose some conditions. Potential economic benefits: A 30 per cent increase in performance gains and 70 per cent “labour substitution.”

Grocery stores: When you walk in to the store, you would be greeted by name, thanks to facial recognition software, and personalized coupons downloaded to your mobile device. An automated shopping cart would follow you around and a robot would bring your goods to your car or deliver them by drone. The store would accurately charge your account after sensing what goods you bought. Robots would clean the aisles and stock the shelves, as they empty. Potential economic benefits: Reduction of 65 per cent of labour hours. Plus, stores would shrink in size, requiring less capital investment during startup. But only large chains may be able to make investments.

Mortgage applications: The collection and processing of data in the financial-service industry for mortgages, which takes 14 to 21 days in the U.S., could drop to six days with automation. That could lower default risks and eliminate inconsistencies in processing, reducing the need for management oversight. It could also decrease the human bias in underwriting. It would free up brokers to advise customers or handle exceptions. Data scientists would be needed to increase accuracy in algorithms used in processing. Potential economic benefits: 12 per cent for performance gains and 88 per cent for labour substitution.

Artificial intelligence in the workplace:

Law

Some major firms in the US, according to raconteur.com, already employ electronic systems that sift through legal documents for words that are relevant to a certain litigation, saving the firms 95 per cent of “lawyer time.” AI can also be used by insurance firms to screen personal injury damages claims for signs of fraud. And it can be used to draw up job or tenancy contracts tailored to suit individuals. The prediction is those systems for lawyers will be increasingly used by lay persons to write their own contracts on their mobile devices.

Marketing and advertising

In the U.S. an advertising firm launched an experimental AI poster campaign that used a body-tracking technology to sense the presence of passersby and learn digitally from their reactions how relevant the ads were. Behind the scenes, one promising development is the application of recognition and cognitive leanings systems to help process sales leads, according to raconteur.com. And AI is being used to target ads to buyers.

Customer service

Virgin Trains in the U.K. uses AI to “read” complaint emails as they come in, “understanding” their meaning and sentiment enough to capture key points for the customer relations team to respond. It cut down the daily task to four hours from 35 staff hours and decreased the response time, according to raconteur.com. AI is also being used to automate conversation with customers through “almost human-like” texts with customers.

Health care

Boston Children’s Hospital is using a cognitive system to help clinicians interpret a child’s genome sequencing data to compare it with medical literature to identify anomalies to help diagnose rare diseases. And an app that can tell whether patients or participants in drug trials are taking the medications, with facial recognition to ensure it’s not being tricked, is already being used.