Rnordman

It’s easy to get tunnel vision as a marketer.

You’ve got lots of goals to achieve, and only so many hours in the day to get there. So you put your head down, get focused, and get results.

At the same time, it’s important to let yourself be inspired by others.

Our industry can be creative, groundbreaking and a lot of fun. If you’re in need of a marketing recharge, here are 28 amazing marketing campaigns and experiments—and the amazing people who dreamed them up. Read on, and get inspired to add your own innovative contribution to this list!

1. Marketing himself, after a high-profile layoff

Marketer: Sree Sreenivasan

Innovation: If I were laid off from a high-profile job, I imagine I’d be pretty quiet on social media. But Sreenivasan,, former chief digital officer at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, wasn’t—he shared the news far and wide on Facebook, and asked for advice on what he should do next, even linking to a form inviting friends to give advice. In return, he racked up hundreds of likes, encouraging comments and more—proving that vulnerability can turn a low point into an opportunity.

2. The newsroom as marketing

Marketer: Danielle Morrill

Innovation: To be an authority on your topic, you’ve got to know it inside and out. At Mattermark, which collects and organizes information on the world’s fastest growing companies, CEO Morrill takes authority one step further: The company basically set up a small, independent newsroom (led by former TechCrunch reporter Alex Wilhelm) within the team, producing reporting and analysis on financial trends, the venture capital space, startups and more.

3. The trend caller

Marketer: Mary Meeker

Innovation: No slide deck is more anticipated every year than Meeker’s giant analysis of digital trends from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In the 2016 Internet Trends Report, Meeker breaks down why Snapchat video marketing works, what motivates Millennials and so much more.

4. The foolproof formula

Marketer: Bamidele Onibalusi

Innovation: Busy marketers love surefire formulas. We love it even more when someone lets us in on a secret they could have kept to themselves. Onibalusi covers both in his actionable and thorough step-by-step opus on writing content that gets more than 100,000 views—every time.

5. Bringing more fun to newsletters

Marketer: Susan Su

Innovation: Is your inbox full to bursting? Mine too, but somehow there’s still room for newsletters that surprise and delight. Su’s Distro Snack, from 500 Startups, is one such delight, a beyond-quick read that consists of a daily startup growth tip and a “delightful GIF alongside.”

6. No more forms

Marketer: David Gerhardt

Innovation: Imagine a content marketing landscape with no gated content. No content upgrades. No more forms or hurdles to getting to what you want. At Drift, CEO David Cancel and Marketing Lead David Gerhardt are going all in on the idea of taking marketing back to its roots. Sensing a shift in the air toward true authenticity and connection above ROI, they’ve removed all forms from the site. “All of the content we create and share from here on out will be free,” they announced. Talk about turning the funnel upside down!

7. Startups 101 on Snapchat

Marketer: Mark Suster

Innovation: Does Snapchat marketing have to look like emojis and rainbow vomit filters? Not necessarily. Suster, a venture capitalist in Los Angeles, uses Snapchat to deliver what he calls “Snapstorms”—mini-lectures across many video snaps that offer the inside scoop about startup challenges like hiring, power dynamics among boards, CEOs, and shareholders; and how to write a great email. Follow him here:

8. The surprise mixtape

Marketer: Toki Wright

Innovation: While most brand’s April Fools Day jokes are forgotten within 24 hours, Hamburger Helper produced an April 1st “prank” that’s a cut above: a shockingly good mixtape called Watch the Stove. The project started as a Twitter joke, but after General Mills enlisted music veteran Toki Wright and the students at McNally Smith College of Music, the project took on new heft—and then took the Internet by storm.

9. The videos taking over Facebook

Marketer: Andrew Gauthier

Innovation: You’ve seen them on Facebook: Quick, mouthwatering recipes that you experience from beginning to end over the course of 30 seconds to a minute (sound optional!). The source is often Gauthier’s project Tasty, a year-old pilot from BuzzFeed that has amassed more than 62 million Facebook fans (and taken over your feed). BuzzFeed followed up Tasty’s success with TastyJunior as well as Nifty, a hacks and DIY site with an even bigger following.

10. The automation experiment

Marketer: Tami Brehse

Innovation: Always be testing is our marketing mantra. So we were inspired by Brehse, who did just that by automating her Twitter posts for a full month to find out what would change (spoiler alert: the all-green stats above are hers!)

11. The DIY marketer

Marketer: Annie Cushing

Innovation: OK, we all know SEO is important. But getting from that basic understanding to the intricacies of site audits and technical SEO can be a huge hurdle—unless you’ve got Cushing in your corner. After years of educating the public through speaking, she now offers resources that bridge the gap (site audits! analytics basics! Excel dashboards!) that turn any marketer into a technical marketer.

12. The authenticity revolution

Marketer: Mack Fogelson

Innovation: When is a rebranding more than a rebranding? For Fogelson’s company, formerly known as Mack Web, rebranding was a chance to tie deeply felt values into their services. In doing so, the brand now known as Genuinely created a manifesto for a new marketing era:

“The way our world has evolved has completely changed how companies must shape and market. People not only interact differently with businesses, they expect more. A ‘brand’ isn’t about generating a virtual identity through websites, emails, social media, and being found at the top of Google. Great brands are real and human and they follow through.”

13. Virtual reality that connects an audience

Day in the life: What The New York Times’ first VR editor does

Marketer: Jenna Pirog

Innovation: In November 2015, The New York Times distributed more than 1 million Google Cardboard viewers/glasses to Sunday home delivery subscribers. Since then,VR Editor Pirog has been in charge of innovating in storytelling’s newest platform: virtual reality. Viewers have explored everything from Pluto to SXSW thanks to Pirog’s pioneering work in a new medium.

14. Arts and crafts on Snapchat

Marketer: Soul Pancake

Innovation: Far beyond selfies and landscapes, Soul Pancake is turning Snapchat into a true hub of creativity and community. On the day I wrote this, snaps focused on creating a doodle self-portrait and featured tons of community examples. Even better, lots of their coolest experiments are on YouTube in case you missed them on Snapchat. Follow them for more:

15. The newsletter that loves you

Marketer: Anand Sanwal

Innovation: Ever wondered who’s really paying attention to the emails you’re sending? Sanwal, founder and CEO of CB Insights, a private market intelligence firm, did. So he changed tactics, adding conversational tidbits readers wouldn’t expect into his daily emails (each one is signed with an “I love you”). The result? The newsletter has nearly 200,000 subscribers and has “taken the tech industry by storm.”

16. The political myth buster

Marketer: Rhea Drysdale

Innovation: When you name your company Outspoken Media, you set the bar high. But even for an outspoken marketer, Drysdale has been on a roll. Her honest account of being a pregnant CEO opened industry eyes and set the stage for her to debunk a political rumor involving Hilary Clinton and Google. When you know your stuff well enough to correct news outlets, you’re going to get lots of attention—deservedly so.

17. The real-time case study

Marketers: Devesh Khanal and Benji Hyam

Innovation: The co-founders of Grow & Convert are racing against the clock to hit a goal of 40,000 monthly unique visitors—and they’re doing the whole thing in public. (What can we say, we’re suckers for transparency!)

18. Simplifying remarketing

Marketer: Elizabeth Marsten

Innovation: Remarketing can be a big annoyance to your audience—unless it’s done right. In the presentation Make Your Remarketing More Than an Echo, Marsten lays down the context and strategy to make sure your remarketing hits all the right notes.

19. Inside views with Facebook Live

Marketer: Christine Dwyer

Innovation: Have you harnessed the giant potential of Facebook Live yet? Dwyer has. The fitness trainer and speaker uses Live to take viewers inside her classes on Facebook, with engaging results. No wonder she’s one of Facebook guru Mari Smith’s fave follows.

20. Email + video = success

Marketer: Ellie Mirman

Innovation: Video isn’t just for social media—it can also be highly targeted and optimized to convert just the right customer. Find out how with Mirman’s presentation from WistiaFest: How to Use Video to Nurture Leads through the Marketing Funnel.

21. A heatmap for your Google Analytics

Marketer: SEER Interactive

Innovation: Google Analytics’ heatmap feature lets users visualize metrics, like users or revenue, over time. But you can’t have it in a report—until now. The analytics team at SEER built a custom Google sheet that allows you to create a heatmap metrics and identify growing or hot trends over time.

22. Social with personality

US: DID IT WORK?
You: Did what work?
US: YOU KNOW, THE #NIGHTMARKETING?
You: No of course it didn
US: PLEASE BUY SMOOTHIES
You: [Sigh]

— innocent drinks (@innocent) July 5, 2016

Marketer: Helena Langdon

Innovation: Whether she’s live-tweeting the Euro 2016 semi-final or finding the humor in Brexit, Langdon, the social voice of Innocent Drinks, keeps followers enthralled by innovating on the medium daily. We’re also fond of Innocent’s compliment generator. It’s our kind of weird.

23. A Tumblr of Internet ephemera

Marketer: Juan Buis

Innovation: Honestly, I think I’m too old to understand what’s going on with The Next Web’s Tumblr, expertly curated by Buis. But I do know I couldn’t stop staring at it for quite a while.

24. She knows what we want to see

Marketer: Pam Grossman

Innovation: Where do stock photos even come from? Someone has to be dreaming up all those women laughing with salad, and that person is Getty’s Director of Visual Trends Pam Grossman (well, the salad thing probably wasn’t her idea). What visual trends are on her radar for this year? “People who push the envelope and visuals that break with tradition,” along with meaningful consumption and surreal imagery.

25. Keeping it weird on Facebook

Marketer: Sarah Burton

Innovation: How do you get an increasingly overstimulated audience interested in reading the news? What if you read it to them in a sultry whisper? BuzzFeed’s Burton has been experimenting with “ASMR News”—that’s “autonomous sensory meridian response,” for those not in the know, a kind of “brain orgasm” triggered by sounds such as scratching and whispering. “Right now we’re keeping it weird, but simple,” Burton told NiemanLab. “We’re trying to see what people respond to.”

26. Don’t skip the ads on this podcast

Marketers: Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton

Innovation: There’s only one podcast whose advertisements I never, ever skip, and it’s Another Round, a “boozy podcast that covers everything from race and gender to squirrels and mangoes.” Heben and Tracy (and the whole “pod squad”) make sure to put thought into every single moment of their time on air, which means even ads become hilarious drinking games and pop quizzes.

27. Letting the community call the shots

Marketers: Benefit Cosmetics

Innovation: Another great Facebook Live example! We love Benefit’s”Tipsy Tricks” series every Thursday. Viewers have learned to count on this series, and know that they’ll get the chance to ask questions, make requests, and generally take the lead in how the video will go.

28. Curation with care

Marketer: Ashley Hockney

Innovation: Curated content works great because it’s not all about you. Hockney’s weekly “Make Change” newsletter from Teachable is such a great example of sharing the love and building authority and trust as a result.

Bonus: 75 more examples!

Marketer: Alexandria Heinz

Innovation: In case this post isn’t quite enough to get you inspired, Siege Media’s Heinz has curated an incredible resource of 75 content marketing examples, grading each one on a scale of elements that includes traffic, revenue, UX, design and interactivity.

Over to you!

It was so much fun to see all the cool ways folks are innovating with their marketing. I bet you know of many more incredible examples and marketers, and I can’t wait to hear them. Share your top picks for marketers doing awesome things in the comments and add to our inspirational list!

Image sources: WOCinTech, Pablo

As more and more consumers rely on their mobile devices for personal and business use, the need for a mobile app is rapidly growing. 2015 was dubbed “The Year of the Mobile Web,” so small businesses without a mobile presence have already fallen far behind.

There’s typically only one reason these businesses hold out: money.

The Cost of a Mobile App

In January 2015, Clutch conducted a survey of a number of leading mobile app developers to determine the average overall cost of building an iPhone/Android app, including the factors or variables that affect cost the most. The findings put the average cost of mobile app development between $37,913 and $171,450. For a small business, even the lower end of this price range is a hefty one to swallow, especially without an immediate return on investment.

Luckily, the average price has fallen drastically. While the numbers may be a bit out of date, the data can still help us identify the features carrying the highest cost when developing a mobile app: the infrastructure, features, and design. On the less expensive end is the planning, deployment, and even testing that goes into the mobile app’s release.

Why Mobile Development Is More Accessible Now

Technology often changes so fast that as soon as data like the above is released, newer technology has made development more accessible, thus lowering costs. As mobile development has become more popular and important in today’s business world, the number of app builders on the market also grown. More providers means more competitive pricing; there are more options to choose from, and some of these options are remarkably cheap compared to the prices we were seeing just a year or more ago.

Also on the rise is app development software. Some of these software or app development services are designed for a small business to make their own mobile app at a very low price. As long as a business owner is willing to take the time and effort required, these hyper user-friendly tools can drastically reduce overhead.

The evolution of mobile is almost identical to the changes we’ve witnessed in web development through its infancy and beyond. In the early stages of the internet, having a website became an undisputed necessity for businesses, but development was costly. There was only a small number of developers and designers available. Now, there are a number of inexpensive services that allow anyone to make their own functioning website with relative ease.

The Future of Small Businesses and Mobile Development

With a mobile app becoming a much more reasonable investment for a small business to swallow, the future looks very positive. Recent data reports that roughly a quarter of small businesses already have a mobile app and another 27% of them have plans to enter the mobile world in the next year or so. As prices go down and accessibility goes up, these numbers are likely to increase rapidly.

Part of the shift from uncertainty to conviction is simple education. Small businesses ambivalent about adopting mobile may have been quoted for an app a year or more ago and still believe it’s out of their price range. Others fail to see how a mobile app will impact their business or how it’s relevant to their industry.

What Mobile Development Can be Used For

At the core of all business apps, there’s one of a number of key drivers:

• Accessibility & Visibility — As mobile search volume continues to grow, adopting a mobile platform is more and more important for accessibility and visibility. If consumers can’t find you or interact with your brand in the mobile environment, they may defect to a mobile competitor. Alternatively, attracting new customers without a mobile app could become harder and harder; your business is less discoverable and you lack a key tool to keep you up-to-date and competitive in your industry.
• Internal Processes & Productivity — While we often think of apps as a new platform for our customers to engage with, mobile development also improves internal processes and productivity. Many companies utilize desktop software to facilitate certain day-to-day business processes. A mobile-centric version of this software could further enhance these processes. After all, mobile is, well, mobile, which means you can perform these processes on the go instead of sitting down to fire up your desktop.
• Customer Experience — Without mobile, a customer’s relationship with your brand or company is interrupted the moment they walk out the door. By providing a mobile app experience, that relationship does not have to end. Your brand is more accessible, appears more personable, and can stimulate more communication. Improving the customer experience ultimately increases brand loyalty and reduces churn.

All of these factors and others have direct relationships to profits. The more visible you are, the more discoverable you are to new and existing customers. Internal mobile apps boost productivity and, perhaps more than ever, time is money. Lastly, a mobile app is key to enhancing the customer experience, which is becoming more and more important to audiences. It is no longer about offering the best product and quality, you also need to provide the best experience and mobile is one of the most important facets of that.

Conclusion

The mobile world took off like a rocket. In a few short years, it moved from a trend and a business luxury to an accessible and vital dimension of the modern business. In the past, small businesses couldn’t afford to invest in this rapidly growing, mobile world. But as mobile has grown, so has the number of app developers and services available, reducing the costs of mobile adoption.

Even though only about a quarter of small businesses have entered the mobile app world, more expect to join soon. Those who remain unconvinced may be swayed as prices go down and accessibility goes up. And for the rest, a little bit of education on how mobile can impact their success could set them over the edge.

Sales success hinges on a number of characteristics, including industry knowledge, quality products, and personal drive. Arguably the most important? Charisma.

After all, the smartest, most up-to-date sales rep of all time won't sell very much if she can't get prospects to buy into her proposed plan, and this is why charisma is so critical. Emotions creep into the decision-making process of even the most rational buyers. If a stakeholder has a bad feeling about you, the business is going to the competition.

Don't lose deals because you can't inspire confidence. Turn up the charm by trying the nine charisma-boosting strategies presented in the following infographic from Business Insider.

 

I work with a lot of SDR’s (also called BDR’s, Inside Sales Reps and more) and one of the things I often see is how many of them can’t wait to get promoted to account executive. For many SDRs, the role of setting appointments and being the first line of qualification is less than glamorous.  Often, it’s not just the SDR’s who feel this way; it often pervades an entire organization’s culture, perpetuated by management.

For many SDRs, the role of setting appointments and being the first line for prospect qualification is less than glamorous.  Often, it’s not just the SDR’s who feel this way; it often pervades an entire organization’s culture, perpetuated by management.

SDRs are seen as the grunts too often, and that’s a shame, it needs to stop.

The world of sales has changed dramatically in the past ten years and at the center of this shift is the addition of sales development reps. These reps are responsible for picking the good from the bad AND teeing up the good.

It’s this latter part that I focus on most and use to differentiate great SDRs from average SDRs.

Whether from a marketing download or a from a cold call, the job of the SDR is to convince a prospect to have a meeting, to sit through a demo, etc.  It’s the SDR’s job to create demand, enough demand that the prospect is not only willing to meet with a salesperson but wants to meet with a salesperson.  There is a big difference between willing to meet and wants to meet and the best SDRs get prospects to want to meet with your sales people.

Ya don’t think there is a big difference between wants and willing?  How different do you think the call is gonna go if the prospect was willing to meet with you vs. wants to meet with you. Yeah, I thought so. I’ll take wants to any day of the week.

Getting prospects or buyers to want to meet starts with recognizing that the meeting, the demo or whatever action you want the buyer to take IS the sale.  Great SDR’s understand that the meeting they are trying to get the prospect to take is their closed deal. It’s their sale and therefore, like any other sale, they have to provide enough value that the prospects says; yes, I will trade my time for your information, demo, or whatever it is you’re offering for their time.

Don’t think this is a small effort. In today’s world time is just as valuable and in many cases more valuable than money.  Unlike money, time is finite. In some organizations, it’s easier for a buyer to get budget than it is for them to prioritize the time to pay attention to you.

Make no mistake, sales development reps are sales people. Instead of product or service and dollars being the consideration, it’s time and information.

Great SDRs have to figure out how to create a large enough value proposition to get buyers to trade their highly guarded, highly in demand time for your information.  Give that some thought for a second. Don’t just brush right over that.  People’s time is so highly guarded these days. If an SDR is unable to demonstrate why the information your Account Executive has, or the demo will highlight or . . . is worth 15, 30, 45, 60 minutes of the prospects time, they’re not gonna give it the SDR or Account Executive and that my friends is a lost sale.

SDR’s are legit sales people, with a legitimate sales cycle. It may not result in ultimately winning the business, but the business can’t be won without that first sale — getting that first meeting.

SDRs, if you’re feeling like you’re not a real salesperson cut it out, because getting people to give up their time, is the real deal. Get good at the fundamentals and learn how to get prospects to want to meet with your account executives, not just be willing to. Get good at knowing what questions to ask to uncover opportunities. Get good at positioning the value of the meeting. Get good at positioning yourself as an expert, the first line of expertise in solving the pressing business problem your company can solve. Get good at these things and you’ll quickly realize there is nothing remedial or entry-level about being and SDR.

Selling is selling, and whether you’re selling a $500,00 SaaS solution or a 45-minute demo, the rules still apply.

Is there enough value in what you’re offering your prospect for them to give up their time? There should be!

Remember my SDR friends, there is no sale without you, stand tall, be proud and get damn good. You are worth your weight in gold.

 

 

 

Are you thinking about purchasing an email list? I get it, your sales team is hungry for leads and you have to do what it takes to fill the funnel.

This could potentially be a growth hack for your business, right?

Well, that depends. Although it might give you access to hundreds or thousands of leads you didn’t previously have, there’s no way to know for sure you are reaching out to prospective buyers. Worse, it’s possible the people on the list didn’t give their permission to be included in the first place!

In general, you should expect low conversion rates from purchased email lists.

If the leads are cheap, then low conversions are better than no conversions, you say. Here’s why that’s a dangerous marketing mantra to live by.

Subscribers Don’t Know Who You Are

Corey Wainwright sets forth several reasons why buying an email list is a bad idea, but here is one of the main reasons you are unlikely to get a high conversion rate from a list you’ve purchased:

“The contacts have opted in to receive emails, from, say, the list-purchasing company—not your company,” Wainwright says. “Even if the opt-in process includes language like, ‘Opt in to receive information from us, or offers from other companies we think you might enjoy,’ the fact is that the recipient has never heard of your company, and does not remember opting in to receive emails from you.”

The unfortunate tendency here is to get marked as spam since the people on the list don’t know who you are or how you got their email address in the first place. The last thing you want is to get blacklisted by spam filters.

A Purchased List Is a Dead List?

MailChimp tells us that a purchased list is as good as dead.

Here’s the gist of it: “If we look at campaign performance versus the percentage of a mailing list that’s purchased or scraped, we find that positive engagement falls off a cliff as purchased correlation increases. Since most folks have to open an email to unsubscribe, unsubscribers die off too. The only thing that does go up? Complaints.”

Purchased lists will clutter your database with dead leads who may never take the time to unsubscribe. Most marketing and email platforms charge you based on the number of unique emails in your database. When a dead list won’t churn, you may end up paying for those leads —again and again.

MailChimp—and many other reputable email marketing providers—don’t allow the use of purchased lists in the first place. Although not connected to conversion rate, this might be another reason not to buy lists.

Moreover, it’s simply not best practice with an established inbound methodology.

So how do you generate lead lists the inbound way?

Growing an Opt-In List Organically

Growing your own email list is still the best way to create a connection with your target audience. Why? Because you earned their attention.

They’ve engaged with your content, they think you have something valuable to say and they’ve opted in to receive more information on a specific topic.

Here are several ways to grow your own email list.

Create Valuable, Optimized Content

Create content that helps you get discovered in search, and provide an experience that’s different or unique from that of your competitors.

If you offer a lot of value up front, visitors will want to take the relationship to the next level, because they’ll be eager to find out what more you have to share with them.

 

Brian Dean from Backlinko always creates valuable, long-form content that entices users to want to get on his email list. It makes you think – “If this is what I get for free, what do I get when I subscribe?”

Also focus on creating content that’s shareable. As more of your audience shares your content on social media, you’ll be able to attract more signups, too.

Make It Easy for People to Subscribe

There are times when a multi-step process works because you’ve gotten a visitor to click on a button, and psychologically they’re already in a space to say “yes” when they’re asked to put their email address in a form.

But it’s easy to overcomplicate the process by creating unnecessary steps between the user and the signup form. Try placing simple one-step subscription forms on different parts of your website and test their effectiveness.

CD Baby has a simple subscription form in their footer – no fluff!

Create Compelling Offers

What does your target audience actually want? Templates? Whitepapers or eBooks? Reports? Case studies? Courses? Offer something that’s relevant and valuable, and you will see opt-in rates skyrocket.

Content Marketing Institute has done a ton of work to figure out what kind of tools and eBooks its target audience wants.

Make Offers Easy to Find

It might seem obvious, but if you’re hiding your downloads on a page no one can find, your visitors will have trouble gaining access to assets they want and need.

Create a proper infrastructure and navigation flow for your website, and place calls-to-action in strategic locations, such as at the end of a blog post.

HubSpot has an entire marketing library that can be accessed from the top navigation – these are all opt-in offers.

Use Persuasive Calls-to-Action

Pay attention to copy, color and imagery. A/B test to find out what resonates best with your audience. Grab their attention with your calls-to-action so they don’t miss out on a valuable offer.

Neil Patel from Quick Sprout creates persuasive calls to action that are hard not to notice.

Experiment With Popups

Popups don’t work for every company in every industry, and can sometimes irritate users. But it’s worth your time to experiment with them because they tend to convert well.

Try using popup windows for a while, and determine whether they give you worthwhile results (for example, finding the unsubscribe rate from this method).

Many sites have popups that show up as you’re about to leave their site; this one is on Social Media Examiner.

To Buy or Not to Buy?

The problem with a purchased list is that you’re probably not going to see a high conversion rate. Your communication style may be different from that of the seller’s, the product offering might not be matched up to the audience, or the list itself might have pre-existing problems that you’re not even aware of.

Building your own list is time-consuming and sometimes requires sophisticated strategies, but in the end, it’s worth every bit of effort you put into it. Subscribers will be more engaged, and you’ll see a much higher conversion rate, as long as your inbound strategy is well-formed around your buyer personas.

After anticipating extra long airport security lines this year, the Transportation Security Administration has taken steps to fix the problem. Their latest solution involves adding new screening technology to Chicago (O’Hare), Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, and Miami. They’ll also include a pilot program in Phoenix.

Read more...

Are you familiar with the Pareto principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule? Essentially, it states that 80% of your business wealth will come from 20% of your customer base. Add this to the fact that it costs at least 10 times more to acquire new customers than to sell to the ones you already have, according to eMarketer, and you’ve got a strong business case to invest in your customer base.

Despite these powerful numbers, B2B marketers are still primarily focusing their investment and activities into driving acquisition, which means that they are leaving money on the table. Today, more than ever, marketers must focus on providing value through the entire customer lifecycle. From acquisition, where your goal is to acquire customers at the lowest possible cost, to engaging those customers in meaningful conversations on the channels they’re on, to retaining them and continuing to provide value, to ultimately turning those customers into brand advocates.

The Fundamentals of Customer Base Marketing

Think beyond acquisition and focus on customer base marketing, which revolves around each customer’s lifetime value, not just their first purchase, by identifying and marketing additional cross-sell products or services to an existing customer, working to keep them happy and keep them as a customer, and developing current customers into loyal brand advocates.

Customer base marketing can be broken down into these four pillars:

1. Cross-sell is the concept of offering complementary products or services to those a customer bought initially. For a simple example of this, think about the last time you went to a fast food joint and got asked, “Do you want fries or a drink with that?”
2. Upsell is defined as selling more of the same product or an upgrade. Using the fast food example again, customer upsell would be the restaurant asking, “Do you want to supersize your meal?” They’re still selling you the same food, but they’re offering you the option to select a bigger portion.
3. Retention focuses on preventing churn by keeping existing customers happy and coming back for more. Successful customer retention starts with the first contact an organization has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of the relationship. This includes successful customer onboarding, enablement, engagement with the company and its products, adoption and usage of the product or service they purchased, value realization, customer satisfaction, and repurchase intent.
4. Advocacy and loyalty refers to continuing to build trust with your returning customers, rewarding them for their repeated business, and leveraging their high satisfaction, brand loyalty, and willingness to act as brand ambassadors to extend your marketing efforts—building awareness, providing referrals, and ultimately helping drive sales and increase revenue. In fact, research by BzzAgent, a word-of-mouth marketing company, shows that a customer advocate is 50% more likely to influence a purchase decision than a regular customer.

Customer Base Marketing is a Win-Win Situation

Customer base marketing creates a more engaged customer base by helping them maximize the return on their investment—successfully onboarding them, nurturing them with personalized, automated, and actionable tips to ensure broad product adoption and usage, and gradually opening their horizons to new capabilities and complementary products.

Customer base marketing doesn’t just bring more value your customers; it benefits your business as well:

1. Sell more to existing customers. You’ve already done most of the hard work winning the customer’s business. Now that you know who they are and what they’re interested in, you can leverage lead scoring across demographics, firmographics, and behavioral data to identify opportunities to expand your footprint and create cross-sell and upsell opportunities. You can even prioritize your best customers to target them with unique offers.
2. Target your best sources of growth. Listening and responding to customer behaviors helps you determine their interest in specific products or services and identify which customers are valuable opportunities. You already know your customer’s interests, so engage with them on their terms: on the right channel, at the right time, with the right message—one that they’re truly interested in. There are a few different approaches to targeting your customers. One strategy is to focus your efforts on customers with the highest potential, the highest lifetime value based on their historical purchase history, high usage maturity, and breadth of featured used. Another consideration is to identify risky customers early in their post-acquisition journey and develop custom programs to prevent churn. Both of these strategies should be used simultaneously to continue to provide value to happy customers and identify ways to prevent the unhappy ones from churning.
3. Focus sales on their best bets. For a B2B organization, the benefits of customer base marketing extend to the sales team as well. Sales can have a more personalized dialogue based on who your customers are, as well as the behaviors and interests they’ve expressed, to prioritize conversations and focus on closing business.
4. Measure marketing’s impact on growth. Like any other marketing program, with the right measurements in place, you will be able to demonstrate how your marketing investment impacts revenue. Focusing on the entire customer lifecycle allows you to gather the relevant data that gives you insight into how your marketing dollars impact business growth—beyond a customer’s first purchase to their entire customer lifetime value.

Ready to learn more and take a deep-dive into customer base marketing? Read our ebook Customer Marketing: How to Keep Your Customers Coming Back for More.

We are often asked (by those executives and sales leaders we have worked with previously) how to find their next career step or new role on LinkedIn.

Rather than keep this information quiet we wanted to share it with everyone to give them some focus to their efforts, demystify some of the “best practices” that aren’t, and look at the tips and free advice which are often contrary to what actually works.

To give you a rounded view we have shared not just our experience but have also gotten the perspectives from a number of great recruiters we know about what they look for and how they see your efforts, and the combined list is fascinating!

Here we go!

1. Never change your headline to currently available or seeking new opportunity – comes across as desperate. Erodes the value perception of you right now as opposed to your expertise and insights having great value.

2. Do make sure that somewhere (anywhere!) in your profile you have all the job seeking type words such as: opportunity, seeking, open to, vacancy, career, job, role, opening, contract if applicable etcetera, but not all together! They can be almost anywhere in your profile (apart from the advice for contacting me section of your profile!) as the less efficient recruiters will look for these key flag words in a search on LinkedIn.

3. Status messages are now even more critical. Think of status messages in terms of real human interaction. If you bumped into someone you knew and they said “How’s life?” what would you say? Put that response in your update box, but perhaps set it as ‘connections only’ to keep the conversation within your own network not wider.

4. Make sure you are doing status updates regularly, but no more than once or twice per day. Sharing what you’re up to, researching … , meeting up with a …, exploring how I could add value to a … etcetera always positive but always honest too. All work related not holidays, family or kitten (!) related. You get the picture I’m sure.

5. Start interacting in groups where you potential employers are; interact on others conversations first before starting your own. Think of a group like a conference or convention and act the same way. Professional, respectful to others, not desperate and progressive in how you engage in conversations.

6. Do not spend too much time on LinkedIn! This might sound wrong but imagine I see you interacting on LinkedIn every ten minutes in your public activity then you are shouting you have no work or if you do you certainly aren’t focused on it enough!

7. Search through your network for introduction opportunities to potential employers in your networks second level and “pull” on your relationship/ connections to get an exploratory chat about what is going on in their world, if your skill sets add value, who in their market is on the up or down? But notice not asking for a role or job as that shuts down conversation, smart people will recognise you’re looking and offer if there is a role you’re a good fit for but if not you just learn and get more prepared for next time or who next :)

An encapsulation of this is just to treat LinkedIn like business life; engage a little more and talk to people not just now but always.

This is the first of a couple of blogs on how to find your next role on LinkedIn so if you enjoyed this one watch out for the next or sign up below.

What tips would you suggest?

According to Aberdeen Research, marketers who use buyer personas and map content to the Buyer Journey enjoy 73% higher conversions from response to marketing qualified lead.

At this point, you know you need Buyer Personas. The search term has been gaining steam the last few years, peaking at a Google Trends Score of 100 (out of 100) in May of 2016.

The problem? Most B2B buyer personas are terrible. Sorry to say, but yours probably do, too.

Why is this?

Well, buyer personas were originally created in the early 80s by software developers so that they could theorize how different types of users would play with the interfaces they designed. Not radically different from how we use them today in a Marketing and Sales sense.

But also, pretty unscientific.

Today, with the rise of social media, content marketing, the evolution of SEO, and advanced marketing automation tactics, having accurate and documented buyer personas has become critical for marketers.

They’re necessary for developing an effective B2B content marketing strategy, building traction across your digital marketing channels, helping the Marketing team stay focused, and creating tight alignment between Marketing and Sales. Buyer Personas tie the whole Sales & Marketing Machine together.

Here are 9 resources for building better B2B Buyer Personas for your team:

1. Current Customer Surveys: This is, by far, the easiest way to build out really strong buyer personas. Send out a survey to a segment of your email list that’s most engaged with your newsletter, your store, etc. Ensure that the survey covers off on how they came to be a customer, why they chose to become a customer, and what would ensure that they remain.
2. Former Customer Surveys: These surveys will usually see lower response rates, naturally, but sometimes your former customers may surprise you. And when they do, you’ll get the real gems. How did you lose their business? Are they happy with the partner/vendor/supplier/software they chose instead? What would make them switch back?
3. Lost Customer Interviews: With surveys, you may be looking at more straightforward intel, but when you set up interviews, this is where you can dig up some really great qualitative insights. And while a survey size of 1,000 may be small, an interview set of only 5 might be enough (depending on how many industries and segments you serve).
4. Advocate Interviews: Naturally, if you’re interviewing your former customers, then you’ll want to also interview your absolute best customers. Find those customers who flew through the Buyer Journey and Sales Funnel; find the customers who purchase the most from you annually; the customers who have been with you the longest; the customers who refer you the most business. What makes them tick?
5. Sales Manager Interviews: Yes, the Sales team probably knows what motivates your buyer as well as you do (probably better than you do). Set up time and sit down with your team’s most experienced AND least experienced sales reps. You’ll find that both will surprise you.
6. Customer Support Interviews: These folks are a gold mine for pain points. Why are customers hard to track down? Why do they contact you? Why do they reschedule? What are they asking for? Your customer success team will be able to teach you a thing or two about your firm’s Loyalty Loop.
7. Leadership Team Interviews: Your leadership team likely knows your buyer incredibly well. They might also be able to provide a few pearls of wisdom that may not have made it into the last iteration of your strategy documentation. This is also a great time to get alignment and buy-in on your new content marketing strategy or social marketing strategy – likely the reason that you’re re-evaluating buyer personas in the first place.
8. Mining CRM Data: Your customer relationship management platform will be especially helpful with buyer persona segmentation. What are the most common demographics for our best buyers, or for our most frequently lost customers? Many times, your CRM will actually house recorded calls, notes from the Sales team, and other contextual gems that can be layered into your buyer personas.
9. Mining Social Media Data: By far the least understood, and therefore most the infrequently or ineffectually used, is using social listening data to pull insights about your buyers. Using social listening and monitoring tools, which range from Free to Enterprise level, you can sort, filter, and comb through unprompted opinions, sentiment, and interactions between your customers, your social profiles, and your competitors. This is a must for generating accurate buyer personas today.

Buyer personas are depictions of your most important customer segments, with sample data of their demographics, psychographics, and digital habits. What motivates them? How do they make purchasing decisions? Where do they go to conduct research? Which peers do they lean on for advice?

Once you’ve created 3-5 buyer personas per vertical or industry that you target, you can begin to map out your Buyer Journey.

Questions about creating strong B2B buyer personas? Comment below.

I love my job. When people ask me what I do for a living and I reply with “consulting” there’s always that glazed-over look in their eye. Some nod and pretend they know what I mean. Others are curious enough to ask questions such as “consulting for what?” or “consulting for whom?” When I explain that I’m a Demand Generation Strategy Consultant the confusion and lack of understanding is further magnified. I can see their gears turning. What is Demand Generation? Why would there be consultants for that and what does that mean you actually do?

Perhaps I should put it in terms everyone can understand. How about this….I work with large businesses that sell to other businesses to help them figure out how to generate awareness, turn the awareness into sales opportunities, and ultimately drive revenue from their marketing and sales efforts. We do this using buyer research, technology, content, data and lead management best practices. Even that is quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

Yes, it is a mouthful but it’s an honest answer to the question. I may not be splitting atoms or curing cancer, but I’m helping enterprise companies understand their buyers, leverage technology, and build marketing programs that will generate real results which are ultimately, measured by revenue. There are four roles that Demand Generation Strategy Consultants play:

Researcher-
One of the reasons I love my job is that I have the opportunity to work across many different industries. The first thing a Strategy Consultant does when working with a new client is conduct copious amounts of research to understand their market and their buyers. Without a deep understanding of a client’s buyers, it’s impossible to build an effective Demand Generation strategy. Over the course of my past eight years as a consultant, I’ve learned about everything from band saw blades and financial software, to medical devices. I know just enough to be dangerous (and entertaining at a cocktail party). This keeps the job extremely interesting and challenging at the same time.

Business and technology strategist-
In addition to learning our clients’ business, a Strategy Consultant must also stay up-to-date with industry trends, best practices and technology. Because we’re on the “outside” our clients expect us to be knowledgeable and armed with all the latest facts, figures and statistics. We must know what works and what doesn’t and why or why not across all industries, across all technologies. It’s a lot of pressure, but it’s also why we have an insatiable appetite for information and strive to always be learning. No one ever said the life of a Strategy Consultant was dull.

Therapist and mediator-
One of the most challenging things a Strategy Consultant does is drive alignment between different groups, both internally and externally. As with the changing industries we work with, we also work with different personalities and cultures as we move from client to client. Let’s be honest – transforming the way an enterprise company conducts their demand generation efforts is no small feat. There are always people within the client company who believe in what we’re working towards. But there are always just as many who are threatened by it or even opposed to it.

Therefore, a critical role we must play is to ensure everyone is moving toward the same goal. We must try to read our clients, identify quickly who those people are who aren’t in favor of the pending change, and do our best to prevent them from spreading the negativity to others, or better yet, get them to open their minds to the possibility of positive change within their organization. It’s really about change management and it takes time. And as a Strategy Consultant, you ARE the change. Some days that means playing the role of psychologist or group leader. Some days it means simply listening and making people feel heard. It’s a slow-moving process but worth the effort and a definite requirement of the job.

Educator-
Running somewhat hand-in-hand with driving change is the opportunity for Strategy Consultants to teach. Having the opportunity to work in various industries, companies and cultures, we can share our learnings not only among ourselves, but also with our clients. This insight allows us to continuously hone our methodologies and benchmark our efforts against ourselves, as well as others in the industry.

One of the most rewarding things to have happened to me was when a client expressed how much they’d learned through the eighteen-month process of Demand Generation transformation. I remember when we first started working together everything seemed foreign to this client – from the language to the coding, to the notion of personas, to the new technologies we implemented. However, within a couple months, I heard this client repeat back to me the terminology I’d been using with her and I knew that something had resonated and she had turned a corner. By the time we reached program launch, she could train her internal team as well as I could have. That means a consultant has done their job well.

I’m sure this role I love so much will continue to evolve as our organization grows and as the industry continues to develop. The role of Strategy Consultant is not for everyone. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t frustrating days, ridiculous timelines, and challenging situations to contend with. However, I can’t think of another role in which I’d have the opportunity to learn so much and drive such change within my clients’ organizations.

Recently, we were approached at The Sales Lion to help a real-estate company sell one of their premium homes—a listing well into the millions—and upon review of their ...

The post The Essential Secret to Creating Powerful In-House Videos for Your Business appeared first on The Sales Lion by Marcus Sheridan.

Acquisition cost, lead gen, cost per lead, customer life-time value, ROI... Making sense of customer acquisition metrics

We live in a world of supply and demand, this applies to customer acquisition. Gaining a customer isn’t free, nor is it cheap. It’s a necessary expense when running a business, but it is possible to overspend. It’s important to find a good balance when it comes to customer acquisition, but that’s no easy feat.

It’s difficult to keep costs down because of the competition that’s inherent in any industry. Marketing costs are necessary to beat out the competitors. With so many more demands for customer attention circulating in the modern world, your draw needs to stand out in order to succeed.

Looking at the overall economics of the situation can help with this.

Supply and Demand

The idea of customer acquisition isn’t much different from the way the stock market runs. It’s driven by supply and demand. Timothy Sykes, investment guru, gives an excellent description of supply and demand in the stock market: “When there are more buyers than sellers, the stock prices rise to attract more sellers. When there are more sellers than buyers, stock prices fall to attract more buyers. Price is always changing based on supply and demand.”

The same goes for customer acquisition, and it’s an important component in calculating the actual cost of a customer. Obviously, the more customers you have, the more profits you’re making. The fewer customers, the fewer profits. Therefore, if trying to get customers on board has cost implications related to services available versus services desired, you're functioning within these basic market forces.

Customer Acquisition Costs

The first step in truly understanding the economics of acquisition is calculating the lifetime value of the average customer. Tallying up the cash flows you’ll receive on average and putting this in a dollar amount will show you the value, which will act as your baseline as you begin to evaluate several other aspects of acquisition, including:

• Annual Spending: Define the difference between your one-time customers and loyal customers by looking at what they spend. In general, the loyal customer will spend more rapidly, particularly as you present more offers. From there, you can determine if you should be spending more to acquire new customers, or if you should hold back because you’re putting too much of a dent in your profit margins.

• Retention Rate: You can discover likely retention patterns simply by evaluating the longevity of your biggest spenders. Based on their interactions and the costs you’ve presented to win their loyalty, you can gauge the cost of retention.

• Price Point: Your one-time and infrequent customers will snap up any deal and discount they can get while your loyal customers are less likely to quibble over price. Compare the margins of what you make from your loyal customers with the margins you make from your less-loyal crew.

• Word of Mouth: Sometimes the cost of acquisition is measured less in dollars and more by the actions of your customers. If they’re spreading the word about your business and products, that reduces your costs and ups your profits. This is an important metric to measure, since 84 percent of customers say they trust recommendations from family, colleagues, and friends.

Every one of these metrics can have a profound impact on customer acquisition. Looking at the numbers developed through these calculations can lead you to discover where you’re overspending and where you should spend more.

Customer Value

Obviously, your loyal customers will be worth more to you than your non-valued customers, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bring more customers to your company.

You must look at consumers like they have the potential to stay with your company for years to come. If you knew every first-time customer would make at least one purchase per month for the rest of their lives, you would do whatever it took to get those customers on board.

This is one of the reasons that startups tend to struggle more than established companies: startups are living with an out of balance business model in which the cost to acquire a customer – which includes all the costs such as marketing, salaries, and other company expenses – is far greater than the current lifetime value of that customer.

In order for startups to turn a profit, they need to rapidly reverse this equation, a challenge when you’re still dealing with all the overhead costs involved in opening a business. Another problem is that companies often don’t see the precise cost of conversions. Instead, they focus on lead generation. Leads are important – they’re where conversions start – but if your conversion rate is too low, you’ll quickly find your marketing campaigns too expensive.

As you can see in the following example, in order to understand the real cost of customer acquisition, you need to take an accounting of each step in the supply chain. First, understand the steps – you need to go from visitor, to lead, to acquisition, and at each step you’ll see a drop off in the number of customers and an increase in the cost of your marketing.

In this model, we’ll take a basic pay-per-click scheme as the customer acquisition method with a budget of $1000. The goal here is to demonstrate the problem of imbalance as well as our often inadequate calculations at the start of a campaign.

Step 1:

• Starting budget: $1000
• Clicks: 500
• Cost per click: $2

Two dollars for a click may not be great, but 500 clicks for a site that’s new or had low traffic before might be a great improvement. If the calculations stopped here and clicks equaled customers, this would be a great value on the lifetime monetization scale. Unfortunately, this is just the start.

Step 2:

• Cost per click: $2
  Conversion to leads: 5%
• Cost per lead: $40

Things start to get pricey here. Forty dollars is an rather lot for a lead (depending on the industry)– especially when we remember that a lead hasn’t bought anything yet. We haven’t converted these individuals. We have to take the lead one step further.

Step 3:

• Cost per lead: $40
• Acquisition rate: 10%
• Cost per customer: $400

Here’s where we see the real problem at hand – your campaign cost you $400 a customer, an amount that’s untenable for the vast majority of companies. Although one look at the most expensive keywords will show they're are some industries happy to pay it.

Sure, on a high enough profit margin over 20 or 40 years, this could ultimately reverse the balance between acquisitions and lifetime value, but it’s hard to get out of that initial slump unless you have a lot of startup money to burn.

What’s more, recognize that not all customers will jump on your bandwagon. Even those that you convert through this first thread will not all become lifetime customers. Your real calculation will require you to figure out the ratio of those long-lasting customers to one-time purchasers and determine what you can afford to spend to bring in new customers vs. how much you make.

You’ll also have to consider how long it will take to begin to see profits turn around and rebalance your business model. Lifetime value is about repeating these exchanges or other quality transactions. If you can’t stay afloat long enough to make lifetime value calculations work, then you’re already in the wrong business.

Boost Your Customer Acquisition

Ultimately, the best way to ensure positive customer acquisition is to boost your customer numbers, thereby dropping the acquisition cost per customer. To do that, there may be some aspects of acquisition you should work on developing.

• Use Videos: Right now, online video consumption is taking over the internet, particularly for those aged 18-35. According to a Nielson survey, video traffic will make up 80 percent of online internet traffic in 2019. It’s currently one of the best ways to reach the younger generation and increase your customer reach.

• Make Interactions More Personal: Marketing tools have evolved significantly in just five years, making it possible to tailor your marketing towards a targeted audience. Using personalization to your advantage can be a great way to see your acquisition rates jump. For example, personalized emails receive six times the transaction and revenue rates of traditional emails. 

• Engage Around the Clock: The internet doesn’t sleep, and if you want to make your customers feel truly valued, you can’t either. Well, your online engagement can’t. As unrealistic as it sounds, consumers expect 24/7 engagement with brands. That’s where freelancers and customer service companies come in handy. They can help you tend to your customers at all times. Even if they respond at 2 o’clock in the morning to say they’ll have a better answer at 8 a.m., it’s still better than no response at all.

Consumers are demanding more and more from their retailers, and only those who keep up with such demands survive. Putting forth the extra cash to develop a strong customer acquisition strategy is essential to developing a wide customer base, and those who wisely strike a balance between money spent and money earned have the best chance of succeeding.

Image credits:  Gabriel S. Delgado C.

If you haven’t asked yourself if less is really better lately, then you should.

Here are some unexpected examples of where less is really better:

1. Fewer leads
2. More cost
3. Fewer employees
4. Less space
5. Fewer tools
6. Fewer platforms
7. Less content

I’m sure you don’t believe me, but let’s delve into these examples of where less is really better.

Fewer leads

In generating leads, less is really better.

For some of my clients, generating a lot of leads is their primary marketing goal. So, why am I arguing that fewer leads is better?

Because a lead is just a lead — nothing more, nothing less. What you really want are customers, right? Leads are only interesting in that they’re the first step down the conversion funnel to becoming customers.

And, you really don’t care about customers, for that matter. What you care about is revenue. So fewer customers isn’t really a problem and shouldn’t be a goal.

What you should be looking at is CLV (customer lifetime value) and doing yield management to maximize the CLV per customer.

Adding high CLV customers is much better than keeping existing low CLV customers. Increasing the CLV of customers is preferable to adding new customers.

Increasing your conversion rate is preferable to generating more leads.

The number of leads is a useless metric.

The entire sales process was turned on its ear by inbound marketing, which transfers power from the seller to the buyer. Buyers no longer have to reach out to you (becoming a lead) before they buy. If you’ve done it right, they have all the information they need right on your website or in your social feeds. They can go straight from strangers to customers with a single sales call without ever becoming a lead or generating incremental costs.

Isn’t that great!

More cost

Most folks think spending less is really better. No accountant worth his/ her salt would recommend increasing costs.

But, marketers aren’t accountants. We know spending more for a lead might generate a higher quality lead in terms of CLV [source].

Similarly, spending more to get high-quality employees is better than spending less on a mediocre employee [source].

And, you should spend more on better materials to make more profit [source].

If we learned nothing from the ’80, we killed the concept of shrinking to greatness [source]. While great advantage comes from operating lean, indiscriminate cost cutting often reduces expenses, like routine maintenance, that actually cause higher costs in the long run.

Get my meaning?

Fewer employees

Having too many employees may be more deadly than having too few [source].

Work expands to fill the time available. With too many employees, clunky procedures and wasteful processes develop. When there’s more work, the staff available can’t get it done because they’re hampered with these legacy systems.

Too many employees also leads to political problems and turf warfare that are counterproductive to efficient operation.

Having too many employees leads to unwieldy bureaucracies that slow down the company.

Less space

Less is really better when you think about space, as well.

In traditional organizations, c-suite folks had massive offices and the size of the office declined as the employee’s rank declined.

One aspect of lean is the realization that we don’t need all this space. In fact, employees work better, more efficiently, with fewer conflicts when they work in a combined space, rather than individual offices. Google, for instance, has pods where cubicles are adjacent to open spaces for chatting and kitchen areas for refreshment, all combined in an open floor plan that’s very fluid.

Rumor has it, even Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook, has a cube rather than a big fancy office.

The same goes for manufacturing space. I once consulted with a client who had a very dysfunctional manufacturing facility that added significantly to cost, just because they could. Rather than constructing a facility where machines involved in a process were nearby, they simply set new machines down in any available space. If they’d had a smaller space, they would be forced to be smarter in where they placed equipment, forcing them to make an effort to design a smart process.

Fewer tools

I’m really a fan of using as few tools as possible to get the job done — preferably 1 tool.

This is a great example of where the less is really better. Too many tools results in a lack of coordination, duplication of efforts, and confusion. It also makes analytics a nightmare.

The same goes for fewer platforms — social platforms in particular. Is less really better? Absolutely. Having too many social platforms, jumping on the bandwagon of the current platform du jour, and having legacy platforms just hanging around all damage your reputation when you don’t have the resources to coordinate and post fresh, valuable content on a routine basis.

I once consulted with a company that had the same product sold through 4 or 5 different companies. Each had its own website and social media. It was a nightmare just to keep everything straight. Instead, I recommended having a single website with different pages for different target markets rather than different companies and websites.

Less content

Some businesses think that if content is good, more content is better. It’s been a constant discussion among marketers as to the proper balance between quantity and quality.

For me, I’ll come out on the side of quality every the time.

But, there are limits where less is really better. Notice this graphic from Hubspot. Note that there’s a big drop-off when content is less than weekly. The change between weekly and multiple times per day isn’t as great as when you create content less than once per week. For my clients, I come out with a preference for 2-3 posts/week. I find this is the sweet spot between what is best and what is possible with the given resources.

Some final thoughts

It’s common practice to assume that more is better. I don’t agree. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t always fix it and may make it worse. Instead, you should be throwing smarts at a problem — figure out what it takes to get where your REALLY want to be, the figuring out what it’ll take you to get there.

In many cases, less is really better. If nothing else, it forces you to use resources wisely.

While it may be true that “good things come to those who wait,” it is more true that in sales, better things happen to those who make things happen. Making things happen involves effort in a number of ways, one being persistence, the ability and – willingness – to take the game to the buyer. Despite proclamations to the contrary, most salespeople do not invest sufficient effort in gaining and keeping a prospect’s attention.

When I speak to sellers about their sales prospecting cadence with respect to engaging with prospects, most fall into the category of “too few and too much time between touch points.” Most tell me that they belong to the “3 & 3” camp. That is three touch points, once a week, over the course of three weeks, then they move on to the next prospect. Some will recycle the lead, and some from the Glengarry Glen Ross school don’t even do that, complaining about the quality of the leads all the way through.

Think about all of the things a buyer has to deal with in the course of one day, not just with other vendors, but with direct reports, kids, wife, mistresses, IRS, and more. They are already packing 16 hours into a 10-hour day, having to keep track of a host of things.

So, how are you going to stand out?

Let’s look at it from two perspectives. First, let’s say you are dealing with a potential buyer or someone who may have downloaded content from your website and so you take the opportunity to pounce. Chances are better than good that they performed a similar activity on your competitor’s site, meaning that you need to stay top of mind before your competition regains that place. If in fact it is the above scenario, it is best to design and implement a plan to touch the prospect frequently and in a meaningful way. You have a sense of what is of interest to them, and you have the benefit of having sold to similar buyers. This allows you to develop a narrative that you can build on during each touch point, allowing you to avoid the “I’m following up on my call” routine. If you can articulate why buyers buy from you and the business impacts you have delivered, you can build a string of voicemails, emails, and other means of communication that tell a story of success.

If you are making cold calls, yes cold, you will need to create a plan that will map out your pursuit plan ahead of time. Now, instead of trying to distinguish yourself from the competition, your narrative needs to communicate something of value to the prospect that will help them to see the benefit of becoming a customer. They need to see you as a means of achieving an objective that they had before you ever called. How will you know what that is? Again, look at your past deals, and build on them.

At this point, I know you are asking, “what’s the alternative to the ‘3 & 3’ method?” Start with “8 in 2,” that is – eight touch points over the course of two business weeks. When you master that, move to “10 in 2.”

“But I don’t want to harass them,” I hear some of you say. Don’t worry about it, think over the last couple of weeks of an instance where you have had a couple of calls from a business acquaintance or a friend, who has left you a couple of messages over the last week. And while you always want to call them back, you always forget until you’re on that commuter train heading home. What chance does a complete stranger have at receiving a call back from you? Especially off a cold call?

Parting advice.

Map it out. Call your prospect and leave a voicemail and email in that same day. Call that same prospect two days later, followed by a snail mail, and that’s week one already completed. You can spice things up week two with a LinkedIn InMail or connection request, add a text to the mix, before a final email. Persistence executed with purpose will win every time. Plan it, map it, set up your reminders/tasks, and let if flow. Don’t second guess yourself based on your mood that day. Follow your plan and execute.

Need more in-depth advice?

Still not sure about your sales prospecting cadence? Do you want to implement a higher degree of objective based selling into your strategy? Sign up for my webinar with Paul Alves, CRO and Co-Founder of QuotaFactory, on Thursday, July 21st at 1 PM EST.

Do you want to learn how to close more deals faster with an integrated B2B sales funnel?

Join LeadFuze's Founder & CEO Justin McGill, Close.io's Head of Sales Kevin Ramani, and PandaDoc's VP of Parternships Jared Fuller for a live webinar on sales enablement.

You'll hear strategies from behind the scenes at some of the fastest-growing teams in sales enablement and learn what their most successful customers are doing to drive growth.

Don't miss out—reserve your seat now.

Watch and you'll learn:

• What sales enablement is and how it helps you build an effective sales process
• How to generate leads and qualify cold prospects with outbound email
• Why the CRM matters and how it can help you to build a "book of truth"
• How to close deals with content and measure conversions

Wednesday, July 20 2016

10 AM PDT/1 pm EDT

Click here to register today!

Here’s a fast and efficient way to both personalize AND automate your invitations when connecting with potential customers on LinkedIn!

Dale Carnegie said it best: “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

When you dissect the components of a perfect LinkedIn invitation, it plays right into what the author of How To Win Friends & Influence People was getting at: Personalization is key.

What the Perfect LinkedIn Invite Looks Like

One of the biggest problems with all those random invitations flying around LinkedIn is that nobody takes time to personalize the text.

So when you type in someone’s name, or make a note about where he or she lives, or comment on where he or she went to college, etc., your personal touch goes beyond what 99 percent of LinkedIn invites typically contain.

That gets you noticed, ensures your invite gets accepted and starts your new LinkedIn relationship off on a positive, personal note.

The problem, of course, is that utilizing a personal approach to each and every LinkedIn invite you send takes a lot of time.

Or at least it used to.

Thanks to LinkedIn’s powerful internal search engine and a nifty plugin called LinMailPro, you can now automate and personalize all the LinkedIn invites you send to prospective clients and customers.

(Watch this video to see how the entire process works.)

Step 1 – LinkedIn Search

First, you’ll want to utilize LinkedIn’s internal search engine, which essentially works just like a Google search online.

You type in your search term – perhaps the job title that your ideal customer has – and then LinkedIn goes to work, looking at 433 million profiles in 200+ countries to deliver you the most accurate results.

(Bonus tip: Make sure you do a “Boolean Search,” which means putting quotation marks around your search term. For example, if you want to connect with people who work in Business Development, you’d type “Business Development” into LinkedIn Search. That tells LinkedIn’s internal search engine to only show you profile pages that have that extra phrase – “Business Development” – in a person’s job title or professional headline.)

Step 2 – Filters

Next, you filter your search results by People, then by Relationship, choosing “2nd Level.”

(Again, watch this video for a step-by-step walkthrough of the entire process.)

Next, you move further down the screen and filter the search results by Location, Industry, Company Name, School or Nonprofit Interests.

What you want to do is choose 1 or 2 of those indicators (where someone lives, or where he or she went to college) to further refine your list of prospects and set yourself up for a “personal” invite.

Once you do that, you’re ready to rock!

Step 3 – Invites

At this point, you should have a ready-made list of your ideal clients or customers that is sorted based on someone’s job title, and another factor or two such as location, school or industry type.

This is where LinMailPro, a Google Chrome browser extension, comes into play. It allows you to send everyone on that list a personalized, 1-on-1 invite to connect without you having to do anything other than push the “go” button.

Once you have LinMailPro fired up, you type out the invite text you want to use, and LinMailPro adds in the person’s name (remember Dale Carnegie?) along with your personalized invite text.

Say, for example, I want to connect with Business Development professionals who live in Minneapolis-St. Paul (where I am).

My invite text might look like this: “Hi %%FIRST%% – came across your profile here on LinkedIn, was intrigued and thought I’d reach out to connect. Also noticed you live in Minneapolis-St. Paul like I do – hope you’re enjoying the warm weather! (Finally!) Look forward to connecting soon! – John Nemo”

Notice how I’m sending each person on my list a personal, 1-on-1 invite that not only uses his or her first name, but also talks about the fact that we both live in Minneapolis, that the weather is great today, etc.

Best of all, LinMailPro lets me automate the entire process, so I can send out dozens of invites like this every single day.

It’s personal, it’s automated and it’s effective.

What more do you want?

If you haven’t already, watch this video to see the entire process in action, and then give it a shot yourself!

According to the Harvard Business Review, more and more sales organizations are shifting their resources from field to inside sales. That’s because inside sales is not only cost effective, but it is also delivering the goods.

This begs the question, “How do you get the most out of your inside sales initiative?”

Here are three inside sales techniques that put you in the driver’s seat, moving forward as fast as possible on the road to delivering increased sales.

1. Be Prompt
Today, the amount of time people are able to concentrate on one subject, their attention span, is shorter than ever.

That declaration is not mere theory—it’s based on research. In fact, Microsoft wondered whether technology was impacting attention spans. To find the answer, they conducted both quantitative and neurological research.

In 2013, the attention span of the average human was 8 seconds. What was it back in 2000? Twelve seconds. It had shrunk by 33%. And, yes, technology appears to be to blame. Early adopters of technology have shorter attention spans than those who stumbled upon bits and bytes later in life.

Coupled with this attention deficit is the demand for instant gratification. It’s seeping into every aspect of our lives. After all, technology gives us answers instantly to our burning questions as well as access to services, products and entertainment. Having successfully adapted to a technological environment, we are no longer willing to wait more than a few seconds to reach our goals.

How are these adaptations affecting sales and marketing?

It turns out that online sales leads have an extremely short shelf life. And, despite the malleability of the human race in general, most marketers are a breed apart—they have not responded to their buyers’ needs for immediate attention.

When the Harvard Business Review (HBR) audited 2,241 U.S. companies to find out how long it took them to respond to leads, they discovered that 37% got back to leads in an hour, 16% in 24 hours and 24% waited more than 24 hours.

In another study of over a million leads, HBR discovered that businesses that contacted prospects within an hour of receiving a lead were almost seven times more likely to qualify them than those that waited 24 hours or more.

There’s a breakdown here between what buyers want and what companies provide. While it can be challenging to respond rapidly if your marketing automation and CRM systems are not connecting, it’s a challenge worth surmounting. If you’re prompt and respond in an hour you’ll have almost 700% more qualified leads than you will if you wait 24 hours. Clearly, prompt follow-up represents a massive opportunity for those who can conquer it.

2. Persist
According to research conducted by InsideSales.com and based on more than 700 sales organizations, persistence pays off. Of the companies that try to call a lead, on average they do so a paltry 1.41 times before abandoning the cause. That makes no sense. Let’s do a little math. In B2B sales, you have about a 10 percent chance of reaching someone each time you call. That means you need to make on average 10 calls to reach a live person on the phone. If you’re only calling once or twice, it’s likely you will never talk to most of your leads.

Here’s a tip—you can increase your chances of reaching an inquiry by asking on your web form, “When is the best time to call you?”

3. Leave a Voice Mail
Given that you’re making all these phone calls without reaching live people, it’s only natural to wonder whether to leave a voicemail. Yes, you should, but you need to plan ahead and craft your message carefully.

You should not talk about your company. Instead, raise the pain point that your product or services address. For example, at 3D2B, we might leave a message that talks about the frustration of not being able to reach leads on the phone. The objective is to open the wound and then offer a solution that heals it.

Often, there’s resistance to leaving messages. If you do it all the time, they can feel repetitive and could come across as being robotic. Alternatively, you might be concerned that you will trip over your words and leave a bad impression.

Since you’re not the first to feel this way, there are now systems that automate your voicemail messages in the same way that you can systematize sales and marketing emails.

First, you record a message. When you do, talk slowly and confidently. Announce yourself at the beginning of the message and repeat your name and contact information at the end. In between, talk about the pain and how to resolve it. That’s it. When you need a voicemail message, press a button. Magically, it’s there doing your work for you to perfection.

These three inside sales techniques, simple as they are, can go a long way to improving your results from inside sales.

Overcome Buyer Objections and Increase Sales

If you’ve been in business long enough, then you know how frustrating it can be for a lead to turn you down after months of hard work. If you’re not getting the results that you need then you will want read on.

A hot prospect may be ready to buy, but it’s how you approach them that makes the difference in getting a sale. There are several reasons you might get turned away, including:

• Too many details
• A product or service that doesn’t make sense to them
• Over-valuing your pricing structure

Marketing Wizdom founder, Robert Clay, reports that the majority of sales representatives will give up after just four rejections. This is mainly due to a lack of strategy and follow-up — with creative approaches you can turn a cold lead into a warm sale.

In order to draw interest, you need to first understand exactly what your potential customers want to purchase and why. This will enable you to provide something of value that they will be compelled to know more about.

Hubspot recently featured 18 sales objections based on an infographic by the RAIN Group. These methods not only show us what customers are thinking, but also provide insight into how we can change our approach for a more favorable response.

As your business focuses on the needs and desires of your leads first you can introduce a more detailed offer at a later time. The key is to capture their interest in order to sell to a ready buyer.

Find out how your business can successfully negotiate your way to a sale with 5 of the top tips from the Rain Group infographic:

Show them the value

A brand new lead is more likely to turn you down even before the pitch process has begun. In order to capture their attention right away, give them a 30-second request to find out whether your offer meets their needs. It’s important to have a good understanding of your target market before proceeding. At the end of your conversation ask them whether you can follow up with them. This may just get the ball rolling and keep the door open for a later pitch.

What if they already work with another company?

More often than not your business will discover that your leads have been working with the competition, but this may not actually be a good situation for them. With a positive attitude, you could show how your products or services could provide the same service, but in a better way and at a competitive price. Use testimonials, case studies, and real results before heading into this approach. The goal is to give them information they had not considered before while being respectful to the company they are currently working with.

The calendar approach

If a prospect hasn’t expressed an interest yet they might want to put this off until later, which means they may have already decided not to accept your offer. You don’t need to be a hurry to close the deal, but rather schedule a time at their earliest convenience to discuss the idea again.

Depending on your niche, a certain time or day of the week may work the best. A Lead Response Management study shows that Thursday is the best day to contact a lead by phone between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m.

A later date can place your product or service on the forefront of your lead’s minds, and also provide them more time to overview your business. While they are thinking about your pitch you could send any helpful information they may want to overview before making a firm decision.

A low budget issue

Small businesses and entrepreneurs may be operating on a limited budget, but this can also be an opportunity to provide something of value on a trial basis or as a free introductory offer. Once you learn their budget needs you can revisit how the free item has been helpful to them with a plan of action on how to make this work for their company. Approach this step with caution; however, and do your homework on their niche and the ability of them to become a paying customer in the near future.

Getting past approvals

You’ve made a home run with a lead, but now they need to discuss the idea with their supervisor. But this doesn’t mean you’re out of the game yet. You can use this situation to set up another meeting with their superior(s) as long they are the decision makers. If they want a lower price you can always negotiate with the higher-ups, and keep the door of opportunity open.

Sales objections are not the end of the road — they are just another way your business can show your prospects that what you have to offer stands out from the rest of the competition with a high benefit to their company. With a unique approach that builds trust, you can turn a “no” to a positive “yes” by being patient and working with the needs of your potential customers.

Forty-two percent of salespeople report that prospecting is the part of the sales process they struggle with most. But as a sales professional, consistent prospecting efforts are arguably your most important activity. And these days, email is an essential part of an effective prospecting campaign.

The hardest part of email prospecting? Efficiently making the right amount of high-quality attempts to each prospect with the right amount of time in between. The average rep only makes two attempts before giving up, yet the average sale requires eight attempts.

It’s no wonder most salespeople are failing at their jobs. They simply don’t make enough attempts to connect with each prospect.

However, sending more of the same emails isn’t the answer. The reps who are making multiple attempts often send the same message to each prospect over and over again. Or worse, they forward their original message and attempt to guilt trip prospects with lines like “Have you seen my previous emails?” Not a good idea.

To strike the right balance, salespeople need to plan what to say as well as how to say it, and vary their approach. It’s not that hard to make the appropriate number of creative outreach attempts if enough effort is put into creating reusable, quickly customizable email template sequences. And by automating the right parts of email prospecting, you can speed up your sales cycle too.

To inspire you to step up your game, I asked Matthew Iovanni and Holly Berrigan, respectively CEO and former director of accounts at FullFunnel, to share their formulas for success.

Using a process like the one below, they’ve helped clients such as Innovation Asset Group achieve 400% growth in their pipeline. As a Platinum Level HubSpot Agency Partner, they’ve also helped many HubSpot customers produce similar results.

Follow the process below to make more meaningful connections with more of the right prospects.

Effective prospecting campaigns require planning -- and lots of it.

“Most companies take a haphazard approach to prospecting, arming their salespeople with a handful of templates, an email address, and a login to the CRM,” Iovanni says. Here's how not to do that.

1. Use sales software to schedule multiple attempts at once.

FullFunnel uses the HubSpot email sequences to deploy their prospecting campaigns. Sequences leverages sales automation to enable a rep to automatically personalize and schedule a series of emails at pre-defined intervals for each prospect. Once a buyer responds, they are un-enrolled from the sequence and no further automated emails are sent.

“This process saves our clients’ salespeople a lot of time because once we schedule a set of emails to send, we don’t have to worry about which email to send next or when to send it,” Berrigan says.

Sequences users can also schedule tasks for the salesperson, prompting them to make a call before or after an email is scheduled to send, follow and/or interact with prospects on social media, or simply check whether prospects are opening emails or not.

Of course, FullFunnel doesn’t stop there. Over the years, they’ve refined their approach to crafting messages. Let’s start from the top and work our way down the anatomy of a perfect sales email.

2. Use intriguing subject lines to maximize open rates.

Subject lines seem like such a small thing, but they’re incredibly important -- and you should obsess over them more than most salespeople do. If a prospect doesn’t find the subject line interesting, they won't read your email.

“Recipients are more likely to open emails with intriguing subject lines, so be sure to include personalization, exclusivity, and questions,” Berrigan says.

Below are a few subject lines that have worked for FullFunnel’s clients. Customize them to fit your product and persona.

Personalized subject lines:

• [Name], interesting piece of advice.
• Your profile is impressive, [Name]

Exclusive subject lines (note: only use these if you actually have an exclusive offer):

• Invite Only -- [Event Name]
• Secret sauce for overcoming [challenge]

Question subject lines:

• What do you think of X?
• How do you do X?

3. Personalize and customize to demonstrate interest in your prospect.

We’ve all received un-targeted emails from salespeople. At best, it’s annoying. At worst, it pisses us off.

“No one likes to feel like they’re getting a generic email,” Iovanni says. “A potential customer wants to be recognized as the unique and individual snowflake that they are.”

Follow these three steps to effectively customize your messages:

1. Personalize. Use personalization tokens in your emails to automatically populate messages with your prospect’s name, company, title, and any other distinguishing information you have about them. “Just make sure your CRM information is accurate,” Iovanni says.
2. Use a persona. Make sure your recipient matches your target persona. Specific personas (or types of buyers) will have common pain points, so share content related to those pain points with prospects who fit the persona.
3. Research. To maximize response rates, do research to find something unique about the individual you’re contacting. Incorporate this research into your messages, or even focus your entire first message on your findings.

4. Write short messages with the right tone to hit home.

In addition to personalizing and targeting your messages, you must write engaging and concise copy. Customization won't matter if your email is poorly written. By focusing on your message's tone and keeping it brief, you’ll significantly increase engagement.

Many salespeople make the mistake of putting their product's full value proposition in every email rather than something (anything!) about their prospect. FullFunnel uses Sequences to test bite-sized messages, which are more likely to get read precisely because they’re short, according to Berrigan.

“There’s no need to cram everything you want to tell someone in an email,” Iovanni points out. “People want to know how your product or service will benefit them, not how it works.”

In addition, try experimenting with tone in your emails. FullFunnel's reps have seen success keeping their language familiar and friendly, but your ideal tone might be different depending on your target personas.

Below is a mock example of an email FullFunnel uses to market their service. The message this is based on achieved a 33% open and 11% clickthrough rate.

You'll notice that the email doesn’t go into the specifics of what FullFunnel does. Instead, it shows the potential benefit to the recipient’s company. And most importantly, the email is written in the fun and friendly FullFunnel voice.

5. Test images to increase relatability.

In the example email above, you may have been drawn in by the simple graphic. FullFunnel uses images such as these in their emails in several ways.

“Educational infographics work when you want the prospect to come to the same conclusion you’re proposing, while funny images can quickly break the ice,” Iovanni explains.

Here’s an example from FullFunnel client VOIQ, a provider of on-demand sales calling services. Who doesn’t love a little classic Burt Reynolds? (Once again, this is a mock example without any customization based on the individual recipient.)

You can even include animated GIFs, which are supported by almost all email clients.

“Humorous GIFs are great for attention-grabbing messages to difficult-to-reach personas such as those in IT, or for very social personas like those in sales or recruiting,” Iovanni told me.

6. Use content and a clear call-to-action to encourage engagement.

Following the advice above should help you increase your email open rate. But that’s all for naught unless you can get prospects to reply or re-convert on your website as a result of your email.

The content and call-to-action (CTA) you choose to include in your messages will vary significantly on the stage of the buyer's journey your prospect is in. Below are the guidelines FullFunnel recommends their clients follow when choosing content and CTAs:

1. Include links meant to generate website conversions. Use simple action words such as “click here,” “discover,” or “download” to make it clear exactly what you’d like the reader to do.
2. For contacts who are less familiar with your company's offerings, include a link to a landing page with relevant educational offers.
3. In the event that the lead is aware of the company's offerings and likely to be interested, link to a meeting scheduler so the prospect can immediately book time with a rep.
4. For messages that fall late in the sequence or leads that have expressed interest through repeat website visits, email opens, or website conversions, include a link to a case study.

FullFunnel also uses progressive profiling to capture more information about a given lead every time they complete a form. Progressive profiling automatically hides form fields if the information is already known for that prospect, and presents a new field to complete instead. This keeps the form short, while enabling companies to capture more information about leads each time they convert. The additional information collected as prospects complete more fields is used to send increasingly targeted offers, which in turn helps move leads farther along their buyer’s journey.

7. Create reusable sequences for different personas to maximize efficiency.

FullFunnel also considers which target persona a specific lead matches when determining which email sequence to send them.

“For each persona, we recommend creating five or more emails [per] cadence,” Iovanni says. “Each message should hit on pain points your persona may struggle with and present proof that you can help eliminate the problem.”

Save each series of emails as a HubSpot Sales Sequence to automate your prospecting touches without sacrificing personalization.

In Email Prospecting, a Little Planning Goes a Long Way

Ever feel like a little piece of your soul dies when you send the same spammy message to the same prospect over and over again? Ever get frustrated that so many of your prospects ignore you or tell you to back off? With a bit of planning, some content, and the right tools, you can stop feeling this way -- for good.

Create email templates that include content tailored to the persona and buyer stage of each contact, write engaging subject lines, add images where they make sense, keep it brief, and follow through with multiple, creative attempts.

Next, use technology to store these customizable email template sequences and automate the repetitive parts of prospecting by scheduling multiple attempts at once. But don't go overboard with automation -- use your newfound time to do more research and customize each message for each prospect even more.

By quickly accessing and scheduling reusable email templates with CTAs to content proven to convert, you can achieve higher response rates more efficiently. Keep creating new templates and sequences for different stages of the buyer’s journey and different personas, and you’ll build a prospecting machine that puts quality opportunities into your funnel at an ever-increasing rate.

Email Prospecting Software

1. Sales Hub

• Price: Starter, $50/month for 1 paid user; Professional, $400/month for 5 paid users; Enterprise, $1200/month for 10 paid users
• About: Ready to put prospecting on autopilot? Sales Hub doesn't just help you cut down on data entry and organize your pipeline. It also offers email sequences, which allow you to use email templates and customer information to schedule and send targeted emails to prospects with the information they want, right when they need it most.

2. Apollo

• Price: Starter, Free; Basic, $32/month/user; Professional, $100/month/user; Enterprise, pricing available upon request
• About: Apollo offers automated or manual email sequences, calls, and tasks. Plus, they have click-to-call dialing, recording, transcription, and CRM-logging tools. Create rules that take instant action based on prospect activities, stages, or triggers. And integrate with LinkedIn, Gmail, Outlook, and your favorite CRM.

3. PersistIQ

• Price: Lite, $40/month/user; Starter, $60/month/user; $90/month/user
• About: Ready to send personalized emails faster than ever before? Create customized email campaigns full of smart variables that keeps you from sending emails with missing values (i.e., that dreaded "Hi "). Their software can also determine between actual replies and out of office replies. And they flawlessly format your emails using their modern email templates.

4. Outreach.io

• Price: Available upon request
• About: Wish you had software that combined calling, texting, email, and social media to reach buyers where they most want to be contacted? Outreach.io can help. Auto-populated variables, open and click tracking, inbox integrations, and more make this a solid email prospecting option.

5. SalesLoft

• Price: Available upon request
• About: Use SalesLoft's templates to personalize your emails where it counts -- even embedding customized videos or attachments. You can also A/B test automated messages to find out which content serves your prospects best. OOO detection, an email deliverability checklist, timezone detection, and engagement triggers are just a few of the other features that will streamline your email prospecting with this software.

6. Reply

• Price: Individual, $55/month/user, $70/month/user, or $90/month/user; Business, $200/month for 3 users, $300/month for 5 users, $500/month for 10 users; Enterprise, pricing available upon request
• About: Send personalized, automated emails to your prospects, from onboarding to re-engagement. Then, track the performance of those emails with comprehensive statistics on deliveries, opens, and clicks. Oh, and you'll be able to use their template library, of course.

7. Mixmax

• Price: Starter, $9/month/user; Small Business, $24/month/user; Growth, $49/month/user; Enterprise, pricing available upon request
• About: Opens, click, and downloads are all tracked. Meetings are booked with one email. Messages can be personalized and scheduled at scale, and all of your emails, performance metrics, and downloads are automatically logged in your CRM. That's just a sampling of what you'll get with Mixmax.

Email automation doesn't have to be cold, monotonous, or spammy. Follow these suggestions and choose the right prospecting software, and you can enrich the buying experience for your prospects -- and for your career.

A good conversation starter can transform an awkward, stilted conversation into an interesting, enjoyable discussion. 

That's important in sales, as having several conversation starters up your sleeve will help you form connections with prospects, referrals, and potential partners. In other words, your ability to start a conversation translates to real business.

Take a look at our list of 166 conversation starters and find your favorite one-liner to kick start your next conversation.

Table of Contents

Conversation Topics

Conversation Starters to Use at a Conference

Conversation Starters to Use at an Industry Event

Conversation Starters to Use at a Networking Happy Hour

Conversation Starters to Use at a Social Event

Questions to Start a Conversation

What makes a good conversation starter? While there isn't an exact formula, you can tailor your questions for different situations. For instance, the conversation starters you use with your friends will differ from, say, your boss. 

Here are the common types of questions:

1. Open-ended: A broad, open-ended question typically generates a far more engaging answer than a closed, yes-or-no one.
2. Non-routine: Breaking out of the standard weather and job-related questions will jolt the person you're talking to out of autopilot. You'll also make yourself more memorable.
3. Professional: Some topics are more suited for your friends and family than strangers or near-strangers. Your questions should never make your conversational partner uncomfortable.
4. Relevant: If you can, start a conversation about something timely or specific, such as your location, event, industry, jobs, or current interests. The other person will find it easier to contribute.

Conversation Topics

So, you want to start a conversation. But what should you talk about? Here are some topics to kick off a conversation.

Events

If you're attending a conference or event, you can ask questions about the event itself, its location, your industry, the other person's objectives, what they've learned, and more.

Industries

At an industry event, talk about the latest news or technology in your industry. Ask how your industry is evolving, and what changes people are most excited about.

Technology

Is a person using a phone, tablet, or electronic device you're interested in? Ask them about it.

Content

Ask if they recommend any books, blogs, podcasts, or videos. You might find a mutual interest that you can talk about.

Fun Facts

Start conversations about where they work, their favorite food and restaurants in the area, or chat about something they learned recently. Fun facts are ideal for networking events or happy hours.

To start great conversations, borrow from this list of 166 conversation starters.

Conversation Starters to Use at a Conference

Conferences are chock-full of opportunities to ask thought-provoking, relevant, and engaging questions. You can discuss the specific event, its location, your industry, the other person's objectives, what they've learned, and more.

Keith Grehan, an account manager in HubSpot's Dublin office says:

"I approach conference introductions the same way I approach outbound calls, by having a reason to call/initiate the conversation. Ideally, I'd know something about the prospect, their company and the challenge/hot topics in their industry and use that as a jumping off point. If, however, I was at an event and didn't have a chance to complete prior research, I introduce myself and ask, ‘What are you hoping to get from the day?' It's a great place to start."

1. Which [speaker/panel] are you most excited for?
2. Which [speaker/panel] did you most enjoy? Which did you find the most useful?
3. If you could meet one speaker from this event, who would it be?
4. If you could have your entire company watch a single session from this event, which would it be?
5. If you were giving a presentation, what would the topic be?
6. How does this conference compare to others you've attended?
7. If you were running this conference, what would you do differently?
8. What did you think of the talk [length, structure, style]?
9. Have you gone to this conference before? What's changed?
10. What's the most surprising thing you've learned? (If the conference isn't over, add "so far?")
11. Why did you decide to attend?
12. Are you planning on coming back next year?
13. Are you here with other people? Do you prefer going to conferences solo or with a group?
14. Are you doing any non-conference activities while you're here? (Alternatively: "Did you fit in any non-conference activities?")
15. Is this your first time in [city]? What do you think of it?
16. Are you from the area? (If yes: "Do you have any [food, museum, shopping, music] recommendations?" If no: "Where are you from?")
17. Do you think the conference could benefit from being a day [shorter, longer]? Why?
18. I wonder how many people would have attended this conference eight years ago — what do you think?
19. I wonder how many people will attend this conference in eight years — what do you think?
20. Do you go to a lot of conferences?
21. What's the first conference you ever attended?
22. Would your company ever host a conference? (Or if they're from a large organization: "Does your company host conferences?")
23. What conference — real or imaginary — would you absolutely hate to miss?
24. Do you think [industry] needs more conferences? Less?
25. What's the primary reason you chose to attend [conference name]?
26. Do you have any plans to explore [city]?
27. What's your biggest takeaway from [speaker/panel]?
28. Will you come back to this event next year?
29. Have you met/seen any of the speakers before?

Conversation Starters to Use at an Industry Event

Attending a highly specific event like a forum comes with some advantages. For one, you usually have a pretty good sense of which roles and interests the other attendees hold. When you're blanking on topics, use this information.

1. Have you been to any events hosted by [organizer] before?
2. Why'd you decide to come to this forum?
3. Is [theme of event] a major professional focus of yours?
4. Why do you think they chose this specific theme?
5. By any chance, have you read anything good about [theme of event]?
6. Do you attend any other forums?
7. Are there any upcoming events you're planning on going to?
8. Had you heard of [speaker] before this?
9. Why do you think they chose [speaker]?
10. Have you ever organized an event like this? What surprised you about running the scenes?
11. If you could only remember one fact or insight from this [morning, afternoon, evening], what would it be?
12. What were your thoughts on [specific point speaker made]?
13. Do you have any predictions for how the discussion will go? (Or if the event is wrapping up: "Did the discussion meet your expectations?")
14. You look so familiar! Did you go to [previous event]?
15. What are your favorite and least favorite things about working in [industry]?
16. How long have you been in [industry]? Have there been any significant changes since you entered this space?
17. If you could spend an entire day talking to any expert in our industry, who would it be?
18. If you were in charge of this forum, and you had an unlimited budget, what would you do differently?
19. Did you disagree with any of the points made?
20. Did this event change how you think about [industry] and/or your role in [industry]?
21. Do you frequently go to these types of events?
22. How'd you learn about this forum?
23. I'm in the market for a new [phone, computer, notebook, etc.], and I noticed you're using an [iPhone 12, Moleskine notebook, etc.] — would you recommend it?
24. If you had to sum up this event in three words, which would they be?
25. What new projects do you have lined up?
26. Which skills in [industry] do you think will be most in demand in the next five years?
27. Do you listen to any [industry]-specific podcasts?
28. Where do you like to get your [industry]-related news?

Conversation Starters to Use at a Networking Happy Hour

Socializing with strangers who already express an interest in connecting is always a little easier — or at least, more relaxed — at the end of the day. And, in the case that the majority of attendees are local, you've got a ton of built-in questions about the city, how long they've lived here, what they like to do in the area, and so on at your disposal.

As a general rule, your questions should be a little lighter than the ones you'd use at a conference or speaker event. Happy hours are for mixing work and play, so match your tone accordingly.

Grehan has advice for those preparing for networking happy hours as well. He says:

"At a happy hour, it's important to be more informal. People have had a long day of research and attending seminars, so having someone open with a different topic than the event or what they do for a living can be a breath of fresh air. If anything funny happened or if something didn't go well during the event, a joke about it is a good opener -- nothing brings people together like complaining after a long day!"

1. What's keeping you busy lately?
2. Did you come here from work?
3. What's your favorite part about living in [city]? Least favorite?
4. What do you think of this venue?
5. If you could only attend one type of networking function for the rest of your life, would you choose breakfasts or happy hours?
6. Have you tried any of the food? What's good?
7. What did you get done today?
8. Why did you come tonight?
9. How long have you lived in [city]?
10. Why did you move to [city]?
11. Do you think [city] is a place most people move to, or from?
12. Where did you move to [city] from? What do you miss about your last town — and what were you happy to leave behind?
13. If you could recommend only one [restaurant, coffee shop, bar] in [city], which one would you choose?
14. As [day of the week]s go, how was yours? (For example, "Did you have a good Monday, as Mondays go?")
15. At this time on a typical [day of the week], what would you be doing?
16. I have a semi-important decision to make, and I'd love your input: Should I have [appetizer #1] or [appetizer #2]?
17. I just learned "happy hours" were invented in the 1920s on naval ships. To make sea life a little less boring, sailors got daily breaks for wrestling and boxing matches. Do you prefer the modern or original version?
18. If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would you choose?
19. What's the last new skill you learned?
20. Are there any skills you thought would be crucial to your job that turned out to be unimportant?
21. Are there any common misconceptions about your job?
22. I read an article claiming nowadays everyone has a side project (or four). Do you agree? Are you working on anything on the side?
23. Wow, I see a lot of phones out — the email addiction is real! Do you think your company could survive if your CEO banned internal email?
24. Do you think you're the only [title] in the room?
25. If someone was making a movie about your current job, what genre would it be? What would they call it?
26. I love your [tie/bracelet/shoe/attire]! Where did you get it from?
27. What would you be doing at this time on a normal day?
28. It's nice to meet you. How has your day been?
29. Wow, that drink looks good. What is it?
30. What a great place for an event, right? Have you ever been here before?

Conversation Starters to Use at a Social Event

You might not think of your friend's BBQ or neighbor's block party as prime networking events — but as the most successful reps know, great sales opportunities can appear in unlikely places.

However, steer away from job, career, or industry-related questions. Since you're at a social event, less serious subjects are far more appropriate (and fun). Building rapport is your primary mission — after the party, you can figure out which new connections might benefit from your product.

1. If you were in charge of the playlist, which song would you play next?
2. You look like you could be in [random occupation]. Am I anywhere close?
3. If there was $200 at stake, would you be willing to prepare the food using only lunch meat, the contents of the freezer, and basic kitchen staples?
4. Have you tried any of the [appetizers, drinks, sides, etc.]? Any recommendations?
5. Do you have a signature drink? (Gesture to their glass.)
6. Is your [day/night] going like you expected?
7. Do you prefer hosting events or attending them?
8. Games at parties: Yay, or nay? Why?
9. Are you a cat or dog person? Do you have any pets?
10. If you had to switch outfits with one person here, who would it be?
11. Do you know most of the people here?
12. If you could invite anyone to this party and they were guaranteed to show up, who would you ask?
13. I'm trying to plan my next trip — have you traveled anywhere interesting lately?
14. What do you think are the top three ingredients for a successful party?
15. Would you rather only host fancy dinner parties or theme parties for the rest of your life?
16. Great [shoes/haircut/shirt]! Where'd you get it?
17. What are you reading?
18. Are there any Netflix/Hulu/television series you'd recommend?
19. If you were stuck on a desert island with four items of your choice from this room, what would you bring?
20. What's the last movie you saw in theaters? Was it worth the trip?
21. What do you not do? (Smile while you ask to show you're being humorous.)
22. Have you been to any great restaurants lately?
23. Where's your favorite vacation spot?
24. Got any fun plans for the weekend? I need some inspiration so I don't end up on the couch with some Netflix and Ben & Jerry's.
25. Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin?
26. Did you fulfill your childhood dream?
27. What's the best gift you've ever gotten? My friend's birthday is coming up and I'd love some ideas.
28. Are you looking forward to anything in the next few weeks?
29. Are you looking forward to anything in the next few weeks?
30. How do you know the host?
31. Are you keeping up with [sports team/TV show/news] recently?
32. Have you tried any new restaurants lately?
33. [For couples] How did you two meet?
34. Are you having a good time?

Questions to Start a Conversation

Sometimes, a simple introduction is the best way to proceed. But, then what? Open-ended questions are your friend, in these situations. Sales expert, and author of "Networking in the 21st Century," David J.P. Fisher explains his strategy for navigating professional gatherings:

"The most powerful way to start a conversation at industry events is the simplest: introduce yourself! Simply saying, ‘Hi, my name is ______' invites them to respond with their name, and now you have a conversation. It helps to have an open-ended question for follow up after that. Something like, ‘What do you think of the event so far?' or ‘Which has been your favorite session?' works well."

1. What's the most interesting thing you've read lately?
2. How many days do you think it takes you to scroll a mile on your phone? One day? One week?
3. What's a fact about you that's not on the internet?
4. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
5. Do you have a go-to conversation starter for these types of events? What is it?
6. Which blogs do you read?
7. Do you listen to any podcasts? Which ones?
8. You remind me of a celebrity, but I'm having trouble remembering their name… Whom are you normally compared to?
9. Did you hear about the trend of dinner party hosts banning small talk? Would you ever try that?
10. Would you recommend the last documentary you watched? Why or why not?
11. What's something in your industry you consider underrated?
12. What are your company's unique traditions?
13. If you could only [read, watch, listen to] one genre of [books, shows, music] for the rest of your life, which would it be?
14. On what topic do people always come to you with questions?
15. If you could spend one month at any period in the past — and you were guaranteed not to suffer any harm or change the course of history -- when would it be?
16. If you weren't in [X profession], which one would you be in?
17. Who was your childhood hero?
18. Do you have a secret talent?
19. What's the best event freebie you've ever gotten?
20. If you could publish a book on any subject, what would it be?
21. Let's say you could invite any three people in [industry, role, organization] to dinner. Who would you ask?
22. What's the last thing you learned outside of work?
23. How do you feel about unlimited vacation policies? Do you think they work as intended?
24. What's one company perk you'd love to have?
25. Have you taken any professional development courses lately?
26. If you could be a fly on the wall for a C-suite meeting at any company, which company would it be?
27. Do you prefer working remotely or in-person — and why?
28. What's one thing you'd love to be an expert at?
29. If there were no dress code, how would you dress for work?
30. Tell me about the best boss you ever had — what made them so great?
31.   What’s the quality that people admire most about you?
32.  What is one non-work related goal that you would like to achieve in the next five years?
33.  Suppose you get to redecorate the conference room — what would you do?

The Ultimate Conversation Starter

Last but not least, the ultimate networking question that you can ask anyone, anywhere, anytime:

What do you love about what you do?

This question gives people the chance to dig into their passions — automatically putting them in a good mood and making them more likely to enjoy your conversation. Plus, it's a fresh twist on an old standby. You'll instantly stand out from the hordes of other people making small talk.

Do you have a blog? Do you generate leads?

Lead generation (through gated content) plays a pivotal role in the sales funnel of many businesses.

It certainly has a central position in ours.

But it’s exhausting – who are we kidding?

Creating an entire ebook from scratch? Infographics, slide decks, white papers, reports – everything you can possibly email gate you should be.

But how do you find the time?

This article will guide you through the entire process. I’ll break down how to repurpose content to create lead generating incentives (or lead magnets) and why you should.

Let’s dive in!

---

Choosing Content to Repurpose

---

Different content types are better suited to different lead magnet types.

For instance, if you have a list post, it’ll likely make an excellent infographic or slide deck.

If you have a comprehensive article (or series of 5 comprehensive articles) about a single topic, it’ll likely make an excellent ebook.

But you have to prove there’s interest first. While you should create content with repurposing in mind (more on that in a second), you shouldn’t create content which will only have value once it’s repurposed.

Prove there’s demand for your content before spending any time repurposing. There’s no reason to spend a single moment turning your blog article into an infographic if nobody’s interested in the article.

Publish your content and watch its 5-day traffic (how it does with your newsletter subscribers, social, forums, etc) and then take a look at its content. Only when both variables look like they’ll work for repurposing should you dive in.

---

Creating Content That can Be Easily Repurposed

---

Let’s take an ebook example…

If I know that I need an ebook on landing pages (I want to generate leads guaranteed to be interested in a product I’ve developed – landing page software), I can create five articles – from introductory to advanced – with the ebook in mind.

For instance, I could write these five articles:

1. Landing Page Fundamentals and Best Practices
2. 10 Landing Page Elements You Need to Have – with Examples
3. The Specifics of Lead Generation Landing Pages
4. Introduction to A/B Testing, and the 5 Most Impactful Variables
5. Advanced Landing Page Strategies You Haven’t Tried Yet

And then compile them into a single PDF (I recommend Google Presentations or Canva for this).

I applied this exact strategy when I wrote my Comprehensive Guide to Facebook Ads. Though the whole guide is free and available as a series, we’ve had over 1,200 people download it (compiled together as an ebook) as a single resource.

So this…

Became this…

---

Repurposed Content Examples

---

My colleague Kevin recently wrote 100 Marketing Growth Hacks Learned from 5 Years as a Startup. This was a massively successful list and resource post filled with a ton of value.

It was the perfect post to repurpose in different ways.

Here’s why the article was the perfect post to repurpose:

• It was made up of bite-sized pieces of content (tips), which suits visual content such as infographics and slide decks.
• It had high traffic beyond the standard 5-day lifespan of an article. This means that creating “value-add” pieces of repurposed content was even more valuable. Adding “value-adds” to low-traffic content rarely results in a positive ROI.
• The value of the post was high, making people want to download, keep it around and keep referring to it over time.

Repurposing Content as an Infographic:

Infographics are liked and shared 300% more frequently than other types of content on social media.

But not every infographic has to take a week to create or have a thousand different icons, font sizes and the rest. So long as the headline is intriguing (see above) and the content valuable, people will love it.

The one above was built in about half an hour by a content marketer with pretty entry-level Photoshop abilities. There are a thousand online guides to help you with Photoshop or, if you’re really strapped for cash, you can always use a tool like Canva or even Google Drawing.

Repurposing Content as a Slideshare:

The Slideshare Kevin created by repurposing his 100 Growth Hacks article has generated more than 89,000 views since it was published on May 30th, 2016.

That’s an astonishing amount – better than we’ve ever done before.

That said, in the past 12 months we’ve driven more than 127,800 Slideshare views per month on average – all from a combination of original and repurposed content.

Top Strategies to Creating a Successful Slideshare:

• Spend as much time on your title page as the rest of it.
• Have no more than 10 words on any single slide. Break it down then break it up.
• Use high-quality images on every slide behind the text. Play with contrast, brightness and filters.
• Use templated pages to ensure your alignment between slides remains identical.
• Have your first three or four slides be “context” slides for the information to come (statistics, etc).

---

Using your Repurposed Content

---

Once you have your repurposed content, you have a few options for what to do with it.

1. Create an optimized Landing Page:

This is my recommendation for an ebook, whitepaper or industry report which you’ve repurposed from multiple blog articles.

Something like this:

2. Add your repurposed content into your blog and use Popups & Overlays to promote:

It’s super easy to quickly create a click popup and attach the “download your free copy” button to a PDF URL.

3. Test going Pro with Slideshare to Generate Leads

Slideshare is a community of more than 70 million and can be a great way to get eyes on your repurposed content (infographics and slide decks, both).

There’s also the option to use repurposed content on Slideshare to generate leads.

Slideshare’s Pro option charges $8.50/lead (for U.S. leads – it’s more or less depending on your geographic target). A popup appears at a set time and place within a selected number of slide decks and prompts viewers to submit lead information. The service only charges for the leads you generate and allows you to ask for a quite generous amount of lead detail.

Check out a screenshot of one of our lead generation forms below:

If $8.50 sounds like a bargain for you to generate some pretty legitimate lead information, check out Slideshare Pro. If not, I highly recommend you check out the content-posting side of the platform nonetheless.

---

Wrapping it Up

---

Hopefully this guide to repurposing content has given you an idea of where to start. Repurposing content will help you save time, money, and creative resources.

Have you ever got an exciting ROI from pre-existing, repurposed content? Let me know what’s worked for you in the comment section below!

Every sales leader, in every company, is searching for a killer growth angle. We all want to know how to squeeze more out of our pipeline. The best go-to-market managers differentiate themselves by pinpointing key segments where they can close deals quickly. However, this isn’t a code many people can easily crack. Whether you know it or not, your company is sitting on at least some “white space” of untapped opportunities that are already in your funnel. Few businesses realize how much potential revenue they’re actually leaving on the table, but we’re seeing more and more elite sales and marketing shops figure out how to turn pipeline gaps into revenue growth upwards of 10% – and I’ve had the privilege of learning from several of them.

One thing I’ve noticed in top-notch Sales VPs is that it all starts with how good they are at forecasting pipeline. But even when management is great at predicting how much revenue each rep and each channel will bring in, high-growth companies are never quite on target. That’s why identifying gaps is crucial to meeting sales goals. Once you determine where your team is missing the mark, you need to make adjustments quickly to address those gaps. This could mean reassigning territories, changing the makeup of the team, mandating training programs, etc. Good managers go through this cycle again and again to optimize and perfect sales motions until they hit or exceed their number.

The second stage in that sales management cycle – identifying gaps – is the toughest to nail, especially as a company evolves. But I’ve found that the gray area of discovering hidden gems already sitting in a CRM or Marketing Automation system is actually one of those variables that can have a large impact on the topline.

Tips for Finding the White Space in Your Pipeline

Here at Infer, we rely heavily on dashboards and scorecards that size up our pipeline across the buyer’s journey – from marketing engagement, to sales development, to active opportunities. I’ve found it hugely valuable to look at each of these layers through the lens of just two or three main indicators. For example, how many logos can we close off existing leads or accounts? How much potential revenue does that account for? Here’s an example of the at-a-glance view we use to monitor our white space at Infer:

Let’s dig into the three specific ways sales and marketing teams can find untapped growth to add up to the overall opportunity illustrated above.

Scour Your Marketing Systems

Any company that’s been selling for a while probably has a chunk of leads buried in some type of archive. Too many good leads end up neglected in so-called “nurturing” programs and are never heard from again. While most sales folks assume that old leads are worthless, they can actually be the fastest route to growth when activated, because these are contacts or accounts that already know something about your product. By looking for leads that haven’t been touched in a while but still retain ideal customer characteristics, marketing can often resurface high-potential sales prospects that are worth another try.

Analyze Sales Development Outreach

But if you stop with your marketing database, you’re still missing out on some precious white space. The next layer to analyze is sales development (SDR) outreach by looking at how much opportunity is in the funnel this quarter. Whether SDRs sit in your marketing or sales team, consider which accounts each rep should go after and how they should load balance them to avoid anything sitting idle. It can be very helpful to employ a profiling tool that lets you slice and dice your target markets by key attributes. When reviewing your pipeline in this multi-dimensional way, you’ll find a bunch of accounts ripe for more aggressive SDR follow up, and can provide reps with context into why and how they should target them.

Stay on Top of Active and Inactive Sales Opportunities

The third layer of white space falls under the purview of quota-carrying account executives (AEs). By now, leads are well-qualified and what’s important is making sure reps stay on top of them – especially those best-fit accounts you really want to convert. This may include older closed/lost deals that should be revisited (depending on the circumstances of the original decision not to buy). It’s also helpful to analyze whether any reps have opportunities stuck at certain stages for too long and figure out why. Once you know where things are slowing down, you can invest in the right managers, reps and resources to improve cycle times. You might want to fine-tune your sales SLAs, or re-assign certain leads to SDRs or marketing so that AEs can double-down on top accounts.

Many sales leaders underestimate just how much revenue falls through the cracks at each of these stages. Of course, there are no free rides, but I believe every company can do a better job of nurturing golden leads and accounts throughout the buyer’s journey. There are always gaps somewhere in the go-to-market process, and using a methodical approach to fill those gaps has proven successful. Time and time again, I’ve seen businesses expose significant revenue growth by executing on these three key white space opportunities.

Every sales team needs leads — but the best sales teams know how to make every lead count. Our e-book, Get More From Your Leads, shows you how to jumpstart your lead management strategy.

I was having coffee with someone who works in a senior marketing role at a startup in Boston.

“I want to pick your brain on PR” she said.

“OK, shoot. What about PR?”

“Well we’re having a hard time getting any press.”

This company is well funded. They have a solid team. And they’re in a space that is filled with boring old incumbents. There should be plenty of angles here.

So I asked her what she meant when she said “press.”

“You know like Wired, TechCrunch, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe — that type of stuff.”

^ that’s why they are having a hard time getting press.

And this is something that countless startups get wrong with PR today.

Think about it: You don’t rely on those places to get your information on a daily basis any more, so why would your customers?

The Landscape for Press Has Changed.

And we know this…But just like most things in startups, we don’t often think about what we actually do as consumers. We have a hard time separating ourselves from the things that we want to do with our businesses and how we actually do things as people.

How often have you read the WSJ or NYT and heard about a company, product, or idea for the very first time? That almost never happens any more.

We don’t start our days with the the Journal or the Times any more.

Sure, we check what’s going on there, but we start our day doing things like checking Twitter, reading blogs (and Medium articles) from our favorite people and companies — and we listen to podcasts on our commutes on the way to work.

Getting PR today starts with understanding that what PR is has changed. More people have audiences today than ever before, and anyone can be a publisher.

PR today is all about reaching an audience — not about getting a logo to put in the footer of your website.
And getting more PR starts with understanding that the landscape has changed — and as a result, the tactics that you take to get PR need to change too.

Why Most Startups Suck At Getting PR

Most startups struggle to press because their “pitch” starts from the inside out. And that make sense. It’s human nature. You started a company (hopefully) because you so passionately believe that you’re solving a big problem or meeting a huge need in the market. Spoiler alert though: most people don’t care.

Have you ever read the comments on Product Hunt? Every single day, hundreds of new products are posted and launched there. And every single day, there are countless comments that ask:

“How is [New Product] different than [Existing Product]”

Even if you really are different, there’s just so much noise out there that it is so hard to stand out with your product story.

Take any product in any industry, and there are at least a handful of similar products. Heck I mean there are even three different people trying to invent new ways to send ROCKETS into SPACE.

So there are probably at least a handful of existing products in your industry, too.

And even if you have dreams of landing a nice story in the NYT or WSJ, there are usually only two typical pitches work:

1. A huge round of funding led by a well known investor that’s always on the forefront of the next big thing.
2. A handful of powerful customer references (and that story needs to be something more than someone saying “this marketing tool got me 200% more leads!” or “because of X product, I can now run my business while on the go!”).

How to Start Getting More PR for your Startup

Knowing that the landscape has changed, here are the two keys to getting more PR today:

First, your pitch needs to be all about you. Throw out your industry and your “game changing technology” and talk about YOU. Yep. You, as a person — as a founder, as an entrepreneur, marketer, whatever. This is the story that will give you a better shot at landing PR. We (people!) love hearing tactical, authentic stories about businesses today. It’s why we read Medium. It’s why we listen to podcasts. It’s why we follow brands on Snapchat. Use that to your advantage.

Take the crew at Buffer for example. Leo Widrich and Joel Gascoigne are PR BEASTS because from day one, they’ve been sharing their story as they’ve been building a company.

Maybe you started your company after working at Public Company X under legendary Manager Y for 5 years and that’s why you started this company.

That’s your story.

Or maybe this is just straight up the first time you’ve run a business — start sharing all of the things you’re learning as you’re building.

People would rather hear about those stories than about how you’re disrupting hiring, travel, or marketing technology for the 73rd time. Authenticity is the way that the best companies are getting PR today. Figure out what angle you can take to do the same.

This is an especially good strategy for your company to take if you’re still pre $1-5M in ARR and don’t have a ton of news or hundreds of happy customers that will go on record for you.

Second, the channels you’re using to get press need to change. Stop chasing the WSJ, NYT, Wired and TechCrunch and focus here:

• Speaking engagements. You’re most likely an expert in your industry if you’re building a company around this business — so find every conference that’s relevant and try and get yourself a speaking slot. And this doesn’t mean make a list of the top 2–3 conferences in your industry. Find the small ones — speaking in front of 100 people who will love you will have a bigger impact on your business than speaking in front of 1,000 people who will be checking their phones the entire time. Plus, speaking forces you to sharpen your story for when you’re ready for that dream interview.
• Podcasts. Think about the explosion in podcasts. There are podcasts for every single topic, niche and industry you can imagine. Go on every single podcast that you can before you starting pitching press. Podcasters are like mini PR outlets — and some of them aren’t so mini. There are thousands of podcasts that have THOUSANDS of monthly listeners. I can’t stress enough of much of an impact going on podcasts can have (and it’s the most authentic version of PR — you speaking directly into someones ears as they shop, workout, commute to work, etc.) And not only can you find every single podcast in your industry to go on, but there are also a whole set of sub-topics you can talk about. Let’s say you’re the founder of a startup that is building marketing software. I’d find every single marketing podcast to go on (for one angle) and then every single podcast about startups and entrepreneurship for a different angle. There are even podcasts about company culture, work/life balance, etc. ← my point is there are so, so many angles. Find them all before worrying about getting some “print PR.”
• Content. Content is PR, but we just don’t think of it that way. Just like you should find every podcast to be on, apply the same stuff we talked about there and find every single site and blog that will take your writing. And this doesn’t just have to be media sites — every brand is a publisher now. Find all of the blogs you read and the ones you like in your industry and find a way to write for them. Nearly everyone takes contributed content now — you just have to put in the time to write something original. For example, if you have a SaaS sales product, make a list of the top 20 startup sales blogs and try and write posts for as many of those blogs that will take your stuff. You can also use Help A Reporter Out as a tool to source opportunities (you get a daily email with a list of reporters and bloggers who are looking for quotes on particular topics; it’s a great free way to get more links and press).
• Figure out who’s already written something about your competitors. As we talked about earlier in this post, you’re probably not the first company in a given industry. You can actually use that to your advantage for PR. Find everyone that’s ever written about one of your competitors and reach out to tell your story. And don’t just look at the traditional press — make a list of every podcast interview they’ve done, site they’ve guest blogged for, AMA’s their founder has done and more. You can use a tool like Moz’s Open Site Explorer to find all of the backlinks to your competitors blog, homepage or particular landing pages — or use BuzzSumo to find influencers on a particular topic — and then make a really targeted list of people to reach out.

Whether you’re struggling to get PR or just think you should be getting more PR, spend more time focusing on the tactics in this post (content, podcasts, speaking) than pitching traditional media outlets and journalists.

And switch up your angle too — make it more about you than the industry you’re trying to “disrupt.”
We love reading and hearing authentic stories from real people, and I bet your prospects and customers do too.

Oh and this PR stuff isn’t just something I wanted to write about on Medium — this is something we focus on at Drift and it works.

Since the fall we’ve had over 70+ PR features — none in the WSJ, NYT, or TechCrunch — and that’s led to us doubling traffic to Drift.com, growing our blog traffic 7500%, and increasing organic search by 4x.

Now go and get some more PR of your own.

The post Why Most Startups Suck at PR and How to Fix It to Get More Press Right Now appeared first on OpenView Labs.

The SaaS marketing world is humming in 2016 to the tune of offering your business something – anything – related to account-based marketing (ABM). It’s the summer hit equivalent of Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling.”

One of my favorite offerings has been to use retargeting advertising to engage with the employees from a specific account as they surf the web. Yes, retargeting ads can be annoying. But they are also effective. And when as much as 75 percent of the buying process happens before a contact ever reaches out to you, it is critical to be looking for proactive ways to win hearts and minds by building the brand through any number of tactics, including retargeting.

But just as ABM is a new concept that is really 20+ years in the making, an effective retargeting campaign for ABM relies on some old-school marketing.

Let’s review what you’ll want to consider as you launch your next retargeting campaign for ABM, and how they all the pieces fit together.

Ideal account profile

Who is your ideal account?

Just as you begin any marketing initiative by determining your ideal customer profile and buyer persona, the same applies to building out your ideal account profile.

Look at the accounts you have now or that are in your pipeline. What ones do you want to emulate? Do you understand the business drivers for that prospective account, on both an industry and company level?

Next, you want to focus on understanding goals, behaviors, language, processes, systems, and more. As you build out your ideal account profile and next move to creating personas, you will want to consider that you’ll need personas for the decision maker, the influencer, and the stakeholders.

As CMO Kevin Bobowski points out in the video below, in the example of targeting the Act-On account, we would build out personas for him (the decision maker), for his directors and senior directors of the various marketing teams (the influencers), and then a persona for folks like me that will be working every day in the product being sold (the hands-on users). The end result is that there can be hundreds or more different touchpoints into an account throughout the different stages (brand, demand, expand), all of which calls for a coordinated approach.

Content audit

As your ideal account and account-buyer personas take shape, be aware that you should have an audit that addresses each stage of the buyer’s journey for each persona. Audit the content you already have and identify the gaps. For instance, you may want to produce an eBook for users, a short demo video for the influencers, and an ROI case study for the decision makers. As this content gets identified and fleshed out, you can plan how to use it in your ABM retargeting campaign.

Lead nurturing

Let’s define it.

“Lead nurturing is an automated program that encourages prospects to interact with your brand,” said Linda West, director of marketing at Act-On Software.

According to Gleanster Research, 30 percent to 50 percent of the leads that marketers get are qualified, but are not yet ready to buy.

“Just because they’re not ready to buy does not mean they will never buy,” West said. “It means that it’s your job as a marketer to really stay top of mind with the person and really develop the relationship with that person, warm them up over time, so that when they are ready to buy, they choose you.”

She said the goal with lead nurturing is to provide that top of mind outreach through a series of emails and other communications, but not explicitly sell to the prospect, so that over time you’re building trust with them.

“You don’t want to turn them off by sending this ‘BUY NOW’ email message when you know they’re not ready to buy, when they’re not quite there yet, and when they barely know your brand,” West said. “They just won’t bite, especially if you’re in the B2B space or if you have a product with a really big price tag on it, and you have a much longer sales cycle.”

She said you can nurture a prospect across different channels, using the intelligence you’ve gathered from your marketing automation platform and your lead nurturing environment. Companies that excel at this, West said, generate 50 percent more sales ready leads at 33 percent lower cost, according to Forrester Research.

The messaging you send via your nurture program is going to be influenced by your prospect’s profile, behavior, and engagement on your website. Your nurture program is going to direct your account personas along the buyer’s journey.

The content you’ll serve could include blog posts, tweets videos, and just about anything that will help them better understand the problem they’re experiencing as their respective pain points. This can be best-practice content, inspirational content, or funny, suitable-for-the-workplace content. In later stages of the buying cycle, you’ll validate their interests and offer more specific solution/product information such as case studies, testimonials, analyst reports, and so forth.

Just as you did during your content audit, you want to map out where along the funnel you will be sending your nurture campaign messaging. Recognize that no one makes decisions on your timeline; they make decisions on their own timelines.

So as you develop an email nurturing automated program, you’ll use branching logic to say if someone interacts with this email, then serve them with this message. If they don’t interact, they get a different message. Map out the scenarios in which they interact with everything, and the scenarios if they interact with nothing.

You’ll now be ready to integrate that with your retargeting campaigns, expanding those nurturing messages via retargeting to the same personas in your lead nurturing email campaign.

“For every individual email message we have in the nurture campaign, we also have an ad that follows them around the web wherever they are, it’s a retargeting ad, that complements that message and gives them that same feeling,” West said.

Retargeting

Rodrigo Fuentes, co-founder and CEO of ListenLoop.com, suggests looking at how the loop can be closed via retargeting by looking at a hypothetical example: Carl, the CIO of Acme Construction Company (decision maker), has been tasked with buying construction management software for a new project Acme is starting. Carl delegates this assignment down the chain, and it eventually ends up on the desk of Anne, an engineering project manager.

Anne starts the buying process via a Bing internet search for “construction management software.” During her initial research, she comes across HCSS, a construction software company. HCSS, our hero in this example, was also on a list of prospective firms that Carl had passed down to her.

Anne visits HCSS’s website, exploring pages that give a high-level overview of various problems that construction companies have. She finds a landing page for a white paper that gives an in-depth analysis of the specific problem Acme has, and gives particulars of the benefits of HCSS’s construction management solution.

Anne downloads this whitepaper, saves it to her desktop, and then moves on to another project. You see, as mentioned earlier, Acme is a qualified buyer, but isn’t yet ready to buy. For Acme, it will be a 4–6-month buying process, and Anne has moved on to address more immediate deadlines.

But by downloading the white paper, Anne has been entered into HCSS’s CRM via its marketing automation platform. Carl is already in the system, filed under the Acme account profile. With the addition of Anne, HCSS is beginning to develop an account profile.

Based on her initial behavior, HCSS is going to put Anne in its lead nurturing program, sending her an email with content related to her interest and behavior on the HCSS website (gleaned from the marketing automation platform).

Additionally, HCSS is going to also serve Anne retargeting ads that support the nurture program. Those retargeting ads will be displayed on various third-party platforms, such as internet news sites.

The first retargeted ad offers an eBook on construction safety programs (based on her behavior on the HCSS website). A second, then third retargeting ad offering content focusing on the top of the funnel is sent out every seven days.

If Anne engages with this content, then next month HCSS will send her another batch of retargeting ads (and emails) that offer her middle of funnel content. Then, based on Anne’s engagement with the middle of funnel content, HCSS will send her bottom-of-funnel nurturing content.

Additionally, based on Anne’s behavior, HCSS will serve Carl retargeting ads that offer top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and later bottom-of-funnel content targeted to his persona as a decision maker.

Over the course of four to five months, HCSS will have been nurturing both the influencer and decision makers at Acme about their software solution. They will have also been generating brand awareness with Anne and Carl as the two traveled around the rest of the web via retargeting ads, including ads that featured Acme’s logo in them.

“It’s really important to understand that in this postmodern marketing world that we live in, people are becoming a lot more marketing savvy,” Fuentes said. “You really have to get creative and understand how to nurture audiences across digital channels. And I think that’s really where intelligent retargeting and intelligent email nurture marketing can be extremely valuable.”

Ready to expand your knowledge about how to extend your nurturing across digital channels? Join Linda West, Director of Marketing at Act-On Software and Rodrigo Fuentes, Co-Founder and CEO of ListenLoop, as they deep dive into the topic and show you how you can generate more sales-ready leads, by extending your lead nurturing efforts through retargeting.

Still haven't found an email app replacement for Mailbox after its devastating death last December?

Well, there is some good news: there are enough good mail apps out there to assure you won't have to settle for Apple Mail, Gmail, or Outlook. 

Here are some of the best options. 

Spark

Why it's good: Spark, which was built by Ukranian development company Readdle, is a good choice for those stressed out over an unruly inbox. Spark's killer app is its smart inbox, which automatically groups emails into categories (i.e. newsletters or personal) that are all viewable on one screen. The app also has a handful of other helpful features, including the ability to "snooze" emails until a later date and customize email signatures for different recipients. 

Available for: iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch

Price: Free

 

EasilyDo

Why it's good: EasilyDo isn't purely an email app. It markets itself as "a smart assistant," and it is helpful for getting your affairs in order. The super fast app links up to your email account, and the landing page shows your calendar, archives your receipts, and tracks packages. But its email functioning is invaluable. The app shows you emails that requires immediate attention in the dashboard, automatically add meetings confirmed within emails to your calendar, and automatically sends follow-up emails to confirm next-day meetings. 

Available for: Android, iPhone, and iPad

Price: Free

CloudMagic

Why it's good: CloudMagic is simple and tends to eat up less data than other mail apps. The app allows you to sync up all of your email accounts so you can sift through them on one screen. CloudMagic also allows you to add important or relevant emails to third party accounts like Evernote, Trello, and Asana with a single tap. It's also really secure, allowing users to protect their email with a passcode and remotely wipe their account should someone steak their phone. 

Available for: Android, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac

Price: Free for Androids and iPhones, $19.99 for Macs

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Unless you are a sales manager with your own territory (which is an untenable position), you don’t produce revenue. Yes, you are measured on revenue and results, but you are not responsible for producing revenue, your people are!

It’s an important point that too many in sales management don’t understand. Our people are responsible/accountable for producing revenue. It’s their jobs to find the deals, qualify them, and manage them to closure. It’s their jobs to develop and execute winning sales strategies. It’s their jobs to make their numbers.

Some of you may be ripping your hair out, shrieking, “Dave, I have to make my numbers, I lose my job if I don’t! Tell me something that’s helpful!”

We have to make our numbers, but the only way we do that is through assuring each of our people is making theirs. We can’t do it ourselves, the math goes against us.

Think about it for a moment. Undoubtedly, as a top sales performer, you made your numbers. It probably took you full time (or, in reality, more than full time), just to make your own numbers. You didn’t have time to spare. Now as manager, you are responsible for numbers that are 5,10, 15 times more than those you faced as an individual contributor. Already, even with the help of your team, if you went out to try to drive those deals, you don’t have enough time in the day to make the numbers–it’s impossible to do it yourself! (Managers who think of themselves as “super closers” take note!)

The only way to make your numbers is through maximizing the performance of each person on your team. Without each person making their numbers, you won’t make yours!

The job of the sales manager is to maximize the performance of each person on their team!

Easily said, but how do you do it?

You don’t do it by sitting behind your desk analyzing reports. The data may give you clues to performance challenges, but they don’t correct them.

You don’t do it by sitting in endless internal meetings talking about performance problems, new strategies, and the endless number of things that consume lots of management time.

You don’t do it by calling your people on the carpet, demanding they do better.

You do it by rolling up your sleeves and working with your people. You assess their strengths and weaknesses–not generally but specifically: How are they at prospecting? What about qualification skills? How about their ability to develop and execute winning deal strategies? How about their effectiveness in executing high impact calls? What about their ability to understand and help their customers solve their problems, producing business results? How effectively do they manage and use their time? How effectively are they using the resources in the organization? The list goes on.

You know you can’t fix everything at once, so you have to prioritize, “What one or two things are going to have the biggest impact on the salesperson’s performance?” You focus on those, then move to the next two, then to the next. It’s constantly working with each person, helping them achieve their own goals.

There are some things you can do to help the team. You provide systems, tools, processes, programs, and training to help them become more efficient, perhaps even more effective.

You also remove the roadblocks and barriers to their success, making sure they get the support and resources they need to achieve their goals.

But it still comes back to each individual, do you have the right people? Are they doing the right things at the right time with the right people? Are they performing at levels that enable them to reach their goals–to produce the revenue expected?

Coaching underlies all of this. How do we work with each person developing their ability to perform at the level expected? How do we help them learn and develop, so they continuously improve to meet the ever changing challenges their customers face?

Our jobs are not to produce revenue. Our jobs are to make sure each of our people is performing at the highest levels possible, so they can produce revenue.

Are you doing your job, helping them do their jobs?

In today’s environment, employees tend to feel as they are working WAY harder than they have in years past. They are taking on additional responsibilities and feel under compensated. For companies in the position to use raises to reward and retain employees, the common question is often, “When is the right time to offer an employee a raise?” Ultimately it’s your job as a business owner or manager to identify the right time to initiate that dialogue. Small businesses can’t afford to just give away money, so we’re presenting the following scenarios and times that indicate a raise could add to your bottom line when other employee retention ideas just wont cut it.

Three Scenarios to Consider Before Offering a Raise:

1. Longevity and Loyalty

Employees with proven commitment and long-term loyalty are great candidates for a raise. They help your small business grow because they have continued positive attitudes and focus driving business in the door and not out of it. Before making your decision, have a discussion with the employee about their long-term goals within your company. Don’t wait until it’s too late (a resignation letter) before evaluating important team members that have demonstrated their value.

2. Innovative Employees

Do you have an employee that routinely steps outside the box to help make the workplace more productive? Is there a member of your team that spearheads new ideas and concepts on their own without shying away from the additional responsibilities involved? This type of employee is self-motivated, driven, and confident. Reward the mindset of goal orientation. Innovation is something that continually drives companies to develop better products, bring in great ideas and help ride the waves of an up and down market. Set an example that being motivated and results-driven is rewarded in your small business.

3. Employees’ Consistent Results

Does your organization have that one sales person that consistently blows their quotas out of the water? Is there an employee that is always on top of their metrics? Maybe you’ve consistently received high praise about a specific employee from customers. Pay attention to specific feedback and achievement of goals among team members over time to identify employees that aren’t just a flash in the pan, helping to ensure you’ll get a great return on the money spent on a raise. Sales people are particularly performance and money motivated, so monitoring progress towards goals allows you to define additional compensation-related incentives.

Three Key Opportunities to Offer a Raise:

1. Employees’ Annual Review

Raises mean more when they are awarded less frequently, but often enough that they might be on employees’ minds. An employee’s annual review is a perfect (albeit conventional) time to discuss compensation and consider a raise. It’s when you both reflect on the past years’ work and the value the employee has had on your company. When a positive employee review illustrates proven results, successfully handling additional responsibilities, and team-oriented thinking, a raise is one way to reward and foster that type of work ethic. A raise tied to a performance review can also help motivate your employee with an increased sense of their value and improve their job satisfaction.

2. Hiring Additional Employees

If you’re accomplishing the goals you’ve set for yourself, hopefully, your small business is growing. As such, you’re going to need more staff. While you might be juggling budgets to find the funds to expand the headcount, don’t forget about the folks who have been holding down the fort while responsibilities continued to increase. These employees have been carrying extra weight, probably working beyond their original job duties, and are responsible for putting your company in a position to grow the team. Before hiring that next employee, consider giving these key performers a raise because you will be relying on them to train and help new staff learn the ropes. Offering this raise rewards those who are going to continue to share the growing pains right alongside you.

3. Promotions

When employees think promotion, they’re usually thinking more money too. When employers think promotion, they’re probably thinking about increased productivity and additional value to their company (and yes, more money). When an employer offers up a promotion it says the employee’s work is highly valued and that management is confident that they will succeed at the next level. Of course, the next level comes with additional or different types of responsibilities, which often means a new level of salary, making it the perfect time to offer up a raise. It is a great reinforcement and return on your employee investment.

With even the most optimal situation, triple check to ensure you have the funds to provide a raise that is sustainable. Give your employees a roadmap to achieve future raises. Give yourself time to evaluate employee performance by making it part of your annual review process, and maintain consistency and fairness.

Storytelling in selling? Sure! It’s only natural.

From the beginning of time, humans have bonded with each other by sharing stories. Why should it be any different in selling? When sellers listen to buyer’s stories and share a piece of themselves, too, connections are formed.

CONNECT! Online Radio for Selling Professionals™ featured a very special guest to focus on how YOU can connect with your buyers through storytelling in selling.

Mike Bosworth, international speaker, founder of Solution Selling, and co-author of the best-seller “What Great Salespeople Do: The Science of Selling through Emotional Connection and the Power of Story,” joined show host Deb Calvert in this broadcast to talk about how to connect with, inspire and influence your buyers.

Some excerpts from Deb’s interview with Mike about storytelling in selling

Deb: “ You shared a story, and you concluded that being vulnerable, authentic, caring and a good listener all help to form buyer-seller connections…. Let’s start with that, Help our listeners understand why that matter so much.”

Mike: “Connection or connecting is the ultimate soft skill. But what led me to really understanding the true power of it was that I had an event in 2008 where I almost felt like I had been kicked in the stomach… ” (Be sure to tune in to hear the rest of this story!)

Deb: “Tell us what happens now that I”m a seller. I’m exposed to the idea that I need to make emotional connections. Stories come in to that in some regard. What am I doing now? How do I enter into a new relationship with the buyer?”

Mike: “Well, interest and attention are both incremental between buyer and seller. And when two people meet each other for the first time, the windows are pretty narrow so we have to teach salespeople how to increase their speed in building trust.”

There’s more to learn! Tune in to hear all about Storytelling in Selling from the expert, Mike Bosworth

There’s no better way to maximize your windshield time than by listening to CONNECT! Online Radio for Selling Professionals™. Download interviews with all your favorite sales experts so you can cut out continuances, put an end to pending and stop stalling out in sales.

The post Storytelling in Selling: An Interview with Mike Bosworth appeared first on People First.

Everyone in sales and marketing knows what BANT stands for – Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe. This concept was first introduced by IBM in the early 2000s and was the gold-standard for qualifying sales and marketing “leads.” It was used religiously to determine sales-ready leads and almost every sales representative (inside as well as outside) and marketer knew the value of these qualifiers.

Is BANT still meaningful in 2016? Not so much. The ways in which buyers buy is fundamentally different today than when BANT was first introduced. Vendors and sales people are not the gatekeepers of information any longer and multiple analyst reports state that buyers are generally through 50-70% of their buying journey by the time they first interact with sales. Information is at a buyer’s fingertips anytime, anyplace and generally speaking, for free ( it may cost an email address).

In a 2016 article by SalesHacker, BANT Sales Qualification for a New Era the idea of BANT today, especially for SaaS companies and in our buyer-centric world, is outdated. I’m not suggesting qualifying questions aren’t necessary anymore, but asking these static questions as a way to gain insight into if a buyer is ready to buy is just not useful or realistic anymore.

Why?

• If we are a buyer-centric organization, the buyer’s behavior (offline and digitally) and content consumption patterns will show and tell us when they are ready to buy.
• If we are a buyer-centric organization, we know there is generally a buying committee for B2B organizations, not a single buyer.
• If we are buyer-centric, we know our buyers well enough not ask if they have purchasing authority or budget, because it doesn’t really matter when engaging a buyer to help them solve their problem.

With strategic demand generation, sales and marketing work together to help educate our buyers as they proceed through this buying process. In doing so, the buyers obtain the information they need to solve their challenges and address their needs. As the consumption of content occurs, they are also qualified as they indicate various buying signals. This approach is far more complex and accurate than BANT.

If your organization is still using BANT as a primary or even secondary method of qualifying sales-ready leads, it might be time to reassess your lead management process. The era for BANT is over in a buyer-centric organization because we all know that buyers will buy when they are ready, and not when they fit our pre-determined buying criteria.

If your company is practicing account-based marketing, you probably know that events are one of the best ways to engage your target accounts. Events are also still the biggest spend in B2B marketing budgets. Companies invest in events because in-person interaction is the most effective way to create and accelerate sales pipeline.

While B2B marketing has evolved to reach today’s account-based marketing level of sophistication, many event strategies are still stuck in the past. Simply sponsoring big conferences and sending sales reps to work the booth isn’t enough. You need to adjust your event strategy to align with your ABM goals.

Here are six things you can do to optimize your event strategy for account-based marketing:

1. Get the Right Internal Teams Involved

ABM requires full cooperation between Marketing and Sales and so does your event strategy. Without alignment, marketing spends a bunch of money on an event only to have sales dismiss event leads and drop the ball on follow-up.

The benefits of alignment are backed up by data. Teams that report marketing and sales as being “tightly aligned,” report ROIs of greater than 1.5x according to the 2015 State of Pipeline Marketing Report.

Alignment around events goes beyond just marketing and sales. An event with only sales reps present won’t be nearly as effective as one that also includes representation and collaboration from marketing, customer success, and your executive team. This cross-team collaboration needs to start long before your event takes place. Marketing plans and promotes the event while sales invites prospects, customer success invites customers, and your executives reach out to their peers at strategic customer and prospects accounts.

On event day, marketing makes sure the event runs smoothly, manages check-in, and coordinates presentations and content creation. Sales and customer reps connect with prospects and customers to create and accelerate deals. Executives can provide thought leadership in a presentation and connect with attendees one-on-one to build stronger relationships with your customers and prospects.

2. Shift Event Focus from Leads to Pipeline

What is the main purpose of your current event strategy? If the answer is “lead generation,” you aren’t alone, but recent research suggests that you’re focusing on the wrong thing. With ABM, B2B marketers are starting to realize that they need to move past the lead generation role of simply filling the sales funnel with individual, named leads. Many marketers aren’t using event marketing to its full potential.

While lead generation tops the list of reasons that companies invest in events, they would be better served to focus on educating their attendees and accelerating sales pipeline.

A recent Forrester report finds that using events for lead generation isn’t effective:

Our results show that marketers rely on events to find buyers but not to educate or persuade them…B2B marketers clearly aren’t treating event investments strategically; much of their money and effort here could be better spent.

One major issue with marketing events today is that many marketers aren’t measuring success in a meaningful way. Looking at attendance numbers alone is an ineffective way to measure event success. Moving away from a lead generation focus to a pipeline focus and then measuring your event’s impact on revenue will help you optimize your strategy for maximum ROI.

Lead gen can still be part of your marketing strategy, but using events to generate leads is far less effective than other tactics. Events are the most impactful when they focusing on engagement with the prospect and customer accounts you know you want to engage.

3. Target Both Your Prospects and Customers

Your happy customers are some of your best marketing assets. Getting your prospects and customers together at an event is a great way to accelerate pipeline via in-person customer testimonials. You don’t even need to have your customers speak at your events (though that’s always a good idea). Just having them around to chat with your prospects provides an opportunity to create and accelerate pipeline at your event.

An ideal account-based marketing event will help you create and accelerate pipeline with both prospects and customers. Beyond that, making your customers the VIPs at your event makes them feel appreciated and strengthens your relationship with them.

Planning the introductions you want to make between customers and prospects in advance is also helpful. This is where having marketing, sales, and customer success working together prior to the event is important. Without that collaboration, those strategic introductions won’t happen.

4. Focus on Quality Over Quantity

Account-based marketing is all about quality over quantity. Your events should be too. Events need to measure more than just the number of new sales leads. Your sales team doesn’t care about how many leads you send them if they aren’t going to convert to real opportunities. Focus your event efforts on getting the highest quality attendees from your target accounts to attend. The next step is enabling your team to maximize their in-person interactions with those target accounts.

Getting a target account to an event is also a much higher value marketing touch than the typical digital engagement. While a website visit, eBook download, or webinar sign up could result in no more than a few seconds of real engagement, an event requires the attendee to take time out of their day to physically show up to your event. Depending on the length of your event, attendance can result in hours of engagement including listening to a presentation of your content, speaking with a sales rep, and getting a customer reference.

Effective account-based marketing requires a lot of touches throughout the customer lifecycle, not just at the point of lead creation. Looking at metrics like the relationship between customer event attendance and customer retention and renewals should become part of your event process.

5. Enable Fast and Effective Follow-Up

Context is the most important part of any marketing or sales activity. Your team needs to have context on the attendees at your event to make your content, face-to-face conversations, and follow-up relevant. One of the most difficult parts of any B2B event is having access to the right data for meaningful follow-up. It’s easy to send a generic “thanks for attending” email, but those emails aren’t a great way to engage attendees.

After your team has those awesome in-person conversations with your targeted list of prospects and customers, what comes next? All of those great interactions are worthless if your team doesn’t have a quick and effective process for following up with relevant information.

To accomplish quick follow-up that actually works, you need a process for both making sure that all of your attendees are personally engaged at the event and that your on-site team has a process for recording their conversation notes. Doing this enables sales to follow up quickly and personally after an event, and start to turn those event conversations into revenue.

6. Track Event Influence

As with any aspect of marketing, measurement is hugely important. Without tracking the success of your events, you could be wasting a lot of money. It’s clear that measuring events by lead generation isn’t a good representation of ROI.

The focus of event measurement needs to switch to pipeline acceleration and revenue generation. Looking at how your events directly influence your sales opportunities is one of the best ways to measure success. The combination of revenue event marketing software and omni-channel attribution will allow you clearly measure the impact of your events.

Conclusion

Events can be one of the most powerful tactics in your marketing strategy, but they need to be optimized to fit your ABM strategy. Focusing on generating leads and sponsoring conferences isn’t sufficient to drive results in the B2B market. Making events a key piece of your account-based marketing requires a strategic reevaluation of your strategy.